“Don’t be wrong,” Boomer said.
He turned away from the dealer and walked toward Dead-Eye and the exit door, slipping the closed knife into his back pocket.
“You think I’m gonna need stitches for this cut?” the dealer asked, jabbing the blood-soaked handkerchief against his wound. “It feels pretty deep.”
“We ain’t doctors either,” Dead-Eye said as he closed the door behind him.
• • •
MALCOLM JUNIPER WAS twenty-seven years old and four weeks removed from a three-year spin at Attica prison on a rape and molestation conviction when he had spotted the teary-eyed girl from across the street. He smiled, took a hit off a joint, and turned the engine over on his cherry-red Chrysler Imperial. Ramming the gear stick into drive, he angled his way across the busy intersection, his glassy eyes barely aware of the traffic, smelling his prey.
“You look like you could use some help, sugar” were Malcolm’s first words to Jennifer Santori. He was leaning across the front seat, talking through an open window.
“I’m okay,” she managed to say. Jennifer stared at his scarred and chapped lips and the fingers of one hand that gripped the steering wheel.
“You okay, you wouldn’t be standing out in the rain,” Malcolm said with a laugh. “Be somewhere safe. Warm. Be with family.”
“I am with family,” Jennifer said.
“All I see is you,” Malcolm said.
“My brother,” Jennifer said, turning away to look past the car, down the distant streets. “I’m here with my brother. He had to use a bathroom. Told me to wait for him here.”
Jennifer was lying. She was lost and looked it. It was so stupid of her not to wait for Anthony outside the bathroom door as he had asked. But he had taken such a long time, like he always did at home, and she just couldn’t wait anymore. Not with all those people rushing past, some looking at her and smiling, others staring with empty eyes, dirty clothes held together by rope and cloth. Then there was the horrible smell, strong as a punch, of dried urine sprayed across walls and stuck to the floor. Jennifer clasped a gloved hand to her mouth and swallowed the urge to vomit.
She needed to get out. Just for a few minutes.
She rode an escalator up toward fresh air, which she welcomed with a deep breath. The ride was slow and creaky, and the guttural shouts of eager newsboys hawking morning papers filtered down toward her. She stepped carefully off the escalator, turned left, and was soon washed into a swarm of people moving with concerted speed to a variety of destinations. There was a smile on her face, and her curiosity overwhelmed, for the briefest moment, her fear of the unknown.
She was walking the streets of a city she had always heard about and seen perhaps ten times in her life. It was the city her brother talked about with a sense of wonder. The same city her father faced daily with dread and unease and her mother reserved for special occasions. She was in it alone, at pace with the people who called it home, in step with the hungry and the moneyed, the desperate and the dreamers.
She had crossed three streets before the warmth of adventure was replaced by cold awareness. She turned and tried to make her way back. It took a few moments, two wrong turns, and a quick run against a flashing light before she knew the truth.
The dream weekend she and her brother had planned had turned a dark corner.
And on that corner lurked Malcolm Juniper.
“Be better for you to wait in a dry place,” Malcolm said to her, reaching across to the passenger side door.
The light facing Jennifer turned from red to green, but she didn’t move. “He must have stopped to get something to eat,” she said.
“I can help you find him,” Malcolm told her.
Jennifer hesitated before stepping into the car, too frightened to recall her father’s constant litany of caution. She slammed the car door shut and disappeared into a world of darkness.
• • •
MALCOLM JUNIPER WALKED out of the deli entrance and spotted Boomer and Dead-Eye coming toward him from across the street. Even from a distance, the two men, one favoring his right leg, the other breathing through his mouth, smelled like cop. Malcolm gripped the large paper bag filled with a six-pack of Colt .45 malt and turned the corner, trying to hold on to his calm, knowing the two men would be fast on him. Even if they grabbed him, they didn’t have much. He wasn’t armed, had clocked in regular with his parole officer, and had applied for work at three fast-food outfits. The very model of a parolee and the last man any cop could finger for a street kidnapping.
