CHAPTER THREE
The glow of streetlamps bounced off the windshield, interposed with traffic lights that, if Larkin pressed on the gas just so, he could cruise for several blocks before a red light managed to interrupt his nightly meditation.
He glanced at the dashboard—the temperature read eighty degrees, and already before the glass and steel and asphalt of the city had a chance to bake under the sun’s summer rays.
Larkin adjusted the AC’s settings and hoped the heatwave would actually break as predicted.
Doyle sat in the passenger seat—which existed in a near permanent state of being adjusted as far back as it’d go in order to accommodate his legs—and he looked so comfortably poured into the seat that he reminded Larkin of when you pick up a housecat and they turn into a noodle.
Doyle had his right arm resting on the door and would turn his head occasionally, studying a sign or bit of architecture as the city passed them by.
Doyle was typically quiet whenever he accompanied Larkin on night drives.
He seemed to understand that this was one of Larkin’s few tricks for centering himself without falling back on the dependency of pharmaceuticals, but also, there was a kind of bliss in their shared silence that Larkin was certain Doyle appreciated as much as he did.
It was a shame this wasn’t a drive intended for the sake of that peace.
Larkin turned left onto East Fourth Street, continued on toward Avenue A, and entered Alphabet City.
It was a well-lived-in neighborhood, with a resiliency that could be read in the weathered facades and oxidized fire escapes of century-old walk-ups, and the mom-and-pop shops that catered to the practical needs of a working-class community holding on by their fingernails: bodegas, laundromats, and barber shops, as well as independently owned pharmacies and groceries.
Graffiti freckled the area—spray-painted on security gates rolled down over business fronts, splashed across the sides of the double-parked interborough delivery trucks, even overhead in the nooks and crannies between brick tenements.
Alphabet City had survived a lot of drugs, a lot of crime, and had been a haven for immigrant families and artists priced out of the Village.
But now, like so many other neighborhoods, it was fighting for its life against the real estate industry desperate to raze old character to the ground in order to construct luxury high rises none of the locals could afford.
Larkin had to make a bit of a U-turn at Avenue D and pulled onto the one-way East Third Street. That was when Doyle finally spoke.
“How’s Jessica Lopez doing?”
Jessica Lopez, the best friend and former roommate of Andrew Gorman—the very case that had brought Doyle into Larkin’s orbit—had been instrumental in helping them reconstruct the face of a long-lost person of interest, which had led to the abrupt end of Harry Regmore’s murderous rampage.
She’d been shot by Harry’s cousin and accomplice, Ricky Goulding, and would have most certainly died if Larkin and Doyle hadn’t still been within a stone’s throw of her apartment, which was only three blocks north of their current location.
Larkin parallel parked behind an orange Kia—one of those box cars that’d been all the rage when he’d been in high school—with the ease and finesse of a man long practiced.
He turned off the engine and unbuckled his seat belt.
“Physical recovery always outpaces the mental,” he answered.
“But she’s still in agreement to testify for the prosecution when Gorman’s murder finally goes to trial. ”
“Glad to hear it.”
They climbed out of the Audi and were hit by a wall of warm humidity.
Larkin grumbled under his breath as he crossed the empty street alongside Doyle.
As they approached two rundown multiuses standing side-by-side—the ground floor businesses Chinese takeout and dry cleaning, respectively—Larkin had thought he’d been allowed enough time, between their decision back in the Fuck It and having to drive all the way downtown, to fortify himself for the associations sure to come from entering the dilapidated apartments overhead.
—the stink of dirty laundry and cooked meat, worn linoleum underneath, the pounding, pounding, pounding in his head, and Doyle fighting to breathe—
Larkin came to an abrupt stop before the familiar blue door.
— the Maglite choking him —
He winced hard enough that the gesture was comical.
But there was nothing funny about the memory of having almost lost Doyle to a frustrated Adam Worth and a rabid Sal Costa.
Larkin could taste that rag again, and this time, he did spit.
He could feel the duct tape pulling on his skin, could feel that undiluted fury that’d been burning in his soul when Costa shot and lunged at Doyle.
