The Graving Dock Read online

  “The Caesar salad looks good.”

  Jack gave her a worried look. “You can’t have a salad for dinner.” What kind of story would that make when they were old and sitting around on a porch somewhere?

  Michelle looked beautiful, her skin glowing in the candlelight. I don’t have a single doubt about this woman, Jack marveled.

  He glanced at a middle-aged couple two tables away. They were the only black people he had seen since he had gotten off the train. They were more formally dressed than anyone else in the room. The guy sat as straight as if there were a board in the back of his jacket. He looked about as comfortable here as Jack was, but he had probably never allowed himself to consider skipping the tie.

  Jack made it through the dinner. He managed to order something, and even to eat something, and to make small talk about how the sweater-vested bartender looked like he might have fought in the Revolutionary War himself. He kept reaching down to his pants pocket and then remembering that he had surrendered the ring to the innkeeper, who was going to pass it on to the chef, who was going to hide it in Michelle’s dessert.

  A busboy cleared their entree plates. “Hoo,” said Michelle, who had finally settled on linguini with shrimp. “I’m stuffed.”

  Jack tried not to frown. “Have a little dessert. How about the chocolate mousse? You love chocolate.”

  Michelle sighed. “I’m fine. Thank you, honey. This was such a beautiful dinner.”

  “Get the mousse,” Jack said. “I’ll help you eat it.” He wished he had just held on to the damned ring.

  Michelle took a sip of her wine. “All right—but only if you’ll help.”

  After the waitress took their order, Jack sat back and wiped some sweat off his upper lip. He was known as the Homicide Task Force’s most dogged veteran, a guy who didn’t mind tackling the most difficult, evidence-starved cases. Proposing made such challenges seem like a walk in the park.

  Even though he and Michelle had known each other for only a short time, they had gone through so much together, and he was sure she wouldn’t say no. Almost sure. His armpits were sweating profusely and he was glad his jacket was still on.

  The waitress swept out of the kitchen bearing a silver tray. With a flourish she set down the mousse and two little glasses of port. “Compliments of the chef.”

  Jack tried to smile as he nodded his thanks, but he wondered if the port was overkill. Michelle gave no sign of suspicion, just picked up her spoon and scooped up a tiny dab of whipped cream. After a minute, another. At this rate, it might take an hour to reach the ring. Jack wanted to help, but what would happen if he accidentally scooped it up?

  “You okay?” Michelle asked.

  “Huh?” he said. “Of course. It’s just a little hot in here.”

  Thankfully, once Michelle hit the chocolate she began to take more of an interest in the dessert. She finished a big spoonful and closed her eyes in rapture. “Oh my God. This is amazing.”

  Jack glanced over at the bar. The waitress was beaming at him and the bartender gave him a thumbs-up. The room was packed now and he wondered how the other diners would react when he got down on one knee.

  Michelle licked some mousse off her finger and gave him a sultry look. “Don’t you want some?”

  “It’s okay. I’m good.”

  She smiled again. “You certainly are.” She dipped the spoon in, dipped the spoon…

  His chest got tighter with every dip. Absurdly, he wondered which knee to get down on. He tried not to stare at Michelle’s par-fait glass. Another spoonful. Another. And then…she scraped the spoon along the bottom of the empty glass.

  He stared openly now, in shock. He had spent two months’ pay on the ring, like you were supposed to. He’d run the gauntlet of the jewelry stores up on Forty-seventh Street, the Diamond District, the horror—salesmen practically diving over their counters, as if he had worn a sign on his head: SCHMUCK LOOKING FOR ENGAGEMENT RING…And he had finally found just the right one.

  Vanished.

  CHAPTER three

  SPECKS OF GLASS GLITTERED in the asphalt as Jack drove deep into the heart of Red Hook. Past vacant lots, low factories, modest row houses; past dead weeds rising out of sidewalk cracks. He drove through the quiet, run-down streets but also through the remembered world of his childhood, when these streets had swarmed with sailors and shipbuilders and longshoremen, back before the boom years of the Brooklyn docks had irrevocably gone bust. In those days the place had been packed with bars, movie theaters, groceries, and clothing stores; now you had to leave the neighborhood to shop or to see a show. There was talk of a revival but the place still felt like a ghost town.

