In one swift movement a heavy arm had swung around my neck.
The forearm clamped my airway shut.
“Leave him alone,” said Jack.
I pulled down on the arm with both hands, but I only got as far as easing the pressure, opening my windpipe a fraction. I sucked in as much air as possible, filling my nose with the smell of the Magic Tree that dangled from the rearview mirror. I maintained the pressure on the arm, but I was losing. The guy behind me had all the leverage. He just needed to hang on and let his weight do the rest.
“How does it feel?” said the man in the backseat. I could hear traces of Boston Irish, wet with bourbon and cigarettes. He pulled again. Someone putting pressure on your windpipe does something to your brain. It’s like pushing a panic button. I wanted to pull the arm away and push back against the seat with my torso, but that only increased the pressure. My legs began to scramble for purchase, pushing against the floor, my throat burning, head ready to explode, eyes bursting.
He eased the pressure, and the rush of air into my throat started a coughing fit.
We were approaching an intersection.
“Turn right. Drop me off on the corner of Nassau,” said the man.
“No problem. Just relax and leave my partner alone,” said Jack.
The man tightened his grip, but not enough to choke me. I guessed he wanted me to have enough air to be able to speak.
“What did Frost tell you?” he said.
I had two choices. Bullshit or tell the truth. He was probably one of Marzone’s. A cop. He could spot a lie, just like I could.
“He told me he had statistics. The real data on choke hold complaints.”
“That all?” he said.
“That’s all.”
He reached over me with his other hand and placed his index finger on my chest. He drew a cross over my heart.
“He didn’t give you any paper. We know that. We know you took a swim and called Jacky boy here. Now I’m telling you to take the offer from Vinnie. He’s giving you a couple thou. Walk away now. If you fight this case, I’ll kill the both o’ ya.”
I’d already decided that if the asshole tried to choke me again, I would break his thumb. The Caddy was maybe thirty feet from the stoplight at the intersection. No cars ahead of us. The light was red. I glanced at the speedometer and saw we were doing maybe fifteen miles an hour.
Breaking his thumb would make me feel a whole lot happier, but I had a better idea.
“Is that how you killed Chilli Hernandez?” I said. “You drew a cross on his chest and then choked the life out of him?”
“I didn’t kill him. But I watched him die. Like this,” he said, and this time he almost broke my neck as he slammed his forearm across my throat. But I was ready. No panic this time, no mad scrabbling and pulling. I simply leaned back and let him take my throat. I had to lean back to create the angle. My left foot shot up and came down hard on Jack’s left foot, causing him to floor the Caddy.
“Hey, what the . . .” said Jack as he tried desperately to gain control of the car, pushing my leg upward with his knees.
We tore through the red light. A shot to the side of my head burned my sight into soft focus. I lifted my foot, and Jack spun the car through the right turn, narrowly missing a truck parked on the corner.
“You listen to me, and you listen good. Take the offer in the morning. If you go into court, we’ll kill you and your client. Pull over.”
Jack stopped the car.
“Good night,” said the man, releasing me.
Another coughing fit. My head pounded and my throat was sandpaper. But I made sure to watch this guy as he got out of the car. He walked past the front of the Caddy. A big guy in a black leather jacket and close-cut curly hair. He’d been in court for some of the preliminary hearings. His name was Roark. His partner was Slab Marzone. He got into a dark car that had just pulled up beside us and was gone.
I couldn’t hear what Jack was saying. My head roared and I leaned down, closed my eyes, and held on to the seat. My body was still in panic mode, and I had to get control, slow my breathing. The dizziness made me want to vomit. Christ, what would it have been like for Chilli? Right then I thought that being choked to death would be the worst way to go. I’d seen Chilli’s autopsy photos. His eyes were bloodied, almost popped out of his head. Petechial hemorrhages all over the whites of his eyes. His face twisted, like he’d tried to dislocate his own jaw just to get away.
The sound of Jack punching the dash and swearing brought me back. My stomach heaved, and I got out of the car before I vomited. Folding my legs beneath me, I sat down on the sidewalk and fought down the surge from my stomach. The saliva in my throat and the taste of the bile in my mouth made me gag, but somehow I managed not to puke.
