Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [6]
Three of Boomer’s seven partners died in the line of duty, each working by his side.
The majority of cops go through their entire careers never pulling gun from holster. Boomer was not one of those. He viewed his job under a bright, unmistakable moral light. To him, it was all a battle for turf. The dealers were foreign invaders. The more of them who went down, the safer it would be for a man heading to work, looking to keep a family fed and warm.
The truth be known, he enjoyed his dance with death. And that made him the deadliest type of cop to have on the street, the kind who never thinks he will live long enough to see a pension. In his years on the force, plainclothes and detective, Boomer had been involved in fourteen serious shootouts, half a dozen knifings, and hundreds of street fights. Once, his car was machine-gunned to pieces while he sat in his favorite Italian restaurant, eating a plate of pasta with red clam sauce.
“You just going to sit there and let them do that to your car?” asked his date, Andrea, a dark-haired detective working out of a Brooklyn fingerprint unit.
“It was my car,” Boomer said, wiping his pasta plate with a chunk of Italian bread. “Sold it to Pete Lucas over in Vice a couple of days ago.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
Boomer sipped from a glass of red wine and looked through the window at the shell of what had started the evening as a shiny Impala.
“To keep up his insurance payments,” Boomer said.
• • •
BOOMER FRONTIERI NEVER stopped working. Maybe it was because he had nothing else in his life. Maybe it was the feeling of power he got when he walked into a dark bar and every criminal eye turned his way. It could also have been the nods and smiles he garnered from the working people of the tough, put-upon neighborhoods he made it his business to clean up. Whatever it was, Boomer Frontieri was never far removed from the streets, always minutes from his next bust, doing all he could to cause havoc in the pursuit of civil peace.
In between, he always managed to make time for a little fun.
• • •
“I DON’T KNOW if I can do this,” the informant said, standing in the darkened vestibule, Boomer by his side.
“Do what?” Boomer said, his eyes farther up the corner, checking out a small circle of dealers. “Point out a friend?”
“They find out it’s me that whispered them out and they gonna smoke me for sure,” the informant said.
“You showing up at that job I got you?” Boomer asked, eyes still searching faces.
“That job sucks,” the informant said. “It’s long and hard and don’t pay for shit.”
“It puts money in your pockets and keeps you out of Rikers,” Boomer said. “That’s all your mother gives a shit about. Now, cut the chatter and let me have the dealer.”
The informant hesitated, his feet shifting nervously back and forth.
“Guy in black,” he finally said.
“They’re all in black,” Boomer pointed out.
“One with the panama hat,” the informant said. “He’s always got pockets full of change. Jiggles ’em all the time. Thinks it’s funny.”
“He got a name?”
“His boys call him Padrone,” the informant said. “Don’t know his real catch.”
“Disappear,” Boomer said, leaving the vestibule and heading down the front steps.
He walked down the street, one hand at his side, the other holding an old New York Telephone meter. It was thick, black, and heavy. It had a reading on it, running from green to red, with a white button at its center. A squeeze of the button and a thin black needle would move from the green area to the red.
The six men, huddled in a circle, turned still as stone the minute they spotted him.
“Five-O on the block,” one said. Five-O was the current street code for narc,