by David Grace
“And you were that excuse?” Chris asked, glancing briefly at Big Jim before pulling a left on Congress Avenue.
“I knew I could be that reason, if I handled it right.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Here’s the thing, Chris. People who are doing what they want to be doing are competitors. Businessmen, car thieves, politicians, it doesn’t matter. They’re going to fight back against anyone who tries to stop them. You can’t give those people an inch or they’ll run right over you. But when a guy wants to give it up, that’s when you’ve got a chance to turn him around. Some cops will tell you that the way to do that is to crush him into the dirt and then you’ll own him.”
“Some cops like Teddy Joy you mean.”
“I’m not mentioning any names but, yeah, assholes like Teddy Joy. Let me tell you something, Chris — people will always do more for you out of love than out of fear. You see a guy who’s down, who you can really help — I don’t mean some scumbag loser who wants you to give him a free ride, but somebody who can still be saved — you do what you can for him and he’ll remember that and, maybe, someday he’ll help you. What goes around, comes around. People will surprise you. They will.”
That was one of Big Jim’s favorite sayings: People will surprise you. Chris had heard it a hundred times and he still didn’t really understand it. People always surprised him. Practically everything people did was a surprise to him. They were illogical and irrational, ruled by their emotions and their self-destructive needs and obsessions. But saying that wasn’t going to get him any closer to figuring out the lesson that Big Jim was trying to teach him.
“So, you helped this Terry Connelly? How? Did you let him go?”
“What would he have learned if I had done that?” Big Jim almost laughed. “People never value stuff they get for free. They have to earn it for themselves for it to mean anything. So, no, I didn’t let him go. I locked him up.”
Then what was the lesson? Chris wondered. Don’t give a criminal a free pass? No, he was pretty sure that wasn’t it. Chris stayed silent and after a moment, Big Jim continued on his own.
“I thought about turning him, making him my CI, but I didn’t think the kid’s heart was in it anymore. He would have screwed it up and maybe gotten himself shot or dead. Anyway, I went to the arraignment the next morning and I asked the Deputy D.A. to let him out on an OR, then I bought him a hamburger and talked to him. I just asked him what he would do with his life if he got the chance to change things.”
“And he told you he wanted to be a pastry chef?”
“No, he told me that he liked to cook. I asked Sonny Salciccio to give Terry a job in his kitchen and see if he had any talent. It turned out that he was pretty good at it.” Big Jim turned back to the window and studied the faces drifting past. “He’s a good kid, Terry. He just needed a chance to turn his life around, to do the right thing. It’s always the right time to do the right thing,” Big Jim said, recalling a famous quote from Martin Luther King.
Big Jim was silent and for thirty seconds Chris tried to figure out the point of the story, the lesson that Big Jim was trying to teach him. He evaluated and discarded two or three theories before settling on one — You need to have a generous heart. He wanted to ask Big Jim if that was it, but Big Jim wouldn’t have answered. It didn’t work that way. Chris knew that he had to figure it out on his own as best he could.
Chris turned onto Speedway and approached the Naughty Lady bar where Johnny-Boy Watkins ran his string of girls. Big Jim watched the street but if he could have read Chris’ mind he would have smiled, pleased that his partner had figured out the point of the story after all.
CHAPTER THREE
When the Naughty Lady’s front door opened Johnny-Boy Watkins squinted into the glare, then frowned. Johnny-Boy didn’t like cops, any cops, and he especially didn’t like Irish cops, and most of all he disliked this particular Irish cop, Big Jim Donegan. Big Jim. What the hell kind of name was that? The guy was only five feet eleven, though he did look like he had a barrel stuffed inside his chest and he had long arms and hands like catcher’s mitts. With a thatch of gray hair going white, pink skin, and pale blue eyes, to Johnny-Boy Big Jim looked like Teddy Kennedy’s long-lost brother.
Johnny-Boy took a long sip from the Venti his bottom girl had just brought him and stared a hole through Donegan and his punk-ass partner. Crap, the guy looked like some motorcycle cop just off the Highway Patrol. Could he be any more white-bread?
