Port City Black and White

by Gerry Boyle

  Another swallow, another wipe.

  “I worry that compared to all that, I’m just boring. Working in a library, writing my stories, a novel that probably will never be published.”

  “Sure it will. You’re a great writer. I love your stories,” Brandon said. “And you’re not boring. You’re wonderful.”

  “Okay, then, maybe it’s not that I’m boring. Maybe it’s more that you’ll be bored and you’ll leave, find somebody with a life more like yours. This Kat you’re always talking about. You like her.”

  “Kat’s a lesbian.”

  “Okay, then some other Kat who’s straight. Women find you very attractive. I’m sure there are woman cops who—”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Mia turned to him. Another tear spilled down her cheek, like a raindrop running down a window.

  “Even if you don’t, Brandon. Our friends, my friends—because they’re more mine than yours—it’s like you’re watching them, always standing back. It’s like you’re not there.”

  “It’s hard when I can’t drink,” Brandon said. “I mean, out in public.”

  “Oh, I know, but like tonight. It was fun—the food, the company. They were nice and interesting. And it was like you were, I don’t know, bemused or something.”

  “I was tired.”

  “I know,” Mia said. “But—”

  “And it’s hard to just shut everything out. I mean, Chantelle lying there dead, her eyes open. I mean, I was just talking to her. And the baby gone—”

  “I know, Brand, but then tonight it all turns into this big fight on the street, and now you’re going back to work. I mean, what are we going to do, honey? What are we going to do?”

  She reached over and took his hand. The tears were coming faster now, silver streaks on her cheeks. “How are we going to make this work, baby? Tell me, because I need to know.”

  “So you can decide whether to stay or go?” Brandon said.

  Mia paused.

  “I love you,” she said.

  “And I love you,” Brandon said.

  “But I can’t love you and only get this little piece of you back.”

  “I know.”

  He squeezed her hand. With his other hand he adjusted his gun.

  The big guy made the cops take him to the ER, claimed his arm was broken. They took him to Mercy Hospital because Dever, freshly divorced, had his eye on this PA who worked the night shift there. She told them the guy’s arm wasn’t broken, just strained—that he should take ibuprofen and ice it, he’d be fine. The big guy said he’d go to a real doctor, not some stupid fake doctor bitch.

  Dever told him to watch his mouth, gave the PA a nice smile, which she returned, and then they hauled the big guy to the PD to process.

  A successful visit all around.

  Brandon filled out his statement, what he’d seen and when, the precise amount of force needed to subdue and restrain the combative suspect. Depending on if he had any money to burn, the big guy might sue, and, as Zachary put it, “You want all your ducks in a row.”

  It was after 1 a.m. when Brandon pulled out of the PD lot. Down Middle Street, he weighed whether Mia would be up, whether she’d worry. He continued down Spring Street, headed for the bridge, stopped at the light and watched three guys—middle-aged conference types—stagger across the street, headed for the Holiday Inn.

  Brandon glanced at his phone. 1:23. The wine and drinks—Mia was probably out cold. He hesitated, slowed down. Took a right.

  Up the hill, left on Congress. People were out: knots of drunk kids walking home from the Old Port, a couple of Goths from the art school, alcoholics and mentally ill people standing in front of the Landmark Hotel. Nobody noticed him in the old truck, and Brandon liked that, sliding along unnoticed, invisible. Kat said detectives had a boring job, never in on the action, always showing up when everything was over. But Brandon thought he’d like going undercover, nobody knowing he was a cop until he slapped on the cuffs.

  He went through the square, saw a cruiser pulled up by the porn shop, probably cops rousting somebody for soliciting. And then he took a right, saw the moon low over the rooftops to the west.

  It was a new moon, a sliver on the bottom, the palest shade of green. It would be pretty over the water. Soon.

  Granite Street was quiet, dark and leafy and still. He drove past 317, saw lights on in the Ottos’ apartment. Immigrants had a different clock, up all hours, kids, too. Brandon continued down the block, past a gaggle of kids on bikes. A woman walked past them—tight jean shorts, white high heels. They called to her in Arabic and she flipped them off, kept walking. Brandon circled the block.

