If so, Corry intended to go down fighting. For once in her miserable fucking life.
Shoona was seated alone at a table, munching on a slice, when Corry stepped inside Solliano Sicilian, a pizza shop on Elmhurst Avenue only feet from the subway stop.
‘Girl,’ she said, ‘what happened to you?’ When Corry didn’t reply, she added, ‘Like that, huh? Well, I expect you’re in a hurry, so let’s move on.’
Shoona carried the remains of her slice into an intermittent drizzle. She hesitated, then raised a butterfly-festooned umbrella big enough to shield a minivan. Drawing Corry into the umbrella’s shadow, she passed over a Ziploc bag containing twenty glassine envelopes.
‘You been to a doctor?’ she asked.
‘Fuck the doctor,’ Corry said. ‘I got my medicine right here.’
ELEVEN
By the time Boots and Jill finally headed out, at four o’clock, the skies above were rapidly darkening and it had begun to drizzle. It would rain hard that night, a cold, November rain certain to leave the city’s many homeless residents scurrying for cover. Doorways, awnings, subway cars, anything but a shelter system that ran by a simple rule long associated with prison life. The strong collect, the weak pay.
In no hurry, Boots drove his ancient Taurus along North 12th Street, the ball fields of McCarren Park to his right, a series of construction sites to his left. The Northside was changing fast. The three-story homes that once dominated had been torn down, replaced within months by sleek apartment buildings with floor-to-ceiling windows. The developers were already selling condos at prices no one he knew could afford.
For the most part, Boots avoided the pity parties his neighbors regularly attended. Williamsburg and Greenpoint had undergone many changes over the years, one group muscling in, another moving out. Poles, Jews, Irish, Italians, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans had fought too many turf battles to count. But if the actors had come and gone, the two neighborhoods had remained working class throughout. No longer. Hundreds of people had been displaced and dozens of businesses uprooted to provide housing for young professionals who’d never work in the small factories and warehouses that provided the natives with a paycheck. But they just might buy up those factories in order to build even more unaffordable housing.
There was nothing to be done about the situation, of this Boots was certain. Here, too, the strong and powerful devoured the weak and helpless. Boots could only hope that his street wouldn’t be included in the next wave of development. In any event, with Jill Kelly sitting beside him, Boots was content. The smoke curling up from a cigarette didn’t hurt. Nor did that amused look only a step from sultry.
‘Did you have it all planned, Boots?’ Jill asked, her tone playful.
‘All what?’
‘You urged the prosecutor to fight for a high bail after you told Alviro he could rely on you to do exactly the opposite.’
‘I only said that to get his confession.’ Boots was prepared to drop the matter, what with Alviro being in his personal rear-view mirror, but finally relented as he eased the Ford around a truck delivering sheetrock to a construction site. ‘Remember I told you that Alviro cut up the cushions and mattresses in the apartments he trashed?’
‘Sure.’
‘Well he did the cutting with his own knife, one of those combat knives where you can flick out the blade with your thumb. It was found in his pocket when he was picked up. Bad news if someone had come home unexpectedly, which is why I want him off the street for as long as possible. Most burglars don’t carry weapons.’
Jill tossed her cigarette out the window. ‘Bottom line, never trust a cop?’
‘Bottom line, don’t destroy other people’s homes and not expect to pay a high price when you’re finally apprehended. I’ve been after this kid for a long time. The way you saw him this afternoon? Scared out of his little mind? Trust me, the Alviro who spray-painted those walls bears no resemblance to the terrified Alviro trapped in the box. They might as well be unacquainted.’
Boots turned east on Kent Avenue and followed it to Franklyn Street. Behind him, newly erected apartment buildings along the waterfront stretched back to the Williamsburg Bridge. Ahead, squat, flat-roofed cubes built a hundred years ago lined both sides of the road. These buildings, from the grimy brick to the artless graffiti, had yesterday written all over them.
‘You wouldn’t want to tell me where we’re going?’ Jill asked.
Boots answered her question with one of his own. ‘Explain it to me again. What’s your assignment?’
