Cold War

Chapter 9

Schaefer turned and looked out through the storefront, trying to appear casual or as casual as he ever did, at any rate.

He was standing in a small shop in the Village, a place called Collectors World that sold comic books, baseball cards, and other such things, all of it overpriced kid stuff, in Schaefer’s opinion. He was pretending to talk to the shop’s manager, a balding guy named Jon Cohen, but he was actually looking out the front window at the man in the driver’s seat of a brown van that had just parked illegally at the opposite sidewalk.

The van was late; Schaefer had been in here killing time for a good three minutes, waiting for it.

”Testing, one two three, testing, one two three,” he said in a conversational tone. “This wire better be working, Rawlings, because I’m going in, in about two minutes, before these clowns talk me into buying any funny books.”

The driver held up a hand, displaying thumb and forefinger in a circle-the “okay” sign. The mike was live.

”Okay, boys,” Schaefer said as he strode toward the door, pushing past a clerk who’d also given his name as John, “we’re on. Remember, nobody moves in until Baby coughs up the dope. I want her for dealing, not just for some candy-ass zoning violation.”

He marched out onto the sidewalk and across the street, headed for a kitchenware shop-a shop that, according to the dealers in the vicinity and NYPD’s own undercover operatives, happened to be the local headquarters for wholesale cocaine. A cold winter wind ripped down the street, flapping his leather coat, but Schaefer ignored it.

In the back of the brown van one of the three cops manning the monitoring equipment muttered, “Thank God Schaefer’s here to tell us our jobs, hey? For a second there I was almost feeling competent.”

His companions grinned nervously.

”Shut up,” Rawlings said from the driver’s seat. “You guys be ready.”

A bell jingled as Schaefer stepped into the kitchenware shop. He looked around at the cluttered shelves and empty aisles; the only other person in the place was the woman behind the counter, who seemed out of place amid saucepans and spatulas. She wore fishnet stockings, an elaborately teased blond wig, and makeup as thick as Tammy Faye Bakker’s, and looked as much at home among kitchenware as a coyote among kittens.

Schaefer knew her as Baby. Everyone in this neighborhood knew her as Baby.

”Glad you could make it, big man,” she said. “Could I interest you in some Fiesta ware?”

Schaefer grinned. “No way,” he replied, doing his best impression of a happy-go-lucky kid. “Coke sticks to the Teflon when you cook it down.”

The woman smiled back. “No problem. I’ll toss in a couple of cans of Pam.”

In the truck one of the cops muttered, “Asshole. Coke doesn’t stick to Teflon.”

”C’mon, Schaef,” Rawlings said, knowing Schaefer couldn’t hear him. “Don’t swap dumb jokes with the broad, just make the damn buy!”

In the back, one of the techs glanced up from the equipment, then nudged his neighbor and pointed out the back window. “Oh, great,” he said. “We’ve got company.”

A man in a ragged trench coat was approaching the van unsteadily, standing on tiptoe as if trying to peer in through the windows in the rear doors. The windows were covered with one-way foil, so he wouldn’t see anything, but still, no one involved with the operation wanted anything to draw any attention to the van.

”Some homeless geek looking for a smash and grab,” the cop nearest the door said. “Want me to get out there and shoo him away?”

Rawlings shook his head. “Not when we’re in Baby’s line of sight,” he said. “Just keep an eye on him.”

”Got it,” the man by the rear door said. He turned to look out the back window again just in time to see the derelict pull a. 357 from under his trench coat.

”Oh, my God…” the cop said, just before the bum pulled the trigger and the plastic window shattered. Half a second later, before anyone could react, a second shot took the top off the cop’s head.

The third shot punched through another cop’s throat; the fourth missed, and Rawlings actually got off a shot of his own before a slug went through his right eye.

Rawlings’s shot missed the “derelict” completely and ricocheted off the second story of an office building half a block away.

The last cop, a technician who’d never fired his gun outside the department shooting range before, was still fumbling with the flap on his holster when the “derelict’s” sixth bullet took him down.

”What the hell?” Schaefer said, whirling at the sound of gunfire.

Something had gone wrong; he knew that much instantly. He didn’t know yet what had gone wrong, but it had to be bad. He’d heard six shots, one after another, from a high-caliber handgun not anything his backup was carrying. For a moment he completely forgot about the woman he’d been trying to bust.

That was a mistake.

”You should have gone for the pans, sweetheart,” Baby said, pulling a. 45 from under the counter. As she did, a big man with a shaved head, tattoos, and a pump-action shotgun stepped out of the back room. The shotgun was aimed directly at Schaefer’s head.

”Don’t you think so, Detective Schaefer?” Baby said. “If you’d just come in for a nice set of aluminum ware we might’ve avoided a whole shit load of trouble.”

Schaefer stared at Baby for a moment, considering the automatic in her hand, then turned and looked over the punk with the shotgun.

