CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I could see the future.

A few weeks from now I’d think about the circumstances surrounding Larry McDonald’s suicide or homicide or whatever-icide, and I’d put them away as if I were sliding a few singles change back into my wallet. How many times in my life had I been so completely preoccupied with something or someone that there wasn’t enough room in my head to think, in my heart to feel, in my lungs to breathe? Christ, if we could turn our preoccupations into occupations, we’d all be fat and happy.

And then there was Carmella Melendez. Was my obsession with her any different than with Andrea Cotter, my high school crush, or the ten other women whose paths I’d crossed in the course of my life and thought I could never be without? Now, I barely remembered some of their names or faces or why it was they so consumed me. No doubt, there’s something magical in obsession-a spark, the ultimate reminder of what it feels like to be alive. Yet, afterthought is the sad fate of all obsession. Some obsessions rush out like the tide; others recede slowly like middle-aged hairlines, but they do recede.

Yes, I could see my future. It included vague, half-remembered questions about Larry’s death and wistful smiles about a foolish kiss. Time would bleach out the color and sand off the sharp edges of these things like everything else that seems pressing and urgent at any given moment. Unfortunately, there were people in the world whose vision of the future didn’t jibe with mine. Wish I had known that before I got Carmella’s call. Guess my powers of prognostication had their limits.


The low, misty clouds of the late afternoon had turned darker than the night itself and the romantic pitter-patter of earlier showers was now long forgotten. Rain fell in solid sheets, landing on the roof of my car like swipes from a dull axe. I took it slow over Red Hook’s slick and vacant cobblestone streets. Between the blinding rain and the black streams of overflow sewer water, I couldn’t be sure of where the street might dip or where the next pothole was looming.

In spite of the awful weather, or maybe because of it, Crispo’s was booming. Above the pounding rain, I could hear the buzz of the crowd and the thumping jukebox bass halfway down the block. The noise left me cold. Driving past, I couldn’t shake the sense that all the revelry had the vibe of a party at the end of the world. What the fuck? I was a Cold War baby and my mother’s son. Either way, I was brought up believing we were always on the verge of extinction. At least, thank God, the Cold War was over. My mom’s legacy of pessimism would be considerably harder to outrun.

Although I’d found a spot near the corner, no more than forty paces from Rip’s front door, I managed to get soaked to my skin. Inside, the place was even more crowded than I expected, but it didn’t take me fifteen seconds to spot Melendez at the corner of the bar, not far from where we’d met the last time. The broad smile that had graced her lovely face that last time was gone. Even after making eye contact, her demeanor remained much the same as it had been the first time I saw her in the vestibule of the 60th Precinct house. She wore her scowling Don’t fuck with me! face. I didn’t have to look more than five feet to her left to see why. Detective John Murphy, her partner, was there, staring at me like a plate of cold leftovers.

And then, in the tangle of damp bodies to Murphy’s right, I caught a glimpse of something else, something familiar. It wasn’t so much a face as a part of a profile in silhouette. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it registered. For a reason still unknown to me, I found myself looking back-not at Melendez, but at Murphy. He had followed my gaze and the silhouette had registered with him as well. He turned his eyes my way and in them there seemed to be a mix of confusion and worry. Something was wrong. I peeked over to Carmella. She had been watching the exchange of glances. Now she, too, seemed worried and took a step toward me.

Murphy’s eyes got big with panic and he shouted something at Melendez. His mouth worked in super-slow motion, his gaunt face contorted by the movement of his lips; it was impossible to make out his scream above the music. Some wiseass had played “Dominick the Donkey (The Italian Christmas Donkey)” and gotten the bartender to turn it up. The crowd started clapping and singing along with Lou Monte:

A pair of shoes for Louie

And a dress for Josephine

The labels on the inside says

They’re made in Brook-a-lyn

With the mention of Brooklyn, everyone cheered. Murphy began pushing his way to his partner.

That’s when the shooting started. I caught the first flash out of the corner of my eye, felt the burn on my right cheek, heard the explosion. When the shots come from over your right shoulder, handgun fire is fucking loud. It doesn’t sound like firecrackers or a car backfiring in the street. Murphy got hit flush in the neck, spraying blood and panic everywhere as he collapsed. Carmella was going for her piece when the second shot whizzed by me. The frightened girl next to Melendez ran right into the path of the bullet. She fell into the crowd. A third shot. This one hit Melendez, spinning her sideways against the bar, and she crumpled.

