by David Wind
While I’d learned a lot about ‘the life’, she hadn’t offered a whole bunch of new information on Streeter, his sidekick or Margaret Ann. What I did discover was that Streeter was hated by everyone on the street—hated and scared at the same time. And no one had seen him or his friend since after he’d made bail.
Streeter, according to Lilah, was a ‘flat out mean bastid.’ He was hard on his girls, and had a heavy hand when they didn’t do what was expected of them. If they talked back, or didn’t bring in enough money, he hit them and more often than not, put them out of commission for a night or two. Lilah also confirmed Streeter always had one or two real young ones on hand, and the johns who liked them young knew where to find him.
I hadn’t needed to ask many questions, she was a fountain of knowledge, and had been willing to give me payback for the meal and the time I was using on her clock. But I’d saved the two most important questions for the end.
The first had been the easiest: Where do Streeter and his girls go to ground?
The answer had been just as easy. She didn’t have the faintest idea. She told me Streeter showed up every night at nine-thirty and parked his tricked out Mercedes in a lot on Forty-seventh Street. His block was Ninth Avenue between Forty-sixth and Forty-fifth streets, and no one crossed his territory. He left between two and four each morning, depending on how busy it was. She had no idea where he and the girls went.
The second question had been a little more difficult: Whom did Streeter hang out with and work with?
“Word is he’s connected. You know what I mean, right?”
I said I did. She told me she’d seen some men talk with him a few times. They were the boys from uptown. She didn’t have names, but was positive they were gangsters. “They dressed it up real fine, and they talked the talk. Didn’t go after no girls either. They’d drive up in a black Lincoln, one or two of ‘em would get out and talk to him for a few minutes, then leave.”
When push came to shove, Lilah didn’t know who his friends were, and only knew the small guy who was always with him and ran all his errands. She’d told me he was simple minded and didn’t know what was going on around him.
When she’d finished eating, I handed her a hundred and thanked her for her time. She’d smiled, looked at the C note and said, “Anytime you want to talk, you know where to find me.”
I’d paid the check, left her to a third cup of coffee and made sure to hand the five-dollar tip to the waitress. It didn’t matter that I’d just given her a hundred, she was still a hooker and five bucks is five bucks.
I took a relieved breath when I made it home. Then I saw the door was ajar a half-inch. A metallic clicking sound came from inside.
For the second time today, I pulled the Sig from its holster. Moving slowly and quietly, I hugged the wall and inched sideways toward the large open kitchen.
How the hell had they gotten in? My breathing was shallow and the blood pulsing through my carotid sounded like a train. It took me a full fifteen seconds to reach the opening.
I drew in a quiet breath, made sure the safety was off, and then sprang. I landed on both feet, bracing the Sig by holding my left hand under the butt. “Shit!”
Gina turned to me, her hands on her hips. “Is this where I say, ‘is that a gun or are you just happy to see me’?”
“How–” The question stuck in my throat, as I remembered the key I’d given her so long ago. “I could have shot you.”
“No you couldn’t.”
In the next instant, she was in my arms. Her and her lips were on mine, hard yet soft and hot and demanding even as her tongue speared into my mouth and danced with mine as one hand dug into my back pulling me tighter while the other clasped my neck.
“Jesus, I’ve missed you,” I murmured as I drew my mouth from hers and ran my lips down to her neck where I kissed the vein pulsing so close to the surface of her skin.
Her hand slid upward from my neck, her finger going into my hair, pulling me closer to her until a sudden sharp stitch of pain made me wince. She stiffened and then looked at me, her fingers now exploring the large bump.
“What the hell happened now, Dick Tracey?”
“I haven’t eaten for a while and I’m starving. Let’s do dinner and while we eat I’ll tell you about my day… dear,” I said with a smirk and a wink.
She pointed to the brown grocery bag on the counter. “Just so happens I came prepared.”
“Pretty sure of yourself, weren’t you? What if I hadn’t come home?”
Her smile grew wide. “You’re here aren’t you? Besides, you owe me the movie we didn’t watch last night.”
“Don’t forget the ice cream.”
“I’m over the ice cream, can’t you tell?”
Chapter 28
Gina’s dinner of angel hair pasta and shrimp in a high kicking spicy Italian red sauce was the perfect antidote to the bump on my head: It worked by taking my mind off my head to concentrate on the fire in my mouth. But it was good. The bottle of Sangiovese she’d brought with her was the perfect counter to the fire.
Between mouthfuls, I ran down my afternoon and evening, leaving out a few minor details—maybe more than a few. When we finished, we took the bottle of wine into the living room and I set up the DVD. While last night’s unseen choice had been the Maltese Falcon, tonight’s was Out Of The Past because it was possibly the best Noir movie of that decade and I was in the mood to get lost in someone else’s distorted case. The movie stared Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglass, Rhonda Fleming and a few more big names. It was a classic in the truest sense of the word.
When I reached for the remote, Gina placed her hand on mine to stop me. “What?”
She gave me a little smile. “I’ve been thinking about what you said during dinner. There’s something bothering me.”
