Buried on Avenue B

by Peter de Jonge

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” says O’Hara, jumping to her feet, “it’s our van. We got to get this toddler’s attention.”

  “I got it covered,” says Wawrinka, getting to her feet.

  “What are you going to do?”

  Wawrinka reaches for the Sauer automatic holstered in the small of her back, undoes the safety, aims it straight over her head, and fires three times.

  CHAPTER 39

  IN THE FADING light, the green van is little more than a dark rectangle. It’s not until the Caddy and the Cherokee have been shunted aside, and the van brought closer to the ground, that O’Hara can see that the tires and wheels have been stripped along with all the glass—front windshield, passenger windows, and side-view mirrors. There are no windows in the back of the van.

  Using a forklift, Porter lowers the van to within four feet of the ground, then turns toward the edge of the clearing. As he navigates the rutted track between the outer stacks and the first line of surrounding woods, O’Hara, Wawrinka, and the dog walk behind the front-loaded vehicle like mourners following a loved one to the grave. The evening smells of damp clay and pine, and the air buzzes with moths, gnats, and mosquitoes. After half a mile, a clean boxlike structure materializes in the woods. “Could you pull up the door in the middle,” asks Porter over the idling engine, “then pull it shut as soon as we’re in. Maybe we can keep most of the bloodsuckers out.”

  O’Hara grabs the handle and braces her back, but the door flies up the well-oiled track so easily she nearly loses her balance. Inside, the darkness is complete. The echo of Porter’s clomping steps are followed by an electrical thwunk, and a bank of fluorescent lights come on in succession across the high ceiling. Rather than a backwoods shed, O’Hara finds herself in an immaculate three-bay garage with whitewashed cement floors.

  Porter parks the forklift in the center bay and gently lowers the rusted axles to the floor. To the left an automotive shape is covered by a tarp, and to the right on a jack is number 57—a black dirt-track racer, its front end almost as banged up as the Skylark after the first blow inside the compactor. Surrounding the number in scripts of various size and color are the car’s sponsors—MABEL’S TOWING, EZ EXCAVATING, TP SALVAGE, and BO’S BAR & GRILL—and on the wall behind it a large poster: CHEROKEE MOTOR SPEEDWAY, THE PLACE YOUR MAMA WARNED YOU ABOUT.

  Slowly, O’Hara circles the van. She is so stunned and relieved to have found it and so riveted by the dazzling sight of it in front of her in the operating room light, she is half afraid it’s a mirage, and for several minutes forgets she isn’t the only person in the garage. Outside, there was just enough light for O’Hara to make out the little bits of black and the W in the middle. Under the powerful fluorescent lights of the garage it’s clear that those flecks of black are what remain after someone hurriedly scraped off letters painted on the side panel with a stencil. Standing to the side, the outlines of even the most thoroughly scraped-off letters are plain: SARASOTA WATER AUTHORITY, word for word, letter for letter, exactly what Sharon Di Nunzio remembered seeing briefly in Banyan Bay visitor parking more than six months ago.

  “God bless her heart,” says O’Hara, talking out loud for the first time. “That ninety-year-old slut got it exactly right.”

  “Excuse me?” Porter’s drawl brings O’Hara out of her thoughts and back into the room. Porter, who goes about six-four, two-fifty, with the kind of NFL lineman infrastructure that could handle fifty more, stands in front of her, both hands shoved into the pockets of his greasy jeans. Size notwithstanding, Porter doesn’t evince a shred of menace. His fleshy jug head, and furrowed brow, suggest a benevolent mastiff. On the other hand, Porter has every incentive to put his best foot forward, and since O’Hara and Wawrinka abruptly got his attention, he has been projecting goodwill in buckets.

  “I need some answers,” says O’Hara. “They are sufficiently important that for the moment, I’m going to move off to one side your dealings with that Clint Eakins and how you happened to come into possession of this vehicle. First of all, what is it exactly?”

  “A 2004 GMC Astrovan.”

  “How long have you had it?”

  “I picked it up about five months ago. Except for my sister’s boy, who comes in a couple afternoons and Saturdays, it’s just me here. So the vehicle would have sat in the yard for another two months easy before I got around to doing anything to it.”