  On the second approach he saw the glow of a cigarette in the driveway. He pulled over. Got out. The glow moved like a firefly, then sailed, landing in a brief shower of sparks. Brandon walked up the driveway, saw Mr. Otto. He was sitting on a plastic fish crate. Brandon walked up, said, “Mr. Otto. It’s me. Officer Blake.”

  “The policeman,” Otto said. “Now you a detective, like on TV?”

  “I’m off. Headed home.”

  “Where you live?”

  “South Portland. On a boat.”

  Otto looked away. Smiled. “Must be nice. Peaceful.”

  “Yes, it is. Unless there’s a storm.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Otto said. “A storm. The wind blow.”

  He was wearing blue Dickies like an old Mainer. Shaking the pack, he took out another cigarette and held it out to Brandon.

  “No. But thank you, though,” Brandon said.

  Otto lit up, drew deeply, the glow illuminating his face, his eyes.

  “The mother of the little boy—she’s dead, right?” he said.

  “Yes. They found her in the water under the bridge.”

  “When was that?”

  “They found her this morning. Went in the water sometime last night.”

  “I knew that. I knew that ahead of you.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. I know last night.”

  “How is that, sir?” Brandon said.

  He waited as Otto smoked, looked away, seemed to be considering how to say something.

  “Shabah. The spirit.”

  “Spirit? Spirit of what?”

  “The child. The girl’s child. The baby’s spirit come back. He’s looking for his mother and don’t find her because she lost, also.”

  “Huh,” Brandon said. “You saw the spirit?”

  “Fatima. She can see these things.”

  “More than you?”

  “Yeah. Men, they have the less power.”

  “So Fatima saw the spirit? Lincoln’s spirit.”

  Otto dropped his cigarette to the driveway, stepped on it with his work boot and stood. “You wait here, okay? I have her come tell you.”

  Otto turned and walked to the door. It slammed behind him and Brandon heard his boots clomping up the stairs. He stood and waited, wondered if the appearance of the spirit would help fix the time of death.

  And then there was more clomping, the door rattling open, Otto and Fatima there, Fatima behind her father, Samir and Edgard behind Fatima. They crossed the driveway to Brandon, circled him.

  “Yo, Five-Oh,” Edgard said. He smiled but his eyes were hard. Samir, his Sixers cap sideways, said, “Why you keep coming around, Mr. Policeman?”

  Otto looked at them, said, “Go.” The brothers looked at their father, sauntered down the driveway and across the street to the kids on bikes. The older man turned to Fatima, in cotton sweatpants and flip-flops, black jilbab hanging to her knees, arms folded protectively across her chest. Her eyes were on the ground.

  “You tell the Portland Police,” Otto said.

  “Tell him what?”

  “About the shabah,” Otto said. Fatima looked away. She was very pretty, Brandon thought. He stared at her mahogany skin, luminous dark eyes.

  “You’ll make fun of me,” she said.

  “No,” Brandon said. “I won’t.�
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  She wouldn’t meet his gaze, looked at the street, her brothers, standing on the far sidewalk talking on the phone.

  “Yeah, well. It’s just that they don’t let me sleep.”

  “The spirits.”

  “Right. I fall asleep, right away they wake me up.”

  “More than one of them?”

  “Yes. They call me.” She glanced at him. “Now don’t you laugh.”

  “I won’t. I’m not. But then what happens?”

  Fatima fidgeted, wiggled her toes. Her toenails were painted pink, showing even in the dark against her brown-skinned feet.

  “Tell him,” Otto said.

  “Then they make me listen,” Fatima said.

  “To what?”

  “To the baby’s spirit.”

  “What does it sound like?”

  “It cries for its mother. It cries for what it can never have.”

  “You know Chantelle is dead?”

  Fatima nodded. “She jumped, right?” she said. “That’s what somebody said.”

  “That’s what they think.”

  “So her soul will roam the earth forever.”

  “I suppose so,” Brandon said.

  “And the baby’s soul is trying to find her,” Fatima said.

