Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [142]
They were surrounded by smoke, flames, and the dead. They could hear the sounds of sirens and fire engine horns closing in.
“Hey, Boomer,” Rev. Jim said.
“What?” Boomer said without lifting his head.
“I don’t wanna upset you or anything, but there’s a knife stickin’ out of your back.”
“I needed a place to hang my hat,” Boomer told him.
“Good thinkin’,” Rev. Jim said.
As they waited in silence for the rescue squads to come and clean up, Dead-Eye turned to his right. One of the wounded shooters was crawling for his gun.
The shooter looked at Dead-Eye, his hand around the pistol handle. “Hey, nigger,” the shooter said, straining to lift the gun. “Don’t you ever miss?”
Dead-Eye curled the .44 he held in his left hand and squeezed off one round, hitting the shooter in the center of his forehead, dropping him dead.
“No,” Dead-Eye said, leaning his head back against the wall.
“Ask a stupid question …” Rev. Jim said.
The laughter of the wounded Apaches echoed through the shell of the burning house and floated out across the ruins of a fallen drug empire.
The ones they said could never be whole again had achieved victory.
EPILOGUE
Every man has his own destiny. The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads.
—Henry Miller,
“The Wisdom of the Heart”
January 1983
BOOMER SAT AT the head of the small table, sipping a cup of tea, watching Dead-Eye and Rev. Jim go deep into a game of chess.
“Is that as boring to play as it is to watch?” Boomer asked.
“Yes,” Rev. Jim said.
“So why play it?” Boomer said.
“We don’t have any checkers,” Dead-Eye said.
The physical healing was almost complete.
Boomer and Dead-Eye had spent a month in an Arizona hospital. Rev. Jim was set loose after two weeks, during which he managed to fall hard for one of the night nurses. They each had to endure painful daily physical therapy sessions, which by now were a given in their lives.
As expected, there had been no legal complications from the attack on Lucia’s compound. The feds were more than eager to grab credit for the takedown of Lucia Carney and her crew. The Apaches watched the press conference on a TV in Boomer’s hospital room.
“If they could only bust as good as they bullshit,” Rev. Jim said, turning off the set, “there’d be no crime.”
They never did get to the private plane that waited for them three miles east of the compound. Instead, they drove out of Arizona in a rented convertible. Along the way they stopped to visit with Geronimo’s Native American adviser. The old man listened with bright eyes as they told him how Geronimo had died—a brave warrior, unafraid and proud.
“We’ll miss him,” Boomer told the old man. “He was a good friend.”
“There’s no need,” the man said in a voice filled with strength. “His spirit lives and travels alongside you. And alongside those who will follow you.”
“The only thing following us these days are flies,” Rev. Jim said.
The old man smiled and nodded. “No one chooses their road,” he said. “Especially the brave.”
When he got back to New York, Boomer headed straight for Mrs. Columbo’s house. He sat at the small kitchen table across from her husband and son. He pulled her shield from his pocket and handed it to young Frank.
“She’d want you to keep this for her,” Boomer said to the boy.
Frank held the badge and stared at it. “It’s all she cared about,” he said, his voice choking. “Being a cop.”
“You’re wrong about that,” Boomer said. “She cared about you. A lot.”
“Did you love her?” Frank asked, looking up from his mother’s shield.
“Yes,” Boomer said, looking right back.
“Did she love you?”
“Yes,” Boomer said. “But not in the way you’re thinking. Not in the way she loved your father.”
“What way, then?” Frank asked.
“She loved me for what I did,” Boomer said. “She loved your dad for who he was. There’s a big difference.