Dancer in the Flames

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘Detective, are you awake?’

  In the time it took Boots to realize that he’d been spoken to, the question was repeated: ‘Detective, are you awake?’

  Ah, yes, perfect, Boots thought. When the man gave you a job, you did it, the condition of a beat-to-shit detective somebody else’s problem. Boots knew he was dealing with another cop even before he opened his good eye.

  ‘Lenny Olmeda,’ the cop said, flashing a detective’s shield. ‘You remember me.’

  ‘Of course, you’re Inspector Corcoran’s secretary.’

  ‘Attaché,’ Olmeda corrected.

  ‘We’re gonna have to make this quick, Lenny. I feel like I was run over by a truck.’

  ‘Yeah, check it out. My job’s to find the truck.’ Short and stocky, Olmeda’s full cheeks were pitted with acne scars and he sported a bandito mustache that curled around his mouth in a manner likely to draw a reprimand if he was still on the street. ‘Can I call you Irwin?’ he asked.

  ‘Boots,’ Boots replied affably, though he was certain that Olmeda was fully aware of his nickname. ‘Everybody calls me Boots.’

  Olmeda took out a little notebook and balanced it on his knee. ‘All right, Boots, why don’t you tell me what happened?’

  Boots repeated the story he told Levine that morning. The robberies early in the week, Flint Page’s two phone calls, walking into the apartment. Then nothing.

  ‘Well, you’re a big help.’ Olmeda’s smile lifted his mustache until it splayed out along his cheeks. ‘Being as you’re on the job, I thought you’d have a little more consideration, maybe throw me a grounder.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  A silence followed, one Boots was not tempted to break. Finally, Olmeda said, ‘Can you think of anyone who’d want to do this to you?’

  ‘I been workin’ on that, sarge, and the only name that pops up is Mark Dupont.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mark Dupont. He’s a knucklehead I spotted in Greenpoint a couple of weeks ago. I encouraged the uniforms at the Six-Four to find an excuse to violate his parole. I wanted him off the street.’

  ‘Did they succeed?’

  ‘They did, and he knows I was behind it. Dupont’s sittin’ in Rikers, but he definitely has the muscle to reach out. If I was you, that’s where I’d look first.’

  ‘What about the skell who set you up?’

  Boots laughed for the first time that day. ‘Yeah, that’d be great. You got four or five years with nothing to do, spend it lookin’ for Jimmy Page.’

  Boots passed the rest of the afternoon alternately watching television and entertaining visitors. The visitors were fellow cops at the Six-Four, other detectives and a few uniforms, including Craig O’Malley and the Bulgarian, Boris Velikov. When O’Malley asked him what happened, he told them the same basic story he told Olmeda, though he left Mark Dupont out of it.

  ‘Flint Page? I always made the guy for a pussy.’

  ‘Looked me right in the eye when I came out of the elevator. In fact, the last thing I remember is Flint Page holding the door to the apartment.’

  For a moment, Boots was certain the Bulgarian, who’d worked himself into a frenzy of outrage, would start drooling. But Velikov surprised him.

  ‘Fuck findin’ Page,’ he told Boots. ‘That jerk-off never woulda did what he did if he was gonna stick around.’

  ‘True enough, but I’m hopin’ you’ll do me a favor anyway.’ Boots turned slightly to focus his functioning eye on O’Malley. ‘The way I read it, Page most likely had a good reason to skip town before I came into the picture. Maybe you can check it out, prove me right or wrong.’

  Velikov’s grin lifted his taut cheeks, narrowing his black eyes still further. ‘I know somebody who knows Page real good,’ he told Boots, ‘a scumbag who likes to beat on his wife. We been to this asshole’s house five times in the last six months, but every time we bust him, his wife’s too scared to testify.’ He looked over at his partner. ‘I’m talkin’ about that Armenian.’

  ‘Manuk Grigoryan?’

  ‘Yeah, Grigoryan. I think I’m gonna ask him first.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Boots concurred, ‘but, for now, why don’t we just keep this between ourselves.’

  At six o’clock, a few minutes after Velikov and O’Malley cleared the room, Boots was taken for another walk. The walking itself was not a big deal. Raising himself to a sitting position, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, shifting forward until he slid off – this was the bad news. Once he got his weight over his feet, the pain was bearable.

