Sleepless city, p.1
Sleepless City, page 1
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PRAISE FOR SLEEPLESS CITY
“What’s one cop gonna do against a rigged system? Sleepless City answers that question in a blaze of pace, action, suspense, and intrigue, all underpinned by thoughtful moral questions and a truly great new character in Nick Ryan. Coleman is a noir grandmaster and I hope this series runs forever.”
—Lee Child
BOOKS BY REED FARREL COLEMAN
THE NICK RYAN SERIES
Sleepless City
ROBERT B. PARKER’S JESSE STONE SERIES
Blind Spot
The Devil Wins
Debt to Pay
The Hangman’s Sonnet
Colorblind
The Bitterest Pill
THE GUS MURPHY SERIES
Where It Hurts
What You Break
THE GULLIVER DOWD MYSTERIES
Dirty Work
Valentino Pier
The Boardwalk
Love and Fear
THE MOE PRAGER SERIES
Walking the Perfect Square
Redemption Street
The James Deans
Soul Patch
Empty Ever After
Innocent Monster
Hurt Machine
Onion Street
The Hollow Girl
Copyright © 2023 by Reed F. Coleman, Inc.
E-book published in 2023 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Kathryn Galloway English
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced
or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-9826-4307-2
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-9826-4306-5
Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
I don’t know if my being there in that place and at that time makes me a bad person, but on most days I think it means I do not get to claim to be a good one.
—Kevin Powers
Prologue
june 25
He’d torn off the name patch above the right pocket on his camo jacket. Tonight he wasn’t Nick Ryan. He was an anonymous guy, an invisible face in the crowd marching down Church Street toward the Brooklyn Bridge. Invisibility was one of his talents. In that way, he was like the jacket he wore, patterned to blend into the brown color palette of the Afghan dust and mountains. These were different mountains he walked among.
He disdained using his invisibility this way, but he did as he was ordered. Duty was a matter of blood to the Ryans. He’d pleaded and cajoled, ego-massaged his target for three weeks to set up the buy-and-bust for tonight in Red Hook. Now that was history. Gone like his name patch.
“No way, man,” the wannabe drug kingpin had told Nick when he tried delaying the takedown. “I like you, and maybe we can do business in the future, but I got this Apache sold three times over. First come, first serve.”
Apache, Dance Fever, Murder 8—fentanyl had a hundred street names. Getting a kilo of it out of circulation might not have sounded like much to the women and men marching with him. Nick knew better. Listening to the blaring car horns and cursing of frustrated drivers at every intersection, he looked around at the patchwork quilt of Black, brown, yellow, and white faces—young and old—and did the math. A million milligrams in a kilo. Fatal dosage two to three milligrams. But there was only one death these people cared about: Vincent Merrimack’s. And they let the world know as they chanted his name.
“Vincent was innocent. No justice, no peace. Vincent was innocent. No justice, no peace. Vincent was innocent . . .”
Nick had listened to this chant for the past ninety minutes as the throng, squeezed between barricades and row after row of impassive cop faces, slowly made its way downtown from the staging area. His job wasn’t supposed to be about feelings. His opinions were for off duty. He’d been ordered to seem a part of the demonstration while really being apart from it. Nevertheless, he had seen the body-cam footage of the shooting. The protesters were correct. Vincent was innocent.
In the early morning hours of June 22, Vincent Merrimack, a sixteen-year-old African American kid, was shot to death by four cops on Flatlands Avenue, in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn. Vincent, who was on the autism spectrum, became disoriented after his Aunt Marta suffered a stroke. Unable to rouse his aunt, Vincent began screeching and banging his fists into the wall. Marta’s neighbors, misinterpreting the noises, called 911. When no one answered repeated requests for entry, the responding units broke into the home. Totally beyond his stimulation threshold, Vincent shouted at the cops and took a step toward them, shaking his fist. That fist shake would prove to be the last act of Vincent Merrimack’s too-short life.
