Dancer in the Flames (22 page)

Impatient when the game began, Boots found himself grateful now. He liked to see his options laid out clearly, like laundry on a line. Boots could remember his mother hanging laundry, especially in the spring when she threw open every window to ‘rid us of the smell of winter’. Boots suddenly wished he could rid himself of Jill Kelly, then instantly took it back. As his father might say, she was grand, her every move a dare. And she was right about saving his life, too. As Boots remembered it, the diameter of the shotgun’s muzzle was wide enough to cover his entire face.

‘Boots?’ Frankie asked when the last out was finally recorded shortly before eleven.

‘Yeah, Frankie?’

‘Suppose my lawyer asks you if it could’ve happened with Angie the way I said it happened when I spoke to that prosecutor. What’re you gonna say?’

‘Your statement to Thelma Blount isn’t admissible. If you recall, it was off the record.’

‘C’mon, Boots. Don’t bust balls.’

Boots rose and stretched. ‘If I’m asked, I’ll say that I know you shoved Angie, I know that she fell back into the stairway, I know that she died when she hit her head on the basement floor. As to what was goin’ on in your mind when all this happened? I’m not a psychic.’

Frankie Drago wasn’t satisfied. ‘But what if he asks you if you think it’s possible that Frankie Drago didn’t mean to kill his sister, or even hurt her.’

‘What will I say?’ Looking into Frankie’s eyes, Boots knew the question had little to do with the legal system. Frankie had yet to forgive himself – most likely he’d never be free of the guilt, no matter how many times he confessed to the priests at Mount Carmel. ‘First thing, your lawyer has to put the question more precisely. He has to ask me if there’s any physical evidence provin’ you intended to inflict death, or any major injury, upon Angie. And just for the record, that you deliberately killed your sister by pushin’ her down a flight of stairs never crossed my mind. It’s too stupid, even for you.’

With his radar on full alert, Boots walked the several blocks to where he’d parked his car. The streetlights seemed brighter, the shadows deeper, the lights of oncoming cars blinding. He struggled to be aware of everything going on around him, the traffic, silhouettes in the windows, Ferdie Salise walking a poodle so old and fat its legs shook when it squatted to pee. Boots heard airplanes passing overhead, helicopters running up and down the East River, doo-wop music from an apartment three stories above his head, the Platters doing their signature tune, ‘The Great Pretender’.

Boots didn’t believe he could be traced to Frankie Drago’s, but his car was another matter. The buckshot meant for his body had slammed into the bricks a mere ten feet above his head. Relative to human flesh, brick is very hard, yet the chunk gouged from the face of the tenement was big enough to hold a grapefruit.

When a meandering drive through the neighborhood failed to uncover a tail, Boots detoured over the Williamsburg Bridge, to a garage on Houston Street that catered to cabbies on a 24/7 basis. A flash of his badge and a twenty-dollar bill got his Chevy on a lift ten minutes after his arrival. Using a borrowed drop light, he checked the undercarriage, from front to rear, in search of a tracking device. His approach was as systematic and meticulous as all those white-suited cops Jill Kelly had watched earlier in the day. When he was satisfied, he had the car brought down, then inspected the trunk and the engine. Nothing.

‘So, what else can I do for you?’ the mechanic asked. ‘Maybe a quick oil change?’

‘Nope, I’m good to go.’

Boots found himself with mixed feelings as he headed off to Anita Parker’s Staten Island home. He could operate without looking over his shoulder for oncoming bullets, at least for the present, and that was all to the good. But the scales had shifted. More and more, it seemed to him that Jill Kelly had been the primary target when that shotgun appeared in the van’s window. And what was he gonna do about that? Except jump into bed with her at the earliest opportunity. Greedy as any fat-cat CEO.

W
ithin a minute of climbing through Anita Parker’s unlocked window, Boots was thoroughly tested. He was in the dining room, now emptied of its furniture, when the overhead light came on. This was a lucky break as it turned out, but at the time Boots felt his heart jump into his mouth, looking, maybe, to desert the sinking ship. Nevertheless, his head swiveled, to the right and the left, covering the empty room, and his gun was in his hand before he’d taken a breath.

