by Brad Smith
Hoffman included. Now he was truly bent on finding the coke, selling it to Yuri, and getting the hell out of the state. He’d left a careless trail these past few days and it was likely to come back and haunt him if he was to stick around. Associating with Soup and Yuri had been a dicey proposition from the start, and now, with Soup on the run with a couple million dollars’ worth of cocaine, the situation seemed even more likely to blow up in Hoffman’s face. Crackheads not being known for their discretion; if Soup was to get busted with the haul, he would roll over on Hoffman in a heartbeat. And Hoffman would be the one looking at time. There were judges out there who just loved to throw dirty cops in jail. Hoffman needed to find the coke and he needed to find it fast.
Yuri was waiting in the back office when Hoffman walked in, still wearing the black hat and the jeans and the boots, although now he’d switched to a red Western shirt, this one featuring looping lariats on each shoulder. He was behind the scarred desk, the size 12 boots propped on some scattered papers and magazines on the desktop. Hoffman sat opposite him.
“All right, where we going to find him?” he asked.
“You have other clothes?” Yuri asked.
“What?” Hoffman was wearing his brown suit.
“Every day you wear the same thing.”
“I wore a blue suit yesterday. What’re you talking about?”
“I don’t care the colors,” Yuri said. “Is still the same thing. You look like cop. We need to find Mr. Soup, and yet everywhere we go you might as well be wearing a sign that says, ‘I am cop!’”
“So I’m conspicuous?” Hoffman said. “You looked in the mirror lately?”
Yuri regarded his own attire with obvious admiration. “Ah, but I do not look like cop. Unless this is Dodge City in olden days. Then I look like U.S. marshal. But today, no one mistakes me for cop. So first thing we do, we go to your house and you change duds, partner.”
Hoffman threw his hands up. “All right, all right. If it makes you happy. We’ll go there first. What I want to know is where we’re going second.”
“Is good question,” Yuri said. “Mr. Soup is crackhead. If he is looking to buy drugs, he is easy to find. But we both know this is not the case. I think we can say that Mr. Soup has sufficient product. He is stoned and he is scared, yes? This means that he is holed up. We must flush him out.”
“And how do we do that?”
Yuri got to his feet. “I have no plan, not yet. But for flushing, I think we first must find birds of a feather.”
They walked out back, to where Hoffman’s car was parked beside the black pickup with the horns attached to the hood. Yuri indicated the sedan with the dented fender and shook his head. “We leave this car here. Is like your clothes, it screams cop.”
They got into the pickup and drove to Hoffman’s house in the suburbs. Hoffman went inside and changed into khaki slacks and a golf shirt he’d won at a police stag once, bearing the Kraft Foods logo across the breast pocket. Even untucked the shirt didn’t adequately cover the Glock on his belt, so he pulled on a windbreaker as well, despite the fact it was seventy-five degrees outside. He put his shield in his pocket, thinking he might find it useful where they were going, wherever the hell that turned out to be.
Before leaving his bedroom, he glanced out the window to see Yuri out of the truck, leaning against the front fender while he rolled a cigarette. Another cowboy cliché. Hoffman was sure his neighbors were getting an eyeful. They were a pretentious bunch of assholes and right now they were probably making jokes about the circus being in town. Not that he cared at all; he’d lived on the street for fourteen years and he never knew any of them well enough to call them by name.
He stopped in the kitchen and took down a bottle of rum from the cupboard above the fridge and drank a couple of ounces straight from the bottle. He was tired. He hadn’t slept much the night before, lying awake thinking of how stupid he had been not to remove the keys from the trunk lock, and then planning on what he would do to Soup when he found him. The scenarios varied, depending on whether he found him with the coke, or without. Either way, it wasn’t going to be a happy time for the thieving black fuck.
He took another drink, put the bottle away, and went outside. Yuri pulled on the rolled cigarette, exhaled as he watched Hoffman coming down the drive.
“Now you look like salesman,” he said. “At conference. All you need is silly hat.” When Hoffman got close, Yuri leaned toward him. “You even smell like booze, like salesman at conference. You have no normal clothes?”
