Dead Street

Well, I couldn’t have them killing the punk. Bucky still knew things I didn’t. And as much as I wouldn’t have minded seeing a guy who would sell out a city getting another kneecap or maybe his gonads shot off, I had to put a stop to this.

I came clattering halfway down the reinforced steps, not trying to be quiet at all, pointed t... .45 and yelled, “NYPD! Weapons down, hands up!”

But every one of them got stupid. All at once stupid, if not exactly otherwise coordinated — they turned toward me, looking almost red in the lantern light, and went for their guns and by all rights one of them should have been fast enough.

I took the little leather-jacket one out first — both he and the taller Saudi were on my left, with the burly boys at right, Bucky squirming on his back down between them. By shooting the short one first, exploding his head like a melon with a forehead-center... .45 that splashed the taller one with gore, I distracted tallboy for the fraction of a second I needed to give him the same skull-shattering treatment.

Neither one had fallen by the time I swung t... .45 onto the bigger, slower brutes, who were digging in their waistbands for Glocks, their hands clumsy in the work gloves. Still, the one closest to me almost had his rod out.

There wasn’t time for anything fancy — I just unloaded t... .45 on them, head and torso alike, one bullet squirting the juice out of the bald one’s left eye, the ponytail guy losing an ear before catching a hell of a heart shot and they collided with each other doing their stringless puppet routine, tumbling in a bloody pile-up.

The rafters shook and dust and dirt rained down and the blood on the dirt floor draining from shattered skulls and punctured organs was already seeping and soaking in, shiny and glittery, black not red.

Blood mist and cordite were mingling as I took my time coming down the steps, putting a new clip in just in case reinforcements showed.

“Doctor!” Bucky was yelling, having a spasmodic fit down in his iron box.

“I’m not your doctor,” I said, “but here’s what I prescribe for you, Bucky.”

And I clanged the door shut on him.

His muffled screams made me smile.

A minute or so later, I opened the safe and leaned down in and stuck t... .45 in his face. “Selling a nuke to terrorists, Bucky — new low even for you.”

“Shooter? Shooter! Don’t do it, don’t do it....”

“I have to, Bucky.”

“Don’t do it!”

“I said I have to. Much as I want to kill your greedy ass, I’m going to haul you up and out and get you a doctor.”

“God bless you, Captain! God bless you....”

“Why, Bucky — did I sneeze? But if you don’t talk, and tell me every damn thing I want to know, after I get you to a medic? The only blessing you’ll get is a death as quick as these bastards got.”

I didn’t call 911 — I called Sgt. Davy Ross. While Bucky and I were waiting down in that cellar of death for his ambulance and my cop pal, I gave him enough first aid on the shot-up knee to get by. I had him sit on the edge of the open safe. It stank of vacated bowels in that dank space and, in that orange Coleman glow, it was a hellish atmosphere that even got to me a little. But it really got to Bucky.

He passed out and I’d have to wait to ask him my questions. That was okay. Even if he was faking, I didn’t figure he was in shape for much of a getaway run.

Chapter Ten

Bucky really rated.

Ross arranged him a private room at Bellevue’s prison ward. There, in a bed where his shot-up bandaged leg was elevated, Bucky was feeling no pain, thanks to the medics pumping him full of junk.

Not that Bucky didn’t feel the weight of his circumstances. That smirk of his was gone, and I didn’t figure after he finally got back on his feet he’d ever have that same swagger old Bessie recognized.

“I’ll cooperate,” he said. He was cranked up in the bed enough to be able to look right at me and the police sergeant standing at his bedside. “I’ll give you the names of those Saudis, every damn one of them creeps.”

Ross said, “We don’t need their names, Bucky. Captain Stang here shot them all.”

“There are others! I’m going to want immunity. You want my cooperation, I’m going to want immunity.”

I said, “You’ll want a lawyer, too.”

“That’s right!”

I turned to Davy and said, “Why don’t you go get him one?”

Davy saw the look in my eyes and smiled just a little. “I’ll go and get right on that.”

And Sgt. Ross was gone.

“Now it’s just you and me, Bucky,” I said, hovering over him. “Not a cop and a con. Just a couple old birds from the street.”

“Don’t shit me, Shooter! You’re a cop!”

I braced my hand on the mattress near his pillow. “I retired.”

“You said I need a lawyer...”

“You do. For when the cops are around. Before that happens, you and me are going to catch up on old times. The room isn’t wired, and nothing you say can be... but you know the rest.”

Beads of sweat pearled the forehead under the skimpy cue ball comb-over. “Why should I talk to you, Shooter?”

“Because I saved your ass. And because you promised you would, if I got you a medic. I kept my promise, Buck.” I shifted my position and very gently laid my hand on his elevated, bandaged knee. “Your turn to keep yours.”

It all came spilling out.

How twenty years ago a mob guy named Benny Orbach buttonholed him about Big Zappo’s safe. A big heist was going down, involving atomic materials, and the right kind of storage was needed for the dangerous stuff. That old lead safe of Padrone’s would do the trick, till the haul was shifted to a buyer. And there were lots of prospective buyers on the scene, even back then — from the North Vietnamese to various Middle Eastern groups.

“How did you happen to have access to Big Zappo’s safe, Bucky?”

“I found it — I heard the stories about Zappo’s money stash being somewhere in that cellar, and I looked till I found it.”

“How much loot did you find?”

“Not that much — maybe ten K in those big old bills. If I’d known they was collector’s items, I wouldn’t have been so free with ‘em.”

“Why did you have access, Bucky? Why do you have part ownership of that building?”

“Because... because I’m Big Zappo’s kid, all right?”

“What?”

“Bastard kid, okay, Shooter? He was old enough to be my granddad when one of his whores had me, get it? But blood is blood, and he willed that building to me. He set it up that half of the income went to that charity — my old man had a thing about helping out these homeless characters.”

“They say he started those soup kitchens back in the Depression.”

Bucky nodded. “And, tell you the truth, Big Zap thought I’d just sell the place and blow the dough, if there wasn’t some, you know... constraint put on me. I was a wild-ass kid, in those days — you remember. Hell, my share was tied up in a trust fund deal till I turned forty!”

He was at least fifty now.

I asked, “Why didn’t you sell out then?”

“Because I wasn’t a snotnose no more. You might not buy it, Shooter, but I’ve led a respectable damn life, for years. Even twenty years ago, I’d already broke off from that whole street gang scene — I took a technical course. Got in the ground floor of computer repair.”

“Which is how you got the Credentials gig.”