Canary

by Duane Swierczynski

  “You’re liking them younger and younger.”

  “Nah, you know I’m into the older women. Keep hoping to catch myself a Betty White type hooked on smack.”

  Wildey has an uneasy relationship with Kaz. She likes to goof around with him, calling him “Wild Child” even though his name was pronounced will-dee and was not supposed to rhyme with wild. And he jokes back most times, which is good. In building the ranks of her newly formed Narcotics Field Unit-Central South, she was careful to pull guys from all over the city to bust up any existing allegiances. But she could be frustratingly cryptic and hard to read. Frankly, Wildey never quite knew where he stood with her.

  At first she told Wildey he was the perfect fit for the unit. Wildey was fresh off a commendation for his role in taking back the notorious McPherson Square Park from drug dealers last year. For three decades “Needle Park” had been littered with syringes and gun casings and junkies dozing on benches. When the Twenty-fourth District decided to take it back, Wildey was one of the bicycle cops who was racking up steady and constant arrests. Which was impressive alone, considering his size. (He dropped twenty pounds riding that damn bike.) Somehow, word of his exploits found their way to Kaz. She liked that he was a lone wolf with no wife, no kids, not much of a life outside the job. But all of his work so far seems to have vaguely disappointed her. “Keep digging” is a common refrain. No leads excite her. Sometimes, Wildey thinks he’d be better off on his bike, picking off street dealers one at a time.

  Wildey puts Serafina Holland, a.k.a. Honors Girl, in one of their birdcages—what they call their meeting rooms—then returns to brief his boss. “I’m making some real progress on Chuckie Morphine,” he says.

  “Who’s this now?” Kaz asks.

  “The guy I think’s dealing to college kids, high school kids, based out of the house on Ninth—you remember. His name kept coming up in September. A couple of my CIs came up with an address and I’ve been watching it.”

  “So this girl is one of his dealers?”

  “No—her boyfriend is.”

  “Where’s he?”

  “Probably still running through South Philly.”

  “So what did you catch her with?”

  Wildey tells her: Oxys, Mollies, stop signs. Kaz nods appreciatively.

  “That’s a fairly solid haul. You sure she’s not the dealer?”

  “Positive.”

  Kaz nods for a good half minute then looks steadily, calmly into Wildey’s eyes.

  “Let’s do this.”

  I’ve never been inside a police station before but this looks like no police station I’ve ever seen. I’m pretty sure most police stations don’t smell like cheese curls, chalk, and bleach. Or have blackboards.

  Maybe it’s just late and I’m working on no sleep, but the whole building looks like a former school. The cop who arrested me—I don’t even know his name at this point—leads me down a cramped hallway until he makes a sharp turn into a tiny room, pointing to a chair where I’m supposed to sit. Nothing else in the room but a dented metal folding table and gunmetal gray shelves lining the walls. I’m guessing this used to be the school library. Too bad there are no law books in here.

  The advice from every cop movie and show ever: Ask for a lawyer then STFU. But as smart as that advice seems in the abstract, I can’t bring myself to do it. Calling a lawyer makes all of this irrevocably real. Calling a lawyer means Dad will find out. There’s no way I can do that to him. Not after this past year. No offense, Mom.

  On the way in, the cop tells me if I’m smart there’ll be a way to straighten this out. I keep seeing those bags of pills. The cop, bouncing them in his oversized hand, smirking, proud of his catch.

  So I sit at the table, hunched forward slightly, palms down on the surface. The room is small, airless, windowless, stripped of all decoration. There isn’t even one of those obvious one-way mirrors you see on the cop shows. I’m wired but exhausted. The two sensations play tug-of-war with my nervous system. I’m tempted to start pacing or put my head down on the table but I do neither. Years of Catholic school have trained me for this. I so, so badly want to blink and wake up and realize this was just my brain playing a cruel little scared-straight nightmare.

