Chapter 2
June 23
Day 2
Faith Yokas sneezed. Three times, in quick succession.
"Bless you," Ty Davis said without looking up.
Bosco felt a flash of irritation. He was hunched over his locker, muttering and pretending to rummage ineffectually through his duffel bag, but really what he was doing was trying to think. "'Bless you?' Come on, Davis, who actually says that?"
Ty looked up from buttoning his shirt, genuinely puzzled. "What? It's just something you say. Didn't your mother teach you manners?"
Bosco only grunted and continued fidgeting in his locker.
Faith rolled her eyes at Ty, who only smiled thinly and went back to his shirt. "Thanks so much for your sympathy, Bos," she said dryly, drawing a Kleenex from the box in her locker. "You know, this really stinks. I don't usually get sick this time of year."
David shrugged. "Ah, there was something on the news this morning. The flu. Some new Chinese or German strain or something. I've had the sniffles the past couple of days, but it's no big deal. I'll shake it off fast. Vitamin C, y'know. Makes you damn near invulnerable."
"I'm not feeling so invulnerable," John Sullivan muttered, checking the speedloaders on his gunbelt. "Throat's killing me. Head feels like it's stuffed with shit." Sully looked up at Davis and Bosco half-noticed something pass between them, an unspoken little something that seemed to carry an uneasy weight with it. "It's nothing, though. Must just be the same thing you guys have."
Bosco slammed the door of his locker and groaned. "Oh, would you listen to this! Did I take a wrong turn and walk into a friggin' nursing home this morning? Why don't you just go the distance and start comparing what brand of diaper has better absorbency? You know what this is? Psychotropic, that's all. One person gets sick, everybody else wants in on the sympathy."
Faith shook her head. "The term is 'psychosomatic,' Bosco. And what's wrong with you today, anyway? You've been jumping down everybody's throat every time they open their mouths. I suppose you Anti-Crime alpha males never get colds."
Bosco grinned and patted his chest. "Feel like a million, baby."
Faith blew her nose. "Well, in that case you can handle the driving today. Baby."
They went through roll call and started for the parking lot. On the way Bosco kept quiet, waiting for Faith to start in on him. Waiting for her to ask about Cruz, about Anti-Crime and why he was back in uniform today. And Faith would, of course, try to make it sound innocent, light, just some friendly banter between partners.
And it would, of course, come out sounding stiff and rehearsed.
Was there a rift opening between them? If there was it could mean trouble, because he was no longer at all sure about Cruz; she had not spoken to him since the argument over Dougie, and now she'd pulled a disappearing act today. Could she be scared? Worried that if Dougie tried to make a case of it, Bosco would back him up? Scared that Bosco might say something anyway, that he might suddenly decide to go all Faith Yokas and file a report stating that he'd had to stop a fellow a police officer from shooting an unarmed suspect in cold blood?
Because he wouldn't do a thing like that, and he hoped Cruz understood that. Maybe what she had wanted to do last night was bad, but such an act of back-stabbing treachery towards another cop - especially Cruz, of all people - would be unforgivable. And if Dougie tried to make a thing out of it (which he wouldn't; Dougie was a bred-in-the-bones coward, and if he hadn't been scared of Cruz before, he sure as hell was now) Bosco would be there to back up her side of the story.
And now something else was intruding on him, another uncomfortable little idea ... what if he'd let Cruz do it? Would there really have been that many questions asked afterwards? Would it really have been murder, in the strictest sense of the term? Dougie was a master at looking pathetic and weak and harmless, but he hadn't been pathetic and weak and harmless, had he? Okay, the knife was small, but a knife was still a knife and it was possible that he could have killed her. Or at least badly injured her.
That brought forth a nauseatingly clear picture; Cruz standing in Dougie's shitty little apartment, looking down in surprised horror at long, pinkish-purple ropes of intestine hanging from her lacerated belly.
He pushed the image away with an internal curse. If Dougie had tried to kill him in such a sniveling, cowardly way, wouldn't he have felt the same?
Can I get a hell yeah?
The truth of the matter was that Dougie Francis would have been dismissed by all but the most limp-wristed of bleeding hearts as No Big Loss. The word of two cops against a dead drug dealer, a drug dealer who probably had no family to ask questions or start sounding the Great American War Cry of Lawsuit.
