Dead Red (3 page)

“My landlord likes cops,” I said. “Even ex ones. Gave me a break on the rent. I shovel when it snows, replace the occasional lightbulb in the staircase.”

Jack took a long sip of water and closed his eyes. “That’s something you and I got in common now, isn’t it?”

“Decent landlords?”

“We’re ex-cops,” he said and registered my surprise. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear I put in my papers, Mr. Donne. I thought you knew everything that happened at the nine-oh, and what you didn’t know your uncle’d tell ya.”

“I guess I missed the newsletter, Jack.” I put my glass against my forehead and then moved it up to the lump. “What made you qui—put in your papers?”

“Take a fucking guess.”

“Oh, I bet I know,” Rachel said, sitting on the ottoman but leaning forward and raising her hand like a sixth grader. “You figured out with your people skills you had a better chance of winning the lottery than making detective.” She paused to give Jack a smile. “How’m I
fucking
doing, Jack?”

“Nice mouth,” he said, opening his eyes. “You blow Dennis with that—”

“Hey!” I yelled, sending another wave of pain to my head. I put my water on the coffee table carefully. “She’s my sister, Jack. Cut it out or leave.”

Jack looked like he wanted to argue the point, but I think his ribs reminded him that he’d be better off where he was for the moment.

“Let’s just say,” Jack said, barely moving his lips, “I decided my future lay on a different career path. So I put in my fifteen and left.”

“To do what?” I asked.

Jack smiled. “I’m private now. I hung up my badge and hung out my shingle.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a card. Like a magician, he flung it at me, hitting me in the chest.
Fucking Jack.

I picked the card off my lap. It had a picture of a horse on it. “Jack Knight,” I read aloud. “Private Investigations and Security.”

“Have Dick, Will Travel?” Rachel asked.

Jack ignored her. “See the horse? It’s a knight. Like in chess.”

“Very clever. How’s business?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“But you decided to assault me instead?”

“I lost my temper,” he said. “The whole thing with Ricky T, y’know?”

“How did you find out about that so quickly?”

“You think you’re the only one with friends? I gotta call from a buddy at the precinct. By the time I got on scene, you both’d been taken to the hospital. I drove over,” he swallowed hard, “got the word about Ricky, and waited for you.”

“What the hell for?”

He looked over at Rachel and then at me. “Can we talk? Alone?”

“If you think I’m leaving you alone with my brother, you’re dumber than you look.”

Jack squirmed and looked like he wanted to get up again. “Ray?” he said.

“Easy, Rachel,” I said. “I do want to talk with Jack.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do?” asked Rachel.

My stomach growled. “Go on down to Christina’s. Please. Pick up six egg sandwiches with kielbasa and—”

“I don’t want kielbasa for breakfast.”

“—
and
something for yourself. You can take some cash out of my wallet. It’s in the baggie from the hospital—”

“I can buy breakfast, Raymond.” She took two steps toward the door and turned. “The coffee should be ready. You boys can get that yourselves.”

“Thank you, Rachel.”

When the door shut, Jack got right to the point.

“Ricky was working for me,” he said. “Has been for a few months now.”

“I thought he was driving the cab.”

“At night, yeah. During the day, I had him doing some of my light work.”

“Light work?” I repeated. “Light work that doesn’t get you killed?”

“I know. You don’t think that’s the only thing on my mind the last coupla hours?” Jack got up slowly and walked to the window. He looked out at the Manhattan skyline, the early morning sun casting an orange glow on the buildings. When he turned around, I couldn’t tell if his eyes were showing emotion or still suffering from my sister’s pepper spray. “But, I swear, Ray. It was light work.”

“Jack. Sit down before you fall down.”

He stepped back over to the futon and sat. I let him get comfortable before speaking again.

“Explain,” I said, as if talking to one of my students.

“I needed someone to do a few building inspections for me,” he said. “Most of my work—over ninety percent—is for insurance companies. Someone gets injured or’s the victim of a crime in one of the buildings they cover, the company’s gotta send an investigator, do a report. Check the stairs, door locks, the carpeting, lighting. All that shit. Talk to the super. See if the accident and/or crime was preventable, how much the surroundings contributed.”

