by Steven Henry
“So Lorenzo was poisoned?”
“Looks that way.”
“That’s an unusual way for a lad in the game to throw in his cards.”
“Murder is murder.”
“True enough. You know, Erin, if you’re not terribly busy, there’s plenty of room on this couch beside me, and I’ve a bottle of Glen D that’s nearly full.”
“Thanks, but I’m still on duty.”
“It’s my job to tempt you into all manner of unwise behavior.”
“And you’re good at it,” she chuckled. “I’ll look you up at the end of my shift, okay? Save some of that bottle for me.”
“Your name’s on it. Best of luck, darling.”
* * *
Then it was back to the waiting game. Some cops swore by coffee, gallons of the stuff, but Erin knew better. When you didn’t want to leave the scene, even for a five-minute bathroom break, you wanted to go easy on the fluid intake. The boys in blue could use empty water bottles in an emergency, but the women had it tougher. Staying awake wasn’t the main problem anyway. Distraction was the number one enemy. She couldn’t let herself drift away with her thoughts. At least it was winter, so the car didn’t overheat. It was gradually getting colder inside, but that wasn’t as much of a problem, particularly for Rolf. If they’d been pulling this job in summer, she’d have had to keep the engine running for the air conditioning.
Why had she volunteered for this lousy assignment? Erin couldn’t stand being in an office all day. She and Rolf had both needed to get out a little, even if it meant sitting curbside for a few hours. Sometimes it was just a lose-lose situation.
She keyed her radio and called the other car. “Hey, guys. O’Reilly here.”
“Malinowski and Bauer,” the reply came back. “Give us good news.”
“You want good news?” she asked. “All is forgiven. Jesus died for our sins. Especially yours.”
“Bauer’s Jewish,” Malinowski replied.
“So was Jesus.”
He laughed. “What’s up on your side of the street?”
“I got nothing. Just making sure you Patrol boys are still alive.”
“Still breathing. Bauer needs a breath mint.”
“So does Rolf.”
“Want to trade partners?”
“Not on your life.”
“Stay sharp, O’Reilly.”
“You too, Malinowski.”
The apartment door opened. Erin’s head snapped up. Paulie Bianchi stepped outside. His hands were empty, but he was wearing a backpack over a light jacket.
The radio link was still open. “Guys!” she called. “I got the kid coming out.”
“Copy that.” Malinowski dropped his bantering tone. “You want us to roll to you?”
“Negative. You might spook him, and we still need eyes on the building. I got this.” Erin didn’t start the car. Paulie was on foot, walking quickly down the sidewalk. She didn’t know where he was going, but driving slowly down the street behind him would be the most obvious thing she could do. On the other hand, he’d seen her before and would know her face. She’d stand out, especially if she took Rolf with her. She did a quick risk assessment and decided to tail him the old-fashioned way.
“Malinowski?”
“Go ahead.”
“I’m leaving my vehicle and trailing Bianchi on foot, with my K-9.”
“Copy that, O’Reilly. You need us, we’ll be there. Be careful.”
Erin waited until Bianchi was past her and looking the other way. Then she got out of the Charger and popped Rolf’s compartment. The Shepherd hit the pavement ready for action, but he was disciplined. He stuck next to Erin’s leg, not pulling on the leash. They started after the kid, hanging back about thirty feet, blending into the usual Manhattan pedestrian traffic.
Paulie wasn’t a big kid, and Erin was only five foot six, so it was tricky keeping him in sight. But she didn’t want to be spotted, so it was a tradeoff. She had to keep looking to the sides, making sure he didn’t hop in a taxi or go into a storefront. It would’ve been easier if Rolf had his scent, but she didn’t have any of Paulie’s stuff for him to sniff.
She almost missed him, but she caught a sight of Paulie out of the corner of her eye as he went down into a subway entrance. “Great,” she muttered. She’d been down on subways ever since she’d nearly been killed in a gunfight with Neo-Nazis in one the previous autumn. But she wasn’t going to let bad memories stand in her way. She steered Rolf to the stairs. Paulie was moving fast and was already most of the way down. Erin sped up. Rolf trotted briskly beside her.
