Old Flame (20 page)

CHAPTER

55

I
woke up on a gurney in Bellevue’s emergency room. Turns out, I was far enough from the blast to avoid serious injury but close enough to screw up my lung even more. There was nothing the docs could do, but they kept me overnight for observation. I was one of the lucky ones. Two of Dave’s men wound up in the morgue. Nick was OK — he’d been in the storeroom, out of harm’s way. Dave was in intensive care.

The next morning, the docs discharged me. I went to see Dave. Franny and Anthony were at his bedside. Nick stood at the doorway.

“How is he?”

“You don’t know?” Nick said.

“Only what the nurse said. His condition is critical.”

“He lost his left hand. Blew it clean off.”

“Sweet Jesus!”

“He nearly lost an eye, but they were able to save it. The way I heard it, Dave was bragging about Barak blinking first. Y’know, he figured he beat the bastard. Then he tried to open the box but there was so much duct tape, Dave went looking for a knife.”

“Then he opens the lid,” I muttered.

“Yeah. And the first thing he sees is—”

“Reno’s head.”

“Right. Dave slams the lid down and the bomb goes off. Must have used a time-delay fuse. And that’s all she wrote. You OK?”

“In the pink. How badly was Feeney’s damaged?”

“Pretty bad. But we’re like Timex. Take a licking, but we keep on ticking. We’ll be back.”

“I’ve got to see my brother.”

Franny and Anthony were at his bedside. Franny’s eyes were swollen. Anthony, gritting his teeth, never took his eyes off his father. The stump where Dave’s hand used to be was swathed in bandages.

“How is he?” I said.

“Not so good. He’s all doped up. Sometimes he’s awake, most often he’s not. How are you?”

“I’m fine. What did the doc say?”

“He’ll make it, but it’s going to take time.”

“I’m so sorry, Franny.”

“I’m not surprised. His whole life was leading to this. You don’t know how many times I begged him to quit. In a way, he’s lucky it’s just his hand.”

“That fucking heeb is going to pay for this,” Anthony muttered.

Suddenly, Franny wheeled and smacked him in the face. It was the first time I had ever seen her hit any of her children.

The skin around her eyes tightened. Her voice was cold and flat. “It ends here,” she said.

For an instant, Anthony glared at her, then lowered his eyes. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw the hint of a smile.

“Jake!”

Dave’s voice was hoarse, and barely above a whisper. He motioned me over.

I put my hand on his forehead. It was clammy. His breathing was rapid.

“How’re you doing, Dave?”

“Something to . . . tell . . . you.”

I brought my ear to his mouth.

“Sins of . . . the . . . fathers . . .”

And then his eyes closed. He was breathing easier now that he had handed down his myth to his son.

“What did he say?” Franny asked.

“That he’s sorry . . . sorry for everything.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Stories may spring from a writer’s head, but books are always the result of a collaboration.
Old Flame
is no exception. I would like to thank my agent, David Larabell of the David Black Agency, for never allowing me to veer off track when
off track
is exactly where I wanted to go; Julian Pavia, my editor at Crown/Random House, for making this book better than the manuscript he saw originally; Roberta Silman for her valuable insights and support. Lastly, and with great gratitude, my wife, Phyllis, my first and last reader and the reason I’m a writer.

Turn the page for a preview of
Sinner’s Ball,
Ira Berkowitz’s next novel featuring Jackson Steeg.

PROLOGUE

H
er name was Angela. She was a tiny fifteen-year-old runaway with flyaway hair, a face that was all hollows dense with shadows, and minutes left to live.

She had been in the city just shy of two months. Her older sister Wanda had run a year earlier, leaving Angela alone in their father’s house.

You’ve got to get out, Wanda had said. I know what it’s like. Know what he’s like. Ma won’t admit it. Probably glad he don’t mess with her. It ain’t gonna stop, Angie. Quit being a fraidy cat. Come to New York and live with me. It’s cool. The people. The scene. All cool. There’s work. I’ll hook you up. Pays more money than you ever seen.