But Malcolm Juniper was a career criminal who had spent the better part of his adult years behind the cold bars of a lockup. His ex-con’s survival instinct told him that the two men tracking him had no interest in probable cause or Miranda rights. These two looked serious, so they either wanted a snitch out, which would put Malcolm in street trouble, or they knew about the girl, which could land him behind bars until coffin time. Either way, Malcolm Juniper wasn’t going in. Not on this day.
He crossed against the light, moving up to Fortieth and Eighth. The street was filled with early morning stiffs heading out of the terminal and into work. Side streets were clogged with traffic, Jersey plates trying to squeeze into twelve-buck-a-day garage slots. The two men had drawn closer, walking less than twenty feet behind him, the white guy sure to be the first one to make the move, the brother not looking to be one to jump and tear on the street. But then, the worst beatings Malcolm Juniper ever took were from black badges and, if anything, the one stalking him looked fit to hand out the punishment.
Malcolm was straight enough to know not to outfight them, and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with their shakedown shit, and he sure as sin wasn’t going to be dragged to the house to be fingered on something he didn’t do. It left him only one viable option, and he took it as soon as he crossed Forty-first and turned left, heading down toward Ninth Avenue and less congested streets.
Malcolm tossed the bag filled with the Colts over his shoulder and started to run, heading for the rummy shacks down by the West Side Highway.
“Rabbit’s on the go, Boom,” Dead-Eye shouted, starting to take chase.
“Let’s try and keep him alive,” Boomer said, running alongside. “For a change.”
“You’re talking like a civilian now,” Dead-Eye said, ignoring the pain in his chest as he ran.
“He’s makin’ for the highway,” Boomer said, wincing from the pressure the hard concrete was putting on his bad leg. “We gotta cut him off by the time he gets to Tenth.”
“If we make it to Tenth,” Dead-Eye said, starting to slow his pace, the burn in his chest growing with every deep breath.
“We’re makin’ him look like Jesse Owens,” Boomer said, the frustration in his voice spiking as high as the pain.
“With us chasin’, everybody’s Jesse Owens,” Dead-Eye said, wiping a hand across his forehead, brushing away cold drops of sweat.
They stopped next to a cab stand, both gasping for air, bent over, hands to knees, faces twisted in pain, Malcolm Juniper long gone from their sights.
Dead-Eye took a step back and leaned his aching body against a taxi. “What are we doin’?” he said angrily. “We’re finished, man. This shit ain’t for us anymore. We’re done, you and me, and we got the papers to prove it.”
“It’s just a little rust,” Boomer wheezed, walking in small circles, willing the pain in his chest and leg to flee from him as fast as Malcolm had. “We’ve just gotta get our timing back.”
“We got all the timing we need,” Dead-Eye said, his voice wistful. “Me for being a doorman and you for lifting a pasta fork.”
“You can’t walk away from this,” Boomer said, grabbing Dead-Eye’s jacket. “It’s all you know. And it’s all I got.”
“I’m sorry about your friend’s kid,” Dead-Eye said, slowly easing Boomer’s hand away. “And I wanted to help. But she don’t need me. She needs a cop to help her. A real cop. Not some guy trying to remember what it was to be
one.”
Dead-Eye patted Boomer’s arm, braced his jacket against the cold, and headed toward Eighth Avenue. Boomer stood and watched him, his breath still coming hard, the pain fading, tears rolling down the side of his nose. He walked over toward the front steps of a tenement, ignoring the stares of the cabdrivers on break. There were three garbage cans lined in front of the basement apartment. He flipped the lid off the nearest packed can, picked it up, lifted it to chest level, and heaved it into the street. He stared at the bags of waste as they weaved into the wind, loose strips of greasy foil and paper towels slapping against the sides of parked cars. He saw the dented can rumble down the sharp incline and come banging to a stop next to a no parking sign.
Boomer Frontieri looked over at the drivers, who stared back at him in silence. He took a deep breath and walked away, hands inside his pockets, leg still burning from the run, moving slowly down the quiet street, nothing ahead of him but time.
8
MALCOLM JUNIPER STOOD in a dark corner of the one-room apartment and stared over at Jennifer Santori. The girl’s face was tear-lined and bruised; her bare arms were extended, wrists locked in a set of cuffs attached to the top of a radiator pipe. She was naked from the waist up, thin legs bunched against the sides of her hips, her frail body shivering in the cold emptiness of the room.
