“Well, you can’t leave her in the fucking basement of a wine store, Moe!”
“Don’t you think I know that? But her life’s in danger. What if I bring her to a hospital on Long Island or Westches—”
“Forget it! A blind doctor would spot this as a gunshot wound and it would get reported immediately. At best you’d be buying her a couple of hours. Besides, the long ride in a car could do her more damage.”
We stood there in the basement of Bordeaux In Brooklyn, trying not to stare at each other. I couldn’t afford to tell him any more than I already had. He was in deep enough and I didn’t want to dig him a hole he might never get out of. He was about to do that all by himself.
“You look like shit yourself,” he said.
“Thanks, brother-in-law. I love you too.”
He slipped on another pair of gloves. “After I clean you up, help me get her into my dad’s car.”
“Ronnie, you—”
“Shut up, Moe. Just know this. The minute I feel she needs to go to the hospital, I’m going to drop her at Kings County. Deal?”
“You can’t bring her back to your parents’ house.”
“She’s my patient now. She’s my responsibility. Where I bring her is my business. Do we have a deal?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Not unless you want her to die.”
“Deal.”
I’D TAKEN THE deal, and the world, as is its wont, had since moved on. Katy and Sarah were already on their way upstate to stay with my in-laws. It’s what they did whenever I managed to fuck up our lives by getting involved in things out of my purview. Katy didn’t even bother asking why. The damage had been done. Knowing how and why was beside the point.
I loved that Katy had supported me and got how badly I missed being a cop. She alone knew what it had cost me to twice turn down reinstatement and that gold shield. Years ago, she’d even given me a replica of a NYPD detective’s shield. These days it collected dust and lint in my sock drawer with my P.I. license and the remainder of an unfulfilled promise. In spite of it all, I couldn’t help but feel she had come around to Aaron’s point of view: that my time as a cop had
come and gone. That it was time to snap out of it, to grow up and embrace the fact that the wine business was my life now. I’d never much cared for Peter Pan until just recently. Who wants to grow up, really?
Klaus had gone clothes and car shopping for me. The clothes were mine. The car was rented. Klaus, too, had learned not to ask too many questions, especially about the big splotches of blood on my clothes, the bandages on my hands, or the two big plastic bags I’d asked him to drop into another store’s dumpster. He’d probably put two and two together by now. Klaus was good at simple math, and the Red Hook Massacre, as it was already being called, was all over the news. Five dead, including a decorated NYPD detective and two underage girls; seven wounded; and a neighborhood in shock was the stuff of tabloid wet dreams.
Luckily, the cops hadn’t quite sorted things out as yet. They still didn’t know if Murphy was a target or if he had simply gotten caught responding to a gunfight between at least two other shooters. There was no mention of Carmella Melendez on the radio or in the papers. But she wouldn’t stay under the radar for very long. The cops would be suspicious by now that she hadn’t called in or shown up at the first news of her partner’s murder. Maybe they already knew she was missing and/or wounded. For most anyone else it would have been impossible to find out just what the cops knew or didn’t know, but not for me. No, not me. I had a pipeline into the NYPD and his name was Robert Hiram Fishbein. He got to the phone pretty quick.
“I thought you might be calling, Mr. Prager.”
“Why’s that?”
“Give me a little credit, will you? Almost everything you’ve asked me for to this juncture has to do with Coney Island and your old precinct, the one in which you served with the late Chief McDonald. So when I wake up this fine morning and hear a detective—and not just any detective, but one from the Six-O—is gunned down in Red Hook . . . And when I recall that he’s the partner of that hot Puerto Rican honey you couldn’t keep your eyes off at Fountain Avenue, well, let’s just say I did some discreet checking around.”
“How much do they know about Red Hook?”
“Are you asking me what they know or what they think?”
“Both.”
“They know very little, about as much as they say in the papers. What they think is that maybe Murphy was a target and not collateral damage. They don’t know why, but none of the witnesses recall an argument prior to the gunfire breaking out.
