Free Apaches by Lorenzo Carcaterra Page A

mile. She had what the other woman would give everything to attain—a husband in her bed and a son in the next room.
    Maybe her marriage wasn’t such an uneasy fallback after all, and watching Frankie grow had given her plenty of reasons to smile. It was far better than sitting in a room alone, staring at an antique vase filled with a single red rose, knowing no phone would ever ring to a voice that cared and no door would ever open to let in a warm hug.
    Mary Silvestri crossed against a flashing red light and picked up the speed of her pace, suddenly eager to get home. She never saw the man with the knife hunkered down in the alley, alongside the shuttered gates of Sergio’s Deli. He stood perched on the balls of his feet, watching as she approached, waiting to time his leap and score the purse dangling against her hip.
    When she was directly in front of him, he jumped.
    The man, wiry and muscular, wrapped his right arm around Mary’s throat and wedged the blade of a six-inch knife between her shoulders, hard against the soft wool of her camel’s hair J. C. Penney blazer.
    “You breathe, you die,” the man said. His breath against her neck reeked of alcohol.
    He tightened his grip around Mary’s throat and gave the edge of the knife a rough twist. He took backward steps, dragging Mary with him, pulling her away from the light and into the blind darkness of the alley.
    Mary relaxed her body and let the man’s strength do all the work. She kept her hands free, loose, waiting to make her move. The arm around her throat was wrapped in bandages, blood flowing through the white gauze as his fingers gripped thick clumps of her hair. She shifted her face away from him, brushing against the rough skin of his cheek as she moved.
    They were in the alley now.
    “What you got for me?” the man asked, leaning her face forward against the red brick wall. “How much?”
    “Take it all,” Mary said, forcing the words out. “In the purse. Take it.”
    He yanked her head back with a forceful grip of her hair and slammed her face against the wall.
    “Don’t tell me what to take, bitch. I take what I want. Understand me?”
    “Yes,” Mary said, tasting the blood dripping down from her forehead.
    He moved his arm from her throat and ripped the purse off her shoulder. He leaned her hard against the wall, the blade of the knife keeping her in place. Mary closed her eyes, took in a few deep breaths, and tried to think with a clear head. She knew she didn’t have much time and was angry at herself for leaving her gun in the office, something she always did when she went out drinking with the squad.
    She heard the man rifle through the purse and knewexactly what he would find—sixty dollars in cash, Visa and MasterCards, one overdue and the other at its limit, a few coins, her father’s pocket watch, and an NYPD gold-shield detective’s badge.
    The man took the cash, missed the badge, and tossed the purse into a corner of the alley. He shoved the money into a front pocket of a pair of soiled jeans and leaned closer to Mary. He rested his head on her shoulder and put his lips to her ear, the knife still in its place.
    “Like the way you smell,” he said, his tongue stroking the edges of her ear.
    “You got what you wanted,” Mary said, fighting to keep her voice calm. “You got enough to get a fix and make it through the night.”
    She heard the man slide his zipper down and push himself closer.
    “You gonna be my fix,” he said. “You and me, we gonna make it through the night.”
    The man was rubbing himself against her leg, free hand pawing at her skirt and panties, trying to reach flesh. Mary struggled to free herself from his grip, using the wall as a brace, balancing her feet for leverage.
    “That’s it, baby,” the man said. “Fight me. C’mon, trim, fight me.”
    Mary turned her face from the wall, moving the man’s arm away from her thigh. She looked in his eyes, brown, glazed, and empty, and saw in them