Afterburn (34 page)

Now Paul pulled the car up against the garage and touched a button on the dash, and the wide door slowly opened, revealing a well-lit space, rakes and shovels and lawn tools hung neatly along the walls, sports equipment for the boys on another, the tractor-mower parked to one side.

"So what's the commonsense part?"

"Oh, I was saying she's good-looking."

"Right."

"So other guys will think that, too."

"I guess."

"Then there's one more question. I think I know the answer, but for the purposes of the argument I have to ask it."

"All right."

"Christina like to, whatever, spend time in bed?" Paul opened his hands. "This is just my wife, another woman thinking out loud. So just answer the question."

"Yeah, she likes to fuck," Rick said. "She likes it a lot and she's good at it, and she's picky about who it is, but she gets a lot of guys to pick from."

Paul nodded at this, too. All his nodding was starting to bug Rick. "This means someone else."

"Another guy?"

"Just a matter of time before she finds a guy. Or a guy finds her. They'll hook up somehow, somewhere. It's human nature. You don't know who. You have no idea. He could be a nobody or he could be a problem. But he definitely complicates your situation, Rick, he fucking complicates your situation. I mean, he could have money, he could be a cop, he could be somebody with big friends, he could be anybody. Soon as she's involved with him, it's harder for her to care about you, it's harder for her to do things for Tony so easily, lot of things get messed up there."

His brother opened his car door. Inside the house was a meal, a wife, two boys with their hair brushed. Civilization. The conversation had stayed outside the house. "So," Rick summarized, hoping for an indication of compassion from Paul, "I'm racing against Tony and I'm racing against Christina finding a guy she likes."

"In a sense."

"That's bad, I think."

Paul's hand was on the door to the kitchen. He turned back and faced Rick, his eyes remote, all-seeing of patterns and numbers and what happened to people—other people, including his brother.

A HOUSE OF SMELLS:
laundry detergent, the pink soap in the bathroom, the roast of lamb in the kitchen, Paul's two boys panting and sweaty and eager, the wet football cleats on the counter, the modest perfumery of Mary's neck and arms as she bent close to serve Rick his dinner, the pencil shavings and cigars in Paul's study—which, Rick noticed, had no fewer than five phone lines and what appeared to be a substantial recording device on the desk, as well as a small personal safe behind the woodwork, tucked between the duck decoys, hunting in Mexico having become Paul's newest pastime, which, when you thought of it, was a pretty good way to meet drug dealers, if that was your inclination, which with Paul was not necessarily the case. Not necessarily. You didn't know, almost no one knew, and that was the way he wanted it. Paul was masked and hedged and operating at a double-blind level, not to mention the Cayman Island account and untraceable and no return address and calling number blocked and encrypted private mail drop and forget you heard this and attorney-client privilege and high-speed shredder—yes, right there under the desk, Rick noticed, the spaghetti of paper not carried away in the house trash and entrusted to the New York City Department of Sanitation but, if he knew Paul, which he did, burned in the fireplace three steps away, where a yellow can of starter fluid and a large box of wooden matches sat on the mantel ready to smoke numbers and words into invisibility.

AFTER DINNER
, Paul drove Rick back to the ferry.

"We've got fifteen minutes," he said, switching off the headlights but keeping the car running. "My boys loved seeing you. So did Mary."

Rick nodded. Paul's sons had climbed all over him, wrestling, pummeling him.

"All right," Paul said. "I found out some other things I wanted to save for after dinner so you wouldn't be too upset. After you called me, I was on the phone for two hours. In fact, that's what I was working on when your ferry came in. I had to talk to some people I usually don't like to talk with." Paul paused, looked at Rick, then back out the window. "When Peck put Christina away, he was still trying to catch up with his father, who was a captain, too. Used to come into my bar. Okay, so the little Peck got his gold shield maybe a year ago and somehow got in with the D.A.'s squad in Manhattan."

"They're good."

"Yes, they are. They certainly are that. Fellows you would prefer to have avoided. I mean, it's amazing for this guy to make the Manhattan squad in his late twenties. There's a little respect for his old man in that. But that can create a problem, too. The other guys don't impress very easily. And nobody's cutting him any slack. He's not making good cases as often as he should. He's not desperate, he's just on the ropes. He's a frustrated guy. We know that. I know people who know that. He's working hard, too. Extra hours. But there's something funny about him, Rick. They don't know what it is. Something is edgewise about him. It's not that he's not smart. He is. Now, how do I know this? I know this because Tony has, in fact, approached Peck. They have an arrangement."

The food felt heavy in Rick's stomach. "What kind of arrangement?"

"Tony goes to Peck and says, I can give you a couple of great cases, no problem, I'll get Mickey Simms to sing his song. But you got to get me Christina. This is what he says to Peck."

"A young detective is not going to go for that."

"Not at first."

"But then he thinks about it."

