Dead Red (16 page)

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I watched as Jimmy Key downed half a pint of Brooklyn Pilsner without taking a breath. I was sure I had been that thirsty once, I just couldn’t remember when. He saw the smile on my face, returned it with one of his own, and wiped the moisture from his lips.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know. I’ve been back in the States for almost a year now, but this,” he raised his pint glass, “was one of those things I didn’t appreciate until I couldn’t have it, y’know?”

“There’s no beer in the Middle East?”

“Not as much as there should be, with all that Muslim stuff, y’know? And what there was? Not so great.” He finished the rest of the pint and slid the glass forward on the bar. We were sitting at Teddy’s and were lucky enough to get the last two stools before the after-work crowd came in.

I took another sip of my beer. “Welcome back.”

“Thanks.”

The bartender came over with two more pints and a gorgeous smile of her own. I hadn’t noticed how blue her eyes were the first time she’d come over.

“I’m not quite ready yet,” I said.

“These are on Felice,” she said in a slight Southern drawl. She motioned with her head to the other end of the bar, where the owner was busy on the phone. Felice gave us an exaggerated grin and a thumbs-up, and went back to her call.

“Then…” I drained my beer, “I guess I am ready.”

The bartender walked away and Jimmy said, “You in with the owner?”

“She likes teachers. And just wait ’til she hears you’re a soldier.”

“Private security, Ray. Not Uncle Sam’s army.” He looked over at Felice. “She’s cute.”

“And married. Happily.” I picked up my glass and touched it to Jimmy’s. “I’m guessing there’s a lot of things you missed while you were over there.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Every day I wake up since I’ve been back? I thank the Lord for fresh coffee, cold milk, hot showers, and seeing more of a woman than just her eyes. I think about the shit I used to complain about and feel like a jerk.”

“It was that bad?”

“Most of the time and most of the places, yeah.” He let that thought hang for a bit as he took a normal-size sip of beer. “Always had the other guys, though, y’know? You couldn’t complain ’cause we were all in the same foxhole, right?”

“Doesn’t stop some teachers I work with.”

He laughed. “Not in the desert, man. When you’re in that situation and you’re flying your colors, you’re part of something much bigger than yourself.” He took a quick sip. “I don’t care what your politics are, how you feel about being over there, who you pray to when the lights go down, or if you don’t pray when the lights go down. Everybody’s wearing our flag, and that means a shitload more than the last time you took a shower or did your laundry.”

“You better not say that out loud, Jimmy. Sounds like you wanna go back.”

“Nah, man. I made my bucks over there. Helped our guys do what they were told to do, we were proud to do it, but it was time to get all of us the fuck outta there. Hope it stays that way.”

“How often you work with Ricky T?”

“We’d run into each other once in a while on some of the bigger details. General, or some senator or congressman trying to look all supportive and shit, comes by for a visit, we’d see each other. But that’d be it.”

“So,” I said, “being law enforcement over there.…”

“A lot of the same shit as over here. Except you’re not local, y’know? Some of the folks knew why we were there and respected that. Some knew why we were there and didn’t. You know what the shittiest part was?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“When you’re in the desert or patrolling one of the villages? Everybody fits the profile. Adults, kids, fucking grandmothers. I hate to say this, but you never knew who was out to get ya. Back here, at least, you get a description. Suspect’s wearing a black hoodie with a red baseball cap. Suspect was last seen wearing bright orange kicks, riding a BMW bike, heading north on Bushwick. Ain’t like that over there. I ain’t a racist, Ray, but that thing about some people looking all the same, I never got that until I went over. Shit, I’m sure they felt the same way about our guys—a bunch of white guys in green and khaki, carrying heavy-duty firearms, going anywhere we damn-well pleased. On their streets, in their markets. Fuck, we even went into their homes, for God’s sake.”

“You private guys did that kinda stuff?”

“And more, man.”

Jimmy finished his beer and pushed the empty glass away. The bartender came over with two more. This was fast drinking even for me. Jimmy grabbed his pint right away and gave the bartender a flirty grin before she walked away.

“She’s cute, too.” He let his eyes linger a while. “Visual Viagra, man. That girl could cure erectile dysfunction just by walking into a doctor’s office.” He took a sip. “You were a cop for how long?”

“About five years.”

“So, you’re pretty familiar with the Constitution?”

