He took another swig and listened. Only the ticking of the clock broke the silence of the empty house. He turned from the window, sat wearily on the sofa, and looked across the room at his grandfather’s Steinway, its top covered with family photographs. His grandfather was posing in one of the many bars and grills he had owned in the Ridge and Flatbush. Rumor had it that he also owned whorehouses in Red Hook and Park Slope. A photo of his dad and his aunt Elizabeth, a Carmelite nun. They were posing in front of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. He looked at the photograph of his dad, outfitted in the Job’s outmoded dark blue uniform, standing beside one of the old green-and-white radio cars. His beautiful mother and dad on Easter Sunday, posing in the Botanical Gardens. A family at Christmas.
He got up and walked over to the piano, sat on the bench, and began playing a Chopin nocturne, his eyes focusing on the photograph of him and Pat and David. The music carried his thoughts back to the wonderful years when he had a loving wife and a wonderful, bright son and the Job. On David’s sixth birthday, a Sunday in June, three o’clock on a beautiful day, Matt had been in the backyard, barbecuing chicken and ribs, the trees full of smoke from his grill. Pat was busy in the kitchen, making her famous potato salad. They had just exchanged a loving look through the kitchen window when the phone call came. He had watched her answer it, and when he saw the frown come over her face, he knew that the Job would, once again, screw up another important moment in the lives of his family.
Two detectives from the Eight One Squad had been shot dead attempting to execute an arrest warrant that had been endorsed by the courts for Sunday service. He had dressed quickly, kissed his family good-bye, and been walking through the kitchen toward the garage door when he’d realized that he was going after a cop killer and had better take along an extra gun. So he’d gone back into the bedroom and taken down his .38 S&W Chief from the top of the closet.
He had rushed out to the car, which was parked in the driveway. David was standing there, waving good-bye to his dad. Matt looked out the rear window as he moved the transmission out of park. Only it had not gone into reverse—he had accidentally jammed it into drive. For the rest of his life, a brief and unspeakably horrible tape would play over and over again in his mind: David’s body crushed between the front bumper and the splintered garage door. The sound track was the one awful crunch—David had not even had time to scream. It was his wife who had screamed, a keening that seemed to go on for a long, long time.
That Sunday his wonderful life had ended.
He banged his hands down over the keys of the piano, got up, and rushed upstairs to the bedroom. He stripped down to his briefs, took his jump rope out of the top drawer of the dresser, and began springing over the twirling rope.
Dr. Lamm, who had treated him after the tragedy, had helped him see that it was an accident and not his fault. The doctor had suggested that whenever the pain got to be too much for him, he should engage in some strenuous exercise like rope jumping to relieve the tension. But the pain and the guilt were always there, lurking just below the surface.
Pat was hospitalized for clinical depression for almost three months after the accident. When she came home, their life together was over. Matt immersed himself in the Job, unable to heal the gaping wound in the marriage. What he didn’t grasp was the simple fact that Pat hated the Job. One day she just moved out. She didn’t say anything or leave a note. She didn’t have to. He understood. So now all he had in his life was the Job and the big empty house that his grandfather had built.
Helen Kahn had finished washing her undies and was hanging her bra on the drying wire stretched across the top of her tub when her phone started ringing. She darted into the bedroom and stopped short, staring down at the telephone on her night-stand, deciding if she was going to answer it. She was afraid that Ken was on the other end. She’d been avoiding him, trying to gather her strength for what she expected would be high drama when she ended it with him.
“The hell with it,” she said, and grabbed the receiver. “Hello.”
“Hi, gorgeous.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Where are you, Ken?”
“I’m just leaving the office. Me and my raging hard-on can be there in fifteen minutes.” His tone was one of smug assurance.
She sucked in a deep breath and said, “No, Ken. It’s not going to work with us anymore. I can’t see you.”
His cold silence filled the line. “Helen, I’ll come over, we’ll talk.”
“No, Ken, please. I need to get on with my life, and being involved with a married man isn’t my idea of going forward.”
“I love you. How could you do this to me?” His voice was trembling with barely suppressed anger.
She held the phone out in front of her, staring at the mouthpiece. He’s rolling out his heavy guns, she thought, that bastard. “Ken, I’ve made up my mind.”
“I’ll get a divorce, we’ll get married.”
A cynical smile crossed her face. Sure you will, you lying prick, she thought. “Ken, let’s say our good-byes now, and stay friends.”
“Is there anyone else?”
“Yes, your wife.”
His tone took on a threatening edge. “I could do you a lot of favors, Helen. On the other hand …”
“I don’t need any favors, Ken.” She did not want this conversation. “Ken, I’m very tired. We’re making collars on a double homicide in the A.M., and I have to be up real early. I need my sleep. Good-bye.”
“Just give me five minutes, fa’ crissake.”
She hung up and slowly curled up on the bed, staring at the silent phone. She lay there, her heart pounding, expecting him to ring her back. After five long minutes, when the telephone did not come to life, she rolled on her back and sighed in relief; she was free, she thought. But why didn’t she feel free?
Stuart shook himself awake; he had fallen asleep after his exercise and a shower. It took him several moments to shake off his dream and realize that the phone was ringing.
