Apaches (37 page)

They sat across from each other, sun filtering in through the large front windows, the silence between them welcome and relaxing.

“I’m going over to the bowling alley,” Pins said. “Roll a few games. Helps clear my head. Wouldn’t mind having company if you’re interested.”

“You as good as they say you are?” Nunzio asked, the hardness back in his face and voice.

“Probably better,” Pins said, smiling.

“What will you spot me?” Nunzio asked.

“I’ll give you twenty,” Pins said. “We play three games, that’s a sixty spot. Highest total wins.”

“How much we playin’ for?”

“I don’t want your money, Nunzio,” Pins said.

“You ain’t gettin’ my money,” Nunzio said, walking out from behind the bar. “Now, how much?”

“Ten bucks a game,” Pins said. “Twenty if you sweep the three.”

“Deal,” Nunzio said, rolling down his sleeves and putting on a black leather jacket.

“You ain’t a ringer, are you?” Pins said, walking behind Nunzio toward the front door.

“You’ll know in a couple of hours.” Nunzio shrugged his shoulders and walked out, leaving Pins to lock the door.

•    •    •

B
OOMER AND
D
R
. Carolyn Bartlett walked quietly side by side down the south end of Thirty-sixth Street between Park and Madison. It was late on a warm Tuesday night, a cloudless spring night, a mild wind brushing against their backs. Boomer glanced over at her unlined face lit by an overhead streetlight, struck by the simplicity of her beauty and still surprised she had accepted his dinner invitation. He was attracted to Bartlett from the first and admired her for the stance she had taken in defense of Jennifer Santori. He wished he had said something to her about it back then. But, as usual, Boomer let anger stand in his way.

He had driven down to pick her up in front of her office building and taken her over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to a favorite Long Island City hangout, where they had feasted on southern Italian specialties prepared to heavenly perfection by the proprietor and his wife. During the course of the three-hour meal, they talked, laughed, easily broke down the barriers thrown between them by their work. They even joined Vincent, a retired cop from Naples, in an off-key rendition of “Amore Mio.” Boomer introduced Carolyn to Fernet Branca, an after-dinner digestive with the smoothness of lighter fluid, and he watched with mild wonder as she shot back the drink in one gulp and was able to name three of the herbs used in its making.

They drove back into Manhattan in comfortable silence and she seemed amenable when he suggested that they park the car and walk for a bit. He curbed up next to
a fire hydrant, tossed an NYPD permit across the dash, and walked over to hold her door open.

“Are you still allowed to have one of those?” she asked, pointing to the permit.

“No,” Boomer said.

“Do you follow the rules on
anything
?” Carolyn asked.

“No.”

Carolyn slid a hand under his arm and moved herself closer to his side. “I’m glad you called.”

“I owed you,” Boomer said. “I ran a little rough on you about Jenny. Wrote you off as another bleeding heart. I should have known better.”

“Is that an apology?” she asked.

“It’s as close as I get to one,” Boomer said. His eyes locked on Carolyn. “But don’t go getting used to it.”

“I won’t.”

“You know, I talked to Jenny’s dad the other night,” Boomer said. “He told me she’s starting to come around and that you’ve been a big help to her and the family. I appreciate that.”

“Is that the only reason you asked me out?” Carolyn said, stopping in front of her brownstone.

“No, that wasn’t the reason,” Boomer said, turning to face her. “That was just a damn good excuse.”

“What other reason, then, would you have to ask me out, Detective?” Carolyn asked, running a soft hand against the hard features of Boomer’s face.

“Would you buy it if I said I didn’t want to eat alone?” Boomer asked.

“No,” Carolyn said.

“How about if I told you I wanted free medical advice?” Boomer said. “Would that one work?”

“No,” Carolyn said.

“How about if I told you I’ve thought about you every day since we met?” Boomer said, leaning closer to Carolyn. “And that I picked up the phone a dozen times to call you but didn’t because I’d’ve bet money you’d say no. Would you believe any of that?”

“There’s a good chance on that one,” Carolyn said.

