The Striver

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘You don’t think we scared him off?’

  ‘I don’t think Teddy Winuk does fear. But even if he did, the stakes are too big. Twenty-five to life? He’ll try to beat us to the only witness. He has to.’

  ‘And then what?’

  Jill’s question remained with Boots as he and Jill made the short run from the restaurant to Newell Street. Carlo’s victim had been left alive, and not through any mistake. More than just sparing her, the shooter might very well have pulled the trigger in order to save her. So, now that his own liberty was at risk, what would the white knight do if he found the damsel in distress?

  Rather than circle the block for the next hour, Boots parked the Taurus on Calyer Street, a few blocks away from his home. Here the neighborhood was solidly industrial and it was easy to find parking at night if you didn’t mind a little walk. Boots didn’t mind, his thoughts having turned to the hours ahead. As unpleasant as the circumstances were, Jill was truly free for the first time in years and Boots expected to take full advantage.

  The temperature, if anything, had risen, and they walked with their coats thrown over their arms, alert to a danger intensified by the gathering fog. Lost behind windows filmed with condensation, the occupants of the passing cars and vans were little more than blurry shadows. They might have been sitting with their hands in the laps or holding sawed-off shotguns. You had to be ready, as Boots knew from bitter experience, and both cops turned their attention to an approaching vehicle as they neared the front door of Andrew Littlewood’s house. A second later, the door to that house flew open to reveal Stefano Ungaro and the gun he carried in his right hand.

  The epithet Ungaro shouted must have been directed at Boots Littlewood because it described an act Jill could not possible do to her mother. Yet Ungaro fired at Jill Kelly first, pulling the trigger twice in rapid succession.

  The world began to narrow for Boots as the door opened. It shrank until it was too small to include Jill Kelly, who toppled over backwards. It shrank until it grew too small even for Joaquin, who’d been home when Boots called from the precinct. It shrank until a single thought seized his awareness, excluding every other consideration.

  Kill or be killed.

  Boots reached that bottom line in milliseconds, amazed to find himself unafraid. He was thinking clearly, and he’d continue to think clearly as long as he focused on the task before him. His right hand was moving toward the Glock in his shoulder rig before Ungaro pulled the trigger for the first time. The flow seemed utterly natural, a gesture he’d made so many times that no calculation was necessary.

  For the next few seconds, time for Boots moved with the stately grace of a water ballet, and at the speed of light, every second broken into a thousand segments, every second infused with desperate urgency. Yet Boots, far from bewildered, continued to evaluate his options. He knew that he wouldn’t free his gun before Ungaro turned on him, knew it as Ungaro fired his second shot into Jill Kelly. Therefore …

  Boots flipped his trench coat at Ungaro, holding it by the collar so it would flare out as it fell across the man’s right hand and arm. The move caught the gangster by surprise and he hesitated initially as he tried to shake the coat off. When that didn’t work, he pulled the trigger twice. The automatic fired the first time, the bullet ripping past the big cop’s shoulder, but then the hammer snagged on the coat’s fabric.

  There would be no third attempt on Detective Littlewood’s life. Boots leveled his Glock and fired twice at the center of Ungaro’s chest. Although both shots ran high, both ripped into the gangster’s flesh. The first took out a significant chunk of his lower jaw. The second destroyed his right collar bone, leaving him in pain so immediate and overpowering that his pistol dropped from his fingers and he screamed in agony.

  Far from sympathetic, Boots kicked Ungaro’s weapon off the stoop and smashed his Glock into the side of the man’s face. Then he followed Ungaro to the ground and laid the hollow end of the Glock’s barrel on his left eye.

  ‘Don’t shoot him, Boots. I’m alive.’

  ‘Are you wounded?’

  ‘My vest …’ Jill groaned as she pulled herself to her feet. ‘The vest stopped the rounds, but it feels like I broke a couple of ribs.’

  ‘Go inside,’ Boots said, his tone unsympathetic, ‘and check on Joaquin.’

  ‘Don’t kill Ungaro, Boots.’

  The gun didn’t waver. ‘Just do it.’

