Malcolm ran a dry tongue over an even drier set of lips. Sweat dripped down the small of his back and he couldn’t stop the right side of his face from twitching.
Boomer uncuffed Jennifer, brought her arm down gently to her side. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wrapped it around the top of her hand. As the girl let out a soft whimper of pain, he held Jennifer in his arms and lifted her up.
“It got a little crazy,” Malcolm said. “That happens sometimes.”
Boomer made no attempt to hide his revulsion. He’d seen a lot in the years since he first pinned on his shield and he knew about the ugliness that filtered down the streets of his beat: men who killed the women they loved over the last hit on a pipe; dealers who sold poison to junkies, caring little that they would die within seconds of the rush; hitters who murdered strangers for cash and walked off into the night without care or concern; radicals so filled with hate they butchered the innocent in honor of some indefinite principle. All those he had seen and, over the years, had slowly come to understand.
But what he had seen over the past several days was a new form of evil. The man he stood across from and the other on his knees behind him were alien creatures to Boomer, each so willing to drop into the depths of an inhumanity he found terrifying.
There had been many criminals who’d crossed paths with Boomer whom he’d found pleasure in arresting. There were a handful he had killed because of the situation and the moment. But there had never been anyone he had wanted to kill for the pure emotional need to eliminate him.
Not until he crossed paths with Junior and Malcolm.
“I’m taking the girl,” Boomer said quietly. “The police’ll be here soon and take you and your friend away.” He took two steps back, and for a moment closed his eyes.
“Learn to pray, Malcolm,” Boomer said. “Pray for a long prison sentence and for me to die the day before you get out.”
• • •
DEAD-EYE HAD HIS gun back down by his side, the heat of anger swelling within him as well. It was fueled by the bleakness of the room, the thick smell of blood and body fluids that filtered into his lungs. He fought back a desire to scream, trying to erase from his head images of his own wife and son caught in the grips of such men. His eyes were fixed on the girl in Boomer’s arms, so different now from the open, smiling face on the picture that was hidden inside the fold of his jacket pocket.
It takes a great deal to touch a hardened man, to penetrate the defensive shield and reach down and press his vulnerable core. Dead-Eye always felt he had made himself strong enough to escape such pressure.
He knew now that he was wrong.
Dead-Eye took his eyes away from the girl and looked down at Junior, who had inched closer to Malcolm’s knife. His fingers were stretching to reach it, only a quick grab away from the handle. Junior had stayed silent, making himself easy to ignore. He had glanced behind him and was aware that Dead-Eye’s gun was at rest, no longer pointed at him. Besides, the rich, pampered Junior was arrogant enough to think no cop would ever shoot him and expect to walk away.
It was the perfect time to make his move.
Malcolm saw it first, saw Junior standing behind Boomer, the blade of the knife held high, ready to come down hard into the cop’s back, the gleeful look of a vengeful killer fulfilling his fate.
Malcolm curled a half-smile over at Boomer and shook his head slowly. “Maybe,” he said, “I don’t have to pray so hard as you think.”
Boomer looked into Malcolm’s eyes, saw the confidence suddenly show itself. He held his ground, gripping Jennifer’s slight body closer to him, burying her head deeper into his chest, sensing what was about to happen.
One shot brought it to an end.
It came out of Dead-Eye’s .44 and flew past the center of Junior’s brain.
A low, guttural moan came from deep inside Junior’s body. Thick, dark gushes of blood sprayed across Malcolm’s face and over the back of Boomer’s head and neck. Boomer turned to see Junior fall face first to the floor, the hole in his head large enough to shine a spotlight through, the knife held loose in the curve of his right hand. Behind them, Dead-Eye stood in a crouch position, his legs spread, right arm extended, smoke filtering off the barrel of his gun.
“You’re not supposed to shoot a suspect in the back,” Boomer said. “Or is that one of the classes you missed?”
“He wasn’t a suspect,” Dead-Eye said, holstering his gun and walking toward Boomer, ignoring the body on the floor. “And I didn’t shoot him in the back. I shot him in the head.”
