The Drop Zone

by Bob Kroll

  “My partner,” Danny said. “He’s cool with the arrangement.”

  Teabag was not happy as the two of them pulled up wooden chairs and sat in positions that cornered the pimp on his throne.

  Danny wasted no time. He flipped Teabag a morgue photo of the girl from the Broken Promise. “Was she a working girl?”

  Teabag gave it a close look and flipped it back. “Can’t be sure. You know what they say.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Danny said. “White girls all look the same.”

  Teabag’s smile could just as easily have been a sneer. His voice was like grinding glass. “Pussy don’t have a colour barrier.”

  “I heard that being said.”

  “Hearing ain’t knowing.”

  Peterson interrupted, pointing to the photograph in Danny’s hand. “Was someone running her?”

  Teabag didn’t answer. He waited for Danny to ask the same question, and when Danny asked it, Teabag skated it by. “I’m leaving that out,” he said.

  Peterson leaned closer. “What are you leaving in?”

  Teabag still wouldn’t give Peterson a straight look. He kept his eyes on Danny. “It blows back and I get wasted.”

  “You buy insurance, you pay a premium,” Danny prodded.

  Teabag fiddled with a silver bracelet. “It’s a business arrangement. Back and forth, here and out west.”

  “Where west?” Danny asked.

  “Fucked if I know. I get out of town, and who knows which way is up.”

  “Fuck with me, Teabag,” Danny said, “and I’ll fuck with you.”

  Teabag stared back hard. “Long haul girls back and forth. Quebec. Ontario. That’s what I know.”

  “Keep them moving?”

  Teabag shrugged. “Like a franchise, man, like they get a piece of every transaction.”

  “Who’s they?” Peterson questioned.

  Teabag shook his head. His eyes pleaded with Danny for a break, but Danny wasn’t giving one. “Pay the premium,” Danny ordered.

  Teabag made half a dozen different faces of anguish then he snorted and said, “Posse, man!”

  “Wholesalers?” Danny asked.

  “Fuck, yeah.”

  “You dipping their supply?”

  “Sometimes I freshen up. Whores wear out.”

  An urge balled up from Peterson’s guts and filled his mouth with a sour, stinking taste. It was all he could do to keep his fists still. He inched closer on his chair, reading the fear in Teabag’s face. “Posse running girls at home?”

  Teabag kept his eyes on Danny. He was telling Danny not Peterson. “You know what they say, supply and demand.” He rubbed his fingers together. Money. “Baby snatch goes private. A driver makes deliveries.”

  “He have a name?” Danny asked.

  “No name.”

  “Then give me a face.”

  Teabag squirmed. “I give him up, they’ll know who,” he said.

  “We can tiptoe when we know where to walk,” Peterson said.

  Teabag considered the offer for a little longer than Danny appreciated.

  “Otherwise,” Danny threatened, “we’ll be on you like a house on fire. Shut you down.”

  Teabag threw back his head and drew a deep breath. He talked to the ceiling. “You’re looking for a skinhead with a face like bad news.”

  “That could be you,” Peterson taunted.

  Teabag lowered his head and stared hard at Danny to show his contempt for his partner.

  Danny wasn’t buying it. “I’m still not seeing this guy.”

  “Fuck,” Teabag said. He was walking on thin ice now, and it showed in the way his eyes danced and his voice squeezed through his teeth. “A guy with a snake on each arm. Big ones, with flat heads.”

  “Cobras?” Danny asked.

  “Yeah, that’s what they are.”

  Peterson saw the sweat bead on Teabag’s upper lip and knew Teabag’s back was a river. Press too hard now and the pimp would clam up. Peterson chanced it. “The private deliveries come with names?”

  Teabag shook his head.

  Danny stood abruptly, circled his chair, and settled his hands on its back. “You ain’t burning an IOU unless you have names.”

