The Subtle Art of Brutality, page 14
“Naw, bro. Danny and Cherry got a racket goin’ on. Word on the street is they’ve been knockin’ over ATMs for capital. Trying to buy into the game. And Delilah, she showed up and dropped the mother-load in their laps. No production costs, high quality shit. Just bam! And they sell it. He ain’t gonna let it go. No way.”
“You don’t care one bit, huh?”
“Like I said. The bitch fucked me over and over. There’s some voodoo magic about her pussy. It makes you feel invincible and ten-foot-tall. But when it’s gone...it’s like withdrawal. What it leaves behind destroys a man. Believe me?”
“Your place is a shithole.” I walk out, forty bucks richer.
“I keep this place as clean as you keep your shave,” he calls after me. I’m at the door when he comes out of the room, excited. Anxious.
“Hey, make sure and tell your people I’m clean of this whole thing and...and I did a lot to help you guys out.”
“No,” I say and leave.
Let him sweat for it.
30
After the whole Jefferson Stoke thing, the brass decided to transfer me out of homicide.
There were some questions about the incident. Like I said, the SRT boys who made it into the house when the shot went off gave conflicting stories. I passed a polygraph on Stoke’s death. I’m that good.
But so did every SRT member who “saw” what happened. Each was little different. It’s the inherent problem with the bullshit polygraph. George Constanza announced it to his best buddy and all of America one night on prime time television: “Remember, Jerry, it’s not a lie if you believe it.”
The SRT boys had nothing to lose. They were honest. Belief.
If you can focus on a single dot on the wall, you can pass it. If you can keep yourself from sweating bullets, you can pass it. If you take some blood pressure meds beforehand, you can pass it. Nothing is certain anywhere, and I’ll bet my annual take-home that any polygraph examiner will be throwing the bullshit flag on me for stating that, but trust me and the countless number of other folks in jobs where they had to pass a polygraph.
You can pass it and lie your ass off.
Back to Stoke: there were five different polygraphs, five different stories, five truthful read-outs. In the end it was ruled as a suicide. That’s good; Jefferson Stoke pulled his own trigger. So it was suicide. I just focused on that. I also tiptoed around any kind of allegation that had the word “assistance” in it. It was a careful dance; but I’m a damned six-foot-two ballerina when it comes to such things.
The air cleared. Took a while, but it blew over. There were lingering crosshairs aimed at me. This wasn’t the first time IA and I ran into each other. Seems no one notices you while you’re setting records in homicide for closing cases with convictions. But as soon as a questionable death by violent means pops up—literally—in your lap all of a sudden you might not be a great cop.
A woman by the name of Cassandra Flemming worked in IA. Headhunter. Internal Affairs is a necessary branch of police departments; they keep the cops in line who take dope off of pushers and then sell it on the street themselves. They take care of the cops who help themselves to the evidence locker when no one is looking.
Flemming made it her business to sink good cops. Our breed deals with three things: tension, uncertainty and rapidly evolving circumstances. Cops make decisions in deep shit all the time. Some are better than others. Some are more costly than others. Some you can’t let get away. Some just need a slap on the wrist or further training.
Flemming didn’t slap wrists; she slit throats. Or she lodged knives in peoples’ backs. That’s not IA. That’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And she didn’t like me. The situation with Stoke opened the door and she shouldered her way in.
Any transfers in the department that do not occur on a payday Sunday are disciplinary. I was transferred on a Wednesday afternoon.
That told me something.
I was sent to the stolen vehicles unit, where rookies who barely passed the detectives’ exam went to cut their teeth. There is an ancient legend that has been passed down in whispers from investigator to investigator about the stolen cars unit: it was created as a reservoir of those the PD wishes to forget, or push out.
The PD wasn’t going to forget me. Not after Stoke. Not after a lot of things, really.
They wanted me out. Cassandra Flemming wanted me out. She got stolen vehicles instead. Same thing, longer period of suffering.
