“Move what?” the chubby man asked, curious, his anger simmering while he smoked out the details of a potential deal.
Luther looked to his left and right and then turned back to the fat man. He undid the four buttons on his leather coat and then, with the fingers of both hands, spread the jacket open. He broke into a gap-toothed grin when he saw the fat man’s eyes shimmer as he looked down at the six small, clear Hefty bags taped to the furry inside of the coat, each one filled with cocaine. “You rip a player off?” the chubby man asked. “Or you come by that stash on the square?”
“I didn’t find religion or a new way to have sex in the joint, Hector,” Luther said, still holding on to the grin. “I found a dealer who can set me straight. This is my first heavy buy from him, made the score late yesterday.”
“You ain’t on CNN, loser,” Hector said, glancing up both sides of the hall. “I don’t need to know the details. All I care about is that the shit is yours, which means if I buy I can make it mine.”
“You can sleep on that,” Luther said. “And if you got fifteen thousand in spare change buried under all that food you keep in the fridge, then I can leave here a lot lighter and a lot richer.”
“This connection of yours, he can supply you regular?” Hector asked. “Two-a-week drops, thirty going back to him?”
“He can fill you up floor to ceiling,” Luther said. “Turn you into an honorary Colombian drug king overnight.”
Hector scratched the gray stubble on his chin and gave the cocaine packs dangling off Luther’s jacket a hard stare, gently tapping the thin end of the pool cue on the red painted cement floor. “Take a breath,” he finally said. “And pull those bags off your coat, lay them out by my door. And if you get mugged while I’m gone, the deal’s off.”
“Make it a fast one, fat man,” Luther said, peeling off one of the Hefty bags. “Don’t stop to munch.”
Jennifer was spread down across the cold ground, her legs dangling over the top steps of the stairwell, the cocked nine-millimeter in her right hand, her eyes, half hidden by the brim of a Yankees cap, on Luther and the fat man at the end of the hallway. There was an eerie silence to the building, few noises coming from behind any of the apartment doors, no cooking odors and no dogs barking and scrubbing their paws against the wood, anxious to hit the street. She watched as Hector walked back into his apartment and closed the door, leaving Luther alone to pile his coke stash on the welcome mat. She wasn’t as trusting of the fat man’s motives as was Luther in the leather. She figured there was little chance that a hard-time gangbanger would do business of any kind with a shaky street skel, especially one who was a step away from a bust and a sure bet to flip inside a locked interrogation room. The simple fact that the fat man was doing business in the hall instead of inside his apartment was another tip-off that this deal was destined to end not with a handshake but with bullets.
She slid her body along the ground, trying to get to her knees and into a better shooting position. She was giving up height and weight to both men, but was working with the advantage of surprise and the confidence that neither could take her down unless he had amazing luck or an extra set of eyes on her she hadn’t caught. Jennifer figured Luther would take longer to get to his gun, buried somewhere in the back of his thick coat, well out of Hector’s view. She was also betting that his pull would be slow and his aim off, his reflexes marred by the drugs in his body and the years spent in prison. That made Hector her primary. She slowly eased up to her knees, flipped her cap around, the bill now hanging flat against the thick strands of her rich blond hair, and aimed her gun into the shadows of the poorly lit hall.
Hector opened the door to his apartment, a D’Agostino paper bag in his right hand, and stared down at the pile of drugs next to his chubby feet. “At least you can follow directions,” he said, nodding toward Luther. “That’s more props than I was set to give you.”
“When it comes to cash, you can put my name on any list,” Luther said, starting to sweat for the first time that day, his eyes fast on the paper bag in Hector’s hand. “It’s the only reason to open your eyes in the morning.”
“The world gets its gas tank fueled by greed,” Hector said. “Lucky for my end of business that there’s a lot more needle freaks breathing than money-grubbers. That’s how I keep my end filled.”
“Then we both walking away happy as pigs rolling in shit,” Luther said. “That is, soon as you hand me over what’s in that bag. You might wanna do that sooner than later, got to be getting close to your feed time.”
