by Tim Stevens
“It’ll cost you, of course.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I realize you wouldn’t -” O’Dell broke off. “How much?”
Venn told him.
O’Dell’s face froze. His eyes flicked about, calculating.
He said: “Agreed.” He heaved himself up out of his office chair, extended a sweaty hand. “You’ve got yourself a job.”
*
Venn had visited this district of Queens before, but he’d never been inside any of the apartment blocks. He was a Chicago native, born and bred, and after he’d left the city’s police department nearly three years earlier, he’d set up as a private investigator in Manhattan. His cases, such as they were, had been mostly of the bourgeois kind. Surveillance of the cheating spouses of Upper West Side financiers. Missing-person hunts on behalf of the worried middle-class parents of rebellious college dropouts. The occasional contract involving a suspicion of white-collar fraud, paltry thefts from an IT company’s supply cupboard.
He’d never slummed it.
Now, two days later, and standing poised outside the door of room number 17, with O’Dell behind him, he reflected that the noises coming from the other side wouldn’t have been out of place in any of the homes he’d laid surveillance on in more respectable parts of the city.
But he knew that beyond the door lay something very, very different.
Venn had already laid down his ground rules to O’Dell. “There may be some damage to property,” he’d said. “Unavoidable. Busted locks, smashed furniture, shot-up wall plaster. It doesn’t get deducted from my fee, unless we both agree I used unreasonable force. Both agree.”
O’Dell had swallowed, and nodded.
Venn put his hand to the door handle and turned it, gently.
He leaned his weight, equally carefully, against the cheap wood of the door.
The door held. Locked.
Without looking at O’Dell, Venn took a step back and raised his right leg and pistoned it out, the full force of his strength from the hip channeling into his sneakered foot.
The wood splintered around the lock.
Venn barged his shoulder against the door and it gave, wrenching free from the metal lock and handle, and he was inside, the fug of smoke tearing his eyes immediately. He swung the Beretta across the room in a two-handed grip and yelled, “Raid, raid,” and saw five figures in total through the fumes, half-camouflaged in the chaos of ripped couches and empty pizza boxes and spilt bottles of cheap wine. Two of the figures slumped against one wall, barely conscious enough to swivel their heads his way. The other three sprang up from armchairs, thin and wiry and agile.
One woman, two men. Two of them African-American, the other guy white.
They clustered together, which made it easier for Venn. He roared, using the voice he’d honed in the Marines, the thunderclap bellow that commanded attention: “Get down on the ground, now. Place your hands behind your heads.”
The woman and the white man hesitated. Then the man muttered, “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” and they dropped, faces down, their fingers interlocked at the backs of their necks.
The second man made a run for it.
He moved with amazing speed, like a ferret, whipping between the obstacles strewn across the floor and toward a half-open door on the left. Venn didn’t fire, just vaulted over the couch in his path and got to the door as it swung closed and flung it open and aimed the Beretta.
It was a bathroom, a stinking cesspit with a floor flooded to the depth of a half-inch. The window opposite was raised, and the man’s skinny jeans-clad butt wriggled as he worked his torso through.
Venn sloshed through the pool, grabbed the back of the man’s T-shirt and hauled him back so that his head struck the bottom of the window. The guy yelped.
“Fuck, man -”
Venn dropped him in the water, or whatever it was. The man landed on his ass. He tried to scramble away, his legs flailing and splashing Venn’s chinos.
Venn didn’t bother to point the gun.
“Name?” he said.
The man’s eyes burned with a mixture of fear and defiance. He snarled: “You want to show me a warrant?”
“Who said I was a cop?” Now Venn aimed the Beretta, at a point just below the man’s breastbone. “You might as well tell me your name. It’s the only thing you can possibly give me.”
The man propped himself up on his elbows. He muttered something.
“Say what?” Venn tilted his head closer.
“Righteous.”
“I said, your name.”
“That is my name.” The guy drew himself up so that he was sitting on the soaked floor, his arms round his bent legs. “Righteous. Righteous Hammond.”
