Richard Price - The Whites

“Needs his rest,” Billy finished for her, then, leaning over Taft as if to say goodbye, whispered, “You will never get rid of me,” and walked out of the room.

Unable to leave the hospital, Billy paced the main hall atrium, now and then charging halfway back to Taft’s room, then reining himself in until a security guard finally approached him to see what was up. Flashing his ID, Billy muttered something about a sick cop, the square badge at first backing off leery, then quickly losing interest.

And then Billy saw her, Taft’s wife, tall and gracefully obese, pushing a two-year-old in a stroller across the sun-dappled floor. He reflexively moved to her, then blocked her way.

“Hey, Patricia, right?”

She stopped and stared, not able to place him.

“Bill Graves, I was at your wedding.”

She reared back, got taller, gave him a face like a fortress. “I remember you.”

As well she should. When he had heard that Taft, less than a year after the murders, was getting married, Billy and Whelan, who was about to retire in any event, put on suits and crashed the wedding. Right after the minister asked if anyone objected, Billy sang out, “Right over here, because that bastard is a baby-killing triple murderer. He did it once, he’ll do it again.”

They got their asses good and kicked that day; half the wedding party, both male and female, were correction officers related by blood to Taft. But it was worth it just to ruin the ceremony — or maybe not, given that the incident led to his being transferred to Night Watch, his second banishment to the underworld, most bosses believing that working any kind of steady midnights was just this side of a firing squad.

“So,” Billy said amiably, “I just want to know, how’s it working out for you two, everybody happy?”

“You have no right to be accosting me,” her voice as stiff as her posture.

“I just want to ask you, does he ever wake up in the middle of the night all covered in sweat and screaming his head off? You know what I’m talking about, right?”

She waved to the same security guard across the floor, but Billy re-tinned him without even looking in his direction, the man once again backstepping to his post.

Billy felt light as a feather, out-of-his-mind spontaneous. “How’s he as a dad?” nodding to the stroller, kid number three from what he’d heard. “A real disciplinarian I’ll bet.”

She attempted to walk away, but Billy, astonishing himself, blocked her escape.

“One last bed question: does he ever get up, say, about six in the morning, come back about an hour later, a little winded, maybe a little bloody? I’m just curious.”

“I work for Christian Outreach,” her voice suddenly a hoarse, teary mess, “I help people, and you have no right to talk to me like this.”

No, he didn’t; suddenly red-faced, Billy turned from her without another word and walked away.

Finally striding across the central atrium toward the exit, Billy was startled to see Pavlicek coming in through the revolving doors, moving like a sleepwalker, his eyes off-center and shining as he made his way through the slanting beams of captured sunlight to the elevator banks.

“John!”

“Hey,” Pavlicek said flatly, turning to Billy as if they had just seen each other an hour ago.

“What are you doing here?” Billy’s voice still burbling with adrenaline.

“My doctor’s here.”

“You OK?”

“Yeah, just some tests.”

“Tests for what?”

“Cholesterol’s through the roof.”

“Yeah? What’s he got you on, Lipitor? Crestor?”

“Vytorin.”

“Jimmy Daly takes that. He says it’s a lifesaver.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You’re not here to see Curtis Taft by any chance,” Billy asked, his voice sly-dog low.

“Curtis Taft works here?” Pavlicek blinked.

Billy took a moment, then: “He’s a patient. I just about put my hands around his throat.”

“Still fucking with him, huh?” Pavlicek sounded elsewhere, his eyes over Billy’s shoulder as if there was bigger game to be had.

“You all right?”

“I just told you.”

“I mean otherwise.”

“It’s a funny day. I’m late for a meeting.”

“A meeting here?” Billy not sure whether he was still too jacked to keep track of the conversation or it was just careening off point on its own.

The elevator arrived, Pavlicek silently giving him his back as he stepped inside.

“Hey, what’s your doctor’s name?”

“What for?” Pavlicek towering over everyone else in the car.

Billy tapped his own heart. “You’re not the only one.”

“Go to someone up by you,” Pavlicek said as the door began to close. “My guy’s not all that.”

The sixteen-year-old Yemeni kid lay flat on his back, arms flung wide, staring up with his one unexploded eye at a cardboard placard taped to the ceiling: “SCREW THE DOG — BEWARE OF OWNER.” Above the words was a caricature of a stubble-jawed bruiser aiming a hand cannon at the viewer, the circumference of the muzzle almost as big around as the guy’s head. The real shooter — who had accidentally killed his best friend while showing off his father’s gun, which had been hidden beneath the cash register — was on the floor too, sitting at the end of a food aisle. Glaze-faced and weeping, he was being interviewed by Alice Stupak, squatting on her hams as she attempted to gently tweeze out his version of events.

As Billy stood by the front window debriefing the first uniform on the scene, Gene Feeley came into the store with a young man, not a cop, the kid involuntarily inhaling when he first saw the body.

“Back in the day the homicide rate around here was so high, Jackie, that the precinct had to split in two just to keep pace with the bodies,” Feeley explained. “But those days are dead and gone, so they say, although I would no sooner walk down the street unarmed around here than I would if I was living in Iraq.”

“What’s going on, Gene?” As far as Billy knew, Feeley had the night off.

“My sister’s kid, he’s doing a paper for his journalism class, I thought I’d help out.”

“No kidding,” Billy said, thinking, The guy never shows up when he’s supposed to, now he starts showing up when he isn’t.

“Uncle Gene,” the kid said, taking in the gun cartoon directly over the body. “Look at that.”

“Go on over there,” Feeley said, taking his nephew’s iPad. “I’ll take your picture, you can tweet it on Facebook.”

“Maybe you should wait until they finish,” Billy said.

“No problem, Billy,” one of the CSUs said, raising up from the body and taking the iPad from Feeley. “Go ahead, Gene, get in with the kid.”

A moment later, the store owner, the hem of his pajama bottoms peeking out from beneath his trouser cuffs, finally stumbled into the store, his gun permit held out before him like a magic charm. Avoiding looking at either the dead kid or his son, he walked right past Billy to Feeley, the most senior-looking cop on the set.

“Talk to her,” Feeley said, chucking a thumb at Stupak, who was coming back up to the front.

“Talk to me? What’s wrong with you?” she snapped. “Your hearing aid on the fritz?”

“Watch your mouth,” Feeley said, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?” she squawked, her arms outstretched in mock bewilderment.

“I got to be somewhere.”

“Somewhere where, ” she blew. “You’re here, here’s where you got to be, so how about you stun the shit out of everybody and do your fucking job for a change.”

“Alice,” Billy pulling her back.

“You better talk to her,” Feeley said to Billy.