“I can eat anytime,” Hector said. “I always got an appetite. Ain’t missed a meal since I was livin’ off my mama’s tit.”
Hector stepped closer to Luther and reached a hand into the paper bag. His eyes stayed on the taller man in the leather coat, following his hands, watching as sweat bubbles formed on the sides of his face. “You okay, player?” he asked him. “I swear to heaven’s Mary you starting to turn pale on me. This heat and that coat gotta be enough to melt any man’s skin.”
“Don’t lose any worry over me, Hector,” Luther said. “I’m good. And I’ll be even better soon as I get my end of the score.”
“Let’s finish it then,” Hector said, his hand buried inside the paper bag.
“Right there,” Jennifer shouted from down the hall. She was walking toward them, her arms stretched out, the nine-millimeter and her eyes aimed straight at Hector. “Don’t even twitch. And if you want to end the day without losing blood, slide your trigger finger off the gun.”
Luther looked at Jennifer and then back to Hector, the chubby man relaxed, willing to wait for the good-looking lady with the tough eyes to make her way to him. “She right?” he asked, taking a hard look at the paper bag. “You were going to take me out? Drop me right in front of your door? What the hell you play me for, Hector?”
“Stay calm, Luther,” Jennifer said, close enough now to take out one but unsure whether she would be fast enough to drop both if they moved at the same time. “This ends the right way and you’ll both go to jail. You’ll have plenty of time to square things with Hector once you get settled upstate.”
“I tell you what,” Hector said, throwing Jennifer a casual smile. “Pretty little bird like you can’t take us both, even if one of us is as dumb as a tree stump. You got Luther on more charges than you can type up. Possession alone should be good for a seven-year ride. All you got on me is that maybe I got a gun in this bag. With the lawyers I can dial, that’s a long way to go for a short walk.”
“So you give me Luther and the dope and I let you walk?” Jennifer said, holding her place, sneakers spread apart, gun steady, pointed just below Hector’s neckline. “That what you’d like to see happen?”
“Makes the most sense,” Hector said. “You get an easy collar and maybe a boost in pay. I lose a guy who could only lead me down troubled ways, and it can all be wrapped and set before lunch.”
“You’d flip me that fast, you fat bastard?” Luther said, the sweat now pouring off him like a stream, shading the color on his torn brown T-shirt.
“Like a flapjack, loser,” Hector said, the heat of his anger rising to match the weight of his words. “Guy like you don’t play in the same town I do, never mind the same league. You been processed so many times, prison cops got your ID number burned to memory. I’m a gatto grande, that’s big-time. We piss on nickel-and-dime dealers. Especially ones come in wearing leather coats in August looking to move shit packed in garbage bags. I made bigger scores than that before I had hair on my balls.”
“Put the bag down, Hector,” Jennifer said. Her voice was calm, soothing and steady, not looking to add to the heat meter. “Then we can all start walking out of here.”
“I got a better one for you, cop,” Hector said. “Why don’t you go away for five minutes. Grab a cold root beer at the bodega around the corner. Then come back. When you do, you’ll find everything you need spread out on the floor—drugs on one side and Luther on the other. The only
thing missing will be me. We can save our bounce for some other time.”
“I’m not going to tell you again, Hector,” Jennifer said, her voice still at the same level. “Put the bag and the gun down.”
“That’s a favor I gotta take a pass on,” Hector said. “I’m taking Luther out, for bringing cops and drugs to my door and just because I don’t like the fucker. If that means I have to put you down next to him, won’t make me happy, but I’ll make it happen.”
“You’re too smart to take a risk like that,” Jennifer said. She could feel the sweat damp and cold on her neck, droplets running down the length of her back. “Not unless the gattos let any moron with a tattoo into their gang.”
“What risk, baby?” Hector asked, brushing aside the insult. “Luther’s packing, no doubt. But odds are heavy he shoots himself before he even gets one off near me. That leaves it down to the two of us. And as good as you think you are, that’s how good I am.”
Jennifer took a deep breath and shrugged her shoulders. “That’s probably true,” she said.
