Red Hook Page 5

  Tomas Berrios had cycled out this same way less than forty-eight hours earlier. Five young men, pumping along the avenue at night, calling out to each other, laughing, joking—the image grew in Jack’s mind. He tried to draw it out, expand it. Where were they headed? Who did Tomas Berrios expect to meet? Put enough of these images together, and he’d create a mental movie of the vic’s last days.

  Near the Park, they passed a bus depot named after Jackie Gleason.

  “Look at that,” he said, grinning. “You gotta love this borough.”

  Daskivitch shifted his weight in the seat. “So what’s your take? I still think it looks like a Mob hit.”

  “Mafia sounds glamorous, but I think this kid probably just got in over his head with some bad local player. Took the drugs, owed the money.”

  Stopped at a light, he glanced to the west down a San Francisco—steep hill: past the end of the street, the grand orange Staten Island ferry plowed the slate-blue water of Upper New York Bay. In the intersection ahead, a stout middle-aged woman with permed hair shuffled across at a stoic, deliberate Brooklyn pace. Jack reached into the pocket of his sports coat and pulled out a couple of tablets.

  “You got candy?”

  “Just some antacids.”

  “You all right?”

  “Would you shut up with that? I’m fine.”

  Daskivitch shrugged.

  On the north side of the Park, many of the storefronts were covered in Asian lettering. Times changed. Back in Jack’s father’s day, the neighborhood had been known as Little Finland, home to thousands of Scandinavians skilled in the building trades. That was before the Gowanus Expressway forced out many of the old Finnish homeowners, before the same highway ripped the heart out of Red Hook and the old man.

  When Jack’s parents first got married, they lived in a nice little house in the center of the Hook. Back in the 1940s, when city planner Robert Moses dreamed up the expressway, its path ran directly through the house. The city had condemned and demolished the property, along with hundreds of other homes.

  The highway continued on through Sunset Park. Though residents there had pleaded with Moses to place the route along Second Avenue, a marginal industrial strip, the planner ignored them, calling their thriving neighborhood a slum. He ran the elevated highway right above Third Avenue, the vital center of the place, a boulevard of little mom-and-pop stores, of newsstands and family restaurants. Half the buildings along the route were torn down. The new highway was so wide that it cast the avenue below into darkness. The surviving businesses didn’t survive long, with the thunder of trucks and cars overhead and the gloom below. After the central arteries of Sunset Park and Red Hook were destroyed, the blight spread through the smaller streets.

  The Gowanus Expressway was followed by the Belt Parkway, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, massive construction projects that further isolated the Hook from the rest of Brooklyn. More bad news arrived in the 1960s. In the old days, stevedores like Jack’s father lifted everything out of the ships by hand. But shipping technology advanced—cranes were able to hoist giant metal containers directly out of the holds. Red Hook caught on to the change too late and most of the shipping moved to yards in New Jersey, where it was easier to load the containers directly onto trains.

  Once, after his father’s funeral, Jack asked his mother why the old man had been so tough. “He was always kind of hard,” she explained. “But he turned mean after Robert Moses tore down our home.”

  Raymond Ortslee lived on a quiet street near the eastern edge of the Park. On the corner a red and yellow plastic sign read Muchachos Grocery. Across the way stretched a row of little houses with diamond-shaped windows cut in their front doors. White filigreed iron fences surrounded the tiny yards. Jack parked between a dented van and a repainted Mustang.

  The barge captain’s building sat ten yards back from the sidewalk, across a dismal yard. A dog barked somewhere in the back as Jack and his partner entered the cracked driveway. The apartment house was boxy and covered in faded mustard-yellow paint; one section of the facade was slightly darker, where some shingles had been replaced. An exterior staircase crawled up to the third story, where faded aquamarine curtains hung in the windows.

  As Jack led the way up the staircase, he saw one of the curtains move slightly. The doorbell rang inside with a harsh metallic clatter.

  The detectives waited on the landing. Daskivitch stepped forward and rang the bell again.

  “He’s in there,” Jack said quietly. “Right behind that curtain.”