The light in question, Boots realized after a few seconds, was on a timer. The timer would switch the light off and on several times each day, as other timers would turn other lights off and on. The goal was to frighten burglars and vandals by simulating the activities of a family in residence. In fact, timers are an aid to burglars, as these were to Boots. Now any light in the house could be turned on without attracting the attention of meddlesome neighbors.

Boots started in the attic and worked his way down. He’d been all over the house only a day before without uncovering anything out of place on the upper floors. Still, he methodically searched each room, all those years of experience coming into play. By the time he reached the basement, he was able to concentrate on the problem at hand without a nagging fear that he’d missed something. If Chris Parker had a hidden stash upstairs, it wasn’t in a closet or along the baseboards or behind any cabinet or beneath a trap door.

With the house cleaned out by the movers, the basement seemed empty: a few makeshift workbenches, plastic water pipes, an oil burner, a washer and dryer in a small laundry room. Not so on the day before, when every nook and cranny was taken up by Chris Parker’s woodworking tools.

Still permeated by the pungent odor of wood shavings, the basement had been Parker’s retreat, the place he came to be alone. If he was going to hide something in the house, something he didn’t want even his wife to know about, this was where he’d put it. Still, the basement had been so cluttered that if not for Anita Parker, Boots might never have uncovered the anomaly. Anita had spoken at length about her home’s many advantages, seeming, once she got started, unable to stop. Boots had listened patiently, aware that she was cataloguing her memories, not pitching real estate. Anita remembered completing the addition over the garage, replacing the roof, remodeling the kitchen, preparing a bedroom for their first child, upgrading the furnace in the basement.

‘We replaced the furnace two years ago,’ she’d said. ‘The system we installed was top of the line. It uses half the fuel that the old system used and it doesn’t clank every time it shuts down.’

When Boots had finally reached the basement, he’d made a cursory inspection, then stood before the new furnace for several minutes before he put his finger on what was bothering him. A sheet-metal duct running above a long workbench wasn’t connected to the new heating system on either end, though one end rested against the furnace. Had the contractor who installed the new system left the duct behind? Had Chris Parker taken advantage?

Boots had been about to find out when Anita came thumping down the stairs, a laundry basket cradled in her arms.

‘It never ends,’ she’d said.

Boots gave the end of the duct resting against the furnace a tug, moving it far enough to get his hand inside, but found nothing. He walked calmly to the other end, twenty-five feet away, and focused the beam of his flashlight along the inside. About half-way down, a small shadow blocked the light. Boots twisted the flashlight to angle the beam into the shadow which then became a black shopping bag.

The duct was made of box-like segments, press-fit into a single unit. Boots separated the two segments at the center by holding them against his body, then yanking in opposite directions. They came apart easily, one end dropping down to release the bag. Boots could tell by the sound the bag made when it hit the concrete floor, the muffled ker-chunk, that there was money inside.

Something over twenty thousand dollars, as a quick count revealed, more than enough to set up Joaquin. Boots found himself wishing that Father Leo was in the room so he could kick the priest’s ass from one wall to the other. Yeah, the commandment says, Thou shalt not steal. But if the money didn’t belong to Boots, who did it belong to? Who was he stealing from? Anita Parker? On the grounds that her husband had extorted it, fair and square? Or maybe the city or the state? Or how about Maytag LeGuin? What would Maytag say if Boots walked up and handed him a bag of money?

‘This is yours, I believe.’

Boots shook his head in an effort to erase the entire train of thought. He let the money fall to the floor, then retrieved the only other item in Parker’s stash – a DVD in a jewel case. Boots examined the disc for a moment, but there was no label to indicate its contents, which he found encouraging. Parker would not have taken such pains to conceal a few hours of video shot at a family celebration.

Boots slid the DVD into his pocket, then dropped to his knees and stuffed the cash into the bag. It was time to get out and he knew it. Still, for the length of a drawn breath, he continued to stare down at the stacked bills. He wanted them so bad. He wanted them more than anything they could hope to buy, and he couldn’t shake off the notion that only a chump would leave them behind.