“Now you thinking right, baby,” Hector said, tossing a quick glance over at Luther. Jennifer waited until Hector’s eyes were back on her, the two holding the look, the hefty gangbanger biting down on his lower lip, standing fearless despite the one gun aimed his way and the other now wedged against the back of Luther’s spine. “If I knew you a little bit better, I’d watch and let you do Luther here. Toss a favor to the blue team.”
“I’ll remember that when I type up your report,” Jennifer said. “Might shave off a day or two on your sentence.”
“It’s your move, baby,” Hector said, tilting his head toward Jennifer. “The pawns are out of the game. It’s down to the king and queen. So, what’s it gonna be?
“Checkmate,” Jennifer said.
She fired off two quick rounds, one hitting Hector in the fat of his right shoulder, the other smashing bone on his elbow. The power of the blows knocked Hector to the ground, his head slamming against the concrete wall, the paper bag with the gun falling to the floor next to the pile of coke. Luther jolted when he heard the gun fire and backed up against the railing, his right hand reaching behind his leather coat. Jennifer kept her eyes on Hector and walked closer to the wounded man.
“Don’t even go there,” she said to Luther, kicking the paper bag farther down the hall, out of Hector’s reach. “Remember, I came here for you. Hector’s just an extra prize in the Cracker Jack box.”
“He’s the prize,” Luther said. “A prime-time player. Me, I’m just another number on a yellow rap sheet. Nobody cares about me.”
“Don’t get all sobby on me, Luther,” Jennifer said. “I care about you. I carry your picture with me all the time. Now, take that coat off and let it drop to the floor. And do it as slow as you do everything else. Then, turn around and step toward me.”
Luther moved away from the railing and let the coat fall off his shoulders. Then he put his hands out at his side and turned. Jennifer leaned forward and pulled out the snub-nose .38 that was jammed between his stained pants and torn shirt. She looked down at Hector, his eyes following her every move, his right arm drowning in blood, a thick puddle starting to form on the floor. Jennifer reached behind her jean jacket and pulled out her handcuffs. She grabbed a hand radio out of her back pocket and called for her second unit and an ambulance.
“I’m going to cuff you to Hector, toss the guns and the dope into the paper bag, and then we’ll all sit here and wait for a few of my friends,” she told Luther. “That sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
“I’d rather you put one in my head than have you cuff me to this reeked-out loser,” Hector said, through the pain of the wounds.
“Talk it all you want, you three-belly punk,” Luther said to him. “Word gets out you got taken down by a little girl with a gun, you’ll be doing your prison time wearing lipstick and heels.”
Jennifer slapped one cuff against Luther’s skinny wrist and then jammed the other around Hector’s much beefier one. She pushed Luther face forward against the wall, his leg brushing up against Hector’s shoulder, blood oozing past his boots. She picked up the paper bag, hearing the screaming sirens outside, and tossed Luther’s gun in next to Hector’s Magnum. She piled the drug packs on top of the guns one at a time, shoved the bag up to the railing and then leaned next to it, her gun back in its hip holster.
“Hope the cops keep that leather coat safe for you,” Hector said to Luther. “And giving it a tumble dry wouldn’t be a bad way to go, either. My cat’s ass is cleaner than that dishrag. And that’s what I want you to be wearing when I set fire to your punk ass. Light you up like a dry tree and grill me a burger over your melted bones.”
“The only thing you gonna be lightin’ up is your husband’s joints,” Luther said. “Shape you’re gonna be in, they might as well send you to do your time in a woman’s prison. You gonna go from gatto grande to gatto bitch.”
“You guys should have your own talk show,” Jennifer said, glancing down the stairwell, watching as four uniform officers and two EMS workers ran up. “Put you against Howard Stern and see how you do.”
“Who’s Howard Stern?” Luther asked.
9
LO MANTO STOOD in the middle of the detectives’ squad room, scanning the printouts that listed all the missing-person reports filed in the last week. “There’s close to five hundred names here,” he said to Frank Fernandez. “How many of them do you ever find?”
“It depends,” Fernandez said. “First off, not everybody on that list is really missing, but they have family that thinks they might be. So, it’d be a safe bet to scratch off about one-quarter of the names. Then there’s another group that are missing, but by their own choice. And if you’re old enough and didn’t do anything illegal and want to skip town, then that’s your business, not police business.”
