Blind to Sin Read online

  Herrick faked a smile back and told the kid to keep shooting.

  “I DON’T understand this at all.” Kenneth Herrick rubbed his hands together.

  They hadn’t left the hotel since Donne’d come back the night before. The TV played CNN at a minimum volume. They were reporting on early stock market returns. Donne would have preferred SportsCenter.

  Kenneth wanted to sleep on what Donne had told him the night before and did. Donne wondered how he slept, if it was full of nightmares and guilt, or if it was a sound rest. Donne was dead to the world all night, his muscles recovering from the workout they’d gotten.

  The only reason either of them had even left the room this morning was to get coffee, Kenneth bringing two cups back. He passed one to Donne, and then sat on a chair on the opposite side of the room. He put the coffee on the table. Donne watched steam waft into the air and dissipate.

  “I told them I needed you,” Kenneth said.

  “Clearly they disagreed.”

  “But why?”

  Donne shrugged.

  “You really beat the shit out of Manuel? Jesus.”

  Donne thought of a few wisecracks, but passed them up. He was no Sean Connery.

  “He’s not dead. That’s a problem. You wimped out.”

  A tremor ran through Donne.

  “I’m gonna call Elliot,” Kenneth said. His voice was wobbly.

  “No,” Donne said. “Don’t you dare.”

  The words were so sharp, Kenneth’s head snapped up.

  “We don’t know what his game is yet. And he may not know yet. We go about our business, and if you want to plan this heist, you’d better get to work. No distractions.”

  Kenneth shook his head. “I need Matt involved.”

  CNN moved on to a story about the Middle East. Donne glanced at the stock shots of the desert.

  “Then get busy, damn it.”

  Kenneth stood up. “Seems like someone woke up.”

  Donne stared at Kenneth. “My turn not to understand, I guess.”

  “For a year in prison, you sat there like a proverbial duck. Trying to make friends, and lean on me for protection. People coming after you every ten minutes. Bring me the head of Jackson Donne. And I kept you alive, didn’t I?”

  “You did.”

  “But you were a damn mope. Sitting around doing nothing.”

  Donne stood up and walked over to the window. Their room had a spectacular view of the brick-building wall next door. Nothing else.

  “I was in prison,” he said. “Not a Mary Poppins revival.”

  “So, I’m glad this incident with Manuel woke you up. But we need to be smart, and not killing Manuel wasn’t smart.”

  “I’ve done dumber things and I’m still here.”

  “Good for you, Half Measure. I’m calling Elliot.”

  Donne nodded. “I don’t think it’s the right play. Call Matt instead.”

  Kenneth took a deep breath.

  “Think about it,” Donne said. “We have a finite amount of time before Elliot figures out I’m still alive. We don’t know why they don’t want me in the picture, but if you’re going to save your wife—or whatever the hell she is to you now—then you need to get working.”

  “You used to feel bad when people died. When I had to kill someone to save you. I should have known you’d hold back”

  Donne exhaled. “Times don’t change.”

  “They should.” Kenneth slammed his fist into his own thigh. “God damn it, Jackson.”

  Donne stood up and walked to the other side of the hotel room. He wanted to go outside.

  “When I cased the joint yesterday, I noticed something.”

  “Was it the fact that you said ‘case the joint’?” Kenneth’s words were sharp.

  Donne wiped at his nose. “Place looks like Rahway Prison. We just got out of there, and now we have to go back in.”

  “You didn’t want to leave Rahway.” Kenneth scratched his cheek.

  “This is different.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “What is your problem?” Donne asked.

  “Maybe because you should have killed a guy yesterday. You just made things so much harder for us. You…” He trailed off.

  Donne didn’t respond. Pushing Kenneth to finish the statement would only cause more tension. Unnecessary.

  Outside, bus brakes squealed. Donne looked at his fists. He didn’t answer Kenneth and instead got up and left the room. He needed to talk to Matt.

  HER ROOM was cold.