  “Is that what you think?”

  “That’s what I hear,” she said.

  “You can tell from what? The crying?”

  “They’re two spirits—shabah, the baby and the mother—but they can never, ever meet again,” Fatima said.

  “She knows these things,” Otto said.

  Fatima didn’t deny it.

  “They’re apart forever. The baby cries for his mother.”

  “But the spirit comes here?” Brandon said. “The shabah?”

  “It’s where they were together.”

  “The baby and the mom.”

  “Yeah.”

  Brandon paused. The three of them stood for a minute, Otto looking at his daughter sadly, like this power to hear ghosts was an incurable illness.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Fatima said.

  “Yes,” Brandon said. “I do.”

  “You’ll go back to the other police and tell them and laugh. This big joke, crazy girl,” she said.

  “No,” Brandon said. “I won’t.”

  They stood. Fatima folded her arms tighter. Her father looked at Brandon, as though waiting for some sort of instruction.

  “What time did you first hear the spirits, the crying?” Brandon said.

  “It was almost one o’clock,” Fatima said. “At night.”

  “It woke you up?”

  “Yes. At first I think it was a dream.”

  “Where were you?”

  “In my bed.”

  “How long did it cry?”

  “Every little while. Like, a few minutes.”

  “And then it stopped?” He didn’t wait for the answer. “Have you heard it tonight?”

  “I’m too scared to go to sleep. Sleeping is when it comes.” She looked at her father.

  “This is a bad thing,” Otto said. “Can make you sick. Even make you die. We maybe have to move.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be okay,” Brandon said.

  Fatima finally looked at Brandon. “How do you know?” she said. “You’re just a policeman.”

  He ignored that, said, “Fatima—if the baby’s alive, but he’s just lost or kidnapped or something, can he still have a shabah?”

  “No,” Fatima said.

  “For shabah,” Otto said, “it gotta be dead.”

  MOTHER OF MISSING BABY FOUND DEAD, the headline said. CHANTELLE ANTHONY, 24, OF PORTLAND, DIES IN BRIDGE LEAP.

  Estusa’s story was first on the Portland Tribune’s local news list. Brandon read it on his laptop, seated at the helm, bent over the glowing screen. The story had Chantelle’s death—her body in the harbor, car on the bridge—tacked on top of the story about Lincoln going missing.

  The sequence of events that ended with Ms. Anthony’s death began when police were called to her 317 Granite Street apartment to investigate a noise complaint, said Sergeant Joseph Perry. Officers Kat Malone and Brandon Blake questioned Ms. Anthony and discovered that the baby, Lincoln Anthony, six months old, was missing from his bed, Perry said.

  Ms. Anthony is estranged from the child’s father, Toby Koski, of Portland. Asked if the incident could stem from a custody dispute, Perry said the case was still under investigation.

  According to court records, Ms. Anthony has a history of drug offenses. Perry said he could not confirm reports that the young mother was under the influence of drugs when police entered the apartment. Toxicology results that would show the presence of drugs in her body at the time of her death were not available Saturday night.

  Meanwhile, the dead woman’s mother and sister and brother, Stacy, Ronnie, and Jason Anthony, all of Portland, said Chantelle Anthony felt police blamed her for the child going missing. “Instead of pointing their fingers they should have been looking for Lincoln,” Stacy Anthony, the dead woman’s mother, said Saturday. “Chantelle had some personal issues, but she was a good mom, and she never would have done anything to hurt her baby. She loved him very much.”

  Ronnie Anthony said Chantelle told her that police were “accusatory” at the apartment, and later at police headquarters, where she was questioned again. “Just because she had substance abuse problems don’t mean you treat her like dirt,” the sister said.

  Asked if harsh treatment by police may have contributed to her sister’s death, Ronnie Anthony said, “It was unfair. First, she has her baby gone, and then on top of that they say it’s her fault. I’m sure this was too much to put on her shoulders.”

  Added Jason Anthony, “Those cops, Blake especially. He killed her just like he’d put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. He’s gotta pay for that. In this life or the next, you know what I’m sayin’. What goes around comes around.”

