Loud Pipes Save Lives

by Jennifer Giacalone

  A dented black Camry pulled up alongside them, and Miri leaned out the window, calling out with a grin, “Excuse me, Officer, can you stop these miscreants from smoking in front of my house, please?” She stopped, recognizing Ainsley and Khady, and suspicion immediately clouded her cheer. “What are you two doing here?”

  “Just leaving,” Ainsley replied. “Good to see you, Miri.” Ainsley and Lily looked at each other one last time, and then Ainsley touched Khady’s arm and they booked off down the street, making long strides toward where they’d parked their bikes.

  Lily got into the car. Miri laid her large hand over Lily’s smaller one. “What the hell was that? You look like shit.”

  Lily shook her head. “My sister is part of the biker thing. I’ve had a feeling for a while now, but now it’s confirmed. I came here to check the frat house out and talk to the guys, because I suspected they were going to be the next target, and she and her girlfriend were here casing the place.”

  Miri gave a heavy sigh. “God, Lil. What are you going to do?”

  Lily threw her hands up in resignation. “What can I do? I can’t arrest my sister. I told her she has to stop, and I’m going to just…not catch her.” It killed her to even think about letting her sister go on this, but she couldn’t deny that a part of her felt queasy at the idea that she had come out here to protect the safety of guys who had, in all likelihood, raped a girl and gotten away scot-free simply because the fact that she was on psych meds made her a less credible witness in the eyes of the jury. Ainsley had issues; so did her aunt Caroline, though Lily knew less about them. She felt sick at the thought that they could potentially be victimized and not get justice simply because society saw them as less than one hundred percent whole.

  She could see, a few blocks away up on the corner on the boulevard, the bright lights of a diner. “There’s no point talking to these frat guys now. Do you have time to grab a coffee before you go back to the station?”

  Miri glanced at the clock in the car, then pulled close to the curb and parked. “Yeah, a quick one. Let’s go.”

  As they walked up the steps of the diner, Lily felt her phone vibrate. She had a message. When she pulled it out, she saw that Quin had called her a bunch of times. It must have been while she was in the subway. She reached into her pocket again for her notepad and realized that she must have left it in the car. “I’m just gonna run back for my pad, okay? It must have fallen out of my pocket in the car. Can you get us a table, or a spot at the counter or something?”

  Miri nodded, casting a wary eye down the darkening block, but didn’t say anything other than, “Okay. Hurry up.”

  Lily winked at her. “Baby, I have a badge, a gun, and a license to kill. I’ll be fine walking to the car and back.”

  “I know,” Miri mumbled, her ears turning a little red. She tossed Lily the car keys and went inside.

  Lily jogged back down the block to where the car was parked, underneath yet another of this neighborhood’s stuttering street lamps. Why had Quin called so many times? she wondered. She pulled out her phone again, unlocked the car, and slid into the driver’s seat, listening to his message as she pawed around the passenger seat and felt around on the floor, looking for her pad.

  She heard his voice, in tears: “Lil…Lil, for the love of Christ, please, I hope you check this message…”

  She stiffened.

  “Lil, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know everything, but you’re not safe right now…”

  She sat up straight.

  “Wherever it is you’re going, please don’t go. Please turn around and just go somewhere else. Go to Miri’s house. Whatever. Erik told me that you’re investigating Dad’s death and you’re getting too close…”

  Lily’s heart started pounding hard.

  “He said they were gonna try to do something to you tonight. Please, Lil, call me when you get this. Let me know you’re okay. I think it was Erik who killed Dad, and…”

  The phone went flying from her hand. She suddenly felt something searing hot around her throat as all of her air was cut off. She kicked and struggled, but trying to buck forward made the hot pain around her neck even worse. A man’s voice rasped into her ear, “Sssshh, pretty lady, don’t fight it; it’s only gonna make it worse.”