“Personally?”
“No, it’s what happened today. Scotty was never one to get involved with anything shady. I can’t figure out why these people are after you.”
“That makes two of us. But it also tells me Scotty’s murder had nothing to do with a break in.”
“Gabe,” she began. The tip of her tongue slipped out to moisten her lips as she framed her next words. “Maybe, just maybe, these people have nothing to do with Scotty. Maybe it’s something else—some other case you were working on.”
Gina was nothing, if not smart. She hadn’t gotten to where she was in the Bureau without knowing how to look at things from a lot of different angles. Besides being beautiful, she was a tough cop who knew how to find the evidence to make her cases. But then this wasn’t one of her cases.
“I haven’t had anything heavy in the last couple of months, just the usual stuff. No, it’s Scotty.”
“Look at Streeter and the girl he killed… maybe that’s what this is about.”
I gave it some thought, wondering where that had come from. “No.”
She studied me for a moment. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Then let’s talk out Scotty’s case.”
“I thought you didn’t want to cross any lines?” Crossing lines had been partially responsible for what had driven us apart before.
She leaned forward. Her large eyes, all liquid chocolate with drops of bittersweet and butterscotch, looked intense. “I’ve thought about what happened a lot over the last year. It’s not possible. We can’t be together and ignore what we do. If we’re going to make a stab at this again, we can’t shut each other out– it’s too much a part of our lives.”
I swam out of the deep pools of her eyes. “I’m not used to sharing, you know that.”
She nodded.
I remembered how good it had been to wake up to her. It came down to whether I was willing to give it up again. I’d known what I’d chosen to do with my life would be hard on those around me, but I was tired of being alone.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” she echoed. “Why don’t you tell me what you didn’t tell me about today?
”
I laughed. “Lia Thornton made a pass at me.”
“Not your type by a long shot.”
“Really… hmmm.”
She took a sip of the wine and then took her time setting the glass down. “What else?”
“Not much. Like I told you, I returned to Scotty’s and went through his files but didn’t come across anything.” The picture of the nine-year-old girl flicked before my eyes. “I found a couple of things but they’re not important. Scotty has a file draw of missing kids at the apartment. At least fifty files.”
“He spent a lot of time at Save Them.”
“I know, but why keep duplicate files at home?” A new thought slipped in. “If they were duplicates; and, he also had a file for his sister. All that was in it was her picture.”
A puzzled shadow crossed her face. “Why put a picture in the folder instead of out on a desk or a wall?”
“There’d been some papers in it, but they were gone.”
“Why would he have a file of his sister and take out the paperwork. What’s the point?”
“There were three other files like that: Pictures but no paperwork.”
“Could they be connected?”
“I don’t see how any of the kids in the file could be connected with Scotty’s sister. She was abducted what… twenty-five—twenty-six years ago? There couldn’t be any connection.”
“Maybe the connection to Scotty’s death are the kids and not the play,” Gina said, her words almost a whisper.
Was I so dead set on Scotty’s killer being someone connected with the play? Why couldn’t I look elsewhere? “I don’t know. It’s a stretch.”
“What else?”
“I spent a hundred on a hooker.”
Her expression was worth the price of what followed. Her back stiffened, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. “You did what?”
“I spent a hundred on a hooker, plus her dinner: For her time, not her body.”
I took her punch on my shoulder with a grin. “Wise ass.”
“You love it.”
She ignored my comment. “Was she worth it?”
“I don’t know yet.” I went over what Lilah had told me and when I was done, Gina sat straighter.
“And we’re back to Streeter again - do you think this Streeter is connected?”
I remembered the desk sergeant telling me the pimp had been sprung by a big buck lawyer. “It makes sense. He made bail fast. Rabbit thought he might be connected as well. But why the hell is a pimp connected?”
Gina stared at the ceiling. When she lowered her eyes, she said, “He’d be real low on our radar… easy to overlook. I’ll send out an inquiry. Maybe I can find something. You do tend to go charging in inappropriately.”
“Inappropriately? What the hell does that mean? This prick is running underage hookers. Nothing I could do would be inappropriate.”
She laughed. “Most of the time, nothing you do is appropriate.”
“Really? Try this?” I lunged across the couch and grabbed her, one hand going into the thick dark hair, pulling her face to mine and crushing her mouth to mine. Her arms and legs went around me, her body pressing hard against mine, until we both fell off the couch and hit the floor with a heavy thump. It would have been okay if I hadn’t hit my already sore head on the coffee table.
“Shit!” Separating myself from her encompassing body, I grabbed at the back of my head, which was another mistake. “Damn,” I muttered, as I struggled back onto the couch.
Gina stood. “Let me get some ice. Then we’ll watch the movie. I’d be afraid of doing anything else with someone in as delicate a situation as you.”
Before I could dig up a comeback, she was gone, which saved me the embarrassment of not having one. I lifted the glass and took a man-sized slug of the wine. Let me tell you a little secret—if you decide to take a big slug of wine, don’t! It tastes like crap.
