The Sniper's Wife

Chapter 15

It was so dark in the alley that Willy Kunkle couldn't even see Riley Cox, although they were standing just four feet apart.

"That Marcus?" asked Riley in a disembodied whisper.

"According to my source, it is," said Willy. "From spiky hair to silver necklace-too far off to see the scar on his face. And I guess we're at the right address."

Willy watched Marcus cross the street, carefully check up and down the block, and then vanish into the entryway of a beaten-up building with the first two floors of windows covered in metal and a row of dented trash cans out front. Willy quickly trained his small telescope on the site, as he'd been doing throughout, steadying it against a drainpipe running down the wall beside him. They'd been standing here for several hours, waiting for some indication that their information was accurate. Not finding any clues at Nate Lee's apartment to Nate's whereabouts, Riley had taken them on a round of personal contacts to make inquiries. It hadn't taken long to find someone who claimed to know where Diablo was reportedly packaged for distribution. They'd also been told that there was good reason this brand had been around for a long time. The man in charge-nicknamed La Culebra, or the Snake-was known for his ruthlessness and a penchant for security. Riley's informant had described the address they were now looking at as a fortress. If it was, however, it didn't include the entire building. The traffic in and out up to now had been strictly mundane: moms with kids, old people, a few couples. And the windows of the upper floors had revealed the kind of normal activity one might expect in a regular apartment house. La Culebra might have been a tough nut, but he apparently wasn't well heeled or paranoid enough to claim the whole place as his own.

Willy lowered the telescope. "He hit the second-floor buzzer."

There was a small moment of silence before Riley murmured, "Okay, we seen day-to-day stuff on the third and fourth floors, and who knows about the first and second."

"First's probably the factory," Willy ventured, "with several exits besides the front door. And the second's where he lives. At least that's the way I'd lay it out."

Riley didn't disagree, but his focus was on something more pragmatic. "So, what now? We don't even know what La Culebra looks like, much less how to get at him."

Willy looked thoughtfully across the street. "The trick," he said, "is to come at them some way they don't expect."

"And they expect cops and the competition," Riley added, "meaning a big show of force."

Willy admitted with grudging admiration, "I bet that's why half this place looks normal. Fill a potential combat zone with civilians and you screw up the other guy's attack plan. No free-fire zones, no Philadelphia-style bombings from helicopters. We can't even burn them out with a Molotov cocktail."

"Too bad we don't have more time to recon this," Riley mused.

"Well," Willy answered, "we don't, so we'll just have to improvise. Maybe we can underwhelm them, instead." He reached into his pocket, extracted his gun, and held it out to where Riley was standing in the inky darkness, nudging him in the shoulder. "Here."

"What're you doin'?" Riley asked in surprise.

"Going in there," Willy said simply, and stepped out into the open.

"Wait," Riley whispered from his hiding place. "You'll get your ass shot off."

"Whatever," Willy said without looking back. "Stay put and keep an ear out."

He crossed the street, climbed the front steps, and rang the same bell he'd seen Marcus hit earlier.

"What?" came the reply through the small loudspeaker above the door.

"Police. Open up."

The speaker went dead. Willy waited for several minutes, aware of the conversation that must be taking place overhead.

Finally, the disembodied voice came back with the most standard of inquiries. "You got a warrant?"

"Not necessary. La Culebra needs what I have."

"What d'you mean?"

"I'll tell that to him."

"The fuck you will."

"You'll be fucked if I don't."

There was another prolonged silence. Willy let out a small puff of air. Despite the stakes, there was an element of formal, almost boring protocol to this, as if all of them were locked into a pattern of behavior none could escape.

Without further comment from the loudspeaker, the door lock buzzed noisily and Willy turned the knob. He stepped into an empty, dimly lit lobby with a staircase and an elevator door against the far wall.

"Step into the middle of the room and put your hands up," said a voice.

Willy looked around. There were several doors to each side, one of which was barely open. He moved forward. "My left arm is paralyzed. I can't lift it."

"I suppose to believe that?"

"You don't have much choice."

