Jury of Peers

by Troy L Brodsky

  “Two blocks up, I’ll tell ya where to turn,” the kid said. "Let’s go man, let’s go.”

  Seth jerked the car into reverse and punched the gas. Sure enough, the two kids were still there–clawing to get out of the road. Seth tore past them and roared down the street.

  “So answer the question,” Seth said.

  Both seemed eager enough to answer, though unclear as to just what the question was. "What question man?”

  “Do I seem serious to you?”

  Chapter Twenty–Five

  Incredulity

  As many times as they’d seen it, they all still stared as they trudged past the Capitol building in the afternoon traffic. Ray was familiar with the downtown streets in and around the Mall. The monuments in their pristine white continued to stand as a reassurance to so many, and Ray was no exception. He’d actually found D.C. to his liking, even without the lure of ‘real’ journalism. The city was fast and important, in many ways the center of the universe for someone who aspired to one day make a mark as a writer. He wasn’t lying about being a lawyer, it wasn’t his bag. He’d spent six months staffing for a metro law firm only to come away with the very same taste in his mouth that he had now. Washington, D.C. political? Who would have thought? So now he’d tossed away another six months of his life with Irving Hack. Lovely. His wife was starting to get antsy, and rightfully so. Even with both of them working, it was getting really close at the end of each month. Now he was faced with telling her that one more of his dream jobs was in the toilet. Either that, or make something happen. So maybe getting roped into driving around the less “official” areas of the city would be good for him if only to take his mind off of life in general. He worried though, that it would be a hands–on lesson.

  “Where’d you live before D.C., Ray?” Finn asked as they turned up Widmore Street.

  “Miami,” Ray said. "My wife wants to move back.”

  “How’s come?”

  “Something about the weather.”

  Finn snorted, "There are a few days every year when it’s really nice. And it's not usually this cold.”

  “I like it, she doesn’t. And the weather isn’t it… our kids are getting close to school age.”

  “Ah,” Tonic said as he came up behind a big tour bus. "There are a few days a year when the schools here are really nice.”

  “Just don’t let her read the papers or watch TV and you’ll be fine Ray,” Finn said.

  “After this deal in Arlington Heights I’m really catching shit to go back.”

  Tonic tapped the wheel in time with music that only he could hear. "Thing is we’re all hearing about this deal in the Heights because it’s some politician’s kid. I mean, it’s a shitty thing and it's the same all over. It’s not like it happens everyday, but lots of people are steppin’ in shit that they don’t deserve, Ray.”

  Ray said nothing, but these facts weren’t going to win him points at home.

  “Seriously, we’ve had lots more street cops out getting into everyone’s face. They’re shaking people down on the off chance that we’ll get a lucky hit on something. That almost never happens. The norm would be to rustle up a couple of informants, if there were any, or throw the physical evidence in line with the other fifty–four hundred cases that need to be done this month. But this is getting shit hot press and thus here, we are right?”

  “But you’d want to work this case right?” Ray asked.

  “Fuck yeah, but you know how things are. Think about how many things you’re dropping everyday to work this thing, eh?” Tonic flipped his visor down as they turned into the setting sun. “By the way, there’s a vest back there for you somewhere.”

  “A what?” It was lying under a pile of worn maps. “Why are we doing this again?” Ray asked as he lifted the dark blue Kevlar vest and flipped it around, praying that there were no holes. Freshly spray–painted in white block letters was the word, NERD.

  “Nice.”

  Finn smiled, still watching the road, “We’ve got to meet someone.”

  Tonic went on, “Finny hasn’t always been this respectable. He started with me in narcotics. We still know some people down here.”

  “We think.”

  “Yeah. Assuming they’re not dead.”

  Finn turned on his seat. “He started with me by the way.”

  “Whatever, but my point is that it was before you turned all gay.”

  “Just because I don’t shop at an Army Surplus store and like to clean my nails once in awhile?”

  “No, because you shop at the Gap and have someone else clean your nails. Besides, fatigues are comfy, they give me room to breathe, God knows I need it.” He pointed at Finn’s slacks, “Those are just a pair of hundred and eighty dollar army pants.”

