Mitchell Smith (40 page)

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell you. Classman would have shot the livin’ shit out of ‘em.

You’d have a bunch of dead junkies, real quick.”

“That isn’t what happened, though, Tommy.”

“Right. That isn’t what happened. What happenedmaybe-is, Classman ran into cops. Trained guys waitin’ for him. He hits one-then maybe they’re yellin’ ‘Cops, cops!” or one of ‘ern’s got his badge out-and Classman stops shootin’ to think it over-and gets nailed.”

“That couldn’t be.”

“Oh, the hell it couldn’t! Happened more than once in the Department, let me tell you. -That black guy maybe was a dealer, maybe another cop.

An’ him an’ his buddies came out of Classman’s with two problems.

-Onethey got a guy hurt or dead, and two-they killed a cop an’ they got to cover. What happened to the guy got hit, I don’t know, but I bet if he was a cop, you’re going’ to find out he got a leave or a detached assignment real quick, the next day. -An’ for cover on the killin’, make it look like a junkie B an’ E-they went and took Jesfis Chdvez up to the Bronx, an’ they put a slug clean through him, look like Classman’s shot-then they haul the poor guy up, an’ did him a Brody off that roof.”

“Jesus H. Christ, Tommy . . .”

“How do you like that one?”

“I think it’s very farfetched.”

“Listen, honey-there are three witnesses saw that black son-of-a-bitch’s face! We got one witness–old Clayton there-saw the two white guys.

Saw that rented Dodge.

… What do you bet—one million bucks if Homicide checks every car rental, just on Dodges, last couple of weeks-they’re going’ to find a piece of fake ID, car rented by a guy don’t exist. They start checking’

around all over town-the precincts, bars, restaurants, everythin’, put the word out on the street looking’ for somebody remembers seem’ a big black guy with glasses hanging’ out with two big white guys look like cops. -They don’t bust something’ loose in a week, maybe two weeks, I’ll be damn surprised.”

“O.K., Tommy, what are you going to do? -We don’t have the time to screw around with this—even if you’re right.”

“I’m not going’ to do a goddamn thing. What I’m going’ to do is tell Leahy, let him tell Anderson-an’ that jerk can call Division an’ let ‘em know we aren’t all assholes down there, after all. I mean, I could be wrong-right? It makes sense to me-but, O.K., I could be dead wrong.”

“You certainly could.”

“But it’s a lead-right? It’s witnesses saw that same guy takin’ Chdvez away. I didn’t make that up.”

“I guess you could be right, Tommy. But I hope you’re wrong, and it wasn’t cops.”

“I know,” Nardone said, opened his door and climbed out of the car. “I know what you mean.”

A tiny woman, almost a midget, was talking to the only sergeant on desk duty when Ellie and Nardone went in. The woman had a high-pitched voice, and she was speaking a very rapid Spanish. The desk sergeant was black.

The woman finished what she was saying, and the sergeant said, “I want to know if he threatened you, physically. Did he say he was going’ to hurt you, you didn’t let him do what he wanted?”

The tiny woman shook her head, and answered rat-atat-tat in Spanish.

” Look,” the sergeant said. “How about just payin’ your rent?”

More Spanish. When she spoke with such speed and force, the little woman rose on her toes with the effort.

“He said he doesn’t want your money. .

Spanish.

“He’s making’ sexual blackmail on you-right?”

The little lady nodded.

“I was you, I’d move,” the desk sergeant said.

The woman said nothing to that.

“How many kids you got?”

“Cuatro.”

They looked at each other for a moment-the sergeant looking down, the small woman, up.

“Get a lawyer,” the desk sergeant said. “-Tell that asshole you’re gonna take him to court.”

Sad, slower Spanish, then, which Ellie understood pretty well.

“The landlord is a lawyer . . . ?” The desk sergeant considered that.

“-I was you, I’d move.” He turned in his chair, and beckoned Ellie and Nardone over.

“What do you need?”