  Boots was just beginning a second circuit of the nursing station when Lieutenant Carl Levine walked on to the unit. Grinning, Levine did a mock double-take.

  ‘What next, the hundred-yard dash?’ he asked.

  ‘Bataan Death March is more like it.’ Boots winked at the aide who stood by his side. ‘Marcy threatened to withhold my sponge bath if I didn’t get out of bed.’

  Marcy smiled. ‘One more time, Mr Littlewood.’

  Boots shuffled forward, with Levine to his left and the railing to his right. Neither spoke until Boots was safely back in bed and they were alone. Then Levine asked, ‘What’s up with the eye?’

  ‘Don’t know, lou. It’s kinda wait-and-see. But my brain’s not fried, which is very good news considering how hard I was hit.’ Gingerly, Boots touched the row of stitches on his forehead. ‘The docs say I’ll have to see a plastic surgeon if the scar’s too thick. Maybe I’ll get a tummy tuck at the same time, or have my ass liposuctioned. You know, restore my youthful figure.’

  Levine responded to this little tirade with a slow, empathetic sigh perfectly in keeping with his Lieutenant Sorrowful persona. ‘I’m on the clock,’ he explained. ‘I gotta get back soon.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, and I should’ve raised this particular matter when you came before. Only I was too weak and I had that tube in my throat.’

  ‘Hey, it’s all right. Just tell me what’s on your mind.’

  Boots turned to fix Levine with his left eye. ‘Well, boss, the good news, from your point of view, is that even though you sold me out to Corcoran, I’m probably not gonna kill you.’

  Levine rose out of his chair as though levitated by the hand of God. ‘Boots—’

  ‘Don’t bother, lou. It’s been a long day and I’m not in the mood for any bullshit. Corcoran asked you to keep an eye on me and you did it. Otherwise, those petty rip-offs on Bushwick Avenue would never have to come to the attention of anybody at Borough Command.’

  For once, as he searched for the right response, a counter to the hurled accusation, Levine’s face became animated, his lips and nostrils twitching, his eyebrows rising and falling.

  ‘Boots,’ he finally said, ‘you don’t even remember what happened in that apartment. You told me so, yourself.’

  But Irwin ‘Boots’ Littlewood did remember. He remembered every element of the attack, including the club that hit him for the second time. That club had passed through the beam of a flashlight, becoming visible just long enough for Boots to be certain it was a nightstick.

  ‘Who’s limping?’ Boots asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘At Borough Command. There’s somebody down there who’s limping. If you don’t know who it is, find out.’

  ‘Look, Boots, I’m your superior officer. You don’t tell me what to do. I’ll overlook it once, in light of what happened, but—’

  ‘That’s what you shoulda said when I first accused you, boss. Now it’s too late. Did I ever tell you that I went to college for a couple of semesters?’

  ‘No.’

  Boots cleared his throat, trying to work up a little moisture. It felt as if somebody was in there with a blow torch. Still, he wasn’t about to be deflected. He’d begun rehearsing this speech when he asked his father to call Levine and he had it just the way he wanted. ‘I took classes at John Jay, in their criminal justice program, when I first came on the job. I was thinking about the sergeant’s exam and I knew I’d nee
d some college credit. Anyway, I don’t remember all that much, but part of one lecture definitely stuck with me.’

  ‘Boots, are you crazy?’

  ‘Wait, hear me out.’ Boots dropped his head to the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. ‘Professor Rabin said that men live by a code of honor in any society where they can’t go to the state for justice. That’s because unless they draw a sharp line, unless they make it clear that anybody crossing that line is in for a fight, they’re gonna definitely be victimized. Well, lou, this is one of those cases where the line has been crossed, but the victim can’t dial nine-one-one and let the cops get justice for him. He has to get it for himself.’

  Boots waved off Levine’s attempt to speak, even that gesture causing him to gasp. Pain meds soon, he told himself. Pain meds, dinner and the Yankees. Three cheers for modern medicine.

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ he continued, ‘I don’t blame you. I was the one makin’ all the trouble, but your neck was on the line, too. Only it’s gotta stop now. Understand?’

