Chapter 3
Cruz
I.
She could hear them. Even through the fog of pain and almost berserk rage, she could hear them, jabbering away in their secret language in that dry, impersonal way paramedics have. Familiar and yet meaningless, frantic and yet strangely businesslike, a drone with no words behind it. She'd heard it before, many times.
Only this time, of course, they were talking about her. And that was simply not possible. It was a dream, had to be, and yet she knew it wasn't, it was fact, unchangeable, irreversible, it was done and she had been cheated, cheated out of everything, out of -
"- have a thirty-year-old female - "
- the bitch, that Yokas-bitch, that bitch SHOT me - !
" - G.S.W. to the left shoulder with - "
- kill her! Kill her! Kill them both, her and that fucking cabron Boscorelli - !
" - an exit wound, just above the -"
- cheated me, robbed me of it, I was so close, so close ... Lettie ... Lettie - !
" - patient is combative - "
It felt like someone was holding a blowtorch to her shoulder, setting off a grenade, grinding in broken glass, you pick the metaphor, but oh Dios Mio, it fucking hurt ...!
Then nothing. Blessed relief. Sedation. Sleep.
Sleep.
Dreamless sleep, thank God.
II.
Two days later, Maritza Cruz lay awake in her hospital bed.
She stared blankly and almost unblinkingly at the ceiling, the only sign of life the gentle rise and fall of her chest ... and her good hand, which clenched and unclenched with slow regularity at her side. This was how she had spent most of her waking moments, and the doctors didn't like it. Zoned out and uncommunicative, eyes fixed on the same ceiling tile (the cracked one, always the cracked one), the right hand opening and closing, opening and closing. Opening and squeezing; by now her nails had dug bloody crescents into her palm.
The doctors didn't like that, either.
In fact, to be perfectly frank, the doctors didn't like her. She had been far from an easy patient to this point; when she wasn't doped up and sleeping she was either lost in her own head or fighting with the nursing staff. She had made two of them cry on the first day alone, and Cruz suspected that they were now drawing straws to decide who would have to deal with the bitch in Room 301. At one point they had sent in their resident she-bear, a big, hefty take-no-shit mama with an ass roughly half the width of a VW microbus. Her name was Yolanda something-or-other. Cruz guessed that they thought sending in a Latina sister to talk Spanish to her would make her more tame. Big Hefty Yolanda had been all ready to put Cruz right about who was in charge.
Cruz had sent her out in tears, raising her score to three.
She had had no patience with these people from the start, but after Yolanda went out bawling she had discovered that she would have to be more careful. She had overheard some ominous talk. Talk of sending in another kind of doctor to see her.
"Just somebody for her to ... open up to," was their uneasy way of putting it.
A shrink, in other words.
Cruz didn't think that being rude and uncooperative was in itself enough to justify sending in a psychologist. She guessed that a good chunk of the doctors' concern came from what had happened in the hotel. They couldn't know the details, but they knew that she was a cop and that she had been shot by another cop, and they probably drew their own conclusions about her state of mind from that. But the fact that she was a handful didn't help matters. So she had to be careful. When they saw what she'd done to her palm, a nurse (not Yolanda, haha) had come in, taken her hand, and clipped her fingernails almost down to the cuticle. Cruz had submitted to this unspeakable humiliation, barely able to restrain the urge to grab the nurse by the collar and smash her head against the metal bedpost.
She was being careful now, though. She was being very careful. But it wasn't easy.
This morning a wizened little doctor named Hyde had come in to see her. Hyde, as in Jekyll and. That was his little joke, and wasn't it just so cute? Dr. Hyde was an orthopedic surgeon. When he came in he was holding something small and off-white in his hand, something that Cruz at first thought was a dog's plastic chew-toy. Closer inspection had revealed it to be what she would be lifting her arm with for the rest of her life. Because her shoulder was ... well, her shoulder wasn't. Her shoulder was, as they say, history. But hey! How does plastic and titanium sound? Screws. Surgical pins. Total replacement with an artificial ball-and-socket joint, which Dr. Hyde had brought in to show her. A marvel of modern medicine for sure, but even so the new shoulder would never be the same as the old one. The one the Good Lord had given her twenty-nine years ago, the one Faith Yokas had blown to powder two days ago.
But it was better than nothing, right?
Physiotherapy would follow. She could see it clearly; months of some grinning nitwit slobbering encouragement at her while sweat streamed down her face from the simple effort of moving her arm. You can do it, 'Ritza! Just a bit higher, 'Ritza! Just one more lift, 'Ritza!
Hyde had demonstrated the artificial shoulder's range of motion, showing her how well it worked, telling her how wonderful it would be once they cut her open and screwed it into her body. His eyes had sparkled with childlike enthusiasm, and he had grinned incessantly.
