by Greg Rucka
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Here, have a mint, stud.”
I took the mint and crunched on it, and neither of us spoke for the rest of the drive.
——
Philippe was at the door and I remembered I owed him twenty bucks, so I gave him the money before we went past. Bridgett watched the exchange of currency without comment. We took the stairs to the second floor, passing a young man I didn’t recognize as we started down Romero’s hall. Bridgett stayed ahead of me and didn’t stop. When we’d instituted security for Romero, I had made a point of getting to know each face on the doctor’s floor.
This guy wasn’t one of them.
Could be anybody, I thought.
But I stopped and turned around and said, “Hey, excuse me?”
He had opened the door to the stairwell, and he turned his head. His hair was buzz-cut short, dirty blond, and his arms were thick and powerful. A pair of brown leather gloves were thrust into the back pocket of his jeans. His face was that of a boy. His eyes were hazel, and they met mine.
Gloves, I thought. In summer.
Then he ran.
“Bridgett!” I shouted and started after him, yanking the door to the stairwell back in time to see him exiting into the lobby. I swung over the railing, and felt my left ankle twist and then give as I came down on the last step. I sprawled forward through the door before it swung shut completely.
“Stop that man!” I shouted to Philippe.
He took a second to react, then pivoted, putting his body between the other man and the door, but the other man didn’t stop, just bent low and then blasted forward like a linebacker after a quarterback when the blitz is on. Philippe went through the glass door backward, hitting the cement sidewalk hard, the glass showering about them both. The other man regained his footing almost immediately and kept going.
Bridgett ran past me as I got up, and I was ten feet behind her when we hit the street. Philippe was coughing as I went past, struggling to his feet, and I assumed he was fine.
Bridgett had pulled up, looking frantically both ways, growling, “Where’s that pest-bastard?”
There was a ripple in the Friday-night crowd, heading south toward the Seaport. I started that way, Bridgett following me. I’m not much for running, only when chased, I suppose, but I am quick.
This guy was, too, and he had the lead on us.
We hit the open promenade of the Seaport in time to see him push through a crowd that had surrounded a fire-eater. My left ankle was killing me, protesting with sincere pain every time I came down on it. Bridgett cut left around the crowd, and I went right, and we met up again on the other side, each scanning. The crowd was bubbly, liquid, shifting easily now, and with a lot of noise, conversation, patter, laughter.
He was nowhere to be seen.
“Fuck!” Bridgett shouted. “Fuck fuck fuck!”
A young couple pulled their son away from us, and the crowd thinned near where we stood.
“Son of a bitch,” Bridgett said breathlessly. “Mother of . . . oh, I’m so mad I could just—what the fuck are you looking at?” The last was directed at a young woman wearing a Fordham T-shirt.
“Whoa,” the woman said, and backed away with her friends.
“Preppy bitch,” Bridgett said.
“I know who he is,” I said.
“What?”
“That guy, I know where I’ve seen him before. Outside the clinic, the day the bottle was thrown. He was with Barry, he was wearing a Columbia University sweatshirt.”
“You’re sure it’s the same guy?”
“It’s the same guy.”
“Good, okay, good, that means we can find his name,” she said. “That means we can find out who he is.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“He wasn’t arrested.”
She squeezed her eyes closed, putting both her hands to her head and sliding them up into her dark hair. Her hair fell back and she exhaled sharply, then opened her eyes and said, “He was in her apartment, wasn’t he?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Probably.”
' “We’ll get prints off her door. I’ve got a kit in the Porsche.”
I shook my head. “No, he had gloves. He must have worn them in the apartment.”
“The stairwell!” Bridgett said.
We gave the crowd one last look-over, but it was futile. Then we turned and started back up the street.
“Quit limping,” she told me.
“Fuck you,” I said sweetly.
Philippe was on the phone when we got back to the building. Bridgett continued on to her car for her print kit. I waited until he hung up. “Just ordered a new door,” he said. “Who the hell was that guy?”
