Apaches (17 page)

“Save it for Mike Wallace,” Dead-Eye said. “All we wanna hear is you spit up some names.”

“Don’t have to give you shit, Super Fly.” The smile was back on Cleve’s face. “You can’t arrest me. Your badges been stamped out.”

“I never shot a pimp on the job,” Boomer said, looking away from Cleve and checking the two hookers in hot pants and fake fur standing by a pink Lincoln, shivering in their six-inch heels. “How about you, Dead-Eye?”

“Fleshed one once in the shoulder,” Dead-Eye said.
“Up in Spanish Harlem. He ran off down the avenue, screaming like an old woman.”

“There’s a hundred wacks, easy, out here movin’ kids,” Cleve said. “I ain’t no ftickin’ yellow pages. Can’t know them all.”

Boomer looked away from the hookers and stepped in closer to Cleve, lips inches from the pimp’s left ear. “Be a pal,” Boomer whispered, “and give us your three best names.”

“I only go by their street names,” Cleve said, eyes moving from Boomer to Dead-Eye.

“We’ll take what you can give,” Dead-Eye said.

“I’d peek at a lowball PR calls himself Crow,” Cleve said, toning down his voice. “Works the terminal, lifting boys for the chicken hawks, sometimes takes a chippie home for himself.”

“You’re riding a wave, Cleve,” Boomer said. “Don’t stop it now.”

“There’s this white dude rides around the deuce in out-of-state wheels,” Cleve said, lifting the front flap of his coat and pulling out a filter-tip Kool. “Nasty piece of business. Got more tattoos than skin. Couldn’t miss him if you were blind and tied to a tree.”

“We get the idea,” Dead-Eye said.

“He deals in runaways,” Cleve said, putting a lit match to the cigarette, talking as he puffed. “Hangs on to them for a week or so, chillin’ his bones, then sells ’em off to an outside shipper.”

“Nice set of friends,” Boomer said. “I should shoot you just for knowin’ ’em.”

“We only walk on the same streets, Boom,” Cleve said. “I don’t ever chop wood with shit like that. I aim my end simple and clean. Keeps my pockets filled with cash, my dick covered with pussy, and my soft ass outta jail.”

“You should have your own talk show,” Boomer said. “Now, get back on track, Romeo. Give us up another name.”

“There’s a brother calls himself X,” Cleve said, tossing the butt end of the Kool out toward the curb. “You know, like Malcolm X?”

“Minus the religion,” Dead-Eye said.

“He’s as close to Malcolm as me to the Pope,” Cleve said. “This fucker’s out there, pulls in runaways and sells them over to some uptown crew that takes ’em, fucks ’em till they’re knocked up, then deals them
and
the baby. Like a two for one.”

“Jesus Christ,” Dead-Eye muttered.

“He work the area steady?” Boomer asked.

“I see him enough to make me nervous,” Cleve said. “He don’t always sell what he picks up.”

“Why’s that?” Dead-Eye asked.

“Sometimes the goods are too damaged,” Cleve said. “Buyers take a pass, if you read what I mean. He ain’t happy just gettin’ his rocks soft. He’s into the pain.”

“He have a regular spot?” Boomer said. “A hang place.”

“I hear he scores his dope off a dealer works the Eighth Avenue end of the Port,” Cleve said. “That’d be where I would gaze. But then, I ain’t no shot-up super cops like you two.”

“Appreciate the info, Cleve,” Boomer said. “You ever end up doin’ a stretch, we promise to visit.”

“Bring you and your prison chick some home cookin’,” Dead-Eye said.

“Like being in the can ain’t bad enough,” Cleve said, silver teeth gleaming under the glow of the overhead streetlight.

“Just one more thing,” Boomer said, nodding over toward Dead-Eye.

“I gave up the three.” Cleve was annoyed. “That’s all I can do for free.”

“This one won’t cost,” Boomer said, smiling. “It’s just a favor, Cleve.”

“What you need?” Cleve started to slow-step it toward
the parked car and the waiting hookers. “But make it quick.”

“The name of your dentist,” Boomer said.

•    •    •

B
OOMER PLACED THE
sharp end of a pocket knife in the dealer’s ear. He had his left hand wrapped around the man’s throat, force-lifting him inches from the floor. The dealer was thin and bug-eyed with long, greasy black hair covering half his face.

