needed to do was call it a crime in progress.
Yet there was one witness, Tully. He'd seen the whole thing, and by now the old man had pieced it together clearly enough in his mind that he'd provide the necessary details. And with the younger kid squealing so loudly, no one would be any the wiser. Still, Sincebaugh wondered: How did I know? Was it their movements? Their clothes? Their eyes? A combination of all of it? Or did it just come with years of experience on the force, a second sight or blue sense as some called it? Was it any different from the second sight which Dr. Kim Desinor purported to both have and control, or was there an intrinsic difference?
Again he was reminded of Vietnam and how he had survived capture while better men had succumbed to an eternity there.
Ben deYampert was almost home from Little League practice with his kids when he heard the radio call come over, instantly alert, recognizing his partner's involvement. It was as though Alex had gone out looking for trouble and found it, like he was playing James Arness in Gun smoke or something. Son of a bitch is just spoiling for trouble with Landry and the brass. It figured with all the anger he'd been bottling up inside and no place to loosen the cork. Something had to give.
Ben rushed his kids home and didn't stop for so much as a biscuit or a kiss from Fiona, shouting that he had to take an emergency call. He heard one of his kids telling his wife it had something to do with Uncle Alex.
Ben hadn't taken time to change out of his sweat-soaked coach's uniform. He worried the entire nine and a half miles through traffic to the scene, his siren blaring atop the family van.
Was Alex flat on his back, a bullet hole in him? Would he be hauled off in an ambulance before Ben could get there? Was he critical? What was going on? Nobody seemed to know.
Alex was a good partner and a fine man, someone Ben had confided in over the years, a man whose opinion he'd sought in all things, from purchasing his first home, to speaking to a divorce lawyer, to his daughter's taste in guys. They'd partnered together for so long, they'd become what cops calleid an old married couple. Ben had picked Alex as his partner after Alex's last partner, Keith Tyler, had been killed in a running gun battle, the wound opening up a grapefruit-sized hole in Tyler's head thanks to a single cop-killer bullet used by the backwater creeps that Alex and Tyler had gone after.
Some said that Alex, in those days, had a death wish, and that Tyler's death was the result, that it was somehow on Alex's head, due to his irresponsibility, but Ben didn't believe it, and when he visited Alex in the hospital, he was doubly sure. Alex had taken two hits behind a Kevlar vest, but Alex had also taken out the men who had killed his partner, a pair of wild-eyed drug dealers. Ben greatly admired his partner and while Alex confided very little, Ben often found himself confiding a great deal, about his kids, his wife, problems at home, money woes, almost everything.
Now he greatly feared for Sincy. No news was coming over the radio. No one could tell him what was going down, what had happened, nothing.
He raced demon like to the scene.
“ You son of a bitch, Alex! You'd better be okay!”
When his van couldn't get past the congested street filled with police cars, their strobes menacing the night, Ben leapt from the passenger seat and raced the half block remaining, huffing and out of breath before stopping just outside the big plate-glass window of the coffee shop and staring in, seeing that Alex was alive and well and calmly going over the shooting with Internal Affairs detectives inside. Ben took a deep breath and pushed through the door.
“ What the hell happened, Alex?”
“ Little simple armed robbery attempt's all.”
“ This camera operating?” asked one of the IAD officers.
“ Sure… sure,” said the old man, Tully. “We got the whole thing on video! I shoulda thunk of it myself. Now youse guys'll hafta see we're tellin' it just the way it happened. Right, Alex? Wonder if that I-Witness Video or maybe The Crusaders program would be interested in this?”
Alex realized only too late that he'd painted himself into a corner.
“ Who knows, Tully.” Alex's reply came out flat and heartless, his fear of the tape rising in his constricted throat. He could only hope that the angle was with him, shielding his and the kid's hands.
The IAD cop, a thin and sallow man with no upper lip named Hanson, asked Tully for a ladder. Ben sensed the sudden uneasiness in his partner.
“ You guys got what you want?” Ben barked at the IAD men.
The other IAD man grumbled that they did, for now. “Then I'm going to buy the lieutenant here a drink. So, if you don't mind?”
The IAD guy on the ladder fumbled about with the camera's mechanism near the ceiling. Finally, the machine released the tape, freeing the two IAD cops to leave. Hanson rushed out ahead of his partner, an even younger guy who gave Alex and Ben a sophomoric grin and a big thumbs-up sign, saying, “Looks like a good collar, Detective; fairly simple, cut and dried. We'll just file our reports. Say, aren't you the two guys who're on the trail of the Heart- Taker? Some disgusting creep, huh? Boy, what I'd pay to be in your shoes; real police work.
This crap with IAD is driving my balls numb.”
Alex and Ben exchanged a knowing look. Most IAD guys were so young and inexperienced because no cop wanted such duty, and so the NOPD had taken to putting its best and brightest and most recently finished Academy types directly into Internal Affairs. That way no one knew them and they had no conflicts of interest, or so the thinking went. Of course, the Department was losing in the long run.
Big Ben nodded, smiled at the clean-shaven kid and said, “Maybe some day, kid. What's your name?”
“ Hirschenfeldt, sir.”
“ We'll keep you in mind when something comes open, Hirsch-felt, how's that?”
Alex turned into the booth where most of his newspapers still lay, trying to hide the uncontrollable laughter erupting volcano like at Ben's nasty little tease.
The IAD guy was all wide-eyed and smiling now, stumbling for the door like a lovesick suitor who'd just asked his secret love to go to the dance with him and been surprised with an acceptance.
“ Terrific…wow,” he sputtered, “great… really…” He backed from the coffee shop, the bell announcing his departure.
Ben immediately turned to Alex. “Now, you want to tell your fat, old wife what the fuck happened here, Sincy?”
16
… after they have… lost all this fear, they are so artless and so free with all they possess… Of anything they have, if you ask them for it they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts.
Ben deYampert telephoned his wife Fiona, letting her know that all was well and that he and Alex were going to have a few beers and he'd be straight home from there. Ben insisted on taking Alex to a nearby tavern, a place called Maxine's, where the music was country and western, the clientele generally down on their luck and toasting to better days. Alex recognized the neighborhood-fairly seedy, the streets lined with shops of every size and stripe, signs littering the doorways and windows as far as the eye could see, all vying for attention and gaining none, save maybe the Root Mon's store. Root Heaven. Alex pointed it out to Ben as they were entering Maxine's, and together they laughed at the memory associated with Root Heaven.
Once inside and sipping dark Guinness beer, Alex asked Big, “You remember the call we got on that place?”
Ben laughed heartily. “ 'I know where the hearts are bein' kept. And I know what they're doin' with 'em!' Slow down, lady, I told her. She almost busted a gut having to give me her name. Never did get an honest answer to that one.”