Cruz remembered wanting to kill him.
Instead, she had calmly suggested that Dr. Hyde take his shoulder joint and perform an unnatural act on himself with it. To hell with being a good little girl. Hyde hadn't taken offense anyway. He had simply sighed, shrugged, and left her alone. He would probably be back.
The police had been to see her, as well. She didn't quite remember when - her perception of time had become murky and peculiar - but it was before Dr. Hyde. It had been Lieutenant Swersky and the PBA representative, flanked by two Internal Affairs detectives. She remembered hearing a doctor complaining about it, insisting that they shouldn't be bothering her, but of course they had stayed anyway, all four of them looking down at her with identical sneers, the way you might look at some half-eviscerated lab animal pinned open on a table. They'd waited until they were sure she was awake and clearheaded, and then asked her just what in the name of hell had gone down in that hotel room.
Cruz might have been afraid of them. Perhaps she should have been afraid of them, but she hadn't been. Not in the slightest. She'd told them exactly what happened - that Yokas had wigged out and shot her.
The lead IAB detective was Brent Schaeffer. He was a massive, imposing man with steel-gray hair and a goatee that did nothing to soften a heavily-featured, vaguely simian face. He'd asked most of the questions. And she didn't think he had been very impressed with most of her answers.
That was okay - Cruz hadn't been all that impressed with him, either.
He had started with the obvious: "Why were you all there in Aaron Noble's room in the first place? You and Officers Yokas and Boscorelli?"
"Because Yokas was going to blow the case I was working on."
"What do you mean? Why would she do that?"
"How the hell should I know? Yokas has had it in for me since we met. Doesn't like my style."
"What is your style, Sergeant?"
"See, Yokas thinks my whole Anti-Crime team is corrupt - "
"Is it?"
"No! What kind of question is that? She was interfering with my case and with my C.I., and when I went to stop her, she shot me. Simple as that."
"If Officer Yokas is concerned about corruption, that seems like an odd thing for her to do, doesn't it?"
"Don't ask me how she thinks. I told you - I have no idea what her reasoning is."
"Uh-huh. What about the gun, Sergeant? The one Officer Yokas shot you with? It was Aaron Noble's?"
Oh, now this had been a tricky one. Cruz had taken a huge gamble here.
"No ... Yokas planted it - that was why she was there. That was why Boscorelli lured Noble out of his hotel room. They were trying to make it look like Noble was the shooter in the Willie G. killing."
"And not Stevie Nunez."
"That's right. Yokas was planting the gun to frame Noble."
Here Schaeffer had paused, watching her shrewdly. Finally he had said: "Sergeant, you do realize that the paramedics found narcotics on you, right?"
Ah, now came the rapid changes of subject, trying to throw her off her guard. Tricky guy, for sure. But Cruz hadn't missed a beat. "Yeah, so what? I caught some 'banger with it earlier in the day. I let him go but I kept the drugs. It was a judgement call. I'd have turned them in later on."
"I'm sure you would have, Sergeant. Who was this gangbanger you were so uncharacteristically lenient with?"
"Bernie Stiller," she had lied without hesitation. Bernie was an exceptionally high-strung junkie who was a compulsive liar and almost impossible to talk to - if the IAB detectives tracked him down, they'd never get a straight answer out of him. They'd ask him if Cruz had shaken him down - Bernie would say no. But a minute later he might say yes, come to think of it, she had shaken him down. Then he'd flip-flop again. In short, he'd run them around in circles until they tired of him and gave up.
So she was safe. Bases covered.
Hopefully.
The detectives had asked her a few more questions before they left, questions that were more or less just the same things over again. Trying to trip her up, catch her in a lie, knowing her brains were still a bit mushy from the pain meds. But Cruz had stuck to her story, hoping Noble would be smart enough to stick to his. At the very least, he would deny ownership of the gun, so she had one other person to back her up on that. Noble would have wiped his prints from it - Yokas' prints, however, would be all over it. That was very good.
And yet it all felt too flimsy. Too uncertain. The IAB detectives had despised her, she had felt it clearly. Especially Schaeffer. She knew they would be biased against her the whole way. Righteous bastards, all of them. She'd had her run-ins with them before, and they knew her, they knew her reputation, they knew the rumors surrounding Anti-Crime as well as anyone else. Yokas, on the other hand, had kept her nose relatively clean for years.
Then again, so have I. They have nothing real on me, they never could get anything real on me, and they can't get anything real on me. Not from the skells on the street - they won't talk if they know what's good for them. Not from Yokas. Not even from Noble's notebook.
Ah, but what about Boscorelli? What would his story be?