Nick looked at all the makeshift signs, many bearing likenesses of Merrimack. Vincent had been a handsome teen, his expression as beatific as any saint’s. That was what he had become for the marchers: a martyr they could rally around. But Nick turned away, instead focusing on the other marchers, looking for the people he’d been briefed about.
He wasn’t so much studying faces as looking for long sleeves, closed hands, loose-fitting clothing, backpacks. In Afghanistan a clenched fist and long sleeves meant a detonator and hidden wires. Backpacks and loose-fitting clothing could conceal explosives. It was a cool night for early summer—perfect for long sleeves or loose jackets like the one he was wearing. And while no one was anticipating anything as extreme as a bomb, Nick knew that if you looked only for what was expected, you were already beaten.
The first inkling of trouble came as his part of the march neared Duane Street, two blocks before the crowd was to turn left down Chambers Street, in the direction of the Dinkins Municipal Building, One Police Plaza, and the Brooklyn Bridge. A group of four white men in street clothes slipped into the crowd through a convenient gap in the metal barriers. Nick recognized one of them from the academy, though the name escaped him. The others were strangers, but they carried themselves like cops. You know your own kind. There was something else he recognized: a pack on the hunt.
Thinking he needed to keep an eye on them, Nick moved closer, zigzagging unnoticed through the demonstrators. He didn’t register as police. That was part of his talent for undercover work. Then the pack showed its hand. Three of the four cops worked their way between the demonstrators and a Black man in his late twenties. The man was now isolated between the barricades on his left and the three men—one walking behind him, one to his right, and the last in front of him. Nick had marched near the man the entire way from Herald Square. The man had been less vocal than most of the other marchers. He didn’t carry a sign, hadn’t even chanted, and ignored the few counterprotesters shouting as he passed. Though he was surrounded, he seemed unaware of anything outside his own thoughts.
Something wasn’t right. Arresting an African American man in the midst of this protest was tone-deaf bordering on stupid. But if this guy was a threat or was wanted for a serious felony, Nick was in no position to judge. Maybe they were following orders same as he. There was a commotion to Nick’s right. The fourth member of the pack stumbled hard to the pavement, drawing the crowd’s attention away from what was really going on. Nick wasn’t fooled by the sleight of hand.
At the precise moment of the fall, the other three pack members came together around the Black man, shoving him through the barricades at the corner of Church and Reade Streets. The uniforms lining the barricades closed ranks, vanishing the hole as quickly as it had appeared. Nick was pushed along by the surging crowd. He looked back and saw the three cops dragging the man down Reade Street. Turning right, he saw that the cop who stumbled had conveniently disappeared.
“Excuse me,” Nick said to the woman next to him. “The man who fell—where did he go?”
“It was really weird. He got right up and ran ahead.”
There it was, the familiar pull in two directions—to follow orders or his gut. Nick never needed long to decide. He had lived through two tours in Afghanistan by trusting his instincts. Hopping the metal barrier, he worked his way back to Reade Street. He tugged on the chain around his neck and took his detective shield out from under his T-shirt. At that point, he ceased being invisible, and people stepped aside.
Reade Street was eerily quiet. City quiet, not country quiet. The chanting from the crowd became a muted, indecipherable echo as he walked away from the march. The block was closed off to vehicular and pedestrian traffic down to Park Row. Nearing Broadway, he saw two unmarked NYPD SUVs parked in a V formation on the sidewalk. His view was obscured by the vehicles’ height and their dark tinted windows. As he approached the SUVs, Nick heard the unmistakable sounds of a beating. Fists pounding flesh, grunts and moans. He heard something else too. Footsteps coming up quickly behind him.
“Hey, you, asshole, didn’t you see the street’s closed off?” a breathless voice called to him.
He turned to see the cop who had taken the pratfall. “I noticed.”
The cop saw Nick’s shield and slowed, but his attitude didn’t change. “Look, Detective, we all got enough on our plates, right? Why don’t you go back to whatever it was you was doin’? This don’t concern you.”
