The nurse at the desk at Roosevelt Hospital looked at Taylor with disgust. Whatever the professor had been up to, the sins of the father were raining down on the son. Taylor had called the apartment before heading home and learned from Samantha the hospital needed him urgently. The last thing he wanted tonight.
The nurse slapped a clipboard on the Formica counter. “Your father wants to go home.”
“Oh, okay—”
“We don’t think he should. The doctor doesn’t think he should. He won’t listen to us.”
“He doesn’t listen to me either.”
“No, I imagine not. He’s too busy insulting those trying to help him.”
“I’m sorry.” He paused, embarrassed. “What do you need me to do?”
“He showed up here without any cash. He can’t walk home.”
The professor was yelling at the nurse retrieving his clothes. He continued in a similar vein, cursing any staff they saw, until they were in the cab on the way to his West 78th Street apartment. That was when he turned on Taylor.
“Forget I was in the hospital?”
“You ran out of visits when you insulted Samantha.”
“Bitch of a cop. I hope you—”
“Stop!” Taylor had directed the command at the cabbie, leaning forward to be clear. The man complied, pulling over at 100th.
“You want to walk from here?”
“I can’t walk.”
“Crawl. I don’t give a shit. Nothing about Samantha.”
For the rest of the ride, the professor mumbled various insults aimed at Taylor—the themes being ungrateful sons, their poor judgment, lack of respect, and meaningless jobs. Taylor had heard it all before—though seldom when his father was stone cold sober. What a sad victory it was to be insulted so his father would leave Samantha out of it …. As nasty as the man could be, Taylor wasn’t sure he could have dumped his ass on the street.
“Did you enjoy the DTs?”
“Don’t remember them.”
“You can’t drink. The docs are using all kinds of medical terminology to say your liver’s fucked. Booze will kill you.”
His father’s apartment was worse than when Taylor last visited. Bags of garbage hadn’t made it out of the living room in at least a week. Taylor took them all to the trash chute, yet the living room still reeked of the same sour, rotting food stink that had come up from the chute. It would take a cleaning crew to deal with the mess still here—a full day on the kitchen alone.
Taylor couldn’t leave the man standing there. Loyalty was a strange emotion when no love was attached.
He stripped the bed, made it, helped him change and get in. His father refused to respond when Taylor asked if he needed anything, yelled when Taylor listed specific groceries he could go get.
“I’m a fucking grown man. They’ll deliver.”
Taylor wasn’t even out the front door when his father dialed Broadway Liquor at 85th Street.
Yeah, they’ll deliver that too. Your death.
Taylor would chase all over town trying to help strangers by writing their stories. There was so little he could do for his father. Was that Taylor’s fault? His father had been drunk and mean for as long as Taylor could remember. The professor had never struck him, but boy, did he have something nasty to say for every occasion. He’d heaped abuse on Taylor for skipping college and taking a copyboy’s job at the Messenger-Telegram. The work wasn’t dignified enough, held none of the significance of the intellectual life the professor claimed to so value.
Once Taylor’s mother died, months went by until something big enough happened to bring them together. Like his brother Billy going MIA in the jungles of Vietnam. At the service, his father had called Billy a hero. Before then, his father had told Billy to his face that he was “a fascist fighting a fascist’s war.” No. Billy was just a kid trying to get away from his father.
The Messenger-Telegram had been Taylor’s escape. Maybe. Taylor hadn’t seen it that way at the time. He’d been enthralled by sources and stories and bylines. Page one a daily test of what he could accomplish. Today, if he looked in the mirror, he didn’t see a man helping strays because he couldn’t do anything for his father. How could he help a snarling dog, teeth bared, mouth foaming? It was more about the way his father made him hurt—a sense of sadness and loss that left him empty and drained. Taylor’s only answer for that had been to find another story.
Reggie passed heroin to a customer, another student-looking kid. Taylor had been watching long enough that he could identify half the man’s clientele. Middle-aged black man. Fat man, white (strangely fat, in fact, for this addiction). Pair of women who looked aged beyond their years. A black teen. A white teen. A Hispanic teen. They rolled on past for the third day on stakeout. Reggie had every race and age covered.