“They’re also worried about Murphy’s partner. She hasn’t shown up or checked in and she’s not at home. There’s also some speculation she might have been at Rip’s as well. Some witnesses remember a pretty, black-haired woman getting shot at the end of the bar, but, alas, no body. Curious, huh?”
“Very.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Prager?”
“I might.”
“Care to share?”
“Not yet, Mr. D.A. First, I need to find out everything you can about another detective in the 60th. His name’s Bento. Fax the stuff to my Brooklyn store.”
“As you wish.”
“And Fishbein, in case you’re feeling a little impatient and want to cash me in for the short-end money, don’t do it. I won’t be at the store and I’ll cut my own balls off before you get a thing out of me. Understand?”
“Understood.”
I gave Klaus some instructions about where to forward the faxed documents and what to do with my car.
“Look, there’s a lot of blood on the front seat, so throw a blanket over it and park it in the underground garage down the street. Where’s the rental?”
“At the meter directly in front of the store.”
“I owe you.”
“No, boss. You don’t owe me a thing. Just promise me you won’t get killed. I don’t make friends easily.”
“I promise.”
“Liar. You’re just like all straight men.”
“I don’t know how to take that, Klaus.”
“Forget it. Just remember, if you get killed, I’m not coming to the funeral.”
“I’ll remember.”
Looked like I was going back to the land of one-eyed cats and disgraced ex-cops. True, I made friends more easily than Klaus, but at the moment, the ones I had—even the former ones—would have to do.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I WOULDN’T SAY that Rico Tripoli was thrilled to see me, given that the woman from the next room was topless and on her knees in front of him. Marisa was a kid herself, bone skinny, with a plain face and disinterested brown eyes. Given her method of fund-raising, that disinterest would serve her well. On the other hand, her addiction to crack would not. It had already begun to erode her body. Whatever humanity she had left wouldn’t be far behind. With a few more months of wear and tear on her, she’d be getting five bucks a throw and a lot less picky about her clientele. Two things you never see in this world: baby pigeons and old crack ho’s. I wondered if her daughter would ever consider drug abuse as a victimless crime.
I was in no position to judge and no mood to preach, but I was feeling impatient. I waved four twenties at her, putting a basketball-sized dent in her disinterest. She didn’t even bother getting up, hobbling over to me on her knees. When she reached out for my zipper I snatched her hand and folded it around the money. Then I lifted her up and told her to go buy her daughter some new clothes and the cat some decent food. I didn’t delude myself that she would do anything other than sailor-spend it on crack. She was out of the room before her shirt was buttoned.
Good thing I had too many worries of my own to look for evidence of shame in Rico’s eyes. Good, because I wouldn’t have found any. He was beyond worrying about redemption, maybe completely beyond redemption itself. The alcohol, drugs, and prison time had beaten all the hope out of him.
“What do you want besides to fuck up my good time?”
“I want your help.”
He thought about that for a second. “What’s it worth to you?”
I guess I didn’t react very well to the question.
“What’s the matter, Moe? You just gave that bitch eighty bucks
not
to blow you. What’s my help worth? Or maybe you’re thinking I owe you something, something like loyalty maybe. I don’t owe you shit.”
“Okay, Rico, you’re right. You don’t owe me shit. I heard this speech the last time I was here.”
“And you’ll hear it again.”
“No, I won’t,” I said, noticing the near-empty bottle of no-name scotch next to his bed. “I’m going now. Maybe I’ll be back. If I bother coming back, then we’ll negotiate the terms of our deal. I’m making a lot of deals these days, old buddy. Don’t be stupid and fuck this one up.”
YOU HAVE A better chance at winning the lottery than finding a fully functional public phone in that part of Manhattan. If it wasn’t the homeless rigging coin slots to trap quarters to be fished out with a crooked piece of wire, it was inept crackheads and a sprinkling of other assorted assholes who ripped apart phones in futile attempts to get at the coin boxes.
