Cuts Through Bone

by Alaric Hunt

  “The Chinese are different like that. They don’t call the police. Chinese gangsters will cut you to pieces, or shoot you a dozen times, then run outside and set off firecrackers to pretend they’re having a party for their cousin. The gangs are the law, and nobody talks. We took the subway downtown—did I tell you Wasserman would rather ride the train than drive? Sure. Once we got there, the little old Chinese guy gives me a hard look, then props on his cane while he talks. Messengers went back and forth around us while he spelled it out.

  “Early that morning, somebody snatched Li Wei’s granddaughter—eldest daughter of eldest son, along those lines. In China, the girls aren’t that important, but over here, the old men treat every girl child like she’s spun from gold. See, the old men almost died out, because there weren’t no women. Up until the second war, Chinese women couldn’t emigrate to America unless they were prostitutes. An American-born girl child?” Guthrie nodded absently. Trucks rumbled on the bridge overhead, coming out of the Bronx, headed somewhere in the city.

  “Li Wei wanted his granddaughter back. She was gold, tiger sign and everything, and that made it double bad. See, the triads do kidnapping for ransom, but not the way it’s usually done over here. They run all of the usual scams—extortion, robbery, whatever—but kidnapping is their ultimate shakedown. The victim has to pay promptly. They don’t ask for huge ransoms because they don’t wait long. After twenty or thirty hours, maybe forty, it’s over. First, they tell you when and where to pay. Then after a bit, if the victim acts stubborn, they do a warning—who they’re holding gets beat half to death, or loses some fingers, or gets raped, with some pictures taken. There ain’t no second warning—just a body, and maybe not that.

  “Wasserman grilled him for the details, and it was your typical seam job. The kidnappers picked just the right moment, and whisked her away, only chopping one guy. The job seemed too clean. Li Wei believed they had somebody on his inside, but Wasserman said different. People just trust their routines too much. They agreed the girl had to be outside Chinatown, because nobody would keep quiet about Li Wei’s granddaughter—he was an old gangster, with more favors in his pocket than pigeons in the park.

  “Then they came to the tough part. Li Wei couldn’t pay. If he pays, he loses face. The renegades take his face and go up the ladder. So he has to have the crew. He wants his granddaughter back, but the crew is more important.

  “The renegades snatched Li Wei’s granddaughter real early. That was bad for them. Wasserman taught me the trick with the street people. Inside the city, that’s easy. Sure enough, a florist’s van went screaming down James Street at half past seven. By midafternoon, drunks were happy on a path through downtown and we’re sitting on a white florist’s van: Trammel’s Treasury. The renegades were in an old walkup on Rivington, just down from Alphabet City.

  “I watched while Wasserman went to call Li Wei. One Chinese guy came out, but I didn’t worry, because it’d only been eight hours.” Guthrie laughed. Vasquez had a sour look on her face. “I told you, he never missed anything. Eight hours after the snatch, we were sitting on them. We almost reached their hideout before they did.

  “Wasserman came back and explained that Li Wei wasn’t coming. He figured the first Asian face on the street got his granddaughter chopped. Then Wasserman asked me which apartment they were sitting inside, and I got the sick feeling you get when you do something stupid. I’d been waiting for him to find out. He didn’t say a thing. He just sat down and planted his hands on his knees. I had to sit and think for a minute.

  “Some Spanish kids down the block were playing stickball. I bought a stack of newspapers and sent one of the kids door-to-door, passing free newspapers and pretending to sell subscriptions. I made sure he was real persistent at every door.” Guthrie laughed. “On the second floor the kid found a pissed-off Chinese guy who didn’t want a newspaper—apartment two C.

  “I was proud, like a kid who made his first peanut butter sandwich. Wasserman didn’t wait for me to settle down. He went right back up the stairs and kicked in the door of two C. When the door came open, the first thing I heard was a TV. I followed him through the door into a typical nothing little apartment. All of the doors lead out into one room, and the kitchen was on one side. Three Chinese guys were inside. The angry guy who didn’t want a newspaper was watching TV. Another one was sitting on a stool to watch the street, eating pistachios and spitting the hulls onto the apartment floor. The last one was in the kitchen, boiling some horrible-smelling soup. Wasserman told me later that the soup was called ‘tiger balls’—not really from a tiger, but supposedly serious yang. The renegades were about to do the warning on Li Wei’s granddaughter. The man who left before Wasserman came back was a tip-off, but I neglected to tell him.

