Chapter 10 Continued
III.
He left the hotel and stepped back out into the downpour, and when he did he felt his life immediately start trying to fold itself around him again. So much for self-administered therapy. So much for the Bridgeview's magic bullet. His feet hit the sidewalk and suddenly he was slipping right back towards melancholy. Thinking about the mistakes. Thinking about his job. Thinking about Ma.
Thinking about Faith.
It occurred to him just how funny the whole Bridgeview thing would have been. He could imagine it as a legitimate call: the two of them roll up to the hotel in an RMP to ask Aaron Noble a few questions about Cruz. They go inside, where Bosco immediately starts getting the warm-fuzzies over the atmosphere. The ambiance. He gets thinking about high school and old girlfriends. About Fawlty Towers and how the rooms are probably like cozy little Hobbit-holes. Then he develops an instant crush on one of the managers, a woman who looks old enough to be his grandmother. Then he's attacked by an elderly cat, to which he responds by threatening it with death and taxidermy. And then you had Iris and Tom's floor show, gossiping about the media fiasco over Cruz and arguing over the proper pronunciation of her given name.
He could imagine Faith standing off to one side, getting a big kick out of the whole business and vowing to herself never to let him live it down. Any of it. Faith would've teased him with the Bridgeview throughout their lunch break, the rest of the shift, the rest of the week, and quite possibly on select special occasions throughout the rest of their careers.
And he could imagine the conversation:
Faith, voice dripping with sarcastic nonchalance: "It's like the place had this effect on you, Bos. I should take you there more often. You know I always love being reminded that you have a softer side."
Bosco, a tad sullenly: "It was a nice place. That's all I'm saying."
Faith, grinning as an idea suddenly strikes her: "You know what it was like? The Shining. The Mr. Rogers version of the Shining. Sunshine and lollipops instead of ax-murder and rivers of blood from the elevators. Very cute. Except for the whole yelling at the cat thing."
Bosco: "Yeah, well, the little son of a bitch ripped my jacket."
Faith, cackling: "I thought you were gonna piss yourself! You should've seen the look on your face; 'I'm gonna come back here and have your ass stuffed and mounted.' Priceless, Bos, priceless."
Bosco: "It attacked me, Faith!"
Faith: "You want to go back and charge him with assaulting a police officer? 'Cause I'll tell you right now, you can be the one who fingerprints him."
Bosco, still sullen: "It ... it startled me. That's all."
Faith: "Awww, did the big bad puddy-tat scare you? Did he put a little scratchy-watchy on your jacket? Come here and let Faith kiss 'm all better."
Bosco: "Ought to call Animal Control. That's what we should do. Fucking thing could have rabies."
Faith: "Yeah, I'd love to sit down and watch you get twenty needles in the stomach."
Bosco: "What?"
Faith: "Rabies shots. It's like, a bunch of needles right in the stomach, isn't it?"
Bosco (uneasy, pretending not to be): "Are you serious?"
Faith: "Shit, I don't know! You're fine anyway, Bosco! Just forget it. Forget the stupid cat. And you can forget about Iris, too - she's way out of your league."
Bosco: "Excuse me?"
Faith: "She's way too fast for you, trust me. Ol' Iris there? She's a wild one. You could never handle her, Bosco. Why, I bet she could bake a tray of muffins and sew up the rip in your jacket at the same time
Bosco, exasperated: "Oh, where are you getting this? Huh?"
Faith, laughing again: "Bosco, you were getting all goo-goo-eyed over a married woman twice your age! You think I couldn't see that? I was standing right there!"
Bosco: "Whatever. Whatever."
Faith: "Freud would have made a fortune on you. And wait till I tell Rose. What's she gonna think about her son dating an older woman? An older, married woman? Here's to you, Mrs. Hendrickson!"
And on like that.
And on like that.
He could hear it. He could hear it all, he could hear her voice. He could see it. He could hear it all and see it all, and he wanted it back. It made his heart hurt and he wanted it all back. He wanted her back. He wanted to be Five-Five David again.
