Kelson set up the bust. He told Toselli and four other narcotic cops about Bicho and the Northwest Side operation. When he finished, the division commander took questions. Toselli looked stung by the slight. ‘You couldn’t’ve told us?’
‘What would you have wanted to do if I did?’ Malinowski asked.
‘Crush the kid.’
‘My point. Now you get your chance.’
They planned a standard six-man action. Kelson at the alley mouth with Bicho and his supplier. Toselli and the four others scattered at a hundred-yard perimeter – Toselli at one end of the alley, the others in a van, in a storefront, and in the shadows of a neighboring house at the opposite end. A separate team would shoot video.
Protocol said Kelson should make the bust unarmed so the supplier could frisk him. But while the others slipped into their vests and strapped on their weapons, the division commander pulled Kelson aside and said, ‘Carry a full mag on this one,’ and, when Kelson gave him a doubtful look, repeated what he said earlier. ‘Something feels wrong.’
The KelTec weighed against Kelson’s ribs as he climbed from the BMW and walked to the alley. Bicho usually opened shop at nine in the morning and disappeared around noon or after the last stragglers stumbled up and laid balled dollar bills in his palm. Now it was midnight, and the street was empty except for a van idling at the curb a half block away and a man smoking a cigarette outside a twenty-four-hour laundromat. The kid shivered in the cold.
‘Where’s the boss?’ Kelson asked.
Bicho nodded him into the alley – off video but in the sightline of Toselli at the far end. Kelson followed the kid past a pile of broken wood pallets and an upended trash barrel to where the light dimmed. Another two steps would dissolve him in the dark.
Kelson stopped. ‘Where’s—’
‘You got the money?’ Bicho asked.
Kelson pulled a wad of fifties and twenties from inside his jacket. He fanned the bills so the boy could see. ‘Your turn.’
But Bicho swept his gun from his pocket. ‘You’re a cop.’
Kelson’s fear felt like a blade on his neck. ‘Huh?’
‘A narc.’
Undercover cops trained for moments like this – in sessions paid for by taxpayers, in conversations with other undercover cops, in sweaty nightmares. Kelson forced a grin. ‘All right, all right, you don’t want my money, I know people that do.’ He stuck the bills back in his jacket – and his hand came out with the KelTec.
The sound of gunshots slammed against the alley walls. The noises came so fast that one seemed to overtake the other in a single explosion.
Kelson and the boy crashed to the cold pavement.
Last thing Kelson saw, Bicho’s pip of a gun flashed in the dark alley.
Last thing he saw, his own hands flung from his body as if his arms detached at his shoulders.
Last thing, he was falling, falling, and the fifties and twenties scattered in the windless air like a blizzard.
Narcotics cops swarmed from their posts, their boots and vinyl glinting in the dark, their guns hot in their hands. One cop radioed for help and swung his pistol left and right in case Bicho had armed friends. Others rounded the wall into the alley and ran to Kelson. He had a neat bloody pock in his forehead. He looked dead. Coming from the far end, Toselli reached the boy first. Bicho had a hole like a melon in his chest. Toselli saw right through to the bloody pavement. He drew a sharp breath and shouldered through the other cops. For a moment, it looked as if he would slug Kelson to bring him to life. Instead, he slapped him with an open palm, the meat of his hand cracking against Kelson’s cheekbone, spraying blood.
One of the other cops said, ‘What are you—’
Like a diver plunging into a black lake, Toselli sucked a breath and mashed his lips to Kelson’s. He gave him life from his own lungs. When he came up – eyes wet with tears, lips oily with blood – he drew another breath. Then he plunged into another kiss of life, another gift of what only God could give if you believed in God and something just as miraculous if you didn’t.
For twenty minutes, as an ambulance zigged through city streets toward the alley, Toselli breathed for Kelson. When other cops offered to take a turn, he ignored them. He bucked off the supporting hands they rested on his back. More than a lover, more than a father, Toselli claimed Kelson’s body as his own.
Then the ambulance crunched over the ice and garbage into the alley, its siren screaming between the brick walls of the abutting buildings. Toselli stopped and stared down at Kelson. Then Kelson, as if responding to his friend’s fierce will, breathed once on his own. That was the second time Toselli saved him.
The paramedics strapped an oxygen mask over Kelson’s face and loaded him into the back of the ambulance.
The siren screamed again, and the ambulance backed from the alley. Far, far away, Kelson heard a metallic voice – something singing, something of bells.