  The wait is long. For all I know the sun is already up and Dad is at the airport, pissed.

  There is no clock and I don’t have my phone, so I can only guess at the time when the two cops finally, at long last, enter the room. I try to look as innocent as possible. After all, I am (basically) a good girl in a bad situation.

  The cop who arrested me casually tosses two objects on the table in front of me: D.’s fedora. And D.’s navy windbreaker. He introduces himself and his partner—who I later learn is actually his boss.

  —I’m Officer Ben Wildey, this is Lieutenant Katrina Mahoney.

  Officer Wildey’s smiling like we’re old pals. His boss, though, gives me eye daggers. There’s a smile on her lips, too, but not one of those warm, reassuring ones. It’s the I’m-gonna-fuck-you-up kind. Introductions made, they sit down across the table from me. Officer Wildey looks at me head-on, while Lieutenant Mahoney is half turned, like she’s not ready to make the full commitment. When she speaks it’s with a Russian accent.

  —You like the pancakes and syrup?

  I blink. Are they offering me breakfast? I know it’s probably close to dawn, but what the hell?

  —You must like pancakes and syrup a lot. I mean, considering what Officer Wildey found in your car. You must have had a real big weekend planned.

  I seriously have no idea what she’s talking about. Officer Wildey chuckles.

  —You don’t know what she’s talking about, do you.

  Lieutenant Mahoney makes a tut-tut sound.

  —Oh, she knows. Look at her.

  —No, I don’t think her boyfriend was into the breakfast treats, probably just slinging ’em.

  —Uh, what are you guys talking about?

  Pancakes and syrup, he explains, is a mix of Xanax and codeine cough syrup. Something kids like if you don’t want to mess around with heroin. The high is similar. I start to stammer, telling them that not only have I not heard of pancakes or syrup, I don’t know anyone who has. This is all news to me. This is a mistake that I’m here at all. Somebody stashed some stuff in my car without me seeing and now …

  —Easy, now.

  Officer Wildey reaches across the table and touches my hand. His skin is rough.

  —There are exactly two ways this can go.

  The lieutenant, meanwhile, is busy flicking something from one of her nails.

  —We charge you with possession and intent to sell. You receive serious jail time—five years, mandatory. This is not us being hard-asses. These are federal guidelines, and we can’t do a blessed thing about them. You won’t be finishing your senior year until you’re in your midtwenties. Doubt the honors program’s gonna take you back then.

  I take this in. Not all the way in. More like inside the vestibule of my mind, where it can be quickly kicked out the front door again. This first way? Shit, this was no way at all. Going to jail? No. That would ruin my life. Kill Dad. Probably ruin Marty’s life, too. Dead mother, crazy father, jailbird sister. Good luck, kid.

  Wildey pats my hand reassuringly.

  —Now let me remind you that this can all go away. You can walk out of here tonight in, like, just five minutes … if you tell me the name of the guy in the red pants who I chased all the hell over South Philly.

  I almost blurt it out. Instead I imagine steel rods emerging from my teeth and locking in on the opposite side and clamping my jaw shut. If I speak that name out loud, all of this falls on his head. And I can’t do that. Yeah, he shouldn’t have taken me on a drug run. But I was the one who got pulled over. I was the dumbass who said sure, search the car. If D. had somebody else drive him, that somebody else would have been smarter about cruising laws and unmarked cars and all of that. All D. wanted was a cheesesteak. I tell myself: Don’t pussy out
now.

  I tell them, slowly and confidently:

  —I don’t know any guy in red pants.

  Officer Wildey and Lieutenant Mahoney exchange glances. She smirks.

  —No guy, huh.

  —No.

  —So the drugs in that car were yours.

  —No! They’re not!

  Officer Wildey turns to face me again, sighs.

  —Okay, then there’s the other way this can go. We can’t just let you walk out of here, not with what you had in your car. The good news is, you can work off the charges. Work hard enough, as a matter of fact, and it’s like this never happened.

