Chasers

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “What the fuck is an EDP?” one of the other gunmen asked.

  The drunk moved with lightning speed, one hand on the husky man’s gun, the other grabbing his free arm and whirling him in a circle, turning him so that he was facing the other two shooters. In less time than it would take to turn a light switch on and off, the drunk had the gun in his right hand, pressed against the husky man’s temple, and his left arm was wrapped tight around his neck. The drunk leaned his head on the husky man’s wide shoulder and looked across at the two shooters. “EDP is an emotionally disturbed person,” Rev. Jim said. “But don’t worry—the doctors think I’m cured!”

  A small closet door swung open and Dead-Eye stepped out, two guns still in his hands. “I have never been inside one of these subway shitters and not seen them flooded,” he said, waving for the two shooters to drop their weapons. “More water on the ground than in the toilets, that’s for damn sure.”

  “As long as there aren’t any rats,” Rev. Jim said. “I can deal with anything but that shit. I see a rat and I scream like an old lady getting mugged.”

  “Then it would be best for you to stay away from that closet,” Dead-Eye said, walking toward the two shooters. “And for me to stay away from you in the event you don’t.”

  “Let’s just deal with the Three Musketeers here and then hit the damn prairie,” Rev. Jim said. “How in hell did you figure on this shithouse as the drop zone?”

  “My cousin Big Ernie has been working MTA going on thirty-five years now,” Dead-Eye said. “He knows every bathroom on every stop in the city, and the best place to hide in each one.”

  “That’s the kind of knowledge that’s earned,” Rev. Jim said, “not bought.”

  Dead-Eye kicked the gunmen’s two dropped weapons under a closed stall and then turned to face the husky man. “Let me hear your name,” he said.

  “Phil,” the husky man said, his eyes as hard as his body was soft.

  “Did he just say Phil?” Rev. Jim asked, easing the weapon from the man’s temple. “Line of work you put yourself in, you have got to get yourself a much tougher name. Or add a little something to it. Like Big Phil. Then maybe you got a chance at pulling off the tough-guy stance. But Phil alone doesn’t cut it, trust me.”

  “I’m sorry me and motor mouth here fucked up your chance at leaving me dead inside some rotted-out stall,” Dead-Eye said. “Now we could reverse the coin, pop you a few shots, and then flip you, one on top of the other, in one corner. Or we could work it out to where we all walk out of here, wet but still alive.”

  “I’m listening,” Phil said, shrugging away from Rev. Jim’s grip and waving the other two shooters closer. “Put some words to what you got in mind.”

  “That’s a Big Phil talking there,” Rev. Jim said with a smile, giving him a firm slap on the back.

  “You part of Robles’s team—am I right on that?” Dead-Eye said.

  Phil nodded. “I captain his downtown crew,” he said. “Or did until I stepped into this fuckin’ disaster.”

  “Captain Phil,” Rev. Jim said. “Shit, that’s even better than Big Phil.”

  “Captain or not, you’re still a street soldier,” Dead-Eye said. “And our beef is with your bosses, not with you. You’ve been around it long enough to know the real—that if you fall by the wayside, facedown or faceup, they’ll forget your name between the cocktail and the first course.”

  “Which puts you and me where, exactly?” Phil asked.

  “Washing each other’s backs,” Dead-Eye said. “We can shoot it out, here or in some other rat hole, if that’s the way you want it to go. But you and me both know that doesn’t help push either one of our agendas.”

  “What does?” Phil asked.

  “We want a head-to-head with your boss,” Dead-Eye said. “You can set it up from street level, using an outside pay phone. Lay it out clean and neat for him if you want, or lie like a married man in a pickup bar—your call. Just get us in with him and walk away.”

  “And then?”

  “If it goes our way and Robles ends up on a slab with a ME trying to ID his ass with a cavity search, you get to stand on his watch and call his turf your own,” Dead-Eye said. “And not worry about getting any heat coming your way from us.”

  “And what if it’s Robles who wins the battle?” Phil asked. “Where does that put us then?”

