Apaches (21 page)

She knew that if she lived, if she somehow escaped from Malcolm’s hold, she would always be his prisoner. The days and nights spent captive in this room had ensured that he would always be alive inside her, crawling to the surface at any moment, bringing with him the visions and the pain, resurrecting the horror and misery she had suffered.

She knew that smiling face would be as much a part of the rest of her life as her own skin. And as young as she was, as innocent as she’d been, she realized that if, in some way, she survived this nightmare and was set free, she would wait for the moment and then commit the one act that would break his hold on her.

At that moment Jennifer Santori knew that if Malcolm did not kill her, she would one day take her own life.

Malcolm stuck the edge of the knife into a floor panel and used it to help lift his face up. He inched closer to Jennifer, always with the smile, his brain still reeling from the smoked rock and the Four Roses pint he’d lifted from a street rummy.

“Why you lookin’ at Malcolm like that?” he asked her. “There something you want to say? Is there, baby?”

Jennifer nodded her head.

“What, baby?” Malcolm said in a voice that for him passed as soft and concerned. “Tell me.”

Jennifer drew up all that was left of her strength, took in one more long breath, and then spoke her very first words since Malcolm had taken her finger.

“Fuck you,” she said.

Malcolm reacted with a rage not even Jennifer could have imagined. He jumped to his feet, dropped the knife to the floor, and began punching her, his two closed fists balled into stone. He forgot all about Junior and cleaning Jennifer up for his approval. His fury was unleashed now, and there was no reeling it back.

His punches landed hard, heavy, and often, smashing bone and breaking skin. Within minutes there wasn’t a part of Jennifer’s body that wasn’t bruised, bleeding, or broken. When he tired of throwing punches and landing kicks, Malcolm grabbed her hair and slammed the front of her head against the base of the cold radiator.

“Talk to me like that?” Malcolm shouted. “After all I done for you. You bitch! You spoiled, rich, fuckin’ bitch! You gonna die here. You gonna die for talkin’ to me like that.”

Malcolm’s words were heard by no one.

Jennifer was long past hearing him, her mind having entered a warm room surrounded by familiar sounds, smells, and features. A room where she would be loved and trusted. A room where no intruder would ever be allowed in to cause her harm.

A room far away, removed from blood, pain, and misery.

A room that would always remain unknown to a crazed man named Malcolm Juniper.

And a room where the shadows of Boomer Frontieri and Dead-Eye Winthrop would soon loom large.

•    •    •

J
UNIOR CAME CRASHING
and flailing through the wooden front door, crying out in pain as he landed on his hands and knees, his right hand inches from the handle of Malcolm’s bloody knife. Boomer and Dead-Eye stood in the entry way behind him, arms out straight, guns cocked and drawn, aimed at Malcolm’s head.

“Move away from the girl,” Boomer told Malcolm,
looking down at the still body. “I want you with your back to the wall and your hands out flat.”

Malcolm let go of Jennifer’s hair, took two steps back, and pressed his body against the wall. He was breathing through his mouth, his body tense and coated with a foul-smelling sweat.

Boomer stepped over Junior, sliding the gun back into his hip holster as he walked over to his friend’s daughter. He crouched down and held her battered face, wiped away strands of hair and brushed off lines of blood and mucus. He slid his hand down to her neck and felt for a pulse. It was beating at a low rate, just enough to keep her alive.

“She needs a doctor fast.” Boomer cradled Jennifer’s head with both hands. Fighting both the impulse to cry and the desire to kill, he turned to Malcolm. “Where are the keys to the cuffs? And I don’t wanna hear anything more outta you than the fuckin’ answer.”

Malcolm kept his eyes square on the barrel of Dead-Eye’s gun. “Front pocket of my jeans.”

Boomer rested Jennifer’s head against the wall and took four quick steps over to Malcolm’s jeans, which were crumpled in the center of the room. He picked them up and took out a tiny set of silver keys. Along with the keys, Boomer pulled out a business card, black with white lettering. He pocketed the card and walked back to Jennifer. It was then that he noticed the missing finger.

Malcolm ran a dry tongue over an even drier set of lips. Sweat dripped down the small of his back and he couldn’t stop the right side of his face from twitching.