She had absolutely no idea. Boscorelli was a complete mystery to her now. The back-stabbing son of a bitch had turned on her, but that wasn't even the worst of it. He'd turned on her over that pathetic piece of shit Stevie Nunez, but that wasn't the worst of it either. The worst of it was, he'd turned on her just when they had been so close. So close to having Richard Buford by the balls. Noble could have handed Buford to them on a silver platter, but Boscorelli (and his bitch partner) hadn't been able to see anything beyond that scrawny little motherfucking junkie.
In a way it was funny, because using Aaron Noble as an informant had started out as something of an amusing game. Noble had built his own career by destroying other people's - his books were supposed to be examples of valiant investigative journalism, shining a light on dirty cops and "corrupt practices." Forcing police departments to step in and take action to appease a liberal public who didn't understand the subtle realities of the job. The truth, however, was actually much sloppier (and, ironically, much less noble); in his books, Noble generally pointed fingers in every direction and voiced doubts - often unfounded - about cops who had done nothing wrong. These unfortunates would eventually be cleared, but by then the damage was already done; the pen is, after all, mightier than the sword. Like most cops Cruz hated him, and making him her bitch - so to speak - was an indescribably satisfying pleasure.
But Noble's newest project was going to be a book about the Disciples biker gang and its rivals, and one of the chapters was to focus entirely on Richard Buford, the gang's leader and head of one of the largest heroin and methamphetamine rings in North America. Buford occupied a spot on the FBI's Most Wanted list; it was not unusual to see his name mentioned in the same sentence with Osama bin Laden, and he was just as much of a spook. Perhaps even more of a spook - while bin Laden's face was plastered all over every newspaper and TV channel, no-one seemed to even know what Buford looked like.
No-one, that was, but Aaron Noble, who had met the man once and had been planning on meeting him again.
Nailing Buford - and with no help from the feds - would have been an incredible achievement. It would have been national news. She and Bosco would have been up to their necks in medals and commendations. It would have made their careers and perhaps made them minor celebrities. And absolutely none of that would have mattered to Maritza Cruz; she wanted Buford for one reason and one reason only.
He had killed her sister, and he had to pay.
Growing up, she had repeatedly promised her father that she would always be there to protect Lettie, to keep her out of trouble, to keep her from getting hurt. It could be said that such a promise is not uncommon in older brothers and sisters, but from a young age Lettie had given both Maritza and their father plenty of reasons to worry. Lettie had been as stubborn and headstrong as her older sister, but lacked her sense and, more significantly, her resilience; being tough was written into Maritza's genes, but seemed to have bypassed Letitia entirely. She was too trusting, too innocent, too ready to believe the best in everyone, and coming up in a tough neighborhood had never squeezed that out of her. Maritza would always have to be there to look out for her ... but never, her father insisted, to coddle her. Maritza would teach Lettie how to defend herself. How to be careful with her trust, how to know when somebody was trying to fuck her over (or just plain trying to fuck her). How to be tough.
And Maritza was there through Lettie's childhood, true to her word, almost ten years older and as ruthlessly protective as a mother. Their own mother had died not long after Lettie was born, and there were no other siblings to shoulder any of the burden; the stereotype of the huge Latin-American family most certainly did not apply to them. Maritza mirrored their father's parenting style, a simple, old fashioned stern-but-kind approach, and whatever other problems they might have had, the early years had been the best years; during Lettie's early childhood the most serious problems Maritza faced usually amounted to putting band-aids on scrapes and reading to her at night and scaring away the monsters in her closet. Kid's stuff, literally.
But Maritza also had her legendary temper, and when it came to her sister it was always on a hair trigger. Lettie had been pudgy and gopher-cheeked until she was about ten, and once she was out in the world there was never a shortage of tormentors, the jeering boys and the vicious little girls ... but in the end they always met Maritza, and in the end Maritza always made them sorry. Bullies were dealt with mercilessly, and it didn't matter if the bully in question was only half Maritza's age and size - or twice her size, for that matter. The smallest schoolyard insult required an immediate apology, on pain of immediate face-to-pavement therapy. This knee-jerk philosophy had gone on to land Maritza in more than a few fights, often with girls but also with boys as well, a few of them full-on fist-fights that resulted bloody noses, black eyes and once even a lost tooth.
She remembered them all fondly, too, the wins and the losses. The wins were gratifying. The losses were badges of honor, proud battle-scars taken in the name of family. But the one she remembered the most fondly was a win, and it had happened in the summer of 1987, when she was only fourteen. June 16th. A Tuesday. She'd never forgotten it. She'd never forgotten it for two reasons: one, it was the first time she'd actually beaten someone up over her sister; and two, the person she had beaten up had been her own boyfriend.
