Read Parker 04 - The Fury Online
Authors: Jason Pinter
D you've got the right guy."
"You said usually," I replied. "You said eighty to
ninety percent. Well, it's my job to find the exception
to your rule. I've told you everything I know. I'm hoping
when I walk out of here you do something with it, and
don't piss it all away because of what you read in a
damn textbook. Because I
find
that extra few percent,
Detective. Father or not, brother or not, it's just what I
do."
Amanda and I stood up. Waited for Detective Sevi
Makhoulian to say something. When he didn't, we
waved at the camera so the observers in the other room
would unlock the door. Makhoulian nodded, a click
signaled that the door was unlocked, and I left to prove
to the detective I was a man of my word.
And as I walked down the hallway, Amanda's
unsteady hand locked in mine, I could feel the detec
tive's eyes on my back.
24
I was dialing the number before I even left the station
house. He picked up right away, his voice not even at
tempting to hide the boredom that had no doubt settled
in over the past several months. Though I still harbored
some guilt over what had happened, every time we
spoke he'd forbid me to show any pity, either for myself
or for him. To Curt Sheffield, being wounded in the line
of duty was something to be proud of. He'd never
wanted to be anything but a cop--and he was a damn
good one at that--and he wasn't going to let some
pissant reporter wallow in a pint over some spilt blood.
"Officer Sheffield," he said, practically moaning.
Curt had taken a bullet in the leg last year while helping
me investigate a series of child kidnappings. The slug
had nicked an artery, and it took a few surgeries to
repair the wound. He'd probably never run in the
Olympics, but while he wouldn't accept anyone's pity
he had told me on several occasions the injury had done
wonders for his sex life. Guess chicks really do dig
scars. I'd have to ask Amanda if that's why she was still
with me.
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"Hey, man, has your ass spread at all today?"
"S'up, Henry? Matter of fact I've been doing butt
blasts at my desk. Docs won't let me go to the gym, but
I think it's a trick to get me to keep coming in so they
can charge my insurance company. I swear my ass looks
like the victim of an attack of cottage cheese."
"I don't want to think about anything involving your
butt. What do you say to a drink after work? On me."
"I don't know man, I feel like I gotta lay low a little
bit. Last time I brought you in here I caught hell from
the chief of the department. You don't have a lot of
friends around here these days, especially considering
what's going on with your pops. At least you can be
happy you got the deep end of the Parker gene pool."
"I'll let that one slide. No work talk," I said. "Just
conversation. All I ask. Okay, maybe one or two ques
tions, but that's it."
Curt went silent, but I could tell he was checking his
watch. Sitting behind the desk for Curt was like keeping
a racehorse stalled behind the starting gate. He was
born to walk the streets, not type up reports. That's
likely why I felt the most guilt; it was one less great cop
protecting the city.
"Gimme one hour. Mixins." Mixins was a cheesy
singles bar primarily frequented by law and finance
professionals who felt eight-dollar beers and weak
cosmos were part of the mating ritual. The bar had
undergone a total renovation over the last few years,
mainly due to its predilection to serving underage girls.
A friend of a friend who used to drink there said the
waitstaff would grossly undercharge young women,
naturally in the hopes of luring free-spending men to the
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bar. Soon enough the cops caught on. Though rumor
had it they didn't so much as catch on, but an off-duty
detective saw a group of girls walk directly to the bar
once after finishing class on Friday.
The bar had been shut down, but underwent a classic
change in management, and now you'd be hard pressed
to find someone holding a glass who didn't take home
close to six figures. Neither Curt nor I pulled in
anywhere in the universe of that salary, but Curt enjoyed
it because, in his words, finance girls were workahol
ics in every aspect of their lives. They kept their minds
and their bodies sharp, and even though he seemed to
always be in a serious relationship--sometimes several
at once--he enjoyed having nice views at the bar. When
I asked him about it, his answer was simply that I wasn't
pretty enough to hold his attention through more than
one round of drinks.
I got to the bar before he did, took a seat and ordered
a Brooklyn Lager. The bartender, a tall, rail-thin guy
wearing a tight black T-shirt that ended right above his
veiny pelvic area, served it to me then recommenced
putting his elbows on the table and looking tortured.
The stools by the bar were never full here. It wasn't the
kind of place one went to for a quiet drink.
A few months ago I'd gone through a rough personal
patch. When Amanda and I were separated for a while.
Being apart from her led me to drink too much and seek
out my own solitude. Losing a part of your life can be
the most accurate barometer of what matters most. If
you love something, being apart from it will haunt you.
If it doesn't, it can't have mattered all that much to
begin with.
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Being apart from Amanda was a miserable experi
ence. I slept at my desk at the
Gazette.
My personal
hygiene fell a rung below your average wino's. I
wondered if I was simply the kind of guy who always
needed to be in a relationship. Before Amanda, I'd been
with my previous girlfriend, Mya, for several years. We
also ended badly, and after suffering brutal injuries at
the hands of a maniac, she seemed fully recovered, her
life back on track. I was happy with Amanda, and I
knew the difference between a good and a bad relation
ship. Learning it had nearly killed me, but it was worth
it.
After waiting fifteen minutes and downing half my
beer, Curt strode into the bar. He was tall, black, in
great shape, though his recent sedentary work life had
softened the edges just a bit. He was wearing a dark shirt
made of some shiny fabric. Certainly not what he wore
on the job, unless the NYPD was far more fashionable
than I'd thought.
