Dust To Dust (2 page)

"I ditched the goods!"

"Possession of drug paraphernalia:' Liska said, unimpressed. "Big deal. Cut him loose. He's not worth our time."

"Fuck you, bitch!" Jamal said, swaggering toward her. "I wouldn't let you suck my cock."

"I'd rather gouge my eyes out with a rusty nail." Liska advanced on him, blue glare boring into him like a pair of cold lasers. "Keep it in your pants, Jamal. If you live long enough, maybe you'll find some nice guy in prison to do it for you."

"He's not going to prison today," Kovac announced impatiently. "Let's wrap this up. I got a party to go to."

Jackson made his move as Kovac started to turn for the door. He pulled one of the loose shelves out of the bookcase and rushed Kovac from behind. Caught back on his heels, Elwood shouted an obscenity and jumped too late. Kovac swung around in time to catch the corner of the shelf, the board slicing a gash above his left eyebrow.

"ShitV, "Dammit!" Kovac went down on his knees, his vision lacy with a spiderweb of

black. The floor felt like rubber beneath him.

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Elwood grabbed
Jackson's wrists andjammed his arms upward, and the board went flying, a corner of it gouging the new wall.

Then
Jackson screamed and went down suddenly, his left knee buckling beneath him. Halfway down he screamed again, back arching. Elwood jumped back, wide-eyed.

Liska rode
Jackson down from behind, her knee in the rmiddle of his back as his face hit the floor.

The door opened and half a dozen detectives stood with guns drawn. Liska raised a short black ASP tactical baton, looking surprised and innocent.

"Gosh, look what I found in my coat pocket!"

She leaned down over Jamal Jackson's ear and murmured seductively, "Looks like I'll get to fulfill one of your wishes, Jamal. You're under arrest."

'LOOKS KIND offaggy."

"Is that the voice of authority, Tippen?" "Fuck youjinks."

"Is that a no or wishful thinking?"

Laughter erupted around the table, the kind of raw, hard laughter that came from people who saw too much ugliness on a day-to-day basis. Cop humor was rude and biting because the world they lived in was a crude and savage place. They had no time or patience for Noel Coward repartee.

The group had snagged a coveted corner table at Patrick's, an Irishnamed bar owned and run by Swedes. On an ordinary day the pubstrategically located equidistant between the Minneapolis Police Department and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office-was packed belly to butt with cops this time of day. Day-shift cops gearing down and loading up for life off the
Retired cops who'd found they couldn't socialize with regular humans once they'd left the job. Dogwatch guys grabbing dinner and camaraderie, killing time before they were up for their tour.

This was not an ordinary day. The usual crowd had been augmented by PD brass, city politicos, and newsies. Unwelcome additions that put an extra layer of tension in the air that was already blue with smoke and language. A news crew from one of the local stations was setting up near the front window.

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"You should've insisted on real stitches. The old-fashioned kind:' Tippen went on.

He tapped the ash off his cigarette and raised it to his lips for a long drag, his attention narrowed on the camera crew. He had a face like an

wi
is

Irish wolffiound: long and homely ith a bri tly gray mustache and fiercely intelligent dark eyes- A detective With the Sheriff's Office, he had been a member of the task force that had worked the Cremator murders a littJe more than a year before. Some of the task force members had become the kind of &1ends who did this-met in a bar to drink and talk shop and insult one another.

"Then he ends up with a big ugly Frankenstein scar," Liska said. "With the butterfly clamp, he gets a neat, thin scar-the kind women find sexy."

"Sadistic women," Elwood commented. Tippen curled his lip. "Is there another kind?"

"Sure. The kind who go out with you," Liska said. "Masochists." Tippen flicked a corn chip at her.

Kovac regarded himself critically in the mirror of Liska's compact. The split in his forehead had been cleaned and patched by an overworked resident in the Hennepin County Medical Center ER, where gangbangers were regularly patched up or zipped into body bags. He'd been embarrassed to go there with anything less than a gunshot wound, and the young woman had gi
ven him
the attitude that treating anything less was beneath her. Sexual attraction hadn't been a part

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of the picture.

