“Yeah, we’re all good Germans,” Gritz commiserated, wanting to ask the man a question but he’d already gone.
Gritz got as close as he could and stopped to watch. The forensics boys were there in white, bagging evidence. A photographer worked the scene. A couple detective-types in jackets were talking to one another, looking in his direction. He could tell they recognized him, could tell they thought he was past his expiration date. Gritz raised his coffee to them, “Fuck you, boys,” saying it so only he could hear it.
A white sheet was tarped over a body.
Gritz rubbed a hand on his jaw. He needed a shave. Nah. He’d needed a shave three days ago. This was getting ridiculous.
Rotors reverberated overhead, a news chopper covering the traffic backup on the Palisades.
Gritz knew what they said about him behind his back. They used to call him True Gritz, respect in their voices. Nowadays they called him Bad Lieutenant like Keitel in that movie. Or worse, a drunk. Not that there wasn’t an element of truth to it. Gritz liked him his drink. Carried a flask. Gritz could kid around about it with himself, thinking it was like that old joke: what’s the difference between an alcoholic and a drunk? A drunk doesn’t have to go to those stupid meetings.
And he didn’t.
Every day, Gritz was feeling more and more like someone’s stereotype of a policeman: the grizzled, veteran detective who’d seen it all and learned to shrug his shoulders at the inhumanity. There was another side to that coin, even less attractive, the middle-aged, washed-up, burnt out cop. Gritz didn’t know if he’d go so far to say he was corrupt, but he’d turned his head to enough bullshit in the past twenty-five years. Only in the earliest days did any of it trouble his sleep. These days he carried the flask, which helped.
Foley came over to stand next to him. Foley with his kit, straight out of the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. Foley looked past the crime scene, beyond the river.
“What are we looking at Foley?”
“Looks like Spuyten Duyvil to me.” A part of Riverdale over in the Bronx.
“They found a note.” Gritz didn’t ask him if he’d spoken to anybody from the Jersey M.E.’s office.
“They found a note,” confirmed Foley, proceeding to fill Gritz in on the details. Gritz listened and nodded, sipping at his coffee now that it was cooling. Foley wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know, hadn’t seen before. This guy called himself Mephisto, guy had an M.O.
As Foley talked, Gritz thought he had another reason to drink these days. The bullshit was mounting. Cases he couldn’t solve; others he stood powerless on the sidelines of; a troubled marriage. Hell if it could even be called a marriage anymore. He and Cathleen were estranged, their kids wouldn’t talk to him.
“Why’s he hunting them outside the city now?”
“Make our lives more difficult,” Foley ventured.
Gritz and Foley stood on the overlook, the lot blocked off from interstate traffic, police tape and police at the entrance, a mess of vehicles clogging the lot. The helicopter buzzed overhead. Gritz remarked to the coroner, “There’s got to be a way out of here.”
“Said the joker to the thief.” Like Gritz, Foley was a classic rock guy. They had that, baseball, and their love of booze in common. “See you at Jackie’s sometime, detective.”
Gritz grunted by way of goodbye and stood there with his coffee, looking out across the Hudson River to Westchester County, to the south Bronx and northern Manhattan. Focusing on the city south of here, he wondered at its secrets, dark and terrible, a part of him feeling better off not knowing.
But a guy like him, a guy like him couldn’t let it go.
Yeah, Gritz was feeling more and more each day like some badly written stereotype of a cop from a crime novel or movie. And he could see where it was all going from here. Few more years, he’d be Fish from Barney Miller. The best case scenario. The worse case, well, the worse case he didn’t particularly want to consider.
He watched them transfer the sheeted body to a gurney.
Whatever.
He was what he was and he was here by his own choice.
A second chopper had joined the first in the sky.
The one thing Gritz liked to do and still did, outside of drinking, was read. And lately he’d taken to picking up Faust, thinking about it, looking for clues.
Guess he likes Faust Frank had said to him, referring to this Mephisto freak. Said it to him at the porn girl’s murder. What was that, over a month ago? The porn girl slaughtered with eight other human beings, not much recognizable left about any of them. DNA and dental evidence confirming their identities.