“The parts that I needed to know on the streets, yeah.”

“Ain’t no Constitution over there. Illegal search and seizure? Twenty times a day. Reasonable cause? ‘Be
cause
I said so,’ that’s my reasonable cause.”

“How long were you home before you went back to security work?”

“Two weeks,” he said.

“That sounds pretty quick.”

“Yeah, I coulda pushed it to a month or two, but I needed to get back. I didn’t want the other guys looking at me like I was a broken toy, y’know?”

I nodded.
Broken toy.
Cop talk for someone who couldn’t do the job the way he used to. That was one of the main reasons I chose not to go back after my accident. It’s one thing to doubt your own ability to do your job, a completely different thing to have other people doubt it. People whose lives literally depended on you. Once that seed is planted, it’s hard to dig it back up. For the first time in a long time, I felt pain in my knees.

“That’s why I kept pushing Ricky T to get back on the saddle,” Jimmy said. “The longer he put it off, the harder it was gonna be for him. And it was getting hard. He had all the symptoms, man. Told me he wasn’t sleeping at night, kept looking over his shoulder. Even told me he’d drive by some fares if he thought they looked Middle Eastern.”

“Post-traumatic stress,” I said. “I went through some after my accident.”

He nodded. “You had a fall, right? Chasing a perp?”

I gave him the quick version of my story: from getting cursed at outside the projects all the way up to the fire escape pulling away from the building.

“How’d you get through that? How’d you avoid the full PTSD thing?”

“My uncle said he’d smack the shit out of me if he ever saw me feeling sorry for myself anymore.”

Jimmy laughed. “I’ve heard stories about the Chief and his old-school methods. But what else did you do?”

“Drank a lot. Watched a few months of shitty TV and sat out on my deck staring at the skyline. One day I woke up and was sick of myself. My sister dragged me to my G.P., who prescribed some meds for half a year. But I never saw a therapist or anything.” I ran two fingers up and down the side of my frosted pint glass. “Decided to go back and finish college, and after a semester, figured I’d give teaching a shot. I like to think of it as getting to these kids before the cops do.”

Jimmy raised his glass. “Good for you, Ray. Like I said, you’re a part of something bigger than you. A lot of guys I talk to who’ve been over there, that’s the biggest thing they miss. Feeling like they’re part of something important.”

“I’m not comparing being a teacher to what you’ve done, Jimmy.”

“I know. But what you’re doing has real meaning. I mean, you stand less of a chance of getting shot at—in theory, anyway—but it’s important. Ricky had a blind spot when it came to the bigger picture sometimes.”

“But he did come around,” I reminded him. “Any idea why? Why now?”

“Nope. Just said it was time. His exact words? ‘Time to grow the fuck up.’ Never had the chance to follow up on that thought.”

“Last thing he told me was that he’d made a big mistake.”

“First I’m hearing about that.” He spun his pint glass around. “What was it like? Being in the car with him when the shooting started?”

“If I say ‘otherworldly’ do I sound like an asshole?”

“It makes you sound like a civilian, Ray. A regular human being.”

“Let’s go with that then.” My phone rang. I slipped it out of my pocket and recognized Jack Knight’s number. I raised the phone to Jimmy and got off my stool. “I gotta take this.”

“No problem,” he said. “I gotta pee.” He disappeared into the back, while I stepped outside to take the call.

“What’s up?”

“That’s what I’m calling to ask you,” Jack said. “How’d the interview with our wit go? He showed, right?”

“Oh, yeah, he showed.” I took a breath. “He’s not a good witness, Jack—at least, not for the insurance company. He was still buzzed this morning when we spoke. My guess is he was under the influence the morning of the accident.”

Jack was silent for a few seconds. “Shit. You took good notes, though?”

“For what it’s worth, yeah.”

“Okay.” More silence. “Forget about emailing the photos and report.”
Good, because I had forgotten.
“You can give ’em to me tomorrow. Refresh my memory; you don’t got wheels, right?”

“Right.”

“All right. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

I thought about my plan to drink more beer. “That’s kinda early, isn’t it?”

“Mr. Golden’s working from home tomorrow morning. I wanna be there by eight thirty. With traffic and construction and the kinda cash this guy’s paying me, I don’t wanna keep him waiting.”

“Want me to pick up breakfast?”

