Red Hook Page 6

  “If we want our guy to talk, we need to surprise him,” he said. He pushed the door open and stepped out of the car.

  Five minutes later he returned, carrying a paper bag from the corner deli.

  “What’s that?” Daskvitch said.

  “Secret weapon.” He pulled out an overstuffed sandwich and removed the plastic wrap. “Double the egg salad, that’s the trick.”

  “What, you’re gonna bribe the guy with a frikkin’ sandwich?”

  Jack grinned. “Watch and learn, Grasshopper.” He took off his sports coat and tie and set them on the back seat. He drew his gun from his shoulder holster, then removed the harness and added it to the pile. Daskivitch looked on, mystified, as he pulled out his badge and dropped it and the gun into the bag.

  The late-day sun caught only the tops of the buildings, but it was still hot down in the street. Twenty yards ahead of Jack, the lookout leaned against a parked car, listening to a Walkman. The job must get dull, standing alone out there for hours at a stretch. But the guy was alert; his shaved head swiveled from side to side like a nervous bird’s. He was maybe nineteen, wearing a T-shirt and those dumb baggy bell-bottoms the kids were into this year.

  Two teenage girls strolled up the block. “So he acksed me did I want to go ovah to his house Saturday,” one of the girls said as they passed Jack. “He said his muthah was gonna be out.” Her big gold earrings jangled as she shook her head in disbelief.

  Jack squeezed the sandwich until the filling oozed out the sides and down his wrist. And that’s how he closed the gap, a guy walking down the street completely immersed in trying to eat a sandwich without spilling egg salad on his pants.

  He walked past the lookout, dropped the sandwich, and yanked his badge out of the bag.

  “Police!” he said, whipping around. He shoved the badge in his back pocket, grabbed the shocked lookout, shoved him into the doorway, and twisted his arm behind his back. Then he leaned out and waved down the street.

  “Yo, get the fuck off me,” the kid muttered. “I ain’t do nothin’.”

  “We’ve been watching you for days. “You’re going to jail right now.”

  “You don’t got shit. Ain’t no law against standing on no sidewalk.”

  “Oh, yeah? We have a video of you.” An empty threat, but if the kid had been stupid enough to hand over any drugs out in the open, he might fall for it.

  “Bullshit,” the kid said, but he lacked enthusiasm.

  “Tell you what.” Jack leaned forward and spoke calmly into the kid’s ear. “You get me buzzed in and I’ll let you walk. I never saw you.”

  Daskivitch jogged up, breathless, a big bear trying to look little. The kid’s eyes widened as he saw more law closing in.

  “How many people upstairs?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Listen,” Jack said patiently, “you might be up for a couple of years, but I’m offering you a get-out-of-jail-free. Now, how many?”

  “I’m gonna get beat.”

  “You’ll get worse than that in the House of Detention, a little guy like you.”

  The kid stared mournfully down at his new Nike sneakers, considering this impeccable logic. “Just two,” he muttered.

  “Okay,” Jack said. “That’s good. Now all you have to do is buzz up and tell them you need to use the John.”

  “Come on, man.”

  “Let’s go,” Jack said, losing patience. It was only a matter of seconds before some concerned young citizen came along, saw what was happening, and gave a warning call upstairs.

  The kid scrunched up his face. Then he reached out and pressed the buzzer for 4D. The intercom squawked.

  “Yo,” the kid said. “It’s me. I gotta take a piss.” The lock clicked open.

  Jack turned to Daskivitch. “Hold on to our little friend until we get up.”

  The door was heavy steel, with a little wire-hatched window in the middle. Jack peered in; the hallway was empty.

  He pushed through, followed by Daskivitch, who practically carried the lookout under one arm. The door thunked closed behind them. Jack reached into the bag and pulled out his gun. He noted irritably that there were no napkins in the bag—and for once he was out of hand wipes. He smeared his shooting hand against a wall to get rid of some egg salad. In twenty-four years with the NYPD, he’d only fired the gun twice—once into the air when he was an over-zealous beat cop chasing a purse snatcher, once into the leg of a serial rapist diving out a back window—but the weight of it was comforting in his hand.

