Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [124]
“That’s as good as my guesses get,” Boomer said, standing behind her, arms around her waist.
She shoved the key in the latch, opened the door, and turned around to face Boomer. “I’m afraid for you,” Carolyn said, losing the smile. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to me either,” Boomer said, holding the door open with one hand.
“I’m pretty sure I’m going to fall in love with you, Boomer. And it would be very nice if you were around long enough to see it happen.”
“I’ll be around as long as you want me to be,” Boomer promised. “You’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”
The smile returned to Carolyn’s face as she wrapped her arms around him. They stepped into the foyer, let the door shut quietly behind them, and moved up the stairs toward Carolyn’s second-floor apartment.
The peaceful spring night was theirs to call their own.
• • •
THE BLACK LEXUS was parked across the street. Wilber Graves sat behind the wheel, smoking a Cuban cigar, a grin on his face as he watched Boomer and Carolyn walk up the brownstone steps.
“Our friend has himself a woman,” Wilber said to a young man seated on the passenger side of the car.
“Do you want me to deal with it now?” the young man asked.
Wilber looked over at him and spread his smile. “You have no sense of romance, Derek,” Wilber said. “Let the lovers have their night. Let them have something to remember. This way, when we reach for them and let them feel our touch, the pain will be that much harder to forget.”
“How soon, then?” the young man said.
Wilber took a long drag from his cigar, filling the front of the car with smoke. He took half of it back in his lungs with a deep breath. “The cop will have his way tonight,” Wilber said. “And come the morning, we will have ours.”
19
DEAD-EYE WAS ON his third turn around the Central Park reservoir, building up his lung capacity, trying to get back reasonably close to the pace he’d kept in the years before the elevator shoot-out. He was taking long strides, heavy beads of sweat soaking through his blue NYPD running gear, the center of his chest burning with a pain he willed himself to ignore. His legs stabbed at him with sharp bolts, his back muscles twitched in spasms, his stomach churned out its acid.
And still Dead-Eye ran.
The shooting had altered Dead-Eye’s life in so many ways, but the physical changes were the hardest. His diet now consisted mainly of fruits, fresh-cut vegetables, and fish. He attacked his local gym three mornings a week, lifting and pulling for three hours at a heavy clip. The longer his workouts went, the more intense his pain grew. And despite stern warnings from a concerned battery of doctors, Dead-Eye made it a point to hit the track.
Four mornings a week, four miles at a time.
It couldn’t make him whole again, nothing could do that, but it helped keep him sane. When he ran, regardless of weather or time of day, Dead-Eye always brought himself back to younger years when he raced along the Brooklyn piers next to his father. He was never able to beat him, but he always managed to finish the course, no matter how tired. During their daily runs, Dead-Eye’s father had imparted to his son the two rules he held absolute: Give everything you do an honest effort and never give up or give in.
It was the only way Dead-Eye knew how to live. Even with a body that was scarred and ravaged.
He was coming around a hard curve now, trees and brush to his right, the clear waters of the reservoir to his left. He checked the stopwatch in his hand. Forty minutes and two more miles to go. He picked up his pace, looking to finish in thirty-five.
The two men came at him from behind, and he never had a chance. They jumped out from behind a thick row of bushes, slammed Dead-Eye up against the chain-link fence, two guns drawn, both held against his chest.
The man on his left was decked out in a dark designer jogging suit. The other one had on a black leather jacket over a thin black turtleneck and a pair of tailored blue jeans. Dead-Eye waited for them to talk, his