Crybaby, crybaby. Here we are again, tripping on self-pity. Let's see, you've been out on the street for ... what? All of ten seconds? And you're back on the horse already. Impressive. Didn't miss a trick, didja?
Bosco shrugged inwardly. No self-pity here - not this time, anyway. And while the subject was open, he had to admit he was getting as sick of the term itself as he was of feeling that way - those two words, hyphenated and used in conjunction with each other. Self-pity. Just saying it sounded stupid.
This was just honest grief. Honest, healthy grief, no more than that. He was done sucking his thumb - the Bridgeview had killed it out of him. The only direction he could move in now was forward.
And at the moment that meant moving in the direction of something to eat. He was still hungry, and hungry was good. Hungry meant you were healthy. Hungry meant you were alive. And after that ...
After that he might drop in on Brian O'Malley.
No, really - he would. Or at least think about it.
Bosco pulled the collar of his jacket up around his neck (he would have to check it later on to see if Captain Jack had left any rips or tears) and stopped at the curb to wait for the traffic to thin. The rain was still coming down. Maybe that was why he couldn't shake the bad shit off - just a simple case of the rainy-day blues. The downpour hadn't lost any of its power since it started yesterday afternoon, and from what few weather reports he'd managed to catch (in between chasing the Anti-Crime scandal from channel to channel), it looked like New York City and the surrounding area were in for a royal pounding over the next couple of days.
He hurried across the street towards his car.
He was thinking about McDonald's when he saw it. McDonald's and Egg McMuffins. He was thinking that it had been years since he'd eaten one of the hideous things, and he was thinking maybe they'd improved in the meantime, and then he saw the scratch.
It was about two-and-a-half feet long and ran most of the length of the driver's side door, crossing over onto the front fender in the last inch or so. It was deep and very nasty. Very noticeable. The worst of the damage was at the halfway mark, where the vandal might have put a little extra push into it just to make sure the job was done properly.
Bosco stood looking at it for what seemed a long time. He wasn't angry. He knew that a week ago he would have been; a week ago he would have been furious. A week ago he would have gone straight to Defcon-Fucking-Five. A week ago he would have been ready to turn the city upside down and inside out to find the jagoff responsible for keying his fucking car, his Mustang, and when he found the jagoff, the jagoff would have the distinction of being the first man on Earth to be successfully castrated with a car key.
Because a week ago this would have seemed important.
Right now, however, Bosco only found it slightly confusing. It was odd that the scratch was on the driver's side door, because that was the side facing out into the street. The asshole would have had to step off the sidewalk and go around the car in order to key the driver's side, when it would have been far easier - and safer - to just casually reach out and make the scratch on the passenger's side as he (or she, Bosco supposed it could have been a woman, maybe even an ex-girlfriend, Tori or Nicole or even Karen Tuttle ... as if Karen could have any idea the car was his) walked along the sidewalk.
Bosco reached out and touched the scratch with his right hand. Gently, with the reverent tenderness of a man stroking his wife's brow as she slept. His fingers came back with little flakes of blue paint on them. Strange. You'd think the paint shavings would have been washed away by the rain, and yet there they were. He looked back at the long, silvery line of the scratch; not only was the scar deepest and ugliest near its center, it dipped and rose in a bit of an S-curve, as if the jagoff had been trying to put a little artistic flair into it. The result looked like a crooked smile.
Bosco looked at the paint-flecks on his fingertips again. That was blood, right there - the blood of his beloved Mustang.
A horn blared behind him, followed by an obscenity of uniquely New York construction and wit. The exact wording was lost in the rain, although it seemed to suggest that Bosco had come into the world as a result of forbidden love between his mother and a farm animal from the low end of the food chain.
Translation: excuse me, sir, but you appear to be standing in the middle of a fairly busy street. It might be wise to move to a safer location before someone flattens your sorry ass.
Bosco skittered around the front of his mutilated car and hopped up on the sidewalk.
He was now less than ten feet and roughly thirty seconds away from his fate.
