Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets

by David Simon

  Sensing that the boy needs one more good shove, Garvey walks out of the interrogation room and grabs the plastic soap dish from Vincent’s bedroom.

  “Gimme one of these,” he says, taking a.38 cartridge from the dish. “This motherfucker needs some show-and-tell.”

  Garvey walks back into the cubicle and deposits the.38 round in Kincaid’s left hand. The older detective needs no further prompting; he stands the round on its end in the center of the table.

  “See this here bullet?” Kincaid asks.

  Vincent looks at the cartridge.

  “This isn’t your ordinary thirty-eight ammunition, is it? Now we can get them to type this for us at the FBI lab, and it usually takes ’em two or three months, but on a rush job they can have it back in two days. And they’re gonna be able to tell us which box of fifty this bullet came from,” says Kincaid, pushing the round slowly toward the boy. “So, you tell me, is it going to be just coincidence if the FBI says this bullet comes from the same box as the one that killed your daddy and Lena both? You tell me.”

  Vincent looks away, his hands clasped tightly in his lap. A perfect deceit: even if the FBI could narrow the.38 ammunition to the same manufacturer’s lot number of a couple hundred thousand boxes or more, the process would probably take half a year.

  “We’re just trying to lay it out for you, son,” says Garvey. “What do you think a judge is going to do with evidence like that?”

  The boy is silent.

  “Death penalty case, Vincent.”

  “And I’m gonna be the one to testify,” adds Kincaid in his Kentucky drawl, “ ’cause that’s my thing.”

  “Death penalty?” asks Vincent, startled.

  “No contest,” says Kincaid.

  “Honest, son, if you’re lying to us…”

  “Even if we let you leave here today,” says Kincaid, “you’ll never know the next time there’s a knock on your door whether it’s us coming back to lock you up.”

  “And we will come back,” says Garvey, pulling his chair closer to Vincent. Wordlessly, he brings himself face-to-face with the boy, leaning forward until their eyes are less than a foot apart. Then, softly, he begins describing the murder of Purnell Booker. An argument, a brief struggle, perhaps, then the wounds. Garvey moves closer still to Vincent Booker and tells of the twenty or so blade wounds to the face; as he does so, he taps the boy’s cheek lightly with his finger.

  Vincent Booker sickens visibly.

  “Get this off your chest, son,” says Garvey. “What do you know about these murders?”

  “I gave the bullets to Frazier.”

  “You gave him bullets?”

  “He asked me for bullets… I gave him six.”

  The boy comes close to crying but quickly steadies himself, resting both elbows on the table and hiding his face behind his hands. “Why did Frazier ask for bullets?”

  Vincent shrugs.

  “Dammit, Vincent.”

  “I didn’t…”

  “You’re holdin’ back.”

  “I…”

  “Get it off your chest, son. We’re trying to help you to start over here. This’ll be the only chance you’re going to have to start over.”

  Vincent Booker breaks.

  “My daddy…” he says.

  “Why would Frazier kill your father?”

  First he tells them about the drugs, the packaged cocaine that was in his room at his mother’s house, ready for street sale. Then he tells about his father finding the dope and taking it away. He tells them about the argument, about how his father wouldn’t listen and drove off to his apartment on Lafayette Avenue with the cocaine in the car. Vincent’s cocaine. Frazier’s cocaine.

  He tells them about how he went to Denise’s house on Amity Street to tell Frazier, to admit that he’d fucked up, to reveal that his father had stolen their dope. Frazier listened angrily, then asked for bullets, and Vincent, afraid to refuse, gave him six wadcutters that he had taken from the tobacco can on top of the bureau in his father’s apartment. Frazier went alone to Lafayette Avenue, Vincent tells them.

  He expected his father would be threatened, he tells them, just as he expected that Frazier would get back the drugs. He did not expect a murder, he says, and he does not know what happened at his father’s apartment.

