Dancer in the Flames

by Stephen Solomita

  Boots made the connection instantly. Isabella Amarando was the registered owner of the Ford Windstar used in the drive-by. Unable to contain himself, Boots marched off to the bathroom, where he called Craig O’Malley. Could they meet this afternoon, at the sergeant’s convenience?

  ‘Four thirty, same place as last time.’

  Lunch started out well, considering the tension. Boots knew that all assembled, especially Andy, wanted to learn something of his activities. An estimate, at the very least, of when the family could return home. Boots told them nothing, as he struggled with his impatience. Events were speeding up and he needed to get out in front.

  But the silence was too much for Andy Littlewood and he decided, at the last minute, not to respect his son’s privacy. He had too much at stake here. ‘Father Leo,’ he declared, ‘says to tell you that you’re in his prayers.’ When Boots didn’t respond, he added, ‘Father Leo thought you might want to come by for confession.’

  ‘Tell him my soul is still pure from the last time.’

  A self-professed atheist, Joaquin laughed. ‘I think my father’s in love,’ he announced as he bit into a pickle. ‘And having seen Jill Kelly, I can understand why.

  But he couldn’t, of course. Joaquin didn’t know the first thing about Crazy Jill. Boots calmly bit into his sandwich. He was comforted by the thought that he could never have her. Even if things worked out, she would eventually move on.

  ‘She’s beautiful, that girl, and blazin’ hot,’ Andy said. He glanced at Libby, noted her frown, finally echoed his son’s thoughts. ‘But she’s all wrong for you, Irwin. She’s not a woman you can possess, no more than you can hold fire. All you can do is dance in her flame and hope you’re not consumed.’

  Boots was initially pleased when his cellphone began to trill. First, because the time when he’d have to respond to his father was rapidly approaching. Second, because he hoped it was Jill Kelly. He carried the phone into the kitchen before answering.

  ‘Boots, it’s Levine,’ Lieutenant Sorrowful said.

  ‘What’s up, lou?’

  ‘Lenny Olmeda, he’s dead. Shot down in his apartment. His cleaning lady discovered the body. I’m calling to give you a heads-up.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Preliminary estimate, last night between seven and ten o’clock.’

  Boots took a second to think it over, then said, ‘The shit’s gonna hit the fan now.’

  ‘The bosses are trying to keep a lid on things. Public Information is talking about a possible suicide.’

  ‘Who’s investigating?’

  ‘The Chief of D’s office.’ Levine paused to take a breath. ‘What you have to think here, Boots, is that somebody’s eventually gonna knock on your door, ask for a minute-by-minute account of your movements during the relevant time frame.’

  Boots grinned to himself. He had an airtight alibi for the relevant time frame. He was playing hearts with Frankie Drago and his mother. Boots imagined explaining his relationship with a known bookmaker accused of killing his sister.

  Oh yeah, me and Frankie, we go way back.

  At which point an IAB team would lead him into a courtyard, put him against a wall, ask him if he wanted a last cigarette.

  THIRTY-THREE

  ‘Nice lobby.’

  Boots turned to Boris Velikov, who exhibited a loopy smile beneath glassy eyes. According to O’Malley, the Bulgarian’s antidepressant level had recently been nudged upward.

  ‘Yeah,’ Boots said for lack of something better, ‘high-class all the way.’

  In fact, there was something about the lobby that struck him as empty. Maybe it was the aspiration: the red rug, the flocked wallpaper, a gilded chandelier that would have been at home in a whorehouse. From outside, the ten-story, eighty-unit building was no more than a collection of rectangles. But luxury was the name of the game in the new millennium. Everybody wanted to be on the next rung, and if you couldn’t make it in real life, you could always plaster the lobby with oil paintings dark enough to pass for respectable.

  The building’s obligatory doorman rose to his feet and came toward them. A middle-aged Latino, he wore a double-breasted maroon jacket with gold piping and a pair of epaulets worthy of an admiral in the Kaiser’s navy. On his face, an uh-oh expression rose suddenly, deflated just as suddenly when the three giants revealed their badges, finally blossomed once more as he considered the implications.

  Boots proffered Maytag LeGuin’s mug shot. ‘Is this man in apartment eight-F?’

