by S. J. Rozan
Or when I got another miracle.
A siren crescendoed fast from behind and a flashing red light penetrated the murky rear window. Lu’s driver swore, slowed, stopped. The siren stopped, too, but the light kept flashing. Inside the car, some quick rearrangement of steel as three guns slipped into a lockbox. Lu kept his. That made him the only guy in the car with a carry permit, and no doubt the licensed owner of the other three guns. The driver rolled his window down and smiled thinly. “Something wrong, officer?”
“Let’s see your license and registration, sir.” It was a female cop, an emotionless, traffic-stop voice.
A voice I knew.
The driver handed his paperwork out the window to Detective Mary Kee.
5
It was a miracle, but that didn’t mean it would end well. Mary ordered the driver out of the car. He looked back at Lu. I could see Lu running the calculus: waste her and speed off with me, or cooperate and try to convince her—maybe with a mix of fast talk, grease, and Asian fellow feeling—that the story on the beat-to-shit guy in the back was, they’d stumbled across a dangerous fugitive and were taking him in. If he picked door number one he’d keep me but he’d have burned a cop. Even in his business, that’s got to be a bad choice. Door number two, he risked Mary taking him and his boys, too; or she might let them off, but he’d lose me, his link to his dead girl. How much did that matter?
I decided I didn’t like her odds. I tried to pull away, kick something, warn her. Ming lifted off me and I thought I was getting someplace until I realized it was just for leverage. He drove his fist into my stomach and I couldn’t move. Or even breathe. Choking, I fought the gray fog that rolled in, was dimly aware of Lu leaning close. “This is not the end,” he whispered. “Tell your boss I’m coming for him.” Then he sat up and nodded. The driver, and Strawman with him, got out. I heard Mary telling them to spread their legs, hands on the hood. She tapped on Lu’s window and he powered it down.
Even in civvies, her braid swinging, even short as she is, Mary’s impressive, with an in-charge cop swagger. To me, strangling on the floor of the Escalade, she was the Eighty-second Airborne. “Please step out of the vehicle, gentlemen.”
Lu echoed his driver. “Is something wrong, Officer?”
Mary’s voice hardened. “Please step outside.” Lu climbed down, assumed the position. Ming gave me a souvenir squeeze on the windpipe, setting off a storm of tiny silent stars. Then the weight lifted from my chest as Ming followed his boss.
Mary called, “You in the car! I said you, too!” I hauled myself up, half-rolled out, half-fell. Mary watched me, no flicker of recognition or sympathy. To Lu, she said, “What’s this?”
Lu didn’t respond. Mary leaned down, yanked the tape from my mouth. I drew deep, heard her ask again: “What’s this?”
“Rough trade,” I rasped, kneeling in the gravel, trying to fill my lungs with air. “But I changed my mind. These guys aren’t my type.”
Mary cuffed everyone except me, collected everyone’s IDs, including mine from the floor of the car, took the only gun she saw, which was Lu’s, and disappeared behind her wheel. A minute later she came out. “Mr. Rough Trade,” she said. “Come with me.”
I staggered to her unmarked car, dropped into the back. She leaned in the window, eyes burning. An explosion was on the way, but right now all she did was ask, “Just tell me, do I arrest them?”
“No.”
She strode to the Escalade, unlocked Lu’s cuffs, clipped the plastic cuffs off the others, gave everyone back their IDs and Lu his gun. I heard her tell them their playmate was wanted by the NYPD, did they know that? Lu widened his eyes, Ooh, scary. He gave her the abashed smile of a man whose kinky pastimes had been found out, thanked her for saving him from what certainly could have been a bad situation, a wanted criminal!
“All right, you’re free to go. And get that brake light fixed. I won’t ticket you now but the next cop who stops you will.” She gave Lu a stony stare. “Sorry for the inconvenience.” From the back of her car I saw the Escalade fill, heard the doors slam, watched the perfectly intact brake lights dwindle as the car slipped into traffic and headed over the bridge.
Mary got in her front seat, turned to face me. “Now, what the hell is going on?”
“Jesus Christ, I wish I knew. Where did you come from? This can’t be coincidence.”