‘I’ve been sent to keep an eye on you while OCCB investigates Carlo’s murder.’
‘Well, you’re doin’ a fine job.’ Boots turned his head to look at her, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘But if OCCB’s handling the investigation, where we’re goin’ doesn’t really matter. Hell, we could go to the movies and nobody would give a damn. Or even notice.’
Jill stared out through the windshield. Having decided to cover his ass, Karkanian had dispatched Jill to spy on Boots. Or maybe his aim was to rid himself of Jill Kelly, a general pain in the ass and a poor detective to boot. Either way, at no time had Captain Karkanian expressed a desire to have Jill and Boots investigate the murder of Carlo Pianetta.
‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’ Jill asked.
‘I locked it in a safe the last time someone took a shot at me. If my memory serves, you were there at the time.’
‘C’mon, Boots, admit it, we had a lot of fun.’ Jill laid her hand on her new partner’s shoulder. ‘Do you remember the time I pretended to be a hooker and you picked me up on the street? Do you remember telling me to get in the backseat? Do you remember … Why Boots, your face is getting all red. Your neck, too. If I didn’t know better, what with the round head and the buzz cut, I’d think I was looking at a giant erection.’
Boots sighed. ‘We’re heading for the crime scene,’ he admitted. ‘I want you to see something before the rain washes it away.’
The sun was all but down by the time Boots pulled to a stop behind a Sixty-Fourth Precinct RMP. Two cops, Louis Fallanga and Lily Bremer sat inside, their mission to protect the scene in case the Crime Scene Unit wanted another shot.
Boots took a flashlight from the trunk of his Taurus, then approached the two cops. ‘You on punishment detail?’ he asked.
‘I’m on overtime and I have a kid who needs braces,’ Lily said. She jerked her chin at Jill, who stood by Boots’s Taurus. ‘That who I think it is?’
‘That’s Jill Kelly.’
‘Crazy Jill. If I remember right, last time the two of you worked together, you nearly got killed.’
‘So did she.’
Boots led Jill into the deep shadows beneath the bridge, past a footing, to where Carlo Pianetta had breathed his last. He played the flashlight’s beam over the trail of blood and tissue that extended outward from where Carlo’s skull, or what was left of it, had once rested.
‘What’d you see this morning?’ he asked.
‘The victim took one to the head.’
‘That’s it?’
‘I spoke to the ME’s investigator. There was just the one wound.’
‘The Death Investigator? You didn’t examine the body yourself?’
‘I took a look, Boots, and like I said, there was just the one visible wound.’
Boots sighed. Jill had never pretended to be a great, or even a competent, detective. Truth be told, she wasn’t cut out to be a cop, and probably wouldn’t have considered the job if she wasn’t descended from a cop family that had deep roots in the NYPD. Or if her father hadn’t been a hero detective who’d given his life for the job.
‘So, what do you think happened to Carlo?’
Jill shook her head. ‘I don’t think I want to play professor-student today, but what with a single shot to the back of the head, it looked like a professional hit.’
‘Except …?’
‘Except that Carlo’s pants and underpants were around his ankles.’
Boots slid the flashlight beam to the left of where Carlo had fallen. It took him several minutes to find what remained of the blood spot he’d discovered earlier. Someone from the Crime Scene Unit had collected most of the blood, but the outline of the stain was still visible.
‘That’s what’s left of a bloodstain that couldn’t have come from Carlo. Like you said, one shot to the back of the skull and the spatter all went in the same direction. When I noticed it, the odd bloodstain, my first thought was that it was deposited by the shooter. But that still wouldn’t explain the pants around the ankles. Plus, the shot was fired from behind Carlo, not from where I found the bloodstain. What I finally did, knowing Carlo Pianetta to be a particularly vicious criminal, was check his hands. The knuckles on both his hands were stained with blood, but they weren’t cut.’
