Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [143]
“I don’t see it,” Frank said.
“You don’t have to see it now,” Boomer said, standing. “But one day you will. And I hope I’m around when you do.”
• • •
THEY HAD RETURNED to the predictable boredom of their everyday lives.
Dead-Eye was back on doorman duty, working a building on East Sixty-fifth Street In his free time he played catch with Eddie and took long drives with his wife.
Rev. Jim went into construction, taking charge of the crew Nunzio had hired to rebuild Pins’s bowling alley. The old man thought he could turn it into an afternoon retreat for the neighborhood kids.
Boomer busied himself with daytime stops at movies, museums, and libraries. His nights, as always, were spent at Nunzio’s.
• • •
DEAD-EYE MOVED A knight against one of Rev. Jim’s rooks, swiping it from the board.
“That’s it?” Boomer said. “Fifteen minutes you stare and wait and that’s what you do?”
“Couldn’t get to his queen,” Dead-Eye explained.
“People in comas have more laughs,” Boomer muttered.
Nunzio walked over, dragging a chair, holding a cup of coffee.
“There’s a call for you,” he told Boomer, sitting down to watch the game. “Before you take it, tell me who’s ahead here. I don’t want to break into their concentration.”
“If you get an answer,” Boomer said, “I’ll buy dinner for the table.”
“I’m winning,” Dead-Eye said.
“I’ll have the steak special,” Rev. Jim added.
Boomer pushed his chair back and headed for the phone by the bar.
“Who is it?” he asked Nunzio.
“Wouldn’t say.”
“Why not?”
Nunzio shrugged. “Maybe he’s shy.”
Boomer came back to the table in less than five minutes. There was a glow to his face and in his eyes. Dead-Eye, Rev. Jim, and Nunzio all stared over at him.
“You gonna tell us?” Dead-Eye asked. “Or do we play another game?”
“How much longer till you finish this one?” Boomer asked.
“We can stop anytime,” Rev. Jim said. “If we’ve got a good reason.”
“Wanna take a ride with me?” Boomer asked.
“Where to?” Dead-Eye said.
“See a guy who’s in a little trouble,” Boomer said. “He thinks maybe we can help.”
Boomer looked at his three friends, and, as the smiles formed on their faces, he nodded.
“I ain’t ever gonna get that doorman’s pension,” Dead-Eye said, pushing the chessboard aside.
“Maybe they’ll let you keep the suit,” Rev. Jim said, reaching for his cap. “It looks good on you.”
Nunzio sat at the table and watched the Apaches walk out of his restaurant into the frigid afternoon of a winter’s day. He watched them leave to be what they had always been.
Cops.
LORENZO CARCATERRA is the author of Chasers, Paradise City, Street Boys, Gangster, A Safe Place, and the New York Times bestseller Sleepers. He has written scripts for movies and television, and has worked as a writer and producer for Law & Order. Learn more about his work at www.LorenzoCarcaterra.com.
Apaches is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
2005 Ballantine Books Mass Market Edition
Copyright © 1997 by Lorenzo Carcaterra
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1997.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc., and Harold Ober Associates Incorporated for permission to reprint “Fantasy in Purple” from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. Copyright © 1994 by the estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf and Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.
eISBN: 978-0-307-75650-3
www.ballantinebooks.com
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Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Book One