Good detectives will have good cases wherever they work. I tried. My time there was unremarkable save one thing. One thing that, in the end, cost me everything. Jared Garrett came knocking.
Narcotics will pull in fresh faces now and then to do controlled buys. Cops are easier to trust than CI’s. Garrett asked me to do some controlled buys against a Big Fry dealer. Seems his case was hinged on some crackhead CI who was so-so to begin with and had turned up dead. OD. I wanted anything I could get to pull me away from my punishment desk in stolen vehicles. So I said yes. I should not have.
Doing the buys weren’t hard. It was the hit afterwards that cooked my goose.
Roscoe’s.
Somewhere around 9 a.m. a fat bald guy unlocks the door to the bar. Two guys have been waiting outside the place longer than me. Both go right to the counter. The fat guy walks around the place and grabs two mugs. Fills them up. Serves. No orders, no talk. All habit.
My kind of bartender.
I watch the door for a moment, see if the off-coming police shift walks in. Sometimes that happens. Midnights get off work as the sun rises but to them, it’s their evening. And who doesn’t want a beer or two before bed? Lord knows I do. But no cops show up.
I sit down away from the customers and I light up a smoke. The fat guy comes over.
“City says you can’t do that.”
“I say I can. What do you say?”
He reaches under the bar a little ways down and produces an ashtray. “I don’t tell customers what they can’t do.” He holds the ashtray in his hand. “You a customer?”
“I am today.”
“What’ll it be then?”
“So eager to get booze in a man at this hour?”
“The way I see it, you’re sitting at bar, maybe I ain’t the one so eager to get booze in you. If you ash on the floor instead of in this here tray you’ll be fucking up my mop job. I don’t take kindly to that. So you want to smoke, you need an ashtray. You need an ashtray; so you need to be a customer. What’ll it be?”
I smile. My kind of bartender. “Stout on tap?”
“Yup. Local brew.”
“Like it?”
“Yup.”
“I’ll take one.”
He sets down the ashtray. Mozies off. Returns with the beer.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah. Blimpie.” I sit my smoke down in the ashtray and eyeball him. The bartender gives me a distrusting look.
“Blimpie don’t work today,” he says.
“What’ll it cost to whip up a shift for him that started ten minutes ago?”
“Five hundred. Cash.” No hesitation. None.
I drop the bills on the counter. Derne, it goes on your tab.
The bartender walks off and picks up a phone. Dials, no answer. Hangs up. Does it again. And again. The fourth time he speaks to someone. Shouts. Hangs up. Walks back over to me.
“Give him a half hour or so. And no blood in the bar.”
“No problem,” I say. “One more beer.”
I’ll try to hold good to the no blood in the bar part. I’ll try.
31
Blimpie looks inbred.
Fat retard. Close enough description coming from a junkie. Blimpie comes shuffling through the door, and the bartender shoots me a weary glance. I snap my fingers. Blimpie looks my way, and I point at him. Point to the stool next to me. He hesitates. I will not snap again.
He slinks over as much as his rotund shuffle will allow. Stares at my neck, my collar. My jaw. Over my shoulder. Not my eyes. Too submissive.
“Sit.”
He does.
“I want to see your brother. Now.”
“Why?”
“The dope they bought off that dame a while back, the one who knows Dobbins.”
“I don’t—?”
“It wasn’t her dope.”
“Wait? Dobbins sent you here? Looking for me?”
“You, Danny and Cherry.”
“Dobbins? Everybody knows that guy as the dude caught sucking dick in the shitter for blow.”
“So?”
“So you gonna listen to fags?”
“Yes. Where is Danny?”
“I don’t keep tabs.”
I lean in. This is pissing me off. “Blimpie, you better start keeping tabs. Danny isn’t here but you are. Get it?”
“I thought I had to work—”
He looks to the bartender and he flicks his eyes at me. Blimpie looks back and I fluff my jacket, showing him the firepower.
