Down Here (7 page)

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” he said, showing me his street roller’s stare. “Look, I don’t have a lot of time; I’m supposed to be on a case in the Jamaica courthouse at nine—not that the fucking pussy ADA is ever on time himself—so listen up. For right now, the DA’s going along with it. You understand what I’m telling you? Full police guard. Why? Because the official story is that Wolfe’s put out a contract on him.”

“Yeah, that’d be smart,” I said. “Believe me, if there’s one person in this city who wants that scumbag alive, it’s Wolfe. Davidson’s going to dice and slice him so bad on the stand, the case will never get to the jury.”

“I’m not arguing,” the cop said. “Something else is going on. I just don’t know what. But him not being in a coma anymore, that’s worth something, right?”

“How much?” I said, slipping my hand inside my jacket.

Sands’ eyes snapped into violence. One of his big fists clenched. When he spoke, his voice was tightly constricted, like an overwound spring.

“Listen, pal. You don’t know me. And I don’t know you. So I’m going to be real fucking patient. This once. I meant, worth something to
Wolfe.
You think I don’t go way back with her? You think I don’t know what a filthy little maggot this Wychek is? How many rapes he got away with because, in this whole stinking town, only Wolfe had the stones to take the case to trial, even when it wasn’t a slam-dunk?”

I nodded, not affirming his connection to Wolfe, just the truth he spoke about her. When Wolfe was running City-Wide, if there had been any damn way to bring the other victims in, she would have done it.

“I know something else, too,” he said, leaning even closer. “That ‘Ha ha!’ letter he sent Wolfe? He must have sent other ones, too. ’Cause that’s the kind of fucking degenerate filth he is. You want to know who
really
tried to kill him,
that’s
where you start.”

“Where would I get—”

“Been nice meeting you,” the cop said, holding out his hand for me to shake. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime. You ever go out to Platinum Pussycats? The strip joint, out by JFK?”

“No,” I said, arranging my face into a mute question, as I palmed the piece of paper he had slipped to me.

“Ah, you can’t miss it,” he said. “It’s behind that giant storage-unit place they have out there.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, in a dismissive voice. “Anything you want me to tell—?”

“Anything I want to tell her, she already knows,” the cop said.

A
s I was walking back over to my place, the cell phone in my pocket rang.

“What?” I answered.

“Got your message.” Davidson’s voice. “Nice work. I’ll have her out by—”

“There’s new stuff,” I said. “Call me as soon as you get her sprung, so we can meet.”

I
was starting to feel the fatigue knocking at all my doors by then, but I had to pick up whatever the cop had in that storage locker, and do it fast. If he was being straight, if he really was with Wolfe, I couldn’t leave him hanging out there, exposed. And if it was a trap, if they had a camera on the unit so they could get a look at the members of Wolfe’s crew, I couldn’t turn the job over to Pepper.

The Prof and Clarence were probably back in their crib, over in East New York. Which was kind of on the way to the airport, if I took Atlantic Avenue all the way through Brooklyn into Queens. But with the key in my hand, I didn’t need the Prof for the locks. And this had to be a no-guns deal, which meant Clarence wasn’t coming.

The Mole was all the way up in the South Bronx. But even if he’d lived close by, he wouldn’t be the man for this job—his idea of personal protection is heavy explosives. And I still wasn’t sure where Michelle was.

But Max’s place was off Division Street, and I knew everybody in his house would be awake.

I liberated my Plymouth, drove over to the warehouse where Max has his dojo on one floor and his family home on the next. I probed until I found the hidden switch that raised the metal doors to the loading bay, drove inside, and closed it behind me.

By then, I knew Max was watching, from somewhere. As I got out, a dark shape vaulted over the second-floor railing, dropping next to me as lightly as a Kleenex on velour.

Max. Not showing off, showing up.

I started to gesture out what we had to do, but he held one finger in the air for silence, then used it to point upstairs before he flowed his hands together in a prayerful gesture. I took a quick glance at my watch, to tell him we didn’t have a
lot
of time, and then I followed him upstairs.

“Burke!” the teenage girl shouted, as she ran to me. Flower, the only child of Max and his wife, Immaculata.