  As the seconds ticked by, Ungaro made an effort to communicate. But the blood flowing from what was left of his jaw and mouth impeded every word. Later on, Boots was never sure whether Ungaro said ‘Kill me’ or ‘Don’t kill me’. Finally, the door opened behind him.

  ‘I found a note from Joaquin. He went back to his girlfriend. Your father’s not here, either.’

  ‘He’s spending the night with his bride-to-be.’

  Boots finally backed off, rising to his feet. He could hear a police siren on McGuinness Boulevard a few blocks away. He found its rise and fall oddly comforting as he finally turned to his partner. Jill had shrugged out of her blazer and opened her blouse to expose a pair of bullets lodged in the body armor she wore beneath. Her midnight-blue eyes reflected the pain she was in, but there was bewilderment, too. It wasn’t supposed to come out this way.

  ‘You’ll live,’ Boots observed after a moment. ‘Which, by the way, makes us even.’

  THIRTY-NINE

  Teddy Winuk left Kings County Criminal Court at three o’clock in the morning. Despite the obvious setbacks, he felt good. First thing, he hadn’t caved in to the big cop, hadn’t said a word. Second, the arraignment judge, a woman named Li Xiu Ying, had listened to his lawyer’s impassioned plea and dismissed the charges, with the Assistant D.A. barely putting up a fight. Third, Sanda Dragomir was sitting behind the wheel of the Crown Vic when he stepped onto Schermerhorn Street.

  ‘We’re goin’ back to where you picked up the car,’ he said as he slid into the seat beside her. ‘We have work to do.’

  Sanda made a right on Boerum Place, heading for Atlantic Avenue and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

  ‘You have a driver’s license?’ he asked.

  ‘I have license from Ohio. I buy this online, yes?’

  ‘How’d you do that?’

  ‘I buy on website called Silk Road before FBI shut this down. With bitcoins money.’

  Teddy looked at Sanda and grinned. Another unexpected talent, another reason to want her on the Winuk team. ‘I’m impressed,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. Now, I will drive to nearest subway and go home.’

  ‘C’mon, we’re gonna hit a couple of after-hours joints. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Fun? In Jackson Heights?’

  In fact, Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights was lined with businesses catering to Colombians and rumor had it that million-dollar drug deals were routinely cut in its various clubs and restaurants. Jackson Heights was also Shurie Banerjee’s home turf and Teddy knew it well enough to be sure that a beautiful woman on his arm would be the ice-breaker he needed.

  Teddy had made one move before the two cops pinched him. He’d flagged down the delivery boy who spoke to the cops outside Solliano Pizza. A twenty would almost certainly have done the trick, but Teddy, in a generous mood, had flashed a fifty.

  The kid hadn’t hesitated. He described the woman with the broken face and the long-haired man wearing the camo gear, then took the money. Teddy didn’t hesitate, either. He drew the same conclusion Boots and Jill had drawn only an hour before. The search would be for the man, not the woman.

  For all his hyperactive metabolism, Teddy suddenly found himself tired. He leaned back against the seat and closed his eyes, though he didn’t sleep. In his heart of hearts, he knew he should have walked on by when he first heard the woman’s moans. Either that or kill her as well, which he hadn’t wanted to do, and still didn’t.

  ‘Where is it I am going to?’ Sanda asked.

  ‘Roosevelt Avenue, under the el. And take it slow.
I’ve got a long day ahead of me and I could use a little downtime.’

  By six in the morning, when the after-hours clubs shut down, Teddy and Sanda had spoken to three individuals who’d run into the long-haired man in the camo gear. They confirmed that he was ex-military and provided a first name: Tommy.

  ‘Some of these guys,’ a fellow vet explained, ‘they come back different. Tommy’s one of those guys. The kid’s got a hair trigger, which I was real careful not to pull.’

  All three men believed that Tommy lived in the neighborhood. They didn’t know exactly where, but close by.

  Teddy had thought twice before bringing Sanda along. This sort of business didn’t need informed witnesses. But the individuals who’d spoken to them, all men, had spent the first moments of the encounter staring at her breasts. Teddy had watched her play them with her smile, her thick, husky voice, her crazed English. Talk about priming the pump. After a minute or two, their mouths were going a mile a minute.

