Buried on Avenue B (4 page)

 

CHAPTER 7

COMPARED TO GUS'S
apartment, the squad room is an oasis of comfort and calm. O'Hara slips the photograph from her bag and drops it on her desk. Based on the tree's foliage and the plants and flowers visible in the background, the picture was taken in the summer, but how many summers ago is impossible to know.

“It was taken with a Polaroid Swinger,” says Jandorek over her shoulder. “My uncle gave me one for my twelfth birthday. In the sixties, they were cool and cost about twenty bucks. Now guys with tats and hats collect them in Williamsburg.”

“I found it in a cigar box at Henderson's place,” says O'Hara, “right before he pissed himself. The whole visit was a preview of what we have to look forward to in the golden years, a trailer of coming attractions. Kind of interesting, though, that Henderson has a picture of the tree. And if this camera was around seventeen years ago, it fits the time frame.”

“It was around way before that,” says Jandorek. “Not that it matters.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's a complete waste of time. No way in hell Kelso approves homicide dollars for a backhoe because a junkie with Alzheimer's told his health aide he killed a black guy. Please. And by the way, you missed a nice piece of fish—cod, roasted, over heirloom tomatoes.”

Jandorek is right, of course, but Gus and Paulette and the frigging willow have taken root in her brain. So has that quagmire of a garden. And now three distinct bits support the possibility that a body is under the tree: Henderson's original candlelit confession when he thought the end was near; his pointing at the spot two weeks later when he was better; and this photo found among a handful of meds and old keepsakes.

O'Hara Googles “Polaroid Swinger,” and discovers that Jandorek got it pretty much exactly right, as usual. If the guy cared half as much about solving homicides as the location of his next piece of fish, he could shame Sherlock Holmes. The cameras were made from 1965 to 1970, went for $19.95, and became one of the best-selling cameras of all time. According to Wikipedia, “The Swinger was especially successful with the youth market due to its low price, stylish appearance, and catchy ‘Meet the Swinger' jingle sung by Barry Manilow in a television advertisement featuring a young Ali MacGraw.”

While the computer is on, O'Hara decides to take another look at Henderson's rap sheet and marvels again at his stamina. Here was a man who found his vocation early and never wavered. He did what he wanted as long as he could, and then stopped, and in her visit, O'Hara didn't detect a trace of self-pity or regret. Between his first arrest in '57 and his last in '02, is an endless roll call of picayune offenses—panhandling, loitering, turnstile jumping, shoplifting, public intoxication, public urination—tell me about it, thinks O'Hara—possession of stolen property, possession of burglary tools. And then there's the shit that's so stupid it's almost inspired, like when he got arrested twenty years ago, trying to pawn three full-length furs on Canal Street in the middle of July.

In his twenties, thirties, and forties, Henderson was like a slugger a manager could pencil in for thirty homers every year, only in his case it was thirty arrests. His consistency was so remarkable that what catches her attention is the three-year gap in his résumé between 1988 and 1991. A little more research, and she learns the reason. He spent twenty-eight of those thirty-six months in Attica, his first and only real stretch of jail time, for a mugging in Washington Square, which got elevated to armed robbery because either he or his accomplice wielded a screwdriver.

When the shift ends at four, Jandorek is out the door, O'Hara pulls a Red Bull out of her drawer and continues to pore over the junkie rap sheet like a railbird studies a racing form, and if the fact that she has been known to start her day with a grapefruit juice and vodka makes her fascination with Henderson's epic addiction more than strictly professional, so be it. She is particularly intrigued by the fact that he was able to stay clean for six months after his release from jail, that he showed the discipline to sit tight and wait out his probation, not out of a desire to go straight but because he knew if he violated and got sent back, the beautiful affair between him and dope could be over. After his release from jail in the middle of 1990, it took almost a year for the arrests to start again, and from that point on, he was more careful, the arrests were fewer, and he never truly put his addiction at risk.