He was a white kid named Cameron Wilcox, two years older than her and one of the school's resident heartthrobs. He was also a bit of a blowhard, one of those loud, slightly phony save-the-world liberal types - he claimed to love both Maritza and her culture equally, being deeply interested in learning all about "the Latin-American Experience." In truth, Cam actually knew nothing of her culture and could not even string two words of Spanish together; even at fourteen Maritza could see that his interest in the "experience" began and ended with getting into her pants.
She didn't care. She was tough and she was a natural-born cynic and she could see Cam for the pretentious, essentially harmless, essentially horny kid he was. She was, however, also a horny kid herself, and she liked Cam more or less for one reason; he was cute. She might even go the distance and say he was hot. He was hot, and she knew he wanted her, and she was already learning to use that to her advantage to manipulate him. She didn't lose her virginity to him, but in a sense she did lose her innocence; it was the first time in her life Maritza Cruz had the clear sense that her body could really be used as a tool of domination ... and perhaps even as a weapon. She tested this theory on Cam constantly, with an almost clinical fascination and growing sense of excitement that made her think of a fledgling superhero toying with her newfound powers. She could make Cam do anything. Anything. And the beauty of it was, she didn't even have to degrade herself in any way, didn't have to lift so much as a finger - just throw out a sly hint here, a vague suggestion there, a flash of thigh or cleavage or even just a slinky look, and Cam Wilcox became her willing servant.
June 16th, 1987 was supposed to have been a little different. Her friend Sarena had gone away with her parents; before departing, Sarena had slipped a key into Maritza's hand, punctuating it with a wink. It was a key to Sarena's apartment. Sarena's empty apartment. So Maritza had decided that the day had finally come to indulge in some good ol' fashioned teenage experimentation. She and Cam were going to get off the bus at her usual stop, walk right past her own building, head straight to Sarena's, and see if they couldn't suck the fillings out of each other's teeth. And maybe do a little more. A little more. She was wearing her green halter, and she was idly debating with herself whether or not she would let Cam get a hand into it. She had, however, decided that she was going to let him think he could go as far as he wanted with her. Then she would stop him just when he was at his most hot and bothered.
It was going to be great.
They never got to Sarena's, of course; just as they were passing her own building, the front doors flew open with a hollow bang. Maritza and Cam both jumped and swung around guiltily, and for one awful moment Maritza could actually see her father come charging out and down the concrete steps, supernaturally aware of what she was up to and ready to put her in traction for about eight weeks for planning to do such an irresponsible and dangerous thing.
But it wasn't her father who came out. Lettie, who at a proud five years old was already off school for the summer, came sweeping down the steps full-tilt, face split in a broad grin. She must have been lying in ambush in the apartment, watching out the window, just waiting for her sister to get home.
"Maritza!" she was screeching. "Maritza! Come see! Come see! Papa bought me fish! Come see!"
Maritza, taken by surprise and not even sure what it was Lettie was yelling about (fish? Like, for dinner?), started to tell her no, not now, she was busy, even as Lettie caught hold of her hand and started tugging her back toward the front steps of their building. Maritza dug in her heels but Lettie took absolutely no notice, pulling with that deadly serious, industrious determination small children get when trying to make a big person hustle it up.
Cam Wilcox didn't normally mind Lettie. In truth, he seemed a bit uncomfortable around kids in general and didn't pay much attention to her. When he did speak to her, he was always nice in a stilted, offhand kind of way, talking to her in a few token monosyllables and then dismissing her.
Now, however, Lettie's behavior was affecting him in a very direct and very drastic way. Lettie was making his girlfriend hesitate. And blood was thicker than water; if Lettie wanted Maritza to abandon him for some other nonsense, Maritza probably would.
And there was her father to worry about.
"Uh, 'Ritza ...?" Cam rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "We should get moving."
"Yeah," she said absently over her shoulder. Lettie was still pulling. She was making game little grunting sounds now, too - uh! uh! uh! "Look, Cam, just a - " Maritza broke off as Lettie, tired of trying to tow her sister along by force, abruptly let go of her hand and ran on ahead.
Maritza, still offering a gentle but firm resistance when Lettie released her, stumbled backwards. One of her sandals slid off and she almost fell on her ass. "I can't right now, Lettie," Maritza called after her in Spanish, dancing on one foot as she fumbled the sandal back on. "Later, okay?"
Lettie turned. Her smile hadn't faded, not in the slightest, and she was hopping from foot to foot like she had to go to the bathroom. "You've gotta come see them! Papa bought them for me today!" She glanced at Cam, who she clearly thought should be interested as well. "Come in and see!"
It was at this point that Cam, clearly sensing his chances at getting up to some mischief (and maybe getting a hand under that green halter) running out from under him, took a step towards Lettie. He bent over and rested his hands on his thighs, the way any condescending adult will usually talk to a kid, even though Lettie was at the top of the steps and therefore already at eye-level with him.