“An athlete,” I said.
“No shit?” He brushed specks of glass from his uniform, muttering.
“You’re okay?”
“Didn’t get cut, if that’s what you mean. Don’t know how.”
“Lucky.”
“You get him?”
I shook my head.
He went to get a broom, saying, “Should I call the police?”
“We’ll handle it,” I told him.
Bridgett dusted the doors to the stairwell, both front and back, and then worked the railing. She pulled numerous useless prints, but got a portion of a palm off the inside of the first-floor door where we figured University had pushed it open.
“It’s a nice partial,” she said, blowing gently on the toner.
She prepared the cards and I used the doorman’s phone to call Fowler’s cellular. I told him what happened, that I recognized the man from outside the clinic, and that Bridgett had pulled a possible print. Fowler said he’d get there as soon as he could, and told us not to disturb anything more.
“Let us do our job,” he said. “You protect Romero: That’s what you do. I find clues and bad guys: That’s what I do. Got it?”
“We’ll be in the apartment,” I said.
“No, you won’t,” he said. “Don’t even go near it. You’ll destroy evidence.”
“We’ll wait in the lobby,” I said.
“That’s a good boy. Keep it up and you’ll get a puppy treat.”
I barked at him before he hung up.
Bridgett didn’t want to wait in the lobby. “I just want to look around,” she said.
“We wait.”
She grumbled and checked her pockets for more candy, coming up empty and heading to a deli next door to restock. The first patrol car pulled up as she returned, starting in on the first roll. The CSU arrived a few minutes later. Bridgett was starting on a new roll, Spear-O-Mint, when Fowler showed up and told us to wait in the lobby. We followed him up to Romero’s apartment.
It would have been funny, I think, if the situation was different. But walking into the apartment again, taking the flight of stairs onto the main floor, and seeing, again, the whole living room in forensic disarray, a pressure built behind my eyes. While Bridgett dogged Fowler through the apartment, I stood by the stairs, and watched the technicians work. This wasn’t the same as when Katie died, I knew that, but it was hard to get past it, and my dream from the night before came back sharply.
Cops and techs coming up the stairs kept brushing past me. The third time the same officer bumped me I snapped, “Watch what the hell you’re doing.”
The patrolman turned and said, “You got a problem?”
“You can stop fucking pushing me every time you come up the stairs, that’s my problem.”
He shoved his face to mine, leaving half an inch of hostile air separating us. “You can wait outside, or you can shut up, but you’re at a crime scene and you’ve got no rights, asshole.”
I almost put my fist in his stomach, but Bridgett got to me first, saying, “Come here, would you?” and pulling me by the arm. The cop and I kept eye contact until Bridgett nudged me into the bedroom.
“What the fuck’s your problem?” she asked.
“No problem,” I said. “I just don’t like being pushed.”
“You don’t like . . .” She shook her head. “Try the decaf, stud, calm down.”
“Don’t call me stud.”
“Sit down, stud,” Bridgett told me.
I glared at her and she pushed my chest with her index finger firmly. “Sit.” I took a seat on the bed, watching while the CSU analyzed the stained footprints on the carpet by the bathroom. One of the techs asked me to take off my sneakers so she could run a comparison, and I complied without comment. My ankle was starting to swell, and it hurt to remove my shoe.
“Five sets,” I heard her tell Fowler. “I can tell you that already. One of them’s his,” and she pointed the toe of my Reebok at me. “I assume we’ve got matches for the others at the lab. But we do have a fresh one.”
“You didn’t come in here before we arrived?” Fowler asked me.
“No.”
The CSU tech gave me my sneakers back, and after that, feeling claustrophobic, I limped back down to the lobby. I thought about calling the safe apartment to check on everything, decided against it. There was a bench out front of the building, so I sat on that and waited. The doorman was fussing at the workmen who were replacing the broken door.
Bridgett came out ten minutes later and said, “Mint?” I took one, looked at it, then threw it across the street. “That was a waste of a perfectly good mint,” she said. “You hungry?”