  Daskivitch rattled the knob. Suddenly the door swung open and they were looking into the barrel of an ancient rifle. Behind the weapon stood a small man, wild-eyed behind heavy spectacles. The barge captain’s hair was gray and bristly but it had been Brylcreamed back—he looked like a wet otter.

  Jack and his partner traded a wary look. Without a word, they moved to opposite sides of the landing: if the guy opened fire, he wouldn’t take them both out.

  “I didn’t see nothin’,” the man said desperately. “I’ll swear to it in court. You guys don’t have nothing to worry about.”

  “Point the gun down, Mr. Ortslee,” Daskivitch said firmly.

  The man continued to point the rifle, but he pulled off his eyeglasses. “I’ll say I wasn’t wearing these. Look, I’m blind as a bat without ’em. I’ll say my eyes were bothering me and I took ’em off. Please, I’ll do anything you guys want.”

  “We’re detectives,” Jack said. “NYPD.”

  The man blinked and put his glasses back on. He peered out from the doorway, ready to dive back inside. “I’m not fallin’ for that,” he said. “I know damn well who you guys are.”

  Moving slowly and deliberately, Jack took out his shield. Then he reached into his wallet and pulled out a card.

  “Here,” he said. “Call this number and ask for Sergeant Tanney.

  The man blinked down at the card. He stared out of the dark doorway. The door closed. They could hear him locking it on the other side.

  “Jesus,” Daskivitch said, “did you see that fucking gun?”

  Jack wiped sweat from his forehead. “It was prewar.”

  “It was pre-Civil War. It’s a whaddayacallit, a fowling piece.”

  “A blunderbuss.”

  “That’s right. What the Pilgrims used to shoot turkeys.”

  Both men grinned at their fortune to be standing there alive and in one piece.

  After a moment, the door opened again.

  “I’m sorry, officers,” the man said. “The gun is registered. Perfectly legal. I’ve got the papers.”

  They sat in Ortslee’s living room, low-ceilinged like an attic. Despite the bright day outside and the big windows facing the street, the room was dingy and dim, paneled with cheap, dark veneer. It smelled of mothballs and sweat and mildewed carpet. The furniture was splintered rattan that looked like it belonged on a patio.

  “Was it you who called to tip us off, Mr. Ortslee?” Jack said.

  “I don’t wanna get involved in this.”

  “You already are. Did you make the call?”

  Ortslee struggled with himself, then gave a dismal nod.

  “What did you see?”

  “It was far away. I couldn’t see nothin’.”

  “This is a very serious matter,” Jack said patiently. “We’ll keep anything you tell us entirely confidential.”

  “I was far off. Probably seventy-five yards.”

  “And?”

  “There was two of them. Throwing something over the fence. That’s all I know.” Ortslee rose. “I gotta get ready for work now.” He scuttled out of the room.

  The detectives followed. They caught up with him in his bedroom. A big suitcase lay open on the bed, half filled with jumbled clothes.

  “Don’t fuck with us,” Daskivitch said.

  “I really didn’t see nothin’,” Ortslee replied. His hands shook as he lifted a stack of shirts out of a dresser drawer.


  “If you want, we can discuss this down at the precinct house,” Daskivitch said. “We could charge you with obstruction of justice. One way or another, you’re gonna tell us what you saw on that canal.”

  “I know how this works,” Ortslee said. “I watch NYPD Blue every week.” His eyes darted to Jack, “You play the good cop and he plays the bad cop. Well, I’m not gonna fall for it.”

  Jack chuckled.

  “That damn NYPD Blue,” Daskivitch said, shaking his head. “And I was so looking forward to my bad cop routine.”

  “I can’t stay here,” Ortslee said. “They’re gonna figure out how to find me. And if they already killed one guy, why would they stop there?”

  “Relax,” Jack said. “If you couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see you, right? Tell us what happened.”

  “How’d it go?” asked Daskivitch’s boss, Sergeant Riordan. The man slouched on the edge of his desk in the Seven-six squad room, rubbing his jaw as if he had a toothache. The pain of command.

