Chasers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  Boomer looked to Dead-Eye, who nodded and swung open the door.

  Boomer tossed Angel out into the hall just as the cops were rounding the top stairwell, slamming the door shut behind him. Dead-Eye lifted his gun and fired three rounds into the ceiling.

  They held their position and listened as Angel tried to shout out his innocence, the two guns taped to his hands, blood running down his right shoulder. They listened as the cops unleashed a storm of bullets and the former priest howled out his last, brief prayer.

  Boomer and Dead-Eye walked over to the small staircase in the corner that led to the rooftop garden. Boomer looked to his left and caught a glance of a painting that was hanging between the door and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. He tapped Dead-Eye on the shoulder and pointed to the painting. “Have we seen that before?” he asked.

  “I think so,” Dead-Eye said.

  “And what does it mean that it’s here?” he asked.

  “It means we have a problem,” Dead-Eye said. “A serious one.”

  The two Apaches opened the door leading out of the room and stepped into the carpeted hall, Angel’s fallen body to their left, resting facedown against a corner wall. The stairwell, from top floor to bottom, was lined with police officers, both uniform and plainclothes, all with guns drawn. Boomer and Dead-Eye stared out at them and watched as each one silently holstered his weapon. The two Apaches walked down the stairs, flanked by cops on either side, heads down, arms at rest. No one spoke as Boomer and Dead-Eye left the town house and disappeared into the safety of the cold, New York night.

  15

  Boomer rested the fresh basket of flowers against the gray headstone, his moist eyes locked onto the name, Angela Bromardi, chiseled across its front. It was a sun-drenched Sunday morning, two days into the start of another summer, the grass around the grave site freshly mulched, the soil brown and soft. “I wonder how she would have felt about what you, Dead-Eye, and the others went out and did,” his sister, Maria, said. She was standing to his right, one arm linked through his. “She was cut from a different cloth than you and me. Getting even wasn’t in her blood, it seems.”

  “I wish none of it had to be done,” Boomer said. “I can’t imagine she would have been all that happy with any one of us. Most especially me.”

  “She loved you, John,” Maria said, holding him closer. “You always were the one she went to when she needed to talk. Not to me or her dad, only you. She felt she’d get a fair listen, whether you agreed with her or not.”

  “And I usually didn’t,” he said, managing a smile. “I think that was part of the fun for her. You guys didn’t argue, but I did and she got a big kick out of that end of it. But I was only her uncle. I can get away with crap that a mother and father never could. It’s a very unfair advantage.”

  “I miss her,” Maria said. “Every day and in every way. I thought as time passed it would be a little easier. Not that I would forget her—that could never happen. Just that maybe there would be one night when I didn’t sit up in bed and cry. The other day, I was in the middle of the supermarket, reaching for a box of tangerines, and I just broke down, remembering how she could never get enough of those. Even as a toddler, she saw a tangerine and it was like she saw gold. I had to be helped out of the store; that’s how bad it was.”

  “That part will get easier,” Boomer said to her. “But living with her loss will always be hard. It’s like losing a key piece of your own body. You adjust your life to it, but you’re always aware that there’s something missing.”

  “Thank you for what you went and did,” Maria said, wiping tears from her eyes with the fingers of her right hand. “I tell you, I feel like such a hypocrite sometimes. I go to Mass every day, say the rosary the way Mama taught me, and go to confession each Saturday. And, at the same time, here I am, happy that the people who did this to our Angela are dead. And knowing that it wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t taken a hand. What does that make me, John? What kind of person?”

  “You’re a mother, Maria,” Boomer said. “A mother whose daughter was stolen from her for no reason. What you do in that church and those prayers you say every day matter to the ones you say them for, and the scum that took Angela away from us were never to be included in that mix. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s reality.”

  “What happens now,” she asked, “to you and to Dead-Eye? You two can’t keep doing this, not if you expect to live long enough to make collecting that pension of yours worth the time and effort. I know the main reason you both went out after the men that did this was to get payback for Angela. But there was more to it than that. It gave you a reason to throw yourselves back into the action. And that was a piece of it neither one of you could turn your backs on.”

