Tin Badges

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “My cases?” I said. “How would you be able to read up on my cases?”

  “We’re pretty good with computers, me and my friends,” Gabe said, smiling for the first time since I’d met him, aware that he had caught me off guard. “If it’s on a computer somewhere, we can find it.”

  “Good to know,” I said. “You know that guy Mark Harmon plays on NCIS? The boss, the guy with all the rules?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m like him except I only have one rule,” I said. “Don’t hack on my computer. You want to look something up you shouldn’t be reading do it in the library. We clear?”

  Gabe nodded.

  “Get some sleep,” I said. “You had a tough couple of days and tomorrow’s going to be even tougher. But at least you won’t be alone.”

  “What do I call you?” Gabe asked.

  “Tank will do for now,” I said.

  I couldn’t sleep. My mind in turmoil, I went to the gym instead. I couldn’t shake the face of the little murdered girl and I had to come to terms with the fact that I was now taking care of a teenage boy who happened to be the only child of a brother I had turned my back on so long ago. I pounded on the treadmill as fast as I could, my mind racing between a three-year-old crime scene and a fourteen-year-old boy now living in my apartment that was as immersed in the study of crime as anyone I’d ever seen. I’d been dreading zits, teenage angst, and loud hip-hop music. Instead, I had “Young Sherlock Holmes” in my back bedroom.

  I came back from the gym and stopped into Bella’s to pick up some coffee for me and breakfast for Gabe. Instead, to my surprise, I caught a glimpse of Gabe sitting in a booth by the window across from Connie’s father, Dominick. I went in, caught Connie’s eye, and poured myself a coffee as she walked over.

  “How’d he make his way down here?” I asked.

  “I went up to check on you and I saw him sitting on your couch reading a book,” Connie said. “One of those forensic books you keep on your shelf.”

  I looked over at Gabe and Dominick deep in conversation. Dominick was an old-school gangster, long since retired, but still not someone I would be eager to tangle with. In his day, he ran off plenty of high-end scores, ran a successful book-making operation, and had enough money earning him interest on the street that he could retire free of any worries. He had long ago made his peace with the fact that his one and only daughter happened to be in love with an ex-cop. And I had long ago come to understand that while Dominick had been a knock around guy, he had always dealt with equally ruthless men and had never hurt anyone who was innocent.

  “He and your dad seem to be hitting it off,” I said.

  Connie glanced over at the table and nodded. “Figure by now, your nephew can tell you which horse to bet on in the third race at Saratoga and what the current neighborhood vig is on loans.”

  I smiled. “That’s information any boy his age needs to know.”

  I leaned over and kissed Connie softly on the cheek. “You think the old man would mind keeping an eye on the kid for me later? We’ll go to the funeral, but I need to start working my case. It’s on the way back, so Rocco can drop me there after and then drive the kid back here.”

  “I can’t think of better company for young Gabe than Rocco and my pop,” Connie said, giving me a long, warm hug. “Have some bail money set aside, just in case.”

  After the funeral, I started working the streets of the housing projects along the Henry Hudson Parkway, doing what cops do best—knocking on the doors of strangers and asking questions none of them were eager to answer. I took a friend with me, Carl Rodgers. He’s one of those street performers you see every day working a small space in a New York City park, in his case playing a blues guitar that made even the jaded stop, listen, and drop some change in his cigar box. Carl even caught a few legit jobs from time to time down in the better paying clubs in the Village. He was also good with people, got them to open up, tell him things they wouldn’t normally tell a guy like me. I look and smell cop and these days in these poor neighborhoods that’s not a plus. But Carl was my buffer. They knew he wasn’t a badge and he could be trusted.

  After hours of revolving door conversations with people who either didn’t know anything or claimed they didn’t, we were walking down a side street that faced toward where Angela’s body was found.

  “This is it,” I said to Carl. “If the paperwork’s up to date, she’s on the third floor.”

  “Who is?” Carl asked.

  “Angela’s mother,” I said, starting up the tenement steps toward the broken front door.

  “She the one who reported her missing?”

  I turned to face Carl. He was in his late twenties, with a Meatloaf body and a ZZ-Top beard. “No.” I said.

  I walked into Bella’s later that night and slumped into a chair in the back and waited for one of the waiters to bring me a glass of red wine and some water. I lowered my head and closed my eyes for a few moments. The mother was a wash, didn’t even blink when talking about her daughter, a little girl found dead in a cooler less than a mile from her apartment. She never reported her missing because she figured she had run away, and with good cause. The mother’s name was Minerva and she couldn’t give us the name of Angela’s father since she didn’t know it. She had a lot of men in her life back in the day and anyone of them could have gotten her pregnant. At the time the girl disappeared, Minerva was living with a low-hanger named Truco who had been rough with her—nothing out of the ordinary, but the girl needed to be kept in line. And Truco was in the wind and had been for a few years now.

  “Any luck?”

  I opened my eyes and saw Gabe and shook my head. “I might have a bite,” I said, figuring he’d much rather talk about the case than the burials we’d watched that morning. Gabe had been stoic throughout, but I sensed there was anger just beneath the surface. “Boyfriend of the mother. Might lead somewhere. I’ll have the detectives run his name through the system.”

