Trahan pointed at an ancient, listing, four-story walk-up midway down the block.
“There she blows,” he said. “That’s the club.”
Club? I thought, confused. What club? What Trahan was pointing at were just two graffiti-covered steel shutters bookending the shadowed doorway of an anonymous-looking storefront. The crumbling tenement windows above it were empty. Not just of people. Of glass and aluminum frames, too.
Trahan caught my dumbfounded look.
“You have to see this place inside,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “It’s another world.”
Trahan took out his cell phone and made a call. He tssked after a few seconds, snapped it shut.
“Damn confidential informants,” he said. “She’s not picking up.”
“It’s a woman?” I said.
“Of course,” Detective Marut said. “She was sleeping with Mark Ordonez until he left her for another lady. There’s no better informant than a woman scorned.”
“When did you last hear from her?” I asked.
“Right before we picked you up,” Trahan said. He bit the antenna of his radio in frustration.
“I wanted to hit it fast, flash-bang through the front door, get everybody down. Now I’m not so sure. My CI there said that the place was packed. We can’t risk somebody getting hurt, especially us, unless the Ordonez brothers are definitely in there. Then, fuck everything!”
“Hey, wait a second,” I said. “Where’s the Emergency Service Unit? They live for this kind of stuff. Why don’t we let them handle it?”
“Scott was our brother,” Khuong said gravely, his eyes hard and dark as coal. “This stays in the family.”
Good lord. I didn’t like the sound of that. I was getting a scary vibe off everyone, actually. These guys were too keyed up. Letting their emotions get the best of them. This thing felt more like a war party than an arrest procedure. Whatever happened to removing the emotionally involved from the case? Like I of all people should talk.
“Did somebody say that the place was packed?” I said, staring dubiously at the desolate establishment. “It’s coming on nine a.m.”
Thaddeus’s gold tooth winked. At least I think that’s what I saw. He racked his 10mm Smith & Wesson.
“Some people never want the party to end, girl,” he said.
“Wait a second. How are we going to do a recon?” Detective Marut chimed in. “If these guys killed Scott, then they’re going to be superparanoid about anybody who looks suspicious. We’ve all been on surveillance. Who knows if they made us.”
“I have an idea,” I said.
I stared at the club. It looked evil, like an inner-city entrance to Hell. But I was the one whose charade had put us here, and I could barely live with myself at that moment. If somebody else got hurt, I didn’t know what I would do.
“Wire me up,” I said.
Trahan shook his head. “No way.”
“What are you, nuts?” Mike said. “No way are you going into that pit alone. I’ll do it.”
I stared into my partner’s eyes. He meant what he’d just said. Like I said, he’s the best.
“You listen to me,” I said. “I’m going in. They don’t know me from Eve. They won’t expect a woman. Oh, and if that’s not good enough for you, I’m the primary investigator. And to answer your first question, Yes, obviously I’m nuts.”
Chapter 49
IT TOOK ABOUT A MINUTE AND A HALF for DEA agent Thaddeus Price to attach a tiny wireless Typhoon mike under the button of my suit jacket. I kind of wanted to tell him I wasn’t in that big a hurry, but I kept that particular news flash to myself.
“Okay, here’s the set,” he said. “This place is a shit hole, but believe it or not, on Friday mornings they get a slumming, hard-partying Manhattan crowd. Go up, knock on the door, and tell the bouncer you’re looking for your boyfriend, DJ Lewis. Don’t worry, he’s not there. But the bouncer will probably let you in.”
“Why’s that?” I said.
Thaddeus’s tooth glittered again as he smiled at me.
“Look in the mirror, Detective. Pretty white girls like you don’t need to be on the list.”
“You see either of our buddies, Mark or Victor,” Trahan advised, “I want you to call out, ‘Code red,’ and find the nearest corner. Same goes if there’s trouble, if you feel you’re in any danger at all. We’ll be there before you can draw another breath, okay?”
“Code red,” I said. “Got it.” Hell, I’d been in code red for the past twenty-four hours.