  Finn brushed the crumbs off of his pressed khakis and ignored his partner. "Want something else that you shouldn’t tell your wife, Ray?”

  “What?” Ray leaned forward between the seats, clutching the Kevlar to his chest like a child’s doll.

  “The guys who did this, they’re probably juveniles,” Finn said. “You’re a lawyer right? You know how it is.”

  Ray looked between the two. "Yeah… yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. What usually happens? I mean, I know the books, but not the street.”

  “They could get off pretty clean, it all depends. We have to find ‘em first, but listen, the average age of a D.C. gang member ain’t thirty–five, man, more like twelve,” Tonic said. “Just because some people are stupid, doesn’t mean they all are… the guys who survive, the guys who run shit, well it’s all Darwinism. Natural selection. They made it through this far with luck and brains and having big fuckin’ balls, which means that they’ll play the system if they can.” He stopped at a light and turned in his seat, “Why use twelve year old kids to sell ice or weed or whatever?”

  Ray considered, "So if they get caught?”

  “Yeah, it’s like recycling. They get busted, they come back.” Tonic ignored the green light, watching Ray in the mirror. "And lots of things work that way in the system. If you’re not eighteen, it’s a whole other fuckin’ world.”

  Ray found one foot tapping against the other and tucked them up under himself on the seat to make himself stop. “So how far is it?” he asked. He could still see the Capital building.

  “Dude, we’re like two blocks away,” Tonic said.

  Ray looked around. This wasn’t a bad neighborhood. Not rich by any means, but the homes were well kept, older, but still cared for by their owners. It didn’t look like a gang neighborhood.

  “Here?” Ray sat back again, keeping to the middle of the car. Any embarrassment about wearing the vest was long gone. “Do I put this on over or under my shirt.”

  “Over your shirt, under your jacket,” Tonic said.

  “The neighborhoods change real fast,” Finn said. "You’ll see. Just cross one street sometimes and it’s Mogadishu.”

  Tonic began giving the tour. "A block over there is SMG,” he pointed. Over here is just plain ol’ Widmore Street. SMG on this side, Widmore Crew on that side. There are bars in the windows and all up and down this main drag, but a guy can walk there at night. Five blocks up this way,” he gestured forward, "it’s pretty nice. A few blocks that way and you’re getting’ close to the Mall. It’s weird shit, and it changes like a river. Sometimes the river behaves itself and you can live there for twenty years.”

  “Then one day there’s a flood,” Finn said. "And then your neighborhood is neck deep in mud. It might shift back, it might not.”

  “What’s Arlington Heights then?” Ray asked.

  “Bad luck. You ready, Ray?”

  “No.” Ray fought the urge to fasten his seatbelt.

  Tonic caught his eye in the mirror. “Just watch how fast it changes.” They turned left and in one block all that was left of the rational world seemed to be the occasional right angles he could find at the intersections.

  Ray fastened his belt.

 
For the most part, the streets were clear. There were few cars, and many of those that had been left to fend for themselves were burned out, bone white hulks, picked clean like carrion along the highway. The only windows to be seen in the almost identically built brick apartments were above the fifth floor. That’s about as high as a kid could throw a rock, Ray decided. He was no architect, but these had to be approaching fairly old status even by European standards. There was very little life; the wind was still far too stiff for most people to be outside without a good reason, but here and there he watched a few bundled souls taking advantage of the daylight to move back and forth between their homes and where ever it was that they went. They passed a form slumped against a wall.

  “Hasn’t been a place to get food down here for like a year,” Tonic said. He pointed at a woman, hunched as if she were wearing an anvil around her neck. Six or eight plastic bags threatened to scrape the pavement as she hobbled along.

  “So if you want anything, it’s about ten blocks up that way.”

  They approached an intersection and slowed, but not much. Tonic blew through the stop sign that leaned out into the road at a forty–five degree angle.

  Finn said, “Usually there’s someone dealin’ on this corner.”

  Tonic nodded, “Usually.” But there was no one to be seen.

