Red Hook

by Gabriel Cohen

  He followed the sergeant into his office, hoping he wouldn’t be rebuked for his lateness. When he’d started out, he looked up to the middle-aged detectives on the force. Now that he was middle-aged himself, the power kept moving into younger hands. Tanney, in his mid-thirties, had fine, very curly red hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, a face that was almost pretty. He seemed slightly insecure, like Ryan O’Neal trying to be believable in a tough-guy role. Tanney was new as the team leader—he’d been transferred three months earlier from Brooklyn North and the verdict in the squad room was still out regarding his trustworthiness and allegiances.

  On the wall above the sergeant’s desk, an erasable chart kept tabs on which cars were assigned to which detectives. Clusters of red pins covered a Brooklyn map, one pin for each homicide of the year. On the wall to the right hung a clipboard for each of the seventeen precincts in Brooklyn South—Tanney pulled down one marked “76 Squad.”

  “You caught that John Doe along the Gowanus yesterday, right?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “His name is Tomas Berrios.”

  “What, did we miss his wallet?”

  “Don’t feel bad—his wife ID’d him. He didn’t show up for work yesterday, so his boss called to find out if he was sick. The wife didn’t know anything about it—she’d sent Berrios off to work with a bag lunch. By three A.M. she was getting frantic so she called the Seven-six. One of their uniforms drove her down to the morgue first thing this morning.”

  Jack was relieved on two counts. One, the sergeant hadn’t embarrassed him by calling him on the rug for the lateness. More important, he didn’t have to be the one to notify the victim’s family of the death. “Does he have a sheet?”

  “Just a couple of minor things. Possession, marijuana, three years old. And a disorderly conduct, five years ago. He got in a scuffle with some guys outside a bar after last call. Did you guys get any witnesses?”

  “There’s a barge captain who does a run along the canal every day, but we haven’t talked to him yet. Does the wife have any idea who did it?”

  “She wasn’t in any condition for an interview. Why don’t you and your partner pay her a visit?”

  “Yet another reason to be on time: as the last detective in, Jack had drawn the squad’s worst car, a Chevy Lumina with a cranky disposition. He pulled out of the lot into a Brooklyn street bustle: at the intersection, clumps of black and Hispanic kids were hanging out, eating chips and popsicles, riding bikes and popping wheelies. Between a Chinese take-out joint and a liquor store, three plump women stood in front of a Dumpster, enjoying a shrill shouting match.

  It would have been faster to head toward Neptune Avenue, but he drove a block south to Surf Avenue to catch some ocean air. The weather was damp and gray; ahead the flared tower of Coney’s Parachute Jump disappeared up into fog. A little farther on, the abandoned Thunderbolt roller coaster writhed in the mist, the convulsed skeleton of a snake. Even this early in the day, Coney Island smelled like fried grease.

  Several blocks ahead, a cheerleader stood on a corner. As Jack neared, she turned into a crack whore with sunken cheeks and bad skin. Glancing to the right, he caught a glimpse of the board-walk—it disappeared into a solid white mist, the edge of the world.

  Several years before, his colleague Carl Santiago had asked if he wanted to go along on a visit to the detective’s son. The kid was in the Navy, on a cruiser docked on Manhattan’s West Side. Carl beamed with pride as his boy gave a tour of the ship, including a look inside the nuclear-missile bay. They walked between the gleaming rockets as if through a forest of white trees; Jack could reach out and touch their cool trunks. Solemnly Carl’s son warned them that if a fire alarm sounded, they would have only thirty seconds to escape—after that, the entire chamber would be sprayed with a mist so dense a man would drown breathing it in.

  By the time he reached the Shore Parkway the morning fog had burned off and he was treated to a spectacular view across the water to Staten Island. As he rounded a bend the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, that beautiful soaring span, came into view and raised his spirits.

  The 76th Precinct house sat on the edge of Carroll Gardens, a stone’s throw from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the border of Red Hook. Jack parked in one of the diagonal spaces out front. Good smells wafted toward him from the Italian bakery on one corner and the pizzeria on the other.

