The Sniper's Wife

Chapter 9

Nathan Lee had lived in Washington Heights all his life, and had done almost everything within reach to make a living. He wasn't a major player, just one of thousands on the hustle, a discreet man with a professionally short memory, who never forgot anything or anyone, knew how and where to get things done, and whose comfort level with things legal and illegal had finally reached an even keel. Just as he would never hold a nine-to-five job, he would also never touch anything that might cost him more than a night's detention.

That hadn't always been true, and his coming to terms with moderation owed a lot to Willy Kunkle.

All those years ago, before Willy left for Vietnam and while still a rookie on the NYPD, he stopped Nate Lee on a drug possession charge. The circumstances weren't egregious. It was a routine piece of business, but the laws were such, and Nate's record long enough, that had Willy actually arrested him, Nate, no spring chicken even back then, would have spent the rest of his life in prison.

That hadn't happened. For reasons neither man was likely to be able to explain, an odd connection was made that night between the troubled patrol officer who, unbeknownst to himself, was already in freefall, and the penny-ante street hustler one step away from a life sentence. Like one failing relay racer tossing the baton to the next man up, Willy spontaneously granted Nate absolution, with no strings attached. He merely poured the drugs into a storm drain, told Nate to nurture the gift he'd just been granted, and walked away.

The two never met again.

To Willy, the experience was like a passing inspiration, unsought at the time, inexplicable later, and finally all but forgotten. To Nate, however, it had more significance. He pondered the chances of being as lucky as he'd been with Willy, and found them slim enough to warrant his paying attention. Not that he then joined the church or found redemption. But he started thinking before he acted, considering his own survival, and never again put himself in such peril. After a couple of years practicing this new habit, he then thought a show of thanks might be in order, so he wrote a letter to Patrol Officer Kunkle, care of the NYPD, reminding him of that night without going into detail, expressing his gratitude, and hoping that everything in Kunkle's life was equally on the upswing.

He never heard back, never expected he would, but was content to have made the gesture.

Kunkle actually got that letter, a long time after it was sent. The police department forwarded it to Vietnam, where Willy opened it in an alcoholic stupor one night, and injected into its mundane wording an intangible significance. Some act of grace that he'd practiced without thought a seeming lifetime ago had been brought back to his attention in the middle of a hell on earth like some elusive sign. Willy kept the letter almost as a talisman, rereading it occasionally until it finally became lost in the wake of his turbulent travels.

When the young steerer mentioned Washington Heights, however, forcing Willy to think back not just to his childhood, but to when he'd walked the beat in exactly that neighborhood, the memory of Nate's letter came back to mind with abrupt and total clarity. That's why he'd referred to the second shoe dropping.

In fact, such a historic connection was by now becoming the norm. Since crossing the Harlem River, he'd been traveling backward in time like a man walking into freezing cold water. Mary's death, the fact that he'd been the one called to identify her, its happening in New York, seeing Bob and Andy, and finally his sudden recall of Nathan Lee's innocuous letter in relation to Washington Heights, were all part of a progressive pattern.

As Willy rode the subway north into Harlem late that night, he couldn't help but wonder whether-even hope that-the journey he was on might clarify more than just the questions surrounding Mary's death.

Because he was feeling the need for a whole lot of answers. Nathan Lee swung out the door and stepped lightly down the stairs of the apartment building fronting Amsterdam Avenue, a wad of cash tight in his back pocket. He'd known a man who needed a job done, and knew another man who could do it. That was largely the nature of Nate's existence nowadays, hovering in the middle of as much action as possible, like a party balloon being swatted from one table to another-he made it his business to pass between disparate people, and made sure that with each swat, he got a small percentage.

He looked up and down the sidewalk with a smile. It was long after midnight, which for him was mid-workday, and he was in the mood to see if he couldn't hit two scores in one night.

He turned south toward 155th Street and headed for his office, an all-night, pocket-sized general store selling everything from cigarettes to playing cards to soda and candy bars, and whose owner, Riley Cox, he'd known since Riley was a kid.

Nate had been a street hustler even back then. Part of his success now, in fact, lay in how old he was. Whitehaired, bandy-legged, and skinny as a pole, he was the epitome of the elderly black caricature, watching life passing by on the stoop of a brownstone. Except that he had too much energy for that. The combination of his appearance and his natural enthusiasm made him hard to resist and, more importantly, harder to target as a fall guy when things went awry. The tough people he often dealt with either protected him or dismissed him, but they rarely held him to blame. It was a blessing he nurtured and never took for granted.