They were inside an empty Port Authority men’s room, Dead-Eye leaning his back against the front door. The dealer’s glassy eyes veered from Boomer to Dead-Eye, trying to place the faces of the men who had yanked him without warning from the street and dragged him into the first open door they found.

“I
know
you guys ain’t dealers,” he said. “And I don’t
think
you’re cops.”

“We’re priests,” Dead-Eye said.

“And we’re willing to save your fucking soul,” Boomer said, lifting the dealer higher up against the side of the grimy wall. “So the only thinkin’ for you right now should be about how can I make these guys happy.”

“Take my works,” the dealer said, fear kicking his voice into a higher gear. “Got enough for ten, maybe twelve, easy, on the street.”

“You sell smack to a low-end run chaser calls himself X,” Dead-Eye said, pointing a finger toward the knife inside the dealer’s ear. “Give us his name, unless you want to spend the rest of your life reading lips.”

“You guys lookin’ for chicks, no problem, I can help you out,” the dealer said. “X is the best. He can find a fresh piece of fur in the desert.”

Boomer slid the edge of the knife across the side of the dealer’s ear, bringing a thin row of blood drops flowing down his neck. “You guys ain’t fuckin’ priests,” the dealer muttered.

Boomer squeezed his hand tighter against the man’s
throat, muffling the sounds of pain, causing his eyes to bulge. “The name is all I wanna hear from you,” Boomer said. “We understand each other?”

The dealer nodded and Boomer lightened his grip. “Malcolm Juniper,” the dealer said. “We did a spin together up at Attica.”

“Where’s he sleep?” Dead-Eye asked, popping four Maalox tablets into his mouth.

“Here and there,” the dealer said. “No place steady. He’s only been loose a few weeks.”

“Where’s he sleeping tonight?” Boomer asked, wiping the knife blade on the sleeve of the dealer’s torn velvet jacket. Then he took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and handed it to the dealer. “Clean that blood off your ear,” he told him. “
After
you answer the question.”

“He’s been stayin’ at a park-and-lock on Thirty-ninth Street,” he said, putting the handkerchief next to his ear. “Put down enough for a four-day stay.”

“When?” Dead-Eye asked.

“Yesterday,” the dealer said. “Day before, maybe.”

“Don’t be wrong,” Boomer said.

He turned away from the dealer and walked toward Dead-Eye and the exit door, slipping the closed knife into his back pocket.

“You think I’m gonna need stitches for this cut?” the dealer asked, jabbing the blood-soaked handkerchief against his wound. “It feels pretty deep.”

“We ain’t doctors either,” Dead-Eye said as he closed the door behind him.

•    •    •

M
ALCOLM
J
UNIPER WAS
twenty-seven years old and four weeks removed from a three-year spin at Attica prison on a rape and molestation conviction when he had spotted the teary-eyed girl from across the street. He smiled, took a hit off a joint, and turned the engine over on his cherry-red Chrysler Imperial. Ramming the gear stick into drive,
he angled his way across the busy intersection, his glassy eyes barely aware of the traffic, smelling his prey.

“You look like you could use some help, sugar” were Malcolm’s first words to Jennifer Santori. He was leaning across the front seat, talking through an open window.

“I’m okay,” she managed to say. Jennifer stared at his scarred and chapped lips and the fingers of one hand that gripped the steering wheel.

“You okay, you wouldn’t be standing out in the rain,” Malcolm said with a laugh. “Be somewhere safe. Warm. Be with family.”

“I am with family,” Jennifer said.

“All I see is you,” Malcolm said.

“My brother,” Jennifer said, turning away to look past the car, down the distant streets. “I’m here with my brother. He had to use a bathroom. Told me to wait for him here.”

Jennifer was lying. She was lost and looked it. It was so stupid of her not to wait for Anthony outside the bathroom door as he had asked. But he had taken such a long time, like he always did at home, and she just couldn’t wait anymore. Not with all those people rushing past, some looking at her and smiling, others staring with empty eyes, dirty clothes held together by rope and cloth. Then there was the horrible smell, strong as a punch, of dried urine sprayed across walls and stuck to the floor. Jennifer clasped a gloved hand to her mouth and swallowed the urge to vomit.

She needed to get out. Just for a few minutes.

She rode an escalator up toward fresh air, which she welcomed with a deep breath. The ride was slow and creaky, and the guttural shouts of eager newsboys hawking morning papers filtered down toward her. She stepped carefully off the escalator, turned left, and was soon washed into a swarm of people moving with concerted speed to a variety of destinations. There was a smile on her face, and her curiosity overwhelmed, for the briefest moment, her fear of the unknown.

