“I can believe that,” Quincy said. “It’s probably a union job, and they have to overpay to find anyone crazy enough to do this sort of work full-time. Did your cop friend eventually leave the department?”
“He eventually left the planet,” Rev. Jim said. “Took a full header off the middle tier of a downtown office tower. They found his work boots three blocks away from where he fell. And he had on two of these latches!”
“I wonder what goes through your mind during those few seconds before you hit the ground,” Quincy said. “Who do you think of, what’s the last image that flashes across your eyes?”
“I know what it would be for me,” Rev. Jim said. “Fucking Boomer and Dead-Eye talking us both into doing something this insane. If I was so eager to commit suicide, I would have picked a much less painful escape route.”
“I’ve picked mine already,” Quincy said. “You know, for when the time comes.”
Rev. Jim turned to Quincy and locked eyes with him, tossing aside his fear of heights. “It may not come to that,” he said. “You’ve been with us for a while now and you seem to be getting stronger, not weaker. Maybe it’s not a death sentence for everybody that has it.”
“I joined a small support group a few months after I was diagnosed,” Quincy said. “Early on, I kept up that cop ruse we all use—the one that allows us to make-believe nothing gets to us. But I found I needed to talk to somebody, and who better than a group of men with the same disease?”
“Was it a help?” Rev. Jim asked.
“Very much,” Quincy said. “If for no other reason than knowing you’re not the only one thinking the thoughts and feeling the pain and dreading the next day or the next month. Point is, though, there were fifteen original members in that group when I first signed on about three months ago. We’re down to six. It is a death sentence, Jim. The only unknown is the where and the when.”
“If you have to die, it won’t be alone,” Rev. Jim said. “If I’m still breathing, I’ll be there right next to you, for whatever the hell that’s worth.”
“You may want to rethink that,” Quincy said. “I appreciate it, don’t get me wrong. But watching someone waste away during the last stages of this isn’t something you would wish on any friend.”
Rev. Jim worked his side of the window in silence and then rested the brush in a wide bucket of water by his feet. “So what plan did you work up?” he asked. “How do you figure booking that final checkout?”
“I ruled out eating a gun from the get-go,” Quincy said.
“Good call,” Rev. Jim said. “That way is so cop.”
“Besides which, I don’t think I’d be able to pull the trigger,” Quincy said. “So I thought I’d charge a very expensive bottle of wine to my Amex and down that while listening to a Sinatra album.”
“What kind of wine?” Rev. Jim asked.
“A Brunello,” Quincy said. “I was always told it was a wine to die for. This is my chance to prove that theory.”
“Then what, wash a few pills down with it?” he asked.
“No, that takes too long,” Quincy said, “and I don’t have that kind of patience. I’m going to wrap a plastic bag over my head, tie it up nice and tight with some thick cord, lie down on a soft bed, and let it all play out.”
Rev. Jim held on to one side of the scaffold, stared across at Quincy, and then smiled.
“It’s just too bad we didn’t know each other back in the days I was hooked on drugs,” he said. “We would have made one helluva fucking team, let me just tell you that.”
“What about you?” Quincy asked. “You ever give any thought to ending it? I always thought every cop did at one time or another.”
“I used to think about it,” Rev. Jim said with a shrug. “Especially after I got wounded and couldn’t work anymore. I didn’t see much point in going on with what would be left of my life. So, yeah, I ran a few different death dances across my mind, but I never did come close enough to act on any of them.”
“What changed it for you?” Quincy asked.
“I hooked up with Boomer and Dead-Eye,” Rev. Jim said. “Once you line up on their end of the field, you can forget all about the need to waste yourself. Those two bastards will come up with ways to end a life all by themselves.”
Freddie Gonzalez walked into the large office, a long, wide conference table sucking up most of the free space in the room. He walked over to a corner, past the two men on the scaffold scrubbing the windows, swung open the door to a small fridge, and pulled out a cold can of beer. Three other men followed him in, each holding large leather satchels, and sat around the table, resting the bags by their feet. A woman in a designer business suit was the last one in the room, closing the thick oak door behind her. She walked over toward Freddie and stood next to him near the head of the table, both facing the two men on the scaffold.
