“The cops don’t have Parker yet. That’s a fact. He fled the scene before the boys in blue showed up. This morning some towel head at a meat market called 911, claimed Parker stole a newspaper after threatening his sons. Cops’re combing the area, but they couldn’t find a doughnut if they fucking sat on it. Rumor has it since they killed a cop, the Feds will be called in soon.”
DiForio looked like he was about to swear, then held back. “Have they locked down the building on 105th yet?”
Blanket nodded. “Place is tighter than my old lady.”
“Fuck,” DiForio spat. It startled Blanket, this sudden loss of composure. DiForio rubbed his temples. “What are Parker’s outs?”
Blanket scratched the back of his neck and looked at Michael. “Well, Port Authority’s out of the question. There’s no way he’s buying a bus ticket out of New York without a thirty-eight going up his ass. Airports, not a chance. Guy’s a college grad, figure even nowadays that’s worth something, so he’s too smart to try and use a passport.”
“What else?”
Blanket coughed.
“The Path could be a tough one. They’re sending cops to cover entry points at 33rd and Union Square, but there’s a definite chance he could have made it to Jersey.” The Path was an underground train service running to and from New Jersey. It was as hard to monitor as the subway system and ran just as often. There were several stations in the city, and a constant, bustling stream of crowds. “The kid doesn’t have any relatives there, maybe some college friends, who knows. Definitely nobody who’d take a bullet or get sent to lockup for him.”
“He got a girlfriend?” DiForio asked. Blanket stayed silent. Michael stood up, pushing his chair back. Metal scraped against metal. His voice effortlessly thundered in the small room. “Blanket, does he have a girlfriend? Boyfriend? He like transvestites?”
“Actually, boss, I’m not sure about that yet. Cops’re checking phone records, my man at the 24th said he’ll tell me whatever they find, but they’re still looking. We’re not gonna know anything until they do.”
DiForio picked his chair up and heaved it across the room. A dozen pairs of eyes watched it fly over their heads and clang against the wall. Michael walked around the table and approached Blanket, his chest mere inches away.
Dom Loverro stood up. The man weighed three hundred, three-fifty easy. Body fat percentage hovering around ninety-five. He said, “Mike, you want us to take care of it? Find this prick Parker?”
DiForio looked at him with contempt. “If I need a fat asshole to walk up behind a deaf and dumb guy and hit him in the back of the head with a crowbar, I’ll let you know. I need to chase down a fugitive thirty years younger than us, something tells me I’ll need a guy who can see his toes.”
“Mike?” Blanket said.
“The package from that junkie shutterbug,” DiForio said. “Where is it?”
Blanket’s heart caught in his throat. He blinked rapidly, felt sweat leaking through his pores. “The cops don’t have it. It wasn’t at the scene.”
DiForio slowly turned around, taking two steps away from Blanket. Then in the blink of an eye, he spun around and slapped Blanket across the face.
Spit flew from his lips. He tasted salty blood, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, took it in stride.
“So, would you find it safe to say that since Luis Guzman doesn’t have my package, and the cops don’t have it yet, either…you see what I’m getting at you stupid fuck?”
Blanket spit a cluster of blood and phlegm onto the concrete. “Parker,” he said. “He must have taken it last night when he ran.”
DiForio nodded. “Blanket?”
“Yeah, boss?”
“Call the Ringer.”
Blanket felt a shiver, an electrical pulse, course through his body. A smile crept over his busted lip. He felt no pain, only a sense of satisfaction. At that moment, Blanket wouldn’t have traded places with Henry Parker for all the riches on earth.
10
Federal Plaza felt like 3:00 a.m. during a graveyard shift, everyone walking around like zombies. Many of the agents knew the man who died last night. And they were all looking to Joe Mauser to bring Henry Parker to justice.
Mauser banged open the office door. The younger agent, Leonard Denton, was already there. Clean shaven, smelled like a bottle of Drakkar Noir threw up all over him. Joe offered an imperceptible nod and sat down at the table. He sniffed, grimaced, the younger man’s aftershave reeking like holy hell. Hygiene be damned, Joe didn’t care much about anything at this point. Parker was still out there. Goddamn NYPD had the kid pinned like a rat and let him squirm away.
Leonard Denton had a squeaky clean rep in the department, squeaky to the point where people almost assumed he would flip out one day and go postal. He was efficient and by-the-book, admirable qualities. But being admired and having admirable qualities were two totally different animals. Denton requested this case for that very reason, to prove to the rank and file that he would take down a man who killed one of their own. When it came to tracking down a fugitive cop killer, you set the book on fire and laughed at it while it burned. And Mauser could tell from Denton’s face that the man was completely prepared to do that.
Denton had requested that he partner with Mauser. Joe obliged. This would be their first time working together. And as much as a longtime partner could bring familiarity to a case, Joe wanted to be kept on his toes. Denton was six-one. A little too skinny. Probably drank too much coffee, didn’t eat much, worked out like crazy. He didn’t wear a wedding ring. Never talked about a girl, serious or just someone he was banging on the side. His life was streamlined for the job. The kind of guy you’d want to track down Henry Parker.
Joe had seen the body lying in the hallway like a sack of beef. He had to bite his lower lip and turn away, the tears of rage coming uninvited. Louis Carruthers had put his hand on Joe’s shoulder, leaning in to console him, but got violently shoved away for his efforts. Louis knew, as did the other officers, that solace wouldn’t come easily. The friendly arms retracted before Joe could brush them off. He would’ve taken a flamethrower to them if given the chance.
There was no way he’d let someone else-someone detached-be the primary on this case. It had to be his. It didn’t just need closure, but the right kind of closure. Agent Joseph Mauser had to find Henry Parker himself. Since there was the chance Parker could cross state lines, the NYPD called in the Feds. Joe demanded the case. Nobody at the marshal’s office offered any resistance. Agents with a personal stake in capturing a fugitive were dogged to the point of obsession.
Officer John Fredrickson. His brother-in-law. Dead. Shot through the heart by some twenty-four-year-old walking disease. John had served the NYPD faithfully for twenty years. His wife, Linda, was Joe’s younger sister. His death left behind two children, Nancy and Joel. Paying bills was hard enough in the Fredrickson household, Joe knew that, and now they’d lost their main source of income. Linda worked as a court stenographer-actually made a pretty decent living-but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to feed three mouths. Joel was in college, and his tuition was already hard enough to foot.
His sister’s husband, stolen from the earth by a demon with no soul.
Jesus.
Joe didn’t know if he could go to the funeral. Seeing his dear friend in a box would be too much to bear. Standing over a convex piece of earth, saying meaningless farewells, what good did it do? What’s done is done. That’s what he told himself. No amount of tears could change anything, but they came anyway.
For years Joe Mauser had dipped his hands in death, and now death had hit home. The sad sacks who wept into lined hankies, the ones he was often forced to comfort, now he was one of them. His cheeks had gone flushed last night, and he’d felt warmth spread through him like a brush fire. He fought it off, stepped outside, claimed the