  As Boots spoke, Velikov moved to the doorman’s right, O’Malley to his left, polar bears surrounding a beached seal.

  ‘Yes,’ the doorman said. ‘This man is in Ms Amarando’s apartment. Do you wan’ me to announce you?’

  ‘Do you want me to beat you to a pulp?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s good. Now, tell me who else is up there.’

  ‘Please, I only start my shift one hour ago, at ten o’clock. I see Mr LeGuin go up aroun’ ten thirty.’ He shrugged. ‘Who else might be there—’

  ‘Amarando, she get a lot of traffic?’

  ‘I don’ un’erstan’ wha’ you askin’ me.’

  ‘I wanna know if drugs are being dealt out of that apartment. I wanna know if Ms Amarando gets visitors of a certain type.’

  The doorman’s head swung from side to side. ‘Ms Amarando, she’s a very quiet lady. Her sister comes sometimes, and her mother. But she don’ make no trouble.’

  Boots positioned himself to one side of the door, then knocked lightly. He was hoping to remove LeGuin without disturbing the neighbors. There was no response and he knocked again, this time a little harder. Finally, a woman’s voice from inside: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Police,’ Boots said. ‘Open the door. We have a search warrant.’

  This was true. Boots did have a warrant, which he’d spent many hours securing, but it was for Isabella Amarando’s Ford Windstar, not her residence.

  Boots heard Isabella whisper to someone – an exchange of advice, no doubt. Finally, she said, ‘Slide the warrant under the door.’

  ‘Open up, Isabella. Or we’ll bust our way inside. No bullshit. I mean now.’

  ‘Awright, awright.’ The door opened a few inches. The safety chain was still on. ‘Lemme see the warrant?’

  Boots held it up for Isabella’s inspection, turning after a few seconds to the last page and the judge’s signature. ‘Make it easy on yourself. There’s no reason to get the neighbors involved. Remember, your children live here.’

  From inside the apartment, a male voice said, ‘Open the damn door.’

  Boots was inside the apartment, his weapon drawn, an instant after Isabella released the chain, forcing her backwards and on to her butt. Maytag LeGuin was sitting in a chair fifteen feet away. Boots locked his weapon on LeGuin’s forehead. This man had tried to murder him, to end his life, whether or not the dealer was inside the van. Boots again heard the roar of the shotgun, then a shower of brick on the sidewalk behind him, as if the events were ongoing. He felt time slow down, and the absolute certainty that he wasn’t quick enough to defend himself burst into his consciousness like a shroud. If it hadn’t been for Jill Kelly …

  Boots felt the desire to kill LeGuin ripple through his flesh, felt it leap into the tip of his right forefinger, the one resting on the Glock’s trigger. What would it take? Three pounds of pressure? You could produce three pounds of pressure merely by accident, right?

  LeGuin’s eyes were darting about, from Boots’s scar, to his half-closed eye, to the barrel of his gun. ‘Hey, man,’ he said, ‘no reason to get crazy here.’

  The dealer’s speech hinted at his British origins, the effect jarring enough to slow Boots down. Still, Boots had to ask himself if putting a round in LeGuin’s skull wouldn’t do wonders for his post-traumatic stress. Surely, the remedy would be more effective than handing LeGuin over to the state. Boots thought of Jill Kelly, of her all-too-evident stress. Jill would delight in t
his little adventure, no doubt, and nothing would have made Boots happier than to have Jill with him at that moment. But it was clearly impossible.

  ‘Anybody else in the apartment?’ Boots asked.

  ‘My children,’ Isabella responded.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘In their beds, asleep.’

  ‘No one else?’

  Isabella’s mouth opened, then shut.

  ‘Remember,’ Boots said, ‘we’ve got a warrant.’

  ‘Elijah’s cousin, Malcolm,’ she said. ‘He’s sick in his bed.’

  Boots glanced at O’Malley. ‘Check it out. I need a moment with Mr LeGuin.’

  ‘No problem.’

  Maytag LeGuin didn’t protest when Boots pulled him off the couch, spun him around and cuffed his hands behind his back. In his early forties, LeGuin had the sad eyes of a prizefighter suddenly grown old in the ring. Still, he met Boots’s gaze evenly.