Boots turned away from the crime scene and began to walk back to his car. Jill put the pieces together as she followed. The puzzle wasn’t all that complex anyway. The pants and underwear around the ankles indicated a sexual encounter. The bloodstain and the blood on Carlo’s hands indicated the use of force. But why hadn’t Boots simply said the word rape? Was he being considerate? Early in her teens, Jill had witnessed her father’s murder, then been raped by his killers. Maybe Boots thought she was still fragile, that hearing the word might trigger some kind of PTSD-like response. That was so far from the truth that Jill almost laughed aloud. She’d tracked down the men who killed her father, had enacted the ultimate revenge, understanding all the while that what she wanted most – to alter the past, to bring her father back – could never happen.
‘You’re thinking Carlo was in the act of raping someone?’
‘Someone he’d beaten severely.’
‘And then what? She had a gun, or got hold of his gun?’
‘Carlo wasn’t killed by his victim. The shooter stood behind him and off to one side.’
‘A partner?’
‘Some kind of gang rape? That’s possible, but very unlikely. Given the blood, we have to assume the attack had been going on for some time. If the partner intended to kill Carlo all along, there was no reason to wait. And there’s something else. We can be sure Carlo’s victim wasn’t killed because there’s only the small bloodstain.’
Boots and Jill slid into the Taurus as the first drops of rain began to fall. Within a few seconds, the patter on the roof above their heads grew steady. Jill waited for Boots to start the car, then turn on the lights and the wipers. She watched the wipers trace a greasy trail across the windshield before she spoke.
‘You think she was taken away?’
‘Why? Why not kill her, too? Look, I could be completely wrong, but you have to start somewhere and I’m starting with the most likely explanation. Somebody happened along and caught Pianetta in the act. Though he took the opportunity to make the world a better place by sending Carlo’s soul to hell, he had enough humanity to spare Carlo’s victim, who then left the scene.’
Jill poked Boots in the ribs. She laughed as Boots flinched. The man was still ticklish. ‘I thought cops didn’t believe in coincidence.’
‘Jill, if coincidences didn’t happen, there wouldn’t be a word for them.’
Boots put the Ford in gear and pulled away from the curb. ‘This case,’ he said, ‘we don’t have a realistic chance of closing it. First thing, in a normal homicide investigation, you interview family and friends. Did the victim have any enemies? How’d he get along with the missus? Was he feuding with the wrong neighbor? But that approach is out because Carlo’s whole life revolved around the Pianetta crew, none of whom will give us the time of day.’
‘We could look for the woman. If she was badly beaten, she must have sought treatment.’
‘That’s exactly what I intend to do.’
TWELVE
‘I’m surprised you haven’t popped the big question,’ Boots said as he turned onto McGuinness Boulevard.
‘You talking marriage, Boots?’
‘I’m asking why, if we’re right about what Carlo was doing just before he met the end he so richly deserved, the victim didn’t report the assault. I’m asking why, since her attacker was dead, she didn’t call for an ambulance.’
Boots reached under the seat and withdrew a bottle of Windex. He rolled down the window, stuck his arm out and sprayed Windex across the windshield.
‘Better,’ he said. ‘Now I can see where we’re going.’
‘Which is where?’
‘Woodhull Memorial Hospital, also known as Hell On Earth. I’m hoping Carlo’s vic went to their emergency room.’
Jill stared out through the clean windshield at a young couple huddled under a massive umbrella. In no hurry, they ambled along, arms around each other’s waists. The girl had a cell phone in her free hand and she held up its glowing screen so her companion could have a look.
‘I don’t know if you heard, but there are new medical privacy rules in place. You’ll need a warrant to look at medical records and you won’t get one. Not for a fishing expedition.’
‘Sometimes it’s not a matter of askin’ the right question. Sometimes you have to ask the right person. Woodhull is where cops interview victims, and where prisoners are taken if they’re too crazy to be handled in the house.’ Boots paused for a moment, then said, ‘I have a lot of friends at Woodhull.’
Ten minutes later, as they got out of the car, Boots and Jill clipped their badges to the lapels of their coats lest they be mistaken for patients. Or victims.
