THE SMALL WAITING room outside the ER was dull beige, and the light from the overhead fixture was flat white and glaring.
Richie was in surgery. Cindy and I sat together and she was so afraid for him, trying to hold it together, but the tears just streamed down her face. I held her hand, told her the things you say in a situation when you don’t know what the fuck is going to happen. “He’s going to be OK. I promise.”
Yuki was pacing, and Claire was in the hallway waiting for word of the outcome. Claire had checked out the surgeon and assured all of us that Dr. Starr was the best.
Joe was off getting coffee, and Brady had waited with us for hours but had gone back to the Hall to tell the story again, this time to Internal Affairs.
The last hours were running through my mind on a closed loop.
I kept hearing the sharp sounds of rapid gunfire and the shrill screams of the hostages. I saw the bodies of Brand and Whitney and thought their plan had been a Hail Mary pass. That they hadn’t truly expected to survive.
I recalled handing my gun to Brady, then climbing into the ambulance that was taking Rich to the hospital. I was supposed to stay at the scene, but there was no way that could happen. No way. Neck injuries were serious, mostly fatal. Richie. My dear friend, my partner, my brother. He could die.
I remembered calling Cindy from the ambulance and hearing her panicked screams. And I remembered calling Joe, saying “I’m OK.” Now, in the hospital waiting room, he put a tray of coffee containers down on a table, sat down next to me, and held my hand.
A moment after that, we were all on our feet as the doctor entered the room. He was a small man with a goatee and long fingers.
He said, “Inspector Conklin is out of surgery. And I have good news. The bullet hit his left forearm, breaking it and deflecting the bullet, slowing it down. That was a lucky thing for Inspector Conklin.
“Because the bullet was deflected, instead of severing his arteries or spine, it grazed his neck. He had a ragged wound that caused him to collapse and bleed like crazy, but he’s all stitched up and his arm has been set. He’s going to be fine.
“Who is Cindy?” Dr. Starr asked.
Cindy stood up, her face pink and gleaming with tears. “That’s me.”
Dr. Starr said, “He’s really going to be OK, my dear. He said to tell you he loves you.”
Cindy said, “Thank God,” and she sat back down from the weight of relief and emotion. We were all emoting, thanking both God and Dr. Starr, and tears were springing from all eyes.
When my phone rang, I said to Joe, “It’s probably Brady.”
But when I looked at the caller ID, I was shocked to see who was calling me.
It was Vasquez.
Where was he?
Did he know that his partner, Ted Swanson, was in the ICU? That Kyle Robertson was dead? That Brand’s and Whitney’s bodies were at the morgue? I fumbled the phone, then stabbed the Talk button.
“Boxer,” I said.
The voice that came over Vasquez’s phone did not belong to Vasquez. It was male, unaccented, unfamiliar.
“There’s been a terrible accident, Sergeant Boxer, and Vasquez himself couldn’t place the call.”
“Who is this?”
“Just listen. Vasquez can’t contact anyone, you understand what I’m saying? He’s lying in the Wicker House parking lot. But Vasquez is not important. Here’s what is. I want what was taken from me. Three million in cash. Two hundred pounds of synthetic marijuana and a hundred kilos of high-grade heroin.”
I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. It’s your case. You’re in charge. I hope you know who you’re dealing with.”
“Who is this?” I asked again.
“I’m called Kingfisher. Ask around. You’ll be hearing from me again soon, Lindsay Boxer. You can count on it.”
The phone went dead in my hand.
Joe said, “Linds? Who was that?”
I stuttered, “S-some dirtbag who has been harassing me.”
If only Kingfisher were your ordinary dirtbag. But he was anything but ordinary. He topped the list of the most ruthless drug lords in the country: wanted for drug trafficking, torture, murder, and organized crime up and down the length of California and many points east.
And now the King was here.
His investment at Wicker House had been stolen by cops—and he wasn’t writing it off as “the cost of doing business.” He’d been unable to recover his property from Calhoun or Vasquez. Robertson, Brand, and Whitney were also dead.
The only living person who might know the whereabouts of the Wicker House haul was a dirty cop known as One, real name Edward “Ted” Swanson, who’d been hospitalized with multiple gunshot wounds and wasn’t expected to live.
So Kingfisher was targeting me.
Turn the page for a sneak preview of
TRUTH OR DIE
Coming June 2015
“WHERE EXACTLY DID it happen?” I asked.
“West End Avenue at Seventy-Third. The taxi was stopped at a red light,” said Lamont. “The assailant smashed the driver’s side window, pistol-whipped the driver until he was knocked out cold, and grabbed his money bag. He then robbed Ms. Parker at gunpoint.”
“Claire,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Please call her Claire.”
I knew it was a weird thing for me to say, but weirder still was hearing Lamont refer to Claire as Ms. Parker, not that I blamed him. Victims are always Mr., Mrs., or Ms. for a detective. He was supposed to call her that. I just wasn’t ready to hear it.
“I apologize,” I said. “It’s just that—”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a raised palm. He understood. He got it.
“So what happened next?” I asked. “What went wrong?”
“We’re not sure, exactly. Best we can tell, she fully cooperated, didn’t put up a fight.”
That made sense. Claire might have been your prototypical “tough” New Yorker, but she was also no fool. She didn’t own anything she’d risk her life to keep. Does anyone?
No, she definitely knew the drill. Never be a statistic. If your taxi gets jacked, you do exactly as told.
“And you said the driver was knocked out, right? He didn’t hear anything?” I asked.
“Not even the gunshots,” said Lamont. “In fact, he didn’t actually regain consciousness until after the first two officers arrived at the scene.”
“Who called it in?”
“An older couple walking nearby.”
“What did they see?”
“The shooter running back to his car, which was behind the taxi. They were thirty or forty yards away; they didn’t get a good look.”
“Any other witnesses?”
“You’d think, but no. Then again, residential block … after midnight,” he said. “We’ll obviously follow up in the area tomorrow. Talk to the driver, too. He was taken to St. Luke’s before we arrived.”
I leaned back in my chair, a metal hinge somewhere below the seat creaking its age. I must have had a dozen more questions for Lamont, each one trying to get me that much closer to being in the taxi with Claire, to knowing what had really happened.
To knowing whether or not it truly was … fuckin’ random.
But I wasn’t fooling anyone. Not Lamont, and especially not myself. All I was doing was procrastinating, trying hopelessly to avoid asking the one question whose answer I was truly dreading.
I couldn’t avoid it any longer.
“FOR THE RECORD, you were never in here,” said Lamont, pausing at a closed door toward the back corner of the precinct house.
I stared at him blankly as if I were some chronic sufferer of short-term memory loss. “In where?” I asked.
He smirked. Then he opened the door.
The windowless room I followed him into was only slightly bigger than claustrophobic. After closing the door behind us, Lamont introduced me to his partner, Detective Mike McGeary, who was at the helm of what looked like one of those video arcade games where you sit in a captain’s chair shooting at alien spaceships on a large screen. He was even holding what looked like a joystick.