Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [8]
Boomer dated an assortment of women, staying with them long enough for companionship but never long enough to fall in love. Some were cops, a couple worked in bars he scouted, one was an ex-hooker now earning a living as a meter maid. There was even a college professor he helped clear on a marijuana bust. Of them all, the only woman Boomer Frontieri ever gave any thought to marrying was Theresa.
They met at a cookout at his sister’s home in Queens. She was tall and thin, had red hair flowing long down her back, and hazel eyes that twinkled mischievously from an unlined face. She worked in the check reconcilement department of a Wall Street branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank while taking night courses at St. John’s, crawling her way toward a business degree. They both spoke Italian, drank coffee with their pizza, and loved music but hated to dance.
She never asked about his work, or complained when he disappeared for days or canceled long-standing dates with last-minute calls. From the go, she understood the nature of his job. Boomer could relax around Theresa, put down his guard as easily as he would slide his gun inside a desk drawer. He felt safe, instinctively knowing she would never betray him and would always be honest with him, tell him what was in her heart whether he wanted to hear it or not. He knew life for a cop’s wife was, at best, difficult and lonely. But he trusted Theresa could handle that part. It was the other end of the table that troubled him, the steady gaze of death that hovered above him, the chill of a late night ringing phone or doorbell. It was there that his doubts rested.
• • •
“IT LOOKS BAD,” Theresa said to him, sitting on a plastic chair across from his hospital bed. Boomer looked back at her and smiled. His hands were bandaged, his chest wrapped tight, and his face marked with bruises, welts, and stitches, the results of a drug raid gone sour.
“Feels worse,” he said.
“Who’d you piss off?”
“My aunt Grade,” Boomer said, still smiling. “You ever meet her? She’s got some kind of a temper.”
“She’s got a knife too,” Theresa said, sadness touching her voice.
“It’s nothing,” Boomer reassured her. “Doctor says I can be out of here in two, maybe three days.”
“They arrest the guy who did it?”
Boomer stared at her through blurry eyes.
“They didn’t have to,” he said.
She nodded and didn’t talk about it anymore. But Boomer saw the look and knew that it was over. It lasted less than a second, and most men wouldn’t have noticed, but Boomer stayed alive reading faces, and he knew what this one reflected.
Theresa could handle the parts of the job that most women couldn’t, even his dying. But she could not get used to the fact that he would have to kill in order to stay alive. That would haunt her, keep her awake when he wasn’t there, make her shudder in her sleep on empty nights.
“It’s late,” he said to her. “You should get home. One of us has to get up early in the morning, and I know it’s not me.”
“Will it hurt if I kiss you?” she asked, standing. The force of her beauty now struck him as she stared down at him, less than a foot away. He knew he would never be this close to love again.
“It’ll hurt more if you don’t,” Boomer said.
She leaned down and they kissed for the last time.
• • •
IN 1978, A small but effective group of radical black extremists bent on overthrowing the government declared war on the cops of New York City. In a span of four weeks, six officers were chosen at random, then shot and killed in cold blood. It was open season