Fresh Kills (21 page)
Authors: Bill Loehfelm
First thing we did after I pulled off the expressway was stop for more cigarettes and a couple of tall boy six-packs. Jimmy let me spring for them. He cracked two beers open as I turned out of the parking lot.
“Shame they don’t sell pony bottles of Bud anymore,” Jimmy said, handing me a beer. “Then this would really be a trip down memory lane.”
“All my Mötley Crüe tapes are back at the apartment,” I said.
I made a right at the light and turned us onto Willowbrook Road. We sped along the dark Atlantic coast of the island, not talking, just smoking cigarettes, drinking beer. Every other streetlight was out, and the road was dark and quiet. There were no other cars. As we ran one red light after another, a silver sliver of beach and the cold, black ocean flew by on our left. Rows of rundown,abandoned bungalows littered the roadside on our right— fossils of the island’s long-lost heyday as a beach resort. More than a few now stood charred by amateur arsonists, or addicts careless with the pipe. The rest leaned at odd angles, exhausted and distant, like homeless drunks slumped in a doorway.
As we neared South Beach, the partial silhouettes of swing sets and softball backstops materialized in the darkness between the road and the beach. After another couple of miles they gave way to the shadowy remnants of the crumbling, tumbledown boardwalk. It ran along between us and the sea like a long, black Stone-henge. A thin mist drifted inland off the sea. The low rumble of the waves on the beach made strange echoes. Up ahead, the gauzy glow of headlights in the South Beach parking lot.
“What a shithole,” Jimmy said. “I can’t believe how much time we used to spend here.” He took several long swallows of beer. “You’ll know these guys when you see them?”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. “Well, no. We’ll have to ask around a little.”
“You sure they’ll be here?” Jimmy asked.
“It’s Staten Island, McGrath. Whatever they were doing last night, that’s what they’re doing tonight.”
Jimmy drank more beer and bummed another smoke off me.
I eased into the parking lot, staring past Jimmy at the disembodied heads that turned in our direction. A few dozen teenagers, mostly boys, milled around in close proximity to their cars, late-model SUVs almost to a one. I wheeled the Galaxie around and parked it facing the crowd, catching them in my headlights. A few of the kids shielded their eyes. A few more flipped us off. Silver beer cans glinted in their hands. I left the lights on and the engine running as Jimmy and I got out of the car. We circled around the front of the car. Standing in the glare of the headlights, we cast huge, deformed shadows across the asphalt.
“I guess driving the folks’ old station wagon has gone out of style,” Jimmy said.
I could barely hear Jimmy speak. What I’d took for the rumbling of waves was really the thumping of discordant, bone-rattling bass coming from the SUVs. Each crew had their stereo turned way up in an attempt to drown out the others. All I heard from where we stood was a lot of aggravating fucking noise. A salty stink blew in on the ocean breeze. Low tide. I leaned closer to Jimmy.
“You still up for this, Saint?”
“Why not?” he said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
I stuck my hands deep in the pockets of my leather jacket and led us across the foggy parking lot. Two guys met us halfway.
They could’ve been brothers, twins almost, in their blond buzz cuts, white T-shirts, and gold bracelets. They were seventeen or eighteen, lean and hard from weight lifting for football, one slightly taller than the other. Both were half in the bag from Coors Light and Crown Royal. In unison, they shifted their varsity jackets off their shoulders and spread their feet. I tried real hard not to feel old.
“The fag section,” the short one said, tilting up his chin, “is back toward the bridge.”
Jimmy glanced at his watch. “You two better hurry up, then. You’ll be late for the circle jerk.” He surprised me almost as much as he surprised them. I hoped I hadn’t let it show. We were off to a flying start.
The boys glanced at each other then stepped closer to us. “Fuck you, motherfucker,” the short one growled at Jimmy.
“Get in the car,” Jimmy said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “We’ll go see the bridge.” He wiggled his eyebrows and grinned.