Not a month ago, Aaron bought a cellular phone. The man spends his entire life in two places: the Manhattan store and at home. What, he couldn’t be without a phone on his car rides to and from work? I mean, who the hell wants to be tethered to a phone twenty-four hours a day? Talk about an invention destined to fail. Then again, the idea of a portable phone seemed pretty appealing to me right at the moment. It was a brief flirtation. I found a working phone three blocks north of the Mistral Arms.
Miriam picked up. “Hello.”
“Hey, little sister.”
“Don’t little sister me! How could you drag us into this, Moses? We’re on vacation with our kids. With our kids, for chrissakes!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry! You’ve jeopardized Ronnie’s career. I can only imagine what would be going on here if his folks hadn’t left for a cruise yesterday.”
“If I could’ve thought of any other way of doing it, I wouldn’t have called Ronnie. You know that. But her life was in danger,
is
in danger and—”
“No kidding! You mean people don’t get shot for fun?”
“Miriam—”
“Isn’t this what they have cops and hospitals for?”
“No, not for situations like this, they don’t! Look, I can’t unring the bell, but I’ll try and do my best to clear this up quick. How is she?”
“Better. Ronnie’s got her on some heavy pain medication, so she’s in and out of it. But she says she needs to see you, that it’s very important.”
“Okay. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You guys need anything?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to, Moses. Didn’t you teach me that?”
I took that as a cue to hang up.
DITMAS PARK IS a section of Brooklyn that is of a different time and place. It’s a small neighborhood of tree-lined streets, period lamp-posts, and oversized Victorians on plots of land barely big enough to contain them. Some streets even have grassy center islands. With a little imagination, you could almost see horse-drawn carriages rolling along the shady thoroughfares, men tipping their hats to giggling young ladies in floor-hugging cotton dresses who twirled their parasols.
Whereas many of the neighbors had let their houses succumb to the ravages of aluminum siding and stucco, Ronnie’s parents had scrupulously maintained the spindle work and clapboards and character of their old manse. But I wasn’t there to admire the turrets and wraparound porch, nor was I thrilled at the prospect of squaring off with my sister. I hated when she was right.
Ronnie answered the door. “Come on in. Mir took the kids to the movies, so you don’t have to put on your body armor.”
“She’s right about this, Ron. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved in this shit.”
“Well, no, but that sort of doesn’t matter at this point.”
“I guess not, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. My sister tells me the patient’s improved.”
“Improved, but not out of the woods. I flushed the wound and repaired what damage I could find. I have her on pain medication and
antibiotics to prevent infection, but she still needs to get X-rayed and have a more thorough examination than I can do here.”
“I understand.”
“You’ve got one more day, Moe. Then she’s going straight to the hospital.”
I ignored that. “Where is she?”
“Downstairs in my old room.”
“Is she lucid?”
“Pretty much.”
“Thanks, Ronnie. I’ll call you if I need you.”
“Moe, take it easy on her, and don’t stay too long.”
“Got it.”
It was so odd seeing Carmella Melendez in what was essentially a high school boy’s bedroom. Although she wasn’t particularly tall, she seemed too big for the bed. Maybe that’s the wrong way to put it. She seemed too grown-up for the bed. Her skin was pale, but her breathing was regular and unlabored. Her eyes were shut, so I pulled a chair up and waited.
“Moe,” she whispered.
“Hey, nice to have you back.” I brushed a strand of hair off her cheek.
“Murphy’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“And the girl, the one who stepped in front of me?”
“Her too.”
Carmella clenched the sheets, tears pouring out of her eyes. I let her cry.
“Listen, you’ve gotta stay calm. Doctor’s orders. You can’t open up that wound again.”
“I’ll try.”
“My sister said you needed to see me.”
“I got a call at home from Murphy yesterday, about an hour after I left work. He said he got tipped off about Chief McDonald. I told him that you needed to hear about it. That’s why I called you to come to Rip’s.”
“What about Larry?”
“The informant said he was dirty.”
“Is that so?”
“You don’t seem so surprised, Moe.”