American Gangster by Max Allan Collins Page B

making love to your wife, with the kid in the next room and bills to pay and inlawsand PTA meetings and all the issues that made a bad habit of coming into the bedroom with you.
    Yesterday was a (literal) textbook case of high stress and max pressure, and even in its way of life or death: he’d taken his law board exams. Maybe that anonymous chamber with its fifty or sixty student-type desks and as many asses dropped down in them, and the pinched-puss exam proctors prowling their beat, wasn’t as literally dangerous as going down a dark alley or busting into some junkie shooting gallery.
    But Richie’s life did depend on it.
    He felt he’d done okay, and anyway it was over. So he’d celebrated by calling up that sexy little brunette paramedic who’d stitched up his mitt last week. He took her out for steaks and a show (
M*A*S*H
) and they hung out in a bar a while, and his place was closer, so that was fine, and she hadn’t even minded his overgrown closet of an apartment. They’d done it twice last night, once a fast frantic hump on the floor with their clothes half-hanging off, and then in bed, slow and sensual and romantic.
    She’d stayed over and they rubbed against each other all through the night and at dawn he was balls deep in her again—
what was her name?
—and she was making so much noise, he was worried his neighbors might call the cops, and when the phone rang, it was almost a relief.
    He reached for the receiver, but she slapped his hand, panting, looking up at him with big demanding eyes and orgasm-flushed cheeks; but the ringing wouldn’t stop.
    Neither would the paramedic, and he answered the phone in action and out of breath.
    The voice on the other end was exploding words so fast, Richie wouldn’t have had a chance to respond right away even if he could have.
    Javy Rivera was saying, “Richie? Richie, man, I’m in trouble. This guy, this fuckin’
guy
, I don’t know how, but he
made
me. And he went for his piece, Rich, Jesus Christ, he went for it like John Fuckin’ Wayne and what choice did I have? I had to do it, swear to God. Now they’re gonna kill
me
.”
    The paramedic was looking frustrated and annoyed, because she had lost Richie’s full attention; and she didn’t even protest, when he rolled off her and sat on the edge of the bed and got intense with the phone.
    â€œ
Who
, Jav? Who’s gonna kill you?”
    â€œMan, there’s a hundred people out there, that heard the damn shots. I mean, if this goddamn fuckin’ shit were any deeper I’d be gargling. Richie, man, you gotta help me. You gotta do
something
. Or my ass is grass, man.”
    Richie was getting it. “He’s dead? Perp’s dead?”
    â€œ
He’s
dead,
I’m
dead. They’re gonna
kill
me!”
    Doing his best to calm his partner out of his hysteria, Richie said, “Cool it. Stay cool. Where are you? Javy? . . . Talk to me. Where are you, buddy?”
    â€œ. . . That’s the problem.”
    â€œWhat is?”
    â€œWhere I am is.”
    â€œWhich is
where?
”
    â€œProjects. Stephen Crane.”
    Oh shit
, Richie thought, then said, “No problem. Stay cool. If it’s not my voice, don’t answer the door.”
    â€œDon’t fuckin’ worry.”
    And Javy gave him the building and apartment number.
    Richie threw on a shirt, jeans, gun and his brown leather jacket, responding to his bedmate’s question of “Should I wait?” with “Up to you.”
    Within minutes he was in his Plymouth Fury, moving quickly; this was Sunday, not long after dawn, traffic dead as Javy’s perp.
    The radio kept cutting in and out on him, but he didn’t have any trouble hearing the male dispatcher’s nasty news: “
There are no cars in that area, Detective Roberts.
”
    â€œBullshit,” he spat into the mike. “I got a man in trouble and I need