  The detectives’ squad room was a grubby fluorescent-lit office with a barred holding pen against one wall. The wheezing air conditioner in the window, assisted by several fans, ruffled papers on the desks and walls. The whir of the fans added to the clamor of phones ringing, scanners crackling, detectives wisecracking to each other across the room. Their massive gray desks were enlivened by personal touches: pictures of kids, a scruffy little house plant, a plastic troll with long orange hair.

  Gary Daskivitch sat behind a desk in the middle of it all, typing on an old IBM Selectric. Every case brought a big folder of paperwork and Daskivitch was digging into his required field reports, the DD-Fives: Notification and Response of Crime Scene Unit, Interview of the First Officer, License Plates at the Scene…While he pecked away with one finger, he maneuvered a cold slice of pizza into his mouth.

  Jack grimaced.

  “What?” Daskivitch said. “I found it in the lounge—must’ve been left over from the night watch.”

  Jack snorted. “That pizza looks DCDS.” Deceased, Confirmed Dead at Scene. “Did you hear we got an ID on our vic:

  Daskivitch nodded. “The wife is home. And I located the barge guy—he lives in Sunset Park.”

  Jack crossed to the lounge in back, crowded with a card table, two cots, an ancient TV, and a vinyl couch (two green cushions, one red). He poured himself a cup of coffee and glanced at some papers taped to the cinderblock wall: a sheet listing detectives’ pay grades—inspirational reading—and a handwritten sign saying, Please Put Your Cigarette Butts in Ashtray. This is Not Your House.

  He sauntered out into the squad room. “Let’s roll.”

  Like Jack’s son, Tomas Berrios had lived near the Gowanus Houses in Boerum Hill on a side street halfway between working class and gentrified.

  The iron gate clanged shut behind the detectives as they crossed the concrete yard and climbed the stoop to a brick row house. At ten A.M., the sun was already high in the sky. Daskivitch wiped his forehead; the big man was a heavy perspirer. Next door, salsa music blared out of a third-story window. Its frenetic rhythm got on Jack’s nerves; it sounded like a wind-up toy wound too tight.

  He rang the middle buzzer.

  After a moment, the intercom crackled with a sharp woman’s voice, Spanish accent. “Are you the funeral home?”

  “No, ma’am. We’re with the police department.”

  A pause. “She already speak to the police this morning.”

  Jack turned to his partner and sighed. He hated this part of the job. “We just need to talk to you for a minute.”

  He wasn’t sure if she heard, but then the door swung open to reveal a squat Hispanic woman, wider than she was tall. Her chest was pushed up like a fighting cock. She dried her hands on the hem of a quilted housecoat, looked suspiciously up at the two men, then turned and led them to a narrow staircase. She pulled her way up with both hands on the banister, pausing in mid-climb to announce, “I’m the mother-in-law.”

  She led them inside her living room and showed them to an enormous pink couch.

  “I know what you people think,” she said. “You think a young Hispanish man must be involved with some kind of trouble.”

  Jack didn’t know whether “you people” meant whites or cops. Probably both. He looked olive-skinned and vaguely Semitic and people were often confused about his background—Spanish? Italian?—but there was no doubt about Daskivitch. He was so big, intimidating, and Midwestern-football-player white. So police.

  “It’s not true,” the mother-in-law continued. “He doesn’t have no problems with the law. Look how he takes care of
his family.” She gestured around the living room.

  The apartment reminded Jack of his own parents’ home. A castle of the working poor, each piece of furniture purchased after much saving, the design elaborate to cover shoddy craftsmanship. Smoked mirrors, chrome, fake leopard skin. Studio pictures of the kids on top of the gigantic old Buick of a TV.

  He took out his steno pad. “It’s a beautiful apartment, Mrs….?”

  “Espinal.”

  “Ma’am, we just want to find out who did this to your son-in-law. Do you think we could talk to your daughter? What’s her name?”

  “Recina. You can’t talk to her right now. This morning the doctor he gave her something to make her sleep.” Mrs. Espinal sank into an armchair, a deflated ball of feathers. “She was hurting herself, digging into her arms with her nails after she saw him.”

  “Do you have any idea why someone might have done this to your son-in-law?” Daskivitch asked.

