"Started on what, Boomer?" Geronimo asked. The muscles in his face were rigid.

"On bringing Lucia and her little crew of babysitters down."

There was another silence in the room. Then Mrs. Columbo gave out with a mirthless laugh.

"There are cops out there for this," she said. "Real cops. Not ones like us." cops. Not ones like us."

"The real cops can't do it," Boomer said.

"Why not?" Geronimo asked.

"Because they're the law and they have to follow it," Boomer said. "We don't."

"Which makes us criminals," Pins said. "Not cops."

"This is a major crew you're talking about," Rev. Jim chimed in. "They've got the money and the muscle. We can't keep up with that. At least I know I can't."

"I can understand some of you being nervous," Boomer said.

"I'm not nervous, Boomer," Mrs. Columbo said. "I'm scared. We probably all are. You were right about what you said before. We were the best in the business. But now we're not. I wake up in pain and go to bed the same way. Just like everybody else in this room. That's no shape to be in when you're chasing down a prime-time queen."

"Six cops, crippled or not, up against a crew of four hundred are pretty steep odds to begin with," Dead-Eye said, wishing for the first time in his life that he smoked.

"You're forgetting someone, Dead-Eye," Nunzio said.

Dead-Eye looked over at him. "Sorry. Six and a half against four hundred."

"That's better." Nunzio nodded, pleased.

"Look, I admit I didn't always go by the book when I was on the job," Geronimo now said. "But this is about more than bending the rules. This is about breaking the law. That's one line I never thought of crossing."

"I'll give you the strongest reason I can think of," Boomer said. "And it's got nothin' to do with Lucia."

"f.u.c.k the suspense, Boomer," Mrs. Columbo said. "Just tell us."

"It'll make us feel alive again." It was Dead-Eye who gave the answer, with a nod toward Boomer. "Make us feel like we used to feel before they took it all away. That's a feeling worth getting back. Even if it kills us. Is that what you were going to say, Boomer?"

"Something like that," Boomer said.

They all sat quietly and digested what they had heard. Each one weighed the task Boomer had laid out before them. It was warm in the room and throats were dry. Pins took off his bowling jacket and tossed it behind his chair. Geronimo leaned back and stretched. Mrs. Columbo kept her eyes on Boomer, both happy and angry that he had called her in. Rev. Jim ran a hand along his scarred neck and kept his head down. Dead-Eye stared into his empty gla.s.s.

"Nunzio, do I have to kill somebody to get another drink?" Rev. Jim said, breaking the silence.

"Only on Sundays." Nunzio stood up, opened the door, and headed for the bar.

"You decided already?" Dead-Eye asked Boomer.

"I don't have family like some of you," Boomer said. "I don't have a job I might grow to care about. I've only got the shield. For me, it's an easier decision."

"A shield doesn't cover breaking the law," Pins said.

"I'm still doing what I swore to do," Boomer responded. "Bring the fight to the bad. I'm just doing it a different way, that's all."

"It's a way that can get you killed in a heartbeat," Rev. Jim said.

"Then I exit on my terms. And that's a contract I can follow and not look backon. Now all I'm looking for are a few other signatures."

"And you're recruiting from among the wounded," Dead-Eye said.

Boomer nodded. "That's because they're the most dangerous."

11.

THE BRAND-NEW PINK stucco house was large, well lit, and heavily guarded. Motion spots rested behind the dozens of bushes, trees, and large fruit plants that dotted the half acre of property. Two all-terrain vehicles were parked and locked behind thick garage doors and a black Mercedes sat in the circular driveway, shaded by an overhanging palm tree. stucco house was large, well lit, and heavily guarded. Motion spots rested behind the dozens of bushes, trees, and large fruit plants that dotted the half acre of property. Two all-terrain vehicles were parked and locked behind thick garage doors and a black Mercedes sat in the circular driveway, shaded by an overhanging palm tree.