“You mean see how liable the owner and the insurance company are.”

He nodded. “Yeah. It brings in the big bucks, but I do a fair and honest inspection, Ray. Victims’ got people on their side trying to make a buck, my guys got me.”

Jack sounded like he was auditioning for his own commercial.

“And you got—had—Ricky?”

“He was good at it, man. All those years as a cop, writing incident reports and shit. He did good. Never forgot the report might end up in court someday. Concise, objective.” He took a breath. “And I gotta tell ya, having a Spanish guy going into the buildings the companies cover, that ain’t such a bad thing.”

I looked at Jack’s midsection. “That why you still carry the piece?”

“You better believe it,” Jack said. “Had to pull it a few times on some of these … citizens.” When I worked the streets with Jack, the word “citizen” meant any nonwhite member of the community. “Made sure Ricky carried his, too.” Jack put his arm on the back of the futon and turned more toward me. “What the fuck were you doing with him, Ray?”

“He called me. Told me he needed to talk and it had to be right away. He picked me up and drove me over to North Seventh and Kent.”

He closed his eyes again. “Why the hell would he drive all the way over there?” he asked. “He’s at his mom’s on the other side of the expressway.”

“It was two in the morning, Jack. I was more concerned with what was so important, not the location.”
But now that I thought of it, it was a good question.

“So you didn’t ask?”

“No.” Then something came back to me. “I do remember him saying he was working more hours and that he wanted to show me something.”

Jack leaned forward. “Something on that block?”

I reached up and felt the lump on my head. I picked up my glass and pressed its cool condensation against the lump. “I don’t remember. Something he was doing for you?”

“There was nothing he was doing for me that’s worth talking about at…”

I’ve never known Jack Knight to start a sentence without finishing it. Now it was my turn to lean forward.

“What is it, Jack?”

He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, but not very convincingly.

“Jack? If you know something, my uncle’s coming over in a few—”

“No. It’s just that Ricky was doing such a good job for me, and he said he needed more hours. The cab thing wasn’t pulling in enough bucks, so…”

That was twice now with the unfinished thought. “Jack?”

“I let him do some grunt work for me on a case,” he said. “A real case.”

“What’s a
real
case?” I asked, and then remembered what he’d said about most of his business. “The other ten percent?”

“Yeah. A buddy of Ricky’s works out in Nassau County now, lucky bastard. Their patrolmen pull in as much as our sergeants do.”

“Get to the point, Jack.”

“This buddy, he puts me in touch with this family. Rich white folks. Live on the water out there in Nassau. Guy’s a big shit in PR in the city. About a month ago, their daughter goes missing. You probably saw it in the papers.”

“Rich white girl from the Island disappears? Yeah, Jack. I think I saw it in the papers. And on TV. Folks got a website up with a reward, right?” It took a couple of beats for me to come up with the name. “The Goldens?”

“Right. Angela Golden. Look her up on GoldenGirldotcom. That’s where I come in.”

I brought my glass down from my head and took a sip. “Maybe it’s my head, Jack, and all the shit I’ve been through the past few hours, but you’re gonna have to go through that part for me real slow.”

“Every time a debutante goes missing and the family puts out a reward, the crazies start coming out like diarrhea. That’s why the cops hate fucking rewards.”

“Virtue being its own, right?”

He gave me a look like I was speaking Latin. “Huh?”

“Never mind. Keep going.”

“Me? I love rewards. I get to bill by the hour for chasing down every halfway-credible lead that comes in to the website. The closest thing to a clue the family could provide was that the daughter recently hooked up with a new friend. Puerto Rican, Dominican, they’re not sure. The one thing they are sure of?”

I waited. “Yeah?”

“Parents said their kid tells them her new running buddy’s from the Willy B. I hear that, I get Ricky T to do a little double duty. While he’s out doing my accident reports, I got him asking around about ‘anybody see this
chiquita
.’”

“And let me guess…”

“That’s right,” Jack interrupted. “I get to bill two clients at the same time and split the fees with Ricky. Called that a nine-point-one on the RicTor scale.”