  “He was a superior young man. Never a problem, everybody on the block like him. My daughter, this morning, she said…” A sob escaped. “She said he was tied with ropes.”

  Shouts and laughter came from the hallway leading to the back of the apartment. A little boy ran into the front room. At the sight of the two strangers, he skidded to a halt on feet covered with Spiderman socks.

  “Stop shouting, Mando, Mami’s sleeping,” said a small voice from the hall. A tiny girl appeared.

  “Armand,” said Mrs. Espinal firmly. “Go with your sister into the kitchen—you can have a pudding.”

  The boy walked backward, staring at the detectives as he pulled his sister down the hall.

  “They don’t know yet what happen,” Mrs. Espinal said. She sighed bitterly. “Just the other day, for the Fourth of July, Tommy went down to Canal Street to buy some fireworks. I told him, no, the children are too young, something bad might happen…”

  Jack pictured the young father down on Canal Street, buying illegal fireworks out of the back of someone’s car, carrying the bag proudly home to his kids, handing them each a sparkler. When he first looked at a body it was usually just flesh, a puzzle. It was in the interviews later that the victims came alive in his mind.

  “Do you know if he owed anybody money?”

  “Look at this chair,” she said. “Look at this couch. All paid for. He has a good job, no reason to owe nobody.”

  “Mrs. Espinal, I’m sorry to have to ask this question, but some time back your son-in-law was arrested on a marijuana charge. Do you have any idea if he’s been using drugs?”

  Mrs. Espinal pushed angrily out of her chair. “That was a long time ago, a mistake. When he was just a boy. Now he’s good, like I tell you.”

  Jack raised his hands. “All right. Where did he work?”

  She settled back. “In Manhattan. In a big building on the Upper East Side, very fancy. The Bentley.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was a porter. Like a doorman, only he was in the back. He wasn’t allowed to be with the people so much, because he speak like a Dominican.”

  Jack jotted notes. He looked up. “Did you get along with him?”

  Mrs. Espinal considered this shrewdly. “I am his mother-in-law. We live in the same house. Sometimes, we have a little argument. One or two times, he call me some names…But we never fight about how he treat my daughter or the kids. He was a good father, a good husband.”

  Mrs. Espinal’s confession made Jack feel better about the interview. Even innocent people lied routinely to the police—at the least, they spun, tweaked, rearranged, and shaded the facts to come up with a safer truth, a more flattering or forgiving one. If she claimed that everything was perfect in the Berrios household, he would have taken her whole statement with a grain of salt.

  She seemed to honestly believe that her son-in-law had no enemies, but one thing was sure: Tomas Berrios had managed to piss somebody off. This was no random killing, no drunken bar fight flaring into unpremeditated homicide. Whoever killed Berrios had taken the trouble to rough him up, stab him in the most efficient manner possible, attempt to methodically dispose of the body.

  A group of four young men, early or mid-twenties, approached the house. Subdued, serious. One of them, a pale-faced kid, had a disproportionately large head topped with a yellow Afro. He held a bouquet of flowers.

  As Jack and his partner stepped off the stoop, the group held their ground with a studied indifference to show that they were not intimidated by the presence of two obvious cops.

  “How ya doin’?” Jack said as he pushed out through the gate.

  The kids looked off into the distance. They seemed pretty harmless for homeboys.

  “You guys friends of Tomas, huh?”

  Three of the kids examined their complicated basketball shoes, but the one with yellow hair answered. “Did you find out who did it?”

  His comrades groaned in disgust, “You,” said a handsome, sharp-faced kid with jet-black hair. “Shut the fuck up. You don’t gotta talk to no cops.”

  “We’re just here to help,” Jack said. “Cool your jets.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, the youths made a big show of holding their sides and guffawing. “‘Cool your jets,’” repeated the sharp-faced kid. “Man, you must’ve been watching The Mod Squad.”

  Daskivitch stepped forward. “He means ‘chill out,’ you little punk.”

  The kid backed against the fence.

  Jack moved his head subtly to the side, signaling Daskivitch to back off. The kids were lippy, but not hinky—they didn’t act as if they had anything particular to hide.

