Клео Коул - French Pressed

Mike nodded. “Call him back in the car.” He glanced up and down the hall. “You should talk to him in private.”

“Okay.”

We hit the street again, found the battered beige Dodge. Mike unlocked my passenger-side door. I climbed in, surprised Mike didn’t get in with me.

“Private’s private,” he insisted.

As I hit speed dial, Mike walked to the corner to check out the headlines at a small newsstand. I watched him affably engage the Hispanic vendor. He appeared to be speaking in fluent Spanish.

I put the phone to my ear, listened to Matt’s phone ring. My ex picked up right away. “Clare, I have some news from the lawyers—”

“Can I see Joy today?”

“No. Neither one of us can. She’s on Riker’s Island, and no one can see her but her lawyers.”

“What about tomorrow?” I asked, my tone a little desperate.

“Same deal. Neither one of us can see her until her arraignment Monday.”

“Monday?” My gaze fell from the bright windshield. I stared unseeingly at the Dodge’s dashboard. “Is that a normal amount of time?”

“There are complicating issues. The Vincent Buccelli murder might be tagged on, but it took place in Queens, and that’s another borough, so it’s another DA’s office.” He sighed. “They’re sorting it all out, I guess—a lot of law degrees are involved.”

I took a deep breath, released it. “She will get out on bail, right? What are the lawyers saying?”

“The judge will decide Monday downtown in criminal court.”

I closed my eyes, not able to comprehend my Joy sitting behind bars for months and months before her trial would even come up on the docket.

“Anyway, Clare, I’ll stay on the lawyers, keep you informed.”

“Thanks, Matt.”

“You should thank Breanne, too. This criminal defense firm is one of the best in the city. Bree has personal ties to the partner handling Joy’s case. She made all the calls from Milan.”

“I will thank her, Matt. I just pray we never have to use Bree’s lawyer friend. If I get lucky today, Joy’s case will never have to go to trial.”

“You think you can nail Keitel’s killer?”

“Vinny’s, too. I think Brigitte killed them both. She’s on the lam now, but Mike and I are on her trail.”

“Keep following it then.” Matt paused. “Look, I know I’ve been down on you in the past for butting in, for being a nose hound, but this is our daughter we’re talking about, so…anything you can do, Clare, anything …”

“I know, Matt. I’ve been doing the best I can—”

My eyes lifted up just then. I noticed Mike in his long overcoat, turning away from the newsstand. He glanced back at the Dodge, met my eyes.

“—now let me get back to work.”

The prescription bottle carried an Inwood address, which meant we had to go even farther uptown, way above 125th Street—the last road most tourist maps bothered to show as part of Manhattan Island.

The neighborhood was largely residential. Most of its structures were town houses, apartment buildings, and two- and three-family dwellings. It was probably the most suburban of Manhattan’s seventy-plus neighborhoods with three shopping districts, a hospital, and a public park.

Mike drove us up one quiet, tree-lined street and down another. When the car’s direction twisted and turned in a particularly odd way, I was a little confused whether we were heading east or west.

“The lay of the land’s different up here,” I remarked, leaning forward to peer at the passing street signs. “There’s no grid pattern.”

“Right,” Mike said. “Some of these streets are based on old Indian trails. They weren’t laid out by city planners like the rest of Manhattan.”

“Except not all of Manhattan has the grid,” I reminded him.

“True…”

The lanes in the West Village, for instance, were far from straight. This often confused people, but without the legal protection of historic preservation, my neighborhood’s one- and two-century-old town houses—including the four-story Federal that the Village Blend occupied—would have been razed by now and replaced with thirty-story apartment buildings, all lined up in the nice, neat pattern of the rest of the borough, with addresses that were standard, predictable, and all-conforming.

I leaned back against the car seat. “You know what? I’d rather have the Indian trails.”

Ironically, the address we were currently after was on a wild frontier, just beyond the invisible border of Inwood’s happy, middle-class Hispanic lives. Sherman Creek, a rundown subsection of Inwood, was located along a strip of the Harlem River. To get there we drove through a sprawling public housing project called the Dyckman Houses.

The Saturday afternoon weather was pleasant, bright, and only mildly chilly, yet the grounds around the project appeared close to deserted. Benches along the sidewalks were empty, and a children’s playground was lifeless. I wasn’t surprised, since I recognized the name of this housing development as the center of a recent crime wave that had been reported on the news.

Sherman Creek itself was mostly industrial. When we arrived in the neighborhood, Mike gave me a quick rundown on the place. He said it was mixed zoning, with warehouses and businesses existing next to apartments and lofts, some of which were now inhabited by urban pioneers, an adventurous and hearty breed of city dweller that I’d always admired since they paved the way for further residential development and eventual gentrification.

At the moment, gentrification was a moot point for Sherman Creek. The businesses we drove by—construction and demolition companies, air-conditioner installation and repair, and automotive garages—were branded with more gang tags than we’d noticed in Washington Heights. As Mike parked, I pointed out the graffiti.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s pretty bad. Then again, you should have seen the Upper West Side fifteen years ago, when I was working anticrime.”

“You were in an anticrime unit?”

“Yeah, and I did some antigang work, too. Then I moved to OCCB-Narcotics—”

“What’s OCC—”

“Sorry. Organized Crime Control Bureau. It’s how I earned my gold shield, but I still attend antigang seminars twice a month.”

“So you’re an expert. Then what’s the deal with this one?” I pointed.

Most of the gang tags were a mess, aesthetically speaking. But the scarlet symbol I’d singled out had been done with admirable graphic flair: two stylized letter R s spray-painted together, one drawn backward. The artist even added a drop shadow. All things considered, it could have worked as a corporate logo.

“Whoever painted it has a decent technique,” I said, tilting my head to check it out at another angle.

“That’s the Red Razors,” Mike replied, folding his arms and regarding me, regarding the tag. “Nothing but a pack of small-time punks peddling ganja. They wouldn’t last a week against the gangs we faced back in the day. Stone killers like the Wild Cowboys, the Red Top Crew. But the worst of the bunch was the Jheri Curls—”

“The what ? You’re kidding me, right? There was not a gang named after Little Richard’s do?”

“It’s a real gang. I promise you. Funny name. Nothing funny about their methods.” Mike turned and began walking down the sidewalk. “The address we’re looking for is Rayburn Way,” he reminded me. “It should be a few more blocks this way.”

I caught up to his long strides. “So what did they do? The Jheri Curls?”

Mike continued to glance up and down the street, taking in our surroundings. “Rafael Martinez and his four brothers ran a major cocaine trafficking operation out of Washington Heights, committed several murders, including a gang-style hit of a witness.”