Page 59 of The Writer

Ain’t that how it’s always been, boy? You and me, we’re nothing but garbage to them. Something to be left on the curb and forgotten.

“Fuck you, Pop,” Declan mutters softly. “Don’t you ever compare me to you.”

You think we’re different? We ain’t no different. Work hard. Do what’s right. Get shit on. Work harder. Get shit on again. It’s all good if you keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told, but the second you try to get up, a thousand boots are on your back putting you in your place. That Lucero fella was a twisted fuck; he got what he had coming. You saw him about to get off, you felt those boots on your back, you didn’t let them hold you down. Nope. Not my boy. You shook them off. You put that dog down. You ask me, he got off easy. In my day we woulda tied him behind a car and dragged his ass around the neighborhood until all his nastiness was nothing but a stain on the pavement. But you got him your way—ain’t nothing wrong with that. Maybe a little weak in execution, but you still got him. Good for you.

Declan looks down at his hands. His fists are clenched so tight, his nails are digging into his palms. Rather than releasethem, he squeezes tighter, hoping the pain will shut down his father’s voice. It does not.

You ask me, the way you tookmeout showed more balls. Hell, to pull that off? At seven? Goddamn, boy. That’s when I knew I raised you right. I raised you strong.

“You beat the hell out of me.”

I made you a man! I was thirteen before I stood up to my old man. You were seven! Fifty pounds soaking wet. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t ready for it. Didn’t see you coming. Another four or five years, hell yeah, I’d be watching, but not when you were seven. No way. I didn’t figure it out until the moment I slipped off that girder. I was in the air, on my way to the pavement, and that’s when it hit me. What was it you put in my coffee? Rat poison? Strychnine? No, that’s not right. They would have caught that. What was it again?

“Benadryl.”

Yeah, the same shit your mama slipped you when she couldn’t get you to sleep. Benadryl. I felt nothing. Not a damn thing. Not at first. Up on that building. Walking around. Doing what needed doing. I was maybe an hour into my shift, two-thirds through that thermos of coffee, when the Benadryl kicked in. Not in a bad way; more a warm-blanket kinda way, like slipping-into-a-nice-tub-of-water kinda way. I shoulda known something was wrong, but that’s the beauty of a drug like that. It dulls all the senses, numbs you. There’s no anxiety, worry, or fear—all the things that’d kept me alive on those girders day after god-awful day slowly dimmed. Dimmed so slow, I didn’t notice them go. And with them went my coordination, my balance… when I took that last step, when I realized my foot had missed the edge of the girder and I tumbled, even then, there was no fear. I suppose that ain’t what you want tohear, is it, boy? I’m guessing you want to believe I went out in a bad way, but it just wasn’t like that. You know what my last thought was? What went through my head when I realized what you’d done? It was pride. It was pride in my boy. I knew in those last few seconds you’d get through the shit of this world just fine. I knew I’d put that in you. My boy, who don’t let nobody push him around. Not even me.

Declan unclenches his fists, studies the red marks on his palms, then squeezes them again. Tighter. As tight as he can. He wants the pain. He needs it. All those broken bones. The cuts. The bruises. He needs to remember every ounce of pain his father inflicted on him.

Without me, think you could do the things you do? Think you’d have it in you? Not a chance. I made you.

“Yeah, well, Pop, you’re gonna love what comes next.”

Declan stands, stretches, feels the blood course through every inch of his body. He exits the park and crosses the street, heading for the Beresford building, the night thick all around him. He’s never felt so alive.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

DECLAN REMEMBERS THE dog walker. He caught only a glimpse of her, an older woman bundled in a thick coat tugging some little kick-me dog of indeterminate breed. He knew it was probably some expensive purebred that cost more than some cars, but Declan didn’t know dogs. She’d come around the corner and stood in front of the Beresford. He noticed her but didn’t think she noticed him; clearly, he’d been wrong about that. Not that it matters. None of it will matter much longer.

He stops at the edge of Central Park West, glances up at the Beresford, and takes it all in. Twenty-two stories with separate entrances for what’s basically three buildings pressed together. Declan knows of no other building like it in New York. Or anywhere, actually.

To access the Morrows’ apartment, you have to go through the entrance on Central Park West, then take the elevator up to the tower. There’s no other way to reach it.

It’s a beautiful design.

Designed for privacy.

Designed for the elite.

From where he stands, Declan can see the Central Park West entrance, but when he starts walking, he doesn’t go that way. He passes right by the spot the woman with the dog had been; he half expects to see her again but does not. He goes into the building through the service entrance on Eighty-Second and immediately looks at the camera. When he disabled it a few weeks back, he didn’t just disconnect the wire—he clipped the wire at the base of the camera and again at the spot where it vanished in the wall. This wasn’t something that could be repaired; it needs to be replaced, and that still hasn’t happened. There’s no doorman at this entrance, another plus for those owners so concerned about their personal security and privacy that they choose to have no one watching their regular comings and goings. And a bonus for Declan, who also values privacy, who also doesn’t want to be watched.

He takes the service elevator to the fourth floor. The doors open on a dingy hallway lit by bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The narrow space is filled with cobwebs and discarded furniture from an era long gone, all thick with dust. This hall is one of many in the bowels of the Beresford that don’t appear on the blueprints filed with the New York City building inspector. They were added after permits were issued and were originally meant for servants and household staff to use so theycould navigate the building unseen. Cross from section to section unseen. In a building designed for the elite, designed for privacy, the last thing residents wanted to see in the gilded halls they traveled was a maid hauling groceries or a butler carrying a bundle of laundered shirts. That was all best left to the dark.

Declan stops at a door about two-thirds of the way down the narrow hall. On this side, the door is clearly marked—EXITpainted in faded red letters. Declan presses the weighted latch and steps through, and on that side, there’s no sign; the door vanishes in the intricate woodwork of the tenant foyer of the fourth floor. Like the lobby, this space is deserted. There’s only one apartment off the foyer, and it’s quiet. Declan steps over to the tenant elevator opposite the hidden door and presses the button. When the elevator arrives, he enters and hits the button that will take him to the Morrows’ tower apartment.

To Denise Morrow’s apartment.

The last time he was here, the vestibule off the elevator was filled with half of New York’s Finest, but now the space is empty and silent. The ding of the elevator closing sounds like a trumpet blast to him.

The lock on the Morrow door has been replaced with a beefier model, but Declan makes quick work of it. He grew up picking far harder locks. He slips inside the dark apartment and eases the door shut at his back. The LED on the alarm panel is green. Disarmed.

Declan takes out his gun.

He’s halfway down the entry hall when he feels eyes on him. He turns and spots Denise Morrow’s cat hovering in the shadows a few paces behind him, his bright green eyes shimmeringin the dark. What is his name? Quincy? Quinton? Quimby. That’s it.

The cat rockets past him, a blur of fur and a jingle of tags, and stops at the place where David Morrow’s body was. The cat pads back several more steps, then looks up at Declan like he’s showing it all to him. The body is long gone; the tiles have been scrubbed. No sign of what happened. Yet Declan still feels the dead man in the air. Feels like he is stepping over a body when he walks past that spot. He goes through the kitchen to the main bedroom.

The door is open, and Denise Morrow is barely visible in the faint moonlight. She’s lying atop the large bed, naked save for a white satin sheet that doesn’t cover her legs; looks like she kicked it aside to feel the chilled air on her skin.

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