Beyond Blue (2 page)

“Better to keep him working so he can come up with the cash,” Lorenzo said.

“Ahhhh, crap,” the other man said. “We never have no fun.” He slammed the cleaver into the wooden butcher's block where it seemed to shudder for a moment.

Lorenzo shrugged and started back toward the street. He focused on the people around him, going about their daily business, not wanting to think about the man in the little shack who also was just trying to make a living. A bus pulled up at the far corner and he thought about the working stiffs boarding it, wishing briefly that he was one of them, riding up FDR Drive, maybe to a fancy office uptown on Park Avenue.

But that was never going to happen.

There weren't any Park Avenue offices for people like him.

Undercover cops lived in the street and died in the street. And sometimes, he didn't know which possibility he hated more.

In one of those offices uptown on Park Avenue, Irving Jerome turned his chair just a bit so that the first light of day shone on his notes for this morning's court case. He nibbled at his bagel and sipped his designer coffee, supremely confident that by noon, two p.m. at the outside, his client would walk. With his Johnny Depp-ish good looks, Jerome knew he could sweet-talk almost any jury if he had to, but today he knew that charm would not be needed because the prosecution's case was fatally flawed. The arresting officer had done all the right things, but he
had done them all the wrong way and the only thing Jerome had to do was to point out the mistakes.

The officer said he had read Jerome's client his Miranda rights, but neglected to have a witness present. He had turned in all the drugs found on the felon, but had not had his client verify the exact amounts. He had used no excessive force, but had failed to prevent Jerome's client from cutting himself over his eye while thrashing around in the back of the police car.

It was almost a given that the judge would direct an acquittal and the case would be over by noon. And if, by some wild chance, that did not happen, Jerome had another ace in the hole that would guarantee his client's freedom. But he didn't want to use it. He much preferred to tear police apart on the witness stand. For one thing, it was good for business. The other, simpler, more important reason was that he hated the police. He always had, ever since the time years before when his father was arrested on a minor assault charge and then, while awaiting arraignment, was killed in jail by a drug-crazed prisoner.

Jerome sat back, staring out his expansive window, past the small balcony, at his panoramic view of the city. His eyes wandered to the Grand Hyatt hotel down by Grand Central Station. He would meet a certain young lady later that day in one of those rooms to collect one of the perks of working for the men who ran the city from underneath. He would enjoy the woman nearly as much as he would enjoy destroying that cop in court in a couple of hours.

“Francine, I've heard it all before. Just tell me what you want,” Patrolman Alex Brooks said. He finished strapping on his uniform holster. Through the smoked glass panel in the front door, he could see his partner waiting for him on the front porch.

“What I want?” Francine screeched. Her plasticized blond hair flipped around her shoulders as her head
snapped forward and back. “I want something more than this dismal crap.” When she stopped shaking her head, not one single hair had changed its relative position.

“Francine, I already work as much overtime as they let me,” Alex said, his voice the soft mumble of a man who had heard it all before, said it all before, and knew it would not be listened to this time either. “You're the one who wanted this house.”

“I wanted to get out of Bensonhurst. That didn't mean we had to move to this dump. And you're not the only one who works. I have to work too, you know. And meanwhile, poor Amy is always here all alone.” She waggled an index finger at him. The long and obviously artificial nail sported a tiny decal of Justin Timberlake.

“Francine, it's a part time job, for God's sakes. And Amy's fourteen. She's fine alone for an hour or two. If you worry so much, maybe you should try coming right home from work.”

“Oh, it's my fault now that you're on your way to becoming the oldest non-promoted patrolman in New York City and our poor little girl has to grow up like a goddamn latchkey kid? In this freaking world of pervs and losers?” Frustrated, Alex held his hands forward momentarily, as if he were considering strangulation, then let them drop, his left hand landing on the butt of the nightstick hanging at his side.

“Oh, you threatening me now? Gonna club me? Why don't you call in that useless partner of yours? Then you'll have a witness. You can both say it was all my fault. You lie, he swears to it.”

