New York City Noir

by Tim McLoughlin

  “Dave, your partner didn’t have a drop of blood on him.” Savio makes an unsuccessful attempt at eye contact with his client, then continues. “What you need to do here is see the big picture. Dante Russo told Lieutenant Whitlock that he had to pull you off Clarence Spott. He said this before the body was found, he repeated it to a Grand Jury, he’ll testify to it in open court. That’s enough to bury you all by itself, even without Officer Anthony Szarek’s testimony.

  “The Broom,” Lodge moans. “I’m being done in by the fucking Broom.”

  “The Broom?”

  “Szarek, he’s a couple years short of a thirty-year pension and the job’s carrying him. He spends most of his tour sweeping the precinct. That bottle they found me with? That was his.”

  “Well, Broom or not, Szarek’s gonna say that he was present when you and Russo brought Spott to the holding cells, that he heard Russo tell you to go to the hospital, that he watched Russo walk away …”

  “Stop sayin’ his name.” Lodge raises a fist to his shoulder as if about to deliver a punch. “Fucking Dante Russo. If I could just get to him, just for a minute.”

  “What’d you think? That you and your partner would go down with the ship together? Maybe holding hands? Well, Dave, it’s time for you to start using your head.”

  Lodge draws a deep breath, then glances around the room. Gray concrete floor, green cinder-block walls, a table bolted to the floor, plastic chairs on metal legs. And that’s it. The room where he confers with his attorney is as barren as his cell, as barren as the message his attorney delivers.

  “Face the facts, Dave. Take the plea. It’s not gonna get any better and it could be withdrawn.”

  “Man-one?”

  “That’s right, first-degree manslaughter. You take the deal, you’ll be out in seven years. On the other hand, you go to trial, find yourself convicted of second-degree murder, you could be lookin’ at twenty-five to life. Right now you’re thirty seven years old. You can do the seven years and still have a reason to live when you’re released.”

  Though Lodge believes his lawyer, he still can’t bring himself to accept Savio’s counsel. At times over the past months, he’s literally banged his head against the wall in an effort to jog his memory. Drunk or sober, he feels no guilt about the parts he can vaguely recall. Yeah, he tuned Spott up. He must have because he remembers Russo driving to a heavily industrial section of Greenpoint, north of Flushing Avenue, remembers turning onto Bogart Street where it dead-ends against the railroad tracks, remembers yanking Spott out of the backseat. Spott had resisted despite the cuffs.

  But Spott deserved his punishment. He’d committed a crime familiar to every member of every police force in the world: Contempt of Cop. You didn’t run from cops, you didn’t disrespect them with your big mouth, and you never, under any circumstances, hit them. If you did, you paid a price.

  That was it, though, the full extent as far as Lodge was concerned. To the best of his knowledge, he’d never beaten a prisoner with any weapon but his hands. Never.

  “What if I’m innocent?” he finally asks his lawyer.

  “What if there’s a million black people residing in Brooklyn who already think you’re guilty?”

  * * *

  One week later, suspended Police Officer David Lodge appears before Justice Harold Roth in Part 70 of the Criminal Term of Brooklyn Supreme Court. Lodge is the last piece of business on Roth’s calendar late this Friday afternoon. It’s a cameo shot, posed in front of the raised dais where Roth sits—Lodge, his lawyer Savio, and the deputy chief of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau—nobody is in the audience in the cavernous courtroom.

  Justice Roth is not one to smile unduly or waste words. “Well, counsellor?”

  “Yes, your honor,” Savio marshalls his words. “My client has authorized me to withdraw his previously entered plea of not guilty and now offers to plead guilty to manslaughter in the first degree, a class-C violent felony, under the first count of the indictment, in satisfaction of the entire indictment.” Savio stops then, but does not look at Lodge, who is three feet to his right, standing ram-rod straight, staring fixedly at the judge. Lodge heard not a word Savio said.

  “Is that what you want to do, Mr. Lodge?” Roth asks, not unkindly.

  Mister Lodge. The words rock him like a blow to the body. Yet he remains transfixed, mute.

