Reckless Endangerment

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “Perfect. Runs smooth, the engine’s been steam-cleaned. The upholstery’s in good shape. Why, you in the market?”

  White smiled briefly and said, “No, just that why use a nice car like that for a dump car. Why not steal a car from a dentist, or use the vic’s own car?”

  “Maybe it is his car,” said Alfasano.

  White exchanged a look with Raney and said, “If it was his car, why would it have phony plates on it? Why would the killer bother? No, this is a special kind of car. This is an armed-robbery getaway car, bought or rented from a chop shop. It’s like Avis uptown: you pay your money, you get a clean, fast, good-running car for the job. After, you take it back, the guy wipes it, paints it, dumps the stolen plates he supplied, and it disappears. It never was. If for some reason you got to dump the car, nobody can trace it back to you or to the guy you got it from.” He paused and explained, “Eight years on the heavy-crimes unit out of the Two-Eight. Now, the guys who do this kind of work tend to be a close-mouthed bunch, or they’re out of business, or dead. However …”

  “What?” said Raney and Alfasano almost simultaneously, provoking a chuckle from White. “There’s one guy up in Inwood I recall,” said White, “used to specialize in muscle cars, Firebirds, GTOs, Mustangs. A Dominican guy, real precise, a perfectionist. He used to grind the VINs off the axles too. And he owes me a favor.”

  As it turned out, Felipe Valdés, the chop artist, did not mind giving up the name of Connie Erbes to Detective Alonso White. Erbes was not a regular customer and was unlikely to take violent revenge if busted. Also, White had sworn to him that he would not have to testify, and White, Felipe knew, was not only a man of his word, but had, in the old days, placed his bulk between Valdés and any number of “accessory to” charges.

  Ramon Valdés, when questioned at the Club Carib, said he hadn’t seen Connie for a while. The word was she was laying low, trying to shake a troublesome boyfriend. And yeah, he had an address for her.

  The door to the apartment Connie Erbes reportedly occupied was unresponsive to knocks and, surprisingly, unlocked. The detectives entered, therefore, with drawn guns, crouching. They found a place unkempt, piled with take-out debris and smashed furnishings, but unoccupied. Raney went to check out the bedrooms, White to cover the rest of the apartment.

  One bedroom had clearly not been occupied for a long time, and Raney ignored that one. The other showed signs of recent occupancy. The bed was rumpled, the sheets stained. There were some women’s clothes on the floor of the closet, and the smashed ruins of a dressing table. In a wastebasket he found wads of bloodstained cotton wadding. Raney looked under the bed. A brassy gleam attracted his eye, and he reached the little thing out with a rubber-covered hand. He was examining the cartridge closely, although he had known what it was the instant he had it in his fingers, when White came in, looking gray.

  “Find something?” asked Raney.

  “Oh, nothing much,” said White. “Ray Netski’s stuffed into the refrigerator with a bunch of holes in his chest. Besides that …”

  “Oh, Christ!”

  “Yeah, the beat goes on. Looks like he’s been dead a couple of days. We need to find this woman.”

  “Uh-huh. Look at this.” He stood up and handed White the cartridge.

  White peered at it. “What is that, Russian writing on the base?”

  “Uh-huh. They were thick on the ground in ’Nam. That’s a Soviet-made 7.62mm round for the AK-47 assault rifle.”

  “Roland,” said Karp, “you’re acting like a baby,” knowing it was the least calming thing he could say, and not caring anymore, not caring if the red-faced man who had just barged into his office cursing and screaming had a stroke, launched himself across the desk at which Karp sat, fists flying, or vanished through the earth like Rumpelstiltskin.

  Roland didn’t seem to hear, however, but, standing by the open door, continued his diatribe. “… and didn’t think to even fucking inform me, a meeting at police headquarters, on my case. Who the fuck died and left you king shit? Huh? You trying to ruin me? You son of a bitch!”

  Karp had on his desk a paperweight, a heavy piece of Lucite enclosing a rifle bullet once removed from his shoulder. Right next to it was a regulation baseball bearing the signature of Mickey Mantle. Instantly Hrcany’s last words were out, Karp sprang to his feet, grabbed the paperweight, and flung it at Roland’s head. It grazed his ear and slammed into the wall next to the door, making a sizable dent. Roland’s jaw dropped, and he went pale. He touched his ear and looked at the claret on his fingertips. Then he looked at Karp, who had the baseball in his hand and was in the final stages of a serious wind-up.

