Cold Night (Jack Paine Mysteries) (12 page)

Paine felt sick. There was a constant gnaw in his belly that had risen slowly to the back of his head and settled behind the back of his eyes where it throbbed dully. His head felt like a giant squeezed fist.

"Sure you don't want to go in?" Dannon kept asking. He knew Dannon was taunting him. Good cops did their job. Good cops stuck with their partners, didn't go in sick in the middle of a shift.

"Come on, Jack," Dannon said with mock heartiness, punching him lightly in the ribs. "Want a nice bowl of chili? Maybe a greasy bucket of Chinese ribs?"

Paine groaned and Dannon laughed.

Dannon was always like this—a sour mix of paternalism and riding, suppressed brutality. Paine had given up long ago trying to figure Dannon out. He seemed to like being a cop, but there was a deep, festering resentment in him, an itch he never scratched in front of Paine. He hovered on the edge of unpredictability. At first it had seemed like camaraderie, the complaining and dissatisfaction, but Paine had learned that Dannon's resentment also held room for Paine himself. After Paine had refused to have anything to do with Dannon's small payoffs, the free hamburgers and coffees, the twenties cheerfully collected here and there, he knew he had found his way onto Dannon's crap list.

"Little high and mighty for a rookie whose old man blew his own brother's head off, don't you think?" Dannon had said one night, his joking manner layering the hostility beneath. In the locker room he subtly rode Paine all the time, doing it in such a way that, without looking cruel, he drew laughter from anyone who was around. When they were alone, he could be just as subtle and vicious, and often was.

"Sure you don't want a taco, kid?" Dannon laughed, pushing Paine with his fist in the ribs again. His voice turned mean. "Want me to bring you in, Jack? Take you to the nurse?"

"Fuck off," Paine said.

The dull yellow lights flashing off the black wet tarp were like pins stabbing into his eyes. He wanted to squeeze his head with his hands and scream.

Dannon drove without speaking, blessing Paine with the near silence of windshield wipers slapping water from the glass in front of him.

They were in the center of Yonkers now, a run-down mix of gasping businesses and warehouses bordered by low-rent apartments. Paine fought to keep his eyes from squinting against the stabbing hurt that assaulted them from the sodium vapor lamps overhead. There had been a lot of trouble near here lately.

Dannon slowed the car to a crawl.

Paine thought his partner had seen something. Ignoring the anguish his eyes felt, he searched for a problem. If he missed something, Dannon would get on him. But there was nothing. Dannon began to talk.

"You know, kid," he said, his voice conversationally hiding the menace that crept into it, "I don't understand how you can afford to be a fucking saint."

"Let it drop," Paine said.

Dannon laughed. "I can always stop for those tacos." His tone changed to mock seriousness. "I just don't understand you."

"I told you," Paine said, wanting more than anything to ram his eyes shut, but keeping them open, looking through the sweeping path of the wipers, out through the water-spattered, half-opened window on his right, "I don't give a shit what you do. Just leave me out of it."

"You're my
partner,
Jack," Dannon went on. "I can't leave you out of anything."

"Learn."

Anger, the thing Paine had fought to control since he had started with this man, rose in him.

"Look," Dannon began, but the anger spilled over in Paine and he grabbed Dannon's arm, hard. Dannon braked the car in the middle of the street and turned his cold eyes on Paine.

"Leave me the fuck alone," Paine hissed. "I don't give a shit if you're screwing your grandmother on the side,
just leave me out."

Time stood still as Dannon stared into his face. Then he broke contact and turned back to the road. "All right, kid," he said quietly.

They drove in silence. The night melted away around them. Yellow lights, black streets. Yellow and black. The rain made everything ghostly; a few wisps of misty fog trailed up from the gutters to nuzzle the darkness. They circled the center of town, skirted the outskirts, started from the bottom and drove back up again.

The night stabbed at Paine and he fought to keep his eyes open.

Dannon began to say something, then stopped and said, "Holy shit."

