Valentino Pier (Rapid Reads) (2 page)

The dog was asleep on a blanket. He’d had a rough day. The vet had given him vaccinations against all sorts of diseases. Pumped him full of medicines to treat the ones he already had. Even cleaned his teeth. They’d shaved his old fur down to the skin. Flea-dipped him. Bathed him. And bathed him again. Gulliver had to admit the dog smelled a lot better. But even with his ratty fur gone. With clean teeth. The pooch was still as ugly as could be.

Gulliver was half-asleep on the couch. The tv was on. There was a knock at the door. Ugly didn’t like that. He stirred. Walked to the door. Growled a low, steady growl. Gulliver didn’t like it either. It was nearly three o’clock in the morning. And you had to ring the loft from the lobby. Then you had to wait to be buzzed in. Gulliver wrapped his oddly shaped hand around the butt of his Sig. Then relaxed. It must be the kid, he thought. Probably couldn’t wait to see if Gulliver had found his dog. Street kids don’t live by the clockre you doing hereanurz. They also have ways of getting into places without following the rules. The street has its own rules.

“One second,” he called out. He pulled back the door.

It wasn’t the kid. Of course it wasn’t. The dog wouldn’t be growling if it was the kid. But what did Gulliver know about dogs? Two big men stood in the doorway. Both had blue-and-gold NYPD detective shields hanging from their jacket pockets. One of them looked familiar. He was in his forties. He had thinning reddish hair. Some of it was gray. Blue eyes. A sad mouth. Gulliver couldn’t remember where he knew the detective from. The other guy was a blob. Fat. Double-chinned. Bald. Older. Cold gray eyes in tiny slits.

“You Dowd?” the re d - h a i red detective asked.

“Gulliver Dowd. Yes. Why?”

“We’ll ask the questions,” said the Blob.

“I’m Detective Sam Patrick. This is my partner, Detective Rigo.” He nodded at the Blob.

“What can I do for you, detectives?” Gulliver asked. Then he turned to Ugly. “Go back to your blanket and lie down.” The dog listened. Nestled back down on his blanket.

But kept his bulging eyes on the cops.

“Ugly dog,” Rigo said.

That pissed Gulliver off. “You always this pleasant? I wonder what the dog thinks about your weight.”

“Listen, you little freak. I’m gonna—”

“Enough,” snapped Patrick. He held out a plastic bag. “Is this your card?”

Gulliver took the bag. One of his business cards was inside. It had specks of red on it. His heart thumped in his chest. “Yeah. It’s mine. Where did you find it?”

“It was recovered from a crime scene an hour ago.”

Gulliver felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “Oh, shit. The kid. It’s the kid, right? About ten? Skinny? Dirty T-shirt? Crooked teeth? About this tall?” He held his hand a few inches above his head. “Dark brown eyes?”

The Blob said, “We don’t know about his eyes. They was shut at the time.”

“Is he—”

“Nah,” Patrick said. “He’s not dead. He’s hurt bad though. They don’t know how bad yet. He’s at Brooklyn University Hospital.”

The Blob poked Gulliver in the chest. “Why’d you do it, Dowd?”

“Do what?” Gulliver turned to Patrick. “Tell your partner that if he does that again, I’ll break his fingers.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Rigo went to poke him again. “You little—”

Gulliver grabbed the fat detective’s thumb. Twisted it. Rigo fell to his knees. He was red-faced. He winced in pain.

“Now that we see eye to eye, Detective Rigo…”

“You’re assaulting an officer,” Rigo said through gritted teeth.

Patrick laughed. Then commanded, “Let him go. She had betrayed u k, , Dowd. Now!”

Gulliver let go of the fat man’s hand. Rigo got to his feet. He rubbed the feeling back into his hand.

“How did this kid come to have your card on him?” Patrick asked.

“He was my client.”

Rigo snorted. “Get outta here.”

Gulliver pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. “That’s the kid’s dog. He asked me to find the dog. I found the dog. I knew he was a street kid. No home. No phone. I gave him my card so he could check in with me. I thought it was the kid at the door just now. You can ask Juan at the bodega on Van Brunt. Heyman Jones at Coffey Park. And Mia at Dr. Prentice’s vet clinic on Union Street. They’ll tell you I spent the day looking for and taking care of the dog. There’s a video camera outside the building that will tell you when I came into the building. It will show you I haven’t left since.”

“And you did this thing with the dog out of the goodness of your heart?” Patrick asked.