But Angela was a fraidy cat and stayed, kidding herself into believing it would stop.

Until the last time. He’d made her do things. Hurt her.

While he slept, Angela had crept into the garage, lifted all the cash from his secret hiding place, and headed for the Greyhound bus station in Davenport. Twenty-two stops and a little more than a day later she pulled into the Port Authority bus depot. Wanda met her and took her back to an apartment she shared with three other girls and a man they called Daddy. He told Angela she was part of the family now, and in his family everyone worked. Then he told her what work meant.

Angela ran. Again.

Until the streets caught her.

Now it was Christmas Eve. The temperature had dipped into the low teens and the wind blew the snow sideways. The sidewalk Santas were long gone, the carolers had packed it in, and all across the city, families, all warm and cozy, tossed the last piece of tinsel on the tree and settled in for the night.

In Hell’s Kitchen, Angela and two brain-fried junkies she had met outside a warehouse hatched their own plan to celebrate the Savior’s birth.

The guys—one with rat eyes and the other with sores on his face—had dug deep into their pockets and come up with enough for a dime bag of rock and the best bottle of wine three dollars could buy. Even though the thought of it made her feel as if spiders were crawling all over her skin, Angela chipped in her body for a couple of hits and a few hours of warmth. Then they jimmied a window and climbed into the warehouse.

Christmas Eve was for families, and it had been a long time since Angela had seen her sister. The zombies were all for it. Rat Eyes handed her a cell phone he had boosted a few days earlier. Wanda didn’t answer, but Angela left the address.

And then it was party time.

Surrounded by stacks of cartons stuffed with counterfeit designer goods, they made short work of the rock and polished off the bottle with lying stories of Christmas Eves past. Now with eyes closed and heads propped against the cartons, they slept and dreamed Thunderbird dreams.

They never heard the whisper of flame smoldering deep within the walls or the frantic rustling of rats scurrying to the safety of the river. Never smelled the acrid odor of smoke as the flames crept up toward the dead space right under the roof.

And even if they had, it would have been too late.

Wanda sat in a musty bar thick with smoke, nursing a two-buck draft in a dirty pint glass, listening to Angela’s message and weighing her options. Outside the streets were empty, shrouded in the muted glow of light filtered through giant flakes of whipping snow. She wasn’t even close to making her three-hundred-dollar nut, and didn’t have a prayer. But there was one thing she knew for a certainty, Daddy had to get paid. Didn’t want to hear shit about blizzards or Christmas or any other stuff. You live in Daddy’s house, you pay the rent. Every day. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Wanda reached into her bra and pulled out a thin wad of bills, adding them up one more time, thinking maybe she had made a mistake. Nope. Three twenties and a ten.

Fuck it!
she thought, downing the beer and dropping her cigarette into the thin soup at the bottom of the glass.
If I’m gonna get a beating, it’s gonna be for a good reason.
Besides, the warehouse wasn’t too far away.

The flames were streaming through the windows on the lower floors when Wanda came up the street. Splashes of glass glittered like diamonds in the snow. She stood stock-still, her body unwilling to move. A man, standing across the street with his face framed in firelight, turned to look at her. The expression on his face made her guts shrivel, and she looked away. When she looked back, he was gone.

At the distant whine of sirens Wanda glanced back at the building and swiped a sleeve across her eyes.

There was nothing to be done.

The Red Devil had begun to feed.

CHAPTER

1

I
need you to meet me at Feeney’s. Noon tomorrow. It’s important.

My brother, Dave, had finally made an appearance.

It had been a Job-like year for my brother. He had always been pretty good at dodging whatever it was that outrageous fortune threw at him. But in a short few months he had hit the cosmic trifecta. A rival mobster’s bomb blew off his left hand. His son, Anthony, blew off Dartmouth for a spot in the family business. Soon after, his wife, Franny, blew up their marriage. Three stunning body blows he never saw coming, and that discomfiting knowledge had turned him into a recluse.