“I suppose,” I said.
“I know a great place. Come on.”
Bridgett parked against the curb on Third Avenue and we walked back to the Abbey Tavern. It was dim inside and fairly busy, the bar full. Bridgett turned a sharp right and was greeted by a gray-haired man wearing a subdued suit.
“Bridie, it’s been how long?”
She said, “Two months, I think, Chris.”
“And those holes, dear Lord, look! Your parents would scream if they saw what you’ve done to that beautiful face. And how many have you added since I saw you last?”
“Two more,” Bridgett said.
“You’re mad.”
It might have been me, but I could have sworn I heard an accent creeping into her speech.
Chris grabbed two menus and walked us to a booth. After we were seated he said, “I’ll send Shannon right over.” He gave me a smile, then left the table.
Bridgett shook hair out of her eyes. “You’re not Irish, are you?”
“Not unless it’s a well-kept family secret,” I said.
Our waitress Shannon was short and slender, and gave Bridgett a hug when she reached our table. I was introduced, and Shannon gave Bridgett an approving look, then told us the specials. I picked the lamb stew; Bridgett ordered a large salad. We both ordered pints of Guinness. “Come here a lot, do you?” I asked.
She nodded and grinned. “My people. And yours?”
“I’m a mutt. Some Czech, some Russian, some Polish.” Our food arrived and we bent to the task. The stew was substantial, and it came with a basket of soda bread that made for perfect company. I cleaned out my bowl and sat back, finishing my stout. “Good choice,” I said.
“You want some of this?”
“No, thanks.”
She pushed her greens around some more, then set down her fork and knife and pulled out another mint. “So?” she asked. “You want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know, actually.”
“Fair enough.”
Shannon returned and shook her head at Bridgett’s bowl. “You’ll waste into nothing,” she said as she cleared the table. Then she returned and gave us each a cup of coffee.
“Were you going to belt that cop?” Bridgett asked me. “I might’ve.”
“Dumb.”
“I know.”
She tapped the side of her cup with a fingernail. Her nails were short, but clean and unpainted. I wondered if she went for manicures.
“Have you ever had an abortion?” I asked her.
“No,” Bridgett said. “No, never an abortion.”
“The woman I was seeing, she had one. That’s how I met Romero.”
“Alison?”
“That’s her,” I said. “We’ve been seeing each other for about seven months, and she called me when I got in last night, told me that I wasn’t the man she wanted to grow old with.”
Bridgett raised her eyebrows.
“Not in those words,” I amended. “Close, but not those words.”
“Her timing is for shit.”
“I told her that.”
Shannon returned and refilled our coffee cups. Bridgett waited until she was gone, then said, “This because of her abortion?”
“I think in part. If nothing else, it made her take another look at me. And I hadn’t been around—I wasn’t super supportive after the fact. I was working for Romero.”
“You don’t sound too certain about the decision.”
“No, it was the right thing to do, I really believe that. I can’t be a father yet, and Alison sure as hell didn’t want to be a mother. It’s just that working for Romero, in a way it was an easy excuse. Made the abortion something I didn’t have to deal with.”
“Not anymore.”
“No,” I said. “And Katie’s dead, and that is so wrong and it makes me so angry . . . shouldn’t our child mean the same thing?” I toyed with my coffee cup, watching the way the liquid sloshed along the sides. It made me think of the bloody water pouring from the toilet in Romero’s bathroom. “I look at people like Veronica Selby, even Crowell, for God’s sake, and I wonder.”
“Don’t give Crowell that much credit. He doesn’t see sanctity of life, he sees a road to attention.”
“I think he’s a son of a bitch, don’t worry. I can’t imagine what would be left of him if I got him alone in an alley for a few minutes.”
“Him or Barry?”
“Both,” I said.
“Romero’s still alive.”
“Tell me that tomorrow night,” I said.
“It’s a date,” she said as Shannon slipped the check onto the table. Bridgett picked it up before I could, saying, “It’s on me.”