He smiled at her and said: "Get lost. We don't care about your stinkin' fish."
He said it softly, and he might have even tried to lighten the words a bit, make it sound like it was all in fun. But Lettie wasn't stupid; she sensed the subtle undertone, and she knew Cam well enough now to associate his coolness towards her with dislike.
But Maritza would think later that what really crushed Lettie was the idea that Cam was actually speaking for both himself and for Maritza - we don't care about your stinkin' fish. That word must have clanged through the kid's brain like a gong - WE. Cam's opinion alone wouldn't have mattered, but the idea that Maritza (her Maritza!) could also be indifferent was obviously too much.
Lettie's smile disappeared, and for a moment it looked like that might be the end of it, that Lettie would just go back inside and sulk, but then her face twitched and then it cracked and then it crumbled and she began to cry.
Maritza turned to Cam, feeling a warm, brassy anger rising in her cheeks. Cam looked mildly uncomfortable and a bit surprised, but only in the most offhand way - he was more or less ready to get back to business. Lettie stood on the steps, her fish forgotten, her head tilted back slightly, bawling at the sky.
Thoughts of making out with Cam, of teasing him into a hormonal feeding frenzy just for kicks, disappeared. All physical attraction immediately ceased. The anger began to boil over into a dark rage that was already becoming familiar to her, and Maritza took a step towards him.
Cam shrugged and offered a sheepish smile, as if to say, little brothers, little sisters, little pains in the ass - whaddaya gonna do? Because he thought it was over. He really did. He thought she was ready to get on with it, that she was just going to walk away with him and leave Lettie bawling on the front steps of their building. He thought he could hurt her sister's feelings and ruin her excitement at whatever she was so keyed up about, and nothing would come of it.
"I'm sorr-" Cam began, smiling his bashful I'm-a-bad-wittle-boy smile, and he was still smiling when Maritza punched him in the face.
It must be understood that this was not a slap, not an indignant little cuff to the nose that might or might not draw blood; this was a serious right cross, with all of her weight and lean strength thrown behind it. It caught him square and true right across the cheek and took him off his feet.
Everything seemed to go very quiet in the ten or so seconds that followed; Maritza could hear herself panting (with fury, not exertion - Cam went down like the sack of shit he was), but she could no longer hear Lettie crying. She couldn't hear any music, either, and that was odd because there was always music around here, drifting out of somebody's window or some kid's ghetto-blaster somewhere on the block. It was just another constant of the summer ... but now there was nothing. She had the sudden and stupidly giddy feeling of having stopped the world. She and Cam and Lettie were the three principal actors on a stage and everyone on Earth was just waiting now to see what would happen next.
What happened next was this: her hand began to throb.
She looked down at it blandly. The knuckles were red and already beginning to swell. She had hurt herself. On Cam's face. She had hurt herself.
She dismissed this and looked dreamily over at Lettie.
The little girl was staring at her, her tears forgotten, her face slack, her mouth set in a perfectly comical O of surprise.
Cam, for his part, sat on the ground for what seemed a very long time, stunned. He didn't look to be very badly hurt, and when it came right down to it he wasn't (she had hurt her hand almost as much as she'd hurt him - maybe more), but the next time Maritza saw him he was sporting one very ugly shiner.
Eventually, Cam began to stand up.
Two things happened when he did.
Firstly, he began to cry. More accurately, he began to bawl, and that was important to Maritza in a symbolic sense; through the magic of a well-placed punch, she had transferred her sister's tears over to him.
Secondly, once he was up on his feet he immediately began rattling off a series of poisonous racial slurs, some of which she'd heard before and many that she hadn't, all of them appalling and gutter-filthy and usually with some sexual subtext behind them, all pouring out of this politically correct, sweetly stupid liberal kid who thought he was so hip to the "Latin-American Experience."
When he was finished, his nose was running and his lip was bleeding and his face was screwed into a childish leer. Maritza's expression of dull surprise now mirrored Lettie's. She wondered how she could have ever let him touch her. Or kiss her. Jesus.
Maritza moved in close and said, very softly, in the same mock-kind tone he'd used with Lettie: "I'd get out of here, if I were you." Then she spat directly and almost daintily into his face and added, just as sweetly: "Cabron."
Cam looked around. People all over the neighborhood had heard him, of course, people all over this predominately Hispanic neighborhood had heard him screaming a string of racist gutter-talk that would have made the staunchest KKK stooge blush, and many had come out on the street to see what it was all about.
If Cam didn't vacate the area within the next two minutes, a punch in the face from a teenage girl was going to be the least of his troubles.