  “Business is rough with cops rolling up on you all day long.”

  “So hold on…” Ray said. “Why do it then? I mean, the heart of all this is money right? Jesus I’d sell my fingers to get out of this place. So why screw it all up by taking credit for something like the Arlington Heights thing? They had to know, right? I just don’t get it,” Ray watched a gutted row house as it slid past.

  “Think it through, Ray,” Finn said. “List the possibilities.”

  Ray opened his mouth and then closed it, took a few moments, and then decided to go with his first thoughts. He put his hands up on his temples like blinders so that he could think. “They did it to show that they were serious. The real deal. Period. That they could do whatever they wanted. To get some credit, some reputation or whatever.” He didn’t look up, but felt Finn staring at him. “Or, they did it for the rep and then realized, too late, that they’d hit a big shot.”

  Tonic was watching in the mirror. "Or?”

  “I don’t see an ‘or’,” Ray said.

  “What if they didn’t do it?” Tonic asked.

  “Who? I don’t… oh,” Ray’s hands came down and head came up. “They put someone else’s graffiti in the hall, another gang’s you mean?”

  “Prolly, that’d be a good way to fuck someone over. We’ve seen it lotsa times,” Tonic said.

  “So we’re totally looking in the wrong place?” Ray said, incredulous.

  “Who knows?” Finn told him. "We’ll see if anyone stepped up and spilled their guts tonight when we get back. Maybe we’ll find Andy. It takes time. Having it run on national news, I dunno. It could speed things up, or slow it way the hell down. Depends on who’s taking the heat.”

  “Who’s Andy?”

  “Just a dude that used to deal down here. Kinda nice guy, actually, in a fucked up sort of way,” Tonic said. “Scared shitless of Finny.”

  “How’s come?” Ray asked.

  Finn turned, "Why, exactly, is that so hard to believe?”

  Something skipped off of the trunk and cracked into the back window. Ray jerked in his seat, assuming a position that he might in a crashing airliner. Tonic accelerated, turned the corner, and only then looked back. “That was a rock right?”

  Finn squinted at the little spider web left in its wake. "Looks like it. Wakes a guy up, though.”

  “Cherry donut time?” Ray muttered into his crotch.

  “We’ll cruise around for a while in our über unmarked car,” Tonic said. "And then bail out before it gets dark if we don’t find our dude.”

  “What happens when it gets dark?” Ray asked.

  “They probably all turn into wolves,” Tonic said. “I’ve never been down here at night.”

  Andy the Informant was not on his old corner, nor was he on his next old corner, and this was irritating. There were two possibilities that neither cop wanted to entertain, but that seemed increasingly likely as they drove up and down the naked streets. One: Andy had been rotting sight unseen in an alley for a year or so. Two: Andy wasn’t as stupid as he looked, and was holed up somewhere to keep his nuts from freezing to the pavement. They knew where that somewhere might be, but just knowing wouldn’t get him to come out and play.

  Just after two it started to sprinkle tiny pellets of frozen rain that skittered about on the hood and hissed against the windows.

  “Is this one of the nice days?” Ray asked.

  “Hush child,” Finn said.

  Ray smiled despite the anxiety that grew with the darkening skies. The rain quickly forced anyone who had lingered on the streets inside, and the effect was the sudden and absolute sense that this was indeed a ghost town; a section of the city that had been exposed to radiation, poisoned and left to only the creatures hardy enough to survive the primal blight. Ray craned around and peered out the back window – an occasional gap between buildings would reveal the Capitol building, brightly lit but still shrouded in the weather as if it were trying to pull a veil over itself… protection from this canker festering just out of sight. It was hard to believe. There were few lights, and as the sky thickened, some fires came to life deep in the alleyways. Their shadows leaped from the narrow passages, occasionally giving a glimpse at human form, but more often serving only as a beacon to illuminate Ray’s fears.

  “You know we’re going to have to go in the old shelter if we’re gonna find the fucker,” Tonic said as they passed two dogs fighting over… something.

