That was a long time ago.
The Street was starting to die about then.
Set fifty feet back from the corner, so there would be ample curb space for a few squad cars, was the timeworn station house. It was an old-fashioned name for an old-fashioned building that had been born in the eighteen hundreds when this part of Manhattan still had goatherds and potato fields.
Until two years ago it had been well taken care of, but the financial cut-off had let the cement chip away from the courses of brick and left a blackboard for the damn graffiti artists to spray-paint insults on. A couple of those slobs were still wearing bandages. The station house wasn’t going at full throttle, but the few left for roll call were the tough apples.
I used to be the boss man there. Captain. Hardass but fair. Good record. I got along with the troops and we kept the area as straight as it could get.
I retired out after wearing the badge for thirty years. I had gone into the Academy straight out of the Marine Corps back in ’75, so I still had some good years ahead.
But I sure missed the Job.
It was quiet today. Overcast with a snap in the air. October was almost here and a fresh season of trouble was gearing up. Sergeant Davy Ross was standing beside an unmarked police vehicle, talking to a tall, thin guy in his fifties wearing black-frame glasses who had a white trench coat draped over his arm. In his hand was an inexpensive cardboard folder people keep receipts in and when Davy turned his head, glanced my way and said something, I knew they were talking about me.
Hell, I was the living anachronism, the old firehorse they couldn’t get out of his stall, a dinosaur at fifty-six. Had to show up at home base the first of every month just to keep an eye on things.
Sergeant Ross grinned while we were shaking hands and said, “You got a fan from Staten Island, Jack. You remember that place?”
“Other side of the river, isn’t it?”
“Roger. I think it still belongs to New York City, though.” He paused and nodded toward the thin guy. “This is Dr. Thomas Brice.”
When I took the doctor’s hand, he said, “I’m a vet.”
“What war?”
He grinned and the eyes behind the specs were alert and blue. “No, I mean I’m an animal doctor, Captain Stang. Don’t want to get off on the wrong foot.”
“No sweat,” I told him. “I’m an animal lover myself.”
Davy Ross cut in with, “You guys have your conversation. I’m going back to work.”
We both told him so long and watched for a few seconds as he walked away.
When Dave went through the door, I said, “What’s all this about, Doctor? You know, I’m not on the payroll anymore. I draw a pension.”
Brice stared at me for a couple of seconds, his eyes reading me as though he were examining a strange breed of dog. It was an expression I had seen a lot of times before, but not from someone who didn’t want to kill me.
Softly, Brice said, “Is there somewhere we can sit down? You must have a coffee shop around here somewhere.”
I told him Billy’s was down the avenue two blocks, an old cop’s hangout that was about to go into the chopper when the station house shut its doors. Billy was finally going to have to go home and eat his wife’s cooking for a change.
Two of the detectives from the other shift were winding up their tour and waved at me. Both of them eyed Thomas Brice with one of those cop glances that take in everything in a blink and they both had the shadow of a frown when they realized he was one of those clean civilian types and figured he probably was some distant relation of mine.
I winked and nodded back. They seemed relieved.
Over coffee and a bagel lathered with cream cheese, I said, “I haven’t been to Staten Island since I was a kid.” My eyes were cold and I scanned his face carefully.
“I understand,” he told me.
“Neither do I remember ever having a case that involved that area.”
His tongue ran over his lips lightly and his head bobbed again. “I know that too. I did some research on you and...”
“I’m clean,” I interrupted.
“Yes, I know. You have a lot of commendations.”
“A lot of scars, too.”
I took a bite of the bagel and sipped at my coffee.
“It’s a tough job, Captain,” Brice said quietly.
“But nothing ever happened on Staten Island.”
He was staring back at me now. I knew my eyes were growing colder.
“Captain, you’re wrong,” the doctor told me softly. “Something did happen on Staten Island.”
I laid the bagel on the plate and under the table my fingers were interlaced, each hand telling the other not to reach for the gun on my belt. I didn’t wear the shoulder holster with the o... .45 Colt automatic snugged in it anymore. I was a civilian now. Still authorized by the state of New York to pack a firearm. But I wasn’t on the Job any more. Caution, I kept telling myself. Easy. Play this hand carefully.
Something was going down.
And the doctor was reading me. His hands stayed on the tabletop.
For several seconds his eyes watched mine, but they were encompassing every feature of my face. Then Dr. Thomas Brice broke the ice. It didn’t tinkle like a dropped champagne glass — it crashed like a piece from a glacier. “Long time ago, you were in love with a woman named Bettie...”
A pair of tiny muscles twitched alongside my spine. It wasn’t a new sensation at all. Twice before I had felt those insidious little squirms and both times I had been shot at right afterward.
He was saying, “She was abducted and stuffed into a van but an alert had gone out minutes before and a police car was in pursuit. The chase led to the bridge over the Hudson River where the driver lost control, went through the guardrails and over the fencing and fell a hundred and thirty feet into the water.”
My hand was on t... .45 now. My thumb flipped off the leather snap fastener and eased the hammer back. If this was a pathetic jokester he was about to die at this last punch line.
Softly, I said, “There was an immediate search party on the site. They located the wreckage. The driver was dead. There was no other body recovered.”
The doctor’s expression never changed, the eyes behind the lenses unblinking. He let a moment pass and told me, “Correct, Captain, no other body.”
Something seemed to jab into my heart. I waited, my forefinger curling around the trigger.
He added, “The next morning, right after dawn, one of the dogs in the cages at a veterinary clinic began whimpering strangely. It awakened the doctor—”
“A doctor named Brice?”
“Yes. But not this Brice — my late father. I was around, but not a vet yet. May I continue?”
I nodded.
“Anyway, my father got up to see what the trouble was. The animal was fine, but it was whimpering toward the rear lawn that bordered on the Hudson River. My father didn’t quite know what was going on, but went with that dog’s sensitivity and walked out the back.”
Somehow, Dr. Brice read my expression. He knew that if there was a downside to his story, he was never going to finish it....
“There was a young girl there. Alive.”
Alive!
“One arm was gripped fiercely around an inflated inner tube.”
He must have seen my arm move. Somehow he knew there was no tense finger around the hammer of a dead... .45 automatic any longer.
“The night before, we had heard about the altercation in the city, and we both knew at once that this girl was the one who had been abducted. The late news mentioned that it was a mob snatch, as they called it, because sources within the NYPD indicated she had information that could seriously damage a major Mafia group.”