“You gotta be kidding me,” said Venn.
He jerked the Beretta’s barrel upward. The man stood, following the order. His thin legs shook beneath him, and Venn thought he was clamping his jaws shut to stop his teeth chattering. Even in the gloom of the bathroom, Venn could see the needle tracks up the scrawny arms, the gnarled worms of his long-defunct veins.
Venn motioned to the door and the man went, shuffling noisily through the water. Back in the main room, the man and the woman were still on their bellies on the ratty carpet. Both had their heads raised and were peering in his direction.
O’Dell stood in the wrecked doorway, looking uncertain.
Venn said: “All right. This is the way it is. I’m leaving now, alone. I’ll be back in two hours, on the dot. The three of you, plus your two comatose buddies over there, will be gone by then. If you’re not, I’ll kick all of your asses so hard you’ll spend the rest of your lives shitting through your mouths. Do I make myself clear?”
On the floor, the woman said, quietly but clearly: “Cracker motherfucker.”
Venn stared at her. She was young, in her middle- or late twenties, and would be quite attractive in different circumstances. Her hair was in cornrows, and she had cheekbones that could cut glass.
He glanced over at O’Dell. “Nah. You know what? The hell with this. I’m hauling these skells down to the local precinct station. The cops there know me. They’ll turn this place over. Most likely they’ll find enough crap stashed here to put these freaks away on a dealing charge.”
He aimed the Beretta, straight-arm, at the woman’s head. “Up.”
O’Dell said, “Wait.”
And Venn thought: Bingo.
Chapter 2
O’Dell said, “Maybe I can make an offer.”
Venn kept his gun trained on the pair on the floor. When the man he’d caught in the bathroom stayed standing, Venn motioned with his free hand. The man spread himself, face down, beside the others.
Facing Venn, as though there was nobody else in the room, O’Dell said, “Ten per cent.”
Venn frowned.
“Ten per cent,” O’Dell went on. “Of everything extra I charge them to stay here, and thereby stay out of jail. I’m thinking a one-hundred-per-cent markup on their current rent. To buy my silence. You get ten of that. Every week, for as long as they stay here.”
Venn watched the fat man’s eyes. They held nothing of the quiet despair he’d seen there at their first meeting. Instead, they were shrewd, businesslike.
After a few seconds’ silence, O’Dell took a step into the room. “Passive income. You do nothing more. The knowledge that you might come back, at any time, will keep them paying. A guaranteed wad of cash, each and every week. What do you say?”
Venn raised his eyebrows. With his free hand he reached inside his jacket, as though scratching his chest in thought. He brought his hand out.
In it was a shield.
“Sean O’Dell,” Venn said, “I’m arresting you for attempting to bribe a police officer. You have the right to remain –”
O’Dell bolted for the door, moving surprisingly quickly for a man his size. Venn sighed.
The woman on the floor leaped up, hurtled after O’Dell like a rocket. She reached him as he got to the door, colliding wit
h him so hard he was knocked out into the corridor beyond. Venn heard him land with a crash and a stifled yell.
“– Silent,” Venn heard her finish. “Anything you say may be used against you in court. You have the right to an attorney...”
The two men on the floor stared about in confusion. The two bodies slumped against the walls were conscious, but too strung-out to react.
Venn watched the woman hustle O’Dell back into the apartment. With his hands cuffed behind him, he looked comical in his too-tight suit, like a waddling penguin. His face was flushed and purple, and for a moment Venn was concerned he might be having a heart attack.
“You can’t do this,” O’Dell yelled. “I have connections. I’m a personal friend of –”
“Councilman Marshall. Yeah, I know,” said Venn.
Marshall was an influential voice in the City Council, and well respected in the Queens district he represented. O’Dell was a member of the housing taskforce Marshall had appointed to look into homelessness in the borough, and a golfing friend of the man. As such, any investigation into wrongdoing by O’Dell was bound to be politically sensitive.
But handling that kind of case was what Venn specialized in.