  “I don’t have names,” Teabag insisted. “We’re talking suits, know what I mean? I hear but I don’t ask. Posse lets me sell pussy, I don’t care.”

  Peterson leaned so close he could have bitten Teabag’s chin. “The suits wear ties?”

  “Oh yeah,” Teabag said, his eyes fixed on Danny. “They dressed.”

  Chapter

  TWENTY-ONE

  They sat on the patio outside Carmichael’s office, psychiatrist and patient, uncomfortable in wooden lawn chairs. Beyond the patio was a lawn and flower garden with wooden benches, concrete ornaments, a huge sundial, and an abstract stone sculpture that looked to Peterson like a question mark. Colour blasted the men from all sides, challenging the dark probing of one and the moodiness of the other. A red oak shielded them from direct sunlight.

  The casual setting and the iced tea were not lost on Peterson. He was on the defensive.

  “I pressed a devil worshiper too hard,” Peterson replied to Carmichael’s question. “He griped, and his lawyer claimed police intimidation, threw in religious intolerance and whatever else he could scratch from his law books.”

  “Was it?” Carmichael sipped his iced tea, watching Peterson’s reaction over the brim.

  Peterson opened his hands in a gesture of remorse. Even his voice curried favour. “He’s a suspect in a brutal murder.”

  “There are rules of engagement,” Carmichael said.

  “You finger a sore spot to get a patient talking. That’s all I did.”

  “And it got you a reprimand for conduct unbecoming a police officer, and one very vocal member of the Police Commission calling for your head on a silver platter. He wants you riding a desk for the rest of your career.”

  “That’s why I need a good word,” Peterson said.

  “I don’t have a good reason to give you one.”

  Peterson took it on the chin and looked past Carmichael to the stone sculpture — a symbol of doubt and wonderment — and beyond to a bed of flowers, dark brown spots in bright yellow skirts.

  “What are those called?” Peterson gestured toward the flowers.

  “Black-eyed Susans.”

  Peterson heaved a deep breath and looked back at the shrink. “The job is who I am.”

  “And who is that?” Carmichael set his glass on the table and folded his hands. “You can start by being honest with yourself. You’re all alone, Peterson. You’ve closed yourself off from what you love. Now you have to answer the question: Why?”

  Peterson didn’t answer.

  “If the job is who and what you are,” Carmichael continued, “then you’re deeper in the woods than I suspected. You’re more than just a cop, Peterson. You have wounds that won’t heal. And you have a sensitivity you can’t shrug off. So drop the baggage. Leave who you think you are behind. Lower your guard and start searching for the you that is hidden inside.”

  Peterson leaned his head on the back of the chair and stared through the tree branches at a single dark cloud drifting in a blue sky. “Anyone ever say you talk a lot of bullshit?”

  Carmichael smiled. “More than once.”

  Peterson’s cell phone rang. A scream. Then it stopped. Then it screamed again.

  Carmichael watched Peterson go numb at the sound of the phone. Staring at it in the palm of his hand. “You’re supposed to shut that off.”

  “I know.”

  “Then answer it,” Carmichael said. “You know who it is.”

  Peterson checked the cell phone to see what he had seen so many times before: the fleabag room, the unmade bed, the peeling wallpaper.
“Katy.”

  No response.

  He turned off the cell phone. The fullness he had once felt so long ago had dissipated with the years. Carmichael was right; his life had shrivelled down to nothing.

  “What are you afraid of?” Carmichael asked.

  Peterson looked Carmichael full on. “To hear she is a corpse on a slab, with no one to claim her body.”

  Carmichael leaned forward to reach this man who had become little more than a shadow in a dark alley. “Then unmask the fear and face it. There is still time to become the father you wished you had been.”

  Peterson straightened and rose from the chair. “We must be into overtime by now.”

  “Or we could just start a new game.”

  “What game is that?”

