Kindness Goes Unpunished wl-3

by Craig Johnson

Three cruisers would make their standard run at the place, with the fourth parked close but not within view. Nine of the eleven officers would rush the Fort, and the two men in the fourth car would call in a 10-32, pretending they’d gotten the call from the district. The cops would race out of the place, jumping in their units to respond to the fake point-to-point that no one else in the district would hear besides them and the drug dealers monitoring the police radio. The trick was that four officers would remain on the roof of the building and wait about five minutes for the dealers to reacquire their weapons and restock from inside.

  Malcolm Chavez wanted to be on the roof squad, but Michael convinced him that he could go better undetected by the dealers since all white guys look alike. Chavez and another officer by the name of Johnston would do the fourth car position and call in the thirty-two at the appropriate time. Only the radios in the immediate vicinity would receive the call, but that would include the spotter the drug dealers were using, who would watch as the cops all piled out of the house, jumped in their cruisers, and sped off. At least all the cops he knew about. Then the ones on the roof would rush the building from behind. My job was to sit in the back of the cruiser on my hands and try not to think of why I was here and not with my daughter.

  “So, when you were planning your trip to Philadelphia, did you ever think you’d be sittin’ in the ghetto with two brothers?”

  “You bet.”

  Rayfield Johnston was a likable sort, a little older than the others. He had been an elementary school teacher but had grown restless and decided to switch careers. I told him about my experiences reading to Durant Elementary School students. He thought it was pretty funny.

  Johnston shook his head and compared notes. “We got the Police Athletic League, and I umpire up north of Belmont…”

  Chavez blew air out. “Shit…”

  Johnston laughed. “Combat pay, man. Combat pay.”

  The radio broke in with Michael’s voice. Static. “Unit 18, 10-34, Lancaster and Pauley.” We listened through the open windows as the sirens of the associated units sped toward the Fort about two blocks away. You could actually make out the blush of the surrounding buildings as the flicking red lights caromed off the uneven surfaces of the derelict row houses.

  I thought about the people in the little buildings, dwarfed by the towers of Center City only a short distance away. You could see the tops of the skyscrapers from here, hovering over the moat of the Schuylkill like some magical kingdom. I wondered what they thought about the activity just outside their doors. Would they be happy that this little cottage industry of poison was being interrupted, or were we just another event in a constant cycle of tired desperation and civic stupidity? I looked at the heads of the two men in the front seat and thought about Johnston being screamed at by over-enthusiastic parents and coaches, and about Chavez returning to a place he had fought so hard to escape. Hope is what it always comes down to, whether it’s a trailer home on the other side of the tracks in Durant, Wyoming, or a tiny row house in the Wild West of Philadelphia. I smiled to myself and hoped my thoughts wouldn’t carry to the patrolmen up front-they would laugh. Far beyond the badges and the guns, hope and laughter were their most powerful weapons.

  Chavez started the car, and it seemed like he was in slow motion as he lifted the mic to his lips. “Unit 41, I’ve got a 10-32 at 52nd and Market.” We listened as the sirens fired up again and the light show increased its intensity. The cavalry had made its charge and now appeared to be retreating.

  Chavez hung the mic back on the dash and slipped the cruiser into gear. “Here we go.”

  We slipped through the remaining blocks to another corner, made a left, and were looking straight at the back of the row house. There were partial balconies at the rear of the building all the way up to the third floor, with a flight of stairs winding their way from the righthand side. The remnants of aluminum awnings cast shadows across the back of the structure, making it difficult to see where anyone might be stationed. There was an abandoned car with its wheels removed and what looked like the remnants of an old chain-link fence stretching across the backyard. It was like a demilitarized zone, and all I could think of was the amount of guns that were about to converge there.

  When Chavez slid the cruiser behind a derelict van, he and Johnston got out of the vehicle; the young officer reached back and lifted the handle to allow me to join them on the street.

  “Lose your batons and hats.”