The boys held their stares, trying to hide their growing fear. Jimmy and I were old, outnumbered, and out of place. That we weren’t afraid confused them. They were wondering, I knew, what secret, pedophilic black magic we might know and whether we might use it to drag them, terrified, under the Verrazano. They were wondering whether or not they’d fucked up and picked a fight with two cops. I liked it that way. I saw no reason to dispel their imaginings. The tall one finally broke his stare and glanced over his shoulder for the cavalry. I reached out and grabbed his forearm. He jerked it back like he’d been stung.
“Ladies,” I said. “We need to talk to you and your, uh, homies over there. Let’s just get down to business.”
I started toward the cars. The twins followed, Jimmy close behind them. The music got turned down. Someone in the passenger seat of the nearest Escalade hid something under the seat. They were hedging their bets, figuring we might be cops. And not the usual cops that hit the lights and sat in their patrol car until the parking lot cleared out. We were cops who wanted something, or knew something.
I walked over to the Escalade. “You wanna give me that?”
A big-eyed girl, not more than fifteen and buried in makeup, stared down at me. She smelled like pot. “Give you what?”
“Whatever it is you just jammed under the seat.”
Her eyes searched the boys around her. “What? I don’t know what—”
“Just fuckin’ give it to him, Gina,” someone shouted.
“Move your feet,” I said, tapping Gina’s bare calf. She snapped her legs up underneath her. Under the seat I found a bottle of Crown. I stepped back from the car and took a long pull, then tossed the bottle to Jimmy. He did the same.
“Fucking Canadian pisswater,” Jimmy said. He lobbed the bottle to Gina but she didn’t catch it. It smashed on the pavement. A groan went up in the crowd. “Fuckin’ Gina,” someone said.
“Gimme a break,” I said. “You got plenty more stashed around here.”
I turned to face the gathered crowd. “Last night, some fuckhead burned a car out here. I wanna talk to whoever called it in.”
A murmur went through the crowd. Heads shook. Whispers passed from lips to ears. Nobody had anything to say.
“Don’t give me this shit,” I said. “You spoiled-ass motherfuckers are out here every night. Somebody saw something. Give it up.”
“Cops been here about that already,” the tall twin said. “Talk to them.”
“I did already. That conversation is why I’m here. Who’d they talk to?”
The tall twin stepped forward. “What, your cop friends didn’t tell you, big man?” Maybe he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. So I smacked his beer out of his hand and shoved him hard against the Escalade. “Abuse,” someone shouted from the back of the crowd. “I got a camera phone,” shouted someone else.
“You’ll fucking eat it,” Jimmy shouted back. A couple people jumped. He’d been so quiet they’d forgotten he was there.
I closed in on the tall twin, close enough to let him smell my whiskey breath. Close enough for him to think maybe I wasn’t a cop after all, maybe I was something worse. He flattened his back against the car.
“You know, I fucking hated football players when I was a kid,” I said. “Really fucking hated them.”
“Why?”
“I had my reasons. Sometimes it still keeps me up at night. You gonna tell us about that phone call?”
“I don’t know nothin’,” he said. “We talked to the cops when they got here, but me and Sean and Gina got here after the fire was out. Nobody I know called nobody.”
A short, fat girl in a red sweatshirt, hair piled high, jaws furiously punishing her gum, shoved her way forward through the crowd. “Fuck this shit. I was here last night. Talk to those faggots across the lot.” She turned and pointed a plump, diamond-ringed finger into the darkness. “Down by the boardwalk. The two greasy faggots in the shitmobile. Cops talked to them a long time. Betcha those are your boys.”
I looked at Jimmy. He acted bored, slouching, running his hand through his hair, but his eyes burned bright and wary. I took a deep breath and backed away from the scared kid in front of me. His friends parted as I made my way over to Jimmy. We stepped away from the murmuring crowd.
“Whadda ya think?” I asked him. “You know teenagers better than me.”
“Either those are our guys in the other car,” he said, “or these punks will try and bail soon as we walk away. If they don’t scatter, we’ll know they were telling the truth.”
“Fuck it,” I said. “Let’s see what the other two have to say.” As we headed across the lot, the music in the SUVs behind us got louder. I took it as a good sign.