Had Larkin’s hands not been literally tied, he’d have committed murder on June 12.
Without question, without hesitation, Larkin would have killed Sal Costa.
The realization that he wasn’t immune to the most depraved and base human behaviors shook him so abruptly, so profoundly, that Larkin’s Rolodex memory spun wildly, cards scattering—
— removing the handles, retainer nuts, and cylinders on the bathroom sink, installing new parts while Noah leaned in the open doorway to watch, saying Larkin’s decision to fix the leak himself when the Super had failed to address the issue was a little dramatic because you couldn’t even hear the drip , drip , ick —
—tick, tick of his wristwatch on the bedside stand as night after night after night Larkin lay awake, listening to every second slip away like a grain of sand falling in an hourglass, unable to stop the obsessive daydreams of death befalling his partner, his heartbeat an erratic thump , thump , ump—
—bump, bump coming from inside the apartment, finding Doyle surrounded by parts to an unassembled shelving unit and open tool kit, saying he’d meant to have it built before Larkin got home, to surprise him with a place to keep his recently acquired houseplants, but that the delivery had been a little late—
“Larkin?”
Larkin blinked a few times. He began to mentally retrieve all his spilled Rolodex cards, tuck them away, and pretend that homicide wasn’t among them. He grabbed the door handle and pulled it open.
They stepped into the tiny vestibule with its mismatched tile floor and low wattage overhead light.
There wasn’t any abandoned junk mail this time but for a scattering of the usual business cards advertising locksmiths and pest control, and an outlier for a Midtown detox center called Butt Baths.
Larkin grabbed the knob of the interior door—residents had once again taped the latch so it couldn’t automatically lock behind them.
Stepping through, they quietly took the old stairs to the second floor and walked toward the door of 2A.
The NYPD had slapped a neon green door seal at eye level and a key lockbox around the knob.
Larkin took a moment to put in the code, retrieved the house key from inside, used it to rip the sticker, then unlocked and pushed open the apartment door to Earl and Matilde Wagner’s former residence.
Larkin stepped inside first, listening to Doyle follow and shut the door, briefly enclosing them in total blackness.
The grimy overhead light flicked on, and Larkin watched a massive roach quickly scurry along the living room baseboard.
The apartment had a musty, closed-up smell that tickled his nose, and the lack of circulating air was already making him sweat.
He brushed aside the blackout curtain at the window overlooking East Third, but there was no AC unit installed.
Larkin shrugged out of his suit coat and then hesitated over where to set it.
The home wasn’t filthy, or even messy, but there was this general sense of malaise—an evil and vile sickness that seemed to permeate the very air, that would embed itself into the fibers of his clothes, a stink that Larkin would never be able to wash away.
The closet beside the front door opened and Larkin turned.
Doyle was pushing aside several hanging articles before he motioned for Larkin’s coat.
He hung both of theirs inside but left the door open, like he too could sense the peculiar illness that Matilde had left on the world and wanted their clothing to be able to breathe a little.
Doyle pulled two pairs of latex gloves from the front pocket of his coat before joining Larkin and offering him a set.
Larkin accepted, yanking them on with a snap as he examined the room he’d only seen once before in shadow.
The love seat against the wall was upholstered in brown corduroy, something designers were undoubtably trying to bring back as modern chic but that should have been left behind in the ’70s where it belonged.
A pill-covered flannel blanket had been thrown haphazardly over the back of its cushions.
The recliner to the right looked a bit like a La-Z-Boy knockoff that the Wagners had tried to match to the love seat’s color, but it was just different enough to look tacky.
The television on the left side of the room was one of those behemoth box sets that’d take two men to lift.
It sat on a blond faux-wood stand with a VCR shoved into the compartment beneath, a handful of VHS tapes stacked atop, and a pull-out drawer on the bottom that undoubtably held more.
There was nothing by way of wall decoration but for a vintage, twelve-inch wooden crucifix with a gold Jesus hanging over the love seat.
Doyle’s voice broke the quiet. “What if I’m wrong?” He rested his gloved hands on his hips. “What if the brooch isn’t Wagner’s personal property or a trophy?”
Larkin motioned for Doyle to continue.