Concrete wall of a building at the far end. A Dumpster and some junked furniture to his left. A pile of black trash bags and debris to his right. The alley was perhaps twenty yards long. The wrought iron fire escape was empty. Sirens still approaching.
Boldt understood he was going to have to do this alone. He thought of Miles and Sarah and how much time he owed them, how many years they all had yet to go. He thought of how much he and Liz had been through together, how far they’d come. He moved quickly to his left until his shoulder brushed the cool brick wall, his right hand ready with his weapon. He smelled urine and stale beer and garbage and oil. He heard the firefight in the distance like a neighbor’s TV through the wall.
‘‘Police!’’ he announced sharply, very much aware that calling out made him a target, standing at the open end of the alley as he was.
The air was suddenly incredibly still. The distant sirens formed an uneasy curtain behind him. All else was silence and the beating of his own heart. Sweat prickled his scalp; his mouth was dry. He’d spent his life in this city; he had no intention of dying here. He saw the open graves at Hilltop. They seemed to call to him. All the petty politics suddenly seemed just that. This was the real police work. This was The Moment, and nothing else, the steady ticking off of seconds, each worth a lifetime. It was raw, visceral terror.
‘‘We’ve got two options,’’ Boldt announced, not wanting anything to do with a firefight. ‘‘One is you stand up with your arms high and walk out of here. The other is you come out feet first in a body bag. There’s nothing in between. You hear those sirens? You think a couple hotheaded young uniforms just dying to try out their weapons are going to improve your situation any? Listen to me! I’m the best chance you’ll ever have of walking out of here alive.’’
Silence. Had it been a few grunts, a few complaints, there would have been a dialogue started.
He took a series of deep breaths. He was guessing behind the Dumpster or hidden in the pile of bags and debris to his right.
He crept forward, eyes shifting: Dumpster, debris, Dumpster, debris. Every darkened shadow filled with an imaginary shape. He wanted none of this. He wanted to turn and walk away. The kid could be anywhere, most likely in the one place Boldt had not yet considered. He wanted to talk the kid out. He feared it wasn’t going to happen.
His hand sweated against the gun’s knurled stock. The sound of blood pumping clouded his ears. It was too damn dark in this alley.
He reached the Dumpster and wedged himself into the corner against the wall. He was in a full sweat. He hadn’t heard the kid jump into the Dumpster but couldn’t discount the possibility.
He glanced toward the mouth of the alley, ten yards behind him— thirty feet, most of it unprotected.
‘‘Do you have any brothers?’’ he called out. ‘‘Sisters? A mother? Anyone who matters to you?’’
That same sickening silence.
‘‘You don’t show yourself, make yourself known to me, I’m likely to shoot you. You understand that? I don’t want to do that, but I will. You’re not coming out of there. You’re not getting past me.’’
‘‘Bullshit.’’
Fast footsteps. A dark blur from the pile of trash bags. He ran low and incredibly fast.
Boldt had only one chance to intercept that blur. He lowered his shoulder, judged the distance and charged behind a loud scream meant to distract the kid. They made contact on the far side of the alley, Boldt just getting a small piece of the kid. They both spun like pinwheels and crashed down several feet apart. The kid came to his knees. Boldt lunged toward him and swatted. The kid went down a second time. Boldt scrambled forward, catching a gray glint of a metal blade. He fired a warning shot as he rolled out of the way and the blade came down where his chest had been. Boldt kicked out. The kid fell back. The slash of a flashlight beam painted the opposite brick wall. Backup was close.
The kid stood quickly and cocked his arm back, intending to throw the knife. Boldt fired once and missed. Fired again. Missed. That blade tumbled through the air end-over-end and clattered into the brick somewhere in the narrow space between Boldt’s shoulder and head. The kid ran five paces, saw those flashlight beams paint him with their light and threw himself prostrate into the alley’s urine-soaked litter, hands and legs outstretched.
‘‘You’re under arrest,’’ Boldt called out, making himself known to his own people.
‘‘I not do nothing,’’ the kid called out.
Boldt checked his right ear to make sure it was still attached to his head as he reached for the handcuffs. This collar was his, no one else’s.
CHAPTER 68
hoever had designed the ventilation system for the interrogation rooms had either flunked engineering or had it in for detectives and suspects. The Box, as the largest of the rooms was referred to, smelled vaguely of tobacco smoke and strongly of the acrid, bitter body odor that accompanied panic and a person’s last vestiges of freedom. The room was small nonetheless, impressively bland, and home to a cigarette-scarred table bolted to the floor and, on that night, three black formed-fiberglass chairs, one occupied by the shackled suspect, the other two by Daphne Matthews and Boldt.
Boldt understood the time pressures. With police closing in, with the SS
LaMoia had contacted Talmadge at home as ordered by Boldt. To everyone’s surprise and disappointment, it was Talmadge himself, not Coughlie, who had come down to Public Safety to view the interrogation. Talmadge looked pale and visibly shaken, though he said nothing to explain his condition. LaMoia stood with the man on the other side of the one-way glass watching Boldt and Matthews work their magic. But LaMoia wasn’t watching the interrogation; his eyes were on the shaky Adam Talmadge.
For Boldt and Matthews, teaming up on a suspect was like two singers joining in on a duet. They had done this enough times to communicate with only body language and voice inflection. As a psychologist, Matthews tended to humanize the event while Boldt used the existence of physical evidence to maintain pressure.
‘‘You’re in some kind of trouble,’’ Boldt said to the kid.
He was a Chinese youth in his late teens, early twenties, with a neck like a water buffalo and pinprick eyes. His teeth were bad and he’d been in too many fights: Angry scars beaded from the edge of his lips, the turn of his nose and the slant of his eyes. He attempted a game face but the shine on his upper lip and the tinge of scarlet below his ears gave away his anxiety.
Daphne said, ‘‘You’re alone in this room, and you’ll be alone in a jail cell, but we know you’re not alone in this.’’
‘‘I no do nothing, bitch.’’
Boldt shifted in his chair as if to smack the guy, a fine performance. Daphne reached out and blocked him. Good cop, bad cop— ‘‘sweet and sour,’’ as they called it. Boldt ran off a list of offenses including assault and attempted murder of a police officer, the last of which set the suspect to a vigorous blinking, a kind of tic that continued to manifest itself well into the interrogation.
Boldt said, ‘‘Your priors occupy two and a half pages. Your name appears on a roster compiled by our Gang Squad. You are in violation of your parole. Any judge gets one look at these charges and you’re gone for good.’’
‘‘So let’s just see about that,’’ the kid said. ‘‘You got the sheet, Butch,’’ he said to Boldt. ‘‘How much hard time I done?’’ He grinned, ‘‘Butch and Bitch. What a pair you are!’’
