Stuart Kaminsky - Dead of Winter

"And no sounds during the night?" asked Flack.

"From her room? No."

"From anywhere?"

"No."

"Maybe you should have someone watching your house till we pick up the guy who killed Cliff?"

"I'm well armed," said Taxx. "I know how to use my weapon."

"You might want to wear it and have it at your bedside."

Taxx pulled up his Jets sweat shirt to reveal a small holster and gun on his belt. Then he pulled the sweat shirt down.

"I got the same idea when I heard what happened to Collier, but for the life of me, I don't know what Collier and I might have heard or seen that would make Marco send out a hit on us. He's got to know the morning news will be all over this and he'll be crucified if something happens to me. More coffee?"

"No, thanks," said Flack, rising carefully.

"Sure you don't want to spend the night?"

"No, thanks," he said.

"Suit yourself," said Taxx, leading him back to the front door.

"Try to think of something you might have forgotten, missed," said Flack.

"I've been trying, going over everything, but… I'll keep trying," said Taxx. "Be careful out there tonight."

Flack went out the door and into the frigid night. The door closed behind him cutting off the last of the warmth. He was missing something. He knew it, felt it.

He would drive home now, carefully, knowing that the pain was winning, at least for now, at least until he got home and took another hydrocodine tablet. In the morning, he'd check in with Stella to see if she had come up with anything. Whatever else he did in the morning would depend on whether Stevie Guista had been caught.

He got into his car and reached into his jacket pocket. The move sent a shock of pain across his chest. He pulled out the bottle of pills, started to open it, and changed his mind.

It took him almost two hours to get home.

The woman on the uptown intersection video monitor was Molly Ives. She was stubby, black, studying law at night, and wide awake. Her shift, the night shift, had begun fifteen minutes earlier.

She spotted the bread truck at a red light at 96th and Third. She wasn't sure it was the one she had a note to look for on the clipboard next to her. She became sure when the light turned green and she could make out the words MARCO'S BAKERY on the side of the truck as it passed.

Molly Ives called it in to the NYPD dispatcher who contacted a patrol car in the area. Five minutes later, the patrol car cut off the bakery truck, and the two policemen inside got out.

They approached the small truck, weapons in hand, one officer on each side of the vehicle.

"Come out," called one of the officers. "Hands up."

The bakery truck door opened, and the driver climbed out slowly.

Big Stevie had stopped the bleeding. He had sat in the back of his bread truck with the heat on, took off his T-shirt and pressed it against the wound in his right leg, the thick fleshy part above the knee. When he reached back he felt the exit wound. That was bleeding less but the hole was bigger. No bones were broken. He wrapped the T-shirt tightly.

He would have to abandon the truck. He would have to see a doctor or a nurse or something. Who knows what's going on inside? Could be internal bleeding, one of those embolisms, something. And he would need money to get out of town. Steven Guista's needs were great and he had only one place to go with them.

He drove, thought about taking the bridge to Manhattan, changed his mind, and headed to the neighborhood he knew best. The makeshift bandage was holding reasonably well but some blood was seeping through. He drove to an outdoor phone, in front of a twenty-four-hour grocery where he had stopped a few dozen times before. He parked and hobbled out of the truck.

"It's me," he said when the woman answered. He gave her the number of the phone he was calling from. She hung up. He stood, shivering, light-headed, waiting, the lights of the grocery giving off no heat. She called back in ten minutes.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"Brooklyn," he said. "Went back to my place. Cop shot me."

The pause was so long that Stevie asked, "You there?"

"I'm here," she said. "How badly hurt are you?"

"Leg," he said. "I need a doctor."

"I'll give you an address," she said. "Can you remember it?"

"I don't have a pencil, paper, anything," he said.

"Then just keep saying it to yourself. Get rid of the truck. Take a cab."

She gave him the name of a woman, Lynn Contranos, and an address. He repeated them to her.

"I'll call her and tell her you're coming."

The woman hung up. Stevie pulled change out of his pocket, dialed information for a car service number, made the call, and waited. While he waited he almost sang the name of the woman he was supposed to see, Lynn Contranos.

His birthday was only a few hours from ending. He didn't want to think about it. His pants were sticking to his leg now, the blood freezing.

He kept repeating the mantra as he waited, didn't think beyond going to that address. One thing at a time and maybe he would come out of this.

There was no car fifteen minutes later, and Big Stevie got back in the bread truck, turned on the heat and waited, watching the curb for the arrival of the car.

If it doesn't get here in ten more minutes, I'm driving. He was having trouble remembering the name and address he was supposed to go to, but he kept repeating them as he waited for the car that might never come.

Mac sat in his living room in the worn brown chair with the matching ottoman. His wife had indulged him. He had loved the chair, was still drawn to it, but the love was gone. It was just a place to sit and work or watch a ball game or a dog show or an old movie.

Tonight, clad in a clean gray sweat suit, it was work. On the slightly scratched, inlaid wooden table by his side stood two piles of books, new, fresh smelling, and twenty-seven neatly typed pages of paper clipped together. On a small cutting board no larger than one of the books rested a mug of coffee he had just microwaved.

There was also a stack of book reviews, old and new, he had printed from the Internet.

It was just before ten.

He had the books by Louisa Cormier arranged in chronological order. Her first book was titled Genesis Standing. The reviews had been mildly good, but the sales had been phenomenal. By the fourth book, reviews said Louisa Cormier had turned a corner and belonged among the upper echelon of mystery writers. Now she was always compared, favorably, with women writers like Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, Marcia Muller, Faye Kellerman, and Sara Paretsky.

Mac took a sip of coffee. It wasn't hot enough, but he didn't want to get up, go to the kitchen and go through the microwaving process again. He drank a little deeper and hoped he found the work of Louisa Cormier interesting.

Before he could open the first book, the phone rang.

It was a little after ten at night. Stella was looking over Danny's shoulder as he constructed the image on the computer screen in the lab.

Stella's eyes burned. She no longer doubted that she was coming down with something. Something was definitely causing her sinuses to fill, her eyes to water, and her throat to tickle. She tried to ignore it.

The image on the screen looked like something out of one of those computer generated games advertised on television, the ones in which people, who didn't look all that much like people, slaughtered each other with noisy weapons, vicious kicks, and painful sounds.

On the screen was a computer-generated brick wall. There was a single window in the wall.

"How high above the bathroom window was the window to Guista's hotel room?" he asked.