The Sniper's Wife Part 7

"He is pretty certifiable sometimes," Sammie said.

But Joe shook his head. "My back pocket psychology is that we're all giving him the support today he craved growing up, but since he's literally been to the wars and back, he doesn't know how to accept it. He needs it, wants it, and hangs around to receive it, but he'll flip you the finger when you pony it up because he sees all dependence as a sign of weakness."

Sammie pondered that for a while, a frown growing across her face. "Sounds like I got stuck with another Froot Loop." She smacked her forehead with the heel of her hand in mock penitence. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."

Gunther laughed, but his eyes were serious. "You really believe that?"

"What's not to believe?" she asked him. "You're describing a guy who needs help but who kicks whoever's helping him in the teeth so he can maintain his selfimage. That sound like a pick of the litter to you?"

"It wouldn't be if it weren't a work in progress. He is improving."

She wanted to argue the point, but she couldn't. It was true. w.i.l.l.y had learned to control his alcoholism through sheer willpower. His more flagrantly self-destructive behavior was largely a thing of the past. When they were alone together, he'd exhibited tenderness and warmth she'd never thought him capable of in the old days. And, as naive as it sounded even to her, there was the art-the pencil sketches he did, often while on stakeout, quickly and efficiently with that powerful, dexterous right hand, turning out images of subtle beauty.

Still, it p.i.s.sed her off. "Why can't I fall for a normal guy?"

Joe Gunther gazed at her affectionately. "Because you're not a normal woman."

"Perfect. I really wanted to hear that. What was Mary like?" she asked after a pause.

He thought a moment before answering, "There's a danger right now of just seeing her as a junkie loser. But when I met her, she was naive and shy and damaged and a real sweetheart. And she worshiped w.i.l.l.y, probably for all the wrong reasons. The way that marriage ended burned both of them terribly-her because of the betrayal she'd suffered, and him because it was the latest and biggest example of his failure as a human being. I don't know what Mary was up to in New York, but it was more than just being a victim. 'Cause she was smart, too, and, after w.i.l.l.y, good and angry. Whatever she was planning by going down there, you can bet that getting even was part of it."

Sammie shook her head. "I just hope he's not the target, even from the grave."

At around the same moment, back in New York's Lower East Side, w.i.l.l.y Kunkle stood quietly in the shadows of an empty warehouse, hidden behind a concrete b.u.t.tress, watching a small piece of urban theater play out at the end of the block. There, along a darker stretch of East Broadway, a young man paced the sidewalk, a quirky combination of self-confidence and nervousness. Dressed in the quasi-uniform of baggy pants, sneakers, watch cap, and loose logo jacket, he bounced back and forth like an eager dog prowling a dock, awaiting the return of its owner's boat. But the boats, in this case pa.s.sing cars, went back and forth in a blur, seemingly ignoring him.

Until one slowed, veered slightly to get out of traffic, and then stopped. The young man's body language instantly changed. Now diffident, almost surly, he reluctantly approached the car as if it had a bad odor, and condescended to bend ever so slightly at the waist to address the driver through the pa.s.senger-side window. There was a short conversation, after which the young man-a drug dealer's so-called steerer-straightened dismissively and gestured to the driver to pull over to the entrance of an alleyway directly across from w.i.l.l.y's observation post. His role fulfilled, the steerer returned to keeping a lookout for both customers and cops.

w.i.l.l.y continued watching as a small boy suddenly appeared on a bike, despite the late hour and poor visibility, and rode up and down the street without apparent purpose-the mobile perimeter sentry, activated by the driver emerging from his car. This man, white, conservatively dressed, clearly on edge, looked up and down the sidewalk before crossing to the alleyway and pausing at its opening. w.i.l.l.y extracted a small, inexpensive telescope he kept in his coat pocket for such occasions, and focused on the dimly lit scene.

Barely visible, the outline of a man appeared from the gloom beyond the buyer. The two conferred briefly, the dealer taking something from the buyer, after which he reached above his head to one of the upper support brackets of the roll-down metal curtain protecting a shop window next to him, and retrieved a small package-all in a gesture as smooth and fast as a hummingbird sipping from a flower.