  Finn nodded. “I know it. Let’s go past and see if it’s even still there.”

  They wheeled around, careful not to jump the curb and bust a tire. Ray was sure that they’d be awfully quick to remind him of his intern status if something like that happened. He could imagine them saying, “We just want to see if you can do it,” as he changed the spare. It could be his epitaph.

  “Where’s this shelter?” he asked as the two cops peered out either side of the car.

  “Right around here somewhere,” Finn said. He wiped fog off of his window.

  “There,” Tonic said. He slowed and pointed.

  It was a three story brick building just like most of the others, with two wide, church–like doors slightly ajar on the ground level. There was no light inside, and nothing much to be revealed anyway as the windows were boarded up against the wind and cold.

  “This is the shelter?”

  “The old shelter,” Tonic corrected.

  “Okay, Ray,” Finn said as he drew out his pistol and checked the chamber. "Seriously, if you don’t want to go in, it’s cool.”

  Ray looked at Tonic who was, in turn, watching the front doors. He tapped him on the shoulder. "You going?”

  “He'll get lost if I don’t. You can hold the flashlight if you wanna come in since you’re wearing a vest. They mostly shoot at flashlights.”

  “Well I’m not staying here alone. Fuck that.”

  Tonic smiled, but it wasn’t his usual easy grin. “I hear ya. Don’t sweat it, I’m just givin’ you shit about the light n’all. Just stay with us, and don’t call out if you get separated. We’ll find you.”

  “I won’t,” Ray said, though it wasn’t clear if he meant get separated or call out. Probably both. His natural tan was waning.

  “Seriously, it’s all good. We’ve done this before,” Tonic assured him. Finn radioed in their location and they all bailed out of the car as one. Finn led them to the trunk. The wind was a breath stealer after the humid warmth of the car–the sleet stung, and as soon as the trunk was open, they all hunkered down behind it.

  There was a pile of gear, strewn about by a couple of hours of erratic driving. Finn, too, donned a vest, working in and out of his coat like a
runway model changing between sets. “Christ,” he said as he tossed Ray the dreaded flashlight. “Miami sounds good.”

  “I didn’t think you guys were serious about the light,” Ray said weakly.

  “We weren’t. Give that to Spencer. You take this.” He handed him a helmet. A no shit, going to war in Afghanistan helmet. It was scuffed and well–worn, tan even.

  “What the fuck is this?” Ray gasped.

  “Relax, it’s mostly to keep shit from falling on your head man,” Tonic said.

  “Mostly?”

  “Yeah,” Finn said. "But it works for other stuff too.” He put one on as well, an old black one, and pulled the chin strap tight.

  “What about you?” Ray asked Tonic, who in turn beat his chest with his fist.

  “I wear mine all the time. Makes me feel tough,” he rummaged through the trunk as if it were a pile of laundry. “Where’s my silly string?”

  Ray’s heart was pounding, thrumming away in his ears like some enormous electrical transformer. His armpits were slick with sweat… this was nuts. He felt like he could sense everything around him, smell the spray paint on his vest, feel the hair bristling on his arms–he could hear each little pellet of ice as it glanced off of his face.

  “I’ve got it, dear,” Finn said, waving the can and then dropping it into his pocket. He saw the look on Ray’s face and said, “We’re just going in and out. We’ll find Andy, get his attention, then meet later. Just stay close. No big deal, alright?” he thumped Ray on the back of the vest.

  “Easy peasy,” Tonic said and threw the trunk closed. The wind hit them all in the face. He locked the doors, something that struck Ray as entirely unnecessary, and then the trio started off toward the yawning double doors. As they drew closer to the building, Ray could hear something scraping inside of the structure, slightly above them. It reminded him of the tree that used to stand outside of his bedroom window; all night long it would creek and groan in the slightest of wind, scraping against his window like the claws of the beast. His breath preceded him in tight little puffs. The two cops didn’t have their guns drawn and seemed almost casual. Were it not for the ridiculous mixture of street clothes and body armor, they might have been the survivors of an earthquake, emerging to view the destruction for the first time since the big one.