“Yeah. I was sad today. I was missing my—” Gulliver stopped midsentence. He suddenly remembered how he knew Detective Patrick. “You used to be in uniform at the Seven-Five in East New York. Didn’t you?”

Patrick tilted his head. “That’s right. But how—”

Gulliver had spent many days at the Seven-Five precinct house in the year after his sister’s murder. And he never forgot faces. He turned. Went to his desk. Got the picture of Keisha in her dress blues. He showed the framed photo to the detectives. “That’s my sister, Keisha,” he said.

Rigo shook his head and laughed. “You got some strange genes in your family. A dwarf and a—”

“That’s enough, Rigo,” Patrick shouted at his partner. “I’ll handle this. Go wait in the car.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. Turned. Went down the steps.

“Keisha was a good cop,” Patrick said when he was sure Rigo was gone.

“That was a bad day when they found her like that.”

“All I’ve had are bad days since then. Come in. Tell me what happened to the kid.”

Detective Patrick sat down on the couch across from the desk. Gulliver handed him a beer. He had one himself. That thing about cops not drinking on duty is bullshit.

“Found him behind an ocean freight container on Ferris Street near Valentino Pier. Looks like someone whacked him pretty good across the side of his head. The kid had your card folded in his hand. He also had a twenty-dollar bill in his pocket.”

Gulliver explained about giving the kid the bill. About what he told the kid to do with the money. About how he found the dog. About how he had dealt with a lot of street kids. “I didn’t even know the kid’s name. He looked like he needed some help. I figured once he came for the dog I would be able to talk to him. Find out about his folks. See if I could get him some real help.”

Patrick put his half-empty beer down on the floor. “Okay, Dowd. Come in tomorrow. Give us an official statement. Maybe by then we’ ll know something.”

Gulliver was curious. “What’s the kid’s name?”

“Maybe that’s one of the things we’ll know by tomorrow.”

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CHAPTER
FOUR

T
he weather had turned. But that’s spring in New York. Blue skies one day, gray the next. Gulliver took Ugly with him to the precinct house. They made a funny pair. Gulliver laughed at some of the looks they got.

“You and me,” Gulliver said to Ugly. “Two runts of their litters.”

As they walked, Gulliver came to see just how lucky Ugly was. The dog wasn’t aware he was ugly. Girl dogs probably didn’t care about his squished-in face. His stubby little legs. His bulging eyeballs. His bent tail. Words couldn’t hurt him. Not the way they hurt Gulliver. Ugly just lived his life from day to day. From meal to meal. And he was loved. That kid really loved his dog. What Gulliver wouldn’t give to be loved.

He gave his statement as he had promised he would. Then he had a talk with Detective Patrick. Gulliver was glad that Detective Rigo was nowhere in sight.

“Any word on the kid?” he asked.

Patrick said, “Still unconscious, but stable.”

“That’s something.”

“He’s been in the system. Name is Ellis Torres. Mother’s a tweaker. In and out of jail and rehab all the time. Right now she’s doing a short bid for a parole violation. The father…he’s in the wind.”

“So the kid really is on his own.”

Patrick smiled, looking to the dog. “Yeah. Him and the mutt. They put the kid in foster care when the mother went away. Ran after a few days.”

“No surprise there.”

Keisha had told Gulliver all about the bad side of foster care. There were good sides too. He knew that. Keisha knew that. Only Keisha hadn’t gotten much of the good.

Patrick said, “Some kids just can’t adjust.”

“Or maybe he just missed his dog.” Gulliver was curious. “Any leads? Any witnesses?”

“Nope. No one’s come forward. No one saw or heard anything. But there aren’t always a lot of people down that way.”

“You’ll keep me posted? across the side of his headtedhat happened”

“Sure. And Dowd,” Patrick said, “I know you’re a PI. A good one, from what I hear.”

“Thanks. But…”

“Stay out of this. This is a police matter. I liked your sister. She was a good cop. But if you get in the middle of this…”

“I understand. I’m on my own. Don’t worry. I’m used to that.”

Gulliver Dowd had no plans to stay out of it. The people who hired him almost always had money. They could afford to send him out onto the street to look for their missing kids. But who watched out for kids like Ellis Torres? If someone hadn’t laid a pipe or a baseball bat across the side of his head, no one would have even noticed him. Not the cops. Not anybody. There were eight million people in New York City. Really, more like ten million. Many of those people were faceless. Nameless. Powerless. No one watched out for them. But not Ellis Torres. Not anymore. He had Gulliver Dowd to stand up for him.