And so now he knew Cruz was capable of murder. Okay, so what? So was he. Bosco had always believed everyone was, if pushed hard enough in the right (or wrong, depending on how you wanted to look at it) direction ...
"Bosco?"
"Huh? What?"
Faith rolled her eyes. "Oh, Jeez."
He frowned. "What?"
"Nothing. Look, I only asked how things have been going lately. Clean out your ears and listen to me, will you? You and Cruz win the War on Drugs yet?"
Ah, so here it was.
He ignored the undertone of sarcasm and answered the question straight. "Ah, we caught some jagoff dealer yesterday. We were just there to get some helpful information from him, you know? All real friendly. And what does he do? He takes a swing at Cruz with a knife."
"Ouch," Faith said without much sympathy.
Bosco glared at her. "She could have been killed, Faith."
She nodded, mock-solemn. "Oh, God forbid."
"She's a cop, Faith!" Bosco shook his head. "I can't believe you lately."
She uttered a quick snort of laughter. "You can't believe me lately? That's cute, Bos. Say that again. You have no idea how prim and proper and snooty you sounded just now." She stopped in front of a drinking fountain and leaned down.
"Yeah, well, you don't have to worry about running into Cruz for the next day or two. She called in sick."
Faith tried to laugh and choked on her water. "Sick? Cruz? Cruz called in sick? God, Bosco, I'd have thought you'd need a rocket launcher to make a dent in that bitch." She sneezed again, then put a hand up in mock-apology when she saw his expression. "Sorry, sorry. She's not a bitch." She laughed. "I feel so much better now knowing I probably got this cold from your little Anti-Crime girlfriend. You know what's gonna happen, don't you? I'll pass this right along to Fred and the kids. Always happens. Charlie will be whining, Emily will keep wanting more time off school, and Fred ... Fred gets pretty hard to love when he's sick, Bosco."
Bosco had long since stopped listening.
"Would you stop calling her that?" he snapped.
They were outside now, in the parking lot. Faith turned to him as they reached their cruiser. "What?"
"Stop calling Cruz my 'Anti-Crime girlfriend,' okay? She's not."
Faith slid into the passenger seat and waited for him to get in next to her. "You slept with her, right?"
Bosco started the car. "Yeah ..."
He'd figured Faith wouldn't be able to resist rubbing it in a little (or maybe a lot), and she didn't disappoint. "Oh, what? Did she use you, Bos? It was a one-night stand, wasn't it? You thought it was more, but for her it was just a little roll in the hay. She said she'd call you, right? And she never did." Faith chuckled. "About time a man got a taste of that medicine."
Bosco eased the car out onto the street. "Just drop it, okay?"
Faith shrugged and muffled a cough with her hand. "Okay, Bosco."
A touchy silence seemed to descend over both of them in a thin, slimy curtain. Bosco didn't like it.
In fact, he thought, it would be fair to say that he loathed it. Over the past few days it had suddenly become as if they were total strangers to each other, and that was stupid as well as being irritating. Stupid. Ridiculous.
Get it out in the clear. This shit can't go on any longer. Absolutely not.
"Look," he snapped suddenly, pulling the car over to the curb. "Number one, Cruz is not my girlfriend. All right? Are we straight on that?"
Faith turned to him, surprised - and somewhat chagrined - by the genuine animosity in his tone.
"Okay, Bosco," she said soberly. "Sure. I'm sorry if ... I'm sorry."
"And I'm sorry I lied to you about Cruz, about the dying declaration, all right? I didn't want to ..." He shook his head helplessly. "I didn't want to involve you. Okay? Can we leave it there?"
"Okay, Bos."
He clenched his teeth. "Faith?"
"Yeah?"
"Are you going to try to ... are you gonna make something out of it?"
Faith lowered her eyes and said nothing. Neither of them had ever put it out there in such succinct terms.
What if she says yes. Hmm? You don't really expect her to, but what if she does? What will you do?
Or here's a more interesting and waaaay more cheerful question; what will Cruz do?
"Faith?"
"No." She looked up at him again. "No, Bosco."
He nodded, hiding how relieved he really was. "Okay. Because you know, what we did, it brought crime down in that area ..."
"I know, Bos ..."