New York provided MetroCards to all its first responders, free of charge. Most cops didn’t bother using them more than a few times a month, but there were definitely times it came in handy. Erin swiped her card a few seconds behind Paulie. They got onto the platform just as the train pulled in. Paulie hurried across the concrete and through the doors as soon as they opened. He turned as he climbed aboard. He and Erin made eye contact.
“Shit,” Erin said, and saw Paulie’s lips mouth the same word in almost perfect unison. Then she and Rolf were running across the platform. The doors were still open. Paulie was backing away. Then, as Erin and Rolf lunged onto the train, Paulie turned and sprinted down the length of the train car.
“Stop! NYPD!” Erin shouted. She hadn’t been sure until that moment, but now she knew Paulie was up to something. The time for stealth was over.
Unfortunately, she also realized something else. Paulie was going to make it through the doors at the far end of the car and she wasn’t. She was about to take a trip to the next station without him.
She made another quick decision. She wasn’t fast enough, but maybe her partner was. Erin unsnapped his leash. “Rolf! Fass!”
The Shepherd uncoiled. He threaded between the legs of startled passengers as if it was an agility course. There were any number of people he could’ve bitten, but he’d been well trained and knew to go for the guy who was running. Even as the train’s doors slid shut, he slipped through, his tail barely clearing the narrowing gap. As the train started moving, Erin saw a brief glimpse of the Mafia wannabe going down hard, Rolf on top of him.
Erin could have yanked the emergency stop. She wanted to. But she’d had it drummed into her by her dad that you did not do that unless the train itself was about to kill someone. It wasn’t like the cord on a city bus that politely paged the driver to stop. It would automatically trigger extremely powerful compressed-air brakes. That would set a whole row of municipal dominoes falling, as the MTA would be contacted, the train wouldn’t go anywhere for a quarter of an hour or more, and the brakes would need to be manually reset. At the very least, she’d have to fill out all kinds of forms and get her ass chewed by the MTA, the transit police, and Lieutenant Webb, in that order.
On the flip side, that meant she was stuck on the subway car, staring out the window at her K-9 who was locked in a clinch with a suspect. If Paulie had a gun, he might shoot Rolf.
“Damn, damn, damn,” she said under her breath, her fingernails digging into her palms. She couldn’t even call Dispatch on her phone. Rumor had it the city was working on installing wifi and cell service in the tunnels, but it hadn’t happened yet. All she could do was wait and fret.
At the next station, she was the first one off the train. She saw a transit cop near the wall and ran toward him, holding up her shield.
“I need backup at the Canal Street Station!” she shouted. “Got a 10-12 by an unaccompanied K-9!”
A 10-12 meant a police officer was holding a suspect, which was more or less true. The cop gave her a surprised look, but called it in on his radio. By the time he got through, Erin was back in the tunnel, running alongside the track, sprinting back toward the previous station.
Breathing hard from her run, Erin vaulted onto the platform and saw a circle of bystanders keeping a cautious perimeter. A pair of uniforms had arrived a little before her, but they were clearly at a loss as to what to do. Nei
ther one wanted to interfere with the dog, so they were contenting themselves with holding back the growing crowd. Paulie was still on the ground, Rolf’s jaws clamped on his arm. But the kid was smarter than Erin had given him credit for. Unlike many perps, he wasn’t trying to pull free or fight back. He was holding perfectly still. As a result, while Rolf had him in a firm grip, the Shepherd wasn’t cracking his bones. He’d have bruises, but that was about it.
“Okay, kiddo,” Erin said. “You gonna hold still now?”
Paulie nodded cautiously.
“Rolf, pust,” she said, giving him his “release” command. Rolf obediently let go of the kid and looked at Erin, wagging his tail and waiting to be told what a good boy he was. She pulled his special chew-toy out of her jacket pocket and tossed it to him. He dropped to his belly and started gnawing like an oversized puppy, to the delight of the onlookers. Several of them had their phones out and recording, and Erin knew her partner was on his way to becoming a social media celebrity.