“Hi, Johnny-Boy. Mind if we sit down?” Big Jim said, already sliding into the booth. Chris Hunter pulled a chair from a nearby table. Johnny-Boy waved his hand as if giving permission for what Big Jim had already done.
“Deeeetective. What can I do for you this fine day?” Johnny-Boy drawled.
“We’re here about one of your girls, Johnny,” Big Jim said.
“Which one? There are so many fine ladies who want to spend time with me I can’t hardly keep track of them all.”
“The one you’re missing,” Big Jim told him.
“Missing? How can you tell? Women don’t punch no time clock. They come. They go.” Johnny-Boy shrugged as if talking about the weather.
“The one who went out last night and didn’t come back,” Chris snapped. “Reddish-brown hair, gray eyes, Romanian, Albanian, Polish.” Johnny-Boy pursed his lips as if deep in thought then gave his head a little shake.
“That’s OK, Johnny. We’ll just bring the wagon down here and pick up all your girls and take them down to the station for questioning. Sooner or later one of them will give us a name. Of course, you’re going to lose a day’s production, but you’ve got plenty of money, don’t you? Losing a day’s business is no problem for you, right?”
Johnny-Boy pretended to be lost in thought, then suddenly smiled. “Oh, maybe you mean, oh, what’s her name, Darja? Yeah, that’s it, Darja Novoriska, or Novorska or Nov-something-ska. Pretty girl. She’s crazy about me. She calls me Daddy Sugar, ‘cause I’m so sweet to her.”
Big Jim struggled to keep his face blank but Johnny-Boy was pleased to see the detective’s cheeks pink up. Fuck you, cop! he thought.
“Yeah, that Darja, she just can’t get enough of me. ‘Course, she’s got to wait her turn. There’s only so much of me to go around, if you know what I’m saying.”
“When—” Chris began but Johnny Boy cut him off.
“You had me confused there for a minute with that stuff about Albania. She ain’t from anywhere around there. She’s from, oh what’s that place, Rus-something? No, Belarus, that’s it. Belarus. Anyway, what about her? Did she do something wrong?” Johnny-Boy tried to look worried but was unable to keep a smile off his face.
“Yeah, she did something wrong,” Chris snapped. “She got herself dead.”
“Dead? What are you talking about?”
“When’s the last time you saw Ms. Novoriska, Johnny-Boy?”
“Why are you asking me? Why would I kill her?”
“Off the top of my head I can think of at least five reasons,” Chris replied, leaning forward. “Maybe she held out part of the take. Maybe she tried to quit the business. Maybe she disrespected you. Maybe she got so sick she couldn’t work anymore. Maybe she started talking to one of your competitors. There are lots of reasons why a man like you would kill a girl like her. Maybe you just got so drugged up you flipped out and killed her for the fun of it.”
“That’s crazy! A man don’t kill the goose that’s laying them golden eggs.” Johnny-Boy licked his lips and turned back to Big Jim. “You know I’m just a businessman. These girls, they need a job. The economy’s in the toilet. They can’t find no work and I put bread on their table. I don’t kill them. I help them.”
“I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago, Johnny, so give it a rest and tell me when was the last time you saw her.”
Johnny-Boy closed his eyes then opened them and blinked. “Last night, right around eight or so. I cruised on by her spot and she was right
there, doing her thing.”
“What spot?”
“On Grandy, near the corner, just down from the Chicken King. Guys get off work and stop in there for dinner and then they maybe want a little something, something before they go home.”
“And that was it, eight o’clock? You didn’t check back on her? You didn’t count her take at the end of the night?”
“I was busy last night. I got done checking on the girls and then I went over to Freddie’s. He had some suckers there who liked to mix blow and poker. I took three grand off ‘em. I gave Freddie his cut and then I went home.”
“What time was that?”
“Two-thirty, three. Hey, I barely got here before you all showed up. I was fixin’ to check the receipts after I got me some breakfast.”
