by Kevin Fox
“Jesus Christ, Kill. We’ve gotta go.”
“They’re just bodies,” I said, looking up at her.
“No, they’re not. Please, now. I’m having freakin’ palpitations up here.
Come on. Let’s go. There’s nothing but death here.”
“Just let me finish,” I told her. “Why are you suddenly so freaked out?”
“Why? Why? You don’t feel the bad juju here? You’re disturbing dead kids.”
“I’m looking for evidence.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Kill. You don’t mess with shit like this. They’ll haunt us. We’re leaving,” she said, insisting as she pulled me away from the graves and the gravestones, suddenly pale.
“I thought you don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot of stuff I never believed in until I saw it,” she told me, striding quickly toward my mother’s Camry, pulling me behind her. “You said you knew how to find them, so let’s go.”
“I think I know.”
“Think or know, Kill? It can’t be both. We’ve got like an hour and a half until the bridges open,” she told me as she opened the doors to the Camry.
“An hour and twenty-six,” I told her, looking at my watch as she immediately slammed the Camry door, not getting in.
“That car smells like a goddamn ashtray. I can’t ride in that. I won’t get the smell out of my hair for a week.”
“Well, the other car’s perched on ‘Michael Sherman 1910-1987’ and has a shattered windshield. It’s not going anywhere.”
“It can. Give me two minutes and we’ll be on the road.”
“And the windshield? You expect me to peer between the cracks?”
“Like you ever really look where you’re goin’ anyway.”
“Just get in the Camry, Kat,” I ordered. “Get in the Camry.”
“You don’t even know where you’re going.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You know where Markov is?” asked Kat, with attitude.
“Yeah, Morocco said that Markov was coming into Staten Island ‘right through the graveyard’ and that he ‘never stayed long, just took up residence on the day.’”
“And that means exactly nothing to me,” Kat pouted, petulant.
“It does to me. There’s a boat graveyard on Arthur Kill Road. That’s the only kind of graveyard you can come through to get onto Staten Island,” I assured her. “We know he was arriving on a yacht. If he anchored, then used lifeboats to come in close, no one would ever know. Planes are too easy to spot now, but ships coming into port… They could off-load right there.”
“Sounds like a stretch to me…” Kat muttered, still unsure.
“Maybe, but Morocco also said ‘on the day’—and an old freighter abandoned there is called the Eldia. I think Morocco assumed it was in Spanish and translated it as El Dia—The Day.” I pulled open the driver’s door, got in, and turned the key that Rigan had left in the ignition. Stale, smoke-scented air blasted out of the vents into my face, and my mother’s Barry Manilow drifted out of the speakers, a dirge about friends being hard to find.
Hate was too kind a word for what I felt about that particular song. Kat smirked at me. “I’m not getting in that car.”
“Well, we’re not taking my father’s Accord, since it’s currently perched on top of Mr. Sherman,” I said, ending the conversation. Kat just smiled at me.
The windshield of my father’s car wasn’t as badly shattered as I thought, and I could see through a three-inch by three-inch undamaged spot if I hunched over just the slightest bit in the driver’s seat. Kat had somehow managed to rock the car back and forth enough to get it off Michael Sherman’s headstone—only pulling off the muffler a little bit. Including the thirty seconds it took to curse her for the damage, we were back on the road in about two minutes. It was a compromise, and to be honest, driving the Accord wasn’t so bad once the loose pieces of glass stopped falling in on us.
I didn’t have time to argue with Kat anyway, since now Markov had Alina, Dariya and Rigan. It was slow going as I drove, looking through the cracked windshield. Rain and spray from the standing water in the street was coming through the cracks, and periodically branches of downed trees, camouflaged by the damage, would slap the windshield, scaring the shit out of both Kat and me. She was quiet on the drive over, which was both a relief and a worry.
“Give it up. What’s bothering you? The bodies?” I finally asked.
Kat shrugged, looking out the window. “They were just kids… And did you notice anything strange about one of them?”
“Like what?”
Kat turned to look back out the window, shaking her head. “Nothing. It just creeped me out. Like seeing a ghost, you know? Like they were peaceful and happy and then Rigan came along and dragged it all back up again,” Kat muttered.
“Dragged what back up again?” I asked as my phone rang—Burke. There was only one reason for him to be calling. The dead guy in the backhoe. It had taken him about twice as long as I had expected, but Hurricane Sandy had probably slowed everyone’s reactions down.
“Collins,” I answered, trying to sound cheerful.
“Where the hell are you?” Burke growled.
“Is that Burke? Put him on speaker.” I slapped away Kat’s hand as she reached for the phone, causing the car to swerve.
“Just out for a drive,” I told him, waiting to see what he knew before incriminating myself.
“Cut the crap, Collins. You know I got a call from Demetrius,” Burke told me, getting to the point. There was no avoiding the lecture now. Kat leaned across the seat, trying to listen in.
“So, you’re not calling me because you got a lead on Markov?”
“I’m covering your ass out of respect, but you’re leaving me hanging here. I got an ashtray that doubles as a car in front of me, parked in Saint Peter’s Cemetery. It’s registered to your mother—and I got a gravedigger that looks like he dug his own grave,” Burke went on. “The other diggers here said your mystery lady paid the guy a pretty penny to bring up the bodies.”