  “The angry guy picked up right where he left off with the Spanish kid: raising hell. The one on the stool started laughing, but he slid off the stool, pulled a knife, and threw it at Wasserman. The old bastard started shooting. The gunshots covered the sound of another four rushing up the stairs. We walked into the building just ahead of them. That’s what the man on the stool was laughing about.”

  Guthrie rubbed his chin and pointed through the windshield down toward the Harlem River at something that wasn’t there. “The cook was wearing a white apron. He threw a saucepan full of hot something at me. I spun around to dodge and missed with a shot. We ended up facing each other. He had a boning knife and the saucepan. He cut the buttons off the sleeve of my suit coat and almost smashed my face with the pan, but I hit him in the belly with my second shot. He dropped.

  “Then the rest of them barreled through the door. One rushed me. I caught an inside grip on his knife hand with the outside edge of my hand and stepped inside him to keep the hold. He circled around me and rammed the kitchen counter, and I stepped back out. One of the new ones was flying toward Wasserman’s back like an ax dropping on stove wood. I shot him through the hips. He bent in half and lost his knife.

  “Wasserman slid a little deeper into the living room. He switched pistols and kicked the coffee table at them. The living room was already a mess. The TV was dead, along with the angry Chinese guy. The other one was still standing by the window, but he was propped on the wall with both hands and covered with blood. The guy who went out and came back ran for one of the inside doors. I chased him. The one I rammed into the kitchen counter swung his knife as I was taking the first step. He split my suit coat open and it slid down my arms. Probably the leather strap on my shoulder holster saved my life.

  “That knife-in-a-gunfight thing is crap, unless you’re twenty feet away,” the little detective said. “That Chinese guy notched four of my ribs. Wasserman shot him as he chased me across the living room. I wanted to duck when the old man swung that forty-five auto past me. I had three bullets left in my forty-four. Going by, I shot the other little guy who was after Wasserman. He had on a button-down shirt and tan pants, with plastic-framed sunglasses and his hair slicked back 1950s style. The blade of his knife was as long as his forearm. His shirt turned bright red when the bullet hit him.

  “The bathroom was cheap plaster, with a claw-foot tub and one pebbled-glass window up high. The tub was converted to a shower, with a stand-up brass railing, and Li Wei’s granddaughter was hanging by her wrists, a gag in her mouth. She was a little marked up already. The triads like heavy knives, to cut off anything held up to ward them away—fingers, hands, even arms. The last one rushed to chop her.

  “Li Wei’s granddaughter was brave. He meant to chop her across the throat, but she lowered her chin and took it on the face. I shot him twice. She didn’t look good, but I was out of bullets and couldn’t shoot him again. Wasserman came in and cut her down. She slid down into a puddle in the tub, and then a few seconds later she stood right back up. She wanted the gag out, but even after, she couldn’t talk. That girl was brave. She looked like the walking dead. We had to run out of there and dodge the cops.” The little detective shook his head.

 
“You saved her.”

  “She saved herself. Or Wasserman did. I couldn’t have found her that fast. I doubt I could even now.”

  Vasquez pretended to look out at the river with him, but she was watching the little man. She wondered why he needed to be perfect, why good enough wasn’t quite enough. He began brooding again; his jaw worked like he was chewing something. He climbed out of the old Ford and walked down to the shore of the Harlem. After a minute, Vasquez followed him. The bank of the Harlem was a concrete retaining wall and sheet pilings wracked with rust. Instead of reeds or sedges, a litter of empty bottles slowly bobbed around an old tire with part of the sidewall missing.

  “Things come out of the past,” Guthrie said before turning back to look at the bridge. “The killer had to hate Olsen. This’s the beginning. He chose this spot for a reason. We have to look again.”

  “This can’t be the beginning,” Vasquez said. “It’s gotta be the end. Whoever it is hates Olsen for something he did.”

