Small Vices

"It's me," I said to Rugar. "Lazarus… come back to tell you all."

Chapter 48

I KNEW SOMEONE would call the cops, and the first one showed up about forty-five seconds after I hit Rugar. It was a young black guy walking toward me very fast from the Sixth Avenue end of the building. There was a Rock Center security guy with him, pointing toward me. The young cop had his gun drawn and pointing at the floor, held in against his right thigh as he walked. His finger was outside the trigger guard.

When he got close enough he said, "Put the gun down."

I said, "I'm a private detective. This guy's wanted for attempted murder in Boston."

"Maybe he is," the cop said. "But I want that gun down on the ground, now."

"Guy's too dangerous," I said. "He's got a gun, left side."

"I'll take care of the gun," the young cop said. "You lay yours down and step away."

"Call Manhattan Homicide," I said. "Detective Eugene Corsetti. My name's Spenser."

"First put down the piece," the cop said.

He was in a shooter's stance now, gun held in both hands, steady on my back.

"Don't drag this out," I said. "You aren't going to shoot until you know the deal. Call Corsetti."

Rugar started to speak and I jammed the gun barrel harder up under his jaw hinge. His head was bleeding. Blood smeared the marble wall behind him.

"Not a sound," I said.

Two more cops came hot-footing it in from the Fifth Avenue end and I could hear sirens in the distance.The black cop was silent for a moment. Then as the other two cops arrived he spoke to them.

"Got a hostage deal here. Guy with the gun wants to talk to Corsetti at Manhattan Homicide. Call it in."

The three cops stayed in a circle around me, pointing their guns at me while one of them talked into the radio mike clipped to his lapel. As he talked some of the sirens stopped outside while others called in the distance. Cops, mostly uniformed, came pouring into the building wearing bullet-proof vests. The circle of pointing weapons enlarged. I kept a firm hold on Rugar's hair and a continuing pressure on his underjaw with the barrel of my gun. It was probably uncomfortable for him. I didn't care. And he didn't flinch. And that's how we stayed while more cops arrived and the crowd milled apprehensively trying to see, trying to stay safe in case there was shooting. Some of the cops started working at the crowd.

The crowd got bigger and harder to control. Here and there people yelled, "Shoot him." I didn't know if they were talking to me or the cops. There were more sirens. More cops. More flack jackets. Fewer uniforms. More plainclothes. More crowd. The media arrived. Cameras. Tape recorders. Note pads. Somebody popped a flash bulb and a uniformed cop slapped the camera down and jawed at the camera man. A woman with a television camera was on the shoulders of a big sound guy trying to get a clear shot of the scene. The young black cop had relaxed into his shooter's stance, his gun still steady, his eyes still steady on Rugar and on me. There were five other cops ringing us, in the same stance. A rangy white-haired police captain with a bright red Irish face arrived. He told me to stay calm, and we'd all wait for Corsetti. Then he turned his attention to making sure there was no way for us to run. He ordered some guy in civvies to check the lines of fire so that if the cops had to shoot they wouldn't hit a civilian. He instructed other subordinates to get the crowd the hell out of the way. The subordinates weren't having much luck. The crowd got bigger. There was a lot of horn beeping outside and more sirens and then through the mob walking the way cops walk, a little arrogant, a little careful, a lot of I'm-on top-of-this, came Detective Second Grade Eugene Corsetti. I had met him ten or eleven years ago when I was looking for a kid named April Kyle, and since then when I had time on my hands in New York, I'd go have a beer with him. Corsetti was a short guy, maybe five feet seven or eight, with a body like a bowling ball and an eighteen-inch neck. He had on a dark blue Yankees warm-up jacket and a white dress shirt open at the neck. As far as I knew, all his shirts were worn, of necessity, open at the neck. His natural cop swagger was enhanced by his build so that he almost rolled from side to side as he pushed through the crowd and slid with surprising delicacy through the perimeter of shooting-stance cops. He put his own hand gun into Rugar's ribs and gri

"Film at eleven, buddy."

"Gun on his belt," I said. "Left side."

Corsetti nodded. I stepped away and handed my gun to the young black cop. Corsetti flipped Rugar's coat open and took out a 9mm Berretta and dropped it in his coat pocket. With his eyes on Rugar he spoke over his shoulder.

"This guy's legit, captain."

He reached with his left hand to the small of his back and got a pair of handcuffs off his belt and handcuffed Rugar.

"We can take them over my place," Corsetti said, "and get statements."

The captain nodded.

"Sergeant, clear us a path," he said.

Then he pointed a finger at the young black cop.

"You come too," he said.

Corsetti and I took Rugar through a corridor of onlookers and press toward the Fifth Avenue end of the building. We were behind a phalanx of cops the captain had designated to clear an egress. Behind me came the young black cop and four guys in plainclothes that had arrived with Corsetti. Behind us a uniformed employee of Rockefeller Center was already cleaning Rugar's blood off the wall with some Windex and a roll of paper towel.

Outside Thirty Rock on the little side street behind the statue of Atlas, where the limos normally let people off for television interviews, there was a mosh of police vehicles and behind them the mobile units of television stations, spilling out onto Forty-ninth and Fiftieth streets, blocking crosstown traffic back beyond the Delaware Water Gap. There was a bank of cameras set up along the far side of the street and Corsetti turned toward them and smiled as we moved toward his car.

"Eugene Corsetti," he yelled, "Detective second grade, NYPD."

Chapter 49

I WAS WITH Rugar in a holding cell. There was no furniture so we both stood. There was still force in Rugar. But before it had been a force field that radiated from him. Now it was contained, as if the genie had gone back into the bottle for the moment. He stood motionless near the far wall of the cell, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, his face expressionless, looking straight at me without blinking. There was a big bruise on his chin and another on his cheekbone. His gray hair was matted and dark with dried blood. I was leaning on the wall near the door with my arms folded looking back at him.

"You know who I am?" I said.

"Of course."

His voice was still a reverberative purr.

"Then you know we got you."

"For the moment."

"Forever," I said. "No better witness to attempted homicide than the survivor."

"I was told you would be difficult," Rugar said.

"By whom?"

"By people I asked, people who know of you."

"If it's any consolation," I said, "you almost succeeded."

"It is no consolation," Rugar said.

The cell was a cage of heavy wire mesh backed against a yellow-tiled wall in the basement of the precinct house. The cells on either side were empty. The area was lit by a ceiling fixture in the hallway, where a low wattage bulb was overmatched by the space it had to light. Outside in the corridor, under the ineffective ceiling light, a uniformed cop with a thick moustache rested his back against the far wall out of earshot and watched us. The moustache was partly gray though his hair was dark.