Exacting Justice

by TG Wolff

  He swatted at his sister as she covered laughter with a cough. “Well, Nadia, congratulations, you are doing well.”

  “My son is a detective with the Cleveland police.” His mother brushed the hair out of his face “The long hair isn’t him. It’s part of working under blankets.”

  He caught his mother’s hand and held it, leaving his hair where it was. Six days a week, it was pulled against his head and tightly braided. Sundays, he let it hang free down his back and anywhere else it wanted to go. “Undercover, Mom. Not under blankets.”

  “I like your hair,” Nadia said. “Is it as soft as it looks?”

  “Tito,” Rhianna said in a loud whine. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  Mariana reached for her daughter. “Let’s—”

  Cruz shouldered his sister aside and lifted his niece to his hip. “Sorry, Nadia. Nature calls. You understand.” He hurried toward the church without looking back.

  Inside the foyer, Rhianna leapt down. “Did I do it right, Tito?”

  “You were perfect.” He knelt, took out his wallet, and handed Rhianna two dollar bills.

  “Can we do it again?”

  “With your abuela, we’ll do it every Sunday.” A throat cleared behind him. He cringed, dreading the lecture, then peeked over his shoulder. “Mari.”

  His sister stood with her arms crossed under her chest, her foot tapping on the carpeted floor. “I can’t believe you would use my daughter this way.” Her barely contained grin ruined the effect. “You better hope Mom doesn’t catch you. I’m not covering your butt.”

  Rhianna giggled. “Butt.”

  “Every Sunday, Mari, every Sunday she finds a new girl to parade like, like…”

  “For her, marriage and happiness are hand and glove. She wants to see you happy, that’s all.”

  He opened the door enough to peer out. “We’re clear.” He took one of Rhianna’s hands, his sister took the other. “A woman is not the answer to everything. Look, I know it’s not their fault. That’s why I came up with this. I make an exit, and nobody gets hurt.”

  At Mari and Tony’s house, laughter and chatter and noise were the soundtrack to the dinner of stuffed peppers and rice Cruz prepared. This was his home for a year and a half. The room they kept for him anchored him in a world that still shifted beneath his feet. He loved those little girls, who had a sixth sense about when he hurt, when he struggled. They gave him the strength to step out on his own again.

  Coming back each Sunday was a reward for making it through another week. He leaned back in his chair, content to watch the girls clear the table.

  “Are you staying tonight, Tito?” Gabby asked with a broad smile.

  “Please, please, please,” Rhianna said, jumping with two plates in her hands.

  “I stayed over Tuesday night.” Cruz caught the plates before they fell, then pointed a finger between the two girls. “Neither of you let me sleep. Four hours. That’s all I got.”

  Gabby rolled her eyes. “It was Halloween, Tito. Nobody’s supposed to sleep on Halloween.”

  “Too many monsters.” Rhianna pulled back her lips and gnashed her teeth.

  “You definitely are going to keep me awake and I have to work in the morning. Plus, you know I meet Dr. Oscar on Sunday nights.”

  Both girls pouted, but then Gabby lifted her brows. “Will you play before you go?”

  Rhianna grabbed her uncle’s hand and pulled with all her might. “Yeah, yeah. Me and Gabby against Tito.”

  Hours later, Cruz walked into the familiar restaurant, high on life. After two years of meeting at the same table, he could find Bollier with his eyes closed.

  “You have grass stains on your knees.”

  “I lost seventy to fifty-six. The girls cheat.” As he sat, coffee appeared before him, dressed just the way he liked.

  Dr. Oscar Bollier’s edges were frayed: his hair too long, his shirt rumpled, his beard untrimmed. To find the man, you had to look in his eyes.

  Calm. Collected. Content.

  That drew Cruz to this man, the elusive Cs he wanted for himself.

  “How’s the office?” Cruz asked.

  “Can’t complain. Now, my patients, they complain. Did have something funny come in.”

  “Funny” was never “funny.” Funny was weird or grotesque. It often oozed. It sometimes smelled. As he listened, Cruz was grateful, as he had been so many other times, that he was not eating. Even homicide detectives had their limits.

