JM03 - Red Cat (28 page)

“Still, you left.”

She drank some seltzer and put the glass down. “As far as I know, you only get this one life, and I wasn’t getting any younger. And it turned out I still had some ideas about marriage that I wasn’t ready to trade for another HermДs bag.” A crooked smile crossed her face. “Who knew I was so fucking noble?” she said, and she turned back to her newspaper.

I came up behind her and put my face into her hair. I slid a hand under her shirt and across her warm belly, and I slid my fingers down the waistband of her low-slung jeans. “There’s something about all that integrity…” I said softly.

She shuddered, and rolled her ass against me, and unbuttoned her jeans. “Mr. Curious,” she whispered, and she slid my hand lower.

* * *

I drove north with the first wave of rush hour. The sky was purple going to black, and the traffic was stop-and-go into Yonkers and again in Tarrytown as I made my way along Route 9. I parked three long blocks from Van Winkle Court and took a cold, roundabout walk to the condo complex. I kept my eyes open the whole way; if there were cops staked out, I didn’t spot them.

Hagen’s basement door was locked, and there were no lights on in the windows that I thought were his. I followed the path he’d taken the night before and went two buildings south and tried the basement door there. Locked. I circled the building and checked the basement windows. I saw an empty laundry room through one. The rest were dark, and one was painted black. Yellow light seeped through a crack in the frame. I went back to the basement door and looked over the Van Winkle Court footpaths. No one. I pulled a small pry bar from the pocket of my parka and slipped it in the door jamb. I barely leaned and the door popped open with a sound like a cough. I put the pry bar away and took out a flashlight.

Inside, I smelled damp cement and laundry soap. I listened for a moment and heard mechanical ticks and water in pipes and the rush of air in ductwork, but nothing else. There was a dark corridor ahead, and I walked in what I thought was the direction of the painted window. There was a fine grit on the concrete floor, and I tried to move quietly on it.

The hallway branched. To the right, light spilled from a wide doorway. The laundry room. To the left was darkness. I went left. I passed by a dented metal door, and the reek of rotted vegetables and dirty diapers. Garbage room. I kept going. At the end of the hall, opposite a small mountain of bundled newspaper and flattened cardboard boxes, there was another metal door. There was a lock in the knob, another, heftier one above it, and a seam of light at the sill. I leaned closer and, faintly, I smelled coffee. And cigarettes.

I took the pry bar from my pocket and found the darkest shadows I could beside a tall stack of newspaper. I held the pry bar high and let it drop. It made a shattering clang on the cement; I picked it up and waited.

Almost instantly, a shadow moved across the threshold. Adrenaline surged into my arms and legs, and my heart spun like a flywheel. And then, nothing…for what seemed a very long time. Sweat prickled on my chest and slid down my ribs, and the shadow shifted again. I heard a metallic scraping, and I held my breath. The seam of light slowly widened and spread up the doorframe, and I saw a sliver of crew-cut head, one blue eye and a pinch of nose. I got all my weight behind the kick.

I hit the door above the knob, and there was a sound of crumpled metal, splintered wood, and a wetter sort of crunch. There was a barked, startled curse and the door flew wide and then rebounded, but Coyle was down against the far wall and I was in. His hand was to his face and blood was streaming between his fingers. I caught a glimpse of cot and card table, utility sink, lamp and folding chair, coffee pot— and then, somehow, he was coming up fast and a big fist caught me under the ribs.

Air came out of me in a shout and I covered up and threw an elbow at his neck. It went off his shoulder and I went back, into the doorframe. Coyle grabbed a hunk of my jacket and hauled me forward, toward a waiting haymaker. I tucked my chin down and drove off the wall and ducked under the blow and smacked him in the cheek with my forehead. He cursed again and we both went over. I kneed him somewhere and he cuffed me on the ear and a flare went off behind my eyes. I scrambled up but Coyle got there first and dug a thumb at my throat. I gagged and yanked the pry bar from my pocket and swung it at his thigh. He roared and went down, but on the way he grabbed my wrist and dragged me into his forearm. Stars lit and the pry bar went flying and so did I, into the card table and into a corner. It took a moment for my vision to clear, another to realize that the hot wet patch down my back was coffee and not blood, and one more to register that Coyle was gone. I hauled myself up and shook my head and lunged out the door.

