The Drop Zone

by Bob Kroll

  “Two other guys,” Peterson corrected, “and I never laid a glove.”

  “A week off the job, and you get sloppy and don’t call for backup?”

  “I didn’t think I needed it.”

  Danny reached into the back seat for the morning paper. He handed it to Peterson. “You’ll need it now. Front page, bottom left.”

  Peterson read the headline out loud. “Body found in city park.” He skimmed the item then lowered the paper. “No details?”

  “I’m holding back for a couple of days.”

  “How ugly is it?”

  “Ugly enough to keep seeing it.”

  That caught Peterson off guard: cast-iron Danny going white just talking about it.

  “Did you ID the body?”

  “Oh yeah. A friend of ours. Terry Sylvester. They strung him up between two trees and gutted him like a deer. His insides spread all over the ground like sausage. No gunshot wounds. No head contusions. Just a deep slit from his balls to his throat. Crouse thinks he was alive when they cut him.”

  Peterson stared out the windshield. Message sent; message received. He imagined a box filled with bad things, and he had flipped open the lid.

  “That’s problem number one,” Danny said. “Problem number two is Sylvester’s girlfriend. She’s downtown boiling over about cops muscling him for information. That could go upstairs. But that one, we can skate around. Number three is a little more complicated. The street knows about Sylvester, and that has Teabag so scared his face is all eyes. He’s holed up in that abandoned military housing complex and he wants to talk. He wants to spill what he knows to get the protection I promised. Only I had no authorization to make such a promise.”

  Peterson tried to draw a deep breath but cut it short with the pain. He waited for it to pass before speaking. His voice was cold. “Then we should hear what Teabag has to say, while he can still say it.”

  “I doubt a prosecutor will accept him as a key witness,” Danny said.

  “Not on his own. But if we have someone else.”

  “The dancer?” Off Peterson’s nod, Danny added. “We wouldn’t get a nickel from the department to protect one of them let alone two. Collar a gang of big-time drug dealers, maybe, but we’re talking pimps and whores. Only johns spend money on whores.”

  Peterson showed his frustration. “Then we go for information, stockpile evidence, and build a case from there.”

  “Teabag will negotiate.”

  “So we make more promises.”

  “And we pay them off with what?”

  “How many promises do you think he’s ever kept?”

  Danny started the car, and they drove across one of the harbour bridges to an area of tenements that had once housed married military personnel. It was now a wasteland of broken windows and sun-bleached paint. Treeless and dry, with empty laneways and alleys of cracked asphalt. A forsaken community of ghosts, dense and curdled behind a chain-link fence topped with razor wire.

  Danny grabbed a flashlight from the back seat and gestured for Peterson to take the smaller one from the glove box.

  The gate was open and the padlock lay on the ground, still attached to the heavy-duty chain that was cut in two.

  “Someone didn’t have a key,” Peterson said.

  Danny unsnapped his holster and laid his palm on the pistol butt.

  They walked around empty oil drums and entered the first of the three-storey tenements, its door off its hinges. They could hear rats’ feet running on broken glass. Almost on cue, they both reached for their cell phones to turn them off. Peterson found that his was already off, and he realized it must have been that way since the other night, when he started following the girl.

  “Déjà vu,” Danny whispered.

  Peterson didn’t answer. He knew what Danny meant: storage warehouses on the waterfront thirteen years ago. They were beat cops following up a call that a gut-shot drug dealer was holed up in one of them and was dying. They went in just like this. Frightened.

  Now they were careful as they made their way under sagging ceilings and around piles of rubble. There was broken plaster and damp-smelling dust throughout the labyrinth of small apartments and narrow hallways. They picked their way through the debris, down one lifeless corridor after another.

  Peterson sidestepped a fallen beam. His rib cage shot with pain. He winced and held it down, along with the fear of what was behind the closed door at the end of the long hall.

  “Where?” he whispered.

  “Inside,” Danny said. “It’s a big meeting room. I set him up, far right corner. Mattress. Camp stove.”

  “You worried?”

  Danny forced a smile. “Shitting bricks.”

  They waited outside the door, their backs pressed against the wall, listening. Then Danny called out, “Teabag! It’s me. Be cool, all right? I’m coming in.”

  Without moving position, Danny reached for the doorknob, swung the door inward, and flashed his light into the dark room. Peterson slipped in and crouched at one side of the door, catching the pain before it leaked out. Danny dodged around the open door to the other side. They played their flashlights over the room till Danny’s landed on Teabag. He was propped against the back wall with a bullet hole between his eyes. Peterson’s light fell on another body in much the same position.

  His stomach was in his mouth before he knew it. No holding back. He bent double and cried with the guilt he could not stand to feel.

  Debbie Wilson, Mississauga. Honey from the Rendezvous. Her eyes popping. Pistol in her mouth, and the back of her head blasted open. There was a cell phone beside her body, and not far away a piece of paper with Peterson’s phone number.

  Chapter

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Peterson was shuffled to the sidelines and out of the picture. A cop under suspension. His version didn’t make even a side­bar in the local press.

