behind him barking into the phone, “Willis. Seven to five. Done.” Kyle looked around, stepped past a few scattered trash cans into an
empty passageway leading to the alley. When he reached the alley, he
turned to the right, only to see Vern, in his purple velvet sweat suit.
Vern was standing in front of him, holding a baseball bat in one hand,
pounding it into the palm of his other.
Pound. Pound. Pound.
HENDERSON AND RAMIREZ were at a crime scene when they got the call from the hospital. The crime scene was sordid and familiar and tragic: a little girl on a stoop, a shooting a block away, a stray bullet finding a stray target. For Ramirez this was new and wrenching; for Henderson its very commonness was one of the things shoving him toward retirement. There had been a plague of such killings in the city the past couple of years, as if the cruel calculations of nationstates had descended upon the streets.
The scene had been taped closed, the blood spatters had been marked, but in a crime like this the victim had nothing to do with the solution, so the blood didn’t matter. While the uniforms were going door-to-door asking about the shooting, well down the street from the bloodstains Henderson and Ramirez were standing behind the rough line defined by little number placards, each denoting a found cartridge, and trying to figure out where the shots had been headed so they could maybe figure out who was being targeted so they could maybe figure out who was doing the shooting and why.
“Two witnesses said the shooter was in a car,” said Ramirez, “black or blue, late-model sedan or small import, muffler busted or the music pumping.”
“The specificity of the description is devastating,” said Henderson.
“If the car was here and the shooter was sticking his automatic out the window, then the shots were in this direction.”
“Aiming at one of those houses?”
“Or someone walking along the street.”
“Anyone see anyone walking?” said Henderson.
“Just a lot of running. After.”
“Nothing you wouldn’t expect. Any names?”
“No.”
“Descriptions?”
“Nothing specific.”
“Black or white,” said Henderson. “Six feet tall or under five foot. Over forty or just a kid.”
“Something like that.”
“I am so weary.”
“You giving up already, old man?”
“You know what I’m going to get when I retire?”
“What’s that?”
“A puppy. Something to lap at my face and soothe the nerves. Something to run on up and jump at my chest when I call. I can close my eyes and see it.”
“A Labrador?”
“Nah, a mutt. Something dumb and happy. Just like I want to be. But to answer your question, no, I’m not giving up. Can’t give up, not with a girl dead and a killer on the loose. But a crime like this is beyond us. It will get solved only if one of these neighbors talks.
136 WILLIAM LASHNER
Except they’re afraid to talk, because the shooter will come back and we can’t protect them. And we can’t even pretend that by solving this we can stop the next one, because it’s a plague that can’t be solved case by case. Something bigger than us has to step in, but they won’t, because it’s only a little girl who’s lying there. So what we really are, you and me, is a salve to the conscience of the city, to make everyone feel like something is being done when nothing is being done.”
“You make me want to cry,” she said.
“You ever hear of Sisyphus?”
“What is that, an STD?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
His phone rang. He stepped away from Ramirez when he answered
it, holding the little piece of metal in his huge, latex-covered hands. Henderson had already locked down his emotions, so the words from the uniform, who happened to be in the hospital when the beating victim was brought in, didn’t register as anything other than another sad fact on an already dismal day. He thanked the uniform and snapped his phone shut.
“Now, that’s peculiar,” said Henderson.
“What?”
“You know that kid you were questioning on the Toth murder, the
one that broke into his father’s old office?”
“Byrne. Yeah?”
“He just got brought into the emergency room at Methodist, beat
all to hell.”
“What is that about?” said Ramirez.
“Don’t know for sure, but my guess is he wasn’t minding his own
business. Before they discharge him, maybe you ought to find out who he pissed off.”
“After we finish here.”
“That won’t be for a while,” said Henderson, looking beyond the
placards to the row of houses on the other side of the street. “Lot of stories I got to hear, and then I need to talk again to the girl’s family.” “They don’t know anything but the grief.”
“Maybe, but still, that’s what I need to do. Go on over to Methodist and find out what you can about what that boy is up to. And while you’re there, see if you can convince him to mind his own damn business.”
DETECTIVE RAMIREZ FELT a slight but undeniable thrill as she was let into the working space of the Methodist Hospital emergency room, and it worried her. She hadn’t made her fabulous climb up the police department’s ladder of success by letting her emotions get in her way. In every post she’d been assigned, from her first beat on up, she had been the hard one,
la reina del hielo.
It hadn’t made her many friends, but she wasn’t looking for friends, she was looking to rise, and Lord knows she had risen. Like a rocket ship. And the key had always been the ability to keep her emotions in check. Let burnouts like Henderson weep over the blood and the futility—she had more important things to do. Like rise and rise some more.