  Tammy walked through the house slowly, wrapped in a blanket, looking for the thermostat. Elliot had gone out in a panic, something he couldn’t talk about. She hadn’t seen Manuel or the other one recently. Just Elliot. And now he was gone. Since she’d spent so much time sleeping, eating and reading in her room, she hadn’t taken the time to learn the layout of the house. But the thermostat had to be around here somewhere.

  She was always cold.

  Ever since that day, a year ago, when they got the diagnosis. Tammy sat on the sticky leather bed. She’d already pushed the white paper out of the way, hating how it scratched her legs. Elliot leaned against the wall of the office, across from the cabinets. They’d been waiting for about twenty minutes, and Tammy’s heart was doing the jitterbug in her chest. There was sweat starting to form at her hairline. She was just about to ask Elliot where the doctor was when there was a knock at the door.

  She and Elliot made eye contact before he said the doctor should come in. Dr. Rosenberg, white jacket and all, strode into the room. He didn’t look at Tammy, instead grabbing the stool with wheels all doctors owned, and pulled it over to an area between Tammy and Elliot. Elliot could see over the doctor’s shoulder, but Tammy couldn’t. She wanted Elliot to come over to her, but he remained against the wall.

  Rosenberg cleared his throat, and Tammy felt something catch in hers. He fiddled with some paperwork as Tammy coughed. She wanted to beg him to get on with it, but the words wouldn’t come. Elliot could see the paperwork, she knew he could. He had shifted off the wall and was squinting. He never squinted.

  “I’m afraid,” Dr. Rosenberg said, “that the news is not good. The results of your biopsy are in, as is your blood work. I’m afraid you have cancer.”

  The doctor held up an X-ray result, and the light swathed through it, except for the dark mass in the center. The mass looked huge. That was when the room temperature changed. It felt like everything iced over. The sweat on her forehead felt cold to the touch. She shivered.

  Doctor Rosenberg was talking, yacking away, but the words didn’t connect with her. A wave of ambient noise filled her ears, and her vision went to shit. Air clogged her lungs and her balance was giving out. Then Elliot was there, finally. His arms were around her. He helped her lie backward. The doctor brought her water. Elliot and the doctor were still chattering, like her teeth. And the words weren’t clear. All she heard was surgery and chemo.

  Then began the process she was still going through. Six weeks until the surgery. Then recovery. And then chemo. Still with the damn chemo. Low dosages because that was what the doctor told her she needed. Low dosage over a prolonged period. So she felt exhausted, and cold. Always cold.

  And she still couldn’t find the damn thermostat.

  Now, she rounded the corner of the hallway, and shrugged the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Her breathing was ragged, and all she wanted was to get back to bed. Today’s session had been exceedingly exhausting.

  Elliot’s office was in front of her, at the end of a short hallway. Maybe she’d find the little temperature dial there. She shuffled forward, inhaling the smells of breakfast from the kitchen behind her. The toast and butter odor made her fight vomit back into her stomach. Last thing she wanted to even think about now was food. The chemo had destroyed her palette to the point where even simple foods turned her stomach.

  She walked into the office and closed the door. To her left was the thermostat, just beyond Ellio
t’s trashed desk. Usually this room was locked. Whatever had caused him to fly into a panic and leave made him forget his routine. Thank God. Tammy just wanted to feel some warmth.

  The white thermostat was set for sixty-five. Too cold. She pressed the up button four times, and heard the furnace kick on with a muted thunk. Tammy exhaled as steam hissed from the radiator in the office. She stepped over to it and put her hand close, feeling the warmth exude. Now, back to bed.

  As she turned, her eyes caught a glimpse of the paper disaster that spread over Elliot’s desk. One of those items was an X-ray, looking very much like the one the doctor had held up a year ago. She blinked. And reached over, picking it up. On the bottom, it had her name and the date of her diagnosis. But there was something different about the actual X-ray.

  There was no large mass in the middle of it, only a very small one. Not the same tumor Rosenberg had blathered about. Tammy’s internal alarm started ringing loudly. She started spreading out the rest of the papers on the desk, sorting through them. There was another paper, this one a report. It had her name on it as well. It was the blood test she’d gone through.