  A full minute has passed. Roth has had enough. “Come up.”

  The lawyers hasten up to the bench, huddling with Roth at the sidebar. Savio earnestly explains that his client is unable to admit guilt because he was in the throes of an alcoholic blackout when he allegedly bludgeoned the victim, and so has no memory of the event. After several minutes of back-and-forth, Roth ends the debate.

  “He can have an Alford-Serrano. Step back.”

  At Lodge’s side, Savio explains their good fortune. In an Alford-Serrano plea—normally reserved for the insane—Roth will simply ask Lodge if he is pleading guilty because Lodge believes that the evidence is such that he will be found guilty at trial. Savio whispers urgently in Lodge’s ear, an Iago to his Othello.

  Suddenly, David Lodge’s body goes slack, his gaze falters. Lodge has an epiphany. He sees the faces of all the skells he’d ever arrested who’d whined innocent, and for the only time in his life he’s flooded with a compassion, till the fear takes hold—the fear of a small child upon awaking alone in the dark in an empty house.

  PART IV

  Backwater Brooklyn

  TRIPLE HARRISON

  BY MAGGIE ESTEP

  East New York

  She was wearing her t-shirt but she’d shed her jeans and her bleach-stained panties. She had me pinned down by the shoulders and her long dirty hair was tickling my cheeks as she hovered over me. I kept trying to look into her eyes but she had her face turned away. Even though her body was doing things to mine, she didn’t want me seeing what her eyes thought about it.

  “Stella.” I said her name but she wouldn’t look at me. She took one hand off my shoulder and started raking her fingernails down my chest a little too violently.

  “Hey, that hurts, girl,” I warned, trying to grab at her hand.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re hurting me,” I repeated.

  Her eyes suddenly got smaller, her mouth shrank like a flower losing life, and she slapped me.

  “Hey! Shit, stop that, Stella,” I protested, shocked. I didn’t know much about the girl but what I’d seen had been distinctly reserved and nonviolent.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her.

  She slapped me again. I tried to grab her hands but she made fists and pummeled my chest.

  “You fuck!” she screamed.

  I was pretty baffled. I’d been seeing Stella for a couple of months. She never said much, but up until now, she’d seemed to like me just fine. She would turn up on my door-step late at night, peel off her clothes, and get in my bed. I’d bought her flowers once and taken her out to dinner twice. I’d never said anything but nice things to her and I didn’t think I’d done anything to incur her fists.

  “What’s the matter, Stella?” I asked again, finally getting hold of her wrists and flipping her under me.

  “Get offa me, Triple,” she spat, wiggling like an electrified snake.

  I released her wrists and slid my body off hers. I lay there, panting a little from the effort of the struggle.

  I watched Stella scramble to her feet, then pick her panties and jeans off the floor. She yanked her clothes on. She was so angry she put her pants on backwards.

  “I don’t get it, what’d I do, Stella?” I asked her, as she furiously took her pants back off then put them on the right way. She ignored me.

  I was really starting to like Stella. Maybe that’s what got her mad.

  She zipped her pants, slipped her feet into her cheap sneakers, then went to the door and walked out, slamming it behind her.

  “What the fuck?” I said aloud. There was no one to h
ear me though. My dog had died of old age and the stray cat I’d taken in had gotten tired of me and moved on. It was just me and the peeling walls of the tiny wood-frame house. And all of a sudden that didn’t feel like much at all.

  Ever since Stella had come along, I hadn’t dwelled on any of it. On being broke and close to forty and living in a condemned house that was so far gone no one bothered to come kick me out of it. But now, for mysterious reasons, Stella probably wouldn’t be back and there wasn’t much to distract me from my condition. I only had one thing left that gave me any hope, and that was my horse. As it happened, it was just about time to go feed her, so I put on my clothes and went out, heading for the barn a hundred yards down from the house. I don’t suppose too many Brooklynites have horses, period, never mind keep them a hundred yards from the house. But real estate isn’t exactly at a premium here at the ass-end of Dumont Avenue, where Brooklyn meets up with the edge of Queens.