The girl slammed into me like a linebacker making a goal-line stop, knocking me back a few feet as I held on to her. “Hey, kiddo,” I said. “Easy!”

She stood on her toes, gave me a messy kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so used to Daddy.”

“Daddy?”

“That is what she
persists
in calling her father lately,” Immaculata said, her voice mock-severe. “Flower’s manners have suffered greatly, now that she is
so
grown up.”

“Mom!”

“You see?” Immaculata smiled at me. She turned to her beautiful, glowing daughter. “Have you invited your uncle Burke to come into our home, child? To sit down? To share our breakfast with us?”

“Aaaargh!” the girl said, rolling her eyes. She stepped back a couple of paces, bowed formally, said, “Uncle, please come into our home and share our meal with us. We would be honored.”

“It would be
my
honor,” I said, bowing back.

Max regarded his wife and daughter with his standard mixture of stunned amazement and fierce love.

Immaculata was in a plum-colored robe heavily brocaded with silver. Her hair was tied in a chignon. Her daughter was wearing pink jeans and a black sweatshirt that came almost to her knees. Her hair was pulled into three pigtails, with two on the right.

We all sat around the teak table with rosewood inlays that the family used for all its meals. I don’t know what was in the eggs Immaculata served, but they tasted wonderful.

“Drink,” she said, putting a glass of some ginger-colored stuff she had just mixed up in front of me. “For energy.”

“Thank you,” I said, not remotely surprised that she could tell I needed it.

Max disappeared. Came back in a few seconds with a framed document of some kind.

“Oh my
god
!” Flower exclaimed, dramatically.

I took the document from Max, read through the glass. Flower’s PSAT scores. Verbal: 80. Math: 78. Writing: 80. Spending all that time with teenagers last year had schooled me enough to understand that those scores, coupled with Flower’s school activities, made her a mortal lock for a National Merit Scholarship.

“Congratulations!” I said to her.

“Oh, this is so
embarrassing,
” the girl said. “I mean, it isn’t a Nobel Prize, for goodness’ sake!”

“When you win one of those, will you still throw a fit if your father wants to show it off?” I asked her.

“Burke! You’re supposed to be on
my
side.”

“Honey, it’s not like Max is making a window display out of it.”

“Well, he
wanted
to, I think. And when he showed it to Grandmother,
she
wanted to build a
shrine
to it. I’m
serious
!”

“‘Grandmother,’ huh?” I teased her. “You don’t call her ‘Granny,’ then?”

“She wouldn’t
dare,
” Immaculata laughed. “This child has always been able to bully her poor father, but Mama . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “Mama’s like me. She doesn’t put up with any guff from the younger generation.”

“You are so tough,” Flower said, getting up from the table. She bent forward to give me a kiss, slipping her hand into the side pocket of my jacket, as I had taught her to do when she was just a little girl. Back then, she always found candy. Later, it was the kind of junk jewelry preteens love . . . or pretend to, anyway. Now it’s a fifty-dollar bill. “I must get ready for school now,” she announced.

“Hold on a damn minute,” I said. “I want to tell you something. Something important. You’re old enough to hear it now.”

Flower’s eyes were rapt. There was nothing she treasured more than vindication of her status as a mature young woman.

“I’ve known your father for a
long
time,” I said. “He is my brother. I love him. You know the amazing skills your father has. But I was never jealous of him. Not until now. Do you understand?”

“Oh, Burke,” she said. She gave me another quick kiss, then fled to her room, tears flowing.

E
ven though we were heading away from Manhattan, the inbound HOV lane cut down our options. That, plus the reverse-commuters and airport traffic, clogged the artery enough to keep us below the speed limit for pretty much the entire trip.

The highways that crisscross the city during rush hour carry a United Nations of passengers. Perfect for the kind of traveling I like to do—nothing stands out. Besides, the average commuter is either talking on a cell phone, eating his breakfast, or staring blankly through the windshield like an overtranq’d mental patient. A zebra-striped stretch limo with a palm tree growing out of its sunroof wouldn’t get more than a passing glance, never mind my purposely anonymous Plymouth.

