Enemy within
( Karp and Ciampi - 13 )
Robert K Tanenbaum
Robert K Tanenbaum
Enemy within
1
They were having lunch at four in the morning, sitting in the unmarked, a black Dodge Fury double-parked on the south side of Forty-seventh Street just west of Tenth. Nash, in the driver's seat, had a couple of chili dogs and a can of Pepsi. Next to him, Cooley was eating an Italian hero and drinking a large white coffee. It was early March and chilly, with a persistent rain, and they had left the engine running and turned on the wipers and the defroster. The car was warm, the windows were clear.
Infrequently, for it was a Sunday night, a car came down the street, slowing to pass the unmarked, and when that happened, both men stopped eating. Nash checked the rearview, and Cooley craned his neck and looked behind him and followed the vehicle as it splashed past. They were looking for a particular car, a van actually, dark blue with white lettering. It belonged to a guy-whom some other guy had told a third guy about-who was planning to run in tonight from Virginia with a big load of pistols and automatic rifles to a place on Forty-seventh between Ninth and Tenth. Three other cars were stationed at various places around this part of Manhattan, so that if the guy slipped past the anticrime team that was setting up to make the grab, and ran, there would be cars in position to block the escape.
Nash stole a glance at his partner, who had not said five words since coming back to the car from the all-night joint with their meal. Cooley's brow was flexed, and his jaw was working rather more than crushing an Italian hero strictly required, indicating a certain tension. Cooley did not like being in a blocking car. No, Detective Cooley preferred to be the first one through the door, pistol out, yelling "Freeze, freeze!" or some other hearty police exclamation. While Willie Nash considered himself as brave as it was necessary for an NYPD detective to be, and while no one had ever accused him of not pulling his load, he freely conceded that his partner was in a different class altogether in the guts department. Not exactly crazy, because Nash, who had a wife and three, would not have worked with a nut, but definitely on the unusual side. At thirty-two, Nash, though four years older than Cooley, operated as the junior partner, which he did not mind, really. It suited his flamboyant personality, and he liked the reflected glory and the lush collars you got when you hung around Cooley. Nash told himself that his part of the deal was watching Brendan's back-a full-time job in itself-and keeping something of a lid on the younger man's more outrageous impulses. He wondered now if Cooley was pissed at him for not doing something about the Firmo disaster, that failure being one reason why they were not on point tonight, but really, Nash thought, as he completed his first chili dog, what could he have done? First of all, Cooley had been-
"Jesus! That's him. There's that motherfucker!" cried Cooley. Nash looked to his right, startled. A late-model SUV was slipping by, red, an Explorer or a Jeep.
"Who?"
"Lomax, who do you think? Let's go!"
"Cooley, we're supposed to stay here until-"
"We'll be right back. Come on! Roll!" Cooley tossed his coffee out the window and the remains of his sandwich down into the footwell. Nash put the car in gear and headed after the SUV, which he now saw was a Cherokee SE with New York plates.
"Nice car," he observed. "You sure it was Cisco?"
"I stared the fucker right in the face. Look at him! He's pretending nothing's wrong, just driving along under the limit in a car that's got to be fucking hot as hell. Give him the lights and siren."
Nash stuck the red flasher on the roof and goosed the siren, a quick moan. The next sound they heard was the scream of spinning tires slipping on wet pavement. The Jeep took off, fishtailing down Forty-seventh Street. Without thinking, Nash tromped on the gas, and the Fury leaped forward, dumping his chili dog and soda all over the front seat.