The buyer took the drugs, quickly broke away, returned to his car, and joined his brethren in the flow of traffic. The whole thing took about two minutes.

As a final sign of returning normalcy, the underage bicyclist rolled to a stop opposite his perch barely within sight of the steerer, and waited for the next heads up.

w.i.l.l.y smiled and pocketed the telescope, having found what he was after. He separated himself from his hiding spot, walked down the side street, crossed East Broadway, and approached the steerer at an angle that put the young man between him and the opening to the alleyway.

Like any midrange occupant of the urban food chain, the steerer noticed w.i.l.l.y early and warily, stopped his restless weaving, and turned to face the threat, while balancing on the b.a.l.l.s of his sneakered feet, ready for flight. One hand drifted toward the right-hand pocket of his jacket.

w.i.l.l.y shook his head from a distance. "Don't do that."

The steerer hesitated. Close up, he couldn't have been older than sixteen, all the hardness he could muster twitching around his mouth and nostrils, but only fleeting in his eyes. He could clearly see that the strange-looking, asymmetrical man coming toward him was no one to bluff.

"You the man?" he asked.

w.i.l.l.y smiled slightly. "You want to find out?"

"I didn't do nuthin'."

"Then we're just having a conversation." w.i.l.l.y extracted a photograph from his pocket and showed it to the steerer. "Tell me about this."

It was the evidence picture of the package of drugs found next to Mary's body, labeled with the caricature of the red devil.

"I don't know about that s.h.i.t."

"Maybe your main man does in the alleyway."

The steerer's eyes widened slightly. "What're you talkin' about?"

"You pull 'em in, you and the kid on the bike keep an eye out, and the third guy does the deal. Why're we talkin' about this? Eyeball the picture and tell me about the red devil. Then I'm gone and you're back in business."

The steerer pressed his lips together in thought. "That's it?"

w.i.l.l.y pretended to be losing patience. "I'm being polite here, showing you respect. I coulda gone straight to your man in the alley, shined a light in his face, grabbed his goods from above the security gate, and showed him you can't do your job, but I didn't do that, did I? You wanna screw that up?"

The youngster showed his age by clenching his fists and stamping one foot. "s.h.i.t, man. You f.u.c.kin' with me?"

w.i.l.l.y held out the picture again. "Tell me about the red devil. That's it."

The steerer finally made up his mind with a quick glance over his shoulder. "We don't do that s.h.i.t."

"We talkin' in circles here?" w.i.l.l.y asked menacingly.

"No, man. I mean it ain't ours. That comes from uptown. Diablo."

"That's what they call it? Where uptown?"

"A hundred and fifty-fifth. The Old Polo Grounds." That caught w.i.l.l.y by surprise. The Polo Grounds were only twenty blocks south of where he'd met Bob earlier that day. The old neighborhood.

"Who sells it?"

The young man took a step backward, shaking his head vigorously. "No way, man. You asked what I know. That's it. I ain't tellin' you more."

w.i.l.l.y didn't care. If the kid had given him a name, it might well have been wrong or a street alias of little value. The key was to know where Diablo called home. From there, w.i.l.l.y could track it back to its maker.

And he knew just the man to consult.

He slipped the photograph back into his pocket. "You've been a scholar and a gentleman. I will go to the oracle."

The kid stared at him suspiciously. "What is that?"

w.i.l.l.y paused and smiled as he turned away. "Good question. I hope it's the other shoe dropping."

Chapter 9.

Nathan Lee had lived in Washington Heights all his life, and had done almost everything within reach to make a living. He wasn't a major player, just one of thousands on the hustle, a discreet man with a professionally short memory, who never forgot anything or anyone, knew how and where to get things done, and whose comfort level with things legal and illegal had finally reached an even keel. Just as he would never hold a nine-to-five job, he would also never touch anything that might cost him more than a night's detention.

That hadn't always been true, and his coming to terms with moderation owed a lot to w.i.l.l.y Kunkle.