AT 7:30, O'HARA
takes a short walk to Second Avenue and picks up some beef and broccoli from the place on Twenty-Second. She didn't think she could miss bad Chinese, but she does. Grease, sugar, and MSG has never tasted this good. She devours the carton's contents at her desk, and as she lingers over the last dripping stalk of broccoli, the date of Henderson's release from Attica catches her eye—August 15, 1990. That is seventeen years ago, almost to the day, and Henderson told Williamson he killed someone seventeen years ago.

O'Hara is onto something. There are no coincidences in homicide. If his confession was accurate, and O'Hara is becoming increasingly convinced it was, than he killed someone right after he got out. Maybe, thinks O'Hara, the killing stemmed from something that happened inside. O'Hara logs into a separate database for the Department of Corrections to see what she can learn about how Gus did his time. As it turns out, he did it very well. There are no red flags, no disciplinary actions, no evidence of a dispute. Henderson sat himself down and did his little stint like an adult. Even Kelso would have been impressed. He was such a good inmate, they let him out a couple months early.

With nothing coming out of his prison experience, O'Hara refocuses on Henderson's time on the streets and scrolls again through the breakdown of offenses and arrests. She notices that in many of his shenanigans, Henderson was operating in concert with a hapless accomplice and soul mate named Charles Faulk. From 1983 to 1988, Henderson and Faulk were taken away in handcuffs nineteen times, a streak that ended with the mugging that sent Henderson to jail.

Henderson told Williamson that seventeen years ago, he'd killed a large black man. Faulk's description: “African American, six-four, three hundred twenty pounds.”

Faulk is large and black. But is he dead? Now O'Hara runs Faulk's name. Faulk's rap is similar and often identical to Henderson's. The only substantial difference is that Faulk's career in petty crime ended ten years before age slowed Henderson. His last arrest for possession or anything else was on August 11, 1990, four days before Henderson got out of jail. O'Hara takes a deep breath and reminds herself that just because Faulk hasn't been arrested for seventeen years, that doesn't mean he's dead. Perhaps he finally saw the folly of his ways, accepted Jesus as his personal savior, and is running a small ministry for wayward youth in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Or maybe he's spent the last seventeen years rotting under a willow in the East Village.

O'Hara runs Faulk through Missing Persons and finds that on November 13, 1990, his mother, Marie Scott of Monroe, South Carolina, filed a missing person report for her son and the case is still open. Again, O'Hara tells herself to chill. The missing person file could be out of date. It's been seventeen years; maybe Faulk has resurfaced. She Googles “Marie Scott, mother of Charles Faulk, Monroe, South Carolina.” She gets an address and phone number, and makes the call. A woman answers.

“Mrs. Scott?”

“Speaking.”

“My name is Darlene O'Hara. I'm a detective for the NYPD. I'm very sorry to trouble you about this matter. I saw that you reported your son missing in 1990. Has your son been found since then, or was there any progress in the attempt to find him?”

“What do you think?” asks Scott. “A junkie disappears, who's going to care? You're with NYPD, you know that better than me. For a couple years, I made calls to a detective in the Ninth Precinct, but eventually I gave up after I heard my son had jumped off the Staten Island Ferry. Charles had a history of mental problems and depression, and he'd tried to kill himself once before. So it could be true.”

“May I ask who told you your son had committed suicide?”

“An old friend of his.”

“You don't remember his name by any chance?”

“Gus Henderson. My son was gay, and I always assumed he and Charlie were lovers. Why this sudden interest in my son after all these years?”

“I'm a homicide detective, Mrs. Scott. I was just given a file on a cold case of someone who may have been associated with your son. I was hoping your son had been found and I could talk to him.”

“Really? Well, he wasn't, because no one ever looked for him. Good night, Detective,” says Scott and hangs up.