“You got a drunk named Bostwick,” Nardone said.

“I don’t know,” the sergeant said, swiveled his chair and called behind him. “Hey, Morty? -We got a Bostwick holdin’?”

A patrolman clerk at the back of the room called, “We got him-he’s down in three.”

“Go get him-Ao these officers a favor.” And to Nardone as Morty got up and left the desk room, “-Let me see some ID” as he pulled a blue form out of his desk drawer. “Fill this out.”

Bostwick was able to stand, but only at a slant. He was a very slender man in his fifties or sixties, with a thick white stubble of beard. His top front teeth were missing, and he’d formed the habit of sticking his tongue partway out through that gap, and leaving it protruding. He was wearing a torn shirt, black with dirt, and a pair of baggy chinos stained darker brown here and there. There was a powerful smell of shit about him.

“You’re going on a ride upstate, Carl,” Ellie said. “An officer up there wants to talk to you. -You know? You remember that fight in the bar? The two state troopers?”

Carl didn’t seem to remember it.

“We need a blanket for this one,” Nardone said to the sergeant. “-We can’t take the guy in the car like this.

Guy’s got a load in his pants right now.”

“We’re supposed to give you guys an emergency blanket? -How we going’

to get that blanket back? You guys going’ dry clean that blanket?”

“Has he had something to eat?” Ellie said.

“Two Big Macs,” the patrolman clerk called from his desk.

“Don’t give us a hard time-O.K.?” Nardone said to the sergeant. “I’ll pay you for the fuckin’ blanket-you can get your captain something’ for Christmas.”

“-Anything else?” Ellie said.

“That’s it,” the patrolman clerk called. “-He kept it down.

“All right,” the sergeant said. “We’ll give you a blanket-you sign for it.”

The drive to Port Authority was a slow drive in early evening traffic.

Carl Bostwick’s odor, issuing from the back seat, was severe, and seemed only strengthened by their opening the car’s windows. Bostwick, after the first two or three blocks, began to make a sort of tooting sound, lips rounded, his tongue still slightly protruding.

The sound would begin as a soft, almost humming note, swell slowly to a hornlike toot-pretty loud-and end in soft tongue-flapping farting noises.

“Will you give us a break back there, Carl?” Nardone said. ‘-It’s kinda late in the day.”

“Carl—do you need a drink?” Ellie said.

“Yes,” Bostwick said.

“Let’s stop and get him something.”

“Jesus . . .”

“Come on, Tommy………

A block farther crosstown, Nardone pulled over to the left, and doubleparked in front of Palace Liquors. A cabbie behind them started on his horn right away, and Nardone got out of the Ford, walked back to the cab, bent down to the driver’s side window, and spoke to the man.

Then he walked across the sidewalk to the liquor store, and in a couple of minutes came out with a small paper bag and got back into the Ford. A lot of horns were sounding behind them by that time-though not from the cab-and that had encouraged Bostwick, who’d tooted louder and louder in competition.

“Christ, Carl-will you cut that shit out!” Nardone took a half-pint of St. George’s rum from the paper bag, twisted the top off, and handed the bottle back to Bostwick, who completed a last long tooting sound before he reached out and took it.

Ellie turned to watch, and saw Bostwick, wrapped like an Indian in his dark blue blanket, tilt the small bottle up to his toothless upper gums, and empty it. “That’s more like it,” he said when he was finished.

`-That’s the ticket, man,” grew swiftly red in the face, and apparently moved his bowels. “I did doody,” he said.

“Why don’t they show this shit on TV, those fuckin’ Cop shows?” Nardone said. “You don’t ever see this shit. -What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” Ellie said, but couldn’t stop laughing.

Nardone tried to keep his face straight, but couldn’t, and began to laugh. “Carl,” he said, when he caught his breath. “Carl—you got what it takes to be President.”

