Losers Live Longer (12 page)

Law Addison, Michael Cassidy, heroin, Craig Wales, Ethan Ore, and Owl. I was trying to wrap my mind around it, wondering what it all meant, wondering if it meant anything at all. It didn’t have to. Nothing had to mean anything. After all, this was New York City and there was the random element to take into account, the six-degrees effect; always layer upon layer of non sequiturs to wade through. I should’ve known that by now, but I persisted in seeking out connections.

I was still turning all of it over in my head, like a wire cage of bingo numbers, when my downstairs doorbuzzer buzzed.

I got up, went over to the intercom, pushed the SPEAK button, and asked who it was. But I got no answer. I shrugged and went back to my desk.

I was just clicking on a browser link to the West Side Film Festival when I heard a key turning in my lock.

I looked up as my office door swung open.

“
What the hell? Come right in, why don’t you?”

No point in my saying it, he was already inside.

My old boss, Matt Chadinsky, had lost weight, but he was still built like a concrete traffic divider, with a hard expression on his face I wanted to veer away from.

“
I called,” he said. “Your fucking phone’s been busy.”

“
I was on the Internet.”

“
What, you still using dial-up? Shit, Payton, churn your own fucking butter, too?”

I ignored it. I logged off the Internet and folded down the lid of my laptop without turning it off. I said, “You’ve lost weight, Matt. And shaved off your mustache.”

Matt touched his bare upper lip like someone checking his wallet on a crowded subway.

“
Yeh, over a year ago.”

He sat on my couchbed, planting his ass down on my pillow. Where I put my head at night. Not the stuff dreams are made of.

I asked, “How’d you get in?”

He held up his hand, my other spare set of keys dangling from his forefinger. He tossed them overhand to me. I fumbled catching them and had to stoop to pick them up off the floor.

Matt said, “Time you got ’em back. What’s with your fucking place anyway? Moving out or did Goodwill repo you?”

“
I’m keeping to the essentials these days.”

“
Sure, whatever. How come you didn’t return my calls?”

“
I was out.”

“
Where the fuck’ve you been? I told you to stay put. What the hell’s going on, Payton? I talked to my guy over at the Ninth, and he said the responding unit didn’t have your name. Who’d you talk to on scene?”

“
No one. I didn’t stick around. I had a job to do.”

“
Yeh, right. I can see how busy you are.”

“
The job Owl hired me for.”

“
Job? What job?”

“
Doesn’t matter now, it’s been taken care of.”

“
No. No-no-no, that’s not how this is goin’ to work. I ask questions, you answer. Now what job?”

“
Tail job. So I—”

“
How do you know when—”

“
I told you, I called my precinct guy. He finally helped me track down where they took Owl’s body. No fucking help from you there. As usual.”

Heat seeped up my neck into my face. So much for the happy reunion. Nothing had changed in five years between us; it might as well have been the last time we spoke, after my final assignment for Metro.

It was a simple job, all I had to do was watch a door, a door without a handle that never opened, an outside utility door set flush in a blank two-story-high brick wall at the rear of the Baruch Houses apartment complex below Houston, from midnight to 5 a.m., Tuesday thru Saturday, in late March of 2003.

And still I managed to screw it up…

I was seated behind the wheel of an agency car, a blue Honda Accord, parked south of the access ramp to the FDR Drive.

It was temp work Matt had fielded to me to help me get by, never telling me what I was there for, except to verify that the door always remained closed.

It wasn’t much of a door, especially after hours and hours of looking at it. If not for the outer hinges, it might’ve just been an immovable steel plate. The hardest part of the job was not falling asleep while listening to the sough of traffic on the FDR. But looking back, I’d’ve been better off if I had fallen asleep. That at least would have been understandable in the eyes of Matt, more than what actually happened.

It was about 4:30 a.m. when I caught sight of the girl rushing down the road, first in my rear view mirror and then as she passed by at an awkward half-run, a willowy white girl in her late teens casting quick looks over her shoulder. In the mirror, a car came into view approaching at a slow roll, a green late-model Impala with a rusted undercarriage and its headlights switched off. It passed by, closing in on the girl until a bend in the road ahead cut them off from view.

None of my business, literally. My business was to stay in the car, my job was to keep watching that door. But I didn’t.

“
There a problem here?” I called out.

Rhetorical question, because as I came jogging round the bend, the passenger door of the idling Impala stood open and a tall guy with straggly hair and a Pharaoh’s beard was in the road trying to push the girl inside. She’d lost one shoe.

The guy favored me with a scowl and some choice words about my mother. The girl uttered nothing but a low, pleading
Nooo
as she shook her head from side to side.

Just as a goof really, I said to the guy, “Unhand her.” Never expecting he would, but he did and the girl who’d been leaning back trying to pry herself away fell flat on her ass.

The guy took three quick strides to me. He looked like he meant business, so I cut out the comedy and raised my right hand fast. The telescopic steel baton sprang open to its full length with a satisfying snick and the tip sank deep into his crotch. He went down and over and did his lima bean impression.

