Night and Day (7 page)

I turned, my hand going to the holstered pistol on my belt. Jedron was at the curb, watching
me. When he saw my hand on the gun, he yelled “Get out of here, sis!” and darted across the
street.

Sis. I didn’t even bother to process that as I started to run.

I had a hundred pounds and about fifteen years on Jedron, so he opened up a nice lead. He
looked fit, a whole lot fitter than I was. Only thing on my side was that he was a bartender, not
an athlete. I wasn’t going to outrun him, but I had pretty good stamina. If I didn’t lose him, I’d
run him down him sooner or later.

Chelsea ran toward me, screaming furiously. I gave her a good shove as she got close and
she went down, landing on her ass on the sidewalk. Without a glance at her, I ran across the
street and into the alley I’d seen Jedron enter seconds before.

Jerking the pistol out of the holster, I held it as I ran, keeping the safety on. I didn’t want to
shoot, not even to wound, but when I finally caught up to Jedron, there was no telling what he
might do. And as much as I didn’t want to hurt him, I wasn’t going to let him hurt me.

The alley opened onto Third Street a couple of blocks south of Expedition Square and my
office. I looked north, then south. Jedron was on the other side of the street, running through the
clumps of people on the sidewalk. His lead was nearly three quarters of a block.

I stayed on the west side of the street and ran down the sidewalk, yelling, “Out of the way!”
as I ran. I don’t know how much my yelling was helping, but the pistol in my hand was getting
some attention. People focused on that, and scattered.

As I ran, I kept one eye on Jedron, the other on the sidewalk in front of me. He disappeared
for a moment, and I thought he’d crouched to make himself less obvious. Then I realized that
he’d stumbled into somebody and hit the ground.

I veered to the right, into the street, and almost got nailed by a delivery van barreling by. It
was enough to make me stumble, and I almost fell. When I got back into my rhythm,
Jedron was maybe half a block ahead.

He turned into another alley, heading for Expedition Street. His run was choppy, awkward,
and I was starting to gain on him. The fall must have banged up his leg pretty good.

As I went into the alley, I caught a glimpse of Dick Nedelmann and Shelly Hodge further
down Third. The commotion must have attracted their attention. I couldn’t tell if they
recognized me or if they were following. My eyes were locked on Jedron’s back. He cut south
again as he came out of the alley, and I was a hundred feet behind him.

When I reached Expedition, I looked south and didn’t see anything. There were no alleys he
could have ducked into in the time he’d had. That meant he’d gone into one of the shops that
lined the street.

There was no time for subtlety. A teenage boy was standing on the sidewalk about 10 feet
south of the alley. I raised the pistol, centered it on his head, and yelled, “Where?”

The kid froze, then pointed at a tailor shop two doors down.

I lowered the pistol and started running. So did the kid, in the other direction.

It wasn’t hard to find Jedron. A couple of customers and an old guy with a yarmulke on the
back of his head, clearly the owner, were standing in the rear of the shop, yelling at him, as
Jedron clawed at the back door. The bars across the door weren’t making it easy to get through.

“That’s it, Jedron,” I said, raising the pistol. “On the floor, hands behind your head.”

Jedron spun around, his friendly, open face twisted by anger and fear. He pointed at me.
“Help me! He’s working for the bloodsuckers!”

I don’t know what he hoped saying that would do. I know what it did. The two
customers and the owner turned to me and took in the pistol in my hand. Then the three of them
slipped past me quickly, heading for the front door.

“Easy, Jedron,” I said, keeping my voice calm and even. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just get
on the floor, face down, and put your hands behind your head.”

“Hurt?” he yelled. “They’re gonna kill me!”

I shook my head. “Nobody is going to kill you. It’s not that big a deal. Just get down on
the floor.”

“Why are you doing this, man?” he asked. “Why are you working for those fuckers?”

“I’m just doing a job. Get down on the floor so I can cuff you and get you out of here.
Come on now.”