The gun was held nice and steady, not wavering at all, and Schaefer could see that finger crooked on the trigger, ready to pull. Baby’s hand was steady, too.

Reluctantly Schaefer raised his hands. He might have tried jumping one opponent, but the combination of the two was too much.

He wanted to know what the hell had just happened outside, where his backup was, whether he still had any backup, but it didn’t look as if anyone was going to answer his questions just now. He had a sneaking suspicion that if he headed for the door, he’d catch a bullet in the back.

Baby strolled around the counter, showing off those fishnets and her blood-red spike heels. She stepped up to Schaefer and shoved the. 45 under his chin. “When are you cops going to learn?” she said. “Nothing goes down around here that Baby doesn’t know about.” She reached out and ran the fingers of her left hand under the leather coat and across Schaefer’s shirt while her right held the gun in place. The gesture was a mockery of eroticism; Schaefer knew she wasn’t fondling him. She was looking for something.

She found it. Her fingertips brushed the wire under Schaefer’s shirt, and she ripped the shirt open, exposing the tiny microphone.

”Cute little thing,” she said.

”You like it?” Schaefer said. “Keep going-you might find a CD player strapped to-”

”Shut up!” she said, slapping the. 45 across his face. It stung, but Schaefer didn’t feel anything broken or bleeding-Baby had just been making a point. If she wanted to, he didn’t doubt she could do far worse, so he knew she hadn’t been trying to hurt him.

Not yet, anyway.

Just then, before Schaefer could reply or Baby could comment further, the ripping sound of nearby full-auto gunfire interrupted the conversation.

The three in the shop froze.

”What the fuck…” the man with the shotgun said-the first words Schaefer had heard him speak. He had a squeaky tenor that didn’t match his broad shoulders. He kept the shotgun trained on Schaefer, glancing uneasily back and forth, as he headed for the shop’s display window.

He didn’t reach it; instead, the window reached him, bursting in a shower of shattered glass as the old man in the trench coat came flying through it amid another burst of machine-gun fire.

”Son of a bitch!” Baby said. She turned and ran for the back door, the. 45 still in her hand.

Schaefer didn’t worry about that; he’d stationed a man out back, just in case, and if that cop couldn’t handle Baby, then the department was in worse shape than Schaefer thought.

The shotgunner, unaware of his boss’s sudden exit, picked himself up from the welter of broken glass and pumped two rounds into the street at random.

”Fuck!” he screamed. “Baby, it’s fucked somehow! They got Arturo!”

”What do you know, Einstein,” Schaefer said. “So they did!” He had no weapon, since he’d thought they might check him out before closing the buy, and the other man still had the shotgun, but Schaefer didn’t hesitate before launching himself in a flying tackle.

The two men landed in a clatter of kitchenware; the shotgun put another round through the shop ceiling before flying from its owner’s hands.

The man turned over in Schaefer’s grip, though, and locked his hands around the detective’s throat.

”Die, motherfucker!” he said. He squeezed.

Those shoulders weren’t just for looks, Schaefer realized. “Potty-mouth,” he grunted, forcing the words out in a harsh whisper. “And speaking of pots…” He picked up a heavy-duty frying pan from the store’s scattered stock and slammed it down on his opponent’s head.

The grip on his neck suddenly loosened.

”Take a look,” Schaefer said as he pulled free. He held up the pan. “Drugs,” he said. Then he slammed it down on the other man’s head again, just to be sure. “That’s drugs on your brain. Your brain on drugs. Whatever.”

He climbed to his feet, tossed the pan aside, then asked his unconscious foe, “Any questions?”

”Yeah, I got a question,” Baby said from the back-room doorway. “You gonna run, or you gonna die?”

She was holding an M-16, Schaefer realized. What’s more, she was pointing it directly at him. She hadn’t been fleeing at all when she’d left; she’d just been going back for more firepower.

He dove for cover behind a rack of flour and sugar canisters as she opened fire, and then he began crawling, looking for something he could use as shelter.

Baby continued to spray bullets into the merchandise for another few seconds, until the click of an empty chamber told her she’d used up her ammunition.

”Damn it!” she shouted as she realized she had missed him. She yanked the spent clip and fumbled with a new one. “Where are you, big boy? Come out, come out wherever you are!”

This would have been Schaefer’s chance, while Baby was reloading, if he’d been somewhere he could have gotten at her. He wasn’t. He didn’t have a gun, and Baby was on the other side of two aisles of kitchen gadgets.

By the time the fresh clip was in place he had already planned his course; he slithered behind shelves full of pot holders and place mats, out of her sight, working his way behind the counter.

”Yoo hoo,” Baby called. “Come on out and play, Detective Schaefer! I know you’re in there.”

