“You spotted it, why not one of the others?” Boomer asked.
“They don’t know the signs, least not the way I do,” Dead-Eye said. “Shit, we’ve been together so long, when you inhale I exhale.”
“Well, then, let’s hope that between the two of us we got enough breath left to take out these bastards,” Boomer said.
2
Natalie cradled the warm cup of tea between her fingers and looked over at Boomer, the lines around her dark eyes weighed down with concern. “I’m very sorry about what happened to your friend,” she said. “They went after what they thought would hurt you the most.”
“Would you have done it the same way if you and me were sitting on opposite sides?” Boomer asked.
“We are on opposite sides,” Natalie said. “But to answer your question, yes, I would have done it the same way.”
“Why?” Boomer asked.
“To show you the level of my anger,” Natalie said. “And to illustrate how far I would be willing to go to rid myself of such a pain in my side. It also would force you to turn to desperate means in order to achieve a victory that on your own you cannot ever hope to attain.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing now?” Boomer asked, leaning closer to Natalie. “Reaching out to you—is that how you see it, a desperate measure?”
“A detective seeking my help in wiping out two crews of drug dealers?” Natalie said. “I think that answer presents itself.”
“You put it on the table before and I turned away,” Boomer said. “It was a mistake, and a friend of mine died because of it.”
“Before this is over, with or without my help, you stand to lose many more of your friends,” Natalie said, taking a sip of her tea. “And the same is true of your enemies. It’s what the two sides in any war have in common.”
They were in the back room of a small Upper West Side tea-and-biscuit shop with a cozy feel and an old-world design, the walls around them crowded with large framed photos of European settings from earlier eras. Natalie was wearing a floral print skirt with a blue jacket and black pumps with low-cut tops, looking more like a banker on her day off than the ruthless leader of a criminal enterprise.
“What kind of help can I expect to get?” he asked, reaching over to pour her a fresh cup of herbal tea.
“That depends on what you expect to accomplish,” she said, her spend-the-night eyes sparkling under the chandelier’s soft glare. “On what it is you want to see happen to the two crews on the other end.”
“A wipeout,” Boomer said. “A total dismantling of their operation and elimination of the players at their table.”
Natalie shook her head. “That’s not what you want, and it’s certainly not what I do,” she said. “That’s just your anger talking.”
“Then you tell me,” Boomer said. “But know this, with or without you, we’re going in against these crews and we’ll stay in until they carry us out.”
“There are six on your team if you include the dog,” Natalie said. “And you’ve done quite a bit of damage with that small a group in a short period of time, but you’ve accomplished nothing. You’ve been flies buzzing around. You need to be quite a bit more than that.”
“Can you get me to Angel?” Boomer asked. “And the Gonzalez brothers, too, as well as the people in their tight circle?”
“Yes,” she said. “These guerrilla tactics you use are very effective on the street, especially if the dealers on the other end are working blind to any trouble. You can do the same on a higher level, you just need access.”
“And what is it you want in return for that access?” Boomer asked.
“I move in, once the blood settles, and take over their operations,” Natalie said. “It’s as clean as that.”
Boomer sat back and stayed silent for several moments. “You know, there’s a thin line you need to navigate when you’re on the job, a cop like I was,” he said. “To get it done—and more often than not to get it done right—I needed to step over that line. And believe me, I stepped over it more times than I ever want to admit, but I always justified it by the results. I knew the rules and was well aware of when I was breaking them.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now?” he said. “All those rules, the ones I broke and the ones I followed, mean shit to me right now. I don’t know what that makes me. I know I can’t call myself a cop anymore—that tugboat took off a long time ago. I was kidding myself into believing otherwise. It was easier than thinking what I was out there doing was criminal.”
“Then why do it at all?” Natalie asked. “You can turn around and walk away from it, even now. No one would come after you if you went that route. I would see to that.”
“With you,” Boomer asked, “or without?”
“I would like to think with,” Natalie said. “I just can’t think of how we could ever make it work.”
“Neither can I,” Boomer said to her. “So how about we just keep it to business for now until at least one of us can?”
Natalie nodded, her eyes locked on Boomer, who sat across from her now clear of the warmth he had shown earlier, resembling more a fighter ready to get into the ring for one last, vicious battle. “The odds are stacked against you, regardless of how much help you get from me,” she said. “You go in with the numbers heavy in their favor and face two crews who give no thought to any lines being blurred. You’ve seen how they conduct their business, the coldness with which they dispatch an enemy. There is no collateral damage where they are concerned. If you and your team bring the fight to their turf, they will consider anyone you know and like a target equal to one of you and they will make a move against them.”
“Same true for you?” Boomer asked her. “Is that how you come in ready to do battle?”
“Yes, only more so,” Natalie said, wiping loose strands of hair from her eyes. “It is not enough to beat your opponent. Victory is accomplished only when he is destroyed. Are you prepared to do that?”
“I wouldn’t be in a tea room if I wasn’t,” Boomer said. “And if you come in with us it makes us more than friends. It makes us partners.”