That was Gritz’s case.
That was what he should be working on, instead of standing here in Jersey on a Tuesday morning.
The hell was Frank these days anyway.
But Mephisto, come on: Why would someone call themself that?
4.
9:45 A.M.
Johnny Spasso with his sunglasses, a Fu-Manchu covering his upper lip, in the passenger seat next to Sully behind the wheel. Spasso usually packing a pistol under each arm, but not today. Spasso was always cool. He didn’t care if the cops were grilling him, if people were shooting at him. He would maintain his poise. And it wasn’t an act.
This morning, this morning was hard though.
The boss, Dickie Nicolie, sitting in the back. Dickie given to tracks suits, even wearing one this morning, today when he’d be trading in his freedom. The capo wore a dark green zippered jacket and matching pants over spotless tennis shoes. His Movado on his wrist and his gold crucifix on his neck.
“This is really in the middle of nowhere,” Dickie said as Sully’s Cadillac passed through the trees. They’d left the throughway behind some time ago. “I escape,” Dickie was grinning, “where the fuck am I gonna be?”
Johnny and Sully chose not to comment, only Gooch saying anything, “You thinkin’ ‘bout escape already, Dick?”
“I’m thinkin’, maybe Maryann bakes me a cake with a file.” Dickie winked at Sully in the rearview mirror, Sully with his toothpick in his mouth, the driver not thinking much of the man in the backseat with Dickie. Sully the type to say something, but Johnny had spoken to him beforehand and he understood. He’d keep his mouth shut, not tell Gooch what he thought of the man, what he suspected. What they all suspected.
Not today.
Not today of all days.
There’d be a time for that.
“They’d be stupid to bring Cassidy into this.” Gooch volunteered, bringing back up a conversation from earlier.
“That’d be upping the ante,” acknowledged Dickie. “They bring Cassidy into this,” he reached forward from the backseat and put his hand on the shoulder of Johnny’s raincoat, “You’re all over him.”
Johnny nodded, knew what Dickie meant.
“Now,” Dickie sat back, settling into the leather seats of Sully’s El Dorado, “they try and bring Eduardo in on this—” the look on Gooch’s face as Dickie said it, even Johnny perking up “—you just kill that Mexican, Johnny. The hell with the consequences.” Dickie looked out the window to the trees. “Guy’s a wild animal.”
The prison came into sight, the only thing around, looking like something someone plunked down in the middle of the trees.
“Wow,” Gooch the only one to speak. “Looks like a fortress or somethin’.” Gooch the only one to speak because Dickie had his thoughts and Johnny and Sully knew that silence was the best form of respect in a situation like this.
“Not like Rikers…” Gooch mentioning Rikers where he’d done a couple bits. Sully’s eyes nailed Gooch in the rearview, Gooch oblivious to it. Gooch mentioning Rikers when Dickie was staring Buck Rogers time in the face.
The Cadillac pulled to a stop outside the prison, a sign stating the name of the correctional facility, a high cyclone fence. Part of the fence rolled back, three men stepping out onto the path. Two of them in correctional officers uniforms, the third in a suit.
Dickie lowered the window, called out to them, “Be with you gentlemen in a minute,” pressed another button, the window humming back up into place. “Gooch, do me a favor, get my bag out the back. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
When Gooch had left the car, Dickie turned to Johnny.
“I want you to keep an eye on Gooch,” Dickie unclasped his watch, removing it from his wrist. “Whatever Heinlein’s into, Gooch’s in on it with him.”
“We’re on him,” Johnny assured.
“Found it kind of, I don’t know,” Sully searched for the word, “funny, you bringing him along this morning. Thought maybe…” Sully flicked his index finger against his thumb.
“Not this time,” Dickie smiled at the driver. “You know that saying about keeping your enemies closer? Doesn’t hurt to keep the guy guessin’ either.” Dickie held his watch up, looking at it dangling there. “Here Sully,” he proffered the time piece, “I want you to have this.”