Cam did manage to get away with his head on straight - that much Maritza remembered, but she no longer knew the details of how, because in those first few minutes after the punch she had gone into a mild kind of shock. Not at what she'd done; if she could do it over again, she'd do it the same, right down to the last second - just for that satisfying thock she'd felt all the way up her arm. What shocked her was how sickeningly fast things could change, how quickly and easily the entire balance of a situation could swing to the other end of the spectrum. It was a feeling she'd become intimately reacquainted with two days ago in that hotel room.
She did remember spending the remainder of the afternoon sitting in her father's armchair, holding her swollen and aching hand in a bucket of ice while he yelled at her. Jaime Cruz loved both his daughters dearly but he was hopelessly unable to understand the older one, and the poor man had no idea that this incident was just the first in an escalating trend. Why couldn't she control her temper? Why did she do such things? Was it any way for a good Catholic girl to behave, picking fistfights with boys right out on the street? This kid was going to make trouble for them, Papa said morosely. A white boy getting his block knocked off by a Latino girl - trouble, oh trouble. Papa would call Father Estrada in the morning and she would speak with him, she would go to Confession, she would learn to count to ten before she started throwing jabs and uppercuts and haymakers, something, anything.
Maritza had taken it all very patiently, relieved that Papa didn't know what the original plan for the day had been. The "fish" Lettie had been so excited about had turned out to be two perfectly ordinary, perfectly uninteresting goldfish their father had bought for her that day. Once her hand was a bit better, Maritza had gone into Lettie's room to make a show of oohing and aahing over them. Cam never did make any trouble - probably because he remembered that string of disgusting epithets he'd screamed at her afterwards - but Maritza wouldn't have cared if he had. Cam was gone to her. Cam was history, easily discarded and never missed. Cam was moot. Cam didn't compare to Lettie, sitting there watching her new fish swim around, enthralled, utterly content, not knowing that someday she would die in the basement of a filthy methamphetamine lab while it burned down around her.
Lettie was all that mattered to her in the end - protecting her, keeping her safe, and it that meant the occasional fistfight, so be it. But it could never stay so simple, so satisfying, so innocent; by the time Lettie hit her teens, keeping that promise to her father had become a serious, exhausting, and terribly frustrating business for Maritza. At fourteen Lettie wasn't sneaking off to make out with boyfriends; she was hanging out with honest-to-god dope dealers, the real thing, drug dealers and drug addicts and gangbangers, the sort of crowd who couldn't exactly be intimidated by blustery threats made by an indignant older sister. If Maritza had tried to take the Cam Wilcox approach, there was a good chance she'd have gotten a knife slid between her ribs. Lettie got older and Lettie got surly and arrogant and Lettie started getting into some bad trouble, and Maritza could no longer do anything about it.
The answer was simple and obvious: she became a cop, and protecting Lettie truly and literally became a full-time job.
But in the end none of it had mattered, had it? Not one bit. Lettie had died, and afterwards something had soured for Maritza, her outlook on her job had changed. She didn't lose her passion for it - if anything it was the very opposite. She became even more deeply immersed, setting the job up as a barrier between herself and the world. But suddenly there was no real pleasure in taking down the low-level dealers, no satisfaction in dismantling their operations, no satisfaction even in the thought of how many hypothetical kids she could save by doing so. She did her job with the same fierce conviction she'd always had ... but with a note of sour desperation as well. It started to become clear to her that things would have to be taken to the next level if Lettie was ever going to be at peace, if she was ever going to make up for failing her so completely. A single individual would have to be separated from the herd, somebody high up on the food chain, somebody who profited from this kind of obscenity more than anyone else. One person would have to be singled out and made to pay.
She had decided that person would be Richard Buford.
For a while the thought had allowed her to rest easy, easier than she had in months - there had been no insomnia, no nightmares, no waking up in the middle of the night sick and shivering and drowning in her own sweat. No dreams about Lettie, no dreams about that last night in the hospital, the last overdose, no dreams of the meth lab, the fire, Lettie dead in her arms. That it could really end that way, that all those years could come right down to that one pitiful moment, the air hot and stinking and full of burning chemicals, the house falling down around them. Lettie dead in her arms. After all those years.
She had crafted a plan, working out exactly how she would handle the operation, how she would deal with Buford when she caught him (and it would be her who caught him, you could lay your money down on that), planning in exquisite detail how she would tear it out of his hide. If things played out just right, she might even be able to get him alone. A bullet in each kneecap, perhaps. Followed by one in the groin. And then she would spit on him. All purely in self-defense, of course, and to hell with any inquiries or reviews boards that might follow. And even if she simply took him down routine and legal, it would be enough.
It was all gone now, though. All academic, you might say. Buford was out of her reach, Buford had been spooked and had pulled a quick fade. And she had been so close.