  “We have to find what ties it together.” The little detective walked slowly back toward the abutment. He paused several times, studying the bridge and the loop of asphalt beneath it. Empty trailers were massed in a transfer park on the far side. A bobtailed Mack growled softly, slipping between them as it moved back out toward the city. Beneath the bridge, a Dumpster was tucked tight against the retaining wall of the abutment, and a colonnade of piers supported the bridge on its way to arch over the Harlem. A loop of asphalt ran north beneath the bridge, connecting the transfer park to an alley onto Eighth Avenue.

  The Mack hadn’t used the loop—it headed south, directly into the city. The fence line along the transfer park was a strip of ragged weeds sprouting from an illicit dump. Old, rotten cardboard and pallets formed crooked stacks. Bottles and cans filled the creases above a litter of grimy multicolored pebbles made of shattered glass. Inside the colonnade, fire pits dotted the bases of the piers. The retaining wall and Dumpster were marked with graffiti in a multitude of colors. Jumbled together in overlay, they looked more like a visual grille than an attempt to communicate, obscure, or vandalize.

  Guthrie paced the distance from the asphalt loop to the remnants of NYPD yellow crime tape for the body. Faint stains remained. The bridge arched above like a shield. The killing had happened ten or twelve steps from the Dumpster. The little detective grunted. No attempt had been made to hide Bowman’s body, even by tipping it into the Dumpster. The murder was meant to be discovered—a confirmation—but the site itself was tucked away. The site required either a search or familiarity.

  “The killer knew about this spot,” Guthrie muttered.

  “Someplace secluded, where nobody could see. No houses or apartments nearby, no kids hiding nearby,” Vasquez said, glancing out around them.

  Guthrie pointed at the graffiti. “What’s that stuff mean?”

  She shrugged. “Ain’t tags. Don’t even look like words.”

  The little detective pulled out his phone and took several snapshots.

  “I’ll float it on the Net and see if we get a bite.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Olsen asked me to check on you,” the little detective said to Philip Linney. “He wanted to be sure you came out of it.”

  Linney’s answering smile had a sad edge. “I think that shoe’s on the other foot now.”

  The midday sun on St. Peter’s Avenue in Westchester was bright and hot. Dust from shattered mortar hung in the air, and every other breath had an ozone bite from scorched metal. Linney was on lunch break from his labor job on a teardown. He slid into the backseat of the old Ford. Vasquez pulled away from the curb and the smell of reconstruction.

  “My boys say Captain ain’t acting straight himself. He told me some story about the cops fishing after more murders—and I can see that on TV,” he said. A few smears of bright dust decorated his dark face. He opened his brown bag and pulled out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. “Captain’s too white-bread. All this shit’s catching him by surprise.”

  Guthrie nodded agreement. He pulled a lukewarm Yoo-hoo from the grab bag and handed it over the seat. Linney cracked the top and took a long drink.

  “That’s what you wanted to see me about?”

  “Sure. I wanted to see where you were at,” Guthrie said. “I ain’t gonna dig around in something and make a mess, not if there’s another way. Talking to you about it would just be faster.”

  Linney frowned. “I’m straight. Captain squared me away, just like over there. See the job? I ain’t some bullshit kid that’s too good to work. I know what real gangster is—and it ain’t sitting on your ass, getting high, and faking hard. So what are you getting at?”

  “You’re a sharp guy. Last time, you figured I wasn’t talking because I didn’t want Olsen to know what I was doing.” Linney nodded. “That’s changed. Now it seems clear that Bowman’s killing has to do with Olsen, not Bowman. Everything else is only clouding the picture. So now I’m connecting the dots—and you have something to do with Olsen, not Bowman.”

  “I ain’t been running around with Captain, you know. He’s got his world, I got mine.”

  “Thinking they were apart like that kept me from coming back to you sooner,” Guthrie said. “Maybe it’s a coincidence. I say somebody framed Olsen. Maybe the same person who wants bad things to happen to him wants bad things to happen to you, too.”

  “What the fuck, man!” Linney turned in his seat as if he wanted to get out of the car, but they were moving. Vasquez studied him in the rearview mirror. The dark-skinned man was flushed with anger.

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Guthrie continued. “Tell me what happened to your mother.”