Boomer leaned closer and kissed her, holding Carolyn tightly in his arms, her hair brushing against his face. Her lips were soft and her breath was as warm as the light wind coming up off the East River. He held on to her for as long as he could, engulfed by the peaceful night and the passion of her kiss. They stood under the streetlight, the pains and fears of their jobs shoved aside for this brief moment.

“Now you know my real reason,” Boomer whispered, sliding his face alongside Carolyn’s, his strong arms still holding her slight frame.

“And now you know why I said yes,” Carolyn whispered in his ear.

“I haven’t felt like this in a long time,” Boomer said, forgetting what lay ahead, concerned only with the present. “A
very
long time.”

Carolyn lifted her head to look at Boomer, cupping her hands around his face. “Come up with me,” she said. “But there’s something you should know before you do.”

“You’re married,” Boomer said. “And your husband’s asleep on the couch with a gun in his hand.”

“Besides that,” she said, laughing and leading him up the brownstone steps.

“You don’t have any Fernet Branca,” Boomer said, following her.

“And I
never will
either,” Carolyn said, reaching into her shoulder bag for the key to the front door.

“That’s as good as my guesses get,” Boomer said, standing behind her, arms around her waist.

She shoved the key in the latch, opened the door, and turned around to face Boomer. “I’m afraid for you,” Carolyn said, losing the smile. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“I don’t want anything to happen to me either,” Boomer said, holding the door open with one hand.

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall in love with you,
Boomer. And it would be very nice if you were around long enough to see it happen.”

“I’ll be around as long as you want me to be,” Boomer promised. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

The smile returned to Carolyn’s face as she wrapped her arms around him. They stepped into the foyer, let the door shut quietly behind them, and moved up the stairs toward Carolyn’s second-floor apartment.

The peaceful spring night was theirs to call their own.

•    •    •

T
HE BLACK
L
EXUS
was parked across the street. Wilber Graves sat behind the wheel, smoking a Cuban cigar, a grin on his face as he watched Boomer and Carolyn walk up the brownstone steps.

“Our friend has himself a woman,” Wilber said to a young man seated on the passenger side of the car.

“Do you want me to deal with it now?” the young man asked.

Wilber looked over at him and spread his smile. “You have no sense of romance, Derek,” Wilber said. “Let the lovers have their night. Let them have something to remember. This way, when we reach for them and let them feel our touch, the pain will be that much harder to forget.”

“How soon, then?” the young man said.

Wilber took a long drag from his cigar, filling the front of the car with smoke. He took half of it back in his lungs with a deep breath. “The cop will have his way tonight,” Wilber said. “And come the morning, we will have ours.”

D
EAD
-E
YE WAS ON
his third turn around the Central Park reservoir, building up his lung capacity, trying to get back reasonably close to the pace he’d kept in the years before the elevator shoot-out. He was taking long strides, heavy beads of sweat soaking through his blue NYPD running gear, the center of his chest burning with a pain he willed himself to ignore. His legs stabbed at him with sharp bolts, his back muscles twitched in spasms, his stomach churned out its acid.

And still Dead-Eye ran.

The shooting had altered Dead-Eye’s life in so many ways, but the physical changes were the hardest. His diet now consisted mainly of fruits, fresh-cut vegetables, and fish. He attacked his local gym three mornings a week, lifting and pulling for three hours at a heavy clip. The longer his workouts went, the more intense his pain grew. And despite stern warnings from a concerned battery of doctors, Dead-Eye made it a point to hit the track.

Four mornings a week, four miles at a time.

It couldn’t make him whole again, nothing could do that, but it helped keep him sane. When he ran, regardless of weather or time of day, Dead-Eye always brought himself back to younger years when he raced along the Brooklyn piers next to his father. He was never able to beat him, but he always managed to finish the course, no matter how tired. During their daily runs, Dead-Eye’s father had imparted to his son the two rules he held
absolute: Give everything you do an honest effort and never give up or give in.

It was the only way Dead-Eye knew how to live. Even with a body that was scarred and ravaged.

He was coming around a hard curve now, trees and brush to his right, the clear waters of the reservoir to his left. He checked the stopwatch in his hand. Forty minutes and two more miles to go. He picked up his pace, looking to finish in thirty-five.

