The Subtle Art of Brutality, page 9
“How?”
“Candy was driving the night I stashed the ten spot and she always always always speeds. Always. It’s like the bitch can only floor the pedal. She got pulled over and I was never more glad I stashed the dope. ’Cuz she had a warrant so they ran me and I had one too. We both were taken in.”
“What about the dudes you were doing business with? Who were they?”
“A guy named Pete and some other dude named Pinky Meyers.”
“They go back and get the dope?”
“No. There was a shit storm over that. I swear! They never knew I stashed it and when I sent Candy back for it—she got out before I did—Delilah said she found it and fuckin’ freaked. The bitch said she dumped it off on some ex-boyfriend who middle-manned it. Told Candy to kick rocks and never come back ’round again or she’d call the cops.”
“And?”
“And that crack whore stripper didn’t want no part of drug dealin’. Just wanted to get high. Twat found another dealer. I hear she’s dead. Fuck her. Probably bad shit.”
“Candy is dead?”
“What I hear. Now get off—”
“You have her killed?”
“I mighta called a favor in from a prison buddy, I dunno.”
Bounce.
“Try and know for me, please.”
A shower of blood from his mouth, tears from his eyes: “The big guy out there! The big guy you elbowed in the fuckin’ face! He whacked the bitch! I never asked where he stashed her! I swear!”
“So, after Candy flopped on your request you sent Benny over there to double check?”
“He was goin’ muscle her a bit if he needed to, yeah. You know how much she robbed me for? You got any fuckin’ idea?”
“I doubt very much you produce high quality drugs. Who else is looking for her?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care! My boys are sellin’. I’ll look that bitch up in due time and roll her ass and you motherfucker, you, I got people and you—”
“You’re crashing in a shithole apartment complex in the Burrows. Operation my ass.” I take a long drag, feel the burn running down my throat. We’re about done here.
Honest, detached intrigue: “Are you really the manager?”
“No! The manager buys from me! I’m staying here for a while!”
“Where is he?”
“Extended vacation! Okay? Extended vacation!”
Dead.
“Get the fuck offa me cocksucker—”
His face goes back in the toilet. A full two cigarettes after he stops struggling I let go.
I get up, walk out of the shitter. The mess in the living room. I put Benny’s gun in his dead hand and aim at the unconscious Cyclops thug.
In this complex a gunshot goes unnoticed.
20
Graham Clevenger: born in Wyoming.
I forget where. North end of the state. I remember that much. He said his childhood was spent on a cattle ranch doing the kind of thing real cowboys do. Herd cattle, cook chili, drink and fight. When he was eighteen he enlisted into the Navy. Being a former Marine that is something I never let him live down.
The service took him here. He said he was glad for it; he’s got family here. After his tour he decided to stay for a while because his girlfriend at the time, a gal by the name of Molly, lived here. He joined the Saint Ansgar PD after he watched me in action. No joke.
I was actively engaged in a pursuit with a guy by the name of Denton Philips. They called him “Hulk” on the street. He was a huge man who abused his size and used it as the because I can reason when it came to bullying folks and beating up women. He had some gang affiliations, a rap sheet for things like assault, battery, domestic violence, resisting, armed this and that and drug charges.
Hulk was wanted for beating a man severely in a bar fight. Hulk pounded him into the tabletop and left, throwing over chairs and smashing beer bottles on his way out. Man-child in a temper tantrum. Apparently once Hulk was spun up everyone had to suffer through his bullshit fits.
The guy Hulk beat died later on in the hospital. Brain bleed. I hear the surgeon opened the guy’s skull and drained it, went the whole nine yards but the thing was hosed before he got there. Hulk was looking at some real time for this.
Hulk disapproved.
A few nights after the guy died, some unnamed beat cop did a traffic stop on Hulk. Seven miles away Clevenger was sitting down to dinner on an outside patio with Molly. He was going to be discharged from the Navy in another month.
