CONCOURSE (Bill Smith/Lydia Chin) (27 page)

Skeletor was right. I was lying, and I lied again. “I saw you.”

“Yo! Yo, bitch! You seen me, why you ain’t told faggot-ass Lindfors it was me? Why not, bitch?”

“All your homies would’ve alibied you,” I said. “That’s what Cobras do, isn’t it? Stick together? Besides,” I added, “I was working for Snake. I thought he ought to know.”

Snake’s eyes were slits as he stared at Skeletor. “What up with this shit, my man?”

“Oh, man!” Skeletor exploded. “Oh, man, what difference do it make?”

“Oh, it make a difference,” Snake said, soft. “You stealing from me, nigger? You stealing from the Cobras?”

Snake and Skeletor faced each other. The wind tossed shadows of tree branches over them like a net.

“The Cobras.” Skeletor’s voice was soft as Snake’s had been. “That all you ever be thinking about, Snake. The fucking Cobras. New stereo for the crib. Little bike for Speedo’s sister. Man, we could’a had it
all
, but you wasn’t interested. You happy just sitting on your skinny ass looking at the Cobras. You sorry-ass nigger. Well, Skeletor ain’t living like that.”

He jabbed himself in the chest with his thumb. “I been studying that fat white bastard. Your li-ai-son.” Skeletor’s face twisted with contempt. “Only way that fucker could’a made more money be if he have three hands to take it with. Everybody give him something, like it Christmas and he their favorite charity. So I be thinking, why not me too?”

Snake was taut as a piano string. He didn’t move. Wind yanked a sheet of newspaper around the playground as though it were on a chain. I was cold, and weak; I knew I couldn’t last much longer.

In a deep, quiet voice, Snake said to Skeletor, “You do me like that?” I thought Skeletor flinched, looking into Snake’s eyes, but I wasn’t sure.

Then Snake’s leg snapped out, slammed into Skeletor’s soft stomach. A beautiful roundhouse, a karate move. Skeletor, surprise bulging his eyes, doubled over, heaving. Snake threw another kick, to his jaw. Skeletor staggered, then lunged wildly forward.

Snake kicked again, but Skeletor shoved him off balance. They grappled. Snake, ignoring Skeletor’s punches, pushed his shoulder into Skeletor’s, twisted his hip, flipped the fat kid over. Skeletor went down hard and Snake followed, raining fast snapping blows on Skeletor’s face.

Behind us, doors slammed. Running feet pounded pavement. Then a silver flash, something pulled from Skeletor’s shirt. A voice, Speedo’s, hissing, “Shit! Oh, shit!” Then an explosion. Snake lifted
half into the air, staggering backwards, falling. Something warm and wet splashing my cheek.

And Lindfors, at the playground gate, roaring, “No!” into the night.

F
ORTY
-S
EVEN

S
keletor rolled to his feet as voices yelled and shots rang out. Carter shoved me; I went down, ribs screaming as I skidded onto the asphalt. Carter was on the ground too, half on top of me.

“Thanks,” I choked.

More shots, more bullets filled the air. Suddenly, on a shout, they stopped. I twisted around, looked up in the silence.

Skeletor, clutching Speedo in front of him, was easing his way to the playground gate.

“Yo.” Speedo writhed in Skeletor’s grip. “Yo, man, it’s me! Yo, lemme go, brother!”

“Shut up!” Skeletor held the gun against Speedo’s head, held Speedo between himself and the cops who stood, motionless and futile, where they’d stopped. Robinson, Lindfors, Carter, three uniforms and I all watched helplessly as Skeletor, dragging Speedo with him, inched out the gate, started backing down the hill.

Snake, bleeding on the pavement, groaned.

Then, right behind Skeletor, a car door flew open. A small dark figure leaped onto the sidewalk, legs planted wide, gun held two-handed. “Drop your gun and don’t turn around!” Lydia’s shout carried across the asphalt, cut into my heart.

Skeletor whipped around, yanking Speedo with him. He fired, but Lydia was already on the ground, knocked there by a larger, clumsier figure who staggered back when Skeletor’s shot rang out. Skeletor started to run, but he tripped, pitched forward, his feet tangled with Speedo’s and with something else, something long and thin.

Lydia rolled over, smashed the butt of her gun onto Skeletor’s hand. She pulled his automatic out of his loosened grip, slammed her elbow into his face so he’d know she’d been there. Then she held her own gun two inches from his nose, kept it there while she climbed to her feet and the uniforms and Robinson charged over.