“Give the uniforms your statement,” Boomer said. “I’ll call in from the hospital to back it up. Then we’ll take it all from there.”
“I’ll tell ’em what I saw,” Malcolm said, his upper body starting to shiver. “Swear to God, tell ’em everything. Unless you let me go. Now.”
“Look down at that big hole in Junior’s head,” Dead-Eye said to Malcolm, turning his back on him long enough to close the door behind Boomer and the little girl in his arms. “Then remember I’ve still got five more bullets in my gun.”
Dead-Eye rested his back against a far wall, his legs stretched out, arms folded across his chest. In the distance, he heard police sirens drawing closer.
“I don’t see you puttin’ down a brother,” Malcolm said. “You don’t look the type to kill your own blood.”
Dead-Eye pushed himself away from the wall, the siren wails growing louder, and headed straight for Malcolm. He pulled the gun from his holster, cocked it, and jammed it right under the naked man’s chin.
“We don’t have the same blood,” Dead-Eye said, barely moving his lips, shoving the gun in harder against the fleshy part of Malcolm’s jaw. “And, believe me, I would kill any brother who was scum like you. Even my own.”
He pulled the gun away, stepped over Junior’s body, and walked to the apartment door. He opened the door, leaned his shoulder against the cracked hinges, rested his head on the wood, and stared up at a bare bulb hanging from a ceiling wire.
A cop waiting to be rescued.
9
BOOMER SAT AT his usual corner table at Nunzio’s, hovering over a large bowl of penne with pesto. Across from him, Dead-Eye quietly cut into a thick char-broiled veal chop. Nunzio Goldman watched as they both ate, his back to a closed window, a large glass of red wine in front of him.
Nunzio knew his two friends had been through an ordeal these past few days. He could read it in their faces. Reading people was one of the things that came as second nature to Nunzio Goldman. He had spent his life on both sides of the law and managed to avoid any problems from either end. The good cops, like Boomer and Dead-Eye, trusted him. They knew that bets came in steady over his phone and that the sporting spreads for the Upper West Side were set behind his bar, but that kind of action didn’t interest them. Boomer’s mother bet a dollar on a number every day of her life, even hit one on a few occasions. Dead-Eye’s father had ten dollars riding every week on his beloved Giants during football season, with or without points. It didn’t make it right, it just didn’t make it a crime, not in their eyes. Not when off-track betting in New York State was legal, enticing people as easily as any street hustler to lay down money they could ill afford to lose. To Boomer and Dead-Eye’s way of thinking, they were all bookies.
Dirty cops periodically tried to shake Nunzio down and were always sent away empty-handed. Nunzio made it his business to get as much information on them as could be dug up. If they were too dirty for his hands, he passed the folders on to the right people. If they were just looking to do some light skimming, he told the cops what he knew about their business and threw down a simple choice—either disappear from his line of vision or prepare to deal with Internal Affairs.
In Nunzio’s world there was no black and white, only shades of gray, and he lived with ease within that cloudy area. He was a criminal who hated drugs and all that their sale embodied, but was comfortable in the company of hired killers who contracte
d out murders as easily as he sliced off strips of prosciutto. He ran an honest restaurant, treating customers with respect and serving only the finest foods he could afford. At the same time, he and his accountant devoted hours to cooking the books, keeping two sets of ledgers, reporting only the false set to the Internal Revenue Service. In the midst of a complicated universe, Nunzio Goldman kept his life and his ways as simple as he could manage.
“What kind of fallout did you guys get from taking out Junior?” Nunzio asked Boomer and Dead-Eye.
“His father says he’s gonna sue the department.” Boomer paused, filling his mouth with pasta. “He’s put a team of six-figure lawyers on the case.”
“He know you were in on it?” Nunzio asked.
“He knows what he was told,” Dead-Eye said. “Two retired detectives heard a rumor about a young girl being held against her will in an abandoned building.”