  “We start talking for real. We talk about the real you, about your wife and daughter. About what they meant to you, or didn’t. We get inside the hurt you feel, and the guilt. We peel it back and see it for what it is. We drag up the past, all of it, back to when you were a kid. We face it. No more running away. We do what we have to do to help you mend your mind and your heart.”

  Peterson took a deep breath and stood. “Maybe we will, but not right now. I have something to do.”

  On his way out of the garden he stopped and turned. “Don’t give up on me, not yet.”

  “My door is open.”

  Chapter

  TWENTY-TWO

  Searching the department’s database for an ugly skinhead with snake tattoos was a snap for some, but not for Peterson. Opening files, searching folders, even patching in hard drives and scanners was one thing, but negotiating his way through a national database was like mapping out a driving tour around the world. He needed help, but asking for it was tricky. He had to keep the search on the Q.T. In a police department that was all ears, someone trying to keep details of an investigation under wraps was the first thing everyone talked about, especially Miles and his cronies. And one thing Peterson was sure about was that any organization making big money under the table had someone in the cop shop who would tell them the news before it hit a briefing session in the squad room. The Posse would be no different.

  His dilemma resolved itself later that night. He was sitting in the empty Investigation Unit, in his customary pose — flask in hand, feet propped on a file box, staring into the overhead light — when he heard Bernie call his name from across the room. Then a sandwich sailed through his line of sight and landed square in his lap. He snapped forward and reached for the floor in time to stop himself from toppling out of the chair. “What the —?”

  “Food,” Bernie said, towering over him. “We eat and talk. No argument.” She dropped into Danny’s chair with a sandwich of her own.

  Peterson righted his chair, looked at the smoked meat sandwich and then at Bernie. She was dead serious.

  “Eat, for Christ’s sake,” she said, “and if there’s any left in that flask, you’re sharing.”

  Peterson unscrewed the top and gave her the flask. She took a big sip and passed it back.

  “I thought you had a son to go home to,” Peterson said.

  “Don’t be a smart ass,” Bernie snapped. “Jarvis Owens, the kid delivering pizza, the hit on him was a mistake. That night he was covering a shift for Leon Allen, who delivered pizza and juggled crack. Allen had been cutting a bigger slice for himself, and someone intended to make him an example. The connection between the hit on Allen and on the accountant was pure coincidence. Two different hires, same shooter.”

  “How’d you find that out?”

  Bernie grinned. “I squeezed someone on a parole violation.”

  “That’s not playing fair.”

  “I faked nothing. The guy was smoking up outside a known crack house.”

  “And you just happened to be there.”

  “I got a phone call from a friend of a friend. No rules broken.”

  “And he told you about Jarvis Owens?”

  “No, about Leon Allen. He said Allen pissed someone off, someone up the line.”

  “Montreal?”

  “Looks that way.”

  Peterson nodded and toasted her with the flask, took a sip, and passed it over. “You tell anyone?”

  “Fultz. He said there’s enough to pass it to the Mounties.”

  “You pleased with that?”

  Bernie glanced across the empty room to its reflection in the dark windows. “Like you said, we don’t do it for the pat on the back. So what the hell, right?”

  “Yeah, what the hell,” Peterson said, feeling envy and admiration. They each had another sip. Then Peterson said, “Before you pull out another cold case, I could use some help.”

  Bernie had ID’d the skinhead before Peterson had eaten half the sandwich and drained the flask. She passed him a six-page printout that painted Terry Sylvester as a home-grown hard ass with previous convictions for assault, sexual assault, driving under the influence, breaking and entering, armed robbery, and violating probation. He lived in a trailer park fifteen clicks out of town.

  Peterson and Danny knew the trailer park for what it was: a dump for three-time losers. A previous generation of cops had nicknamed the trailer park “Calcutta” after the notorious city in India. It still lived up to its reputation, even under the cover of darkness.