  Johnston turned and looked at me, neither of them having heard a word I said. “What?”

  “Lose the batons and hats; they’re going to fall off anyway. Turn your jackets inside out so that none of the metal reflects.” They both looked at me for a moment more and then did as I told them. They looked so young.

  Chavez, having prepared himself, studied Johnston. “You still look like a cop, man.”

  Johnston smiled. “Yeah? Well, you do, too.” They both turned to look at me. “He doesn’t.” I smiled and took off my Phillies cap, placing it on Chavez’s head.

  He pulled it off at an angle, gangsta style. “You gonna be all right while we’re gone?”

  I looked up and down the street, where there was only one light on in a second-story window at the end of the block. “Looks pretty quiet in my part of the neighborhood.”

  “That could change.” He reached back in the open window and unlocked a black Mossberg 590 DA 12-gauge and handed it to me. “You know how to use that?”

  I checked the breech and safety. “Yep.”

  He smiled. “I bet you do.”

  The requisite amount of time had passed, and in the next few minutes Michael and his team would begin a very noisy descent from the roof. We were counting on it.

  I watched as Chavez and Johnston moved around the discarded van and started working their way across the street and over the sagging fence. They stayed apart, and I didn’t hear any warning sounds coming from the Fort as they slowly covered the fifty yards to the abandoned car.

  I draped the Mossberg down along my leg after rechecking the safety, resting the end of the barrel on the toe of my boot. I figured if anybody were looking out the window, it would be prudent to not advertise the shotgun. I moved along the side of the van for a better vantage point and watched as the squad cars returned after pulling a quick U-turn. Michael and his group should now be descending the stairwell inside the building.

  I could hear the thud of the back door being kicked in and watched as Chavez and Johnston disappeared into the darkness. People were yelling all over the place, and I could make out someone from inside shouting that they were the police and that whomever they were talking to should freeze. There was more yelling, and I watched as the beams from the cops’ Maglites flashed inside the row house, some on the third floor and some on the second.

  There were people running everywhere; the patrolmen coming from around the front tackled a few. Some of the more lithe individuals were able to slip by and disappeared into the streets and alleys beyond.

  It was then that I heard the first shot, that cattle-prod reaction to the sharp sound of gunfire. It doesn’t sound like in the movies; it is more like a quick smacking sound that makes you second-guess. I heard the sound again and was pretty sure it was coming from the second floor. I looked down at the 12-gauge in my hands, noticing that I had already clicked off the safety.

  I moved across the street and was approaching the sagging fence when I saw some commotion at the second-story window and heard the report of a handgun. I sped up.

  An uneven image crowded the window, and I watched in horror as what looked like two men scrambled and then tumbled from the second story. They crashed through the partial aluminum awning of the first floor and slid onto the back porch. There were more shots with a lot of screaming and yelling before one of the figures stood and leapt from the stoop, clearing the back of the collapsed porch in one leap. He turned as other people crowded the doorway and reached for something at his waistband. He tripped but
converted the fall into a lope that brought him back up on a course for where I now stood.

  It appeared as if his eyes were right on me as I stood there at the fence with the shotgun trained at his middle. I could make out Chavez’s voice screaming for him to stop and prayed that they wouldn’t open fire with me directly in line, but no bullets came whizzing from the Fort, only a half-naked man who still seemed to be fussing with something in the low-hanging pants at his midriff.

  The police behind him screamed again, but he wasn’t listening, intent only on his line of escape. As he got closer, I could see the well-defined muscles that covered his body and figured he was roughly my size, but in a lot better shape.

  I looked over the shotgun and then thought about what I was doing and where I was. I clicked the safety back on. As he got closer, I could see the tattoos that seemed to cover his body. He was a monster. I stayed alongside the abandoned car for a moment and then took two steps, catching him halfway over the fence.

