Apaches (40 page)

There was silence again.

It was broken by Geronimo.

“Sooner everybody leaves, sooner I can get started,” he said. “I don’t have all that much time.”

Boomer stroked the sides of Pins’s face, his fingers red with the young man’s blood. The two exchanged a long look, then Boomer stood and left, followed by the other Apaches, each of whom saluted Pins with a closed fist to their hearts.

Geronimo jumped to his feet and tapped Boomer on the shoulder. “If I don’t crack the device, I’d like you to do me a favor.”

“I don’t wanna lose two of you,” Boomer said.

“The favor,” Geronimo said. “Will you do it?”

“Name it.”

“Blow that bitch away,” Geronimo said.

•    •    •

S
WEAT RAN DOWN
the sides of Geronimo’s arms and face. He was inching along on his knees, working slowly beside Pins, scanning wires, operating as much with gut as he was with knowledge.

“I’m gonna give the blue wires a snap,” Geronimo said.

“What’s that gonna do?” Pins asked.

“If we’re lucky, not a thing,” Geronimo said. “And it’ll leave us one less device to worry about.”

“What if we ain’t so lucky?” Pins said.

“We won’t know it,” Geronimo told him.

Geronimo took a deep breath, squeezed the tip of his hand pliers over the blue wire, and snapped it apart. Beads of sweat mixed with blood flowed down Pins’s face as he gave Geronimo a knowing nod. “I woulda guessed red myself,” he said.

“It’s a good thing you’re the one that’s wired and not me.” Geronimo wiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his blue Bomb Squad T-shirt.

“How much time left?” Pins asked.

“Why? Gotta be somewhere special?”

“They designed this bomb just for you,” Pins told him. “They said you were the best, but not even you could crack what they laid in here.”

“You were always the quiet one,” Geronimo said. “Wrap a little dyno around you and suddenly I can’t shut you up.”

“I don’t need you to die with me,” Pins said. “I can do this alone. I’ve done everything else that way, don’t see why dying should be any different.”

“They shoulda taped your mouth shut too.” Geronimo was on his back, next to Pins, ready to snap down on a green wire. “Would’ve made my job easier.”

“Boomer, Dead-Eye, the others, they need your help, Geronimo,” Pins said. “A lot more than I do.”

Geronimo snapped off the green wire, shoved the clipper in his waistband, crawled back several inches farther, and started to remove the wire from Pins’s feet. He tossed the wire behind him and inched his way back to the front of the cage.

“Just so you know and it registers,” Geronimo said, wiping the sweat from Pins’s forehead with the front of his shirt. “There are two things in this life I’ve never walked away from. A device and a friend.”

“Then you’re gonna die in here,” Pins said. “With this friend and with this device.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Geronimo said. “Now, that timer is telling me we got ourselves a little less than three minutes. I could snap off a few more wires and hope we stay lucky, or, if you want, I can just kick back and we shoot the shit. Your call, Pins.”

“We never did get a chance to talk all that much,” Pins said.

“White or red,” Geronimo said. “Pick one.”

“I still like red,” Pins breathed.

“Devices love creatures of habit,” Geronimo said with
a smile. Then he pulled the clipper and snapped off the white wires. “File that for the next time.”

“How many of those wires we got left?” Pins asked.

“Hard to figure. They laid on a lot of ’em. Crisscrossed ’em all on top of it. Most are dummies, only one is lit. So we got that, plus the dyno hooked to the rope around your neck, which can go off of any wire. Best I can do is try to get to the central coil and snap it down, but it would be more a guess than anything else.”

“Bottom-line it for me, Geronimo,” Pins said. “Where we goin’ with this?”

Geronimo laid the clipper down on the shiny floor of the bowling lane. He took off his shirt, wiped the sweat off his body, and sat down. He folded his legs and rested his arms on top of them. He turned and looked over at Pins, drenched in blood and sweat, his legs lifeless from having held one position for such a long time. He took several long, slow, deep breaths.

“The device wins, Pins,” Geronimo finally said. “We can’t beat it.”

“Yeah, we can,” Pins said.

“I’m listening,” Geronimo told him.

“Don’t wait for it,” Pins said. “Let it blow on your terms. You’re the best at this. So let the best decide when the fucker goes up.”

Geronimo smiled at Pins as his right hand reached for the clippers. “Pick your color,” Geronimo said.