“Who told you it was? I got a call.”
“You— What call?”
“A woman named Trella Bartoli. She said you were in trouble and Lydia was in worse trouble and you were in an SUV headed north along Conover in Red Hook. Gave me the plates. Said as a cop I wasn’t supposed to know about this, except Linus Wong said to call me. Since as a cop I happened to know there’s a warrant out on you for assaulting two officers and for homicide, I put out a call on the SUV without saying why, got a likely on it from a sector car, came over the bridge, and got lucky. Now tell me what’s going on or I swear I’ll call it in.”
That she hadn’t called it in already was the best news I’d heard in a while. I turned. “Can you take the tape off?” I knew she could. I wasn’t sure she would.
“Why?” But she leaned across the seat and did it.
“I don’t know how Trella knew about Lu and his boys. But what she said was true.” I slumped back against the seat, slipped out a cigarette, found my hands trembling as I lit it. I pulled in that nicotine, closed my eyes, let it flow.
“No!”
My eyes snapped open at Mary’s shout.
“Don’t pass out on me. You’re hurt, I’ll take you to a hospital, but you have to tell me what’s going on.” She started the car.
“No. No hospital. I’m fine.” She snorted at that, but turned the car off, faced me again. I rubbed my eyes. “A couple of hours ago, I got a call. Someone, I don’t know who, but he’s crazy, grabbed Lydia. He’s holding her until I—well, now I don’t know what.” I ran the whole thing down for her.
Anger blazed in her eyes, the kind that flares to hide fear. “Why didn’t you call me right away?”
“I don’t know who he is, Mary. He could even be a cop. Or not, but have ears in the department. He said no cops. I was afraid he’d know.”
“You didn’t think I could’ve kept it quiet?”
“Of course you could. That’s not the point. I couldn’t afford to chance it.”
“So you called a couple of teenage superheroes. Fantastic. And your friends in the Escalade?”
“Lu’s a pimp. The dead girl was one of his. He thinks someone hired me to kill her as some kind of message to him, but he’s not sure what it says.”
“How did he find you?”
“I don’t know.”
Leaning over the seat back, she scowled silently for a few moments. Then: “What are you supposed to do next? To find Lydia?”
“I don’t know that either. He said he’d call me, and someone did, but my phone was off and—” I stopped. My phone was ringing, not Lydia’s ring, but a blocked number. I pulled it from my pocket, pressed speaker before I answered. “Smith.”
“What the fuck happened?” The robotic voice, thin and tinny. “Every cop in Brooklyn is looking for you.”
Mary leaned closer across the seat back.
“I didn’t call them,” I said.
“Why’re you on speaker phone? Don’t fucking tell me you’re not, I can hear the echo. Who else is listening?”
My eyes met Mary’s. “No one’s listening. I’m driving.”
“Oh. Driving what?”
“For Christ’s sake, I boosted a car! Last thing I need is to get pulled over for being on the goddamn phone! Listen, I didn’t call those cops.”
“Cops, cops, cops. Yessiree, that place sure was swarming with cops. Maybe I should have said ‘no cops.’ Oh, wait! I did! Didn’t I? Didn’t I, asshole?”
“They weren’t my idea. Someone must have seen me on the fire escape.”
“Why so defensive? Oh! I bet you think I’m mad! Well, i
t was a rule, wasn’t it? No cops? You think maybe I killed your girlfriend just now, because of all those the cops? Shot her? Sliced her up? Beat her brains out? Or maybe I did all three, and there was blood everywhere. Everywhere! Or maybe there wasn’t any blood, everything was neat and clean because I fed her rat poison on a spoon, like poor little Lei-lei. You think I did that? Do you? Which one do you think?”
Blood everywhere. Or no blood. Lei-lei’s agonized face, but not Lei-lei’s. “You—” All I could get out was that one strangled word.
He laughed. “Oh, relax. God, you’re a nervous wreck! I’m just messing with you. Your girlfriend’s right here, she’s fine. Aren’t you, sweetie? I know you didn’t call the cops, asshole. I did.”
My heart started up again. “I—what—put Lydia on.”
