Free Where It Hurts by Reed Farrel Coleman

explained to him about Kristen getting pulled over and Pete McCann stepping in to keep her from getting arrested.
    “I mean, Christ, Al, if Pete hadn’t warned me off, I probably wouldn’t even have given it a second thought.”
    “Okay,” he said and scribbled some notes. When he looked up, he asked, “So the guys that shot at you, you think they were citizens?”
    Citizens, that was current white-cop lingo for African-Americans. And in Suffolk County, that was almost all cops. For a while, “Canadians” was the code word. There were others. The code changed every now and then.
    “I think at least one of them was black,” I said. “I don’t know about the shooter. He let his bullets do his talking. And before you ask, I didn’t see either one of them. For all I know, there might’ve been more than two guys, but I can only be sure of two. And no, I didn’t see the vehicle except that it was a big SUV.”
    He shook his head in mock disgust. “Didn’t you used to be a cop? You’re as useless as sharp corners on a bowling ball.”
    “Sorry, I was too busy getting shot, you prick.”
    Al laughed and patted my shoulder. “Okay, Gus, we’re almost done here. Give me a minute to finish making some notes and . . .” His voice drifted off.
    Something was eating at me. He had asked me all the right questions but one, so I asked him.
    “What do you think they were looking for, Al?”
    “Huh?” He didn’t look up, but he heard me all right. His jaw clenched.
    “The guys that killed Delcamino.”
    “What about them?”
    “Before I found the body, I checked for him in both trailers. They were tossed and these guys were thorough. They dumped his cerealboxes, cut all the cushions, his mattress, pulled out every drawer, turned everything upside down. They must’ve been looking for something specific.”
    “Maybe.”
    “C’mon, Al, what the fuck’s going on here? A few minutes ago you asked me why I thought Delcamino might’ve been killed. I mean—”
    “Enough, Gus. Enough!”
    “But—”
    Al reached across me and pushed the Ford’s passenger door open. “It’s late. Go home. Get some rest. I’ve got what I need. I’ll call you when forensics clears your weapon and you can come pick it up.”
    We shook hands and I slid off the seat. My leg had stiffened up and was killing me. I propped myself up, leaning one elbow on the open door and the other on the car roof. Al noticed.
    “What’d the EMT tell you about the leg?”
    “Gave me a starter does of antibiotics and told me to get a full script from a doctor. Told me to stay off the leg for a while.”
    Al’s expression went from his usual vague sadness to earnest.
    “Don’t listen to him, Gus. Stay on the leg long enough to walk away.”
    “What’s that supposed—”
    “We’ve been friends a long time, you and me. Walk away. Forget Tommy Delcamino.”
    I opened my mouth to say something else, but Al stretched out, grabbed the door handle, and yanked it shut.

14
    (THURSDAY NIGHT)
    I was feeling half-past dead when I pulled into the parking lot at the Paragon. My head was throbbing; worse than that, my leg was throbbing pretty bad. I’d been shot at before, a few times, but never shot. Don’t let anyone tell you those are about the same thing. There’s kind of an unreality to getting shot at. No unreality to getting a piece of your flesh torn off and burned away by a hot piece of metal. I’d been lucky. I knew that. Compared to most of the gunshot trauma I’d seen, my wound was nothing: a future scar, a story to tell the boys over beers at Commack Lanes. But it was also something more than that.
    I sat in the front seat of my car and switched off the radio, tired of hearing the same sketchy reports of Tommy Delcamino’s murder. Light travels faster than anything else in the universe. Bad news was a close second. I closed my eyes, rested my head, too beat to get out. At least part of my headache was frustration and maybe more than a