  “As in stripping it for parts?”

  “That’s right.”

  “So how long has it been exposed to the elements?”

  “About three months, and unfortunately, this time of year, you can count on a thunderstorm every week.”

  “One last question for now. What’s the name of your dog?”

  “Mabel.”

  CHAPTER 40

  CAREFUL NOT TO touch the side of the car, the five-foot-four O’Hara takes her first look inside. The height of the opening makes it difficult to see much, and even in the bright light the interior is in shadows. Without prompting, Porter rolls a metal chest of Snap-on tools to the driver’s-side, locks the wheels, and helps O’Hara onto it, giving her platform from which to peer down into the front of the van. Then he drives the forklift to the opposite side of the car, attaches two hanging lights to the lift, and raises it just short of the roofline. The lights, aiming downward from the top of the missing passenger window, illuminate the entire front interior.

  Three months without a windshield have subjected the dash to a furious aerial assault, and it’s caked with a thick omelet of bird shit. They say that a roomful of monkeys equipped with typewriters will eventually tap out the plays of William Shakespeare. That may or may not be true, but with a couple months and a sky full of birds you get a Jackson Pollock.

  “I’ve never seen pigeon shit like this,” says O’Hara.

  “Neither have I,” says Porter. “This is crow and blackbird, a little osprey and hawk, and maybe a couple seagulls who took a wrong turn.”

  “Kind of like you, Porter. For a car thief, you certainly know your bird shit.”

  Porter’s only response is to continue to offer the same high level of personal service, which combines the anticipation of a valet and the resourcefulness of a gaffer. He rummages through a drawer and grabs a spackling knife. “How about I try to dig out the vehicle identification number?”

  “That would be lovely.” As she surveys the garbage-strewn interior, Porter chips and scrapes the left side of the dash until he unshits a metal tag. He wipes it with a soaked rag, then reads the numbers to Wawrinka, who calls them in to Sarasota PD. Watching them interact, it occurs to O’Hara that Wawrinka has finally encountered someone butcher than her.

  O’Hara returns her attention to the interior. The foot wells on the driver and passenger side hold a foot of gray water, and the seats, as well as the raised area between them, are littered with a sodden mess of greasy food wrappers and cardboard containers representing the major enablers of American obesity.

  Although the light is good, leaning into the car’s window without being able to touch any part of it for support requires the strength and flexibility of the contortionists whose portraits hang in the Ringling Museum. O’Hara can’t do it for more than thirty seconds at a time before her back starts to give, but that’s enough to see that there is more trash than would have accumulated in a twelve-hour sprint from Florida to South Carolina. That suggests the perps have been using this van for several days or weeks before Levin was killed.

  This is confirmed when Wawrinka gets a return call from Sarasota PD. “The VIN bounced back,” says Wawrinka. “The van was rented from Alamo at the Sarasota Airport on February 18, thirteen days before Levin got shot. It was put on MasterCard by a Nicholas Adams of 187 Parade Hill Road, Dearborn, Michigan, and when the bill wasn’t paid and the address found to be fake, was reported stolen three months later. According to his Michigan driver’s license, which has the same
phony address, Adams is twenty-three, five-seven, a hundred and thirty-five pounds. No priors under that name.”

  “They have a picture?”

  “No. Michigan is one of only two states where they don’t have license pictures in the system. All we got is the description.”

  Like a snorkeler, O’Hara takes a breath and leans back into the car. In addition to the bird-shit-speckled garbage, there’s a flotilla of trash on the water. O’Hara can make out a half dozen Pepsi and Coke cans, several water bottles, and a plastic Advil tub. Beside it, floating on its back in a clear pouch is a Happy Meal toy. The green figure is the first thing she has seen that makes her think of the kid rather than the perps, and the thought of his agonizing death hits her in the chest. As she unfolds from the window, Wawrinka returns from the small kitchen in the back of the garage.

  “Darlene, I just got off the phone with my sergeant,” says Wawrinka, and for the first time since O’Hara met her, she sounds uneasy. “For starters, he sends his congratulations.”