He assessed the damage with a critical eye. His face was a quadtangle punctuated With stress lines, a couple of scars, and a hawkish, crooked nose that made a nice accompaniment to the crooked, sardomc mouth lurking beneath the requisite cop mustache. The hair was more gray than-brown. Once a month he paid an old Norwegian

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barber ten bucks to cut it, which probably accounted for the fact that it tended to stand up.

He'd never been handsome in the GQ sense of the word, but he'd never sent women running either-at least not because of his looks. One more scar wasn't going to matter.

Liska studied him as she sipped her beer. "It gives you character, Sam."

"It gives me a headache," he groused, handing the compact back to her. "I already had all the character I needed."

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"Well, I'd kiss it and make it better for you. But I already kneecapped the guy who did it. I think I've done my part."

"And you wonder why you're single," Tippen remarked.

Liska blew him a kiss. "Hey, love me, love my ASP. Or in your case, Tip, kiss my ASP"

The front door swung open and a gust of cold air swept in, along with a new pack of patrons. Every cop's eye in the place went instantly flat, and the tension level cranked a notch.The cop collective guarding against outsiders.

"The man of the hour," Elwood said, as recognition rippled through the crowd and a cheer went up. "Come to hobnob with the unwashed masses before his ascension."

Kovac said nothing. Ace Wyatt stood in the doorway in a doublebreasted camel-hair topcoat, looking like Captain
America, master of all he surveyed. Square jaw, white smile, groomed like a fucking game-show host. He probably tipped his hairstylist ten bucks and got a complimentary blov'Job from the shampoo girl.

"Is he wearing makeup?" Tippen asked under his breath. "I heard he gets his eyelashes dyed."

"That's what happens when you go
Hollywood
Elwood said. "1

'd be willing to suffer the indignity," Liska said sarcastically. "Did you hear the kind of money he's getting for that show?"

Tippen took a long pull on his cigarette and exhaled. Kovac looked at Captain Ace Wyatt through the cloud. They'd worked on the same squad for a time. it seemed a hundred years ago. He'd just made the move from robbery to homicide.Wyatt was the top dog, already a legend, and angling to become a star on the brass side of things. He'd succeeded handsomely within the department, then branched out into television-maintaining his office as a CID captain and starring in a
Minneapolis cross between
America's Most Wanted and a motivational infornercial. The show, Crime Time, was going national.

"I hate that guy."

He reached for the Jack he wasn't supposed to Mix with his painkillers and tossed back what was left of it.

"Jealous?" Liska needled. "Of what? Being a prick?"

"Don't sell yourself short, Kojak. You're as big a prick as any man here."

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Kovac made a growl at- the back of his throat, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but here. Why in hell had he come?. He had three parts of a concussion, and a perfect excuse to beg off and go home. So there was nothing to go home to-an empty house with an empty aquarium in the living room. The fish had all died of neglect while he'd pulled nearly seventy-two hours straight on the Cremator case. He hadn't bothered to replace them.

Sitt*
for Ace Wyatt, he was as big a masochist as any ing at a party

woman Tippen had ever dated. He'd finished his drink. As soon as Wyatt's posse cleared the door, he could make his way through the crowd and slip out. Maybe go down to the bar where the Fifth Precinct cops hung out. They could give a shit about Ace Wyatt.

In the instant he made the decision,Wyatt spotted him and zeroed in with a blinding grin, a quartet of minions trailing after him. He wove through the crowd, touching hands and shoulders like the Pope giving cursory blessings.

"Kojak, you old warhorse!" he shouted above the din. He took hold of Sam's hand in a powerful grasp.

Kovac came up out of his chair, the floor seeming to shift beneath his feet.The aftereffects of his close encounter with the board, or the mix of drugs and booze. It sure as hell wasn't his thri at Wyatt's

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attention. The asshole, calling him Kojak. He hated the nickname. People who knew him well mostly used it to grind him.

One of the minions came in close with a Polaroid and the flash damn near blinded him.

"One for the scrapbook," the minion said, a thirty-something cover-boy type with shiny black hair and cobalt-blue eyes. He had the looks for a part in a low-end prime-time drama.