“From the looks of his head, he’s not gonna get to spend that cash.”
“So you admit that you were here?” he asked, building a case against me already.
“I’m taking the fifth for now. I’ll have a better idea what’s going on soon. I need to go visit an old friend first. I’ll call you in an hour. If I am unable, my tenant will call you and tell you where I am.”
“Your tenant, huh? How many lies are you going to tell me today?”
“Just buy me some time with Demetrius.”
“You’ve got an hour. Soon after that the bridges will be open and this whole thing will go to shit. I’ll telling him you admitted to shooting the guy in the backhoe and I’m putting out a BOLO on you, and I will find you. If you fuck up my case up for me, I’ll be pissed—” he warned me. I hung up on him.
“You hung up?” Kat asked. “Was that a wise decision?”
“Maybe not. But what’s the worst that could happen?” I asked, heading for another kind of cemetery—one filled with the wrecks of decaying boats.
“I’m not seeing your plan here,” Kat said. “How am I going to fill him in if I’m with you?”
“You’re not going to be with me. I need you to be backup—the cavalry if I get jammed up. You need to be ready to call Burke and the whole goddamn NYPD if this goes wrong.”
“But—” she started to argue.
I stopped her, putting a gentle hand on her thigh before it became another argument. “Kat, I’m asking because I trust you. I really need you for this.”
“For what exactly? What’s the plan?”
“Well, first, we might need another car.”
“You plan on wrecking this one? Not that I’d miss it.”
“No. But if you’re going to follow me, you can’t be in the same car I am, can you?” I asked, and saw her eyes light up. Kat was excited to be involved.
“Father Finley
drives a BMW,” Kat said, almost too quickly.
“He’d lend you his car?” I asked, wondering what kind of priest drives a BMW.
“He has before.”
“Does he know he has? Or did you ‘borrow’ it?” I asked, already knowing the answer even before Kat grinned.
“It’s fine,” she reassured me. “He barely even uses it. It has like seven hundred miles on it. I’ll get it and follow you. I just have one question—”
“Yes. I’ll give you a gun,” I answered, tired of her asking already.
Chapter
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Arthur Kill boat graveyard is more like an auto salvage yard than anything else. It’s surrounded by a crappy chain-link fence with hand-lettered warning signs to keep out and has random, unidentifiable pieces of steel and metal piled up in what someone, somewhere, must recognize as a Picasso-esque vision of order. At one point, over four hundred ships lay rotting here. In the past few years, a lot of them had been salvaged for scrap metal and parts, but the place was no less creepy for being less crowded.
In order to enter the graveyard stealthily, I’d parked on the side of Arthur Kill Road and walked through the misty night, passing through a centuries-old roadside cemetery with its grave markers nearly worn clean from hundreds of years of rain and weather. The garbage-strewn path that led toward the rusting fence and sheet metal walls that surrounded the yard was full of mud that sucked my feet in, and the wet grass soaked my pants to the knee before I got close enough to see the floodlights that lit the water’s edge.
The darkly reflective surface of the flat, calm Arthur Kill appeared suddenly as I got close enough to see it, but the marshy smell of its tainted water had reached my nostrils several minutes before. It gave off a rotten odor, and I wondered if the Dutch subconsciously adopted the word “kill” from English because the stagnant water smelled like death. I could just see the New York Post tomorrow with my picture on the cover, a morgue shot, and a cheesy headline: “Great Kills” and a story about murdered women and a dead homicide detective washed up on the edge of the “kill.”
The hulking shadows of the abandoned and rotting ships came into view beyond the fence. The gentle lapping of waves against their sides gave the graveyard a sonic shape and size, drowning out the rustling of swamp reeds and far-off traffic on the West Shore Expressway. Once I was inside the yard, I headed straight across to the water. I was looking for something that would float well enough to get me out to the Eldia, which I could see anchored a hundred yards out. I could see lights—more than the usual that would warn passing ships of its presence. Someone was on board.
The ground became softer under my feet as splotchy reflections of rain hit the oily, polluted surface of the Arthur Kill. I scanned the water’s edge, noticing one bright spot in the darkness, half hidden in the cattails: a yellow life raft that looked brand-new. To get to it I would need to wade out another fifteen feet, carefully, so I didn’t make any noise that might warn the occupants of the Eldia. Fortunately, the raft had both an outboard motor and oars, so I could forge across the water stealthily.
Before I went any farther I dialed my cell phone. Hers rang only once. She’d been expecting my call.
“Where are you, Kill?” Kat asked.
“Knee deep in shit, where else?”
“I can call Burke and have him ping your cell and send the Feds right now, or you can stop fucking around,” Kat told me. I knew she wasn’t bluffing.
“Fine. I’m in the middle of the Arthur Kill boat graveyard. Just keep listening and if you hear anything sketchy, call Burke and get him down here.”
“Maybe I should just call him now,” she threatened.