  There were two things they taught me when I was an offensive lineman at USC back in the Dark Ages. One: after a holding call, grab anything that moves because they’re not going to make two holding calls in a row. Second: never underestimate the power of a good clothesline tackle. I felt the liquid thump of a body giving way as my right arm came up and caught him in the middle of the chest, forcing the air out of him,

  He didn’t make it over the fence, but what was in his waistband did; a small 9 mm semiautomatic pistol that struck the sidewalk and skittered over the curb and into the street, next to a sewer grating.

  I watched as he gurgled for a moment, then breathed in an unsteady motion, clutching his abdomen and rolling from side to side; I noticed in a moment of irony that he was wearing black alligator cowboy boots. As one of the cops made it to the fence, I slipped the shotgun under my arm and walked into the street to look for the automatic, but I was pretty sure it’d dropped into the sewer.

  There was a gaggle of police vehicles and EMTs, all with their gumballs going, at the front of the Fort, so before anybody with more authority could get back to where we were, I handed the shotgun to a patrolman named Fraser. His partner rolled the already complaining man over and cuffed him.

  “This one had an automatic, but I think it dropped into the sewer grate.”

  Fraser smiled. “We’ll light it up and take a look.”

  “Everybody okay over there?”

  “Moretti stepped on a nail, so the big pussy’s going to have to get a tetanus shot.”

  The large man in the cuffs cocked his head and stopped groaning long enough to yell toward me. “Hey, motherfucker, my ribs are broken!”

  I looked back at Fraser. “What was all the gunfire?”

  “Hey, motherfucker, who are you?!”

  He motioned to the drug dealer. “One of his buddies threw a few into the stairwell before shooting himself in the leg.”

  “Motherfucker, I asked you a question!”

  The other cop yanked him a little to the side. “Shut the fuck up, DuVall!”

  “Who went out the window with this guy?”

  The patrolman looked serious for a moment. “Johnston.”

  Two of the EMTs were working on Rayfield by the time I got there. He had dislocated his shoulder and broken a collarbone, but he was smiling when I leaned against the porch, eye to eye with him. They were stabilizing his arm and preparing a gurney to transport. “How you feeling?”

  He groaned. “Like shit. How’d we do?”

  I looked around at the assembled cops, spotting Chavez and some of the others smiling like guys who had gotten away with something. “I think pretty good.”

  My nostrils flared, and my nose hurt. I rubbed it cautiously and looked at Cady. I thanked Lena and apologized for being late, but I didn’t ask the usual changing-of-the-guard question, whether there had been any improvement, and Lena hadn’t volunteered any information. I wondered if that was the first phase in giving up, if I had passed over some threshold of hope. I didn’t want to start saying Cady as I had said Martha, with a level of such misery and despair that I just couldn’t say it without people looking away.

  I sat in the chair by Cady’s bed and remembered a game we used to play when she was around eight. If I would get home late, later than her bedtime, I would carefully make my way down the creaking hallway of our rented house, softly push apart the painted surfaces of the door and jamb, and stand in the backlight of the doorway. She was supposed to be long asleep, and she was a very good actress, but I could tell. If I thought it was a performance, I’d walk over to the bed and place my face only inches from hers, say the magic word, and be rewarded with an explosion of giggles.

  I scooted my chair over and rested my chin on the sore arm that I had carefully placed on Sleeping Beauty’s bed. I leaned in very close to her face and whispered. “Faker.”

  She didn’t move.

  Craig Johnson

  Kindness Goes Unpunished

  8

  This time I got the ride downtown; as a matter of fact, I got a ride to another state.

  The big Crown Vic took the Broad Street entrance ramp onto I-95 southbound. There were ducks on a lake off to the right; I felt like joining them.

  By the time the PPD had gotten its investigative ducks in a row and been fully informed about what I’d been up to, it was late in the afternoon. Katz and Gowder had picked me up from Cady’s, where I had retreated for a shower, and hadn’t mentioned anything about missing our breakfast. Henry had taken the afternoon shift at the hospital and had called to warn me of the detectives’ impending arrival. I had taken Dog for a walk, and they had been waiting when I returned.

