by Jason Pinter
24
I was dialing the number before I even left the station house. He picked up right away, his voice not even at tempting to hide the boredom that had no doubt settled in over the past several months. Though I still harbored some guilt over what had happened, every time we spoke he'd forbid me to show any pity, either for myself or for him. To Curt Sheffield, being wounded in the line of duty was something to be proud of. He'd never wanted to be anything but a cop-and he was a damn good one at that-and he wasn't going to let some pissant reporter wallow in a pint over some spilt blood.
"Officer Sheffield," he said, practically moaning.
Curt had taken a bullet in the leg last year while helping me investigate a series of child kidnappings. The slug had nicked an artery, and it took a few surgeries to repair the wound. He'd probably never run in the
Olympics, but while he wouldn't accept anyone's pity he had told me on several occasions the injury had done wonders for his sex life. Guess chicks really do dig scars. I'd have to ask Amanda if that's why she was still with me.
"Hey, man, has your ass spread at all today?"
"S'up, Henry? Matter of fact I've been doing butt blasts at my desk. Docs won't let me go to the gym, but
I think it's a trick to get me to keep coming in so they can charge my insurance company. I swear my ass looks like the victim of an attack of cottage cheese."
"I don't want to think about anything involving your butt. What do you say to a drink after work? On me."
"I don't know man, I feel like I gotta lay low a little bit. Last time I brought you in here I caught hell from the chief of the department. You don't have a lot of friends around here these days, especially considering what's going on with your pops. At least you can be happy you got the deep end of the Parker gene pool."
"I'll let that one slide. No work talk," I said. "Just conversation. All I ask. Okay, maybe one or two ques tions, but that's it."
Curt went silent, but I could tell he was checking his watch. Sitting behind the desk for Curt was like keeping a racehorse stalled behind the starting gate. He was born to walk the streets, not type up reports. That's likely why I felt the most guilt; it was one less great cop protecting the city.
"Gimme one hour. Mixins." Mixins was a cheesy singles bar primarily frequented by law and finance professionals who felt eight-dollar beers and weak cosmos were part of the mating ritual. The bar had undergone a total renovation over the last few years, mainly due to its predilection to serving underage girls.
A friend of a friend who used to drink there said the waitstaff would grossly undercharge young women, naturally in the hopes of luring free-spending men to the bar. Soon enough the cops caught on. Though rumor had it they didn't so much as catch on, but an off-duty detective saw a group of girls walk directly to the bar once after finishing class on Friday.
The bar had been shut down, but underwent a classic change in management, and now you'd be hard pressed to find someone holding a glass who didn't take home close to six figures. Neither Curt nor I pulled in anywhere in the universe of that salary, but Curt enjoyed it because, in his words, finance girls were workahol ics in every aspect of their lives. They kept their minds and their bodies sharp, and even though he seemed to always be in a serious relationship-sometimes several at once-he enjoyed having nice views at the bar. When
I asked him about it, his answer was simply that I wasn't pretty enough to hold his attention through more than one round of drinks.
I got to the bar before he did, took a seat and ordered a Brooklyn Lager. The bartender, a tall, rail-thin guy wearing a tight black T-shirt that ended right above his veiny pelvic area, served it to me then recommenced putting his elbows on the table and looking tortured.
The stools by the bar were never full here. It wasn't the kind of place one went to for a quiet drink.
A few months ago I'd gone through a rough personal patch. When Amanda and I were separated for a while.
Being apart from her led me to drink too much and seek out my own solitude. Losing a part of your life can be the most accurate barometer of what matters most. If you love something, being apart from it will haunt you.
If it doesn't, it can't have mattered all that much to begin with.
Being apart from Amanda was a miserable experi ence. I slept at my desk at the Gazette. My personal hygiene fell a rung below your average wino's. I wondered if I was simply the kind of guy who always needed to be in a relationship. Before Amanda, I'd been with my previous girlfriend, Mya, for several years. We also ended badly, and after suffering brutal injuries at the hands of a maniac, she seemed fully recovered, her life back on track. I was happy with Amanda, and I knew the difference between a good and a bad relation ship. Learning it had nearly killed me, but it was worth it.
After waiting fifteen minutes and downing half my beer, Curt strode into the bar. He was tall, black, in great shape, though his recent sedentary work life had softened the edges just a bit. He was wearing a dark shirt made of some shiny fabric. Certainly not what he wore on the job, unless the NYPD was far more fashionable than I'd thought.
Though his posture was perfect and he betrayed no sense of pain, there was still a slight limp evident in Curt's walk. I remembered seeing him lying there in a pool of blood, holding back the pain, unwilling to let anything get over on him. It was as though he was disgusted at himself for showing weakness, taking the maxim "never let them see you bleed" quite literally. If he was limping at all, he was probably in more pain and discomfort than he let on.
We shook hands, and Curt ordered a beer. The bar tender poured it from the tap, eyeing Curt while letting the foam pour over, a thin smile on his thin lips. Once he'd set the glass down and moved away, I said to Curt,
"Now batting for the other team…"
"Don't even start, Henry."