I tried to run to her, but the crush of bodies was too great. I reached under my jacket for my.38. As I did so, I saw an automatic, maybe a 9mm, sticking out of the mass of bodies from the spot where the silhouette had been. I didn’t wait around for the muzzle flash. I dropped. Now the shots came in a hurry, one blast almost catching up to the next catching up to the next, and one body, then another, fell on top of me. The lights went out, glass showering down. I crawled through a moving web of legs to where I thought Carmella would be. I called her name and felt a hand, sticky and wet, grab my forearm.

“Moe, it fucking hurts. Oh, Christ, Moe!”

I felt for her mouth and clamped my hand over it. “Can you crawl?”

Her head shook no against my hand.

“Can you climb on my back?”

This time her head shook yes. I laid flat on my stomach. She rolled on top of me and as I raised up to crawl, only one of her arms curled around me. I headed directly to the kitchen. Almost everyone was running in the other direction, toward the front door. Although there seemed to be a momentary cease-fire, the screaming and the chaos went on unabated. I wanted to check Carmella’s wound, but I was afraid to stop just yet. I pushed through the kitchen door with my head and shoulder. The galley was deserted, as near as I could tell.

“I’m gonna lay you down and then fireman-carry you. It’ll hurt like a bastard, but try not to scream, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“Where are you hit?”

“Right shoulder.”

“Okay, here we go. One, two. .”

I rolled her gently off my back onto the tile floor. Then I gathered her up and placed her over my shoulder. As I placed my hands under her armpits, her body writhed in pain. I’d been shot at but never shot, so I could only guess at her agony.

Shit, just thinking about the sound of my snapping knee ligaments made me nauseous. Making my way through the lightless kitchen, it occurred to me that the.38 had been in my hand this whole time. My knuckles were scraped and raw from crawling and from having been trampled on.

I kicked open the back door and waited. Nothing. I ran down the alleyway. Rip’s was close to the corner, so it was a short run back to my car. I laid Carmella on the front seat next to me and pulled away before the cops arrived. This had setup written all over it and I wasn’t in a cop-trusting mood at the moment. As I pulled away, I pressed a wad of glove box napkins against her wound to stanch the flow of blood.

“How’s Murphy? How’s Murphy? How’s. .” she kept repeating, her breathing growing shallower and faster. Her skin was almost colorless and clammy to the touch.

He’s fucking dead! “I don’t know. I sorta lost sight of him. Just keep quiet and calm.”

I pulled over by a public phone, removed the soaked napkins, and looked at the wound. It seemed small, but I knew that meant nothing. It’s what the bullet does after it enters that matters. I pushed her forward and saw the back of her blouse was also completely covered in

“Listen, Carmella, do you trust me?”

“I do.”

“I’m gonna get you some help, but I can’t take you to a hospital.”

“I understand.” She took rapid little gulps of air.

“Okay, good, I’m gonna make a call and then I’ll be right back. I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

“I know you won’t. You always save me.”

Good thing she believed it. I sure as hell didn’t. For all I knew, I had just condemned her to death.


My brother-in-law, Ronnie, had been a trauma room surgeon at Kings County Hospital before he and my little sister moved to New Mexico a few years back. If there’s one thing you learn to deal with at Kings County it’s gunshot wounds. These days, he teaches at the university medical school and works at the trauma center. Suddenly I was feeling very grateful Miriam and Ronnie had decided to use the timing of our grand opening party to vacation in the city and show their kids where mommy and daddy had grown up.

“She’s sleeping now. The shot was a through and through. The wound is pretty clean, but I have no way of knowing exactly how much damage was done. I know it looks like she lost a lot of blood, but the slug didn’t hit a major artery. In any case, you should get her to a hospital as soon as you can,” Ronnie said, slipping the latex gloves off his hands.

“I don’t know how soon that will be.”

“Why not?”

“Because the cops will be all over it.”

“So. .”

“Like I told you on the phone, someone killed her partner tonight and tried to kill her, and I can’t trust the cops right now.”

“But-”

“Look, Ronnie, I have my fucking reasons and I don’t have time to explain.”

“Well, you can’t leave her in the fucking basement of a wine store, Moe!”

“Don’t you think I know that? But her life’s in danger. What if I bring her to a hospital on Long Island or Westches-”

“Forget it! A blind doctor would spot this as a gunshot wound and it would get reported immediately. At best you’d be buying her a couple of hours. Besides, the long ride in a car could do her more damage.”

We stood there in the basement of Bordeaux In Brooklyn, trying not to stare at each other. I couldn’t afford to tell him any more than I already had. He was in deep enough and I didn’t want to dig him a hole he might never get out of. He was about to do that all by himself.

“You look like shit yourself,” he said.

“Thanks, brother-in-law. I love you too.”