Woodhull Hospital’s emergency room easily matched Boots’s description. Cacophony first, crying children, scolding mothers, howling crack addicts handcuffed to gurneys. A man standing near the door was giving a passionate address to an audience visible only to himself. A sobbing woman spread her hands before her, a supplicating gesture ignored by the nurses and aides who whizzed past. Several men wandered through the room, jostling other patients, their expressions clearly belligerent.
Underfunded, like every city hospital, Woodhull was located on Broadway, the borderline between Williamsburg and the nearly all-black neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant. Williamsburg’s yuppies avoided Woodhull, as they avoided small, dark bars with Spanish names. Except in dire emergencies, they took their private health insurance to Manhattan’s private hospitals. Woodhull was reserved for Medicaid patients. It was also, by far, the hospital closest to the Pulaski Bridge.
‘This place is crazy,’ Jill observed.
‘You should see it on Saturday night,’ Boots said.
A uniformed hospital cop, a woman, interrupted Jill’s reply. ‘Hey, Boots, you got a minute?’ She kept her eyes on Jill as Boots approached. ‘You don’t mind, I need to speak to you confidentially.’
Boots shook his head. ‘You can speak in front of my partner, Consuela. But first, I have something I want to ask you. Were you on duty Sunday morning?’
‘Yeah, I worked a double on Sunday.’ Consuela’s round face opened into a broad smile. ‘I’m payin’ tuition fees for three kids in Catholic School. Truth be told, with the hours I gotta work, they spend more time with the nuns than with their mother.’
‘I danced that dance with my own kid,’ Boots said. ‘All the way into college. He bought into a business a year ago and now he’s finally livin’ on his own dime. In fact, the little prick makes more than I do.’
Though Consuela laughed, her eyes never stopped moving across the emergency room. This was her realm, this lunacy, and from her point of view, peace reigned in the land.
‘OK, tell me what you want, Boots.’
‘I want to find out if a woman with facial injuries was treated here on Sunday morning sometime after eight o’clock. I’m talkin’ about a serious beating, an obvious beating.’
‘Any race, any age? Gee, Boots, why don’t you make it hard for me?’
‘Sorry, Consuela, that’s the best I can do. So, what was it you wanted to ask me?’
The emergency room door blew open to admit two cops, Sgt. Craig O
’Malley and Boris Velikov. They pushed a limping, handcuffed prisoner ahead of them. Boots waved, but didn’t turn away from Consuela.
‘So?’
‘It’s about my sister’s boy, Julio Vargas. The asshole got himself arrested three days ago for stealin’ a car. It’s killin’ his mother. He’s fifteen.’ Consuela stopped abruptly and drew a deep breath. ‘I’m his godmother,’ she explained. ‘It’s killin’ me, too.’
Boots nodded. He’d worried about Joaquin making a stupid mistake, one that would follow him for the rest of his life, throughout the boy’s high-school years. ‘Where’d this happen, Consuela?’
‘He and his buddy snatched the car on Jewel Street. They didn’t make it to McGuinness Boulevard before they crashed into a stop sign.’
‘Was Julio driving?’
‘No. But the boy who was really driving, a hoodlum named Rafael Quintera, says he was.’
‘So it’s one boy’s word against the other?’ Boots waited for a nod. ‘You wouldn’t know the names of the arresting officers?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Well, I can ask around, but I wouldn’t expect much more than a heads up. It’d be different if Julio hadn’t already been charged. Now it’s mostly up to the prosecutors. And by the way, Consuela, if I hear the kid’s a knucklehead, I won’t lift a finger to help him out.’
Consuela stared into Boots’s eyes for a moment, then turned away. ‘I don’t remember a battered woman comin’ through on Sunday morning, but let me check with the coordinator.’
Left to themselves, Boots and Jill created a small island of calm in the misery around them, a bit of dry land on a flood plain. This was a case of practice makes perfect. Given the amount of time cops spent in emergency rooms during their years on patrol, they either erected floodgates or drowned in the suffering. Just ahead of them, a woman cradled a feverish toddler, his face flushed, his hair soaked with sweat. The bawling child would not be consoled.
The Striver Page 6