Now she had other problems. Now she was almost as helpless as a baby, stuck in this goddam bed, at the mercy of the hospital staff and, more so, the painkillers. Every time they doped her up, she told herself that she would let the drugs wear off and refuse more, that she would just suck it up and deal with the pain. And every time it became unbearable, every time she would end up calling for the nurse, almost in tears from the agony, the humiliation, the black fucking rage. Soon they would want to start a surgery schedule, begin the process of rebuilding her mangled shoulder, and that would make things even worse. They kept telling her that her injury was of the career-ending variety, that while she might keep working for the NYPD in some capacity, her days in the field were most certainly over.
Cruz had no intention of riding a desk for the rest of her life. Just as she had no intention of staying here in this place any longer than she had to. She needed to get up, get up and get back out to where she would be in some kind of control. She told herself over and over that she had not lost everything, that something could still be salvaged. But even if that were true, she was still losing every minute she lay here.
And it was all because of Yokas. And Boscorelli. The back-stabbing son of a bitch cabron.
Her train of thought was broken by needling pain in her good hand.
She held it up and squinted at it. Her nails were too short now to do any further damage to her palm, but her fist had clenched so tight that the old cuts had pulled open, the little square band-aids the nurse had put on now mashed around and gummy with sweat.
She wiped the blood absently on her sheets and sighed. The shoulder was getting worse, too. It had been for the last hour or so, ramping slowly but surely from a dull, distant throb to a persistent ache. She was becoming accustomed to the cycle, and she knew that very soon it would become excruciating. She didn't think she would be able to take it, and there it was again, staring her in the face - as long as she was dependant on the dope, nothing would change. She would remain helpless. The terrible irony of this was not lost on her. For all intents and purposes, she had become a junkie.
Oh, how it all comes around.
Gritting her teeth, she pressed the Call button.
Later, as she drifted off to sleep, Cruz's thoughts finally mellowed. She would be all right. This mess was just one of dozens she'd gotten herself into - and out of - over the eight years of her career. She'd been through a lot worse and come out clean on the other side. It would be Yokas's word against hers, but she would have Noble to back her up, and to hell with Boscorelli - with his reputation nobody was apt to believe anything he said. It would be Yokas and Boscorelli who would find their asses over the fire by the time she was finished with them. Oh yes. Don't doubt it for a second. And then she could get back to business. Back to finding Buford.
She would be all right. She always was.
Everything would be all right.
III.
"Cruz."
No ... lemme 'lone.
"Wake up, Sergeant."
She groaned softly, the sleep - God, that sweet, warm, dreamless sleep - thinning, slipping away. It was followed immediately by a flare of sullen irritation. Bastard! Who was it? The voice was familiar, but she couldn't place it. Whoever it was, they should be thankful she wasn't exactly feeling one hundred percent. If she were feeling one hundred percent, she'd get up and hand them their ass.
"Wakey wakey, Sarge."
She did know that voice. She could open her eyes and find out who it was, but she wanted - needed - to sleep, so badly. Oh, it was so incredible to sleep this way, so serene, so warm ...
Her eyes closed again.
"You really can't do this later?" someone else said. Sounded like maybe one of the doctors. Fields? Fields, yes, she thought so.
"No." A pause, and then the voice was directed at her again, harsher now. "Wake up and greet the world, beautiful."
God-DAMMIT!
Cruz at last managed to open her eyes, squinting against the stark white hospital lighting. Three blurry figures were at the foot of her bed, one of them the doctor. The other two ... the other two were wearing suits, and one of them was huge, well over six feet tall and built like a linebacker. The owner of the deep voice. The voice that was familiar.
The voice that had a bad association with it.
It was Detective Schaeffer. And he was grinning.
"What'cha want?" she slurred, deliberately making herself sound sleepier than she really was, buying a few seconds to get her mind working, to think. Her heart was suddenly pounding hard in her chest, too hard, too fast, enough so that it felt like the whole bed was shaking with the force of it. Her shoulder had come awake with her and was now singing with a bright, nauseating pain.
Why was he back here? Why?
Schaeffer leaned in a bit closer. "Don't bullshit me, Cruz," he said softly. Almost kindly. "Your bullshitting days are over."
She forced herself to look at him, her apprehension growing, almost overshadowing the pain. Every nerve ending in her body seemed to be on fire, and she could no longer tell where the terror ended and the physical pain began. Your bullshitting days are over - what the hell was that?
They're here for me, that's what. It's over. They've got something, Noble talked, Bosco talked, Yokas spun them some wonderful tale. Something.
