Street Rules (8 page)

“How about a ham and Swiss on rye? That shouldn’t be much trouble.”

“You got it.” Slipping off the stool, Nancy asked, “Stout?”

“No. Scotch. Double.”

Frank watched Nancy squeeze back behind the bar and pour her drink. Frank kept her eyes on the waitress as she talked to the cook. Nance had put on some pounds but she still filled a skirt nicely. Nancy reclaimed her stool and while she tallied receipts, Frank asked how her son was doing. Nancy and the liquor loosened the evening’s death grip on Frank. She kept drinking, paying attention to Nancy as she scarfed the sandwich the cook brought out.

“When are you gonna get someone to take care of you?” Nancy clucked.

Frank was grateful for the familiar banter, answering, “You mean a secretary?”

“You know what I mean,” Nancy chided, then in a lower voice she added, “I mean a real live woman.”

Been there, done that, Frank thought.

She said around a mouthful, “You applying for the job?”

“Shit,” Nancy retorted, “I’ve had my application in for years. I’m still waiting to hear about it.”

“Takes a long time to get to these things,” Frank assured her.

“Well, I guess some things are just worth waiting for.”

“Things okay with you and Kennedy?”

Nancy sighed and said, “Yeah. You were right, though. She’s not real long-term, is she?”

Kennedy had alluded to Nancy that there was nothing serious between her and Frank, and Nancy had believed it, had needed to. She’d even checked with Frank, who by then agreed that, no, there was nothing between her and Kennedy. But Frank had warned Nancy to be careful. She glanced at Nancy, who said, “I know, I know, you told me. But still, even if it doesn’t work out…”

“It won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?” Nancy pouted.

“She’s a player, Nance. It’s in her blood. She’s not going to change just ‘cause you get hooked on her.”

“I’m not hooked,” the waitress defended.

“Good. Don’t get that way. She’s fun, and that’s all.”

“I know,” she groaned.

Nancy changed the subject, chatting while Frank savaged her dinner and worked on another double. The cook said goodnight, and Frank thought she should go home and let Nance close up. Thing was, she didn’t want to go yet. Frank appraised the handsome woman beside her, wondering as she often had, what it would be like to take her up on her offer. The welcome mat had been out for a long time, but as tempting as it was, Frank liked Nancy too much to use her like that.

Frank drained her scotch and left a hefty tip. It had been a while since she’d spent the night on the couch in her office, but that was where she reluctantly headed. Crashing on the chrome and vinyl relic, she hoped that sleep would take her instantly. No such luck. The old faces came, as she’d feared they would, swirling around her like a windy fog. She bent an arm across her eyes as if that would fend them off.

She and Claudia and Placa had traveled a far stretch of time together, their histories sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly linked. They’d grown up and grown older together. Made right choices and wrong ones. Lost people they’d loved. One was an ex-junkie, one a notorious banger, and another a commanding peace officer. Still they had more in common than not. And they’d all been young once, with more promise than not. But that had been before the junk got Claudia, before the streets got Placa, before Frank…

She flipped uneasily on to her side, quite aware of the familiar dread trying to get a claw into her. J
should just let it take me wherever it wants to go,
she thought,
have its little ride, then be done.
She threw off the thin blanket she kept in her locker for nights like this and stabbed at the light switch. Her desk was irritatingly clean. She picked through a cold case, hoping to ease her discomfort. But she knew by now that work just postponed it. Nothing eased it.

She closed the binder and sank into her old wooden chair. Rubbing one of the scarred, skin-polished arms, Frank thought,
been a long way with you too.
They kept trying to give her a new chair, one with wheels and springs and a dozen different positions, but she refused to give this one up. She wondered if maybe she should cave; how could she bring her head into the present if her ass was still firmly planted in the past? So much of her was in the past and she was bone weary of that.

She tried to convince herself to think of everyone, even Maggie, then let them all go. She could do that. She was stronger now, thanks to Clay. And Kennedy had helped, too. Propping bare feet on the desk, Frank tilted the chair back, hovering on the narrow cusp between forward and backward motion. Picturing Claudia young and not yet beaten, and Placa, giggling in diapers, Frank was grateful for all of Clay’s instruction. Not only was he teaching her how to salvage the good memories, the best ones, but he was also showing her how to move on from the bad ones. She sat a while doing just that.