  Linney didn’t say anything for a few minutes. He finished his sandwiches, barely chewing. He drained the bottle of Yoo-hoo, then rolled down his window. He hurled the bottle out at a lamppost, but his curse was the only sound that wasn’t lost behind them. “Now you got me thinking,” Linney said softly after rolling up the window.

  “Mama lived in a mixed neighborhood in Unionport. Black, white, Spanish, Asian, Indian, whatever, all crammed into the tenements together. People ain’t watching over each other like they should. Some stickup boys ran into the bodega where she’s picking up groceries, and they were high or something, and they beat everybody. Moms was old—” His fists clenched, and then he started strangling his empty brown paper lunch bag. “Moms died from the beating.”

  Guthrie waited while Vasquez drove the long length of the block. “Who’s the story from?”

  “The cops,” Linney said. “And Ms. Wilson—she lived down the hall from Moms. Who knows where she had it from, but it was about the same thing.”

  “I know somebody who works the precinct up there. I should be able to take a look at that.” He turned to look over the seat and study Linney’s face. “I know this stirred you up. Are you gonna be okay to go back to work?”

  “I ain’t doing nothing hard.”

  “You ain’t gotta pay attention?”

  Linney smiled. “It ain’t sentry duty. Maybe I’ll drop something.”

  Guthrie handed the grab bag over the seat. “Reach in there and get you something.”

  “You a strange dude, you know that?” Linney smiled, his hand rustling in the bag. “Like Halloween or something.” A yellow bag of M&M’s was bright in his dark hand, but his eyes were hard. “You gotta tell me if you think there’s something to what you said, all right?”

  “I gotta talk with you again, anyway,” the little detective said.

  Linney gave the detectives a puzzled look as Vasquez paused the Ford by his job site to let him out. “You’re like Captain,” he said. “His mouth don’t move much unless he’s got something to say.” He climbed from the backseat. The cool from the rain was gone, and the pavement was like an oven heated by the sun. For the moment, the dust was settled, but an air gun was already blatting somewhere in the building. The face of the city changes slowly, but on the inside, things shift around a
ll the time.

  * * *

  Outside the Unionport precinct house, sunshine was a broad stripe of fire in the middle of the street. Inside, screaming drunks filled the bottom floor. Tiny Laotians hurled insults at Indians, and Jamaicans pointed fingers at Dominicans. Partisans on both sides wore blood-speckled bandages, or carried ice bags in manacled hands. Shouted taunts and threats twisted into a melody. Early reports placed the beginning of hostilities upon an unexpected pregnancy, along with a casual suggestion that the father might be other than the devoted swain. After half-a-dozen assaults were docketed in the same Olmstead tenement, the captain ordered anyone who raised their voice brought into the station house for a cooldown. The paddy wagons stayed busy. Guthrie and Vasquez wormed through the tired officers and fuming citizens to question Robert Gennaro, the desk sergeant.

  Gennaro, a dark, heavyset Italian with a mustache, was still short of middle-aged. He recognized the bodega robbery when Guthrie described it—it was still on the board, and he didn’t see much chance of a solve. The stickup crew didn’t match any of the pros they had working the area. He called upstairs for the detective assigned the case. Jonathan Sullivan came down, disinterestedly swallowed a story about insurance coverage, and gave them details and information on his few witnesses—the five assault victims in the robbery. Gennaro spent his time fending off requests from uniforms, and watching Vasquez. Once they were finished, the police sergeant drew breath for a speech, but he was interrupted by a sloppy handcuffed fistfight between an overweight Jamaican and a half-dressed Dominican. Guthrie and Vasquez slipped out.

  The bodega on Turnbull Avenue was dimly lit and perfumed with fresh fruit and baked goods. The detectives were lucky. William Donovan, the cashier, hadn’t drifted away from the job after the robbery. He was a middle-aged man who knew he wouldn’t get away from stupid people and stupid things by moving someplace else. He had a mop of faded red hair and a tired face. The bottoms of old blue jeans showed beneath his red work apron. He wasn’t interested in talking about the robbery, but Guthrie slid a fifty-dollar bill across the dark wooden counter. Donovan took it, smiling sadly. The new floor man watched curiously as he swept; the man he’d replaced had quit because he was beaten badly in the robbery.