Bobby stood also, shouldering the car he’d fallen against, leaning on it as his right hand gripped his left arm above the elbow.

I pulled myself up, to go to Bobby and Lydia. The other Cobras were long gone, scattering when they had the chance. The cops were all over by the car, cuffing Skeletor, trying to hold Speedo, who cursed and fought until they finally cuffed him, too.

All except one.

Lindfors stood near me, motionless. His eyes were on Snake, but his face was dark and distant and I wasn’t sure he saw.

Then Snake groaned. Slowly, Lindfors knelt, peeled off his jacket as if in a trance. He balled it up, pressed it against Snake’s chest, against the endless flow.

Snake’s eyes opened, moved wildly. They found Lindfors. “Shit,” he murmured, but he smiled. “You seen that? Cocksucker.”

“Shut up,” Lindfors said. Something was wrong with his voice.

“No, really, man. You seen it?” Snake’s words were a whisper torn away by the wind. “I have him down. I have the cocksucker, if he ain’t shot me. One, two, he be going. Just like you show me, Hank. Just like you show me.”

“Yeah.” Lindfors’s voice was worse now, ragged and torn. “Just like I showed you.”

“Hank?” Snake’s eyes closed. “I’m cold, man. Fucking cold.”

“All right,” Lindfors said. “All right, Anthony. It’ll be all right now.”

“He ain’t shot me, I have him,” Snake muttered. “I was winning, Hank. I learned it good, what you showed me. I’d’ve won.”

“Yeah,” said Lindfors. “Yeah. You’d’ve won.”

Sirens cut the night. Lindfors stayed kneeling beside Snake while the ambulance howled into the schoolyard. The attendants spread a sheet over Snake, and then the Crime Scene wagon was there.

Lindfors stood stiffly, looked around like a man unsure of where he was. His eyes met mine, but I didn’t think he saw me.

Then, slowly, he crossed the asphalt, headed down the hill. In the blowing darkness, I lost him very soon.

F
ORTY
-E
IGHT

I
slept for the next two days.

After Lindfors was gone I’d turned away from Snake’s body. Lydia was by my side by then, and I leaned on both her and Carter as we left the schoolyard.

“Bobby?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” Lydia said. “He even laughed. He said he never uses that arm anyway.”

I talked to Bobby as he lay on a stretcher in the ambulance waiting to be hauled off to Samaritan.

“Tell them you’re a friend of Margaret O’Connor’s,” I said. “You’ll get a better table.”

“I did okay for an old cripple, huh?” Bobby’s face was white with pain, but he was grinning. Across his lap he held the cane he’d shoved through Skeletor’s legs.

“Twenty-five years,” I said. “You haven’t changed. What the hell were you two guys doing here?”

“We didn’t think you could do it without us. Your girlfriend’s a little crazy,” he added.

“No kidding.” I glanced at Lydia, on the sidewalk talking to Robinson. I looked back to Bobby. “Thanks.”

He grinned at me again, and I thought I saw, in his eyes, what I used to see.

I sat in a cop car until the cops didn’t want me anymore. I answered their questions and gave them back their microphone and somebody brought me a cup of coffee. After a while Lydia drove me home.

She helped me upstairs and I told her I’d be all right. When she left I took my shoes off, lay down on the still-made bed, pulled the quilt over me as though you could get warmth from a blanket. I called Samaritan, to ask about Bobby. Good condition, they said. Just a flesh wound. I don’t remember hanging up the phone.

Toward morning I woke, washed, had a drink, and went back to bed.

Much, much later I woke again and had coffee. I lit a cigarette and called Robinson at the precinct.

“How’s Lindfors?”

“When he turns up I’ll know,” Robinson said.

“You’re a sentimental bastard.”

“You want me to break my heart over every cop who couldn’t draw the line? Someone has to stay behind and do the job.”

I pulled on the cigarette. “We still have a deal.”

“I remember.”

“I mean it. I don’t want Bobby to know about Howe and Mike.”

Robinson paused, a long pause. “Portelli’s looking at some hard time. Receiving. Accessory before and after, for Vega. Maybe racketeering. Guys in his position say just about anything. Most of it we don’t even write down.”

“Thanks, Robinson. I owe you.”

“I don’t want you to owe me. I want to never see you again, except in court when Skeletor’s trial comes up.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”

I called Shorty downstairs and asked him to send me up some chili. He sent a lot and I ate it all. I had some bourbon and went back to bed. Before I fell asleep Bobby called.