“You’re a trusting guy, Johnny,” Big Jim said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?
“It means that most pimps watch their girls real close,” Chris broke in. “They strip them down at the end of the night to make sure that they haven’t held out a twenty here or there, maybe slipped a bill into their boots or someplace more intimate. And you’re telling us that you just let them all finish their shifts and go on home? This is the first time I’ve heard of a pimp operating on the Honor System.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just the kind of guy I am. I trust my ladies.” Johnny-Boy thrust out his chin. “That’s why they love me so much.”
“Yeah, we’ll keep that in mind. Where’d Darja live?” Big Jim demanded.
Johnny-Boy paused for a moment then noticed Big Jim’s shoulders starting to bunch up and said: “420 Wilsonia, top floor, number 509. Her and another girl.”
Chris made a note of the address then stood when Big Jim slid out of the booth.
“Aren’t you gonna tell me not to leave town?” Johnny-Boy taunted.
“If you killed her you’d better leave town because you won’t like how this is going to go down if I come for you.”
“Hey, I’m no killer!”
“We both know that’s a lie, Johnny,” Big Jim said in a quiet voice.
“You ain’t got no right to talk that way to me!”
“Meli Orencia.” Johnny pulled back as if struck. “You remember her. She did something to piss you off and you cut her. You cut her so bad that she bled to death. You murdered her.”
“Somebody cut her. It wasn’t me. And she wasn’t murdered. She had that disease, hemo—something, from all them drugs she was taking so her bleeding to death wasn’t no murder. It was an accident.”
“It was murder as far as I’m concerned,” Big Jim said, leaning over until his face was five inches from Johnny-Boy’s nose.
“If you think I killed her, then why don’t you arrest me?”
“I haven’t arrested you, Johnny, because, so far, I don’t have enough evidence to make it stick.” Johnny-Boy smirked. “And,” Big Jim continued, “because I’m still controlling myself. You’d better hope I don’t decide that you killed Darja too because if I do then my self-control might just snap, and if that happens, you won’t need to worry about me arresting you. They’ll find you in an alley someplace all cut up and bled out just like Meli, another terrible accident.”
“You can’t fucking scare me.”
“You should be scared of me after what I saw happened to Darja.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? What happened to her?”
“Oh, now you care? Now you want to know how she died?”
“Sure I want to know. She was one of my girls.”
“Wood chipper.” Big Jim said it like a curse.
“Wood chipper? What’s that mean? You sayin’ somebody put her in a wood chipper?”
“After they strangled her. You know anything about that? You got any experience with wood chippers, Johnny?”
“Shit, no! I don’t know nothing about no wood chippers. What do I look like, a lumberjack?”
“That’s interesting because our killer, he didn’t know anything about them either. He screwed it all up. That’s why we’ve still got half her body down in the morgue.”
“Half her body? Jesus!”
Big Jim headed for the door and Chris trailed behind. Just before leaving Chris took a last look at Johnny-Boy and tried to figure out if he was really surprised about what had happened to Darja or if he was just faking it. Could he have actually strangled one of his girls and shoved her body into a wood chipper? Hell, yes, Chris decided.
CHAPTER FOUR
Wilsonia Avenue was populated with a hodgepodge of brick and stone-faced buildings four to ten stories tall, scarred, slumping and stained with age. Most had been built between the advent of the electric light and the beginning of World War II and none had aged well. Big Jim felt as if he was looking at the architectural equivalent of an old folk’s home, the inhabitants forgotten, tired, and sagging, but still not yet quite ready to let go of life.
“There it is, on the right,” Big Jim said and Chris pulled the Malibu in behind a dented Civic that seemed as weary as the building in front of which it was parked. At one time the entrance might have had a lock but those days were long gone and the front door opened with only a rattling squeak.
“509,” Big Jim said, checking his notes.