“Fuck you,” Hoffman said. “This is it. We can’t all dress like a rodeo clown.”
Yuri laughed out loud. “Rodeo clown! See—you have sense of humor after all. Okay then, is no use. I think we could put you in bathing suit and still you would look like police.”
From Hoffman’s quiet neighborhood in Colonie they drove downtown. The Dodge truck towered over the cars on the street. Hoffman, sitting in the passenger seat, looked down into the vehicles they passed. He watched for women drivers with short skirts, the skirts hiked up to operate the pedals. Sitting at a light, one woman caught him gawking, and she gave him the finger. Stupid bitch.
They made their way along South Pearl, a few blocks from Jefferson Park, and Yuri pulled over to the curb. He indicated the various diners and greasy spoons on either side of the street.
“Whatever he is up to, Mr. Soup still has to eat,” he said. “Maybe you should check these fine establishments, see if he has been in for chow. I will go to Jefferson Park.”
“You mean you don’t want me with you,” Hoffman said.
“Now you are catching on,” the Russian said. “Even in your salesman outfit, you are sticking out like you have sore thumbs. So maybe it is best if you are still cop after all, maybe you find something that way. Is more than one way to skin cats, right?”
“Right,” Hoffman said, and got out.
“Leave your cell phone on,” Yuri added, leaning over to talk out the passenger window. “You find Mr. Soup, I am the first person you call. Is understood?”
“Yeah.”
But Hoffman had a disturbing thought as Yuri pulled away. What if it worked the other way around and Yuri found Soup? Would Hoffman be the first person Yuri would call? Or would Yuri call Hoffman at all?
Hoffman wasn’t convinced. He had no claim of ownership on the dope—after all, he had stolen it himself—and even if he did, there was nothing about the Russian to suggest he would honor a claim, bogus or otherwise. When Soup had first introduced Hoffman to Yuri, he had expected his status as a cop would carry some weight with the man. The opposite was true; Yuri seemed to enjoy putting Hoffman down—because he was a cop, not despite the fact. He obviously considered himself superior to Hoffman, and he wasn’t hesitant to show it. It was almost as if Hoffman was working for the Russian. He didn’t seem to care that Hoffman, with a quick phone call, could bring his world crashing down around him. Not that Hoffman had witnessed anything overtly criminal in his dealings with Yuri, but he was quite certain that the pool hall on Third Avenue wouldn’t stand up to a protracted search-and-seizure.
If the coke didn’t show up, if it was gone forever, then Hoffman would make that call before he left town. See if the Russian shit kicker thought that was funny.
Until then, he decided he needed to keep Yuri close. The black truck was still visible a couple of blocks away, idling at a stoplight. The Russian would park nearby, Hoffman assumed, and make his way into the park on foot. Ironically, Jefferson Park was the one place in the city where Yuri wouldn’t stand out. The place was a cesspool of freaks and addicts and other assorted losers. A mad Russian in a cowboy costume wouldn’t rate a second glance.
Hoffman started to walk toward the park, but he did take the time to check out the diners he passed along the way. Wouldn’t he love to stumble on Soup in one of them, having a little lunch before returning to his stash, wherever it was? It occurred to Hoffman again that Soup could very well overdose, if the
coke was as good as purported. But Soup was a crackhead; he’d be smoking the stuff, not shooting it. Hoffman had never heard of anybody OD’ing from smoking cocaine. He hoped that was true. If Soup killed himself, Hoffman would never find the coke. Some homeboys would stumble on it and it would be scattered to the four winds. The only positive to that scenario is that maybe it would take a bunch of them out too. But that wouldn’t help Hoffman’s retirement plans any.
Yuri was right about one thing. Even in his casual clothes, Hoffman wasn’t fooling anyone. He was known in the neighborhood, so the punks and the gangbangers and the junkies knew him by sight anyway, but even to others, it seemed, he was an easy man to make. He went with it, flashing his shield a couple of times when asking waitresses or proprietors if they’d seen Soup. Nobody had, or at least nobody was talking, not yet anyway. But somebody would. A man sitting on that much product couldn’t keep it quiet for long, no matter how hard he tried. Somebody would talk, somebody with an ax to grind, or an old score to settle. Soup had been a fuckup his whole life, and Hoffman was counting on him to come through again.