It had been a long time since I’d heard from him. Then his message showed up on my answering machine.

It got my attention. Words like “need” had never been part of Dave’s vocabulary.

A couple of hours before my meeting with Dave I awoke to a day that brought new meaning to the word “bleak.” Sometime during the night, the boiler in my apartment house had finally gone belly-up, and my three rooms were as comfy as a meat locker. Outside, the banked mounds of the most recent snowstorm were stained black with soot. A stiff west wind drove a blanket of clouds the color of sewage over the city, promising more of the same.

When I arrived at Feeney’s, a young, wiry-looking guy with shoulder-length blond hair stood out front smoking a cigarette and eyeing me with a psycho piranha grin. A Closed sign hung on the front door. The usual deal when my brother wanted complete privacy.

I reached for the doorknob and Ponytail sidled up real close.

“Can’t you read, rummy?” he said. “The sign says you’re gonna have to find another slop chute to drink your breakfast in.”

This had all the makings of an adventure.

The snakes in my head awakened from their slumber and began to uncoil. It had been a while since they had graced me with their presence. Truth be told, I’d missed them, especially at times like this.

“And you are?” I said.

He placed the flat of his hand on my chest, his grin toying and eyes glistening with razor wire.

“Me? I’m the guy who tells you where you can or can’t go.”

Maybe it was the stupid grin, or the hand on my chest, or that the boiler in my apartment building had committed suicide. Nah, it was the “rummy” crack.

My left hand shot out and grabbed his hair, tugging his head toward me. The move kind of shortened the distance between my right hand and a spot just above the bridge of his nose. He went down as if he had been hit with a cattle prod.

I reached down and dragged him into Feeney’s, leaving his body just inside the door.

Nick D’Amico, the proprietor, and one of Dave’s deceptively jolly killers, was deep in conversation at the bar with Kenny Apple, another of Dave’s gunmen. They both stared at me.

“Who’s the new guy?” I said.

Nick looked over at Ponytail. “What the hell happened?”

“Your new doorman has an attitude problem.”

“
Fuck!”
Nick said. “He ain’t one of mine. Name’s Tommy Cisco. He’s with Anthony’s crew.”

“Anthony has a crew? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“He thinks he does. What can I tell you?” He reached down, grabbed a handful of Cisco’s hair and dragged him back outside. “Be right back, I gotta take the garbage out.”

“Nice work,” Kenny said.

“He pissed me off. So what’s so important that I had to come out on a day like this?”

“You got anything better to do?”

“Actually, no.”

Ever since the NYPD and I parted company, my plate has been pretty much half empty. Sometimes more. There’s not much call for an ex–Homicide detective with one lung and a disability pension. Every now and then something comes along and, if it interests me, I handle it. The pay is usually crap, but I don’t need much. The rest of the time I spend trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. At least, that’s what I tell people. The truth is, I did figure it out, and I just didn’t like the answer.

“How about a heads-up about what I’m walking into here?” I said.

Nick jerked his thumb toward the back of the room. “Dave’ll tell you.”

“He has
another
problem?”

“You might say. You better get over there, his blood’s really up.”

Nick had done a nice job putting Feeney’s back together after the bomb that took Dave’s hand had gutted the joint. The mahogany bar, the Wurlitzer, the tin ceiling with a fleur-de-lis hammered into every panel, everything looked as good as new. The same couldn’t be said for my brother.

Feeney’s was where Dave did business, and as usual, he was dressed for it. Navy blue pinstriped suit. Crisp white shirt. Soft gray tie. But that’s where the resemblance to the
old
Dave ended. His eyes were listless recesses set in a face that had lost its certainty. The stump of his left hand was encased in a sheath of black leather, which he rubbed furiously against the pebbled remainder of a port wine stain on his cheek, an endlessly humiliating blotch of congenital graffiti that even laser surgery couldn’t completely erase.