  “And you,” Bollier said. “Detect anything interesting lately?”

  “I thought working undercover narcotics for six years I’d seen it all. Yesterday, a five-year-old dropped an f-bomb on me. Imitating his old man—a dealer.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I’d been around him a few times. He tried to place me. The clean shave and new face throws them.” He touched the scars at the corner of his eye that were his bane and had become his talisman. “He’s going to try something stupid on a guy that takes pride on taking stupid shits apart. It gets so predictable, you know? There are times I’d like to see something different.”

  Bollier snorted derisively. “Be careful. I wished for something different once.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got what I wished for.”

  November 5

  No. No. No. This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. Don’t go anywhere.

  He’s still dead. Maybe I’m dreaming.

  I bit my tongue. I think it’s bleeding.

  Tastes like it. That doesn’t prove I’m awake. Don’t go anywhere

  Not my fault. Not my fault. It was dark. Not my fault. Light flashed. Felt a thud. Not my fault. I got out to help. Not my fault. I thought it was a dog.

  I should check for ID. Why didn’t I think of that before?

  I was right, it was a dog. The two-legged kind. The man sold drugs.

  The City is better off without him.

  Chapter Three

  Monday, November 6

  Dressed for the day, Cruz leaned against the kitchen counter he’d installed himself, sipping coffee and reading the daily meditation. Weak sunlight poked through the blinds, striping the page until it was unreadable. He set the book aside. A moment later, his phone rang.

  His day started with a caravan of city-issued cars parked on the northbound shoulder of I-71. The knot of concrete ribbons was the nexus of I-71, I-480, and the spurs to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Going through at sixty-five miles an hour, he had read the “Cleveland Corp Limit” sign hundreds of times but never noticed this triangle patch. The sign rose up behind the concrete barricade and between its legs was a post. The post wasn’t interesting. It was what was on it.

  “Just a head?” Cruz shouted to be heard over the white noise of traffic above, below and next to him. He swung a leg over the barricade and carefully lowered his weight to the ground. The land dropped sharply down to I-480. This wasn’t a place made for walking.

  “So far, Detective.” One of the patrolmen on the scene, a big man named Buettner, answered him. Three others fought the wind to secure a tent screening the crime scene from the morning commute. “Had nearly a half dozen accidents with people looking at this.”

  “It would get my attention, even without coffee.” Because he was watching his footing, he began with the ground. The post was one of the thousands sold for myriad household uses. Heavy enough gauge to be able to take some weight, small enough to be portable. The ground wasn’t frozen, but it would take a mallet to drive it in deep enough to support a head. Crime scene would dust for prints. Overgrown scrub around the post was matted down but showed no footprints of the person who had stood here and planted the nightmare.

  His latest customer died hard. The head was battered, scraped as though it had been bounced off pavement a few times. Something was familiar…

  “Shit. Why wasn’t I told his ID?”

  “We don’t have it yet, Detective. Can’t take prints,” Buettner said.

>   Cruz paced away. This wasn’t coincidence or serendipity or even cosmic justice. This was just messed up. “His name is Alvin Hall. Street name Uncle.”

  Buettner’s brows rose. “You know him?”

  His hand lifted to his scars. “Narcotics.”

  “You sure it’s him?”

  When a guy puts you in a hospital for three months, rearranges your face, you tended to remember him. “I’m sure.” Just another customer, he told himself, dropping into a squat. He looked at the dried chunk of meat that was Uncle’s neck. The cut was smooth right through bone. “There’s little blood on the ground. He wasn’t killed or decapitated here.” He stood, surveyed the surroundings, then pointed to the triangle valley between the highways. “Search that. See if you can find the rest of him.”

  A pair of patrol officers began the slow task of searching the uneven ground.

  “What do we have on a timetable?”

  “First call came in 6:45 a.m. First District responded. By the time I arrived, nine-one-one took a half dozen calls. I went south an exit and came back. It wouldn’t have been visible in the dark. The bridge column shadowed it. I was on top of the thing before I saw it.”