Before Alex could answer, his partner pounded on the door and yelled, “Come on, man, let's get out of here, or we'll be late.”

Alex followed his partner, Vinnie Giles, out to the curb where Vinnie's aging Ford Fairlane sat, coughing and shuddering. He whipped the car onto 19
^th
, the Prospect Expressway toward the Battery Tunnel and lower
Manhattan.

“Hey, no coffee today?” Alex asked. Their usual routine was to stop at one of the many little diners on 18
^th
for morning coffee before facing the job.

“What, so you can Irish up your first cup of the day before we even start our shift?”

“A little pop of sauce in the morning takes the edge off, man,” Alex Brooks said. “And you need to lay off the intervention crap. It's bad enough I got to listen to Francine without having to listen to you, too. She's thinking divorce. I know it.”

Vinnie did not answer. He chewed on his lower lip and decided that whether Alex liked it or not, Vinnie was going to help him. Alex could no longer think straight.
He's just figured out that Francine is thinking divorce?
he thought, convinced that Francine Brooks had been thinking about divorce from the first day she married Alex. The woman was taking him for a ride and if Alex wasn't careful.. well, Vinnie didn't like to think about what might happen, especially with Alex drinking more and more.

Suddenly, Vinnie's head snapped around. “Hey, man, did you see that?”

On the other side of the Expressway, a new, silver 350Z shot past them in the other direction, seeming as blurred as a bullet in flight.

“He's doing a hundred for sure,” Vinnie said.

They were in uniform and could have turned around to stop him, but Vinnie had something else he had to deal with this morning. Besides, his ratty old Fairlane wouldn't have a prayer of catching that sports car.

“Screw him,” Alex said. “With any luck, he'll be dead in five minutes. One less asshole in New York City.”

Rafael Sandoval, piloting his brand new silver Nissan roadster expertly through the growing morning traffic, had no plans of dying anytime soon. He just loved the speed
and the handling of the car and kept trying to push it to the limit. The thought of dying would never occur to him. In his world, handsome gentlemen in thousand dollar suits didn't die in highway crashes.

Sandoval was short, barely five feet six, but that had never bothered him.
Anyone can be tall. But it takes brains to be rich.

He had a face like polished teakwood, his teeth even and very white, and his long-lashed eyes were the kind that men found a little disquieting and women loved to talk about getting lost in.

Rafe pulled his Adidas sport glasses down over his face, against the sun which now burned into his eyes as he cut left onto Linden Boulevard toward JFK International Airport. He checked the lowest of the three small dials set into the blue face of his Breitling Chrono Avenger. When you pay more than three grand for a watch, you use its features. That morning, it was tracking his elapsed time. Time was money and money had always been the driving force in his life, especially since he had come from his native Colombia to the United States.

He had come with only two hundred dollars and the clothes on his back, but with an ability to speak perfect English, courtesy of the nuns at his childhood parochial school. He quickly realized that his ability to speak English, along with his charm and native intelligence, made him the perfect choice to help other new immigrants navigate their way through the maze of bureaucracy and government that was the United States. At first, he charged small fees, then bigger as he moved from unknown to well known. His business cards now referred to him as an “expeditor,” and he had no shortage of Central American clients who needed help to relocate, to set up businesses, or just to deal with American bankers. He knew that most people with just a nodding acquaintance of him thought he was probably a drug dealer. But why bother with crime? This was the United States, and anyone could get rich if he was
smart and willing to work.

If only he could convince his dumb kid brother, Hector, of that. He had promised their mama that he would take care of Hector, but the young brother was a little bit of a hothead, a sucker for get-rich-quick schemes. Still so far, not so bad. He had kept Hector out of trouble and the boy was young and could still learn.

Rafe had gotten him a job at JFK Airport, working in baggage security. Then, to everyone's surprise, some stupid retired cop had gotten himself suspended when drugs were found in his locker and Hector got a surprise promotion. Now he was a security shift boss at one of the airport's terminals. Mama was proud; Hector even had people working under him.

