Coming in silent made the thing more difficult for Sergeant Crewes because he couldn’t hit the siren and blow these dimwits out of his way. He had to push his cruiser through the gridlocked traffic at Hunts Point Avenue and Bruckner with only his roof lights to force the cars out of his way. He also utilized some man-to-man voice communication out his open window. In the rear Doctor Dred was moaning a little as the car bounced over the potholes on Bruckner and jolted south toward Timpson Place.
“You okay back there, son?” asked Crewes, feeling more kindly toward the boy since they’d worked out their differences.
Doctor Dred had his face buried in the vinyl and his arms and legs hogtied, so it was difficult for him to keep his head up long enough to make his response clear, but Crewes figured it was something encouraging. He counted the blocks off as he sped down the Bruckner, weaving in and out of the crawling lines of trucks and cabs and cars.
159th.
156th.
There you go, 144th. The silent alarm was coming from a unit that was out in a kind of island, a wide stretch of warehouse blocks formed by the widening gap between Southern Boulevard and the Bruckner Expressway. Bruckner itself ran pretty much underneath the elevated expressway, a potholed and ancient roadway that hadn’t seen daylight since the nineteenth century.
All the way down Crewes had been listening to Central as Central tried to drum up some cover cars for this alarm call. So far, Four Frank was still on an aided case, Five Charlie was trying to reach him from Third and 149th Street, and two other detective cars were also pushing through the rush-hour traffic to help him out. He saw the front window of La Luna Negra coming up on his right-hand side and pulled a sharp right turn. The alley that ran up behind the rows of warehouses and car repair shops was narrow and packed with Dumpsters, trucks, a Jeep, a few wandering homeless drunks, a white van, and a great deal of random garbage. The sodium-arc warehouse lamp was casting a hard yellow light on the rutted lane. There was a steel loading door, closed, and a smaller door beside the dock. The door was wide open.
Crewes killed his lights and his engine.
“Five Frank, K. I’m ten-84.”
“Five Frank?”
“Ten-four. The door’s open. Where’s my cover?”
“Four one three and 419 are coming. Four one three, K?”
Another voice came on, the voice of Gold Shield Detective Jerome Boynton, one of the 41st Precinct plainclothes cops assigned to Robbery.
“Four one three, K. Brian, we’re at St. Francis and rolling. Wait for us, K?”
“The door’s open here, Jerry.”
“Don’t go in without cover. We’ll be there in two minutes.”
That open door worried Crewes. There were citizens in there, and a silent alarm that was still broadcasting to the Wackenhut station. The Patrol Guide was clear about ten-31 calls, though. You always got a cover car.
God-damn this traffic.
Two minutes could be somebody’s lifetime in the South Bronx.
“Where are you now, Jerry?”
Crewes could hear the frustration in Boynton’s voice.
“We’re trying, we’re trying—move, asshole!” This was apparently shouted out the window of the car.
“Come in hot, Jerry. Central, I’m ten-six now.”
Boynton’s voice cut in across the transmission. “Brian, wait one. We’re almost there. Don’t—”
“ETA, 413?”
“Two minutes max!”
“I’m ten-six, 413. They don’t pay us to stand around with our thumbs up our—”
“Brian—”
Crewes cut him off. Two minutes was too long to wait. Inside someone could be dying right now. Crewes looked over into the back seat. Doctor Dred had his head turned to look back up at him.
“Look, kid, I’m gonna take a look-see here. I’ll be right back.”
The boy blinked up at him, spit a little blood. Crewes got out of the car quietly, closed the door and locked it, pocketed his keys, and turned the volume down to one on his portable radio. He could hear a call, but he wouldn’t be blasting his presence all over the lot. He took out his service revolver and went up the short flight of iron stairs leading to the open door.
The interior of the warehouse was dark. His breath floated and swirled out in front of him in a puffy cloud. In the chilly and damp winter air, he now heard a police siren, rising and falling, getting louder.