  —What, do you mean, like, intern with the police?

  Both cops turn to smirk at each other, not even trying to hide it. I feel my cheeks burn. Fuck you both.

  —No, not an intern, Honors Girl. You can help us another way.

  —How?

  —You can become a confidential informant, and help us catch the scuzbags who sell drugs to your classmates.

  —A confidential what?

  They explain it to me. They want me to become a CI—a confidential informant. Only Wildey and his boss would know my identity. In short, they’re asking me to be a snitch. In Philadelphia. Where snitches are killed on a regular basis.

  —But I don’t know anything. I’m telling you, I’d be the worst snitch ever.

  Lieutenant Mahoney stands up and leans over the table, gives me the eye daggers so hard I twitch.

  —Guess you’re going to have to learn. Otherwise we’re forced to go with the first option.

  The lieutenant’s office used to be the principal’s office. There’s not much of Kaz in here except a dying cactus (“to remind me not to get too close to pricks”) and a small boom box, which almost never plays music, only AM radio news. Once in a while Wildey will hear Kaz playing crap like Billy Joel and REO Speedwagon and it cracks him up.

  Wildey stays on his feet while Kaz stands behind her desk, tapping an index finger on the track pad of her laptop. She never seems to sit. Wildey knows he won’t be here very long.

  “Looks like she’ll be CI one thirty-seven,” Kaz tells him. “The important thing is to keep on her constantly. Keep pressure building. You need to be this unrelenting hard-ass who will not go away. Ten bucks she cracks by Black Friday.”

  “She’s just a kid.”

  “She’s the kid standing in the way of your case. You want to help her, get her talking, then get her out of the way.”

  “Okay. Gonna drop her back at her car, then I’m out. I’ll keep you posted.”

  “You’re a sweetheart, Wild Child.”

  “Happy Thanksgiving, Loot.”

  Even though tomorrow is not really a holiday for either of them. There is no overtime in the NFU-CS, not anymore—that gravy train has long left the station. But Kaz expects the same hours and unflagging devotion to the task. Wildey agreed to this when he signed up for the unit. Doesn’t matter to him, as he doesn’t have much to do outside the unit anyway. He can catch up on video games and cable shows and movies when he retires.

  Wildey shows me where I can wash my face, then returns my purse, hairpin (after all, it could be a deadly weapon), and cell and gives me a ride back to my car on Reed Street. The sun isn’t up yet and the wind is howling. The cold sinks deep into my bones. I don’t know if I’m shivering because I’m still scared or because it’s like negative twenty out. I check the time. If I haul ass I can still make it down I-95 in time for Dad’s flight. There’s an awkward moment when, if this were a date, a fumbling first kiss would be attempted. But this is very much not a date.

  Officer Wildey looks at me.

  —You all set now?

  —Yes. I mean … no. Not really.

  —No?

  —I have no idea how this works.

  —Damn, and here I thought you were an honors student.

  —But I don’t know what you want from me because I don’t know anything. Is there a rule book or, like, instructions?

  Wildey chuckles.

  —Couldn’t be simpler. You’re an informant. You give me information. I follow up on it.

  —I’m not a drug dealer and I don’t know any drug dealers. At school, or anywhere else.

  —Yeah, yeah, and those bags of pills just magically ended up in your car.

  —Exactly!

  —Cut the shit, honey. Why are you protecting him? Has he ever hurt you? Are you afraid he might hurt you? Because we can do something about that. I can do something.

  Again I almost say something dumb like, No he wouldn’t hurt me, he barely knows me. Then I remember: There is no him. I can never admit there ever was a him. Stick to the story—weird as it is—that I was alone in my car tonight, driving around, looking for a place to park so I could pick up a cheesesteak for my little brother at home. I have no idea how that jacket or those pills ended up in the backseat of my Civic. Maybe some junkie near St. Jude’s used my car as a stash spot.