“What the hell happened? I got out of Manny’s early to come pick you up and that asshole was waiting for me in the back of my car. Damn near scared the shit out of me. Are you okay?”
I smiled.
“Yeah,” I said.
Hands on his hips, Jack shook his head.
“I didn’t sign up for his, Eddie. Taking a case against the NYPD is one thing. Getting the hassle from the cops, the media, the court clerks looking at you like you’re a goddamned criminal. I told you not to take this case, didn’t I? Look where it’s got us; we’re broke. Now we got this shit hanging over us. Death threats, Eddie. This will get us and our pregnant client killed. It’s finished. I’m calling Vinnie right now. I’m taking the money. This case is over.”
“No.”
“Are you crazy? That guy almost killed you.”
“He didn’t, though. He thinks he scared us off. We’re going to settle, but not for a couple of thousand. We’ve got leverage now.”
Jack walked off. Stopped, ran his fingers through his hair and swung back toward me.
“I don’t believe you, man. What leverage do we got?”
“We got Mrs. Tulisi,” I said.
For a second, Jack simply stared at me, openmouthed.
“That guy cut off the oxygen to your brain for too damn long. Mrs. Tulisi? Isn’t she the mother of the guy who pays his legal bills in tuna?”
“The very same. I told you earlier she’s good to know, that she’s in city management. Well, I exaggerated a little. She works in the enforcement division of the Transport Department. If you run a stoplight, Mrs. Tulisi can conveniently lose the photograph from the traffic camera for five hundred bucks. Or, in this case, she can e-mail the photo to us in the morning.”
I pointed toward the intersection we’d just come through. A stoplight camera hung from a cable suspended across the road.
“I made you run the red light for a reason. We just got a photograph of Marzone’s partner with his arm around my throat, choking me. If you’ve got five hundred bucks for Mrs. Tulisi, then we’ve got our leverage.”
Chapter Twelve
Jack’s second-floor apartment on Avenue B sat above an all-night tattoo parlor. He’d gotten a long lease fifteen years ago, when the area was still a mix of flophouses, bars, and delis. Now you couldn’t move for restaurants, gourmet coffee shops, and art galleries. The rent had gone up but was nowhere near what Jack would have to pay if he were just moving in today. Of course, the big bonus came in the shape of the landlord owning a parking garage a stone’s throw away from the building. In fact, I got the impression Jack would happily live in a cardboard box if it came with a secure parking space for the Caddy.
I came out of the shower to find Jack had laid out a pair of his baggy jeans and a Public Enemy tee. The jeans swam on Jack—they fit me just fine. We were both around the same size, but I’d spent a lot of time in the gym. Whereas Jack had spent those years at a card table, picking up nothing heavier than a tall stack of chips.
The small dining table opposite the kitchenette held the files that made up the Hernandez case. We’d stopped at the office to pick them up on the way to Jack’s place. A cell phone sat on top of the files. A deck of card
s split, packed, flipped, and split again in Jack’s right hand with fluid ease of a guy who’d spent most of his life around cards. He often did this when he was nervous.
“Vinnie’s number is on that phone,” said Jack.
I picked the cell phone off the top of the file, placed it on the table, and helped myself to cold, leftover pizza from a box in the fridge. It tasted pretty bad.
“When did you say you ordered this pizza?”
“I didn’t,” said Jack.
I spat the pizza into the trash, took the rest of it from the fridge and dumped it, too. The only other contents of the refrigerator were a few cans of beer, an aerosol can of Easy Cheese, and a packet of cold cuts from the mom-and-pop deli across the street. I took a Bud and the sliced turkey and sat at the table.
“There’s a can of cheese in the fridge if you want it,” I said.
“I couldn’t eat anything,” said Jack, the irony lost on him.
I’d told him about my meeting with Frost. It scared the crap out of him. I’d told him I wasn’t too happy about the experience myself. Jack wanted to cash in on the settlement and leave town.