The woman held up her own shield next to O’Dell’s face. “Just in case you try telling a jury the arresting officers didn’t both identify themselves. Detective Sergeant Harmony Jones.”
She turned O’Dell toward the door. Venn followed.
“Hey.” One of the men on the floor, the one named Righteous, pushed himself up. “What about us?”
“A social worker will be along shortly,” said Venn. “Don’t go anywhere. You’re not in any trouble. And you may be called to testify against this guy.”
*
A patrol car took O’Dell away. Venn started heading for his own vehicle, a four-year-old Mustang GT parked up on the curb ten yards from the apartment block.
The woman, Jones, said, “Wait.” She pointed a thumb at a taco outlet across the street. “Before anything else, I need to eat. All I’ve had for the past week is skell food, what there was of it.”
The place was dingy but clean enough. Nobody gave them a second glance as they went in, even though they made an odd pair: a big white man in a leather jacket and a short, lean African-American woman in filthy denim. Venn guessed a lot of the patrons had seen it all, and were no longer surprised by much.
At the counter Jones ordered the works: beef enchiladas with extra chilli and cheese and a side of tacos. Venn hesitated, his stomach rumbling. He pointed to a chicken salad with low-fat dressing.
“Get the hell out of here,” said Jones in disgust. She helped herself to a Coke from the refrigerator.
Venn took a mineral water.
They sat at a corner table, below the listless airconditioning unit. Jones shook her head.
“You’re whipped,” she muttered.
“Shut up,” said Venn. But she was right, in a sense. Beth had persuaded him to change his diet, to recognize that a man pushing forty needed to start taking note of what he ate. He’d resisted, but she’d gradually and gently worn him down. Now, though he allowed himself the occasional splurge on a steak and eggs and fries, he generally stuck to grease-free fare.
And he had to admit, he felt better for it. More energetic, mentally sharper.
They ate in silence for a couple of minutes, Jones wolfing hers as if she had a plane to catch. Between mouthfuls she said: “By the way, if you’re waiting for me to apologize for calling you a cracker motherfucker, it ain’t gonna happen.”
“The thought never crossed my mind,” said Venn.
“Because you were a goddamn racist yourself back there.”
Venn frowned. “How so?”
“I heard you in that bathroom. You sneered at that guy’s name. ‘Righteous’. A brother has an unusual name, and you people get all superior.”
“Bullshit,” said Venn. He wasn’t always sure when she was joking. “You’ve got a weird name yourself, Harmony. And I don’t make fun of you. No, the thing I found so ridiculous about the guy’s name was that it was so obviously ironic. Whereas yours... ‘Harmony’ fits your nature perfectly.”
She snorted.
Gradually they began to talk about the case. O’Dell had been suspected for some time of running a low-grade extortion and protection racket in his properties. Finding anyone who’d be willing to admit they’d been a victim was difficult, because most of them were addicts, or illegals, and shied clear of the law. Harmony had gone in undercover a week ago, posing as a tenant, while Venn tried to find a way into O’Dell’s confidence. His lucky break came when he saw the advertisement in the Voice.
Venn headed a small, three-person outfit named the Division of Special Projects. Technically a branch of the NYPD’s Anti-Crime Unit, or Taxi Squad, it was a fledgling operation set up a year earlier to investigate cases of a potentially sensitive nature, such as those involving local politicians or other people of influence. The DSP was the pet project of Venn’s boss, Captain David Kang, who’d created the outfit specifically with Venn in mind to head it.
A year before that, Venn had been a private eye living in the East Village, near-broke and with few prospects, when he’d inadvertently become caught up in a situation that had led to the downfall of several members of the US Congress as well as a major pharmaceutical company. Venn himself had been seriously injured during the events – had barely survived, in fact – and had spent the next nine months walking with a stick and wondering if he’d ever have the full use of his limbs again. But he’d pulled through, and despite a recurring ache in his right leg and a degree of residual stiffness in his shoulder on the same side, he was back to full fitness within a year.