The car looked okay from this side. He looked at the passenger-side door, the door he probably wouldn't have looked at otherwise; if the scratch had been on that side, he wouldn't have seen it. He would have just gotten in and driven away. He would have gotten his breakfast, maybe at McDonald's or maybe someplace else. He might have even followed through and gone to see Brian O'Malley. But he wouldn't have noticed the scratch until the end of the day. Maybe not even then.
But the passenger door was clean.
So it wasn't an impulsive act, then. Somebody had made a little effort here. The guy (or girl) had strutted out onto the busy street and keyed the other side, just so Bosco would be sure to notice. The asshole had actually put some thought into it.
An act of premeditated assault on a defenseless classic muscle car.
Bosco began to laugh.
It caught him almost by surprise, starting silent and breathless low in his chest, then rose like an air bubble, and suddenly he was standing in the downpour almost doubled over, shaking his head from side to side like a man saying no, no, stop, you're killing me here! And it was killing him. Because this was the last straw, the icing on the cake, the cherry on the whole big shit-sundae, and it was pretty tame, pretty lame, pretty ho-hum compared to everything else. He loses his career, his pension, his friends, becomes an IAB rat, and breaks his Ma's heart all in one week ... and this is the Grand Finale? This was supposed to be the kicker? A scratch? It was stupid. It was all stupid and it wasn't even funny - not funny like his little sortie into the Bridgeview Hotel - but he laughed anyway, because right now it was either laugh or go crazy. He backed away from his car (a splash of bright color in all this grayness, gray streets and gray buildings and gray skies) and plopped down on a nearby public bench. His ass soaked through instantly and this made him laugh harder. He kept laughing, because it felt good, he felt good, the rain felt good. His eye caught a flash of color on the ground - another flash of color in all this grayness - and then skipped back to his car again.
A scratch. His car had been defaced by some subnormal fuckhead who just happened to be passing and had a key in his hand that wasn't being put to any use. After everything else, God sees fit to make that the big topper.
He laughed for almost two full minutes, unaware that his fate had already found him and was now sitting about three inches from his left foot. He laughed until at last it began to taper off, the wild gusts shortening into little chuckles that settled into a low, pleasant chuffing. The spell passed, leaving a nice, warm tingling up through his chest. He looked at the Bridgeview again, then at his car, and then down at that spot on the ground again. That other little flash of color.
Bosco's smile faded. The last of his laughter died abruptly.
Maritza Cruz was looking up at him from the ground.
For a moment he couldn't do anything, couldn't move or breathe or look at anything but that little flash of color on the ground next to his left foot. His heart, already beating fast from his little fit, began to thud heavily, almost painfully in his chest.
He reached down, very slowly, and then immediately drew his hand back, as if from a hot stove. He knew what he was seeing, of course; the photograph was not so badly damaged that he couldn't see what it showed, but its presence here (not only in this place but right at this moment) was so strange, so utterly impossible that he almost couldn't bring himself to touch it. Later he would realize it was because he was afraid it didn't actually exist; he was afraid he was experiencing his first bona-fide hallucination. That when he reached down to pick it up his fingers would close on nothing but air, and that would confirm once and for all what he'd often suspected these last few days - that he had lost it. Completely.
But it was there, solid and perfectly real, and he was able to pinch the corner of the photo between his thumb and forefinger (he could still see flecks of blue paint under his nails) and pick it up.
It was unmistakable. Ragged and badly damaged but unmistakable, because it was a picture he had seen before, in Maritza Cruz's apartment. Less than five minutes before they were rolling around on the floor peeling each others' clothes off, as it happened.
(This was taken on a ski trip three years ago ... three years ... that's all it took to eat her up).
"Jesus Christ," Bosco whispered. He was unaware that his free hand had crept up to his mouth in an old woman's stage-show gesture of horror. It was shaking slightly.
She was here.
Cruz had been sitting right here.