Though his posture was perfect and he betrayed no
sense of pain, there was still a slight limp evident in Curt's
walk. I remembered seeing him lying there in a pool of
blood, holding back the pain, unwilling to let anything get
over on him. It was as though he was disgusted at himself
for showing weakness, taking the maxim "never let them
see you bleed" quite literally. If he was limping at all, he
was probably in more pain and discomfort than he let on.
We shook hands, and Curt ordered a beer. The bar
tender poured it from the tap, eyeing Curt while letting
the foam pour over, a thin smile on his thin lips. Once
he'd set the glass down and moved away, I said to Curt,
"Now batting for the other team..."
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205
"Don't even start, Henry."
"What? That's a compliment. Any man who can
attract players from both dugouts is doing something
right. Besides, wearing that shirt, I wouldn't be sur
prised if a few new dugouts spring up."
"You know, Parker, I don't even know what the hell
you're talking about sometimes." Curt sipped his beer.
"How's the leg?" I asked, slightly apprehensive. It
would have been easier to ignore it, to pretend he'd
never been shot and there was nothing holding him
back. It would have been easier to sit here, drink and
carry on, pretend he wasn't limping.
"It's getting better," he said. "Takes a while for the
muscle strength to build up, since they had to slice
through some muscle to repair the damage to the artery."
Just hearing this made me wince. "Does it hurt?"
"When it's cold out, yeah. Gets a little stiff on me.
Plus, it's a little numb by my toes, on account of them
having to go through some nerves, too. Docs aren't sure
that'll ever come back. Not a big deal, though."
I wanted to scream at him and ask how that could not
be a big deal, but I supposed if you took a bullet in an
artery and that was the worst-case scenario, you tended
to think on the bright side of things.
"Tell you one thing," Curt continued, "I'm going to
have to start wearing gloves, they got me filling out so
many forms. Feel like I'm a supporting cast member
on
The Office
or something. The black dude who
stands in the corner with paper cuts on every finger.
How's Amanda?"
"She's doing well," I said. "Been a huge help on
this thing with my dad. Without her he'd probably
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still be sitting in an Oregon prison claiming not to be
James Parker."
"She's a good one, my man. Glad you finally made
amends for all that crap you pulled breaking up with
her."
"It wasn't like I was just breaking up with her," I said,
taking another pull on my drink. "I thought I was doing
the right thing, being noble."
"Nobility isn't about telling someone what you think
is right for them. It's doing the right thing, period.
Girls's a grown woman, she can make her own deci
sions. What you did was selfish, and it was to alleviate
your own guilt over what happened to her and Mya. You
felt like if you broke things off, you could feel as if you
were protecting them. Just not so. I don't claim to be
Mr. Perfect Relationship, but there's give-and-take.
You're with someone, you're their partner. It was
selfish, bro, own up to it."
"Maybe you're right," I said. "And trust me, I know
I screwed up. And I'm atoning for it."
"How?"
"For starters, I cook every Friday night."
"You a good cook?"
"If by 'good' you mean she's able to swallow one
forkful without gagging, then yeah, I'm a good cook."
Curt sipped his drink, then shifted his weight, a small
grimace spreading over his face. It was a brief reaction
and certainly unintentional, but for some reason it made
my stomach feel hollow.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"'Course, man.You sound serious all of a sudden, you
got a month to live or something?" he said, laughing.
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207
I smiled, drank. "You ever feel like I do more harm
than good? As a person?"
Curt looked at me. He could tell I was serious. "Not
quite sure why you say that," he said. "But it feels to
me like you might be having a little pity party."
"It's not that," I said. "I'm over all that. I just feel like
over the last few years...I mean, look at it. Mya.
Amanda. You. My dad. Just feels like all these people
I'm supposed to be close to get hurt. Not to mention this
guy who got killed the other day."
"What guy?' Curt asked.
I filled him in on the details of Hector Guardado and
the briefcase. He sat there, focused, listening intently.
He nodded when I brought up Detective Makhoulian,
said he'd met the guy once or twice and that he seemed
like he was on the up-and-up.
Often it took a good cop to recognize a good cop, so
it was reassuring to hear Curt say that.
Though my first few months in the city I'd been dis
trustful of cops--and who could blame me since two
of them tried to kill me for erroneous reasons--recently
I'd begun to settle back in, believing that guys like Mak
houlian were truly here to serve and protect. Just
because most of them didn't like me didn't mean I
didn't have respect for them.
"And you think this guy Guardado is somehow tied
in to your brother's death?" he said.
"Probably not directly, but I caught Guardado
coming out of a building where I saw a bunch of other
drug couriers signing in to a company called 718 Enter
prises. I couldn't find much on them, but I'm pretty sure
Stephen might have worked for them at some point."
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"Selling drugs," Curt said.
"That's right."
"And what's the name of that company you men
tioned? 718?"
"718 Enterprises," I repeated.
Curt scratched his nose, downed the rest of his
beer. "Not sure why, but for some reason that name
sounds familiar."
"That means it's likely not a good thing," I said.
Curt shook his head, thinking. "Give me some time
tonight, I'm going to go back and dig into some of the
files, ask around."
"Curt, you don't have to do that, I--"