The Striver

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘My father talkin’ about me again?’

  Drago’s answer stuck in his throat at the sight of Jill Kelly perched on the couch, her long legs folded beneath her. Jill wore one of her boyfriend’s T-shirts, the T-shirt big enough to pass for a nightgown. Even without makeup and her hair only vaguely brushed, she was stunning. The black hair, the midnight-blue eyes, the pale Irish complexion, the insolent tilt of her head. Oh, yeah, Boots had finally bitten off more than he could chew.

  ‘Hey,’ he muttered, suddenly aware of his sweat-soaked track suit. Purple, of course.

  ‘This is Frankie Drago,’ Joaquin said. ‘Frankie, meet Jill Kelly. Detective Jill Kelly, as she likes to be called.’

  Jill nodded before returning to her morning coffee. She knew all about Frankie Drago, knew he’d been to jail for killing his sister and knew that he and Boots had been friends since high school. Knew, also, that Frankie had become a kind of informal snitch.

  Boots made his appearance a moment later, wearing his suit pants and a white shirt open at the neck. ‘Frankie,’ he said, his tone cheerful, ‘you come right from the shower?’

  Boots was in a good mood. Jill’s mother had agreed to enter a rehab program, the first weeks to be spent in-residence. He and Jill would drive her from NYU Medical Center to her place of confinement in the Bronx as soon as they finished breakfast. That would free up Jill to guard his body full time.

  ‘I’m killin’ two birds with one stone,’ Frankie said. ‘Doin’ my run and doin’ a favor for a friend.’

  ‘And who would that be?’

  Frankie turned to Jill. ‘Does he do this to everybody? Or am I a special case?’

  The questions drew a smile from Jill, but no response. The woman had the eyes of a professional poker player, always busy, alert for a tell.

  ‘Let’s take a walk,’ he told Boots. ‘It’s nice out.’

  ‘So?’ Boots asked as they strolled down Newell Street.

  ‘So, I been hearing things. On and off, from certain people.’

  ‘Like?’

  The bookmaker shook his head. ‘What’s the matter with you, Boots? Why did you fuck with these guys?’

  ‘They were interfering in my investigation. Still are, for that matter.’

  ‘You’re so full of shit. Look, all the time I’ve known you, from back when we were kids, you were always careful. Angles, that’s what you were about. Now you’re buttin’ heads with a guy who’ll kill you in a minute. Like some mountain sheep with his balls in an uproar. I don’t get it, Boots. I don’t.’

  Boots had already heard this many times, from his son and his father. But he liked the bit about the sheep crashing their heads together. The point – in the sheep’s case – was to impress a lady. To the victor belongs the spoils. Or at least one part of the spoils’ anatomy. But his game was more complicated. First, he had Jill. Not the beautiful woman Frankie imagined bedding. Detective Littlewood’s Jill Kelly was a walking insurance policy.

  ‘Frankie, if you came here to lecture me on my mid-life crisis, consider your mission accomplished.’

  ‘No, it’s more than that. You remember askin’ me to keep my ears open, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Well, two things I’m hearin’ that you need to know. First, the man who shot Silvy Mussa wore a rosary with colored beads and a skull instead of a crucifix at the end. You know, like that bullshit gang in the projects, Los …’

  ‘Los Afligidos. The Afflicted.’

  ‘The afflicted? What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s a cry for help from a small group of Ecuadoran kids surrounded by large, powerful gangs.’

  Frankie took a step back. ‘Pardon me if I puke.’

  They walked in silence for a minute, until Boots’s patience wore thin. ‘So, what else?’ he asked.

  ‘Johnny’s not gonna retaliate against you. His kid talked him out of it.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Because they decided that you’re playing Johnny for a sucker. Like you want Johnny to take a shot at you and they’re not gonna fall into the trap. Also, Johnny’s people are spreading the word that Johnny took care of the scumbags responsible for Carlo’s death, that he evened the score and now it’s back to business as usual.’

  Boots considered the implications for a moment before speaking. ‘How do you know this?’

  That produced a quick flush. ‘I got it from Johnny, himself.’ Drago shrugged. ‘What could I say, Boots? He knows that we know each other. It’s not like I could refuse.’