  He pulled over for a moment, took out his cell phone, and dialed the inn, his second call of the morning.

  “Did you find it yet?”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the innkeeper said. “I promise you we’re doing the best we can.” She didn’t sound particularly sorry, but at least she had given up on her argument that the inn was not responsible. (She had stuck to that claim until he had finally done what he hated to do: pull out his badge when off duty.)

  “It’s not replaceable,” he said. Not strictly true, but he couldn’t face another shopping trip.

  “Sir, I told you,” she said. “We’re doing the best we can, and if there’s any problem, I’m sure our insurance will take care of it.”

  Jack just snorted and signed off. No insurance was going to compensate him for watching his romantic weekend go up in smoke, or for the Oscar-worthy performance he had had to pull off for the rest the night, pretending to Michelle that everything was okay.

  He stopped in to a bodega for a cup of coffee. He was tempted to pick up a pack of smokes, but his long hospital stay had gotten him off the nicotine; it would be stupid to start up again. He took a sip of the thick Puerto Rican Java and got back in the car.

  He surveyed the sidewalks idly as he drove past: a couple of kids goofing around at a bus stop, swinging their backpacks at each other; a big battleship of a woman nattering away on a little cell phone. As he neared Coffey Street, his stomach clenched. Just two blocks down, in a dank warehouse basement, his world had almost ended. He flashed on a moment from that crazy summer night: police scanners crackling, paramedics shouting as they stretchered him up and out. He’d lain on his back watching streetlights slide by overhead like bright full moons and he had believed that he was about to die…

  The anxiety ebbed as he drove on. “I’ll understand if you’d rather not take the case,” his boss had said to him this morning. “I can give it to Santiago or Reinhorn, but I figure you know the neighborhood best.” Normally Brooklyn South Homicide used an impartial rotation, with each of the detectives catching new cases in turn, but Detective Sergeant Stephen Tanney was making an exception. Was it a test, Jack wondered, an opportunity for his boss to find out if his recovery was complete?

  He drove another block, then turned toward the harbor, down a cobbled street bordered by anonymous little factories and machine shops. Down at the end, he parked behind a couple of patrol cars, a detective’s Grand Marquis, and the Crime Scene wagon. Being back in Red Hook gave him the willies, no doubt about it, but he was eager to put recent events behind him and to immerse himself in a case.

  As he stepped out into the cold, damp air, his nose filled with the smell of some industrial solvent, a metallic scent, like spray paint, probably coming from one of the factories lining the street. He strode down the old cobblestones, then veered into a little waterfront park. A lawn led down to a small bay, which opened out onto the gray expanse of New York Harbor. Once upon a time this had been the site of the wooden Coffey Pier, where he and his childhood pals had dived laughing out into the water (wearing underpants because none of their parents could afford swim trunks), but that pier had long since rotted away. Recently it had been rebuilt in metal and concrete.

  The base of the pier and a stretch of rocky coastline were cordoned off with yellow Crime Scene tape. Beyond that f
limsy barrier the inevitable crowd of local spectators had already mushroomed up, wearing the baggy jeans and hooded sweatshirts of the city’s poor. They cracked nervous jokes and stamped their feet to stay warm. “Yo, CSI!” they shouted, though they were actually looking at a couple of jumpsuited technicians from the Medical Examiner’s office. (Thanks to the hit TV show, public interest had moved away from homicide detectives and settled on the Crime Scene teams, which was fine with Jack—he wasn’t looking for glory.)

  He moved through the crowd, badged the young uniform guarding the perimeter, and ducked under the tape. Down at the water’s edge several cops were gathered around some sort of wooden object, but first he set out across the sloping lawn toward a clump of the city workers who dealt with the dead. Usually they’d be standing around relaxed, shooting the shit, but they seemed tense now and Jack could tell that something unusual was going on.

  He felt warmer when he joined the huddle, and it wasn’t just the added protection from the wind. After a too-long medical leave, he was back in his element.

