Detective Stewart Weston pushed through the door of the bar into the dim interior, and conversation quickly died off in spots
across the room, bringing an uneasy silence. One by one, faces turned to look at him, angry faces confronting an intruder
and ready to fight.
It was a dive in East Harlem called The Galley, one of those places that not even cops dared to walk into alone—and very seldom
did they try it in pairs. It stood next to a boarded-up grocery store where the local hookers turned five-dollar tricks on
lice-infested mattresses in the backroom, while their pimp—a thirteen-year-old black—stood guard at the door, tire iron in
hand. The Galley’s burnt-out neon sign in front showed T E GAL E, and was the only illumination on the dark street.
A decade ago all its patrons would have been black, but the neighborhood had undergone plenty of changes
since then, and now the racial mix was split between blacks and Puerto Ricans. And at the moment every one of them was looking
at Stewart Weston. He stood over six feet, and dressed as he was now, in denim pants and light windbreaker, you might think
be was skinny, until you got a look at the lean hard-muscled arms and chest. His sideburns were kind of long for a cop, and
his mustache a little shaggy. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, but Weston knew it wasn’t his cool green eyes that was turning
heads in The Galley tonight; it was his race. He was white, and the last white guy who had walked into this place had taken
one look at the hostile faces turned his way and had back-pedaled out of there, fast, mumbling something about forgetting
to lock his car.
There were about twenty men and a handful of women in the place tonight, at the high stools along the bar, and in the tables
and wall booths. There was not one of them who had not seen the inside of a jail cell in the past twelve months. They knew
how to give a guy a look that could make him feel the knife blade prick the tender skin under his chin, and that was what
they were doing now, fully expecting Weston to realize he was trespassing, and allowing him to turn around and hustle his
butt out of the place.
But Weston walked on down the bar, looking for an empty booth. He passed up the first one he saw because there were too many
people at the nearby tables to give any privacy. He headed for a corner booth next to an old-fashioned jukebox and a pinball
machine. He caught fragments of grumbled curses as he passed, meant to menace:
“… jive-ass honky…”
“… mother-fucking asshole…”
Weston slid into a booth seat, turning sideways a bit so that he could keep an eye on the rest of the room. A few
faces returned to their drinks, but the rest stayed pointed Weston’s way, staring with moody belligerence. Prison stares—he’d
seen them before—hard eyes angry, defiant, resentful, brim full of the frustration of being the wrong color in the white man’s
world, ready to explode in violence. One guy in particular, a big guy sitting alone at a table near the front window, was
working himself up to something violent: he was tossing back shots of whisky like a man trying to fuel some inner fire. One
huge hand rested on the table in a fist the size of a cantaloupe. A few people spotted him, and suddenly everybody was looking
at the two men, eyes moving with anticipation between the broad black man at the window and the skinny honky who didn’t have
sense enough to come in out of the rain. If anybody noticed that Weston didn’t look particularly scared, they must have figured
he was just too numb-ass stupid to be scared when he ought to be.
Weston knew that if there were going to be trouble then it was going to come from that dude. The guy’d tacitly become the
representative of the rest of the patrons here, he’d do the work for the whole lot of them, and nobody had any doubt that
he was fit for the job. And the big guy knew they were all behind him, seemed to gain strength from the encouraging looks
he got. He tossed back the last of his whisky, put the glass down with meticulous precision, and then—eyes still hard on Weston—slowly
got to his feet. He almost blotted out the dirty dark window behind him. No one else in the room stirred; it was suddenly
so quiet that Weston could have sworn no one was so much as drawing a breath. It was that menacing silence, like the quiet
before a storm.
Everybody was so entranced by the big guy and the mean smile on his face that nobody realized that someone else had entered
the bar until the door had swung shut
with a soft thud. They looked over to see another intruder standing there, this one a shade under six feet with the muscular
build of a light-heavyweight in fighting trim. When the big guy caught sight of the newcomer his mean smile faded a little
and worry started to replace the drunken anger in his dark eyes.
The newcomer stood for a moment in the tense silence, then tapped a cigarette loose from a pack of Winstons and put it between
his lips, casually, as if he’d just walked into his own house.
“Got a light, pal?” he asked the big guy. He spotted the guy’s lighter on the table and helped himself. “Thanks.”
His voice was light and friendly, and anybody sitting nearby would have sworn he was just a harmless jerk. But they could
not see his eyes as the big guy could and he knew that if he wanted trouble all he had to do was make a move and he’d get
plenty, more than he bargained for, more possibly than the whole roomful of people could bargain for. He began to wonder how
many others of these white guys would be coming in, one after another, like this, and his worry grew. Everybody started to
wonder that, and the more imaginative among them could picture cars full of whites waiting outside for trouble to start so
that they could come charging in and bust a few heads and maybe do a few of the women, just for kicks.