  “I could do that for you,” Gabe said. “If you want.”

  “Do what?”

  “Get into VICAP and check out the boyfriend,” Gabe said. “We’ll get a last name if we’re lucky or even his real one.”

  I stared at him for several moments and then nodded. “Connie’s got a laptop in the back room. Bring it here and let’s see if you’re as good as you say you are.”

  Gabe smiled and went for the computer. Connie walked over and rested a bottle of wine on the table. “You think it’s a good move to include him in this?” she asked.

  “He’s in my life now,” I said. “And he’s going to be living in our world. The sooner he gets to know it, the better.”

  “He’s just a kid,” Connie said. “A kid whose parents just died. He’s hiding it pretty well. But he’s got to feel lost.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why he also needs to feel he belongs. Needs to feel he hasn’t lost everything. If we can give him that, it’ll be easier for him to deal with the other stuff.”

  “That’s how it worked for you?”

  “To a point,” I said. “You never get over it, Connie. You just live your life around it and don’t let it eat at you. If you do, it’ll bring you down faster than a bullet.”

  Gabe worked the computer for an hour, getting into sites I didn’t even know existed, getting instant messages from friends across the country. Before long, I had a teenage squad working for me, each one eager to help me crack a case.

  “Truco’s rap sheet is longer than a Pat Conroy novel,” I said. “But there’s nothing in there that points to him hurting a kid.”

  Dominick and Rocco had joined us at the table. Dominick was average height with an old boxer’s body, still ready for a tussle, his hair the color of silver. Rocco was tall and stocky with a thick head of white hair and hands that had handed out more than a fair share of beatings. He also had the warmest smile I had ever seen.

  “Maybe mamma didn’t report Angela missing because maybe she wasn’t living at
home,” I said, scanning all the printed out information Gabe and his friends had managed to generate.

  “You figuring she was on the street?” Dominick asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe living with someone else. There’s always someone in those neighborhoods—guy usually—takes in runaways, plays the system, pretends to care, has room enough to keep six, maybe more in his place. Turns some of them out for more money. Whatever suits his needs. They’re not kids to him—they’re product.”

  “Sometimes, families give up their kids to guys like that and in return he forgives the money they owe to a street shark,” Dominick said. “The kid is used to balance the books.”

  “And there’s no paper trail,” Rocco said. “Kid makes a run for it and goes in the wind, no one knows, no one sees.”

  “And if the kid gets out of line?” I asked. “Or maybe talks about it to somebody she shouldn’t talk to?”

  “Or maybe just wants to go back home,” Connie says. “To be with a mother who never wanted her in the first place.”

  I looked at the faces around me and then at Gabe, listening intently. “Can you find me a name?” I asked him. “Somebody who might have had something like that going three years back?”

  “I can try,” Gabe said.

  “Call me if you get anything,” I said, pushing my chair back and walking away from the table.

  “Where you heading?” Rocco asked.

  “The kid can get the computer to talk,” I said without looking back. “I can get the street to talk.”

  It took well into the night, the summer sun minutes away from warming the day, before I found who I was looking for. Frankie Robles was in his sixties, an overweight diabetic who reeked of Dewar’s and lived in a railroad apartment he shared with four teens and six cats. The windows had long sleeves of wax paper hanging from them in place of curtains and reeked of stale smoke and cat urine. It was on the top floor of the building and was just a quick walk to the roof, where Robles kept a small fridge packed with beer and a coop with only three pigeons in it. We stood there, both of us staring down at the park where only days earlier they’d found little Angela’s body. I showed him her photo, rested it on the tar ledge.

  “Think before you answer,” I said.

  “Well everybody knows her face by now,” he said. “Been in all the papers and all over the news. So, yeah, I know the face. So what?”

  “I’m not asking if you know her now,” I said. “I’m asking if you knew her three years ago.”

  “Hey, a lot of kids like her come through here,” he said. “They turn to me when they got no place else to go. I’m like that place Boys Town. Only I take girls, too.”

  “Yeah, I could see that,” I said. “Things are bad at home, some guy wailing on you, your mother strung out on drugs, why not come to a dump like this and live with a model citizen like yourself? Makes perfect sense.”

  “I do my best,” Robles said. “Nobody puts a gun on them to come here. They just show up and I do what I can.”

  “Which is what, exactly?”

  “Give them a boost, you know,” he said. “A fresh start. A chance to earn their way, put some dollars in their pockets.”

  “And in yours, too.”

  “It’s America, baby,” Robles said. “It may be the land of the free, but there ain’t nothin’ out here that’s free.”

  “I’m going to tell you what I am pretty sure happened,” I said, staring at Robles. “And then I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen.”

  “I’m all ears,” he said. “I love to hear me a good story.”

  “You took Angela in, about three years ago, give or take. You took care of her as best you could for a week, maybe two. Just enough time to get her to trust you, make her think she had finally found a home, shit hole that it may well be. You riding with me so far?”

  “I can hear,” Robles said.

