“Scopin’ out more innocent men?” Malcolm asked. “Or you just come to apologize?”
“The judge and the D.A. cut you loose,” Boomer said, looking directly at Malcolm. “Not me.”
“I ain’t free but two minutes and you shot-up losers start hasslin’ me.” Malcolm acted indignant, tossing the cigarette to the ground, inches from Dead-Eye’s brown boot. “My man Jerry here ain’t gonna sit for that kinda shit.” Malcolm turned his head, looking over at the lawyer with a thick head of hair and a face layered with red pimples, whiteheads, and acne scars. “That right, Jerry?”
Jerry Spieglman stepped forward, less confident than Malcolm about confronting Boomer and Dead-Eye. He was a low-tier lawyer building a practice from the bottom-feeder end of the pool. “There’s no need to further hassle my client,” Jerry said in a voice as light as his frame. “He’s been cleared by a court of law.”
“They got shit that can help that,” Dead-Eye said, pointing a finger at Jerry’s scarred face. “You let that get any worse, lepers are gonna start takin’ a step back.”
“The only reason we’re not pressing charges against the two of you is that my client wants this put behind him,” Jerry went on, trying to sound tough but not getting anywhere close. “However, if you continue, you will force our hand.”
“Lemme pass it to you soft,” Malcolm added, full of swagger and dare. “You breathe near me and you gonna be the ones in cuffs. That clear enough, Five-O? Or maybe all them bullets you two swallowed fucked up your hearing too.”
“Besides, you two guys are in enough trouble as it is,” Jerry said, taking his confidence cue from Malcolm, convinced now that he was in no physical danger. “You don’t need more. Certainly not from us.”
“How do you figure?” Boomer asked, curious. “Us being the ones in trouble, I mean.”
“You’re being named in the civil suit,” Jerry announced matter-of-factly. “Along with the police department, the Santori family, and the city of New York. Malcolm was arrested for no just reason. Someone has to pay for that.”
“You’re suing?” Dead-Eye asked, incredulous. “You’re suing?”
“That’s right, you crippled, mother-fuckin’ losers.” Malcolm lit another cigarette. “I don’t wanna see you fuckers behind bars. Ain’t nothin’ in there for me. I want you out on them streets, workin’ job after job and handin’ that hard-earned green over to me. That’s gonna eat you up, kill you quicker than any gun I could buy.”
Jerry stood between Boomer and Malcolm, nervously shifting his brown backpack from one hand to the other. Boomer took two steps toward him and put a hand on his shoulder.
“I want a word with your client,” Boomer said, squeezing the fingers of his hand tight across the top of Jerry’s jacket. “I want that word alone. And I know you’re not going to have a problem with that. Am I right?”
“It’s a reasonable request,” Jerry said, casting a quick glance at Malcolm. “Not even you would be crazy enough to try something in passing view of the public.”
“All I see around me are skanks and ambulance chasers,” Dead-Eye said, glancing at the faces rushing by. “We ain’t exactly talking Vatican City.”
“I’ll be over by the mailbox if you need my help,” Jerry told Malcolm. He lowered his head and slowly walked away.
“I needed your help inside, Jerry,” Malcolm said, inching closer to Boomer, taking a drag on the cigarette and letting the smoke flow toward the cop’s face. “Not out here. Not up against these limpin’ fools. I got their shit down nasty.”
Boomer ignored the smoke and moved close enough to Malcolm to smell the nicotine and stale coffee on his breath and spot the marijuana seeds dotting his lower teeth.
“The court can give you all my money,” Boomer said in a low voice edged with violence. “They can give you every dime I’ve got. And you can spend it any way that you want. Gamble it, sniff it, screw it. That doesn’t mean shit to me. You walk your way, I walk mine, and we both live out our lives. But you even think about touching that girl again or taking one fucking thing from her family after all this and I will kill you in a way you never even knew existed.”
Malcolm’s eyes widened in mock incredulity. “I just hear a threat from the mouth of a cripple?”
