Night Life
Page 35
Fraker kicked the box aside, but by that time Cassidy was on his feet. Fraker moved forward, following the knife blade.
Cassidy worked at his jacket buttons and got the top one free and started on the second. It was bound in the wet cloth. His attacker came in fast. The blade flicked left and right, left and right, and then it came straight at Cassidy’s gut, and he turned away from it, and as the blade passed, he snatched the man’s sleeve and pulled, and the man came forward off balance. Cassidy grabbed him by the coat and used his momentum to run him into the brick wall of the warehouse. He hit face-first, but it was not hard enough, and he turned and slashed at Cassidy and ripped a long gash along his arm. Cassidy kicked a garbage can at him, and when he dodged, he followed and punched him in the face, and the man slashed again and ripped the front of Cassidy’s jacket without cutting him. The force of the thrust turned the man off balance again, and Cassidy kicked him hard in the thigh and turned him more and then grabbed the back of the man’s jacket in both hands and ran his face into the brick wall.
The attacker bounced and pulled from his hands and then went down on the sidewalk with his neck at a strange angle. Cassidy kicked him in the kidneys, but the man did not flinch. He felt for a pulse; there was none. He rolled him over faceup into the light. He had seen him before but could not remember where. The rain sifted down on him, plastering his hair to his skull. His body shook and his hands twitched as the adrenaline burned away. Who was this guy? Why had he tried to kill him?
Crofoot watched Cassidy walk by the doorway and suddenly spin around as Fraker stepped out with the gun to kill him. Fraker fired, but Cassidy didn’t fall. He saw Fraker go down for the last time. From the way Cassidy turned his back on him, he knew Fraker was dead. Now what? Could this still work? Fraker dead. Cassidy dead. That was the plan. Nothing much had changed. Cassidy was supposed to die first. Now he’d die second.
Cassidy bent down to pick up his hat. He heard a car door open, and when he looked up, Crofoot was running through the rain toward him with a gun in his hand. Crofoot fired and the bullet splashed off the pavement inches from Cassidy’s foot. Cassidy dropped and rolled, and another shot sparked his face with cement chips.
Crofoot stopped running and dropped into a shooter’s crouch ten feet away to steady his aim. No way was he going to miss this one.
Cassidy felt something hard under his side. Fraker’s gun. He rolled, snatched up the gun, and shot Crofoot twice in the chest. Crofoot dropped his gun and sat down in the gutter water. Cassidy walked to him, the gun ready. Crofoot pressed both hands to his chest. When he looked up at Cassidy, rain dripped from his chin.
“Damn it,” he said in a forlorn voice. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” Then he toppled over on his side. The gutter water built up against his body and then flowed around it and ran toward the river stained with blood.
Cassidy went through his attacker’s pocket and found a wallet with thirty-eight dollars, a condom in a foil packet, and a driver’s license from West Virginia that identified him as Edmond Fraker. He put it back in the dead man’s jacket. He found Crofoot’s gun and put it in his hand and wiped Fraker’s gun clean of his prints and wrapped Fraker’s hand around it. Someone would find the bodies in the morning, the garbagemen or people coming to work in the warehouse. What would the Homicide detectives make of this, bullets from Fraker’s gun in Crofoot, and Fraker with a broken neck?
Who was Edmond Fraker? The guy who searched Ingram’s apartment, that was certain. Where had he seen him before? Had he been alone? No, with Orso. A close space. An elevator. Fraker was the man who had gotten in the elevator when they went up to talk to Perry Werth. He got out at the floor below, but now it was clear that he had been on his way to Werth’s, but he had recognized Cassidy. How? Not from Ingram’s. They had fought in darkness. Someone had pointed him out. It had to be Crofoot. Why did Crofoot want him dead? The photos. Like everyone else, Crofoot thought he had the photos and that if he was killed they would be exposed.
In his apartment, he poured bourbon over ice and carried it into the bathroom and stripped off his jacket and shirt. The bullet had burned across his ribs above the scar from the knife wound from Ingram’s apartment. It had stopped bleeding. The slice on his arm was shallow and long, and he poured iodine into it, hissing at the burn, and then pulled the edges together and taped it. He took a long pull of the bourbon and looked at himself in the mirror. For a man who was supposed to be dead, he looked remarkably well.