All those years ago, before w.i.l.l.y left for Vietnam and while still a rookie on the NYPD, he stopped Nate Lee on a drug possession charge. The circ.u.mstances weren't egregious. It was a routine piece of business, but the laws were such, and Nate's record long enough, that had w.i.l.l.y actually arrested him, Nate, no spring chicken even back then, would have spent the rest of his life in prison.

That hadn't happened. For reasons neither man was likely to be able to explain, an odd connection was made that night between the troubled patrol officer who, unbeknownst to himself, was already in freefall, and the penny-ante street hustler one step away from a life sentence. Like one failing relay racer tossing the baton to the next man up, w.i.l.l.y spontaneously granted Nate absolution, with no strings attached. He merely poured the drugs into a storm drain, told Nate to nurture the gift he'd just been granted, and walked away.

The two never met again.

To w.i.l.l.y, the experience was like a pa.s.sing inspiration, unsought at the time, inexplicable later, and finally all but forgotten. To Nate, however, it had more significance. He pondered the chances of being as lucky as he'd been with w.i.l.l.y, and found them slim enough to warrant his paying attention. Not that he then joined the church or found redemption. But he started thinking before he acted, considering his own survival, and never again put himself in such peril. After a couple of years practicing this new habit, he then thought a show of thanks might be in order, so he wrote a letter to Patrol Officer Kunkle, care of the NYPD, reminding him of that night without going into detail, expressing his grat.i.tude, and hoping that everything in Kunkle's life was equally on the upswing.

He never heard back, never expected he would, but was content to have made the gesture.

Kunkle actually got that letter, a long time after it was sent. The police department forwarded it to Vietnam, where w.i.l.l.y opened it in an alcoholic stupor one night, and injected into its mundane wording an intangible significance. Some act of grace that he'd practiced without thought a seeming lifetime ago had been brought back to his attention in the middle of a h.e.l.l on earth like some elusive sign. w.i.l.l.y kept the letter almost as a talisman, rereading it occasionally until it finally became lost in the wake of his turbulent travels.

When the young steerer mentioned Washington Heights, however, forcing w.i.l.l.y to think back not just to his childhood, but to when he'd walked the beat in exactly that neighborhood, the memory of Nate's letter came back to mind with abrupt and total clarity. That's why he'd referred to the second shoe dropping.

In fact, such a historic connection was by now becoming the norm. Since crossing the Harlem River, he'd been traveling backward in time like a man walking into freezing cold water. Mary's death, the fact that he'd been the one called to identify her, its happening in New York, seeing Bob and Andy, and finally his sudden recall of Nathan Lee's innocuous letter in relation to Washington Heights, were all part of a progressive pattern.

As w.i.l.l.y rode the subway north into Harlem late that night, he couldn't help but wonder whether-even hope that-the journey he was on might clarify more than just the questions surrounding Mary's death.

Because he was feeling the need for a whole lot of answers.

Nathan Lee swung out the door and stepped lightly down the stairs of the apartment building fronting Amsterdam Avenue, a wad of cash tight in his back pocket. He'd known a man who needed a job done, and knew another man who could do it. That was largely the nature of Nate's existence nowadays, hovering in the middle of as much action as possible, like a party balloon being swatted from one table to another-he made it his business to pa.s.s between disparate people, and made sure that with each swat, he got a small percentage.

He looked up and down the sidewalk with a smile. It was long after midnight, which for him was mid-workday, and he was in the mood to see if he couldn't hit two scores in one night.

He turned south toward 155th Street and headed for his office, an all-night, pocket-sized general store selling everything from cigarettes to playing cards to soda and candy bars, and whose owner, Riley c.o.x, he'd known since Riley was a kid.

Nate had been a street hustler even back then. Part of his success now, in fact, lay in how old he was. Whitehaired, bandy-legged, and skinny as a pole, he was the epitome of the elderly black caricature, watching life pa.s.sing by on the stoop of a brownstone. Except that he had too much energy for that. The combination of his appearance and his natural enthusiasm made him hard to resist and, more importantly, harder to target as a fall guy when things went awry. The tough people he often dealt with either protected him or dismissed him, but they rarely held him to blame. It was a blessing he nurtured and never took for granted.