  ‘You know who I am?’ Boots asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m the man you tried to murder two days ago.’ Boots gave it a couple of beats, then said, ‘What would you do, Maytag, if you got your hands on somebody responsible for a shotgun bein’ fired at your head? What would you do if you had such a man in your power?’

  LeGuin had a sharp nose and chin, both of which he emphasized by tilting his head up. ‘You can’t put my hands on no shotgun. Two days ago, I was in Jersey City.’

  Boots pressed the barrel of his Glock against LeGuin’s forehead. ‘You say that again, I’ll kill you.’ As far as he could tell, he meant it.

  ‘Yo, Boots, you better come check this out.’

  Boots turned to Craig O’Malley. Like his partner, O’Malley wore a leather jacket that would’ve been appropriate on a mob wannabe. ‘What’s up, sarge?’

  ‘Guy in the bedroom’s been shot.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  Boots recognized the boy instantly. The face in the van’s window, the face behind the shotgun. He’d never have thought it possible if asked beforehand, but the round face and protruding front teeth seemed as familiar as the images he carried of his own mother.

  Still in his teens, the boy’s face was pouring sweat and his breathing was labored, the phlegm rattling in his lungs. He had a badly infected entrance wound high up on the right side of his chest. The injury itself did not appear life-threatening, but the whole room smelled of rot.

  ‘You waitin’ for him to die? That what it is?’ Boots had LeGuin by his left arm. He squeezed down as he asked the question. ‘That what you’re hopin’, Maytag? You hopin’ he’ll die with your kids in the next room? Maybe they could watch you cut up the body, learn a few life lessons?’

  Boots glanced at the Bulgarian’s face. The loopy smile was gone, replaced by a rage so blind that Boots had to suppress a smile. Not for the first time did he remind himself never to get on Velikov’s bad side.

  ‘You sent this kid to kill me,’ he continued. ‘Now you’re gonna let him die. Tell me somethin’, how’d you like it if we dragged your ass upstate and handcuffed you to a tree? How’d you like it if we taped your mouth shut and left you there?’ Boots jerked his head toward Velikov. ‘You think my partner would have a problem with that?’

  LeGuin picked his words carefully. He didn’t think Boots would follow through, but he wasn’t absolutely sure. Boots would already be dead if their positions were reversed. Meanwhile, Elijah LeGuin hadn’t even been arrested. Was that good or bad news? He didn’t know. But he was sure that Boots wanted something more than revenge.

  ‘Malcolm took a bad turn this afternoon. I was thinkin’ about callin’ nine-one-one ’bout the time you arrived.’

  Boots lifted a wallet from the top of a small bureau. He found a driver’s license and a Medicaid ID card inside, both issued to Malcolm Sutcliffe, age nineteen. He put the license in his shirt pocket, then turned to Isabella.

  ‘Where’s the van?’ he asked.

  No more than five feet tall, Isabella stood with her hands on her hips, the very picture of defiance. ‘If you’re talkin’ about my Windstar, it was stolen on Friday night.’

  ‘You report the theft?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Sunday morning. That’s when I went out to look for it.’

  Boots was about to ask how she knew the van was stolen on Friday if she didn’t notice it missing until Sunday, but then he glanced at LeGuin. Maytag wasn’t worried about the van, which would have Malcolm Sutcliffe’s blood in it. That meant the vehicle had already been destroyed.

  ‘OK, here’s the plan. I’m gonna make a phone call, after which I’m takin’ Maytag out of here. You, Isabella, the minute the door closes behind us, will call nine-one-one and have Malcolm carted off to the hospital. I’ll be outside until the ambulance arrives, just to make sure. Keep in mind, if I want to, I can have your kids taken away. You think I’m lyin’, just try me.’

  Boots turned and walked back to the living room. He consulted a small notebook, then punched a series of numbers into the key pad of his cellphone. Madeline Gobard answered on the second ring.

  ‘We’re on the way,’ Boots said.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Inspector Murad Najaz pointed to the DVD in Boots’s hand. ‘How long?’ he asked.

  ‘Three hours.’

  Boots and Najaz were in a small office within the larger suite of offices comprising the headquarters of the NYPD’s Detective Bureau. Earlier that morning, only a few hours after the DVD was completed, Boots had reached out to Jill Kelly’s uncle, Michael Shaw, Chief of Detectives. Inspector Najaz was as far as he’d gotten.

