“A certain young man.”
“Couldn’t you make it a young woman instead? They’re more to my liking.”
“His name is Harry, Harry something or other, the fool who looted your home in much the same manner as Bucyk ransacked my brownstone. If you give your word not to harm a mutual friend, I will tell you where he can be found.”
“I get him for how many of the krytrons?”
“For all.”
Nicholas made a tsking sound with his tongue and his teeth. “I don’t see much profit in that. How about sweetening the pot? Can I interest you in more blow? I just received a quantity of pharmaceutically pure—”
“Not at this time. But there is something else I want from you.”
“I’m giving up too much as it is.”
“Hear me out first,” Howard said, letting his voice rise for effect, then dropping down to little more than a whisper. “I want Bucyk. What he did inside my house is unforgivable. What he tried to do to me through this friend, that is worse.”
“Why? I heard nothing happened,” Nicholas said, amused.
“But why did anyone have to try?” Not whispering any more.
“You won’t be sore if I suggest that Stan is not your biggest fan? He didn’t enjoy calling on you when he was carrying the tin, and he doesn’t resent you any less now that he works for me.” He paused, letting everything sink in. “I promised Stan I would let him show me what he could do on his own one time, and that I would help out if I could. What he wanted to do, he wanted to do to you. He’s a manipulator, Ormont … and I’m a man of my word. What choice did I have but to go along with him?”
“I’m sure you were greatly inconvenienced.”
“No harm was done to anyone, except to that Russian kid, and Stan says that was unavoidable. If you don’t believe me, ask the girl.”
“To me, Nick, damn it. The harm was done to me. Letting Bucyk get at me through—”
“I don’t see how,” Nicholas said. “I treated her like a lady.”
“You don’t have to see. I want … I needed her—”
“And a good time was had by all. The girl has an appetite for luxury, Ormont. You should indulge it once in a while. It might bring results. I understand that so far they have been short in coming.”
“It wouldn’t be that for your own reasons you resent me as greatly as Bucyk does?” Howard said. “That you would like to see me embarrassed, too, that you thought Kate was a pushover.”
“Ormont, how can you even think such things? Without my money where would you be?”
“Where you would be without my laundering so much of it for you. No good, Nick. I want Bucyk. I want to see him dead. You can deliver him in that condition, or I will have it taken care of myself. We both know I’m doing you a favor.”
“You’re right about Stan. He is more trouble than he’s worth. But I can’t let you have him right away. He has an important job to do for me. In fact, he’s working on it at this very minute.”
“What kind of job?” Howard asked anxiously. “Where a job?”
“You were going to tell me where yourself, weren’t you?”
“I …”
“Quick, Ormont. I’ve got to run. My other phone is ringing.”
“In Brooklyn,” Howard said. “All the way out at the end of the subway line. In a place called Little Odessa …”
The single-prong plug fit neatly in the lighter socket. Bucyk dropped the small coil inside a can of Campbell’s tomato soup and balanced it on the console between the seats, watched it simmer. He looked up to stare through the rain at the brownstone half a block away, flicking on his wipers, running through all four speeds before deciding on the slowest one. The aroma of the soup distracted him, and he searched the glove compartment for a plastic straw and inserted one end carefully between his cracked lips.
He switched on the radio. There was only hard rock and news on the AM band, more of the same plus some elevator music on FM. He sent the antenna higher and scoured the dial again, settling for a hockey game. It was the one sport he wasn’t interested in, hockey and horseshoes, maybe. But the partisan roar of the crowd heartened him as though the cheers were meant for him. Any port in a storm, he thought, as he glanced at his watch again. He had been parked on Seventy-sixth Street for most of the day, and was feeling damp all over. He wondered if the girl was ever coming out.
He warmed his palms on the can as he sucked the soup over temporary crowns. Checking the brownstone again, he saw the door open, and put the wipers on high. Ormont came out with an umbrella and leash in one hand and Kate on his elbow. The wolfhound went straight for the ginkgo tree at the curb. Ormont yanked him away and then gave him his lead. His second choice was a plane tree two doors down. Bucyk decided that if he were still carrying a summons book, he’d have cited Ormont for not cleaning up afterward.
