“Can I ask you something?” Brenda Walker cocked her head as Nerese drew close, then gestured with the detective’s card between her fingers to the rotting floral cross hanging over the entrance to Eight Building. “You have anything to do with that up there?”
“Not, no, this isn’t my district.”
“Well, I’ll tell you, just so you know,” she said. “That lady that was killed? She had just moved in about three months ago and I believe she had brought her trouble in with her. Because all things being equal? This project’s still a pretty good place to call home.”
Nerese headed over to the Bureau of Criminal Identification, situated in the basement of one of the smaller courtroom buildings in Dempsy. It was a greenish place consisting of two rooms: one, a vast and dusty warehouse lined with ancient oak filing cabinets which held thousands of criminal records still awaiting conversion to a county-wide database; the other, much smaller, almost claustrophobically so, set up for processing the catch of the day. It included a fingerprinting station, a fixed camera and backdrop for mug shots, an ancient scale and a small steel table for last-minute negotiations. There was also a tiny holding cell in here, no bigger than an elevator car but which in the course of the last century had temporarily housed two German saboteurs working the Dempsy waterfront in World War I; Longy Zwillman, the behind-the-scenes founder of syndicated crime; Dutch Schultz; Carmine Galante; Henry Hill; and Abbie Hoffman.
Sitting on the edge of the small steel desk, Nerese studied the rap sheet of Freddy Martinez. Yes, there was a murder charge that had brought him before a grand jury midway during his second stretch in County, but they had failed to indict, which invariably meant that he had acted in self-defense, as Brenda Walker had claimed; and in front of witnesses, the guards themselves most likely, as required for a No Bill judgment. So for now, Nerese put this incident aside in order to get a clearer picture of the whole; on the face of it, a fairly run-of-the-mill history of mid- to low-level drug transgressions, but for those who could read between the charges and dispositions, the trajectory was a little trickier. There were four arrests over a period of twelve years; for the earliest, on a County-based charge of possession with intent, he was sentenced to three to five years but only served nine months—not that unusual for a first offense. But of the three subsequent arrests, all initially for PWI, two were downgraded to simple possession and one to a disorderly persons, each in turn kicked back to municipal court, where the longest possible sentence was a year and a day. He served nowhere near that: two months on the first municipal complaint, during which he had killed the other inmate; a desk appearance on the second; and, for this most recent one, six weeks.
If all things were on the up-and-up, each arrest should have led to more time than the last, and the fact that after the initial bust County kept downgrading the charges, then booting them into city court, told Nerese that after Freddy’s first arrest County Narcotics had turned him into an informant and pretty much kept him out of jail save for just enough time to keep his street credentials intact. In addition, as these relationships primarily worked on a don’t ask, don’t tell basis, his handlers most likely turned a blind eye to his continuing career as some kind of dopeslinger. The scale of his dealings was difficult for Nerese to tell from the paper in her hands, except that there always seemed to be a bigger fish out there that justified County’s perpetual catch-and-release policy toward whomever they happened to have on their hook at any given moment.
Nerese sat across the desk from Kenny Howell, a lieutenant in the Dempsy County Narcotics Squad ten years her junior.
It was common knowledge that Kenny owed his quick rise up the ranks to his foresight in casting his lot with a dark-horse mayoral candidate who pulled off an upset victory in the last election; the lieutenant’s shield a reward for volunteering thirty hours a week during the campaign and dropping $3,000 into the war chest from his own pocket. On the actual lieutenant’s examination, Howell had finished fourteenth out of one hundred and forty candidates, usually well beneath the cutoff for new appointments, but the mayor got around this by simply declaring that the Dempsy PD needed fifteen new lieutenants, the guy beneath Howell lucking out in order to make the reward a touch less obvious. Not that anybody would complain. This was how things were done in Dempsy; Nerese knew it, the newspapers knew it, the governor of the state knew it—it was just how things were done.
