The Big Fear

by Andrew Case

  Mulino heard something across the deck. A high-pitched squeak. Shoes coming to a quick stop. He stood up and trained his flashlight down the narrower crosstown aisles. The light was harsh and bright and showed him nothing. Stillness. Container after container, in those decrepit fading pastels, held firm as the beam shone on them. No sign of motion.

  “I see you down there.” If you lie to them, trick them into thinking you know more than you do, then they might be afraid. And if they are afraid, you have the upper hand. “Come on out and come out quietly. I’m going to count to three.”

  He honed his flashlight toward the noise. Nothing. His heart slowly came to life—a new pulse, a new energy.

  “One.” He swung the flashlight back and forth. Maybe he had the wrong corner.

  “Two.” Someone out there, he realized, could hear him, and knew he was a cop, and wasn’t showing himself. Someone who had maybe just killed a man. It was best to take some cover.

  “Three.” Nothing again. He ducked out from behind his corner; the aisle was clear. Then footsteps. They came from far up the ship and to the right. He took his gun out. He shut the flashlight off: until he knew where to shine it, it would only make him a target. Mulino crouched and scampered, damn the bad back now; he was filled with the scent and the thrill and the pulse of it all. Someone was running away, speeding through the thin aisle, and whoever it was knew Mulino was gaining ground. Just as he reached the edge of the narrow aisle, toward the starboard side of the boat, Mulino turned.

  Dark. Quiet. Nothing. The faint glow of the faraway city kept the moonless night from pitch darkness. Mulino peered over the edge of the ship; steady waves slapped the hull. He looked along the deck. He couldn’t see anything with his flashlight off. He wheezed deep to get his wind back. He couldn’t run like he used to. His breath sounded so loud to himself. Loud enough that whoever was out there could probably hear it. Maybe could see him. He ducked by the railing of the ship to take some small measure of cover.

  “Freeze. Police. Stay right there.” Mulino wouldn’t admit that he was afraid. He had been afraid, really afraid, only once before on the job, in the Ebbets Field Apartments, and that had almost ruined him. He squinted and caught his breath. He thought he saw something beyond the row of containers. He was out in the open now, the freight to one side and the railing to the other. Using his radio to call for help would mean putting down either his gun or his flashlight. He paced slowly along the aisle, clinging to the edge of the containers, gun drawn.

  He raised the flashlight with his left hand and snapped it on. The row of containers lit up again, dull reds and cool blues, and behind one about thirty feet out, Mulino saw a small shudder, maybe a shoulder quickly vanishing behind the edge.

  “Hold it. I have a gun on you. Come out slowly.” Mulino held the gun cautiously. He pointed it steady where he had last seen the shoulder. But he had to be careful. Maybe the man hadn’t heard. Maybe he didn’t speak English. You have to think about these things, as a cop. You have to think of every possible innocent explanation before you take action. You have to imagine yourself in the trial room, being crossed by some kid who lives in the comfort of a perpetual game of Minesweeper. Did you consider that the man on the boat might not have heard you identify yourself as a police officer? That he might be deaf? That he might have been out fishing for stingrays? Mulino had been in the trial room before. You never come out of it the same.

  But as careful as you have to be, you can’t hesitate either. The plaques on the walls of every precinct in the city list the names of cops who stopped to consider. One or two seconds the other way and there would be a procession of uniformed cops at a cemetery in Queens instead of a trial. Better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.

  As Detective Mulino spent those two seconds considering, the figure at the end of the aisle spun out again. He ducked low and crossed out of sight. Maybe Mulino should have shot him then. But he didn’t see a gun. He didn’t know this man had killed the sailor. Mulino noticed for the first time that his shirt was soaked through with sweat. He stepped forward and his once-silent shoes started to squish, like he was walking through puddles. He spread the light from left to right. Nothing moved at all.

  Mulino was exposed and the other man had cover. If the man had a gun, he’d have a bead on Mulino, and Mulino wouldn’t have a bead on him. The detective set down his flashlight, the beam askance across the row of containers, and gripped his gun with both hands. His heartbeat was beginning to pick up. His breathing too. He wasn’t as calm as he liked. He shuffled the gun to one hand and reached for his radio.

  “10-13. There’s a body on the boat. And another unidentified male.”

  Which is about when the man ran, tight to the edge of the containers. Looking over the aisle toward the railing. Planning to jump the boat, maybe. The man was moving too fast for Mulino to see and had something in his left hand, something flashy and hard and dark. Mulino didn’t hesitate this time. He whipped out his gun and gritted his teeth shut to overcome the fear. Through his clenched jaw, he called out “freeze,” and the man pulled up his left hand with a glint that looked like a gun, and Mulino—for the first time in his twenty-four years as a police officer—fired his weapon at another human being. The guy crumpled backward to the deck, and the whole thing had taken only two seconds or so, and now the pumping of blood was noisy through Mulino’s head and ears, and his knees suddenly, totally, started hurting again.