The light was red at Eleventh, but it was clear that the Jeep was going to run it, not a big surprise, and Nash did not brake either as they, too, shot through the intersection, drawing an outraged honk from a taxi. The Jeep made a big skidding right at Twelfth and headed uptown, Nash and the Fury on his tail, keeping a couple of lengths back, Nash now trying, through the pumping adrenaline, to take stock of the situation, gain some control. He should tell someone what they were doing. He should call for some backup. This was crazy. It was turning into a high-speed chase, on trail-slick roads; someone was going to get hurt, and not after some armed-bank-robber, mass-murderer type, but an asshole car-thief snitch…
Thinking thus, he still accelerated, now to ninety miles an hour. At Fifty-third right by the little park, they passed two blue-and-whites parked nose-to-tail for a conversation, and seconds later both of those radio patrol cars joined the pursuit, the radio crackling with demands to know what was going on. Nash did not respond because he was driving too hard. Cooley did not either, although it was his job. The Jeep screamed up onto the Henry Hudson. It suddenly became damply cold in the Fury. Out of the corner of his eye, Nash saw that Cooley had rolled his window all the way down.
"Closer!" he yelled over the wind blast.
Nash saw the needle pass a hundred miles an hour, the car shaking like a blender on the scabbed asphalt typical of the city's arterials, bits of chili flying around, his hands locked tight on the shuddering wheel, and then he saw that Cooley had his gun out, and he wanted to yell out something to make Cooley stop, but he had all he could do to keep the Fury from flying off the elevated highway. He should have stopped, he should have taken control, but he didn't, and he could not really have told anyone why, except that every cop in the world would have understood why not.
Nash brought the unmarked within five yards of the swerving Jeep, and Cooley began to shoot. Nash could hardly hear the flat crack of the shots, the wind filled the car so, and he lost count. He saw the rear window of the Jeep fly to pieces though, and the right rear tire come apart. The rear of the Jeep started to shimmy violently. Cooley was reloading. The Jeep drifted right, struck the guardrails, bounced back, went into a long sideways skid. Nash stepped on his brake and whipped the wheel over hard and felt, sickeningly, his rear tires break loose from the road and felt the tail of his vehicle proceed northward independently of the steering wheel. There was a grinding, metallic thump, a shudder, the scenery revolved, another crash. An enormous boom. The windshield of the Fury starred, buckled. Nash felt sharp things strike his face.
"Brendan! What the fuck…!" Boom. Cooley was firing through the windshield whenever the red shape of the Cherokee came into sight. Both vehicles were out of control, bouncing across the highway and past each other like dogfighters over blitz-time London. Then a louder crash and the red car disappeared-no, there it was again for an instant-another crash, and Nash saw a shower of sparks. After a time, Nash was able to bring the Dodge to a stop.
"Let's go!" Cooley shouted, and leaped from the car.
"Cooley! Goddammit! Will you wait?" Cooley did not, but ran into the dark. Nash left the unmarked, too, and found his shaking knees could barely support his weight. Shots, a bunch of them. Now he saw the Cherokee resting sadly on its right wheel rims against the left-side median barrier, with its snout pointed downtown. He saw that Cooley was running toward the stricken car in a combat crouch, firing as he went. Nash pulled out his own pistol and took in the scene. He thought he had time for that because no one seemed to be firing back at him. The unmarked had come to a stop north of the wreck. To the south, one of the blue-and-whites had stopped in the center lane, illuminating the scene with its flashing bubble-gum lights. The other blue-and-white had parked across the center lane, blocking traffic a hundred yards to the south. Good, Nash thought, at least someone was using his brain.
>
Then he heard the whick of a bullet flying by his head and the sound of a couple of shots not from Cooley's gun. He crouched instinctively and fired twice into the Cherokee. He saw that Cooley was creeping around the rear of the wreck, toward the passenger side. More shots. This was the negative part of being Brendan Cooley's partner. Bent almost double, with his pistol out in front of him, Nash trotted gamely toward the left side of the vehicle. Another shot cracked past, right in front of him, and the driver's-side rear window starred around a fat hole. Three more shots in rapid succession, and the windshield splintered. Oh, great! He screamed at the two cops in the blue-and-white to stop firing, nor was he polite about it.