The beat cop, a veteran guy who was never getting out of patrol, made two mistakes. His first was he called out the plate to Dispatch and then approached the car before he received the return. Sign of complacency. You want to get up on that car before they can stash their dope or pull a gun, but hear your return first.
If he’d waited he would have heard the warning that the registered owner had a homicide warrant. But he didn’t. The beat cop approached Hulk’s car. Did the whole spiel. Evening. My name is so-and-so, I work for the Saint Ansgar PD and the reason I stopped you...Hulk had his license ready and was offering it before the cop asked. A set up. Just a worm on a line.
The second mistake: Hulk held the license inside the window enough to where he’d have leverage over the cop. What the guy should have done is told Hulk to reach out the window.
In a quick flash Hulk dropped the license, grabbed the cop by the wrist and gunned the engine.
Just like that we have what we call in the biz an oh shit moment.
He held onto the beat cop just long enough to be trouble. The beat cop was wearing steel-toed shoes and got his left foot run over by the vehicle as it took off. Hulk let go and the beat cop collapsed into the street. The steel toe is actually just a dome of metal over the toe in the boot, which, when the weight of a car is applied to it, fails miserably. The steel toe dome smashed down, severing all five toes on the cop’s foot. Later the beat cop said he missed the return because he was speaking with the driver and turned his radio down so he wouldn’t have to shout over it.
I heard the return on the radio. A moment later I heard a cop scream officer down. Every available unit started speeding that way.
I was close by. Homicide warrant and officer down is a good way to get me focused. My coffee and sandwich dropped to the ground as I bolted for my car.
I went hunting and in no time I found my prey.
Hulk saw another cop car in his rearview and he went apeshit. Some perps decide that if they’re going down, they’re going down in a ball of fire. Forget stoplights, other traffic, pedestrians. He was going to escape or he was going to wreck the city on his way out. I really thought about shooting him. Just drawing my iron and firing right through my windshield into the back of his head. I was already under a microscope for pistol-whipping a john who had brutally raped a whore a few months back so I decided to let this one play out in traffic. If Hulk killed someone in that neighborhood it would probably be a drug dealer anyways.
The car chase went as chases do. Hulk drove the wrong way in traffic for a spell until a semi-truck came nose-to-nose with him. He ran every red light. Doubled the speed limit. Went over curbs. This went on for a few minutes and then one of the SAPD guys ahead of us deployed some variation of a spike strip. Hulk hit it with all four tires. Effective. Hulk gunned the engine even harder as the car was struggling more. We were three blocks away from Clevenger.
The precinct captain got on the air and told us to end this thing quick. We were leaving the rough neighborhoods and getting into the classier ones. I guess he just wanted us to wave our magic wands and safely bring all vehicles to a complete stop.
Hulk fought his steering wheel to maintain some semblance of control while traveling fast enough to lose the devil. He couldn’t shake me, though. He was heading for the Mannsmith Memorial Bridge.
Clevenger said he looked up when he heard the sirens, faint as old regrets calling in the distance. He said everyone seated at the tables around him were trying to ignore the nightly soundtrack until it became apparent that whatever was going on was coming their way.
Clevenger, nursing a beer, staring at Molly, gorgeous as Aphrodite. A cool, pleasant night eating outside. Forty feet away, a car, battered and near death, shrieking on tire rims, taking the corner too fast and skidding sideways. Rolling onto the roof. Sliding nearer with a cascade of sparks like fireworks. Molly screaming. Jumping up. Everyone around erupting in terror.
Fifteen feet. Cop cars spilling forward like a dam broke. Before the suspect vehicle even came to a complete halt, the huge man inside it punching through the cracked driver’s side window. Hits the curb, rocks unsteady for a moment. The driver emerges, sees an older man and woman standing there.