  Tammy scanned through all the results. The words “Stage 1” and “treatable” were typed on them. She sorted through more paperwork. The final one was dated the day after her initial treatment after her surgery. It said she was free and clear. She dropped the paper.

  And the blanket.

  For the first time in a year, sweat formed at her hairline. Her heart did the locomotion. And bile caught in her throat. She ran from the office and found the bathroom. Once she hit the toilet, everything in her stomach—which wasn’t much—came back up again.

  No cancer.

  Not anymore.

  But she still endured another chemo cycle. And a promise of a Cuban cure.

  Good God, what was going on?

  Tammy wasn’t sure she wanted to find out. Elliot would be back soon, and she was going to have to talk to him.

  Not until she calmed the heat in her ears and the throbbing in her temples. She needed to know more.

  HOBOKEN WAS humming.

  Donne always pictured the town to be a rush hour town, crowded from six to nine in the morning and five until the bars closed at night. But today, at lunchtime, the town was bustling. It was one of those great spring days in New Jersey, in the seventies with a breeze coming off the Hudson and spiraling up Washington. People were having liquid lunches outdoors or wandering the street while chomping on pizza slices. Donne’s stomach growled just watching them. But he ignored the feeling and wandered over to Herrick’s apartment.

  The buzzer wasn’t needed as someone entering the apartment building held the door for Donne. Once inside the lobby, Donne closed his eyes and tried to remember Herrick’s room. It’d been a long time since he’d been upstairs, that night he got back from Vermont. They got back from Vermont, with a killer on his tail.

  Donne exhaled and remembered the fourth floor. He took the stairs, and exited into the hallway that smelled like an old pizza box. Donne took to the hall and started eyeing up the doors. Four-oh-three seemed like a good place to start, so Donne knocked. And then he counted to thirty. If Herrick didn’t live here, he could ask which apartment was his. Herrick seemed like a sociable guy. The kind who’d talk to neighbors and make friends. Donne used to have a friend. Artie. But now who? Kenneth? Maybe.

  When he got to twenty-seven, he heard someone approaching the door.

  A stroke of luck. Herrick answered. And then nearly slammed the door in Donne’s face.

  “We have to talk,” Donne said. He caught the door with his foot, like a stereotypical encyclopedia salesman.

  Herrick gave the door one more push. The move sent a shockwave of pain as far up as Donne’s knee.

  “My dad already chatted with me. We really don’t have to.”

  “No. Fuck that. Things have gotten worse.”

  Herrick eyed Donne, who remained as stony faced as he could. Don’t break. You’re a goddamn salesman today. Be calm and be excited.

  “Oh no,” Herrick said. He stepped aside to let Donne in. “My dad?”

  “No,” Donne said. The apartment smelled like some sort of berry. “My fault.”

  Herrick didn’t offer Donne anything, but Donne took a seat on the couch anyway.

  “What happened?”

  “You know that guy, Manuel? Big guy, works with Elliot? Kind of crazy?”

  Herrick nodded.

  “He tried to kill me so I beat the crap out of him.”

  Herrick stopped mid-step. His face turned red. Donne looked away from him to the magazine on the table. He picked up and flipped through it. Something about Pottery Barn. It was a catalog, not a magazine. They had nice tables, though.

  “Had to be done. He was going to kill me.”

  “Why?”

  Donne shrugged. “Not sure yet. But it’s put us on the clock big time.”

  “What are you getting at, Jackson?” Herrick sat down on the chair in the corner of the room. The cushions creaked under him.

  Herrick crossed his legs and arms. That was the point—make this as uncomfortable as possible. They needed Matt in on this if they were going to have any chance at success.

  “Listen, Matt, it’s taken me a while, but I’ve learned something. In our business, people die. Sometimes it’s the good guys and sometimes it’s the bad guys. But I want to keep breathing for a long time. And I wasn’t going to let some two-bit henchman take me down.”