  But I know Wildey must have seen me and D. together. The cop saw me warn him off. It’s all gonna unravel on you, so you’d better keep your mouth shut. There’s a way out of this you’re not considering.

  —Is that what’s going on? He like to hit you?

  —No.

  —So there is a he?

  —No, there’s not.

  Wildey exhales like a steam train ready to pull out of the station. I look around the quiet freezing streets and a thought hits me.

  —Look, can’t I just work this off another way?

  The cop seems genuinely mystified.

  —What do you mean?

  —I mean, can’t you give me a lead or something, and I’ll follow up on it? I’m great at research. I can help you that way.

  Wildey smiles.

  —That’s cute, Honors Girl. But that’s not how it works. You’re supposed to bring me the leads. You’re the informant. And you’d better have something for me soon, because informants who don’t inform are of no use. You know what happens to those informants, right? You’re a bright girl. You’ll figure it out.

  —Right.

  —Now listen.

  —Yeah?

  —I know you’re probably going to want to tell your pops about this, and that’s perfectly natural. But let me tell you why this is a bad idea. The moment Pops hears about this, he’s gonna call a lawyer. And the moment we hear from a lawyer, our deal with you goes up in smoke. You’re going to have to do some jail time, no matter what he says. And there’s nothing I’ll be able to do about that. You understand?

  —I understand.

  Wildey gives me a cheap pre-paid phone—a pay-by-the-minutes deal already loaded with his number. He calls it “the burner.” Wildey tells me he’ll never answer; just leave a voicemail or a text and he’ll get back to me. I have to keep this cheap phone on me at all times. No matter what. Then he hands my iPhone back.

  —Here’s yours. I have your number. You don’t get back to me on the ditch phone, I call this. You understand me?

  I reach for it but he teases me, refusing to let go.

  —You’re smart, Honors Girl. I know you’ll do the right thing.

  POLICE ON MY BACK

  PHILADELPHIA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  November 28

  Kevin Holland startles awake, surprised to find himself back in Philadelphia. When had he drifted off? That almost never happens to him on planes. He’s usually awake for every cramped, dim, agonizing twilight moment. What’s more bizarre is that he slept through the landing, too. Only the final bing of the overhead seat belt indicator roused him from slumber.

  Then again, this is what happens when you drink a little too much at an airport bar and then basically pour yourself into your window seat.

  The tear started the way it usually does. Used to; he doesn’t do this anymore, it’s just an aberration, he tells himself. He had one beer to calm his nerves, maybe help him sleep on the flight even though he knows he never sleeps on flights. Second beer in, he’s p
rimed up for one Jack on the rocks, just one, you know, to calm his nerves on the flight, even though he’s never been a nervous flier. One Jack becomes three and Kevin knows that’s enough, more than enough, but one more and maybe he really could sleep on the plane, because tomorrow’s Thanksgiving and there’ll be so much to do, so much he can’t even keep it all straight in his head. But the bartender, a blonde with purple streaks and some hard living on her face, was his buddy by now and poured him a double, no extra charge. And then it was a rush to grab his bag and settle up and dart to the men’s room for an epic piss and wash his face and look in the mirror to see Old Kev staring back at him. Hey, where you been, poser?

  What worries Kevin is the utter lack of hangover, which means he’s still drunk this morning. He turns on his phone and texts Sarie. She texts back a nanosecond later, from the cell phone lot. Rock-solid dependable as always, his daughter. “Strong like bull,” he used to joke in a grunting voice when she was younger, and it remains true. He’s relieved as hell she agreed to pick him up this morning. Two trains all the way to the Northeast on Thanksgiving morning would be depressing. Kevin doesn’t drive, not since he lost his license in high school in the worst way you could lose it. Even though he was allowed to drive again, he refused. Kevin never wanted to be back in that kind of situation ever again. Laura always drove. Then Sarie took over. Kevin is the eternal passenger.