“When people tell me not to be concerned, it concerns me.”
The cop shrugged. “Still not your business.”
The sounds of the beating stopped.
“Get rid of that guy, Jimmy,” growled a voice from behind the SUVs.
“He’s a detective, Robby.”
“I don’t care if he’s the pope. Get his ass outta here.”
Jimmy made a face, not a happy one. “You heard him. C’mon, just go. Everybody’s happy that way. Nobody gets hurt or nothin’.”
“I’m already pissed. That guy you’re kicking the shit out of . . . he’s hurting. So, no I’m not moving.”
Jimmy wasn’t tall, but he was sinewy. The kind of guy that always gets underestimated. Nick turned, baiting Jimmy into making a move. It didn’t take long. As soon as Nick about-faced, Jimmy came charging. Nick heard him coming, saw his reflection in the SUV’s side window. As Jimmy got close, Nick dropped to one knee and swung his left elbow up into Jimmy’s solar plexus. He didn’t have to swing hard; Jimmy’s momentum supplied all the power. The cop tumbled into the driver’s side door of the SUV with a loud bang. Jimmy was red-faced, struggling for breath. Nick cuffed him to a vent pipe.
“Yo, Jimmy,” Robby called out. “What the fuck?” When Jimmy didn’t answer, Robby called out again, this time with worry in his voice. “Yo, Jimmy, everything okay?”
Nick jumped up onto the hood of the blue SUV. “Jimmy’s having too much trouble breathing to answer.”
The victim’s hands were strapped behind him with a plastic tie, and two cops were propping him up for a trimming. The man’s mouth was bloodied, and his eyes were swelling shut. Robby, the guy Nick remembered from the academy, was wearing a pair of brown leather gloves, keeping his hands unmarked as he delivered the beatdown. Nick jumped off the hood of the car and stood only a few feet from him.
Robby was thick all around, legs to neck, with a cruel smile, which he aimed at Nick.
“You’re a detective, so what? You’re not my CO. Get the fuck outta here and let us do what we gotta do.” He reached out, giving a derisive flip to the left pocket on Nick’s camo jacket, “Booyah, Semper Fi, and all that rah-rah bullshit.” He gave a dismissive salute. “Now, go fuck yourself. I owe this nig—”
“Don’t even say it, not in front of me. It’s oorah, by the way, and I was army, shithead. See, it says it right here in big letters.”
Robby squinted his eyes, wagged his gloved finger at Nick. “Wait a second . . . I know you—”
“Hey. Robby, let’s get on with this, man,” one of the other cops said. “We’re exposed out here.”
“Shut up, Tom. I went to the academy with this prick. This is Nick Ryan. The guy whose father ratted out his precinct to the Argent Commission.”
Nick snapped his fingers. “Yeah, I remember you now. Robby Rasmussen. You were a prick back then and that hasn’t changed.”
“Yeah, Robby, forget him,” the third cop said. “Let’s get Jimmy and split. It’s getting dark, but we’re out in the open here.”
Nick pointed at the injured man. “He’s coming with me.”
As the last word came out of Nick’s mouth, Rasmussen threw a left. Nick slipped the punch, but the leather grazed his jaw. Nick stepped to his right to get a good angle and, using the top of his foot, kicked Rasmussen twice in the left calf. The vicious, short chopping kicks jellied Rasmussen’s leg, collapsing him. Nick took a quick peek at the other two cops to see if they were going to be a problem. He needn’t have bothered. They were busy deciding whether to court any more trouble than they already had.
Nick returned his full focus to Rasmussen, who had managed to get to his knees. Nick thrust the heel of his palm to the underside of Rasmussen’s nose. He didn’t hit him hard enough to break the nose, but he wished he had. Rasmussen went back down, temporarily blinded by tears, coughing out blood.
Nick pulled his Glock and got back to the issue at hand. “You two, cut the tie and step away from him. Now!”
