Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [55]
“I gave up the three.” Cleve was annoyed. “That’s all I can do for free.”
“This one won’t cost,” Boomer said, smiling. “It’s just a favor, Cleve.”
“What you need?” Cleve started to slow-step it toward the parked car and the waiting hookers. “But make it quick.”
“The name of your dentist,” Boomer said.
• • •
BOOMER PLACED THE sharp end of a pocket knife in the dealer’s ear. He had his left hand wrapped around the man’s throat, force-lifting him inches from the floor. The dealer was thin and bug-eyed with long, greasy black hair covering half his face.
They were inside an empty Port Authority men’s room, Dead-Eye leaning his back against the front door. The dealer’s glassy eyes veered from Boomer to Dead-Eye, trying to place the faces of the men who had yanked him without warning from the street and dragged him into the first open door they found.
“I know you guys ain’t dealers,” he said. “And I don’t think you’re cops.”
“We’re priests,” Dead-Eye said.
“And we’re willing to save your fucking soul,” Boomer said, lifting the dealer higher up against the side of the grimy wall. “So the only thinkin’ for you right now should be about how can I make these guys happy.”
“Take my works,” the dealer said, fear kicking his voice into a higher gear. “Got enough for ten, maybe twelve, easy, on the street.”
“You sell smack to a low-end run chaser calls himself X,” Dead-Eye said, pointing a finger toward the knife inside the dealer’s ear. “Give us his name, unless you want to spend the rest of your life reading lips.”
“You guys lookin’ for chicks, no problem, I can help you out,” the dealer said. “X is the best. He can find a fresh piece of fur in the desert.”
Boomer slid the edge of the knife across the side of the dealer’s ear, bringing a thin row of blood drops flowing down his neck. “You guys ain’t fuckin’ priests,” the dealer muttered.
Boomer squeezed his hand tighter against the man’s throat, muffling the sounds of pain, causing his eyes to bulge. “The name is all I wanna hear from you,” Boomer said. “We understand each other?”
The dealer nodded and Boomer lightened his grip. “Malcolm Juniper,” the dealer said. “We did a spin together up at Attica.”
“Where’s he sleep?” Dead-Eye asked, popping four Maalox tablets into his mouth.
“Here and there,” the dealer said. “No place steady. He’s only been loose a few weeks.”
“Where’s he sleeping tonight?” Boomer asked, wiping the knife blade on the sleeve of the dealer’s torn velvet jacket. Then he took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and handed it to the dealer. “Clean that blood off your ear,” he told him. “After you answer the question.”
“He’s been stayin’ at a park-and-lock on Thirty-ninth Street,” he said, putting the handkerchief next to his ear. “Put down enough for a four-day stay.”
“When?” Dead-Eye asked.
“Yesterday,” the dealer said. “Day before, maybe.”
“Don’t be wrong,” Boomer said.
He turned away from the dealer and walked toward Dead-Eye and the exit door, slipping the closed knife into his back pocket.
“You think I’m gonna need stitches for this cut?” the dealer asked, jabbing the blood-soaked handkerchief against his wound. “It feels pretty deep.”
“We ain’t doctors either,” Dead-Eye said as he closed the door behind him.
• • •
MALCOLM JUNIPER WAS twenty-seven years old and four weeks removed from a three-year spin at Attica prison on a rape and molestation conviction when he had spotted the teary-eyed girl from across the street. He smiled, took a hit off a joint, and turned the engine over on his cherry-red Chrysler Imperial. Ramming the gear stick into drive, he angled his way across the busy intersection, his glassy eyes barely aware of the traffic, smelling his prey.
“You look like you could use some help, sugar” were Malcolm’s first words to Jennifer Santori. He was leaning across the front seat, talking through an open window.
“I’m okay,” she managed to say. Jennifer stared at his scarred and chapped lips and the fingers of one hand that gripped the steering wheel.
“You okay, you wouldn’t be standing