Clevenger said Hulk clapped the older man upside the head and he crumbled like a wet sack of irons. Hulk grabbed the older woman. She screamed so hard her teeth flew out of her mouth. Then I was there, appearing out of nowhere. Clevenger heard Hulk bellow out This cunt dies if anyone—and then BOOM. My muzzle to his head, making the older woman safe.
Just like that we have what we call in the biz a firearm solution.
Clevenger said he was already making plans to pick up an application the next day at a police station near his apartment. Molly said, “I’m glad you don’t have friends like that cop.”
Ha.
I toss Nicky’s pad.
I find a duffle bag, an overloaded ash tray full of cheap cigarette butts and roaches and a couple of spoons, scorched on the bottom and stained in the bowl. Mainlining. Needles in the trash. Empty Chinese food containers. Beer bottles. Porn.
The door to the single bathroom is hollow-core. Too heavy on top. I leave it open, get a chair; stand on it. The top ledge of the door itself has been pried off. Tool marks along one side. I peel it back.
Hollow-core doors are partitioned inside by slats of cardboard. Users will sometimes remove the top and stash contraband inside them. Nicky has several ounces of weed in one section. About three ounces of cocaine in the next. He’s got a .22 caliber with no serial number next to the top hinge.
On the back patio there is a barbeque grill filled with paper ashes. No charcoal ashes. No wood. Paper. Burning his notes and ledgers. The organized distribution folks will have to keep some kind of temporary paperwork. When the shipment is complete they’ll destroy the paperwork, so that it does not become evidence against them.
Still, the ashes are cold and there is no smell of fire in the air.
These are old. Maybe Nicky really did have some degree of an operation going on here.
Plot point: assuming Nicky was some kind of network man, it’s possible that Delilah, among other problems, hosed the wrong dealer who just happened to be in a turf war. Losing a shipment like that would cost big bucks.
Tweakers kill over a few granules of meth or a single Big Fry pill. Giving the long screw to a dealer over an entire shipment is suicide, whether she knew what she was doing or not.
Sold it to an ex-boyfriend who middle-manned a deal. Pierce White? James Dobbins? Some third player?
I go back to the duffle bag—no doubt Nicky’s entire life packed up—and I dig. There are some clothes, a carton of the cheap cigarettes same as the butts that fill the ashtray, some mementos from a previous life where he was apparently a loving boyfriend or husband and father. These must be prior to his Big Fry existence. You see these remnants of ordinary, person-next-door lives with meth addicts, alcoholics, everybody.
You learn to despise addictions in a new way when you see what was sacrificed for them. If I felt sadness I would for the woman and child Nicky left behind.
I wonder what they would think knowing the Nicky they loved is dead, scrawny and weathered beyond his years, floating tits up and face down in a piss-filled toilet.
At the bottom of the bag is a five-subject spiral-bound notebook. The first two subjects have been torn out. Burned, I’m sure. The third subject is missing pages but when I open the cover up there are handwritten notes.
They have to do with the current production schedule. Excellent.
I walk out the door to Jeremiah’s car. On the way I flip open my cell phone and dial the best man I know. On the third ring he picks up.
21
Out of that armpit and back up north.
Jeremiah meets me at the corner. I get out, leave it running and light a smoke.
“You smoke in my car?” he asks.
“You smoke in your car.”
“Yeah, but it’s my car.”
“So?”
“So don’t smoke in my car.”
“Well, I didn’t smoke in it.”
“I don’t believe you,” he says and pops the trunk.
“There’s no dead bodies back there, Jeremiah.”
“So says you.” He goes around to the back and makes a grand spectacle of checking the space. Truth be told, I did consider stuffing someone from Nicky’s apartment in there as a joke but I didn’t want the headache of having to dump it somewhere else. I don’t have the time right now.
And I’ll probably need to borrow Jeremiah’s car in the future. So, as funny as it is, my future plans will not include using a friend’s trunk as a meat locker for amusement.
Small talk: “How are things going today?”
“Usual. Frequent flyers pill shopping. Did you fill this thing up?”