"There's probably a percentage or a statistic or something to go with it, but all I know is, crime is down in that neighborhood because of what we did. We reduced the drug problem in the whole damned area, Faith. Why would that be wrong? Because Cruz pretended that one worthless jagoff gangbanger made a dying declaration against another worthless jagoff gangbanger?" He shook his head. "No way."
Great! some dim little voice cried before he could completely silence it. Now tell her about what Cruz wanted to do to reduce the Dougie problem!
Faith pursed her lips and nodded. "Okay, I can accept that. ... But listen to me, Bos. Okay?"
Oh boy, here it comes.
Faith studied him thoughtfully for a moment. "I don't know exactly how you look at her, Bosco, but I'm going to tell you for the last time - she's trouble. You think you're her friend? You're not. I don't think someone like her can have friends. I don't think she even understands the term. I think she's missing a few things upstairs, Bosco. Like a conscience."
He opened his mouth to disagree-
Faith cut him off. "I saved her ass that night, in that alley. Did she thank me? No. She just decided to mouth off to me a little more. After I saved her life, Bosco. That just went right over her head. And you know what? Just before I shot that guy, I hesitated. There was this sick, twisted little part of me that considered just letting the son of a bitch choke her. I hated myself for that later, because it was just exactly like something Cruz would do."
Bosco said nothing. He wanted to protest, wanted to-
Remember Dougie crying? Remember him saying "joke's over, guys" in his ratty little whisper? Remember Cruz' eyes? No pity in them, was there? No emotion in them at all but that inarticulate, animal hate. In fact, they were not even quite what you'd call sane, were they? Remember her gun loose and ready at her side, the impatient way her hand kept kneading the grip? How badly she wanted to do it! To just gun him down like a dog! What do you call that? Hmm? Hmm?
"She had a hard life growing up, Faith," he said softly, but it sounded hollow in his ears. Hell, he didn't even technically know if it was true. "Her sister ... all those years with that junkie sister, and then the overdose ..."
Ah, but that's no excuse, is it? You've said it yourself, dumbass. Remember?
"A lot of people have had a hard life growing up, Bosco. Okay, so Cruz became a cop. That's good. She works Anti-Crime. Okay, that's good, too. She hates drugs and she has good reason to. Okay. The problem is, she doesn't care how she gets the job done. It's all a big game to her. She uses people. She uses kids against their parents. She'll walk over anybody who gets in her way, and you know what? That includes you. She'll turn on you as soon as it suits her. If she gets caught doing something illegal, it'll be you she tries to pin it on. The woman is a snake, Bosco. Or if you wanna get technical, she's a sociopath."
That, he thought, was going a bit far. "Faith-"
But her gaze remained steady, and with angry, trapped dismay he knew she was right.
And on the heels of that, he suddenly had a powerful and very disturbing urge to strike her across the face.
He turned away quickly, horrified.
Great speech, Faith, he thought bitterly. You oughtta be writing that shit down.
"Okay," he said tightly. "Point taken."
Faith sighed. "Bosco ..."
"Let's just drop it for good, okay? We're past it now."
Ah, but they weren't, and both of them knew it.
***
It was quite clear that the owner of the silver Lexus had caused the accident. Quite clear because two police officers watched it happen right in front of them; Bosco and Faith saw the Lexus as it rounded the corner in turn that was both too early and too tight, watched the back end almost clip a lightpole, watched the front end plow into the back of a box truck that was parked in front of a pharmacy.
The Lexus' nose immediately became wedged under the back bumper of the larger vehicle, and damned if the driver didn't throw the car into reverse and try to pull out of it. The box truck's bumper held on, though the Lexus' driver might have eventually freed it had it not been for two mitigating factors. Factor A being Bosco and Faith, who pulled up behind the mess, and Factor B being the box truck's driver, who came out of the pharmacy and, upon seeing what had happened, promptly went crazy.
Ah, what fun, New York.
The truck driver had been pushing an empty dolly back for another load, and when he saw the mess his reaction was eerily quick. It was like he didn't even need to think, as if seeing that a car had hit his truck (doing absolutely no real damage) just naturally called for an instantaneous wanton act of violence, as natural as scratching an itch. He immediately swung the dolly back over his shoulder, and with a wild, inarticulate yelp of rage, he brought it down in a heavy, awkward arc to strike the already crumpled hood of the Lexus.