A rush of dizzy unreality washed over him. His head rolled back bonelessly on his neck, leaving him staring helplessly at the Bridgeview. The expression on his face was that of a man who has just discovered both his hands have been chopped off in some wickedly quick and precise piece of industrial machinery.
"No," he said in a clear and perfectly conversational voice. He chuckled again to try to reinforce this little statement of denial, but there wasn't anything remotely genuine in it. "Oh, no. No way."
And yet when he looked down again there it was, the truth staring right up at him. Cruz had been here. She'd come here to kill Noble, she'd sat out here in this downpour - right where he was sitting now - staking the place out, waiting for the writer to come out so she could murder him.
Except that didn't make any sense. If Cruz had come here to kill him, she'd have shot him dead in the parking lot. Or she'd have snuck up on him while he was sitting in his car, and today the Bridgeview Hotel would be famous for more than its baked potatoes, the latest chapter in the increasingly sensational Anti-Crime story. Good evening, New York - Mad-Dog Cruz has taken her first victim. We go live to the scene.
Bosco's eyes kept trying to creep upwards, trying to fix themselves back onto the hotel across the street and stay there. The cute little hotel, after all, was so much more sane than what he was holding in his hand.
He forced himself to look at the photo again.
Letitia Cruz was grinning broadly. It was a smile that said God was in His Heaven and everything was right with the world. That was the addict. The addict never saw themselves as a problem, as a burden, a black sheep or disappointment or anything else even remotely negative. The addict was sick, and the sick often become petulant and demanding. The addict expects you to be there for them because that is your duty. The addict expects big brother or big sister or mommy or daddy to come along and wipe the shit off their rumps and kiss the all the boo-boos away ... but they'll bite and scratch and whine as you do it. Bosco could look at the other side of the picture and read this in Maritza's eyes. In Maritza's smile, which wasn't even half the size of her sister's. The smile that said: Yes, I know, I know - we're standing here cheek-to-jowl with our teeth showing, she grins like she's just a precocious little schoolgirl and I'm Patient and Wise Big Sis, and here I am trying to look like I believe it. I try for her sake, I act like I don't know that none of this is real, because I want to pretend for a minute that it is. Okay? Can't we just pretend for a minute?
(Three years. That's all it took to eat her up)
Bosco allowed himself to look up at the Bridgeview Hotel again. He glanced at the little parking lot next to the building, which wasn't very big; you had maybe fifteen spaces altogether, ten for guests and five for visitors. Wouldn't have been hard to pick Noble's car out. If Cruz had come here to kill him, she wouldn't have had any trouble pinpointing him. But something had obviously gone wrong, maybe he'd put up a fight, something had -
And there it was - the magic question. That little something that had been bothering him about Tom Hendrickson all along. It was something Tom had said, something that had gotten lost almost immediately in all the chatter, the nonsense argument (Mare-IT-za versus Mare-EET-za) and the antics of Captain Jack.
I think she might even have come back to have another go at him last night. There was quite a lot of shouting coming from the parking lot just after he left. The devilish part of me likes to think it was Ms. Zambrano, back for Round Two.
So what had bothered him so much about that? Well, nothing, really. It just sort of struck him as a subject he'd like to have explored a bit more. Shouting outside in the parking lot at night. It was just the kind of thing that snagged your interest, wasn't it? Especially if you were a cop doing some sniffing around.
But you're not, his angry little interior friend said. A cop, that is.
No, he wasn't. And he hadn't gone to the Bridgeview in a cop frame of mind - he'd gone there half-hungover and feeling like flat shit.
But that didn't mean he couldn't still have the occasional lapse into clearheaded sobriety.
So - was it a lovers' quarrel between Kim and Noble that Tom heard last night? It was perfectly possible. Bosco had always figured Kim Zambrano for a bit of a drama-queen, so it was easy to picture her breaking up with Noble (and making a scene of soap-opera proportions in the process) and then moping around for a few hours before coming back for more. Then there'd be more arguing, more tears, perhaps some begging, and of course, lots of drama. She might storm off again in a huff. Or she might take him back. Make up with him, hop into his car with him, and drive off into the night with him. Maybe hit the Crimson Lion for a little dancing and drinking. Then back to Kim's place to do what came naturally.