Noah put down a box of doughnuts and gave Frank the once over. Spraying powdered sugar on his too short suit, he mumbled, “What were you doin’ here all night?”

Her hair had given her away. It was still slick, dripping onto her shirt collar from the shower she’d taken in the locker room. Frank didn’t look up from the paper in her hand.

“Pretty much camped here all weekend. Somebody capped Placa Saturday night.”

The doughnut fell away from Noah’s mouth.

“Oh,
man.
Who?”

“Don’t know.”

Noah shook his head and said, “Goddamnit.”

“Hardly a surprise,” Frank responded curtly.

Noah’s mouth dropped open. No one else was in the squad room yet and he said, “Jesus Christ, Frank! I swear I just wanna
hurl
this doughnut at you! I been workin’ with you nearly twelve years and I swear to Christ sometimes it’s like bein’ with a stranger.”

Frank glanced up from the warrant in her hand, seemingly unmoved by Noah’s outburst.

“Something bugging you?”

“Yeah,” Noah said angrily, “You! How can you be so fucking blase about a girl half this squad raised?”

Facing him squarely, Frank made Noah wait for his answer. The overheads accentuated the purple shadows under her eyes and she absently rubbed the back of her neck. Frank rarely verbalized a feeling, but for someone who’d had as much practice reading her as Noah had, words weren’t necessary. A sudden frosting and narrowing of the dark blue eyes indicated she was plenty pissed. If this was accompanied by bouncing jaw muscles it was likely someone or something was about to get broken. When she was engrossed in thought she often stroked the spot on her ring finger where a band used to be and squeezing the back of her neck was a dead giveaway that something was eating her. She tried to control her mannerisms but sometimes, like now, she simply forgot.

Dropping his doughnut back into the box, Noah’s temper sputtered as quickly as it had flared.

“Never mind,” he said, as Bobby and Ike came in together. Frank asked, “You want to talk in my office?”

“No. Sorry. Just lost it for a sec.”

Frank’s phone rang and she went to get it. Johnnie was calling in, said he had a migraine and he’d be in around ten.

“You know you’re out of sick time,” Frank responded.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he wheezed on the other end. “What am I supposed to do, huh?”

“That’s a good question. Might want to think about it while you’re nursing that hangover.”

He started to protest and Frank hung up, making a mental note to talk to Noah. When all her detectives arrived, they had their morning meeting. Even-keeled and calm, Frank sat with her feet crossed on Gough’s old desk. Ike was sporting a bruise on his cheekbone. From rough trade, he claimed. While the boys razzed him, Frank’s hand strayed to the back of her neck. This time she caught herself and stopped kneading the tense muscles, but Noah had already seen her. She thought about how long they’d been friends, how there was a time when he would have died to rub Frank’s neck for her. Popping the rest of a doughnut in his mouth, he stared at her, as if reading her thoughts. She swore he could sometimes, and she looked back down at her notes.

“All right,” Frank said, starting business. She brought Ike, Diego, and Noah up to date on Placa’s case then asked Nook and Bobby what they had. The smaller man flipped through his notebook.

“Well, we’ve been chasing homies all over town. Nobody knows nothing, and if they do they’re not tellin’. The one thing we got is that Placa was really making a move on Playboy territory, specifically 51st Street. The corner held by Ocho Ruiz. You remember him?” Nook asked Frank.

“Refresh me.”

“Got the octopus tattooed on his back? The tentacles wrapped around his chest?”

“Oh yeah,” Frank nodded. “Lot’s of time in stir. The tentacles connect to a big M.”

“That’s the one. And he’s out again, but word is he’s slippin’. Sampling too much of his own product.”

Ocho Ruiz had started as an entrepreneurial hustler, keeping an eye out for bailers doing business on the corner, hollering when the heat came near. He’d fought and killed for his turf, stabbing and clubbing his way to a profitable corner of the drug trade in his barrio. He’d managed to stay on top even in lockup. Reputedly this had been done with the aid of the Mexican Mafia, hence the large M tat.

“Best part though, turns out he drives a yellow ‘91 T-Bird.