“You must be somebody special,” Malcolm said, eyes glaring down at the unformed breasts, “cops be chasin’ me way they did.”
Jennifer looked at the man she once believed would help her find her brother and tried to form the words to beg for her release. She forced her eyes to wipe away the blurry images and bring Malcolm Juniper into a clear focus. Her throat burned and her damaged body ached and she wanted more than anything to be back in the safe womb of the New Jersey home she so often used to think of as a dull prison.
It seemed like months since he had driven her around the Port Authority area for the better part of an hour, a concerned look etched across his brow, playing the role of Good Samaritan. He parked and ran out to buy her a Pepsi and a hot dog from an all-night stand, returning with the food, a smile, and a sincere reassurance that her brother would be found.
Jennifer grew tired, eyelids itching and burning from lack of sleep. Long bus rides tended to make her groggy, and that, coupled with the anxiety over losing Anthony, made it all the easier for her to ease into the backseat of the car, as Malcolm suggested, and curl up to nap while he continued his search, looking for a boy he had no intention of finding.
She woke up with his mouth over her lips, his hands sliding up and down her body, both their pants down around the ankles, a sharp burning pain between her legs. Her eyes bubbled over with fear; his were lit by contempt.
He forced himself on her for the better part of three hours, slapping her face and arms, running lit matches down the sides of her thighs and across her breasts during his restful moments. He poured cheap whiskey down her throat, laughing with glee when she coughed up the foul taste. He lit a crack pipe and forced the smoke of the cooked cocaine into her lungs, holding her head back, pushing her down deep into the rear cushion of the car.
They were parked in an abandoned lot near the Fourteenth Street meat market, the windows rolled up and steamed with breath and smoke, an overhead streetlight casting the car in its cloudy glow. He cuffed her hand to one door handle and her foot to another and forced a handkerchief into her mouth while he went out for cigarettes. He came back a short time later with another man, stoop-shouldered, haggard, and crazed, and let him have at her for the price of a Big Mac and a large Coke.
She blacked out during the final rape, letting the pain, the drugs, and the drink whisk her away on a blanket of dreams.
When she woke, she was handcuffed to a radiator, head pounding, dried blood and semen caked to her body. She opened her eyes slowly, the room revealing itself in an array of shadows as streams of light flashed in from the streets outside. Her legs felt weighed down and her arms were cold and numb, dangling from the pipe above her head. She had trouble breathing, the insides of her lungs and nostrils scorched from their cocaine and whiskey diet.
Malcolm Juniper stood above her, wearing only a pair of brown socks, a crazed smile on his face, crack pipe in his right hand, kitchen knife dangling from his left.
“We’re low,” Malcolm said, running the crack pipe past her eyes. “More’s on the way. Junior’s gettin’ over a fresh load that’ll turn your eyes. Won’t be long.”
Jennifer stared up at him, biting down on her lower lip, her teeth breaking through the cracked and sore exterior, droplets of blood forming on the edges.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.
The words pressed themselves out slowly, each one enclosed in layers of pain and embarrassment. She wanted so much to cry, to shout out for help, but couldn’t muster the strength required. Instead, she took in another long, painful breath and asked him again, “Are you going to kill me?”
Malcolm Juniper crouched down and rested the crack pipe on the floor between them. He brought the sharp end of the knife up across the side of Jennifer’s neck and pressed it tight against her skin. He reached up and rubbed her arms with his free hand.
“Killin’ you be like burnin’ money,” Malcolm said in as soothing a voice as he could muster. “You worth way too much. I’m gonna make me a killin’ all right. But it ain’t the kind you be thinkin’.”
“I just want to go home,” Jennifer said to him, the rush of his acid breath warm on her cheeks. “I won’t say anything about this. Or about you. I’ll just say I got lost.”
“You gonna be goin’ home, baby,” Malcolm said, still in his seductive voice. “Be a different home, is all. But that’s down the road a ways. Right now you and me got to be thinkin’ about Junior and how we need to make him a happy man.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Jennifer wailed, more with confusion than with anger.