In other circumstances, he’d have been given the freedom of New York City and a ticker-tape parade down Broadway for his part in the situation. But there were reasons for his involvement in the whole affair to be hushed up, reasons that Venn accepted. Instead, he was headhunted. By his old employers in the Chicago Police Department, by the Marine Corps, and by the NYPD. He felt he’d moved on from the life of the Corps, and his bridges with Chicago were well and truly burned as far as he was concerned. So he took the New York offer, as a Detective Lieutenant heading up Captain Kang’s Division of Special Projects.
His office and budget were small, and the cases he’d handled in the last year had been of modest importance. But Venn liked the job. He was given a degree of independence few lieutenants in any police department anywhere in the US enjoyed. He got to hand-pick his staff, and thereby to work with people he could trust.
And it meant he got to stay in New York, where Beth’s career was really starting to take off.
“He’ll make bail,” said Harmony.
“O’Dell? Sure he will. But it doesn’t really matter.” Venn gazed at the window beside their table, studying the vague figure he saw reflected there. “He’s small fry. The point is, he’ll probably cut a deal with the DA and give her Marshall.” Without a pause, but dropping his voice a fraction, he said, “We’ve got company.”
Harmony managed to survey the room without directly looking at anybody. “Yeah. So we have.”
“Is he approaching?”
“Yes.”
Venn tensed, preparing himself to turn suddenly, his hand on the Beretta inside his jacket. From behind him he heard a voice: “Officers?”
Venn twisted in his seat. “Well, well. Righteous. What a coincidence. I thought I told you to stay put.”
The man was wearing an outsized duffel coat that emphasized his skinny frame. His earlier defiance had been replaced by a wary look.
“Hands out your coat pockets,” snarled Harmony. “Kind of a dumbass approaches two cops looking like he’s about to draw a gun?”
Righteous held his hands away from his sides apologetically. “I just... look, can I sit down for a minute?”
Venn studied him, up and down. Then he hooked a chair with his foot and turned it toward Righteous. Th
e scrawny man sat, uncertainly, as if he thought Venn might have rigged it to collapse.
The two cops waited.
Righteous muttered: “I followed you.”
“We kind of worked that one out,” said Venn.
“You could of busted me back there. But you didn’t.”
“Because we’re nice guys,” said Harmony. “Also, because you’re not worth the paperwork.”
Righteous shuffled his chair forward, refusing to be cowed. “I figured, since you seem reasonable cops, and not the usual assholes, I could be useful to you.”
Harmony sighed. “An informant? No thanks. Got enough of them already.”
“Wait,” said Venn. “Go on. Useful how?”
The man licked his lips as if they’d suddenly got dry.
“Mr O’Dell wasn’t just planning to shake us down. He was supplying us with the junk too.”
“The junk?” said Venn. “You mean smack?”
“Yeah.” Righteous glanced about him, not theatrically but with genuine nervousness.
“O’Dell’s a drug dealer?”
“Not him, exactly.” He wiped his mouth. “But when I signed the tenancy agreement, he asked if there was anything I needed from him. The name of a reliable supplier. I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. Thought it was a trap. He gave me a business card, told me to call the number any time, day or night. I kept the card, I don’t know why. Then, two weeks later, I got a problem. I need a fix, and my usual guy’s not returning my calls. So I call the number on the card. It goes to voicemail. I’m desperate, so I give my name and address. An hour later, at three a.m., this dude turns up. Doesn’t give his name, doesn’t say anything at all. He’s brought baggies, lots of them. I buy what I can afford. It’s good stuff.”
“Did you call the number again?” said Venn.
“Uh-huh. Three, four times since. Always the same. Voicemail, then somebody arrives within the hour. Sometimes the same guy as the first time, sometimes not.”
Venn said, “You got the card with you?”
Righteous fumbled out a creased, dirty cardboard rectangle. Venn took it. The legend read: Kruger’s. Your first choice for quality secondhand furniture since 2007. There was an address in the Bronx, and a cell phone number.