“All right, what else?” Trahan said. “Oh, yeah. Cough up your weapon and badge. The bouncer might want to search you.”
The walls of the cramped van suddenly seemed to shrink in on me, until I felt like I was lying in a coffin. My own coffin.
Dear Holy Christ!
I could hand over my Glock and badge without any problem whatsoever.
But Scott’s gun, the one that Paul had used to murder him, was in my handbag. That might raise a few eyebrows in the van. What the hell was I going to do now?
I reached into my purse and handed Trahan my Glock. Then I gave him my gold badge.
But I left Scott’s murder weapon right where it was, under my wallet and a box of Altoids. “Wish me luck,” I said.
“Code red,” Trahan repeated. “Don’t be a hero in there, Lauren.”
“Trust me, I’m no hero.”
The door of the van suddenly slid open, and I stepped out, blinking, onto the cracked and stained sidewalk. I looked around. I didn’t know which was bleaker, the inner-city horizon or my dwindling chances of pulling this crazy charade off alive.
“Don’t worry, partner,” Mike said. “We’ll be watching you every step of the way.”
Yeah, I thought, hefting my bag as the door slammed shut.
That was precisely the problem.
I stared at the establishment in question, the so-called club. The steel shutters. The lightless doorway between them like a vertical open grave.
What in the name of everything holy could happen to me next?
Code red was the least of my problems.
Chapter 50
IN THE SMALL ALCOVE just inside the crummy front door was a crimson velvet rope and behind it, an ink-black stairwell leading down.
The bouncer standing next to it was wearing champagne-colored sunglasses and a three-piece suit that could have been made of red Mylar. I silently debated what made me more uneasy as I approached him, the fact that he was six and a half feet tall or the fact that he was morbidly obese.
A steady thumping rose from the raw concrete stairwell at his side, as if blasting were going on in the depths of the earth.
“Lewis spinning tonight?” I asked.
The bouncer shook his huge head almost imperceptibly.
Did he understand English? Did he automatically know I was a cop? I felt suddenly very glad Mike and the other guys were just a yell away.
“Is it a private party, or can I get in?” I said.
Private party, I prayed, glancing down into the black of the stairwell. I had no problem with going back to the van a failure. We could figure something else out. I was leaning toward a nap at that point. Or maybe a three-week vacation out of the country.
“Depends,” the bouncer finally spoke.
“On what?” I said.
The bouncer lowered his shades and adjusted himself in a way that made me glad I hadn’t eaten any breakfast.
“On how bad you want in,” he said.
“That’s really romantic,” I said as I turned on my heel. “But there’s nothing on this earth I want that bad.”
“Come back, come back,” the unsavory bouncer said, booming nasty laughter as he unclipped the velvet rope. “Don’t get so testy, white girl. Just a little joke. Bouncer humor. Welcome to Wonderground.”
Chapter 51
I WAS ALMOST READY to draw Scott’s gun for protection by the time I made it to the bottom of the treacherously dark stairwell
. Instead, I took a deep breath. Then I stepped toward the amplified throbbing, passing through a doorway curtained with crystal beads.
On the other side, I stared, amazed, at the flat-screen TVs, the expensive lighting, the packed center bar that looked like it was made of black glass.
The female bartenders behind it wore black rubber cat suits and fake breasts. Heck, they might have been transvestites. The Bronx really was back.
I had to admit, I was kind of impressed. This could have been Manhattan. The Ordonez brothers had done their degradation research.
Among the predominantly Hispanic crowd was a well-represented contingent of upscale white people. They were sweating on the dance floor, faces rapt with foolish smiles as they spun neon-colored glow sticks in both hands.
Above gyrating dancers, in a steel cage suspended from the ceiling, a naked dwarf wearing angel wings was banging on the bars with a white nightstick. Who thinks this shit up? I wondered.
“I can feel your energy,” a bloated, middle-aged bond-trader type said as he spilled off the dance floor and tried to embrace me.