  A short Dominican man with ramrod posture and a near-bald pate nodded hello: Anselmo Alvarez. The supervisor of the Crime Scene crew turned to introduce the man next to him, whose fancy wool coat and Italian leather shoes said detective. “This is Tommy Balfa from the Seven-six squad.”

  As a member of the task force Jack’s mission was to team up with local detectives, who caught all sorts of cases and didn’t necessarily have much experience with homicides. He reached out to shake hands. The man looked to be around forty-five, with a handsome, rugged face. He wore thin, elegant leather gloves, and gripped Jack’s hand a little too hard. If this was some thirties movie, Jack thought, Balfa would have been cast as the gigolo.

  Jack squared his shoulders. “What do we have?”

  Instead of answering, Balfa led them down to the water’s edge, where a coffin-shaped wooden object lay on a fringe of stony beach. The box looked custom made. The lid was open, facing away.

  “Is the photographer finished?” Jack asked. Nothing could be moved until a Crime Scene tech took pictures of the entire area. If there had been a murder and the perp was caught, it might be years before the case went to trial, and then this scene so vivid before his eyes would exist only as a series of photos to be pinned on a courtroom wall.

  Alvarez nodded.

  Jack moved around and stared down into the box. Inside, resting on a gray wool blanket, lay the body of a Caucasian boy, perhaps ten years old. In thirteen years with the task force Jack had seen a number of juvenile corpses, and many in far worse shape, but he still winced. This was something you never got inured to, especially if you had a kid of your own—or if you had a brother who had died young.

  There was no obvious cause of death. The first thing Jack noticed was something written on the boy’s forehead with what looked like red Magic Marker: the letters G.I. The child was fully clothed, in blue jeans, sneakers, and a cheap plaid shirt buttoned to the neck—something you might buy from a discount department store. Eyes closed, skin pale and slightly blue, arms resting at his sides. Cheap bowl haircut.

  Jack took out a notebook. The sight of the kid was deeply disturbing, but he needed to focus on what was in front of him, not his emotional response. His mind began working furiously, questions popping. Did G.I. mean some kind of Army connection, and was the kid lying on an Army blanket? Who had built the floating box, and where had it gone into the water in the first place?

  First, though, he was concerned about how the tabloids would run with such a story. Most homicides offered little novelty—they were the result of skirmishes over narcotics turf, domestic disputes, petty acts of revenge. The press loved an unusual angle. (He could vividly recall the time in 1982 when he had stepped into a bodega in the middle of a midnight-to-eight and seen the infamous Post cover, HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR.) And now? They would nickname the victim “Coffin Boy” or something equally ghoulish. His race would matter, too. Black or Hispanic kids bought it all the time and barely made a paragraph on some inside page, but a white kid? Forget it—the story might well go national.

  Jack called out to a uniformed sergeant. “We need to get those spectators moved all the way out of the park. And block all entrances. No press.” He wanted a few minutes to focus before things got out of hand. He turned to Alvarez. “You have a cause of death?”

  The Dominican shook his head. “I don’t see any wounds or evidence of trauma or strangulation. We’ll have to take him back and do an autopsy.” He glanced down at the pager clipped to his belt. “Excuse me, gentlemen.”

  Jack turned to the local detective. “Do you have any witnesses who saw how this thing got here?”

  Balfa nodded toward the pier. “I’ve got a uniform holding them out there.”

  “Who are they?”

  The detective lowered his voice. “Coupl’a ’Rican greaseballs. I can’t believe it: They called Nine-one-one and then actually stuck around.”

  Jack was not surprised by the man’s casual racism—he had been a cop too long—but he was not thrilled about it, either. He figured that somebody who spoke to him about greaseballs might well talk about kikes when he wasn’t around. He didn’t say anything, though—the nature of his job was that he probably wouldn’t be paired up with the man for long.

