It was a sad way to end a career, but not an unusual one. Some took it in stride, shrugging it off to departmental indifference. Others brought the parting home with a bitter taste, letting it simmer beneath the surface as they mentally relived their great moments. For these men, both past and future eventually melded inside the dark haven of a local bar.
Boomer was facing a long and shaky break in his road.
Retirement didn’t suit him as well as it might have a less complicated man. He didn’t have enough money to live well and travel, but he had too much just to sit and lounge around a table in the only restaurant he trusted enough to relax in. It was not his way to mix it up with everyday life, to settle into and find comfort within the confines of a routine. He set his own clock as a cop and resented having the timepiece snatched from his grasp at a time when he was too young for the early-bird special and too old for the after-hours clubs.
It was one of the reasons he was on the Jennifer Santori case. He knew it was a crazy notion. How could he chase down a missing girl when he was better suited to sit in a lounge chair and let the sun soak his wounds while he listened to a ball game on the radio? Bringing in Jennifer was a risk, and Boomer knew the smart thing for him to do would be to walk away from it. But Boomer had always lived for the risk. And now risk was all that he had left.
Common sense told him that the girl was either dead or long gone from the area. But the cop inside shoved common sense aside and let the power and ego of the shield take charge. If she was alive, and if she was to be found, then Boomer Frontieri was the only cop, disabled or not, who could bring her home. He believed it with all the strength left in a body that had so recently betrayed him during that futile chase down a Manhattan side street.
It was why he had stayed up all night and why he was back there now, coming out of an alley off a Harlem corner, heading for a brownstone brothel run by a 350- pound madam with a glass eye.
If Boomer Frontieri’s ride as a cop was going to come to an end, he wasn’t going to let it be with him leaning against the side of a yellow cab, clutching at the cold air for breath, a circle of foreign drivers mingling around him, as indifferent to his plight as the pencil stubs down at One Police Plaza. After all the years and busts and chases and gunfights, Boomer needed to stamp a better ending to it all.
The ending required him to find Jennifer Santori. And maybe, if luck traveled down the same path, he would die in the triumph.
• • •
BOOMER CROSSED THE intersection, ignoring the light and walking against oncoming clusters of gypsy cabs on the prowl for downtown passengers, and headed toward the well-kept brownstone. He had his hands in his jeans pockets and his head down from the wind, lost in a whirl of thought. He heard the footsteps of the man coming up behind him, and saw the shape of the large shadow start to overtake his own.
He stopped walking and turned.
“Don’t tell me,” Boomer said. “You could have taken me out anytime you wanted.”
“Back in the alley,” Dead-Eye agreed. “Head shot right into the garbage can.”
“I thought you were too old and shot up for this shit,” Boomer said, looking over at him. “Or am I going deaf too?”
“I am too old and shot up,” Dead-Eye said. “And so are you.”
“But you’re here,” Boomer said.
“You and me broke every case we ever worked on,” Dead-Eye said. “They took us off the job because we were wounded. Not because we couldn’t solve cases.”
“I’m goin’ up to see Bel,” Boomer said, nodding toward the brownstone. “You want in?”
“Just to talk?” Dead-Eye said, stepping up alongside Boomer. “Anything more, I’ll wait for you here.”
“I never need to do anything with Bel that doesn’t involve talk,” Boomer said, walking up the brownstone steps. “When that day comes, then I’ll want you to take me out.”
“You wake up next to Bel,” Dead-Eye said, “and it’ll be my pleasure.”
• • •
BEL STIRRED A large cup of black coffee with a thick wooden spoon, her glass eye gleaming under the glare of the dining room chandelier. Boomer and Dead-Eye sat across from her, squeezed in together on a red velvet love seat. The five-room railroad apartment was well furnished and clean, its windows covered by red satin drapes, the wood floors hidden beneath thick shag carpets. Ornate lights, shaded by low-watt bulbs and starched white handkerchiefs, hung from every ceiling. A blanket of incense filtered through the halls, blending easily with varied scents of perfume and lingering marijuana smoke.