Bosco looked at the picture again.
Raised voices from the parking lot. Quite a lot of shouting. Say it's not Noble arguing with Kim. Say it's Noble arguing with Cruz. Pleading for his life, perhaps.
And what does Cruz do? Does she just ignore the whimpering, taunt him a bit, and then shoot him on the spot? No. She's in no shape to make a quick getaway, and she's got other places she wants to go. Other scores to settle. So she takes him hostage instead. You get in the front, I get in the back. Then she tells him to drive to somewhere more secluded, where she can do the job without raising an alarm.
Could somebody in her condition really do that, though? Strong as she was, her reflexes would be shot - pardon the tasteless pun - and Noble would probably be able to get the drop on her at the first opportunity.
Maybe he did.
Yes. Maybe he'd turned on her, hurt or killed her, then dumped her or left her for dead somewhere. Calling the police would be the smart thing to do in that situation, but if he did that he'd be making more trouble for himself. Maybe he panicked. God knew he was enough of a coward.
There was something wrong with all of that, though. Something was not adding up.
Oh, lookie here! the angry little shit said. The useless ex-cop's really getting ready to prove himself now! Somebody cue a fucking drum-roll! You GO, Sherlock!
Bosco ignored this. Again - he wasn't a cop anymore. He knew that. He wasn't a cop in the sense of being employed as a public servant by the City of New York. But there was nothing wrong with his brain, and once he cleared the crap out of his head he found his bullshit-detector was in perfect working order. His cop's intuition. It was still there. It was like a limb that keeps twitching long after it's been severed.
Bosco looked at the photo yet again. Bridgeview to photo, photo to Bridgeview - that seemed to be the only two directions he could aim his eyes in. There you had the hotel where the unfortunate Aaron Noble may have met his fate. Here you had Lettie and Maritza in their parkas. The picture was in a frame the last time he'd seen it, sitting on top of a pile of other photos and personal trinkets and a set of ancient-looking rosary beads. The sum of Maritza Cruz's grief, around which their sickly little relationship had formed. Stupid death. Pointless death. Resulting from the self-destructive lifestyle of a stupid kid making stupid choices.
There was nobody to blame for something like that, was there? Nobody but the stupid kid herself. And that made it all that much worse, didn't it? There was nobody to blame but Lettie.
(That son of a bitch Buford killed my sister
So here in the photo you had the sum of Cruz's grief ... which had lasted right up until they found Noble. Until they drafted him as a Confidential Informant and the whole Richard Buford fixation began. Cruz decides that the biker is somehow responsible for Lettie's death, despite the fact that they'd already put Gary "Animal" Barnes - Lettie's dealer - away.
Not good enough for Cruz. As far as Cruz was concerned you had to go right to the top of the pyramid to get justice, and Bosco had wanted to help her get there. He'd wanted Buford, too. Of course he had - he was a cop and Buford was a criminal and that was just how it worked. Bosco had wanted to put Buford away.
But Cruz had wanted it more. And what reason was there to assume her feelings on the matter had changed?
None whatsoever.
She wasn't going after Faith at all. She wasn't after Faith, or Noble, or Bosco himself. Not even Schaeffer or his lying, spying bitch Reyes. Cruz was after Richard Buford. Jesus, it was so fucking obvious, wasn't it - Cruz couldn't give up. She could never just give up. That was what he'd admired about her in the beginning, and it was also her central character flaw - she didn't know when to back down. Like the car chase with Buford, like the Nunez thing, like when she'd been shot. She was still after Richard Buford, and she was using Noble somehow because Noble was the only lead she had. She'd taken him hostage. It didn't seem likely she could do that ... but then it also didn't seem likely that she could have escaped from the hospital. She'd pulled it off somehow, and that was almost certainly what Tom Hendrickson had heard outside his window last night - Noble being hijacked.