The door swung wide, revealing a young man pointing a small machine gun at Willy's chest. He smiled as Willy watched him. "I got a choice, dummy, and this is it."

"What? You kill me and then La Culebra kills you because he learned what I got too late to save his butt? Sharp thinking."

"Fuck you."

Willy smiled. What would these guys do without that word?

The gunman hesitated, thrown by Willy's seeming lack of concern. "Open your coat, then," he finally ordered.

Willy did so slowly, revealing the badge he had clipped to his belt.

"Okay. Go over there and lean against the wall with your legs spread out."

Half amused at the irony of the request, Willy did as he'd ordered countless others to do in the past. The other man emerged from his refuge, crossed the lobby, and patted Willy down, looking for weapons or hidden wires.

Satisfied, he stepped back. "Okay. Go upstairs."

Willy took the steps slowly, his right hand held slightly away from his body so the gunman could see it at all times. One flight up was a landing with three doors, two of which had been welded shut with steel plates, and the third heavily beefed up against forced entry. A camera was perched over this last door, surveying the entire landing.

The gunman pounded on the door. "Rico. Open up."

A mechanical chorus of bolts and locks snapping to was followed by the door opening onto another man with a similar weapon.

"He clean?" this one asked the first.

"No, asshole. I made sure he was carrying hand grenades."

"Fuck you, Manny. Who made you the big man?"

Willy shook his head. "Boys, boys."

Manny poked him in the back with the barrel of his gun. "Fuck you, cop. Maybe I don't care what you got and I kill you right here."

Willy looked at him. "Maybe you do. So what?"

Manny's eyes narrowed. "You fuckin' with me?"

Willy considered commenting on his limited vocabulary, but said instead, "Take me to La Culebra. Let him figure this out."

Manny pressed his lips together angrily before spitting out, "I don't like you, man."

Willy knew he should be a nervous wreck by now, bearding the lion in his den, bluffing all the way. But fear was an instinct he'd lost long ago. Once, during a similar confrontation when he'd been taken by surprise by a Viet Cong guerrilla, the man had threatened to shoot him on the spot. Willy had merely opened his shirt and exposed his bare chest in a moment of stark self-revelation, all concern for survival gone. During the stunned hesitation that had followed, one of Willy's companions had appeared from the foliage behind them and shot the young man dead. In that moment, Willy had both mourned his passing and the service he'd been about to provide.

"Join the crowd," he told Manny.

They took him down a hallway, past rooms with other men loitering inside, some watching TV, others talking, a couple cleaning more guns. It reminded him of a base camp between operations. Willy noticed all the windows were equipped with closed steel shutters.

They reached what might have once been a dining room, now converted into a hodgepodge of den and office and general storage area. There, sitting at a badly abused metal desk covered with an assortment of weapons, paperwork, wads of money, and a couple of powder-filled baggies, was a man in his late thirties sporting a trim beard and mustache, his hair swept back and held in a ponytail, incongruously wearing a pair of half glasses on the end of his nose. He was reading something in a folder, much as any businessman might.

He looked up as Willy entered with his escort.

"He's clean," Manny announced unnecessarily. "He's got a crippled arm, too."

The man with the beard gave Manny a careful look, but didn't say anything to him. Instead, he motioned to an empty folding chair and told Willy, "Sit."

Manny and Rico fanned out to either side.

"You Culebra?" Willy asked.

"La Culebra, yes."

"What I got is for your ears only."

The Snake pushed out his lips thoughtfully, taking in the man opposite him. He then gave his two lieutenants a rapid order in Spanish and sent them off.

He waited until the door had closed behind them. "So," he asked, removing his glasses, "what do you want to tell me?"

"Nothing," Willy admitted. "I wanted to ask you a question."

La Culebra sat back in his chair, his face slightly flushed. He sensed he'd been taken advantage of, but knew the value of staying cool. "All this trouble just for that? You are a strange man. Are you really a policeman?"

Willy flipped open his jacket again, revealing the badge. "Vermont Bureau of Investigation."

La Culebra broke into a broad grin. "Vermont? What the hell is that? You the ski police or something?"

