Dancer in the Flames (26 page)

Boots laughed out loud. ‘Count yourself lucky that I don’t actually have a daughter.’

After a moment, LeGuin chuckled. ‘I sometimes lose my temper, let my rap get all crazy. But that bullshit with the cats? I hate that like I hate that name – Maytag. Swear on my sainted mum, I never threw her cat into no washin’ machine. Those were her gerbils I washed.’

Both men laughed a little too long, neither apparently wanting to be the first to stop. Finally, Boots said, ‘OK, let me repeat the question I asked you a moment ago. Now, I’m gonna elaborate a little, but that’s just my way, so don’t mind me. It’s still the same question.’

A short silence followed, then Boots started up. ‘Two days ago, I was standin’ on the sidewalk in front of my own home, mindin’ my own business, when a van registered to Isabella Amarando, the mother of your children, turned on to the block. The van came to within thirty feet, then a boy named Malcolm Sutcliffe rolled down the window and aimed a shotgun at my face. If my partner hadn’t wounded Malcolm, what was left of me would be lyin’ on an autopsy table in the morgue. Now, that’s a lot of provocation, Elijah. That’s enough provocation to make a man crazy for revenge, yet I haven’t shown you any disrespect. I want you to tell me why that should be so. And while you’re at it, ask yourself about Captain Parker and Sergeant Olmeda. Ask yourself what happened to them. What happened and why.’

Seconds turned into minutes as LeGuin prepared his response. He began to speak several times, his mouth opening, then closing again as he reconsidered. Finally, he said, ‘You got anybody stupid in your family? You got anyone just naturally chumps out, like it’s in his blood?’

‘My family and everyone else’s.’

‘Well, let’s say this, sometimes you tell Stupid to do one thing and Stupid does another. Then it’s on your head.’

‘You talkin’ about Malcolm?’

LeGuin’s knee began to jump. ‘I’m talkin’ about tellin’ Stupid, “Just follow the bitch. See where she goes, what she does.” But Stupid ain’t got the self-control of a hungry rat. Stupid wants to represent. Stupid wants to be a gangsta. He listens to them beats and thinks it’s for real.’

When LeGuin stopped speaking, Boots patiently turned him around. ‘That’s fine, Elijah, but it doesn’t answer the question. Why am I treatin’ you with respect?’

Najaz signaled Boots to stop the video. A detective for thirty years, he was the co-author of a textbook on the craft of interrogation. He knew that Boots was seeking to establish a rapport with LeGuin before asking any pointed questions. Though often effective, the technique was time-consuming.

‘Tell me where you’re headed?’ he asked Boots. ‘Maybe we can skip some of the boilerplate.’

‘I want to convince LeGuin that Corcoran is out of the picture. The payoffs come to me from now on. In return, I’ll overlook the attempt on my life.’

Najaz laughed. ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘The tape can definitely not be presented in a court of law.’

It took forty minutes before LeGuin answered the question, and only after Boots posed it as a hypothetical. If a person unknown had done all the things LeGuin did, and if cops unknown were still respecting him, what did that mean?

‘If all those ifs you just said was true,’ LeGuin declared, ‘then the dude would figure the cops wanted somethin’.’ His head did a slow dance, chin swiveling up and to the left. He’d broken through a barrier, one self-erected, and on some level he knew it.

‘And what do you think those cops would want, Elijah?’

They again circled the block, Boots probing, LeGuin evading. Quick-witted, the dealer might even have believed that he was holding his own. In fact, he was gradually shedding his defensive posture. His shoulders dropped and his fingers uncurled as he slouched in the chair, legs crossed at the knee.

Finally, Boots slapped the table. ‘Why don’t we look at this another way? Pretend you’re directin’ a movie and the actor playin’ the cop asks you to explain his motivation. What would you tell that actor?’

LeGuin’s emotions played across his face. His lips moved almost continually, tightening down, pursing. He kept his eyes averted for the most part, but the glances he threw Boots were pointed. Boots was offering him a way out. If he accepted it, they could pretend to be entrepreneurs negotiating a business deal. This was definitely preferable to handcuffed and helpless, but LeGuin had been around for a long time and he had a nose for traps. On the other hand, there was that moron, Malcolm, who’d hold out for maybe ten seconds before spilling his guts.

‘I don’t wanna slow your roll,’ he finally said, ‘but I can’t pay double. I can’t pay Corcoran and pay you, too. You got to take the man off my back.’

‘No problem.’