He entered 155th and walked west, his feet moving to a tune that kept echoing in his head, something he'd heard on the radio last week. He saw Riley's sign in the distance, a yellow beacon offering friendship, comfort, and maybe a hot lead.

Now snapping his fingers to the tune, he rounded the newspaper rack outside and pulled open the gla.s.s door into a wall of warm, aromatic air, as embracing to him as a home kitchen on a winter day, even though the odors were of dust, cigarette smoke, and stale humanity.

Nate caught Riley's eye as he stepped inside and felt his opening one-liner die on his lips. There was nothing amiss about the tiny store. It was as busy as always, and even Riley looked almost normal. But you didn't know someone for decades without sensing that single element's being out of place. Nate stopped in his tracks, the door still open in his hand, and readied himself for a fast retreat.

"Hey, Riley. How's it keepin'?"

In response, Riley shifted his gaze to the nearest of the two aisles inside the store, the one that was just out of Nate's line of sight. Nate silently leaned to his left in order to get a better view, his hand still on the doork.n.o.b. Slowly, the aisle came into view, revealing a thin, hatchet-faced man with intense dark eyes and a shriveled left arm.

Nate, whose business was faces, didn't hesitate, even after all the years. He broke into a wide smile and released the door. Riley visibly relaxed. "Why, if it ain't Officer Kunkle."

"Long time, Nate," w.i.l.l.y answered.

Nate approached him with an appraising eye. "Not to be rude, but you're lookin' a little rough, if that's all right to say."

w.i.l.l.y let out a small snort. "Can't argue with the truth."

"What happened to you?"

"Took a ride along the bottom a few years back."

Nate stuck out his hand and w.i.l.l.y shook it, enjoying the warm, smooth feel of it.

"And the arm?"

"Bullet wound," w.i.l.l.y answered shortly.

Nate nodded sympathetically. "Oh, my lord. So, you're not with the police anymore."

w.i.l.l.y smiled thinly and gave an indirect answer. "You don't get that lucky. They can't fire you if you can still do the job."

Nate tried to hide his skepticism. "h.e.l.l, given some of your brothers, they're not even that picky. Why're you back, after all this time?"

They were looking at one another straight in the eyes, as if reading the real dialogue between them.

"Favor for a favor?" w.i.l.l.y suggested.

Nate chuckled. "I didn't forget. That's why I'm still here to talk to you. What're you after?"

Someone squeezed by them to pay at Riley's counter.

"You up for a walk around the block?" w.i.l.l.y asked.

Nate glanced over his shoulder at Riley and raised his eyebrows.

"It'll keep," Riley answered enigmatically.

That put Nate back in his good mood. He was intrigued by Kunkle's reappearance, but he doubted it would fatten his wallet. Riley's comment, however, implied the night might still be young, as he'd been hoping.

Nate patted w.i.l.l.y's right elbow. "Follow me. I got just the place."

He led the way down the block and up a side street. Before a dilapidated brownstone with the front door connected to the sidewalk by a set of broad steps, Nate ducked to the right and climbed down a narrow metal staircase to what had once been the service entrance. It was so dark at the bottom of this trench that w.i.l.l.y could barely see the back of the man before him.

Nate gave the door a coded knock and waited. A small, weak light went on overhead for no more than two seconds, before the door swung back just wide enough to let them both into a small, quiet antechamber that reminded w.i.l.l.y of an air lock. A huge, barrel-chested man with no hair and a goatee gave Nate a broad smile and a pat on the shoulder. "How're tricks, Nate? Keepin' busy?"

"You know it, Jesse. How's your sister?"

"Much better. I'll tell her you asked."

The man's voice was friendly and relaxed, but his eyes hadn't left w.i.l.l.y's face since the moment he'd come into view.

Nate laid a protective hand on w.i.l.l.y's shoulder. "This is w.i.l.l.y, Jesse. An old friend who did me a big favor a long time back."

"And the man," Jesse said simply, his smile only half in place.