Boots shut down abruptly. The kid needed a little time now, time to consider his possibilities. Teddy wasn’t stupid. Boots hadn’t said a word about the woman they were both looking for in Jackson Heights. A ray of hope?
‘Am I under arrest?’ Teddy finally asked.
‘No, but you will be soon.’
‘On what charge?’
‘What do think? Spitting on the sidewalk? Littering? You’ll be charged with the premeditated murder of Carlo Pianetta. I’m asking you where you want to go with that.’
Teddy finally smiled, a tight smile, but one that spoke of his intention to communicate. ‘How ‘bout home and to bed?’
‘That’s good. But I was thinkin’ you might want to get your side on the record. How you stumbled upon a rape in progress, how you took steps to rescue the victim the only way you knew how. Afterwards, who knows? You acted on instinct when you pulled the trigger and you acted on instinct when you ran away. The main thing is that you didn’t harm Carlo’s victim, even though she could probably identify you. You let her live.’
Teddy opened the Pepsi and one of the bags. He shoved a handful of chips into his mouth and washed them down. ‘Are you recording this?’ he asked.
‘No, Teddy. The evidence is stacked against you and we don’t need to play games. Everything you say is off the record until you decide otherwise.’
‘Then tell me what happened to this woman you claim that I rescued.’
‘She’s not cooperating, at least for the present.’
‘What about the future?’
‘If she’s subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, she’ll have to appear. What she’ll do if she’s put under oath is anybody’s guess. But you’re the one who needs her, not us. All we have to do is convince a jury that you shot Carlo. Why? Because you and Carlo were fellow criminals and you were at odds with him. This we can also prove.’
The two men sat in silence for the next several minutes while Teddy finished the chips and his soda. ‘What’s gonna happen to Sanda?’
‘She’ll be given a green card and relocated. To California or Florida, if she has her way. Sanda hates the cold.’ Boots laughed. ‘Meanwhile, her heart could’ve been sculpted from ice.’
‘It’s not her fault, not really.’ Teddy stared down at the table for a minute. ‘I mean, she warned me, but I didn’t listen. And if I did take a gun when I left her place, which I’m not sayin’ I did, I wouldn’t have let her see me do it if I expected to run into Carlo ten minutes later.’
‘How’s that tune go?’ Boots said. ‘Bad luck and trouble, follow me all my days?’
‘The punch you don’t see coming is the one that knocks you out.’
‘Like you never expected us to recover the gun?’
‘More like I know you were lyin’ when you told me you found DNA on it.’
‘Is that because you wiped it down before you tossed it in the creek?’
Boots felt the tension lift as both men laughed. Exactly as he’d hoped. Teddy was grasping at straws, though he didn’t know it.
‘So, whatta ya think I’ll get?’ Teddy asked. ‘If I’m convicted?’
‘If you go to trial? Or if you take the plea bargain?’
‘If I take the plea.’
‘Manslaughter with a five-year sentence. You’ll probably do three.’ Boots leaned over the table and let his voice drop to a whisper, as though he was about to reveal a secret. Which, in fact, he was.
‘But the state is the least of your problems, Teddy.’ Boots let that sink in before continuing. ‘The hit on Carlo was big-time news, which you’d have to expect, him bein’ a known gangster caught with his pants down. So, there’s no hidin’ the fact that we closed out the case by arresting you. You hear me? Once I start the booking process, the New York Police Department’s Division of Public Information will notify every reporter and news agency listed in its computerized files. And the media will come, Teddy. They’ll come by the hundreds and they’ll be standing outside when you get to star in your own perp walk. Now, I could put a coat over your head, so the photographers don’t get a shot of your face, but somehow I don’t think what’s left of the Pianetta crew is gonna be fooled. They got lots of trouble these days, between the hits on Carlo, Johnny and the Rock, the cops busting their operations and strivers like you muscling in. Guaranteed, they’re lookin’ for someone to blame.’