  Shit on that, Garvey thinks as he listens to the story. We know damned well what happened. I know it, you know it, Kincaid here knows it. Robert Frazier showed up at your daddy’s house wired tight on cocaine from Denise’s party, armed with a loaded.38 and a short blade and desirous of some missing drugs. Your daddy must have told Frazier to go to hell.

  That scenario explained the ransacking of Purnell Booker’s apartment as well as the repeated superficial stab wounds to the old man’s face. The torture was inflicted to make Purnell Booker talk; the ransacking suggested he didn’t.

  But why kill Lena that same night? And in the same way? Vincent claims no knowledge of that murder, and from everything he’s learned, Garvey has no idea either. Maybe Frazier was led to believe that Lena was somehow involved in the missing drugs. Maybe she was dipping into some of the dope Frazier kept on Gilmor Street. Maybe she answered the door saying something Frazier didn’t particularly like. Maybe the cocaine rush got good to Frazier and he just kept on killing. Maybe A and B, or B and C, or all of the above. Does it matter? Not to me, thinks Garvey. Not anymore.

  “You were there, weren’t you, Vincent? You went with Frazier to your father’s.”

  Vincent shakes his head and looks away.

  “I’m not saying you were involved in the murder, but you went there, didn’t you?”

  “No,” the boy says, “I just gave him those bullets.”

  Bullshit, thinks Garvey. You were there when Robert Frazier killed your father. Why else would this be so hard? It’s one thing to live in fear of a man like Frazier, another to be afraid of telling the truth to your own family. Garvey pushes the boy for a half hour or more, but it’s no use; Vincent Booker has come as close to the cliff as he dares. It is, Garvey reasons, close enough.

  “If you’re holding out on us, Vincent…”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “ ’Cause you will go before a grand jury, and if you lie to them, it’ll be the worst mistake you ever make.”

  “No, sir.”

  “All right. Now I’m gonna write this up and have you sign it as a statement,” says Garvey. “We’re gonna start at the beginning and go slow so I can write this down.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Vincent Booker.”

  “Your date of birth…”

  The official version, short and sweet. Garvey exhales softly and puts pen to paper.

  FRIDAY, MARCH 11

  With his right hand, Garvey pulls the.38 from his waist holster and drops it down against his trouser leg, shielding it from view.

  “Frazier, open up.”

  The uniform closest to the detective motions toward the front door of the Amity Street rowhouse.

  “Kick it?” he asks.

  Garvey shakes his head. No need. “Frazier, open the door.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Detective Garvey. I got to ask you a couple questions.”

  “Now?” says a voice behind the door. “I got to-”

  “Yeah, now. Open the damn door.”

  The door opens halfway and Garvey slips through, the gun still tight against his thigh.

  “What’s up,” says Frazier, stepping back.

  Suddenly, Garvey brings the snubnose up to the left side of the man’s face. Frazier looks at the black hole of the barrel, then back at Garvey strangely, squinting through a cocaine haze.

  “Get the fuck up against that wall.”

  “Wha…”

  “MOVE, MOTHERFUCKER. AGAINST THAT FUCKING WALL BEFORE I BLOW YOUR FUCKIN’ HEAD OFF.”

  Kincaid and two uniforms follow Garvey through the opening as Frazier is shoved roughly against a
living room wall. Kincaid and the younger uniform check the back rooms as the older patrolman, a veteran of the Western, cocks his own weapon against Frazier’s right ear.

  “Move,” says the uniform, “and your brains are on the floor.”

  Christ, thinks Garvey, staring at the cocked weapon, if that bad boy goes off we’ll all be writing reports for the rest of our careers. But the threat works: Frazier stops bucking and leans into the plasterboard. The uniform uncocks and reholsters his.38 and Garvey once again begins to breathe air.

  “What’s this about?” says Frazier, working hard to approximate a picture of innocent confusion.

  “What do you think it’s about?”

  Frazier says nothing.

  “What do you think, Frazier?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Murder. You’re charged with murder.”

  “Who’d I murder?”

  Garvey smiles. “You killed Lena. And the old man, Booker.”