Sully was shocked, his mouth open, the toothpick somehow fixed there, wasn’t going to fall out, Dickie saying to him, “No, you wear it in good health” before the driver could speak. “No way they’re going to let me keep it in there.”
“Thanks, Dickie.”
Their boss was going away and he wouldn’t be coming back. Dickie had been slapped with a sentence heavy enough to see him through the remainder of his natural lifetime and then some.
The trio of prison officials waited outside the fence, patient. They weren’t going anywhere. Gooch was next to the Cadillac with Dickie’s overnight bag.
“Walk with me, Johnny.”
Johnny got out of the car, closing Dickie’s door behind the man. Johnny took the bag from Gooch, Dickie thanking the man. They started walking, Dickie leaving his freedom behind him.
“This family is going to fall apart.” Dickie admitted his fears to Johnny.
“No,” Johnny told him because it’s what he needed to hear. “It’s not.”
Dickie stopped and Johnny stopped, Dickie turning to face his man, placing a hand on his shoulder. Johnny Dickie’s friend, employee. Hitman. Enforcer. Whatever the job description, it wasn’t something you could file a 1040 for.
“Know what I always respected about you, Johnny?” Johnny stayed silent, let Dickie say it when he was ready. “I mean, aside from your inimitable style,” Dickie getting a smile out of Johnny with that one, Johnny in his rain jacket and pony tail, the Fu-Manchu and shades. “You ain’t old, but you’re like me. Old school.”
Dickie took the bag from Johnny, put it on the ground. He hugged Johnny, really hugged him, none of that bullshit that went on at the social club, upper arms pressed to the torso, arms bent at the elbow. He wrapped his arms around Johnny Spasso and embraced him the way he would one of his sons.
Johnny hugged him back.
Dickie whispered something in Italian, something only Johnny could hear.
Dickie stepped back and picked up his bag. He patted Johnny on the shoulder, turned and walked away. Johnny Spasso stood on the path in his raincoat and sunglasses, watching him go.
“Gentlemen.” Dickie raised his arms away from his body, greeting his warders.
Thursday
15 October 1998
5.
3:30 P.M.
DeAndre Watkins always seemed to have a book under his arm.
Growing up in Queens, in the blighted Moses houses, books were DeAndre’s escape. He could sit down in the library or at home and lose himself in a world of wizards and dragons, of beautiful princesses and fantastical magic, worlds where the good guys were indubitably the good guys and the bad guys bad. Books and worlds where good ultimately triumphed over evil.
Where DeAndre came across words he didn’t know, like indubitably, he looked them up. And once he’d looked them up, he knew them. He owned them.
Sometimes other kids in his neighborhood saw him reading and made comments about it, trying to make fun of him. DeAndre ignored these kids and their taunts. They were going nowhere fast. DeAndre was twelve years old and already thinking on college.
This afternoon there were few folks outside. The people had jobs were at them. At night these streets would teem with people, mostly young men with little if any parental supervision. Young men like DeAndre’s brother Terry and his friends. That time of night, DeAndre would be sitting on his bed with his back to the wall and a book in his lap the way he liked to do, the sounds from the street barely registering in his room on the ninth floor.
He passed a bag lady on the other side of the street, the woman pushing a 2-wheeled folding grocery cart, the cart full of recyclable cans in a clear lawn and leaf bag. The woman looking the other way.
He walked by Old Toke on a bench, Old Toke a friend of his momma’s from way back. DeAndre’s momma said she’d known Toke before he was homeless, before the drugs ruined his life. The few times DeAndre and his momma had run across Old Toke together, momma had greeted Old Toke, said Hello Barry.
DeAndre had christened him Old Toke in his own mind because no way the guy looked like a Barry. Not that DeAndre actually knew anyone named Barry. That and the man had a pipe. Wasn’t no crack pipe neither; it was one of them wooden numbers like DeAndre pictured an Oxford don having. Sure Old Toke lived on the streets and was strung out or something, but DeAndre had stood there enough, observing the man packing his pipe and lighting it up, his actions deliberate and meticulous.
A certain elegance and grace to the whole ritual.