  “What’s your name?” he said calmly to the kid with the yellow Afro.

  “His name’s BigHead,” said the wiseass kid. “You’re the detective, maybe you can figure out why.”

  “Cut it out, Ramon!” the kid with the yellow Afro said. “My name’s Hector.”

  “Dask, why don’t you talk to these gentlemen here?” Jack said. “Hector and I are gonna take a stroll.”

  “Leave him alone, mister,” said one of the other kids. “He’s a retard.”

  “You the retard!” said Hector, glaring back.

  “C’mon,” Jack said, tugging the kid away from the others. They walked off down the street, Hector looking back over his shoulder as they went.

  “When’s the last time you saw Tomas?”

  Hector squinted. “Last night. I mean two nights ago. We was riding.”

  “Who was?”

  “Me, Tommy, Nicio. Felix. Ramon. Them over there.” The kid nodded back toward his friends.

  “Riding what?”

  “Our bikes. Tommy’s the boss.”

  “Motorcycles?”

  “Naw, man. Bicycles.”

  Jack pondered this information. He’d heard of bicycle crews acting as couriers for drug dealers. This kid didn’t seem to have the smarts for that action, but the others?

  “Where did you go?”

  “Around. Out Fourth Avenue. We was going past Bay Ridge and Coney. To Floyd Bennis.”

  “Floyd Bennett Field?” There was a Coast Guard base out there. All of a sudden, Jack had a vision of a drug connection—this thing might turn into something big and ugly and blow up in his face. “Did you meet anybody there?” If the answer was somebody from the Guard, he was screwed.

  “Naw. We just stopped to take a piss.”

  “Any special reason why you went there?”

  “Naw. We go all over. Don’t matter where. We just ride.”

  “Do you meet people?”

  “I told you, mister. We ride. Tommy likes to go to the bridge.” Hector blinked. “Liked.” His friend had only been dead for a day.

  “Listen, Hector. Whatever you tell me, it’s just between you and me. Nobody’s going to get in trouble. We’re just trying to find out who did this to Tommy, okay?”

  Hector nodded.

  “Was he carrying any drugs when you went on these rides?”

  “No…” Hector ch
ewed his lip. “Not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “It’s fucked up to talk to cops.”

  Jack lowered his voice. “Don’t worry about what your friends tell you. This is important.”

  “I have to go back.”

  “Nobody’s going to get in trouble. Just tell me what happened.”

  “He”—Hector turned to look down the street—“he had some chiba. Just enough for a couple of joints. That’s all, mister. I swear.”

  So much for a drug-free Tomas Berrios. Nobody got whacked over a couple of joints, but at least this was a start. “Who did he buy it from, Hector?”

  The kid squirmed. “I don’t know, mister. He never told me nothin’ about that.”

  Jack sighed. “You said Tommy liked to go to the bridge. What bridge?”

  “Verrazano.”

  “Why?”

  Hector shrugged. “He likes to sit in the park next to the bridge. To chill. We talk.”

  “Did you talk to him there the other night?”

  “Yeah. Everybody was bustin’ on me ’cause I was late. But he didn’t care. He was all hyped up.”

  “About what?”

  “My bike’s too small. He said, ‘Tomorrow, I’m gonna buy you a new mountain bike. Replace that piece of shit.’”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Where would he get the money for a new bike?”

  Hector shrugged again. “I don’t know. He had a good job. He was making, like eight or nine dollars a hour.”

  Jack rubbed his hand over his mouth. This kid was no rocket scientist—you didn’t go around buying people new mountain bikes on less than three hundred take-home per week. “He was talking about ‘tomorrow,’ huh? What did he say was gonna happen ‘tomorrow’?”

  Hector shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “Yeah.”

  Jack leaned closer.

  “He said don’t let him forget he was s’posed to buy some Woolite for Mrs. Espinal.”

  five

  AS THE DETECTIVES DROVE out Fourth Avenue toward Sunset Park, the midday sun flared on the asphalt. Bodegas flew past, auto-lube garages, auto-supply stores. Places to buy fuzzy dice or Playboy air fresheners. On the radio, the dispatcher chattered away, the woman’s voice always in the background of the detectives’ lives.