  “Then, you made the first move,” I said, my voice harsher now. “Came to her when it was quiet. Downstairs maybe or even up on this roof. You turned her out. Made sure she wasn’t a little girl anymore. I mean, let’s face it, I’ve seen your rap sheet. It’s what guys like you do, am I right?”

  “So let me get this straight,” Robles said. “You think I had my way with this girl and then what?”

  “You took her to the park, had a talk with her. See if you could convince her to start working the street for you. You smoked some weed with her, got her to relax, gave her a cold beer, maybe even two. Had a couple yourself. How am I doing so far?”

  “You lost with the cold beers,” he said. “It was too hot, holding four beers from here to the park, they be like warm water by the time we popped them open.”

  And then I was certain I was standing next to Angela’s killer. “How did you know it was hot out?” I asked.

  “Who goes walking in the park in the winter time?” Robles asked.

  “Police haven’t released any information as to a timeline for Angela’s death,” I said. “Not to the papers you say you read or to the TV news you say you watch. But you’re right. It was summer time. And you know what’s in that park in the summer time? Coolers filled with ice and beer. People keep them there for after work, to have a cold one under the shade of a tree after a long shift. It’s a good place to stash your drink, cover it up with leaves and such. Stock it when it needs it.”

  Robles didn’t say anything.

  “My old man used to hide a cooler in the park, him and his friends,” I said. “And me and my friends would go sneak some beers when we wanted something stronger than an ice pop.”

  “And you’re saying I had me one of those coolers?”

  “You got two of them down in your apartment,” I said. “And there’s one right here on the roof. Why wouldn’t you keep one in the park? It’s not like you buy them. You have the kids steal them for you. My father did it the same way.”

  “Just because I got a cooler don’t make me a killer,” Robles said.

  “But you are a sex offender,” I said. “Tried and convicted.”

  “I did my time,” Robles said. “And I left that all behind me.”

  “That’s not all you left behind,” I said. “You also left DNA that’s being checked now. We’ll see if any part of you is on that little girl’s body. Once we have that, I got you.”

  “That girl’s been dead a long time. You can’t prove nothin’.”

  “I got a phone in one pocket and a gun in the other. When that phone rings, the voice on the other end is going to tell me all I need to know,” I said.

  “Then what?”

  “Then it’s up to you,” I said. “Cuffs on the hands or a bullet to the head. I’m hoping you do something, anything, that makes me forget I have cuffs.”

  Robles stayed silent for several moments, sweat lining his forehead and marking large circles on his grey shirt. “She fell asleep, under one of the trees after… well you know, after.”

  “You could have left her there,” I said. “Let her sleep it off and then walk away from it. Instead, you popped open your cooler, emptied out the beer, picked up a sleeping drugged-out little girl, and dropped her in. You locked it and then dragged it where it wouldn’t be seen by anyone. Hid it under brush or a bush that’s not even there anymore. Tossed her away like an old can.”

  Robles hung his head and said nothing.

  “Heavy sun, no air, those coolers can get oven hot,” I said. “Angela suffered, cried for breath, but all she heard during those long, horrible final moments was the sound of cars zooming past her on the parkway. She died in a horrible way.”

  “How much time you think I’ll get?” Robles asked.

  “I’m thinking prison is too good for you,” I said. “Which tells me the cuffs don’t work for me. Which tells me I need a third option. And the gun, well, they can trace the bullets back to me in no time.”

  “Which leaves you where, tin badge?”

  “You took the coward’s way with Angela,” I said
. “So it’s only fair you take the coward’s way out for yourself.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Robles turned and saw Rocco standing against the door leading down from the roof to the apartment. He looked back at me. “That means you go with him,” I said. “And there’s a bright spot in doing that. Angela’s case will remain an unsolved. I won’t report it to the police, so it won’t impact your record. You’ll just disappear. Just like she did. And trust me. Not only will no one ever find you, no one is ever going to miss you. After today, it’ll be as if you never existed.”

  I looked at Rocco, nodded, and walked away.

  It was Gabe’s idea to have Angela buried in our family plot in Long Island. We all went to her funeral that day. A mass served in Latin by an old priest friend of mine. Dominick, Rocco, Connie, Carl, and Gabe all in attendance. Even my old partner Winston came to pay his respects.

  “Thanks for your help,” I said to Gabe as we walked from the gravesite toward the waiting cars.

  “Thanks for letting me help,” he said.

  “You’re good at this. Next case I catch, I’ll be sure to include you.”

  “I’m already working on one,” Gabe said.

  “One what?” I asked.

  “A case,” he said.

  I stopped walking and looked over at him. “What case?”

  “My mother and father,” Gabe said, staring at me, his voice confident, his manner relaxed.

  “That’s not a case,” I said. “That’s a car accident.”

  Gabe took in a deep breath, looked around to make sure no one else was listening. “It wasn’t an accident,” he said to me. “It was a murder. And I’m going to prove it. We both are.”

  Gabe then turned and walked toward Connie, waiting for him by her car.

  Dominick came up next to me and patted me on the back. “That nephew of yours is something else,” he said with a smile.

  I looked at Gabe talking to Connie, now both of them smiling. “You have no idea.”

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