He got dressed and put a raincoat on and walked to a newsstand on Hudson and bought a couple of packs of Luckies and then went to an Italian restaurant on Bleecker and ate dinner and drank half a bottle of decent Barolo. He made sure to talk to the owner and the bartender. He walked back to West Street along Perry and then north to Bank Street to his apartment to avoid passing the place where Crofoot and Fraker lay. Someone might have found them already, and if the cops were there he would have to stop, and he wanted some distance before anyone asked him any questions.
* * *
In the morning, the sky was gray. A light rain fell, and the river was the color of slate. Cassidy’s doorbell rang while he was drinking his first cup of coffee. Orso’s voice squawked on the intercom. Cassidy buzzed him in.
“Coffee?”
“Yeah. Coffee’s good.” Orso stirred two teaspoons of sugar into his mug.
“It’s still raining.”
“Yeah. The radio says it’s going to rain all day. But it’s warm. It must be seventy already.”
“Uh-huh. Spring is really here.”
“Are you going in today?”
“Sure. Why wouldn’t I go in?”
“I don’t know. Just asking.”
They were silent for a moment. “Do you want to tell me why you’re here? It’s a little off your traffic pattern.”
“There’s a crew from the Sixth Precinct working a double homicide up the block. I just wanted to check and make sure it wasn’t you.” He watched Cassidy closely.
“Up this block? Who got hit?”
“They don’t know. A couple of guys. One’s ID says Edmond Fraker. The other’s name is Crofoot. Crofoot’s the CIA guy, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. How’d they get it?”
“It looks like Fraker shot Crofoot. Crofoot had a gun too, and it’s been fired, but Fraker’s got a broken neck.”
“That’s a weird one,” Cassidy said. Orso looked at him strangely but said nothing.
When Cassidy and Orso reached the crime scene, the techs were just loading the bodies into the meat wagon.
“Hey, Cassidy, did you hear anything last night?” Detective Dickens was a sandy-haired middleweight in a plastic raincoat with a clear plastic cover on his fedora.
“Like what?”
“Gunshots. One of the deceased had a gun in his hand, a thirty-two. If the clip was full when he started, he fired it four times, hit the other guy twice.”
“I didn’t hear anything. When did it happen?”
“Around seven thirty, near as we can figure.”
“I was having dinner about then on Bleecker, that Italian joint, Bella Luna.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Orso and Cassidy caught a cab at the corner. Orso gave the driver the address of the precinct and lit a cigarette. “I took a look at the guy.”
“Yeah?”
“Hard to tell. His face was kind of bashed in. I think whoever did it ran him into the wall.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I think he was the guy who got into the elevator with us when we were going up to talk to Perry Werth.”
“Yeah, I remember that guy. You think it was him, huh?”
“Mike, is there anything I should know?”
“No. Nothing you should know.”
* * *
Cassidy was interviewing a tourist from Pennsylvania who had been robbed at knifepoint by three teenage punks while he waited for a bus on Eighth Avenue when Tanner came out of his office and gestured that he wa
nted to see him.
“I’ll be right back, Mr. Colquitt. We’ll finish this up.” He went into Tanner’s office.
“What’ve you got?” Cassidy asked.
“The guys who were killed a couple of days ago, the guys on your block?” Tanner lit a cigar.
“Yeah?”
“I got a call from Skinner at the morgue. He says the knife they found with the Fraker guy matched wounds on Amado.”
Cassidy nodded and said nothing.
“So you were right, which is good in some ways, because it shows what hot shits I’ve got working for me, but is not so good in others, because it means Captain Leonard has to go tell all those guys above him that he was maybe a little quick clearing all those murders with Apfel as the fall guy.”
“Too bad.”
“Yeah. Here’s the funny part. You know the two IDs the dead guys were carrying? Well, one of them, the West Virginia license, dead ends. The name on that one, Fraker, that particular Fraker died thirty years ago at the age of four. The other, Crofoot, turns out to be legit. An address in Washington, D.C. We ask the D.C. cops to go by and say hello. Ten minutes after they get to the house, while they’re talking to the missus, a big-time lawyer and a couple of very quiet, very cool guys show up. Phone calls come from on high, and the cops are told to go way back and sit down. What do you think of that?”
“FBI?”
