The Whites: A Novel

by Richard Price

  “Johnson’s partner didn’t say anything?”

  “I can’t say what it’s like now, but back then? You looked the other way. Always.”

  “How about the partner, what happened to him?”

  The old man was so long in answering that Billy almost repeated the question.

  “Looking back after all those years?” his father finally said. “He could’ve been a better father to his kids, maybe, a better husband to his wife, but other than that?” Looking Billy in the eye now. “He sleeps like a rock.”

  Walking into Harlem Hospital at three a.m. in order to follow up on an agg assault that had come into the office an hour earlier, Billy wandered the halls until he found his point man, Emmett Butter, standing outside one of the ORs, notebook in hand, watching as a trauma team worked on his victim.

  “What do you got.”

  “Bekim Ismaeli,” Butter reading off his notes, “nineteen, stabbed twice in the chest.”

  “Is he likely?”

  “Wobblin’.”

  “Where’d it happen.”

  “They’re not sure, they said they were walking on either St. Nicholas or Amsterdam, all of a sudden five or six black guys jumped out of a car, stabbed Ismaeli, snatched his chain, then took off.”

  “Who’s they.”

  “What?”

  “‘They were walking.’ Who was walking.”

  “The other Albanians, his buddies. They brought him in.”

  “Can any of them ID the car?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Make, color, nothing?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Guys are walking down a street, middle of the night, five, six other guys jump out of a car, stab their friend twice, steal his chain, then jump back into the car and take off.”

  “Apparently.”

  “And these friends who brought him here, not one of them knows what street they were on, and nobody can even say what color car it was. Do I have that right?”

  “Apparently,” Butter looking away now.

  “What does that sound like to you.”

  “Like they’re selling a story.”

  “I agree. So where are these Albanian friends?”

  “They left.”

  “They left. Did you interview any of them?”

  “Just as far as I told you. Then I went to check with the doctor and when I came back out they were kind of gone.”

  “Kind of gone. You got their names though, right?”

  “I was about to,” Butter said, blushing with humiliation, then: “I’ll put it all in the report.”

  “How about you don’t.”

  “What?”

  “Do everybody a favor and say you got here after they left.”

  “Yeah?” Butter looking at him now with dog’s eyes.

  “But we’re clear about what happened in here, yes?”

  “Yeah, yes.”

  “My people get to screw up once.”

  “I understand,” Butter said, then again: “I understand.”

  “All right,” Billy said, turning away, “stay with Ismaeli, see if he comes around.”

  “Hey, boss,” Butter called out. “Thank you.”

  Thinking that there was a good chance the kid would screw the pooch on this, his first run, Billy had made sure to wait until something came in north of Ninety-sixth Street before sending Butter out, knowing that grievously fucking up anywhere south of that, where the press began to give a shit, would have resulted in him being transferred to Missing Persons or worse. But if Butter was ever going to be of any use to him or any other squad boss, he had to start cutting his teeth somewhere.

  His wife would never admit it to him, but Billy’s guess was that interns killed patients all the time, and their supervisors, with an eye for the long-term healer to come, mainly looked the other way. Well, it was the same with him. In order to get the greater job done, to mold your people as you saw fit and prepare them to effectively do the job in the years to come, you tolerated error, you turned a not-quite-blind eye to the actions of others and to your own actions. You created secrets and you kept secrets.

  Out on the streets, same thing: depending on the individual and the situation, sometimes you threw the Thor hammer at a misdemeanor, other times you let an individual walk who had no right to sleep in his own bed that night. You did all these things and more because as a boss, if you weren’t willing to play fast and loose when required, if you weren’t willing to make a discreet hash of the rule book now and then, on this job you might as well call in sick.

  That’s just the way it was.

  Carmen called as he was walking to his car. “Hey.”

  “Hey,” Billy bracing himself.

  “Look,” she said, “I don’t want you to do anything or not do anything because I pressured you. You’ll resent me forever.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “That being said, you know how I feel.”

  “Right.”

  “Just come to it on your own.”

  MILTON RAMOS

  Marilys Irrizary Ramos.

  Even her pregnancy was probably bullshit.

  Another family taken away from him. And for what: fifteen hundred for the bogus plane tickets, eighty-five hundred for the bogus bribe.

  A lousy 10K.

  Fuck her.

  It was time to get back in the game.

  Here’s what he didn’t like about giving his daughter away to Anita:

  1.

  Her two-story clapboard was only a curb’s width distant from the city-bound service road of the Staten Island Expressway, cars flying by as if the first to reach the Verrazano Bridge was entitled to free head.

  2. She was a smoker.

  3.

  She drank. As far as could tell, nothing harder than white wine, but still . . .

  And here’s what he did:

  1.

  Her husband, Raymond, was a nice enough guy who owned a gas station and made decent money.

  2.

  She was a thirty-five-year-old teacher’s aide who worked at a K-4 public school but who couldn’t have children of her own, and her eyes always had that slightly tense quivery thing going on, which hopefully meant that she desperately wanted a kid before her time ran out.