Her attention was still on Paulie. “Show me your hands,” she said. When he held out empty palms, she holstered her Glock. “Any weapons?”
“No.”
“What’s in the backpack?”
“Nothing. Just some stuff, is all.”
“Right,” she said. “I’m gonna need to take a look inside. Stay down and don’t move, you understand?”
He nodded, giving Rolf a nervous glance. Both of them knew he didn’t fancy another tangle with the K-9.
Erin had a legal right to search anybody in New York City, under the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policy. It was controversial, particularly when minorities were disproportionately targeted, but in these circumstances Erin figured she wasn’t likely to get too much grief over it. It did mean more paperwork on her horizon. But that was a problem for later. For now, she wanted to see what was in the pack.
She was careful unzipping it. The last thing she needed was a needle-stick. She peeled back the outer flap.
“What the hell?” she murmured.
It was a box of convenience-store chocolates, identical to the one which had poisoned Norman Ridgeway.
“It’s just candy, dammit,” Paulie muttered. “Can I go now?”
Erin pulled out the box and turned it over in her hands. “How come it’s not shrink-wrapped?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” She opened the lid and found herself staring at about two dozen little plastic baggies, each of them containing white powder.
She looked down at Paulie. “It’s candy, all right,” she said. “You got the real sugar right here.”
“I want a lawyer,” he said. Under the circumstances, it was the smartest thing he could have said.
“Yeah, you do,” she said. “Paulie Bianchi, you’re under arrest for felony possession of narcotics. You need to hear your rights? I bet you know them, but I better give ‘em to you anyway. Smile, you’re on camera.”
Three New Yorkers recorded Paulie’s arrest on their phones, while seven more kept filming her dog. That was what passed for news these days.
Chapter 12
“My client has no comment at this time.”
The Bianchi family’s lawyer reminded Erin of a lizard in an expensive suit. His face was expressionless and she wasn’t convinced he needed to blink. He was sitting beside Paulie in the interrogation room. Erin and Webb were on the other side of the table.
“Just so Mr. Bianchi understands how much trouble he’s in,” Webb said. “We’ve got him in possession of twenty-five bags of heroin. At an estimated fifty milligrams apiece, that’s a gram and a quarter. That’s short of an A-1 felony, but given your client’s prior history of drug possession, he could be looking at fourteen years.”
“I will be examining the chain of custody of the alleged narcotic,” the lawyer said. “And I will be scrutinizing Detective O’Reilly’s record to determine the likelihood that she planted the alleged narcotics on my client.”
Erin bristled but knew better than to take the obvious bait.
“I will also be filing an excessive-force complaint against Detective O’Reilly,” he went on. “Given the unsupervised attack of the dangerous animal which assaulted my client, I will be requesting it be destroyed.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Erin snapped. “Are you threatening an NYPD officer?”
Webb raised a calming hand. “Fortunately, the incident was captured on several civilian cameras, as well as security cameras in the subway,” he said. “I’m sure the footage will dispel any such allegations.”
“My office will bring a civil suit,” the lawyer relentlessly continued, as if the detectives hadn’t spoken. “I will also be filing complaints of police harassment. My client and his mother were accosted in a place of worship, immediately after the death of his father, and subjected to a humiliating interrogation.”
“Your client is a suspect in an ongoing homicide investigation,” Erin retorted. “And he’s a drug dealer. I suppose the heroin was for emotional support in this difficult time?”
“My client has no comment,” the lawyer repeated.
Webb stood up. “Thank you for your time,” he said blandly. “We’ll be charging your client shortly. You might want to stick around; it won’t be long.”
“But you can add the wait to your billable hours,” Erin couldn’t resist adding.
Once they were out of the interrogation room, and Bianchi’s lawyer had gone downstairs to wait for them to finish charging the kid, Erin rounded on Webb.