  He followed the detective out. The new pier was much fancier than the old one, but it was already showing subtle signs of decay. The trash cans were just rusting metal drums, but someone had taken the precaution of chaining them to the light poles. Out above the harbor, the sun was locked behind a white haze, making it hard to distinguish where the sky ended and the water began. To the northwest loomed the Manhattan skyline, with its gaping new absence. Even though Jack had had months to get used to the fact, it still seemed impossible that the towers were missing. He turned away.

  The cove was bounded by a modern brick bunker on the right and an old warehouse on the left. Graffiti covered the sides of the latter building: Red Hook Rules and S.A.D. He wondered if the latter was some kid’s initials, or just a general commentary on what had become of the neighborhood.

  After interviewing the two wind-chilled young Hispanic men—who had stayed because one of them had a brother on the job and he wanted to do his civic duty—Jack and his new partner talked to some of the onlookers, but none of them had been present when the coffin washed ashore.

  THE TWO DETECTIVES WENT for lunch at the edge of Red Hook, near the Gowanus Expressway. The highway had severely damaged the Hook, separating it from the rest of Brooklyn. Belmontes Sandwich Shop was one of the few remnants of the old neighborhood—it had been around for eighty years and had survived thanks to four generations of Belmontes. The front window held a collection of American flags and faded plastic flowers. The paneled walls inside sported signed photos of celebrities, including Frank Sinatra. (Jack had seen such photos so many places around New York that he wondered how OF Blue Eyes had found any time to sing—it seemed that he had spent most of his days eating pizza and getting cheap haircuts.)

  He had little appetite this afternoon, but Tommy Balfa stepped up to the counter, manned by crusty men in white T-shirts and little paper hats, and ordered the house special: an Italian hero featuring roast beef, fried eggplant, and fresh mozzarella.

  Jack ordered another cup of coffee. One of the countermen, a burly man with a Tasmanian Devil tattoo on his arm, looked up and his eyes widened. “Hey,” he said, “didn’t you used to be Jackie Leightner?”

  “I still am.”

  “I’m Richie Pepitone,” the man said. “I used to play ball with Petey.”

  Jack nodded politely but his face tightened. His younger brother had been killed when they were just teenagers. The counterman looked like he was eager to chew the fat about old times, but Jack moved away toward the register. The old times had not been such good times, so why dwell on them?

  There were no chairs in Belmontes, so the detectives sat out front in Balfa’s immaculate blue Grand Marq
uis. He turned the engine on and Jack was grateful for the heat pouring out of the dashboard vents.

  Balfa cleared his throat. “So you know the neighborhood, huh?”

  Jack shrugged. “I grew up here.” It seemed to him that the other detective’s look grew slightly cagey, but he might have imagined it.

  Balfa popped a can of Coke and set it on the dash. He unwrapped his sandwich and ate hungrily.

  “You been with the Seven-six long?” Jack said, making conversation.

  Balfa shook his head. “I just got here a few months ago.”

  “Where were you before that?”

  “Narcotics. East New York.”

  Narcotics had always seemed like a shitty detail to Jack. It was pointless, like shoveling sand from one end of a beach to the other. No matter how many skels you arrested, it didn’t do anything to solve the problem. People on the bottom end of the totem pole wanted a little shot of pleasure in their crappy lives. Ultimately, you would need to do something about why they were unhappy in the first place—and how could the police address that? They were mostly there to keep the poor from bugging the taxpayers: off the street, out of sight. At least in Homicide the moral issues were simpler. Killing people: bad.

  “Did you like it?” he asked.

  Balfa’s eyes gleamed. “I loved it.”

  Jack scratched the side of his mouth. Some cops got into a cowboy lifestyle in Narcotics, thrived on the danger. Some got themselves in trouble. “Why’d you leave?”

  Balfa snorted. “My wife couldn’t take it. Said she was gonna pack up and split if I didn’t get into something safer.”

  Jack let the subject drop. He could smell the fried eggplant as Balfa chewed his sandwich. Every couple of minutes the detective checked the rearview and side mirrors; Jack wondered if this was a habit from his days with Narcotics. The man seemed preoccupied, and Jack wondered if he was thinking about their case. “What do you make of it?” he asked. It was time to size up his new partner’s abilities.