The big guy sat down, and people started to take up their breathing again. Detective Vince Santillo put the lighter back down
on the table, and walked across to Weston’s booth. He slid into the seat across the table from his partner. Neither man spoke.
There remained a stillness in the room that promised violence. They sat quietly, hands within easy reach of their guns, because
they were alone now, no one else to come in and stop the trouble,
and if their ploy had not worked then they had to be ready for the consequences.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Santillo said after a moment, and both men smiled, and something in their confident
easy smiles broke the tension in the room and people went back to minding their own business and ignoring the two half-wit
honkies in the corner booth.
Even the big guy forgot about Santillo and Weston when a tall hooker in sequined hot pants and halter left a bar stool and
came over and sat down beside him, nudging his muscled arm with her ample breasts and whispering hot promises into his ear.
“Well, our entrance routine got us in here without starting a riot,” Weston said with relief.
“Any sign of Graaf?” Santillo asked.
“Not yet. But he’ll show. His trial is tomorrow and if he expects to do a deal with us, now is his last chance.”
A surly waitress took their order for two beers and returned with two steins—mostly foam—which she plunked down between them.
“Two bucks,” she said through a defiant sneer. She took their money and swung her hips back behind the bar counter.
“Why the hell did Graaf choose this place?” asked Santillo after he’d put away some of the watered-down drink. “Why not over
by his place on a hundred and twenty-first?”
“He’s on the run. Or so he says.”
“From what?”
“That’s one of the things he’s going to tell us tonight.”
Santillo was typically well-dressed tonight, wearing a navy blue silk shirt beneath his sportscoat, and a blue paisley tie
with flecks of gold in it.
“Are those new shoes you’re wearing, Beau Brummell?” Weston asked his partner.
“Italian leather,” boasted Santillo, and then frowned at Weston’s sportshirt and windbreaker. “When are you going to learn
that a man’s clothes tell all about him? Your clothes have to give out a positive message, Wes. My clothes tell a woman—‘Touch
me, I feel good.’ And when she touches me”—he grinned—“boy, do I feel good.”
As he talked, Santillo looked over the patrons in the gold-veined mirror above the booths. He didn’t recognize Graaf, but
this didn’t surprise him. It would have been hard to recognize his own face in that mirror. Not only was the light bad, but
the mirror looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned since Coolidge had chosen not to run.
A short thin guy with a sprinkling of gray in his black kinky hair who’d been in the men’s room since before Weston’s arrival
came out of the men’s room, picked up a stein of beer at the bar, and carried it across to the pinball machine by Santillo’s
and Weston’s booth. He put the stein down on the glass top, put a bunch of quarters down next to it, and then started to put
a quarter in the slot when he seemed to notice Santillo and Weston. His eyes went wide enough to show the red-veined whites
all around, and he gaped at them as if at a couple of two-headed sideshow freaks. He stood frozen until a couple of guys behind
him laughed at his surprise. Then be turned back to the machine and snapped the first ball out of the chute, and the machine
came to life with tinkles and buzzes and flashing lights.
Weston looked around the room, then gave Santillo a shrug of disappointment, as though not seeing somebody he’d expected to
find here.
“I got something for you guys, something big.” The guy at the pinball machine was talking out of the side of his mouth and
while the machine was making a lot of racket, so both Santillo and Weston had to concentrate to hear what he was saying.
“So let’s have it, Graaf,” Weston said without turning his head.
“You got to be kidding, my friend,” Graaf said. “This kind of info I just don’t give away; this kind of info is worth plenty,
you better believe it.” He slapped the side of the pinball machine with an open palm, as though to emphasize the point. “Plenty.”
“We don’t know what it’s worth till we hear what it is.”
“You know now ’cause I’m telling you. It’s worth plenty, that’s what I say.” He was silent until the pinball started ringing
noisily off bumpers, and then he started up again: “I’m coming up for trial again tomorrow. Another burglary rap. This is
my fourth goddamn fall, and it looks like I’m going to take it on the goddamn chin again like always, and if I do they’re
going to throw away the fucking key. I ain’t letting that happen, you understand, no way am I going back into that shithole.”
“You want us to put in a word with the D.A.,” Santillo said.
“Fuck that ‘put in a word’ bullshit. You guys get me off, get that asshole D.A. to drop the charges.”
Santillo and Weston looked at each other. They were thinking the same thing. The most a guy in Graaf’s position could expect
them to do was ask the D.A. not to ask the court for a life sentence under the habitual criminal act. He’d pull a light sentence,
probably under three years, but he’d still have to do time. But a D.A. would never just drop the charges against him, not
when he had him dead to rights; not when a D.A.’s job hangs on his
conviction percentages. Unless, of course, Graaf had something really big.