Willy smiled back. "Close. I'm looking for a friend of mine-Nathan Lee."

The bearded man touched his forehead with his fingertips, as if trying to locate something he'd misplaced there. "A cop from Vermont lies his way in here to ask me about a man I never heard of. If I kill you right now, will anybody care?"

"Nobody that matters to you."

"You're not going to tell me you have backup?"

"Nope."

"Why do you care about Nathan Lee?"

"He was doing me a favor. I think it got him in trouble."

"What favor?"

"I asked him to find out who was making Diablo. I wanted to ask that person a question."

Clearly fascinated, La Culebra now sat forward and rested his elbows on the desk. "Meaning the question is not where is Nathan Lee. Has anyone ever told you you're a very strange man?"

"All the time. And this is a different question."

He nodded. "Very good. What is it?"

"A friend of mine died from an overdose of Diablo on the Lower East Side. I wanted to know how she got hold of it."

La Culebra laughed incredulously. "How she got hold of it? You're kidding, right?" He pretended to shuffle through the papers before him. "Let's see… what was the serial number on the bag? I'm sure I have it cross-referenced here somewhere. She did mail in her warranty card, didn't she?"

He laughed some more, only quieting down once he saw no reaction from Willy. "Okay, this is where you tell me I am a monster, a peddler of death, worse than the shit on your shoes-the person who killed your friend."

Willy shook his head. "You are worse than the shit on my shoes, but you didn't kill her. You were just the delivery boy. If anyone's responsible, it's me."

La Culebra looked at him with renewed interest. "You made this woman unhappy?"

"I married her."

The drug dealer remained silent for a moment before saying, "I don't know how your wife got hold of Diablo. I am sorry she did. I have no retailers outside this neighborhood. Either she bought it up here or someone else did and then gave it to her. I could ask my people if she was the buyer, though. Do you have a picture?"

Willy reached into an inner pocket and removed the photograph he'd taken from her apartment. He hesitated before handing it over, however.

La Culebra set him at ease. "I have a Xerox machine in the other room. You can have that back."

Willy dropped it on the desk between them. "She's the one right in the middle."

The other man picked it up and considered it for a while. When he spoke next, he seemed to be addressing the picture directly. "My name is Carlos Barzun."

Willy watched his face carefully, wondering at this spontaneous admission. "And you tell me that so I'll know who to credit for this act of grace?"

Barzun smiled. "I am a Catholic. I have memories of such things."

Willy smiled slightly. "My name is Willy Kunkle."

"You are not the only person interested in Nathan Lee," Barzun admitted. "I am to report anyone asking about this batch of Diablo."

"Report to who?"

"A customer who paid me a lot of money."

"Did he say to watch for a one-armed cop?"

Barzun paused. The muted sounds all around them slowly filled the silence. "Yes," he finally said.

"And you told him about Lee?"

"Yes, after I heard Lee had been asking about me."

"But you won't tell me this man's name."

"I have to think about that," Barzun confessed. "I am not sure how generous I should be with you. I worry I have already made a big mistake."

He rose from his chair and picked up the photograph. "You are a bad influence, Willy Kunkle."

"I've heard that before."

"Wait here."

Barzun left the room. Willy stayed absolutely still, knowing the fragility of the slender string keeping him alive-a ruthless man's quirky yielding to a tiny spark of sentimentality, as inexplicable as a hungry shark forgoing an easy meal.

Barzun returned and gave the photo back. "If I hear about your wife, how do I tell you?"

Willy gave him the name and address of Riley's store.

Barzun then picked up a small portable radio and spoke into it in Spanish. Moments later, Manny entered the room, still carrying his squat, ugly gun.

Barzun gestured to Willy and told Manny, "Make sure he gets safely to the street."

With Manny walking warily behind him, Willy retraced his steps out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into the lobby. As they both neared the door, the radio attached to Manny's belt uttered a single short sentence, which Manny briefly acknowledged.

As he held the door open for him, Manny said to Willy, "The boss told me to give you the name Ron Cashman."

"Thanks," Willy replied, and stepped back outside.