Gina came back with a plastic baggy of ice wrapped in a dishtowel, handed it to me and said, “Turn on the movie. Maybe when it’s over your head won’t hurt and I can jump your bones.”
Who am I to argue with an FBI agent?
<><><>
Something, I don’t know what, woke me. I lay there, instantly awake and aware. I kept my breathing shallow so I could hear. Low light cast long shadows across the floor. The smell of antiseptic was strong in my nostrils. I looked around. There were four beds in the room. All four should have been occupied but the other three were empty. They’d left while I’d slept.
A shoe scraped along the infirmary floor, then another. Through the slits in my barely opened eyes, I saw a shadowy figure cross the doorway and step inside. There was another behind it. I could almost hear my blood pounding through my veins and arteries. My muscles tensed. I moved the covers so my right leg would be free. I prayed there would only be two.
The first came at the bed. He was big and broad. Just as he lunged, I kicked my right foot up and caught him in the balls. He fell like an ox. He hit the cement floor head first with a loud dull thud. Then the others came. There were more than two. One launched himself at my chest. I pushed forward, trying to hit him before he landed on me. I felt my fist slam against his chest, absorbing my blow, but his weight pushed him forward and he landed on top of me, knocking me back onto the bed, smothering me with his weight and stink.
I struggled, trying to shove him off, but the other two were on me, locking my arms down. The one on my chest rolled off, got to his feet even as the other two hauled me to mine.
The big man stared at me while the others held me. The fourth man lay still on the floor, knocked out by the fall. I saw the glint of light bounce off a prison made shiv the big man carried in his right hand. His head was shaved and his face scared; his neck was covered with prison made black ink tattoos. His name was Karl Kruger, a lifer who ran the Arian brotherhood.
“You should have just let it go, rich boy. Taken what was offered.” He raised the knife—a honed down spoon—and made a few cuts in the air in front of my face. “We gave you lots of time, Storm, but you didn’t take our offer. You thought you would be safe by sticking with suck-up boy and the other losers. We don’t forget things, and we got nothing to do here but wait for the right time. Now is the right time and now we’ll just take what we want. If you’re real sweet,” he said with a nasty smile, “If you’re real nice and make us all happy, then maybe I’ll leave your pretty face alone.”
He closed the gap and there was a foot between us. He lifted the sharpened spoon and pressed it to my cheek, a half inch under my left eye. “If you’re not, maybe I’ll take the eye to make me think of you.”
Fear and adrenaline mixed in my stomach with a sickening knot. I was in a no win situation. I was alone with the worst Sing-Sing had to offer. The knife fell away from my face and, in a quick movement; Kruger grabbed my shirt and sliced it open.
“Oh, I’m going to like this a lot.”
I saw it then, in his eyes. He was going to do what he needed to and then he would bury the shiv in me. It would be a lesson to anyone inside that he was the man, and anyone who messed with him would pay the price.
The knife flashed upward, the tip breaking the skin in my throat. “Now, rich boy, time to make me happy.”
I dug inside of me, looking for the strength to fight, and jerked back. Knowing I was going to die helped. My right arm came free and I whipped it around, toward Kruger’s face–.
I sat up, my chest heaving at the force of the nightmare. Sweat covered me like a second skin. I tried to catch my breath but couldn’t as the horror was locked within me, no matter how long ago it had happened. No matter that before Kruger could put his shiv into me, a half dozen guards had piled into the room and fallen on the three men, beating them into submission with their hard rubber night sticks until they were able to haul them, and the unconscious one, out of there.
Nor did it matter that they had spent six months in solitary and by the time they’d gotten back into general
population, I had been freed from prison. None of it mattered, because the feel of metal against my throat and their hands on my body was always with me.
“Gabe,” called Gina’s sleepy voice. Her fingers wrapped around my arm gently tightened. “Again?”
I settled my breathing before answering, and covered her hand with mine. This time her presence hadn’t been enough to stop the dreams. “Again.”
She kissed my forehead, my eyes, and then my lips, then drew my head down onto the pillow of her breasts, “I love you,” she whispered into my hair before kissing the top of my head.
Listening to the beat of her heart and feeling the warmth of her body, I slipped into sleep.
<><><>
This time I woke up after dreaming about Margaret Ann McNickles and Elizabeth Granger. I let Gina sleep and went into the kitchen, ground some coffee and made a large pot. While it brewed, I went to the corner deli and got a couple of bagels with cream cheese and Nova and the papers.
She was still asleep when I got back, so I poured myself coffee and began to read. Margaret Ann made the third page of the News and the fourth page of the Times. There wasn’t a lot to the stories, other than a few lines about a prostitute who had been found in the Hudson and the ongoing police investigation.
She deserved more. She deserved to have a real story written: a story that would shake parents out of their complacency and force them to understand it could be their daughter or son who would be dragged out of the river. I would have liked the story to tell all those scummy parents who abused their children, who hurt them to the point where they would run away rather than stay in their private home of hell, that one day there would be retribution. But such is not the way the world works.
I drained my coffee and stood to get another when the downstairs buzzer rang. I shifted to the right wall and pressed the intercom. “Yeah?”