It took Hoffman the better part of an hour to walk the three blocks to the park. Jefferson Park took up most of a small block off South Pearl and on a warm July day it was crowded with people of all stripes—reckless skateboarders, mothers pushing strollers, teenagers shooting hoops or tossing footballs, girls sunbathing. And hustlers and creeps and users and perverts, all doing their thing. Homeless men with snot running down their faces, their pants stained with piss. Teenage girls, bad complexions covered with makeup, who would turn a trick for a pipe. Hoffman hated the place. It was everything that was wrong with the city and society in general. He’d spent too much time there when he worked drugs, and back then he’d been fond of saying that if he was running the city he’d bring the bulldozers in and turn the entire block into a parking lot. And he wouldn’t bother evacuating the place first.
Walking across the grass toward the pavilion at the park’s center, he knew that he drew looks. Not that he gave a shit. These people could smell a cop from a mile off, and it wouldn’t be hard to smell Hoffman anyway, sweating in the windbreaker in the summer heat. He didn’t see Yuri anywhere, but then he could be at the other end, or he might not even have come into the park yet. The surrounding neighborhood was a rat’s nest of drug dens and shooting galleries. Hoffman suspected that Yuri knew his way around the area. The notion only led to his anxiety over the possibility that the Russian would find Soup first and cut Hoffman out. The best solution, as Hoffman saw it, was to track Soup down himself. He even considered cutting Yuri out, but Yuri was the only buyer he had on the line. He could go back to Parson, but that really wasn’t an option. Not that Hoffman believed for a moment that Parson had forgotten about the coke.
That’s where the woman came in. Hoffman wondered if he might run into her down here. After all, she knew the territory too. That would be a bonus. He could remove her from the equation and send Parson a message in the process. Better yet, have Yuri do it. Hoffman suspected it was the type of thing Yuri enjoyed. Not only that, but if Yuri were to kill her, it would excuse Hoffman from any retribution from Parson.
Approaching the pavilion, he saw a large black woman selling peanuts and popcorn and other assorted snacks from a cart. The woman was familiar to Hoffman, yet it took a moment for him to place her as he approached. There was, on the other hand, no hesitation on her part. She turned to him and he saw the recognition come to her immediately; her expression went from neutral to one of pure hatred in the blink of an eye.
Hoffman remembered her then. He couldn’t recall her real name but she was known as Shell, a junkie who had operated as a dealer, strictly small-time, a decade or so earlier. It seemed to Hoffman she’d come from Jamaica originally; he remembered that she had an accent. It took him a little longer to figure out what it was that would make her look at him the way she was at this moment, and then it came to him. He’d busted her with a gram of smack one night, along with a couple hundred in cash. She’d been heading somewhere to fix and she was in a bad way. Hoffman had made a deal with her, letting her keep the dope while he took the money. But there had been a kicker to the deal—he’d also made her give him a blow job in the front seat of his cruiser.
He smiled at her now. “Shell,” he said. “Long time.”
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
“You heard me,” the woman said.
Hoffman shook his head, disappointed that she would carry a grudge after all these years. “So it’s nuts these days, is it?” he asked. He reached into the glass container and helped himself to a handful of cashews. “I hope that’s all you’re dealing, Shell.”
“That’s all,” she said. “You got your cashews, you can keep moving. Cuz I don’t want none of what you dealin’.”
“Telling me you’re clean, Shell?”
“Goin’ on three years now.”
“How’d you manage that? Once a junkie, always a junkie.” Hoffman smiled again. “Or is the city’s methadone program propping you up?”
“Maybe it is. None of your business.”
“Isn’t welfare a wonderful thing?” Hoffman asked. He ate a couple more cashews and then looked around, checking to see who might be within earshot. “I’m looking for Soup. You seen him?”
“I don’t know no Soup.”