He entered 155th and walked west, his feet moving to a tune that kept echoing in his head, something he'd heard on the radio last week. He saw Riley's sign in the distance, a yellow beacon offering friendship, comfort, and maybe a hot lead.

Now snapping his fingers to the tune, he rounded the newspaper rack outside and pulled open the glass door into a wall of warm, aromatic air, as embracing to him as a home kitchen on a winter day, even though the odors were of dust, cigarette smoke, and stale humanity.

Nate caught Riley's eye as he stepped inside and felt his opening one-liner die on his lips. There was nothing amiss about the tiny store. It was as busy as always, and even Riley looked almost normal. But you didn't know someone for decades without sensing that single element's being out of place. Nate stopped in his tracks, the door still open in his hand, and readied himself for a fast retreat.

"Hey, Riley. How's it keepin'?"

In response, Riley shifted his gaze to the nearest of the two aisles inside the store, the one that was just out of Nate's line of sight. Nate silently leaned to his left in order to get a better view, his hand still on the doorknob. Slowly, the aisle came into view, revealing a thin, hatchet-faced man with intense dark eyes and a shriveled left arm.

Nate, whose business was faces, didn't hesitate, even after all the years. He broke into a wide smile and released the door. Riley visibly relaxed. "Why, if it ain't Officer Kunkle."

"Long time, Nate," Willy answered.

Nate approached him with an appraising eye. "Not to be rude, but you're lookin' a little rough, if that's all right to say."

Willy let out a small snort. "Can't argue with the truth."

"What happened to you?"

"Took a ride along the bottom a few years back."

Nate stuck out his hand and Willy shook it, enjoying the warm, smooth feel of it.

"And the arm?"

"Bullet wound," Willy answered shortly.

Nate nodded sympathetically. "Oh, my lord. So, you're not with the police anymore."

Willy smiled thinly and gave an indirect answer. "You don't get that lucky. They can't fire you if you can still do the job."

Nate tried to hide his skepticism. "Hell, given some of your brothers, they're not even that picky. Why're you back, after all this time?"

They were looking at one another straight in the eyes, as if reading the real dialogue between them.

"Favor for a favor?" Willy suggested.

Nate chuckled. "I didn't forget. That's why I'm still here to talk to you. What're you after?"

Someone squeezed by them to pay at Riley's counter.

"You up for a walk around the block?" Willy asked.

Nate glanced over his shoulder at Riley and raised his eyebrows.

"It'll keep," Riley answered enigmatically.

That put Nate back in his good mood. He was intrigued by Kunkle's reappearance, but he doubted it would fatten his wallet. Riley's comment, however, implied the night might still be young, as he'd been hoping.

Nate patted Willy's right elbow. "Follow me. I got just the place."

He led the way down the block and up a side street. Before a dilapidated brownstone with the front door connected to the sidewalk by a set of broad steps, Nate ducked to the right and climbed down a narrow metal staircase to what had once been the service entrance. It was so dark at the bottom of this trench that Willy could barely see the back of the man before him.

Nate gave the door a coded knock and waited. A small, weak light went on overhead for no more than two seconds, before the door swung back just wide enough to let them both into a small, quiet antechamber that reminded Willy of an air lock. A huge, barrel-chested man with no hair and a goatee gave Nate a broad smile and a pat on the shoulder. "How're tricks, Nate? Keepin' busy?"

"You know it, Jesse. How's your sister?"

"Much better. I'll tell her you asked."

The man's voice was friendly and relaxed, but his eyes hadn't left Willy's face since the moment he'd come into view.

Nate laid a protective hand on Willy's shoulder. "This is Willy, Jesse. An old friend who did me a big favor a long time back."

"And the man," Jesse said simply, his smile only half in place.

"That's true," Nate agreed. "You got the eye. But he's still okay."

Jesse weighed that in his mind for a moment, and then gave a single nod with his large head. "Well, then I guess he's okay with me, too."

He took one step toward the rear of the small room and pushed a button Willy didn't see. A back door opened with a click, and they were instantly met with the sounds of laughter and music and ice chinking against glass. Nate had taken them to an after-hours bar, the new century's equivalent of a flapper-era speakeasy, and as big a business during the predawn hours now as any of its predecessors had been all through the 1920s. New York prided itself on being a twenty-four-hour town, and it wasn't going to let any arbitrary bar curfew stand in its way.

Nate exchanged greetings with half a dozen people as he led the way around a pool table and down a row of booths to a bar at the far end of the room.