“No,” Boomer said, standing as still as stone. “It’s no threat. It’s a promise.”
• • •
NUNZIO POURED BOOMER and Dead-Eye refills of their amaretto on the rocks, then held the bottle perched against his knees.
“He’s suing,” Dead-Eye said. “That motherfucker is suing the city!”
“And the city’ll cut a sweet deal with him for sure,” Nunzio said, sadly shaking his head. “They’ll make sure it’s kept under a tight wrap, but they want him out of everybody’s picture. The best way to do that is to cut him a check and tell him to take a walk.”
“I never had a guy look at me the way Jenny’s father did today.” Boomer gripped his glass with his right hand. “It was all there on his face. Everything that kid suffered was right there, looking back at me.”
“You did your job,” Nunzio said. “You both did. But there were other hands in this. You got no control over that. You can live with it or you can forget it. Either way, you gotta make it pass.”
Boomer said nothing, just stood and walked toward the bar, the lines on his weary face staring back at him in the large mirror hanging above the wide assortment of liquor bottles.
“He won and we lost,” Dead-Eye said. “And when he gets that fat check, we lose all over again. Every fucking day he’s alive, he wins all over again.”
“Guys like Malcolm don’t live all that long,” Nunzio said solemnly. “Things happen to people like him. Bad things. It don’t take much. A call to the right ear is all you need.”
Both Dead-Eye and Boomer stayed still and silent after Nunzio’s words. Boomer met Nunzio’s eyes in the mirror, watched his face, empty of emotion, understanding the subtle weight of his words. He saw Dead-Eye look away from the window, his eyes catching Boomer’s, his head giving a slow nod of approval.
Boomer turned from the bar and walked toward Nunzio, sitting on the edge of a stool. He stopped halfway between the bar and his two friends, picked up a hard-backed wooden chair, swung it over his head, and tossed it with a full force against the mirror above the bar. It landed in the center of the glass and shattered it, pieces large and small crashing to the wood floor and across the countertop.
“I’ll pay you for that, Nunz,” Boomer said, his hands by his sides, his head hanging low.
“It’s my treat, Boom,” Nunzio said, unfazed. “I’ll just take out for the chair.”
Boomer lifted his head and glanced over at Nunzio, his eyes welled with tears, his face flushed red.
“I have to go,” Nunzio said. “You two stay as long as you want. Wreck the place if it puts smiles on your faces.”
“Where are you going?” Boomer asked, staring at the old man through wet eyes.
“To make a call,” Nunzio said. “To find the right ear.”
It was a move both Boomer and Dead-Eye wanted to make but couldn’t, and Nunzio knew that. They could never order a hit, pick up a phone, whisper a man’s name and have him done away with. Even someone as despicable as Malcolm Juniper. They were tough cops but not cold-blooded ones. That’s why they needed Nunzio as part of their team. He had made such calls before. He had grown up in the shadows of his father’s world, a place where a nod of the head or the flicker of a light signaled the end of a life. Nunzio knew that the ones at the other end of the bullet were rarely innocents whose lives should or could be spared. He had learned at a young age that every time a call went out, it touched someone who was meant to die.
Nunzio stopped at the corner of Ninety-sixth Street and Amsterdam Avenue. He stood in front of a pay phone, the receiver in his right hand, dropped change into the coin slot, and pressed down on seven numbers.
He waited for the three rings and a pickup.
“Yes,” the voice on the other end said.
“Malcolm Juniper,” Nunzio said. “Tonight.”
He hung up the phone and crossed the street against passing traffic, heading for a corner newsstand to buy a late afternoon paper. The cold air felt clean and fresh against his face, and he whistled a show tune as he walked, the phone call now nothing but a memory.
• • •
MALCOLM JUNIPER STUMBLED as he twisted his hand through his pants pocket, looking for the key to the midtown hotel room he had rented for the night.