  He stood up. He stretched. He breathed as deeply and as slowly as he could. He walked toward the man, patiently, precisely. Blood on the chest, the wispy breathing of someone about to die. He held the radio and called the sergeant. Called dispatch. Could they get a doctor out to the boat? Two men have been shot. One of them might live. He stared down at the twitching hand, next to it a gun. A nine. A real one. Mulino breathed relief. At least that. His flashlight on the man, Mulino saw too that he was black, and couldn’t help but think of the shitstorm if that hadn’t been a gun. The trial room would have been a party compared to it. His stomach started to give out on him; he had seen plenty of bodies but had never watched a man die in front of him before. He caught himself. He took a breath.

  Mulino stepped forward and knelt by the dying man, smearing some blood on his knees. The man’s eyes were nearly closed, rolled back. He was already gone. Mulino had always been a good shot; he had hit the heart and the man had died quickly. Mulino noticed a chain tucked under the man’s shirt. He reached forward and slid his fingers beneath it, feeling something heavy at the end of it. He lifted it out. At the tail of the chain, a blue sunburst badge. Just like an ADA or a city commissioner. A detective’s badge. Just like his own.

  There was going to be a shitstorm after all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE GENERAL PUBLIC

  The man smelled. Leonard Mitchell couldn’t tell if it was the guy’s body, hair, or clothes. Any one of them would have done the trick: the hands and neck were slicked with a dark alloy of sweat and dirt; the tangle above his head had coalesced into a single thick knot. But if Leonard had to guess, he would go with the clothes. Never mind that the air conditioning was busted at the Department to Investigate Misconduct and Corruption, or that it had been over ninety degrees for four out of five days running, the man wore three sweat-stained shirts, each one piled on top of the next. Probably the guy felt that if he left one behind it might get stolen. It was a heavy August morning in the shambling corners of a municipal office, and smelling this man—he signed in as Mr. Starr, but Lord knows what his real name was—was part of the job.

  Leonard braced himself for the coming crowd. Not just Mr. Starr but the rest of them. The shoulders and collar of his discount suit rubbed him wrong; the shirt and tie were too tight for the heat. Whenever he put on this show, opening DIMAC to the general public, as required by the city charter, he felt like a petty bureaucrat. Alone in his offices drafting charges against a wayward cop or a bent buildi
ng inspector gave him purpose and power. But the general public had a way of making him feel small.

  The org chart might not say that Leonard Mitchell was precisely in charge of this little fiefdom, but he herded the general public when it trickled or poured in for the regular meeting. On the second Monday of every month, Leonard would smile and welcome the throng. They would wait on the dull plastic chairs under the harsh light in the lobby until he let them in, and then filter slowly into the even more miserable conference room. Dirty windows, smudged walls, and industrial blue plastic chairs that were said to be unbreakable but were certainly uncomfortable. The whole place looked like a cross between a neglected public school and an East German housing project.

  At every meeting there would be a few earnest good government advocates, a few from the NYPD itself, and a few of the truly abused who came to file complaints, either because they didn’t know or didn’t care that they could call any time and make an appointment with an investigator. And there would be a few like Mr. Starr. Just about every city bureau held regular open meetings: all of these meetings were available to the general public, and all of them served breakfast. Leonard knew that every month Mr. Starr would come in and give another tirade about the police kicking him off his corner, the shelter administrator who told him his Old Spice smelled like he’d been drinking, or the woman at the disability office who was wearing a very nice pair of glasses and was therefore probably a thief. Mr. Starr raised no stink when he was given polite letters dismissing his complaints out of hand. He was only there to score a bagel off the people of New York.

  Ordinarily Mr. Starr would be the first one in, but today there was a problem. Today it was mobbed. Cramming the lobby, keeping him from the meeting room, were about fifteen men, all wearing blazers and slacks that were very nearly the same shade of brown. Despite the heat, a few even sported loosely knotted neckties. Leonard would have known they were reporters by looks alone. The only other people who dressed like that were detectives, and detectives didn’t step foot in DIMAC unless they were subpoenaed.

  Leonard had been ready for them. After the call last night, how could he not be? Every major incident follows the same path: first the press, then the outraged public, then the meticulous investigation, slowed as if to ensure that no one would remember the original event by the time a report was finally issued. Leonard had been up since three, ever since the call from Tony Licata.

  Tony had made his name twenty years ago by sneaking into crime scenes and pressuring detectives to offer details on unfinished cases. He had the stark accent of the true outer boroughs, the ones that had been getting squeezed ever closer to the perimeter for the last thirty years. He had spent those thirty years building trust from the PD, the DAs, and more than a few criminals. He almost always knew more than you did. If he called you after midnight, you had to take it.

  “Youse guys got anything on the shooting?”

  Leonard had been thick with sleep.

  “Tony, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “On the water. Confrontation situation. The shooter is from OCCB.”

  A confrontation situation. Two guys out in the dark with guns and neither one believes the other is a cop.

  “I haven’t gotten anything yet.”

  “Well, you will.”

  “And you want me to give it to you. Even though I’d be breaking about fifteen different laws.”