“Why all the mystery?” he asked. “We usually handle these trade-offs out in the open and without me anywhere near them. What’s changed?”
“Hector thought this would be safer, given all that’s going on,” said one of the men, the one sitting close to the center of the conference table. “We make the exchange, you sign off on it, and we all go our separate ways not having to worry about either the Russians or those fuckin’ cops causing us any grief.”
“Has the room been scanned for bugs?” the young woman asked.
“We had a crew check it out less than an hour ago, Isabel,” one of the men said. “It’s as clean as it looks.”
“What’s here when we’re not?” Freddie asked.
“An insurance company,” one of the men said, lifting his leather satchel from the floor and resting it on the table. “They use this room for video conferences.”
“How’d we end up with it?” he asked.
“Their legal counsel is one of our biggest and most dependable customers,” the man said. “I put a little extra in his weekly sniff-and-smell package, and he gave us weekend security clearance.”
“You tell me, Richie,” Freddie said, “where the fuck would our business be without those high-rise white-bread fuckers with a taste for the thin line? You think we would haul in the kind of cash is in one of those bags regular if we had to depend on street skells and nickel baggers? Tell me straight?”
“We would barely make rent most months,” Richie said. “That’s the down and true.”
“You bet that skinny little ass of yours,” Freddie said. “It’s the Wonder bread wonders who land us the cars, the houses, the booze, the pussy. The rest of the trade is Christmas tip money for the doorman, not even.”
“There four hundred heavy in your bag?” Isabel asked one of the men.
“Washed and ready to wear,” the man said, sliding the satchel over to Richie. “Count it if you like, but it’s there down to the penny.”
“We don’t need to count shit,” Freddie said. “If it’s short even one dirty dime, I know where to find you. And, believe me, you won’t want to be found if that happens.”
“I’m expecting to have ten kilos in return,” the man said. “I figure that’s in the two bags not holding the cash. Once they make their way into my hands, we’ll be done here.”
“You got your powder and we got our green,” Freddie said. “Which means we conclude one of these with smiles all around, which will be a nice fuckin’ change from what’s been going on around here the last week or—”
The harsh breeze from the two open windows forced them all to look up. Rev. Jim and Quincy stood on the black lacquered ledge inside the office, the scaffold at their back.
“What the fuck do you two windshield wipers want in here?” Richie asked, the wind gusts forcing open the front of his jacket, exposing the edge of a gun jammed inside his waistband.
“Me and my buddy here were just curious about something,” Rev. Jim said. “I know it’s a weekend and all, but you think we could apply for an insurance policy?”
“I’ve heard you have a special discount on one,??
? Quincy said. “Just for people in your line of work, and ours.”
“You know the one,” Rev. Jim said. “It comes with a two-bullet deductible.”
Richie was the first to pull his weapon and fire, moving fast and pegging two shots toward the window ledge. Rev. Jim and Quincy both dived forward, yanked off the guns that were taped to the backs of their uniforms, and came up firing, each on one side of the conference room. They were braced on one knee, their arms out, throwing heavy heat at the four men and one woman less than a dozen feet away.
Freddie and one of the men dived behind a set of leather chairs in a far corner and started to peg shots at the two Apaches. The third man fired away, using a table leg and the base of a chair as cover. Isabel reached under the conference table and came up with a semiautomatic. She stood her ground without fear, letting loose a wild fusillade of high-caliber artillery, a cloud of white gun smoke floating up to partially cover her face.
“I hope you came in here with a Plan B,” Quincy shouted across the room to Rev. Jim. “If not, I wasted a lot of man-hours planning a suicide I’ll never need to pull off.”
“Fire all your rounds and then get your ass back on that scaffold,” Rev. Jim shouted back. “The second you pop on, kick it in gear and start to lower it down fast as you can get it to go.”