The house had been sculpted in the flatbed manner that was so popular with the thousands of fresh faces migrating each year into the rocky terrain of Sedona, Arizona, and its surrounding regions. It had been designed and built on spec by a local company, then sold to a man named Garrison Cross, who paid in full, in cash, and had never once set foot inside. The furnishings had all been ordered through catalogues and department stores, shipped to a Phoenix warehouse, and paid for COD. The wildflowers that circled the exterior had been ordered from a greenery in Scottsdale, prepaid, and shipped, then planted in the middle of the night.

Inside, the rooms were large and spread out, the center hall, living room, and dining room dominating the wood-paneled first floor. A thick oak staircase led to the three bedrooms on the second. There were skylights and gas fireplaces in every room except the kitchen. Wall-clipped surveillance cameras recorded each move, from every possible angle. Two purebred German shepherds walked the rooms with complete freedom. Outside, the morning air was fresh and brisk, with a cool breeze coming down from the cliffs. Less than a mile from the house, tourists, fresh off a fast-food breakfast, were already lined up in front of the Red Rock Jeep Tours waiting area, eager to bounce their way through well-charted terrain.

All the activity was in the kitchen, a large, airy s.p.a.ce with bay windows, overhead fans, and a three-screen video display terminal bolted into the granite countertop to the left of the oversized microwave. Two middle-aged women in housecoats and slippers padded quietly across the thick tile floor, carrying cellophane-sealed two-kilo bags of cocaine. They were taking the bags from a large satchel on the kitchen table, then resting them in neat piles next to the sink. Three men in well-tailored suits stood at different ends of the kitchen, eyes hidden by dark shades, arms folded across their chests, silently counting off the piles.

The women were two bags away from emptying the satchel when Lucia Carney walked into the kitchen.

The three men dropped their arms to their sides when they saw her. She stared and smiled at each of them as she pa.s.sed, the thick aroma of her Chanel perfume filling the air. Her dark hair was combed straight back, hanging down long over the shoulders of a black Karl Lagerfeld dress. She wore four-inch heels and her skirt was slit high on both sides, revealing ample portions of well-sculpted legs. The nails on her fingers and toes were painted dark red, her skin was tanned and unlined, and her brown eyes, while seductive and enticing, conveyed a distant and frightening chill.

Lucia was thirty-eight years old but looked much younger. She maintained her spectacular figure with punishing daily two-hour workouts. She took great pleasure in knowing that men both desired and feared her equally. It was what had helped keep her alive in what was a very dangerous occupation. But for Lucia Carney, surviving was always the priority.

She was born in a clinic in Houston, Texas, the third child of migrant workers with little in the way of money and even less in the way of hope. At seven she was sent to Galveston to live with an aunt and her bedridden husband. They lived in a wood frame house with off-and-on running water and a bathroom hooked up next to the shed. Her aunt, a once-beautiful woman eaten away by hard times, worked as a waitress in a local diner during the day. At night she turned tricks in her bedroom while her husband sat in the kitchen propped next to a hand-cranked turntable, listening to Hank Williams and Patsy Cline.

Lucia was a poor student and found herself skipping more cla.s.ses than she attended. By the time she was ten, she was helping her aunt serve customers in the diner, handing over the tips but eating as much of the cherry pies as she wanted. Her aunt noticed the way in which the weary men who frequented the diner fawned over the girl and how Lucia was quick to flirt back.

A month past her twelfth birthday, Lucia was moved out of the diner and sent to work in the shed next to the house. There, in the shadow of a twenty-five-watt bulb, sitting on a wooden bench rich with splinters, her back against the creaky shed wall, she gave oral s.e.x to any man who paid her aunt the five-dollar fee. She always wore the same blue-flowered print dress her mother had sent her from Houston for Christmas, white socks trimmed with lace, and black buckled shoes shined daily with spit and water. She always kept her eyes closed and her hands wrapped tightly around the sharp edges of the bench. Tight enough to draw blood.

Lucia left her aunt behind when she was fourteen, traveling with the money she had earned running bets for her uncle and the extra cash given her by grateful customers. She also left behind the blue print dress and the black shoes.