“I thought I had to work—”
I grab him by the scruff. One dude at the bar has his wallet open, drops a bill and gets up to leave.
“I’m the job today. Where?”
“Okay! Okay!” he trails off, looks away. I blow smoke on him. He coughs, hacks wet.
“Got his number? I’ll call him myself.” Say it so close my skin burns with the fearful heat radiating off of him.
“No. He’d kill me if—”
“Set it up then. Tell him I represent the folks who rightfully own that shit. Tell him now.”
At the mention he becomes as uneasy as a rodent in the claws of a bird of prey. They must have talked about what would happen if one day a guy saying what I am saying showed up. There’s no way some chick from Saint Ansgar would just roll into town with a load of dope needing to pawn it off who didn’t come with some baggage. She had to get it from somewhere. That somewhere is looking for it.
Now Blimpie is sitting across from that guy.
“Now look, mister...I had nothing to do with all that, okay? See, I just drop a baggie here and there and I don’t think—”
“You better run that mouth of yours into your cell phone before I fucking kill you right here, or I’ll take it from your pocket and call your brother while I’m driving to your mother’s house over on Holland to blast her. Got it?”
Wide-eyed stare. Any perp thinks you don’t know shit. They think they’re smarter than they really are. So when you start dropping real life facts about them, stuff like where their mom lives, it helps. They start to sum up the situation in a more realistic way. He looks like he just shit his pants as he says, “Okay, okay.”
He dials the number. Fidgets like a heroin addict a few hours past when they should have bumped but didn’t.
“No answer,” he says, like that is a final answer to everything and I have to let him go.
“Call Cherry then.”
He acts like he didn’t think of that before he spoke up. Maybe he didn’t. The brains of any operation this kid ain’t.
He dials a new number. Bingo.
“Cherry?” he says, nervous as hell calling this guy so early in the morning. A tell about Cherry. “It’s Blimpie. Listen...uhhh, you know that thing you and Danny talked about? The thing with the dope...yeah I know, it’s just that, well, their guy is here. He found me and you guys.”
Interesting how he phrases it me and you guys. Not us.
He leans away from me, whispers: “He’s got a gun.”
His eyes crawl to me. I can hear the voice on the other line but the words are nothing.
“Give me the phone.”
He shakes his head. No.
No one tells me no.
I take the phone in one swift snatch and my other hand lands in his solar plexus. His dumpy form melts and rolls off the stool in one weighted glob. Slaps the floor.
“You tell that fucking guy he can cut you up all he wants he ain’t getting his shit back no way no how! Blimpie? Blimpie! Your fat ass better be repeating me word for fucking word or I swear—”
“Mr. Cherry?” I say.
The other end of the line sobers up.
“Who am I speaking with?” The voice on the other end tries to be firm. I can hear the caged fury eeking out between his teeth. Mad that I show up, derail his perfect plan.
I clear my throat. “My name is Mr. Honey Bunny.”
“And what have you done with Blimpie, Honey Bunny.”
“Mr. Honey Bunny. Blimpie is on the floor, hoping I do not shoot him in the face. First off, Mr. Cherry, I want to assure you and Mr. Danny that the people I represent are not angry with you. They are angry with the woman, but that is another matter which does not concern you. I have it on good authority that you are seeking her out to obtain more of the product you received earlier. Am I correct on that?”
Hesitates. Worried I’m a cop: “I don’t know anything about a ‘product.’”
“Let her go, Mr. Cherry. I hear James Dobbins turned her dyke. And anyways, she ran off. Let her go.” I need to turn him off of the idea of looking for Delilah Boothe. The drug deal will be my angle to refocus him.
“I, uhhh...what?”
“Now, down to business. If you have a market here for our product, we would like to move it. Ideally we would ship twice a month through mules and drop off at a mutually agreeable third party location where you and your associates would distribute. You would be allowed to keep thirty percent. How amenable are you to such a proposition?”