For a cop like Nerese, though, the downside of all this realpolitik was that although she knew exactly what to do in order to get ahead, she basically lacked the moxie, the hustle, the desire to gamble, had no interest in advancing herself by playing the political ponies—attending the right dinners, joining the right organizations or investing a couple of paychecks into this one or that one’s campaign fund. And it had nothing to do with race—there were as many black and Hispanic ponies to bet on as there were white ones—but she just didn’t have the appetite for it. And as a result, whenever she found herself around high-stakes careerists like Lieutenant Howell here, she always wound up feeling like an outsider in her own department, a borderline nonentity, and if she gave the slightest bit of a damn it would probably have pissed her off.
“Freddy Martinez.” Kenny tore off a mouthful of sandwich, held up a finger for Nerese to wait as he chewed and swallowed. “Interesting guy.” He put the sandwich back on his desk, passed a hand across his mouth. “He brings the shit in from Washington Heights, sells it to guys who sell it to guys who sell it on the street. No Pablo Escobar but not exactly Bonehead Jones, either. And he’s smart. We can never catch him with weight. Usually it’s him being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“OK.” Nerese nodded.
“On the other hand, I have to be honest, we kind of like the guy. Never gives us shit, always comes along without a fuss, throws us a useful nibble now and then, you know the type.”
“Sure.” Nerese was almost choking on the horseshit.
“Yeah, he’s an interesting hombre, Freddy. Did you know he and I both went to Montclair State? The thing is, me? I dropped out after two years, but Freddy, he hung in for the full ride and got his degree.”
“Degree in what.” Nerese just asking.
“You’re an aspiring drug dealer, what are you going to major in?”
“How the hell do I know. Chemistry?”
“C’mon, chemistry’s for your underlings. Marketing, baby, marketing.”
“OK.” Nerese thinking, Whatever.
“The thing is, we must have nailed him what, four, five times over the years? When my son was born last July, Freddy came by the office and dropped off a miniature Yankees uniform for him. When I told my wife who it was from and how I knew the guy, she gave it to Goodwill, but it was a nice gesture.”
“Well, I’m kind of liking him for an assault.”
“Who, Freddy?” Howell clasped his hands across his gut, made a face. “I don’t see it.”
“What do you mean, you don’t see it? He was charged with murder.”
“That was no-billed.” Howell held up that finger again.
“But he did it, right?”
“Whoa, hang on hang on, you want to know how that went down? Because I can tell you.”
“Sure.” Nerese shrugged, suppressing her dislike for cops who so eagerly rushed to protect the good names of their street connections.
“OK.” Kenny briskly rubbed his hands. “Each residential pod in County’s got its own mini-gym, right? Like a twenty-by-twenty workout cage? Freddy’s in there, working the speed bags, some three-hundred-pound tattooed numb-nuts comes in has it in his head that Freddy did him some dirt, on the inside, out in the world, who knows, comes at him with a sharpened toothbrush, OK? Now, like I said, the room’s a twenty-by-twenty cage. There’s a guard posted on the outside, but he’s forbidden to enter that space without backup. So, Slobbo goes after Freddy, Freddy’s dancing away best he can, screaming for the guard, who finally removes the thumb from his ass and hits the panic button, which, onc
e again is all he can do. Meanwhile, the guy finally corners Freddy, takes a swipe and opens his forehead like a tin can, at which point, Freddy just straight-out wigs, and by the time the response team shows up, which was maybe all of ninety seconds later? That big tub of shit is laying there with his toothbrush in his heart, and Freddy’s back to working the speed bag again like nothing happened except you can’t see his face for the blood coming down plus he’s hyperventilating. And when they go to grab him? He starts freaking again and blind as a bat, runs face first into the edge of a barbell, breaks his own nose, knocks himself unconscious and spends the next three days in the psych unit. Overall, not what you’d call a cold-blooded killer, you know what I’m saying?”
“Well, I didn’t ask anything about him being cold-blooded,” Nerese said, trying to fend off the image of Freddy as a buck-wild berserker. “I’m just liking him for this assault and I wanted to know if you thought . . .”
“If it was in his general nature?” Kenny shrugged disparagingly. “I believe that thing in jail was a one-time-only situation. I mean, hey, who can say for sure, but . . .” He threw her another uninspired look, then inched forward across his desk. “I mean, it’s up to you, but do you want to throw me the specifics of the situation? Maybe I can . . .”