“I’m a stubborn little bastard. I’m gonna stick with the red.”

“Red it is,” Geronimo said.

He stood on his knees, one hand grasping Pins’s shoulder and the other holding the pliers wrapped around a thin red wire.

“I hope you’re not wrong,” Geronimo said. The smile on his face faded. Then it came back. Pins met it with a smile of his own.

“Bet on this one,” Pins said.

Geronimo snapped down on the red wire and waited for the flash. Once again willing a device to his terms.

•    •    •

T
HE FOUR
A
PACHES
were jolted in their seats by the loud explosion. They were in Boomer’s car, at the far end of the parking lot.

They watched the bowling alley implode. Shards of glass and thick debris flew in all directions. The ceiling caved in, smoke and dust filtered through the air.

Mrs. Columbo gave out a low moan. Rev. Jim was crying and swearing in a rage of emotion. Dead-Eye balled his hands into fists, rubbing them against his legs. Boomer was a mask of stone, the flames reflecting off the darkness of his deep-set eyes. He felt inside his leather jacket, his hand gripping the sticks of dynamite Geronimo had given him. He pulled his hand away and turned the ignition on the car, shoved the gear into drive, and pulled out of the lot.

“Where we going, Boom?” Dead-Eye asked.

“To finish it.”

“We know where?” Rev. Jim wanted to know, glancing back at the smoke billowing from the bowling alley.

“We will,” Boomer said, looking through the rearview. “Pins wired Wilber. We’ll pick him up on the scanner on our way to Nunzio’s.”

“That where we going now?” Mrs. Columbo asked. Her voice was stoic, almost mechanical.

“That’s our first stop,” Boomer said.

“And the second?” Dead-Eye asked.

“To pick up a friend.” Boomer lowered his foot to the gas pedal, pushing the speedometer past seventy.

“Anybody we know?” Dead-Eye asked.

“Deputy Inspector Lavetti,” Boomer said, throwing Mrs. Columbo a quick look over his shoulder and rolling his window up, the night chill too bitter against his face.

“At least it’s somebody we can trust,” Rev. Jim said, slouching in his seat and closing his eyes to the sounds of the night.

T
HEY STOOD IN
the center of Nunzio’s cramped basement, surrounded by red wooden wine barrels and thick crates marked with a government seal. Several of the crates had been eased open with the flat end of a crowbar. An iron door leading to steps and street level was locked and barred. A series of bare bulbs hung overhead.

“Everything you need, you can find inside the crates,” Nunzio said, approaching one and resting a tray loaded with five cups of coffee on it.

“Where did all this stuff come from?” Dead-Eye shook his head in awe. He took a cup from the tray and walked from one crate to the next, his eyes fixed on the astonishing cache of Ingram submachine guns, semiautomatics, grenades, launchers, timers, bullets, vests, knives, and liquid explosives.

“You’re not my
only
friends,” Nunzio said.

“We need one other thing from you,” Boomer said. He passed on the coffee, instead filling a plastic cup with wine from one of the barrels.

“Tell me,” Nunzio said.

“A private plane. With a pilot you trust. We’re going to need to move all the equipment out of state and my airport connection can’t help me walk in with this heavy a load.”

“You want him for the round trip?” Nunzio asked.

Boomer took a look at the Apaches before he answered.
“Yes,” he said. “We’ll be comin’ back. One way or the other.”

“Where to?”

“Arizona,” Boomer said. “Small town, about thirty miles outside Sedona. I’d like to be in the air in about two hours. We picked up Wilber yappin’ away over Pins’s wire. In between the laugh and the brag, he talked about taking his crew back to Lucia’s compound.”

“They want to fight you on their turf,” Nunzio said. “Why not wait and take ’em out on your own ground.”

“We just lost two good cops on our own ground,” Mrs. Columbo said.

“You don’t even know the layout,” Nunzio said. “How many guns she’s got, what you’re up against. You gonna do it, do it right, Boomer. Don’t turn it into a suicide ride.”

“This
is
the right way,” Boomer said. “It’s the way it’s supposed to be. Us against them.”

“From the phones on that plane we can reach out to all our federal contacts,” Rev. Jim said. “Ask ’em to tell us what they know about her spread.”

“And then we tell ’em we’re going in,” Boomer said. “Ask them to follow us out a few hours later.”