The room was Jerry’s treat, his gift for the sweet victory of the day. He even threw Malcolm three crisp hundred-dollar bills, an advance against their upcoming payday. Jerry told him the city was ready to settle, offering a tax-free six-figure sum if they just agreed to walk away, keep quiet, and forget about any lawsuits. Malcolm was all for the big check, but he wanted more. He wanted the police to hassle Boomer and Dead-Eye, maybe mess with their pensions, come down hard and teach the two cripples a lesson.
Teach them not to touch a player like Malcolm Juniper.
Malcolm had scored enough crack in three hours on the street to float his brain for a solid week. He had ordered up an Asian hooker to be sent to his room in less than an hour, pointedly asking the madam for somebody small, thin, and willing to handle rough action.
Malcolm was hungry for a party.
He dug out the key and with an unsteady hand slid it into the slot. He opened the door to the dark single-bed room and stepped inside, his right hand sliding up and down the wall, searching for a light. He kept the door open with the edge of his foot, allowing the light to filter in from the hall.
He stood on shaky legs, staring into the dark void of a hotel room, took in a deep breath, and gave out a short laugh. The warmth of the crack cocaine that flowed briskly through his body, combined with the sweet smell of the flowered room, had emptied him of all tension, all anger. He had made his score. He was a happy man who was only short weeks away from being a rich one.
Life was going to be good.
• • •
THE MAN STEPPED out of the hallway shadows and stood behind Malcolm Juniper, moving with gentle motions. He was dressed all in black, from the brim of the fedora that hid his forehead and eyes to the desert boots that silenced his walk. He stood behind Malcolm and scanned the hall from left to right, a dark specter on a mission that would tolerate no interruption.
The man pressed the cold metal of a silencer against the nape of Malcolm’s neck, feeling Malcolm’s body arch and stiffen. He placed a gloved hand on the center of his back and eased him farther into the room. No words were exchanged, no emotions spent, as each man quietly understood the purpose of the visit.
There would be no party for Malcolm Juniper.
Nothing to celebrate. No hooker to stroke and torment through the long night. No big check to cash. No more innocent blood to shed.
Malcolm’s journey was at an end.
The man in black closed the door behind him and locked it. The click of the cylinder caused Malcolm’s eyes to flutter.
It was now only a matter of time.
The anguished cries of innocent children who suffered under Malcolm Juniper’s crazed urges would finally be brought to an end.
They would be avenged.
BOOK THREE
Beat the drums of tragedy for me,
Beat the drums of tragedy and death.
And let the choir sing a stormy song
To drown the rattle of my dying breath.
Beat the drums of tragedy for me,
And let the white violins whir thin and slow,
But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun
To go with me to the darkness where I go.
—Langston Hughes,
“Fantasy in Purple”
14
April 17, 1982
THE NAKED BABY was placed on a thick white bath towel in the center of the kitchen table, under a large overhead light. Two men hovered over him, both wearing translucent surgical gloves, one gripping an eight-inch butcher knife. Behind these men were two others, standing by the kitchen counter, taping and sealing small packets of cocaine from the kilo sacks resting inside a dry aluminum sink. The rest of the four-room second-floor apartment was a blanket of darkness, the back bedroom windows half open, letting in a soft spring breeze. A portable radio nestled near the baby and lodged against a napkin holder was tuned to an all-news station.
Outside, the narrow Queens street was silent and still, leaves on the trees still damp from a late afternoon shower. Cars were parked tightly on both sides, alarms armed, tires turned in curbside. All were empty except for two, which were parked directly in front of the building.
A middle-aged man sat upright in the lead car, a black four-door Buick LeSabre, smoking a thin cigar, windows rolled up tight. Periodically, the man checked both his watch and the safety on a 9 millimeter jammed inside the spine of the passenger seat. He was nervous and edgy, concerned that the people at work in the apartment above were leaving him little margin for error. He had chewed the lip of his cigar down to the quick, the smoke from its tip engulfing him in small circles. He was new to the country and even newer to a line of work that could easily end with a bullet to the head or a long prison sentence in a state with a name he couldn’t pronounce.
The money made it worth the risk.