  3.

  The house was not just neat but clean, the velour couch and matching chairs in her living room sheathed in vinyl, the wall-to-wall carpet as pristine as a putting green.

  4.

  And lastly, she was slender, at least by his standards, and the most fattening things in her refrigerator, which he opened on the pretense of getting a soda, were a still-sealed log of Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese and a small bubble pack of Genoa salami.

  “What do you mean you’re being targeted, what does that mean?” Anita asked him.

  They were sitting at her dinette table, Sofia watching cartoons in the dustless living room, a small overstuffed suitcase at her feet.

  “Some big-time banger I put away sent down orders from upstate for his crew to take me out. Gang Intel found out about it from a CI.”

  “But what does that mean?” Anita nervously playing with the cellophane on a new pack of Merit Lights.

  “Probably nothing. I spoke to the NYPD Threat Assessment Team, they already had TARU put up surveillance cameras around the house, plus a directed patrol unit rolls by once an hour twenty-four/seven. I’m not really worried about it? But that doesn’t mean nothing’s going to happen.”

  “Milton, Jesus.”

  “It comes with the territory.” He shrugged. “The thing is . . .” looking to Sofia, who was quietly eating mozzarella strips, eyes on the screen. “The thing is, if something does happen to me? Sofia . . .”

  “Of course.”

  “So I was thinking . . .”

  “Of course.”

  “Or if I’m unable to take care of her for whatever reason . . .”

  “Of course of course of course.”

  M
ilton felt relieved but also freaked, his cousin going for it way too fast. “Don’t you want to talk to Ray first?”

  “Why. We’ve being trying to have a child for the last five years.”

  “Still . . .”

  “He’d be doing handstands, trust me.”

  “And you like her, right?”

  “Do I like Sofia?” she whispered. “The bigger question is does she like me.”

  Good question. Sofia hardly knew her.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re her favorite aunt.”

  “I’m her second cousin, if you want to get technical about it,” Anita said, still whispering.

  “Whatever,” Milton said, “blood is blood.”

  “Wow,” Anita said.

  “It would be a simple matter of writing you into my will as Sofia’s guardian.”

  “We have that second bedroom, I mean Ray’s just using it as an office, you know?”

  “Good,” Milton said tightly.

  “I mean what does he need it for?”

  Too fast, too fast, Anita just going with the excitement without a moment’s reflection, as if Milton were offering her a puppy. And she didn’t seem too worried about his own dangerous situation, horseshit story that it was.

  “And I have to say, the schools around here?”

  “Terrific.”

  “Plus I’ve been around kids Sofia’s age five days a week for the last five years, so it’s not like I don’t . . .”

  “There you go.”

  This was a life-changing commitment, how could she not hesitate?

  “I mean I would really love her up, Milton, you know I would,” Anita’s hands trembling a little as she finally opened the pack of cigarettes. Then, catching him staring, she tossed the whole thing in the sink.

  “No more of these, I can promise you that.”

  “Relax, I’m still alive.”

  But she was a good person and he had to believe that if things went south for him—when things went south for him—Sofia would have a soft landing here.

  “Wow.” Anita shivered. “This is almost enough to make me want to bump you off myself, you know?”

  The impact, a heartbeat after he blindly backed out of her driveway into the expressway service road, spun his rear end a full ninety degrees so that he was suddenly facing the oncoming traffic and the smashed front grille of the Ram 1500 that had T-boned him. The driver, big enough to star in TV ads for his own ride, was out of the truck so fast that at first Milton thought he had been ejected. It was all he could do to stow his weapon under the seat before Bigfoot reached his car.

  “The fuck!” the guy shouted, pounding on Milton’s hood.

  Like she was some goddamn rescue dog . . .

  Milton got out of his car. Behind the damaged truck, the nonstop honking of the city-bound cars now trapped in the one-lane road was like the sound track for his fury.

  “It was my fault,” Milton said. He took out his wallet, but the guy slapped it out of his hands before he could even start to fish for his insurance card.

  “I feel like stomping your ass.”

  “You can try,” Milton said.

  Like she was a puppy in a cardboard box . . .

  Thrown by Milton’s matter-of-fact invitation, the big man hesitated.

  “I think you should try.”

  Anita was nuts, was a child herself. She was just jumping on this without a thought in her head.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “And you’re a fucking cunt,” Milton said.

  Red-faced with throttled violence, the guy started to tilt forward from the hips like a dipping bird, his breath puffing Milton’s hair. Praying for the punch to come, Milton stood his ground and waited for it, even though he pretty much knew he had already cut off the guy’s balls and that nothing would happen. And nothing did, Ram Tough man settling for a string of low face-saving curses as he returned to his front-mangled ride and took off, leaving Milton feeling so thwarted he thought his heart would break.

  Milton stood in Sofia’s bedroom, surveying the scatter of dolls and books and games. She would need things, obviously, but he could only send over a little of her previous life at a time in order to allow everyone, his daughter and her new parents, to gradually become accustomed to their roles. He didn’t want anyone to panic.