  “Jack called it,” Daskivitch said. “The barge is motoring along, the captain’s up on deck checking a pressure gauge for the plutonium or whatever-the-hell-poison he’s hauling, and he glances up and sees this thing come flipping over the fence.”

  “A ‘thing’?” Riordan asked.

  “Yeah—it was our vic. First the bargeman thought someone was dumping trash along the canal—which seems to be the big sport over there—but then these two white guys come climbing over the fence after it. He couldn’t see too well on account of the trees and shrubs and crap, but then the perps see him and they wig and scramble back over the fence.”

  “What kind of a look did he get? Could he ID ’em?”

  “Doubtful. He says he was seventy-five yards away.”

  “You want to bring him in and show him some pictures?”

  “He swears he never saw their faces.”

  “He’s just a little hermit who watches too much TN,” Jack said. “I ordered him to stay put in case we need him again. Gary gave him the number here in case he suddenly remembers something, but he seems pretty useless.”

  “What’s next?” Riordan said.

  Jack picked up a glass paperweight from his partner’s desk and hefted it in his palm. “I’ve got a couple of snitches to see.”

  “You want company?” Daskivitch asked.

  Riordan looked up at the clock. “You guys are gonna be heading into OT soon.”

  Daskivitch looked dejected. “You want me to punch out?”

  The rest of New York City was ecstatic that the murder rate had dropped to a fraction of its peak ten years before, but the detective squads had suffered budget cuts. Business, as it were, was off.

  Riordan sighed. “Go with Leightner. God knows, you might actually learn something.”

  six

  THEY SAT IN JACK’S car, just up Atlantic Avenue from a little grimy bunker of a bar called the Luray Inn, the kind of dive where a customer might try to unload coat pockets full of boosted cigarettes or supermarket steaks. Jack shifted, but the back of his shirt stuck to the seat—they couldn’t keep the air conditioner running because they might have to wait for hours. Daskivitch, mercifully had given up drumming on the steering wheel and they sat in a companionable silence. Jack was optimistic: they’d started with an anonymous dump job, but in just over twenty-four hours they had an ID and a possible drug connection.

  On the sidewalk next to the bar, two tiny Arab kids were goofing around. Two old mattresses rested against a brick wall, and one of the kids pressed the other between them until he yelped. When he escaped, they switched roles. It didn’t take a lot to entertain little kids.

  On this side of the street, a customer emerged from a Salvation Army thrift store. Through the plate-glass window Jack watched a friendly cashier make small talk as she rang up a sale. A young couple came out of the store, the pony-tailed girl wearing a backless cotton blouse, the boy in a tie-dyed T-shirt.

  “Can you believe this?” Daskivitch said. “That sixties bullshit is coming back again.”

  The fact was, Jack had missed a lot of the legendary sixties the first time around. The Groovy Decade had passed Red Hook by: while Greenwich Village kids just a few miles across the river were turning on to pot and Bob Dylan, the Hook remained solidly conservative, a place for working men and out-of-work veterans. There was drink, yes, and there was crime, but he never knew a hippie or a head until he got on a troop transport and flew four thousand miles away from Brooklyn. By the time he came back, even cops had long sideburns.

  Motion near the end of the block.

  “Here they come,” he told Daskivitch. “The woman’s called Janelle. The guy goes by T.”

  The man was grizzled and homely, a little black guy trying to walk like a big black guy; the woman white, one hand cocked back to hold a cigarette, swinging tight, a nervous metronome. She followed behind, taking mincing steps like someone wearing high heels for the first time, though she wore sneakers.

  “Why’s he called T?”

  “He likes to drink tea? Thinks he’s Mister T? Who the hell knows?”

  Janelle wore vinyl toreador pants and a low-cut orange top. Her body said thirty, her smoke-and-liquor-ravaged face sixty. She stopped to take off a shoe and shake it out.

  They were a couple—Jack knew they’d been together for ages. He wondered what it must be like for them walking into the Luray, the black guys inside thinking, What’s this brother doing with that white skank? the Caucasian customers asking the opposite question. There was a bravery there worthy of at least some small admiration.