  “Right where you are now,” Dead-Eye said. “Only in drier clothes. Me and Robles are the ones looking at a fifty-fifty. You and your boys here are standing at the win-win window.”

  Phil glanced over at his two men and down at the still water that reached up to the cuffs of his creased trousers. “He’ll want the meet to be in a public place,” he said after minutes of quiet thought. “He’s a cautious guy and feels safer out in the open. If you’re okay with that, then I think I can get him to agree to stand across from you.”

  “You got the name, Big Phil,” Rev. Jim said, smiling across at him. “And if this goes right, soon enough you’ll have the fame. And we’ll have one of our targets. What more can any bum ask for?”

  “A pair of dry shoes,” Dead-Eye said.

  7

  Captain Sean Valentine aimed his .38 Special at the stationary target and fired off two rounds, hitting the mark both times. He repositioned himself to the left of the shooting area, braced his left shoulder against a wood beam, and rapid-fired four more rounds, all on the mark. He placed his gun on a counter and removed the protective gear around his ears, then stared out at the results of his marksmanship.

  Valentine loved the shooting range, his one recreational hobby. He made a point of coming up to the five-acre park every Sunday, just before sunup, letting himself in with a set of keys given him by one of the borough commanders who shared a similar passion. He ran the gauntlet of skill sets that the range offered, from the operational sequences where he would be placed in kill-or-be-kill situations to the standard field tests to determine which targets should be shot at and which shouldn’t. He always ended his routine with an hour out in the fields, shooting an assortment of weapons at various distances from a variety of set positions.

  Valentine picked up a container of lukewarm coffee, holstered his weapon, and then walked down a grassy slope toward the targets, eager to check out his score. His hands were always steady, his gaze unflinching, his marks always hovering near the full bull’s-eye range. Behind him, an early-morning sun began to peek above the tree coverage, the dew and mist that came with dawn starting to dissipate.

  “You’re pretty deadly with paper targets, bales of hay, and empty Coke cans,” the voice at his back said, startling him for a brief moment. “How good are you when the targets can move and fire back, I wonder?”

  Valentine stopped, tossed his coffee container into a thick pile of leaves, and turned to face Boomer. “Who let you in here?” he asked.

  “You did,” Boomer said, stepping up beside Valentine. Valentine hesitated for a moment and then flashed Boomer a smile and offered his hand. Boomer ignored both and, instead, walked past Valentine and headed toward the target area. “My bet is that you score pretty high on the contests, too,” Boomer said to him without glancing back. “Would I be right on that?”

  “I never lose,” Valentine said, trailing Boomer down the hill.

  Boomer turned and looked at Valentine. “You don’t rig those scores, too, do you?” he asked. “I mean, you don’t pour dirt on everything you do as a cop—or do you?”

  “Why are you here, Boomer?” Valentine asked. “If you want something, just spill it and then get the fuck out. Otherwise, hit the bricks and go back to your pretend to still be on the job life.”

  “You know, me and Dead-Eye worked Narcotics together for a year or so,” Boomer said, gazing out at the lush scenery and then turning back to Valentine. “We started to land pretty heavy on this team of dealers from Flushing, over by the stadium. They had been pulling in about three, four hundred thousand a week, but within two months we had them down to pay-
the-rent scores.”

  “Save it for the retirement parties,” Valentine said. “I don’t really give a shit.”

  “The top dog in the crew—guy called himself FM—figures if he couldn’t bury us, then maybe he could buy us,” Boomer said, ignoring Valentine’s remark. “Or at least rent us. So he passed the word to me and Dead-Eye through a street stool that if we stepped back from his operation he would set aside a hundred and fifty thousand a month in cash for the two of us—each and every first, just like Social Security.”

  “Let me take a wild guess here,” Valentine said. “You passed on the offer. And why wouldn’t you, kind of cops you and your pal were? Walked into the job poor and limped out poorer.”

  “We did more than pass,” Boomer said. “We got serious. We went in after FM and his team that same night, and we wiped them out—brought the whole operation to a close, and put down as many as we could for the dirt nap.”

  “And the point to this memory-lane trip is what?” Valentine asked.