“No. I talked to a lieutenant down there. He says, no. The CIA is what he thinks.”
“And?”
“And that’s the end of it.”
But it wasn’t. There was one more thing.
45
It rained for the third night in a row. At midnight Cassidy stood in the shelter of an awning on 11th Street just west of Fifth Avenue and watched a brownstone across the street. The door opened and three middle-aged men came out laughing and talking loudly. They stopped at the bottom of the stoop to raise umbrellas, slapped each other on the back, and then two went east toward Fifth, and the other went west.
Cassidy crossed and rang the brownstone’s doorbell. A small door behind a grille opened and someone looked out at him. Three locks clashed and the door opened. A tall, good-looking Negro woman in a pink silk dress held the door so Cassidy could enter.
“Good evening, Officer.” She shut the door behind him.
The front hall was decorated with heavy Oriental carpets, a plush sofa from another era, and a large mirror with a carved gold frame. A carpeted staircase led to the upper floors. At the end of the hall, an arched doorway opened on the parlor where there was a bar and groupings of comfortable leather chairs and sofas where sports could wait and look over the girls before choosing one or two and going upstairs.
“Is he still here?”
“Oh, yes.” Her voice was resigned. She shrugged and her breasts moved under the cloth.
“Where?”
“Third floor, back room.” She handed him a key, turned, and swayed away down the hall on six-inch heels.
Cassidy went up the stairs.
The thick runner in the upstairs hall deadened his footsteps. He stopped outside a door. From the other side came the smack of flesh on flesh and then a muffled cry of pain. He put the key in the lock, eased the latch, and opened the door.
Franklin had a woman crouched on the bed so he could thrust into her from behind. Every time he did, he slapped her hard on the side of the face or the thigh or buttock. She had taken a mouthful of pillow to stifle her cries. Her body was red from the blows.
“Okay,” Cassidy said.
Franklin jerked around. His dick stuck up at an angle. His face went slack in surprise and he bolted toward the chair where his pants hung with his gun on the belt. Cassidy kicked the chair away and slapped him open-handed, and Franklin stumbled against the end of the bed.
“You spoke to my sister.”
“It was a mistake. I didn’t know it was her until after.”
“No more.”
“No. Swear to God.” His eyes calculated the distance to the overturned chair and gun.
Cassidy wondered what kind of god Franklin would swear to. The woman stood near the bed, clutching a robe. “You might want to get out of here.”
She fled through the open door.
Franklin saw a chance and went for the gun. He had his hand on it when Cassidy kicked him in the ass as hard as he could. Franklin went over the fallen chair, and the gun spun away. Cassidy reached him as he rolled over and hauled him to his feet. He slapped him again and then grabbed two fistfuls of Franklin’s gut and lifted. Franklin went up on his tiptoes, whistling in pain.
“Don’t do it again. Jesus, don’t do it. Not again. Don’t.”
Cassidy walked him backward across the room until the back of Franklin’s legs hit the windowsill. Then he threw him out the window.
* * *
That night he dreamed of walking by a tropical sea, deep blue-green. Waves beat against slabs of stone and spray blew high over a stone wall. Cassidy walked a broad, unfamiliar pavement. A car stopped in the distance and someone got out and started toward him. At first he did not know who it was and then he knew it was Dylan, changed somehow but still Dylan, beautiful, vivid, alive. When she got close, she smiled and said something he could not hear. He started toward her. She waited, smiling, but he did not get closer to her. He kept walking, but he could not close the distance. Dream geography, dream reality. Again she said something he could not hear. She waved and Cassidy ran toward her, but he could not close the distance.
When he woke, he was standing by the window looking out at the river with no memory of how he got there. The rain had stopped, and the day was clear and bright. The dream lingered—Dylan on a tropical shore and Cassidy running toward her.
It filled him with hope.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID C. TAYLOR was born and raised in New York City. He spent twenty years in Los Angeles writing for television and the movies. Taylor has published short stories and magazine articles, and has had an Off-Broadway musical produced in New York City. He now divides his time between Boston and the coast of Maine. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fictio
n. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
NIGHT LIFE
Copyright © 2015 by David C. Taylor
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Charles Brock, Faceout Studio
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-7483-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-4343-1 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466843431
First Edition: March 2015