  Each second felt like an eternity as she tried to figure out how to get herself out of this. She wouldn’t be able to stay conscious for more than ten seconds, probably. She’d be dead in twenty. She fumbled at her holster but her fingers were already feeling cold and she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

  And then, as quickly as it happened, suddenly, she was breathing again. Cold air rushed into her lungs. It rushed into the car. She was aware of hearing the back door open. She marshaled her reserves, turning around just in time to see Miri opening the back door and reaching in to punch her mysterious assailant in the face.

  It was happening so quickly, it was a blur. She saw his head snap back with the force of Miri’s blow, and then she saw a muzzle flash, heard the short, sharp whine of a bullet being fired through a silencer, and saw Miri stumble back into the street. As if having an out of body experience, she saw herself lunge over the back seat, Glock in her tingling hand, and with the butt of it, pistol-whipping him in the back of the head. He weaved, but didn’t fall. She struck him again, harder. This time, he slumped down against the upholstery.

  She jumped out of the car and ran to where Miri stood, clutching her shoulder, a few feet back from the rear door; it was still hanging open. “Are you okay?” Miri asked her.

  Lily fingered the hot, sore line of raised skin all the way around her neck, still in slight disbelief that she was breathing. She nodded. “Yeah. You?”

  Miri nodded, but then pulled her hand away. There was a dark spot of blood showing through her jacket. “See? I knew you shouldn’t have gone alone.”

  “You’re shot!” Lily exclaimed. “Jesus, we have to get you to the hospital!”

  “What about him?” Miri asked through heavy breaths, pointing at the guy in the tracksuit, who was slumped over in the back seat of her car. “Arrest him? Bring him in? What?”

  Lily shook her head. Damnit, if she had only checked Quin’s message when she got off the train, Miri wouldn’t be standing here bleeding. “Bring him in? I don’t know what he knows. I bring him in”—she looked at him again, his silver hair in a close-cropped Caesar cut, the track suit, the medallion—“he just stays mum till he gets some mobster lawyer to spring him. I’m still in danger, and then on top of that, I’m caught investigating something I’m not supposed to be. No,” she decided. “It’s no good.”

  Miri pressed her hand back on her bleeding shoulder. “What, then?”

  Lily picked up her phone. After a hesitation, she called Ainsley. It rang several times before she picked up. She was somewhere noisy, windy.

  “What do you want, Lil?”

  Lily closed her eyes, and took a breath. “I need you, Ainsley.”

  A confused pause. “Okay.”

  “Someone just tried to kill me.”

  “What?”

  “Just listen, just listen. It wasn’t the frat; this isn’t about that. This is about our family. I’ve been investigating Dad’s death because I didn’t buy the story, and someone, Quin thinks it’s the Schulzes, but… I’m getting too close, and someone just tried to fucking strangle me in Miri’s car.”

  She could hear Ainsley mentally changing gears. “What do you need from me?”

  “I can’t bring this guy in, not yet. I don’t know what he knows. I don’t want to tell my C.O.s that I’ve been doing this investigation—because I’m not supposed to be doing it. It’s not what I’m there for.”

  “So you need someplace to bring this guy so you can get answers out of him before you decide what to do with him,” Ainsley finished.

  “Exactly.”

  There was a long pause. “Well, we’ve been locked out of our clubhouse for the last week. But I’ll text you the
address. I’m sure once I explain to Empress why we need to get in, she’ll help us.”

  “Who’s—Whatever. Fine. Send me the address. I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

  She looked up at Miri, who was giving her a nervous look. “Lil, are you sure you’re okay with this option? This seems a little ‘grey area’ for your liking.”

  “I don’t know. But I’m going to drop you off at a hospital and then…”

  They paused as they heard the sound of approaching sirens. Sirens weren’t unusual in any part of the five boroughs, but Miri looked down the block and saw that two unmarked squad cars with sirens on top were coming this way.

  “Lil, if you’re going to go, you better go right now. I don’t know why they’re coming, but if you’re going to do this, you don’t want anyone seeing you with this guy.”