“Next one’s mine,” I told her.
“Then I’ll pick somewhere extremely expensive tomorrow night,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell you, Atticus. You’re not necessarily talking to the right person, here. I respect Selby, everything I know about her. But I disagree with her fundamental argument. This sounds harsh, but that fetus Alison aborted wasn’t anything more than a parasite. It could never have survived without a host, and it was giving nothing in return. Equating that to the murder of Katie Romero, that’s only going to fuck with your head, because they are absolutely two different things. Katie Romero, even if she suffered from Down’s syndrome, was never a parasite. Her potential was realized, and continued to grow.
“A bastard with a rifle cut that short.”
She put some bills on the table and we stood up, stopping to say good night to Chris on the way out. “Don’t be gone so long next time,” he said to Bridgett. “We’ve been missing you.”
“Promise,” she said.
We walked back to her car.
“Get in, stud,” Bridgett said. “I’ll take you home.”
We drove in silence, each of us thinking, I’m sure, about what exactly she and I were doing, and, perhaps, were going to do back at my apartment. She was very attractive to me that night, we both knew it. But if Bridgett came upstairs, I wouldn’t want her to stay, and part of me was preparing what I wanted to say to her if it came to that.
When we reached Thompson, Bridgett couldn’t find a place to park. Even the illegal spaces were taken, including the red zone right in front of the hydrant by my building. “You can just drop me off.”
“Let me walk you home.”
“You’re a perfect gentleman,” I told her.
“A foxy chick like yourself shouldn’t be walking the streets alone this time of night.”
She park
ed on MacDougal, and together we walked back toward Thompson. It was well after one: Bleecker had few people on it and Thompson was empty. We went into the little entrance cubicle to my lobby, and I unlocked the interior door, and held it open so Bridgett could slide past. I shut the door and she waited for me to get back in front of her, since the hallway was too tight to walk comfortably side by side.
He was waiting on the stairs, and I guess he was expecting only me. As I put my foot on the first step he came around the landing above, and then I was forced back off the steps and into the wall, a baseball bat pressed horizontally against my throat. It was a good hard press, and I couldn’t breathe. Barry finished the move by bringing his face close to mine, saying, “Motherfucker, this time I’ll make you piss your pants, motherfucker.” ‘
Which was a mistake, because Bridgett put her pistol to his temple and said, “Drop it, shithead.” She cocked the Sig for emphasis.
He debated the decision for a moment; it was clearly in his eyes as they moved from me to his left, trying to see her. His pressure didn’t let up, and my vision began to cloud with dots moving in from the periphery.
“Now,” Bridgett said. “Or I’ll paint the wall in Early Neanderthal Brain. That means you, Clarence.”
Barry looked back in my eyes, the same mad-hatred look he had pointed at me when Lozano led him away, and then took a step back. Bridgett let the barrel leave his temple, but kept the gun trained on him. As the bat cleared my chin, I brought my head down and began coughing, trying to find my breath.
“Drop the bat,” Bridgett said.
Barry was still looking at me, the bat now at waist level, held lengthwise with both hands. “Fucker lost me my job,” he said. “Fucker ruining my life, thinks he can make me some faggot pussy, making people laugh at me.”
“Drop the fucking bat now, Clarence,” Bridgett said.
“Yeah, I’ll drop it, cunt,” he said, and then he jabbed the bat sharply to his left, catching her hard in the chest with the end. Bridgett staggered, losing her aim, and went down on one knee. Barry brought the bat up again and around, zeroing once more on me. This time I was ready for it, and blocked his arm with my left forearm, shunting his swing off to the side. As the blow came down I snapped my forehead into his nose, felt it give, and pulled back to grab the bat. He brought his free hand up to my face, clawing my glasses off, and we both went back against the wall again. I got a second hand on the bat, twisted, and slammed his wrist against the banister. He dropped the bat, and caught me with a backhand that made my head ring. I lost my grip on him entirely, and staggered back into Bridgett.