  ‘Do you think he’s playin’ it straight?’

  ‘What I think, Boots, is that he’ll bide his time. Maybe he’ll eventually forget. Maybe he won’t. But for right now, you don’t have to worry.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Boots collected Jill and they headed out under rapidly darkening skies. More rain, just what he needed. But the gloom definitely complemented the first task of the day. He and Jill were to pick up Jill’s mom at the hospital and transport her to a rehab facility in the South Bronx. Boots found himself wishing the rush-hour traffic would intensify, though it was already horrific. Last night, when he asked Jill if she wanted him to come along, her quick assent surprised him. He’d expected an out-of-hand refusal. Had counted on it, in fact.

  The two hours Boots spent minding the car while Jill arranged the discharge didn’t help. He listened to the radio for a while, a call-in sports show, but the news was bad. The Steinbrenner family was sticking to their austerity pledge. Rather than acquiring new talent in the free-agent market, they were hemorrhaging talent. Cano, Granderson, Andy Pettitte and the greatest closing pitcher in major league history, Mariano Rivera. Gone, baby, gone. Along with his hopes for next season. Boots shut off the radio with an hour to go, figuring he’d be better entertained by the crash of a jackhammer pounding the asphalt a block away.

  With all that time to think, Boots should have been prepared for the woman in the wheelchair, but he wasn’t. Boots had been in the hospital and he knew you were supposed to ride to the front door in a wheelchair. After that, you were on your own, assuming you could walk without falling down, which Theresa Kelly obviously couldn’t.

  Theresa Kelly was fifty-five years old, according to her daughter, but she looked much older to Boots. Even more, she looked tired, someone who’d simply worn down, crushed by her burdens, self-made or not. The whites of her eyes were filmed with yellow, her skin as well.

  Boots watched Jill guide her mother into the back seat, then slide in beside her and close the door. When she settled against the seat, her mother spoke up.

  ‘Jill?’ her mother said. ‘Please introduce us.’

  ‘This is my mother, Boots, Theresa Kelly. And this, Mom, is my partner, Boots Littlewood.’

  For the first couple of miles, as they headed north on First Avenue, Boots concentrated on the heavy traffic. The Kellys remained silent behind him, their expressions equally grim. This was the end game, an inevitable stop on the express Theresa Kelly had been riding for many years, maybe the last stop. Theresa Kelly was far too sick to enter an ordinary rehab facility. She needed skilled nursing care and the only site in New York that provided it to recovering alcoholics and addicts, Citizens Rest, was itself housed inside one of the largest nursing homes in the city.

  Boots piloted the Taurus straight up First Avenue, through Midtown, the Upper East Side and Harlem, to the Willis Avenue Bridge. He was halfway across the Harlem River when Theresa Kelly spoke up.

  ‘My husband was a policeman, a detective,’ she said. ‘Did Jill tell you?’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  Boots glanced in the rear-view mirror. Theresa Kelly’s hand was shaking, a steady tremble that Jill smothered by taking her mother’s hand in her own.

  ‘Do you know what’s so very interesting?’ Theresa asked.

  ‘I don’t,’ Boots said.

  ‘How someone can be so far away and so present at the same time.’

  ‘Like a circle
. Sometimes I think of my mother that way. There are times when she seems to fade, and maybe I don’t think about her for a couple of weeks. But then she’s right there with me, as if she never died.’

  Jill laughed. ‘This isn’t the end,’ she said, her tone firm. ‘It’s the beginning. Only a fool would see it any other way.’

  ‘Even if it is another way?’ Theresa asked her daughter.

  ‘Especially if it’s another way. I mean, if the reality turns out to be shit, you can at least enjoy the fantasy.’

  ‘Language, Jill. Language.’

  Citizens Rest offered no surprises. A massive white-brick cube broken by windows and doors, it took up an entire block of Longwood Avenue just off Southern Boulevard. The home, like every other nursing home in the city, made do with Medicaid reimbursement rates that did not allow for proper staffing, much less frivolous decoration. Boots knew the inside would be nearly as barren as the home’s exterior and he was more than happy to be told to watch the car while Jill handled the paperwork.

  The drizzle had turned to a steady rain by the time Jill returned an hour later. She motioned Boots to slide over and got in behind the wheel, her attitude brusque. Do it or else.