What Taylor didn’t have covered was a Midtown press conference on last week’s Empire State Building jewelry heist. He’d pick up the details by phone, but knew he should have gone in person. He’d ignored an important assignment. Problem was he couldn’t abandon the stakeout. He was obsessed. This was his only living connection to the murderers of Mary Singer.
Before arriving, he’d finally written up what the News didn’t publish yesterday: Bridget Collucci was buried in the harbor with six bags of heroin taped to her. There hadn’t been any point in holding on to it any longer. The other papers would learn the details soon enough. He’d left out the drug war. That still lived in the realm of theory—or maybe only in Taylor’s imagination. The story hadn’t appeased Cramly. Taylor didn’t care.
An hour after the story went out, he’d received a call from a flunky in the Brooklyn DA’s office who wanted to yell at him. Taylor was succinct in reply.
“I was on the fucking boat.”
“What were you doing on the boat?”
“Ride-along for a Bicentennial feature.”
“Christ save me from the Bicentennial.”
“Tell your boss I know there’s more going on here. I’m going to get the story.”
“Are you threatening the Brooklyn District Attorney?” The high and mighty tone.
“Nah, giving you my job description.”
Reggie sold several bags—it was hard to tell how many—to an older man who could easily be a professor of the City College student who’d bought earlier.
The call from the DA’s flunky had been the only thing the Bridget Collucci story had produced by the time he had to leave for Harlem. No leads or tips. Nothing. Taylor wasn’t sure what he’d expected. He mainly wrote it to show the world he had something no one else did on a story he’d sat on at least a day too long. Did it make up for being late? Nope. You finished in one of two places in journalism—first or last.
A hand squeezed his arm. He jumped—and relaxed almost immediately. A clean soapy fragrance. Prell. Samantha kissed him on the cheek.
“What are you doing here?”
“Though I’d stop by on the way home?”
“Harlem isn’t on the way home to Brooklyn.”
“Is when you’re here. How goes the stakeout, detective?”
“Great if I were doing a feature on the customers of one drug dealer named Reggie. I need the tong to resupply him. Then I follow and have a location. That would give me something to work with.”
Samantha pursed her lips. In the long talk they’d had last night, she’d said that one thing she loved about him was the way he went after a story—and after it, and after it. That was until he became so obsessed, guns were pointed in his face. He wasn’t police, had no backup and sucked with his pistol. She’d said it all, exhaled, and finished with the declaration they couldn’t fight about what he was. What he was all about. Or they wouldn’t be a they anymore. She’d promised to try and keep her worries to herself. Right now, she looked to be fighting hard to do just that.
He slipped his hand into her back pocket. “I’ll be careful. Just want the location. The cops make a bust, maybe the Leung tong moving in on the Fronti family’s territory is on the table.”
“Just. Take. Care.”
“I will. Dead men write no tales.”
“The bad guys know that too. How late?”
“He’ll knock off in another hour or two.”
She kissed him and hugged him fiercely. He stifled a groan so the pain from his ribs wouldn’t ruin the moment. She walked south.
An hour and half later, Reggie, seemingly done for the day, walked north on Hamilton Place. That wasn’t his usual route. Taylor decided to follow. Samantha’s warning about lack of backup echoed in his head. But what if Reggie was getting resupplied somewhere other than where he sold? Taking actual precautions. Previous days, the man had always gone west to catch the subway on Broadway. The first day, Taylor had trailed him all the way on the train and above ground to a walk-up in the Bronx. The second, just to the subway entrance. Today was a change.
A hand gripped his arm. He half-turned to tell Samantha not to blow this for him, only to find the barrel of an automatic. One of the tong members from the Pacer aimed the gun at the side of his head. Reggie turned around, as if checking to see his job was well done, and sprinted away, disappearing up Hamilton.
“Funny, I’ve been looking for you guys.”
The man with the gun pushed it into the side of his head with some force. “Yell, and you shut up for good.”
Taylor grunted from the sharp pain of metal grinding into his skull. Another fish-bowl car, this one blue, pulled up next to them. The gunman opened the back door, shoved Taylor in and slammed it. Hamilton Place, a backwater side street crossing the grid, was the perfect place for a daylight abduction. No one was around.
The gunmen got in, turned and pointed the pistol at Taylor, a serious overestimation of the threat he posed.
“Mr. Shi wants to see you.”
“Can you spell it?”
“Bullet in the face.”
“Odd spelling.”