Dead Man's Grip

Then they headed out to the parking lot and climbed into an unmarked, sludge-brown Ford Crown Victoria.
    Pat Lanigan was an Obama man who spent much of his free time doing charity work for wounded veterans. Dennis Bootle was a diehard Republican who spent most of his free time as an activist for the pro-gun lobby and out hunting. Although two years older than his colleague, Bootle had hair a youthful straw-blond colour, styled in a boyish quiff. Unlike Lanigan, who despite all his dealings with the Mafia had deliberately never once fired his handgun in all his years in service, Bootle had shot three people, on three different occasions, killing two of them. They were chalk and cheese. They argued constantly. Yet they were close.
    As Lanigan started the engine and accelerated forward, a twelve-inch square of cardboard printed with the words ON BROOKLYN D.A.
BUSINESS slid off the top of the dash and fell on to Bootle’s lap. Bootle stuck it on the rear seat, face down, saying nothing. He was a taciturn man and had moods in which he remained silent, sometimes for hours. But he never missed a thing.
    As they headed off, Bootle suddenly said, ‘What’s this sound like to you?’
    Lanigan shrugged. ‘Dunno. You?’
    Bootle shrugged. ‘Sounds to me like a hit. Got hit written all over it.’
     
     
    The early-afternoon traffic on Long Island was light and it stayed that way during the next ninety minutes as they approached the Hamptons. In high season, this stretch of road would be slow, the traffic fender to fender. Relaxed, Lanigan steered the car along the lush shrub- and grass-lined freeway with one hand, keeping a wary eye on the exit signs, distrustful of the occasional instructions of the satnav he had stuck to the windshield.
    Bootle had a new girlfriend who was rich, he told Pat, and had a big spread in Florida. He was planning to retire and move down there with her. The news made Pat sad, because he would miss his buddy. He did not want to think about retirement just yet – he loved his job too much.
    The satnav was showing a right turn ahead, as the trees and shrub gave way to the outskirts of East Hampton, with its large houses, set well back from the road, and then a parade of white-painted, expensive-looking shops. They turned right in front of a Mobil Oil garage and headed along a leafy lane with a double yellow line down the middle.
    ‘You know what you can guarantee about the Hamptons?’ Bootle said suddenly, in his clipped Bostonian accent, breaking twenty minutes of silence.
    ‘Uh? What’s that?’ Lanigan always sounded like he was rolling a couple of marbles around in his mouth.
    Bootle nodded at a vast colonial-style mansion with a colonnaded portico. ‘You ain’t going to find any retired NYPD guys living in this area!’
    ‘This isn’t ordinary Wise Guy terrain either,’ Pat Lanigan retorted.
    ‘This kid’s mother, she’s married to Lou Revere, right?’
    ‘Uh huh.’
    ‘He’s the Mob’s banker. You know that? Last election, rumour has it he gave the Republicans ten million.’
    ‘All the more reason to bust him.’
    ‘Go fuck yourself.’
    Pat Lanigan grinned.
    The double yellow line ended and the lane narrowed to single-track. On both sides there were trim hedges.
    ‘Are we right?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    The satnav told them they had arrived.
    Directly in front of them were closed, tall, grey-painted gates. A sign below the speaker panel said ARMED RESPONSE.
    Pat stopped the car, lowered his window and reached out to press a button on the panel by the gates. The cyclops eye of a CCTV camera peered suspiciously down at them.
    A voice speaking broken English crackled out: ‘Yes, hello, please?’
    ‘Police,’ Pat said, pulling his shield out and holding it up for the camera to see.
    Moments later the gates swung slowly open and they drove through.
    Ahead of them, beyond an expanse of lawn and plants straight from a tropical rainforest, rose the grey superstructure of an imposing modern mansion, with a circular building to the left that reminded Pat of the conning tower of a nuclear submarine.
    ‘This a bit like your new lady’s pad?’ Pat asked.
    ‘Nah. Hers is much bigger than this – this would be like her pool house.’
    Pat grinned as he drove along woodchip, towards a garage large enough to accommodate an aircraft carrier, and pulled up alongside a gold Porsche Cayenne. They climbed out and took in the surroundings for a moment. Then, a short distance away, the front