The RicTor scale was Ricky Torres’s rating system on everything from Spanish food to music to the girls we’d see out on the streets during our patrols. A breakfast burrito from Mickey D’s was a one. My uncle being Chief of Detectives, a nine-point-five.

“How was he able to look for this ‘
chiquita’
?”

“I got a picture from the Goldens.” Jack reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his cell. After pressing a few buttons, he handed the phone to me. I was looking at a blurry face of an obviously dark-skinned girl with a smile that could sell toothpaste, but the quality of the picture made her barely distinguishable from hundreds of other good-looking Hispanic girls around Williamsburg. “That’s a blow-up,” Jack explained, “of a not very good photo they found in Angela’s room.”

“Ricky get any hits off this?” I handed Jack’s phone back.

“Nah, but he was out there trying.” He put the phone back in his pocket. “All billable hours, man.”

“How nice for you.”

“
And
for Ricky. I told you, he wanted more hours. I guess he needed the cash.”

“He ever say for what?”

“Cost of living? I don’t know. Guy didn’t have to shell out much green over in the Middle East. Makes ya forget how expensive the big city can be when ya get back home and gotta start paying for shit again.”

“So you don’t think doing your light work—or grunt work—had anything to do with Ricky being killed?”

“Ray, if I thought that, you and me would not be having this conversation. For all I know, maybe you were the target.”

I hadn’t even considered that and didn’t want to do so now. But Jack did have a point. Why would Ricky need to involve me if he already had a photo of Angela Golden’s Latina friend and his own connections inside Williamsburg?

“So,” he said, “you never told your little sis about our adventure with your boy Frankie, huh?”

“Oh, yeah, Jack. I tell her every time I break the law. Maybe I’ll mention it to my uncle when he swings by for dinner tonight.”

“That’s some funny fucking shit there, Raymond.”

I closed my eyes and leaned back into the recliner. “You ever think about it, Jack?”
I know I did.
“I mean, it was a good shoot, but not exactly by the book.”

“I didn’t read the book as much as you did, Ray. That’s why I was there that night. But, yeah, I fucking killed a guy. A guy who was about to kill you and who kidnapped your student, by the way. No one’s ever gonna accuse me of being Mr. Sensitive, but you think a day goes by I don’t think about it?”

I waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, I said, “And…”

“And better him than you or the kid, okay?” he said. “Don’t read too much into that. You and me were never meant to be friends. Ain’t nobody who knows us don’t know that. But on the street, if it’s between some asshole with a gun and a brother cop? That’s one of them no-brainers we learned about in the academy.”

I was about to remind him I wasn’t a cop two years ago, when the door to my apartment opened. Rachel came in holding two bags of the best-smelling Polish food this side of Warsaw.

“Breakfast, boys.” She placed the food on the coffee table. “Don’t get up.” The sarcasm again. I needed some of that. “I’ll get the plates and silver.” She looked down at the table. “And the coffee, I guess.”

“We were talking,” I explained.

“I got it.”

She went into the kitchen, and someone’s cell phone went off. It wasn’t mine, and the way Jack just sat there I figured it wasn’t his. Rachel stuck her head into the living room holding my baggie from the hospital and said, “Ray. Your phone. You wanna let it go to voice mail?”

The ring didn’t sound right. “I don’t think that’s mine, Rache.”

She opened up the baggie and pulled out the ringing phone. It was not mine. Mine was—where? She stepped over and handed it to me as the ringing stopped—just reaching for it hurt my shoulder—and something else came back from last night. Before everything went all to hell, Ricky had handed me something.

Jack and I looked at each other. I pressed the phone’s home button, and the screen lit up. “Fuck me.”

Jack slid over to the edge of the futon. “What?”

I handed Jack the phone, and he looked at what I had. “Fuck me hard.”

“Boys,” my sister said. “We haven’t even said grace yet.”

Jack reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell, and punched some buttons. He put his phone next to Ricky’s, studied them both for about ten seconds, and then turned them to me.

There, once again, on Jack’s phone was the blurry picture of the girl with the great smile. On Ricky’s was an in-focus image of the same girl.

Chapter 3

“I FUCKED UP, RAY.”

“What kinda fuckup?”