TWENTY-NINE
STATE COP DANNY ESPOSITO is surprised to see the two black SUV’s,SOUTHAMPTON TOWNPOLICEwritten in huge letters on the side, parked out in front of the house, lights flashing.
What are they doing here?
Esposito slams on his brakes, pulls right up onto the lawn, jumps out of his own car, shows his State Police badge to the first cop trying to stop him.
When he looks past the cop, he sees what’s left of the front of the house.
“What the hell happened here?” Esposito says.
“Whathappened?” the kid from Southampton Police asks. “What happened is that somebody turned this guy’s house into a fucking rifle range.”
“Anybody inside get shot up?” Esposito asks.
The cop shakes his head.
“Nope.”
“Shit,” Esposito says. “I was afraid of that.”
“You wanted somebody to get hit?” the cop says.
“A guy can dream,” Esposito says.
Every window in the house has been blown out. There are bullet holes in the door, top to bottom, and between the first- and second-floor windows. The flashing lights from thepatrol cars show the glass in the front yard glistening like a hailstorm just blew through.
“Gotta be some kind of AR-15, right?” Danny Esposito says.
“Hell, yeah,” the kid says. “One of themsportrifles.”
He puts air quotes aroundsport.
Esposito points toward the BMW in the driveway.
“Isthe homeowner here?” he asks. “Or did he miss all the fun?”
“Was here, and is,” the kid says. “He must be one lucky bastard.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Danny Esposito says.
They both see the blown-out front door open then. And there, standing in the entrance, wearing a bathrobe with the belt hanging down behind it, what appears to be a glass of whiskey in his meaty hand, is former Commander of Detectives Paul Harrington.
Esposito heads straight for him.
“Looks like somebody tried to send you a message,” Esposito says to him.
Harrington throws down some of his drink.
“Next time they should just send a text,” he says, and walks back inside.
THIRTY
JURY SELECTION BEGINS AT the courthouse in Mineola tomorrow morning. Katherine Welsh will be in one corner and I’ll be in the other even if I’m somewhat under my normal fighting weight. Judge Michael Horton will be presiding over it all.
I am hoping that the familiar excitement of that, the rush of a new season starting, will somehow mitigate how truly lousy I have been feeling on a daily basis ever since Switzerland. At least when the college hockey season was starting up, I could start hitting people.
“I have to start feeling better,” I say now to Sam Wylie at the Candy Kitchen.
