Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [129]
“Here we are, demolishing a fucking building during lunch hour,” Boomer shouted over to Dead-Eye. “And what don’t we see anywhere? A cop.”
“It must be true, then,” Dead-Eye said. “They’re never around when you really need them.”
“Not even a brown shirt to write up a violation,” Boomer said, scanning up and down the avenue. “I mean, shit, we’ve gotta be breaking some traffic law here.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Dead-Eye shrugged. “We’ve never paid for a ticket in our lives.” After a pause he asked, “Who filled you in on the building?”
“It’s on the DEA scanner sheet,” Boomer said. “And it matched up with the information I got from our guy downtown.”
“Everybody knows the places, but nobody makes a move,” Dead-Eye said.
“That all changed today,” Boomer said.
They watched Mrs. Columbo maneuver the wrecking ball against the building for the last time. It teetered on the verge of a total collapse, then it all fell in one massive heap, caving inward. A cloud of dust flowed out to the street, and sounds of distant horns and sirens could be heard.
Dead-Eye walked through the debris, stepping over crushed rock, splintered wood, darkened packets of cocaine, and a nest of dead rats. He stood over a small mound of red bricks and put a hand inside his jacket pocket, coming out with the crumpled, marked-up photo of his son. He leaned over and placed the picture under a cracked edge of one of the red bricks, then stood up, turned, and walked toward his fellow Apaches.
“That’s just in case Lucia has any trouble figuring out who blew up her stash,” Dead-Eye said.
• • •
CAROLYN BARTLETT LET the hot water run over her body, still tired after an arduous day of coaxing information out of reluctant patients. She had taken on her daily run with relish and looked forward to her post-shower addictions—a low-cal dinner, reading through several chapters of a historical romance, Bach on the stereo and, sometime within the next hour, hearing Boomer’s voice coming over the phone by her bed.
She had been reluctant to get emotionally involved with someone so closely linked to one of her patients, especially a man such as Boomer Frontieri. By falling for Boomer, who openly worked outside the boundaries of the law to get what he felt was justice, Carolyn also shattered a promise she had long ago made to herself: Never date a cop, retired or not. But here she was, in less time than it took to fill out a case file, as involved with Boomer as anyone could expect to get.
Carolyn turned the water off, slid the shower curtain open, and reached for the thick white towel folded on the marble sink. She wrapped it around her body and notched it in place. She picked up the silver hairbrush her grandmother had given her on her sixth birthday and ran it through her long wet hair. She wiped a hand across the steam-drenched medicine cabinet mirror and checked her face. The stress of her work had yet to add wrinkles to her skin, but Carolyn knew those days would soon be close at hand. She smiled, remembering Boomer leaning over her and telling her she had the soft, pure face of an angel. She hoped he would always feel that way.
She walked into the living room, slid a tape of Bach into her stereo system before heading into the kitchen to check out which Lean Cuisine special she should feast on. She slipped a chicken and broccoli on a bed of white rice into her small oven and set the cooking timer to forty minutes. She was padding back, in bare feet, toward the refrigerator to pour herself a glass from a half-empty bottle of Orvietto Classico, when she saw the shadow against the living room wall.
Then Bach went silent.
Carolyn could see the telephone from where she was standing, the red message light flashing on the answering machine, and figured it to be her only move. Her mind racing, her thought processes marred by fear, she ran blindly from the kitchen toward the phone. She made it as far as the end table. A dark-gloved