Three hundred in cash to drive a mule and a baby to the airport, another two hundred to gas the car and wait in the parking lot for the next pickup, and a final three hundred to wrap up the round trip. Eight hundred cash in less than four hours, three nights a week. Tack that on to the thousand-dollar salary he pulled in working for a private car service on Long Island, and Gregor Stavlav, less than three months in the States and a wanted man in his native Greece, found himself smack in the middle of an American dream.
The car parked behind Gregor was dented, rusty, and dirty. He had given it a quick glance in his rearview mirror, then shrugged it off. It was the kind of car a student working his way through school, or a small-timer years past any chance at a score, might own. It was not the kind of car a man with money would be seen in, let alone call his own.
And it was definitely not a cop car.
That much Gregor, who prided himself on his knowledge of cars and the people who drove them, knew.
He would bet his life on it.
• • •
REV. JIM LOVED his seven-year-old AMC Gremlin, loved the way it handled, even liked the way it looked. He took pride in the polished full-leather interior he had custom made at discount by a friend in Washington Heights and wasn’t all that concerned by the ruined condition of the outer body. It was, for him, the perfect car.
He was stretched out across the front seat, head on the door rest, the heels of his construction boots flat against the passenger side jam, two .38 Police Specials crisscrossed on his chest. He slipped a cassette of Clifton Chenier and the Zodiac Ramblers into the tape deck and listened, at uncharacteristically low volume, as they stomped their way through “The Things I Did for You.” Rev. Jim closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.
He wasn’t sure if he was ready for what the Apaches had planned. This would be his first bout of heavy action since the fire that had disabled him, and while he could taste the fear, the adrenaline flow he always felt still hadn’t kicked in. He knew the other members of the team were out there, positioned in the dark, ready to pounce, each of them probably running through the same emotional checks he was clicking off in his mind. He knew it was every cop’s natural instinct to hesitate before going into a bust, but for reasons he couldn’t quite pin down he seemed suddenly uncomfortable with those feelings.
Rev. Jim had always loved the rush that came with being a decoy, walking in blind, never knowing when or if the hit would come or if the assigned backup would really be there. It was all part of the play, risk being as important as the takedown. Rather than fear it, he had always welcomed it. Except for no
w.
Lying down next to the steering wheel of his beat-up Gremlin, Rev. Jim wondered if it was too late for him to be a cop again. Wondered if he had lost too much of what he needed.
He checked the red digital light on his wristwatch.
8:56 P.M.
In less than four minutes he would have his answer.
• • •
BOOMER AND DEAD-EYE sat on opposite ends of the fire escape, backs to the wall, separated by the streaks of light pouring out from the kitchen. Both wore thin black leather jackets, thick black sweaters, and black racer gloves. Boomer had a .38 revolver in his right hand and another pushed into the back of his jeans. Dead-Eye had two semis, both snug inside their shoulder holsters.
Boomer glanced into the kitchen and saw the man with the knife talking in animated tones with the one whose back was to the window. Sweat ran down the man’s forehead and into his eyes. Boomer knew the layout of the apartment and the backgrounds on the men inside from the sealed packet he had received earlier that morning from One Police Plaza. If everything in the narcotics report held accurate, this would be the first hard slap by the Apaches against Lucia Carney.
“We gotta freeze the guy with the knife,” Boomer whispered to Dead-Eye. “Otherwise, he sticks the kid.”
“Make that my worry,” Dead-Eye said. “You deal with his friend.”
“Mrs. Columbo can handle the ones hanging by the sink,” Boomer said. “Any other surprises, we’ve gotta take ’em.”
“Two minutes more.” Dead-Eye checked his watch, then rested his head against the red brick wall, his eyes closed.
“Let’s hope Geronimo hasn’t lost the touch,” Boomer said. “Otherwise we’re in for a tough stretch.”
“Ain’t Geronimo I’m worried about,” Dead-Eye said, still with his eyes closed.
“Who, then?” Boomer asked.
“Me,” Dead-Eye said.