  “Don’t be like that, Len. We’re still friends.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  Tony Licata was in the crowd now, along with a dozen others. Leonard knew most of them. Leonard had tried to prove DIMAC’s value by getting ink on busts they’d made. His stories would get slipped in, four or five pages into the tabloids, maybe a spare graph in the back of the Metro section of the Times. The reporters would play grateful and promise they owed him one; he never knew when he might ask for something in return. Most of them usually ignored DIMAC. But they would show up when the agency caught a case with obvious press appeal. And other than savage murders of pretty white girls, nothing had more obvious press appeal than a cop shooting somebody or a somebody shooting a cop—and this one had both. So today Leonard was important; reporters who ordinarily ignored his hectoring all wanted to hear from him.

  Or at least from his boss. Truth of the matter is that no matter how big he was supposed to feel by manning the door, he was really nothing more than the gatekeeper. Christine Davenport, the last city commissioner to hold over from the previous administration, would come out and give the official public statement. She’d done it before. It would sound impassioned, she would promise her full dedication, and she would call for unity. But afterward when you read all the words, you would realize that she pretty much hadn’t said anything at all. Leonard checked his watch; six minutes until he opened the door, eight until she spoke. She was precise to the second, always.

  Leonard hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after the call from Licata. He was still foggy when he read the coverage before work. It had pushed the news of the pending sanitation strike deep into the papers. Subway strikes in winter; sanitation strikes in summer. You can’t say they don’t know where their leverage is. But that day, it was all about the shooting. According to the Post, the shooter, Detective Ralph Mulino, was a hero, gunning down a deranged cop who had busted onto the ship and probably killed a sailor. In the Daily News, Licata had written that Mulino was in plainclothes and might never have said he was a cop. He might have looked like he was up to no good himself, running around the ship with his gun out.

  The kid who’d been shot—a detective named Brian Rowson, loved by his comrades—might have been responding to the same call, looking for the person who shot the crewmember. Detective Mulino might, after all, have murdered them both. As he surveyed the crowd of restless hacks, Mr. Starr lurching back and forth at the rear of the crowd, Leonard figured that each story had just enough truth in it to be dangerous.

  And it wasn’t only the papers that were here today. The activists had taken their places as well. The ACLU guy who showed up to every meeting and hinted that the commissioner may have filed false statistics was flanked by a pair of deputies, most likely college interns. The police unions had sent a rep, a glum little man in a gray suit who stood puzzled, unsure maybe if he was supporting the cop who got shot or the cop who shot him. And there was Roshni Saal from the August 15 Coalition.

  The Coalition was an organization devoted to documenting every death at the hands of law enforcement in the world. Named for the date twenty years earlier when a man had choked on his own vomit in a holding cell after the arresting officers hadn’t realized he was overdosing, the Coalition collected and published a phony “indictment” every time anyone died at the hands of the police. The circumstances didn’t matter to the Coalition: a drug dealer gunned down while firing at the ESU team was the same as a twelve-year-old boy shot in the face while carrying an obvious squirt gun. They ran public service announcements pairing footage of Nazi guards beating concentration-camp victims with shots of the NYPD in Brownsville dragging teenagers into their cars. The head of the Coalition was Roshni Saal, a marathon runner in silk suits who showed up at DIMAC to present the Coalition’s findings every month. She handed Leonard the paper; they had their routine down.

  “Roshni, don’t you guys see this as one more killer off the streets?”

  She stared hard. She was sharp and straightforward and always serious. “It doesn’t matter who the victim is, Mr. Mitchell. Murder is always murder.”

  “All right then.”

  Leonard saw a commotion at the rear of the crowd. Mr. Starr had grown impatient. He had decided to put his body odor to good use. He leaned toward the nearest reporter, who stepped away instinctively. Suddenly the men in mismatched suits fell like dominoes, turning their backs to the smell and leaving a clear path to the doorway. Mr. Starr looked longingly past Leonard at the s
tack of bagels and Danishes inside the door. Leonard looked at Mr. Starr the way you do at the uncle who always gets drunk on Thanksgiving.

  “Meeting starts in five, Mr. Starr.”

  “Leonard, I got twenty reporters out there. The cops kicked me off my corner last night. Let me in and out and I won’t be any bother to you.”

  As second-in-command at a minor city agency, Leonard Mitchell wore a thousand hats: he was the policy wonk, secretary, or speechwriter, depending on the day. The Department to Investigate Misconduct and Corruption took the grievances of the general public and ground them into neatly presented statistics, every now and again actually catching the bad guys and kicking them out of city service. Sometimes even shipping them to jail. Leonard had mowed through feet of investigative case files and he had spoken at fiery community board meetings after teenagers were shot by skittish cops. His job was always to disappoint—every cop and firefighter and teacher being probed thinks he’s wrongly accused, and every member of the general public thinks the cops and firefighters and teachers can get away with anything. Today it was his job to disappoint a homeless man who only wanted something to eat. But he didn’t always have to do his job.

  “Just grab something and get out of here.” Leonard was the only one at DIMAC who could stand face-to-face with Mr. Starr without retching. He’d smelled worse. He eyed Mr. Starr as he slunk over to the table and pocketed a muffin, picked out something for lunch too, and scampered out the door. Leonard sighed to himself. It would probably be the most useful thing he did all day.