Read Online Dancer in the Flames by Stephen Solomita - Free Book Online

fastidious. She stripped out of her leather coat, tossed it on top of her partner’s, finally closed the trunk.
    ‘There’s one other thing that needs sayin’ and I’m gonna say it now.’ Boots turned to his partner. ‘Vinnie Palermo didn’t kill Chris Parker. I know that’s true because Vinnie doesn’t have the balls to stomp a cockroach. In fact, I’d be willin’ to bet my life savings that he’s never carried a gun in his life.’
    ‘That’s it?’
    ‘No. Vinnie’s a professional car thief and we both know that professional car thieves don’t carry guns because they don’t wanna do the extra time if they get caught.’
    ‘Done now?’ Kelly was no longer smiling.
    Boots shook his head. ‘Once we have Vinnie safely detained, Inspector Corcoran’s gonna dump my ass in a hurry. I don’t mind, bein’ as I never wanted any part of him from the beginning. But then Corcoran and his task force are gonna have to deal with a big temptation.’ Boots ticked the items off on his fingers. ‘Vinnie was at the scene. He was in the process of stealin’ a car. He’s a career criminal. He’s got a long-standing cocaine habit. Stir those four ingredients into the pressure cooker and it’s fifty-fifty that Corcoran takes the easy way out. This kind of case – a cop killing – it makes careers and it breaks careers.’
    ‘Not my career,’ Kelly replied, ‘but I’ll keep what you said in mind. Now, we agreed that Vinnie will go out the fire escape the minute a cop knocks on his door?’
    ‘Without doubt. One of us will have to be waiting in back.’
    ‘And that has to be me, right? Being as your feet aren’t up to a chase?’
    Boots nodded sadly. ‘Just do me a favor, OK? Once you put your hands on Vinnie, he’ll give up. So, let me repeat myself: Please don’t kill him.’
    ‘And why would I do that, Boots?’
    Though Jill’s tone was so cold that Boots shivered, he made his point. ‘Because if Vinnie Booster were to die tonight, given all those factors I pointed out, the case’ll be closed by tomorrow morning.’
    Kelly’s breath hissed between her teeth. For just a moment, Boots was sure she’d take a swing at him. But then she spun smartly on her right heel and headed off down the block.

EIGHT
    B oots watched Jill Kelly thread her way between piles of debris as she negotiated a narrow alley that separated the tenement from a chain link fence topped with razor wire. Nothing in her body language, in the set of her shoulders, the swing of her hips or her stride, indicated the presence of fear, or even apprehension. If anything, she seemed eager. Boots smiled as a stray notion rippled through his mind. While he could easily imagine himself in bed with Jill Kelly, imagine a hard, take-no-prisoners fuck that left the bedclothes in tatters, he couldn’t imagine them exchanging a tender kiss afterward.
    Boots continued to watch until Jill passed the far end of the building and disappeared into the darkness. Then he clipped his shield to the lapel of his jacket, withdrew his weapon and went to work.
    The crime drop in New York over the past three decades is the stuff of legend, with homicide rates now hovering at levels associated with the golden era of the early 1960s. Even neighborhoods long associated with mindless violence – Harlem in Manhattan, Fort Greene in Brooklyn, the South Bronx – have become safe enough to attract yuppie enclaves. Nevertheless, there are still pockets in this city, sometimes only blocks long, sometimes limited to a single block, even a single building, where the bad old days are well preserved, like exhibits in a museum. That this particular tenement, the one Boots faced, had failed to get with the new program was obvious at a glance. The vinyl siding had peeled away along the seams and now projected outward like the half-erect quills of a porcupine. The window frames, crusted over by a century of intermittent repainting, appeared to be covered with bubbling mold. An