Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [84]
Rev. Jim still needed three more skin-graft operations and many months of physical therapy. Even then there would be no promise of relief. On some nights, long past final call, lying in an empty bed, inside a cold apartment, Rev. Jim would stare up at the ceiling and wonder why he was even alive at all. It would be so easy on those nights to open his desk drawer, take out his .38, and swallow a bullet. Instead, he would reach for the cardboard box he kept under the bed. He would open its flaps and empty its contents on the sweat-stained sheets: his graduation photo from the Police Academy; a replica of his shield; a handful of colored ribbons; three folded citations for bravery; and the knife he had used to kill the dealer who murdered his mother. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep him alive.
Rev. Jim kept his eyes on Boomer. He realized why the call had been made. Boomer knew he still wanted to be a cop. Still wanted to be a man. Scars and all.
• • •
“WE’RE NOT WALKING into this blind,” Boomer said.
“That’s the one thing we’re missing,” Pins said. “A blind guy.”
“We’ve all got the connections,” Boomer said. “Federal and local are covered solid. We can pull files, run taps, have computer access. And on the other end Nunzio will hook us into the old wise guys. They hand us what the feds can’t. Everything we need is a phone call away.”
“Why is everybody going to be so eager to help us?” Mrs. Columbo asked.
“They want Lucia to go down as bad as we do,” Boomer said. “But they have to go by the book. Our book was taken away. In their own way, the real cops are just as disabled as we are. Maybe more.”
“What if we don’t get killed?” Dead-Eye asked. “What if we just get caught?”
“Jail time ain’t a sweet time for a cop,” Rev. Jim said, taking a match from his mouth and putting it back in his shirt pocket.
“We keep a book,” Boomer said. “Fill it with the names of everyone who helps us—from a cop who drops a dime on a guy to an A.D.A. making a few copies of a confidential file.”
“We get pinched, we show the district attorney the book,” Dead-Eye said.
“We show him a copy of the book,” Boomer said. “Tell him there are at least six others floating around. That should give him something to worry about.”
“It’s like Allstate,” Nunzio said. “An insurance policy.”
Everyone either laughed or smiled at Nunzio’s crack.
Except for Pins.
He held his worried look. Pins didn’t think he belonged there, just like he didn’t belong in many of the places he’d been in his life. He knew why he was asked. That end was easy to figure. The group would need somebody good with a wire, and it wouldn’t have taken Boomer long, after asking around, to end up looking his way. But this was a hard group, used to heavy action, not afraid to empty a clip inside a crowded room. And that just wasn’t a road Pins traveled down.
The only thing he shared with the cops who sat around the table was a damaged body. He might not have been in as much pain as some of the others, but the confident man who had walked into the wrong apartment less than two years before was long gone. In his place was someone with several vital organs that had been shredded by three bullets. That someone had mended slowly, working his lung capacity to the point where he could once again take deep breaths with only minimal amounts of pain. His right arm was numb from the elbow down, and he suffered from constant migraines, popping as many as five Butalbital tablets a day to ease the pressure. Pins collected his disability pension,