  Frazier shakes his head violently as Howe opens one ring of his handcuffs and pulls Frazier’s right arm off the wall. Suddenly, at the first touch of the metal bracelet, Frazier begins to buck again, pushing away from the wall and pulling his arm away from Howe. With surprising speed, Garvey moves a step and a half across the living room and lands a punch hard against Frazier’s face.

  The suspect looks up, stunned.

  “What was that for?” he asks Garvey.

  For a second or two, Garvey lets himself think about the question. The official answer, the one required for the reports, is that this detective was required to subdue a homicide suspect who attempted to resist arrest. The righteous answer, the one that is soon lost to any detective with time on the street, is that the suspect was struck because he is a cold-blooded piece of shit, a murderous bastard who in a single evening took the lives of an old man and a mother of two. But Garvey’s own answer falls somewhere in between.

  “That,” he tells Frazier, “is for lying to me, motherfucker.” Lying. To a detective. In the first degree.

  Frazier says nothing more, offering no resistance as Howe and Kincaid guide him to the sofa, where he sits with his hands cuffed behind him. On the off chance that Frazier’s.38 might be lying around, the detectives do a quick, plain-view search of the apartment. The murder weapon remains unaccounted for, but on the kitchen table is a night’s work for Robert Frazier: a small amount of rock cocaine, quinine cut, a couple dozen glassine bags, three syringes.

  The detectives look at the uniforms and the uniforms look at each other.

  “You guys want to take it?” asks the younger uniform.

  “Nah,” says Garvey. “We’re charging him with two murders. Besides, we don’t have a warrant for this place.”

  “Hey,” says the patrolman, “fine by me.”

  They leave it on the kitchen table, a West Baltimore still life waiting for the successor to Frazier’s squalid, street-corner business. Garvey walks back into the living room and asks the younger uniform to radio for a wagon. Frazier finds his voice again.

  “Officer Garvey, I didn’t lie to you.”

  Garvey smiles.

  “You ain’t never told the truth,” says Kincaid. “You ain’t got the truth in you.”

  “I ain’t lyin’.”

  “Sheeeet,” says Kincaid, pushing the word to two and a half syllables. “You ain’t got the truth in you, son.”

  “Hey, Frazier,” says Garvey, smiling, “remember how you promised to bring me that thirty-eight? What ever happened to that gun anyway?”

  “That’s right,” says Kincaid, picking up on it. “If you’re so fuckin’ honest, how come you never brought that gun in for us?”

  Frazier says nothing.

  “You ain’t got the truth in you, son,” says Kincaid again. “No sir. It ain’t in you.”

  Frazier simply shakes his head, seeming to gather his thoughts for a moment or two. Then he looks up at Garvey, genuinely curious. “Officer Garvey,” he asks, “am I the only one charged?”

  The only one. If ever Garvey wondered whether Vincent Booker had anything to do with these murders, that utterance alone was enough to answer the question.

  “Yeah, Frazier. You’re it.”

  Vincent was involved, no doubt about it. But Vincent wasn’t the triggerman-not for Lena, not for his father. And in the end, it was a hell of a lot better to keep Vincent Booker as a witness than give him a charge and let Frazier use him in front of a jury. Garvey saw no point in providing Frazier’s attorney with an alternative suspect, a living, breathing piece of reasonable doubt. No, thought Garvey, for once they had told the truth in the interrogation room: You can either be a witness or a suspect, Vincent. One or the other.

  Vincent Booker gave it up-or at least gave as much of it as he dared-and went home as a result. Robert Frazier lied his ass off and now he’s going to the Western District lockup. In Garvey’s mind, there is a certain symmetry to all this.

  At the booking desk of the Western, the contents of Frazier’s pockets are arrayed on the counter, then catalogued by the desk sergeant. From a front pocket comes a thick roll of drug money.

  “Christ,” says the sergeant, “there’s more than fifteen hundred dollars here.”

  “Big fuckin’ deal,” says Garvey. “I make that in a week.”