  The stairwell was airless and humid and painted a sickly green that he couldn’t imagine someone actually choosing. By the time he reached the fourth floor, his shirt was soaked with sweat, and not just because of the heat.

  The hall light was off.

  The lookout squirmed.

  “Don’t let him go until I get through the door,” Jack whispered to his partner. “And keep him quiet.”

  Daskivitch nodded and held a big meaty hand over the scared lookout’s mouth.

  Jack made his way along to 4D. Sweat beaded his face and he licked the salty liquid off his upper lip. He tried the door: locked. He gave a quick rap and mumbled, “It’s me.”

  The door swung open to the panicked face of a chubby little Hispanic male, mid-twenties.

  “What the…?” The guy spun around and shouted to someone inside the apartment. The door started to swing shut.

  “Police!” Jack shouted. He stuck his foot in the door and slammed all his weight against it. The door gave way and he barreled through, pushing the kid back into the room. He swung him around and twisted one of his meaty arms behind his back. Over the kid’s shoulder, he saw a fat gray-haired woman sitting on a white leather sofa. She wore orange sweatpants, but she didn’t look like exercise had ever been on the agenda. She stared openmouthed.

  Daskivitch ran in, gun up, breathing hard.

  Jack guided the kid over next to the woman and pushed him down into what little space was left on the sofa. Daskivitch stationed himself by the door, blocking an end run. Jack glanced around: big new TV, two VCRs, a giant boom-box, a couple of cell phones on a coffee table. It looked as if someone just had won a shopping spree in an electronics store—the boxes were still stacked in a corner. The room was decorated with several large velvet tapestries: Jesus on the cross; a crouching leopard; Julio Iglesias grinning painfully, as if he needed to visit the can. Below the leopard was an altar flanked by gaudy prayer candles, dedicated to some saint Jack didn’t recognize.

  The kid may have been dealing coke, but he certainly didn’t look like a user. He was stuffed into his baggy shorts and tank top like a sausage.

  “Okay,” Jack said amiably. “Let’s have a little talk.”

  “Fuck you, man! Who you think you are, all busting in my apartment with a gun and shit when I’m not doing nothing but watch TV, scare my moms—”

  “Who are these people, Mellow?” The woman adjusted a pair of glitter-framed eyeglasses.

  “They must’ve got the wrong apartment,” the son said. “You okay, Mami?”

  For a second, Jack’s heart sank. What if he’d screwed up, if T and Janelle had sent him on a wild-goose chase? But then, solid citizens didn’t need a downstairs lookout.

  The woman moved to hoist herself up.

  “Ma’am,” Jack said, “I’m gonna ask you to stay on the sofa with your son.” He turned to the kid. “You mind if we take a look around?”

  “Look all you want,” the kid said magnanimously. “We don’t got nothing to hide.”

  Jack and Daskivitch traded surprised looks. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a kid like this would demand to see a warrant. It was obvious that he wasn’t a big-time dealer, but even so he shouldn’t be inviting a search. “Take a look around,” Jack told his partner.

  He lowered himself into a pillowy armchair and watched Mellow and his mother while Daskivitch disappeared down the hall.

  The kid picked up a remote and turned up the volume on the
big-screen TV. “You like the soaps, cop? Why don’t you stay and watch with us?” He leaned forward and took a potato chip from an economy-size bag on a coffee table and crunched it deliberately while staring at Jack.

  “Mellow?” Jack said. “They call you that ’cause you’re such a laid-back guy?”

  The mother snorted. “He used to like marshmallows when he was a baby.” Evidently she had too. She reached forward and grabbed a couple of chips.

  Jack stared at them for a minute. They sat there coolly munching chips with two detectives in the apartment, yet somehow their composure seemed thin. The kid glanced around the apartment, scratched the side of his nose.

  Something was definitely hinky.

  “You find anything?” Jack called out.

  Daskivitch came back into the room. “Zippo.”

  “You try the kitchen?”

  “Not yet.” Daskivitch crossed the living room and disappeared again.