"What? That's a compliment. Any man who can attract players from both dugouts is doing something right. Besides, wearing that shirt, I wouldn't be sur prised if a few new dugouts spring up."
"You know, Parker, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about sometimes." Curt sipped his beer.
"How's the leg?" I asked, slightly apprehensive. It would have been easier to ignore it, to pretend he'd never been shot and there was nothing holding him back. It would have been easier to sit here, drink and carry on, pretend he wasn't limping.
"It's getting better," he said. "Takes a while for the muscle strength to build up, since they had to slice through some muscle to repair the damage to the artery."
Just hearing this made me wince. "Does it hurt?"
"When it's cold out, yeah. Gets a little stiff on me.
Plus, it's a little numb by my toes, on account of them having to go through some nerves, too. Docs aren't sure that'll ever come back. Not a big deal, though."
I wanted to scream at him and ask how that could not be a big deal, but I supposed if you took a bullet in an artery and that was the worst-case scenario, you tended to think on the bright side of things.
"Tell you one thing," Curt continued, "I'm going to have to start wearing gloves, they got me filling out so many forms. Feel like I'm a supporting cast member on The Office or something. The black dude who stands in the corner with paper cuts on every finger.
How's Amanda?"
"She's doing well," I said. "Been a huge help on this thing with my dad. Without her he'd probably still be sitting in an Oregon prison claiming not to be James Parker."
"She's a good one, my man. Glad you finally made amends for all that crap you pulled breaking up with her."
"It wasn't like I was just breaking up with her," I said, taking another pull on my drink. "I thought I was doing the right thing, being noble."
"Nobility isn't about telling someone what you think is right for them. It's doing the right thing, period.
Girls's a grown woman, she can make her own deci sions. What you did was selfish, and it was to alleviate your own guilt over what happened to her and Mya. You felt l
ike if you broke things off, you could feel as if you were protecting them. Just not so. I don't claim to be
Mr. Perfect Relationship, but there's give-and-take.
You're with someone, you're their partner. It was selfish, bro, own up to it."
"Maybe you're right," I said. "And trust me, I know
I screwed up. And I'm atoning for it."
"How?"
"For starters, I cook every Friday night."
"You a good cook?"
"If by 'good' you mean she's able to swallow one forkful without gagging, then yeah, I'm a good cook."
Curt sipped his drink, then shifted his weight, a small grimace spreading over his face. It was a brief reaction and certainly unintentional, but for some reason it made my stomach feel hollow.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"'Course, man. You sound serious all of a sudden, you got a month to live or something?" he said, laughing.
I smiled, drank. "You ever feel like I do more harm than good? As a person?"
Curt looked at me. He could tell I was serious. "Not quite sure why you say that," he said. "But it feels to me like you might be having a little pity party."
"It's not that," I said. "I'm over all that. I just feel like over the last few years…I mean, look at it. Mya.
Amanda. You. My dad. Just feels like all these people
I'm supposed to be close to get hurt. Not to mention this guy who got killed the other day."
"What guy?' Curt asked.
I filled him in on the details of Hector Guardado and the briefcase. He sat there, focused, listening intently.
He nodded when I brought up Detective Makhoulian, said he'd met the guy once or twice and that he seemed like he was on the up-and-up.
Often it took a good cop to recognize a good cop, so it was reassuring to hear Curt say that.
Though my first few months in the city I'd been dis trustful of cops-and who could blame me since two of them tried to kill me for erroneous reasons-recently
I'd begun to settle back in, believing that guys like Mak houlian were truly here to serve and protect. Just because most of them didn't like me didn't mean I didn't have respect for them.
"And you think this guy Guardado is somehow tied in to your brother's death?" he said.
"Probably not directly, but I caught Guardado coming out of a building where I saw a bunch of other drug couriers signing in to a company called 718 Enter prises. I couldn't find much on them, but I'm pretty sure
"Selling drugs," Curt said.
"That's right."
"And what's the name of that company you men tioned? 718?"
"718 Enterprises," I repeated.
Curt scratched his nose, downed the rest of his beer. "Not sure why, but for some reason that name sounds familiar."
"That means it's likely not a good thing," I said.
Curt shook his head, thinking. "Give me some time tonight, I'm going to go back and dig into some of the files, ask around."
"Curt, you don't have to do that, I-"
"Don't even start. I need to get some action, so don't look at this as a favor from me to you, but an excuse for me to get back on the horse."
"Then giddyup, cowboy," I said.
"You know damn well there were no black cowboys, and no, I don't count Mel Brooks movies."
"Actually I think there were," I said. "I know a little about the Old West."
"You being cute with me?" Curt said.
He stood up. We'd finished just one beer, but I could tell he was motivated. And since his motivation might answer a few questions, who was I to stop him?
"Keep your cell on, I'll give you a call tonight," he said. We shook hands and gave an awkward fist-bump man hug that I always felt silly doing but practiced nonetheless.