We took the long right-hand sweeper exiting the BQE for the LIE connector to the Grand Central. Behind us, some congenital defective, in a white Mustang with blue racing stripes, decided we weren’t moving quick enough. He jumped into the service lane, shot past us, then whipped back to his left to cut us off. A gentle tap on the four-piston brakes, concealed behind the dog-dish hubcaps on the Plymouth’s modest sixteen-inch steel wheels, was enough to keep us out of his trunk.

Max gave me a “Should we?” look. I shrugged, not expecting we’d get a chance.

But the Mustang was going the same way we were, so we stayed right with him until the highway forked—left for Long Island, right for JFK.

The Mustang went right. Max looked upward, then nodded in agreement. It was true—I usually don’t like to call attention to myself when I’m driving, but fate
had
made the decision for us.

The Mustang cut across two rows, looking for the outside lane. As he made his move, I dropped the Plymouth down a gear and nailed it. The Roadrunner exploded past his left quarter panel like a train past a tree. By the time the full-on roar of the Plymouth’s stump-puller motor registered in his ears, the Mustang was behind us, stunned.

I glanced in the mirror, caught the driver looking frantically to his right, trying to figure out what had happened. The ancient bucket of bolts he’d cut off so easily
couldn’t
have just blasted past him like that, but . . .

Past JFK, traffic lightened up considerably. The Mustang tailgated relentlessly, flashing his brights, making it clear he wanted that left lane for himself. I glanced at the tach—3200 rpm, about 70 miles an hour. Nothing ahead for quite a distance. Even Miss Cleo could figure out what would happen as soon as the lane next to us cleared.

I watched the mirrors. When the Mustang swung out and made his move to pass on my right, I let him get a half-length on me before I gave it the gun, keeping him pinned in the middle lane.

At 105, the Mustang was still coming, but he was a man trying to scale a Teflon wall with greasy hands—the Plymouth had enough left to run away and hide anytime I asked.

A fat SUV in the middle lane finished it. The screech of the Mustang’s brakes was ugly—I guessed the chump hadn’t seen the need for big brakes to go along with his giant chrome rims.

I shot past the SUV, sliced across the highway, and disappeared into the next exit ramp.

W
e circled back toward the storage facility. Once we had it spotted, I pulled over. We took out a pair of bogus Jersey plates—backed with Velcro bands so they could snap on and off in seconds—and put them in place, just in case there was some sort of surveillance cam working.

The facility was a huge grid formed by lines of connected units, like windowless row houses. I’d been in smaller towns.

There was no fence, just a billboard-sized warning sign at the entrance. All I caught with a quick glance was:
NO LIVING OR SLEEPING IN THE UNITS.

We motored through slowly, navigating by the alphanumeric on the piece of paper Sands had given me. A brown Chevy sedan with white doors rolled past us. The quasi–police shield decal on the doors didn’t exactly give me the tremors. All those patrols ever did was watch for people prying open the units that management sealed up when the rent hadn’t been paid.

Some of the units were bigger than apartments people paid a fortune for in Manhattan. Even the smallest ones would hold anything you could stuff in a pickup.

People keep everything in places like this, from toys to treasures. If you were evicted, you could stash your furniture while you slept in your car and tried to put together enough money for a new crib. If your collection of vintage paperback books was too much for your apartment—or your wife—one of these units could be the solution.

For that matter, all you needed was a chainsaw and an ice chest and you could keep a body in one of them for long enough to be in another country by the time it was discovered.

Sands’ unit was near the end of a long row. I backed the Plymouth up to the door, and Max and I got out.

The lock yielded to the three-number sequence that was on the piece of paper Sands had slipped me. I’d brought a flashlight with me, but I didn’t need it: a switch on the wall lit the place nicely.

The inside of the storage unit looked like the loser’s share of a divorce settlement. An old La-Z-Boy recliner, upholstered in seasick-green Naugahyde. A swaybacked couch the husband had probably spent most of his nights on before the breakup. A fold-up workbench. A set of black iron free weights. Two bowling-ball bags that looked full. A pair of metal file cabinets someone had once painted white, with a brush. A decent assortment of power tools—looked in good condition. Stacks of magazines. A nineteen-inch TV. A mid-range stereo receiver, with matching speakers.