  Toby Koski, contacted Saturday, said he had been on a fishing trip aboard Marie G, a Portland-based lobster boat, when the boat received a report that the baby had gone missing. The Marie G returned to port, where Koski was questioned by Portland detectives, he said.

  “I just want my son back,” Koski said, before Chantelle Anthony’s body was found. “That’s all I want.”

  Like he’d pulled the trigger. Brandon felt himself sinking. And there was more. The guy who spotted the body. The car on the bridge. Neighbors, “who asked that their names not be used,” saying there had been a big party at the Granite Street apartment the night the baby disappeared.

  “She was quiet when they weren’t partying,” one resident of the building said. “She was a nice girl, very nice to the little boy.”

  “When she wasn’t high as a kite and forgetting she even had a kid,” Brandon said. “Give me a break.”

  Mia was asleep, clothes tossed on the deck between the berths. Brandon slid in beside her, felt her naked body next to his. So she hadn’t given up on him. She’d been waiting. He’d let her down twice in one night. Maybe her father was right.

  Brandon tried to sleep but couldn’t. Mia. The guy on the street. Chantelle’s eyes. Fatima and her ghosts.

  He lay on his back and listened. He could hear Mia’s breathing, soft and shallow. A wake rolled in and the boat rocked, fenders creaking, the float knocking on the pilings. There was a horn somewhere, someone leaning on it. And then a siren, the blip of a Portland PD cruiser. Another.

  And then quiet. Brandon started to drift off. The boat rocked so imperceptibly that it might have been imagined. And then he was asleep, dreaming that Bay Witch had come loose from the dock and was drifting and—he heard it.

  Crying. He came to slowly, fighting his way to the surface. He listened. Heard Mia breathing. The berth creak. And then the cry, faint and faraway, but somehow close. A haunting cry, high-pitched but falling away. And then another. Closer.

  Brandon tensed. Waited.

  He heard
it again. The sighing cry . . . that turned into a gull’s chattering laugh.

  In the darkness, Brandon sighed and closed his eyes. And slept until he heard crying again. Opened his eyes to see Mia, leaning on one elbow, talking on the phone, the crying coming from it. She was saying, “Lily. Lily. Calm down. Please calm down. Who’s dead? Who is it?”

  Brandon sped over the bridge, Mia beside him. It was a little after six, a Sunday morning, no traffic. He hit seventy, the harbor flashing by, Mia holding onto the seat. On the Portland side of the bridge, he slowed, ran the light on Fore Street, blasted through the sleeping Old Port, flashed up Fore Street and onto the Eastern Prom.

  They saw the blue lights, an ambulance coming off Congress. Brandon slid the truck to a stop and Mia jumped out and they trotted toward the house. O’Farrell was in the driveway, talking to a detective Brandon didn’t know. In the unmarked cruiser behind him Lily sat alone, a tissue pressed to her face.

  The detective walked back toward the house. Brandon and Mia approached O’Farrell, who said, “So I hear you know these folks.” He looked at his notebook. “Lily Lawrence and Winston Clarke. With an E.”

  “Lily’s a good friend of mine,” Mia said. “Is she okay?”

  “Physically okay,” O’Farrell said.

  “You talk to her?” Brandon said.

  “Tried. She’s pretty shook.”

  He looked at Mia. “You want to see if you can get her calmed down so we can get a better idea of what happened?”

  He walked with Mia to the cruiser, opened the far door. She got in and Brandon saw her embrace Lily, Lily bury her face in Mia’s shoulder. O’Farrell came back.

  “Hope it helps,” Brandon said.

  “Your girlfriend was her first call,” O’Farrell said. “They go way back?”

  “I don’t know about that. Book club. They hit it off.”

  “Well, they’ve got something in common now.”

  Brandon looked at him.

  “Shootings, I mean,” O’Farrell said. “How many people have—” He saw Brandon darken, dropped it. Took out a notebook, flipped the pages.

  “Renford Gayle. Black guy. New York.”

  “He’s the dead guy?”

  “On the kitchen floor as we speak. Nine millimeter right through the heart. Boom.”