The cold air was like a slap as I came up the basement steps, and I picked up Coyle headed south, toward a cluster of Dumpsters on a square of hardtop. He wasn’t moving well and the path was treacherous; he slipped more than once. I didn’t push it, but kept him in sight, a muscular figure lurching under sodium lights, past the Dumpsters, through a tangle of bushes, and onto an icy street. My limbs loosened as I trotted along, and my pulse steadied, and after a little while the pain in my ribs dimmed.

On the street, Coyle turned west. I lengthened my stride and trimmed the distance between us. He glanced over his shoulder a few times and sprinted forward a few paces after each look, but smoking had robbed his wind and he couldn’t keep it up. When he saw I was closing, he cursed.

“Fuck you, asshole,” he shouted over his shoulder, and “Get the fuck out of here.” It screwed up his breathing even more.

We rounded a curve and the road ahead became an overpass spanning the Metro-North train tracks. Coyle put his head down and charged at it. But when he got there, he didn’t cross. Instead, he vaulted the metal railing and slid down the embankment. Shit. I ran faster and followed.

The embankment was steep and snow-covered, and I went down along the trail Coyle had made, mostly on my ass. I skidded at the bottom onto a badly plowed service road that ran parallel to the train tracks, and that was separated from them by a high schoolyard fence. I looked north and south. The road was empty. There was no sign of Coyle, but snowy prints led beneath the overpass. I took a slow, deep breath and pulled the flashlight from my jacket pocket, and the Glock from its holster behind my back. I flicked on the light.

The beam disappeared into the darkness beneath the bridge, and I walked forward, listening for ragged breathing. My ears were straining when I saw a bright yellow light to the north. I stopped, and heard a rising and falling air horn. Train. The light grew brighter, and swept across the rails, and the rush and rumble widened, and swallowed every other sound. So I never heard him coming.

He charged from the left and lifted me off the ground, and if not for the schoolyard fence I’d have been on my way to Grand Central, pasted to the front of a Hudson Line train. As it was, I was doing only slightly better. The flashlight vanished and so did my breath, in a burning bellow, but I held on to the Glock and brought it up in both hands as I bounced off the fence. It wasn’t above my waist before Coyle was on me— both hands wrapped around my own, fingers behind the trigger and over the slide. His bristled, block head ground into my eye socket, and his extra forty pounds drove me back.

My boots scrabbled over the icy hardtop and only the fencing kept me from going over. Coyle was pushing and grunting, and the smell of cigarettes, burnt coffee, and sweat was smothering. My heels were sliding away when I brought my knee up hard— and connected. Coyle roared, and for an instant sagged, and then he twisted and yanked and the Glock came out of my hands. I heard my fingers break before I felt the pain.

We spun apart, and I caught myself on the fence and nearly screamed when I did. I came up panting and so did Coyle, holding the Glock in his big palm, looking down at it, bleeding from his nose, his mouth, and the split in his eyebrow. Looking at me. Looking at the gun. My arms and legs were shaking with fatigue and adrenaline, and I gathered what juice I had left for…I wasn’t sure what. Coyle stared for a long minute, and then a fat tear fell from his eye onto the Glock. His voice was choked and his words were squeezed between gasped breaths.

“Fuck it, man— fuck it all. You want me so bad, take me. Take me in, send me upstate, send me straight to hell if you want. I don’t give a shit. I just can’t do this anymore.” He slumped against the fence and slid to the ground. He tossed the Glock in the snow at my feet.

32

There was a corner of Coyle’s room that we hadn’t trashed, and in it was a pint-sized refrigerator. It held two midget ice trays, and Coyle took one and sat on the cot and fashioned an icepack out of a T-shirt. I took the other and sat on the folding chair. I did the best I could with some paper towels, but it was tough going with three broken fingers, two on the right hand and one on the left. They were already beginning to swell and discolor.

Coyle held the icepack to his brow. “It’s a big surprise, I ran?” His soft voice was scratchy and tired. “The cops bring me in— with my record, it’s like they won the lottery. Who are they gonna like better than me?”