I tried to stiff-arm him away, and when that didn’t work, I lightly kneed him between the legs.
“Now you can — maybe,” I said as he backed off in a hurry. I fled toward the bar.
“Twelve dollars,” the bartender said after I ordered a Heineken.
Look at that, I thought, coughing up the money, they even had Manhattan prices.
Maybe thirty seconds later, a short, pudgy Hispanic man with a goatee smiled and wedged himself in beside me.
“I’m the candy man,” he said.
I stared at him. The candy man? Was that a new pickup line? I’d been out of it for a while. Actually, to tell the truth, nice Catholic girl that I was, I’d never actually been in it.
He placed an ivory-colored pill in my hand. I didn’t think it was a Sweet Tart.
“Twenty,” he said.
I gave it back to him and watched him shrug his shoulders and leave. The Ecstasy dealer had to be working for the Ordonezes, right? But I lost him when he stepped into the laser-light kaleidoscope of the dance floor.
I looked around for either Ordonez. I scanned the A-list booths at the rear of the dance floor behind the DJ. The strobes and violent waves of bass weren’t exactly helping my concentration. Like it or not, I had to get closer.
I was skirting the far edge of the dance floor to avoid any more unwanted advances, when one of the doors in the concrete wall beside me opened.
Victor Ordonez stepped out, staring right into my eyes. Before I could move, an iron hand was wrapped around the back of my neck.
I turned and saw my buddy from upstairs, the bouncer in dire need of Jenny Craig. “It’s only me, lady,” he said and grinned.
“Why don’t you come into the VIP room?” Victor yelled over the music as I was pushed inside. “Private party. But you can be my guest.”
Chapter 52
THE BACK VIP ROOM was actually a tenement basement. Raw concrete walls and floors, cinder-block window frames, the rusted hull of an old boiler. Nice décor. A naked bulb hung above an old grease-caked kitchen table that held a stainless steel electronic scale.
Beyond the table, through a dark doorway, was a corridor with something lying on the floor.
I swallowed hard.
It was a crud-stained mattress.
“Get your filthy hands off me right now,” I said, struggling to break the bouncer’s grip.
“Calm down, please,” Victor said pleasantly as he stepped in front of me. He was wearing a three-piece white suit, white shirt, and a black tie. I wondered if Mickey Rourke knew one of his suits was missing.
“This is a routine security matter,” Victor explained. “My employee, Ignacio, forgot to search you upstairs. An oversight on his part.”
An alarm bell went off in my head. I wondered what else was routine for the violent drug dealer standing in front of me.
“Hey,” I said. “Go ahead and kick me out for breaking your rules. I was thinking about hitting a diner for some breakfast, anyway.”
Victor sighed. Then he nodded at the bouncer.
My handbag was ripped away. I heard its contents being dumped onto the table as I scanned the room for another exit.
I couldn’t stop staring at the mattress. Or remembering the attempted rape arrest on Victor’s rap sheet.
Should I just grab for Scott’s gun? I wondered. How many rounds were left? Four? Double-tap Victor, go for a head shot on the behemoth, then get out the same door I came in.
“What’s this?” Victor said, picking up Scott’s .38 before I could.
I almost panicked. I had an open mike, and I couldn’t let the team hear about the gun. I thought quickly. “That looks like a code red,” I said casually.
“What do you mean, ‘code red’?” he asked.
“That. The gun you pulled and have pointed at me. That looks like a code red!” I said in a loud voice, hoping my mike had picked me up.
My knees stung as Victor suddenly threw me to the floor.
“Shut up, you bitch! Who are you to come into my place, shouting your head off at me?” he yelled.
“Coño! Don’t you see?” the bouncer behind me said. “That’s a cop gun. She’s a fucking lady cop. And Pedro already sold to her!”
“Shut up, you useless hump, and let me think!” Victor screamed.
My face went numb as the younger Ordonez suddenly pointed the gun at me. I stared into the black barrel. Instead of seeing my entire life, everything that had happened since I’d decided to be with Scott flashed before my eyes. In high-definition clarity, I saw every misstep that had led me from two nights before to here and now.