Bravo. Clap clap clap. Process of deduction yields big revelation. Ex-cop proves his mettle.
He hadn't proven anything, though - it was just a theory. But it was one that just felt more and more right. No matter what Schaeffer or Faith or Swersky might think, Cruz didn't have it in her to just go around killing indiscriminately - Bosco had known that from the start. And she didn't have it in her to murder cops, no matter what they'd done to her.
It was about her sister. It was Lettie. It was always Lettie.
So it seemed he'd just been presented with his big chance: he could finally do something, something concrete. He'd played his little detective game and by pure fluke he'd found something solid, he'd literally sat on a lead, and he could do something with it. He had to do something with it. He had to take this new evidence (and evidence was what it was) to the police. To Swersky. Swersky would listen to him, he was sure. Cruz had taken Aaron Noble hostage, and she was using him to try to track down Richard Buford. And the chances of that actually happening were roughly nil.
The question therefore became: what would she do when that reality finally sank in?
There wasn't any choice in the matter. Bosco had to take the photo - and the questions it raised - to Lieutenant Swersky.
If I do that, it'll be Hobart all over again, he thought immediately. They'll kill her. Cruz will make them kill her.
No. She'd know enough to back down when she was cornered.
The same way she knew enough to back down at the Melrose when she had a bullet in her shoulder and two guns trained on her? The same way Hobart knew enough to back down when you went to arrest him? Oh please. A minute ago you were sitting here thinking about how Cruz's whole trip is never knowing when to give in.
Bosco dropped the picture of Cruz and her sister on the bench and put his head in his hands. He'd wanted to do something. Little Bosco wants to help. And you had to be careful what you wished for, didn't you? Again, it was like the washroom at Mercy, the interview room with Schaeffer, lying in bed thinking about making up with Faith: it's easy to think big when you're safe on the sidelines, not so easy when you're in a position where you have to do something real, where you basically have to shit or get off the pot. He'd theorized and blue-skied and shot the breeze with himself about what Cruz's mental state might have become, and now the truth was literally sitting in the palm of his hand as a hard and tangible fact: Cruz had lost her mind. She really and truly had lost her mind. She'd snapped, just like Hobart.
Oh, now don't get so upset, Sherlock, the voice in his head piped up, and he was mildly horrified to notice that it was starting to sound a bit like Schaeffer's rumbling baritone. You're acting like you're the only cop in the city, and you're not even a cop. Somebody else'll figure all this out for themselves. Somebody probably has. Somebody probably reported Noble missing. It's like you figured earlier - it might all be over now anyway. Go home and watch the news and maybe you'll find that Cruz is back safe in her bed and Noble's waiting to be debriefed by the police. Probably already brainstorming a book about the ordeal. "My Life with Mad-Dog Cruz."
Be smart. Forget about the picture and go home.
Which was impossible. He couldn't forget about the picture any more than he could forget his own name, and he couldn't go home. Not now.
On the other hand, he couldn't go anywhere near the NYPD with what he had.
And as for breakfast ... needless to say, he'd lost his appetite. There were no longer any McMuffins in his immediate future.
So in a sense he was back to his earlier predicament; he didn't know what he was going to do or where he was going to go.
Bosco stood up, snatching up the photograph and stuffing it none too gently into his jacket pocket. When he went around his car and dropped into the driver's seat, he barely even noticed the ugly scratch on the door. The scratch was roughly a thousand light years away from where he was now, long dismissed, long forgotten. For the moment, anyway. It would be back. It would be back later, when he would wonder if he could blame it all on that one little act of petty vandalism. Without the scratch there would have been no spontaneous fit of laughter. Without the spontaneous fit of laughter he never would have ended up on that bench. And if he hadn't ended up on that bench, the one where Cruz had parked herself less than twenty-four hours before, he never would have seen the photograph.
And everything might have been different.
Life, as he'd thought several times already, could be funny sometimes.
Bosco drove away.
At almost the same moment, somewhere across the city, Aaron Noble was telling Maritza Cruz that she ought to be thinking about getting right with her God.