  They coasted up to Sylvester’s trailer with their car engine and headlights off and closed the doors without making a sound. The front yard was dirt and littered with a junk car, car parts, a ten-foot tripod for hoisting out engines, scrap wood, rubbish, a hot water tank cut in half for an empty flower box, and a rusted half-ton truck. They climbed the rickety porch to the front door, and that had the rubbernecks across the lane at their window.

  From inside Sylvester’s trailer a man’s voice hollered, “Get the fuck out!” Then a woman’s voice screamed something back that was too high-pitched to make out but sounded crude. Within moments, the man and woman started going at it, yelling and smashing dishes.

  Danny and Peterson found themselves in the middle of a domestic battle. They entered without knocking.

  The inside looked like stink. Dirty dishes and glasses. Beer bottles left wherever they ran empty. On the kitchen side was a chrome table and chairs with the vinyl backs and seats torn and the stuffing coming out. The living-room side was crowded with a metal case for knick-knacks, a big TV, and a shabby yellow couch and even shabbier vinyl recliner that had a board propping up the back.

  The man had his shirt off and he was sloppy fat. He was also bleary eyed and drunk. His face, thrust forward in defiance, was snarly looking behind a few days’ growth and under a shaved head. The snake tattoos on his arms were the give-away.

  He wore jeans. So did she, standing ten feet away, a wiry little thing with her face on fire under a mop of dirty blonde hair. Her eyes were popping and her mouth was going a mile a minute. She was cutting the man to shreds, a harpy with a sharp tongue that sounded like car wheels spinning on ice. She called him a no-fuck fucker who was no goddamn good like most of the shitty-assed men she had ever met.

  They went back and forth with “fuck you” and “screw you” and how neither was any good and never would be. There was no sense to what they were saying, no root to the argument, and no way to take sides, except to line up hard against the woman’s stabbing screech.

  Peterson sensed right off that if they didn’t get those two apart, the fight would get a lot uglier than it already was. And that’s what Danny tried to do, stepping between them, pointing at one, then the other, telling her to shut up and for him to step outside.

  Danny had no sooner said it when the woman spit at the man and sprayed Danny in the face. Danny’s eyes sharpened to razors, and he bellowed again for the woman to shut up.

  But she didn’t. She coiled against the table and never let up. She called Danny every foul word there was. And Dan
ny blew steam right back, going at her face to face and calling her whatever name came into his head.

  The skinhead was at Danny’s back with his fists balled and ready to pounce when Peterson grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him outside, nearly taking the doorjamb with them. He stuffed the man into the back of the car and climbed in beside him, still holding his shoulders. Now he twisted him around in the seat, grabbed his arm and cocked it up behind his back. That brought a deep belly groan and then silence.

  Danny slammed the trailer door then slid behind the wheel and started the car. He drove to the back of the trailer park, where the residents dumped their trash. There was a mountain of it, and it stank as bad as it was high. Danny negotiated around the trash heap and down a grown-over logging road about a hundred metres and stopped. He climbed from the car, nodded to Peterson, then stepped from the skinhead’s view, staying close enough to hear what was being said.

  Sylvester reeked of booze, but Peterson could still smell the sickening sourdough odour of OxyContin seeping from his pores.

  “I’m quiet, all right,” Sylvester slurred. “Calming down. I’m calming down.”

  “Your name Terry Sylvester?” Peterson asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I got you down for a hit and run.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “The license number and truck description matches the one parked in front of your trailer, and the registration is in your name.”

  Sylvester denied hitting anyone and kept denying it until Peterson wrenched his arm to shut him up.

  “I scraped threads from a yellow dress off the dent in the right front end.”

  That had the skinhead blowing more steam, cursing everything and everyone. Another arm-wrench silenced him.

  “There was a girl on the sidewalk,” Peterson continued. “She saw the whole thing and picked you out of a mug shot file. She gave a description: a skinhead with a face only a mother could love.”

  With his free hand Peterson twisted Sylvester’s head so he could see the skinhead’s face. “Yeah, you’re him.”