An instant later he had his right shoulder pressed tight against the wet metal of the Cherokee's flank. He worked the door latch and swung the driver's door out, his pistol pointing. The upper torso of a man slumped down, its lower end held in the car by the seat belt. Nash stared at the face. It was, in fact, the well-known thief, fence, and general nogoodnik Cisco Lomax, Nash was relieved to observe, or rather the exwell-known. The front of the man's tan sweater was black with blood, and big wads of distressed tissue bulged from his face and neck. The back of the driver's seat showed nearly a dozen little puffs of exploded filling, some still white, others as red as wound dressings; the windshield was a spiderweb, sagging in its frame.
Nash looked up and met the eyes of his partner through the passenger-side window.
"How is he?" asked Cooley.
"He's dead, Cooley."
"Are you sure?"
"He took one through the head and one through the neck. That usually does the job, plus about ten or so through the back of the seat. Hey, where are you…?"
Cooley had dashed off, back to their Dodge. Nash saw that he had the radio mike in front of his face. Calling it in. Good. And here were the two cops from the first blue-and-white.
"He's dead, huh?" said one of them. He was a slight, dark kid who looked about seventeen, hatless, his hair glued to his forehead by the rain. Franciosa was the name on his tag.
"Yeah. Was that you doing the shooting?"
"My partner. I didn't get one off."
"Good for you." Nash crooked a finger at the kid's partner, who seemed to be hanging back. The man came forward. He was a light-skinned black man a little older than Franciosa, inclined to be overweight, with a neat mustache. He stared at the hanging corpse.
"Is he…?"
"Dead," said Nash, "Yeah, who are you… Higgs? Higgs, why were you shooting bullets at me?"
"I wasn't shooting at you, Detective."
"You were, son. You might not have been aiming at me, but you were shooting at me. Did they train you on that weapon at the Academy?"
"Sure. But the way it was…"
"Well, when I was there, the instructor said, 'Always make sure of your target and what is behind it.' I recall it because he said it about five hundred times. I guess they left that part out when you went through. Did they?"
"No." Sullen now.
"I'm glad to hear it. That last shot of yours missed my head by about two feet. What were you firing at?"
"At the… at the car, you know, I thought…"
"At the car? You thought the vehicle was a danger to yourself or the public?"
"I mean the driver. Your partner was shooting like crazy, and I thought, you know…"
"That you would join in the fun. Well, you did put one through the passenger window, maybe killing the hostages back there…"
The cop gaped. "Oh, shit, I didn't now…"
"No, you didn't." A long pause. "But in this case there weren't any, which is your dumb good luck."
Why do I bother? Nash thought; let their sergeant give them the nickel lesson. Cooley was approaching, his head down, the collar of his blue nylon jacket up against the rain.
"You call it in?"
"Yeah." Cooley looked at the corpse and shook his head. "The bastard tried to ram us. I had no choice. He spun the car around and headed right toward us. A big fucking car like that would've gone through that Fury like a ball bat through a cream pie. Christ, the two of us would've both been strained through the fucking radiator grille. Stolen car, too. We saw the little fuck-head in a stolen car, and we pursued. And he tried to kill us."
Nash saw the two uniforms exchange a glance. He could see that they knew who Cooley was and that a subtle transformation was going on in their minds, the little neural charges deposited by memory being overwritten by the story Cooley was spinning now. They were recalling how the fleeing vehicle had spun around and become a deadly missile heading toward the unmarked, until Cooley had shot the life out of its driver, and look, the SUV had come to rest conveniently pointing south, the proper direction. Nash, too, was making the story happen in his mind, rather more self-consciously than were the two young cops, mainly because he had enough experience to understand how vulnerable the story was.
But… but just maybe it had happened that way. There had certainly been a lot of swerving around on the slick black road, and he had been totally consumed with keeping the Fury under control. He would go with it. The car had been stolen, the chase was legit. There was no point in dwelling on the fusillade Cooley had let off during the pursuit, or the shots fired after the car had stopped. Nash just prayed that some of the bullets had hit the son of a bitch from the front.