When Dave rubbed his cheek, bad things were in the offing.

He and his son, Anthony, sat in a back booth across from a heavyset, cherubic-looking guy who appeared to be doing all the talking, punctuating each sentence with a twitch of his brush mustache.

After the bombing, in some truly convoluted act of loyalty, Anthony decided he wanted in. And in some truly screwed-up act of parenting, Dave agreed. It won’t last, he had said. The kid’s too soft for the life. Doesn’t have the stomach for it. He’ll be back in Hanover carving ice sculptures at the Winter Festival in under a month.

That made my brother oh-for-four in the prediction department.

Now Anthony, the avid apprentice, sat by the master’s side, soaking in the ins and outs of organized crime. He flashed me a cold smile he had probably spent weeks rehearsing in front of a mirror.

I ignored him.

“You really tuned that guy up,” Dave said. “What happened?”

“I guess you forgot to leave my name on the guest list,” I said. “So, how’re you doing?”

His lips twisted into a bitter smile. “Living the dream.” His voice was a scrape of sandpaper, and so low I had to lean in to hear it.

Anthony giggled as if it were the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

The sight of Anthony working hard on becoming his father’s Mini-Me got
my
blood up. I threw him a look, and the stupid giggle froze in his throat.

“What are you so pissy about?” Dave said.

I glanced at Anthony and back to Dave. “If you don’t know, I’m sorry for you.”

My brother waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. He looked at his watch. “You’re late.”

“Screw you! Last time I checked, I’m not on your payroll.”

“That may be about to change.”

That got the attention of the snakes in my head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How’s Allie?”

“Fine. As soon as I finish here I’m meeting her and DeeDee for lunch.”

Allie Lebow was the current and future love of my life. And DeeDee Santos was my best pal, a friendship forged on filling in the empty spaces in each other’s lives.

“Allie’s a keeper. And DeeDee,” he said, smiling now, “that kid has some mouth on her. Always liked her.”

“She’ll be thrilled to hear it. Now, can we get back to that ‘payroll’ thing again?”

Dave jutted his chin toward the cherub. “This is Sal Lomascio. Sal, this is my brother, Jake.” We shook hands. Dave looked back to me. “Sal’s a friend,” he said. “Sit.”

Sal moved his briefcase from the seat and set it on the table. I squeezed in next to him.

“Sal’s an investigator for Pytho Insurance Group,” Dave said. “We go way back.”

Anthony, the apt pupil, smiled a crooked smile. The kid was trying too hard.

“Anyway,” Dave continued, “we’re talking about that fire I had over at my warehouse.”

He said it dismissively, as if it were a simple kitchen flare-up that took out a couple of oven mitts, rather than a three-alarmer that turned three squatters into stains on the floor and cost two firefighters their lives.

“What about it?” I said.

“Pytho is refusing to pay.”

I turned to Sal, not even bothering to keep the anger out of my voice. “You and Dave go way back. Fix it.”

Anthony looked at me as if I were the dumbest guy in the room. “It’s not that simple,” he said.

Dave beat me to it. “Shut the fuck up, Anthony,” he said.

My nephew’s gaze wobbled and his cheeks went red. In a heartbeat Anthony had gone from being the favored son to a minion, and was having a hard time keeping it together. Welcome to your new life, kid, I thought, not without sadness.

“Not this time,” Sal said. “It was arson.”

“And you know that how?” I said.

“It’s my job. Let me give you the picture, here. Arson ain’t like it is in the movies. You know, where the handsome lead detective spots this mook standing on the fringe of the crowd with his eyes rolling around in his head like he’s about to come and sporting a hard-on you could cut diamonds with, and hauls his ass in to the station house and hammers him until he confesses.”

“I love movies like that. Always made me feel good about my career choice.”

“Trouble is, without proof of an accelerant, you got jack.”

“And you found no accelerant.”

His mustache twitched. “Bingo! So then you look for a shitload of circumstantial evidence and hope that it points somewhere.”