  ‘They threw me out,’ she said, ‘and I won’t be able to visit for at least two weeks. I need something to do and driving is the only game in town.’

  Boots maintained a somber expression. He even nodded wisely, as though the prospect of two uninterrupted weeks with Jill Kelly wasn’t the best news he’d heard in months. Guarding his precious body by day, in his bed at night. Thank you, Lord.

  Or maybe not the Lord, who, if Boots remembered right, frowned on fornication.

  ‘Remind me again,’ Jill said. ‘What are we doing today?’

  ‘We’re doing the one job every cop on the force looks forward to.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Random canvassing in a cold downpour. And you better turn the wipers up to high if you don’t plan on killing the both of us.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Surveillance? Turning the tables on the cops? The idea had a nice ring to it when Teddy Winuk set out that morning. Do unto others what they would do unto you, only do it first. Like putting a tracking device on the big cop’s piece-of-shit Ford Taurus. Teddy glanced to his left, at the image on Shurie’s laptop, a little yellow car moving along a map that covered six or seven square blocks of the city. Nice.

  Unfortunately, Teddy’s euphoria was short-lived. Never renowned for his patience, he quickly discovered that covert surveillance was as boring an activity as human existence had to offer. After making a quick stop at NYU Medical Center, Littlewood had shut down the Taurus by a fire hydrant on 39th Street. There, an hour later, it remained.

  Parked on the next block, Teddy felt like a coiled jack-in-the-box. Somebody open the lid. Please. He text-messaged his associates, only to find them already pursuing their interests like the dependable earners they were. Shurie had found a buyer for the hijacked refrigerators and was in the process of making delivery. Recep was doing collections in Canarsie and Howard Beach. Pablo’s job was a little trickier. As the crew’s Spanish speaker, he’d set up a meeting with a man who claimed to represent a Mexican cartel, La Familia Michoacana. LFM would supply them with marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine, the only issue being whether they could handle the volume.

  As for Mutava … well, Mutava was a big problem. The African communities in New York were tightly knit, with lots of rivalries between clans and nationalities. The Africans weren’t angels, not by any means, but they distrusted outsiders when it came to borrowing money and they rarely used drugs.

  Bottom line, Mutava wasn’t an earner and never would be.

  Teddy had spent a year in a foster care group-home, back when he was eleven. He and Mutava, whose parents were being detained by Immigration, had formed an alliance against the older boys. At one point, Teddy watched Mutava plant a homemade shiv in a kid’s back. Teddy would have been glad to help, but he was busy slamming his aluminum baseball bat into a second boy’s kneecaps.

  If left to himself, Teddy would simply carry Mutava, earner or not. But Teddy had junior partners and they were gung-ho capitalists who insisted that everyone pull his own weight. No exceptions.

  Teddy glanced at the laptop’s screen, then at the rain spattering on the hood of his car. The cop’s Taurus hadn’t moved and the dark skies hadn’t lightened. On impulse, he called Sanda.

  ‘Whatta ya doin’?’

  ‘I was planning trip for groceries, but now with rain …’

  ‘Why don’t you meet me in Manhattan? We’ll ride around together, talk a little more business.’

  Was he asking Sanda? Or was he ordering her? Teddy could sense the wheels turning in Sanda’s brain. Finally, she said, ‘Where are you?’

  Twenty minutes later, while Sanda was still en route, Littlewood’s Taurus moved off. Teddy called Sanda to find she was in a gypsy cab, stuck at the entrance to the Williamsburg Bridge.

  ‘Nothing moves, Teddy. I am thinking the bridge is closed off.’

  ‘Then tell the driver to turn around. I can’t wait anymore.’

  Careful to remain two blocks behind, Teddy trailed the cop, his girlfriend and some old lady to a nursing home in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. They were taking the old lady out of the car when Teddy passed.

  Teddy didn’t have to be told that hanging around this particular neighborhood wasn’t a good idea. He could smell the hostility. Meanwhile, the little car on the monitor had moved to Fox Street where it remained, motionless. Teddy, unable to contain himself, decided to make sure the detective was still inside the car.