Boots released his breath, shoved the money into the bag and the bag into the duct, and finally pressed the segments together. Whoever’s money it was, it wasn’t Boots Littlewood’s money. That was how you knew, or so the nuns had explained way back when. Plus, there was Father Leo’s threat to withhold absolution. If Boots ignored the priest, he might as well quit going to church altogether.

It was well after two o’clock when Boots turned the key in Frankie Drago’s door. He tiptoed through the living room, down the hall and into the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, he was asleep. This was a trait for which Boots could take no credit. Except for those rare occasions when his conscience troubled him, he was able to drop off at will.

Boots slept deeply for several hours, then fell into a series of dreams centering around his mother. In the years since her death, Boots often dreamed of Margie Littlewood, dreams in which he and his mother might be any age, in which they skipped from season to season, setting to setting. He walked beside her in the Bronx Zoo, watched her prepare dinner on a snowy day, swam next to her in a YMCA pool.

In his dream on this night, Boots sat beside his mother in a wooden pew at Mount Carmel. He felt her thigh pressed against his own, smelled the flowery perfume she wore to church. He rose with her, sat with her, knelt with her, sang with her. So happy he could barely contain himself.

And then, without transition, Margie Littlewood was no longer beside her son. She was at the front of the church, beyond the altar rail, in her coffin, and she wasn’t coming back, never, no matter how much he wanted to see her again.

Boots awakened in a panic. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and put his face into his hands. Even now, when he entered his father’s apartment, he sometimes heard, very faintly, his mother call out his name.

Fully awake, Boots took a shower, then retrieved the DVD and headed for the kitchen, drawn by the odor of onions browning in olive oil. When he came through the door, Frankie Drago was breaking eggs into a mixing bowl.

‘Boots, I been wantin’ to talk to you.’ Drago added salt, pepper and chopped garlic, then whisked the eggs into a froth before pouring them over the onions.

‘What about?’

‘What do you think?’ This time Frankie was prepared. No more evasions.

‘About that question I suggested your lawyer ask me?’ Boots’s grin flicked on and off.

‘Yeah, that one. And no more bullshit. I wanna know what you’re gonna say.’

‘Well, Frankie, should your mouthpiece ask me if there’s any physical or circumstantial evidence provin’ that you intended to kill Angie, I’m gonna say no. But you could’ve figured that one out for yourself.’

‘How so?’ Drago folded the omelet, then cut it in half.

‘Because no evidence that you intended to kill your sister exists. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll be acquitted. Remember, I’m just one little arrow in the state’s quiver. That’s why I’m gonna give you a piece of advice. The prosecutor will raise a question of his own – a very important question which you’re gonna have to answer convincingly if you hope to walk away relatively unharmed.’

‘And what question would that be?’

‘Why was your basement door open, exposing a steep and narrow staircase with a concrete floor at the bottom end? My father doesn’t leave the door to the basement open. In fact, nobody I know leaves the door open. So why did Frankie Drago’s basement door happen to be open when he happened to shove his sister through it?’

B
oots ate his omelet standing up. He was annoyed by Drago’s ingratitude. The issue of the open door would play a far more important role in the bookmaker’s trial than Boots Littlewood’s testimony. But Frankie Drago was pissed off because Detective Littlewood had rained on his freedom fantasy. Par for the course. Boots took Chris Parker’s DVD out of his pocket and held it up.

‘You have a player for this?’

‘What’s on it?’

‘I don’t know, Frankie. That’s why I need the player.’

Drago led the way into the living room, handed Boots a remote control, then slid the disc into his DVD player. When Boots didn’t ask him to leave, he dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette.

The disc opened on an outdoor scene in a neighborhood that might be found in any of New York’s outer boroughs, a block of five-story apartment buildings and two-family, attached homes, brick, brick and more brick. There were parked cars on both sides of the road, a half-dozen pedestrians going about their business, a Con-Ed crew digging up the street.

The scene remained static for a few seconds before a car – a blue, late-model Volvo, driven by a woman – glided into view. The Volvo came to a stop next to a Toyota, then attempted to parallel-park. The effort was comical, the Volvo’s rear tires pounding the curb several times before the car again pulled up alongside the Toyota and the driver got out. Bundled up in a puffy, down jacket, she walked directly to the camera, reaching out as she came.