“I don’t know. That was supposed to be a reward, for doing something right. What you did, you made a big fucking mess. Though I suppose it’s true, you did find the place. Hey, did you like my clues?”
“Let me talk to her.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
“They were great. Brilliant. Let me talk to her.”
“And fair? They were fair, right? Because I know you like to play fair.”
“Put Lydia on or I’m out of here.”
“Fuck! Look at that! Swings his dick around even when he’s losing.”
I clicked off.
Mary straightened in shock. “What are you—”
“He’ll be back,” I said, and the phone rang again.
“Do not fucking do that.” The robotic voice froze the air. “Ever.”
“Fuck you.” I gave back the same ice, though I was feeling the opposite. “I don’t talk to Lydia, you can go to hell.”
“Hey.” His tone turned conciliatory. “Come on, bro, where’s your sense of humor? Take everything so seriously, that’s what’s wrong with you. You gotta lighten up, get in the spirit. I was gonna give her to you, what, you thought I wasn’t? Here, honey, it’s for you.”
A short pause, then Lydia. “Bill?”
Hearing Lydia’s voice, Mary bolted upright.
“You okay?” I asked Lydia.
“Yes. I’m still almost completely in the dark, though.”
“Me, too. But don’t worry. It’ll be over soon. I got to Tony, by the way.” To let her know I’d understood.
“Good. I’m trying not to get really down here.”
“Are you—” I started, but the robot voice returned, a knife in my gut.
“Oooh, princess is getting depressed? Honey, cheer up, your prince is coming. Or he’s trying, anyway. He works so hard, you know. Even on shit that’s none of his business! So just think how hard he’s working on this. But listen, Prince Asshole: now you have to wait. I expected you to be tied up a couple hours. I should’ve known you’d cheat. Didn’t get you anywhere, though. Now I don’t have your next clues ready.”
“What does that mean, ‘next clues’?”
“Come on, asshole, the game, the game!”
“There’s more?”
“Of fucking course, there’s more! The prize is your girlfriend and you haven’t found her yet, have you? So we’re still playing. That’s okay, right? You’re still in? Because if you want to stop, I can always—”
“No. I’m in.”
“Sweet. And you still don’t know who I am? Do you? Asshole?”
“No. You want to tell me?”
“That’s a fucking joke, right? Shit, this is fun!”
“Then tell me something else. You called the cops? Why?”
“Oh, just to screw with you. Minute I knew you found that po’ ho, I dropped a dime. How’d you like that, by the way? That was pretty good, right, the girl on the sofa like that? Did you think it was your girlfriend? Admit it, you did, didn’t you? That was pretty good. Poor Lei-lei, not nearly as cute as she used to be. I didn’t know rat poison twists up your face like that! Must’ve hurt. Remind me not to go that way.”
I pushed away the memory of that room, Lei-lei’s face. Keep him talking. Make him give something up. “Seems to me calling the cops—”
“Oh, to you, to you, it seems to you! Everything is you! Don’t you know there’s no ‘I’ in team? Mostly, asshole, I called them so they’d take you in, make you sweat over some dead chink ho. They had nothing on you—no evidence, you follow me?—so they’d cut you loose sooner or later. Probably you even have an alibi for when poor little Lei-lei died. Besides, you’re tight with cops, I know you are. They’d just shake your hand, let you go. Or maybe, some trigger-happy ADA would indict you, but you’d make bail. Delay of game, but no real effect.”
That was far from the likely outcome, if the cops had taken me in, but I didn’t argue with his dreamworld. “You said ‘mostly.’ What was the rest?”
“Oh, so smart, see how he picks up on a single word! Come on, shitbrain, you’re such a freaking genius, figure it out. Maybe you can get bonus points or something. Go on.”
“Screw that.”
“No, for real. You figure it out, I’ll buy your girlfriend a sandwich. Or some chop suey. She must be getting hungry by now. What about it, honey? You feel like you could eat something?”
I couldn’t hear Lydia’s answer; I couldn’t hear much through the surf-roar of my own blood in my ears. When I had control of my voice I said, “All right. If that’s a deal.”
“Oh, sure, not a problem. Maybe we’ll get a pizza, I could use a snack myself. So, what’s your theory?”