I ignored her and slid my cell into my jacket pocket. I wanted to have Kat as a witness to what was about to happen, but I didn’t want her rushing in with the cavalry, fucking everything up and getting everyone killed—and I certainly didn’t want her telling Burke where I was too soon. He’d jump the gun so he could be the hero.
Something behind me moved the cattails, trampling over them. I had a massive sense of déjà vu. I would have run, but could feel the muck suck my feet in, and there was no way I was risking falling face first in the polluted water again. I knew from experience about the vicious eels here and that the water tasted like crap. The little that I’d ingested when I was a kid was probably already eating away at my intestines and would kill me in twenty years.
“Hands up! Don’t move!” he shouted, with a gruff, smoke-etched voice that appeared to be heavy with mucus. I could hear him breathing heavily between words, so I was pretty sure of what I’d see when I turned around. I wasn’t disappointed.
“Which is it you want me to do, put my hands up or not move?” I asked the hairy, portly man wheezing as he trotted toward me, a nine-millimeter pistol hanging heavy by his side.
“Don’t be a smart ass. Get your hands where I can see them.”
I raised my hands and noticed that his shirt was open, revealing a hairy paunch that hung over his unbuttoned pants. I’d interrupted him in the middle of something, possibly taking a piss, more likely pleasuring himself while watching late-night porn on his phone. Security in a boat graveyard had to be boring. I’m sure he got creative with how he passed his time.
“I have my shield in my jacket. You mind if I reach for it?” I asked, keeping my eyes on his pistol.
“Who the fuck are you?” the man demanded, catching his breath even as he raised the pistol to aim at my center mass.
“Detective Collins, NYPD. See?” I reached slowly into my jacket, pulling out my shield case. He moved closer, snatching it from me. After a moment he put out his hand again. I gave him my gun, not having much choice in the matter. Then he pulled out a shield case of his own, shoving it in my face.
“I got one of those too, genius.” I looked at it closely—the ID of an NYPD sergeant.
“Good for you, Sergeant Weinberg. What are you doing here? Night security? In case someone tries to pirate a sinking ship?”
“Don’t be a smart ass. What are you doing here?”
“Working a case. I need to get out to one of those boats.”
“They’re ships, not boats—and you’re not goin’ nowhere without a warrant.”
I nodded, agreeable. I wanted to get on board the Eldia. Weinberg could help me do that if I worked him the right way.
“You work for the owner?” I asked.
“I work for the guy that owns the owner,” he answered as I saw something move behind him, a pale white girl no more than nineteen, moist with mist, her shirt mostly open and too damp for anything near modesty. A hoodie had been hastily thrown over it, but that wasn’t closed either. She was obviously cold—and curious. Sergeant Weinberg hadn’t been taking a piss after all.
“Who’s she?” I asked, distracting Weinberg, but not for long enough to make a move on him.
“A friend.”
“Part of the compensation package? A little perk?”
“She’s my fuckin’ girlfriend, asshole,” Weinberg said, pointing the gun at my face. He sounded as if he actually believed it.
“Let me guess. Markov introduced you, she keeps you satisfied and never, ever, ever tells him every single thing you do. She ever ask you about ongoing cases? Police business?”
“Fuck you. I trust her.”
“Who is this, David? Why is he here?” the girl asked.
“Go inside, Ariana,” Weinberg ordered, but Ariana didn’t move.
“You ever wonder why a girl that looks like that would want to schtup you in a swampy boat graveyard, Weinberg?”
“Ariana, go back to the shed. Now. Stay there.” Again, Ariana didn’t move. She was too interested in what was going on—almost as if she’d have to report back to someone about everything she saw.
“Ariana, run. Now’s your chance. ICE and the FBI will be here soon,” I told her, and I caught her eye. She believed me, and that got her motivated as she started off into the shadows. I�
�d say that it was a fifty-fifty shot that Sergeant Weinberg would never see her again.
Relationships are so hard.
“I’m calling this in,” Weinberg told me as he glanced back at Ariana, who was hurrying to leave, walking out of his life for good.
“Good, ask for Lieutenant Demetrius.”
“I’m not calling the house, moron. I’m calling my boss.” He was already dialing, and I was pretty sure that I was going to get the chance to meet Markov one more time before the night was over.
I got my ride to the Eldia in the life raft. It was at gunpoint, but at least I didn’t have to row since the noise of the engine no longer mattered. Weinberg watched me nervously on the way over, probably never expecting any more excitement as a night security guard than Ariana’s blowjobs. I’d upset his cush gig and made him come out in the rain. He wasn’t happy about it.
“So, what was it? Why’d you need this job? Was it the divorce? Child support?” I pressed, talking to fill the nervous void.
“Divorces. Plural, not that it’s any of your business.”
“Of course. So, what do you do for him, break in the girls?” I asked, and a look of genuine disgust fleetingly crossed the old cop’s face.
“I don’t do nothin’ illegal. I just keep people out.”
“So you’ve never seen girls come through here?”
“Girls, boys, sure. Mr. Markov’s trying to give them a chance at the American dream over here. Finds them jobs,” he said. With a straight face.
“Seriously? You buy that? He transports teen girls here out of the goodness of his heart?”
“He says he has connections at the State Department. Gets them work visas.”