  “It was cold last night. Everything is frosted. Except Uncle.” Cruz made his way back to his car while they waited for crime scene. The highway was backed up as far as he could see. A man dressed for business rolled past, silently shouting and waving his hands at the police.

  “Your day could be worse, buddy.”

  Two hours later, Cruz worked the case from the familiar confines of his desk. He cupped the hot mug of his second cup of coffee, bought en route. After this, he’d have to live on the gritty brew that passed for both coffee and tea. His fingers, stiff and cold, had yet to loosen up. He moved his entire hand when he typed, calling up the file on Alvin “Uncle” Hall.

  Reports filled the screen documenting Uncle’s rise on the streets. The stats were there, but not the story. To get that, he had to take a step backward. He looked up the number in the system directory. The name hung there, poking at the sore spots. He called himself a pussy and punched the numbers into his cell so hard he bobbled it. The call connected and was answered on the second ring.

  “Yablonski.”

  The voice was the same. Ice water over sand paper. Course sand paper. Would he remember? “It’s Cruz.”

  “Cruzie.” The smile came through the phone. “How’s homicide these days? Miss the action of narcotics?”

  Matt Yablonski had been a friend, one of the many he walked away from to rebuild his life. There was guilt in that. “Nah, dying never goes out of style. Speaking of, came across a mutual friend.”

  “Oh yeah? Who?”

  “Uncle Hall.”

  “No shit. When?”

  “Found his head this morning. Hoping the Medical Examiner will tell me more. I read the file but what’s his story?”

  “That was Uncle?” He said, then gave a low whistle. “He was running the Mid-Town Corridor but was getting squeezed lately.”

  “Squeezed? By who?”

  “More like by what. Redevelopment. Gentrification. Cleveland Clinic keeps expanding west. Downtown is creeping east. Developers are buying up the old neighborhoods, replacing them with high-end townhouses. Not Uncle’s type of people.”

  “They use, too.”

  “True, but those doctors can get better shit than what Uncle sells.”

  Cruz doodled on the margin of his legal pad. It morphed into a name. “Christopher Parker mean anything to you?”

  Yablonski hesitated. “What does he mean to you?”

  “His wife called in a drive-by shooting. Parker came home, unhappy to find her talking with me, said he was going to take care of the problem. Their five-year-old kid overheard his mother blame Uncle for the shooting.”

  “Is he at the top of your list?”

  Cruz looked at the paper with only one name on it. “So far. See what you can find out for me.”

  “You going to pay a call?”

  “Not yet. I want a reason to talk to Parker beyond what a kid says under the influence of a bag of candy. I’m going to check out Uncle’s house, make the next-of-kin call. Mrs. Hall’s a nice lady. I had dinner at her house once.”

  “That’s messed up, you knowing her. You worried about being recognized?”

  “Naw. It was more than three years ago, and I don’t look the same.”

  Uncle lived in the house he grew up in—a two-story home on a narrow plot of land sandwiched between two other homes that could be touched by leaning out the double-sashed windows. Loretta Hall served Cruz meatloaf and mashed potatoes in a room with worn wallpaper and faces smiling out from pictures on the wall. It was a lot of years ago, before he and Uncle got sideways, but he tasted the tomato sauce she baked into the meatloaf.

  The street had gotten rougher. Uncle stayed on, living in the neighborhood that made him his money.

  A black metal fence had been installed since Cruz had last set foot on the property. Rods extending beyond the top brace were honed to a point. One gate, a super-sized black metal monster reached across the concrete drive.

  Cruz stood on the sidewalk, looking for a mechanism to open the gate. He had traded his boots for leather shoes, so climbing was not on his to-do list. Still, without the electronic “open sesame,” he had little choice. He took hold of two of the posts and braced his foot on a bracket.

  “You don’t wanna do that.” The voice was male, elderly.

  Foot back on the sidewalk, he turned to the voice. “Why not?”

  Two hundred pounds of pissed-off dog answered. Two of them raced out from under the front porch. The male was a Rottweiler who went a buck and a quarter. His canine teeth were white daggers, ready for action. The female was a brindle mutt, small only in comparison to the Rott. Her growl rumbled deep in her chest, low and menacing.

