Authors: Alaric Hunt
Cuts Through Bone
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For Dean Hill, Russell Spitzer, and Darriel Maner:
three determined old men.
And the original determined old man:
my grandfather.
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CONTENTS
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CHAPTER ONE
The blare of car horns from Thirty-fourth Street in midtown Manhattan leaked through two tall windows on the far end of the rectangular office. Rachel Vasquez was annoyed, but she only glanced across her jumbled desk at her boss, Clayton Guthrie, before turning back to her computer monitor. In the three months that the young Puerto Rican woman had worked for the little detective, he hadn't done much detecting. The job that started the spring as a godsend was becoming a curse. Clayton Guthrie was crazy. Three days before, Vasquez had gone home intending to quit, but intention was as close as she came.
That
morning had started easily. Vasquez drove Guthrie's old blue Ford while they followed a couple around downtown Manhattan. The man was a short, muscular Italian, with gold chains glinting on his dark, hairy neck. He had a prize-winning glare that moved people around him like chess pieces. Vasquez found him easy to dislike. The woman was taller, with light brown hair that glowed like butter when the morning sunshine touched it. She dangled her rounded curves before the Italian like presents, gift-wrapped in a short white skirt and a clinging blue top, but her pinched expression changed to a smile only when he was looking.
Vasquez thought the couple was gangster-movie comic, but Guthrie watched and filmed with the soberness of a government employee. The detectives wore walkie-talkie earpieces like Secret Service agents, and Vasquez had a second camera tucked into her jacket pocket while she drove.
After a morning spent slowly shopping boutiques in SoHo and TriBeCa, the couple stopped for lunch at an upscale grill on a corner of Broome Street. Their table was on the outside corner, and visible through front windows on both streets. Guthrie left Vasquez to film from the front of a shoe store on Broome, and he hurried around the corner to shoot from the other side. The angry Italian and his simpering mistress settled at their table and ordered. Vasquez filmed. Her view was so clear, she could see every gold tooth in the man's busy mouth.
Partway through lunch, the Italian made a phone call. The street traffic was light, mostly Yuppies taking their cell phones for a walk. Vasquez filled her time by guessing whether passersby would enter the grill, and counting the number of taxis that passed without a fare. She despised surveillance. Guthrie tired of her monologue, and reminded her she was on a mike by asking if she would rather be driving a taxi. Several more minutes passed before Vasquez understood that the Italian in the restaurant had spotted her. He started laughing and pointed at her. His mistress turned around to look; the last thing Vasquez caught on video was the woman's terrified smile.
A heavyset young Italian gripped Vasquez's right arm and whipped her around. “Hey there!” he exclaimed, a happy note in his voice. “Whatcha doing?” A drooping mustache concealed most of his mouth. His face was rough like a concrete block, and his shoulders had layers like a vault door. Another young Italian in a jogging suit stood beside him. He wasn't as big, but he looked equally amused.
“Let me go!” Vasquez demanded. After a moment, she emphasized with a knee aimed at his crotch, but he turned it aside with his thigh.
“We got a fighter here,” he rumbled. As always, some pedestrians hunched their shoulders and hurried away, while the others craned for a better view. The scuffle was brief. A skinny teenaged Puerto Rican girl with a long black ponytail didn't burn much time on the fight cards of two Italian heavyweights. They wanted the camera; they took it. Vasquez's ears were ringing before Guthrie arrived, but she held a grip on the bigger thug's wrist, trying to reach past his long arm with a punch.
The big Italian with the mustache tossed Vasquez against the window of the shoe store, but he stumbled as he rushed Guthrie. Vasquez watched as the little detective drew back an open hand. After a thunderclap, the big Italian slid to his hands and knees.
“Yo, Dave, what happened?” he muttered.
Guthrie stepped over to the other thug and snatched Vasquez's camera from his hand before bending to pluck his crumpled brown fedora from the man's face. Vasquez pushed herself away from the storefront window as the Italians struggled to their feet. She could hear the sounds of traffic again. She aimed a few cheap kicks at them as they scrambled down the sidewalk. Bystanders hooted and catcalled, and a clerk rushed out of the shoe store.
Across the street, the couple was watching from the window of the grill. The Italian was livid, pointing at them while he shouted into his phone. Standing on the sidewalk, just inside the edge of shade from the strong July sunshine running down the middle of Broome Street, Guthrie dusted off his fedora and punched it back into shape. His face twisted in disgust when he glanced insideâfresh speckles of blood decorated the silk. He flapped it against his leg instead of putting it on his head.
Once they were back in the old Ford, the little man caught Vasquez's chin and held it while he scowled and inspected her face. “You ain't too bad,” he said.
