Free A Dark and Broken Heart by R.J. Ellory Page B

guns in the car. Take them with him and they’d keep them until he came out again. Unless he was up for a suicide mission, there was no hope of killing Sandià on his home ground. And before today there had been no reason to kill him. Before today he hadn’t hit Sandià personally and directly.
    And if Sandià already knew that Madigan had taken the house that morning, well, Madigan would be dead within the hour. His head, hands, and feet would be a dozen pounds of hamburger bynine, most of it in the New Jersey swamps, a little in the East River, maybe some in the Hudson. By midnight the fire department would be traipsing through the wet, smoldering wreck of his house, and the office of the chief of police would be making a statement to the New York Times about how sorely Madigan would be missed by his colleagues and his family.
    And Sandià would make sure that his connection to Madigan never saw the light of day.
    It was that simple. It was always that simple with Sandià.
    At the lower entrance to the tenement Madigan was waved through into the foyer. Here he went through the customary pat-down—collar, shoulders, underarms, waist, thighs, calves, ankles. His hip holster was empty, as was the one at his ankle. He was escorted to the elevator, and one of the apes rode up with him. Nine floors, all of it in silence, the aged elevator clunking and creaking every foot of the way. The ape didn’t smell so good. He needed a good hosedown. Maybe six three, two ten, two twenty perhaps, his face like a wet sack of sneakers. He had a buzz cut all over, but at the sides there were lightning streaks cut down to the scalp. He had a vicious scar dissecting his left ear, and right down to the edge of his jaw. The ear had been severed, but had knitted.
    “Machete,” the ape said, aware that Madigan was staring.
    “That so?”
    “Sure is.”
    “Gotta smart, huh?”
    “Just a little.”
    “Wouldn’t want to see the guy that did that to you,” Madigan ventured.
    “You ain’t gonna,” the ape replied.
    The elevator shuddered to a halt.
    Madigan waited for the door to slide back. The lithium had slowed his heart, but he could feel the pressure of his own blood in his veins, in his brain, in the arteries in his neck. His hands were moist with sweat. His scalp itched something fierce. He needed to be the way he always was with Sandià—respectful, yet nonchalant and unhurried. They had history together, all of fifteen years, all the way back to the Gangs Division. Back then Madigan had been twenty-seven, Sandià something around forty. He owned a piece of a half dozen things. Nothing was big by itself, but everything together made him matter. He had some cars, some girls, a couple of chop shops, a few runs in and out of the cargo bays at JFK forcigarettes, liquor, videos and electronic gear. He had a crew of three or four dozen. They weren’t a gang. They didn’t wear colors or fly flags. Sandià was too smart for that. No, Sandià knew where to invest his time and resources. Start with the cops already on the take. Get them on your side. Those that weren’t, well, there was always a way. Put a couple of girls in a hotel room, make a call, have a cop arrive for a possession bust, maybe a solicitation or something. The girls take care of the cop so as not to get the ticket, and everything is on film. The cop gets a couple of stills in the mail, he faces a costly divorce, a screwed career, or he gives word to Sandià every time there’s a planned raid on a traffic route.
    Madigan’s own introduction to Sandià’s little world had been a mutual thing, a river that ran both ways. Back then, the mid-90s, there were things going on that made today’s business pale in comparison. Madigan was still married to Angela, his first wife. He went up to Manhattan Gangs in July of ’94. Cassie had been two years old and a handful. Neither he nor Angela were sleeping so good. They were fighting, but still at the stage where they didn’t