“You okay in there, Charlie?” I heard Nedelmann say from behind me. Apparently he and
Shelly had followed after all.

“Yeah, everything’s okay, Dick,” I called. “Just stay outside and let me talk to Jedron here.”

I heard them moving out of the store. Jedron wasn’t paying any attention to them. His eyes
were locked on mine. “You might as well just kill me right now, man,” he said. I could see tears
in the corners of his eyes. “Just blow my fucking head off right here, right now. Better a bullet
than what they’re gonna do to me.”

His tears were flowing freely now. “Come on, man. Just finish it.”

“Nobody is going to kill you,” I said softly. “You have my word. He just wants to throw a
scare into you. Tomorrow night, you’ll be back at work, like nothing happened.”

“What are you talking about?”

I inched closer. “Carpenter. Your boss. He just wants to scare you.”

Jedron shook his head. “You don’t know nothin’, man,” he said, his voice anguished.
“They’re gonna kill me.”

I was close enough. As he opened his mouth to say something else, I swung hard, catching
him on the chin with butt of my pistol. He went down.

Before he could recover, I was on him. I shoved my pistol in the holster and pulled the
handcuffs from my belt, quickly jerking his hands behind his back and snapping the cuffs on his
wrists. Then I frisked him. I didn’t expect to find anything, and I didn’t.

Leaving him on the floor, I went out to the sidewalk. Nedelmann and Hodge were talking to
the older guy with the yarmulke. When they saw me, they came over.

“Mr. Hershowicz wants to know how long his business will be interrupted,” Nedelmann
said. “I go to temple with him, so let’s try to wrap things up so I don’t have to hear about it
every Saturday for the next six months.”

“I’m done,” I said. “Kid’s a bartender, stealing from the register at an uptown club. Nickle
and dime stuff. Owner wants to throw a good scare into him.”

“I’d say you did that,” Shelly said.

“I”m gonna stick him in a cell at Downtown station till tonight. Then Joshua
will take him uptown. The club owner will have a few strong words with the kid, and that’ll be
that. No big deal.”

“Sounds like he thinks it’s a big deal,” Nedelmann said.

“He’s scared. You know how people are. Vees are monsters. You mess with them, they
kill you.”

“They are monsters,” Nedelmann said.

Sighing, I said, “Look, believe me, it’s nothing. He’s going to get his wrist slapped, and
then he’s going back to work. He’s supposed to be a good bartender. Owner isn’t going to kill a
good bartender over a couple of hundred bucks.”

Nedelmann wasn’t looking at me. “Why don’t you let him go,” he said quietly. “Big city.
He gets lost. That’s the end of it.” He paused. “It’s not like you always get your man, Charlie.”

“No, Dick, I don’t,” I said, feeling the anger creep into my voice. “But this time I did.”

“Leave it alone, Dick,” Shelly said softly.

“Sure,” Nedelmann said. “You bet.” His eyes met mine. “You need anything else from us,
Charlie? Escort to the station? Maybe we can give the kid a couple of whacks, break his legs, so
you can drag him?”

“I think I have it covered, Dick. But thanks for the offer.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Shelly said, taking Nedelmann’s arm and pulling gently.
Nedelmann continued to stare at me, then spat on the sidewalk and followed his partner.

I went back into the shop. Jedron was still face down on the floor, sobbing. I slipped my
hand under his elbow and pulled him to his feet.

“Please don’t hurt my sister,” he said suddenly. “Chelsea ain’t got nothin’ to do with any of
this.”

“Your sister will be fine,” I said, guiding him toward the front of the shop. “You’ll be
seeing her again tomorrow, once this gets sorted out.”

“She’s my little sister, man,” Jedron said. “I’m all she’s got. I do my best to take care of
her. Don’t let them kill her.”

“Nobody’s going to kill her,” I said, as we reached the sidewalk. “And nobody’s going to
kill you. Just relax and let it play out. Couple of days, you’re going to be laughing about all
this.”

He turned to me. “You promise me that Chelsea will be okay,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Promise that.”