“And how do you plan on getting out?” Quincy asked. He swung his handgun toward Richie, emptying three rounds in his direction. The first two caught and chipped the rich wood paneling, the third crash-landed through flesh and sent the drug dealer facedown and feet spread onto the carpeted floor.
“I’m going to jump,” Rev. Jim said.
“If anyone’s going to jump, it should be me,” Quincy yelled. “Remember?”
“Don’t be so sure,” Rev. Jim said, using the wall to lift himself up to his feet and firing in a left-to-right arc, making sure to keep everyone’s head down. “Are you on empty yet?”
Quincy fired the final two bullets in his chamber and got one grunt and a wild volley in return, then turned and did a fast jump-and-roll out the window and onto the scaffold. “I am now,” he said. He pushed free the release lever and unwrapped two thick cords of rope wedged on either side of the structure. “I pray you know what the fuck you’re doing.”
Rev. Jim’s eyes lit up. “Me, too!”
A heavy stream of bullets came at Rev. Jim from every possible direction, shattering glass and landing with loud thumps in the wood, lamps, and imported tile. He kept his head down and snapped open the front of his blue uniform, reached into his belt buckle, and pulled free two hand grenades he kept lodged on a clip around his belt. He undid the pins on both before the first bullet landed against the small of his back, followed by a second that nicked his right shoulder, forcing him to twirl and face the shooters bearing down his way. A third bullet hit him just below the chest and sent him halfway out the window. Rev. Jim, blood rushing out of his mouth, did an underhand flip and sent the grenades floating into the room, sending the shooters scattering for cover. “Eat it, you fuckers,” he said.
He lifted his legs off the floor and floated out the open windows.
Rev. Jim landed with a violent thud three stories down, on the middle of three wooden planks of the scaffold, shaking it loose. Quincy was fighting with all his strength to hold it in place, hands suddenly cut through, upper body trembling from the struggle. He managed to steady the scaffold just as the loud explosion came at them from three floors above, shaking and rocking the very foundation of the forty-story building. A large fireball flew out the open windows above and burned through one end of the thick cord, causing the structure to tilt to one side as it moved with dangerous speed down the damaged high-rise.
Quincy bent down on both knees and lifted Rev. Jim in his arms, cradling his dying body. “You crazy bastard,” Quincy said to him, his voice cracking, both their bodies coated in blood. “Hang on to me, just hang on. We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.”
“Do me a favor, would you, Quincy?” Rev. Jim said, each word a struggle.
“Name it,” Quincy said.
“Fight back,” Rev. Jim said. “You’re too good a cop to end it with a Hefty bag wrapped over your head. And you’re too good a man. So skip that, will you? Fight back.”
Quincy nodded, eyes burning, the scaffold making its descent. Rev. Jim looked toward the sky at the smoke and the flames filling the air around them and rested his head against Quincy’s shoulder. “You take my point,” Rev. Jim whispered. “It’s better to die with a friend.”
And then he did.
9
The Apaches stood in front of the altar, three rows of flickering votive candles illuminating their faces in an otherwise empty church, their heads bowed in silent prayer.
“He was our heart,” Boomer said.
“He deserves more than the minutes we can spare right now,” Dead-Eye said.
“He’ll get that,” said Boomer, “as soon as all of this is behind us.”
“And he deserves to be buried proper,” Dead-Eye added. “Soon as our dustup is over, whoever’s still standing should see to that.”
“I’ll keep his ashes until then,” Quincy said.
“He always used to say he never wanted one of those police funerals,” Boomer said. “He would have hated the flags and the guns going off.”
“What did he want?” Ash asked.
“A Viking funeral,” Dead-Eye said, a smile flashing below his wet eyes. “Put out on a boat, piles of wood all around him, us shooting flaming arrows his way as he floats off to the deep sea.”
“Then that’s what he’ll get,” Quincy said, reaching down to pet Buttercup, who was resting under the warm lights of the candles.
Boomer nodded. “I know what else he would have wanted,” he said.