Bel sat on an overstuffed lounge chair, arms and hips resting against a variety of soft fluffed pillows. She was a large woman with an easy manner, round folds of black skin barely hidden by a sheer nightgown and a flowered purple robe. Her fingernails were long, each painted a different shade. Her chubby, unlined face was free of makeup, and her large feet were curled comfortably beneath her robe.
She flicked a gold-plated lighter and lit the end of a filter-tipped Lord cigarette. As she took in a deep drag, smoke curled up in small clouds in front of her damaged right eye. She kept stirring her coffee and smiled at the two former detectives.
“You boys looking for some security work?” Bel asked in a voice treacherous as an ocean wave. “Help me protect my girls against bad company?”
“We’re not here for work, Bel,” Boomer said. “We’re looking for a girl.”
“Used to throw them at you for free back when you were badges,” Bel said, holding up her cup with a large paw of a hand, fat hiding any traces of knuckles, smile still on her face. “You weren’t interested then. Maybe now that you’re both older, a piece of the triangle isn’t as easy to come by.”
“We don’t want one of yours,” Dead-Eye said. “No offense.”
“None taken, sweetskin,” Bel said, swallowing down two large gulps of coffee. “But just so you understand, I don’t feed off another table. You want somebody else’s girl, you got to go talk to somebody else.”
Boomer stood, took a picture of Jennifer Santori out of the front pocket of his leather jacket, and placed it on the circular table next to Bel’s ashtray. He turned and returned to his place next to Dead-Eye.
“She was lifted out of the Port Authority a couple of days ago,” Dead-Eye said. “We caught a bead on the lifter, a street rodent calls himself X. Real name’s Malcolm and he deals in young trade, selling runaways and lost girls on the market.”
“Sounds like you know as much about this Malcolm as I could tell you,” Bel said. “Besides, you know my trade is clean. I deal only in pros. I don’t buy fresh meat.”
“We need you to tell us who does, Bel,” Boomer said. “We’ve been off the loop the last few years.”
Bel picked up Jennifer’s picture and studied it with her one good eye.
“Pretty girl,” Bel said. “Twelve, maybe thirteen. And she’s white. People be willing to pay extra for that.”
“Those are the people we want to meet,” Boomer said.
“The sort of business you’re hunting has never been lacking for a crowd,” Bel said, placing the picture back against the ashtray, a fresh cigarette in her mouth. “It’s like selling a car. Once you sign over the papers, you pocket the money and never see the car again. It’s the same with flesh. Except there’s more money and no papers to sign.”
“If you were Malcolm, who’d you be lookin’ to sell the girl to?” Dead-Eye asked.
“If I was Malcolm, honey, I’d swallow rat poison.” A look of disdain creased the rolls around Bel’s face.
“Let’s go one better, then,” Boomer said. “Who’s the last guy you’d like to see one of your girls end up with?”
Bel stared across the table at Boomer and Dead-Eye, the cigarette dangling from a corner of her lower lip, the glass eye locked on them in a dead gaze. She took in a deep breath, lungs filling with smoke, and rested the back of her large neck against the side of one of the soft pillows.
“Walt Billing
s,” she said. “They call him Junior on the outside. He’s a white guy with a rich daddy and a pretty sick sense of what passes for jewelry.”
“How sick?” Dead-Eye asked.
Bel lowered her voice to a near whisper. “He collects body parts. Hangs them around his neck, wrists, ankles. God only knows where else. When Junior feels the need to add to his collection, he trades a lifter some dope for a girl. Usually a girl the cops have given up for dead. If that child in that picture ends up with Junior, you both pray for her to die.”
“Where’s he shop?” Boomer asked, standing again, lifting the collar on his jacket and slipping a hand into his front jeans pocket.
“Manhattan mostly,” Bel said, finishing off the last of her coffee. “Steers himself clear of the outside boroughs. I’m surprised you two never ran into him all those years you were out busting heads with the sinners.”
