Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [63]
Junior’s eyes turned to rocks and the muscles around his jaw clenched. “What is that?” he said, his voice cold, his body taut. “What do you think I am, Malcolm?”
Malcolm was quick to sense the abrupt change in Junior’s body temperature, and he had heard enough street talk about his flash temper to know that he could easily be left for dead with a half-finished papaya cup in his hand.
“You a businessman, Junior,” Malcolm said, showing off his sweetest smile. “That’s what you are. A businessman. One of the smartest around.”
Junior tossed his empty cup into a trash bin to his left. The tension in his body eased, his shoulders relaxed, and a soft look returned to his eyes. “Okay, then,” Junior said. “Let’s you and me do us some business.”
“What time?”
Junior flicked his wrist and checked his Rolex. He was tall and solid, his body pumped by a personal trainer three mornings a week in a chic downtown gym. He was in his early twenties and had a handsome, unlined face topped by a mane of thick, blond, designer-cut hair, gelled straight back. He wore only expensive imported clothes bought and paid for by an indulgent mother he saw less than five times a year.
“You in a hurry to make the drop?” Junior asked Malcolm, resting a five on the countertop. “Or you want some more time to be with your girl?”
“Can’t ever have enough time with somethin’ as sweet as I found,” Malcolm said, watching the teen replace the five with two-fifty in change and Junior turn his back on it.
“Anytime after seven, then,” Junior said over his shoulder as he walked slowly toward the stairs that would take him out of the Times Square station and into the street. “And clean her up before you bring her over.”
“I’ll scrub the soap on her myself, Junior,” Malcolm said, smiling at the teen and pocketing the change that was left behind. “Bring her by clean and fresh as a newborn baby.”
• • •
BOOMER SHOVED HIS shield into the doorman’s face and put an index finger to his shaky lips.
“Billings,” Boomer said. “Floor and number.”
“Sixteen A,” the doorman said, sweat starting to form around the edges of his cap. “But he’s not there. He’s out.”
“Got a key?” Boomer asked.
“Super has all the keys,” the doorman said. “He lives around the corner, first apartment after the mailboxes.”
“Go tell him you need the key to 16A,” Boomer said. “Tell him the tenant locked himself out, you’ll have it back to him in a few minutes.”
“What if he doesn’t believe me?” the doorman asked.
“Then you tell him there’s a crazy cop out here with a gun just burnin’ to put a hole in his chest,” Dead-Eye said.
“Go ahead, kid,” Boomer told the still-shaking doorman, putting his shield back in his pocket. “Convince him. We’ll watch the desk while you’re gone. My friend here’s in the business.”
• • •
BOOMER AND DEAD-EYE stood behind a circular mahogany desk, staring down at a series of camera banks covering the building and elevators from all angles and a three-unit computerized phone system.
“Most of the doorman buildings have setups like this?” Boomer asked, clicking the cameras on at different locations.
Dead-Eye nodded. “The ones with money do. This system’s pretty new. Can’t be more than a year old. Guy working the desk controls the elevator. You tell him the floor, he hits the button from here.”
“So you can get off only at the floor he presses,” Boomer said.
“Cuts down on break-ins,” Dead-Eye said. “And you can clock who went to what floor at what time.”
“It work both ways?” Boomer asked. “Up and down?”
“Just coming in. When you leave the apartment is still your business. It’s when you enter that everybody knows.”
“What the guy at the desk doesn’t know, these cameras do,” Boomer said, running a hand across the monitors. “Every corner’s covered.”
“It’s like that in the building I work,” Dead-Eye said. “I can tell you who throws out his trash and when they do it.”
“Anything happens up there with Junior,” Boomer said, “we make sure it happens inside the apartment. Last thing we want