“Nah, that’s okay.” Nerese sensed that not only wouldn’t Howell give her anything to work with here if it meant putting one of his primo informants in some kind of jackpot, but he might even go so far as to give Freddy a heads-up.
“I’m just curious,” Nerese said, slipping this in as she made a show of gathering up her things. “Do you know anything about his domestic situation?”
“His home life?” Another shrug. “All I know is what I need to know to do my job, you know?”
“OK, then.” Nerese was about to rise, get some fresh air, but was distracted by another narcotics lieutenant—Billy Herman, steroid-puffed chest, salt-and-pepper ponytail and a face like a frying pan—marching into the office with some sorry-ass-looking street kid in cuffs, Billy steering him with a hand at the back of his neck, planting him in a chair facing Nerese and Howell.
“Kenny, check this out,” ignoring Nerese as he turned to his grab. “Tell him your name.”
“Aw, c’mon, man.” The kid winced, looked away.
“Hey.” Billy towered over him, hands on hips.
“Michael Jackson,” the kid muttered.
“Michael Jackson,” Billy marveled.
Howell made a token noise of amusement; not really—much to his credit, Nerese thought—into the usual niggers-as-God’s-clowns school of cop humor.
“Say it again.”
“Michael Jackson.” The kid looked away, then added, “They din’t ast me when I was born, they just gave it to me.”
“Michael Jackson,” Billy said. “Live and in cuffs.”
Nerese had a history with this prick Herman. She began to leave again.
“Hey, Nerese.” Billy smiled. “I didn’t even see you there. You meet Michael Jackson?”
“She’s asking about Freddy Martinez,” Howell said so blandly that to Nerese’s ears it was insulting in its blatant effort to talk around and through her.
“Oh yeah?” Billy gave her a long look. “How’s your brother Butchie doing? I heard he came down with the Package.”
“Well, you heard wrong,” Nerese controlling her temper, not wanting to put on a show in front of this kid in cuffs.
“Then I must’ve heard it about Antoine. Is it Antoine?”
Nerese just glared at him, unable to lie. A mug of hot coffee sat on the edge of Howell’s desk, steam rising in lazy intertwining swirls.
“So how’s he holding up?” Billy pushing it.
“Not so good,” Nerese answered flatly.
“I’m sorry to hear that. He wasn’t a bad guy.”
“He’s still alive,” Nerese said, trying to lock eyes with him; Billy Herman was having a good day, though, immune to any malocchio.
“Well you tell him he’s in my thoughts, OK?” he said, then gave her his back.
Livid, Nerese rose to her feet. She wasn’t even aware that Kenny Howell’s coffee mug was in her hand until she felt the heat coming through. She carefully, casually returned the mug to its ring of condensation on the edge of the desk.
“Thank you for your time, fellas,” she said dryly, then headed for the door.
“Hey, Nerese?” Howell turned her around. “You know, like I said, Freddy, he’s smart,” taking another bite of his sandwich. “Maybe you got something for us?”
White Tom Potenza stood waiting for Nerese on the stoop of his building, a five-story walk-up wedged between the Dodi-Diana Smoke Shop and the Ship of Zion daycare center on Tonawanda Avenue.
He stood there rickety-legged, leaning into his cane, face hidden behind large impenetrable shades and a push-broom mustache.
Having been born on the same day and in the same housing project as each other, Nerese had known White Tom all her life; had known him when, before the Great White Exodus from Hopewell, his name had simply been Tom.
As she stepped to the curb, White Tom said what he always said when greeting her—“Officer Nerese, keepin’ the peace”—then ceremoniously opened his arms, his cane held aloft like a baton.
Embracing him always gave her the creeps, his torso feeling somehow both bloated and insubstantial; she likened it to hugging a large trash bag filled with dry leaves.
“Come up.”
He pulled a rickety about-face and entered the tiled vestibule, Nerese following behind as he began briskly one-stepping his way up three flights of cracked marble stairs.