She shook him off and started the car, pulling out just before a patrol car turned into the intersection at the corner of Broome Street. She wiped her stinging nose with the back of her hand and checked for blood.
“How in hell did they sneak up on you anyway?” Guthrie asked. “I thought you grew up on the Lower East.”
“You're
loco, viejo,
” Vasquez barked. “They got up on me since you didn't warn me I should be looking! Who the hell was that?”
“Or maybe you were too busy counting taxis?”
“Screw that. You should've told me he was connected. Why are you watching him anyway?”
“We were watching
her.
”
Vasquez pounded the steering wheel and poured out some rapid curses in Spanish. The detective laughed at her, and fired some more that she hadn't used. Discovering that he spoke Spanish startled her into quiet.
“Maybe I should have warned you about my suspicions,” he said after a minute. The old Ford rolled past Washington Square. “And maybe you should've just paid attention. He spotted you, so you blew itâhugs and kisses won't make it sound better. You gotta see that, Rachel. This's a tough job, but I got faith in you. You're a smart girl. You'll figure it out.”
Vasquez went home angry, intending to quit after her next check, but she had forgotten about the marks on her face. Billboard advertisements would've drawn less attention in her parents' tenement apartment that night. Even her brothers kept quiet, staring at her face with shocked and angry looks. Papì recounted his top twenty-seven reasons she should be applying for college, finishing with a final silent finger gesture at her face. At that point, she discovered she was determined to keep working for Clayton Guthrie. Late that night, after the apartment was quiet, Vasquez's mother came to the open door of her bedroom. She stood silently, as if thinking of something to say, but only sighed and walked quietly away.
So Rachel Vasquez didn't quit, and her immediate reward was returning to the study of video-surveillance tapes. After which the little man grilled her like a sandwich to see if she had noticed everything he wanted her to noticeâ
without
telling her in advance what he meant her to notice. Clayton Guthrie was crazy. The quiet in his office was driving Vasquez crazy. At least the blare of horns on Thirty-fourth Street below them meant something was happeningâkids were pushing racks of clothes on the street and slowing the traffic. That was an everyday occurrence in the Garment District. She glanced across the jumbled desk at Guthrie again. Then someone knocked on the office door.
Beyond a square of mismatched furniture, a shape behind the frosted glass window filled it almost completely. The door swung open after one brief knock. A tall silver-haired man in an ash gray suit stepped inside, followed by a young woman in a navy dress. Guthrie dropped his magazine onto his desk blotter. “Good afternoon, Mr. Whitridge,” he said.
The office was well-lit. The desks each faced a couch, squared across a low coffee table littered with books and magazines. Vasquez's desk faced a wall of green paint over plasterwork, split by the frosted outer door, and an oxblood leather couch that belonged to a bygone era, when the entire room had been better dressed. The other couch, overlooked by the tall windows, was ratty brown faux fur. Another remnant of the previous aristocratic era was dark wooden wainscoting on the walls, interrupted by the outer door, and a pair of dark wooden doors behind Guthrie's deskâa supply closet and a bathroom.
The tall silver-haired man, Mr. Whitridge, seemed about the same age as Clayton Guthrieâin his middle yearsâbut he was tailored and distinguished. His gray suit fit him as neatly as a general's dress uniform. A similar number of years left Guthrie rumpled. He was short and slight, and though his soldier-length hair was mostly dark, a dusting of gray seemed to load him down. A dark brown fedora rested on his desktop, and he wore a long-sleeved white shirt tucked into dark trousers. Whitridge stepped around and sat down on the oxblood couch. Moving and seated, the tall man had the perfect carriage of an aristocrat; Guthrie was his workingman opposite, down to the final detail of a relaxed slouch.
Vasquez wore a Yankees cap set crooked on her head, blue jeans, and a red windbreaker with the cuffs pushed up to her elbows. Her ears jutted like open car doors, because her long black hair was tied in a ponytail. The young woman with Whitridge was wearing a loose navy tea dress that couldn't hide rolling curves that had gone out of fashion after Marilyn Monroe. She was pale and blue-eyed, with chocolate brown hair pulled into a short tail with a navy ribbon, like a bloom behind her ear. Despite the curves and clothes, she was plain. Vasquez was dressed like a boy, and slim as a whip, but her dark eyebrows and sharp jaw took her long steps past merely pretty, into the realm of beautiful. The fading marks on her face only made her seem determined, not breakable. The young woman hesitated, then sat down on the brown faux-fur couch.
“Where's Weitz?” the tall man asked after glancing around the office.
“She had enough, I reckon,” Guthrie said. “This's Rachel Vasquez, my new operative.”
Whitridge measured the young Puerto Rican with a glance, then tipped her a diplomat's smile. “I think Michelle may explain this situation better than I would,” he said.
Guthrie nodded.