Too many stops and too many wrong men later, she found herself living and partnered with an angel dust and c.o.ke dealer in a two-room apartment in Lexington, Kentucky. The gangly, brown-haired young man with the funny smile and the tattoo of Casper the Friendly Ghost floating down the center of his back was the first man in her life she didn't charge for s.e.x. His name was Otis Fraimer, but she always called him Jerry and he never seemed to mind. She knew it wouldn't last, knew they were only one knock on the door or one bad buy away from a jail sentence or a bullet, but she felt comfortable with him. And she never did expect Jerry to die, to end up slumped over the steering wheel of a burning car, two shots through his heart and his throat slashed.

She left herself little time to mourn.

Not when Jerry's rival and the man responsible for his death, a fifty-year-old former gunnery sergeant with a severed leg and an engaging smile, offered to bring her in as a full partner. Harry Corain was intent on expanding his drug business, looking to move beyond the low-end money of downstate Kentucky and head into the fertile terrain of nearby Ohio, where the cities of Cincinnati and Columbus were more than eager to offer a demand equal to his supplies. Lucia, who was by then seventeen and tired of being poor, made the move and, in no short order, reorganized Harry's runners into small teams of movers and packers, insisting on a crew that was free of users and abusers. She left the muscle end of the business to Harry and his younger brother, Terry, a draft dodger as quick with a knife as he was slow with a word.

Lucia handled all the cash and c.o.ke transactions.

She gained the loyalty of the mules and sellers by cutting them in on a small percentage of the action, this despite strong protests from the Corain brothers. She hired a cancer-riddled career booster from Canton named Delroy Rumson to teach her all he knew about laundering money and reinvesting clean cash into safe, insured, and tax-free munic.i.p.al bonds. In return for the knowledge she picked up during his six-month cram course, Lucia promised to keep up the $800-a-month home-care payments for Delroy's r.e.t.a.r.ded daughter, Dorothy, after he died.

It was the first of many promises she didn't keep.

Lucia married Harry Corain on April 18, 1964. It was her twentieth birthday, and a week after the wedding she told him she was pregnant with his child, even though she had no intention of keeping either husband or baby. She was simply buying herself more time and using whatever pull Harry had among other midwestern drug runners to build on what she was already raking in.

Two months into the pregnancy, Lucia drove over the Kentucky state line into Cincinnati during the early morning hours of a soft summer day and had an abortion performed in the bas.e.m.e.nt office of a ramshackle two-story house half a mile off Ezzard Charles Boulevard. Dr. Ranyon B. Travis had long ago lost his medical license to drink, drugs, and bribery, and now found himself earning a living disposing of the unwanted for a three-hundred-dollar-cash-up-front fee. Travis had a modest reputation among the dopers and hookers working the riverfront strip and could be counted on to keep his business quiet, if for no other reason than that the years of booze and drug binges had made it impossible to remember.

Travis had been up all night with an underage co-ed and had already gone through half a pint of gin and two grams of c.o.ke when Lucia walked into the foyer leading down to the bas.e.m.e.nt steps. He dressed quickly, splashed water on his face, swallowed two five-hundred-milligram Benzedrine tablets, and prepped Lucia for her abortion. Five minutes into the procedure, she felt a sharp, stinging burn in her pelvic region and immediately knew that the doctor with the shaky hands and shady past had butchered her beyond remedy.

She walked out of the house, leaving three crinkled hundred-dollar bills on the doctor's desk, blood still running down her legs, not answering Travis's apologetic pleas. Her mind forced her body to stride forward and ignore the growing pain that had replaced the curled fetus. Lucia had learned at the earliest age not to cry at the hurt life threw down a person's path, and she did not shed any tears on this night. Instead, she found solace in thoughts of revenge.

Harry found her sprawled face down in the backyard of their house and rushed her to a nearby clinic that excelled at asking few questions. A three-day stay was all it took to heal the external wounds, stop the hemorrhaging, reduce the fever, and quell the infection.

Lucia smiled and kept her focus on the half-empty IV dripping into her arm as she listened to the soft words of a concerned intern tell her she could never have children. She was warmed by the knowledge that at that moment Dr. Ranyon B. Travis, who once headed the OB-GYN wing of a northern Chicago hospital, was hanging from a back alley wall, two thick tire chains wrapped around his hands, his mouth sealed, and his eyes stapled open, being stomach-gutted by the sharp end of Terry's bowie knife. The pain was so intense Dr. Travis chewed off his tongue in the minutes before he died.

