The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [73]
Vinny looked as if he might pass out.
“I don’t. I swear. I don’t know anything about anything in the trunk.”
“You’re lying,” Reggie insisted. He took a half step backward, extending his arm more fully. “I hate to shoot you like this, Vinny, because I’m wearing my favorite coat, and I’m going to get blood all over my sleeve when your heart explodes.”
Vinny moaned, tears running down his face.
“Last chance,” Reggie said.
A surge of furious despair brought me to life as I realized what was going to happen next. Vinny wasn’t going to admit to knowing what was in the trunk, and Reggie wasn’t going to shoot him. Vinny would realize that Reggie had been bluffing, and we’d never learn whatever else he might know. I remembered what Claire had said about our being together.
I swung the bat. I swung it as hard as I could, catching Vinny on the inside of his right knee. He crumpled to the ground, screaming. I drew it back to take a second swing and Reggie grabbed me by the shirtfront, his body interposed between me and Vinny.
“Where’s my son?” I yelled, struggling to get past Reggie. “What did you do with him? Tell me, you little motherfucker, or I’ll kill you.”
Joe came running around the corner, flashlight in one hand and gun in the other.
“Jesus Christ,” he said.
Reggie wrenched the bat from my hands and shoved me toward Joe.
“Get him out of here,” Reggie barked. “Now. I’m going to clean this mess up as best I can.”
24
Reggie and I didn’t talk much on the ride back to Manhattan. He kept his police radio on and tuned to the Staten Island frequency. I heard the call for a patrol car to the gas station where we’d left Vinny, and a follow-up call for an ambulance. I rode with my head tipped against the passenger window, too emotionally spent to care. Reggie hung a left into Battery Park City after we emerged from the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, hopping the curb at the end of Liberty Street and following the footpath toward the North Cove marina. We parked shy of a flight of stairs, with a view of the river. He turned off his headlights and lit a cigarette.
“You and me have a problem.”
I watched the lights of the Financial Center play on the water, listening.
“I’ll admit I screwed up tonight. I shouldn’t have let you come. That makes me stupid, because I let you get mixed up in something you shouldn’t have been mixed up in. But you crossed a line back there. I’m not a goon, and I don’t work with goons. I scare people, and I slap them around sometimes, but I don’t ever hurt anyone unless they’re trying to hurt me, and never if they’re defenseless.”
I straightened up in my seat, took a cigarette from his pack, and lit it. I hadn’t smoked since college. The first inhalation made me flushed and dizzy. I exhaled and took another hit, feeling my nerves steady.
“I hear you, and I respect your opinion. But I’d be lying if I said I felt bad about what I did back there.”
The statement was as much a revelation to me as it was to him. Reggie sighed.
“I’m not saying I don’t understand the impulse. I deal with scumbags all the time, and it wouldn’t make me lose any sleep to kick the shit out of most of them.”
“So, why don’t you?” It had never occurred to me that Reggie had any hard limits. I always assumed his methods adapted to meet the circumstances, regardless of what those circumstances might be. “Because it’s illegal?”
“Fuck legal or illegal. That’s for lawyers to worry about. At the end of the day, you’re a good guy or a bad guy. Good guys try to help people; bad guys try to hurt people. And if you start hurting people to help people, then you’ve crossed the line. It’s not that complicated.”
“I’m a father, Reggie. I know you care, but Kyle’s my son.”
“Why I shouldn’t have brought you along,” he muttered, sounding angry at himself. “Who knew you’d turn into fucking Joe DiMaggio on me.”
I took another hit from the cigarette, remembering the rage I’d felt when I swung the bat.
“Let me ask you a question. What happens if