But there was something about the big, goofy Byrne kid, the way he smiled so easily, the way he seemed to take nothing all that seriously, especially not her. He was as unrilable as he was unreliable, and both traits appealed to her in a perverse sort of way. And she did have to admit that he was easy on the eyes. Given how things had fallen apart with thin and grim Henry, letting herself feel something for someone like Kyle Byrne would have been sort of nice.
Except for the fact that he was neck-deep in one of their murder investigations.
She stopped outside the curtain wrapped around his assigned bed and took a deep breath before pushing the curtain aside. The bed was empty. She took the pulse of her disappointment, very much as the nurses would take the pulse of the patients surrounding her. It was steady and strong and worrisome, along with a fear that maybe something more serious than a mugging had happened to him. Get it together, girl, she told herself.
She heard a shuffling behind her. She turned, and there he was, struggling across the floor like an old man with a bent and crooked posture, taking baby steps as he dragged along his IV.
“My, how you’ve aged,” she said as he stepped slowly past her and then carefully, and with an old man’s grunt, lifted himself gently into the hospital bed. “I haven’t seen such a pathetic display since my grandfather had his prostate removed.”
“How’s he doing?”
“Dead.”
“That’s too bad. I’m sure he was quite the lively dancer.”
“What happened?” she said.
“Well, you see, there was this truck.”
“A truck. And did this truck have a name?”
“Vern.”
“Well, for a truck this Vern is quite the pro. A concussion, a couple of broken ribs, a bruised kidney, and according to your chart you are pissing blood, which is a lovely image, let me tell you. But your face, which actually could have used the work, is virtually untouched, except for a small mouse under your eye.”
“Is it cute?”
“Your face?”
“The mouse.”
She stepped toward the bed, leaned forward. She was filled with a strange worry that was almost maternal. She couldn’t help herself from reaching and tenderly brushing the swelling under his eye. The skin of his face felt soft and hot, electric—
—but to Kyle the back of her hand felt cool and soothing, until she pressed down hard and he felt a squirt of pain.
“Call it Darryl,” said Kyle, jerking his head away and feeling his cracked ribs shiver within his chest. He grunted and gritted his teeth until the pain turned into a dull ache. “I used to have a pet mouse named Darryl.”
“What happened to him?”
“My mom buried him in the backyard of my house, next to Swimmy the fish.”
“You want to tell me what happened?”
“I think the cat broke its neck.”
“I mean to you.”
“Not really.”
“Why not, baby?”
He smiled and it hurt, but he couldn’t help himself. “Baby?”
“Yeah, baby,” she said, leaning forward now, staring right at him so that Kyle could see the golden flecks in her pretty brown eyes. “That’s what I say when I see fear leaking out of some poor kid’s eyes. And right now you are such a baby.”
“Then that’s your answer right there,” said Kyle, turning his head aside, and it was. He wasn’t going to tell her what happened, because he was afraid, afraid if he started blabbing those comical goons would come back and finish the job.
The moment he had spied Vern with that baseball bat, he sensed how much trouble he was in. He spun around to run, but as he turned, one of the two squinty guys from the front, standing behind him all the time, threw a steel garbage can at Kyle’s feet. The can flipped his legs into the air and sent him sprawling to the ground, where the other fat man from the front stomped hard on his chest.
Kyle instinctively curled up like a pill bug as the kicks came from all sides, slamming into his chest and back and legs. He closed his eyes and loosened his muscles and waited it out. It was like being on the bottom of a rugby scrum, it hurt like hell, and he could tell there was damage being done, but still there was no out but patience. If they were going to kill him, there was nothing he could do about it, but he didn’t think they were going to kill him, or he’d already be dead. They were just pissed off about what he had done to them at the front of the store and were getting in their licks. Fair enough, he thought, until the blows stopped and the sandpaper voice of Tiny Tony Sorrentino sounded in his ear.
“I didn’t know Liam Byrne, that son of a bitch, had a son of his own. I didn’t know who the hell to take it out on. But now I do, so I’m taking it out on you.”
A kick thudded against his side, and Kyle’s back clenched involuntarily, opening up his chest for another blow, which landed with a pain-racked thud just above his groin.
“You want to know the truth, you little shit? I hate taking bets. And I had enough saved up to retire fat and happy in Waikiki. So why am I still answering the phone, scribbling down orders from fools with a sports jones? Because your father screwed me up the ass so hard it’s still whistling ‘Dixie.’ And then he died, and poor me, I had no one to take it out on. Until you walked into my joint, and now I’m taking it out on you. And let me tell you, I see your face again before you make it up to me, you better have on a pair of boots, you understand?”
“Boots?” gasped out Kyle.
“So you don’t mess up your Sunday shoes when digging your grave,” said Vern.
“And I will see you again, count on it,” said Tiny Tony Sorrentino. “But you find me that file and maybe our next meeting will be a little more pleasant. Maybe you’ll be my partner, just like your old man. And maybe you’ll even survive it better than he did.”