Lucia was spending a long weekend in New Orleans in the summer of 1966, looking once again to expand her drug operations, when she met Carlo Porfino sitting by himself at the back table of her friend Anna Cortese's blues bar. She joined him for a drink and then for the night. By midafternoon the next day, Lucia had found her second husband and a fast route out of Kentucky.

Carlo Porfino had affiliations with both the New Orleans and Chicago mobs and was moving heavy quant.i.ties of everything imaginable. He was the opposite of Harry in all respects and was not shy about flashing the cash to show Lucia a good time. He also learned quickly in their relationship that she was more than a bar pickup. She had a knack for the drug business, combining a natural ability to make people want to work for her with a ruthlessness that was often necessary in the powder game.

While eager to expand into new territories, Lucia was reluctant to give up what she had built back in Kentucky and Ohio. She turned Carlo's initial indifference into enthusiasm when she told him about the $100,000 a month Harry and Terry were taking in without having totally exploited the burgeoning market. She and Carlo cut a deal. Lucia would get 25 percent of all the Midwest action, plus an additional 10 percent of his southern end, in return for overseeing the operations from her new base in New Orleans. It was a deal a woman like Lucia would never pa.s.s up.

She and Carlo were married on the afternoon of July 27, 1967, in a small chapel overlooking a preCivil War cemetery. On that same day, Kentucky police found Harry Corain's electrocuted body floating face down in a cast-iron tub, his left arm amputated at the shoulder and hanging loose off the side. He was less than ten feet from his baby brother, Terry, who had taken three Magnum hits to the head, his bowie knife still clutched in his right hand.

Lucia was twenty-three years old and well on her way toward stashing away her first million. She had laid the foundation for a national drug network that in fifteen years and one more husband would blossom into an empire that reached into forty-six states and eight foreign countries. By the time she was standing in the large, airy kitchen in Sedona, Arizona, Lucia Carney was feeding four hundred million a year into the coffers of the international drug cartels and organized crime families that relied on her for safe delivery of their cocaine and guaranteed transfer of funds.

She was their cocaine queen, a beautiful woman with a luscious smile and a cold heart. They called her the Dragon, since she had a tattoo of a small black one breathing flames stenciled over her right shoulder blade, a birthday gift years earlier from Carlo, who had a larger one anch.o.r.ed across his chest. She had grown to like Carlo. They had fun together and he always treated her with respect. He had helped link her up with all his organized crime connections and introduced her to the heads of the South American outfits. He taught her how to wash the c.o.ke and still keep it pure. And he was a master on profit skimming, careful to leave behind a trail that always led to a greedier drug dealer.

Lucia often missed Carlo and sometimes regretted that she had had him killed. But he was getting in the way of her business, and Lucia would allow no one to do that.

Especially not a husband.

SHE GOT THE idea for using babies one night while watching a Johnson & Johnson TV commercial. In the high-end drug circles in which Lucia traveled, babies were easy to get, easy to transport, and even easier to dispose of. By the mid-1970s, the black market was a bull market for newborns; this back-door, middle-of-the-night, cash-on-receipt business was a multimillion-dollar-a-year operation. idea for using babies one night while watching a Johnson & Johnson TV commercial. In the high-end drug circles in which Lucia traveled, babies were easy to get, easy to transport, and even easier to dispose of. By the mid-1970s, the black market was a bull market for newborns; this back-door, middle-of-the-night, cash-on-receipt business was a multimillion-dollar-a-year operation.

Within six months of watching the commercial, Lucia had made her mark on the baby industry. She opened clinics in eight states, each of them catering to unwed-and-pregnant teenagers on the low end of the income scale. The girls were all looking for good homes for their babies, some cash in their pockets, and the news of their pregnancies to be broadcast to no one. Lucia used third parties to hire only those whose medical credentials were beyond reproach. Once born, the babies were sent to safe homes, where they were fed and nurtured for six months. Then they were picked up by one of Lucia's soldiers, dropped off at a drug transfer center, usually a newly bought condo on quiet resort property, and killed.

