The Long Good Boy (27 page)

“… to consult an attorney,” he was saying, “before speaking to the police and to have an attorney present during any questioning now or in the future. Do you understand?”

I nodded. I could taste the overcooked turkey and the too-sweet yams I'd eaten hours earlier in my throat, sour now, and all the while, Dashiell kept barking, saliva flying from his mouth, this detective ignoring him, acting as if he wasn't even there.

“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at no cost. Do you understand?”

When I didn't answer right away, he grabbed the boa from both sides and pulled me into his face.

“Speak up, Ms. Alexander, I can't hear you. Or is that just plain Alexander?”

I'd thought this was just business as usual, crack down on the transvestite hookers, chase them to the next precinct, make them someone else's headache. Then how did he know my name?

I could see the other detective talking to LaDonna, who loomed over him, her arms akimbo, giving him some lip, in LaDonna's case, bright pink lip, to match her leather miniskirt, the one she'd shoplifted at Jeffrey two weeks earlier.

Suddenly I was off the ground, the detective sneering. “I knew there was something hinky about you the first time I saw you.” He dropped me, just let go, grinning when I lost my footing for the second time. “If you do not have an attorney available to you,” he said, “you have the right to remain silent until you have had an opportunity to consult with one. Do you understand?” His voice had gotten considerably louder. His big nose was right in my face.

What first time? We met before? I wanted to ask, but didn't. I said, “I do.” Respectful. Trying to diffuse his rage, knowing at the same time that what I wanted was impossible.

“Now that I have advised you of your rights, are you willing to answer my questions?”

“I want to speak to a lawyer,” I said.

When his hand moved, I flinched. But this time he didn't go for my face. This time he grabbed my crotch.

“Where do you hide it?” he asked, squeezing so hard tears came to my eyes. He turned to his partner. “Hey, Ryan, this one here's post-op. Unless he shoved it up his own ass, for a change.”

I bit the inside of my lip but said nothing. Whatever was going on, this cop was acting crazy, and the last thing I wanted to do was to provoke him further. He spun me around and cuffed me, using white plastic cuffs that cut into my wrists, the metal ones that held Dashiell back clanking as he tried to break the chain that held him to the pole. Then everything began to move so fast, it was like watching a slide show, silent images popping up and disappearing before I got the chance to digest them. A nun in a long black habit appeared from nowhere, standing across the street and watching, her palms pressed together as if in prayer. Another hooker came around the corner, and Ryan, waving his gun, called her over. Something dark and quick shot out of a trash can full of bones. When I turned to see where it went, I saw the beam of Ryan's flashlight panning over the pig mural, a bizarre tableau of larger-than-life porkers that morphed into roasts and chops as the light moved from left to right. Behind the sliding wall were parking spaces for the trucks, and behind that, the refrigerated plants where the carcasses of the slaughtered animals were taken to be prepared for sale to hotels and restaurants. I wondered if I'd end up any better off than them, here at the end of the world in the middle of the night with no way of protecting myself.

Then I was moving, but not under my own power. I was being dragged past where LaDonna was cuffed to a street sign, over to where Ryan was, the hooker he'd summoned just standing there, pathetic looking, couldn't have been out of her teens.

The two detectives stepped away from us and turned their backs. The short one was saying something I couldn't hear; his partner, Ryan, was nodding, not a good sign considering the circumstances.

The other hooker took a step closer. She was small and slight, her skin the color of mocha latte, her hair dyed a honey blond, wearing fishnet stockings, a short red skirt and halter top, her cleavage telling me she was taking hormone treatments. “Is it a he or a she?” she asked, nodding her head toward Dashiell.

“A boy,” I told her, looking at Dash, who was barking nonstop now, his forehead crushed with concern.

“I have two cats,” she whispered. “I used to have a dog, but he ate something in the bathroom and my boyfriend took him to the vet and had him put to sleep. I think he did it to get even with me.”

She scuffed a foot and pouted. I thought she was shaking with the cold, her lips trembling, her hands dug deep into her skirt pockets, but there was a trickle of sweat coming down along the left side of her face. The detectives were heading back our way. She pulled one hand out now, keeping it curled around a wad of bills.