“I’ve been thinking about sucking your cock all day,” the sultry voice said when he picked up the phone.
Smiling as he stretched out on the bed, he said, “I hoped I’d be hearing from you tonight.”
“Would you like me to come over?”
“I’d like that very much.”
“A half hour.”
Matt Stuart lay naked across his bed, watching the Ice Maiden slip out of her jacket and toss it aside. She stepped out of her skirt and began unbuttoning her blouse. A flush came to her cheeks as she took it off. She stood before him clad in skimpy black underpants, a lacy black bra, and black thigh-highs.
Matt’s heart pounded as he watched her unfasten her bra and work down her underpants. She stood perfectly still, allowing his eyes to feast on her body, her full breasts with erect pink nipples, her sculptured mound of auburn ringlets, the tops of her thigh-highs set against her smooth, creamy skin. Her large green eyes, set well apart, were watching him stroke his erection.
He was always surprised at the ease with which they could slip into familiarity once she had taken off her clothes. She had the ability to effortlessly erase her Ice Maiden persona and assume the role of a sexually demanding woman.
Inspector Suzanne Albrecht had decided a long time ago that she was going to become the first woman police commissioner of the NYPD. A woman with that kind of agenda needed to pick her playmates carefully.
They had met by accident eight months ago in the Waldbaum’s shopping center on Ocean Avenue. She had been carrying a bag of groceries to her car when the bag broke. He had rushed to help her pick up her food. It turned out that she lived a mile and a half away from him, in one of those grand prewar apartment buildings on Bay Ridge Avenue. After a short edgy period, their pure sexual hunger overpowered their Job-related paranoia. Their secret affair offered them both what they wanted at this stage in their lives: sex, release, excitement—all without commitment.
She came up to the bed and planted one foot on the mattre
ss. “I’ll keep on my stockings,” she said, and began massaging her clit with her three middle fingers. “Do you like watching me play with myself?”
“Yes.” He reached up and kneaded her nipple, his other hand stroking his hardness.
She moaned and slipped two fingers inside her body, moving them in and out rapidly. She removed her fingers and gave them to him. “Lick my pussy juice,” she demanded.
He did.
Afterward they lay in each other’s arms, allowing their silence to engulf them. He toyed with her hair lazily, breathing in the faint scent of her perfume. The cuckoo clock chirped in the distance. She turned her head and looked at him. “What are you going to do about Paul Whitehouser?”
“I’m not sure. It’s not so easy to derail a chief of detective’s contract.” He turned his head, looked into her wide eyes, and asked, “How old is the c of d?”
“Sixty-two. He has to get out in eight months.”
“Unless Patrick Sarsfield Casey wins his age discrimination suit.”
“The word in the Big Building is that the fourteenth floor expects a decision on that in a couple of weeks.”
His brows came together as he adopted a serious expression. “Suzanne …” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “How long are the personnel folders kept after a cop retires?”
“They’re kept in my office for two years and then shipped to a warehouse in Queens, where they’re stored for fifteen years before they’re destroyed.”
“Why fifteen years?”
“Because that’s the average number of years a retiree lives after he gets out.”
“What about the F File?”
She began rubbing her fingers across the film of sweat on his chest.
He watched the small lights playing in her eyes as she pondered his question. We just screwed our brains out and she has to think about giving me an answer, he thought; as easy as she can slip into her sex mode, she can slip back into her Ice Maiden mode. Giving her an encouraging smile, he said, “C’mon, Suzanne. It’s important.”
“It depends,” she said.
“On what?”
“The nature of the allegations in the file, if there’s a possibility that the retiree might bring discredit to the Job because of some real or imagined wrong.”
“What about an ex-member who went to work for the bad guys?”
“How would the Job know?”
“Humor me. Assume we did know.”
“Then we’d probably keep his F File.”
Stuart was silent for a moment, debating how much to tell Suzanne, then said, “Retired sergeant Patrick Holiday, AKA Paddy, was assigned to the Intelligence Division. As a sideline he sold confidential information to the wiseguys. IAD was about to throw a net over him, but somehow he escaped with his pension.”
“How’d he manage that?”
“’At’s what I’d like to know,” Matt said, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes. “Holiday’s up to his ass in my two latest homicides.”
“How long is he out of the Job?”
“Six years.”
“And you want me to resurrect his personnel folder and his F File, and give them to you.” She ran her fingertips over his mouth. “I love the way you smile, Matthew, and I’m wild for your body, but you gotta know that if I do this for you, one day there’ll be payback.”
“Naturally.” He moved his mouth next to her ear and glided his tongue around the rim. “Do you think it would be a violation of the Patrol Guide for a subordinate to ask a ranking officer to go down on him?” he whispered.
“Absolutely not,” she said, and leaning over, she kissed him.
7
At six o’clock Thursday morning a white streak of lightning slashed through towering dark clouds as Detective Calvin Jones walked Smasher past Manny Rodriguez’s house. The hundred-pound rottweiler tugged Jones over to the rusting fire hydrant and began sniffing. The animal raised its leg and added its contribution to the rust. Jones’s gaze swept over the second floor of the defaced mansion. No lights shone behind any of the windows, nor did he see any human shadows moving about. He gave the all-clear signal by patting his African scarf with his left hand.