“No.”
“You’re a son of a bitch, you know that? It’s riding on empty.”
“What’s in the bag?” I motion to a plastic sack dangling from his backpack. It’s in an opened pocket about ready to fall out.
“What?” He turns to fidget with it and it spills onto the street.
Pill bottles.
“You walking out of there with meds?”
“Naw, man. Ain’t my way.”
“So you take them?”
He looks about for a moment and draws near to me. “I swear, RDB. If you tell—”
“Blah blah blah.”
“Every now and then one of the admitting nurses likes to shake it up a bit and get down on one of the meds I hand out to some of the patients. So I hook her up if one of the patients isn’t conscious when I deliver the drug.”
“What about when they are conscious?”
“I give it to them.”
“No, I mean what about after, when they come to and don’t have any meds?”
“The stuff I got ain’t the stuff the junkies come in to trade their dope for, see. This is different shit. The people takin’ these pills, they don’t want to be taking them. Psychiatric meds. It takes a month, month and a half for the appropriate tolerances to build up. Usually. If the levels ain’t right they mess up the patient. Then of course you’ve got your Benzodiazepines, your Chloral Hydrates. Fun pills. Easy. No one bitches when they weren’t force fed their shit. Besides, if they need this stuff they’re beyond help. Trust me.”
Chloral Hydrate: Mickeys. This guy, I swear.
“You just pretend you gave it to them? Is that what you tell the patient?”
“Yeah. I just say, You took your pill like a good boy.” Jeremiah says.
“I’ll be dipped in shit and rolled in corn flakes if your patients buy that crock.”
“Time to shut your mouth and thank me for the car. Again.”
“You’re talking about jail time, Jeremiah. Not that I care,” I say, laughing.
“The nurse shakes it up with me, too. I figure I scratch her back—”
“Yeah, yeah.” I wave him off.
“Thanks for your shitbox car,” I say. “Now scram. I’ve got someone else meeting me here and he’d hate to find out you’re stealing prescriptions from rehab patients and using them to barter for pussy.” I smirk. “Or date rape.”
Jeremiah stares at me, incredulous at my joke. I think he knows I’m razzing him. I think. But, then again, he’s stolen drugs before and gotten busted so maybe he doesn’t think it’s so funny.
“Next time, RDB, when you want a favor you show up with cash.”
“If it’s going to be like that, Jeremiah, I’ll show up with cops.” I smile. He turns his head to the side and spits because he doesn’t dare do it in my direction. He ducks into the car and leaves.
He flips me the bird as he passes out of existence here on this snow-covered avenue. I laugh and blow smoke chasing after him. I don’t think it catches up.
I’m not even done with my smoke before the unmarked SAPD car rolls up; its headlights twin beacons cutting through the noir swath of life stretched out all around me.
22
I walk up to my old partner, comfortably seated inside his car, warm as a hotbox.
The window rolls down and Graham Clevenger’s elbow dangles out. I lean in.
“This notebook will be quite a find,” I say, smiling in earnest to my old friend. The ambient heat washing out from the open window is a welcome blanket covering me in the frigid exterior here. I’d sit in the car but I want to smoke more than I want to be warm.
Clevenger looks at me and readily accepts the spiral-bound ledger, begins to leaf through it.
“Did you take this off a doctor or something?”
“Big Fry dealer. Former dealer.”
“This guy could have written prescriptions, alright. Oh—” His eyes widen at the text. “Where’d you get this again?”
“Nowhere in particular.”
“I gotta tell the captain it’s from somewhere.”
“That depends on the captain. Is it Captain Reichland or Captain Moody now?”
“Jesus, Buckner. I told you back in August that Moody died.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm...Oh that’s right.” I smile. “Moody died?”
“Yes, Buckner. How many times—”
“Moody’s dead?” I ask, finding this to be hilarious.
“Bastard,” Clevenger says. “I know how you felt about the guy but let his body rest.”