There the bartender instructed them, "Place your orders, gentlemen," as if they'd just arrived at the Ritz. The place wasn't that fancy, but it wasn't a dive. Dimly lit and simply but tastefully decorated, it could have held its own against any of its legitimate brethren. There was also a decent CD player leaking out good jazz, and since almost everyone present was over fifty, there was the mellow feeling of an old-fashioned men's club.

Nate ordered a rum, Willy merely bought an overpriced tonic water and was handed a warm bottle without a glass.

"Over here," Nate said, indicating a tiny table wedged against the far wall near a back door labeled, "Outhouse."

They settled down, comfortably far from the music, and sat almost knee to knee.

Nate had the contented look of a man watching an old home movie. He shook his head, took a sip of his drink, sighed with a contented smile, and said, "Officer Kunkle. Man, oh, man. I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again. I thought maybe you were like the nomad in the desert or somethin'-the righteous man who delivers the word of truth and then vanishes forever." He pointed at the arm and added, "And I guess if you'd been standing a few inches in the wrong direction, that'd be the fact of it, too. You ever get my letter?"

"I got it." Willy didn't detail its effect on him.

"Well, I meant every word in it, and I still do. That was an act of grace in an ungenerous world. You did yourself proud that night."

"That's just because it was your bacon I spared. You would've called me a patsy if I'd cut someone else the same slack."

Nate laughed and took another drink. "I am disappointed at the depth of your cynicism, but I can't deny your point. In any case, you did me the big favor, and I will always be grateful."

Willy removed the evidence photo he'd stolen from Ogden and laid it on the table before Nathan Lee. "You know where this stuff comes from? It's called Diablo."

Nate looked at the picture without touching it, his face suddenly grim. Narcotics were what got him in touch with Kunkle the first time, and he'd never dabbled in them again. The fact that the same man was back discussing the same topic didn't bode well.

"I know what it's called," he said shortly.

"Comes from around here, right?"

"Why you want to know?"

Willy hesitated. A cop's first impulse in a conversation is to never volunteer anything. Every word you say is to get the other guy talking. And you sure as hell never reveal anything personal.

But Willy was the one asking favors here, and, training and paranoia aside, there wasn't much to be lost sharing a little with Nate.

"My ex-wife was found dead with that shit in her arm."

Useful or not, the effect of this admission was telling. Nate's eyes opened wide and he stared at Kunkle in amazement. "No wonder you're lookin' a little ragged. She live around here?"

"Lower East Side."

That surprised the older man. "Huh. It happens, but usually a home brew like that doesn't travel far from home. The local appetite's enough to keep the dealer happy."

"So, it is made nearby?"

Nate ignored the question, trying to step back a bit first. "Officer Kunkle, I know I owe you, so don't get me wrong, but is this something you want to do?" As Willy's face darkened, he quickly added, "Now, hold on, don't get me wrong. I'll help you out. I will. But see it from my side, too. That's all I'm askin'."

Willy's expression didn't soften, but he didn't say the harsh words that first came to mind. Instead, he asked, "What do you want?"

Nate waved both his hands at him. "Nope. That ain't it, either. I don't want a thing. But you come back after all this time, and you got one arm messed up and you say you're still a cop and then you show me the picture and say that dope killed your ex-wife. If you were me, you gotta ask yourself: What's goin' on here? You see what I'm saying?"

Once more, Willy fought the urge to react impulsively and tell him to mind his own business, and struggled instead to address Nate's concerns.

He took a swallow from his warm tonic water and then explained, hoping for the best, "I am a cop, but not from here anymore. I work in Vermont."

Nate's eyebrows shot up. "Vermont?"

Willy cut him off. "Yes, Vermont. I'm kind of a state cop up there, like a statewide detective. It doesn't matter, for Christ's sake. The point is, I got a phone call that my wife had died and I had to come down. They're writing it off as an accidental overdose-locked doors, needle in the arm, history of drug abuse. They just want to clear their books."

"They wrong?"

"I don't know for sure. I think they might be." Willy knew Nate would have liked more, but he was disinclined to hand it over. He also wasn't sure he wanted to actually air his misgivings, for fear they might lose credibility even to him.

Fortunately, Nate seemed comfortable working with that little. "I do know somethin' about this Diablo. That's why I was surprised you found it downtown. It don't really go there. She have a reason to come up here to get it?"

Willy thought of his brother, but he couldn't see how that fit. "Not that I know of. We've been apart a long time."

Nate stared at the tabletop thoughtfully. "Sounds kind of funny," he finally admitted, looking up. "Especially if it wasn't an accident. I don't know how much I can do, though. It's not like these people keep records, you dig?"