Boomer uncuffed Jennifer, brought her arm down gently to her side. He pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and wrapped it around the top of her hand. As the girl let out a soft whimper of pain, he held Jennifer in his arms and lifted her up.

“It got a little crazy,” Malcolm said. “That happens sometimes.”

Boomer made no attempt to hide his revulsion. He’d seen a lot in the years since he first pinned on his shield and he knew about the ugliness that filtered down the streets of his beat: men who killed the women they loved over the last hit on a pipe; dealers who sold poison to junkies, caring little that they would die within seconds of the rush; hitters who murdered strangers for cash and walked off into the night without care or concern; radicals so filled with hate they butchered the innocent in honor of some indefinite principle. All those he had seen and, over the years, had slowly come to understand.

But what he had seen over the past several days was a new form of evil. The man he stood across from and the other on his knees behind him were alien creatures to Boomer, each so willing to drop into the depths of an inhumanity he found terrifying.

There had been many criminals who’d crossed paths with Boomer whom he’d found pleasure in arresting. There were a handful he had killed because of the situation and the moment. But there had never been anyone he had wanted to kill for the pure emotional need to eliminate him.

Not until he crossed paths with Junior and Malcolm.

“I’m taking the girl,” Boomer said quietly. “The police’ll be here soon and take you and your friend away.” He took two steps back, and for a moment closed his eyes.

“Learn to pray, Malcolm,” Boomer said. “Pray for a long prison sentence and for me to die the day before you get out.”

•    •    •

D
EAD
-E
YE HAD HIS
gun back down by his side, the heat of anger swelling within him as well. It was fueled by the bleakness of the room, the thick smell of blood and body fluids that filtered into his lungs. He fought back a desire to scream, trying to erase from his head images of his own wife and son caught in the grips of
such men. His eyes were fixed on the girl in Boomer’s arms, so different now from the open, smiling face on the picture that was hidden inside the fold of his jacket pocket.

It takes a great deal to touch a hardened man, to penetrate the defensive shield and reach down and press his vulnerable core. Dead-Eye always felt he had made himself strong enough to escape such pressure.

He knew now that he was wrong.

Dead-Eye took his eyes away from the girl and looked down at Junior, who had inched closer to Malcolm’s knife. His fingers were stretching to reach it, only a quick grab away from the handle. Junior had stayed silent, making himself easy to ignore. He had glanced behind him and was aware that Dead-Eye’s gun was at rest, no longer pointed at him. Besides, the rich, pampered Junior was arrogant enough to think no cop would ever shoot him and expect to walk away.

It was the perfect time to make his move.

Malcolm saw it first, saw Junior standing behind Boomer, the blade of the knife held high, ready to come down hard into the cop’s back, the gleeful look of a vengeful killer fulfilling his fate.

Malcolm curled a half-smile over at Boomer and shook his head slowly. “Maybe,” he said, “I don’t have to pray so hard as you think.”

Boomer looked into Malcolm’s eyes, saw the confidence suddenly show itself. He held his ground, gripping Jennifer’s slight body closer to him, burying her head deeper into his chest, sensing what was about to happen.

One shot brought it to an end.

It came out of Dead-Eye’s .44 and flew past the center of Junior’s brain.

A low, guttural moan came from deep inside Junior’s body. Thick, dark gushes of blood sprayed across Malcolm’s face and over the back of Boomer’s head and neck. Boomer turned to see Junior fall face first to the floor, the hole in his head large enough to shine a
spotlight through, the knife held loose in the curve of his right hand. Behind them, Dead-Eye stood in a crouch position, his legs spread, right arm extended, smoke filtering off the barrel of his gun.

“You’re not supposed to shoot a suspect in the back,” Boomer said. “Or is that one of the classes you missed?”

“He wasn’t a suspect,” Dead-Eye said, holstering his gun and walking toward Boomer, ignoring the body on the floor. “And I didn’t shoot him in the back. I shot him in the head.”

“Give the uniforms your statement,” Boomer said. “I’ll call in from the hospital to back it up. Then we’ll take it all from there.”

“I’ll tell ’em what I saw,” Malcolm said, his upper body starting to shiver. “Swear to God, tell ’em everything. Unless you let me go. Now.”

“Look down at that big hole in Junior’s head,” Dead-Eye said to Malcolm, turning his back on him long enough to close the door behind Boomer and the little girl in his arms. “Then remember I’ve still got five more bullets in my gun.”