  Carmichael called, deeply concerned about Peterson’s mental state. He had set aside all the time Peterson needed, but Peterson didn’t go. Wouldn’t go. Wouldn’t give anyone associated with the department the time of day. Fuck ’em all, he told a reporter, who didn’t report it. Then he ripped out the land line. Left his cell phone off. Waddled around inside his head for three weeks, behind the walls of the house he had always avoided coming home to.

  Danny entered without knocking. It took him one look around the downstairs to know his former partner had lost what little grip he had. The stack of dirty dishes just showed a man living alone, but the pots and pans scattered on the floor among the pieces of broken glass, the dents in the refrigerator, the holes punched in the walls, and a stove element burning bright red told him something else.

  The living room confirmed it. Danny couldn’t walk in it without stepping on broken glass. He saw why. The glass-topped coffee table was shattered, wall mirrors smashed, and two porcelain table lamps demolished. It looked like a frat house on Sunday morning. Smelled like one, too, of stale beer and the cloying stink of a meat sandwich rotting somewhere.

  Peterson came from another room and stopped short at seeing Danny.

  “You having guests any time soon?” Danny said.

  Peterson ignored it. “It took you long enough.”

  “I wanted to give you time,” Danny said, his voice quieted by a touch of guilt. The brass had ordered him to stay away until they closed the disciplinary hearing. Their subtext was plain: keep clear of bad rubbish.

  “Yeah,” Peterson said. “I ran out of things to bust up.”

  Danny saw the stringy look in Peterson’s face. “You all right?”

  “You tell me!”

  “Doesn’t look it.”

  Peterson shrugged.

  Danny negotiated the obstacles in the kitchen and turned off the burner.

  “Is this a social call or am I still under investigation?”
Peterson asked.

  “You were never under —”

  “Two cops parked outside for two straight weeks, what do you call that?”

  Danny didn’t answer.

  “The department said it was observation,” Peterson said, “so I gave them something to observe. I walked across the street and punched one of them out. Then they called it just cause for dismissal.”

  Danny knew the story. It had been coffee-shop talk for days.

  “The union argued PTSD,” Peterson said, “and Carmichael confirmed it. I get two-thirds pension and a disability top-up. You want a beer?”

  Danny nodded. Peterson made his situation sound better than it was. The condition of the house proved it.

  Peterson led the way into a dark wood-panelled den that was tidy compared to the disaster zone they had just passed through. The den served as television room and computer station. He pulled two beers from a bar fridge, handed one to Danny, and settled on a leather love seat, gesturing for Danny to take the recliner.

  “How did you make out?” Peterson asked.

  “I still have my job,” Danny said, not meeting Peterson’s eyes.

  Peterson took a big slug of beer. “How much you pay to keep it?”

  “Cut the shit,” Danny scowled. “I didn’t like looking the other way any more than you.”

  “I didn’t look the other way!”

  Danny leaned over the arm of the chair to look into the smashed-up living room. “And where did that get you?”

  “Not much farther,” Peterson said, “but far enough that I can still use a mirror to shave myself.” He emphasized the point with another long slug.

  “Yeah, sure. Nothing eating at you.”

  Peterson ignored the put down. “Crouse go along too?”

  “It was Crouse’s call from the start. You know that. There was nothing to go on. The girl’s prints and only her prints on the gun. Bang, bang, close range for both of them. The girl killed Teabag and then herself. That’s how Crouse read the evidence, that’s how two investigators read it, and that’s how it made the press: whore kills pimp.”

  Peterson balled his fists and pounded the arms of his chair. “No! It wasn’t like that. I know it and so do you.”

  “How do we know?”

  Peterson was shaking. “Because we know.” He glared at Danny. “Who investigated?”

  “You know who investigated.”

  “And you don’t think Miles and partner cleaned it up?”

  “We can’t prove it,” Danny said. “We can’t prove shit. So what the fuck, huh? What the fuck was I supposed to do?”

  Peterson let it go. He drained his beer and got up to get two more. When he sat down and passed Danny another beer, he saw that his friend had tears in his eyes.

  They sat in silence, trying to find a way around what had come between them. Then Peterson reached for his cell phone and scrolled to a text message. He showed it to Danny.

  “She sent that text the night before they killed her. I had my phone turned off.”

  Danny read the text: Please!!!!!

  Danny jumped up and walked out of the room. His eyes jumped from one broken object to another. He came back and sat.

  “You can’t wear it like that.” Danny said. “And you can’t wear it for the both of us.”

  “She called me!” Peterson shouted.

  “And I kept my mouth shut!”

  Danny was back on his feet, walking into the living room and back again. There was something else pestering him and now he brought it out. “It’s going the same way with the Sylvester murder.”

  Peterson studied his friend. “That’s why you came.”

  Danny ignored it. He sat again. “City maintenance found the knife in a nearby sewer. Sylvester’s blood up the blade and then some. There were fingerprints.”

  “Let me guess. A two-time loser.”

  “Another Stoddard runaway. Stephen Emery. Paranoid schizophrenic. Hears voices like goddamn Joan of Arc.”