“How you so sure they’re gonna go along with somethin’ this crazy?” Nunzio asked.

“They don’t have a choice,” Boomer said. “They’re not gonna blow us out of the sky and they’re not gonna rat us out. Besides, half the guys we deal with would kill for the chance to be with us.”

“Lucia’s expectin’ you to go after her,” Nunzio said. “That should be worth a thought.”

“I think it’s time we met,” Boomer said. “After all we’ve been through together.”

•    •    •

D
EPUTY
I
NSPECTOR
M
ARK
Lavetti stood under the awning of a doorman building on Madison Avenue,
fixing the collar on his brown tweed jacket. He was a handsome man in his early forties, his lean figure topped by a thick head of curly dark hair. He had been a member of the New York City Police Department for twenty-one years and had never recorded a major arrest. He was a test cop, making his steady climb up the ranks by cracking open books in schools rather than cracking heads out on the streets.

He was born with a taste for the sweet life and from his first weeks at the Police Academy was quick to smoke out a pad and how best to squeeze his way in on the action. He took his first envelope while still wearing the grays of a trainee, fifty a week to fill a local dealer in on which probie cops were eager to score free joints and lines, no questions asked. In return, the dealer sold their names to the turf leader of their precinct.

By the time he stood under the awning of the building on Madison Avenue, Mark Lavetti was pulling down twenty-five thousand in cash a month, feeding info to major dealers in the five boroughs. He never went near the money himself, instead using a rotating team of relatives as a pickup posse, letting them move the cash from sealed locker to selected bank and mutual fund accounts.

Lavetti was a master at covering the money trail.

His three-bedroom co-op was in his mother’s name. The sporty Corvette he drove when not on duty was owned tire and gearshift by a sister in Mineola. He had a summer home in Woodstock mortgaged to an uncle living in a nursing home. His yearly vacations came courtesy of a cousin who ran a tourist agency.

Despite the rumors floating out of various precincts, the top brass saw Mark Lavetti exactly as he wanted to be seen—a clean cop riding the fast track.

His biggest score had also been his easiest.

Mark Lavetti was on the phone seconds after Joseph
Silvestri walked out of his One Police Plaza office. He listened to the sad man tell him about his wife’s involvement with a band of disabled cops, assured him all would be kept confidential, then set up a meeting with a main feeder to Lucia Carney’s drug business. Outside Gate D at Shea Stadium, Lavetti handed over the six names of the Apaches to a man he knew would want them dead. In return, he accepted a manila envelope crammed with $100,000 in cash.

And he never gave the matter another thought.

Lavetti walked at a brisk pace down Madison, wondering whether to detour over to Lincoln Center to pick up a pair of opera tickets for himself and his new girlfriend, a model who was easily impressed by such things, or wait until after dinner and then drive past. His car was parked at the corner of Sixty-second Street, next to a hydrant, an official NYPD tag in the front window. As he got closer, he noticed a dark blue sedan double-parked close to his car, blocking his exit, the driver nowhere in sight.

He took the keys from the front pocket of his slacks, ready to call in the car and have a truck come tow it, angry he hadn’t just parked in the building garage as usual.

“Where you off to tonight, Inspector?” Boomer asked, coming out of the shadows of a shuttered dry cleaners, standing behind Lavetti, both hands in his jacket pockets.

“Who the fuck are you?” Lavetti asked.

“I’m surprised you don’t recognize me,” Boomer said. “I’m an Apache.”

“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?” Lavetti asked. But a shift in his tone betrayed his disquiet.

“You put a price on me.” Boomer stepped closer, holding the urge to pull the trigger on the gun inside his jacket. “And on my friends. Somebody started to collect. Two of them died today.”

“Are you crazy!” Lavetti said. “Do you know who you’re talking to? I’m a cop. A deputy inspector!”

“The two who died were
cops
,” Boomer said. “You’re just a punk with a badge. But tonight you’re in for a treat. I’m going to give you a chance to
die
like a cop.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Lavetti said, starting to turn and run.

“Then you’ll die right here.” Boomer pulled the gun from his pocket and pressed it to Lavetti’s temple. “On the street, like the piece of shit you are. Either way, I don’t give a fuck. It’s your decision.”

“Where are we going?” was all Lavetti could manage to say.