The Devil's Elixir

2

MAMARONECK, NEW YORK

I was dumping some dry cleaning and a beer-heavy grocery bag on the passenger seat of my car when my BlackBerry warbled.

It was a typical July morning in the small coastal town, hot and still and humid, but I didn’t mind it. Between the unrelenting heat wave that had turned Manhattan into a sweaty, oxygen-starved cauldron for the past couple of weeks and the heightened-alert July Fourth weekend I’d just spent there dealing with its associated onslaught of false alarms and hysteria, a quiet weekend by the ocean was definitely a heavenly proposition, regardless of the supernova looming overhead. As an added bonus, my Tess and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Kim, were out in Arizona, visiting Tess’s mom and her aunt at the latter’s ranch, and I had the house to myself. Don’t get me wrong. I love Tess to death and I love being around them, and since Tess and I got back together, I’ve realized how much I hate—truly hate—sleeping alone. But we all need a few days alone, now and then, to take stock and ponder and recharge—euphemisms for, basically, vegging out and eating stuff we shouldn’t be eating and being the lazy slobs we love to be when nobody’s watching. So the weekend was shaping up pretty sweet—until the warble.

The name that flashed up on my screen made my heart trip.

Michelle Martinez.

Whoa.

I hadn’t heard from her for—how long had it been? Four, maybe five years. Not since I’d walked away from what we had going during that ill-fated stint of mine down in Mexico. I hadn’t thought about her for years either. The marvelous Tess Chaykin—I don’t use the term lightly—had burst into my life not too long after I’d got back to New York. She’d snared my attention in the chaotic aftermath of that infamous horse-mounted raid at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and had quickly engulfed my world, infecting me with that earnest, addictive lust for life of hers and crowding out any musings I could have had about any past loves or long-gone lovers.

I stared at the screen for a long second, my mind running a meta-trawl through possible reasons for the call. I couldn’t think of any, and just hit the green button.

“Meesh?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m—” I was about to make a joke, something lame about sipping a mojito poolside in the Hamptons, but the edge to her voice ripped the notion to shreds. “You okay?”

“No. Where are you?”

I felt the back of my neck stiffen. Her voice was as distinctively accented as ever, a vestige of her Dominican and Puerto Rican descent with an overlay from growing up in New Jersey, but it had none of the laid-back, playful sultriness I remembered.

“I’m out,” I told her. “Just running some errands. What’s going on?”

“You’re in New York?”

“Yes. Meesh, what’s up? Where are you?”

I heard a sigh—more of an angry grumble, really, as I knew full well that Michelle Martinez was not one to sigh—then she came back.

“I’m in San Diego and I’m—I’m in trouble. Something terrible has happened, Sean. Some guys came to the house and they shot my boyfriend,” she said, the words bursting out and stumbling out of her. “I barely got away and—Christ, I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but I just didn’t know who else to call. I’m sorry.”

My pulse bolted. “No, no, you did the right thing, it’s good you called. You okay? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m all right.” She took another deep breath, like she was calming herself. I’d never heard her like this. She’d always been clear-headed, steel-nerved, unshakeable. This was new territory. Then she said, “Hang on,” and I heard some fumbling, like she was moving the phone away from her mouth and holding it against her clothing. I heard her say, “Sit tight, okay, baby? I’ll be right outside,” heard the car door click open and slam shut, then her voice came back, less frantic than before, but still intense.

“Some guys showed up. I was home—we were all home. There were four, five of them, I’m not sure. White van, coveralls, like painters or something. So they wouldn’t raise eyebrows with the neighbors, I guess. They were pros, Sean. No question. Face masks, Glocks, suppressors. Zero hesitation.”

My pulse hit a higher gear. “Jesus, Meesh.”

Her voice broke, almost imperceptibly, but it was there. “Tom—my boyfriend—if he hadn’t . . .” Her voice trailed off for a moment, then came back with a pained resolve. “Doorbell goes, he gets it. They cut him down the second he opened the door. I’m sure of it. I heard two silenced snaps and a big thump when he hit the ground, then they charged into the house and I just freaked. I got one of them in the neck and I just ran. I grabbed Alex and—the garage has a door that leads out into the backyard, and—I got the hell out of there.” She let out a ragged sigh. “I just left him there, Sean. Maybe he was hurt, maybe I could’ve helped him, but I just ran. I just left him there and ran.”

She was really hurting over that, and I had to move her away from that remorse. “Sounds to me like you didn’t have a choice, Meesh. You did the right thing.” My mind was struggling to process everything she’d said while stumbling over the canyon-size gaps in the overall picture. “Did you call the cops?”

“I called nine-one-one. Gave them the address, said there was a shooting, and hung up.”

Then I remembered something she’d just said. “You said you grabbed Alex. Who’s Alex?”

“My son. My four-year-old boy.”

I heard her hesitate for a moment, I could picture her weighing her next words, then her voice came back and hit me with a three-thousand-mile knockout punch.

“Our boy, Sean. He’s our son.”