She was walking the streets of a city she had always heard about and seen perhaps ten times in her life. It was the city her brother talked about with a sense of wonder. The same city her father faced daily with dread and unease and her mother reserved for special occasions. She was in it alone, at pace with the people who called it home, in step with the hungry and the moneyed, the desperate and the dreamers.

She had crossed three streets before the warmth of adventure was replaced by cold awareness. She turned and tried to make her way back. It took a few moments, two wrong turns, and a quick run against a flashing light before she knew the truth.

The dream weekend she and her brother had planned had turned a dark corner.

And on that corner lurked Malcolm Juniper.

“Be better for you to wait in a dry place,” Malcolm said to her, reaching across to the passenger side door.

The light facing Jennifer turned from red to green, but she didn’t move. “He must have stopped to get something to eat,” she said.

“I can help you find him,” Malcolm told her.

Jennifer hesitated before stepping into the car, too frightened to recall her father’s constant litany of caution. She slammed the car door shut and disappeared into a world of darkness.

•    •    •

M
ALCOLM
J
UNIPER WALKED
out of the deli entrance and spotted Boomer and Dead-Eye coming toward him from across the street. Even from a distance, the two men, one favoring his right leg, the other breathing through his mouth, smelled like cop. Malcolm gripped the large paper bag filled with a six-pack of Colt .45 malt and turned the corner, trying to hold on to his calm, knowing the two men would be fast on him. Even if they grabbed him, they didn’t have much. He wasn’t armed, had clocked in regular with his parole officer, and had applied for
work at three fast-food outfits. The very model of a parolee and the last man any cop could finger for a street kidnapping.

But Malcolm Juniper was a career criminal who had spent the better part of his adult years behind the cold bars of a lockup. His ex-con’s survival instinct told him that the two men tracking him had no interest in probable cause or Miranda rights. These two looked serious, so they either wanted a snitch out, which would put Malcolm in street trouble, or they knew about the girl, which could land him behind bars until coffin time. Either way, Malcolm Juniper wasn’t going in. Not on this day.

He crossed against the light, moving up to Fortieth and Eighth. The street was filled with early morning stiffs heading out of the terminal and into work. Side streets were clogged with traffic, Jersey plates trying to squeeze into twelve-buck-a-day garage slots. The two men had drawn closer, walking less than twenty feet behind him, the white guy sure to be the first one to make the move, the brother not looking to be one to jump and tear on the street. But then, the worst beatings Malcolm Juniper ever took were from black badges and, if anything, the one stalking him looked fit to hand out the punishment.

Malcolm was straight enough to know not to outfight them, and he wasn’t in the mood to deal with their shakedown shit, and he sure as sin wasn’t going to be dragged to the house to be fingered on something he didn’t do. It left him only one viable option, and he took it as soon as he crossed Forty-first and turned left, heading down toward Ninth Avenue and less congested streets.

Malcolm tossed the bag filled with the Colts over his shoulder and started to run, heading for the rummy shacks down by the West Side Highway.

“Rabbit’s on the go, Boom,” Dead-Eye shouted, starting to take chase.

“Let’s try and keep him alive,” Boomer said, running alongside. “For a change.”

“You’re talking like a civilian now,” Dead-Eye said, ignoring the pain in his chest as he ran.

“He’s makin’ for the highway,” Boomer said, wincing from the pressure the hard concrete was putting on his bad leg. “We gotta cut him off by the time he gets to Tenth.”

“If
we
make it to Tenth,” Dead-Eye said, starting to slow his pace, the burn in his chest growing with every deep breath.

“We’re makin’ him look like Jesse Owens,” Boomer said, the frustration in his voice spiking as high as the pain.

“With us chasin’,
everybody’s
Jesse Owens,” Dead-Eye said, wiping a hand across his forehead, brushing away cold drops of sweat.

They stopped next to a cab stand, both gasping for air, bent over, hands to knees, faces twisted in pain, Malcolm Juniper long gone from their sights.

Dead-Eye took a step back and leaned his aching body against a taxi. “What are we doin’?” he said angrily. “We’re finished, man. This shit ain’t for us anymore. We’re done, you and me, and we got the papers to prove it.”

“It’s just a little rust,” Boomer wheezed, walking in small circles, willing the pain in his chest and leg to flee from him as fast as Malcolm had. “We’ve just gotta get our timing back.”