A couple hours ago, all O'Hara had was the alleged confession of a demented ex-junkie. Now she has the body to go with it, a body that fits the description and disappeared at the right time. To get Kelso to rent a backhoe, she still needs one more piece, a persuasive reason for Henderson to turn on his old partner: she needs a motive. Minutes later, after opening both men's files side by side on her screen, she finds it. Five weeks after Faulk and Henderson were arrested for the mugging in Washington Square, Faulk was arrested again for public intoxication. In other words, while Henderson did twenty-four months, Faulk didn't do a minute. O'Hara already knows why, but to be sure she verifies it in the transcripts from
The State of New York versus Gus Henderson
. Listed first among the witnesses for the prosecution is Charles Faulk. Henderson's old running mate flipped, turned state's witness, and ratted him out. That's all very understandable and happens every day, but sometimes payback is a bitch, in which case it's probably no coincidence that four days after Henderson is released from jail, Charles Faulk commits his last crime and, sometime very soon thereafter, takes his last breath. Now O'Hara has a confession, a missing body, and a motive, not to mention a really nice picture of a willow tree. A pretty good day's work in Homicide Soft. It still might not be enough for Kelso, but she doesn't have time to worry about that now.

 

CHAPTER 8

AN HOUR AFTER
O'Hara leaves her desk, the Flat Screens storm the stage of the second-floor ballroom of the Ukrainian Center on Second Avenue. If all goes according to script, rock historians and MTV specials will note ad nauseam that the band's maiden performance was witnessed by only seventeen people, and that four of them, including the lead singer's mother, were current or former detectives from the Seventh Precinct. With its tiny and barely elevated stage, rimmed by plastic plants, and tables and chairs pushed against the side wall, the space evokes the best and worst of junior high, a time when it still seemed like everyone was in the same leaky boat. The band got the show through the drummer's mother who works at the center three days a week. Axl wears a white button-down shirt, lederhosen spray-painted orange, and flip-flops. He grabs the mike and growls a cappella:

Let's get the fuck out of Dodge!

Let's get the fuck out of Dodge!

Let's get the fuck out of Dodge!

Then he adds an elegant last line, whose logic is unassailable.

Because Dodge . . .

Is the place . . .

We want to get the fuck . . . out of!

As the crowd, nonplussed, watches in silence. O'Hara wonders if it's her destiny to spend both her days and nights with the mentally challenged. She also wonders if it's possible, technically speaking, to empty an already empty room. Axl takes a gulp of air, nuzzles the mike with his beard, and launches into the tuneless ditty again. By the second “Let's get the fuck out of Dodge!” three kids and two bulky detectives have taken up the chant, and by the time Axl sings again:

Because Dodge . . .

Is the place . . .

We want to get the fuck . . .

. . . out offfff!

The whole audience, seventeen strong, has signed on for the trip.

With that last clumsy addendum still hanging in the air, the Ukrainian American drummer hurls himself at his kit, the guitarists of unknown ancestry pile on, and a rock 'n' roll riot breaks out.

The sound is so ragged and Axl expectorates the words in such a rush, O'Hara can only make out a line or two here and there before everything is buried beneath the sonic rubble. Enunciation aside, Axl's voice is strong and full of feeling, equal parts outrage and dark comedy. And the songs keep her off balance, the phrases either running longer than she thinks they will or abruptly pulling up short, as Axl clings to the mike stand like a life raft, gasps for breath, and rants on.

She could be wrong, but in the second song, she thinks she hears:

Young lady, if you think one roast chicken

Is going to make up for doing my best friend on my floor

You've got a lot to learn.

That's going to take three chickens

And a side of brussel sprouts . . .  beeatch.

The third song begins:

I have a friend who says she just wants to be happy.

Good luck with that, baby girl.

FIVE SONGS AND
nineteen minutes later the show ends much too quickly, although thankfully without a reprise of “Let's Get the Fuck Out of Dodge.” As the small but ebullient crowd pushes up against the stage, O'Hara exchanges hugs with Krekorian, Nieves, and Flannery.

“I'll say one thing,” says her old partner K. “The boy has sack.”

“A two-hundred-pound leprechaun in German leather,” says Flannery. “It works for me. Always has.”

O'Hara, herself, is overwhelmed. When did Axl, who as a fourteen-year-old was so traumatized by his first breakup she had to stage an intervention/road trip to the Grand Canyon, acquire the sack, as K put it, to live so large and loud? And when did he acquire the experience to write those lyrics? And how did all this happen without her noticing any of it?