“What?” Ash asked.
“For us to finish the job,” Boomer said.
10
Dead-Eye stood on the walkway on the Queens side of the Whitesstone Bridge, three lanes of cars and trucks zooming past him, the clouds overhead threatening rain, the river below choppy and looking cold. Ash was next to him, her back to the traffic, her hair whipping around her face, eyes taking in the majestic view. “This is what passes as a public place to Robles?” she asked.
“Never expect logic of any kind from a drug dealer,” Dead-Eye said. “No matter what happens and what crazy shit he’s got up his coke spoon, just remember: if we stay cool, we’ll be cool.”
“Thanks for the heads-up, Yoda,” Ash said. “But if I had to call this game, I’d be sitting on one of those sailboats down there, glass of wine in hand, heading for no place in particular.”
“Somehow, I doubt we’ll ever live to see days like that,” Dead-Eye said.
“I’ve never even been on a boat,” Ash said, brushing strands of thick hair from her face, tiny drops of cold rain beginning to fall. “Not even a Circle Line ride up to the Statue of Liberty. But when I was a kid, being out on the water was all I dreamed about. I used to have this image of taking this big boat out in the middle of a wild ocean, sails stretched by the wind, me at the helm, land nowhere in sight.”
“Why’d you never do it?” Dead-Eye asked, scanning the traffic around them for any sign of Robles.
“I guess I just turned my back on it and went in the opposite direction,” Ash said. “I chose fire over water, not even fighting them but working the pieces to see who it was that started them. I don’t regret any of it. I just wonder a bit now and then and think how different it might have all been. Only natural, most people spend their lives wondering what it’s like on the other side of the fence.”
“Most, maybe, but not all,” Dead-Eye said. “It might look a whole lot better on the other side of that fence, but who’s to say that it is?”
“You’re a world-class pessimist, you know that?” Ash said. “It’s not just you, either. Most cops I’ve crossed paths with come with that mind-set. And the better the cop, the darker the view.”
“Eve
ry cop’s got a good reason for feeling that way,” Dead-Eye said.
“What’s yours?” Ash asked. “Of course, if you don’t want to go near it, not a problem.”
“Lucinda Jackson,” Dead-Eye said.
“She family or a friend?” Ash asked.
“Never met the young lady,” Dead-Eye said. “I was in my first month working homicide, coming off a tour in plainclothes. My attitude had taken a nick here and there, but I still looked with hopeful eyes.”
“Until you caught a case,” Ash said.
“Not much of one, either,” Dead-Eye said. “Lucinda lived, if you want to stretch the word enough, with a crack mother and her cracked pimp. Her real father wasn’t much better, doing a stretch upstate for a statutory. She was eighteen months old and weighed about as much as an eight-week puppy. All she knew of life was steady beatings and not much food. Then one night her crying got too loud for the cracker and the pimp, and they did the only thing that seemed logical to their demented minds. They shoved her inside a toaster oven and kicked it to high. Played with the timer like it was a radio dial. I cannot bring myself to ever imagine the pain that innocent child felt before mercy took hold.”
“You were the one who found her body?” Ash asked.
“What there was of it,” Dead-Eye said. “There was no money to pay for a funeral, and the only family she had were the two who made her life a hell. She deserved better than to be tossed into a hole in an unmarked grave. So I paid to have her buried out in St. Charles on Long Island, headstone and all. We gave her a full service and got the police chaplain to serve Mass and say prayers over her coffin. She even got a police escort out to the cemetery. About a dozen cops made the ride out and stayed with her until she was buried. Boomer was one of them.”
“The doers get nailed?” she asked.
“The doers that cross paths with me always get nailed,” Dead-Eye said. “You know, Lucinda would have turned twelve this coming June had she lived, and not a morning passes that I don’t flash on her face. Those people down there, riding on them waves, in those tilted sailboats you used to dream about, are so very lucky. The shit we see stays invisible to them. And it’s our job, if we do it right, to keep it that way.”