“When we went in, Junior panicked and came after me with a knife,” Boomer added. “And Dead-Eye iced him.”
“That’s not gonna be enough for Pop,” Nunzio said. “He’s gonna want the ones buried his son.”
“They can take my pension if they want it,” Boomer said, breaking off a hunk of bread from a basket. “I don’t give a fuck. Nothing can take back what they did to that kid.”
“Pop’s gonna use his money to talk for him against the two of you. I’ll use mine to talk against him. End of the day, we’ll see whose money talks louder.” Nunzio sipped his wine.
“How’s Jennifer?”
Boomer put down his fork, took a sip from a glass of mineral water, and looked over at Nunzio, sadness easing its way across his face. “The doctors, with all their fucking diplomas, told her parents that kids can rebound out of these kinds of things.”
“She say anything?” Nunzio said. “Can she talk at all?”
“I was carryin’ her down the street to my car.” Boomer’s voice betrayed the weight of his emotions. “I still couldn’t get over the shape she was in. So much blood, so many bruises, you had to look to find skin. I was cursin’ to myself, sick about the whole fuckin’ business. Then she opens one eye, looks at me, and says ‘thank you.’” Boomer put his head down and picked up his fork.
“I’m only sorry I didn’t leave Malcolm’s body on top of Junior’s,” Dead-Eye said. “Cancel out both their checking accounts.”
“What happens to him now?” Nunzio asked.
“Malcolm?” Dead-Eye said. “He’s looking at a hard ten. Even with a soft judge and a kind wacko report.”
“Doesn’t seem like it’s enough,” Nunzio said.
“It’s never enough,” Boomer said. “No matter what they end up with, it’s never enough.”
“The family needs anything,” Nunzio said, finishing off his wine and getting up from the table, “let ’em know I’ll do all I can.”
They watched the restaurant owner walk toward the bar, giving quick greetings to diners along the way.
“How much juice does Nunzio really have?” Dead-Eye asked, leaning back in his chair.
“About as much as he needs,” Boomer said.
He paused for a moment and then reached inside the pocket of his blue button-down J. Crew shirt. He pulled out the card he had taken from Malcolm’s jeans and slid it across the table.
“Lucia Carney,” Dead-Eye said, reading the name printed on it. “Should that mean something to me?”
“She’s got four names.” Boomer picked up the card and placed it back in his shirt pocket. “Been married three times. All three husbands ended up dead.”
“Everything comes in threes,” Dead-Eye said. “Good things and bad.”
“She works out of Arizona,” Boomer said. “Runs a day care center. One of those drop-off-at-seven, pick-up-at-six places. Takes in about fifteen, maybe twenty thousand a year.”
“Any kids of her own?” Dead-Eye said.
“Can’t have any,” Boomer said. “She had a botched abortion when she was twenty. Messed up her insides. She was either living with or spending quality time with a drug runner down south. Beyond that, her early background’s sketchy.”
“I’m ready for another Pepsi,” Dead-Eye said. “You set with your water?”
“Get yourself two and a large bottle of Pellegrino for the table,” Boomer said, pushing his chair back and walking off toward the men’s room. “I’ll pick it up from there when everybody else gets here.”
“Who’s everybody else?” Dead-Eye asked, wondering where Boomer was taking all this, why he had devoted so much time to digging into the life of a three-time widow who spent her days watching other people’s kids.
“Don’t worry,” Boomer said, stopping between two empty tables. “You’ll like ’em. They’re a bunch of cripples. Like you and me.”
• • •
BOOMER FRONTIERI HAD stopped being a cop physically but not emotionally. His every action, every movement, every glance smelled of cop. He would regularly pass on tips he picked up from old street stools to the beat units and was one of the few retired cops brazen enough to make citizen’s arrests. Once, not long after he’d been pensioned off, he spotted two teens mugging an elderly woman on Sixty-sixth Street, over near Central Park. He cornered the two, confiscated their pocket knives, and yanked them face forward against a black stone wall. He needed to keep them in place while he phoned for two uniforms. After helping the woman to her feet and resting her against a parked car, he stopped a young student heading home from a nearby private school.
