Page 102 of Under Cover
From nowhere, Crosby found a grin. Oh yeah, that’s where his strength was.
“I’ll try not to stain the floor.”
Garcia laughed and started out. He paused at the hallway and said, “Oh, nice cat, by the way. Is he staying?”
Crosby’s grin softened a smidge. “That big ol’ bruiser? Smelled the tuna and just jumped into my arms. I think he likes me!”
Garcia’s laughter echoed through the hallway, and Crosby turned to the glaring excuse for a human being perched on the kitchen stool with renewed purpose.
Pidgeon sneered. “This your real home, Ricky? You go slumming with us real men and come here and live in your little fairy paradise?”
Crosby let an evil smile twist his lips.
“You think Queens is a paradise? You really been doing too much product, Birtle.”
Pidgeon flinched, and Crosby’s black heart grew at least a half a size.
“You think I didn’t know that was your real name? Cute, right? Birtle to Birdie, Birdie to Pidgeon? And that was as good as you got, wasn’t it? Nobody’s calling you Eagle or Falcon or Raven, are they. You’re the street rat of birds, Pidgeon. So don’t worry. Nobody expects you not to fuckin’ sing.”
“You think I’m gonna sing to afag—”
Crosby’s hand flew out, flat and hard, and he cracked the guy across the face. Pidgeon howled through a broken nose, and Crosby took a step back, leaving his hands ready at his sides, and remembered that strength.
“You gonna call me that?” he asked, his voice low and pleasant. “Given that I know you and Kinsey be swapping the same fuckin’ STDs?”
Pidgeon’s face washed so white it was almost green, leaving every blemish, every broken blood vessel, every bad nutrition decision standing out in stark relief. His mouth worked, but Crosby could tell it had just hit him, maybe, where the itchy green gunk dripping out of his cock had come from.
“That’s different,” he muttered weakly. “That’s ’cause Kinsey’s stronger. He’s the fuckin’ alpha of our little tribe, right?”
“I got news for you, buddy,” Crosby said cruelly. “If someone’s fuckin’ you ’cause they’re stronger, that’s rape. That’s not even sex—that’s power. If you’re doin’ that to someone for the same reason, that makes you a rapist. So there you go. Another crime on your jacket. More to look forward to in prison. It’ll be great.”
Pidgeon swallowed again, and if Crosby hadn’t known—known—that Junior had been suffering under him and Kinsey on a daily basis, he might have felt bad for the guy. But he’d taken his pain and shared, spread it around, added salt to it, and Crosby was not impressed.
“What do you want from me, Ricky?” Pidgeon asked, mean little eyes rolling wildly, looking for an escape.
“Why’re you here tonight?” Crosby asked, deciding to start there. “You were after someone on the team. You thought you had someone else, but you ended up here. Why were you making a move tonight?”
Pidgeon grunted. “’Cause two of our guys disappeared near the warehouse in Red Hook tonight, and two of the workers who were supposed to report in from the Bronx dropped off the map. We figured there was a war on. There’s a big delivery on tonight. The big bitch is there to supervise and everything. We couldn’t risk your people showing up when we’re getting a shipment, you know?”
“Drugs?” Crosby said, although he knew.
Pidgeon gave a bitter snort through yellowed teeth. “You ever remember your life before something bad?” he asked. “Kinsey and me, we grew up together. We was friends. And then Jimmy starts working with the big bitch, starts saying we’re gonna pump the Sons of the Blood up, says, ‘Here, boys, have a treat—we’re gonna party,’ right?”
Crosby nodded. He did, in fact, remember life before something bad happened, but his bad thing had been an awakening. Pidgeon’s had been a hammer to the skull.
“So was that it?” Crosby prodded. “There was a party tonight and your guys started disappearing? Creedy ordered you to go on the hunt?”
Pidgeon shook his head. “It was more than that, man. You fuckin’ disappeared. Creedy said you were dead of an overdose, and Kinsey and me, we said no way, ’cause everyone knows you’re clean. But he sends us up to your room to get your shit, and your room is clean, cleared out, empty.” Pidgeon swallowed hard. “So, you know, you tell me Jimmy poisoned you with meth, I see maybe that could be true. And it’s not like we’ve never been at war before. We were at war when the Puerto Ricans moved into the warehouse next door. We drove those little bastards out, and there was some fuckin’ blood. But this time we were supposed to be at war withcops, man. And….” Pidgeon gave a fractured laugh. “You were supposed to be our secret weapon. You were gonna go in, you were gonna feed us intel on the cops, you were gonna keep the cops off our back. But all we could see, really, was you went in and did your job—and not even in a bad way. You actually fuckin did what….” His laugh this time sounded like a sob. “I was supposed to be a cop. So I could help people. But you go in to help Curtis, and he’s so trashed he ends up dead. And Creedy’s so pissed he fuckin’poisonsyou. And we’re at war with the feds, and our guys start disappearing, and….”
Pidgeon was shaking by now, sobbing, whimpering, and Crosby’s reluctant pity stretched and made itself known. “And I don’t even know who’s the good guys anymore,” Pidgeon moaned. “’Cause it damned sure ain’t us.”
Crosby kept his weapon at the ready as he backed to the refrigerator.
“Whatcha doin’, Ricky?” Pidgeon asked, sounding afraid. Could he be faking? Maybe. But Pidgeon and Kinsey weren’t imaginative men. They weren’t crafty. They weren’t smart. Faking was for a smarter breed of criminal.
“Been a while,” Crosby asked. “Since you fixed, right? Been a while?” He could tell; the signs were there. The shaking hands, the uncontrollable emotions. Garcia had frisked him before he’d been cuffed to the stool, and there’d been several dime bags in his pockets. In anyone else, Crosby would have figured there was intent to sell, but he’d seen the guys use, and he was pretty sure that was a night’s good run.
“Yeah,” Pidgeon whispered. “Am I a junkie? Is this what bein’ a junkie’s like?”