The two men came at him from behind, and he never had a chance. They jumped out from behind a thick row of bushes, slammed Dead-Eye up against the chain-link fence, two guns drawn, both held against his chest.

The man on his left was decked out in a dark designer jogging suit. The other one had on a black leather jacket over a thin black turtleneck and a pair of tailored blue jeans. Dead-Eye waited for them to talk, his breathing still heavy from his run.

“Your little bullshit game is over as of today,” the man in the jogging suit said. “You walk away from it now and we’ll forget all about the crap you pulled.”

“You go back to your friends and tell them that,” the one in the turtleneck said, a touch of a lisp to his words. “Tell ’em this is their last fuckin’ chance to leave the table alive.”

“Give me a nod so I know you understand what we’re tellin’ you,” the jogging suit said.

Dead-Eye stared at the two of them and slowly nodded his head, beads of sweat falling onto the dark dirt by his feet.

The man in the turtleneck reached a hand into the side pocket of his leather jacket and brought out a color Polaroid. He held the photo close to Dead-Eye’s face.

“This is your boy, am I right, cop?” the man asked.

Dead-Eye didn’t move. But his eyes flashed anger. They had gone beyond touching a cop. They were touching family. He knew now there could never be any
turning back. Lucia and the Apaches were alike in only one respect. They were both in this fight to win. And, Dead-Eye realized, looking at Eddie’s picture, that the only winners were going to be those who were left alive when the fight was over.

The man in the sweat suit snapped open a black switchblade and watched as his partner slid Eddie’s photo over its sharp point. He smiled at Dead-Eye, flashing the photo and the knife. There was a large X drawn in felt tip crossing over his son’s face.

“This might hurt a little,” he said.

He stuck the knife and the photo into Dead-Eye’s right arm.

Dead-Eye’s knees buckled and his arms shook. The knife wound awoke every sharp pierce his body had ever felt, from bullet to blade. His lungs screamed for mercy and he swallowed back a mouthful of bile. He gave in to the pain, wanting nothing so much as to fall to the ground and rest his head on the dirt track. Wanting so much for it to stop.

But Dead-Eye didn’t fall. He looked out through a blurred vision knowing he now had the one thing he needed to get even. He had the faces of the two men etched across his eyes.

“You go back to your friends,” the man in the jacket said. “Tell ’em about our little meeting. Find out how serious they are about dying.”

“And it ain’t just them that goes down,” the other man said. “It’s everybody attached. Sons, daughters, wives, husbands, even your fuckin’ pets.”

The man in the sweat suit pulled the knife blade out of Dead-Eye’s arm and held it out for him to look at. “Take the picture,” he said, smiling. “Keep it for his scrapbook or his coffin. I’ll leave it to you to decide.”

He watched the men cross over a steep ridge, walking in slow strides, their backs to the sun, guns holstered at their sides. Dead-Eye waited until they disappeared from sight, then he bent down and picked up his son’s
photo. He held it in both hands, blood from the stab wound running down his arm, across his fingers, and dripping onto the picture. He leaned the weight of his back against the fence, his face up, his eyes closed, reveling now in the sharp pain he felt. He stayed there for close to an hour, listening as clusters of other runners came charging past, puffing their way through a morning drill. He was sweating, willing the pain to come on stronger, knowing he would need the strength of that pain to fuel his anger further and carry him through to the end of his task.

With his arm still leaking blood, Dead-Eye wiped the flow of sweat from his face and checked the timer on his stopwatch. He then shifted his feet and picked up where he had left off. Dead-Eye continued down the reservoir path and finished his run, holding his son’s photo crumpled in his right hand.

The pain his only comfort.

•    •    •

G
ERONIMO AND
R
EV
. Jim stood against the railing and watched the field of eight horses canter by. The sixth race at Belmont Park was about to start. With racing programs folded open in their hands and small pencils hooked over their ears, they were trying to decide which horse to wager on.

“Number three just took a shit,” Rev. Jim said, scanning the program for the horse’s name. “That’s always a good sign.”

“You can’t go by that,” Geronimo said. “They’re horses. All they
do
is shit.”