“I remember. We’ll get our exercise today.” Chris headed for the stairs just beyond a vandalized bank of mailboxes. “Before 1952 the building code didn’t require elevators in apartment houses under six stories,” Chris said, half over his shoulder. Big Jim followed behind and secretly prayed that he wouldn’t have to ask Chris to stop halfway up so that he could catch his breath. “That’s why so many of the buildings around here are five stories high.” Big Jim ignored Chris and concentrated on the stairs in front of him. As they passed the third floor Big Jim began to breathe through his mouth.
“How do you suppose they get a refrigerator up to the top floor?” Chris asked, if anything seeming to accelerate his pace. “In Amsterdam, they have piers sticking out from the roofs with a block and tackle on the end so that they can hoist furniture up to the top floor. There’s nothing like that in this building.”
With his heart pounding, Big Jim sucked in a lung-full of air and, head down, half-staggered into the fifth-floor hallway.
“You OK, Jim?” Chris asked. Normally a pale pink, from the neck up the skin on Big Jim’s face now looked like he had spent the last half hour exposed to the desert sun.
“I’m fine,” Big Jim rasped, his voice tired and thin.
Chris started to speak, then stopped himself. One of the things Chris had learned from Big Jim was that what he thought he said and what other people heard him say were often, usually, two different things. Like planning a chess match three moves ahead, Big Jim had taught Chris to think through his comments before speaking.
Do you need to rest? No, that might sound as if Chris thought Big Jim was too frail to do his job. You should exercise more — No, that sounded as if he thought that Big Jim needed his advice about how to live his life. That would be presumptuous and wrong. In fact, it was Chris who, daily, required Big Jim’s advice.
Big Jim took a few more deep breaths, then shrugged and gave Chris a little smile.
“Not used to all those stairs,” Big Jim wheezed then walked past Chris on rubber legs.
Number 509 was halfway down the scuffed hall. The smell of overcooked peppers and garlic and stale cigarettes clung to the walls. Big Jim knocked politely, not the way most cops did, pounding with the meat of their fists and shouting, “Metro Police! Open up!” but more like the pizza guy, almost softly, hoping that the other tenants wouldn’t hear him, peek through their doors and then rob him on his way down the stairs.
The peephole went momentarily dark and Big Jim held up his badge. “Darja’s been in an accident,” Big Jim said. “I need to talk with you for a couple of minutes. Please open the door.”
The silence lasted about three seconds then the peephole brightened and they heard the clatter of the lock being
turned. The door opened four inches on a chain and a small, brown face peered through the gap. Big Jim opened the flap on his case and held out his picture ID.
“Ma’am,” Big Jim began, “I’m Detective James Donegan and this is my partner, Detective Christopher Hunter.” Chris held up his own ID as Big Jim had taught him on their first day as partners. Big Jim looked at the strip of face and tried to work up an encouraging smile. “May we please come in so that we can talk with you about your friend?”
The single brown eye oscillated from Big Jim’s face to his badge and then back again. Finally, she closed the door, and after a second’s pause, removed the chain. The girl stood back against the wall and watched them enter her living room then quickly pushed the door shut and re-set the lock.
The walls were a faded gray and studded with scratches and holes. Posters of bands, none of whom either detective recognized, covered half the space. Picasso Shark? Aztecka Blue? A white-plastic crucifix with gold trim was nailed to the strip of wall between two grimy windows. A stuffed black and white dog with button eyes and a lolling, red tongue guarded one end of the orange couch.
“May we sit down?”
The girl nodded and then sat at the couch’s far end, the dog clutched protectively to her chest. She was brown and small and could have been any age between sixteen and twenty-five depending on how she dressed and the depth of her makeup. Chris figured that the pervs preferred the sixteen-year-old version.
“May I ask your name?”
The girl stared at Big Jim for a second then spoke.
“Fatima Contal.”
“Darja Novoriska is your roommate?”
“Novorska,” Fatima corrected him. Chris made a note in his pad.
“How long have you and Ms. Novorska been roommates?”
Fatima shrugged. “Six months?” She said it as a question more than an answer.
“Do you both work for Johnny-Boy Watkins.”
Fatima tensed up and looked away.