And then a final kick to the back of his head that almost put Kyle to sleep and left him imagining strange gray-headed figures peering at him from the far end of the alley.
So yeah, he was scared, and he had a right to be scared. But telling this cop about Tiny Tony Sorrentino wasn’t going to make him any less scared. She’d make an appearance at Tony’s shop, she’d get all up in Tony’s grill, and the questions would give the whole thing away. And quick as that, Big Vern would show up with more emphatic orders than to administer a simple beating.
“You’re not going to tell me?” said Detective Ramirez.
“There’s nothing to tell,” said Kyle. “I was hit by a truck. I didn’t get the license plate. That’s all I know.”
“A truck named Vern.”
“There you go.”
“Did the guy in the red 280ZX who dropped you off at Emergency have anything to do with it?”
“No.”
“Did you know that three of Laszlo Toth’s fingers were broken a week or so before his murder? The coroner said the break was clean. It’s as if they were snapped by the same kind of pro that put you in here. Any connection?”
“What I hear, that was done by a truck named Frankie.”
“And you’re not going to tell me anything about it.”
“Nothing to tell.”
“You’re not playing detective, are you?”
“Now, why would I do that?”
“To clear your name, to solve Toth’s murder, to find out what really happened to your father.”
“I know what happened.”
“Do you?”
“I told you already.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t sound sure. And maybe now you think one death might have something to do with the other.”
“What could one have to do with the other?” said Kyle, though he’d been thinking exactly as she surmised, and that this pretty cop had pulled it out of the air was damn impressive. Was she just sharp as hell, which he sort of liked, or did she know something he didn’t?
Detective Ramirez took hold of a chair and pulled it close to the bed before sitting down. She put on her face that firm yet concerned look that Kyle had seen too many times lately, on Bubba when Kyle showed up late at the bar, on Kat when she dragged him out of the interrogation room, even on Skitch in the car in front of Sorrentino’s place. He was getting sick of that look; he’d rather face Vern again.
“Please don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t start lecturing me on what I need to do to get my life together. I’ve had enough of that lately.”
“What is going on with you?”
“I don’t know. I’m just going on, is all.”
“You know, I heard about the funerals.”
“What?” Pause. “Where?”
“Kyle, we found you trespassing in what had been the scene of a murder a few nights before. You are a person of interest in a homicide investigation. We were in the process of interrogating you before your tax-law yer friend pulled you out. You didn’t think we were going to ask around?”
“I guess I didn’t think about it.”
“We’re detectives. We ask questions. While fake detectives like you are getting the hell beat out of them, real detectives are asking questions. Like, what is that all about, you going to the funerals of dead lawyers?”
“Not all dead lawyers. They have to have maybe known my dad.”
“And that qualifies them because . . .”
“Because I go and pay my father’s respects. It’s a family thing. I sign his name in the book, I sit there and think about him and the way things might have worked out if he hadn’t died on me. And sometimes I feel his presence, like he’s watching over me.”
“Sounds like church.”
“Call it what you want to.”
“So that’s why you were at Laszlo Toth’s funeral, to get in touch with your father’s spirit?”
“That’s right.”
“Did it work?”
“Sure. He sends his regards.”
“Does he ever actually say something?”
“No.”
“The strong, silent type, is that it?”
“Now you’re just cracking wise.” Kyle struggled to sit up, but he got dizzy, and pain pushed him back into the bed. “I don’t care what you think, I can feel him.”
“Okay, baby. I believe you.”
“Well, don’t worry. Whatever I thought I was doing, I was being an idiot. But it’s over.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, I’m through,” he said, and it was the truth. He was afraid of what could happen to him, afraid of what he’d f ind out about his father, afraid suddenly of the O’Malley file and everything it might contain. Tiny Tony Sorrentino had made it clear what would happen if that little thug saw his face again—Kyle was going to make sure it didn’t happen. Uncle Max was wrong, putting the legends to rest could hurt, and the effort had left Kyle pissing blood. One more call, one more meeting, just to tie up one more loose end, and then he was through. “I don’t have to be run over by a truck twice to learn my lessons.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know. Sleep, drink, heal, take a trip. Maybe Arizona.”
“I have relatives in Arizona. They hate it.”
“But it’s a dry hate.”
“So you’re going to run.”
“Running’s good. Running works. It always has at least.”
“You don’t seem the running type, but maybe I misjudged you. Can I just tell you one more thing?”
“Sure.”
She leaned forward until her lips were right at his ear. He could smell her scent, spicy and sweet, could feel her hair tickling his cheek and the gentle press of her breath on his skin. Even with the steady throb of the pain, he felt himself stir from her proximity.
“I don’t trust a word you say, baby,” she said softly, her lips almost brushing his ear. “Deep down, in your heart, I don’t think you’re a runner at all. W hich means you’re either lying to me or lying to yourself. Let’s just hope you’re lying to yourself, because if you are lying to me, baby, I am going to nail your ass.”