  Lily quickly cuffed the guy’s hands behind his back, shoved him back into the car, and slammed the door. “What about you? I have to take you to a—”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. If this needs handling, I’ll handle it. Take the car. Go.”

  Lily paused for a moment, but she knew Miri was right. She hopped into the car and sped away toward the boulevard, away from the flashing lights at the other end of the block.

  30

  Shot at Redemption

  Terrance Schulze loved Puccini, and most especially loved La Boheme. He was certainly not delusional enough to think himself any sort of actual bohemian—his East Village one-bedroom was too well-appointed for that—but he loved the achingly gorgeous strains of “Si, Mi Chiamo Mimi” when he was sober, and even better when he was a little bumped, as he was now, with the heat in the place turned up, standing in his living room in his boxer shorts, conducting an invisible orchestra.

  His phone rang. He picked it up with mild irritation, and saw it was his little girlfriend. His favorite one, anyhow. He picked it up. “Hello, sweet thing. What do you want?”

  She was not her usual flirtatious self. “What the fuck, Terrance?”

  She seemed unhappy. “Fine, thank you, darling. How are you?”

  “Fuck you, Terrance.”

  He sighed. “Actually, I was just thinking I’d get us some reservations somewhere nice for tomorrow night. Peter Luger’s, maybe?”

  “Fuck you, Terrance,” she repeated. “I agreed to keep an eye on Lily Sparr for your sister. I did not sign up to be a party to wasting anyone, especially not a fellow officer.”

  Terrance sighed again. “Honey, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Apparently, your sister is trying to kill Lily Sparr. Her brother called here a little while ago in hysterics because apparently that fuckwit brother of yours spilled to him that it was going down tonight.”

  “What was going down tonight?”

  “Your sister! Putting a hit on Sparr!” she cried in frustration. “I signed up for a little babysitting, Terrance. Sparr’s a good cop, and I’m fucking pissed that you set me up with your bitch sister without telling me this was part of the deal.”

  Terrance made some soothing sounds into the phone. “I promise, I had no idea.”

  “Well, fucking fix it!”

  “Honestly, what do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know—call your brother, make him do something!”

  Terrance didn’t speak.

  “I mean it, Terrance. Fucking fix this or I’m dumping you.”

  He sighed. “Oh, all right, Officer Ray.”

  He hung up and called Erik. “Where are you?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  Terrance chuckled. “So it’s true, then. You interfered with our sister’s plans to do the unthinkable to the Sparr girl.”

  A beat. “Yes.”

  “Does Connolly know about it?”

  Another beat. “Don’t think so.”

  “Well, you’d better fix that. If Detective Sparr turns up dead, my girlfriend is dumping me.”

  “How awful for you. I’m glad you’re concerned for my wellbeing at the moment.”

  “I am concerned, Erik. That’s why you should loop him in. Maybe he can bail both of your stupid asses out. Again.”

  Miri lay in the hospital bed, her shoulder bound up, slightly high on morphine. It had been roughly an hour since she’d been shot, and it was starting to catch up with her: the exhaustion, the awareness that her shoulder was burning (though the morphine kept her oddly disconnected from the actual pain). It hadn’t been bad, though, and they’d been able to get the bullet out right away.

  The cop cars that showed up, as it turned out, weren’t from the 107th. They weren’t coming in response to the shot. They were from Midtown South. Chernov, the browbeaten detective in charge of the group, told Miri (after she showed her badge) that Lily reported to him—that Lily’s brother had called the precinct, frantically trying to get someone on the phone who knew where she was, and Chernov had decided, after a terse back and forth with the hysterical kid, to take a couple of cars out to where Ray had told him she was going.

  Miri couldn’t very well play completely dumb with a gunshot wound in her shoulder, so she was as truthful as she could be: she was Sparr’s old partner from the 104th, still a close friend, and had slipped out to come meet her so she wouldn't have to talk the frat guys alone. She hadn’t spoken to Quin Sparr, hadn’t heard the message or what was in it. She didn’t know who the guy was that had attacked Sparr, or who had sent him. She didn’t know where Sparr was taking him, though she helpfully suggested that perhaps she was bringing him over to the 107th.