The empty cavity of a dead baby could hold as many as six kilos of cocaine on the front end of a long flight and $100,000 in cash on the return. Each baby was good for three round trips and then shipped to local funeral homes, where his or her remains were cremated and tossed in next to the most recent of the dearly departed.

At no time did the horror of her actions ever bother Lucia. For her, the infants were nothing more than a tool, a safe and inexpensive means of transport, allowing her to move large quant.i.ties of drugs and cash free and undetected. If what she did made her enemies in the drug trade fear her even more, then that was a dividend.

Over time, as the demand for baby transports began to far outstrip her dependable supply, Lucia began to send her troops out to the streets. There she found hundreds of willing partners unafraid to deal in the hot item of the moment. They kept tabs on runaways and drifters, prime candidates to get pregnant and either abandon or sell their children. They tracked birth records at hospitals located in low-income areas, where record-keeping tended to be as shoddy as the security, helping to make any newborn a perfect target. They secured welfare rolls, scanning the lists for mothers who had a drug problem or record and more than three children. Lucia's emissaries then offered them a better deal than what the state allowed.

The cartel leaders were so pleased with this grisly but safe method of operations that they offered up, free of charge, babies born to their string of prost.i.tutes. A number of other gangs willingly sold Lucia the women with whom they had grown tired, from old girlfriends to older wives, and, in some cases, their own daughters.

All done in the name of profit.

And at the expense of the innocent.

LUCIA WALKED AROUND the kitchen of the Sedona house, cradling a six-month-old boy in her arms. She ran a finger softly under the flabs of his chin and got him to smile. She loved the smell of a fresh-washed baby and kissed him on both cheeks before handing him to one of the men in the dark gla.s.ses. the kitchen of the Sedona house, cradling a six-month-old boy in her arms. She ran a finger softly under the flabs of his chin and got him to smile. She loved the smell of a fresh-washed baby and kissed him on both cheeks before handing him to one of the men in the dark gla.s.ses.

"Get him ready," Lucia said to the man, her eyes still on the smiling baby. "The flight leaves in less than two hours."

She stood there as the man walked past her, opening a thick wood door to the bas.e.m.e.nt, where he would perform his a.s.signed task. Lucia watched as the man closed the door behind him, the baby's eyes on hers until he disappeared into the shadows of the bas.e.m.e.nt steps.

Lucia smiled at the baby and waved a final good-bye.

12.

THEY HAD EATEN their grilled salmon dinner in silence. Nunzio was the only one who got up during the meal, scurrying back and forth from the kitchen to the table with a large bowl of salad or a fresh bottle of wine. By the time the fruit and coffee were served, most of the cops had absorbed what Boomer had told them. They sat at the large table in the middle of the empty restaurant, the shades drawn down, only three of the overhead lights turned on, lost in their own internal struggles. their grilled salmon dinner in silence. Nunzio was the only one who got up during the meal, scurrying back and forth from the kitchen to the table with a large bowl of salad or a fresh bottle of wine. By the time the fruit and coffee were served, most of the cops had absorbed what Boomer had told them. They sat at the large table in the middle of the empty restaurant, the shades drawn down, only three of the overhead lights turned on, lost in their own internal struggles.

Geronimo fingered the medallion around his neck, the one his mother had placed there years earlier to ward off harm. He wondered if the others in the group felt as empty as he did. His days were blanks, working a steady shift at a job he cared little about. His nights were horrors, cold sweats mixing with wasted prayer and cries in the dark, wishing he had not lived through the grenade blast that had left him a whole man on the outside and half of one on the inside.

He had not gone near a device since that day. His retirement papers were put through for him while he was still in a hospital bed, about to endure the sixth of what eventually would grow to fourteen surgical procedures, all fruitless attempts to piece together abdominal muscles and lower intestinal tracts. The daily physical therapy he endured was as constant as the pain he forced himself to ignore. The pills he was prescribed sat in rows on three shelves of a medicine cabinet in a one-bedroom apartment in Ozone Park. Geronimo was surviving on antacids and willpower.

