Richard Price - The Whites

Heading to his car, Billy called home and got no answer, not even the answering machine. He called again and got the same, which made him break into a trot.

What was he up to.

Billy had been expecting him to keep moving in deeper on his family, but attacking Stacey’s boyfriend— if he had attacked Stacey’s boyfriend — seemed to be about going outward, maybe going so far outward that he and everyone else would be going crazy wondering if it was still him, and if that, in fact, who the fuck knew, was his game plan, then who would be next? Millie Singh? His sister? Maybe one of Billy’s friends, or one of his friends’ spouses or kids, then after that, maybe going in deep again, and the next time he came after Carmen or the kids or his father — Billy flashing on the boyfriend’s bashed-in face — the outcome would be a lot more catastrophic than a vandalized jacket or a free ride to Harlem.

Was this guy a genius?

Or had Stacey’s boyfriend just straight-up gotten mugged…

Either way he had Billy by the balls.

A third fruitless call home while driving north on the Henry Hudson had him pushing eighty-five.

Stacey called as he was flying past the Roosevelt Raceway. “Hey, you walked out so fast you forgot to tell me about the job.”

“Turns out it’s not happening for a while,” he said, wanting to keep her and hers out of the line of fire.

Pulling onto his street in the early dark of the evening, Billy saw a figure sitting motionless on the front porch of his house. Knowing that no cop patrolling the grounds would just take a breather like that, he glided to a stop a few driveways down, got out of the car, and began to cautiously make the rest of his way on foot. But apparently his tread was heavier than he imagined; sensing Billy’s approach, the figure slowly rose and then eased into a shooter’s stance. Pulling his own weapon, Billy carefully stepped back into the shadowed shrubbery, the numbing notion abruptly rising in him that it was too late, he was too late, and that everyone inside was gone. In sudden free fall, Billy mindlessly recited the roll call of his dead as he sighted his Glock, center mass, center mass, and was about to squeeze one off when Carmen opened the door behind the shooter’s back.

“Dad, come inside, you’re going to get sick out here.” Then: “What the hell are you doing? Give me that.”

“There’s someone out there,” Billy Senior said tentatively, allowing his daughter-in-law to bring him back into the house.

Two hours later, Jimmy Whelan, accompanied by a small, nervous, near-mute woman, most likely another of his vertical harem of tenants, entered the house without knocking.

“Jimmy!” Carmen kissing him while shielding the shiner side of her face. “I’m sorry, this is a total waste of your time.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Whelan said. “This is Mercedes.”

The woman eyed the dinner dishes as if all she wanted in life was to clear the table.

“What’s the matter with you,” Billy nodding to the grip of the Walther sticking straight up from behind Whelan’s belt buckle. “You never heard of a holster?”

“If you conceal it, then no one knows you’re carrying and it defeats its own purpose. Hey! Chief Graves…” Whelan saluting as Billy Senior came into the living room. “Remember me?”

“You’re that kid from Billy’s street team.”

“I am that kid.”

“You make detective yet?”

“You bet.”

“Where are you posted?”

“Fort Surrender,” winking to Billy.

“I never liked that moniker, it’s too cynical for my taste.”

“Well, sir, we live in cynical times.”

“What’s a rook to think?” Senior said. “‘Congratulations, son, you’ve been assigned to Fort Surrender.’”

“You got a point there, boss.”

“Well, keep up the good work,” the old man said, turning to the TV.

Billy nodded toward the porch, and Whelan followed him out.

“The gun was his?” Whelan asked after getting the update.

“It’s his old service piece, I had it spiked the day he moved in.”

Whelan briefly stepped over to the window. Peering into the house, he tried to catch the eye of his sleepover date, sitting on the couch next to Billy Senior.

“Not for nothing and thanks for coming, but did you really need to bring the girl?”

“She’s never been out to the country.”

“You’re being funny, right?”

“About what?”

“All we have for you is a bunk bed.”

“We’ll make do. So what else is going on.”

Billy thought about bringing up Sweetpea, bringing up Pavlicek, then let it pass.

“All right, my brother,” Billy wrapping him in a brief hug. “Gotta go.”

Halfway to his car he stopped and turned. “Hey, let me ask you, Tomassi… Are you sure he was hit by a bus?”

“Am I sure?”

Pulling out his wallet, Whelan gestured for Billy to come back to the porch. “The American Express card,” he intoned, handing over a crime scene photo of his White, chest-crushed and staring up at the stars from beneath the front wheels of a Pelham Bay — bound number 12 bus. “Don’t leave home without it.”

“Well, the other tape came in,” Elvis Perez’s voice in his ear, the Midtown South detective catching Billy on his cell as he was paying for his nightly speed bag at the Korean’s. “From the LIRR end?”

“And?” Billy saluting Joon on the way out.

“And it doesn’t really help us.”

“Why not.”

“There’s too much of a mob under the track information board. It’s like watching worms in a bucket. We can’t even ID Bannion until he separates out from the crowd, and by then he’s already spurting.”

“You can’t track him in reverse and blow up the frames?”

“Worms in a bucket.”

Back at the office, the headline was that Feeley had reverted to being a no-show. Otherwise it was a next-to-nothing tour: a push-in robbery in Sugar Hill, a cabbie in the Meatpacking District getting beat on by two men after he had refused to take them to Brownsville. Neither required his personal attendance, so after sitting there in his office for a few hours listening to the Wheel effortlessly repel three more requests for the squad, Billy put Mayo in charge and headed up to the Bronx.

502 Concord Avenue was an eroding brick single-family Victorian chopped up into multiple SROs, and at three-fifteen in the morning there were no lights on in any of the six windows that overlooked the lifeless street. But 505, directly across the way, was a six-story walk-up, and Billy counted three lighted apartment windows on the second, third, and top floors, meaning three possible habitual night owls, three possible witnesses to the possible abduction of Sweetpea Harris.

Billy woke up the tenants on the second floor, an ashy-skinned middle-aged man, dumb with sleep, coming to the door in his boxers as a woman in the back of the apartment screamed like hell about having to get up for work in a few hours. On the third floor, the door was answered after five minutes of pounding by a moon-faced African in a wrinkled caftan, kufi, and busted slippers, this guy having no English to him, but the TV in his otherwise furniture-less living room was playing so loud that Billy couldn’t imagine him hearing anything out on the street short of an explosion.

The sixth floor was the charm, the tenant, Ramlear Castro, a young, heavily inked Latino, his eyes pink with dope, coming to the door in sweatpants and a hairnet. Billy flashed his ID and Castro gave him his back, retreating into the apartment but leaving the door open for Billy to follow him inside.

“May I?” Castro held up a blunt.

Billy shrugged and a moment later the punky tang coming across the wobbly-legged kitchen table thrust him back into high school.