Down Here

discharged.”

“The wounds—”

“—are bullshit,” he finished for me. “He got hit three times. Front of the right thigh, upper left arm, and right shoulder.”

“That could still be—”

“—with a fucking twenty-five,” he said. “What does that tell you?”

“Nothing by itself.”

“You don’t want to say, a twenty-five, that’s a woman’s gun, right? Well, it’s also a punk’s gun. Little piece- of-shit nothing, make a Saturday Night Special look like a Glock. Street Crimes probably confiscates more Raven twenty-fives a year than all the other pieces put together. Anyway, they got the bullets out like pulling a bad tooth, big deal. Cocksucker won’t even be walking with a limp.”

“The coma was a fake?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” the cop said, a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. “I don’t think so, from what I heard. But this part is gospel—Wychek’s scared. Big scared. Demanding a police guard, the whole works.”

“Scared Wolfe’s going over the wall at Rikers, swim to the Bronx, steal a car, pick up a real gun this time, and hunt him down at the hospital?” I said, not a trace of sarcasm in my voice.

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” he said, showing me his street roller’s stare. “Look, I don’t have a lot of time; I’m supposed to be on a case in the Jamaica courthouse at nine—not that the fucking pussy ADA is ever on time himself—so listen up. For right now, the DA’s going along with it. You understand what I’m telling you? Full police guard. Why? Because the official story is that Wolfe’s put out a contract on him.”

“Yeah, that’d be smart,” I said. “Believe me, if there’s one person in this city who wants that scumbag alive, it’s Wolfe. Davidson’s going to dice and slice him so bad on the stand, the case will never get to the jury.”

“I’m not arguing,” the cop said. “Something else is going on. I just don’t know what. But him not being in a coma anymore, that’s worth something, right?”

“How much?” I said, slipping my hand inside my jacket.

Sands’ eyes snapped into violence. One of his big fists clenched. When he spoke, his voice was tightly constricted, like an overwound spring.

“Listen, pal. You don’t know me. And I don’t know you. So I’m going to be real fucking patient. This once. I meant, worth something to Wolfe. You think I don’t go way back with her? You think I don’t know what a filthy little maggot this Wychek is? How many rapes he got away with because, in this whole stinking town, only Wolfe had the stones to take the case to trial, even when it wasn’t a slam-dunk?”

I nodded, not affirming his connection to Wolfe, just the truth he spoke about her. When Wolfe was running City-Wide, if there had been any damn way to bring the other victims in, she would have done it.

“I know something else, too,” he said, leaning even closer. “That ‘Ha ha!’ letter he sent Wolfe? He must have sent other ones, too. ’Cause that’s the kind of fucking degenerate filth he is. You want to know who really tried to kill him, that’s where you start.”

“Where would I get—”

“Been nice meeting you,” the cop said, holding out his hand for me to shake. “Maybe I’ll see you around sometime. You ever go out to Platinum Pussycats? The strip joint, out by JFK?”

“No,” I said, arranging my face into a mute question, as I palmed the piece of paper he had slipped to me.

“Ah, you can’t miss it,” he said. “It’s behind that giant storage-unit place they have out there.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, in a dismissive voice. “Anything you want me to tell—?”

“Anything I want to tell her, she already knows,” the cop said.

As I was walking back over to my place, the cell phone in my pocket rang.

“What?” I answered.

“Got your message.” Davidson’s voice. “Nice work. I’ll have her out by—”

“There’s new stuff,” I said. “Call me as soon as you get her sprung, so we can meet.”

I was starting to feel the fatigue knocking at all my doors by then, but I had to pick up whatever the cop had in that storage locker, and do it fast. If he was being straight, if he really was with Wolfe, I couldn’t leave him hanging out there, exposed. And if it was a trap, if they had a camera on the unit so they could get a look at the members of Wolfe’s crew, I couldn’t turn the job over to Pepper.

The Prof and Clarence were probably back in their crib, over in East New York. Which was kind of on the way to the airport, if I took Atlantic Avenue all the way through Brooklyn into Queens. But with the key in my hand, I didn’t need the Prof for the locks. And this had to be a no-guns deal, which meant Clarence wasn’t coming.

The Mole was all the way up in the South Bronx. But even if he’d lived close by, he wouldn’t be the man for this job—his idea of personal protection is heavy explosives. And I still wasn’t sure where Michelle was.

But Max’s place was off Division Street, and I knew everybody in his house would be awake.

I liberated my Plymouth, drove over to the warehouse where Max has his dojo on one floor and his family home on the next. I probed until I found the hidden switch that raised the metal doors to the loading bay, drove inside, and closed it behind me.

By then, I knew Max was watching, from somewhere. As I got out, a dark shape vaulted over the second- floor railing, dropping next to me as lightly as a Kleenex on velour.

Max. Not showing off, showing up.

I started to gesture out what we had to do, but he held one finger in the air for silence, then used it to point upstairs before he flowed his hands together in a prayerful gesture. I took a quick glance at my watch, to tell him we didn’t have a lot of time, and then I followed him upstairs.

“Burke!” the teenage girl shouted, as she ran to me. Flower, the only child of Max and his wife, Immaculata.

The girl slammed into me like a linebacker making a goal-line stop, knocking me back a few feet as I held on to her. “Hey, kiddo,” I said. “Easy!”

She stood on her toes, gave me a messy kiss on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so used to Daddy.”

“Daddy?”

“That is what she persists in calling her father lately,” Immaculata said, her voice mock-severe. “Flower’s manners have suffered greatly, now that she is so grown up.”

“Mom!”

“You see?” Immaculata smiled at me. She turned to her beautiful, glowing daughter. “Have you invited your uncle Burke to come into our home, child? To sit down? To share our breakfast with us?”

“Aaaargh!” the girl said, rolling her eyes. She stepped back a couple of paces, bowed formally, said, “Uncle, please come into our home and share our meal with us. We would be honored.”

“It would be my honor,” I said, bowing back.

Max regarded his wife and daughter with his standard mixture of stunned amazement and fierce love.

Immaculata was in a plum-colored robe heavily brocaded with silver. Her hair was tied in a chignon. Her daughter was wearing pink jeans and a black sweatshirt that came almost to her knees. Her hair was pulled into three pigtails, with two on the right.

We all sat around the teak table with rosewood inlays that the family used for all its meals. I don’t know what was in the eggs Immaculata served, but they tasted wonderful.

“Drink,” she said, putting a glass of some ginger-colored stuff she had just mixed up in front of me. “For energy.”

“Thank you,” I said, not remotely surprised that she could tell I needed it.

Max disappeared. Came back in a few seconds with a framed document of some kind.

“Oh my god!” Flower exclaimed, dramatically.

I took the document from Max, read through the glass. Flower’s PSAT scores. Verbal: 80. Math: 78. Writing: 80. Spending all that time with teenagers last year had schooled me enough to understand that those scores, coupled with Flower’s school activities, made her a mortal lock for a National Merit Scholarship.