“If we’d run into him, we wouldn’t be talkin’ about him now,” Dead-Eye said, nodding his head toward Bel and walking over to the double-latched front door.
“Thanks for the news, Bel,” Boomer said. “Anything I can throw your way?”
“Label it as a favor for an old friend,” Bel said, pursing her thick lips and tossing a kiss at Boomer. “Tell you what, though. If I hear that Junior somehow landed faceup in a pine box, I wouldn’t be short of smiles.”
“I just love it when I can make a woman smile,” Boomer said.
• • •
MALCOLM AND JUNIOR both ordered large papaya drinks, leaning forward against the counter of a Times Square food stand, watching a thin black teen with a shaved head reach for two paper cups.
“Squeeze it out right, little man,” Malcolm said to the teen. “I’m lookin’ to drink juice, not foam.”
The teen looked blankly back at Malcolm and nodded.
“How come you didn’t bring the girl down?” Junior asked. “You know I hate payin’ for what I haven’t seen.”
“Can’t risk it out here,” Malcolm said with a flashy smile. “Minute your eyeballs touch, you gonna be lookin’ to chop her up like an onion on a stove and start prayin’ over her bones. That’s how fine a little one I got me. But I did bring you a taste.”
Junior’s eyes widened as Malcolm slipped a hand into a side pocket and came out holding a thick roll of toilet paper. He handed the wad to Junior.
“What’s in it?” Junior said, his voice filled with Christmas morning excitement.
“A gift,” Malcolm said. “Just to show my heart’s in the right place.”
Junior carefully unrolled the toilet paper, turning his back on Malcolm and the teen. He giggled when he saw Jennifer’s severed finger, stroking it and nodding his head with approval. He covered it back up and put it inside his shirt pocket. “Thank you,” he said, turning back to Malcolm. “I really do thank you.”
“No sweat,” Malcolm said.
Junior took his cup of papaya from the teen. “How much you want for this fine little one?” he asked, taking a long drink, ignoring the thin line of orange foam it left across his upper lip.
“A week’s worth,” Malcolm said. “I need off the street for a few days. Get lost inside of some good shit, but I don’t wanna end up dead doin’ it. That’s why I come to see Junior. You always deal me the best.”
“A week’s expensive, Malcolm,” Junior said, shaking his head and finishing off his drink. “I don’t know what you think I am, but I’m not here to be taken.”
“I know what you are.” Malcolm stared back at Junior, holding his half-empty cup at chest level.
Junior’s eyes turned to rocks and the muscles around his jaw clenched. “What is that?” he said, his voice cold, his body taut. “What do you think I am, Malcolm?”
Malcolm was quick to sense the abrupt change in Junior’s body temperature, and he had heard enough street talk about his flash temper to know that he could easily be left for dead with a half-finished papaya cup in his hand.
“You a businessman, Junior,” Malcolm said, showing off his sweetest smile. “That’s what you are. A businessman. One of the smartest around.”
Junior tossed his empty cup into a trash bin to his left. The tension in his body eased, his shoulders relaxed, and a soft look returned to his eyes. “Okay, then,” Junior said. “Let’s you and me do us some business.”
“What time?”
Junior flicked his wrist and checked his Rolex. He was tall and solid, his body pumped by a personal trainer three mornings a week in a chic downtown gym. He was in his early twenties and had a handsome, unlined face topped by a mane of thick, blond, designer-cut hair, gelled straight back. He wore only expensive imported clothes bought and paid for by an indulgent mother he saw less than five times a year.
“You in a hurry to make the drop?” Junior asked Malcolm, resting a five on the countertop. “Or you want some more time to be with your girl?”
“Can’t ever have enough time with somethin’ as sweet as I found,” Malcolm said, watching the teen replace the five with two-fifty in change and Junior turn his back on it.
“Anytime after seven, then,” Junior said over his shoulder as he walked slowly toward the stairs that would take him out of the Times Square station and into the street. “And clean her up before you bring her over.”
“I’ll scrub the soap on her myself, Junior,” Malcolm said, smiling at the teen and pocketing the change that was left behind. “Bring her by clean and fresh as a newborn baby.”