He jerked the car to the curb and was halfway out before Paine focused on what was happening. On the sidewalk ahead of them, a man in a stylish raincoat was just collapsing to his knees. As Paine watched, he fell forward. Even in the dreamlike yellow and black light, Paine saw the red tear across the bottom of his face. And up ahead, a small figure in a leather jacket was running away.

Paine pushed his door open. Pulling his .38, Dannon ran past the fallen figure in the trench coat in pursuit of the boy in the leather jacket. He gave a quick glance back at Paine, indicating with a nod that Paine should check the fallen man.

The man in
the trench
coa
t lay unmoving, next to a bench. His leather
briefcase had fallen open on
the ground, leaving a scatter of papers soaking in the light rain. The man was black, maybe thirty years old. He looked like he had decided to curl up and go to sleep, but he was dead.

Paine pulled him over. The left side of his neck looked like a cherry bomb had gone off in it, taking out a ragged wedge half the size of Paine's fist.

Paine settled the man back down in the rain and let him sleep forever. He looked up. Dannon was well up the street, gaining inevitably on the figure in the leather jacket. The boy took a sudden right corner and Dannon disappeared after him.

Paine ran back to the cruiser and radioed for backup. Then he followed Dannon. He reached the corner Dannon
had turned, and stopped. His eyes were burning. He closed
them tight and then opened them. He was surrounded by night and drizzling rain and yellow and black. He shook his head, bringing his eyes back to focus. He listened. Ahead of him footsteps slapped against wet pavement. He caught movement between two apartment buildings.

He ran. The pavement hit his feet, hard. He felt detached from himself. He felt like someone else was running, watching the pounding of feet against sidewalk. The black and yellow night blurred, cleared. He drew his hand across his eyes, pulled in burning lungfuls of air.

Dannon was twenty yards from him, motioning for Paine to follow him into an alley.

Paine stood before the opening of the alley and swayed. It looked like a cave mouth, the mouth of a dark giant beast. He stumbled forward and it swallowed him.

He fell to one knee, drew a rasping breath, then stood. His eyes focused and unfocused. He felt perhaps he should lie down in the alley, go to sleep, let the other detached self who watched him continue.

"Paine!” he heard from a great distance. It was a giant’s bellow muffled by darkness, the enclosing alley, his own disjoined self.

He grunted, staggering forward.

Dannon was next to him. That much he knew. Dannon was shouting, pointing with his long hand, and Paine fought his body and stood still and looked where Dannon was pointing.

Everything slowed as if he had been dropped into water. The alley was black but suddenly it became very bright. There was light ahead. Someone stepped out of the darkness, a man-boy with a leather jacket on. He pointed something at Paine. Paine remembered the man in the trench coat with the wedge of neck missing, the thick clotting flow of red that melted into the rain and made the man sleep. The man’s eyes had looked as though the life had been yanked out in one surprised pull.

"Paaaaaaaaaine!” he heard. The world slowed even more. The figure in front of Dannon’s pointing finger moved, stepped into the bright light, because part of it, the thing in his hand, the bright sun-flash of the thing in hand pointed at Paine . . .

When Paine awoke in the hospital twelve hours later, Dannon was there to tell him what had happened. The boy with the leather jacket on was fifteen years old. The thing in his hand had been a four-cell Radio Shack flashlight he’d gotten for free that afternoon. He had stepped into the alley to try it out. His mother had told him not to go out but he had gone anyway. He was not the one they were looking for. Dannon told him that he had yelled for Paine not to fire; that Paine had taken out his gun and pointed it at the boy. Dannon told him how the alley had lit up like lightning when Paine fired his .38. He hit the boy in the head from five feet away, killed him instantly.

"You yelled, ‘Uncle Martin!’ when you fired, Jack, " Dannon said, unsmiling. Later, at the inquest, unsmiling, Dannon said the same thing.

For a while, at twenty-five thousand feet in the air, Paine imagined the jet engine’s screams were his own.