  “Well, we’re both too old and banged up for the Peace Corps,” Boomer said. “And we’re still a few years removed from a slot in a nursing home, so I don’t know what we’ll do. But some door will open up. It usually does.”

  “And standing inside that door will be somebody with a gun in his hand, looking to kill the both of you, mark my money,” Maria said. “Good as the two of you are at what you do, eventually you’ll run into somebody better.”

  “We don’t talk about it much, me and Dead-Eye, but I think we both have the sense that our run is coming to a close,” Boomer said, staring down at his niece’s headstone. “We never had to give it a lot of thought before, didn’t really need to take the time. I guess being the kind of action-junkie cops we were, we had to figure that we weren’t going to get much of a chance to be close friends with old age. So why bother even giving it more weight than it needed.”

  “Angela always worried about you,” Maria said. “She never showed it and didn’t want it to be discussed in front of you, but there were times when if we ever got a late-night call she would be convinced it was someone telling us you’d been shot.”

  “I remember that time you brought her to see me in the hospital,” Boomer said. “She couldn’t have been more than, what, seven? Maybe eight? Big brown eyes open wide, her head barely reaching the edge of the bed, looking up at me all bandaged up, tubes running into my arms and down my throat. I opened my eyes and put an arm around her and lifted her to the bed. She never said a word, just rested her head on my shoulder and stayed with me most of that afternoon.”

  “I remember,” Maria said, sniffing away a fresh rush of tears. “She told me she stayed there to protect you, make sure no one came in to hurt you anymore.”

  “And that she did,” Boomer said. “But tough cop or not, I couldn’t do the same for her when she needed it the most. That’s what makes you walk away from it, Maria. It’s not the job, the hours, the politics, the bullshit, or the danger. It’s the simple truth that no matter how hard you work it, how good you are at it, how many you put away or put down, you still will never be able to protect and keep safe the ones you love the most. I’ve seen too many people I love die without cause, and I don’t think I can deal with that part of it anymore.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Maria said, rubbing a hand across the left side of his face. “It’ll just pop one day when you’re not even looking for it. Whatever it is you do next, John, I really hope it’s something that makes you happy. You deserve that, and you’ve more than earned it.”

  “I’ll drop a dime and give you a heads-up soon as I find it,” Boomer said, smiling over at his sister. “I just hope whatever the next stop is it’s not something that requires me to wear a tie.”

  “I’ll go wait for you in the car,” Maria said. “We need to head back soon, and I want to give you and Angela a few minutes alone.”

  Boomer gave her a nod and watched as she walked down the sloping hillside, her steps slowed by both age and the weight of grief. He turned back to the headstone and crouched down, one knee touching the soft dirt. “I’m sorry, kiddo,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “For all the times I wasn’t there, especially on that last day. But if it means anything to you, we went out and got t
hem all—the ones that put you here. Almost all, anyway. There’s still one left. But I give my word, once that’s done I’ll bring an end to it. Put away the gun and the badge, and this time for good. I promise, and it’s one I won’t ever break. If I do, you’ll never let me hear the end of it. I love you, Angie. I wish I had told you that more when you were alive, but I think you knew. You own my heart, kiddo, and you always will.”

  Boomer reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his detective’s gold shield, half hidden in a black leather pouch. He rested it against the front of the headstone, then leaned over and planted a soft kiss above the young woman’s name. He lowered his head, folded his hands, and whispered a soft prayer, the sun warm on his back, casting its glow across the cold dirt of a crowded cemetery.

  16

  Quincy sat up in the hospital bed, his thin body covered by an even thinner gown, a starched white sheet folded up to chest level. Ash stood on one side of the bed, pouring cold water from a plastic container into an NYPD coffee mug and handing it over to Quincy along with a smile. Boomer and Dead-Eye stood on the other side, careful not to brush up against any of the tubes and drips that were attached to Quincy’s arm. Buttercup sat curled on the edge of the bed, her eyes looking up at Quincy.

