The big man with the hood crawled across the carpet in an attempt to reach the apartment’s open door. Blood ran from his nose and marked his progress along the carpet.
Another man, tall and lean, struggled across the carpet and delivered what was left of her six-thousand-dollar Hondel lamp over the back of the first man’s head. The victim erupted, turning and kicking this other man in the face, throwing him off to the side and stealing the lamp himself. But his target rolled and kicked sharply, catching the man in the shoulder.
She saw the blue glint of steel—a gun on the kitchen floor—and this inspired her to aim her own gun overhead and pull the trigger. The blast shot a hole through the ceiling and rained down grains of sheetrock, briefly winning the attention of the two. In that millisecond, the hooded man lunged for the other, caught him by the jacket, stood and put him between Stevie and himself. Then he spun the man, threw him across the living room and ran for the apartment door—all before Stevie understood any of what was happening.
The thrown man struck yet another plate-glass window and it shattered, the sound deafening. He staggered and collapsed into the debris out on the balcony. The intruder fled out the door, so fast as to be only a blur of size and color.
Stevie stood there, the gun gripped in both hands, trembling— bone-numbing cold. She took two steps to her right, aimed at the alarm’s ceiling siren from just a few feet below and shot it out, silencing the room. Not knowing herself.
In the resulting stillness she heard the fire door at the end of the hallway thump shut, the heavy winded breathing of the stranger who had gone out the plate-glass window, the panic of blood pounding in her ears. Not a single siren anywhere to be heard.
‘‘Who are you?’’ she asked, keeping the gun in front of her defensively, stepping forward but stopping short of the broken glass. ‘‘I’ll shoot,’’ she warned.
‘‘You’ll miss . . .’’ he groaned. The man raised his head. It was John LaMoia.
CHAPTER 46
O
n the flickering screen two naked women without tan lines showed acute dexterity with their tongues.
Brian Coughlie watched them go at each other for the better part of a minute. It wasn’t lovemaking; it wasn’t even sex; it was a series of savage, desperate acts, meant to justify the ten-dollar ticket. He felt sick to his stomach. His mouth was dry and tasteless. Clearly these girls had not even reached age twenty. They were Korean and not eating well. Their lives were over. They’d be statistics in a year or two.
Rodriguez held the paper cup of soda and ice to his right eye. ‘‘He was a cop.’’
‘‘You don’t know that. He got there way too fast. He wasn’t a cop. A friend of hers maybe.’’ Coughlie had grown to hate even these brief encounters with Rodriguez. Having busted him for illegal entry, he had later found out the man was wanted by Mexican authorities for a variety of crimes including assault and murder. They had struck an uncomfortable alliance that had grown increasingly worse. The man was obviously into some hard drugs, and Coughlie had watched him degenerate. It was only a matter of time until something would have to be done. What, where and by whom, Coughlie wasn’t sure.
For a long time Coughlie had been the one with all the leverage— threatened deportation or incarceration for the crimes committed. But now, if anything, the roles were reversed: Rodriguez had been part of it nearly from the start; he knew too much.
‘‘Guy can take a punch, I tell you what,’’ he complained.
‘‘You’ll live.’’
‘‘We got to handle her.’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘She trouble, dis lady.’’
‘‘I said no. Scare was all. Get the tapes. And as badly as you handled it, I’d say you accomplished at least that much.’’
‘‘He was a cop, I’m tell you.’’ Rodriguez pointed to the screen. ‘‘Watch dis. You see dat? Can you believe dey show dat? Damn!’’
‘‘Forget her. You got it? She’s handled.’’
‘‘You think?’’
‘‘She saw Klein. Count on it.’’
‘‘She got plenty of nerve, that one. Too bad I didn’t get to—’’
‘‘Enough!’’ He didn’t want any association with Rodriguez. Whenever he met with him, their conversations deteriorated into monosyllabic thug speak. Coughlie reminded himself he needed to keep his distance. ‘‘Forget her,’’ he repeated.
‘‘You give the word, everyone forget her.’’
‘‘Nothing on your own,’’ Coughlie reminded, beginning to warm under the collar both out of anger and because his eye kept straying to the screen. ‘‘No more like that forklift. That was stupid! We stay on track for the next delivery. No choice, or I’ll be the one having an unexplained accident. Got it? We’ve got a break after this next one. I can use that time to get us through this. Nothing more from you unless it comes from me.’’
Coughlie resorted to the one anesthetic he knew would work, at least temporarily: He slipped the man a two-hundred-dollar bonus for the attack at the apartment. He knew Rodriguez would use it to self-medicate. If Coughlie was lucky, it would get him through the weekend.
CHAPTER 47
don’t remember all that much. It happened so quickly.’’ Stevie McNeal wore a T-shirt over her pajamas. The T-shirt promoted a five-mile run to benefit cancer, with KSTV as a sponsor. Teams of police had been inside her apartment for nearly two hours. The Sunday morning sun was trying to steal the night from the sky. The apartment still smelled of weapons fire.
Detective Bobbie Gaynes, looking as tired as the rest, nodded sympathetically.
LaMoia, cupping a disposable blue ice pack to the side of his face, directed traffic in the living room where SID shot photographs and dusted for prints.
She thought that the police were worse than the press when it came to turning a place into a zoo.
Lou Boldt sat in a chair facing the news anchor. He looked older. ‘‘When you’re dressed,’’ Boldt informed her, ‘‘we’ll move you to a hotel. Detective Gaynes will stay in your room with you, if that’s okay. We’ll post a uniform in the hall, outside a room next door, a room that will be empty.’’
‘‘What about Edwardo?’’ she asked to blank expressions. ‘‘The night watchman.’’
‘‘Emergency room. Concussion,’’ Boldt answered. ‘‘We’ll question him in the morning.’’
‘‘I didn’t mean
‘‘They knew what they were doing,’’ Gaynes explained. ‘‘Clubbed him, took his keys, killed the building’s phone system, removed the security video. Without you, we’ve got nothing.’’
‘‘I’ve provided you as much detail as I can.’’
‘‘I’m sure you have,’’ Boldt said patiently, though he was clearly disappointed.
