Mallory and the perp looked so young to him. With their unlined faces and blond hair, they might have been brother and sister. But he could almost feel the car dip to one side with the power on the driver’s end of the front seat.
‘Are you in a lot of pain?’ asked Mallory, her voice switching gears, all mother love in her tone. ‘Yeah, my gut hurts something awful,’ said the boy. ‘Good. I noticed there weren’t any bullets in the gun. That’s not too bright, is it?’
The kid looked from the gun to Mallory and back to the gun, genuinely startled.
‘So you stole the gun, but not the bullets? When I wash this registration number through the computer, am I gonna find out that some taxpayer was burgled by a moron who thinks the gun makes its own bullets? What else did you steal?’
‘Nothing, I didn’t – ’
Riker jolted forward as Mallory slammed on the brakes. The boy didn’t fare as well. With hands cuffed behind him, his head hit the dashboard. The boy moaned and Riker looked away, the better not to see Mallory drawing first blood of Christmas morning.
Wall Street was a ghost town after the financial houses’ end of business day. You could do what you liked in this neighborhood without fear of another pair of eyes.
Mallory leaned over to grab the boy by his shirt collar. ‘You are stupid. When I run the gun through, you think they won’t mention the rest of the stuff?’
‘It was nothing. There was a ring and a bracelet, but it was junk. I took it to a jeweler. He said I’d be better off selling it at a flea market, and that’s the truth. I’ve known him all my life. He wouldn’t lie to me.’
Riker shook his head and smiled. A baby felon who took stolen goods to his neighborhood jeweler. The criminal class was getting dumber every year. And no bullets. Didn’t these kids learn anything in school?
He listened as Mallory called in on her car phone to run the dates and the jewelry description. But she neglected to mention that she had the suspect in custody, and she never mentioned she had the gun, and at the last, she said, ‘Sorry, it doesn’t match up,’ and closed the call.
‘It checks out,’ she said to the boy. ‘I’m gonna cut you loose. But you never tell anyone you saw the deputy police commissioner drunk in an after-hours bar. Deal?’
The kid nodded his head like a trick pony. Yeah, whatever she wanted, so long as she didn’t hurt him any more.
Riker stopped smiling. He sat still in the dark at the back of the car and tried not to lose the glow of the previous six-pack of beer. No good. He was becoming unwillingly sober as he crept up on Mallory’s mind.
Of course. It all fit.
It was only the thief’s gun she wanted. He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling of the car.
Ah, Markowitz, you bastard. How could you die on me and stick me with your kid? Can you hear me, you son of a bitch‘? Look at what your baby’s doing now. She’s robbing another baby.
‘If I don’t see you when I count to ten, I don’t shoot you. Okay?’
She leaned across him to open the door on his side of the car. Riker listened to the metallic mechanics of Mallory unlocking the irons. She sat back. But the boy was tied to the upholstery by fear, and she had to finally cut the cords with ‘GET OUT, you idiot!’
The boy did his dumb-pony nod again as he was half falling, half stumbling from the car. He staggered in a weaving line for all the seconds it took to understand that he was free, and then he ran.
Riker got out of the car and slid into the front seat.
‘I’ll take the gun, Mallory.’
‘No, it’s mine.’
‘You never planned to take him in, and that wasn’t to save me the embarrassment of showing up at the station house drunk. Everyone already knows I’m a drunk. No, you wanted his gun for a throwaway piece. You wanna save it for the perp in the condo. Now if I’ve got this wrong, just stop me.’
But he wasn’t about to let her stop him, and he went on with the relentless energy of a train running at her full speed, because it was the only way to deal with her – if he lost, his breath, he lost his turn, and the train would turn around and crush him.
‘You figure the perp’s weapon of choice is his hands. If you have to kill an unarmed man, the Civilian Review Board will get you. But if you pull another gunslinger stunt, let’s say you get him in the knees, Coffey will get you for it. He’ll lock you up in the computer room, and you’ll never see the street again. Almost seems like you can’t win. But if the perp has a weapon lying on the floor beside him, if it looks like he brought his own gun to the party, you can’t lose, can you?’
She wouldn’t look at him.
‘Markowitz never carried a throwaway piece, not in all the time he put in on the force. He hung out there in the breeze with all the rest of us. He played it straight, and that took guts. Maybe you don’t have the stuff, Kathy. Did you learn anything hanging out with the old man? Anything at all?… Kathy?’
‘Mallory to you,’ she corrected him.
‘You’re going to give me that gun, or I’ll beat the crap out of you and take it. I loved Markowitz longer than you knew him. I’m not gonna let his kid screw up. Give it to me. You know I don’t bluff. Never have, never will.’
Nothing.
She was rigid, deaf and blind to him.
‘Now, Mallory, or it starts to get real ugly.’
She handed him the gun. ‘And Merry Christmas to you too, Riker.’
The device on his belt gave off the annoying beeps, the mechanical, nagging request to call in, and quickly. He picked up the car phone and dialed the number for Special Crimes Section.
‘Yeah,’ he said into the receiver, ‘I know him… No, it’s no problem, I’m on my way.’
To Mallory he said, ‘Charles is at the station. He needs something and says I’ll vouch for him. You coming?’
‘No, I’ll drop you off.’
‘Trouble between you and him?’
‘Charles asked for you, not me. He doesn’t need my help. He made that pretty clear.’
When he stepped out of her car ten minutes later, he leaned down to say softly, ‘Have you given any thought to the toy gun on the inventory sheet?’
Her eyes shone with sudden understanding. She smiled slow and sly. He really hated it when she did that.
Charles sat on a yellow plastic chair which was too small to accommodate his long body. His legs crossed and uncrossed, tucked in and splayed out, looking for a way to look unfoolish.
At three in the morning, there was a constant activity under the bright fluorescent lights. A woman, wrapped in a blanket and screaming, walked past between two uniformed officers. A dazed and docile teenager was led along by a plain clothes detective Charles knew slightly. Two tourists came in yelling. By the snippets of their conversation, he deduced that they were minus their luggage, wallets and jewelry. Next in the parade, two young men in handcuffs were escorted by four officers.
Merry Christmas, said the bright silver paper letters strung over the desk of the civilian clerk who had taken his report.
Charles looked down at the lines and pockmarks on the floor until he saw the familiar scuffed pair of worn brown shoes, topped by a bad suit and a cloud of beer that was Riker’s breath.
Riker nodded to him and walked on in the company of the two officers who had tried to reason with Charles and failed to communicate that there was no way to catch a kid who didn’t want to be caught. They had no problem catching grown-up felons, they told him, but kids could fit into hiding places they had never dreamed of. Then, in desperation, Charles had resorted to the crime of name dropping. One phone call from the desk sergeant, and only minutes later, here was Riker, the improbable knight.
Now Riker was sitting down at a desk and nodding amiably as the two officers leaned down to tell him all their problems with his friend the lunatic. Riker picked up the phone, and Charles watched him make three calls in quick succession. On the fourth call, Riker smiled into his telephone, eased back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. His hand waved to tell the officers they could go on about their business. In parting, one officer put a friendly grip on Riker’s shoulder.