The yellow crime-scene tape was still up. It was blowing in the breeze off the water. The empty ocean container was no more than a hundred yards from where he had met the kid. Valentino Pier was just ahead. But Gulliver wasn’t interested in looking at the harbor sights. Not today. This was the part of the Red Hook that was still rough at the edges. Where the water slapped up against the concrete seawalls. Against old piers. The streets around here were lined with warehouses. Some were full. Some had been empty for years. There were small factory buildings. Tour-bus yards. School-bus yards. Ocean-container storage yards. Some of the streets were still paved with cobbles. Some had old trolley tracks. There was a new pier close by. Some ocean liners docked there. But the docks weren’t busy. Not like in the old days.

Ugly pulled on his new leash as they approached the container. His tail wagged like crazy. The dog smelled the kid’s scent. As they got close, Gulliver’s stomach knotted up again. There was dried blood on the pavement. The spot where they had found the kid. Gulliver took a quick look around. There were some houses mixed in among the warehouses and storage yards. Not many.

He told Ugly to be quiet. Then he did a breathing technique his karate sensei had taught him. It slowed down his breathing. His heart rate. He shut all the noise out of his head. He put himself into a kind of trance. It let him focus. He took a more careful look around. It was as if he was taking photos with his mind.

Ugly wasn’t big on trances. He pulled hard at his leash. He barked at Gulliver. He tugged Gulliver in another direction. Down Ferris toward Coffey Street. Past Coffey Street. Past Dikeman to Wolcott Street. He thought the dog must be following the kid’s scent. Ugly stopped by a cyclone fence in front of a big beige warehouse. There was a warehouse just like it on the next block. But that one was fixed up like new. Not this one.

Gulliver knew this place. He had seen it on some of his walks. A real-estate firm had had big plans for it. They were going to turn it into condos with harbor views. They had hired a builder to gut the inside. To redo the outside. But then the real-estate market crashed. The firm ran out of money. The warehouse had sat untouched for the last four years. Some of its concrete skin had peeled away. Some of its steel bones were showing.

Ugly was barking like mad. Jumping up on his hind legs. Spinning around in circles.

“You don’t look like a ballet ]id th!dancer,” Gulliver said, “but you sure act like one. All you need is some funny shoes and a tutu.”

Dogs are amazing with smells. They can read scents the way people read words. But Gulliver couldn’t understand what Ugly was trying to tell him. He bet Ellis Torres would know.

“Come on, Ugly.” He tugged on the dog’s leash. “Let’s take a look around.”

They began to walk the four sides of the empty warehouse. Then the skies opened up. Bolts of lightning like neon spider webs flashed across the clouds. Thunder cracked. Big drops of rain poured down on them. Gulliver wasn’t ready for this. Ugly pulled on the leash. Gulliver followed. Around the corner there was a hole in the fence surrounding the building. On the other side of the hole was a metal door. The door was closed. But it wasn’t locked. When he tried the handle, it opened. Not a lot. Just enough to let a dog and someone as small as Gulliver inside.

It was dim, but there was just enough light coming through the windows to see okay. Gulliver let go of Ugly’s leash.

“Go!” he said.

Off went the dog.

The floor was covered in dust. In bits of chipped concrete. There were old newspapers lying around. Forgotten tools here and there. He could see all the way up to the ceiling high above him. The builders had taken out all the old floors and inner walls. They’d taken out the pipes and wires. Now only metal girders were left.

Gulliver caught up to Ugly. He was in the far corner of the warehouse. This was where Ellis Torres and his dog had lived until yesterday. The kid had made a pretty nice setup for the two of them. There was a mattress. A sheet and a heavy quilt on top. A propane heater. A beat-up Coleman stove. Two led lanterns. A mirror. A small cooler. A bed for Ugly made out of rags. A case of bottled water. A washbasin made from an old sink. Some dishes and plastic silverware. Towels. A dresser held together with duct tape. Soap. Toothpaste. A toothbrush. Even some books. A ladder leaned against the wall. Gulliver guessed the kid used it for shelving. On the floor around the ladder were some photos. Ellis’s mother.
Attractive
. Ellis in a school uniform. That big smile on his face. Ellis holding Ugly as a puppy. The dog wasn’t any cuter then. Gulliver was always amazed at how street kids made lives for themselves. Often out of the scraps of other people’s lives.