“You’re kiddin’ me.”
“No, Jimmy, that’s him. The stork couldn’t have done a better job of delivering him. Now all I’ve gotta figure out is whether it’s better to take him before or after.”
“Before or after what?”
“He makes his connection. He’s going to score drugs.”
“How do you know that?”
“Never mind how I know it. I just do.”
I followed well behind him for a few blocks and decided it was better to take him before he scored than after. Before allowed me to use Martyr’s own sickness to pressure him. Jimmy wouldn’t even have to do a thing except keep him in the car while I questioned him. If we took him afterwards, things could get a little more complicated. Once he bought the skag, it was the prospect of getting caught carrying narcotics by two nasty-dispositioned cops- hey, I wasn’t going to tell him otherwise-and the prospect of jail time that would work the bad magic on him. But sometimes, if the connection and the user were cozy enough, the junkie would shoot up in the dealer’s place. No, before was better.
Then, just as I put my foot down on the accelerator to catch up to Martyr, he stopped, turned, walked down the steps of a non-descript two-family house and disappeared through the basement apartment door. So much for taking too much time for deliberate thought. Now we only had one option open to us and that was to wait until he came back out. I wasn’t about to bust into the basement and play Cops and Robbers: The Drug Bust Edition. Dealers had a lot to protect, including their lives, their stashes, and their money. That meant they usually had security in the form of hired help or guns or dogs: sometimes all three, but at least one or two. And as the minutes went by, I knew he was doing his business in the dealer’s apartment.
About a half hour later, Nathan Martyr floated up the stairs and back onto the street. While he didn’t look the picture of health, it was clear he’d gotten healthy. His zombie walk was now airy and free, the shackles off his ankles. I waited until he turned the corner and passed by an old church and an adjacent schoolyard. We were on him before he knew what was happening and we dragged him into the back of the dark playground.
I stuck my badge in his face and Jimmy shoved him to the ground. “Nathan Martyr, you’re under arrest.” I put my old cuffs tightly around his wrists. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one, one will be provided for you. Do you understand these rights?”
The asshole actually started humming “Singing In The Rain.”
I patted him down and sure enough, he had an ounce, maybe two, of powder packaged in a knotted red balloon in his right front pocket.
“That’s a lot of weight, Nathan,” I said, cocky as could be.
He stopped humming long enough to tell me to go fuck myself.
Using one hand, Jimmy yanked Martyr up in the air by his wrists, and the asshole squealed in agony. Even at his junkie weight, getting lifted up that way must have felt like his arms were being ripped off his body. I shed no tears.
When Jimmy put him back down, I asked, “What did you say to me?”
“I said go fuck yourself, but what I should have said was good evening, Mr. Prager.”
Talk about stopping the show. I didn’t bother trying to plug ahead. He had me. I knelt down, uncuffed him, and helped stand him up. I held on to his heroin. It was the last card I had to play.
“The doorman, that asshole ex-cop, he showed you my picture,” I said.
“Not two minutes after you left, he buzzed me and told me to come to the lobby, that he had something I might want to take a look at. Thompson’s a dick, but he knows how to make tips and do his job.”
“Yeah, well, you got me, but I got this.” I held the balloon up and dangled it. He made a weak stab at snatching it away from me, but he was hopelessly slow. “Good thing you didn’t get it,” I said, “because then my only option would be to let my partner here have his way with your scrawny, pitiful ass and he’d make you hurt a lot more than you were hurting a half hour ago.”
As if on cue, Jimmy brought his big paw down on Martyr’s shoulder. He collapsed like a three-legged card table.
“Hey, man, there’s no need for that. Just tell me what you want and maybe we can come to some understanding,” he said, surprisingly little fear in his voice.
“I want your mailing list and I want all the data your webmaster has gathered about incoming emails, etc. I want-”
“Chill, Prager,” he said, rubbing his wrists. “That’s no way to negotiate.”
“Negotiate?”
“I want! I want! I want! Didn’t your mother teach you that saying I want won’t get you what you want? It’s pretty obvious what you want. You want to know which one of the people that visit my blog and site are sick enough to have abducted that little cunt Sashi Bluntstone.”
The next thing I knew, I was pulling Jimmy Palumbo’s fingers from around Martyr’s throat. Jimmy got up, but Martyr stayed down.
“That won’t get it done either, Prager,” he rasped. He sat up, resting on an arm outstretched behind him. “You don’t need to sort through all the shit you’d get from my webmaster. It’s already been over three weeks. Time’s running out on little Sashi. Tick… tick… tick…” He tapped his skull. “I have the names you want right here.”
“You motherfucker! I’m gonna-”
This time Jimmy grabbed me and held me back. “Don’t be stupid,” he said. “Listen to this prick and let’s get out of here.”
“I’m okay.” Jimmy let me go and I asked Martyr, “What do you want?”
“First thing I want is a gesture of good faith,” Martyr said, pointing at the balloon, which was lying on the ground near Jimmy Palumbo’s feet.
“I’ll think about it. What else?”
“I want her last painting.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What?”
“You heard me,” he said, standing up, brushing himself off. “I want the last painting she was working on.”
“Why?”
“Because the little bitch is probably dead and the last thing she worked on will be worth a fortune.”
I wanted to rip this guy’s head off. Jimmy did too. I think anyone would have, but I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood and continued as calmly as I could. “But you hate her and her work.”
“But I love money. I love it best of all. What, you think art is for art’s sake? Don’t be a rube, Prager. It’s a commodity like gold or oil or pork bellies. And just like those things, art has no inherent value. It’s about what the market will bear. You think when I kick that all the assholes who delight in pissing on my stuff now won’t be clamoring for a piece of it? Sure I hate that little twat and her awful smears and finger paintings, but I want one and I hope she’s-”
Jimmy Palumbo slapped Martyr so hard it split his lip. I thought the junkie’s body would snap in two. I couldn’t blame Jimmy, but I didn’t want to have to answer for manslaughter charges either. I stepped between Jimmy and Martyr.
“That’s it! Stop. Enough. You, back off!” I pointed at Jimmy. “Here, toss me the balloon.” He did so, if not enthusiastically. “And you,” I said, picking Martyr up in pieces off the playground, “keep your fucking mouth shut for two minutes. I’m gonna give you your drugs back and I’ll get you that painting, but it’ll be a day or two at least. First, I want one name and an address as a sign of good faith.”
His right cheek was scraped and bleeding, his left swollen from where Jimmy’s hand had landed, but Nathan Martyr smiled and looked at me with an odd mixture of contempt and pity. “You want a name? All right, Prager, I’ll give you a name: Sonia Barrows-Willingham. Now give me my medicine.”
“Sonia Barrows-Willingham… I know that name from somewhere,” I said, still gripping the red balloon in my fist. “Does she visit your website?”
“No, Prager, but she’s the one with the most to gain if little missy winds up dead.”
“Who is-”
