Black Water Transit

by Carsten Stroud

  “Spandau, can I ask you a hypothetical?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Shawana Coryell is a little white kid and she’s scooped by three black guys. Are you still on the case?”

  “Yes, sir! Of course. It’s not the kid’s fault.”

  “Okay. And instead of Eddie Rubinek we have Johnny Cochran, and Johnny does his usual giant-squid act, sprays sticky black shit all over the courtroom, the jury goes stone-blind, achieves the approximate IQ of bark mulch. Bingo, the perps walk. Are you now waiting for Johnny Cochran outside the D train exit?”

  “I firmly believe that O.J. was framed, sir.”

  “Yeah? So was Jesus Christ, but then he never took Mary Magdalene apart with a Swiss Army knife. Casey, spare me your totally fucked-in-the-head opinions on the Simpson case and answer my damned question.”

  “To answer that would … seem inculpatory, sir.”

  “Inculpatory! God’s holy trousers! Now we got Kennesaw Mountain Clarence goddamn Darrow here. Okay. The Eight Ball is as black as dime-store licorice, Spandau. Does she get tuned-up for being the stupidest judge in Christendom?”

  “She should be fired. She’s a disgrace to her people.”

  “Oh man. What color are your people, Officer Spandau?”

  “What color?”

  “Never mind. I’ll tell you. Your people are blue. There are thirty-one thousand of them in the city. Everybody else is and will forever be a total goddamn stranger. Now. Did you or didn’t you tune-up Eddie Rubinek?”

  “Sir, I can’t answer that question.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I … any answer I give you … would be dishonest.”

  “Spare me that condescending crap, kid. You know where this will go, don’t you? Your badge is in the palm of my hand.”

  “I know that, sir. I know you have to do what you have to do.”

  “Spandau, you had the mojo. You could have gone anywhere.”

  “Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. It means a lot to me.”

  Then silence. So now what does he do?

  He told her go wait in the hall and poured himself a belt of scotch from the bottle he kept in his drawer for occasions like this, when the burden of command got to be an unbearable pain in the neck, and then, after some further consultation with the Chivas, he has this, like, insight. A stroke of genius, he thinks.

  He makes a call to One Police, gets a possible maybe okay from the personnel drone on the other end of the phone. He sits back in his chair and pops a Zoloft. Then he calls her back in, reads her the riot act from Section 9 of the administrative guide, and tells her to pack her gear and totally un-ass his area of operations in sixty seconds.

  “Where to?” she asks, and he’s pleased to see she’s worried.

  “JTF. The Jay Rats.”

  That stopped her. Casey had never heard of them.

  “JTF? What do they do?”

  “What it sounds like. Joint task force. They work with state and federal cops on cases that cross jurisdictional lines.”

  “Like what?”

  “This isn’t an audition, Casey.”

  “No. I’m sorry, sir. But …”

  “Something happens in Poughkeepsie or Newark or Buffalo and a state cop thinks it connects to something going on in New York, he talks to the JTF guys. They help if they can, you follow? It’s not complicated.”

  “Is this … you’re serious? I’m not suspended?”

  He was. She wasn’t.

  Jay Rats was a unit working out of an unmarked office in the Albee Square Mall over there in darkest Brooklyn. The boss of the Jay Rats is a gold-shield bull by the name of Vincent Zaragosa. The CO of the Two Five figured that if anybody could make a good cop out of Casey Spandau, Vince Zaragosa was the guy.

  Casey Spandau lands on Vince Zaragosa’s doorstep sixty-four minutes later, carrying a beat-up brown briefcase with a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association sticker on it. Zaragosa was sitting behind his desk—a huge rosewood number with a clipper ship inlaid in blond wood—and looking at her over the top of his gold-rimmed reading glasses. Zaragosa was huge, thick-necked and heavy-shouldered, a battered face and deep-set brown eyes, a nose that took the long way down his face and made two lane changes on the way. He was wearing a gray single-breasted suit and a pale-gray tie over a charcoal shirt. The tie was held in with a gold collar pin. On the ring finger of his right hand a heavy gold detective’s ring glittered in the light from a green-glass reading lamp.