  Littlewood had a newspaper propped on the steering wheel when Teddy came past, a tabloid. He seemed oblivious to any threat, probably because of the rain. The few pedestrians on the sidewalk hustled right along, even the ones with umbrellas. If some few were predators, they weren’t looking for prey.

  Resigned now, Teddy made a right at the next intersection. He found a parking place and shut down the engine, only to have the windshield fog over. For the next few seconds, he watched a city bus swim across the streaked glass. Then he started the car and flicked the wipers on. Even so, the image through his windshield was blurry, ditto for the side windows, and you couldn’t make out anyone’s face. It was a perfect day for a hit. Come up on the detective with the side window rolled down, pull to a stop and lean across the seat. Bang, bang, bang. Simple as that. And Teddy already had the gun, a .40 caliber Colt tucked away in a hidden compartment beneath the center console.

  Teddy made a valiant attempt to dismiss the idea out of hand. He’d been telling himself to stop acting on impulse for a long time. This was just another example of his inability to discipline himself. If he didn’t want to spend most of his life in a cage, he had to limit his risk, his exposure. He needed to start thinking long-term. Ten years from now, would it make a difference whether the cop lived or died?

  The argument failed to convince him. First, Littlewood spent most of his time in the company of his girlfriend, by far the more dangerous of the two. Now he was alone. Second, given the old lady and the nursing home, the cop was probably off duty, which would make him less cautious, especially this far from home. Third, it was a half-block from Fox Street to Longwood Avenue, two blocks to Bruckner Boulevard, and maybe six blocks to the eastbound Bruckner Expressway. He would be over the Throgs Neck Bridge and into Queens long before the cops responded.

  Teddy made a second run along Fox Street, looking for security cameras. He didn’t find any attached to the low-rise apartment buildings on either side of the road. No surprise. The South Bronx was poverty heaven and rents were minimal, as were the services provided by landlords. Teddy made the right onto Longwood Avenue, a commercial street lined with shops. Most of the shops had cameras mounted above their doors, but that didn’t bother Teddy. The two-way road was six lanes wide. If he swung out into the center lane, no camera would record his l
icense plate, even assuming one or two picked up his car.

  Teddy was reaching for the keys in the ignition when the little car on the map started to move, its initial surge signaled by a particularly irritating beep, beep, beep. Teddy paused long enough to draw a deep breath. Was he disappointed? Relieved? His cell began to ring before he framed an answer.

  ‘Hey, boss,’ Pablo said, ‘I believe we have a positive situation here that needs your blessing.’

  ‘Where?’

  The intersection Pablo named, Stillwell Avenue and Avenue P, was out in the ass end of Brooklyn, about a million miles from the South Bronx. But postponing the trip was a risky proposition, at best. La Familia had put an acceptable offer, in terms of price and volume, on the table. Now Teddy’s presence was necessary to close the deal. But Teddy Winuk wasn’t ready to abandon his project. He’d been close, very close, close enough to taste victory on the tip of his tongue. With a little luck, he’d close the deal before the end of the day.

  ‘Set something up for later,’ he said. ‘Maybe over the weekend or early next week.’

  ‘Jeez, boss …’

  ‘I’m in the Bronx, Pablo, and there are ten flooded highways between me and you. So give the fellas my apologies, but I’m not gonna make it this afternoon. I got other things to do.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  It was after one o’clock when Boots and Jill finally reached the intersection of Roosevelt and Elmhurst Avenues in the Jackson Heights section of Queens County. This was where Shoona had delivered an unspecified amount of heroin to her battered friend, Corry. Boots took in the pizza shop, Solliano Sicilian, where the pair, according to Shoona, made contact. He and Jill were standing beneath the elevated subway tracks on Roosevelt Avenue, sharing a single umbrella. The rain, now merely steady, had begun to slacken.

  Like every other New York cop, Boots and Jill had paid their dues on the street. There was no jumping from the Academy to a cushy job behind a desk, no matter how powerful your connections. You were assigned to Patrol when you graduated, which meant that you worked in every weather. A blizzard on the way? A hurricane? You didn’t get to hunker down in front of your flat-screen, maybe with a quart of beer and a giant bag of corn chips at your elbow. Off-duty cops were called into work during weather-related emergencies, while overtime was mandatory for those still on duty.