  Okay, thinks O’Hara, what’s the lousy part?

  “He’s sending a crime scene here first thing in the morning with a flatbed to haul the van back to Sarasota.”

  “And?”

  “He wants us to shut it down for the night. He doesn’t want us to risk anything that could compromise the scene. He knows when we left this morning and how tired we are at this point, thinks we’ve done enough for the night.”

  “Sounds like a helluva guy,” says O’Hara. “Compromise the crime scene? Why would he think we would do that?”

  It’s bad enough, thinks O’Hara, I have to deal with my own sergeant. Now I’m getting another layer of supervision from Sarasota?

  “I don’t know,” says Wawrinka. “He doesn’t want us to take any chances. Like I said, he thinks we’ve done enough for the night.”

  Rather than responding, O’Hara acts like she hasn’t heard a word and turns to Porter, as if Wawrinka isn’t in the room. “Terry, could you raise the lift an inch or two so more light hits the water.” Once Porter has done that, O’Hara twists her upper body back through the window. With the improved light, she notices two additional objects floating on the water. They are boxes of some kind, but more substantial than the containers for Whoppers and McNuggets, and they are both dark red.

  “Terry, do me another favor. Stick your head in here and take a look at the two red boxes floating on the water. Tell me what you see.” O’Hara comes down off the tool chest so Porter can slide it aside. Then he carefully sticks his massive head into the car. It takes him a second to find the boxes she is referring to.

  “I see them. One box has gold trim, and so does the other. There’s writing on the top of it, on top of the box, starts with a C, ‘Carter,’ ” he says. “You know what, I think it’s a ring box. It is. An empty ring box. Both of them. They’re a set. Same color. Same gold trim.”

  “Carter, you sure about that? How about Cartier?”

  “That’s it. There’s an i.”

  “Darlene,” says Wawrinka, “we got to shut down.”

  “I just want to see if there’s any way to see into the back.”

  “That’s a bad idea. Listen, there’s something I didn’t tell you. Apparently your sarge and my sarge have gotten all chummy. In the process, your sergeant warned mine about you. Said you’re a great detective, but a loose cannon, that you sabotage yourself. Here’s the thing, I don’t give a shit about my sergeant or your sergeant. I’m sure they deserve each other. But I don’t want to let you do something stupid for my own reasons, because you’re my friend. You found this van, and I don’t know one other detective that could have done that. Now let’s get drunk.”

  CHAPTER 41

  BO’S BAR & GRILL is a hillbilly version of an East Village dive. The light and clientele are just as murky, the jukebox (Haggard, Atkins, Jones, Jagger/Richards, Plant/Page) as good, and the ladies’ bathroom, where O’Hara slaps up a Flat Screens sticker, a half step better than a latrine. The only difference is that no one is sporting a fedora or arrived on a bicycle, and no one’s parents are paying the rent.

  While Wawrinka and Porter detour to the pool table, O’Hara grabs a bottle of Maker’s Mark, and a glass of ice and settles into a tattered booth with her new best friend, who happens to be a dog. O’Hara’s strength as an investigator is that she’s a world-class muller, willing to roll over the same pebble as long as it takes to yield a fresh drop of blood. The flip side is the tendency to aim the same obsessive attention at herself, which can feel like falling asleep under a sunlamp. The great perquisite of finding the van is knowing that for the next several hours, she’ll be gnawing on the case instead of herself.

  As she imbibes her first hard alcohol in a week, she makes a mental list of everything she now knows or is close to knowing about the perps, some of which she shares aloud with Mabel. Based on the discarded empty ring boxes and the bogus but official-sounding “Sarasota Water Authority” painted on the side of the van, they’re burglars. They knock on people’s doors. They bullshit their way in, and they rob them. Based on their MO, and efficiency at carrying it off, they’ve done this many times before. They’re pros. They’ve got skills. With a stencil and a can of spray paint, they turn a generic rental into an official vehicle and themselves into municipal employees. O’Hara rattles the ice, and tells Mabel, “Despite being from New York, they rent the van with a credit card and license from Michigan, which just happens to be one of two states that doesn’t store photographs in their computer files.”