“Okay, Graaf,” Weston said. “We’ll put it out for the D.A. If he picks it up, okay, if he doesn’t—”
“He will,” Graaf said. “But I want something else—protection.”
They looked at him. There was a four-day stubble on his unwashed face, his pants and shirt were wrinkled and dirty, and the
man smelled of sweat and fear. He’d been on the run, all right, and was scared, and it takes something to scare an icy-nerved
burglar like Graaf.
“Protection from who?”
“From a lunatic, a goddamn rubber-room case.” An involuntary shudder ran through him. His hand shook so badly that he had
trouble inserting the next quarter in the machine.
“Why are you bringing this to me and Wes, Graaf?” Santillo wanted to know. “Why not—”
“‘Cause this action is right up your alley, that’s why. If this thing comes off the way it’s planned, then it’s going to stand
this whole fuckin’ town on its ear. The mayor’ll be shining his pants for a week after this one. There’s big money in this
thing, believe me. I wouldn’t be surprised if you two clowns don’t get some kind of promotion or something, move your asses
out of that garbage detail the cops got you working now.”
Weston nodded toward the door and Santillo looked in its direction to see that five men had just entered the bar. A couple
of them drifted toward the booths and the other three wandered down the length of the bar. They fit in here; they didn’t cause
a stir. They looked as if they were average customers hunting for a place to sit down, but Santillo and Weston knew this was
just an act. There were two things wrong with their performance: first, since
they’d all come in together, why weren’t they looking for a place to sit together?; the second false note was the long overcoats
they were wearing. It was a warm, dry summer evening in New York City, not the kind of night a man would need a long coat
for. Not unless he wanted to conceal something under the coat, something long and narrow, maybe, like a rifle or shotgun.
Santillo’s first thought was that they were going to knock over this dump, and what bad luck it was for both groups of men
that they had chosen this night. But he realized immediately that that couldn’t be happening because these guys were moving
toward the back of the barroom and the cash till was up front. The only thing back there was Graaf, still playing the pinball
machine, and, in the booth next to the machine, Santillo and Weston. Then the five men started to fan out across the room,
making Graaf the focal point of a deadly little semicircle.
“Trouble, Graaf,” Weston was saying. “Don’t go back toward the Men’s. When I count three duck behind the pinball machine.
One—”
But in the mirror Graaf caught the dim reflection of the men fanning out, and the sight of the shadowy figures touched a nerve
and he swung around in panic and took off in a run for the door at the back.
It wasn’t far from the corner booth to that door, but the five men didn’t need long to pull their coats open and swing up
the guns hanging on the inside. It was a shotgun blast that got him first, in the side, and it lifted him off his running
feet and slammed him hard into the booth behind Santillo. Graaf slid across the table between a fat man and a fat woman, both
of whom tried frantically to scramble under the table. There wouldn’t have been enough room for one of them under that table,
let alone
two, but even if there had been there was no protection under it from buckshot. Three rifle slugs slammed into the wall next
to Graaf’s right arm, and a fourth tugged at his sleeve like a buzzing insect before he managed to swing his feet around and
get a footing on the table. He started running again, this time right on top of the table, stepping on the fat lady’s neck
and vaulting over the seat, back into the next booth, where one guy had already managed to flatten himself on the floor under
the table.
There wasn’t a drop of blood on Graaf and he was moving pretty agilely for a guy who’d just taken a load of twelve-gauge shot
in the side. It must have occurred to the guy with the shotgun that Graaf was wearing something under his sportscoat that
was more substantial than Fruit of the Loom. He pulled the barrel down a bit, aiming for Graaf’s legs.
While this was happening Santillo and Weston were both launching themselves out of the booth, Santillo making a dive under
the pinball machine, and his partner scrambling around into the wall-niche behind the machine, digging out their guns as they
hit the floor and spinning away from a fusillade from an M-16. Santillo knew he’d be a sitting duck under the pinball machine,
so he pushed off one wall, rolling toward a booth as heavy slugs from the M-16 dug into the grimy tile floor behind him. He
came up on one knee just as he was pulling his Smith & Wesson snubnose .38 free of its shoulder holster. Even though he was
ready to fire, he thought he was going to be dead before he got a chance because the second shotgun was already on him and
the face of the guy holding it was starting to get tense from the anticipated recoil.
But Weston was in a good position in the wall-niche behind the pinball machine and the five killers had decided to go after
the easier target first, thus making the mistake
that gave Weston that extra split-second in which to act, that hair-breadth time which meant the difference between life and
death. So when the second shotgun was shifting toward his partner, Weston was already sending a .38 slug toward the guy. The
slug caught him on the left shoulder, knocked him back like a solid body punch, and the shotgun went off pointed high, sending
buckshot into the ceiling and raining down plaster dust and fragments of the ceiling lights. Weston’s second slug caught the
g. . .
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