When we got closer, I recognized the car as a Gremlin. The hatchback was open and two pairs of denim-clad legs dangled down to the bumper. System of a Down spun out of the car on a cloud of marijuana smoke. Crushed, empty cans of Milwaukee’s Best were piled on the asphalt, where they’d been tossed from the back of the Gremlin. I felt like I’d traveled back in time. I could tell from the grin on Jimmy’s face he was feeling the same way.
“Maybe we can go easier on these guys,” Jimmy said.
“That’s up to them,” I said. I rapped on the windshield. “Sit up straight, children. The grown-ups are here.”
A long “Awwwww-maaaaan” drawled out of the car as they turned down the music, slid out of the back, and stood up at the bumper. One was tall and chubby, with an explosion of wiry black hair. He wore a black long-sleeved shirt with a big white bat signal on it. He shoved his hands in his pockets and threw a dejected glance at his buddy, a short, skinny kid in a pentagrammed hoodie. His hair was already thinning. He shoved a pair of John Lennon glasses on his face and blinked at me and Jimmy. “I guess you guys want the weed,” he said, reaching into his sweatshirt pocket.
“No, we don’t,” Jimmy said. “What’re your names?” His voice was calm and quiet, but the kids only looked more afraid. These guys didn’t have an ounce of violence in them. “Ronnie,” the fat one said. “Mike,” said the other.
“One of you,” I said, “called in that car fire last night.”
“Who told you that?” Ronnie asked.
“The honor society across the lot,” I said.
Ronnie and Mike grinned and glanced at each other. “You mean the nightly ‘my new haircut’ convention?” Mike asked.
“Whatever,” I said. Their grins vanished. We weren’t here to make friends. “Is it true?”
“I guess,” Ronnie said.
“You guess or you know?” I shouted. Ronnie jumped back and I stepped into the space. I was getting tired of dicking around with these fucking arrogant kids. It’s not like I was asking complicated questions.
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Ronnie said. “We called it in on Mikey’s phone.”
“For sure. It was totally me,” Mike said, desperate to get me out of Ronnie’s face. “It was my phone. I called nine-one-one.”
“What did you see?” I asked.
“A car on fire,” Ronnie said.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said. “I fucking know
that
.” Still, I backed off, gave Ronnie a little breathing room. “It was burning when you got here?”
that
.” Still, I backed off, gave Ronnie a little breathing room. “It was burning when you got here?”
“No,” Ronnie said. He clammed up, looked over at Mike.
“Well?” I asked. “What happened then?”
Ronnie shook his head. Mike shrugged. I snatched fistfuls of Mike’s sweatshirt. When he grabbed my wrists, I threw him down. He fixed his glasses before he tried getting up. I put my boot on his chest and pushed him back down. “Those fucks killed someone, shot him in the fucking head. What did they look like?”
Jimmy walked up next to me. We stood shoulder to shoulder. I handed him a cigarette. My palms started to itch. Mike scrambled to his feet and Ronnie didn’t move.
“You miserable little fucks,” Jimmy said, tapping the cigarette against his wrist. “This exciting for you? Jerking our chains about a dead man? What’d you get? Fifty bucks? A dime bag?” He rocked back on his heels, blowing smoke out of his nose. “You little shits burned that car and that’s bad news. It was a real important car.”
Something barked in my chest at Jimmy’s suggestion, something under my heart. It took my breath away. I knew he was right. Lights flashed in front of my eyes, my brain spun. I grabbed Ronnie by his fat cheeks. He cried out, knees buckling. I bent his head back. I screamed in his face.
“You burn that fucking car? Did you?” Finally, I was gonna get an answer. “Who drove it in here? Who told you to?” The man I was looking for was in there, just beyond Ronnie’s terrified eyes. I knew it for sure. His name, his face, his throat, were just beyond my reach, just the other side of this kid’s skull. I could see him behind my own reflection in Ronnie’s eyes. I bent and twisted Ronnie’s head to get a better look. I couldn’t let him get away, even if I had to smash this kid’s skull to get at him.
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