LeGuin recoiled. ‘See, right there I gotta ask myself if you’re full of shit.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘You remember a player named Maurice Selman? Came up before me? He was capped around six years ago.’

Maurice Selman was the dealer who’d accused Corcoran of extortion. ‘Yeah,’ Boots said, ‘I know who he is.’

‘Well, it was Corcoran’s people who offed him.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Man told me straight to my face. I don’t come across, he’ll do to me what he done to Maurice. Plus, Maurice wasn’t the only one.’

‘There were others?’

‘Told me he killed a cop, too. Way back when.’ LeGuin closed his eyes for a second, then looked down at the floor. They’d been at it for an hour. ‘I ain’t disrespectin’ you. I ain’t sayin’ you’re soft. But Corcoran . . .’ LeGuin raised his head to stare across the table. ‘Tell you this, he’s gonna cap that bitch or die tryin’.’

‘And what bitch would that be?’

‘Jill Kelly. All my life, I never knew a man to hate a woman like that.’

B
oots paused the DVD, then leaned back in his chair. ‘That’s the breakthrough. After that, me and Maytag became partners.’

‘Did he add anything important?’ Najaz waved the question off. ‘Scratch that,’ he said, pointing at the DVD player. ‘Are there any other copies of the disc?’

‘One.’ After the job was complete, after O’Malley and Velikov left to drive LeGuin home, after a fumbling Madeline Gobard produced a pair of DVDs, Boots had opened the computer, extracted the hard drive, then smashed it to pieces with a claw hammer. No record of Jill Kelly and Chris Parker’s tryst now existed. Or so he hoped.

Najaz jerked his receding chin at the TV screen. ‘You were good,’ he declared, ‘very good. Too good to be doing what you’ve been doing all these years. So, why were you never promoted? Why are you still a detective, third grade?’

‘Beats me,’ Boots returned.

As the silence built, Najaz realized that Boots was playing him the way he’d played LeGuin. Najaz found this turn of events amusing. ‘And why is it,’ he needled, ‘that you’re still working down in the . . . What’s that precinct again?’

‘The Six-Four.’

‘Right, the Six-Four. How did it come to pass that a man of your talents spent his career as a squad detective in Brooklyn?’

‘Most likely because I have a low tolerance for bullshit.’

Najaz laughed out loud. ‘That would do it,’ he admitted. ‘Now, is there anything more that I need to see?’

Boots pointed the remote at the screen and pressed search. ‘Yeah, one last bit. It’s not long.’

LeGuin’s hands were moving – small, palms-up gestures to illustrate the various points he made. He spoke directly, without hesitation, his truthfulness apparent at a glance.

‘When Corcoran come to me with that bullshit – go out and kill a cop – I got so pissed I wanted to ask him why he didn’t do it his own self. But Corcoran, he don’t appreciate back talk, so what I did was play him for time. I put Malcolm and another boy to watch Kelly, figurin’ the right opportunity would never come and it’d all blow over. But Malcolm ain’t too good at thinkin’ ahead. He sees you and Kelly walkin’ down the street and he just has to bust a move, just can’t control hisself. Never mind there’s witnesses on the street. Never mind he’s ridin’ in a vehicle can be traced back to Isabella. Man, if I even dreamed the boy was packin’ heat, I woulda bitch-slapped him across the room.’

‘I believe you, Elijah. And like I already said, I’m willin’ to forget the whole thing. It’s over, right?’

‘Far as I’m concerned, it was over before it started. But Corcoran, he ain’t under my control. Last time I spoke to him, he said he put out another contract on Kelly. Said he put it with someone who wouldn’t fuck it up. Said it was her or him.’

Boots didn’t object when Najaz retrieved the disc. ‘I got one more thing you might want to look at, inspector.’ He took a small book from his briefcase and offered it to Najaz. ‘This was Chris Parker’s ledger. I don’t know if it’ll do you any good – it’s in code – but here it is.’

Najaz accepted the slim volume. ‘I suppose there’s only one more question to ask.’

‘Before you report?’

‘Yeah, before I report.’

‘So, let’s hear it.’

‘What do you want?’

‘The murder charges against Vinnie Palermo dismissed.’

Najaz nodded to himself. He’d been sure that Jill’s white-hat assessment of Boots was purely fanciful, like much of what Crazy Jill told her uncle. Not so.

‘Hang tight, Boots, this might take a while.’ Najaz rose to his feet and walked to the door. ‘And one thing you might consider while you’re waiting. No matter what Jill may have told you, Michael Shaw loves his niece. He wants to protect her.’