  “The doctor told me you caught some luck, that the cuts went deep but not deep enough to do serious damage,” Dead-Eye said. “They might check you out of here in a day, two at the outside.”

  “It’s nice to have some good luck for a change,” Quincy said. “I’m ready to leave, tell you the truth. Grab a good meal somewhere that’s not here. Have you seen what they call breakfast?”

  “Buttercup did,” Ash said. “She took one look at your tray and I thought she was going to hurl. And this from a dog that will eat shit out of a cat-litter box.”

  “I didn’t think they let dogs in hospital rooms,” Quincy said, looking down at the K-9 and giving her a wink.

  “They don’t,” Boomer said. “Luckily, she’s a cop.”

  “Which means she can come and go as she pleases so long as she flashes that tin,” Dead-Eye said. “And that includes riding for free on buses and subways and getting into ballparks to watch any game she chooses.”

  “You want to talk about a dog’s life,” Ash said, “look no further than our fair lady.”

  “Any fallout from what went down at the town house with Angel?” Quincy asked. “Especially given that Ash, the mad bomber here, nearly took down an entire Manhattan street.”

  “There would have been if we had just gone out and done it on a whim,” Dead-Eye said. “But taking out one of the top drug dealers on two continents does have its perks.”

  “We threw the full weight of the bust over to NYPD and the Federal Drug Task Force,” Boomer said. “We figure we let them fight over who gets final credit, long as they leave us out of it.”

  “They get to clear most of Angel’s team as well as the G-Men off their dockets,” Ash said. “That’s a heavy load of yellow folders to toss into the case-closed file.”

  “And Tony Rigs and the Russians cut up and clean up on the leftovers,” Quincy said. “It’s the revolving door of crime: two crews go out weak and two come back in strong. The best we can do is try and keep as many civilians as we can clear of the traffic.”

  “Their turn will come sure as sunrise,” Boomer said, exchanging a quick look with Dead-Eye. “It’s all about when, how, and who comes in to take them down and wash them out.”

  “You never know,” Ash said with a slight shrug. “Down the road, it might even be us.”

  “I wouldn’t bet your tax-free pension on that,” Boomer said. “From here on, when the bad guys topple, it’s going to have to be some other cops to tip them over. Not us. We’re done. At least I am.”

  “Count me out of the game as well,” Dead-Eye said. “If you guys are eager to keep the Apaches going, you have our full blessings. I wouldn’t give it a high recommend, but I’ll leave it to you to make the call.”

  “So the one job was it?” Quincy said. “We now all go our separate ways?”

  “We stay friends, always,” Boomer said. “And we’ll be there for each other, help out in any way we can. Our lives aren’t over. Just our Apache days.”

  “We need to move on with our lives,” Dead-Eye said. “Maybe me and Boomer more than you two. But the truth is, we’d only be working on borrowed time, we keep going in the direction we’re in now.”

  “I am on borrowed time,” Quincy said. “That’s the only kind of time I know.”

  Boomer stepped up closer to Quincy, resting a hand on top of his folded ones. “You won’t be alone,” he said. “Even if you wanted to be, we won’t allow it. We’re linked to one another tight as a chain. And nothing can take from that—not our wounds, not old age, and sure as shit not some fucking disease. That’s our next fight, and it’s one we fight together.”

  “And you just got the word from the head Wopahoe himself,” Dead-Eye said. “There’s no step back from friendship. We don’t know any other way. But our days doing a duck-and-dodge against a crew of bangers will soon be set in the past.”

  “Which leaves us where, exactly?” Ash asked.

  “On a one-day-at-a-time clip,” Boomer said. “And as for the rest of this one, how about you and our sleepy-time pup hang here with Quincy and see if you can score him a high-caliber lunch?”

  “Maybe even get somebody with soft eyes and a warm smile to change his bandages,” Dead-Eye said. “You know, put to good use that overabundance of charm we all know you secretly possess.”