“Mighty white of you, Ray. Coffee and a buttered cinnamon raisin bagel.”

“I’ll see you outside my apartment at seven, Jack.”

“Later.”

I went back inside and found Jimmy Key standing at the end of the bar, whispering something into our bartender’s ear. She seemed to be listening quite intensely and then broke out into a laugh that spread through the bar like sunlight. This guy was good. I went over to our stools and waited for him to come back.

When he did, he was folding up a napkin and sticking it in his front pocket.

“Smooth,” I said.

“Man,” he said, picking up his beer. “Since I’ve been back, I’ve been collecting digits like a motherfucker. This back-from-the-Middle-East thing is getting me all kinds of action.”

I touched my glass to his. “You deserve it.”

“Amen to that. Important call?”

“I’m doing some work for a P.I. The guy that Ricky T was working with.”

“Yeah. Ricky told me he was a jerk. You guys called him The Whack?”

“Yeah, but he’s changed. A bit. I’m just picking up some hours before school starts.”

“I assume you’ve had the discussion about whether Ricky’s work with Jack had anything to do with the shooting.”

“Yeah, and right now it doesn’t seem like it.”

Jimmy considered that. “The shooting happened right around here, right?”

“A few blocks over. On Kent.”

Jimmy drained what was left of his beer, pulled a twenty out of his pocket, and placed it on the bar. The bartender came over, flashed her blue eyes, and said, “You’re not leaving so early, are you, Soldier?”

Jimmy patted me on the back. “Me and my buddy are gonna take a quick field trip, Sammi. Be back in less than an hour.”

She scooped the twenty off the bar, folded it, and placed it in her cleavage. I’d only seen that in movies. “You better be,” she said.

“Count on it.”

As Jimmy walked me to the door, I said, “Field trip?”

“I wanna see where this all went down.”

Chapter 14

A NICE BREEZE OFF THE EAST RIVER almost made me forget what had happened at this spot a few nights ago. No, that’s not true. Not even close. I’d never get into another cab for as long as I lived without reliving that night. The smell coming off the river made my stomach clench.

“You were parked here?” Jimmy said.

I patted the faded-blue pickup truck that was parked along the construction fence. “Just about exactly.”

“For how long before … you know?”

I had to think about that. A lot of that night was blurry. “I’m going to say about five minutes.”

Jimmy nodded and leaned against the pickup. He looked up at the brand-new high-rise condos across the way from us and shook his head.

“Jesus,” he said. “These gotta be going for close to a mil, huh?”

“I don’t read the real estate section, but that’s probably a good guess.”

His gaze turned east across Kent Avenue, to the side that looked like the Williamsburg that used to be: five-story walk-ups, street-level commercial properties, and an old factory that I was sure would be loft space soon enough.

“Tell me about that night, Ray.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Just tell me about that night. Whatever comes to mind.”

“You interviewing me, Jimmy?”

He grinned. “You know how us personal-security types are.”

This guy could sell shit to a pig. I told him my story.

Three minutes later, he closed his eyes as if contemplating a brainteaser. I waited another minute before he spoke.

“How much time between the driver’s-side window breaking and the shit hitting the fan?”

“That’s one of the things I’m fuzzy about.”

“Ballpark it for me. A minute? Thirty seconds?”

“Less than that. Five seconds? Ten?”

He nodded and looked at the surrounding area again. In fact, he did a very slow full three-sixty. When he had turned around completely, he seemed to have come to some sort of conclusion.

“What?” I said.

He pointed across the avenue at the row of buildings. “Scaffolding,” he said, moving his finger a little to the right and holding it there like he was aiming. After a while, I got what he was doing.

Fuck.

“A sniper?” I said, barely believing the word coming out of my mouth.

“There’s one way to find out,” He started making his way across the avenue. I followed. When we got to the building with the scaffolding, he turned back to where we’d come from. “That’s about thirty, thirty-five yards. Not much of a shot if you know what you’re doing.” He looked up at the metal bars. The next thing I knew, he had jumped up like a gymnast and swung himself up onto the first layer of scaffolding. He did that one more time so that he was now outside the third-floor window. He ran his hand across the metal bar and stopped in the middle. “Smooth spot right here,” he said. “Could be where the shooter rested the rifle. Guy had plenty of time. Dead red.”