Paul nodded. "He thinks and thinks and thinks about it, and Tony can tell he is thinking about it because he has a few guys watching Peck's house, just for the hell of it, just to get a vibe off of the situation. Check out the drinking, the wife, whatever. So Peck and Tony meet again. Tony already knows how it can be done. The detective has to figure out a way to change his original testimony against Christina, without being a liar in the first place."

"But wait," said Rick. "He was the one who ID'd her in the truck. He sat up there and said she's the one."

"Correct. That is correct. Now he has to say it was someone else. He has to say he was wrong. That he saw someone else, another woman on a current case who was the real one."

"That's just a lot of bullshit."

"Of course, but identity is a mysterious fucking thing," Paul agreed softly. "How do I know you are you? I mean, I haven't seen you in almost like four years. Here you are, older, with a beard, with a little gray, you weigh thirty pounds less, hair different, glasses, the whole nine yards, and I know it's you. Right? I know it because I just know it. People've put their faith in this for all of recorded time. So Peck has to think this thing through very carefully. He can't just go to the prosecutor who handled the case and say, I woke up this morning and realized it wasn't her. No, that won't do. He has to pin it on somebody. That's the only way to convince the D.A.'s Office. So, as you remember, your whole crew had what, twelve, thirteen people?"

"At the top, sixteen."

"How many women?"

"Two or three, depending."

"Christina was the only one who went down?" asked Paul.

"Yeah."

"But there were a couple of other women around."

"They didn't do as much. They just helped with the little stuff."

"No, but apparently they're still active. Anyway, according to the original complaint, they had about eleven of your crew under surveillance and only made ID on five or six. The rest are what they call 'lost subjects.' They never got names on them. Two were women. Peck decided he could switch Christina for one of them. Just say it wasn't Christina who was in the truck but one of the female lost subjects. Somebody who he'd subsequently come across."

Rick didn't even remember the names of the other women. Patty someone. Girlfriends of the guys. He'd always tried not to know too much.

"The beauty of it is that he is sure the lost subject was around," Paul went on, shaking his head in the dark of the car. "No. That's not the real beauty of it. The
real
beauty of it is that it makes Peck look like a good guy! So honest that he's willing to lose an old collar that no one would have hassled him about. Also, it helps if the old lost subject has been maybe arrested since then, been hanging out with fuck-ups, whatever. See, the original prosecutors go back and say to themselves, The undercover cop says the real suspect is one slummy chick who's still being watched by Narcotics, somebody who is not exactly an upstanding citizen of the City of New York, and then you've got Christina, never been in prison before, never arrested, was a good student at Columbia before she got mixed up with the bad people, especially that fucking mope Rick Bocca, who they never nailed, and she had a perfect prison record, and that gets into the head of the prosecutor. It eats at him. He has to do something about it. He thinks about it all the time, he talks to his wife about it. He feels guilty, he thinks maybe they were trying to get at you by putting her away. See, these guys have a lot of power. If they really think somebody is innocent, they can get them out
in a few days
."

"I didn't know that."

"It's true. I checked that out with two different people downtown. All the prosecutors have to do is get the motion before the judge. It happens so rarely that the judge is always going to say yes. The judge knows these guys work their asses off to get convictions and aren't going to switch one unless they are really sure the person is innocent."

"So, boom, Christina is out, Tony gets to find her, and then he serves up some people to Peck. Pays him back?"

"That's the way it was explained to me."

"Who are these people?" Rick asked anxiously.

"I don't know. I couldn't get that."

"Why did Peck come visit me, then?"

"I don't know. I have theories."

"He wanted me to come back into the city, do something stupid, and then
he
could get me."

"Maybe," Paul agreed. "If that's true, then he would feel much better about letting Christina out. He gets her out, throws you in, then he's basically traded up."

"Or," Rick worried aloud, "he plans to fuck over Tony by getting me on something and then getting me to say everything I know about Tony. Give him all kinds of stuff."

"Maybe he thinks you'll be so grateful to him for giving you a chance to help Christina that you'll give up Tony."

Rick rubbed his eyes. A web of maybes. Most of them too complicated. He'd learned that if a plan had too many twists and turns it usually broke down.

"Or maybe
you
were one of the people that Tony promised to Peck," whispered Paul. "Ever think of that?"

"You're saying that Tony is going to give him old stuff on me? He's trading me
into
prison to get Christina out?"

"I think it's possible."

"Fuck that."

"But if he said that, then he was lying to Peck. He might tell Peck that he could arrest you and everything, but no way Tony is really going to let that happen, not if he's smart. If he's smart, then he gets ahold of Christina before Peck gets ahold of
you
, and then, once he has her helping him, he grabs you and sends you somewhere."

"Somewhere I won't come back from."

"It's just a theory. Maybe Tony has promised Peck other people. But I don't know why else you would have been pulled in."

"How did you get all of this?"

"I talked to some people who had different pieces, little bits of information. I hasten to add that I could be wrong, Rick, in part or in whole."

"No, I think you got it nailed down."

Paul was silent. "I've done all I can do here, I think."

"Yeah. I mean, hey."