  It was close to dawn now and the newborn sun was throwing itself over the bumpy road. Two dogs were lying on a heap of garbage ten yards down from my house. One of them, some kind of shepherd mix, looked up at me. He showed a few teeth but left it at that.

  * * *

  Our little neighborhood is technically called Lindenwood but most people call it The Hole. A canyon in a cul-de-sac at the edge of East New York. It had been farmland in the not-so-distant past, then, as projects sprung up around it, it became a dumping ground. A few old-timers held on, maintaining their little frame houses, keeping chickens and goats in their yards. I don’t know who the first person to keep a horse here was, but it caught on. Within five years, about a dozen different ramshackle stables were built using old truck trailers and garden sheds. Each stable had its own little yard, some with paddocks in the back, all of it spread over less than five acres. Now, about forty horses live in The Hole, including my mare, Kiss the Culprit. I brought her here six months ago. It’s not exactly pastoral but we make due.

  I reached the big steel gate enclosing the stable yard, unlocked it, and pushed it open. The little area looked like it usually did. A patch of dirt with a few nubs of grass fight-ing for life in front of the green truck trailer that had been converted to horse stalls. Beth, the goat, butted me with her head. The six horses started kicking at their stall doors, clamoring for breakfast, their ruckus waking up the horses in the surrounding barns so that, within a few minutes, the entire area was sounding like a bucolic barnyard in rural Maryland and, in spite of my troubles, I suddenly felt good all over. Particularly as I took my first look of the day at Kiss the Culprit. She had her head hanging over her stall door and was looking at me expectantly. She looked especially good that morning in spite of the fact that, by most standards, she’s not considered a perfect specimen of the Thoroughbred breed. She’s small with an upside-down neck and a head too big for the rest of her. She’s slightly pigeon-toed and, back in her racing days, she’d run with a funny gait that only I thought resembled the great Seabiscuit’s.

  “Hey, girl,” I said, putting one hand on her muzzle and leaning in close to catch a whiff of her warm creature smell. She wanted breakfast though, not cuddling. She pinned her ears and tried to bite me.

  “All right, then,” I laughed, and walked off to the little feed room.

  * * *

  I fed all six horses even though only Culprit is mine. I keep her here free but I have to look after other people’s horses in exchange. Which suits me fine. The only job I have right now is working as a lifeguard at a pool in Downtown Brooklyn. No way I could afford to pay board for my mare.

  As the horses ate their grain, I started raking the stable yard’s nubby dirt, trying to make the place look presentable despite the fact that there were ominous puddles in front of the stalls and the lone flower box near the tack room had a propensity for killing anything we planted in it. This week it was working on terminating some hapless petunias.

  I was raking pretty violently, trying to keep Stella out of my mind. The way her black hair fell in her face. The way her ass had hung out of her crappy cutoffs that first night I’d met her at the bar. I started focusing harder on the rake I was using and how it was falling apart. I envisioned a trip to the Home Depot out at Coney Island to get a new one. I imagined the brightly lit aisles full of useful items. Then I imagined Stella in there with me. I stopped raking.

  I was standing there half-paralyzed by my thoughts when the front gate rattled and Dwight Ross suddenly appeared in the stable yard.

  I wasn’t glad to see him and the feeling was obviously mutual.

  “Triple Harrison, I want my fucking horse back,” Ross said.

  Dwight Ross had always been on the thin side, but now he looked like a whisper would knock him down. His red hair needed cutting and, as he came close, I could see that his navy blue suit had pea-sized pills all over it.

  “You stole my mare,” Dwight hissed, coming to stand two inches away from me. “Don’t fuck with me, Triple, took me six months to find you and I’m not leaving without my horse.”

  “She’s mine now,” I said, trying to seem calm even though I was anything but. I pulled air into my lungs, trying to make myself huge. Dwight backed up a little and started looking around at the horse stalls. He located Culprit’s and started unlatching it.

  “Don’t go in there, Ross,” I said. “Don’t touch that horse.” I felt myself getting hysterical.

  “You want to take this to the law?” Dwight asked, as he got the latch undone and went to stand next to my mare.

