When I saw the movement behind him, I forced my eyes to lock on his, did my damnedest to hold him, make him focus on me. Not on the sliver of Sayre Rauth I could see behind him shifting her weight and raising her right arm out in front of her.
She fired. The .22’s dainty reports, even in the echo chamber of the parking garage, were like birthday balloons popping. The barrel gave off puffs of confectioners’ sugar.
Matt fell against me and I felt the slam of one of the bullets ripping through him. Then another, and a wetness like a sea mist on my face, only hot as molten wax. I clenched my lips against the animal urge to lick it away from my mouth.
She made no song and dance of it. Four times she shot him in the back, one got him in the neck.
I sidestepped his weight against me, shedding him like an overcoat. He landed on his face. I wiped mine on my sleeve.
Sayre lowered her gun, her cunning, little silver gun, the one that killed Windmann, the one I told her she should ditch. Thank god she’d ignored my advice.
She had dragged Elena over to one side, propped her against the concrete wall. I went and untied her, for something to do.
She gulped a free breath, her eyes tearing up. “He kill George,” she said, “and Jeff—” She started to cry.
Sayre came over and put her arms around her, helping her to her feet. They walked together to the stairs.
I checked on Matt, but there was no more Matt, only a silent body, a mound of lifeless meat on the ground. I patted his pockets but couldn’t find his cell. Finally grabbed a handful of coat lapel and heaved. Rolling him as easy as shifting a flood-sodden sandbag.
I found his cell phone, turned it on. A brightly lit animation appeared on the screen—crisp, vibrant—and the phone tootled a snappy tune. The first stored number was labeled JEANNE. I didn’t call it.
Instead I dialed 911. After the call, I slid the phone back inside Matt’s jacket pocket and rolled him back onto his face. I draped the belt with the gold coins in it over him. They would add weight to the story I’d tell the cops. Besides, they were his. If any man had earned his spoils, it was Matt. Then I went down to wait at street level for the cops to arrive.
The sidewalk was empty, both directions, not even a derelict or a roving wolf-pack of pumped-up ’bangers in sight. No sign of Sayre or Elena either. Disappeared into darkness together, the hard black-blue night.
I looked over at the East River, and the lights of Brooklyn beyond, and—
Cried my eyes out.
Only the sound of sirens brought me back. Wet goop was running down my cheeks. The night looked crystal clear and everything was starry.
The siren’s wail didn’t sound far off, but its crybaby cry grew fainter, not louder, more distant, farther away. Not my ride, someone else’s emergency. It was first come, first serve in the big city.
Me and my dead had to wait our turn.
THE END.
But here is a BONUS Payton Sherwood mystery story,
“East Village Noir”
(originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1997)
***
New York City, 1997
Finding a teenage runaway in New York City is easy. The hard part is finding the one you're looking for.
I was in my office/apartment at the computer, hooked up to the Department of Justice's database, downloading a file on evidence seizure for a lawyer friend, when call-waiting interrupted the transfer. My modem crackling, I switched the phone cord and picked up the receiver.
They were calling from a payphone at Veselka's deli three blocks down. Walter and Louise Strich had come to the city to find their daughter Melissa. After a day of looking on their own, they wanted me to find her.
I asked them to pick me up a coffee—dark, three sugars—and come right over. My place was a mess but there was enough time to empty the ashtrays, fold the couch bed, and gather all the dirty glasses into the sink. I met them at the top of the stairs.
Mr. Strich said, "Thank you for seeing us on such short notice, Mr. Sherwood."
"Thank you for the coffee." He waved away the dollar I offered. "Please come in."
It took them awhile to get it all out, but my guest chairs are comfortable and I was patient. Their story was a familiar one:
Melissa Strich, fifteen, had left her home in Keene, New Hampshire five months before, in mid-April, telling a friend she was going to Manhattan to be with her boyfriend, Gary Stadnicki, a would-be guitar player. The New Hampshire police's efforts to locate either Melissa or Stadnicki had turned up nothing; Stadnicki's last known address had been a squatter's building on East 13th Street that the NYPD had evacuated for demolition the previous week.
For five months the Strichs didn't hear from their daughter. Then, two days ago, Tuesday, she called asking for enough money to get her home. So happy to hear her voice, they didn't pressure her for details, just wired the hundred dollars where she told them to, a Western Union on Avenue A, the Lower East Side. The next day, when there was no word from her, the Strichs checked with Western Union and discovered the money hadn't been claimed. Not knowing what else to do, frantic after so many months of worrying, they left their home before dawn the next morning and drove the six hours to New York. By 10 A.M. they were parked in front of the Western Union on Avenue A. They watched all day, but their daughter never came for the money.
I asked Mr. Strich what kind of car they drove.
Mrs. Strich answered. "You can see it from your window, Mr. Sherwood. The stationwagon on the corner."
I craned back and, through the wide oval window overlooking 12th Street and 2nd Avenue, saw a pale blue stationwagon parked across the street. It had New Hampshire license plates and, sitting on its hood, a rangy hooker—probably little older than the Strichs' daughter—applying badly needed flesh tone to her face.
"Your daughter could've picked your car out from five blocks away," I said. "You may have scared her off."
"Our daughter's not scared of us," Mr. Strich said, almost a challenge.
"But we didn't know what else to do," Louise Strich said. "I got so desperate I started stopping people on the street, showing them Missy's picture, asking if they'd seen her."
She handed me the photograph, a head and shoulders shot of Melissa taken the year before: round hazel eyes, cornsilk hair fluffed back, feather earrings brushing her long, slender neck. She was hugging a golden retriever. If she'd been roughing it on the street for five months, I wondered if even her own mother would recognize her now.
"Some people wouldn't even stop," Louise Strich said. "But...then there were these children sitting by—"
"Children!?" her husband groaned. "One was shaved bald. A tattoo of a bat on his forehead. I couldn't believe she went over to 'em."
Mrs. Strich set the record straight. "They were very polite. I showed them Missy's picture, but they said they didn't know her."
I shrugged. "They probably wouldn't have told you if they did. These kids are down here living on the streets for a lot of different reasons; some are just slumming rich kids, playing homeless. Others are fugitives from their families, running from abusers, hiding out."
"But listen, Mr. Sherwood, when we got back to the car, the one with the bat on his head came over. He said that he did know Missy and where she was."
"He knew your daughter?"
"He knew she was from New Hampshire."
"He could've gotten that from your license plates."
She looked unsure.
"But he said he could go and get her for us, if only..."
Her voice trailed off.