  ‘I’m gonna put you in a cab,’ Teddy said. ‘Send you home.’

  Sanda looked at him for a minute, her eyes reflecting an odd disappointment. ‘Can we have breakfast first?’

  Teddy grinned. In fact, he was starving. ‘Sure.’

  They found a small coffee shop on Roosevelt Avenue two blocks away. Teddy expected a few questions, maybe a demand for reassurance. But Sanda didn’t ask what they were doing, or why she’d been asked to come along, or why she was being sent home. Instead, she focused on practical matters. She’d met with Shurie, at Teddy’s request, and she believed they could work together. In any event, she was prepared to run drugs from the stash-house in Brooklyn to their customers in Queens. There was a small problem, though. She needed a car, which she couldn’t buy on her own.

  ‘I have Ohio license, yes, which I used once to show police after being stopped on Long Island Expressway. This was good. They give me warning and let me go. But if I use Ohio license to register a car—’

  Teddy raised a hand. If she wanted to register her car in New York, she’d need a New York driver’s license. That wouldn’t be a big deal if the Ohio license was legit, but it wasn’t. Teddy drained his mug and signaled the waiter for a refill.

  ‘Did you talk to Shurie? About the car?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then that’s what you need to do.’ He smiled, deliberately softening his remarks. ‘I don’t want to get involved in the day-to-day mechanics of the operation. That’s why I recruited you in the first place. Shurie? You’ll need his muscle to keep your customers in line, but the truth is that he couldn’t organize a hotdog wagon. Solve problems, Sanda. Solve problems and you’ll always be valuable.’

  FORTY

  It was Jill’s superior, Captain Karkanian, and not Boots who took Ungaro’s attack personally. Acting on his own authority, Karkanian had Johnny Piano yanked from his home, dragged into the Six-Four and locked in an interview room. There he was detained for the next four hours, despite the protestations of Joyce Kipner, superstar lawyer to the mob. The punitive nature of this detention was established before Kipner’s arrival when Karkanian made a little speech about the consequences of attacking police officers.

  ‘We’re gonna hit every street operation you run. We’re gonna flood Amoroso’s construction sites with highly motivated building inspectors. We’re gonna offer a sweet deal to any defendant who can put your ass in a cage, including Ungaro, who’s going to recover. That means you’re fucking dead, Johnny. That means it’s time to buy yourself a coffin.’

  Two hours later, Johnny decided to give an off-the-record statement. This was against the advice of his lawyer, but he did it anyway. The contents were predictable. Johnny had nothing to do with the attack, didn’t know it was going to happen and would have prevented it if he did.

  ‘A man like Ungaro, you kick his teeth in, he’s gonna come back at you. Detective Littlewood might have figured that out before he did the kicking.’

  Boots wasn’t present for any of this. He spent the first three hours after the attack at Woodhull Medical Center while a pair of emergency-room doctors, both young and male, calculated the extent of Jill’s injuries. After a close examination, too close for Boots, they decided that a couple of ribs were either broken or badly bruised. There was no need to determine which because the non-treatment for both was identical. Give it a month and you’ll be good as new.

  Jill’s responses to the doctor’s questions, and to the debriefing conducted by an NYPD Shooting Board following her release, were limited to a series of monosyllabic grunts. Every breath hurt and the lieutenant who conducted the examination was properly sympathetic. The incident, he assured her, was a no-brainer.

  ‘You and Detective Littlewood, you’re heroes,’ he announced. ‘My guess, your partner will be up for a Combat Cross.’

  Chief of Detectives Michael Shaw, Jill’s uncle, had later confirmed that judgment to Boots. ‘You did well, lad, you and Jill both. And that business with your coat? Wonderful, Detective, absolutely wonderful.’

  Jill and Boots weren’t released until after three o’clock in the morning. Both were exhausted, the adrenaline having deserted their bloodstreams hours before. Jill was especially reluctant to speak. Her ribs were on fire and the short walk from the hospital’s entrance to a cab left her drained. But she couldn’t stay silent forever and she knew it. There were things that needed to be said, though not with the cab driver listening. Or in front of Joaquin and Andy, both of whom had returned to Newell Street.

  ‘You saved my life,’ she finally said. She and Boots were standing on the curb outside his door.