  Boomer stepped up closer to Valentine, puffs of mist coming out of his mouth when he spoke. “It’s time for you and me to get serious,” he said.

  “You may get away with that shit you pull on the street,” Valentine said, his words spiked with venom. “Cops turn their heads and act as if they don’t know you and your crippled crew are nothing but a band of vigilantes out breaking the law. But you even come close to pulling a weapon on me, I’ll have your ass hauled in for attempted assault on a police officer. Is that serious enough for you?”

  “I wouldn’t be pulling my weapon on a police officer,” Boomer said. “I’d be pulling it on a crooked piece of shit that treats his badge like a license to steal.”

  “While you, Double-Fucking-Oh-Seven, have made yours a license to kill,” Valentine said with a smirk. “Look, you and me, we both aim for the same results, and that’s to get what we want. We just choose to come at it from different directions. We’re a lot more alike than you may want to believe.”

  “True or not,” Boomer said, “that little theory of yours comes to a hard end after today.”

  “How do you figure?” Valentine asked.

  “Well, I figure one of us will be dead,” Boomer said.

  Sean Valentine rested his back against the center of a thick tree, using shade and low-hanging branches for coverage, his .38 Special clutched to his chest. He was breathing heavy, and his upper body was coated with sweat. Blood from an open gash ran down the side of his right leg, a tear in his black sweatpants exposing the wound. He moved his head from the tree and gazed out at the wooded terrain around him, knowing Boomer was still out there, not sure if any of his half a dozen shots had found their mark.

  “We’re both too old for this kind of shit,” Valentine shouted. “Let’s bring the fun to an end, Boomer, and I promise to forget this ever happened.”

  “I’m not your problem,” Boomer said, stepping out from behind the shadow of a large boulder up the hill from where Valentine stood. Buttercup was by his side, a detective’s gold shield hanging on a chain around her neck. “Your beef is with my partner here.” Boomer and Buttercup walked slowly down the hill, a .44 hanging loose in his right hand, the dog’s paws swishing and swaying over the thick wet leaves and twigs, her eyes on the corrupt cop less than a dozen feet away.

  Valentine moved away from the tree and took several steps toward them, wiping at his sweaty brow with his gun arm. “That’s good for me to know,” he said, “because I fucking hate dogs.”

  “Not as much as she hates you,” Boomer said. “You see, unlike you, this dog here is a real cop—and straight-up honest to boot. Wouldn’t even take a Milk-Bone from the hand of a drug dealer. And you know one of the things all real cops have in common? Well, in your case, you’d have to take a guess. But go ahead.”

  “I don’t know and I don’t give a fuck,” Valentine said, moving in closer to Boomer and Buttercup, looking for the leverage and the footing to get off a kill shot.

  “They never forget a face,” Boomer said. “And this gold-shield lady has yours burned to her memory.”

  “Now I know you’ve taken too many fucking bullets,” Valentine said. “Your mind’s gone. I’ve never laid eyes on that drooling piece of shit in my life.”

  “Maybe not so you’d notice,” Boomer said. “But she’s seen you, and she knows who you are and will never forget what you did.”

  “Educate me, asshole,” Valentine said.

  “A few years back, you were padded up with a dealer named Paco,” Boomer said. “He mostly moved cheap coke and cheaper heroin out of the projects, and you were more than eager to supply him with some cover for whatever your I’m-for-sale rate was in those days. Am I coming across on your radar yet?”

  “Keep talking, Boomer,” Valentine said. “It’s what you’ve always been good at.”

  “My friend was partnered up with a hard charger named Steve Ramoni, and he made it his business to put Santos out of business,” Boomer said. “The takedown didn’t go exactly according to the script and Buttercup here took a few slugs, which is how she eventually made it onto my team. But, even worse, she had to watch her partner go down, and that’s something else a good cop never forgets.”

  “And I give a fuck about all this because?” Valentine said.