I stood over him. My right shoulder was hit by something soft but heavy. Green and brown, it fell to my feet.

A clump of grass and soil. The next hit me in the neck, not so soft.

I turned my head and the girl was digging her hands into the grass bordering the sidewalk to my right.

I said, “Hey, quit—”

She flung another clump at me. She had good aim. This one hit me in the chin, some of the dirt went down my shirt. I backed away, putting up my arms to block the next one.

But she’d found an empty quart bottle of Colt 45 malt liquor on the verge. Before she threw it I took off running. The bottle shattered at my heels.

My last look back, she was kneeling beside him in the road, cradling his head in her dirt-blackened hands. I had to admit they made a perfect couple.

When I got back to the agency car, my relief was waiting. Except he was anything but, a relief that is. He’d come early and found the car empty. For a beefy guy he had a surprisingly high-pitched voice as he laid into me.

I looked over at the closed door in the brick wall. It was still closed. I doubted it had opened while I was gone, doubted it would ever open. But that wasn’t the point, I understood that—whatever this surveillance had been meant to prove, I’d invalidated it and all the man-hours put into it. But I didn’t need this guy screeching at me like a macaw parrot on crack.

I snicked open the baton again and held it up in front of his face. I wasn’t going to hit him or anything, I just wanted him to shut the fuck up, and he did. I gave him the car keys. I closed the baton and handed it to him (I’d gotten it from the car’s glove compartment), and then I walked away as he started shrieking at me again in his whiny falsetto.

Matt didn’t shout when I called and told him all about it later that morning. He didn’t even swear, which was the worst sign of all; Matt Chadinsky couldn’t whistle without cursing.

I got my last check from Metro the very next day. It was messengered to me, probably costing more than what I got paid, but the messenger was the message. I was out for good and no mistake about it. The end.

Chapter Nine: YOU CAN’T PLAY IF YOU DON’T WIN

Matt yanked my noggin back to the present.

“
So you going to fucking tell me what this is all about?”

“
I already did.”

“
No, all you did was hand me a load of bullshit, nothing that justifies you leaving Owl lying in the street. He deserved more respect than you showed him, you shitstain. George Rowell had friends in this city. Important friends. You better pray Moe Fedel doesn’t catch wind of it, if he hasn’t already.”

“
I’m not afraid of Fedel.”

“
Yeh, well you never were that bright, kid.”

“
Does…did Owl have any family? Who’ll claim his body?”

“
No. No family. He was an orphan, never married.”

I took out my wallet, showed him the photograph of Owl and the girl. “So this isn’t him and a granddaughter then? How ’bout a niece? Does the name Elena mean anything to you?”

“
What have you gone, deaf? I told you, no family. The guys in the business, that’s all he had, and that’s who’s gonna have to send him off. Owl lived for the job, always did.”

“
And died for it.”

Matt stared at the picture of Owl, maybe lost in his own memories of the last time they saw each other, but my words finally sank in. He looked up.

“
What’s that fucking supposed to mean?”

“
What did your guy at the precinct say about Owl’s death? Everything kosher?”

“
Kosher? Shit. Yeh, no meat and dairy mixed. Kosher!”

“
Nothing off about it then?”

“
I didn’t ask. You told me it was a fucking accident.”

“
It was, but…”

“
But what?”

“
Owl was here working on something. A case for an ‘old friend,’ he said. He got a room at the Bowery Plaza two days ago. What’s he been up to since? You’re one of his oldest friends, didn’t he contact you?” Matt had trained under Owl much the way I’d trained under Matt.

He shook his head. “I had no idea he was in the city. Haven’t seen Owl in years, not since he retired. You still haven’t told me what he came to you for—”

“
He asked if I worked on the Law Addison job.”

“
What about it?”

“
Just did I work on it, because he knew Metro had. I told him no, you hadn’t called me.”

“
Damn straight, I didn’t. I wanted that case closed, not fucked up.”

“
But it isn’t closed, is it?” I said. “I was just reading up on it, and there was nothing about Addison’s capture. He’s still a fugitive.”

“
Yeh, so?”

I didn’t push the point. “How did Metro get in on it?”

“
Addison was arrested in May. The fucking judge set his bail at two million.”

“
How come so high?”

“
You think that’s high? For a guy like that? Made millions every year and probably had bank accounts in ten different countries? He was the biggest goddamn flight risk since Charles Fucking Lindbergh.”

“
Evidently. So how come he was granted bail at all?”

“
Because judges are fucking morons. This one said Addison’s passport had been seized, his assets had been frozen, so if he wanted to flee, he’d have to do it on a fucking bus. What a bonehead. You know how much money Addison was playing with at his peak? Two
billion
. With a B. Of which $66 million is still unaccounted for. You can bet he had a nice chunk of that stored away in cash for just such a rainy day.”