He watched them dart back toward the house. Kate whispered something that made Ormont laugh, and then she kissed him—on the cheek, Bucyk noticed with some satisfaction—and when she stepped away, she had the umbrella. Then Ormont ran up the stoop and followed the dog inside. Bucyk twisted the key and backed the van around the corner, keeping an eye on Kate as she hurried toward Broadway.
Nicholas’s phone was busy. The damn thing was always busy. He waited a minute before dialing again, and was answered by the same angry signal. Trying to remember the other number, the one he had been warned was only for emergencies, he pushed the quarter back into the slot.
“What took you so long?”
“She must’ve been in there a goddamn hour,” Bucyk said. “I thought she was gonna spend the night. Then I remembered how hot she was for Ormont’s body and I figured maybe he was leaving. She just went out, heading for the subway. What do you want me to do?”
“Do you think you can beat her train to Brighton Beach?”
“That where she’s been hiding? Shit, I should’ve figured it out myself.”
“You should have,” Nicholas said. “But it doesn’t matter now. Get there as fast as you can and wait for her outside the subway.”
“Which station? There’s lots of them in that part of Brooklyn.”
“The Little Odessa stop.”
“That’s … yeah, that’s Coney Island Avenue. On the D.”
“Follow her wherever she goes, and then call me here and I’ll meet you.”
“It’ll take you an hour, minimum, from where you are,” Bucyk said. “What if they go out while I’m waiting?”
“In this rain? The weather bureau says a major storm is coming.”
“You never know.”
“You’ve got a point,” Nicholas said. “I’ll plug in the damn answering machine. Leave a message so I know where to find you. I’m already gone.”
Bucyk pulled the receiver away, careful not to let the hard plastic brush against his jaw. He reached deep inside his jacket and adjusted the stiff new shoulder harness and the holster it held tight against his ribs, let his fingers flick against the rasped grips of a Taurus PT 99 Protector. “You’re not the only one,” he said out loud.
He was parked in the shadows when she came down from the elevated station, walking briskly through the rain as if outdistancing all her fears. Keeping half a block behind he stalked her along Brighton Beach Avenue, through dark streets blackened by the worsening storm. At Ocean Parkway an old woman in a red and yellow babushka smiled and said something to her, and they ducked under an awning to gesture exaggeratedly with flailing hands. Traffic forced him past them in the curb lane and he saw her look right at the van without a hint of recognition.
From a side street he watched as she kissed the old woman good-bye and then crossed the parkway. Close to the beach there were fewer cars on the road, and he let her get a block ahead before he followed her onto Seabreeze. When she went inside an apartment house, he drove into the shade of an ailanthus thicket and cut the engine. A Con Ed crew in blue waders was scurrying around a manhole like fishermen in an underground strea
m, and the light bubbling up from their excavation illuminated the building entrance. He wrote the address in a spiral notebook with an NYPD shield on the cover. Then he slipped outside to search for a pay phone that worked.
He came back in a downpour and turned on the heater, directing a warm blast of air at his damp clothes. He was monitoring the sparse traffic for Nicholas’s car when a station wagon pulled up and a man in a dark raincoat backed out covering his head with a newspaper. Bucyk flipped on the radio, played it so loud that at first he didn’t hear the tapping on the window. Then he swept the fog from the glass and saw Nicholas with the rain running down his cheeks.
“That building there,” Bucyk nodded, reaching over quickly to let him inside. “…I was looking for the Porsche.”
Nicholas shut off the heater and opened the vents, tossed the raincoat lightly around his shoulders. “I used a car service from Mermaid Avenue. The robbers charged ten dollars for an eight-block ride. I couldn’t take the Porsche into a neighborhood like this. It would stand out like socks on a rooster.”
“Where’d you stash it?”