  I studied the small red dots on the frames of Katz’s designer glasses and wondered where he had gotten them. “So, you guys are going to drive me back to Wyoming?”

  He sighed deeply as Gowder changed lanes, took the unmarked car into the far lefthand one, and leveled off at an even ninety; evidently, wherever we were going, we were in a hurry.

  Katz cleared his throat. “I’m trying to figure out if I have made a terrible mistake.”

  I could feel my face redden a little. “No, you haven’t…”

  He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’m trying to figure out if you are going to be an asset or a detriment.”

  Gowder was watching me in the rearview mirror as I answered. “An asset. Cross my heart.”

  Katz blinked for the first time. “We have about 350 homicides per annum here in Philadelphia, and we try to keep the number of police officers on that list to a minimum.” He glanced at Gowder, who might have smiled. His eyes returned to me. “Do you have any idea how lucky you were last night?”

  “Probably not.”

  He nodded. “Personally, I don’t think you have any idea, but since the Chief Inspector’s son was injured…”

  “He stepped on a nail.” It was the first time Gowder had spoken, and Katz looked at him like he was a potted plant with blight. He stared at the side of Gowder’s head until Gowder leaned an elbow on the window ledge and covered the smile with his index finger.

  After a moment, Katz looked at me again. “So, do you mind telling me how your adventures last night are going to aid in our investigation?”

  “They’re not.”

  He compressed his lips. “You can’t do things like that anymore.”

  We rode along in silence, Katz studying me a while longer before handing me a manila envelope with more than a few files inside. I looked back up at the two of them as we rocketed down I-95. “Devon Conliffe?”

  Katz spoke over his shoulder. “You’ve got thirty minutes.”

  I opened the envelope. “Do you guys mind if I ask where we’re going?”

  “The opera.” Gowder smiled, and the mole under his eye kicked up in the rearview mirror.

  The Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware, incorporated the same wedding-cake characteristics as Philadelphia’s City Hall but with slightly less drama, inside or out. Frenc
h Second Empire with a cast-iron facade, it was lit from below with floodlights that highlighted the detail.

  A grumpy, elderly gentleman was sitting on a stool in the lobby and ushered us into the main auditorium, where Gowder and I sat just below the balcony. Katz continued on into the dark of the theater to a large soundboard that straddled two rows at house center and tapped the stage manager on the shoulder.

  The young woman pulled her earphones aside and spoke with him. He waited as she returned to her headset, prefacing and ending her conversation into it with the word “Maestro.” The seats were comfortable; I watched as Gowder propped his feet over the back of the next row, and I noticed that his socks did, indeed, match today’s ensemble. He whispered, with his head inclined toward me. “Where in the world did you get the idea for the crack house?”

  I also whispered. “OIT.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Old Indian Trick.”

  He smiled the becoming smile, and we watched the rehearsal. It was the end of Act II, where Monterone confronts the hunchback, reaffirming the curse he had placed on Rigoletto and the Duke. The irony of the father/daughter opera was not lost on me, and I could only hope that Cady and I would have a happier ending.

  The scenery and costumes were brilliant, with the Duke’s salon and adjoining apartments drifting to the sixteenth-century Mantuan skyline. It was night, and the jester was watching as the tortured father was dragged away. Inspector Victor Moretti cut a bold figure as Monterone, in a torn robe stripped aside to reveal his lashed back. He was tall and lean like a Doberman, and even from this distance I could feel his eyes. Lena was right about his voice; Victor could sing his baritone ass off.

  I watched and thought about the manila folder the two detectives had shared with me. The chain holding the gate to the north-side entrance of the bridge closed had been cut with a substantial pair of bolt-cutters, and there had been a scuff mark on the sidewalk next to the railing of the bridge that indicated that the perpetrator had worn leather-soled shoes or boots. There were no fingerprints at either location, and it was surmised that the killer had also worn gloves.