“I’m going to miss this apartment. Call Vinnie; tell him we’re taking the money. Do it now, or I will,” said Jack.
The turkey was good and the beer was cold.
“We can talk to Vinnie in the morning,” I said.
“I don’t want to wait that long. This is crazy, Eddie. We didn’t sign up for this. You’ve got a family. So do I.”
“Your sister doesn’t even speak to you,” I said.
“She’s still family.”
“Look, what if we got the information from McAllister? And we took it to the city’s lawyer? I bet we could get seven figures.”
“From Boles? You think he could cough up a mil to keep that information out of court?”
“Maybe, maybe more. We can’t run the damn case, so we lean on Boles with the statistics on choke hold complaints. We’ll have to figure out a way to hit his witnesses with them first. Boles won’t like that. It might be enough to make him rattle some dollars out of the commissioner’s office. That way we can still come out of this with something for Maria, we’re not pushing Marzone, and we’re not making the kind of waves in court that could get us killed.”
The eleven o’clock news started. Jack racked up the volume. They led with the fatal shooting of Captain Frost and Lieutenant Jones of the Internal Affairs Bureau. Both killed by a high-velocity rifle shot fired from the vicinity of Pier 11.
“Jesus,” said Jack. The cards remained still in his hand. His fingers were trembling.
“We can do this,” I said.
“I don’t think I can.”
“I thought you were used to high stakes,” I said.
He slid me an angry look. “Not these kind of stakes. I don’t walk into a game unless I know I can safely walk out of it. This is way different, Eddie.”
Teasing open the blinds, I checked the sidewalk below Jack’s window. The street was pretty well deserted. The only cars outside belonged to residents and visitors to the tattoo parlor.
“They’re out there now, watching us,” said Jack.
“Maybe. But they can’t watch us twenty-four-seven.”
“I don’t care. I’ve had enough, Eddie. I’m out.”
I threw him the cell phone and said, “You want to be the one to call Maria and tell her that? You’re scared. You’re not thinking.”
“Damn right I’m scared.”
“Take a second and think it through. Marzone’s watching us. He sees us meeting Frost. Now, Frost told me he didn’t have anything on Marzone or the Morgue Squad directly, but he had the information on choke hold complaints. But he also lied—he was gonna use me as bait, wait until they tried to make a move on me. Frost struck me as a smart guy. Maybe too smart for his own good. Marzone took out Frost and his lieutenant, why?”
“I don’t know. Why didn’t he shoot you?”
“He could have. Or, the big bastard in the leather jacket could have strangled the both of us in your Caddy, drove us out of the city, and dumped the car and our bodies. He didn’t. Marzone can’t make a move on us directly. You think if the lawyers suing him got killed on the eve of his trial the NYPD would do anything other than arrest him? Think, Jack. We’re too close to him. Frost was responsible for investigating every single cop in this city. Somebody takes him out, you’ve got damn near the entire force as suspects—thirty-five thousand of them.”
“But if Frost didn’t have anything on Marzone, then why’d he kill him?” said Jack.
“That’s what I can’t figure out. He told me he had the stats on choke hold complaints, but that doesn’t link directly to Marzone. He did say something else, though. Said that if he learned to trust me, he’d show me what really happened to Chilli Hernandez. That’s where we should be looking. Chilli’s death exposes Marzone. There’s some kind of link that’s more than a chance encounter with Marzone that led to Chilli’s death. We’re just not seeing it. We can play this out a little longer, Jack. We’ve got to. Tell you the truth, I couldn’t walk away from Maria Hernandez and look myself in the mirror. I just couldn’t do it. Hang in there with me. I need you. We can do this together.”
Leaning forward, Jack shook his head. Then he threw the phone back at me.
“Call McAllister. Let’s see what she’s got. If we can’t force a decent settlement out of the city, then I say we walk away. There’s no other choice here. We got a deal?” said Jack.
“Deal,” I said.
I’d dried out the Post-it note with McAllister’s cell number and memorized it, even the variables on the final number. First call was invalid; I changed the last digit and dialed again.
She picked up on the second ring. I heard her breath, heavy and quick. She didn’t say hello.