A pause. The silent air of confusion becomes the stinging air of seething anger on Cherry’s end. He doesn’t buy a word of it and neither would I. Read on Cherry: dumb, impetuous and steers his life wherever his rage problem wants to go.
Finally he says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about and tell you what, bub, go fuck yourself.”
Click. Silence.
I look down to Blimpie. I look at the phone and finger through his buttons to the REDIAL command. Press it. Voice mail.
“Mr. Cherry, this is Mr. Honey Bunny. Have it your way then. The offer has been retracted. Within twenty-four hours you, your families and your friends will be red smears. No one tells us to fuck ourselves.”
I hang up. Pocket the phone.
“Alright. We’re done.”
Blimpie recoils into his lard. A jelly turtle, scared and alone.
I crush out the smoke, drain my beer. Stand up. Blimpie crawls like a bug cut in half but still trying to move.
I drop one of Dobbins’ twenties and head out. I hear Blimpie use the bar top to lift himself and the bartender says, “Where’re you goin’?”
Blimpie says, “I thought he was the job today?”
The bartender says, “He was. Now sweep the parlor and do a better job than you did last night.”
32
Hail a cab.
Got to make this quick. I ask the cabbie to take me to a liquor store where the clerk speaks English. Takes him several minutes to think of one, and of course he drives around the whole time. Takes him close to fifteen to get there. I go in, come out with two packages and tell him where to go next.
The breakfast joint is the same way I left it. I walk in, the waitress notices me. We meet at the counter.
I set the bottle down on the counter. Brown paper bag. She eyeballs it, looks to me.
“You wanna fuck me or somethin’?”
“Would the bottle do it?”
“Seriously?”
“I need your phone book again.”
“You wanna know my age?”
“No.”
“Probably the right answer, mister.”
She snatches the bottle off the counter and comes back with the directory. I look up Danny Gibbens-something. Bingo. Daniel Gibson, address on Holland. Tear the page out.
I walk out and hear the waitress say, “The bottle would do it. In case you’re curious.”
“Yes, I was curious,” I mutter and leave.
33
The cabbie drops me a block away from Roscoe’s.
I walk the distance. Smoke. Hide the bottle in my jacket. It keeps me warm. I make it to the bar and both Danny and Cherry are already there. I can see them through the front window. Danny looks like Blimpie only thinner and with less hair. Cherry must be the third guy. They’re berating Blimpie.
The bartender mans up and kicks them out. They storm off to a delivery van, peel out. I note the license plate.
Blimpie wanders out onto the sidewalk and stares down the road as the two others streak off. He looks like the word distraught doesn’t begin to suffice right now. I used to see the same look on dudes who had gotten out of prison and immediately get arrested for another felony. They knew they were going back and this time it’d be worse. That’s Blimpie right now.
I walk up behind him. Take him by the arm and keep walking. He startles at my touch. Darts his head my way and his face scrunches up into a little baby’s cry-face.
“Just walk. If you cry this will get out of hand,” I say, lift up on his arm. He walks. Chokes back the tears.
“Let me get this straight,” I say, light a smoke with one hand. “Dobbins sold you guys a pretty good score of Big Fry.”
“Y-yes,” he squeaks out. “Well, Danny and Cherry really. Not me. I just work at the bar—”
“Why those two?”
“They used to deal small stuff. Little bit of weed and whatnot.”
“So Dobbins picks the first dealer he can think of and drops the score of a lifetime in their lap?”
“Well, I-ughhh...I guess. Well, Cherry had been spreading the word they were trying to bust into the game, you know? Make it work—”
“They were trying to become full-time dealers?”
“Yeah, that’s it. I’m not really involved—”
“Knock off your horseshit. You’re involved.” I hate that. Anyone who’s afraid of the consequences will dime out their own mother if that’s what it takes. Every second of everyday a cop hears a chicken shit downplay his role in crime and shift all the blame onto someone else.