“And the other fifty percent?” Lo Manto asked, handing the sheets back to the captain. “What happens to them?”
“Four out of ten are never seen again,” the captain said. “Three end up on a slab in one of the morgues. And if we catch a little luck, we get to bring three of them back home to their families.”
Lo Manto nodded and stared around the large room, filing cabinets, printers, and Xerox machines eating up huge chunks of space. Small desks, grouped together in packs of twos, filled the middle of the room, red lights on black phones running at a steady pace. “You promised me some coffee,” he said to the captain. “Maybe even something to go with it.”
“That I did,” the captain said. “But while you’re eating and drinking, keep it in the back of your mind, I never promised you it’d be any good.”
“It wasn’t any good the last time I was here,” Lo Manto said. “I wasn’t looking for it to change.”
“Good,” Fernandez said. “I always hate to disappoint a friend.”
Frank Fernandez was one of the few precinct bosses who hadn’t tested his way to get a captain’s desk. Instead, he earned his stripes with hard-nail police work. He was the only son of a retired Bronx plumber and a mother who spent more than thirty years working for the phone company back in the days when there was only one in the entire New York area. His parents were hoping their only son would find his way to a top-tier medical or law school, wrapping a thick yellow bow around their American dream. He had the grades and wouldn’t have flinched at the work, but lacked the desire to pursue either profession. All Frank Fernandez ever wanted, all he dreamed of since he was old enough to run and talk and be aware of what happened on the streets of his middle-class Queens neighborhood, was to be a cop with a badge, chasing the bad away from the good.
Fernandez moved from uniform to plainclothes to undercover narcotics in less than three years, earning a drawerful of medals and citations along the way, always quick to stamp his mark on whatever beat he was given, whatever gang he was expected to take down. Much like Lo Manto, he was not a stickler for rules and regulations, bending them to suit his needs whenever he co
uld but always smart enough to give himself cover in an open court when called to testify. His impressive string of arrests and willingness to do whatever was required to get the job done caught the attention of the department chiefs, who were just shy of desperate in their search to find minority candidates worthy of promotion. But Fernandez never thought of himself as a quota boost, and neither did any of the hard-chargers he made sure were part of every detail he worked. He had earned each promotion, and anyone with a badge pinned to their waist or on their chest took it as gospel.
Fernandez was a demanding captain. He expected his sector to have a low crime rate and instructed his officers and detectives to do what was necessary to ensure that the people who lived on their precinct turf felt secure. He demanded that any arrest made be strong enough to hold to conviction in an open court and that a cop be as prepared as any lawyer who would question his motives and actions when he took the stand. And he went after dirty cops harder than he ever chased down a street thug, ensuring that the 47th precinct could withstand the heat of any internal affairs investigations that might come its way. He was golden copy to the crime reporters covering the police beat and a shining knight in a sea of blue to the bosses at One Police Plaza, all eagerly awaiting the day he would be announced as the next commissioner.
All this attention and reverence gave Frank Fernandez a lot of leeway in how he did his job, and he took full advantage of the opportunity to work without the brass constantly at his door, questioning his every move. So, while other precinct captains were grilled on a weekly basis about crime statistics and questionable shootings involving their men, Fernandez was allowed to float with casual ease under the radar. This allowed Fernandez to attempt what no other captain in the city would even dare try. He selected five of his best young officers, all raw in experience but each eager to make a lasting impression, and turned them into silent watchdogs working well beyond the borders of his own precinct. He assigned them the task of frisking out fresh street information on any gang or mob activity, any white-collar irregularities, any corruption connections to NYPD higher-ups, and any shakedowns that had gone unreported. With a wink and a nod from a deputy inspector who approved of his operation, Fernandez, within an eighteen-month period, had accumulated data on any criminal enterprise worth noting in the five-borough area. He also knew who, among the brass and the politicians and the lawyers and judges they mingled with, was tainted. It helped make Frank Fernandez one very good cop to have on your side of the table.