“What’s your name?” he said to the startled boy.
“Joshua,” the kid said.
Boomer pulled the service revolver from his hip holster and handed it to Joshua. “Make sure they don’t move” was all he said, pointing to the two teens over by the wall.
“What if they do?” Joshua said, holding the gun toward the pair, both hands shaking.
“Then shoot ’em,” Boomer said, limping off to the corner phone booth to call the local precinct.
The rescue of Jennifer Santori had brought Boomer back to life. He was angered and repulsed by all that he had witnessed, but it also made him feel like a cop again. His mind was back on red alert, and the adrenaline rush was nearly strong enough to drown out the pain of his wounds. The eventual capture was worth the risk of being hit with a fatal bullet. He knew now that was all he had to keep him going.
The risk.
After finding her card in Malcolm’s pocket, Boomer spent three full days gathering information on Lucia Carney. His first meeting was with DEA Special Agent Tony Malazante, a head banger from his days working buys and busts in Alphabet City. Over two cups of coffee in a downtown diner, Malazante told him about a new brand of cocaine that was just hitting the streets. The dealers called it crack, the junkies called it heaven, and the narcs called it their biggest problem since the Golden Triangle glory days of heroin. New York got its first taste in late 1981. Since then, arrests had multiplied and demand for the drug quadrupled.
“What’s the difference between that and regular blow?” Boomer asked.
“The hits are cheaper,” Malazante said. “Five bucks gets you high for five minutes. Don’t need a lot of cash to stay on the wire all day. You can pick it up stealing petty.”
“Who’s in on it?”
“Everybody so far but the Italians,” Malazante said, sipping from a large cup of mocha. “The demand’s so high that a street dealer can set up shop on a Monday and have a full crew of twenty working for him by Friday.”
“Where’s it coming from?” Boomer wanted to know, holding Lucia’s card in his right hand.
“Same place all this shit comes from,” Malazante said. “South America. Southeast Asia. And it’s landing heavy on the streets. The rock comes in and the cash goes out, usually on the same day.”
“That’s where Lucia comes in,” Boomer said. “How big a hitter is she?”
“She started out small-time.” Malazante leaned his large frame against the back of a torn plastic booth. ?
??Now I’d say she’s in the top three, easy. She’s got a big outfit that’s well run and, I guess you could say, unique.”
“What’s unique about it?”
Malazante finished the rest of his coffee and leaned closer to his friend. “I can help you with this, Boomer,” he said. “But only up to a point. I don’t know what you’re thinking and I don’t want to know. You and me didn’t talk about this and I didn’t leave this folder behind on my seat. If anybody asks, we met, had coffee, and talked about my kids.”
“You don’t have any kids,” Boomer said.
“Then we didn’t talk,” Malazante said, squeezing his girth out of the booth.
An old girlfriend from the FBI gave Boomer the statistics he needed about crack and a confidential printout on Lucia Carney. She promised to help in the future as well, in return for anonymity and the occasional dinner at Nunzio’s. He spent a day working the computers at One Police Plaza, cross-referencing Lucia’s name with known cartel bosses and seven-figure dealers. In between, Boomer ate a quiet office lunch with Deputy Chief Ken Wolfson, a bright, personable man who collected rare comic books and was known on the streets as a cop who liked to see jobs done with as few questions asked as possible. He agreed to be Boomer’s inside man so long as his involvement was that of a silent partner. Boomer would assume all the risks. Wolfson’s cops would get the credit for any busts. Once that was agreed upon, the deputy chief opened a file drawer and laid out all the NYPD background information on Lucia Carney.
A connection from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms then gave Boomer a stat sheet filled with her known lift-and-drop locations. A neighborhood friend now working for a Secret Service unit in Maryland gave him a detailed report on her money-laundering capabilities and how the fast cash was washed overnight between one flight and the next.