Richard Price - The Whites

“And I have to say, the schools around here?”

“Terrific.”

“Plus I’ve been around kids Sofia’s age five days a week for the last five years, so it’s not like I don’t…”

“There you go.”

This was a life-changing commitment, how could she not hesitate?

“I mean I would really love her up, Milton, you know I would,” Anita’s hands trembling a little as she finally opened the pack of cigarettes. Then, catching him staring, she tossed the whole thing in the sink.

“No more of these, I can promise you that.”

“Relax, I’m still alive.”

But she was a good person and he had to believe that if things went south for him— when things went south for him — Sofia would have a soft landing here.

“Wow.” Anita shivered. “This is almost enough to make me want to bump you off myself, you know?”

The impact, a heartbeat after he blindly backed out of her driveway into the expressway service road, spun his rear end a full ninety degrees so that he was suddenly facing the oncoming traffic and the smashed front grille of the Ram 1500 that had T-boned him. The driver, big enough to star in TV ads for his own ride, was out of the truck so fast that at first Milton thought he had been ejected. It was all he could do to stow his weapon under the seat before Bigfoot reached his car.

“The fuck!” the guy shouted, pounding on Milton’s hood.

Like she was some goddamn rescue dog…

Milton got out of his car. Behind the damaged truck, the nonstop honking of the city-bound cars now trapped in the one-lane road was like the sound track for his fury.

“It was my fault,” Milton said. He took out his wallet, but the guy slapped it out of his hands before he could even start to fish for his insurance card.

“I feel like stomping your ass.”

“You can try,” Milton said.

Like she was a puppy in a cardboard box…

Thrown by Milton’s matter-of-fact invitation, the big man hesitated.

“I think you should try.”

Anita was nuts, was a child herself. She was just jumping on this without a thought in her head.

“You’re crazy.”

“And you’re a fucking cunt,” Milton said.

Red-faced with throttled violence, the guy started to tilt forward from the hips like a dipping bird, his breath puffing Milton’s hair. Praying for the punch to come, Milton stood his ground and waited for it, even though he pretty much knew he had already cut off the guy’s balls and that nothing would happen. And nothing did, Ram Tough man settling for a string of low face-saving curses as he returned to his front-mangled ride and took off, leaving Milton feeling so thwarted he thought his heart would break.

Milton stood in Sofia’s bedroom, surveying the scatter of dolls and books and games. She would need things, obviously, but he could only send over a little of her previous life at a time in order to allow everyone, his daughter and her new parents, to gradually become accustomed to their roles. He didn’t want anyone to panic.

But what did she need right away. Clothes. What kind of clothes. What did an eight-year-old girl wear. Even when she was a toddler he had never dressed her, barely took notice of what she had on unless it was something too tight for her frame.

Socks. They didn’t take up much space, so he figured he could get away with three pairs without raising eyebrows. Underwear, T-shirts. Again, three of each, everything tossed into a large Hefty bag. Her floral corduroy jeans, into the bag. How about a dress, a skirt. No, two skirts; no, one, but where did Marilys keep them? This should be Marilys’s job, Milton at first mildly annoyed about that, and then the irony kicked in, making him sit down before he fell down.

A moment later, once again galled to the edge of his teeth by the divide between the grief givers and the grief takers, the fuckers and the fucked, by the eternal inevitable of his violently miserable life, Milton walked out of the room dragging the half-full garbage bag behind him and headed for the basement.

A few minutes later he was out on the street, the bag, much heavier now, spackling the sidewalk red from his front door to the trunk of his car.

It was turning out to be another nothing of a tour, the only job so far a four a.m. outdoor scene in the West Village, where a home owner had been shot by his lawn mower while cutting the backyard. The live.357 shell, previously asleep in the grass, had been sucked up into the rotary blades, ignited, then fired itself out the back end of the machine into his nuts.

By the time Billy and Stupak made it to the scene — shots fired was shots fired — Emergency Services was already combing the yard for any other stray ordnance and some joker had handcuffed the high-end mower to a lamppost.

“Who the fuck mows their lawn at four in the morning,” the patrol sergeant said.

“Myself, I’d be kind of interested in finding out how the bullet got to be in his backyard in the first place.” Billy yawned. “Any ideas?”

“We had a problem last month with some subhumanoids coming over the PATH from Jersey City, but nothing with guns.”

“There’s that indoor rifle club on MacDougal,” a uniform said. “That’s only a block over.”

“A, it’s indoor; B, the house rifle’s a.22,” the patrol sergeant said.

“Just the one so far?” Billy asked one of the ESUs scouring the grass.

“Found a quarter and a roach clip,” the cop said. “That’s about it.”

Billy sent Stupak over to Beth Israel on the off chance that the victim would be able to talk between now and eight a.m., then, after deciding not to canvass the neighbors at this hour, headed for his car with the intention of going back to the office and grabbing a nap.

But the e-mail that came in over his phone a few minutes later as he was pulling out of his space knocked any notion of sleep into the next week.

There was no message, only an attached JPEG, Billy opening it to see a flash-lit snap of Curtis Taft lying cuffed and gagged on a wooden floor, his red-dot eyes buzzing from above the fat strip of electrical tape that had been slapped across his mouth. The photo had been sent from Taft’s own phone, but Billy had to be an idiot not to guess who the shutterbug was.

After reversing back into his spot, he threw the car into park and immediately started to dial.

“What did you do.”

“Come and see,” Pavlicek said.

“Is he dead?”

“Come and see.”

“Where are you.”

“Fifteen twenty-two Vyse.”

In the heart of their old precinct, in a building Pavlicek owned.

“Fuck you. Don’t move.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Thirty minutes later, flying down Vyse Avenue the wrong way, Billy sideswiped the length of Pavlicek’s Lexus, continued until he was a few feet past the taillights, jumped out, and came racing back on foot.

Pavlicek was out of the car waiting for his charge, but all he did when Billy threw a sloppy haymaker was deflect the blow, then pull him into a bear hug. When it came to hand-to-hand, Billy never could fight for shit.

“What did you do,” he hissed, his arms pinned to his sides, Pavlicek’s bristle like sandpaper along his jaw.

“Calm down.”

“What did you do .”

Pavlicek thrust him backward, Billy tottering nearly the length of the SUV before regaining his balance and charging him again. This time Pavlicek whipped him chest-first into the Lexus’s side-view mirror, the pain like a punch.

“You want to keep going with this?”

“Are you trying to jam me up?” Billy barked, ripping the side mirror off its mount and throwing it at Pavlicek’s head. “You think that’ll do it?”