Dead-Eye rested his back against a far wall, his legs stretched out, arms folded across his chest. In the distance, he heard police sirens drawing closer.

“I don’t see you puttin’ down a brother,” Malcolm said. “You don’t look the type to kill your own blood.”

Dead-Eye pushed himself away from the wall, the siren wails growing louder, and headed straight for Malcolm. He pulled the gun from his holster, cocked it, and jammed it right under the naked man’s chin.

“We don’t have the same blood,” Dead-Eye said, barely moving his lips, shoving the gun in harder against the fleshy part of Malcolm’s jaw. “And, believe me, I would kill any brother who was scum like you. Even my own.”

He pulled the gun away, stepped over Junior’s body, and walked to the apartment door. He opened the door,
leaned his shoulder against the cracked hinges, rested his head on the wood, and stared up at a bare bulb hanging from a ceiling wire.

A cop waiting to be rescued.

B
OOMER SAT AT
his usual corner table at Nunzio’s, hovering over a large bowl of penne with pesto. Across from him, Dead-Eye quietly cut into a thick char-broiled veal chop. Nunzio Goldman watched as they both ate, his back to a closed window, a large glass of red wine in front of him.

Nunzio knew his two friends had been through an ordeal these past few days. He could read it in their faces. Reading people was one of the things that came as second nature to Nunzio Goldman. He had spent his life on both sides of the law and managed to avoid any problems from either end. The good cops, like Boomer and Dead-Eye, trusted him. They knew that bets came in steady over his phone and that the sporting spreads for the Upper West Side were set behind his bar, but that kind of action didn’t interest them. Boomer’s mother bet a dollar on a number every day of her life, even hit one on a few occasions. Dead-Eye’s father had ten dollars riding every week on his beloved Giants during football season, with or without points. It didn’t make it right, it just didn’t make it a crime, not in their eyes. Not when off-track betting in New York State was legal, enticing people as easily as any street hustler to lay down money they could ill afford to lose. To Boomer and Dead-Eye’s way of thinking, they were all bookies.

Dirty cops periodically tried to shake Nunzio down and were always sent away empty-handed. Nunzio made it his business to get as much information on them as
could be dug up. If they were too dirty for his hands, he passed the folders on to the right people. If they were just looking to do some light skimming, he told the cops what he knew about their business and threw down a simple choice—either disappear from his line of vision or prepare to deal with Internal Affairs.

In Nunzio’s world there was no black and white, only shades of gray, and he lived with ease within that cloudy area. He was a criminal who hated drugs and all that their sale embodied, but was comfortable in the company of hired killers who contracted out murders as easily as he sliced off strips of prosciutto. He ran an honest restaurant, treating customers with respect and serving only the finest foods he could afford. At the same time, he and his accountant devoted hours to cooking the books, keeping two sets of ledgers, reporting only the false set to the Internal Revenue Service. In the midst of a complicated universe, Nunzio Goldman kept his life and his ways as simple as he could manage.

“What kind of fallout did you guys get from taking out Junior?” Nunzio asked Boomer and Dead-Eye.

“His father says he’s gonna sue the department.” Boomer paused, filling his mouth with pasta. “He’s put a team of six-figure lawyers on the case.”

“He know you were in on it?” Nunzio asked.

“He knows what he was told,” Dead-Eye said. “Two retired detectives heard a rumor about a young girl being held against her will in an abandoned building.”

“When we went in, Junior panicked and came after me with a knife,” Boomer added. “And Dead-Eye iced him.”

“That’s not gonna be enough for Pop,” Nunzio said. “He’s gonna want the ones buried his son.”

“They can take my pension if they want it,” Boomer said, breaking off a hunk of bread from a basket. “I don’t give a fuck. Nothing can take back what they did to that kid.”

“Pop’s gonna use his money to talk for him against the two of you. I’ll use mine to talk against him. End of the
day, we’ll see whose money talks louder.” Nunzio sipped his wine.

“How’s Jennifer?”

Boomer put down his fork, took a sip from a glass of mineral water, and looked over at Nunzio, sadness easing its way across his face. “The doctors, with all their fucking diplomas, told her parents that kids can rebound out of these kinds of things.”