‘If he can?’

‘If he can.’

Boots remained alone in the small room for the next forty-five minutes. On the verge of leaving several times, he managed to check himself. Boots wanted out of the Puzzle Palace, wanted to be away from men he considered terminally ambitious. His need of them pissed him off, and he was still simmering when Chief of Detectives Michael Shaw walked into the room.

Instinctively, Boots rose to his feet, a priest before the Pope. That pissed him off, too, as did Shaw’s first words: ‘Sit down, Boots. Sit down.’

Tall and reed-thin, Shaw had one of those Irish faces that shed color as the years go by. His skin was porcelain pale, his feathery hair gone beyond gray to white, his blue eyes as pale as water. He fixed those eyes on Boots, his tiny mouth expanding into a smile.

‘Is there an implied threat to your visit?’ he asked.

‘I’m giving you what Jill told me you wanted. In return, I’m asking you to drop murder charges lodged against an innocent man by a team of bent cops.’

Shaw remained standing. He was waiting for Boots to flinch, but didn’t really expect that to happen. Nevertheless, he gave it another try. ‘I’m asking again. Is there a threat here?’

‘A threat? Chief, the only reason I came here today is because I’m hopin’ against hope that I won’t have to prove Vinnie innocent by arresting Parker’s actual killer.’

That was enough for Michael Shaw. He shifted his weight to his right leg and rubbed his aching hip, his demeanor softening.

‘I’m getting old, Boots. My days blur, my youth is fast becoming the rock I cling to. For some reason, I need to make sense of it.’ Shaw took a step toward the door, then stopped. ‘There was no sweeter child than Jill Kelly. And no child who loved her father more. Patrick Kelly was everything to his daughter – father and mother, parent and guardian. He put food on her table and washed the dishes afterward. He tucked her into bed. He bought her First Communion dress.’

Shaw’s pale eyes retreated as the blood rose suddenly to inflame his cheeks. ‘And beautiful she was, detective, as she walked to the altar, an angel with a smile bright enough to banish despair itself. I tell you this because I know you love her. Because even a blind man could see it. Jill’s life was ripped apart when her father was killed. You think you can repair her, but you can do no such thing. The best you can do, the most you can hope for, is to protect her.’

It was a good speech, Boots decided, lots of man-to-man sincerity, lots of doomed Irish-poet sentimentality, lots of puffed-up Irish blarney. Listening to it was the price he had to pay and he didn’t begrudge the cost – if the Chief had expected applause, Boots’s hands would already be moving. But the Chief had missed the point, missed it altogether. Boots did not think he could repair Jill Kelly. Nor did he want to. He wanted Crazy Jill the way she was and he couldn’t wait, now that he was done with the Puzzle Palace, to track her down. He looked up to find Chief Shaw with his hand on the doorknob.

‘Despite what you may think, there are limits to what this office can accomplish. I can’t, for instance, now that Mr Palermo’s been indicted, wave a fairy’s wand and have him released. But if it’s any consolation, I don’t believe he murdered Captain Parker and I’ll do what I can to free him . . .’

‘But?’

Shaw’s sliver of a mouth expanded briefly. ‘You have Inspector Najaz’s phone number. Use it whenever you want. In the meantime, take care of my niece.’

O
n the following afternoon, with no word from Jill, Boots drove his father and Libby Greenspan from Astoria to Brooklyn. Home again. That evening, they had a modest celebration, an Italian dinner also attended by Joaquin, Father Gubetti and Frankie Drago.

The bookmaker’s presence was more than a gesture of gratitude. Boots was informing the neighborhood that Angie Drago’s death was an accident, at least in his opinion. Whatever lingering doubts Boots may have had were finally dispelled that morning. As Boots was packing his things, Frankie presented him with a pair of receipts issued by Dave Molitor, a local carpenter who took odd jobs.

The door leading to the Drago basement could not have been open when Angie was pushed. It could not have been open because the door wasn’t there. Molitor had taken it down in order to repair the frame after a hinge ripped away two weeks before Angie’s death. Boots knew Molitor well enough to be sure he wouldn’t fake the receipt to help Frankie Drago. He also knew the man worked cheap and did good work, but was an unreliable drunk. Most likely, he’d taken Frankie’s down payment to the nearest bar.

The talk at dinner was dominated by Father Gubetti, who sat on the board of the Greenpoint–Williamsburg Preservation Society. An ad-hoc organization, the society was created to fight the city’s plans for the East River waterfront between the Williamsburg Bridge and Newtown Creek.