“I’ve never had a partner,” Natalie said. “And I don’t have friends. I can’t afford the risk either brings.”
“Then what is it you and me do have?” Boomer asked.
“Something we can both embrace,” Natalie said, “and which I find to be stronger than either a friend or a partner.”
“And that’s what, exactly?” Boomer asked.
“Mutual enemies,” Natalie said.
3
Jonas Talbot stepped off the elevator on the second floor and made a sharp right-hand turn, heading down a carpeted hallway for the wood-paneled library at the far end of the five-story town house. He was holding an unlit Delmonico cigar in his right hand and cradling a leather-bound copy of Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis, in his left. He was, as usual, meticulously dressed and groomed, and appeared eager to embark on his late-afternoon respite of a few hours of quiet reading mixed in with the enjoyment of a fine cigar. It was the only leisure break he ever allowed himself in the course of an otherwise crammed schedule, preferring to do the bulk of his work in the quiet hours of the New York nights and early mornings. Talbot suffered from dual jolts of blinding migraine headaches and chronic bouts of insomnia, and found his only relief from both demons in the sanctuary of a three-thousand-book library collection and the aroma of swirling cigar smoke. Only then was he a man at peace with both himself and his surroundings.
He had read six pages deeper into the novel before resting it open against his chest, his body sunk and snug inside the contours of a thick and rich brown leather wing chair, and reaching for the wide cigar and a gold lighter dominated by the open mouth of a lion. He snapped the tip of the lighter with his right thumb and watched with one eye closed as the long, thin flame scorched the brown tobacco. He took in a deep drag and then flinched when he heard the unfamiliar voice come at him from behind. “I n
ever lose my sense of amazement at how sweet a life some of you rich fuckers have,” Boomer said. “And all of it built on the backs, good, bad, or nasty, of a handful of poor fucks who would kill you in a tick if they knew how good a ride you coasted in on.”
“Am I to suppose, based on your initial statement, that I’m in the middle of some sort of shakedown?” Talbot asked. “Or did you venture in here out of mere curiosity?”
“They pay you extra to talk like that?” Boomer asked, stepping around the wing chair and looking down at Talbot. “If that’s the case, you’re better off saving the store-bought vocab for the easily impressed.”
“Now that we can safely rule out conversation,” Talbot said, “what is it you came in here expecting to walk out with?”
“Details, mostly,” Boomer said, stepping back and looking around the thick wooden bookcases, which reached up to the very base of the fourteen-foot ceiling.
“Concerning what, if I may ask?” Talbot said.
“We’re going to start our little journey with Sean Valentine and work our way through his grease-stained pad,” Boomer said. “From there, you’re going to tell me what you know about the Boiler Man and where and how I can reach out his way.”
“Is there anything else?” Talbot asked, taking a long and deep drag on his cigar, his face surrounded by puffs of white smoke.
“Assuming you get that far and are still alive, we’ll move on to Angel,” Boomer said. “I always figured he kept a fleshy mound of jelly as his bitch, him being an ex-priest and all, but I never banked on it being someone with pockets deep as yours.”
“Do you mind if I ask how you managed to get in here?” Talbot asked. “Just to appease my curiosity, nothing more.”
“I let myself in,” Boomer said with a smile and a shrug. “The front door was open. All I had to do was sidestep the two guys curled and bleeding in your foyer. It wasn’t like I had to concern myself with an alarm going off or anything like that, especially since they don’t usually work without their wires attached. Now, do you have all the background info you need for us to get started or you want to know how it is I figured I’d find you in here, sitting all nice and cozy-like?”
“I can save you a great deal of time and trouble,” Talbot said. “I never give any information about my clients to anyone, regardless of the threat level directed toward me. There is very little you can do, short of murder, to change that course of action, and you don’t seem like the cold-blooded type, despite the harsh talk.”
Boomer had his hands in his pockets, his head down, pacing in a tight circle several feet from Talbot’s chair. “You collect art as well as books,” he said. “I read that about you in one of the file reports. Expensive art—worth millions, some of the pieces. In fact, if what I read was accurate, you put all your money into books and works of art. That right, would you say?”
“Get to the point, policeman,” Talbot said, his soft face no match for the harsh voice. “You’ve already cost me the privilege of a relaxing afternoon.”
“You like bonfires?” Boomer said. “Me? I can take them or leave them. But my friend Ash, she lives for that shit. So trust me when I tell you, your afternoon is just about to start.”
The paintings were stacked one on top of the other in two piles, six to each. Rev. Jim and Quincy had brought them into the library, scouring the rooms of the town house to take down the designated works. Ash stood next to the paintings, a tin of gas resting between her and Buttercup. Dead-Eye was in one corner of the library looking through a row of books. “This guy has all the works of Alexandre Dumas,” he shouted out to Boomer. “He was always my favorite, ever since I was a kid. I used to read his books in the library next to our building every day after school, stayed until my eyes burned. But they didn’t have copies this good, not with all this leather and shit.”
“Take them, every last one,” Boomer said. “They’re yours. I am certain that Mr. Talbot here would want you to have them.”