  Levine was standing alongside the bed. Despite his hangdog expression and his generally sluggish disposition, he was a powerfully built man, while Boots, of course, was helpless. But Carl Levine didn’t have the inborn courage to take his bluff to the limit, not when Boots was right, so he took the easy path and tried to plead down the charge.

  ‘For what it’s worth, I had no idea what they were gonna do,’ he told Boots.

  ‘For what it’s worth, I believe you. Now, if you know who’s limping, tell me.’

  ‘Artie Farrahan. When I saw him at Borough Command, he was using a cane.’

  Boots fished for the call button and rang the nurse’s desk. When his call was answered, he asked that his pain meds be delivered. The nurse on the other end promised to do so at the earliest opportunity, after which Boots thanked her, then switched on the little TV hanging over the foot of the bed.

  ‘You don’t mind,’ he told Lieutenant Sorrowful, ‘I’m gonna take my Percocets and watch the news. I’m hurtin’ everywhere.’

  As he watched Levine retreat, Boots suddenly realized that he’d been awake for two days and he hadn’t had a single craving for a cigarette. He wondered if maybe Farrahan and company had knocked the addiction out of him, perhaps through some subtle damage to the brain’s addiction center. Boots wasn’t sure that human brains actually had addiction centers, but he could always hope.

  NINETEEN

  Boots got out on the street within days of returning home. The effort cost him, but he wanted to be seen before his bruises disappeared. The resolutely working-class neighborhood in Greenpoint where his father lived had been stable for a century. Predominantly Polish, with substantial Italian, Irish and Latino minorities, everyone knew everyone else. This excessive familiarity, as Boots had long ago admitted, was a mixed bag. Feuds, within and between families, went on for generations. Over the decades, they’d been the immediate cause of many an assault and not a few homicides. Insularity was another nasty consequence of long-term stability. Outsiders were instantly mistrusted.

  It was this last that Boots intended to use to his benefit. Accompanied by his father on a beautiful morning in late April, he shuffled down Newell Street, leaning on a cane. As expected, Jenicka Balicki, Newell Street’s acknowledged matriarch, had already set up lawn chairs next to the entranceway to her home. In a purple housedress and a yellow sweater (the housedress flowered, the sweater striped), she was sitting between Dorota Niski and Fianna Walsh. Boots had known these women, in their eighties now, for all of his life.

  ‘What’s up with the face?’ Fianna demanded.

  ‘He got jumped,’ Andy explained. ‘By persons unknown.’

  ‘What was he doin’?’

  ‘He was, Fianna, my love, attemptin’ to right a wrong.’

  The three women regarded Boots for a moment. Like most working-class people of their generation, they had mixed feelings about cops. Finally, Jenicka Balicki said, her accent still thick after sixty years in Brooklyn, ‘Eh, what do I do?’

  Boots quickly translated the sentence – Jenicka was asking if she could help. Boots pointed to his eye, the lids of which were now several millimeters apart, a development that made his appearance even more ghoulish.

  ‘I need another eye,’ he explained. ‘I need a lot of other eyes. So, if you notice any strangers hangin’ around, I’d appreciate a call to me or my father. Also, if you see any trucks parked on the block that don’t belong here.’

  ‘Trucks?’ Jenicka’s green eyes, seemingly without lashes or brows, fixed on Boots. ‘Only in trucks there are cops.’ She raised a finger. ‘I see this on the television. No criminals are there in trucks. In trucks there is only stakeout.’

  Jenicka’s companions nodded agreement and Boots was forced to admit the possibility that his enemies were fellow cops. As this was his aim from the beginning, he did so cheerfully. These women, all widows, lived on neighborhood gossip. Gossip was what kept them alive. Gossip kept them out of nursing homes. Gossip and a rock-hard determination to die in their own beds.

  His back was covered.

  By the end of the second week, Boots was certain that Corcoran was ignoring him. As long as he was a good boy, there were to be no more attacks.

  The swelling on his face was almost gone, his bruises all but faded. His cracked ribs were another matter. Ribs flex with every breath – they can’t be rested and they’re a long time healing. Boots would be in pain for at least another month. Even worse, though his right eye was open and he was seeing well, his upper lid drooped noticeably. He was having headaches, too, in his right temple. The doctor was non-committal. Maybe Detective Littlewood’s complaints would get better on their own, maybe not, but an eyelid can be raised with a little surgery and the headaches were infrequent and not debilitating.

