Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [35]
Jimmy nodded, checking the inside pocket of his tattered hunting jacket, making sure the dozen tapes were safely tucked away.
“Gonna miss having you here,” George said, holding a longneck bottle of beer.
“I have a gift for you,” Jimmy told George. “To thank you for what you did for me.”
“You kiddin’?” George rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You got me a gift?” He turned to Elaine, hitting her with a scornful gaze, then looked back at Jimmy with a smile.
Jimmy reached into his pocket and took out the set of tapes, neatly wrapped in flowered tissue paper and held together with a ribbon.
“Want me to open it now?” George asked, taking the package and holding it in both hands.
“Maybe you should wait,” Jimmy said, looking over at Elaine. “Until you’re by yourself.”
“Thank you,” George said, nodding his head. “I’ll never forget you doin’ this.”
Jimmy buttoned his coat and picked up his valise. “I know,” he said.
He walked past George and Elaine for the last time, toward the front door, a waiting car, and another set of parents.
• • •
THE WOMAN IN the red pumps knocked on the door to Room 1211, silver bracelet jangling against her wrist.
“It’s like she’s knockin’ on the front hood of the car,” Calise said. “It’s so damn clear.”
“Narcotics have their guys in place?” Jimmy asked, head down, fingers adjusting a series of sound dials.
“They got four in the next suite,” Fitz said. “And three more in a stairwell down the hall. She gets jammed up, should take less than a minute to get to her.”
“Unless they’re asleep,” Calise said. “Which is always fuckin’ possible with those dimrods.”
The door handle snapped open and a man’s voice warmly greeted the woman. He spoke in a thick Spanish accent.
“She’s in,” Jimmy said, sitting straight up and flipping a red switch on to full volume.
“How long you givin’ her?” Fitz said.
“All she needs,” Jimmy said. “These guys are top line. They’re gonna play her first. Make sure she’s legit before they close the deal.”
“What about her?” Calise asked. “How good is she?”
“I’ll let you know in about half an hour,” Jimmy said, putting the earphones back over his head.
• • •
AT SEVENTEEN, JIMMY Ryan did a two-year tour of duty with another foster family of sorts, the U.S. Army. While stationed in Germany, the dark-haired, coal-eyed Ryan was allowed to fuel his passion by working as an electronic surveillance trainee. The army brass was impressed with his ability to handle their most sophisticated equipment and asked him to stay on for an additional four years, promising him tours of Mexico and the Middle East. Ryan, bored and unimpressed with the military regimen and tired of spending weeks without being able to cast his electric gaze on a beautiful woman, took a pass and signed out.
He was in New York City, taking a two-week seminar on wiretapping at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, when he spotted a civil service flyer posted on a hall bulletin board. He ripped it down and signed up to take the New York Police Department exam. Six months later, working as a clerk for a small electronics firm on Queens Boulevard, Ryan got the letter that paved his way to becoming a cop.
He spent a dull sixteen months in uniform and then was transferred to the Manhattan Drug Task Force, working undercover, doing what he had prepared all his life to do—lay down wires, plant devices, and listen to the secrets of others. The assignment also freed Ryan from the uneasy potential for gunplay, the area of police work he cared for the least. He was a listener, content to skirt the perimeters of other people’s worlds, but never eager to enter any one of them.
There were more than enough guys on the squad who had become cops looking to play cowboy, feeding off the nerve rush of the split-second shoot-out. Jimmy Ryan, rugged and catalogue handsome, with a head of thick curly hair and a John Garfield smile, liked living on the outside, doing his police work from a safe distance. He carried only the one gun, the .38 Special, and had never