He worked for Unger Electronics on the Lower East Side, reporting to an overweight man with a bad back named Carl Ungerwood. It was a family-owned operation that survived mainly because of the popularity of its computer repair department, which was where Geronimo toiled. That was as close to a set of wires as he was willing to get since the blast. He still kept a cache of dynamite in a closet off the main hall of his apartment, more for the memory of who he used to be than for use.

Carl Ungerwood had a thirty-second temper that was mostly set off by problems with an ex-wife who was suing him for a piece of the business. He often directed his tirades at Geronimo, hurling insults and venom at a man the city had often decorated as a hero. Geronimo sat in silence during those moments, his eyes dark and distant. He saw the abuse as further punishment for what he had lost to the man with the grenade. That the pay from Unger Electronics was steady didn't matter as much to Geronimo as the fact that the work was as far removed from the New York Police Department as he could hope to get.

Unlike Boomer, Geronimo didn't miss being a cop. But he did miss the thrill of taking down a device. He would set time limits for himself when he worked on the computers, doing mental countdowns as he repaired burned-out modems and replaced weak transmission wires. But it just wasn't the same. There was no sense of mystery to a computer, not like with a device, where someone as good as Geronimo could will it, control it, thrive on its energy, or die in the clutches of its power. Alone with a device, Geronimo's life and his possible death took on spiritual weight. It was better than the slow death he was living through now, hunched on a stool in the back room of a dusty electronics store.

Geronimo couldn't speak for the others, but he sensed that their decision about whether or not they would join Boomer in his battle with Lucia was a matter of choice. Not so for him. For a warrior like Geronimo, it was a matter of destiny.

"IT'S GETTING LATE," Boomer said, taking a quick glance at his watch, "and it's been a long night, so I'll keep the rest of this short. All I ask is for you to think about what I'm going to say. Think on it hard. And then let me know. Either way, I'll walk away with no problem about your decision."

"How soon do you need our answers?" Mrs. Columbo asked.

"It doesn't have to be an overnight deal," Boomer said. "Come to it when you're ready. But come to it soon."

Mrs. Columbo nodded and smiled. She had known Boomer since he was in uniform and had worked with him on several cases. She knew him well enough to realize that alone or with the group, he was going after Lucia. She saw it on his face, from the way he moved and chose his words. He'd always been an obsessed cop, the one guy with a badge criminals hated to have on their trail. He never gave up, never backed down. He thirsted for the rush of the bust.

The same as Mrs. Columbo.

She missed working homicide. Missed it desperately. At best, she was indifferent to her new job-selling insurance from a bland cubicle in a downtown office building. When she was a cop, she always used to pick up a phone after the first ring, waiting for the voice on the other end to tell her that a body had been found and a killer needed to be caught. Now she often let it ring four or five times, knowing it would only be someone asking about the new rates on their car insurance or looking for a two-week extension on a payment. She had stopped reading mysteries and watching them on television. She no longer followed the crime stories in the papers and on the news. Mrs. Columbo was afraid to do anything that would remind her of how much she loved the puzzle of a case.

She knew she should have been a happy woman. There was a husband at home who loved her and cared about her and a son to watch grow. There were PTA meetings to attend and Little League games to monitor. School plays needed to be put on and cake sale funds had to be raised. And while Mrs. Columbo packaged all these activities into parts of her day, she did it without any emotion. It was the same way she approached her physical therapy sessions, handling the difficult exercises with a cold efficiency, hoping that the feeling would soon return to her lower back and ease the sharp pains running down her legs.

Every Sunday, on a rotating basis, Mrs. Columbo and her family had dinner with relatives. The packed dining rooms all looked and sounded the same to her, whether at her sister-in-law's Mineola ranch in Na.s.sau County or her brother-in-law's Bergen County Tudor. The talk always revolved around family, bills, old squabbles, sports, and retirement. The language of middle-cla.s.s life. She listened and partic.i.p.ated, but her words were empty. Maybe it was because none of the talk was ever about an unidentified male found floating by the edge of the river late into the night. No one at any of the tables cared about what to look for at a crime scene, or how to read a suspect's walk and tell who was the one with the killer's heart.