Afterward, it was the usual mob scene. The ambulance arrived first, and then the crime-scene people crawling around, marking and retrieving shell casings and taking photographs. Five minutes later there arrived a couple of extremely unlucky homicide investigators from the Twentieth Precinct, within whose jurisdiction the event (technically a homicide) had occurred. The two of them, a thin, scholarly-looking fellow with horn-rims and a small Hispanic man built like a fire hydrant, examined what they were supposed to examine-the corpse, the corpse's vehicle, the surrounding highway, and the cops involved. The scholarly looking one grabbed a CSU photographer and directed her along the roadway, taking photographs of skid marks and guardrail scrapes, and of the bits of metal and glass lying on the road. He also pulled a big surveyor's tape measure from the trunk of his car and took a remarkable number of measurements. Meanwhile, his partner was directing another CSU person with a camcorder and light. They were walking slowly up and down the highway. The camcorder light beam pointed downward, and both men were bent slightly, as if making a nature film about the lives of roadway insects.
Soon after this investigation had begun, Cooley and Nash's shift lieutenant, Robert Maguire, drove up and looked around, carefully avoiding any contact with the two homicide detectives. He had a conversation with the four officers involved and then called the zone captain, James P. Robb, who was responsible for all detective work in a fat band across the West Side midsection of Manhattan. Robb had, of course, been in bed, and it had been a while since his last visit to a graveyard-shift crime scene, but he had driven in from the Rockland County suburb where he lived, arriving about half an hour later.
Robb took a look around, too, and spoke with Maguire, and also did not talk to the two homicide investigators, although they knew he was there. Every cop on the scene knew that the bosses had arrived. They all exerted themselves at their tasks with exemplary zeal.
Cooley repeated his story to Robb, using nearly the same words he had used with Maguire and the two homicide detectives. Nash and the patrolmen from the blue-and-white confirmed it in separate conversations with the two bosses. The bosses were not happy. It was late, it was raining, it was cold, and a news helicopter was swooping around above, making it difficult to converse and shining its light in everyone's eyes. Several news vans had also appeared, held back by the roadblock, but obviously sniffing blood. Robb called his superior, the borough detective commander, Deputy Chief Inspector Charles T. Gavin, and gave him the short version of what had happened. Gavin did not come himself, but demanded that a full report of the event be ready on his desk first thing that morning and told Robb to make a statement perfectly
void of information to the press, and to tell them that a press conference would take place at One Police Plaza that morning, too late to make the morning shows and early enough so that there was a good chance something more newsworthy and gory would transpire before the evening local news. Robb supposed that Gavin would soon be on the horn with the chief of detectives. Good. Everyone should be pulled from the cozy covers by this abortion.
Robb returned his attention to it. It is a gigantic annoyance to the New York Police Department whenever one of its officers fires a gun in the line of duty. Cops say that the mass of paperwork generated by a police shooting weighs as much as the weapon that fired the shot. That annoyance becomes actual pain when the shot fired intersects any human flesh at all, except perhaps when the cop doing the shooting is obviously preventing a vicious, saliva-dripping felon from making off with a charming little girl, or similar. When the target dies, as here, and when the target is black and the shooter white, also as here, the pain reaches bone-cancer levels.
When they had finished speaking with the principals involved, Captain Robb pulled Lieutenant Maguire into the backseat of his car and asked, "What do you think?"
Maguire said, "Cooley's a good cop. Nash is very solid."
Robb sighed and said carefully, "I know that, Bob. I meant what about this piece of shit we got here, how are we going to play it?"
"Cooley said the perp charged him with the car. Deadly force. He acted to save his life and Nash's."
"That's the story we're going to go with?"
Maguire, like his immediate boss, was a comer in the department and understood the unspoken footnotes that hung from Robb's question. It is difficult to make captain before age fifty, as Robb had, without being able to speak and understand a language that none but other initiates can comprehend. Maguire confidently expected to make captain, too, within the next couple of years, and he was similarly fluent. Wanting another moment to think about it, he deflected with, "Have you called his old man yet?"
Enemy within kac-13 Page 1