P
aine's call to Bobby Petty went right through this time. No one told him Petty was out; no one put him on hold and made him listen to bad music.

"Kicked some ass, Bobby?" Paine asked. He noticed that Petty had taken his call in the quiet place again. No typewriters, no voices.

Petty grunted.

"Dannon been bothering you?"

"Dannon can fuck himself."

"I'm sure he couldn't get it right."

"That's a cheery thought, Jack. I got you something on Lucas Druckman."

"Tell me about Druckman."

Petty hesitated. "Okay, I'll tell you about Druckman." Paine could tell there was something else Bobby had to tell him, something that he was waiting for the right moment to say.

"Is Druckman dead?" Paine asked.

"Yes, Druckman's dead. Someone found him in the trunk of a car in L.A. seven years ago with his face blown off. Somebody must have been very mad at him. LAPD figured he had sharked the wrong guy, maybe borrowed a little too much himself. Maybe he wasn't very good with records. That's not the weirdest thing about this guy, though. Looks like he was another wash job."

"Jeez . . ."

"Nobody named Lucas Druckman existed before 1970. No birth records, nothing."

"Morris Grumbach was involved with two wash jobs? Was he some sort of broker for the FBI?"

"It's possible."

"But why? And if he was, why did the FBI let the scumbags they gave him run all over him?"

"I hit a wall on that, just like with Paterna."

Paine had a sudden thought about the third photo that had been grouped with Paterna and Druckman. "Think your person in L.A. would be willing to take a look at a picture, try to make an ID?"

"Sure, drop it off," Bobby said. "He owes me a couple of favors. Listen, Jack," Bobby continued, "there's something else I've got to tell you."

"Something with Ginny? She call you or Terry?"

"Nothing like that. It's that friend of yours at the Barker Agency. Jimmy Carnaseca."

"What did Jimmy do?"

"He got killed."

"Oh, Christ Jesus."

"He was taking money from some guy to check on his wife, and messing with her himself. The guy killed Jimmy, winged the wife." Bobby continued sarcastically, "The guy forgave the wife, says they're going to save their marriage."

"Christ," Paine said.

"I know you liked him, Jack. I'm sorry. They're going to
wake him tomorrow night at Thompson's in the Bronx."

"Sure, Bobby. Listen, I've got to go."

"You'll be all right?"

Tonelessly, Paine said, "Sure."

"Like I said—"

"I'll call you if I need you, Bobby."

He let the phone fall into its cradle.

"Oh, Jesus," he said.

The night man recognized him this time and nodded briefly over the top of his
Daily News
as Paine signed in. The elevator up to the agency was noisier than usual. Paine thought of Gloria Fulman's elevator, the smooth, regularly oiled mechanism that pulled it gracefully up, the sour look that would cross Gloria Fulman's face if it dared make a noise ("Barbara, have someone look at that").

The elevator jarred to a stop and Paine yanked the rusting, lopsided gate back and pushed his way out into the lobby of the Barker Agency. The carpet was old. There was a flattened, shoe-worn tread in it that wound past Margie's reception desk and down the hall. Paine followed it to Jimmy Carnaseca's office.

"Hey, Jack, you should do what I do," he almost heard Jimmy say.

Sure, Jimmy.

The door to
Jimmy's
office
was locked. Paine tried to push it open, and then he took off his jacket and balled it around his right fist and put it through the glass. The cheap stenciled name on the door shattered, the
J
in Jimmy falling off into darkness.

He reached in and unlocked the door. The police had been here. Nothing had been removed, but he felt like a man whose house has been entered by a stranger in his absence and, though nothing is stolen, the atmosphere itself feels violated. Everything was almost in Jimmy's place for it—Paine knew that each item had been lifted, looked over and then put back. Soon someone would come and take everything away. Whatever the police didn't want would get thrown out. Jimmy had no family. He had run away from the circus at the age of thirty to become a private eye.