  Roland ducked the bean ball, which flew through the doorway. A sound of shattering glass and a woman’s short, shrill yelp. Roaring, Roland took two long steps and a leap, and threw himself across the desk at Karp’s throat, bearing the larger man down behind the desk.

  Karp had not had a serious physical fight (except once with his wife) since age thirteen, and it quickly crossed his mind that he could be in serious trouble in this one. Roland’s hands were on his throat, cutting off air and blood supply. He had once seen Roland, on a bet, actually bend a horseshoe with his hands. Things were starting to go gray when a deluge of cold water fell on both their heads, followed by a sound like the clang of a cracked bell.

  Karp coughed water from his nose and slid out from under the spluttering Hrcany, the side of whose face was now covered with blood. Marcie O’Malley, the D.A.’s secretary, stood over the two of them, holding the galvanized one-gallon watering can with which she maintained the small rain forest of houseplants in the D.A.’s suite. This was the source of the flood, and also of the sound, for she had whaled Roland a couple across the skull.

  “Jesus, Marcie!” said Roland, exploring his head with a cautious finger.

  “Don’t you Jesus me, young man,” said the fierce O’Malley. “I’ve never seen anything like it, carrying on like a couple of mutt dogs on the street. How could you, right in the district attorney’s office! Broken glass! You should be ashamed of yourselves. And the both of you attorneys …” The enormity of this last fact overwhelmed the woman’s reserves of outrage, and she left, closing the door behind her.

  Karp got to his feet, righted his chair, and fished a couple of clean paper napkins out of a bottom drawer. He handed these to Roland, who held them in a wad against his bleeding ear. He got to his feet too and collapsed into Karp’s visitor armchair.

  “Christ, Butch,” he said, probing gently, “you almost tore my ear off.”

  “I was aiming to split your skull,” said Karp huskily. There seemed to be something wrong with his vocal cords.

  “Why, ‘cause I was yelling at you?”

  “No,” Karp croaked, “because a man is dead, a cop is dead, a cop who was supposed to be a pal of yours is dead, and what’s on your mind is your status, your goddamned ego, whether Butch Karp is fucking with you or not. That’s why. I couldn’t stand it anymore, Roland. It’s fucking unworthy of you. And you’ve been poisonous like that ever since you took that damn job.”

  Hrcany was studying his fingernails intently, as if a remarkably engrossing novel had miraculously been imprinted on them.

  “I mean, fuck it, Roland,” Karp added, “it’s okay to be wrong. Everybody’s a schmuck sometimes. The difference between the occasional schmuck and the incurable schmuck to the bone is, do you fucking cop to it and drive on?”

  Roland shook his head sharply from side to side, like a man discouraging a small flying insect. “Okay. On this Netski thing—I do feel bad about it, especially since he probably got it looking into this thing for me, these threats. I think we should pick up the Obregons again. That was his girlfriend, the Erbes woman, who rented the car the Arab who killed Morilla was found in.”

  “You think she killed Netski?” asked Karp with a hidden sigh. That “okay” was all the acknowledgment he was going to get on the subject of Roland’s errors of judgment and his atroci
ous behavior over the last weeks. It was back to business, with Karp hoping faintly for a less abrasive relationship with the Homicide Bureau chief in the future.

  “I doubt it,” said Roland. “There’s another guy involved. Who knows, maybe a third Obregon brother we don’t know about. I’ll have them picked up. The cops are already looking for the woman.”

  “And the Arab connection, the Russian bullet in the apartment? The Czech bullets in the women’s shelter?”

  Roland tossed his hand, fingers spread, a gesture of bafflement. “Fuck if I know, man. We’re back to zero on this whole thing. Let’s reserve theorizing until we get more information.”

  “A wise policy, Roland.”

  “And fuck you too,” said Roland, a hard smile cracking his face. He got up to leave.

  Karp said, “Roland, I want to apologize for trying to kill you.”

  “Ah, shit, that’s okay,” said Roland. “My dad tried a lot harder than that about a million times. I’m surprised I made it this far. What can I say? I’m a fucking pain in the ass.”