O'Hara had naively planned to take her son out for a celebratory drink, but when she sees the crush of friends, including one very pretty girl who may or may not know how to baste a bird, O'Hara realizes that Axl is not going to be celebrating his band's first show with moms. Lucky to get a five-second audience, she pulls his ear within whispering distance and cuts to the chase.

“Not for nothing, Axl, but that was friggin' amazing.”

“Thanks, Darlene.”

O'Hara's former colleagues have to head to back to New City, Long Beach, and Valley Stream, but O'Hara is too amped for Riverdale. Besides, there's still work to be done, and after depositing three twenties in the tip jar, O'Hara heads for the stairs. At 11:00 on a summer Thursday, Second Avenue is a zoo. O'Hara pushes to the curb and turns around to snap a retinal image of the building that housed what will always be Axl's first New York show. Till now, it had never quite registered how Ukrainian this block is, with Veselka on the corner, and next to it the Ukrainian National Home, a shockingly ugly piece of architecture that looks as if it was airlifted from a midsize Soviet city. O'Hara had walked by the Ukrainian Center a hundred times without noticing, built into the facade, the gold bust of a man who, she assumes, is the Ukrainian George Washington.

Half a block south, O'Hara turns right onto St. Mark's. O'Hara is just old enough to remember a time when St. Mark's still packed a little transgressive thrill. Now it's low-end tourist traps—head shops, tattoo parlors, and T-shirt stalls—and dozens of small restaurants, mostly Japanese. All that's left from the bad old days of Joey and Dee Dee and Sid and Nancy are the Gem Spa at one end, the Continental at the other, and the Grassroots Tavern in between, and that's where O'Hara makes her first stop.

She takes her Maker's Mark to a small table in back, across from a pair of dartboards, raises her glass in a silent toast, and repeats to herself what she whispered in her son's ear—
Not for nothing, Axl, but that was friggin' amazing
. Over the years Grassroots has lost some of its roué charm, but makes up for it with the strongest air-conditioning below Fourteenth Street, and O'Hara wonders if the chilly draft is strong enough to affect the flight of a dart, not that she normally gives a flying fuck about darts. Then she glances over her shoulder, and when she sees that the bartender is distracted, she pulls a paper rectangle from her bag, peels off the back, and slaps it to the wall between the two boards. Bull's-eye.

Until someone is sufficiently motivated to scrape it off, every dart thrower who lets his concentration waver will come eye-to-eye with the Flat Screens
.
So begins a brisk hate-to-drink-and-slap-a-band-sticker-on-your-ass-and-run pub blitz that will include successful stops at half a dozen iconic East Village dives. In the next hour and a half, the women's bathrooms at Holiday Lounge, the International, Lakeside, 7B, and Manitoba's are all installed with Flat Screens. Maybe it's guerrilla marketing, probably it's vandalism, but without question the working conditions are foul enough to warrant a medal and a tetanus shot.

Her last stop is Three of Cups. The basement bar below First Avenue represents a unique challenge to a proud mother, since it already boasts the highest concentration of band stickers in the city. The low ceiling is plastered five, six, seven deep. Fortunately, O'Hara has become something of a regular over the past couple years, and is able to guilt the bartender into surrendering the best media placement in the neighborhood—the chrome bill drawer on the old cash register, which faces out from the back wall, among the vodkas and whiskeys. Now every sale is a ringing, open-and-shut endorsement of New York's next great band.

After five brown drinks in two hours, O'Hara is finally coming down off the rush of the Flat Screens' show. For the first time since she's left the squad room, her attention drifts back to her homicide, and the likelihood that Henderson's treacherous old partner Charlie Faulk is buried in a shallow grave a couple blocks away. Persuading Kelso to let her dig him up is not going to be easy, but she can worry about that tomorrow, and with one last look at her handiwork on the register, she pushes from the bar. Time, she thinks, to get the fuck out of Dodge.