“Don’t you fucking lie to me,” Hoffman said casually, still looking away.
She fell silent, admitting nothing. Her breathing was heavy, like she’d just climbed five flights of stairs.
“Okay, maybe you don’t know him,” Hoffman said, turning back to her now. “I just remembered you’re not from here originally, are you? You’re from Jamaica or the Dominican, one of those shitholes that sends us their criminals by the boatload.” Hoffman popped another cashew into his mouth. “Tell me, Shell. How’s your status these days? Did our government decide that a woman selling peanuts in a cesspool of a city park is providing an essential service and therefore issue you a green card? Is that what they decided?”
“My husband an American,” Shell said quietly, her voice so soft Hoffman had to lean closer to hear.
“That a fact?” he said. “And this marriage—is it for real? You didn’t just marry some junkie friend of yours from the hood in order to stay in the country, did you? Are you living with this husband, Shell? Because I can check it out. And while I’m checking it out, I’m pretty sure I can shut off your methadone until you can prove you actually belong in this country. That program is not for foreigners. That methadone is for honest-to-God red, white, and blue American junkies. You good with that—you okay to do without your daily shot for a week, or maybe two?” Shell blinked quickly, in an effort to stop the tears that were forming in the corners of her eyes. She took a breath, then exhaled. “I ain’t seen Soup for some time, maybe a week or more. That the truth.”
“Where would you find him, if you were looking?”
“I can’t say. That ain’t my world no more.”
“Bullshit,” Hoffman said. “Look where you’re standing, smack in the middle of it. So I’ll ask you once more and if you can’t come up with an answer, then I’ll just head over to the station and do what I need to do.”
She wouldn’t look at him. She picked up a cloth and wiped the glass on the cart, working the rag vigorously, as if trying to wipe away Hoffman’s very presence. She stopped, as if realizing the futility of it, and tossed the cloth aside. “His sister Janelle live over on Delaware. The walk-up beside the drugstore. I know sometime he crashes there. But that’s all I know.”
“Well, well,” Hoffman said. “That wasn’t too hard, was it?” He reached in and helped himself to more cashews. “Can I pay you for the nuts, Shell?”
“You can leave me the fuck alone.”
TWENTY
She had said she was framing town houses over in Rensselaer. At least that’s how Virgil remembered it anyway. He’d been fresh out of surgery and loaded up on pain
killers when she told him, sitting in her truck in the hospital parking lot. Even if his memory was accurate, it wasn’t going to make it easy to find her. Virgil didn’t know the area east of the Hudson all that well.
Virgil would have called Dusty but he couldn’t find the scrap of paper with her phone number on it. He was pretty sure it was still on the nightstand at the hospital when he’d left. If he could remember the number he wouldn’t have to make the trip; he simply needed to tell her that Brownie had been killed, and a phone call would suffice for that. She at least deserved a heads-up on that account. What she chose to do with the information was up to her. Virgil would finally be done with it.
It was after four thirty when he crossed the Dunn Memorial Bridge to drive into Rensselaer. It was a town of maybe ten thousand, the houses spread scattershot along the bank of the river, the roads running up and down steep inclines. Virgil promptly got lost in the meandering backstreets, came out of the maze, got lost again. He knew what her truck looked like, but that was all he had to go on.
After a half hour, he came upon a couple of new subdivisions on the north edge of town, close to where Inter-state 90 dipped down, heading east. The developments were, typically, pushing out into the countryside, eating up what appeared to be good farmland.
He was driving past the second site when he spotted the familiar blue Ford 150 parked in a mud lot across the road to his left. To his right was the work site itself, a number of half-constructed town houses with a large sign out front that read Murphy Construction.
Virgil missed the entrance to the lot and had to drive past. At the next intersection he turned around in a little strip mall, approached the parking lot again, and saw Dusty as she walked out of the half-constructed town house complex and crossed the street to where her truck was parked. She was wearing khaki pants and a T-shirt and a blue hard hat. Over her shoulder she carried a carpenter’s apron and in her right hand she held an air nailer. As Virgil approached, behind a line of cars, she got into her truck and drove away.