They did as they were told. When they had freed his hands, they raised their own, palms out. “Look, we got no gripe with this guy,” Tom said. “It’s Robby’s gig. The guy made a complaint against Robby’s partner, and Robby just wants to convince him he made a mistake, is all.”
Nick ignored him. “You . . . Sir, what’s your name?”
“D’Anton Waller,” he said, wiping the blood off his mouth with his sleeve.
“Mr. Waller, do you need medical assistance?”
“I been worse.”
“Then please step over here behind me.”
As Waller stepped behind Nick, Rasmussen tried gathering himself again. Nick kicked him in the ribs to dissuade him.
“We’re leaving, and if you try to stop us, I will shoot you and worry about the fallout later. Don’t doubt it.”
“Whoa, whoa,” Tom said. “Easy. Easy, Ryan. We’re not gonna do nothing, but can’t we keep this thing between us? You know, brother to brother.”
“You’re not my brother. What to do about this is up to Mr. Waller, not me.” Nick nodded to Waller. “If you can, climb over the hood. I’ll cover and follow you.”
“I’m good,” Waller said. Then a few seconds later, “I’m over.”
Nick didn’t have anything else to say, but Rasmussen did, his voice thick from the blood and mucus. “Watch your back, motherfucker, ’cause I’m coming for you.”
“Get in line.”
Nick climbed over the hood, looped his arm through Waller’s, and walked him quickly back toward Church Street. As they got close, Waller shook free of his arm.
“Fuck them guys and fuck you. You ain’t no hero. You all the same.”
“‘Hero.’ What does that word even mean anymore? But we’re not all the same.”
“You go on thinking that,” Waller said. “Even if you are good, so what? What’s one cop gonna do against a rigged system? One good man don’t mean shit.” Waller spat blood on the ground and walked away.
Nick understood how D’Anton Waller could see it in that light. To Waller, the barrel was all rotten apples, not just a few. There wasn’t much Nick could have said to change the man’s mind. Something Waller said resonated. What’s one cop gonna do against a rigged system? Nick didn’t dwell on it. He holstered his weapon and put his shield back under his shirt. As he rejoined the march, his posture changed and he once again became some anonymous guy, invisible.
One
Never goodbye.
Goodbye was an omen of dark permanence. That was what Nick’s mother used to say. A superstition come from Ireland, stowed away in steerage with his great-grandparents, or something his family had adopted when it bubbled up from the stew pot of ethnicities that was and is New York City. The stew recipe changed from time to time—Guyanese and Bangladeshis instead of Irish, Ukrainian Jews, and southern Italians—but the pot boiled. Always! Sometimes, it boiled over. Another man—gazing down from the high windows of his Bay Ridge condo at the cruise ship cutting the water white beneath the Verrazzano Bridge, or at the glass-and-steel prickles of the lower Manhattan skyline glowing orange in the dawn light—might have been able to fool himself that the stew pot was at a low simmer and all was peaceful in this sleepless city.
Nick Ryan did not deceive himself that what lay spread out before him was anything resembling peaceful. Quiet was often the preamble to deadly. Since 9/11, crime in this city had been tamped down. Three generations of the Ryan family had helped make it so. But the vibe on the street was changing, and the summer just past had been a restless, ugly one dominated by three stories splashed across the front pages of the failing tabloids. Stories that fed the infernal lifeblood of social media.
The stories dominating the media were very much on Nick Ryan’s mind. Disparate stories of power, money, race, sex, and violence, bound together by an invisible blue thread. There was the arrest of Aaron Lister, a hedge fund guru whom the Post dubbed “Baby Bernie,” and the News labeled “Mini Madoff” for his swindling of a billion dollars. Most cops wouldn’t have given Lister a second thought but for the fact that a significant amount of the pilfered funds had come from investments sponsored by all the New York City law enforcement unions. The dream of windfall payoffs from private investments meant to supplement their civil service pensions had, with the click of handcuffs around Lister’s wrists, swirled down the drain. Every penny burned away like fog under the glare of the sun.
