Beach Wedding(57)

The keypad of most gun safes is connected to a solenoid, a kind of electromagnetic switch that opens and closes the latch. This solenoid is actually the Achilles’ heel of such gun safes, because if a very powerful magnet field passes over the solenoid from the outside, it can sometimes trip the latch.

I knew this because I’d seen it done by a crazy veteran Philly narcotics cop who had taken me under his wing when I was a rookie. The drug spots we raided often had gun safes, and the magnet trick was about a billion times simpler than cutting the lock with an acetylene torch.

You had to be careful when you did it, though, I remembered from painful experience. The magnet clacked with surprising force to the safe’s metal surface when you brought it near, which was why you needed a sock to help save your fingers from getting crushed.

I was raising the magnet in the sock up toward the keypad when I heard something outside, a kind of clatter. I slowly laid the magnet on the carpet and stood and went to the bedroom window.

At first as I looked through the half-open curtains, I thought that I was seeing things, that my stress-gripped mind was playing tricks on me.

But it wasn’t.

Suffolk County police chief Dennis Tapley was coming up his vacation house’s front steps.



78

I stood there frozen in the middle of Tapley’s bedroom, next to his messily unmade bed, listening to him open his front door downstairs.

From the window, I had seen he was in his police chief’s uniform and was armed with his service weapon, some kind of semiautomatic.

When I packed the night before in preparation for my plan, I had decided to leave my gun behind.

Standing there in the dead silence listening to Tapley loudly toss his jingling keys onto his kitchen counter below, I wondered now if that had been such a great idea.

In fact, as I stood there paralyzed with indecision, I seriously wondered if that decision was about to cost me my life.

This was it, I thought as I heard the bottom step creak under his weight. There was no time to hide, no time to run to the window, no time for anything except maybe to die.

That’s why I had no choice but to do what I did next. None whatsoever.

Tapley had just reached the top of the landing when I dived from the bedroom doorway and cracked him in the mouth as hard as I could with a wild haymaker right.

He cried out in shock and pain as we both went tumbling down the stairs in a crazy tangle. At the bottom, I was the first one up, and Tapley had just cleared his gun when I kicked it out of his hand.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled as he leapt up, trying to tackle me.

In a pirouette that had far more to do with crazed close-to-heart-attack panic than anything else, I dodged just out of his grasp. Over the couch behind us he went with a thump and a crash, and when I turned, I saw that he was picking up his gun.

Already moving, I heard the shot as a chunk of the Sheetrock I’d just been standing in front of disintegrated at my back. I headed for the only place I could go, back up the stairs. Tapley fired at me again.

“I’m gonna kill your ass!” Tapley screamed as I dived back into the bedroom.

I was heading for the window thinking I’d have to dive out of it when I tripped over my burglar bag and went sprawling.

Then I heard Tapley thumping up the stairs again. I reached out and my hand found something, and I leapt up just as Tapley came through the door.

Tapley had the gun half raised to blow my head off when I swung the heavy magnet in the sock and caught him square and flush in his left ear.

His gun went off again as it flew from his hand. Then he bounced off the doorjamb, and there was a heavy house-shaking thud as he landed on his back on the floor in the hallway.

As I knelt down before him in a panic, I thought maybe I had shattered his skull and killed him. But as I patted at his big head, it seemed intact enough, though blood was now coming from his ear. I watched his chest rise and fall. He wasn’t dead. But I’d knocked him out cold.

I didn’t have a moment to spare. I ran to the gun safe and clacked on the magnet and slid it and heard it pop the latch.

Inside the safe were shotguns, boxes of ammo, some cell phones in a cigar box. There was a shoebox filled with cash, twenties, fifties, gold coins.

I was kneeling and digging in beside the shotguns when I noticed a pouch in some webbing on the door. It was a large plastic bag with yellow tape along the top with the words Southampton PD on it.

I lifted it out, and inside I saw a hoodie. I searched around, and a moment later, I saw another plastic evidence bag with something small inside it tucked in with the hoodie.

I took it out and held it level to my night-vision goggles to see it better.

Sonya Serrano, Tapley’s old flame, had been right on the money.

In it were bullets. Two bullets.

The two small, very inconsequential-looking gray bits of mushroomed lead that had taken Noah Sutton’s life.



79

Most people after breaking into law enforcement people’s homes and knocking them cold before robbing them blind would probably take a breather.

But I was a Rourke, and come hell or high water or even impending arrest for assault on a police officer, wedding party duty still called.

When I got home, I’d barely had time to shower and get dressed into the golf clothes Viv had purchased for me for Tom’s formal groomsmen’s golf outing.

Viv was still in bed, and I went over to her to say goodbye. I knew I was in trouble because she wouldn’t talk to me even after I tried to tickle her pits.