We’ve been tryin’ to find him, but he ain’t around. I figure maybe we’d go over to his crib after we’re done here, see if we can catch him nappin’. But my bet is his ass is in the wind for a while.”

“And nobody’s claiming this?”

“Not a whisper,” Bobby said. “I persuaded his mom to consent to a search. We found two .38s and a .45, but no quarter.”

“Confiscate?”

Bobby nodded and Frank said, “Good. Get ballistics on them.”

If they couldn’t get Ocho for Placa, they might be able to nail him on another case.

“How about Itsy?”

Bobby said, “She’s pretty torn up. We couldn’t get anything out of her. The other girls, Negra and Payasa, they saw her around ten that morning, then she disappeared for a couple hours. Evidently she did that a lot, but nobody knows where she went.”

“Keep at them. And both of you drop by and have a chat with Claudia and the kids. I know they know something, but they’re not letting on. And hit Itsy again, and who’s that little dark gal that’s been putting in work for the set?”

“La Limpia,” Noah piped in. “She’s Rolo Hernandez’ sister.”

“What’s he got to say?”

“Nothing. He was home in bed. Has the flu or something.”

“All right. Keep hitting the homes. Let’s hit the Playboys too. Find Ocho’s dogs, bring them in if you have to. How about that CI of yours, Nook? Think she could help?”

“I’ll see.”

All the detectives had snitches or, confidential informers who’d trade a piece of news for a twenty. After everyone updated their cases, Frank moved on to other business, then the small group dispersed. Checking her watch, Frank told Noah to step into her office. When she closed the door, he said “Uh-oh.”

“Tell me about your partner.”

“What about him?”

“How’s he doing?”

Noah looked uncomfortable and Frank knew she was putting him in an awkward spot, but cops usually knew more about their partners than they did about their own spouses.

“He’s all right. Same old Johnnie, pissin’ and moanin’ about the IRS, and the government, and his exes all suckin’ him dry. But he’s okay.”

“He’s drinking a lot.”

Noah pulled his aw-shucks face and opened his hands wide.

“Which one of you doesn’t?”

“Look, I don’t care what he does on his own time, but when it starts interfering with my time, we’ve got a problem. I’m not asking you to cheese him out. I just want a handle on what’s going on. If he’s got a problem, I owe it to him to help before it gets worse. Protecting him isn’t helping him.”

“I know, I know. But he’s not drinkin’ on the job, I can tell you that. But yeah, he’s hung over almost every morning. I had to pull over last week so he could puke in the street.”

Frank stared grimly.

“Don’t come down on him too hard,” Noah pleaded.

Frank nodded, knowing what a softie he was. Noah and Tracey joked that in their house, it was “wait ‘til your mother gets home,” because Noah just couldn’t discipline the kids. He looked for the best in everyone and when he found it, he’d cling to it, refusing to look at the bad. It was one of the ways he kept his sanity in an insane job.

“This doesn’t go out of here,” she said, opening the door. No sooner had she returned to her desk than Diego poked his head in.

“Quivo,
Taquito?”

“Got a minute?”

“Sure.”

He tilted his head and Frank followed. He and Ike had a suspect in one of their cases but couldn’t get him into the box. Zabbo wanted to pull him in on a technicality, but Diego wanted to wait, let it ride until the suspect did something stupid. If they pulled him in now and he didn’t tell them what they wanted, they’d have to let him go. Then he’d know he was wanted and could take a powder.

“This guy’s rap sheet covers the floor, man. He’ll fuck up any day now and then we’ve got him,” Diego reasoned. He sat relaxed in his chair, the faint outline of a tattoo still visible under his left eye. He was an old
cholo,
a White Fence homeboy who’d turned his life around to play on the other side of the law. Nothing perturbed Diego, but his partner was a hothead. At 53, Ike was the second oldest member of the nine-three. The boys called him “Pinkie” because of his rings, and there was much speculation but no proof as to how Ike managed to live like a shot-caller on a detective’s salary.

Waving a sticky maple donut in the air, he argued that their suspect knew he was hot and that they already ran the risk of losing him. Ike was confident if they brought him in on a minor that they could break him down in the box. Just as Frank was about to side with Diego her phone rang and she sprinted into her office. She was waiting for the coroner’s office to call about Placa’s cut.

“Homicide. Franco.”