Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

"Well?"

"This is a guy who puts toothpicks through people's eyeballs. Once we get him, how are you going to make him talk?"

"Damnit, McNamara, will you put down that magazine? You can design your damn dream house on your own dime." It was frustrating. "Felix," he said, "put on that tape of Chin. Now let's listen close, everyone. There's got to be a way. There's always a way ."

"Whaddya got?"

"A cold," said Diatri. "I still got this cold, it won't go away."

"Yeah? That's too bad. On the Raid Jacket case, you got anything?"

"That's what I'm saying. This cold. That's what I got on the Raid Jacket case. I got it standing in the rain. You ever been out to Potter's Field? It's out on Hart Island. Let me tell you, this is a sad place. All those bodies that no one wants. And these City yo-yos they got doing the burying. They don't exactly lower you in. They just tossed this guy in. I mean, I thought the box was going to split open."

"Tossed who in, Frank?"

"Luis, Jim. The guy in the Raid Jacket case. That 'hot' case you gave me?"

"Right, right."

Diatri blew his nose. "Two weeks I've been sucking on zinc tablets. I thought maybe someone would show up at the guy's funeral. No one. So the guy's a scumbag, but scumbags have family-friends, even. You'd think someone would have showed up at his funeral. You want to know the truth, Jim, it was almost sad. I mean, if no one shows up to watch them bury you, it's like you never existed, right?"

"How are you doing otherwise? Your stomach?"

"My stomach is fine, Jim."

"Don't start hitting yourself, Frank. I just asked. Oh, by the way, Mr. Kelly called from DC. He asked about you."

"No kidding? So often when a man moves up in the world, he forgets the little people. Not Mr. Kelly."

"Take care of the cold, okay?"

The SAC walked off, leaving Diatri to blow his nose and sift through the personal effects of Ramon Antonio Luis spread out on his desk. The evidence clerk at the Ninth Precinct had mistakenly sent them to the FBI laboratory and it had taken two weeks to get them back, Detective Korn finally handing them over in a plastic bag held at arm's length as if it contained a live bubonic rat. A pack of Marlboros, a gold chain with the Virgin of Guadalupe, a Porsche key ring with a single key Technical Services said belonged to a Master's brand padlock, $1,200. Robbery was certainly out.

"I'm going out, Alice," he said.

"Okay, Frankie. Don't get shot."

Diatri stopped. "What did you say?"

Alice went on typing. "I said don't get shot."

"Well, what the hell kind of thing is that to say? Jesus, Alice."

"What's the matter with saying that? You're always getting shot. I just said, 'Don't get shot.'"

"Couldn't you just say, 'Be careful,' or, or 'Have a nice day' or something? 'Don't get shot'? Jesus."

Diatri stood on the sidewalk on East Eighth where Luis had died. The brown blood puddle was now just barely visible. He tapped the key ring against his palm. The last address the PD had for Luis was "Unknown."

They found him facedown, headed west, the bullet came from behind, so we know he was walking west. Okay, clean hit, middle of the night, probably silenced since no one heard a shot, professional, possibly, though why pay a pro to pop a lower-echelon scumbag? Still, looks like a professional hit, so… a professional would be waiting for him, and where would he know to wait for him? Diatri looked down the block. NOAH'S 8 THSTREET YAGHT? What was a boat doing here? Never mind the boat. The nearest building was number 316. A sign over the door said:

THIS LAND IS OURS. PROPERTY OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE JOINT PLANNING COUNCIL.

The door was open. Even through his cold he could smell the urine. It was a broken-down building, but underneath the accumulation of crud he saw the remnant of a parquet floor that in its day had been lovingly waxed and buffed. Families had lived in this building and raised children and filled vases with cut flowers and cooked meals and sung around the piano at night-crunch, a crack vial broke under his foot.

He tried the doors on every floor. No one home. He found the padlock on the eighth floor. Master's brand.

He unlocked it and, very slowly, pushed the door open, about an inch, until he saw the wire. He got down on his knees and with his nail clippers snipped it. He pushed the door open the rest of the way.

The wire ran from the door through an eyehook to the trigger of a sawed-off twelve-gauge held in a bench vise and aimed at the knees of whoever walked in the door. He broke the gun and examined the load. Number nine shot. Skeet load. Good spread.

The room was dark, not much light getting through the windows, which he guessed had last been cleaned when Kennedy was President. There were candles all over the place. Empty packs of Marlboros, Doritos, Oreos-the kind with extra filling. Bottles of Dos Equis Mexican beer. A Spanish-language glossy magazine open to a spread on Prince Andrew. There was a steel trunk by the sofa doing duty as a coffee table. Two pharmaceutically brown bottles on top, procaine and mannitol, dental anesthetic and baby laxative. He found the cocaine inside the trunk, about an ounce, not much, but it had the rocky texture and micaceous glint of the good stuff. People who didn't know better mistook numbness for a sign of purity; the baby laxative just added bulk-and made people have to go to the bathroom a lot. They could stretch the ounce by a third, anyway, and retail it for four thousand, more than enough, in this world, to justify shooting off someone's legs.

Diatri was looking through the rest of the apartment when he heard the creak of feet coming up the stairs. He drew his Sig Sauer and crouched behind the door.

"Emi?" he heard. It was a woman's voice, an old woman's, and scared. "Emi?" She pushed open the door and walked in.

"Hello, ma'am-aggh!" The woman shrieked and sprayed him full in the face from a hand canister.

"Ow!" Diatri shouted. "Shit! Ow! Shit!"

"Back!" she yelled. "Or I do again!"

"No! Federal agent! Policia! Ow!" He groped for his ID, waving it at her.

"Oo," said the woman. "Sorry. I think you are mogger."

Diatri stumbled toward a chair, moaning, holding his face.

"You okay, meester?"

"No, I'm not! Jesus. Get water, something."

"You wait, I get." She came back with a damp rag that looked like Egyptian mummy wrappings. Diatri took off his shirt and gave her his undershirt and wet it from a bottle of club soda.

"You gon to arres me?"

"Yes. Assaulting a federal officer with chemicals. Jesus. What's your name? What are you doing here?"

"I look for my son."

Diatri said, in a softer tone of voice, "Is your son's name Ramon?"

"No."

"What's your son's name?"

"I go now."

"No, ma'am. What's your son's name?"

"Emiliano Ramirez. He stay here sometimes. He missing for more than two weeks. I come here for two weeks to see, but I don have key. He take me to church every Sunday but he don come. I go to Missing Persons burro. Please don arres me, mister. My sister dying of cancer. You know cancer? If you arres me, she no have no one to-"

"Okay, okay. Look, let's-Jesus, that hurts-what is that?"

"Mes."

"Mace? Where'd you get-never mind. This is your son's place? Well, your son is in a lot of trouble, Mrs. Ramirez. No, not right in the eye, just, just let me have the bottle, thank you. You see what that is on the table there? That's cocaine, Mrs. Ramirez."

"He don have cocaine."

"You just told me he stays here."

"No."

"Yes, you did, Mrs. Ramirez. You just told me."

"His friend stay here. This not his place." She looked around. "Too dirty."

"Ramon Antonio Luis, do you know him?"

"No. Yes. That his cocaine. Luis is bad person, not like my Emi."