  Casey sat down in front of him, balanced that pug-ugly briefcase on her lap like it held the secret to the meaning of the universe, and gave Zaragosa her Chinese eyes with her mouth thinned out and her back held so straight he could hear it creaking. Zaragosa took one long weary look at her and got right on the horn to her former CO at the Two Five.

  “I got your package. She’s here now. She’s sitting in front of me. We’re making meaningful eye contact. What the fuck am I supposed to do with her?”

  He says, “You owe me, Vince.”

  “I owe you? You sick Irish mutt. For what?”

  “Mulberry Street, you dumb guinea fuck.”

  “Mulberry Street? Where’s that?”

  “She’s a good cop, Vince. I’m trying to keep her on the job.”

  “What’d she do at your house?”

  “She allegedly kicked the living shit out of a PD name of Eddie Rubinek.”

  “Did he allegedly need it?”

  “Desperately. You know the Coryell thing?”

  “Yeah. That hers?”

  “It was. The PD got them off.”

  “How?”

  “The Eight Ball. Violation of ARC. She bought it.”

  “So they’re back on the street?”

  “Tonight. Even as we speak.”

  “Shit. Spandau likely to do this kind of thing again?”

  “Which … tune-up a PD, or get caught for it?”

  “Either one.”

  “No. I don’t think so. I think she’s pretty scared.”

  “Is she likely to get charged for the Rubinek beef?”

  “Not if I can help it.”

  “You gonna mojo the beef?”

  “I won’t have to. There’s not enough evidence to lay a charge. Don’t tell her that. I want her to sweat this out for months.”

  “I won’t. What else is wrong with her?”

  “She’s got attitude.”

  “No shit. I can see that from here. See? She’s not smiling. I really hate that not-smiling-oppressed-black-woman-Oprah-book-club-my-daddy-was-emotionally-unavailable bullshit.”

  “She’s young, Vince. She’ll learn.”

  There was a long silence. Zaragosa could hear the CO breathing on the other end of the line. He’s still making eye contact with Casey Spandau, watching her sit there hugging that stupid brown briefcase into her belly like it was a life preserver and the ship was already hard down by the bow with black ice on the promenade deck. He can see she’s trying not to cry. There’s no way she actually will cry. But the fact that she was close to it, okay, that made the difference for him.

  “Okay, you Mick dick. I’m doing this for you. So remember. You owe me. I got just the guy for her.”

  Zaragosa said a couple more very bad words and hung up and then he slammed Casey directly—right the next thing—no nap—no tea and biscuits—dead-bang into a Jay Rats unit, a stakeout gig in Maspeth, run by this Irish gold shield by the name of Jimmy “Rock” Rule, who happens to be an outstanding street cop, but who is also a very intolerant guy on the issue of the black thing and its effect on the hiring and firing policies of the NYPD.

  Anyway, here’s where it gets weird.

  THURSDAY, JUNE 22

  HIGHWAY 82 NORTHBOUND

  BLUE STORES, NEW YORK

  MIDNIGHT

  Nicky Cicero is working D watch—six at night to six in the morning—with the Highway Patrol section of the New York State Police. He’s got six years in, he’s unmarried, a man for the l
adies, good-looking in a club-fighter kind of way, with a nice head of shiny black hair and, since he really is a club fighter but not too good at it, a nose pushed a little sideways and some scar tissue around his eyes. He’s known around the station as an easygoing troop with a six-second delay, but when you hear the click, you better be elsewhere.

  He’s rolling west and north along Highway 82 listening to the cross talk on the radio and also listening to a Berlitz tape at the same time. He’s going to Italy on a vacation next fall—see the old people in a place called Giarre, in Sicily, and he wants to be able to speak some real Italian to them. Nicky doesn’t know there’s a big difference between Sicilian and Italian. It got explained to him later, but that’s another story.

  He’s conjugating the “to be” part of tu sei molto bella, ragazzina mia and rolling up a dark stretch of the road when his headlight glare bounces off something that glitters bright glassy-red in a big stand of trees way off in the middle of a wheat field.