We both left the club, Curt hailing a taxi while I headed toward the subway. I hadn't known Curt to spend money on cabs too often, he preferred to walk or use public transportation. That he was willing to spring for a cab meant his leg was bothering him enough to forgo the walk to the bus stop.
I arrived home a little past nine. Amanda greeted me with a hug and a kiss and a plate of cold spaghetti. She was wearing an oversize gray sweatshirt and a pair of light blue boxer shorts, and looked absolutely adorable.
Even the rumples of the sweatshirt couldn't hide the body beneath, and I made sure to squeeze her extra tight during our hug.
Changing into shorts and a T-shirt, I sat down at the table and dug into the food. She'd sprinkled a light sheet of parmesan over the tomato sauce.
"I can warm that up for you," she said.
"It's actually good like this," I said. "I ran some track back in high school and always ate cold pasta before meets. It always tastes better cold than reheated."
I proved this by shoveling another forkful in my mouth and grinning.
As I finished the meal, I couldn't help but think about how just yesterday a briefcase full of drugs had occupied the tabletop. Now the owner was dead, and it frightened me to think that whoever Hector Guardado was working for, his life was expendable compared to the contents of the briefcase.
And I wondered, again, why my brother's name was in a dead drug dealer's cell phone. And why Hector
Guardado had called him once and only once, the night
Stephen was murdered.
And as I sat there chewing and thinking, my cell phone rang.
Rummaging through the pile of laundry on the floor, I pulled the phone from my pocket, clicked Send. I rec ognized the prefix as coming from Curt's precinct.
"This is Henry," I said.
"It's Curt."
"You find anything?" I said, beginning to feel that familiar rush of apprehension and excitement. Then I remembered what I'd told Wallace, promising that my mind was still with the paper. I had to think about all this information both as a son and a reporter.
"You could say that. Now I know why the name 718
Enterprises sounded familiar. You sitting down?" he said.
"Yes," I lied.
"Your boys Gaines and Guardado, they're not the only ones."
"What do you mean?"
"Five bodies, Henry. Christ, what have you gotten into."
I stood there, listened, feeling dread pour through me.
Curt continued, saying, "Five young men murdered, the coroner's reports all suggesting the use of a silenced pistol. All gunshots from close range, all executionstyle. Assumed that the victims knew their killers. So if that's true, these guys were all killed just like Stephen
Gaines. Which means all five people were somehow connected to this 718 Enterprises. And all of them killed in the past three months. It's not just Gaines and
Guardado, man. Somebody is systematically taking out everyone who works for that organization."
25
When I was finally able to wrap my head around what
Curt had just told me, I sent an e-mail off to Wallace
Langston informing him of our conversation and what
I'd learned. There had to be some sort of story in what
Curt had told me, and I wanted to let Wallace know my mind was still sharp, I was still committed to the
Gazette, and that at some point I'd have a hell of a pageone exclusive for him.
As always Wallace showed excitement for the pos sibility of the story, but again expressed concern that I was too often finding myself in situations where uncov ering a story would put myself or others in harm's way.
The fact was I'd never been to Iraq, never reported on a war from the trenches, so neither he nor I could state that any danger I found myself in could compare. Bad things happened to find me. So be it. If I was still re porting about cute kittens and big ugly metal spiders- I mean, works of art -I would have impaled myself on a number-two pencil by now.
And as much as it energized me to think of this as a story, I knew it helped distract from the apprehension I had over finding the truth.
Five young men murdered,
all with connections to
718 Enterprises. I had no idea what the company did, but the name and address were clearly a front for some thing. And somehow, after Helen Gaines brought him to New York, my brother had begun to work for them.
If only he were alive today. If only I'd waited on that street corner. If only I'd heard what he had to say.
According to Curt, when the dead mens' bodies were investigated, a phone number attributed to 718 Enter prises was found on their call lists. When dialed, the numbers led nowhere, and in fact each man's cell had a different number credited to 718. This cemented my feeling that Stephen Gaines's murder was one part of something much bigger, much broader, and that not only did my father's freedom and his son's killer hang in the balance, but potentially much more.
Amanda was asleep. Nights like this I would often find myself sitting on the couch in our living room. No music playing, no television. No noise at all beyond what the city offered.
It took a few minutes to realize it, but it began to dawn on me just how strange my world had become.
Nearly ten years ago I'd left the confines of Bend,
Oregon. In part because my ambition drew me to more crowded, deeper waters. I was tired of living in what I felt was a small world, confined to a small house made even smaller still by the discomfort of being around my parents. I longed for adventure, mystery.
I wanted to make a name for myself, and thought nowhere better to do that than in the city that never sleeps.
Now, however, I found myself glad for any quiet that nighttime offered. The fact that my windows weren't soundproof and I could hear car horns and alarms all hours of the night only made the feelings more intense. On those rare nights when I could hear nothing but the hum of my air conditioner, night as I knew it reminded me of those old days in Bend. Those quiet nights I lay restless in my bed, longing for noise that proved I was somewhere, had become someone.
Having been on the front page, having people know my name and my face, it was everything I wanted but nothing I'd expected.