  Jack stared at the couple on the couch. They stared smugly back.

  Too smug. It was the look of smart street dealers when a squad car pulled up. No savvy dealer would have stash on his person when he could be searched at any moment. Jack had found the little envelopes hidden in many places nearby, though: in the middle of a public trash can, inside the base of a lamppost, in a magnetic key case stuck under a parked car, even in a potato-chip bag…

  “Mind if I have a chip?” he asked.

  The mother went pale and struggled to rise out of the sofa.

  Jack leaned forward and grabbed her outstretched wrist. With his left hand, he dumped the bag upside down onto the glass tabletop. He shoved aside a heap of chips and grinned at a handful of tiny wax-paper packets. The mother must have shoved them in the bag when her son called the warning.

  “Dask!” he called.

  His partner trotted back.

  “Lookee here,” Jack said. “Do me a favor and escort this wonderful example of a mother out of the room and take a statement.”

  The woman whimpered as Daskivitch led her down the hall. Lovely, Jack thought. Family values. He’d been a cop too long to be surprised.

  He stared at Mallow. Don’t say anything for a moment; let him sweat. The kid didn’t look like a big bad murdering drug dealer, but he was certainly a lying weasel. Maybe he had gotten into a fight with Berrios; maybe he had a big friend willing to work the victim over. In the heat of the moment, Berrios gets stabbed…

  Mallow scowled. “My mother didn’t know nothing about this.”

  “Why don’t we fingerprint the packets, then?”

  “Fuck you,” Mallow said. He didn’t have anything else to offer.

  Jack pulled his chair forward until his knees were touching the kid’s. “You think you’re in trouble now? Try murder one.”

  Mallow’s eyes went big. “What the hell you talking about!”

  “You know one of your neighbors, name of Tomas Berrios?”

  “I heard about it. That shit is wack.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “No. I mean, I saw him around, but—”

  “Did he buy from you?”

  “No.”

  “Play straight with me. Maybe I can at least keep your mother out of jail.”

  Mallow pressed his fingertips against his temples. “Fuck. I don’t…okay, I knew him. He bought from me a couple of times. Just some reefer.”

  “Any coke?”

  “Never.”

  “I heard different.”

  “Man, he was a pussy. All he ever wanted was chiba. That’s all.”

  “How much did he owe you?”

  Mallow shook his head. “I don’t give credit. I don’t have the muscle to collect. What am I gonna do, send my moms over to their house?” He rubbed his palms against his thighs. “Listen, man—I deal a little smoke, maybe a few grams of blow. That’s it. Don’t try to pin some murder thing on me, all right?”

  “Where were you Sunday morning? Say, from eight A.M. to noon?”

  “I was on Staten Island all weekend, man. I went to see my daughter.”

  “Are you lying to me, Mallow?”

  “No, sir. I swear it on my moms.”

  “Yeah, she’s real trusty.”

  “My ex-wife’s whole family was there, mister. Her moms, her sisters, her cousin…It was a birthday party for my daughter.”

  Shit. Jack would call to check, but the alibi sounded solid. He sighed. “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do. I’m not gonna take you in right now. You or your mother.” The truth was that a narcotics bust probably wouldn’t have held up in court, considering the way he and his partner had gained access to the apartment, but Mallow and Co. couldn’t be sure of that. “But I want you out on the street every goddamn second, listening for any word about who might have killed Tomas Berrios. Here’s my card—you call me if you hear anything. Leave a message if I’m not in.” Jack leaned in until he was inches from Mallow’s face. “And if I ever hear that you’re still dealing, or that you had anything to do with the Berrios murder, anything, I’m gonna personally come back here and make sure you and your mami go away for a hundred years. “You follow me?”

  Mallow shook his head, dazed at his good fortune.

  “Right now, I’m gonna need phone numbers for everybody who was at your daughter’s birthday.”

  Daskivitch whistled in disbelief as they settled back into the car. “A day like this, it really does a lot for your faith in humanity.”

  Jack sighed. The day hadn’t done much for his faith in cracking the case either. But he turned to his partner and grinned. “Egg salad and chips.”