  O’Hara refreshes her glass with ice and bourbon, glances at the pool tournament in progress, then returns her attention to Mabel. “One thing that’s a little odd,” she tells the dog, “is that they’re a burglary outfit from New York, but work a thousand miles away in Sarasota. That’s a long way to go for a couple old rings, don’t you think, even if they are from Cartier.” Thinking about it more, she sees the advantages of working in a random destination far from where you live—the cops don’t know who you are, and if the cops don’t know you, there’s no way for them to lean on you or your friends and no one to rat you out, and you don’t have to worry about bumping into one of your victims at the corner bodega. It’s just another example of their professionalism. But why bring along the kid? Why involve a kid at all? If they walk up to some apartment and claim to be with the water company, doesn’t having a kid contradict the story and make the whole thing less persuasive? And despite the empty jewelry boxes and the bogus writing on the van, there was no evidence Levin’s place had been ransacked or anything stolen.

  When O’Hara looks away from Mabel, Wawrinka and Porter have joined them in the booth. “There’s something you got to see,” says Wawrinka. Her eyes sparkle, and her face is flushed with a tequila glow. “Show her, Porter.”

  Porter, in the outside corner of the booth, pulls his jeans over a massive calf and unveils a tattoo portrait of the junkyard proprietor as a very young man. The young Porter who already has his distinctive jug head, sits astride his plastic Big Wheel. The seat is red, the fork and handlebars yellow, and the wheels black with yellow inserts. Beneath the pedals is the slogan—“Fast, Furious & Fun.”

  “That’s his first vehicle, Darlene. His first set of wheels. That’s where it all starts.”

  “In the beginning,” says O’Hara, “was the Big Wheel.”

  “Exactly,” says Wawrinka, and as O’Hara chinks glasses with her partner, she shares an eye roll with Mabel.

  “And you know something else, Dar,” says Wawrinka, slurring slightly. “That fifty-seven car on the lift. Porter built that himself from scratch. Fabricated the body, everything.”

  “Too bad I can’t keep it on the track,” he says.

  O’Hara has been so immersed in her thoughts, she hadn’t noticed that all the other customers have left, and now the barkeep approaches their booth.

  “Go home,” says P
orter. “I’ll lock up.”

  “Sure?”

  “No problem.”

  “You own this bar, don’t you,” says O’Hara. “You brought us to your own goddamn bar. No wonder the name of the place is on your car. I guess that means you also own EZ Excavating, and God knows what else.”

  “A little real estate is all,” says Porter, embarrassed.

  “I always figured ‘entrepreneur’ is just another word for ‘criminal’,” says O’Hara, chinking his glass. The departure of the bartender reminds her how exhausted she is. “I need to pack it in too,” she says.

  “I got a little apartment upstairs,” says Porter, “in case my friends or I get too drunk to drive home. A guy like me doesn’t need a DWI, right? Two beds in each room, and I just washed the sheets. Swear to God.”

  “I’m going to take you up on that,” says O’Hara, “as long as I can borrow your dog.”

  “Mabel’s a grown woman,” says Porter; “she can do as she pleases.”

  “I’ll be up in a bit,” says Wawrinka, heading back to the table. “I don’t want to end the night on a losing streak.”

  O’Hara and Mabel climb the stairs to a bedroom as clean as Porter’s garage where they barely stir until 10:00 the next morning, when Wawrinka makes a clumsy attempt to discreetly slip into the other bed.

  CHAPTER 42

  WHEN CRIME SCENE unlocks the back of the van revealing the blood-smeared gray metal walls, O’Hara’s mind reels, and retreats to the Chelsea gallery where she first glimpsed the kid, and fell hard. Despite what her eyes see now, she smiles at the remembered image of that shirtless gink, all skin and bones and attitude, his arm cavalierly draped over the shoulder of a topless girl, as if it’s the kind of thing that happens to him all the time. The photographer must have seen that the kid was a natural, and no doubt the kid nailed it, gave him exactly what he wanted, but he also threw in a little mockery for himself.