Paul wasn't looking at him now. "Rick, I'm trying to say I don't have sufficient influence in this situation."

"I understand that, Paulie, I do. You did a hell of a lot."

Paul pulled an envelope out of his coat.

"No, no, Paulie, I got plenty of money."

"Open it."

Rick took the envelope. Inside was a new passport—his passport, with an old photo, a plane ticket to Vancouver, a reservation at a hotel there, an American Express gold card in Rick's name, and five thousand in blank traveler's checks.

"The card bills to me. Use it for anything you need."

"Oh, Paul, man."

His older brother turned to him. "I did everything I could, Rick. I had to be sure I did everything I could." His voice broke. "I can't go see Dad on Sunday and be thinking I didn't do enough."

Rick opened his door. The ferry would soon leave.

"Take the plane," said Paul. "I'm not just asking you."

"What do you know?"

"I told you everything."

Rick looked at his brother. "You know something that makes you scared."

"Yes! Of course I do, you asshole!" Paul pounded the steering wheel. "You!" he whispered savagely. "I know you, Rick."

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Jim-Jack Bar & Restaurant
Broadway and Bleecker, Manhattan
September 15, 1999

HIRING,
announced a sign on the glass door when Christina stepped out of the hot morning sunlight into the restaurant's smoky coolness to call her mother. She liked the way she could sit up at the end of the curved mahogany bar and lean against the wall while using the pay phone. The clever ease of it comforted her, and she could use a little comfort; that morning she'd woken to the sound of someone moaning down the hall, and not yet opening her eyes, she had despaired at what awaited her—the futile passage of the hours, Mazy talking too much, the unmopped floors of the nursery—a day dead before it was done. Then, rolling in her sweaty sheets, she'd seen the boxes of papers that Melissa Williams had left behind, the clothes hanging sparsely in the closet. Her new broom, a bag of apples. Was this real? The soft roar of the city seeped in through the open window. She rolled over. Below the window a shirtless man pinched up a cigarette from the gutter with the exactitude of a jeweler tweezering a diamond. If a dream, this was so ingenious as to be real, and if reality, it was yet so elusive as to be a dream. She
was
out of prison. She was in a bed in some room, just a crummy room, hers for now, a little creepy with the electric meter hanging from the ceiling, a room where people had probably died, or
worse
, whatever that was, and suddenly she wished to be somewhere that felt familiar, a place where people were around, if only strangers who knew nothing of her, and the Jim-Jack was the only spot she could think of, having stopped in there a few times already, each time having liked the joint for its ordinary coming-and goingness, its big window on Broadway. A rare smoking restaurant, and popular as such, it attracted a mix of locals, NYU students, European tourists, sailors on leave, small-time businessmen, retirees meeting for lunch, and solitary souls who ordered coffee and sat next to the windows dreaming impossible dreams while watching the action outside, which included tasty office girls (who were selling, but not for cheap), slick guys with new haircuts (who greased their eyes over the office girls), shell-game operators and their lookouts (who hoped to scam the slick guys good), and the dollar hot-dog place across the street (which, selling greasy, good-tasting food for cheap, scammed no one), the cabs meanwhile flowing and halting, then going and stopping, darting in front of the heavy trucks, which were themselves often gripped at the rear by a bicycle messenger catching a lift through the banners of sunlight that unfurled down the façades of the buildings along Broadway, turn-of-the-century structures of iron and brick, some ornate, others plain, but each having ingested and housed and expelled all manner of enterprise. She loved the repainted exhaustion of the buildings and wondered how long the Jim-Jack had existed. The long bar fit the room perfectly, which meant it probably had been built there from the first, and its ample depth and ridged lip suggested the time when men sat up on stools with their hats pushed back and ate lunch with a stein of beer, hard-boiled eggs in a dish, dill pickles served with everything you ordered. Cuffed pants, Rita Hayworth making eyes at America, the Germans are going to invade Poland, and FDR already has deep circles under his eyes. Now it was brain implants and Alaska is melting. She noticed the Jim-Jack used Mexican busboys. As for the waitresses, the management apparently hired only white women in their twenties—not men, not blacks, not older women. A further refinement was administered: The waitresses, though somewhat attractive, were never to be confused with the cheekbone girls modeling pumpkin soup and radicchio at other restaurants in the Village, which was to say that the Jim-Jack waitresses were not so attractive that they might soon be on their way elsewhere, so perky and lipsticky hot that the management had problems with the late-night crowd making endless drunken passes. No, she thought, watching from the bar, the owner of the Jim-Jack wanted to get the business in and then briskly out, and the girls slinging food to the tables looked like they'd learned much earlier to work dutifully for whatever money they could. No doubt the manager sometimes broke her own rule and hired a girl who was too pretty, who sooner or later ran into trouble; the businessmen floated cloud upon cloud of witty small talk and did not vacate their tables fast enough, feverish lovers showed up and made a scene, or drunken boys flirted with them—successfully. A smile, a phone number, a good time.