“It’s Eddie Flynn,” I said.
“It’s all over the news,” said McAllister.
“I saw. What did you tell the cops?”
“Nothing,” said McAllister. “This wasn’t an official meet. Apart from Jones and me, no one knew Frost was meeting you. Going after Marzone was a strictly off-the-books op. With the quick turnover in IAB, we couldn’t have any accidental slips in security. As far as anyone else in Internal Affairs knows, I was taking a look at the scene of an old shooting in DUMBO. So no one has come to ask me any questions about Frost yet. But they will. If you want the information, I’ve got it. The only question is, how do I get it to you?”
Chapter Thirteen
Jack had given me a ride to Brooklyn to pick up my car.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.
Old Fulton Street looked deserted. Ten after midnight. Not a single person on the street. The only sound was the East River gently washing against the pier and, overhead, the distant sound of traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. Leaning forward, I checked the windows of nearby buildings. No lights. We waited.
I nodded at Jack and got out of the Caddy. Before I got into my own car, I went down on my knees and checked underneath it. Nothing looked unusual, certainly no alien devices hanging beneath. I unlocked the car, got in, and hesitated before I inserted the key. Checking around the center console, I couldn’t see any signs of tampering. I put the key into the ignition. What if somebody hooked the starter motor to a device tucked in beside the engine block? I popped the hood. Got out. Nothing out of place on the old Ford. I got back in, took two deep breaths, and turned the key. Just the regular splutter from the V6. Thumbs-up to Jack. He passed me in the Caddy, and I pulled out behind him.
Left onto Furman Street and then a right loop onto Atlantic Avenue and the access road for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. A steady forty miles an hour behind Jack’s big taillights. Turning east, the three-lane highway became partially covered on the right by the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. I followed Jack off the 278 at Bridge Park, and another loop brought us onto the Manhattan Bridge. As we’d agreed, I overtook Jack on the bridge. He hung back and chan
ged lanes. Far as I could tell, we didn’t have a tail, and Jack was double-checking, watching the vehicles to the rear, keeping a lookout for the blue SUV, or any other car that seemed to be hugging our tail.
Jack sped past me, flashed the lights. No tail that he could see. We exited at Forsyth, which brought us down to ground level, and then a left took us past the end of Chinatown and to the Lower East Side. Fine-dining restaurants, invitation-only art galleries, boutique furniture stores, and hipster coffee that ran at eight dollars a cup. Half a mile north, then a dogleg right at the end of Allen Street onto East Houston and then Avenue B. The coffee got cheaper, the beards a little shorter, and the area a little friendlier.
The tattoo parlor below Jack’s apartment looked empty, but the lights were still on. Probably getting ready to close up. The Caddy’s nose stopped in front of a roller door. Jack got out, used a key to raise the shutter, stepped inside, and hit the lights. He drove in. I followed. A neighbor of Jack’s, a Miss. Corstana, was staying with her mother for a week. Mrs. Corstana Senior had just been released from hospital following a minor stroke. While she was away, Jack was feeding her cat, or was supposed to be. Miss. Corstana’s parking space was free, and I pulled up beside the Caddy.
I killed the engine and waited while Jack closed the shutter doors. The clang of the metal tongue hitting the concrete killed the motor noise from the rollers. I got out and stood at the trunk of my car, beside Jack.
I popped the trunk. Detective McAllister unfolded herself and got out. She stretched her back, letting her arms hyperextend, rolled her neck, and turned back toward the trunk. She came up with a large, bulky brown paper envelope.
“It’s all here,” she said.
Chapter Fourteen
“What kind of man doesn’t have any food in his refrigerator?” said McAllister.
“Jack’s not convinced that eating is good for you,” I said.
“Then why the hell is his fridge so big?” said McAllister.
She had a point. The one appliance that dominated Jack’s studio apartment was the extra-large classic red refrigerator. Home to the loneliest aerosol can of cheese in Manhattan. She settled for a beer but didn’t pop the can. Instead, she held it against her neck, then her forehead.
The Cross: An Eddie Flynn Novella Page 5