  “You are not paying attention,” chided Tran. He was trying to teach Lucy how to spot a tail by dashing across busy streets just before the traffic started, and then observing the results in a plate-glass window set perpendicular to the direction of travel. It was a simple enough dodge, but the child seemed uninterested, dull, and recalcitrant.

  Lucy was about to offer a reflex denial of this charge, as kids do, but then a little flower of maturity chanced to blossom in her soul, and she came out with what was on her mind, in Cantonese:

  “That’s right, Elder Brother, I am not. I am worried about Fatyma. I still cannot understand how you allowed this to occur. It is confusing. I think it was cowardly to allow her to be taken without a fight, although I know you are not a coward.”

  “You are mistaken, Little Sister,” said Tran. “I am a great coward. This is the proof: in my country there are one million dead heroes, but I am alive after twenty-five years of war. I am very good at running away.”

  “And you are not ashamed of this?”

  “No. Shame is for when we act inappropriately. Sometimes it is appropriate to fight like a demon, and other times it is appropriate to run like a rabbit.”

  Lucy thought assiduously, trying to digest this odd lump of notions, so alien to the popular culture in which she had been raised. At length she remarked, “I think I understand, Elder Brother, although I cannot see how you can tell what is appropriate and what is not, when to run and when to fight.”

  Tran smiled benignly. “Well, as to that, that is the study of a lifetime, which you have barely begun. For now you should accept the guidance of your elders.”

  Oh, right! thought Lucy, who could only absorb so much Confucian wisdom at one time. Changing the subject somewhat, she said, “Still, I would very much like to get Fatyma back from whoever has stolen her.”

  “Surely this is a matter for the police.”

  “Oh, the police! If the police find her, they will return her to her horrible father, and he will make her marry that old man or else kill her. No, she must be found by her friends.”

  “And how will her friends do that? She is hidden in so large a city, or maybe she is already taken to another country.”

  Lucy’s jaw firmed up in a way that reminded Tran powerfully of the same expression on Marlene’s face. She said, “I don’t know how yet. But I will ask my mother.”

  “That is always a wise way to begin any enterprise,” said Tran.

  Marlene was at her kitchen table drinking coffee when they hit her with this. Hearing it, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, for she was exhausted with overwork. In the first place, Harry was moving out of the office for his new life with the Osborne Group, leaving Marlene to cope with all their various protective operations. She had spent the morning in court, filing orders and representing several abused women at hearings, then up to St. Vincent’s to see Mattie, who had prevailed upon her to watch the shelter while she was laid up. The shelter was, naturally, in an uproar. Verda and the rest of the small staff were trying hard, but Mattie had kept the operation of the place very close, especially the financial end. The records were a mess, Mattie apparently having filed much of the comings and goings of the residents in her head and in piles of loose papers stuffed in folders. Marlene had worked in the tiny office for hours, interrupted by continual crises—fights between residents, sick children, and the necessity of convincing thirty-odd women that the place was still safe, that they were better off in than out, despite the recent gunplay. Cops were, of course, in and out, interviewing the residents, collecting bits of evidence, and generally stirring things up. She had ordered her calls forwarded to the shelter’s phone, which, of course, never stopped ringing.

  A miserable day, and now this. “Ah, Lucy, darling,” she said weakly, “I’m sorry, but I got my hands full already. There is no way we can mount a search for Fatyma.”

  “I thought you were a detective,” said the implacable child. “I bet her father knows where she is. I bet he’s just waiting to do something bad to her, and it’ll be your fault.”

  Marlene groaned and looked around the room for support. Tran was sipping coffee with his usual neutral expression, looking remarkably like a feeble, retired clerk. A tiny Frenchified jerk of the mouth and eyebrows was all she got from him—what can one do? it said. Posie was supervising a finger-food meal with the boys—cooked carrots and bread-and-jam slivers—giggling with them and spilling sunny personality around the room.

  “Or the brother,” Lucy added contemptuously, “Mr. Gorgeous.”

  “Walid,” said Posie. “I never dated a Walid. I bet he’s got a great body.”

  “Posie, you could think about something else for one minute, you know,” snarled Lucy, and she got a sly giggle back.