“In a lot on the other side of Neptune Avenue. I hope it’s safe.”
“Part of it is,” Bucyk said, showing a lopsided grin that didn’t seem worth the pain. “The fog lights, the radio, they’re safe with whoever’s got them by now.”
“Something like your teeth.”
Bucyk looked back toward the apartment house. “The dentist says no one’ll know. He says the caps’ll look better than the real ones even.”
“They should,” Nicholas said. “They’re costing me a bundle. I’m giving you better benefits than the department.”
Bucyk started a feeble laugh. Nicholas finished it for him.
“You mind changing the subject?” Bucyk asked.
“What would you rather talk about?”
Unbuttoning his jacket, Bucyk came out with the Taurus. “Hunting,” he said.
Nicholas held out his palm and Bucyk slapped the gun into uncallused flesh. Nicholas removed the clip expertly. He switched off the safety and dry-fired it. “Where’d you get this?”
“You could say I always had it.”
“Do you think you can hang onto it without some punk taking it away from you?”
Bucyk replaced the shells and stuffed the Taurus back inside the holster. “We’ll find out soon,” he smiled. “Won’t we?”
Nicholas didn’t return the smile. “I don’t want to find out. I want to know it in advance. If you screw up like last time, I’m telling you now, I’ll cut you loose. Until we get back the Mag, the damn thing is a loose cannon rolling around our decks.”
“Why? Anyone takes it off the punk, it’s no skin off our nose. It’s not like it’s registered in my name.”
“Do I have to tell you that if he’s picked up with it your former employers will run it through ballistics as a matter of routine, and that they’ll see it was used to kill the Russian?”
“You know what happens then?” Bucyk said. “The punk gets nailed for murder two, that’s what. Going after him like this, putting him out of his misery, we’re doing him a favor. Shit, if it wasn’t I had a personal grudge against the bastard, I’d say let’s dime him and save ourselves the bother.”
“That’s all we’d need. He’d be screaming your name to anyone who’d listen. Yours and mine …No,” Nicholas said. “We came here to do a job.”
Bucyk wound down the window and put his hand out. “You think the rain’ll let up, think he’ll be coming out?”
“There’s one thing more. When you’re through with the punk, I’ve got something else for you.”
Bucyk turned quickly toward him, shaking his head. “The girl? I don’t see why it’s necessary she—”
“She has to be silenced,” Nicholas said firmly. “But, you’re right, taking her out is not the way to go about it. We can get at her as effectively through other people.”
Bucyk appeared to relax. “I told you, the punk’s dead.”
Nicholas didn’t seem to hear. “Who can she go to when she finds herself alone? Back to the police? Considering all they’ve done for her so far, I doubt that. It’s more likely she’ll come to us, come crawling. If she does, and if she asks nicely, I might throw her a little something. Make her a partner in my restaurant.” He laughed. “Of course, if she doesn’t ask nicely …”
“You already have a partner in the Knights,” Bucyk said. “Remember?”
“Not for much longer. Not after you take care of him.”
“Ormont? That’s who …? I thought he was your buddy, your cash cow.”
“He was,” Nicholas said. “But then he asked me to do a contemptible thing, something that shows just how little he values my integrity.”
“Yeah? What’s that? What’d he want, a pussy like that?”
“He wants you dead, Stan.”
Bucyk sat up sharply. He rolled up his window and squeezed out of his seat and went to the back of the van. “You mind keeping’ an eye on the building while I catch a few winks?” he asked. “I see where it’s gonna be a long night.”
16
KATE KNOCKED TWICE, THEN twice more. She opened her umbrella and set it beside the door, listening for footfalls that never came. She searched her pockets for the frayed knot of string that held the keys and came inside with her shoes in her hand.