I sighed. “I promise nothing is going to happen to your sister. Now let’s get going, okay?”

“You remember that promise, man,” he said softly.

Chapter Six

Jimmy Mutz was waiting when I came out of the holding cell block at Downtown station.
“So what’s his story?” he asked, nodding toward the cells.

“Petty thief,” I said. “Name’s Marsch, first name Jedron. Bartender at Carpenter’s, uptown
club. Been lifting a few bucks from the till every morning for a while, and the owner got tired of
it.”

Jimmy shook his head. “Not a smart move when the boss sips hundred-proof red.”

“No shit,” I replied. “He’ll get off easy, though. Joshua says the owner is going to give him
a scare, then put him back to work.”

“How’s Joshua doing?”

“Same as always. Keeping me on the straight and narrow while I try to do the
same for him. You ought to stop by the office some night after you get off and say hi. He’d like
that.” I laughed. “Hell, he always liked you. Probably wishes he’d pitched a partnership to you
instead of me.”

“You can be a pain in the ass, that’s for sure,” he said with a smile. “But that private eye
shit isn’t for me. I been wearing a uniform too long. If I didn’t have a badge hanging on my
chest, I wouldn’t know my front from my back.”

I’d known Jimmy Mutz for fifteen years. He’d been a training sergeant when I joined the
department, and I’d had the good luck to have him as my ride-along trainer at the Tremont
Avenue station. Jimmy knew just about everything there was to know about real police work,
and he managed to turn me into a pretty good cop.

I moved on to plainclothes at the 83
^rd
Street station, and Jimmy stayed on the street. He was
a shift sergeant by the time it was clear that we were at war. A month later, we were in camps,
Jimmy in Bravo-8, me in Delta-5.

He’d taken a pass on what the recruiters were offering, just like I did. When the Vees shut
down the camps a couple of years ago, and everybody filtered back into the city, Jimmy returned
to the only work he knew. In six months, he was the day shift watch lieutenant in Downtown
District. Six months after that, they gave him captain’s bars and made him the day shift watch
commander.

About a year later, things got tense at the Downtown station. The night shift watch
commander, a piece of shit imported from Cleveland named Hayden, decided that day shift
wasn’t focusing on the important kind of criminal, the kind that preyed on Vees after the sun
went down. To emphasize his point, he arranged for a few day shift cops to get jumped and
tapped after dark. Things went a little too far, and one of the day shift cops was tapped too hard.
He died.

Jimmy knew that Hayden was behind it, but he couldn’t prove it. He called me, and I
brought Joshua in. It took less than two weeks to find somebody who’d spill, and another three
days before Hayden was abruptly replaced. Joshua took a lot of pleasure telling me and Jimmy
about how Hayden had been taken to the roof of the Central District station and staked out for the morning sun.

Funny thing was, Joshua and Jimmy had hit it off really well. Jimmy is the kind of guy who
deals with people based on who they are, not what they are. That Joshua was a Vee didn’t matter
a bit to Jimmy Mutz. Joshua was the same way. It was a
strong foundation for a friendship.

Jimmy walked with me to the station lobby. “So what do you want me to do with the
Marsch kid?”

“Take good care of him,” I said. “Feed him, don’t let anybody hassle him. He’s scared
shitless that his Vee boss is going to kill him. Let him calm down some. Joshua will pick him
up tonight, take him uptown, and that’ll be that. By midnight, he’ll be tending bar like nothing
ever happened.”

“Hopefully he’ll keep his hands out of the till from now on,” Jimmy said with a chuckle.

“I think you can make book on that,” I said. I stopped and turned to him. “Do what you can
to keep the night shift guys off his case too. I know they can be kind of rough on human
prisoners.”

I paused for a moment. “One other thing. Make it clear that they’re not to release him to
anybody but Joshua.”

“What’s that mean?”

I sighed. “You ever meet Ray Holstein? Robbery-Homicide dick at 83
^rd
Street.”