“My mother used to say there are four things you should never lend out and expect to have returned to you,” Talbot said, his eyes focused on the stacked paintings.
“My mom used to say the same thing,” Dead-Eye said, walking toward Boomer and Talbot, his arms weighed down with a thick stack of leather-bound books. “And I bet the two ladies were of one mind. You never lend books, umbrellas, money, or your wife.”
“That’s correct,” Talbot said.
“Well, you can stay free of worries on that score,” Boomer said. “You’re not lending him those books; you’re giving them to him. And don’t think for one quick second that none of us are grateful.”
“If this is how you expect to get any information from me, you’re so sadly mistaken,” Talbot said. “I can have every one of those books replaced by morning.”
“No kidding, Sheerluck,” Boomer said. “But not any of those paintings, you can’t. They’re one of a kind. Am I right?”
“I brought down a Degas and a Picasso,” Rev. Jim said. “And I think I might have seen a Monet somewhere in one of the batches. But since I don’t know shit from sunshine about art, I can only guess they’re worth a few loose coins to somebody.”
“I’d ballpark the whole lot to run between forty and sixty million,” Quincy said. “Give or take a million on either side.”
“That’s some ballpark to be in,” Ash said. “I hope Buttercup doesn’t get the urge to take one of her five-minute bladder drains on any of them. I can’t get urine stains off a couch, so I can only imagine how much damage it would do to canvas.”
“Not to mention the gasoline in that canister,” Dead-Eye said. “Shit, that whole batch, top to bottom, would go up faster than a winter sneeze.”
“That’s enough,” Talbot said. “Your juvenile humor is wasted on me, as is your time and mine. As ignorant as I’m sure each one of you surely is, I doubt very much that even low-rent Neanderthals such as the lot of you would venture to destroy great works of art.”
“Really?” Boomer said. “And what’s the why not to that theory?”
“There’s neither profit nor pleasure in it for you,” Talbot said with calm assurance. “And it won’t help get you one inch closer to your intended targets. It would be a fruitless and pointless gesture.”
“He might be onto something there,” Dead-Eye said. “I mean, let’s face it. We don’t know shit from squid about any kind of art, other than that paint-by-numbers stuff my kid likes to work on.”
“Don’t knock it,” Rev. Jim said. “That’s nowhere near as easy as it looks. Takes a lot of hand-to-eye skill to stay within those dotted lines.”
Boomer turned away from the Apaches and looked down at Talbot, the lit cigar still clutched in his right hand, the smug look returning. “You know, there’s a lot of weight to what they’re saying and you’re probably right. Burning them would be nothing more than a waste of time. Except for Ash, none of us would really get any kind of a kick out of it.”
“I’m glad to see you curtail your initial anger and return to a sensible position,” Talbot said.
“So how about we do this, then?” Boomer said. “And I do think you’ll like this idea a lot better than the first one.”
“I’m still your prisoner,” Talbot said. “And even if I weren’t, I would still be eager to listen to any solution you can cleverly devise.”
“We’ll just give them away,” Boomer said, the smile fading. “All of them. The ones stacked behind me and the ones still left hanging on the walls. Every fucking painting in your collection, gone. And I have to believe that doing something like that to a guy like you will hit you harder than any bullet I can pin your way.”
“And who is it you could possibly know that would have the knowledge and the know-how to fence and move such valuable and well-documented works of art?” Talbot asked, each word filled with a syrup drip of sarcasm. “Tony Rigs would be a poor choice indeed. The man is dumb as a tree stump, thinks Degas is a shortstop for the Mets. Stay to your strengths
, cop, and don’t risk the drive onto unfamiliar terrain. Works of art do not fall under your skill set.”
“Would they fall under mine?” Natalie Robinov asked, stepping up behind Talbot, a leather-backed copy of Crime and Punishment cradled against her chest. “Or do I need a degree in art history to move your paintings on the black market?”
Talbot responded to the sound of her voice with a sudden jolt and turned to face her, the cigar slipping from his fingers and onto the thick carpet by his feet. “What are you doing here?” he managed to stammer. “It’s not like you to be seen in the company of lawmen, retired or otherwise.”
“I’m a sucker for a bargain,” Natalie said. “So when I heard the whispers that your vast collection might be coming on the market, I just had to come and see for myself. And, sure enough, it’s available—and at such an affordable price.”
Talbot stared at Natalie for several moments and then eased himself out of his wing chair and walked over to her. “I will tell them anything they need to know,” he said, his words more a plea than a statement. “Just please, leave me my collection. I’ve poured my life and my fortune into the possession of these works. You can’t take them from me, I beg you.”
“Give them all the information they require,” Natalie said to him. “The full details, and leave nothing out. Whatever questions you are asked, give them a complete and total response.”
“And what will come my way in return?” Talbot said.
“I will allow you to keep one of your paintings,” she said, her smile as cold as a late-winter storm. “And it will be your choice as to which of the works stays behind. Think it over with great care.”
“I would rather die than live without my paintings,” Talbot said, using up his final doses of defiance. “That you must believe to be true.”