A couple of names came to mind, but I kept them to myself and nodded. He adjusted his ice and winced. Meltwater and blood ran down his face. Coyle’s sweatshirt and jeans were filthy and sodden, and so was he, and beneath the dirt, the fatigue, and the still-suspicious glances, there were other things: fear, confusion, and a deep and grueling sadness. He had, for the moment, spent his anger and panic and blind motion; now he was lost and drifting. I’d told him who I was, and a story about what I wanted, the main points of which were that I wasn’t a cop, wasn’t working with the cops, and had no particular interest in helping them out. He didn’t care much, to the extent he had energy to care at all. Elbows on his knees, he seemed to wither and deflate before my eyes. I wanted him to use the air he had left talking to me. Under the cot, only slightly crushed in the mД™lГ©e, were Uncle Kenny’s doughnuts in a cardboard box. I managed to drag them over without whimpering.

“You mind?” I asked. Coyle looked at me and shook his head. I picked a glazed one and offered him the box. He shook his head again. I got up and righted the card table, and found the little coffeemaker miraculously intact underneath.

“You have any coffee?” I asked. Coyle pointed to a cabinet over the sink. I found filter papers and Folger’s and some foam cups inside. He watched while I fumbled with the fixings. When the coffee was brewing, I turned around.

“Tell me about Holly,” I said quietly. Coyle’s mouth tightened and his chin trembled, and he stayed silent. The aroma of coffee filled the room, masking for the moment the stink of sweat and cigarettes and wet clothing. Coyle stared nowhere, a faraway, convict gaze, and I thought I’d lost him even before we started. Then he looked at me and decided something. And then— with eyes on the walls, the floor or someplace over my shoulder, and with a voice hoarse and sometimes shaky— he spoke.

They’d met last spring, at the 9:30 Club, on a night Jamie Coyle had been on the door. Holly and Gene Werner wanted in, and Coyle had given Holly the free pass he gave all beautiful women. But something about Werner had rubbed him the wrong way.

“Fucking Weenie. Maybe it was the way he was looking at himself in the window, or maybe it was how he grabbed her arm. I don’t know, the prick just pissed me off.” Holly had interceded on Werner’s behalf, which made Werner mad. That had pleased Coyle— that, and Holly’s smile.

“Man, she could melt you. I mean, she was a prizewinner— you had to stare— but that smile…It made something bubble in your chest. She was like nobody I ever knew.”

She’d turned into a regular, occasionally with Werner, but most times not.

“She’d come early sometimes, sometimes late. She’d have a drink or two, always bourbon and ginger ale, and maybe she’d dance. Mostly though it was people watching. Guys would try to work her, girls too sometimes, but Holly was always in her own head, and she could give a damn.

“She’d always come by to shoot the shit, though; it didn’t matter if I was on the door or behind the bar or wherever. A lot of times she’d talk about the crowd. She’d make up things about this guy or that girl, whole stories about their lives. Real funny shit sometimes, and sometimes strange stuff— I didn’t always get it all. Other times she’d talk about next to nothing, the weather or whatever, or she’d ask about my job— how I knew who was gonna be a problem, and how big a problem they’d be, how I knew who would back down, and how much pushing it would take, that kind of stuff. And then there were times she’d just hang out, and not say anything at all.”

All he’d known of Holly’s work at that point was some vague talk about movies. “A director or a cameraman or something like that.” In July, she’d approached him about freelancing, and he found out more.

“She said it was security work for her, while she was making her movies— like a bodyguard. Then she gave me the details— the where and when and why— and my fucking jaw hit the floor. I told her no way. The money was fine and all, but the whole setup was fucked, like she was scamming these guys and she wanted muscle. That kind of thing, it goes bad in a heartbeat— a fucking shitstorm waiting to happen. Where I was in my life— where I’d been— no way I wanted any part of that.

“Holly was cool with it. She didn’t push and she didn’t try to work me— she never pulled that kind of bullshit. She just asked me to take a look at one of her movies. So I did.

“I gotta tell you, it fucking blew me away. I never saw anything like it before. She was…amazing. The way she looked, the things she said— it could make your heart explode just watching. And the way she tore that guy apart at the end, the way she got all in his head— Jesus. I saw one, and then she showed me the rest. Fucking amazing.

“It was weird watching her with those guys— it was fucked up— but Holly wasn’t embarrassed. It was a thing she did to make her movies, she said—‘part of the process,’ like figuring out where to put the cameras, and the lights, and the editing and shit. It was just a role she played, and she was in charge the whole time. That’s what she said.