He slipped on another pair of gloves. “After I clean you up, help me get her into my dad’s car.”

“Ronnie, you-”

“Shut up, Moe. Just know this. The minute I feel she needs to go to the hospital, I’m going to drop her at Kings County. Deal?”

“You can’t bring her back to your parents’ house.”

“She’s my patient now. She’s my responsibility. Where I bring her is my business. Do we have a deal?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not unless you want her to die.”

“Deal.”


I’d taken the deal, and the world, as is its wont, had since moved on. Katy and Sarah were already on their way upstate to stay with my in-laws. It’s what they did whenever I managed to fuck up our lives by getting involved in things out of my purview. Katy didn’t even bother asking why. The damage had been done. Knowing how and why was beside the point.

I loved that Katy had supported me and got how badly I missed being a cop. She alone knew what it had cost me to twice turn down reinstatement and that gold shield. Years ago, she’d even given me a replica of a NYPD detective’s shield. These days it collected dust and lint in my sock drawer with my P.I. license and the remainder of an unfulfilled promise. In spite of it all, I couldn’t help but feel she had come around to Aaron’s point of view: that my time as a cop had

Klaus had gone clothes and car shopping for me. The clothes were mine. The car was rented. Klaus, too, had learned not to ask too many questions, especially about the big splotches of blood on my clothes, the bandages on my hands, or the two big plastic bags I’d asked him to drop into another store’s dumpster. He’d probably put two and two together by now. Klaus was good at simple math, and the Red Hook Massacre, as it was already being called, was all over the news. Five dead, including a decorated NYPD detective and two underage girls; seven wounded; and a neighborhood in shock was the stuff of tabloid wet dreams.

Luckily, the cops hadn’t quite sorted things out as yet. They still didn’t know if Murphy was a target or if he had simply gotten caught responding to a gunfight between at least two other shooters. There was no mention of Carmella Melendez on the radio or in the papers. But she wouldn’t stay under the radar for very long. The cops would be suspicious by now that she hadn’t called in or shown up at the first news of her partner’s murder. Maybe they already knew she was missing and/or wounded. For most anyone else it would have been impossible to find out just what the cops knew or didn’t know, but not for me. No, not me. I had a pipeline into the NYPD and his name was Robert Hiram Fishbein. He got to the phone pretty quick.

“I thought you might be calling, Mr. Prager.”

“Why’s that?”

“Give me a little credit, will you? Almost everything you’ve asked me for to this juncture has to do with Coney Island and your old precinct, the one in which you served with the late Chief McDonald. So when I wake up this fine morning and hear a detective-and not just any detective, but one from the Six-O-is gunned down in Red Hook. . And when I recall that he’s the partner of that hot Puerto Rican honey you couldn’t keep your eyes off at Fountain Avenue, well, let’s just say I did some discreet checking around.”

“How much do they know about Red Hook?”

“Are you asking me what they know or what they think?”

“Both.”

“They know very little, about as much as they say in the papers. What they think is that maybe Murphy was a target and not collateral damage. They don’t know why, but none of the witnesses recall an argument prior to the gunfire breaking out.

“They’re also worried about Murphy’s partner. She hasn’t shown up or checked in and she’s not at home. There’s also some speculation she might have been at Rip’s as well. Some witnesses remember a pretty, black-haired woman getting shot at the end of the bar, but, alas, no body. Curious, huh?”

“Very.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Prager?”

“I might.”

“Care to share?”

“Not yet, Mr. D.A. First, I need to find out everything you can about another detective in the 60th. His name’s Bento. Fax the stuff to my Brooklyn store.”

“As you wish.”

“And Fishbein, in case you’re feeling a little impatient and want to cash me in for the short-end money, don’t do it. I won’t be at the store and I’ll cut my own balls off before you get a thing out of me. Understand?”

“Understood.”

I gave Klaus some instructions about where to forward the faxed documents and what to do with my car.

“Look, there’s a lot of blood on the front seat, so throw a blanket over it and park it in the underground garage down the street. Where’s the rental?”

“At the meter directly in front of the store.”

“I owe you.”

“No, boss. You don’t owe me a thing. Just promise me you won’t get killed. I don’t make friends easily.”

“I promise.”

“Liar. You’re just like all straight men.”

“I don’t know how to take that, Klaus.”

“Forget it. Just remember, if you get killed, I’m not coming to the funeral.”

“I’ll remember.”

Looked like I was going back to the land of one-eyed cats and disgraced ex-cops. True, I made friends more easily than Klaus, but at the moment, the ones I had-even the former ones-would have to do.

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