The Steel Kiss

Rhyme noticed that the attorney had stopped moving. Completely. Not a twist of neck, shift of weight. He stared at the floor. “You’re sure? Who told you?…  Yes, they’re credible.” At last a splinter of emotion crossed the man’s face. And it wasn’t one of pleasure. He disconnected. “We have a problem.” He looked around the room. “Is there any way we could set up a Skype call? And I need to do so immediately.”

* * *

“You have a minute?” Nick Carelli asked Amelia Sachs.

She was thinking, manically because of her shock at his presence, how odd it was that he didn’t look much different, all these years later. All these years spent in prison. Really only his posture had changed. Still in good shape otherwise, he was now slouching.

“I…  I don’t… ” Stammering and hating herself for it.

“I was going to call. Thought you’d hang up.”

Would she have? Of course. Probably.

“I came by, gave it a shot.”

“Are you…  ?” Sachs began. And thought: Finish your goddamn sentences.

He laughed. That low, happy laugh she remembered. Took her right back, a wormhole to the past.

Nick said, “No, I didn’t escape. Good behavior. Called me a model prisoner. Parole board, unanimous.”

Summoning reason, at last. If she got rid of him fast, maybe he’d try to come back later. Hear him out now. Be done with it.

She stepped outside and closed the door. “I don’t have much time. I’ve got to get my mother to the doctor’s.”

Shit. Why say that? Why tell him anything?

His brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?”

“Some heart issues.”

“Is she—”

“I really don’t have a lot of time, Nick.”

“Sure, sure.” Looking her over fast. Then back to her eyes. “I read about you in the paper. You’ve got a partner now. The guy used to be head of IR.”

Investigation Resources, the old name of the division that Crime Scene was part of. “I met him a couple times. Legend. Is he really…  ?”

“He’s disabled, yes.” Silence.

He seemed to sense niceties were clinkers. “Look, I need to talk to you. Tonight, maybe tomorrow, could we get coffee?”

No. Gate closed, window shut, water over dam, under bridge.

“Tell me now.”

Money, a recommendation for a job? He was never getting back on the force; a felony conviction precluded that.

“Okay, I’ll make it fast, Ame… ”

Using his pet name for her grated.

He took a breath. “I’ll just lay it all out for you. The thing is, about my conviction? The ’jacking, assault? You know all the details.”

Of course she did. The crime was a bad one. Nick had been busted for being behind a string of hijackings of merchandise and prescription drug shipments. In the last one, before he was caught, he’d beaten a driver with his pistol. The Russian immigrant, father of four, had been in the hospital for a week.

He leaned forward, eyes drilling into hers. He whispered, “I never did it, Ame. Never did a single thing I was arrested for.”

Her face flushed, hearing this, and her heart began throbbing. She glanced back through the curtained window that bordered the door. No sign of her mother. She’d also looked away to buy a moment to wrestle with what she’d just heard. Finally she turned back. “Nick, I don’t know what to say. Why is this coming up now? Why are you here?”

And her heart continued beat frantically, like the wings of a bird cupped in your hands. She thought: Could it be true?

“I need your help. Not a soul in the world is going help me but you, Ame.”

“Don’t call me that. That’s the old life. That’s not now.”

“Sure, sure. Sorry. I’ll tell you fast, I’ll explain. Donnie was the one working the hijackings. Not me.”

Nick’s younger brother.

She could hardly comprehend this. The quiet one of the two siblings was a dangerous criminal? She recalled that the hijacker had worn a ski mask and never identified by the truck driver.

Nick continued, “He had his problems. You know.”

“The drugs. Drinking, sure. I remember.” The two brothers were so very different, not even resembling each other. Donnie was almost rat-like in manner and nature, Sachs remembered thinking back then, feeling uneasy with the spontaneous image. In addition to the looks, Nick got the confidence, Donnie the uncertainty and anxiety—and the need to numb both of those. She’d tried to engage him in conversation when they went out to dinner, tell jokes, ask about his continuing-education classes but he’d grow shy and evasive. And occasionally hostile. Suspicious. She believed he was envious of his elder brother for having a former fashion model girlfriend. She remembered too how he would disappear into the men’s room and return buoyant and talkative.

Nick continued, “The evening it all went down, the bust…  Remember, you were on night watch?”

She nodded. As if she could ever forget.

“I got a call from Mom. She thought Donnie’d started using again. I asked around and heard he might be meeting somebody near the Third Street Bridge. Had some deal going down.”

The ancient bridge, over a hundred years old, spanned the Gowanus, a sludgy canal in Brooklyn.