Stuart turned to Borrelli, who was behind the wheel of the unmarked car parked at the corner. “Let’s go, quietly.”
Borrelli drove the car up Parkside Avenue and double-parked in front of the apartment house next to Rodriguez’s home so that the car was not visible from any of Rodriguez’s windows. Stuart, Borrelli, and Kahn got out and closed the doors, careful not to make noise.
The detectives hurried along the pathway into the mansion’s vestibule. Jones sat on the stoop with Smasher reclining on his paws beside him. If Rodriguez attempted to escape by taking a header out the window, they’d be there to meet him. The door leading into the hallway was locked.
Borrelli removed a thin strip of plastic from his wallet and inserted it between the door and the jamb, about an inch and a half above the lock, and began working it down. The lock snapped open; the stench of decaying garbage greeted them as they stepped quickly into the hallway. A mahogany staircase wound up to the second level; several of its vase-shaped balusters were missing. Three bulbs hung down from black ceiling wires. Their guns drawn, the detectives tiptoed up the staircase. They did not want to announce their presence, so they tried to take the steps quietly, but the treads were old and warped, and they squeaked.
When they reached the second-floor landing, Kahn swept the corridor with her nine while Stuart and Borrelli silently took up positions against the wall on opposite sides of the door leading into the front apartment.
His back flush with the wall, Stuart reached out with his right hand and curled his fingers around the doorknob, turning the brass knob slowly. His eyebrows came together in surprise when the knob moved all the way. Rodriguez probably came home with his load on and didn’t lock his door, he reasoned, looking across at Borrelli and mouthing, “On three.”
Borrelli nodded.
Kahn continued to check the hallway behind them.
Stuart mouthed, “One, two, three,” and threw open the door. He darted inside in a crouch and moved to the left of the threshold in a combat stance, bending with both hands locked around his nine as it swept the flat.
“Shit,” Stuart said, standing straight.
Manny Rodriguez was sprawled on his bed. He was fully clothed, save for one shoe that lay on the floor beside the bed. He was lying on his left side, his mouth open, eyes wide and empty. Blood had coursed from his ears and mouth, pooling on the bedsheet.
Stuart figured a head shot and ran his hand through the dead man’s hair, searching for the entrance wound. He found it in the hairline about two centimeters behind the left ear, a small hole with smooth edges. Powder tattooing peppered the hair around the wound. He bent down, trying to find an exit wound. There was none.
He’d been a detective long enough to read the signs. The shooter had used a twenty-two, the hitman’s magic wand: it propelled a shell not powerful enough to pass through the skull, so it ricocheted around, tearing up everything inside.
The weight of the body wrinkled the sheets around the corpse. The headboard of the bed was up against the wall, about a foot to the right of a window that looked out over Parkside Avenue. The pillow next to the window had an indentation, as though someone had been sitting on it. A chest of drawers with edges stained black by cigarette burns lined the wall opposite the bed. Above it hung a velvet portrait of Christ with blood seeping out of his crown of thorns.
A framed photograph of Rodriguez, posing with his boxing gloves held high at what must have been a fight he won, sat on the top of the dresser, along with a set of keys, a wad of bills, some change mixed with subway tokens, and an edition of the New York Post with a glaring headline that read 12 SLAIN IN 8 HOURS IN NYC.
Stuart examined the scene, his mind racing ahead. The shooter breaks into the apartment and sits on the pillow, waiting and looking out the window for Manny, h
e reasoned; when he sees him coming, he rushes over and plants himself behind the door. Manny comes in, doesn’t bother to turn on the lights, and walks over to his dresser and empties his pockets. He moves over to the bed to get undressed; the killer steps up behind him and puts out his lights for good.
Stuart struggled his hand inside the dead man’s shirt and felt his armpit. It was still warm. He ran his hand over the neck; it was soft. The downward spread of rigor mortis had not yet begun. He tugged up the blue shirt with the flowery design and bent down, looking at the stomach, and saw the slight purple discoloration of lividity. The blood was starting to fall to the body’s lowest point.
“How long you figure?” Kahn asked.
“’Bout an hour and a half, maybe two,” Stuart said, bitterness creeping into his voice at the thought that someone was several steps ahead of him.
Borrelli counted out the wad of money and announced, “Twenty-seven hundred dollars.”
“Payment for Gee and Hollyman,” Stuart said.
“If they paid ’im, why whack ’im?” Borrelli asked.
“I can come up with several reasons real quick,” Stuart said. “First, he might have been popped for something not connected with the Rastafarians. Maybe he was doing some guy’s wife or girlfriend, or maybe he was into the shys big time, and they felt they had to turn him into a learning experience for other deadbeats.” He tugged at his right earlobe. “Or, after they paid him for the hit, he might have said or done something that made them afraid he might roll over on them. Or …” He looked down at the body, his unspoken thoughts hanging heavily in the room.
Borrelli began to search the closet. Stuart took the chest of drawers.
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