Boots straightened up. Teddy‘s features had squeezed together as Boots explained what should have been obvious. Once Teddy’s name was out there, his life would be on the line every minute of every day. And it didn’t matter whether he spent those days on the streets or on Rikers Island awaiting trial.
Jill Kelly entered the room and took a seat to Winuk’s right, as before. When she spoke, it was obvious that she’d been listening. ‘You’re a smart boy, Teddy. You’ve got an Associate’s degree – in business, no less – and you kept your grades up all the way through. But now here you are, trapped in a corner with no way out. How do you explain that?’
Teddy rallied at that point, motivated, probably, by Jill’s contempt. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘We’re recruiting you, Teddy.’
‘What?’
Jill crossed her legs, then lit a cigarette. She offered the pack to her prisoner. ‘Want one?’
Teddy shook his head.
‘The way I see it, you’ve got two choices. First, you can ask for protective custody and hope nobody gets to you. But that means twenty-three-and-a-half hours a day by yourself in a cage for at least the next four or five years. And even assuming that you’re not picked off on your way to your half-hour of exercise, you still have to ask yourself what’s gonna happen when you’re released. You’ll be on parole, so you can’t just disappear, and Tony Pianetta’s not likely to forgive and forget.’
‘What’s the second choice?’
‘I think you know.’
‘You want me to rat on someone?’
‘No, Teddy, we want you to become a permanent rat.’ Jill laughed. ‘But if you like, you can try thinkin’ of yourself as a double agent. You don’t have a lot of time, by the way.’
The door opened to admit Captain Serge Karkanian, accompanied by a detective sergeant named D’Shawn Robinson. Short and barrel-chested, Robinson had the pitiless eyes of a drill sergeant.
‘Theodore Winuk, meet your future.’ Boots repressed a smile. The wheels in Teddy’s head were already turning, with every possibility he imagined preferable to a bullet through the back of his skull. ‘Two things to consider before me and my partner say goodbye. First, there’s no statute of limitations on a homicide. We can take you off the street ten years from now. Second, there’s no statute of limitations on the kind of Sicilian revenge likely to be enacted if I leak your name to Anthony Pianetta. Which, if you try to fuck us over, I will surely do.’
FIFTY-ONE
‘I don’t know,’ Boots told Jill as he put the Taurus in gear and headed off. ‘I mean, it’s only a week till Christmas and I’d give anything to have my mother home.’
They were on their way to the Bronx, their immediate goal to pick up Theresa Kelly, who was being released from the rehab unit at Citizen’s Rest. Maybe she was sober now, but there was no healing a cirrhotic liver and the woman was still very sick.
Jill and Boots were rapidly approaching the end of their mandatory medical leaves. The idle time had been rough on Boots, his only two consolations the weight room and the wounded Jill Kelly. He couldn’t wait to get back to work. And there was plenty of work to do, according to Cletis Small, who occasionally stopped by for lunch.
The story Detective Small consistently related was more or less the story Boots had been anticipating since he learned of Johnny Piano’s murder. A dozen crews, including Teddy Winuk’s, were vying to occupy the sudden void and the competition was increasingly turning violent. He had his work cut out for him.
Boots was still weighing various lines of attack when Jill spoke up. ‘I had a liver biopsy
last week,’ she said, instantly driving all consideration of the future from her lover’s awareness. ‘To see if my liver was a match for my mother’s. It is, as it turns out.’
‘What does that mean?’ As far as Boots knew, transplanted livers always began their journey inside a cadaver.
‘It means I can donate a piece of my liver, Boots. To keep my mother alive.’
‘I didn’t know that was possible.’
Boots kept his disappointment to himself. Jill had undergone a biopsy without letting him know, another barrier he’d failed to overcome. Meanwhile, she was confiding in him now and he settled behind the wheel. Jill would proceed at her own pace, if at all.
New York was in the middle of an early cold spell and the temperature was in the upper twenties as they made their way from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Skies were clear and the sun bright, perhaps by way of compensation. The view of midtown Manhattan from the crest of the Kosciusko Bridge was stunning, every edge sharp. The spire of the Empire State Building seemed to pierce the sky, a spike into flesh.