  ‘What will I learn if I watch it?’

  ‘A mid-level cocaine and heroin dealer named Elijah LeGuin will admit to paying off Mack Corcoran, Lorenzo Olmeda, Arthur Farrahan and Christopher Parker for ongoing protection. LeGuin will also admit that he orchestrated the attempted murder of Detective Jill Kelly at the request of Mack Corcoran.’

  Najaz folded his thick arms across his even thicker chest. Well over six feet tall, his size alone produced what the bosses referred to as command presence. Najaz was a black man, raised in Brooklyn by parents who’d converted to Islam when Muhammad Ali became a Muslim.

  ‘Any of this admissible?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but combined with other information, it opens avenues of investigation almost certain to bear fruit.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Boots ticked the items off on his fingers. ‘Malcolm Sutcliffe, the boy who fired a shotgun at two police officers on Saturday morning, and who was wounded at the scene, is presently recovering in Elmhurst General Hospital. One of his intended victims, meaning myself, observed him in a neutral setting and is prepared to identify him in court. Sutcliffe was left to die by Maytag LeGuin and now has every reason to cooperate with the authorities. In addition, the registered owner of the Ford van used in the shooting is the mother of LeGuin’s two children. Her freedom can be traded for LeGuin’s cooperation.’

  ‘All right, enough.’ Najaz’s forefinger traced a little circle. ‘Start it up.’

  A moment later, Elijah ‘Maytag’ LeGuin’s head and torso filled the screen, the close-up so extreme that when he turned to the right or the left, as he did from time to time, a chunk of his head left the frame. Boots had instructed Madeline carefully. Under no circumstances was Boots Littlewood, seated at the other end of a small table, or O’Malley and the Bulgarian, who’d positioned themselves along the wall, to become visible.

  ‘Is what they say about you true, Maytag?’ Although distorted by the distance between the speaker and the microphone in the wall, the disembodied voice clearly belonged to Boots Littlewood.

  ‘True. I got two eyes, two ears, two feet, two arms, two legs and two balls. What else you wanna know?’

  ‘I want to know,’ Boots persisted, ‘if you put cats in washing machines when you were a kid. That’s part of your rep. It helps make you what you are. I just wann
a know if it’s true?’

  ‘Yeah? Straight up? Because what I’d like to know is if you still fuck your daughter in the ass.’

  The screen went blank for a few seconds, then LeGuin reappeared. Though his face was unmarked, his short-cropped hair had been pushed to one side, revealing a scar over his right ear.

  ‘You tried to kill me,’ Boots said, ‘but I’ve only treated you with respect. How do you explain that?’

  ‘You kidnap me, beat me down, then call it respect?’

  Boots laughed out loud. ‘Count yourself lucky that I don’t actually have a daughter.’

  After a moment, LeGuin chuckled. ‘I sometimes lose my temper, let my rap get all crazy. But that bullshit with the cats? I hate that like I hate that name – Maytag. Swear on my sainted mum, I never threw her cat into no washin’ machine. Those were her gerbils I washed.’

  Both men laughed a little too long, neither apparently wanting to be the first to stop. Finally, Boots said, ‘OK, let me repeat the question I asked you a moment ago. Now, I’m gonna elaborate a little, but that’s just my way, so don’t mind me. It’s still the same question.’

  A short silence followed, then Boots started up. ‘Two days ago, I was standin’ on the sidewalk in front of my own home, mindin’ my own business, when a van registered to Isabella Amarando, the mother of your children, turned on to the block. The van came to within thirty feet, then a boy named Malcolm Sutcliffe rolled down the window and aimed a shotgun at my face. If my partner hadn’t wounded Malcolm, what was left of me would be lyin’ on an autopsy table in the morgue. Now, that’s a lot of provocation, Elijah. That’s enough provocation to make a man crazy for revenge, yet I haven’t shown you any disrespect. I want you to tell me why that should be so. And while you’re at it, ask yourself about Captain Parker and Sergeant Olmeda. Ask yourself what happened to them. What happened and why.’

  Seconds turned into minutes as LeGuin prepared his response. He began to speak several times, his mouth opening, then closing again as he reconsidered. Finally, he said, ‘You got anybody stupid in your family? You got anyone just naturally chumps out, like it’s in his blood?’