  “But you didn’t kill him. He can come back.”

  Donne shook his head. “Probably. Maybe your dad was right.”

  “You’re crazy.” Herrick’s voice wobbled. “This doesn’t worry you?”

  Again, Donne shook his head. “I’m surviving. And to keep surviving, I need you. Because Elliot is going to be up my ass. On my case. However you want to put it. And your dad can’t do this alone. I’m going to have to be helping from behind the scenes.”

  “And what is it you’re doing?”

  Donne grinned. He was putting on a show at this point. No matter what, sell Matt Herrick. This was the moment to do it. And to sell him, he was going to be flat out honest.

  “We’re robbing the Federal Reserve. That place on Route 17 that looks like a prison. We’re going to steal a lot of money and get your mom down to Cuba to get treatment. Save her life. It’s a good cause. Like March of Dimes.”

  Herrick put his head in his hands. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s not the basketball Tournament of Champions, Matt. But we need you.”

  Herrick shook his head. “This is stupid.”

  “You can help your dad. And your mom. And figure out what the hell Elliot Cole is up to. What do you say?”

  There was a beat. A moment of silence where Donne could only hear Herrick breathing and the hum of his own blood pumping through his ears. Herrick looked up. The red in his face was gone.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Donne clapped his hands. Always be selling. “Hot dog. Let’s get to work.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Herrick said one more time.

  HERRICK FOLLOWED Donne to the PATH train, then into the city. Through the streets full of people to some small hotel somewhere uptown. They had been walking too fast for Herrick to keep track of the streets.

  When they entered the hotel, Herrick’s hands started to shake. He balled them into fists to try and slow the tremors, but to no avail. His dad was upstairs. Had to be.

  Donne pressed the button to summon the elevator and looked Herrick up and down.

  “You’re okay?”

  Herrick nodded. “Seems to be my body’s general reaction now that my dad is back in town.”

  Donne shrugged. The elevator dinged. “If it makes you feel better, he’s happy to see you again.”

  “Nah.”

  They got on the elevator and with each passing floor, Herrick’s breath got shallower. He tried to slow his breathing. Long, deep breaths. Four secon
ds in. Four seconds out. Imagine the stress leaving you. That was what his shrink told him to do after he left Afghanistan.

  His father brought back his PTSD.

  Great.

  The elevator doors opened and Donne led him out. They walked down the hall. Herrick spent so much time focusing on their journey he hadn’t even begun to think about the news Donne had dropped on him.

  Donne used one of those magnetic hotel room keys to unlock a door and they both entered. Kenneth Herrick was sitting in a chair staring out the window at a brick wall. He turned and grinned when he saw them.

  “Matt!”

  “Dad, are you insane?”

  Kenneth stood up. “Matt, I—”

  “You’re essentially trying to break into a prison. Into Fort Knox! You’re not Goldfinger.”

  “Calm down.”

  Donne stepped in between them. “Matt, this isn’t helping. We need you.”

  Kenneth looked at Donne. “Did you tell him?”

  “Just about everything.”

  Kenneth said, “Jesus.”

  Herrick said, “Just about?”

  Donne shrugged. “The days in Rahway were pretty rough. You don’t want to hear about them. I don’t need to tell you everything. And you told me your dad was a good guy who made a mistake. Not John Fucking Dillinger.”

  “Shut up!” Kenneth shouted. “Everyone just shut up.”

  Donne and Herrick turned toward him. Kenneth rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck.

  “We’re going to rob the Federal Reserve,” he said. “But no one said anything about breaking into it.”

  COLE OPENED the door to the house and helped Manuel to the couch. The bruises on his friend’s face had swollen up and closed an eye, despite hours of icing the wound. Manuel was coherent and had been able to talk Cole through the events behind the Javitz Center in great detail. Including Donne’s apparently fantastic right cross and left jab.

  Manuel groaned as he sank into the couch cushions. He put his head back, and his breathing trailed off into sleep.