“Well,” I said slowly, “it can’t be an accident the girl you killed was Chinese.”
“Hey! Hey, good! No, not an accident. Go on.”
“That way,” I was thinking out loud, “you could be pretty sure I wouldn’t tell them about you taking Lydia.”
“Because . . . ?”
“Because they find me with a dead Chinese girl, I try to tell them it’s all some crazy game because someone kidnapped my Chinese partner, what happens is they start thinking I killed Lydia, too.”
“Whoa! Right outta the park. You got it, fuckface. I don’t trust you. I said no cops, but you cheat. You might’ve called them anyway. So now this way, you’ll think twice before you go ahead and tell them about us.” The metallic voice deepened. “ ‘Look at this, Sergeant Friday. Found this mofo with a dead chink ho, a bag of shit, and a lame kidnap story. Making him play a game! Your mama, buddy. You get off on killing chinks, that’s it, right? Now where is she, your girlfriend? What did you do to her? Friday, you got that rubber hose?’ ” A pause. “No, on second thought, maybe you’d better leave the po-lice out of it. Good for you, jerkoff. You get the bonus points and cutie here gets lunch. But I gotta tell you—what you pulled, it was awesome and I didn’t see it coming. You had to escape! Whaling on cops! What a dickwad. So now it’s even better. Now you can’t go to the cops plus you have to dodge them! Screwed the pooch on that one!”
“How do you know what happened? You were watching?”
“Hah! Hahaha! Slip that in, see if I’ll give up where I am? Screw you.”
“Hope you left that crime scene really, really clean. Because when they find your fingerprints, your footprints—”
“Oh, no, not that CSI shit! Come on, idiot, that was a bar, back in the day. Hot! Jumping! Have to be thousands of prints everywhere. And hairs and whatever else they look for except, except, they won’t be looking. Way expensive, that lab shit, you know? And so-o-o-o many cases, bodies popping up all over New York every day. Poor little Lei-lei was only a hooker—and they already know who killed her! You, motherfucker! The way I set it up, you were their best suspect but that’s all. You could’ve made bail. Now—! Fuck, man, you nailed your own ass to the wall.”
“You killed that girl to set me up, okay.” Keep him talking. “But poison? Why like that?”
“Because I wanted to! What do you care? What do you fucking care? I know you like to worry about shit no one asked you to, but I’d focus here, if I were you. Listen, nice talking to you, but I g
otta go. I need to get set for the second quarter. When I’m ready, I’ll give you a ring. From, by the way, a different phone. I got a shitload of phones. So in case you think you can trace me. Haha! Stay out of trouble, big guy.” The connection broke off.
I hit redial, but as it had before, the call refused to go through. Lowering the phone, I met Mary’s eyes.
“Oh, my God,” she said.
6
Then, the explosion.
“You can’t do this alone!”
“You heard him, Mary. He’s goddamn insane!”
“All the more reason.”
“He said no cops.”
“Every kidnapper who ever did a snatch says no cops! Then they kill the vic when the ransom’s paid. You want to find them before that, we do it!”
“There’s no ransom. It’s not about that.”
“What is it about?”
“I don’t know. But it’s personal, it’s me. He took her because of me.”
Unexpectedly, Mary subsided. She gave me a long look. “And you think you have to save her all by yourself, to make up for it?”
“For God’s sake! No!” I shoved my cigarette out the window, shoved that thought away. “But I believe him. If he thinks I brought in cops, he’ll kill her.”
“You don’t think he’ll kill her anyway?”
“Not as long as I keep playing.”
“And when the game’s over?”
“I’ll get to her before that.” It was a prayer, but I spoke it as fact.
A sigh. “Bill, we’re already in. Brooklyn Homicide. He brought us in.”
“Brooklyn Homicide’s looking for me. He was right. Who’d believe me now?”
“I’ll vouch for you. I heard the call.”
“Lydia’s friend? You probably helped me kill her, helped me concoct this whole crazy story.”
“The clues—”
“Garbage in a plastic bag.”
“It may have his prints on it.”
“It may have a dozen people’s prints on it. So what?”
“If one is someone you know—”