"Hey!" Faith shouted as the truck driver began to heave the dolly up for another round. He ignored her and began to gather momentum. She put a hand on the butt of her gun and shouted again. "HEY!"
The dolly stopped halfway through its arc of descent, ending up suspended over the man's head in a rather impressive show of working-man strength. The truck driver looked over, saw the uniform, more importantly saw the hand on the gun, and lowered the makeshift weapon. A bit reluctantly all the same, Faith thought.
"Check him!" she yelled to Bosco, pointing at the Lexus' driver, who had stopped trying to free his car and was now attempting to get out. The impact had warped the car's frame, and it was proving a bit difficult.
"Work ..." the Lexus' driver was saying as he pushed half-heartedly against the door. "Gotta get ... work! ... Shit! Shit! Shit on wholewheat bread! Work!"
"Well, now that sounds tasty," Bosco muttered, adding his own strength to the car's door. It gave with a thin shriek and opened far enough for the driver to slip out. He was maybe in his late twenties or early thirties, a clean-shaven, good-looking carbon copy of any garden variety Corporate Executive On His Way Up. Blood from a short, jagged scalp wound ran freely down the right side of his face and over his suit, which was a dull gray that matched his car and in Bosco's estimation probably cost half as much.
"You want to tell me why you just rammed your car up that guy's ass?" Bosco asked mildly.
"Work," Mr. On-His-Way-Up said gravely. "Shit on wholewheat bread."
Then he sneezed directly into Bosco's face.
It was warm and wet and oh so slimy.
"Aaaawww!" Bosco cried, swiping at his eyes. "Aaaawww shit! What the hell is wrong with you!?"
"I gotta get to work," Mr. On-His-Way-Up said matter-of-factly. "I'm two hours late. At least I think I am ... shit ... shit on wholewheat bread."
"I'll give you shit on wholewheat bread, jagoff!" Bosco howled. Christ, it had gotten into his mouth. He needed water. Now. Then he remembered the way Cruz had spit that big, green gob in Dougie's face last night, the way it dangled from the skinny little junkie's nose, and suddenly he what he felt most like doing was puking. "I'll sit here and make you eat shit on wholewheat bread!"
"Bosco!"
He looked up. It was Faith. Faith had deposited the dolly-swinging truck driver in the back of the cruiser and was walking towards them. "Bosco, what is the problem?"
"Sneezed!" he screamed. "This moron just sneezed right in my face!"
Faith ignored him completely and turned her attention to Mr. On-His-Way-Up, eyeing him cautiously. "Sir, have you been drinking?"
"No!" Bosco snapped, still toweling off and spitting. "He hasn't!"
"How do you know?"
Bosco gaped at her. "I think I just swallowed a gallon of this guy's snot, Faith! Believe me, I'd smell it, I'd taste it, hell, I'd be half-drunk myself by now!"
"I have to get to work," Mr. On-His-Way-Up said. His tone stopped just short of being urgent and instead only seemed foggy and dazed. "I ... have to close a deal today ..." -he sneezed again, this time mercifully turning his head- "It's very important that I get in. I'm late already." He put his bleeding head in his hands. "Oooohh, shit. Oh shit on wholewheat bread."
"Sir, where do you work?"
He looked up, confused. Everything must have sloshed forward when he put his head down, and now his nose was running freely down his face. "What? ... Uh ... I do real-estate. I do real-estate. Re-Max. Manhattan."
"Manhattan!?" Faith exclaimed. "Sir, you're pretty far out of your way, do you realize that?"
"Hmm?"
Faith sighed. "Did you take any pills today? Medication? Any drugs of any kind?"
"Hmm? ... um ... no ... yes ... I took some Tylenol. I got the flu, real bad. The last two days or so. I was in Texas two days ago for a ... a conference. Must have picked it up there."
"Just Tylenol?"
"Fucker's wasted!" the truck driver called disgustedly from the back of the cruiser.
"Shut up!" Faith yelled back. She turned to Bosco. "Better get a bus down here. I don't know if it's drugs, head injury or fever, but this guy is seriously altered. I'm betting on fever."
"Fever?"
She led him a few paces away from Mr. On-His-Way-Up. "Bosco, did you not feel the heat from that guy?"
"I tend to save my energy for those wild Friday night parties."
"Funny, Bos. The poor guy's on fire. You can feel it, like, three feet away from him."