Schaefer knew that as the echoes of gunfire and falling crockery faded and Baby’s hearing recovered, she’d be able to track him by sound-there was no way he could move silently in this place, not with all the crap that had fallen off the shelves. That meant he had to move fast. He looked for a weapon.

There wasn’t any. Plenty of merchants kept a gun behind the counter, the Sullivan Act notwithstanding, but all Schaefer saw under the register here were boxes of creditcard slips and the empty shelf where the. 45 had been.

An idea struck him. There weren’t any weapons under the counter

…

He kicked the wall and said, “Damn!” Then he swung himself quickly into a squatting position, braced himself, and set the heels of his hands under the edge of the counter.

”I heard that, Schaefer!” Baby called. “I know where you are-now, come on out! Don’t make me come in after you!”

Schaefer held his breath.

”All right, you son of a bitch, be like that!” she barked. “You’re just making it hard on us both. Christ, a woman’s work is never done.” She strode over to the counter and started to lean over, finger tightening on the trigger…

And Schaefer straightened up from his squat, hard and fast, putting all the strength of his massive thighs into shoving the counter up into Baby’s face and sending it toppling over onto her.

A moment later he stood over her, kicked the M-16 aside, then reached down and yanked the. 45 from her belt. He pulled the clip, then tossed that aside as well.

He glanced around quickly. The interior of the shop was a shambles; spent cartridge casings, broken glass, and battered merchandise were scattered everywhere. Cold winter air was pouring in from the street. The dead man called Arturo was sprawled just inside the remains of the main display window; the unconscious punk Schaefer had crowned with the frying pan lay nearby.

And a dazed but still conscious Baby lay right in front of, him, glaring up at him.

”You’re under arrest,” he said. “You have the right to remain silent…”

The crunch of glass alerted him; Schaefer turned to see Smithers and three other men in black suits and overcoats standing in the shattered window.

Two of them held assault rifles of a design Schaefer didn’t recognize, and Schaefer suddenly realized who’d shot out the front window- and Arturo.

”Come on, Schaefer,” Smithers said. “You’re coming with us.”

”The hell I am,” Schaefer replied.

”We’ve got our orders,” Smithers said. “And all the authorization we need. I tried asking nicely; now I’m telling you. You’re coming with us.”

”And I’m telling you I’m not,” Schaefer replied. “I’m taking Baby and her little playmate in, and I’m calling the meat wagon for Arturo there, and then in a day or so, when the paperwork’s all squared away, I’m going to sweat some information out of Baby.”

Smithers signaled to the man who didn’t have a rifle; that man drew a 9mm handgun from a shoulder holster, stepped over Arturo’s corpse, then neatly, unhesitatingly, put a bullet through Baby’s head.

She hadn’t had time to realize what was coming; the expression on what was left of her face was mere puzzlement, not fear.

”Christ!” Schaefer exclaimed, staring down at the body in shock.

”Him, too,” Smithers said with a nod, and the shotgunner’s brains were added to the mess on the carpet.

”Smithers, you bastard!” Schaefer shouted.

”Just one less drug-dealing bitch to worry about,” Smithers said. “We’ve got more important things to discuss.”

”Like your funeral,” Schaefer said. “You asshole, we’ve been tracking Baby for months! She could have delivered names, dates, suppliers…”

”Oh, for…” Smithers began. Then he caught himself. “You still don’t understand, do you;

Schaefer?” he said. “We have a problem, a big problem, much bigger than any drug network. We need your help, and you’re going to give it to us, no matter what.”

”I understand well enough,” Schaefer said coldly. “I understand that I liked Baby a whole lot more than I like you, Smithers.”

”We’re up against something a lot more important than drug dealers, Schaefer,” Smithers said. “Something a lot worse.” He nodded to his men. “Take him.”

”You’re worse than the dealers!” Schaefer shouted as the men with machine guns stepped up on either side and trained their weapons on Schaefer’s head. Schaefer froze.

The other man holstered his 9mm, buttoned his jacket, then stepped forward, toward Schaefer, reaching in a pocket of his overcoat as he did.

”You’re worse than all of them,” Schaefer said as the agent pulled out a black case and snapped it open, revealing a loaded hypodermic needle. “At least the people I bust know they’ve done something wrong.”

The man in the black coat slid the needle into Schaefer’s arm and pushed down on the plunger.

”You, Smithers, and the rest of you,” Schaefer said, “you just don’t give a shit about right or wrong…”

The sedative, or whatever it was, hit fast; Schaefer stayed on his feet for several more seconds before keeling over, but was unable to get out any more words or construct a coherent thought.

Even so, he thought he heard Smithers saying, “You’re right, Schaefer. We don’t care about right or wrong, or any kind of philosophy. What we care about is the country.”

He wasn’t sure, though; he decided that he might have imagined it.

As he began to fall to the floor he was just conscious enough to notice that the callous bastards weren’t even going to catch him.