  “Because you were there,” Boomer said. “The dealer who brought her in and saved her life fingered you as one of the shooters. Nobody really believed him, didn’t think an on-the-rise golden boy would be down in a sewer, waist-deep in shit, stuffing his pockets with a cop killer’s money. But there were some who knew better; they just didn’t have the pull or the muscle to bring it down your way.”

  “They didn’t have it then, they sure as shit won’t have it now,” Valentine said.

  “That might be true down at One Police Plaza,” Boomer said. “But you’re standing in a different court now. I know that you were one of the shooters that day. You came in to pick up your cash and stayed for the fireworks, pumping bullets into men with badges. It was your bullets that killed Steve Ramoni. And it was two of your slugs that made their way into Buttercup.”

  “And so what happens now?” Valentine asked. “You want me to say sorry to the mutt, maybe even throw in a little pat on the head?”

  “Your verdict is in, Valentine,” Boomer said. “Buttercup didn’t run her ass all the way up here to grab a cheap apology. She came here to even it up for Steve Ramoni. I told you that you were going to die today. Now I’m telling you who it is that’s going to put you down.”

  “It’s going to take more than an old shot-up dog to make that happen,” Valentine said.

  “Then you were right before,” Boomer said. “You don’t know this dog.”

  Buttercup came at Valentine from the side, the upper part of her body landing with a hard thud against the cop’s left side, sending them both sprawling to the ground. She was fully unleashed now, her police instincts and training bursting out in a vicious assault of bites and snaps, drawing fresh blood with each move. Valentine, his gun well out of reach, rained a barrage of closed-fist hits to Buttercup’s head and rib cage but to little effect. She was in another zone, her eyes focused on the target, her massive girth and power crushing the air from Valentine’s body. Her head was now over his, blocking his breathing passage, her jaw open and wrapped around the veins of his exposed neck. She held the position, waiting for the next command.

  Boomer came up behind them, a cocked gun in his right hand, his eyes glaring hard at Valentine, quick to catch the frightened look that now ruled over the corrupt cop’s sweat-and-blood-streaked face. Steve Ramoni’s gold shield, hanging from Buttercup’s neck, rested on his right shoulder. Boomer uncocked his gun and shoved it back into his shoulder holster. He wiped the blood from a small gash on his forehead and brought his hands to his sides.

  “Don’t do anything crazy,” Valentine said, the confidence gone from his voice, replaced by a cornered fear. “There’s no reason to take this to a place it sh
ouldn’t go. Your point’s been made.”

  “I didn’t come here to make a point, Valentine,” Boomer said. “Neither did Buttercup.”

  “Don’t do this, Boomer,” Valentine pleaded. “You’re too good a cop to go and pull shit like this.”

  “I’m not a cop anymore, remember?” Boomer said. “And neither are you.”

  “Please, Boomer,” Valentine said. “Please, not this way.”

  Boomer stared at Valentine for several long and silent seconds, the tight grip Buttercup held on his neck drawing blood and causing him to lose air.

  “Memory him, Buttercup,” Boomer said. He then turned away, walking back down the hill, blood from a twig cut running down his forehead and into his eyes, not bothering to wait for the snap of bones and muscle that came from the powerful snap of the dog’s jaw. Not waiting for the death rattle that gurgled through the throat of a corrupt cop. Not interrupting as Buttercup savored the warm taste of revenge.

  8

  Quincy and Rev. Jim were standing on the scaffold, twelve stories up, cleaning the thick floor-to-ceiling office windows. They were dressed in blue coveralls and each had on a matching cap, their hands covered with workmen’s gloves, surgical masks hanging loose around their necks. Quincy took a deep breath and ventured a look down. “This is not a job for anyone with a fear of heights,” he said.

  “Then let’s not talk about it,” Rev. Jim said. “Let’s just do it and hope these losers show up for their meeting before one of us slips and ends up kissing the pavement.”

  “We’re latched to the building,” Quincy said, pointing to the two clips attached to the belts around his waist. “The only way we drop is if the building collapses.”

  “There was a cop working in the two-seven back when I was a rookie,” Rev. Jim said. “He had a moonlight business doing this kind of work. Made more money from the second job than he did from the police work, overtime included.”