  He stops the cruiser and moves his roof-rack searchlight. It dances around the woods for a while and he thinks, hey, nothing, a fox eye or a skunk eye or maybe a cat. And then he sees a reflection off a patch of shiny black metal and a section of a license plate. He moves the searchlight and it shows him two crushed-down tracks in the wheat field that start in the wooded area and come all the way back to the edge of the highway.

  Or the other way around, right? From here to there.

  Somebody had a breakdown? But why park the vehicle way off there in the woods? He comes to a complete stop and turns on his roof-rack blue-and-reds. The disco lights bounce off the trees and he sees more reflections coming back from the vehicle. White, scattered, little diamond sparkles. Broken glass on the ground?

  He picks up the radio.

  “Echo One Four to base.”

  “Echo One Four?”

  “Base, this is Echo One Four. I’m at mile marker three-four northbound on Highway Eighty-two. I’m out of the vehicle to look at a possible MVA here. Give me a time check.”

  “Ten-four, Echo One Four. Time is zero hour six minutes.”

  “I can never figure that out, Gracie.”

  The dispatcher’s voice breaks, comes back.

  “It’s six minutes after midnight, Nicky. Take your portable.”

  “I don’t have one. Pete LeTourneau has it in his lockbox.”

  “Then be careful.”

  “Thanks, Gracie. I know you want my body.”

  “That is so not happening, Nicky. I know where it’s been.”

  He puts the handset away and shuts down the engine, leaving the roof lights churning red and blue. He takes his Maglite and, thinking about it, he also grabs his first-aid kit and some latex gloves. He locks the unit and sets out across the field. It’s a starry night, but there’s no moon. Maybe a mile away to the south he sees the yellow lights from a farmhouse. Other than that it’s dark and still.

  Nicky’s a New York City kid—born in Far Rockaway—so it’s not a happy walk for him. He’s maybe twenty yards from the stand of trees when he hears something growling. This upsets him, he can tell, because he’s experiencing an involuntary sex change and the air has gotten as thick as motor oil. He puts the Maglite on the trees. He can see a whole section of black tailgate now, and a Jersey plate: IMA DV8. “I’m a deviate”? Cute.

  This doesn’t help his mood. He thumbs the restraining flap off the butt of his Glock Ten and keeps his right hand on it. The growling is louder now. It’s not a growling like a guard dog would make; it sounds different. Involved. Happy. Nicky doesn’t want to speculate on what would make an animal like that happy. And there’s something else. A tearing sound like something being ripped or tugged at.

  “Police,” says Nicky. It comes out a bit pinched. “Who’s there?”

  The growling stops at once. There’s a short wait while Nicky listens to nothing hard enough to give himself a migraine, and then he sees a quick motion off to his right.

  He lifts out the Glock and covers the area.

  “State Police. Stand up and come out. Hands where I can see them. Now!”

  Something large and dark bolts out of the wheat field at his right. Nicky jumps, steps back a yard, gets the light back on it, his Glock up and ready. His finger is on the blade. He can feel the serration on the trigger, and the three pale-green tritium dots—two on the foresight, one on the rear—are lined up in a perfect row. Beyond the foresight he sees a dog, some sort of mixed breed, part hound, part alligator. Its eyes catch the light and shine like bright red jewels. It stares back at him, jaws open, panting. There’s something dark and sticky-looking all over its muzzle and chest. The dog’s fur glistens.

  Then it turns and … disappears. Nicky listens to the sound it makes as it huffs away through the wheat, a hissing rattle as it pushes through the wheat stalks. In a second he’s alone with whatever is in the vehicle under the trees.

  He comes up to it, a Jimmy SLT, shiny black, brand-new. The windows are heavily tinted. The passenger window is broken, and shattered glass lies all around in the long grass under the trees. He steps up to the passenger side and puts his light inside the Jimmy.

  A young blonde girl is sprawled across the front seats. She’s naked. Damaged as well. There’s blood on her smooth young belly. Her eyes are open. Nicky puts the light in her eyes. Fixed and dilated. He moves the light onto her neck and sees bruising.

  Her neck is … wrong.

  He slips on his latex gloves, reaches in, and touches her throat under the left side of her jaw, where the muscles join. She’s no warmer than the surrounding night. He holds his fingers there long enough to feel the stillness inside her.