• • •
BOOMER SHOVED HIS shield into the doorman’s face and put an index finger to his shaky lips.
“Billings,” Boomer said. “Floor and number.”
“Sixteen A,” the doorman said, sweat starting to form around the edges of his cap. “But he’s not there. He’s out.”
“Got a key?” Boomer asked.
“Super has all the keys,” the doorman said. “He lives around the corner, first apartment after the mailboxes.”
“Go tell him you need the key to 16A,” Boomer said. “Tell him the tenant locked himself out, you’ll have it back to him in a few minutes.”
“What if he doesn’t believe me?” the doorman asked.
“Then you tell him there’s a crazy cop out here with a gun just burnin’ to put a hole in his chest,” Dead-Eye said.
“Go ahead, kid,” Boomer told the still-shaking doorman, putting his shield back in his pocket. “Convince him. We’ll watch the desk while you’re gone. My friend here’s in the business.”
• • •
BOOMER AND DEAD-EYE stood behind a circular mahogany desk, staring down at a series of camera banks covering the building and elevators from all angles and a three-unit computerized phone system.
“Most of the doorman buildings have setups like this?” Boomer asked, clicking the cameras on at different locations.
Dead-Eye nodded. “The ones with money do. This system’s pretty new. Can’t be more than a year old. Guy working the desk controls the elevator. You tell him the floor, he hits the button from here.”
“So you can get off only at the floor he presses,” Boomer said.
“Cuts down on break-ins,” Dead-Eye said. “And you can clock who went to what floor at what time.”
“It work both ways?” Boomer asked. “Up and down?”
“Just coming in. When you leave the apartment is still your business. It’s when you enter that everybody knows.”
“What the guy at the desk doesn’t know, these cameras do,” Boomer said, running a hand across the monitors. “Every corner’s covered.”
“It’s like that in the building I work,” Dead-Eye said. “I can tell you who throws out his trash and when they do it.”
“Anything happens up there with Junior,” Boomer said, “we make sure it happens inside the apartment. Last thing we want is our mugs on these camera reels.”
“They’ll catch us going in,” Dead-Eye said.
“Then we make our play out on the street,” Boomer said, looking up and seei
ng the doorman walk toward them. “Or at a safer drop. For the record, we’re here just to talk to the man.”
“You talk,” Dead-Eye said. “I’ll listen.”
“Don’t matter if you talk or not,” Boomer said, slapping Dead-Eye on the back and smiling. “We get pinched, you’re the one’s going to be put away.”
“How you figure?”
“White guy always walks,” Boomer said. “Black guy takes the fall.”
“You sound exactly like my father,” Dead-Eye said as he shut down the cameras that covered the perimeter and hallways on the sixteenth floor.
“And mine,” Boomer said.
They walked out from behind the counter, nodded at the doorman, took the set of keys from his hand, and headed for the open elevator door.
• • •
THEY STOOD IN the center of the two-bedroom apartment overlooking the Manhattan skyline, surrounded by a blend of leather and chrome furniture, six-figure paintings, sculptures resting on antique surfaces, and religious artifacts, all of which highlighted human and animal sacrifice.
“We don’t need to take a poll to figure out how fucked up Junior is,” Boomer said.
“A goat head on the wall is always a giveaway,” Dead-Eye pointed out. “And you can’t afford to miss the view over by the fireplace.”
Boomer turned and stared at a circular pattern of various animal and human body parts nailed to the wall above the center fireplace, dried blood lining the sides like thin streak prints. Below them was a round oakwood table covered by an assortment of candles of different sizes.
“A lot of what’s up there’s only a few days old,” Boomer said, taking a few steps closer, eyes studying the wall. “This guy likes his kill fresh.”
“All the cuts are from a ragged-edged knife,” Dead-Eye said. “We look hard enough, we’ll find it in here somewhere. Give us something to use to put him away with.”
“I’d just as soon go with plan B,” Boomer said, turning his head toward the door just as Junior’s key jangled in the latch.