Chapter 17

17

Camp Hero Beach in Montauk Point State Park, one of the most easterly beaches on New York's Long Island, was rarely crowded during the offseason.

In fact, it only had two cars in its parking lot when the 600-horsepower shiny black Cadillac CT5 grumbled into it at a little after 3 p.m.

Wheeling Cadillac's answer to the muscle car into the lot's farthest corner, Shaw put it in Park, buttoned off the ignition and pulled up the hood of his Carhartt sweatshirt as he got out of the car.

A lover of privacy, Shaw always liked to be where others weren't, at the beach in the fall and winter, in the warmer months up in the hills.

Shaw's level gaze pivoted left to right over the shiny black hood of his elegant muscle car. Then right to left.

He certainly had his reasons.

With his 6'6" height, short light brown neatly cut hair and a not unhandsome clean-shaven face, to a casual observer Shaw seemed like someone in charge of something, an airline pilot or a basketball coach or business executive perhaps.

But businessmen usually didn't have badly reset broken noses. Or an almost avian, cold watchfulness in their restless eyes.

And although businessmen were sometimes lean, they weren't as lean as Shaw. Nor did they have a jacked-up lift to their broadened out back and shoulders that spoke of the strength training and heavy bag smashing that had taken up multiple hours of Shaw's every waking day since he'd been a fresh marine recruit more than twenty years before.

Now that he'd hit his forties, he worked out even harder than ever. He'd lost a step or two the last time he timed himself in the 100-yard dash. But he was definitely physically stronger and could hit harder than at any time in his life.

Not seeing anyone, Shaw finally walked across the gravel lot to the trail. By the ridge's edge, down at the foot of the bluff toward the famous Montauk Point Lighthouse, the only other soul he spotted was a lady in a floppy hat walking on the beach with a small dog.

No wonder it was less crowded than usual, he thought as he headed east along the ridge. It was unseasonably cold today. Upper forties. Forecast even said there might be snow overnight.

Another two hundred feet up along the bluff, he came around a hedge and stopped before one of his favorite places in the world. In the slanted light, the secluded seaside pasture to his left was like a Renoir landscape, a pastel haze of blue and green with a slash of zinc white in the distance for the beach.

There really was something about the light out here in the Hamptons, he thought as he headed across the meadow. The light was so soft yet had a high-definition clearness brought about by all the water. It gave every vista an extra happy, extra vivid sense of mystery and promise. He'd read that it was the light that had attracted so many famous artists from New York City to stay here. Pollock, de Kooning, Warhol.

Shaw, too, had moved out here because of the light. Or was it the water? Because he was born and raised in flat landlocked Ohio or something? he wondered.

He wasn't sure, but there was something about the endless Atlantic out there—all that water and sky and space—that flat out mesmerized him, pulled at something deep within him he couldn't even begin to name.

He had a place several towns west, a cheap town house in Westhampton, a dump really. But one day he was going to pick up one of the twenty-million-dollar Montauk beach cottages nearby, one of the ones with private beach access and a heated pool where he'd just lie out all day, all week. Hell, he could stare out at all that incredible water forever.

Just a matter of time.

And money, of course.

He arrived at the end of the meadow. There was a stand of trees at the far edge and beyond it was a cleared section of tall grass where he stopped. He took a breath. Took it all in. Montauk in the fall. The smell of hay, the sound of birds, the soft rush of the surf. The Atlantic out there on the horizon like a dream of endless time.

On the ground thirty feet to his right lay two uprooted young white birches about fifteen feet in length. They'd probably been knocked over in a nor'easter the year before. They looked kind of like a couple, he thought. A sad tragic one, star-crossed lovers fallen in a suicide pact.

The gun Shaw took out from under his hoodie was a beautiful stainless-steel Springfield Garrison .45 with thin line, checkered walnut grips. There was a silencer on it, a matte black steel one from a company called Federal Nitro Firearms that he wanted to field test. The silencer was almost the same length as the gun barrel.

Back and forth went the oiled slide over the forged frame, snicking a .45 into the chamber with perfect precision.

He raised and fired. Twice in quick succession. So quick it almost sounded like one sound. With the excellent silencer and the subsonic rounds, there had been no telltale firecracker bang. No echo.

You couldn't help the barrel noise from where the casings were ejected but other than that, the two shots had just been short discreet metallic snaps no louder than a car door being unlocked with an electronic key fob.

Not bad at all , he thought, nodding to himself as he checked the empty chamber and tucked the gun away and scooped his brass. He never scrimped on silencers, and the ones being made today were amazing. He'd add it to his toolbox.

He took a Leatherman from his pocket as he walked forward and knelt at the stump. He snapped its knife open and dug first one then the other spent .45 slugs free from the soft white wood.

What was the Boy Scout expression? he thought, pocketing the smashed lead. Take only snapshots, leave only footprints? Sounded good to him.

When he arrived back at the parking lot, he saw his was the only car remaining now. He'd left his phone in a faraday pouch in the CT5's glove box and when he sat and took it out and checked it, he saw there was a job for him.

He read the details. It was a red ball job. A job in the city that needed doing right this very minute. He smiled. Red ball jobs paid the most.

In every large city in the world, there was a man just like Shaw. A man on call there at all times ready to be summoned to action by those in the know. For the last two years, he had been the top go-to in the Northeast for the jobs that needed doing pronto.

The message said they were powering on a chopper out at the airport as he sat there. As usual, the details of who, what, where on the target in Manhattan would be waiting for him.

That wasn't surprising. He'd done several rush jobs in Manhattan before.

His last one three months before had been on the subway. His first push job. It was on some middle-aged lady who hadn't had the time to utter a single word as Shaw had hip bumped her off the Canal Street platform under the wheels of an arriving Q train.

Easiest six figures he had ever scored.

He smiled at the red ball deets on his phone screen.

Now here came another.

This would help the beach house fund, Shaw thought with a glance out at the water.

Then he started the Cadillac with a 6.2 liter fuel injected grumble and spun back and out of the Camp Hero Beach's gravel lot with a V8 roar.