‘They’re going to spit him out eventually,’ Jill said. ‘You know that, right?’
Boots ignored the change of subject. ‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Teddy Winuk. I’ve seen for myself how OCCB uses registered informants. They’ll rent him out to other agencies, favor for favor, one of yours for one of mine. Narcotics, Vice, the DEA and the FBI, everybody takes a turn. Then one day he’ll get arrested and find out that he has no friends.’
‘I have plans for him, too,’ Boots said. ‘I may not be able to go after Winuk directly, but I can target his operations and his associates. I mean to drive him out of the Six-Four. What OCCB does with him after that is none of my business.’
‘What makes you think you’re going back to the Six-Four?’
The question was pertinent, though Boots preferred not to think about it. Tomorrow morning, he and Jill would present themselves to Brooklyn Borough Command for assignment. Cops were usually returned to their home units after a brief medical leave. But not always.
They drove in silence for a time, until Boots tapped his finger against the steering wheel. Despite his best effort, the quiet was too much for him. ‘What’s the latest on Corry Frisk? Any news?’
Like Boots, Jill had remained in touch with several colleagues. One, Violet Hamilton, sent Jill text messages whenever something new developed.
‘Corry’s standing pat, which is exactly what I’d do in her situation. And by the way, Karkanian’s somehow decided that Corry and Tommy Frisk had nothing to do with the Fort Greene homicides. He’s looking at a Sicilian crew from New Jersey.’
‘Tell me they’re not headed by a man named Tony Soprano.’
Jill laughed. ‘For jerks like Karkanian, the mob is still about people with vowels at the end of their names. OCCB doesn’t have a single one of the Mexican cartels under investigation and we know they operate in New York.’
An hour later, Boots found a parking space next to a fire hydrant and pulled in. He put the car in park, slid the seat back and reached for a paper bag. The discharge process at Citizen’s Rest would take an hour, at least, and he’d brought coffee and a Daily News along. As a matter of habit, he checked the Ford’s rear-view and two side mirrors to make sure they were properly aligned. This was not something he would have done a month before.
‘When they take out part of your liver,’ Jill said, ‘it’s not a small part. They take nearly half.’ She paused long enough to button her coat. ‘But you want to hear something funny? It doesn’t matter, because your own liver grows back.’ She reached for the door, but then dropped her hand to her lap. ‘You want to hear something else that’s funny?’
Boots took a red thermos bottle out of the bag and unscrewed the top. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I could use a chuckle.’
‘The surgeon, Dr Sugarman? He won’t do the surgery unless Mom stays sober for at least six months. Sugarman’s polite, so you have to read between the lines. After that it gets simple. Why take all the risks if she’s going to drink herself to death anyway?’
‘The risks to who?’
‘What?’
‘The risks, Jill. To you or your mother?’
‘To me, of course.’ This time Jill pulled the door handle, releasing the lock. ‘Sugarman forced me to look at pictures of the surgery. He said that he wanted my informed consent to be fully informed. Boots, they start the cut under your breastbone, then sweep around below your ribs on both sides. The first thing when I saw the pictures, I was reminded of the Y-cut that pathologists use. And I also knew, before Sugarman said a word, that I’d have a scar as thick as a clothesline.’ Jill hesitated for a moment, then looked at Boots from the corner of her eye. ‘Would you still love me, Boots,’ she asked, ‘if I made you count the stitch marks with your fingertips? Blindfolded?’
Boots laughed a bit too long, but just a bit. The woman’s façade was bulletproof. What was happening underneath was anyone’s guess. He watched Jill push the door open and put one foot on the curb.
‘Here’s what worries me the most, Boots. I’ll be laid up for the next ten weeks. No lifting anything over ten pounds, and no gun range, either. I think I’ll go mad.’
‘Does that mean it’s going to happen?’
‘I haven’t decided yet, and I’m not going to, not until I’m convinced that mom’s gonna stay sober. According to Sugarman, she has a two-in-three chance of being alive in five years if she receives a piece of my liver. That probability falls to zero if she doesn’t have a transplant.’