“I think you dropped this, Detective.”

Ryan, his hand covered with a latex glove, took the roll and slipped it into his pocket. Then he gestured with a tilt of his head, and she took off toward Fourteenth Street, turning left and disappearing around the next corner.

Ryan went over to the car, pulled the door open, stuck his head in.

“You can go.”

Nothing happened.

“Go,” he shouted. “Crawl back into whatever hole you came out of.” He reached in and pulled her out by her arm. “Don't let me find you here again.”

“It's on the seat.” She turned away and took off into the night.

Chiclets cut the cuffs off LaDonna and said something I couldn't hear. The nun was crossing the street now, moving quickly, not wanting to miss the chance to rehabilitate the last remaining sinner, deliver a lamb to God.

Chiclets was facing me again. He kicked at one of the bones that had spilled out of an overflowing garbage can and watched it skitter down the greasy sidewalk. I held my breath, waiting for him to give me a stern warning and remove the handcuffs.

But that's not what happened.

“If not for you,” he said, his lip curled in disgust, “I could be home eating turkey and cranberry sauce like the rest of the civilized world instead of having to spend my time hanging out with you animals in this jungle. But you need to be controlled, no matter what it takes.”

He grabbed my hair and pulled me toward the open door of the car, pushing my head down when we got there and throwing me in so that I sprawled across the backseat on my side, the crumpled tens and twenties sliding off the seat and landing on the floor of the car.

“Wait a minute,” Ryan said. “What about the dog?”

“Unhook it and throw it in the back, with her. We'll take them down to the station.”

What wouldn't have been good news for any of the rest of them made me so grateful I wanted to slide out backward, fall to my knees, bow, and kiss Chiclets's feet.

“A fucking
pit
bull?
Are you nuts? I'm not going near that thing. Look at him.”

“I'll get him,” I shouted, choking, the words like shards of glass in my throat.

But Chiclets slammed the back door, opening the driver's door before turning back to answer his partner.

“Fuck it. Leave him where he is.”

“We can't do that. You can't just leave a pit bull chained to a pole in the middle of the meat district. What happens when the market opens?”

“You got a point there.” He glared at me, his eyes all hate, then back at Ryan. “What in hell's name you waiting for, he should die of old age? Shoot him.”

34

We Were Face-to-Face Again

I remember opening my mouth, but the sound I heard was not my own scream, it was a gun firing, right behind the car, right where Ryan was standing when he was told to shoot my dog.

And then I heard Chiclets. “Terry. Terry. What the fuck.” I saw his arm move, reaching for his gun. And then there was a second shot, and just like that I could no longer see him. Like a magician's coin, he had disappeared.

I tore at my panty hose with my fingernails, reached under my pants to where the razor blade Chi Chi had given me was taped to my hip, because she'd said, Do it, Rachel, in this life, you never know. Pulling it free, I sliced at the plastic cuffs, cutting them in the center so that my hands were free. I turned to open the door, get out of the car, and see what had happened, and found I couldn't. The handle wouldn't budge, nor would the button that locked the door come up. I tried the window, too, but it wouldn't roll down, and there was a barrier between the front and back of the car. I was in a cage.

I got up to my knees so that I could look out the back, terrified of what I might see, but having to know, my chest so tight I couldn't inhale. But before I had the chance to look, the door was pulled open, and there was the nun, her arms all but hidden beneath the wide sleeves of her habit, a metal pipe in one hand, the crowbar I'd used at Keller's, left God knows where. But it was what was in her other hand that got my attention. I could only see the tip of it, but that was more than enough to scare me witless, because she was holding it in my direction, at about the same spot her crucifix lay against the heavy black cloth that covered her own chest.

The wimple was hiding her face. “Sister,” I managed to say, barely above a whisper, “what's going on here?”

“Suck my dick, bitch,” she said, spitting the words into the car. “Good one, having your cop friends coming to the rescue. Unfortunately, they're not able to do anything for you at the moment. They're too busy being dead.”

Now I didn't need to see her to know who it was, all in black, including her heart.