Willy opened his mouth to say something when they both heard a loud crash at the bar's entrance. The large bouncer was being propelled backward into the room by a flying wedge of men in uniform.

Willy responded first. "Shit. Cops."

Nate recognized them more specifically. "Vice," he said, and grabbed Willy's good arm as patrons and cops began falling over each other near the front. "Head out to the bathrooms and take the second door on the right."

Willy left his seat like a sprinter out of the blocks. "You coming?" he asked over his shoulder.

Nate merely flashed a smile and said, "Too old. Good luck."

Willy slammed through the "Outhouse" door and found himself in a short, dark corridor. With the noise escalating behind him, he pulled open the second door on his right and plunged through without hesitation, stumbling over a couple of steps and sprawling into the middle of a dimly lit landing with a staircase leading upward.

Scrambling back to his feet, he took the stairs two at a time, and had climbed two floors before he heard the door he'd used crash open and the sound of voices shouting.

"Upstairs, upstairs. I hear one of 'em headin' up."

Using his right hand on the banister to help propel himself, Willy increased his speed, peering into the gloom for some alternate way to what was looking like a straight shot to the roof. But every door he saw appeared shut tight, and he didn't have time to do more than look. He was pulling ahead of his slower, more heavily laden pursuers, however, so if the door to the roof was open, there might still be some way to escape.

He wasn't optimistic, though. New York was nothing if not a haven for the security-prone. Home of the fox lock, the LoJack, pepper spray, and more miles of razor wire than it took to tame the West, this city wasn't known for having rooftop doors left open.

Except when they'd been propped that way by a strategically placed brick. As soon as Willy made this discovery, now six floors above the speakeasy, he remembered from the old days how some drug runners would leave themselves a way out, just in case they needed an emergency back door.

Silently, he thanked this particular guardian angel's prescience, stepped through the door onto the gravel-covered roof, and shut the door behind him, hearing with satisfaction the spring-loaded lock snap to.

The roof was flat, bordered by a three-foot-high wall, and pinned in place by an enormous, ancient, otherworldly water tank which stood in the center on lacy legs of steel and loomed overhead like a captured blimp. It was as symbolic of New York as that odd sound manhole covers seem to make only when taxicabs hit them at high speed, and was duplicated a thousandfold all across the five boroughs.

The light was better up here-the city's perpetual ocher glow a veritable sunshine compared to the darkness of the stairwell, and Willy took advantage of it to jog to the edge of the roof, step over it onto the neighboring building, and continue trying to distance himself from his starting point.

Just as he was beginning to think he might have pulled it off, however, he saw his luck begin to sour. Simultaneous to hearing a heavy ram repeatedly smashing into the door he'd locked behind him, Willy saw the beam of a flashlight clear the top of the distant fire escape he'd been aiming for, followed by the silhouette of a cop carrying a shotgun and rolling commando-style over the top of the low wall to vanish from view against the darkness of the roof's surface.

Willy began looking around for another way out, already knowing in his gut that he'd run out of options. He hadn't made five steps in a new direction before the door flew open and a voice from the fire escape yelled, "Police, Don't move. Get face down on the ground with your hands above your head. Do it. Now."

Willy instead ducked briefly into the shadows cast by one of the water tower's legs, quickly removed his wallet, his shield, and his weapon, and slid them all under a flap of tarpaper he found extending from the footing of the tower leg.

"Get out into the light, you son-of-a-bitch, or I'll blow you away where you are."

Willy stepped out where they could see him, his right hand up. "Okay, okay. You got me. My left arm is paralyzed. I can't move it."

One of the cops, winded, adrenalized, and angry at having given chase in what should have been a routine bar sweep, came up behind him, threw him to the ground, wrenched his left hand free of where he parked it in his pocket, and kicked him in the ribs for good measure, frisking him roughly for weapons and contraband. Grunting with the pain, Willy also had to admit he would have done the same thing had the roles been reversed.

The cop finished his search by handcuffing Willy's wrists behind his back and rolling him over to shine a light in his face.

"What the hell did you think you were doing, asshole? You think we haven't done this before?"

He didn't wait for an answer. Instead, he looked up at someone Willy couldn't see and yelled, "We got him, Sarge. Any others up here?"

"Negative," came the distant reply. "Nuthin' with two legs, anyway. You got anything on that guy?"

The answer, Willy thought, was telling: "Nah, just looks like a cripple rummy. No ID, no nuthin'. Better search the area to make sure, though."

He was yanked to his feet and escorted back down the stairs, less troubled by the jam he was in, and more frustrated by the fact that his investigation has been put on hold.