  “And where will you two Galahads be off to while Ash and Buttercup are doing their candy-striper routine?” he asked.

  “We have a date,” Boomer said. “And we can’t be late, not with this lady. She’s the punctual type.”

  “A special kind of woman, no doubt,” Dead-Eye said, leading the way out of the room. “What my father would call a real killer.”

  17

  Natalie sat back and watched as Boomer poured out three glasses of chilled champagne and handed one each to her and Dead-Eye. She smiled, nodded her thanks, and raised her thin glass toward the two Apaches. “To a job perfectly executed,” she said.

  Boomer sat back and stared across at Natalie, dressed in a black Karl Lagerfeld dress that was slit at the thigh, her rich dark hair falling over her shoulders, her olive eyes bright and alert.

  He would never sit across from a more beautiful woman.

  “Yes, it was,” Boomer said. “But I have to spread credit to where it needs to be put, and that’s square on your well-turned-out lap.”

  “I helped,” Natalie said, holding the smile, her eyes moving from Boomer to Dead-Eye. “But you were the ones who pulled it off. None of it would have worked without your team being in the middle of it all.”

  “You did more than plan, Natalie,” Boomer said. “You played us and we walked right into your game, chess pieces on your big board.”

  “There was a time,” Dead-Eye said, “when we might have smelled it out. Maybe seen the moves sooner, not been as blind to your actions as we were.”

  They were sitting at the back of a small dining room in a quiet Italian restaurant on the tail end of West Forty-sixth Street. It was an hour past the lunchtime rush, and they were the only diners in the place, most of the waiters heading off to a well-earned break. “Get to your point,” Natalie said, the smile gone now, the eyes hard, the Lady Who Lunched quickly replaced by the born-and-bred mob boss. “I came here to celebrate, or thought I did. I didn’t come to be lectured or listen to any insane blather.”

  “I have to hand it to you,” Boomer said, his voice tinged with a sad resignation. “You had me going for most of it. Maybe because I wasn’t expecting it, or more like I just didn’t want to see it.”

  Natalie finished her glass of champagne, rested the glass on top of the table, leaned back in her chair, crossed her legs, and smiled over at Boomer. “Where did I botch it?” she asked.

  �
��I caught a glimpse of a piece of art hanging in a corner of Angel’s room,” Boomer said. “It was the same high-end work that we took out of Talbot’s brownstone, included in that big batch that was supposed to have been fenced halfway around the world. Yet, miracle of miracles, it somehow found its way into Angel’s little cave and that was when it all fell into place.”

  “You sell it or just hand it over as a gift?” Dead-Eye asked.

  “I never give,” Natalie said in a voice as harsh as they had ever heard it.

  “No, I guess you don’t,” Boomer said. “And you usually don’t make mistakes. At least not ones big enough that even two beat-up cops like us could catch.”

  “I don’t see where you have much to complain about,” Natalie said. “You wanted to bring down Angel and do damage to his operation, and that you certainly accomplished. Adding the G-Men to the mix was merely sweet icing to a very delicious cake.”

  “That may all be true,” Boomer said, “but we were used, plain and simple, and that sort of shit doesn’t sit well with us.”

  “You needed help and I offered to supply it,” Natalie said. “You made use of my skill set as much as I made use of yours.”

  “You could have taken Angel and his crew down on your own,” Dead-Eye said. “Same holds for the G-Men. You didn’t need to bring us into it.”

  “It was important to me and to my business interests that both groups think we were partners until the very end,” Natalie said. “I couldn’t very well do that if we were at each other’s throats in the middle of a gang war. So that’s where you came into my picture, and I colored you into my plans.”

  “And the only reason we stepped into your picture was because of a restaurant shooting,” Boomer said, his words hard and measured. “A shooting that killed my niece. A shooting that wasn’t the accident it was so carefully made to look like. Feel free to step in and stop me if you think I’m taking this in the wrong direction.”