  But what did she need right away. Clothes. What kind of clothes. What did an eight-year-old girl wear. Even when she was a toddler he had never dressed her, barely took notice of what she had on unless it was something too tight for her frame.

  Socks. They didn’t take up much space, so he figured he could get away with three pairs without raising eyebrows. Underwear, T-shirts. Again, three of each, everything tossed into a large Hefty bag. Her floral corduroy jeans, into the bag. How about a dress, a skirt. No, two skirts; no, one, but where did Marilys keep them? This should be Marilys’s job, Milton at first mildly annoyed about that, and then the irony kicked in, making him sit down before he fell down.

  A moment later, once again galled to the edge of his teeth by the divide between the grief givers and the grief takers, the fuckers and the fucked, by the eternal inevitable of his violently miserable life, Milton walked out of the room dragging the half-full garbage bag behind him and headed for the basement.

  A few minutes later he was out on the street, the bag, much heavier now, spackling the sidewalk red from his front door to the trunk of his car.

  CHAPTER 14

  It was turning out to be another nothing of a tour, the only job so far a four a.m. outdoor scene in the West Village, where a home owner had been shot by his lawn mower while cutting the backyard. The live .357 shell, previously asleep in the grass, had been sucked up into the rotary blades, ignited, then fired itself out the back end of the machine into his nuts.

  By the time Billy and Stupak made it to the scene—shots fired was shots fired—Emergency Services was already combing the yard for any other stray ordnance and some joker had handcuffed the high-end mower to a lamppost.

  “Who the fuck mows their lawn at four in the morning,” the patrol sergeant said.

  “Myself, I’d be kind of interested in finding out how the bullet got to be in his backyard in the first place.” Billy yawned. “Any ideas?”

  “We had a problem last month with some subhumanoids coming over the PATH from Jersey City, but nothing with guns.”

  “There’s that indoor rifle club on MacDougal,” a uniform said. “That’s only a block over.”

  “A, it’s indoor; B, the house rifle’s a .22,” the patrol sergeant said.

  “Just the one so far?” Billy asked one of the ESUs scouring the grass.

  “Found a quarter and a roach clip,” the cop said. “That’s about it.”

  Billy sent Stupak over to Beth Israel on the off chance that the victim would be able to talk between now and eight a.m., then, after deciding not to canvass the neighbors at this hour, headed for his car with the intention of going back to the office and grabbing a nap.

  But the e-mail that came in over his phone a few minutes later as he was pulling out of his space knocked any notion of sleep into the next week.

  There was no message, only an attached JPEG, Billy opening it to see a flash-lit snap of Curtis Taft lying cuffed and gagged on a wooden floor, his red-dot eyes buzzing from above the fat strip of electrical tape that had been slapped across his mouth. The photo had been sent from Taft’s own phone, but Billy had to be an idiot not to guess who the shutterbug was.

  After reversing back into his spot, he threw the car into park and immediately started to dial.

  “What did you do.”

  “Come and see,” Pavlicek said.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Come and see.”

  “Where are you.”

  “Fifteen twenty-two Vyse.”

  In the heart of their old precinct, in a building Pavlicek owned.

  “Fuck you. Don’t move.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”r />
  Thirty minutes later, flying down Vyse Avenue the wrong way, Billy sideswiped the length of Pavlicek’s Lexus, continued until he was a few feet past the taillights, jumped out, and came racing back on foot.

  Pavlicek was out of the car waiting for his charge, but all he did when Billy threw a sloppy haymaker was deflect the blow, then pull him into a bear hug. When it came to hand-to-hand, Billy never could fight for shit.

  “What did you do,” he hissed, his arms pinned to his sides, Pavlicek’s bristle like sandpaper along his jaw.

  “Calm down.”

  “What did you do.”

  Pavlicek thrust him backward, Billy tottering nearly the length of the SUV before regaining his balance and charging him again. This time Pavlicek whipped him chest-first into the Lexus’s side-view mirror, the pain like a punch.

  “You want to keep going with this?”

  “Are you trying to jam me up?” Billy barked, ripping the side mirror off its mount and throwing it at Pavlicek’s head. “You think that’ll do it?”

  The mirror had glanced off Pavlicek’s temple, drawing a little blood. Bracing for a brawl, Billy set his feet, but instead of warring back, Pavlicek simply stanched the thin flow with the heel of his hand, then looked off down the street. At first Billy was thrown—Pavlicek had been erratically explosive for weeks—but now it was as if anger over his son’s impending death had somehow gone beyond expressible fury to a higher, finer level, making Billy’s rage in comparison seem so pedestrian that it hardly merited a reaction.

  Three silent but alert white men in jeans and sweatshirts came out of 1522 into the predawn stillness and headed toward the Lexus, Billy recognizing one: Hal Gurwitz, carrying a Yankees bat bag, a defrocked cop who had done some time for putting a handcuffed prisoner in the hospital with a ruptured spleen. He guessed that the other two, younger and a little more tense, might still be cops.