“How’re you doing?”

“Fine,” I said. “Just tired. You?”

“Fine,” he echoed. “Just shot in the goddamn arm. Had a hell of a time getting out of the hospital. I think they were waiting for me to have another stroke.”

“You planning on it?”

“I didn’t like the first one. Listen, kid. I just talked to Robinson. I wanted you to know.”

“Know what?”

“The bullet in Howe’s foot came from the gun Skeletor shot Snake with.”

“Good. They going to charge him?”

“I think so. The bullet in Mike …” Bobby stopped, went on, “… it came from some other gun. They don’t have it. But it’s a good bet Skeletor did Mike, too.”

“How do they figure?”

“He was meeting Howe in the garden. S.O.P. with them, Robinson says, to pass the cash. Mike must have found him before Howe got there.” Bobby’s voice grew rough. “That bastard Howe must have known, when he found Mike. Son of a bitch, working for me—” Bobby stopped again. I said nothing; when he could, he went on. “Only good thing about that bastard is that Skeletor did him the same way.”

Thanks, I said again to Robinson, in my head. For not testing Howe’s gun. Whatever you say, I owe you.

Bobby and I talked a while longer. Bobby said he’d go see Sheila, tell her about Skeletor.

“Good,” I said. “Get her to make you a cup of tea. She’s got some great thick Irish tea.”

I thought of Bobby at Sheila’s kitchen table, maybe holding Peg on his lap. The trees would be bare by now, the wind chilly on the porch; but the kitchen was warm, and maybe, as long as Bobby was there, the rooms wouldn’t seem so empty.

Later that evening I woke again, and called Lydia.

“Are you all right?” Her voice was gentle. “I would have called but I was afraid you’d be sleeping.”

“I was,” I said. “And will be soon again. I’m okay.”

“Did you talk to Lieutenant Robinson?”

“Yes. And to Bobby. They have Skeletor for Howe. They’ll never charge him with killing Mike, but it’ll be understood.” I rubbed my eyes. Since morning there had been stretches when my vision was clear.

“Bill?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m here.”

“It was right, what you did.”

I didn’t know if that was true, but for the first time in two days, I felt warm, hearing her say it.

“You want to sleep,” she said. “Will you call me when you’re better?”

“Yes,” I said. “Lydia? Thanks.”

The next day nobody called and I talked to no one. The day after that, I was ready to go out.

My eyes were clear and my legs were steady; that meant I could drive. I did, though slowly, both because I didn’t quite trust myself and because I didn’t really want to go back to the Bronx.

I had to, though. And the first place I had to go was to see Andy Hill.

I parked in Lou Gehrig Plaza, climbed the long granite Courthouse steps, stopping halfway up to catch my breath. I hadn’t called, so I was prepared to wait, but Andy Hill didn’t make me wait.

“Smith!” Hill trotted out as soon as the secretary announced me. He ushered me into his office, shut the door behind us. “God, you look like hell,” he said cheerfully.

My eyes moved past him, past the plaques and photographs, to the window. It wasn’t two weeks since I’d first come here, but now the day was gray, the tree branches bare and damp-looking, as though we’d entered a whole new season.

“Are you all right?” Hill asked, into my silence. “I mean, do you need anything? I heard about what happened. Anything I can do?”

“One thing,” I said. “I have a friend who needs a patron. A godfather. What cops call a rabbi. That’s you.”

His look was quizzical, but open, interested. I wanted to punch him.

“If I can help I’d be glad to,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“No, that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to make money.”

Hill cocked his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“And I’ve been beat to shit and I don’t have the energy for games. I’m talking about your little real estate gold mine.”

“I told you about that. I make a few dollars, Arthur gets what he wants—”

“Oh, sure, you told me about the few bucks you make every time you sell to Helping Hands. And Arthur told me—” His eyes seemed to narrow slightly, so I said it again: “Arthur told me about your private arrangement, how much you’ll make over the next decade as his buildings hit the ends of their cycles. Poor Arthur, he feels pretty guilty about that. But it’s worth it to him, doing business with slime like you, if it’s good for his clients. Only he doesn’t know the half of it, does he?”

“I’m afraid you’ve lost me, Smith. I’ve got—”

“At the time I thought that’s what you’d been hiding. You were
so quick to tell me about the meaning of what I’d found that I knew there was something else you didn’t want me looking for. I thought your private arrangement with Arthur was it. But it wasn’t.”