Bosco spat again and rolled his eyes. "Look, whatever, just so long as we don't have to-"
He broke off and craned his neck over her shoulder as something caught his eye.
Well, shit, he thought. Shit on wholewheat bread.
A man had climbed a streetlight and was now sitting on top of it, some joker in redneck duds; shitkickers and bluejeans and a denim jacket, straddling the damn thing just as neat as you please.
"What the hell is that dumbass doin' up there?"
Faith turned. "What?"
Bosco blinked, and with no real surprise saw that the man was gone. Momentary lapse. Brain fart.
The only thing up there on that pole was a fat black crow.
"Jagoff," he muttered at it for no particular reason.
Faith followed his gaze. "Yeah, Bos. I've never seen such flagrant abuse of public property by flying vermin. You wanna put the cuffs on him, or will I?" She looked at him warily. "You all right?"
Momentary lapse my ass. The guy was there. Clear as day. I saw him.
"Yeah, fine. Why wouldn't I be?" He turned back to Mr. On-His-Way-Up, suddenly needing to change the subject. "Can you believe that? Guy looks like he's got the goddam plague and he doesn't even have the sense to take a day off. And look at the mess he gets himself in."
Faith shrugged and started for the cruiser, where the truck driver was now pounding his fists against the door and yelling about his delivery schedule. "I'll go call for the bus and shut him up. You stay here with the other one." About halfway over she stopped and turned, grinning. "He really sneezed on you?"
Bosco scowled at her. "What, you think it's funny?"
She forced down the smile, though not very successfully; it kept pulling the corners of her mouth. "No. Me? Think it's funny? Of course not." She saw where his gaze was slowly drifting to again and sighed. "Bosco, would you stop lookin' at that damn bird? Look, you go call for the ambulance and shut that idiot up, and I'll stay with Sneezy."
"No," he said absently. "You go."
Faith groaned and continued to the cruiser, and Bosco kept watching the crow, becoming more and more sure that it was watching him right back. It's head tipped this way. That way. It cawed once, little black tar-drop eyes marking him. Some dim memory on the periphery of his mind seemed to trigger and was gone almost immediately, some millisecond of deja vu he didn't even really feel.
"Bosco! Look out!"
He turned; Faith was jogging back over to him and pointing at the Lexus' driver, good ol' Mr. On-His-Way-Up, who was wandering dazedly right out into traffic.
Bosco swore and took after him before the stupid asshole could add a few more pages to tonight's paperwork, then led him back over to the curb and once again sat him next to his car. Mr. On-His-Way-Up seemed happy enough to comply. He was gone. Fever my ass, Bosco thought. This guy's righteously stoned.
"You call for the bus?" he asked.
"Yeah, I did. You were supposed to keep an eye on that guy and instead I see you doing this amateur birdwatching thing." She frowned. "Just what is your problem today?"
"I told you, Faith, nothing."
She jabbed a finger at him. "You'd better get your shit together, Bosco and let this Cruz thing go. Right?"
Bosco felt his fists clench at his sides, felt the nails digging into his palms. But he kept his voice neutral. "Right."
The paramedics arrived; Kim Zambrano and Alex Taylor took charge of Mr. On-The-Way-Up. The Lexus and the truck were dealt with, and Bosco and Faith ended up on their way back to the Five-Five with the truck driver.
And Bosco found he could not let the Cruz thing go. An unpleasant idea had occurred to him that he might not be able to let it go until he told Faith about last night. Now there was a wild idea: tell Faith about the Dougie Francis thing. It would be a spectacularly stupid thing to do; he'd diffused her on the other business, the dying declaration thing. Why go firing the other barrel of the shotgun into his face by bringing up the Dougie incident?
But partners didn't lie to each other, did they?
On the other hand, partners didn't stab each other in the back, which is what he'd be doing to Cruz.
Ah, Christ, why did nothing seem as simple as it used to be?
The stupid jagoff truck driver in the back seat didn't make it any easier to think, like that pointless bitching and moaning in the locker room earlier. On their way back to the precinct, the driver made several vocal complaints known, none of which were very original; among other things, how New York was full of bad drivers, how the streets were too crowded, too narrow, that there were too damn many people getting hooked on legal pills by psychiatrists these days.
He also sneezed several times.