No. Couldn't be that, it couldn't be what she thought it was, couldn't be -
"Maritza Cruz," Schaeffer said when he was sure he had her full attention. "You are under arrest for obstruction of justice, filing a false police report, possession of an illegal substance for the purposes of trafficking, and assault with a deadly weapon." He grinned. "And those, my dear, are just the appetizers. It's gonna get a lot tastier down the road, I promise you."
No.
Cruz opened her mouth to speak, and all that came out was a long, whistling sigh.
"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you at the expense of the State." Schaeffer leaned down and smiled sweetly. "Do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?"
No. No no no no no no no -
"I said: do you understand these rights as I've read them to you?"
It's not over, I can get out of this, they can't do this ...
"Listen to me," she said, hating the quiver that she heard - or thought she heard - in her voice. "Listen, it was Yokas. It was all Yokas, Yokas and Boscorelli. They're in it together." She licked her lips, aware that she was rambling and helpless to stop. "I think they're screwing each other, if you ask me, and they hate me, they hate Anti-Crime, ask Noble, he'll back me up, they -"
"Shut up," Schaeffer said flatly, and she did. "I'd love nothing more than to cart your ass away right now, Cruz, but of course that would be considered cruel." He turned to his partner. "Cuff her. Use the right arm. Hook her up to the guardrail, up near the top there, see? Where that little bar is."
The other detective nodded and stepped forward, producing a pair of handcuffs from his jacket.
"Now wait," Dr. Fields said, stepping forward. "That's ridiculous. She can barely move."
Schaeffer grunted. "She sure as hell won't be moving now. Cuff her."
"No!" Fields said sharply.
Schaeffer raised an eyebrow. "She a friend of yours or something?"
Fields shook his head. "Look, she's weak, all right? She's only got the one arm - there's neural damage in the left arm and she can barely move her fingers. She needs her right hand to eat, to - "
"Oh, just go ahead and finish breaking my fragile fucking heart," Schaeffer said bitterly. He turned to his partner. "Okay, cuff the other arm, then."
"No," Fields repeated. "No cuffs."
Schaeffer sighed, looking at Cruz thoughtfully. She glared back at him, resolving not to drop her eyes, not to give him the satisfaction ... but she could not stop herself from trembling. She thought of the way Lettie was that last night in the hospital. Stinking and soaked with sweat and twitching endlessly, shaking, hissing, spitting, reduced to little more than an animal. For Lettie, the end had been near.
As it was for her now.
No, oh no. It's not over. It's not. I can get out of this, somehow. It's NOT OVER!
But it was. They would start with Stevie Nunez, and then they would start working their way backwards. They would start connecting the dots, if you like. And in the end, they would uncover everything, her whole history, and that would be it. She would go to prison, and everything she had ever done as a cop would be undone. She would lose everything.
And she would lose whatever slim chance she might have had at resuming the search for Buford.
The detective could see this all going through her mind, and he was plainly enjoying her distress, getting off on it. She could see it.
Oh, to have a gun right now, even just a little .22, I'd -
"No cuffs," Schaeffer agreed finally. He chuckled. "What the hell, she looks like the type who'd just chew her own hand off anyway." He turned to Dr. Fields. "But we are gonna be posting a guard on her door. That okay with you, Doctor?"
Fields nodded, indifferent. Now that Schaeffer was no longer threatening her physical well-being, he had lost all interest in being Cruz's champion. "Sure. But really, it isn't necessary."
"Listen," Cruz whined -
(Lettie, Lettie, you're just like Lettie now, and isn't that poetic justice)
" - listen, please listen, okay? Yokas shot me. She and Boscorelli were planting the gun, and she shot me ... you heard the doctor, I have neural damage, I can't use my arm, I'll be a cripple the rest of my life, I ..." She broke off, marginally aware that she was crying, begging, her remaining dignity evaporating as fear gave way to outright panic. She had lost herself, completely and utterly. Maritza Cruz was gone, it seemed; a sniveling little girl was in her place. And still she was almost blind with a hysterical, aimless kind of hatred - for Schaeffer, for Yokas, for Boscorelli, for Yolanda the she-bear nurse, for Dr. Hyde and his shitty artificial shoulder, for Dr. Fields, for Buford, even for Lettie, for Noble, for her father, her mother, for herself, for everyone.
"Noble," she whimpered, chest hitching. "Noble will back me up. They were trying to frame him ..."
"Noble told us everything," Schaeffer said, again almost kindly. "He admitted that he killed Willie G., that it wasn't Stevie Nunez at all. It was you who was doing all the framing, Cruz, not Yokas. You and Boscorelli. And you know what's really funny? Noble will probably be able to squirm out of it. It was self-defense, after all, and he only lied about it because you and Boscorelli coerced him to."
Schaeffer actually reached down and patted her shin gently, smiling like a grandfather. "Don't you get it, Cruz? You have nothing left to hide behind. You're screwed."