  Daskivitch shook his head and started the engine.

  “You wanna get some dinner?” Jack said.

  “I gotta get home. The wife’s expecting me.”

  “How long you been married?”

  Daskivitch scratched the side of his big square head. “Actually, it was just a few months after we worked that case in the Gowanus Houses.”

  “Things going good?”

  “Yeah. I like it a lot. I’d hate to be single again, I’ll tell you that.” He winced. “Uh, sorry. You’re divorced, right?”

  Jack nodded.

  “So, you seeing anybody, or what?”

  Jack sighed. “I get out now and then.”

  seven

  SHEILA DIXON TURNED AFTER she opened the door. “I’m just finishing up something on the computer. There’s wine—help yourself.”

  Jack watched her small figure stride down the hall toward the back of her Brooklyn Heights apartment. It was after ten P.M. He’d dropped Daskivitch off at the Seven-six, eaten some eggplant parmigiana at an Italian place near the station house…He’d felt foolish calling Sheila so spur of the moment, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  He took off his coat and slung it over the back of a rocking chair. In the hallway a row of sinister wooden masks stretched toward the bedroom. Between the front door and the hall hung an abstract painting, a sprawling, messy thing. Bookshelves covered the far wall. History, art history, books with French titles. Sheila taught at Columbia University. They’d met a couple of days after the murder of a local dry cleaner, when Jack was canvassing some of the victim’s regular clients. Sheila had sat on this couch drinking a glass of wine, looking through the sliding glass door, which gave out onto a wooden deck with a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline. She offered him a glass and—since it was near the end of an evening shift—he accepted.

  He sauntered, into the cramped kitchen. As usual, an open bottle of expensive wine stood on the counter. He peered down into a case in the corner; nearly empty. He didn’t think Sheila was an alcoholic, but she definitely drank a lot. Maybe the quality of the wine made her feel better about drinking so much of it, about drinking it alone. He poured himself a glass, then peeked into her refrigerator. Other than a container of lactose-free milk and a couple of take-out cartons, it held only row after row of condiments. Curry paste. Hoisin sauce. Olive paste…In the five or six times he’
d been here, he’d never seen her cook—she was too busy with her work. Maybe she put the condiments on the take-out food.

  He wandered back into the living room, his mind never idle. If this was a homicide scene, who would have killed her? Disgruntled student, maybe, academic career ruined by a failing grade? Too Columbo. Most likely it would just be an interrupted B and E. Up over the deck, through the sliding door. Maybe the perp would leave some prints on a take-out food container, a mid-job snack. Jack would guess his nationality by the type of condiment left out on the counter.

  “What are you thinking about?” Sheila asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.

  He spun around, guilty over his morbid preoccupations. “Hm? Just enjoying the scenery.”

  “That moron next door put a floodlight out on his deck. It really interferes with the view.”

  Sheila sipped her wine. Petite Caucasian female, mid-thirties, short brown hair, fairly sexy figure, lipstick-model lips.

  “This wine’s pretty good,” Jack said.

  “Not really. It’s not very complex. I should have taken it back after I opened the first bottle.” She came around the sofa and perched on the far end. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit?”

  “I don’t know, You need a reason?”

  She lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. “I guess not. The inscrutable Detective Leightner.”

  “Actually, I’m feeling pretty scrutable tonight.”

  She considered him without so much as a grin.

  “That was a joke,” he said. “Did you teach today?”

  She pulled a shred of nicotine off her tongue and grimaced. “Don’t ask. I don’t know why they keep admitting these brain-dead kids.”

  Jack didn’t come around often: her relentless negativity was hard to take. If he said the weather was nice, she’d point to a bad forecast; if he complimented her apartment, she’d complain about the lack of space. A couple of times he’d tried to tactfully point out this pattern, but Sheila had been surprised and defensive. She was always talking about spirituality, about being centered and grounded, but her cool exterior seemed brittle to him, the cap on an angry inner life. In short, she was a pain in the ass, but the next time he was feeling too single, he’d probably overlook that again and come back for more.