“No?” Hill’s tone of voice was carefully controlled to sound casual. “Then what was?”

“The Bronx Renaissance.”

“The Bronx Renaissance is a political program—” he began automatically.

“In which the city and the state direct money into development projects in particular places. How do they decide where?”

“How? There are studies. A lot of people get involved—”

“Including the Borough President’s Community Liaison. The man who knows the neighborhoods, has his finger on the pulse. A new police station? Put it here. An open-air market? Over there. Look, this neighborhood already has an anchor—one of those Helping Hands places. We love those. Employers, good neighbors, stable. All this area needs is just one more little boost. How about right here? Right near the Helping Hands place? We can put a land deal together fast. I’ll talk to the property owners. R & G, a couple of other holding companies. No problem. All this land, for sale to the city or the state. Or to some other sucker who believes in the Bronx Renaissance enough to invest in it!”

Hill had stopped smiling, but he hadn’t moved.

“And?” he said.

“And suddenly properties you bought for next to nothing are hot. You make a little on the ones you sell to Helping Hands, but you make a mint on the ones the City buys for the Bronx Renaissance. We checked on this, Hill.”

His mouth opened automatically; he shut it before any sound came out. I wondered if he’d been about to tell me to call him Andy.

“You’ve made a quarter-million profit already, and you have two more sales pending in the Bronx Renaissance program. You stand to pick up another hundred thousand if they go through. There’s probably more. If we look, we’ll find it.”

Slowly, coldly, Hill said again, “And?”

“I know. It’s real estate. It’s legal. You told me that before.”

“It is.”

“Uh-huh. It’s legal, but it’s lousy. The B.P. wouldn’t like it.
Arthur Chaiken wouldn’t like it. Your career wouldn’t be worth a pitcher of piss if it came out.”

He gave me a level look. “I could resign. Start over somewhere else. There are a lot of places.”

“Would you like that?”

Behind him, out the window, iron-gray clouds moved dispiritedly above the asphalt roofs. “No,” he finally said. “I wouldn’t like that. What’s your offer?”

“A job for my friend. Union. Security, training program, benefits.”

“A no-show.” Hill nodded.

“Bullshit. I mean real work. Something worth doing. Something with a future. Construction, maybe. He’s young and strong and smart, my friend.”

“So why does he need someone to run interference?”

I took out my Kents. “He’s from the neighborhood. He’s an ex-Cobra.” I struck the match, reached for the ashtray. “And an ex-con.”

“Oh,” he said. “Martin Carter.”

“You’re damn right.”

“He’s working now.”

“That’s a crappy job. Dead-end. And they may not want him back now that he’s just out of jail.”

Hill tried a sincere smile. “I’m sorry about that. Francine Wyckoff was very convincing. She thought he—”

“No, she didn’t, and you didn’t either. You both just wanted the spotlight off Helping Hands and Carter was convenient. He has two little kids at home. That didn’t bother you at all, did it?”

“If he was guilty—”

“You never believed he was. Hill, you’ve been coasting and you’ve been lucky. Now it’s payback time.”

Hill picked up a pencil, tapped it on the desk. He frowned in thought. “That’s the offer? A job for Carter, and you keep your mouth shut?”

“And the rest of the deal is, he doesn’t know about it.”

“How the hell am I supposed to arrange that?”

“You get it set up. I’ll tell him I did it. He’ll be pissed at me, but he’ll take it. He won’t take it from you.”

“That’s it?”

“As long as Carter’s working I won’t go to anybody with what I know. If you’re really smart that’ll give you time to cut yourself loose from anything that might get caught up in the Helping Hands investigation. Are you that smart?”

Like the sun breaking through clouds, Hill grinned. “Yes. Yes, I think so.”

Outside, the day stayed gray.

I smashed out my cigarette, got up to go. “Just one more thing.”

Hill was still smiling. “What’s that?”

“Seven or eight years ago, the City closed a community center with a PAL program in it, near the Bronx Home. It was reopened about six blocks away, across the Concourse. Did you do that?”

“I think so. I think that was one of my first … projects. Why?”

“How much did you make?”

He shrugged. “Not much, I don’t think. Maybe ten thousand.”

I looked at him, his frank smile, his well-kept body, his expensive suit. “I wish I believed in an afterlife,” I told him. “I wish I believed in Hell.” I left his door open, left him staring after me as I stalked down a corridor that had once been marble.