“You pay the good price for good smoke,” Malcolm said, looking past Jennifer, eyes and mind adrift on their own. “And nobody’s got better smoke than Junior. It’s worth it. Whatever the price, it’s gonna be worth it.”
“Why? Tell me why?” Jennifer begged in the soundless room, her upper body trembling from the sharp wind creeping through the cracked walls.
“Junior ain’t normal like you and me,” Malcolm said, easing the knife away from Jennifer’s throat. “He don’t give a five-cent fuck about money. So you can’t just up and pay him out for the smoke. Cares even less about pussy, so there ain’t no sense askin’ him to a slow dance with you.”
Jennifer closed her mouth and eyes, rushing breath through her nose, choking back a violent need to vomit.
“Junior’s religious,” Malcolm said, standing now, brushing the knife against the sides of Jennifer’s arms. “Fucker walks around prayin’ all the time. He’s into that voodoo shit, where you kill a cat or a dog, drink the blood, burn the bodies. But he always keeps somethin’ for himself. Bone, tooth, nail, eyes. Hangs them on a gold chain around his neck. Keeps away what looks to do him in.”
Jennifer coughed up a mouthful of thick bile and spit it out on the floor, inches from the crack pipe resting on its side. Malcolm ignored it, running the knife slowly between the fingers of the girl’s hands.
“So I’m thinkin’ you and me, we gotta give Junior a little present,” Malcolm said. “Somethin’ he’s gonna wanna have hangin’ around that chain. You know what that present’s gonna be, don’t you, baby?”
Jennifer’s eyes widened, the sudden rush of fear forcing her back to push against the wall and her hands to clench into tight fists. Malcolm whistled Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ by the Dock of the Bay” as he undid the fingers of Jennifer’s left hand. She kicked her legs at his side and tried to get close enough to bite, but he shouldered her head away and pried loose the index finger.
“Don’t fight me, baby,” he said in a vacant voice. “It’s only a gift.”
She saw the sheer look of insanity mixed w
ith glee that filled Malcolm Juniper’s eyes and knew she was in an unholy place that promised her no avenue short of torment and death.
She looked up and watched the sharp edge of the knife close in on the soft flesh of her finger, Malcolm’s staccato laughter cutting through her cries.
Outside, on the cold streets of a cold city, a young girl’s screams cascaded down past a silent army of empty cars and distant faces.
• • •
BOOMER STOOD HALFWAY down the alley, back resting against a Jimi Hendrix poster, eating a cold slice of anchovy pizza and holding a cup of hot black coffee. He was wearing an unzipped black leather jacket, crisp jeans, work boots, and a blue Yankee cap. He had a .22 in the front pocket of the leather and a .38 special tucked in the back of the jeans. He chewed the pizza, sipped the coffee, and studied the early morning Harlem street, filled with blue collars on their way to union jobs, and on-the-nods half hanging near tenement doorways, dreaming of the next place to score.
Boomer took a final bite of the pizza, dropped the crust into the coffee container, and tossed them both into an open garbage can.
He took a deep breath and walked out of the alley.
He hadn’t slept all night, sitting straight up in a lounge chair in his silent apartment, staring out into the cold air of an open window. For the first time in memory, Boomer Frontieri was a frightened man. He had adjusted to living with the pain of his disability, soaking the throbbing aches in his leg and chest not with pills doctors prescribed but with daily doses of the homemade red wine Nunzio had stored in his basement. It was the vague discontent that ate away at Boomer and ground his insides into thick masses of bubbly tension. He felt adrift and helpless.
Boomer wasn’t expecting much when he retired from the job, and he wasn’t disappointed. There were no official notices, no members of the top brass walking up to shake his hand and thank him for all the long hours he put in and for all the years he spent crouched in danger, waiting to give or take a bullet. He had made more than eight thousand arrests in his career with a conviction rate that needled out at 94 percent, and that didn’t even get him so much as a nod from the file clerk behind the mesh cage who took his retirement papers, stamped them, and turned back to her coffee and soap opera.