Reminded DeAndre of a picture of J.R.R. Tolkien on the back one of the books he had in his room, Tolkien all affable looking and aging, holding a pipe. So DeAndre had taken to calling his momma’s friend Barry Old Toke. Tolkien himself an Oxford don.
He turned into the projects and the scene immediately took a turn for the worse. The towers loomed on either side of DeAndre, the windows on the lower floors barred, air conditioners behind locked metal grates. Grafitti tagged all over the walls, the benches, the curb itself, anything that could be written on. The towers stood above all, augural but promising nothing good, dire and lowering. Concrete sarcophagi, inhospitable yes, but these were people’s homes.
This was the place where DeAndre lived.
The street itself was shit here, cracked and pot holed from last winter. The curb was strewn with refuse, the sidewalk little better. DeAndre watched his step, avoiding anything that might puncture the sole of his shoe. The sidewalk a mess of soda cans and malt liquor bottles, empty crack vials and glassine envelopes, the occasional condom wrapper and parts of a newspaper. Even the workfare people, with their brooms and city garbage cans, didn’t like to come down here.
Neighborhood guys messed with them too much.
Neighborhood guys like the three DeAndre was walking towards now: Luke, Marquis, and Yuri, all of them bad news, one worse than the other. DeAndre thought maybe he should turn around, go a different way home.
But it was too late.
They’d seen him coming.
He turned and walked away now, they’d call him soft.
No, he was going to have to walk up to them, past them, ignore whatever kind of bullshit they tried to talk to him. It was gonna happen. Accept the fact that it was going to happen.
Indubitably.
“S’up little nigga.” Luke greeting DeAndre friendly-like, though nothing friendly about Luke. Luke wasn’t the tallest of the three but DeAndre knew he was the ringleader. Luke with his hair pulled back into some kind of bun, DeAndre noticing he wasn’t rockin’ that square-link, the dollar-sign medallion he always wore.
Luke had put his fist out, wanting DeAndre to dap him up, DeAndre wishing to do no such thing. But DeAndre knew if he didn’t it’d be just as bad as if he’d turned around and walked away and they’d seen him before. Even worse.
He bumped fists with Luke.
“S’up, Luke.”
Marquis the tallest and oldest of the three, wore his sunglasses on top of his head.
Marquis’ face all bruised, like someone had mashed him good. Had the biggest set of lips DeAndre had ever seen outside of one of them white women on the cover of those magazines you found on the checkout line at the supermarket.
Not that there were any supermarkets anywhere nearby; DeAndre and his momma having to take a cab to the closest one. Plenty of pawn shops, liquor stores, and check cashing joints where he lived though.
Even a twenty-four hour Chinese take-out place a block away.
“What you lookin’ at?” Marquis snapped at him and DeAndre said “Nothin’” but in truth he was having a hard time not looking at Marquis’ bruised face. Maybe it was true then what he’d heard, that these three had mixed it up with some Dominicans from up out of the Heights. That’s the story they were telling.
“Yo give me a dolla.” Yuri wasn’t asking. The shortest of the three, Yuri wasn’t much taller than DeAndre, which was sad in a way because DeAndre was only twelve and looking forward to a growth spurt, whereas Yuri was sixteen and didn’t have much more height to look forward to. Yuri’s peanut head almost too small for his body.
DeAndre always thought it funny: how’d a nigga like Yuri get a Russian name?
“What you smilin’ ‘bout?” But there was no way DeAndre could tell him. He’d heard stories from his brother Terry about Yuri in juvenile detention, how the guy’d brutalized younger inmates. “Yo where that dolla, black?”
“What chew want a dolla for?” DeAndre asked him, clutching his book, trying to sound street. Wouldn’t think to use words like indubitably with these guys.
“What chew want a dolla for?” Marquis mimicked him, reaching up to dab at his face, the bruises bothering him. DeAndre wishing he’d been there to see Marquis take those shots.
“Nigga please—just give me dat dolla.”
“Nigga I ain’t got no dolla.” DeAndre still trying to talk like them, sounding pathetic to his own ears. To theirs too, Marquis repeating his sentence again.
I Kill Monsters: The Revenants (Book 2) Page 2