Extracurricular Activities by Maggie Barbieri Read Free Book Online Page B

her.
    â€œThat case is a bag of shit,” Fred repeated.
    â€œWhy do you say that?”
    â€œIt’s a Miceli hit, Bobby. Plain and simple. And we know that with Miceli hits, whoever did it is in the wind.”
    Crawford shook his head. “I’m not so sure. I think we can find who did it.”
    The conversation ended when Fred tensed. “What’s that?” he asked and pointed across the street.
    A scraggly-looking man came out of the alley between a shoe store and an Italian deli and approached the female police officer. He reached for her throat and attempted to pull the necklace from it, only to find himself in a half nelson.
    Fred was into the middle of the street before Crawford had a chance to react. When it finally registered what was happening, he leapt over a parked car and darted into traffic, doing a forward roll over a taxi and landing on the double yellow line flat on his feet. Cars screeched to a halt and horns blared as the two ran across the avenue. Crawford grabbed the gun on his hip and pulled his shield from beneath his shirt as he bounded up to the female cop and her quarry.
    â€œYou okay, Carmen?” he asked. Carmen Montoya was small but strong, and had the perp on the ground, a stiletto heel straddling his neck. He flailed beneath her as she checked her manicure. Carmen had been a classmate of Crawford’s in the academy, and while she had a little “junk in the trunk”—the term Fred liked to use to refer to her sizable backside—she was as tough and smart as they came. She smiled at him as she adjusted the strap on her five-hundred-dollar shoes. Fred took over for her and pinned the perp to the sidewalk, reading him his Miranda rights as he huffed and puffed from his sprint across Riverdale Avenue.
    â€œWay to stick your landing,” she remarked, having witnessed his gymnastics across the cab. “Do I have to give back the shoes?”
    Crawford let out a laugh. “I think so.”
    She reached up and pinched Crawford’s cheek, leaving her hand there. “You so cute, Crawford,” she said in a Puerto Rican accent that she affected for his benefit. She had a master’s degree from John Jay and was on the sergeant’s list. “When we gonna hook up, papi?”
    â€œWhen your four kids go to college and your deputy inspector husband is on a respirator,” he said, pulling the perp up from the sidewalk by his handcuffs.
    She walked off, her backside packed into a black skirt, tottering on her high heels. “I’ll see you later,” she said.
    Crawford dragged the perp across the street to the Crown Victoria, parked in front of the Avenue Steak House.
    â€œDon’t tell me you never thought about it,” Fred said, thrusting his head in Carmen’s direction while opening the back door of the Vic.
    Crawford shook his head. If only it were that easy.

Chapter 5
    Another weekend came and I was still rattled by Ray’s death, and, truth be told, by my encounter with Gianna. Nothing says creepy like being in the sights of a Mob wife. Even though she was a seemingly innocuous Staten Island housewife there had been something cold and somewhat calculating about her and in the way she conveyed Peter’s message to me. Was that a hint of jealousy that I had discerned or nothing at all? Whatever it was, I was unnerved, and being as I’m slightly nervous about everything to begin with, this new state wasn’t a welcome addition to my psyche.
    I awoke, at seven-thirty, to the sound of a chain saw, in clear violation of the town’s noise ordinance. No chainsawing, no lawn mowing, no noisemaking until eight o’clock. I looked out my bedroom window and saw my neighbor, Jackson, sawing a stump on his front lawn. Given the recent developments and my thought that a person with a chain saw had killed my ex-husband, I decided to forgo giving Jackson a hard time about it and let him saw away.
    The phone