  “Wait up, T!” she called out, voice like a garbage compactor.

  Jack chuckled. “She turns tricks now and then, if you can believe that. Mostly, they just wander around working lame street cons. She tells people she needs a train ticket to go visit her kid in the hospital. Or he does a brown-bag drop.” It wasn’t a brilliant scam—the perp put an empty bottle in a bag and then walked around a corner and got somebody to bump into him. He dropped the bag, the bottle broke. He told them it was expensive booze; tried to shake them down for five or ten bucks.

  “Cute. Can you trust their info?”

  Jack shrugged. “Sometimes. They’re boozers.”

  As the couple came near, he leaned out the window. “How’s it going, T?”

  The man spun around to scope out the avenue, checking for friends or foes. “All right. How’re you, Detective?”

  “I can’t complain.”

  The man leaned in, but pulled back when he saw Daskivitch. “Who’s he?”

  “My partner. It’s okay.”

  The woman came up behind her mate and perched her cigarette hand on her hip.

  “You’re looking good today,” Jack told her. She rolled her eyes, but couldn’t suppress a grin. “Listen, I need some help. Do you two know a guy in the neighborhood, name of Tomas Berrios?”

  “Shit” said T, disgusted. “He got killed yesterday and we don’t know nothing about it.”

  “How did you know he was killed, then?”

  T snorted. “If I didn’t know what was going on around here, you wouldn’t come looking for me.”

  “You’re absolutely right. So can you help me?”

  T pinched the sides of his mouth. “I could use a little help, myself.”

  Jack reached into his wallet and pulled out a twenty, which immediately disappeared into the man’s back pocket.

  “He hangs out with a bunch of kids. They got bicycles.” T stopped and scanned the avenue again.

  “I gave you twenty bucks for that?”

  “What else you wanna know?”

  “You know anybody might have a thing against him?”

  T shook his head.

  “How about drugs? Was he buying?”

  T squinted. “Could be.”

  “Like what? Blow? Crack? Pills?”

  The man shrugged. Jack reached into his wallet and pulled out another twenty, held it up out of reach.
>
  “Uh, yeah. Blow, I think.”

  “Who does he buy from?”

  T shrugged again.

  “Forget it,” Jack said. “Forty is plenty.”

  T pinched the sides of his mouth again. “I dunno, Detective…” He seemed to make a decision, closed down. Maybe forty bucks wasn’t worth crossing a murderous dealer.

  Jack watched Janelle behind him as she imagined sitting down in the Luray, setting a fresh pack of smokes on the bar, ordering that first cold drink.

  She pushed T out of the way, leaned into the window, and mumbled into Jack’s ear.

  She grabbed the twenty and her man and they were gone.

  The detectives sat in the car near Tomas Berrios’s house, watching a building down at the far end of the block for the subtle undertow of street action that would mark a drug set. Jack picked up the radio and made a call to BCI, the Bureau of Criminal Information. After he gave the color of the day, the ever-changing code that identified him as a real cop, a clerk ran the address through the computer to see if it had been the site of any prior arrests. It hadn’t.

  A lookout stood out on the sidewalk in front of the building. A scrawny kid, Hispanic. In the past forty-five minutes, only a couple of customers had approached him. They’d sidle up and murmur, he’d take a quick look around, then turn to the intercom by the door. He gave them the nod and they disappeared inside for a couple of minutes.

  Daskivitch shifted in his seat. “Jeannie and I rented Titanic after work last night. I think we were the last holdouts on the planet, but she’s been bugging me, so I finally caved.”

  “How was it?”

  “You didn’t see it either, huh? It’s a real treat—you get to see hundreds of dead people.”

  “Don’t tell me how it ends.”

  It was after work for most of the population and there was a lot of traffic down the block, day-jobbers heading home from the subway. Even so, Jack knew that if he and Daskivitch tried to approach the building, they’d be raised in a second—the lookout would zip inside to warn the player in his burrow. Then they’d have to go get a warrant.