Wait a second, I thought. Where are the troops? I looked at the thick walls. These damn basements! I must have been in a radio blind spot.
“Code red!” I screamed as I scrambled for the door.
The bouncer was surprisingly quick for a mountain. I made it only halfway before he grabbed my ankle and almost tore off my entire left foot.
Then there was a scream — and the door exploded!
Pounding dance music instantly flooded the room. My eyes — tearing in the dust and splinters — were greeted with hands-down the most satisfying sight of my life to that point.
My partner, Mike, shotgun to his shoulder, was riding the knocked-down door into the room like it was a surfboard.
Chapter 53
MIKE CRUSHED THE BOUNCER’S ugly face with a shotgun butt to the nose before the monster could even form his first curse word.
“Where’s Victor?” Mike then said, tossing me my Glock and cuffs. “We lost your transmission outside. Trahan’s informant told us Victor brought you in here.”
“I don’t know where he went, Mike,” I said, searching behind me. “He was right here a second ago.”
“Cuff that one to something and give me some backup,” Mike said. He leveled his shotgun toward the dark passageway where the mattress lay and then rushed toward it.
I cuffed the unconscious bouncer to one of the boiler’s pipes. His glasses were shattered and his leaking face was now the color of his suit. Just a little cop humor, I felt like telling him as I ran into the corridor after my partner.
I heard the sound of a door slamming ahead of me.
Where the hell had Mike and Ordonez gone? I banged my shin on some unseen stairs and jogged up them, my Glock leading the way.
The door I finally found, pretty much with my face, exited onto a field with high weeds and garbage and broken glass. Now where was I?
I blinked in the sudden, blinding daylight. I saw Mike already halfway across the abandoned lot. A half block in front of him, a figure in a white suit was sprinting along 140th Street. It was either Victor Ordonez or an ice-cream man training for the marathon.
I began closing the distance as Mike chased Victor east for two blocks. At the end of the third intersection, they went under an el and in through the gate of a junkyard. Would O
rdonez get away? I guess I hoped so. If it were up to me, he could keep running until he got back to Santo Domingo.
Unfortunately, Mike kept up his pursuit, rushing hell-bent for glory around an obstacle course of crushed boxes and piled metal. All Ordonez had to do was wait and fire, and Mike would be toast. But it didn’t happen that way.
Approaching a rusted tin wall at the rear of the junkyard, I heard a loud metal screech. Then a metal-on-metal boom. What the hell was that?
Half a block away in the farthest corner of the yard, I spotted Ordonez scrambling off the forklift he’d just crashed into the fence.
He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled out of sight through a crack that he’d made in the fence.
A second or two later, Mike appeared from a wall of pipes and dove through the same hole in the fence, still chasing Ordonez.
When I finally got there, huffing and puffing, I could see trains. Lots of trains. Ordonez had fled from a junkyard into a subway rail yard.
And I forgot to fill my MetroCard, I thought as I crawled through the fence, keeping my eyes peeled for the deadly third rail.
Chapter 54
I WAS RUNNING through a narrow space between two parked number 4 trains, searching frantically for Mike and Ordonez, when I heard a sharp crack. Shit! The window above my head shattered. “Hey, white girl! Catch!”
I turned in time to watch Victor Ordonez, who was leaning out the conductor’s window two cars away, fire again. I felt something zip past my ear and then heard a sound like thin ice breaking.
I started emptying my Glock in Victor’s direction.
I ejected the empty clip before I realized something warm was running down my neck. My legs dematerialized suddenly, and I found myself lying on gravel. There was something wrong with the side of my face.
God, I’d been hit! I felt dizzy. Like I was sliding out of myself, watching myself from a distance.
Don’t go into shock, Lauren. Move! Do something! Right now! I scrambled upright and began retreating as fast as my shaky legs would carry me. I pressed the sleeve of my jacket to my head where it was bleeding.