Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [9]
Boomer squeezed his street informants. He spread out photos of the suspects to all the hookers who trusted him, the ones he kept off the paddy wagon in return for a tip. He had coffee with organized crime members, mutual respect spread across the table, both sides calling a temporary halt to their separate struggles. He went to see the ministers of the black churches in the neighborhoods he worked, banking on their friendship for answers to a horror that plagued all.
He hit the streets and banged around dealers and pimps, roughed up the chicken hawks and seedy flesh peddlers, tossed Miranda out a nearby window, and let fists and fear take him to where he needed to go.
It was his search for the black extremists that, in 1980, led Boomer to a Brooklyn tenement, where his back was to the wall, gun drawn, flak vest under his black leather jacket. He had a .38 caliber cocked in one hand and a .44 semiautomatic in the other. He tilted his head toward a red wooden door only inches away. Across from him was another detective, Davis “Dead-Eye” Winthrop. Boomer nodded at his partner and smiled. Winthrop smiled back. Boomer didn’t know much about the man other than that Winthrop was twenty-seven, black, had lost a partner two years earlier in a botched buy-and-bust, had won the NYPD marksmanship award three years running, and was always eager to go through the door first. In Boomer’s book, that gave Winthrop points for guts and incentive, but shooting at wooden targets on a grassy field wasn’t the same as a shoot-out in a one-bedroom apartment, lights blown out, six gunmen with nothing to lose on the other side.
A normal cop would have been on the talkie asking for backup. Boomer hated backup. He felt it lessened the odds in his favor. Cops are usually the worst shooters around, most of them lucky enough to get off a couple of rounds in the general direction of the perp. More likely to kill those with badges than the guys without. If Winthrop was as good a shot as they said, he would be all that Boomer needed.
Behind the locked red door, Skeeter Jackson sat at a poker table filled with cash. The apartment was well furnished, with two of Skeeter’s men sleeping on a soft leather couch, guns resting across their chests. Three others were in the kitchen off the main room, one smoking dope, two munching on cold heros and drinking from bottles of Bud. Guns were spread across the table next to the cold cuts.
Skeeter was a dope courier working for Jimmy Hash’s gang in Bed-Stuy. His take alone was $15,000 a day. Seven days a week. Skeeter hadn’t even hit his twenty-first birthday and was already looking at a million-dollar haul.
In his free time, Skeeter Jackson shot young cops in the back, charging $500 for each bullet that pierced flesh. Boomer had known his name and reputation for a long time. A hooker on Nostrand Avenue had given him what he didn’t have—an address.
Boomer leaned across the door and crawled toward Dead-Eye.
“You want to put in a call for help, I understand,” Boomer whispered.
“How many in there?”
“They tell me six, all heavy,” Boomer said. “Probably got more bullets in their pockets than we’ve got in our guns.”
“So, what’s the problem?” Dead-Eye asked with a smile.
“Talk to you after the dance,” Boomer said.
He crawled back to his position against the wall, checked his watch, and signaled over to Dead-Eye.
One minute till the Fourth of July.
They went in with their guns drawn. Boomer came in high, his shoulder against the door, running right toward Skeeter, who stared back at him, stunned. In his hand was a wad of cash. Dead-Eye came in low, took a short roll into the foyer, and popped up on both legs, guns aimed at the two men on the couch. The three in the kitchen came out running, bites of sandwiches still crammed in their mouths. Their semis were pointed straight at the two cops.
Everyone held his place for what seemed