  “I don’t think you do,” I warned. Six months earlier, I’d been working as a groom, looking after Dwight Ross’s string of horses at Aqueduct Racetrack. One day about a month into my tenure there, I caught Dwight trying to inject E. coli into Kiss the Culprit’s knee. Of course, I hadn’t realized what was in the syringe at the time, but I could tell by the way Dwight jumped when I walked in that the massive syringe did not belong in Culprit’s knee. I’d already been suspicious about some of the stuff he was doing to his horses, though it wasn’t till that moment that I fully realized he was one evil motherfucker. He was trying to kill the mare to collect the insurance and split the proceeds with the owner.

  I happened to have a pitchfork in my hand and I didn’t hesitate to use it. I pinned Ross to the wall and made him hand the syringe over and get out. He issued a few choice threats as he backed out of the stall. I figured it wouldn’t take long for him to make good on the threats, but for that moment, he had hightailed it away from the barn. I had skipped bail on a beef in Florida two years earlier so I wasn’t in a position to go to the authorities. I couldn’t stand the idea of leaving the horse there unprotected though, so I decided to take her. I went into Dwight’s office and forged the paperwork, then I loaded the mare into Dwight’s horse trailer. She walked into the trailer without fussing. It seemed to me she knew I was saving her. As I passed through security and drove the trailer away from the Aqueduct backside, I kept expecting to hit a snag and get caught. But I made it. I stashed Culprit at a little stable near Prospect Park while I figured out what to do. I was now unemployed and broke with a horse to take care of. I figured I’d make do though. All my life I’d been taking care of things, stray cats and dogs and crazy women.

  After a week, I got the lifeguard job—swimming was the only thing I was good at apart from taking care of horses—and, not long after I’d made arrangements for keeping Culprit at The Hole, I’d moved into one of the abandoned houses just down the road. I hooked into the electric at one of the stables, and ran a hose in from the yard for water. Culprit and I had settled into a nice daily routine and we’d both been doing just fine. Until now.

  * * *

  Dwight Ross was still standing in my mare’s stall.

  “Come on, Ross,” I said in a quiet voice, “get out of there. Now.”

  At that he smiled. I didn’t see what was funny though.

  “I had the crazy idea you’d be reasonable about this,” Dwight said, leveling a gun I didn’t know h
e had at me.

  “That was a crazy idea, all right,” I told him. I could see worry in his eyes even though he was the one with a gun.

  “I’m taking my mare back and I will hurt you if I have to,” he said in a shrill voice. He stepped out of the stall to reach for Culprit’s halter.

  I didn’t think. Just grabbed for something. Turned out to be a shovel. Ross had his back to me. He heard me move but not in time. I slammed the business end of the shovel into the side of his head. He went down face first. Culprit spooked and her eyes got huge.

  I walked over and put my palm over the end of my mare’s nose and brought her big head against my chest.

  “It’s okay,” I told the horse as I scratched her muzzle.

  I looked down at Ross. He wasn’t moving. I pushed on his shoulder, trying to turn him over. His body felt funny. His eyes and mouth were open. There was blood matted into his red hair. I realized he wasn’t just unconscious.

  I started feeling dizzy and I couldn’t get myself to move. Culprit was looking at me with curiosity, her ears pricked forward.

  “What do I do now, girl?” I asked. She just kept looking at me though.

  It was getting close to 7 a.m. Pretty soon, people would be arriving at the other barns.

  I left Dwight’s body in the stall but led my mare out and tied her up in the yard. I didn’t want her looking at the body.

  I walked back to my house to get the car keys. My stomach was doing backflips. I went inside and it smelled a little like Stella. That didn’t help any.

  I got my keys and went back outside. My ’86 Chevy Caprice Classic had once been blue but now it was just dirt-colored. It still ran though. The engine coughed to life and I drove to the front of the stable yard. I opened the big metal gates wide enough to get the car in, nosing it ahead slowly so as not to alarm Culprit. She stared at the car but she didn’t spook.

  I dragged Dwight’s body out of the stall, pulling it by the feet. The head bounced along the dirt making a funny sound that made me sick.