The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [58]
“Officers Burke, Rodriquez, and myself are leaving Atlantic City.”
Parker stood quietly at the edge of the alleyway. He gazed up and down Indiana Avenue. The scene was strangely placid, especially when he considered the commotion just four blocks away.
Then something moved.
56
SOMETHING FARTHER UP the street caused Parker to pause at the mouth of the alleyway.
Somebody was moving on the sidewalk, almost directly across from where his car was parked. He wasn’t sure what it was yet; his eyes strained to see in the dark. His throat was painfully dry.
Could be just neighborhood types, Parker thought. Maybe it was a street junkie or a wino? The odor in the alley was a fresh scent.
He quietly made his way back into the shadows of the alleyway. Then he walked in a hurry another forty or fifty yards to Illinois, the street running parallel to Indiana. He wanted to come back onto Indiana, but behind the man loitering near his Audi.
Parker peered down another vacant alleyway. His chest felt uncomfortably tight.
He saw something move again. Shadows parted. Then the red ember of a cigarette traveled in a familiar arc.
The left side up ahead…
A distinct outline was poised at the end of the alleyway. A man was waiting near Parker’s car. The man was only twenty to thirty yards away.
A run-down bar a block or so away provided dim lighting. The neon glow from the All-Star Lounge was enough for him to decipher a full silhouette.
Parker began to inch forward again. The waiting man was only ten yards away. He slid out his .22. Who the hell was standing there in the alleyway?
“Freeze! Don’t move,” he finally called out.
The man dropped into a professional shooting crouch.
“It’s Parker,” Isiah shouted, identifying himself.
The man paid no heed. He fired, and the round whistled past Parker.
Instinctively, Parker fired back. He fired a second time. Both hurried shots missed.
“Don’t shoot, Isiah. Don’t shoot, for Chrissakes!”
Parker recognized the voice, and he couldn’t get his breath. Dread clutched him.
The man was Jimmy Burke. His own partner had purposely shot at him.
Burke suddenly darted from the alley. Parker could have fired. He didn’t. There were too many questions. Maybe he couldn’t have fired at Burke anyway.
Isiah Parker ran down the alleyway after Jimmy Burke. Spots appeared in front of his eyes, obscuring the scene.
All at once he stopped. A body was there; a dark shape was curled up beside a collection of rubbish.
There was enough light to make out features of the fallen man. A mop of curly black hair; a long beaked nose; two black holes in the forehead. Aurelio Rodriquez had been murdered.
Police sirens were screaming through the night again. Parker’s brain was screaming. Finally, Parker began to run. He stumbled as he ran away from the police, from whoever was chasing him.
He disappeared into the darkness of Atlantic City….He passed New York Avenue… Then Baltic Avenue…The fear, the feeling of helplessness from just a few minutes before, was already being replaced by rage.
57
John Stefanovitch; Minersville, Pennsylvania
THERE HAD BEEN a massacre, and he had been there. He had heard the horrible screams of death.
Relax, now. Don’t overload, Stefanovitch told himself.
Let everything settle down first, then try to sort it out…
Stefanovitch’s parents’ house was visible down the winding road, beyond a dusty coal hauler they had been following the last few miles. The sky overhead was dark gray, stirred up but oddly beautiful over the sprawling Pennsylvania farmlands, which weren’t all that far from Atlantic City.
“That’s it on the right down there. The homestead.” Stefanovitch broke the silence of the past couple of minutes.
Rest, he thought again.
Get away from Atlantic City, from all of the death and chaos.
Tomorrow is soon enough to start again; to try to understand…
“So you really are a farm boy,” Sarah said in a soft whisper, her waking-up voice. It was just past two in the morning.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s Stefanovitch A&M