She hurried through the empty rooms calling his name. A few twisted strips of tape on the bedroom floor were the only evidence that he had been there. In the kitchen she found a ball of paper in the sink, and she spread it against the drainboard to read the note she had left him. That he was gone didn’t surprise her. The surprising thing was that he had stayed as long as he had—and the moisture she felt on her face. Angry with herself, she blotted her eyes with a paper towel and examined the dark smears. What was the matter with her, anyway? This was what she had wanted, wasn’t it—not having to face him, to tell him herself?
She walked back to the bedroom and slipped out of the wet dress. As she went to the closet, she noticed that the window was wide open and that a small puddle had collected on the sill. She lay the dress on the bed and was hurrying to the window, when she felt her limbs go weak.
Someone was on the fire escape, plodding toward the apartment along the metal rungs. Her instinct was to run into the hall hollering for help, trapping him there. But as she moved away she glimpsed herself in the mirror wearing only her bra and panties, and suddenly modest, picking the worst of all times for that, she froze.
His back was to her, the upper half of his body hidden behind the blinds. She was attempting a few steps toward the door when he bent inside and she saw the cast on his arm and allowed herself the luxury of a breath, then so many of them, quick and shallow, that she nearly toppled onto the bed. He spotted her over his shoulder as he slid off the sill carrying a heavy object on his hip.
“What were you doing out there?” she asked.
He looked at her as though she didn’t exist. He brought his load to a small table and placed it carefully against the wall. She saw that it was a portable television with a silver handle and bent rabbit ears on top.
“You said supper was gonna be late. You didn’t say five hours late. I didn’t have the key, and I didn’t wanna get locked out, so I hung around lookin’ at the walls and when I got done I went over to the neighbor’s, and borrowed this.”
“I don’t believe you did that,” she said angrily.
“Nobody saw.”
“I mean, how could you just go into someone’s apartment and take their TV? That’s a terrible thing to do.”
“They have another one,” he told her. “…Color. They also have plenty of nice stuff they shouldn’t keep lyin’ around, stuff I didn’t take. It makes you feel better, I’ll bring this back when we don’t need it any more.” He pushed the dress out of the way and sat down. “Where’s the mutt?”
“What?” She went to the bed, but when he reached out to her she snatched up the dres
s and pulled it over her head. “Oh, I left him at the brownstone.”
“He wasn’t hungry?”
Kate shrugged.
“Then where the hell were you all day? You know what I was thinkin’ must’ve happened to you?”
“No one told you to,” she said in a voice that reminded her vaguely of herself.
“Since when’d you get so independent? The other night you were too uptight to sleep without me tuckin’ you in bed. Now you’re telling’ me to mind my own business?”
“That’s right,” she shouted. “And lower your voice. We don’t need everyone in the building knowing our problems.”
“There’s somebody in this building who’d like to know what the goddamn problem is.”
Kate threw up her hands in an awkward stage gesture. “What’s the use? This could never work out, not you and me. Who are we trying to fool?”
“Fooled me,” Harry said. “You fooled me good. I thought we were gonna beat it out of town, see what it’d be like by ourselves without all kinds of crap to worry about.”
“It would be just like this.”
“You’d rather be dead?” Not sarcastic, not trying to score points. “What’re you gonna do instead?”
“I …Stop worrying about me,” she said. “You’re in lots deeper trouble than I am. You can have my money, my end of what we took, if you’ll use it to get as far away as you can. Worry about yourself.”
“I’m tired of that. I thought it’d be nice worryin’ about somebody else for a change.”
“Not me. I’m sorry.”
“Come here.” He patted the mattress and made room for her by putting his knees together.
Kate stayed where she was. “Please … leave now. Or I will.”
Harry got off the bed. He slid his hand in his shirt and rubbed his sore ribs. “Okay, that’s what you want.” He grabbed the TV by the handle and carried it to the window.
“Where are you going with that?”
“I told you,” he said, “I was gonna bring it back when we didn’t need it any more.”
In spite of herself she smiled, brushing away tears. “God damn you, why are you making this so hard for me?” She took the TV from him and brought it back to the table. Then she circled her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him. “Don’t go. Not just yet, I mean. There are things I should explain.”
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