That thought made Rafe smile. One of those people working for Hector was a beautiful Afro-Latina and this evening, for dinner, Rafe planned to show her the most romantic time. He looked at his watch again.

It was 6:45 a.m.

At that moment, on the Upper West Side, Patsy Gorman was making her regular breakfast specialty, French toast that somehow burned at the edges while remaining sullenly liquid in the center. Paul Gorman ate it without complaint every morning, but that did not mean he had surrendered and fled the scene of battle.

“Hey, Patsy,” Gorman called from the bathroom where he was dragging a brush through his vibrant crop of thick, dark hair. “I've been thinking.”

“Should I alert the media?” she called back.

“Very funny,” he said as he walked through the kitchen doorway. “No, here's what I was thinking. Instead of the cleaning lady coming in twice a week to help straighten the apartment, why don't you have her come in every morning just to cook breakfast, seven days a week? And you do your own cleaning?”

Gorman wandered to his chair at the head of the table in floppy slippers and the silk bathrobe Patsy gave him for Christmas their first year together. Patsy, at the electric range, was wearing light blue silk pajamas that were loose fitting but that, somehow, she still made seem incredibly erotic.

She turned to him and smiled. “Do my own cleaning? And perhaps break a fingernail?”

“Some have survived it,” Gorman said.

“There's more to life than survival.” She walked behind his chair and draped her arms over his hulking shoulders, gently rubbed his chest, then rested her head on his. Nearing forty, Patsy Gorman was twenty years younger than her husband but she still had the face and figure of a teenager. A teenager who has become the kind of beautiful a woman becomes when she has known love all her life, does not need to watch her diet, and has retained her natural auburn hair color without resorting to dyes. Her voice in his ear was breathy and warm.

“Suppose one evening I am giving you your usual full body massage. And suppose further that I have roused you to a code orange state of maximum readiness and I am now ready to lower my pulpy, whorish carmine lips to your body and awwwwk! What ho! Smelling strangeness! You see a broken fingernail and the magic vanishes in an instant flare of revulsion. And suppose in that instant you realize I am not this wonderfully desirable love bunny you thought I was but a tired old house frau, with nails broken from scrubbing the baseboards. Varicose veins ready to bulge through my skin at a moment's notice. Saggy ugly orangutan arms. Anna Magnani without hormones. Oh, what a sight.”

“I'd be willing to chance it,” he said.

She darted her tongue into his right ear. “Really?” she whispered. He covered her hands on his chest with his own hands.

“God, you are a savage,” he said.

“Yes.” She tongued his ear again. “Yes, yes, yes. Molly Bloom without morals. Yes I said, yes I will, yes, yes, yes.”

“Screw the cleaning lady. Bring on the French toast. I'll eat it off your belly.”

“Syrup?”

“Whipped cream, elderberry jam and oyster-essence ice cream.”

“Now you're catching on.” She slipped her hands out from under his and padded back toward the electric range.

“Ooops, I wouldn't want to burn it.”

“How would anyone know?”

“I would know. Great chefs always know when they have missed the mark, no matter by how little.”

She used a Teflon-coated pancake turner to flip the French toast, put her hands on her hips and stared down into the griddle. “How can you eat this shit? You must really love me.”

It was his turn. He stood behind her, pressed his body against hers and cupped her breasts from behind. “Yes, yes, yes, Molly Bloom.”

“Then screw breakfast. How about a blow job?”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

And the telephone rang. Gorman looked at the cell phone on the kitchen counter.

“Big decision,” Patsy said.

“No decision at all,” he answered. “Fie on telephones. Fie, I say.”

“
Tres gallant
,” she said. “Liar.” She handed him the telephone, pushed the skillet back off the heated burner and slipped away to give him a little space while he was on the phone.

“Hello, Gorman?”

His brows pressed tighter together above his deep-set, brooding eyes. He immediately recognized the high scratchy voice that sounded like a school blackboard that had learned to communicate pain, and said, “Yes, Miss Sanchez,” with precise articulation.