“Hello, Grace,” I said. “Good to see you again.”

I waited for her gracious reply, but none came.

“Nice outfit,” I said. “Black is definitely your color.”

“I'm grieving,” she said.

And then, too late, I understood.

“Those were your brothers who got killed at Hunts Point?” I waited, but not for long. “Grace?”

“But for the Grace of God, would've been me, too.” She looked right into my eyes. “He busy tonight, asked me to take over for the evening, be the one who decides who lives, who dies. I'm well suited for the job, don't you think?”

When her hand moved, I tensed, but it was the hand with the crowbar. She smacked it hard against the side of the car, then let it go. I heard the sound of metal against pavement as it scraped along the ground. Slow motion, Grace reached into one of the pockets hidden in the folds of her skirt and pulled out a syringe.

“You so upset after killing two cops, you needed a little something to shore you up. You girls, you like that. It's what keeps folks like Devon and me in the chips. You need him to earn the money, then I be kind enough to give you something to spend it on.”

I inched back on the seat, knowing there was no way out, knowing that door handle didn't work either, that I was trapped and there was someone holding a lethal shot blocking the only escape.

“How'd you find him? Mulrooney? How'd you know he'd be here?”

But Grace didn't answer me. I tried not to look at the gun, its mouth as big as the opening of the Holland Tunnel, but I couldn't help it, couldn't help seeing the letters tattooed on her fingers,
HATE,
dark against her dark skin.

“What about Rosalinda? She see you off Mulrooney? Was that why you—” I stopped when she started to laugh, a guttural sound, deep and throaty, ending in a cough. At last I'd tickled her fancy.

“Bitch fucking confessed to me. Saw me having a smoke on the corner, took my hands, begged me to listen to her life of sin. Kept talking and talking all the way to the waterfront, saying she wanted to start a new life, asking if I'd absolve her of her sins, the fucking moron. You start out dumb, drugs don't make you any smarter.” She laughed again at the stupidity of it.

“You mean she didn't see you off Mulrooney?”

She shrugged. “Didn't think to ask. She said she been to see the pig man, was all I needed to hear. Did she, didn't she, wasn't a risk I was about to take.”

Adrenaline pumping, my mind searched for a way out. And then I had it, maybe. There'd been two shots. And two detectives down. Dashiell was still alive, but he hadn't figured out what I'd done yet, all that barking, all that pulling, he'd been going the wrong way. I still had that. I had Dashiell. And a razor in my hand, albeit a small one, just a single-edged blade. But it was better than nothing. Of course, Grace not only had a hypodermic needle that she was very experienced using, she also had a gun.

“So you're not one of them,” I said, trying to stall for time again. “You're their dealer.”

It was all coming together, every last bit of it, but what good would it do me now? Grace was leaning forward, coming toward me, the gun pointed at my heart, but it was the needle I had to worry about. If it appeared that I'd killed the cops who were harassing me, then tried to send myself to heaven and accidentally went straight to hell instead, if it seemed I'd OD'd, no one would look any further. Wasn't that Grace's plan, that she'd be able to conduct business as usual on West Thirteenth Street, case closed? The way I saw it, I had one chance, and I took it.

I held up the hand with the puny razor in it. “Back up,” I yelled at the top of my lungs. And again, even louder: “Back up.”

“Who you giving orders to, bitch? I'm the one with the—”

And now Grace disappeared, and I heard the gun scraping against the street, heard her scream this time, and I was out of the car so fast I have no memory of how. Dashiell, who'd listened to me, twice, had backed out of his collar. He was on top of her, and I was kicking her arm, then standing on her wrist until her fingers opened and I had the syringe she'd been trying to get into Dashiell's shoulder.

I stared down at her, but if I was waiting to see fear in her dark eyes, I would have had a long wait. There was none. And there wasn't going to be any. Nor was there anything to celebrate. Behind me, lying in the gutter, were the two detectives. At my feet was the drug dealer Rendell Wright, aka Grace, dressed as a nun, my pit bull standing over her, the look in his eyes and the vibration from his belly keeping her completely still.