Thirty minutes after Jill disappeared, Boots lifted his eyes from the newspaper to check his mirrors. His timing was perfect and he watched a familiar Lincoln double-park behind his Taurus, watched Michael Shaw’s bodyguard open the Lincoln’s rear door, watched the Chief of Detectives emerge. Bathed in sunlight, Shaw looked more sallow than ever, and if his ivory-handled cane was mostly for show, he leaned on it nonetheless.
Though Boots made a conscious effort to control himself, he was annoyed enough to wait until Shaw tapped the cane against the side window before he popped the locks.
Shaw lowered himself into the front seat and arranged the cane between his feet. He said nothing as his bodyguard eased the door shut and walked back to the Lincoln, finally positioning himself on the curb side facing his boss. Boots took a moment to admire the man’s dedication. He wore only a suit and it was very cold.
‘I hope you don’t mind our having this conversation in your car, Boots.’ Shaw stared out through the windshield. ‘I’m becoming senile, you see, and I can’t remember whether I bugged my own Lincoln.’
‘Does that mean you want this conversation to be private?’
‘I do, Boots.’ Shaw gave it five seconds before speaking again. ‘You defied me, you and Jill both, and it doesn’t matter if the story had a happy ending. I have to do something.’
Boots glanced at each of the mirrors, then back through the windshield. ‘Crawling’s not part of my game plan,’ he said. ‘In case that’s what you’re after.’
‘It’s not.’ Shaw leaned forward onto his cane.
‘Then …?’
‘Can’t you do better than this? You made $92,000 last year.’ Shaw swept the car’s interior with his eyes. ‘Or did you lose too much betting the Yankees with a felon named Frankie Drago?’
Boots rolled with the punches. Did they have proof? Did Frankie Drago, the only man who could provide that proof, give a statement to Internal Affairs? Boots refused to believe it. This was about intimidation, as if the job didn’t have enough leverage.
‘I did my time on the street like every other cop,’ Shaw said. ‘I earned my gold shield after four years on patrol and I started my detective life in the north Bronx. For the next twenty years, I either worked the streets or supervised detectives who worked the streets. I learned to separate talented detectives from worker bees along the way, purely as a matter of self-defense. Do you understand? I learned to recognize talent and to use ta
lent to my advantage, always reserving my best detectives for highly publicized cases that must be closed. They never failed me.’
Boots checked the mirrors again, sighting the bodyguard. The man was shifting his weight from foot to foot and his breath steamed the air. As if his boss gave a shit.
‘Is this the carrot?’ Boots asked. ‘The carrot before the stick?’
‘You know, I wasn’t kidding a few weeks ago when I said you’re becoming just like her. I mean, Jill, of course. And by the way, Jill’s going to the Academy where she’ll be a shooting instructor. As I understand it, she’ll be assigned to improve the scores of the least talented cadets.’
Boots considered the prospect for a moment, then shrugged. The Academy’s shooting program wasn’t a bad spot for Jill. At least she’d get to practice after working hours.
‘And, you, Boots, are being promoted to Detective First Grade. You put down Carlo’s murderer, dealt with Stefano Ungaro and protected my niece, as I asked. You deserve to be a hero.’
‘I knew the turf,’ Boots said, recalling Open Circle and the Navy Yard stroll. ‘I knew where to look first. Not that I accomplished anything. Winuk’s still working my streets.’
‘Your streets?’ Shaw sounded his wheezy laugh. ‘You presume too much. The streets were there before you were born and they’ll be there when you rot. If anything, it’s the other way around. The streets possess you, not you the streets. But you’ll be happy to know that you’re going to get what you want. Tomorrow, assuming we reach an understanding, you’ll be reassigned to the Six-Four.’
Boots recalled Ronald Reagan’s debate line: there you go again. The hoop was rising. All he had to do was jump through it. But Shaw was right about one thing. Throughout his career, he’d made an effort to minimize risk. Now he missed it.
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