“That asshole!” she exploded.
“Easy, O’Reilly,” Webb said. “He’s just doing his job.”
“He threatened to kill Rolf! He’s a damn Mafia goon, just like the jerks he works for!”
“Nothing’s going to happen to Rolf,” Webb said. “I saw the kid’s arm. The teeth didn’t even break the skin.”
“And if he does try anything,” Vic said, coming out of the observation room, “I’ll help you beat the shit out of him.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Webb said. “You know we can’t beat up the lawyers.”
“Hey, you wanna hear a joke?” Vic said. “What do you call a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the East River?”
Erin had heard this one. “A good start,” she said. Then she followed up with one of her own. “I heard sharks don’t eat lawyers. You know why?”
Vic snickered. “Professional courtesy. What’s the difference between a defense attorney and a catfish? One’s a scum-sucking bottom-feeder…”
“Okay, knock it off,” Webb said. “And good work on the bust, O’Reilly.”
“Yeah,” Vic said. “You ever wash out of Major Crimes, you can go work for SNEU.”
“Those guys are crazy,” she said. “My dad always told me they were a bunch of nutjobs.”
“Then you oughta fit right in,” Vic said, grinning. “I always kinda wanted to be one of them.”
“Unfortunately,” Webb said, “this doesn’t close our homicide.”
“Yeah, Erin,” Vic said, still grinning. “You gotta stop solving the wrong cases.”
“But it has to be connected,” she said. “I mean, the candy boxes were absolutely identical.”
“I noticed that,” Webb said. “But one of them had poisoned candy, the other had drugs. It’d have to be a hell of a coincidence for both boxes to be in the same apartment.”
“But both boxes were in the same apartment,” she reminded him.
“In that case, Rocky Nicoletti got the wrong box,” Vic said.
Webb and Erin looked at him.
“I mean, Nicoletti’s a small-time drug dealer,” he said. “He’d have preferred the box of drugs, wouldn’t he? So why did Paulie give him the other box?”
“Maybe he didn’t mean to,” Erin said. “Maybe Paulie gave him the wrong one, just like you said. By accident.”
“What kind of idiot does a drug trade without looking in the box first?” Vic asked.
“The kind we’ve got in Interrogation Room One,” Webb said dryly.
“So let’s suppose Paulie’s trying to get his drugs to Rocky,” Erin said. “And he hides them in an empty candy box. Then he sees the box, assumes it’s his, and gives it to his buddy. But the buddy opens it up later, and surprise! It’s candy.”
“So he gives the candy to his girlfriend,” Vic said. “Not knowing it’s poisoned.”
“And she shares it with her other boyfriend,” Erin said. “Not the classiest thing you could do. Next thing they know, he’s dead.”
Webb nodded. “Okay,” he said. “But what happened to the other box in the meantime?”
“I expect Paulie had it hidden somewhere in the apartment,” Erin said. “But he wouldn’t have even thought to look for it before he knew it was still there.”
“But why would he assume the other box was his?” Vic wondered. “If I was smuggling drugs and found somebody’d moved my shit around, I’d double-check.”
“He’s living with his mom,” Erin said. “She probably cleans his room for him.”
“What a loser,” Vic said.
“But who put the other box in the apartment in the first place?” Webb asked.
“Nina,” Erin said at once. “Vic and I think she killed Lorenzo.”
“And the chocolate was her first try?” Webb asked.
“Yeah.”
“Can you prove it?”
Erin and Vic glanced at one another.
Webb sighed. “That’s a no.”
“Not yet,” Erin corrected him.
“And the drug bust is just a distraction from the homicide,” he said.
“We could use it as leverage,” Erin suggested.
“We could,” Webb agreed, “if Paulie knew anything useful about the poison. But I don’t think he does.”
“I don’t mean leverage on him,” she said. As she said it, she felt dirty inside. There were times being a cop didn’t feel all that different from being a gangster. “I mean Nina.”