  This is a crime scene, he decides, and reaches for the portable that he doesn’t have with him. Dammit, he says to himself, and takes a breath to calm himself down, and this is when he catches a scent that reminds him of rust, and he thinks about what was on the dog’s muzzle. He steps back away from the vehicle, and the rust smell gets stronger and catches in the back of his throat.

  He puts the circle of light on the ground and sees a beaten-down section of long grass leading away from the Jimmy. Twenty feet it runs, into a blackness outside the dim circle of his Maglite, where it disappears into a gap between old and twisted trees. He squats down and studies the marks in the grass. Two people, maybe more. They walked away from the Jimmy in that direction.

  Nicky thinks hard about his role in all of this. On the one hand, he’s a cop, and this sort of thing is part of the job. On the other hand, he’s seen this whole scenario before, and it was always with some opening credits scrolling down in front of it and scary music playing. He’s the lone cop in this scene. Everybody knows the lone cop never makes it past the opening credits.

  He sighs, gets up, and follows the track into the gap between the trees. He’s now in a large clearing, circular, perhaps twenty feet wide. In the glow of the flash he can see a body lying on its back in a section of crushed and flattened grass.

  Secondary crime scene, he thinks, and starts to map out all the ways he has moved around the whole sector. He’s going to have to explain it to the GIC people when they get here. He moves in, puts the light on the body from six feet away.

  A white male, tanned, head shaved. Young, maybe in his twenties. Very muscular, a weight lifter or a pro football player. Wearing a white—now a partly white—tank top. Nude from the waist down. Oh man, thinks Nicky. This is going to be bad.

  Nicky steps in closer. The rust smell has another element here, a sewage smell, and a bitter stink of stomach acids. Someone has thrown up here and maybe lost control of their bowels as well. He puts the light on the man’s torso.

  Below the bloodstained white tank top, the man’s belly has been opened up like a piñata, spilling multicolored fruit everywhere. Below the belly there’s nothing but a tangled mass of pink and blue and shiny red tissue all the way to the man’s lower thighs.

  Something—that goddamn gator-dog—has been eating the man from the cr
otch up. Nicky moves backward, fighting his stomach. There’s no way the GIC guys are going to find anything from inside Nicky Cicero anywhere in this disaster area.

  He looks down at the man’s face. It’s a mask of bruises and blood. One eye is open wide, the other pinched shut by swollen tissue. His mouth is open and full of black blood. He looks as if he was beaten to death by someone in a bare-knuckle fight.

  Nicky kneels down and looks at one outstretched hand. He lifts it, a slack meaty weight, and curls the fingers. The knuckles are raw and scraped. He fought, anyway, fought back hard, judging from the wear and tear. Whoever did this to him, that person will have some marks on him, on his knuckles and his face, his arms where he blocked incoming blows. This Nicky knows something about.

  He gets to his feet again and sees the clearing in a new way. This was a stand-up fight. Bare-knuckle and toe to toe. A challenge fight? Maybe some twisted kind of contest. Through the gaps in the stand of gnarled old trees, crazy red-and-blue lights were fluttering in the blackness. They made Nicky think of tropical fish floating in a black lagoon. He turned away and walked slowly back to the cruiser.

  “Echo one four to base.”

  “Nicky, having a pee break?”

  “No, Gracie.”

  “You sound funny, Nicky. Are you okay?”

  “No, Gracie.”

  THURSDAY, JUNE 22

  OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY

  FEDERAL BUILDING, ALBANY, NEW YORK

  0950 HOURS

  In the morning Jack Vermillion called his lawyer, Flannery Coleman, from his house in Rensselaer and found out in damn short order that Coleman emphatically agreed with Creek Johnson on this one, that trading an ATF bust on Earl Pike for a mercy plea on Danny Vermillion was a totally bat-shit stunt that would certainly end in tears, so of course Jack proceeded to ignore his advice as well.

  Two hours later he and a grumpy and dissatisfied Flannery Coleman—a wily old boot-leather lawyer who had spent nine years with the New York DA’s office before he went into private practice up in Albany—met with the special agent in charge of the Albany office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, a compact black cop with white hair named Luther Campbell.