Although part of her was dying to take a run at Freddy—today, right now, this minute—she willed herself to do it right, which meant slowly, patiently continuing to work from the outer rings on in. And no one and nothing in Dempsy—no human, no filing system, no data bank—had the between-the-lines lowdown on so many shady-side individuals as White Tom Potenza.
Sober now for over a decade, he had become over the years something of a local phenomenon, a great and driven fisher of men who, despite multiple health problems, ran his own N.A. and A.A. meetings; and working for a cop who owned a chain of federally funded methadone clinics, tirelessly prowled his old haunts, cajoling and conning his surviving running buddies and the younger generation of lost souls to come in for HIV tests, free counseling and a three-week methadone maintenance program.
He was HIV-negative himself, had been tested twice a year for the last ten years with that result, but pulling a perverse reverse denial on himself, steadfastly refused to believe that his days weren’t numbered.
“So who’s on the menu today,” he asked, shouldering open his apartment door, then, once Nerese was inside, pushing it shut with his cane.
“Don’t you lock that?”
“Why? Anybody breaking in here’s got to face Arletta.” Then, “Honey, I’m home,” calling out to a faint rustling at the back of the railroad flat.
The apartment was tilted, the rake not quite as high as a pitcher’s mound, but a round object placed motionless on the north side of a room would definitely roll across the linoleum until it hit the south wall.
Tom steered her into the small, flaking front parlor and gestured toward the plastic-sheathed couch directly beneath a roughly concentric set of tobacco-tinted water stains on the ceiling. Despite his necrotic hip, White Tom remained on his feet, the man so chronically antsy and tense he couldn’t even take a seat in his own home.
The wall hangings in here consisted of a laminated meditation on Christ’s bleeding hands, an ornately framed eight-by-ten wedding picture of White Tom and his black wife, Arletta, two smaller studio-shot portraits of their three-year-old twins, Eric Sosa and Maceo McGwire Potenza, and a simple reed crucifix pushpinned into the wall over the TV, the frayed unadorned thatch giving it a crude power that moved Nerese every time she saw it.
“Who we talking about today, kid?”
“Freddy Martinez.
”
“Freddy Martinez. He’s in County, right?”
“Just got out,” Nerese said.
“Just got out.”
White Tom took off his shades to briefly rub his eyes, which were pale, piggy and dazed: a blind man’s eyes, set back in sockets as deep as teacups.
This wreck, this gimp, had been the only kid tough enough, athletic enough, to ever kick her brother Antoine’s ass in all the years that her family had lived in Hopewell; kicked his ass good, then gestured to the encircling Brothers that day on the handball courts of Big Playground, a little beckoning waver of his fingers—Who’s next—no one taking him up on it, either.
Nerese looked away until the shades were back on.
“What about Freddy Martinez,” Tom asked.
“What’s his story . . .”
“Freddy? Mid-level dealer. Sells to guys who sell to guys. Probably ratting out some Colombian or other to County in order to avoid any kind of serious time. Just like every other jibone out there.”
“What else . . .”
“What else?”
She waited.
“What else like what, criminal activity or just human interest?”
“Whatever.”
“Personally, I like him,” White Tom said. “Intelligent, well-spoke, never touches the stuff himself. Says, ‘It’s not like I’m selling Marlboros or malt liquor. Those are the real killers.’ You know the type, right?”
“Yup.”
“But I’ll tell you, when the twins were born? He came by and dropped off two baby-sized Minnesota Twins uniforms, had their names already sewn in back—a very thoughtful gesture. Required some imagination, too. You know, the twins and the Twins.”
“Kenny Howell over at Narcotics? When his kid was born, he got the Yankees.” Nerese fucking with him a little.
“Up your ass with the Yankees.” White Tom waved her off. “I live in Dempsy yo, home of the underdog.”
“Well then, go Freddy.”
“No, well look, all I’m saying is . . . Well, fuck it.” Tom shrugged. “Bottom line is, at the end of the day? He’s still one of the bad guys. You know, the ‘good German.’ Still wears the death’s head, right?”
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