  “Funny how two and two always make four.”

  “We’re the only ones who think so,” Danny said

  “Miles and partner again?”

  Danny let his silence answer for him.

  Peterson leaned forward, his voice soft and cajoling. “You’re nosing after something.”

  Danny was back on his feet, walking through his thoughts. Still standing, he drained what was left of his first beer and started on the second. “They’re getting away with it.”

  “I’ve been thinking that for weeks and taking it out on the walls and furniture.”

  “Word came down to clean it up fast,” Danny said. “Gruesome murder. Put the public’s mind to rest. Some shit like that. Then all of a sudden the knife turns up. I know it happens, but this was just too … I mean how many times does city maintenance check the sewer lines, and what’s the chances of them going down that one, you understand?”

  “You said something?”

  “Yeah I said something, loud and clear.” Then off Peterson’s quizzical look, he added, “Fultz said we work with evidence. We don’t speculate on circumstances. I mean what the fuck is that, huh? We question everything. Everything. That’s our job.”

  “And everyone went along?”

  “Like we’re goddamn civil servants,” Danny said. “Go along to get along. We called it according to how it looked, how Miles wrote it up. No questions.”

  Peterson sipped his beer slowly, his thoughts racing. Danny couldn’t sit still. He was pacing again, into the living room and back, three or four times, then he said, “And there’s nothing we can do.”

  Peterson smiled.

  Danny saw it and stopped moving. He dropped into the recliner, his eyes on Peterson. “You’re working on something, aren’t you?”

  Peterson sipped his beer.

  “You going to tell me?”

  Peterson said nothing.

  Danny’s face flushed. “We backed up each other for how many years?”

  “I have nothing to lose if things go sideways,” Peterson said.

  “Now who’s being a guardian angel?”

  “There’s no place for coincidence in a murder investigation,” Peterson said. “There’s a link between Stoddard Hospital and the Posse.” He laced his fingers together. “I just have to ruffle some feathers and find out what.”

  Danny took his time. He took a long slug of beer. Then another. Then he leaned toward Peterson. “What do you need?”

  Chapter

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Peterson parked outside Three Oaks Nursing Home and waited for her bus to arrive. He had cleaned up his act before coming: a haircut the day before, and a new plaid shirt and chinos. He still wore the same beat up pair of Rockport walkers. He even lost the beard stubble, but not the gloominess that seemed to follow him always.

  The bus arrived and Anna stepped down, and after it drove off, she started across the street and stopped dead when she saw him climbing from his car. He gave her the Queen’s wave, and that seemed to have been the right thing to do, because she smiled, finished crossing the street, and took his hand.

  They walked over to the nursing home and through the empty lobby to the elevators. His walkers and her white sneakers, squeaking across the polished grey tile floor, made a syncopated rhythm, accentuated by the steady purl of their voices.

  “I needed time to get my head together,” he said.

  “I know. And I needed time to figure out who I am and what I want.”

  “How far did you get.”

  “I thought it through.”

  He waited in the hallway as she entered her mother’s room, a room made forever sad, despite the bright paint, by its institutional furniture and the hospital corners on the bedcover. Photographs and knick-knacks covered the top of the dresser (no nails in t
he walls), and a yellow and brown afghan on the recliner attempted cheeriness. He watched her straighten what did not need straightening, tidy what did not need tidying, and fuss the way you fuss over someone you love.

  Then she led him down the hall, past the nurses station, toward the sing-song coming from the Great Room. Her mother sat off by herself, unwilling to join the dozen or so seniors around the piano. The old woman with an apple-doll face stared into the blur of the window glass, singing to herself. “When the Red, Red Robin goes bob, bob, bobbing along …”

  She looked up at Anna as they approached and asked, “Is it Sunday already?”

  “Yes,” Anna said, laying her white sweater over the back of a nearby chair.

  “You went to mass? Took Communion?”

  “You know I did.”

  The same questions. The same conversation. The same way of holding on to a moment of clarity.

  Anna leaned down and gave her a kiss. “You’re not with the others.”

  “I enjoy being alone.”

  “You always did.”

  Peterson backed out of the Great Room, leaving mother and daughter to have their time together. He grabbed a magazine from a side table in the lobby, settled in a wingback chair, and waited. An hour later, Anna appeared beside him.

  “Let’s walk,” she suggested.

  “No music in the church?”

  “That would be too convenient,” she said and took his hand and led him from the nursing home.

  They hadn’t gone far when she said, “This is my life. The Birthright Centre and a nursing home. There isn’t much else in it, except for my willingness to believe in something more than what you once called real life. I also have books and music, and that’s about it.”

  Peterson said nothing. He held her hand and was well aware of its softness and the shape of her fingers.

  “I caught myself feeling for you,” she continued. “There’s a goodness in you that you keep so well hidden. And I understand why. I would too if I had to live your life. But I can’t live it. I won’t let myself be part of it. Do you understand?”

  Peterson nodded and let go of her hand. “I can’t live it either,” he said, “but I have to.”