  “Easy Kobe. Down LeBron.” The old man spoke with authority. “Good boy, LeBron.” The Rott laid down but kept his eyes on the stranger. The mutt, Kobe by default, stood her ground, so ready to pounce that her body trembled.

  He lifted the ID hanging from his neck. “Detective De La Cruz, Cleveland police.”

  “Walter Stanislav. Friends call me Stan.” The old man had a shock of white hair on the top of his head, jowls that rivaled a St. Bernard, and glacial blue eyes with a twinkle that warned not to underestimate him. “You looking for Alvin?”

  Just part of him. “Are you a friend of Mr. Hall’s?”

  “Neighbor. Known him all his life. Is he in trouble again?”

  He ignored the question. First things first. “I’m looking for Mrs. Loretta Hall.”

  “She moved to a little place about two years ago. Got her address back in the house. Come on in. You want a cup of coffee? The wife makes a mean brew.”

  Cruz looked to Uncle’s house. “I need to get in there. Any chance you can call the dogs off?”

  Stan shook his head. “They know me, but not well enough.”

  Cruz called animal control and, accepting Stan’s hospitality, waited in the comfort of a living room. Under the picture window, a low table was covered with vigorous plants and a picture of equally vigorously growing grandchildren. Looking beyond the plants, LeBron had gone back to the den under the porch, leaving Kobe on sentry duty.

  “Sorry you had to wait so long.” Stan came in carrying a silver tray from an era gone by. Two cups of coffee, cream, sugar, and a small purple paper were set on the coffee table. Cruz first accepted the note with Loretta Hall’s address and phone number written in an elegant script, then he indulged in coffee strong enough to straighten his hair.

  “You like it? It’s Cuban. You Cuban?”

  He stalled, sipping the coffee again, enjoying the jolt to his system and thinking, not for the first time, nobody laid it out like children and seniors. “My family is Puerto Rican.”

  “Puerto Ricans are all right. U.S. territory and all. No communists. They’re all right.” He lifted his
cup in a toast. “The wife gets it at the Hispanic grocery that opened in the plaza. They sell rice and beans and everything your folks need. You know it? Hacienda something something.”

  “No. You said you’ve known Alvin Hall for a while?”

  “You should try it. Real authentic. As for Alvin, I’ve known him his whole life. I remember the day Loretta brought him home. The wife was pregnant with our first, and she was over there every day. She loves that boy. I let you skate by without answering me out there, but I’d like to know, is Alvin in trouble?”

  Cruz measured the man behind the stern countenance. “I’m homicide. Mr. Hall was found this morning, and we are investigating. Tell me about Alvin.”

  Stan rubbed a calloused hand over his weathered features. His eyes glassed over, and he had to clear his voice twice before he could speak. “What’s there to tell? He was a mean son-of-a-bitch. Oh, he was all right to us. Called us Mr. and Mrs. Stan. Even to this day.” Stan paced his words, not rushing through what he had to say. His matter-of-fact tone didn’t vary higher or lower, but he slowed some words, drawing out small ones, like “oh,” out for a full two seconds. “I assume you know he sold drugs. I don’t know if I’m supposed to know, but you don’t live across from somebody for thirty-odd years and not know when something is rotten in Denmark.”

  “Did you see him sell drugs?”

  “’Course not. What I saw was skeletons walking down my street. Every one of them went to Alvin’s house.”

  “When did this start?”

  “’Bout the same time he bought his mother a nice little house up in Shaker.”

  Uncle had taken Cruz off the streets two and a half years ago. The promotion after Cruz’s accident must have made living with mommy difficult. “So you noticed odd things going on at Alvin’s?”

  “Detective, I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but this is not what most folks consider a good neighborhood. Just because it’s not a good neighborhood doesn’t mean there aren’t good people here. There was a time when Alvin was one of them. Drugs changed him. Made him hard. Made him mean.” Stan sipped his coffee, looking absently out his picture window at the blue house across the street. “I saw him throw a woman out of his house once. She didn’t touch the steps on the way down. Saw him pull a knife on a man.”