  An idea drifted lazily into Marlene’s exhausted brain. She looked at Posie more closely. The girl was wearing oversized USMC fatigue pants that hung nicely on her broad hips, and over that she wore a sleeveless garment of some shiny silver-blue fabric, a retro-shop find, that stretched tightly over her cantaloupe-sized breasts, solid as round shot. She was on one of her interminable diets (grapefruit and yogurt), and this one actually seemed to be doing her some good. She’d dropped some suet (with the resilience of youth), and the arrival of spring had allowed her constant excursions with her small charges, which had toned her legs and put some color into her formerly doughy complexion. Her best feature was still her hair, which ran like a river of hot tar, straight as a die, down her back to her buttocks.

  No, I can’t do that, was Marlene’s first thought, it’s evil; and then, no, it wouldn’t work; and then, no, it’d be too dangerous. But of course, once it had been reduced to a protection problem, it was a done deal as far as Marlene was concerned, since she knew a great deal about protecting people and had every confidence in pulling that part of it off.

  “Um, Posie …” said Marlene.

  Posie turned to her, her gigantic smile pumping out innocence and animal sensuality in equal measure, and Marlene, thinking, oh, my, what a piece of work I’ve become, said, “You know, Posie, maybe it’s time you dated a guy named Walid.”

  FOURTEEN

  In the older sections of Brooklyn, anciently prosperous and some still well-off, the houses stand separately and are brick-built, and each one comes supplied with a ready-made dungeon, for until the clean-air ordinances of the mid-sixties, these houses were all heated by coal. Twice a year the filthy, huge trucks would back into the alleys that bordered each house, and out would come the steel chute, to be inserted into the cellar hole that stared blackly from the side of the house. Then the sooty man would haul on the chain, and with a rattling roar the coal cellar would fill with a couple of tons of number nine anthracite. With the coming of oil and gas heat, each householder had found himself with a small, brick-walled, uncleanably filthy room having a small outlet to the sky and a door leading to where the coal furnace used to be. Most of th
ese coal cellars vanished behind the pine paneling of rumpus rooms or dens, their chutes bricked up, their doors replaced by gypsum-board walls.

  In the house at 308 Sterling Street in Crown Heights owned by Chouza Khalid, the coal-cellar chute had indeed been bricked up, but the space had otherwise hardly been changed since the last load of coal had gone up the chimney. The house itself was a ninety-year-old three-story yellow brick town house with sandstone facings, set back from the street, the former front garden grown up with weeds and ailanthus and maple trees ten feet high that seemed to be trying hard to obscure the weathered realtor’s sign. The windows were boarded up with plywood. In its semi-derelict condition it had been a good deal for Khalid, who wanted a cheap place that no one else knew about, a bolt hole, and a hide for various liquid assets.

  Naturally, the place had been used as a shooting gallery by the local addicts for some time, and Khalid’s first task, even before having the electricity, gas, and water turned on, was to discourage these people. This he did with a savagery unusual even in Brooklyn, and the word soon spread on the junkie grapevine that people who went into that house emerged seriously messed up or did not emerge at all. So they avoided the place. Khalid restored one bedroom and one bathroom to use, and put a thick, solid-core door on the coal cellar, doing all the work himself.

  Fatyma lay on a mattress in this former coal cellar. A razor-thin bar of light came from under the door, dim during what must be the hours of daylight, and sharp on those occasions when someone turned an electric light on in the room outside the coal cellar. Otherwise, it was dark. And damp. The mattress was supplied with a gray wool blanket, and she spent most of the endless hours huddled in this. Twice each day (she thought) the light would go on outside, she would hear the sound of the bolts sliding out, and a big man would come in with a plastic box and a plastic bottle. He was very quick. He removed the old plastic box and bottle and left, locking the door behind him. Once, Fatyma had flattened herself next to the door frame and tried to dash out, but he had caught her easily, then he had hit her so hard on the jaw that she had blacked out for a moment. Her face still hurt from the blow. She had not tried it again; nor had she bothered to scream after the first day, when she had screamed until her throat was raw. She had no idea what he had planned for her, and this was perhaps the worst part of her captivity. Besides that first horrible moment in the car, when he had felt every part of her body, he had not molested her at all. This did not, however, assuage her fears for the future.