  ‘I’d say,’ the doc told him, ‘that you got off lucky.’

  Meanwhile, between the droopy lid and the healing scar, thick as the veins on the Bulgarian’s neck, he looked like a Prohibition-era villain. All he needed was a fedora and a tommy gun.

  Boots dumped the Percocets ten days later, his pain diminished, if not vanished. By that time, he’d fielded calls from Detective Lenny Olmeda and Sergeant Craig O’Malley. Olmeda’s came first. He phoned at ten o’clock in the morning to assure Boots that the investigation was ongoing and that everything possible had been done. When asked to describe his efforts, he complied without hesitation.

  ‘Mark Dupont’s lawyered up,’ he explained, ‘so we can’t talk to him. But we’ll be speakin’ with some of his criminal associates. Believe me, we’re not gonna let this go.’

  Sergeant O’Malley called on Boots at home, knocking on Andy Littlewood’s door at eight o’clock in the evening. Boots was sitting in his father’s living room at the time, watching the Texas Rangers pound the crap out of a succession of Yankee pitchers. He was glad for the interruption.

  ‘Where’s the Bulgarian?’

  ‘I left him in the car. He’s been actin’ weird lately.’

  This was a road Boots was afraid to travel. He quickly changed the subject. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  ‘The story on Flint Page is that he was a suspect in a homicide.’

  ‘I’ve known Page for a long time and I never made him for a killer.’

  ‘Maybe he wasn’t. This was a drug deal in Bed-Stuy that went bad and there were a lotta people in the room. The word I’m gettin’ is that Homicide turned up a witness who claimed that Flint pulled the trigger. That don’t mean it’s true.’

  Boots nodded in agreement. ‘Any sign of Page?’

  ‘None. Page is either in the wind or in the river. Now me, if I had to pick, I’d pick door number two.’ O’Malley turned to leave, then looked back at Boots. ‘I been talkin’ about your situation with Boris. We don’t like the way you got fucked around, so if we can do something, let us know.’

  A month into his recuperation, on a Wednesday morning, Boots journeyed to the Manhattan offic
es of Thomas Galligan, the private investigator who employed Joaquin. Galligan wasn’t a PI in the popular sense – he never left his office, nor did he customarily do business with the general public. Instead, he limited his activities to computer investigation, and his clients to lawyers and corporations. Galligan’s specialty was uncovering hidden assets.

  Galligan was standing behind his assistant’s desk when Boots walked into the office, whispering something through the ink-black hair that covered her ear. Without changing expression, he raised his head to carefully examine his visitor’s drooping eyelid and still-livid scar. Boots took advantage of the silence to perform an examination of his own. Galligan was short, soft and slovenly. He wore a cheap shirt, a cheap tie and a cheap brown suit, each article at least a size too big for his bony frame. Teased and heavily moussed, his brown hair rose a good four inches from the top of his scalp, a wispy wave that only made his small features smaller. This was especially true of the man’s eyes, the pupils of which were shrunken to mere pinpoints. He was clearly stoned.

  ‘Are you …’ Galligan scratched his hip.

  ‘Boots Littlewood,’ Boots said, offering his hand.

  ‘Tommy Galligan.’ Without introducing his assistant, Galligan led Boots into a large room. ‘This is where the work gets done,’ he announced.

  Four desks in the front of the room, arranged to form a cross, held computers, monitors, keyboards and a variety of peripheral devices. Behind them, a well-worn pool table dominated the remainder of the space.

  Ignoring the pool table, Boots pointed to the computers. ‘What can you do with them?’

  Galligan let his weight drop back on his heels. Time for the sales pitch. ‘All public records,’ he began, ‘including births, marriages, divorces, land transfers, law suits and criminal records. Memberships in organizations, from the Rotary Club to the Carpenter’s Union to the Book of the Month Club. Any mention of the subject on almost any media: the Internet, television, newspapers or magazines, in books, in academic journals. I can get you the schools the subject attended, from kindergarten forward. And as for phone numbers and Social Security numbers – hell, if you’ve got a number, it’s out there somewhere and I’ll find it.’