  Kincaid shoots Garvey a look. The governor, the mayor and half of the British royal family would have to be bludgeoned to death in the men’s room of the Fayette Street bus station before a Baltimore detective would see that kind of money. The desk sergeant understands.

  “Yeah,” he tells Garvey, loud enough for Frazier to hear. “And you didn’t have to sell no dope for your paycheck, did you?”

  Garvey nods.

  “Officer Garvey…”

  “Hey, Donald,” says Garvey to Kincaid. “How ’bout I buy you a beer.”

  “Officer Garvey…”

  “I might just have one tonight,” says Kincaid. “I might just take you up on that.”

  “Officer Garvey, I ain’t lied to you.”

  Garvey wheels around, but the turnkey is leading Frazier toward the rear cage door of the Western lockup.

  “Officer Garvey, I ain’t lied.”

  Garvey looks impassively at his suspect. “Bye, Frazier. See you ’round.”

  For a few moments, Robert Frazier is framed by the cage door, waiting at the edge of the lockup as the turnkey prepares a fingerprint card. Garvey finishes playing with the paperwork on the booking desk and walks toward the back door of the station house. He glides past the lockup without looking inside, and so doesn’t see the final, unmistakable expression on Robert Frazier’s face.

  Pure, murderous hate.

  FIVE

  SATURDAY, APRIL 2

  A detective’s prayer: Blessed be the truly unwise, for they bring hope to those obligated to pursue them. Blessed be those of dim understanding, for by their very ignorance they bring light to those who labor in darkness. Blessed be Dennis Wahls, for though he believes otherwise, he is cooperating fully in the campaign to put him in prison for the month-old murder of Karen Renee Smith, the cab driver beaten to death in Northwest Baltimore.

  “This house right here?” says Eddie Brown.

  “Next one.”

  Brown nods and Wahls tries to open the back door of the Cavalier. The detective, sitting next to him in the rear seat, reaches over and pulls the door shut. Harris, one of the officers assigned to the Northwest detail, walks from his own car to Brown’s window.

  “We’ll stay here,” says Brown. “You and Sergeant Nolan go up and get him to come out.”

  Harris nods, then walks with Roger Nolan to the front of the red brick building. The Madison Avenue address is a downtown group home for those charged with delinquency, which in Baltimore means anything up to and including armed robbery and manslaughter. Inside that home is Dennis Wahls’s younger brother, on whose person is a wristwatch that belonged to Karen Smith.

  “How do you know he still has the
watch?” asks Brown as he watches Nolan and the detail officer make their way up the front steps.

  “I saw him yesterday and he had it then,” says Wahls.

  Thank God, thinks Brown. Thank God they’re so stupid. If they were smart, if they regarded murder as a secret and heinous act, if they told no one, if they got rid of the clothing and the weapon and the possessions taken from the victim, if they refused to listen to bullshit in the interrogation rooms, what the hell would a detective do?

  “This is giving me a headache,” says Wahls.

  Brown nods.

  “I’m going to need a lift home after we get finished with this.”

  A lift home. This kid actually thinks he’s going to go home and sleep it off, as if it were some kind of hangover. O.B. McCarter, another detail officer from the Southwest, bites his tongue in the driver’s seat, trying hard not to laugh.

  “You think you all could get me a lift home?”

  “We’ll see what happens,” says Brown.

  What happens is this: The younger brother of Dennis Wahls, a fourteen-year-old urchin with twice the sense of his sibling, comes out of the group home and is escorted to the side of the Chevrolet. He looks into the car, looks at his brother, looks at Eddie Brown and manages to assess the situation for what it really is. He nods.

  “Hey,” says Dennis Wahls.

  “Hey,” says his brother.

  “I told them about the watch-”

  “What watch?”

  “Hey,” Brown interrupts. “Your ass is going to be in this if you don’t listen to your brother.”

  “Man, c’mon,” says Dennis Wahls. “You got to give it up. They gonna let me go if you give it to him. If you don’t, they gonna put a murder charge on me.”