  Chernov had shaken his head, giving her a cynical smile. “I sure hope not. Resnikov’s a prick. That’s why I came out here myself instead of calling and asking them to check it out.”

  Chernov had kindly chauffeured Miri to the nearest hospital, asking a few more times if she could try and get hold of Lily again to find out where she was taking the guy. Miri hedged, pretended to send her a text. She pressed him for any information about Quin’s call, but he was equally cagey. He left his number and asked her to call if he heard from Lily.

  Satisfied that she had done what she could, she fell into a dark, drugged sleep. She woke to the sound of a man’s voice—familiar, but not someone she knew.

  “Detective Schein.”

  She opened her eyes. Sitting next to her bed, looking at her with a great deal of concern, was Commissioner Connolly.

  She struggled to sit up, but was still too drugged. “Sir…”

  “No need to get up on my account, Detective,” he reassured her. She’d seen him on television, of course, and a few times in person, if from a bit of a distance. He was instantly recognizable, but he also seemed smaller—more tired than he’d appeared under those other circumstances. Well, I guess nobody looks good under fluorescent lights, she thought, silently cracking herself up, if no-one else.

  She tried to claw through what felt like sawdust in her brain to make sense of the situation. “What are you doing here?”

  Connolly gave her a wan smile. “You took a bullet for Detective Sparr, is that right?”

  She nodded.

  “I took a bullet for my partner once. As a rookie. That’d be…well, a very long time ago, now. We were sent in on a B&E call, and the perp was still inside. Came around the corner; my partner wanted to go in first, but I had to be the big hero…” He eyed her bandage. “Got hit not too far from where you got hit tonight. Still got the scar.”

  Miri said nothing, just looked at him, silent and wary.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  She shook her head.

  “But you know how to get hold of her.”

  She didn’t respond for a long moment. “Why are you here, sir?” she asked finally.

  He took a deep breath. “Your friend is… Well, she’s in what my old drill sergeant used to call a world of shit. She’s pissed off the wrong people.”

  Miri gave him a cautious eyeing-up. “Respectfully, sir, how do I know you aren’t the wrong p
eople?”

  He leaned forward in his chair. “I take it she’s told you about her under-the-table investigation, then?”

  “Not everything, but, yes, sir.”

  “And what do you think about it?”

  She gave him a hard look. “I don’t know what I think, sir. I think it’s a shit situation.”

  He nodded approvingly. “You’ve got that right, Detective. And I’ll tell you what I think: you don’t trust me.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, she replied, “No, sir, I don’t.”

  He sighed, paced over to the door and shut it, then walked back over and sat down again. “Well, you’d be right not to. I’m a questionable bastard, to be honest. But I’m also probably the only one who can help her right now. She’s expending department resources for personal use, investigating a closed case that she wasn’t assigned to, and she’s got the deputy mayor looking to put her in the ground.”

  Miri let her face register surprise. “What does the deputy mayor have to do with any of this?”

  “Detective Sparr may have been chasing me, but the trail would have led her straight to Lina Schulze.”

  He let those words sink in for a moment.

  “And you came here because…?” she finally asked.

  “Erik Schulze, for his own reasons, I suppose, contacted me and alerted me to the situation. After a few phone calls, it became clear that you were the person I needed to speak to.”

  Miri said nothing, waiting for him to go on.

  He slumped down in the chair, suddenly, as if something were crushing him. Miri wasn’t necessarily sharp with details the way Lily was, but she had a good gut instinct for bullshit, and when he spoke now, she didn’t sense any.

  “You’re still a white knight, I can see it,” he began wearily. “You became a cop because you wanted to help people. I was the same way. I come from a cop family, and we do it because you’re supposed to help people. Truth, justice, all that. The badge means something to you: not just power, but duty and responsibility. Protect and serve.”