Car 413 was coming in hot. But not a lot closer. The traffic was a bitch this time of day. Sergeant Crewes stepped up into the doorway and slipped in, coming in fast, not making a silhouette in the brighter rectangle of the open door, his revolver out in front, his Mag-Lite extended in his left hand. He checked his right, his left, and straight ahead, tracking the bright cone of the Mag-Lite beam with his revolver muzzle. The warehouse was piled with wooden crates, jute-wrapped bundles, cane furniture. In the narrow and intense blue-white beam of his Mag-Lite he saw a closed door at the far end of a narrow aisle in between piles and stacks of parcels.
He could hear music coming faintly from beyond the door, a Latin rhythm, something slow and dreamy, like a waltz or a tango. Strangely, he remembered the name of the song.
It was an old Glenn Miller tune.
“Perfidia.”
Out in Five Frank, Doctor Dred was working very hard to get out of his cord-cuff restraints. This was not an easy thing to do, but he was highly motivated. He knew he was headed for a very long ride up to Sing-Sing for his part in the drive-by, and life in its infinite variety had presented him a chance to fast-forward through some of the uglier bits. If he could get his feet out of the cord-cuff, he could boot a side window out. He knew where he was. One of his homies had a roost less than two blocks away. If he could get there, the man had bolt-cutters. The Doctor would be free and clear.
The exertion was making him breathless, and something was very wrong with his nose. Also, his crotch felt like a pair of basketballs full of hornets. Who knew the little white motherfucker could scrap like that? The Doctor hadn’t lost a fight in years. Well, he hadn’t won a fair one, either, but nobody fought fair in the South Bronx. Smoke ’em and split, that was word. He had already made some headway with the nylon band, gotten his right ankle free, and was working the other one loose, when Doctor Dred heard someone’s boots clattering down a flight of iron steps.
Shit. The cop? Back already?
He craned his neck up and saw a big man in a black leather coat coming down the steps in back of the warehouse. It was fully dark by now, but he got a good enough look at the man in the arc-light glare to be sure he wasn’t a cop.
There was a siren sounding in the middle distance.
Doctor Dred decided to take a chance. Twisting, he slammed his right foot against the steel doorframe of the cop car.
“Yo! Mister!”
The man in the black leather coat jerked to a stop, came close, and looked down into the back of the patrol car. The Doctor looked back up at him through the smeared glass of the side window and was suddenly chilled. In the glaring light the man looked like a dead body walking, like something out of a horror movie, with a pocked face and empty black holes where his eyes were supposed to be.
The man looked up the alley, then back down at Doctor Dred in the back. Then he tried the door handle. The Doctor could feel the strength in that single tug, a terrible animal vitality and power that he knew he could never match, certainly not with his hands cuffed and one leg in a knot. He felt his throat go tight, and his rib cage seemed to freeze up.
The man pulled at the latch again, and the whole cruiser rocked. The door was locked. The Doctor had a very bad feeling about what was going to happen to him if that door lock gave way. This guy didn’t look like mercy missions were his kind of gig. Another hard pull, and the man’s face now showed emotion, a kind of fleeting feral snarl, and his breath misted the side window, and he leaned down to strain at the lock. The door groaned, metal on metal, bent slightly, the big Caprice bounced on its shocks, but the lock held.
Thank you, General Motors.
Thank you, Jesus—
The sound of the approaching siren was louder now. The man looked in through the window of the patrol car, his face only inches from the glass. Doctor Dred found himself remembering a scene from that dinosaur movie. These kids are hiding out in this big stainless-steel kitchen, and there’s this thing, a huge lizard with yellow eyes and a set of teeth like a crocodile, and it’s trying to open the door, and you see its breath puff out onto the window in the door. Now he knew how those kids felt.
And for the first time in his life, Clayton Garr, age seventeen, found himself echelons beyond bravado, and he began to pray.
He prayed for something he had never ever prayed for before. He prayed for the cops to show up.
Soon please.
He prayed very hard.