  ‘I was only thinking about myself, about surviving. And by the way, just in case you’ve decided that you failed here, if Ungaro hadn’t shot you first, our roles would have reversed, the only difference being that you would’ve killed him.’

  ‘No question,’ Jill said. ‘That’s the way it would have come out.’

  ‘Glad we agree.’ Boots laid his fingers on Jill’s cheek, a gesture she might have resisted at another time. ‘Now ask yourself this. Why did Ungaro shoot you first when I’m the one he came to kill? Unless he heard about what happened at Woodhull after Silvy Mussa got shot. And if that’s the case, then you did protect me, with your reputation, if not with your gun.’

  Jill smiled at that. ‘Does that mean you’re gonna give me your medal?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Boots admitted.

  Boots never really got to sleep that night. His thoughts continued to churn when he closed his eyes, like bingo balls tumbling in a cage. Except there was no one to stop the cage and choose a ball. By six, he’d had enough. He got out of bed, took a quick shower and headed for the kitchen where he made a pot of coffee and toasted a slice of bread. A few minutes later, he carried both into the living room where he found his father asleep in a chair. Andy looked old to his son, old and tired.

  I’ve got nobody but myself to blame, Boots reflected. I knew exactly what I was doing.

  But that wasn’t strictly true. When Boots ran into Ungaro at Open Circle, he’d simply popped from everyday consciousness into his personal red zone. Choosing played no part in the process. Still, if Joaquin had been home last night …

  ‘If I’d been home, the scumbag never would’ve gotten in the house,’ Joaquin announced as he emerged from his bedroom. ‘Not that way.’ Joaquin’s voice woke Andy Littlewood, who groaned as he stretched. An old man’s groan that spoke of stiffened muscles and porous bones.

  This was stereo guilt, which Boots didn’t need, but then he remembered that his son, like most private investigators, had a concealed-weapons permit.

  ‘You’re packing these days, Joaquin?’

  ‘Always a good idea, Boots, when your father’s partnered with a woman named Crazy Jill Kelly. If Ungaro had broken that window when I was home, he wouldn’t have been around when you and Jill arrived.’

  Boots laughed as he walked over to the front window and slid the curtains back a few inches. The reporters had
gone home. Thank you, Lord.

  Jill made her appearance twenty minutes later. She was hurting, but wasn’t about to use codeine or any other narcotic to relieve the pain.

  Boots and Jill had gotten lucky twice. The first time when Ungaro fired into Jill’s vest, instead of her face. The second time when they were interviewed after leaving Woodhull. Clearly out to protect the job, the lieutenant who conducted the interviews had confined his questions to the moment of contact.

  Ungaro emerged from inside the house? Check.

  Ungaro had a gun in his hand? Check.

  Ungaro fired first? Check.

  Ungaro’s bullets hit a member of the force? Check.

  Shooting justified? Check.

  Job off the hook? Double check.

  At no point had either been asked what they were doing before Boots parked the Taurus on Calyer Street. As a result, the very existence of a witness to Carlo Pianetta’s murder remained unknown to OCCB and Captain Karkanian.

  ‘I’m going with you this morning,’ Jill announced, her tone defiant.

  Last night, while still in the emergency room, Jill had called Citizen’s Rest, where her mother was undergoing rehab. She’d fought her way through to the unit’s director, a Ms Hammond, but that was as far as she’d gotten. Theresa Kelly was slated, as were all new residents, to spend the first two weeks of her treatment isolated from outside influence while she detoxed. No media, no visitors.

  ‘The story’s already big time and my name is scheduled for release tomorrow morning,’ Jill had explained. ‘I don’t want my mother to find out by reading the newspapers.’

  ‘First, Detective, your mother isn’t allowed newspapers. Second, your life is not in danger. Third, your mother can leave the facility anytime she wants. She’s not a prisoner. Fourth—’

  Jill hadn’t waited for the fourth reason, or any other reasons. She’d hung up, her frustration obvious. Theresa Kelly’s husband, Jill’s father, had been killed in the line of duty. Now her daughter had been attacked. At the very least, she ought to learn about the attack, along with Jill’s condition, from Jill.