"I heard you took another one for the cause!" Wyatt bellowed, grinning. "Jesus, quit while you're ahead. Quit while you still have a head!"

"Seven to go, Slick," Kovac said. "
Hollywood's not beating my door down. Congratulations, by the way."

"Thanks. Taking the show national is a chance to make a big difference."

To the Ace Wyatt bank account, Kovac thought, but he didn't say it.What the hell. He'd never had a taste for designer suits or a weekly mam'cure. He was just a cop. That was all he'd ever wanted to be. Ace Wyatt had always set his sights on bigger, better, brighter, faster;

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reaching for the brass rings of life--and catching every goddamn one of them.

"Glad you could make it to the party, Sam."

"Hey, I'm a cop. Free food, free booze I'm there."

Wyatt's gaze was already roarming'for a more important hand to shake.The pretty-boy minion caught his attention and directed it toward the television camera. The Wyatt grin brightened by a couple hundred watts.

Liska popped up out of her chair like a jack-in-the-box and stuck her hand out before Wyatt could move on. "Captain Wyatt. Nikki Liska, homicide. It's a pleasure. I enjoy your show."

Kovac cocked a brow at her. "My partner. Blond ambition." "You lucky old dog:'Wyatt said with good-natured chauvinism. The muscles flexed in Liska's J'iws as if she was swallowing some-

thing unpleasant." I think your idea of strengthening the link between communities and their police forces through the show and the Internet is a brilliant innovation."

Wyatt soaked up the praise. "
America is a multimedia culture:' he said loudly, as the TV reporter-a brunette in a bright red blazeredged in close with a microphone. Wyatt turned fully toward the camera, bending down to hear the woman's question.

Kovac looked to Liska with disapproval.

"Hey, maybe he'll give me a job as a techmical consultant. I could be a technical consultant," she said with a mischievous quirk to her lips. "That could be my stepping-stone to working on Mel Gibson movies."

"I'll be in the John."

Kovac made his way through the mob that had come in to drink Ace Wyatt's booze and chow down on spicy chicken wings and deepfried cheese. Half the people here had never met Wyatt, let alone worked with him, but they would gladly celebrate his retirement. They would have celebrated the devil's birthday for an open bar.

He stood at the back of the main room and surveyed the scene, made all the more surreal by the Christmas decorations reflecting the glare of the television lights. A sea of people a lot of the faces familiar-yet he felt acutely alone. Empty.Time to get seriously hammered or leave.

Liska was hovering around Wyatt's people, trying to make nice with the main minion. Wyatt had moved to shake the hand of an

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attractive, serious-looking blonde who seemed vaguely familiar. He put his left hand on her shoulder and bent to say something in her ear. Elwood was cutting a swath through the buffet. Tippen was trying to flirt with a waitress who was looking at him as if she'd Just stepped in something.

It'd be last call before they missed him. And then missing him would be just a fleeting thought.

Mere's Kovac? Gone? Pass the beer nuts. He started for the door.

"You were the best fuckin'badge on the job!" a drunken voice bellowed. "The man who don't think so can talk to me! Come on! Come on! Id give Ace Wyatt my goddamn legs!" he shouted.

The drunk sat in a wheelchair that teetered on the top of three shallow steps leading down to the main bar, where Wyatt stood. The drunk had no legs to give. His had been useless for twenty years. There was nothing left of them but spindly bone and atrophied muscle. In contrast, his face was full and red, his upper body a barrel.

Kovac shook his head and took a step toward the wheelchair, trying to catch the old man's attention.

"Hey, Mikey! No one's arguing," he said.

Mike Fallon looked at him without recognition, his eyes glassy with tears. "He's a fucking hero! Don't try to say different!" he said angrily. He swung an arm in Wyatt's direction. "I love that man! I love that man like a son!"

The old man's voice broke on the last word, his face contorting with an inner pain that had nothing to do with the amount of Old Crow he'd put away in the past few hours.

Wyatt lost his glamour grin and started toward Mike Fallon just as Fallon's left hand landed on the wheel of his chair. Kovac leapt forward, crashing into another drunk.