“Look-this man doesn’t go on this bus. That’s all there is to it.” The dispatcher, called down by the Trailways driver, was a short tough-looking elderly man, bald but for a silvery fringe. He had a nameplate pinned to his shirt pocket: Mr. Konjelewski. Mr. Konjelewski was standing beside a large bus parked in a row of other giants in the long, gray, thundering garage. He was blocking the bus door.

“Well-you’re wrong about that, pal,” Nardone said.

“Carl, here, is an important witness-and the State Police want him up in Albany. This bus gets into Albany nine-fifteen-right? There’s going’

to be a trooper waitin’ right at the station for him.”

“O.K.,” Bostwick said. He was leaning against the side of the bus, wrapped in his blanket, gazing into the ground floor of the terminal through thick plate glass.

There, a line of men, women, and children-none prosperous-waited with suitcases, duffel bags, backpacks and paper bags to board.

“This man,” said Mr. Konjelewski, “is simply not in condition to travel safely. Beside which, there is an odor that would disturb other passengers.”

“Put him in the back,” Nardone said. “-You don’t always have daisies ridin’ these buses, do you?”

“No,” Konjelewski said, “we don’t.” He had a habit of poking his right cheek out slightly with his tongue, after he’d said somethings tongue person, apparently, like Bostwick, pleased with an organ most ignored.

“But this is an extreme odor situation, here.”

“This is a special case, Mr. Konjelewski, really very important,” Ellie said, “-and the Department would appreciate your cooperation.”

“Well, the Department is not going to get my cooperation, miss.”

“Detective Klein.”

“Detective Klein . . . I’m not going to cooperate, and put an obviously incompetent and foul-smelling person on board one of our buses. Period.”

“Oh, I think you’re going’ to,” Nardone said.

“Sure you will, Mr. Konjelewski,” Ellie said, “-because if you give us any more of this crap-and we’ve had a very long day-we’re going to have our captain call the State Police right now, and have their Vehicle Safety people come in here in the morning and hold every fucking bus you have coming in or going out, and check their brakes, steering, transmission-every fucking thing they’ve got. Take those motherfuckers right apart! -Period.” She beckoned Bostwick with a finger. “Carl,” she said, “—come here and get on this bus. Come onI’ll get on with you, and we’ll find a nice seat in the back.

They had stayed to watch the bus pull out-Bostwick, in pretty good shape, waving from a back window. He was excited, Ellie having told him he might see deer along the thruway farther upstate, if there was enough light.

“Will he be able to see any deer?” She and Nardone were on the escalator going up to street level. “I didn’t want to lie to him, but he looked scared being on that bus.”

“If he wants to see ‘eta,” Nardone said, “-he’ll see em.”

On the main concourse, they walked toward the Eighth Avenue entrance; they’d left the car two blocks south, at a construction site. The evening rush hour was still on for people trying to get out of the city; the long concourse was streaming with them-walking fast, half-trotting, one or two running for the escalators. Still, planted, immobile amid the hurry, a few bag ladies-establishing presence in shelter for the night-stood along the walls and store display-windows, fat, short, filthy mountains, glowering, muttering in multiple layers of sweaters and skirts, dirt streaked down their necks, swollen legs stippled with small, furious ulcers as they stood guard on broken-wire supermarket carts packed with shopping bags and clear plastic laundry bags and brown plastic garbage bags-all stuffed with treasure half forgotten (and occasionally tugged out, examined, recalled, and repacked to threats and promises heard by any passerby).

Ellie thought what pictures they would make. A series of portraits-this one with a worried grandmother’s face . . . round and gentle as a pillow, but dirty as a child’s would be from playing in the yard. Ellie caught that woman’s eye, and the woman made a grotesque face at her, puffing out her cheeks, rolling her eyes first to one side, then the other. Some of these women were mad and those who weren’t took pains to appear so, to be left alone. After years, Ellie supposed, of living on Manhattan’s winter streets for out-of-wind, and summer avenues for just those north-south breezes, on guard perpetual, caked in stink and dirt as further armor, it would become an easier and easier part to play . .

. until one blazing summer day, taunted by young Puerto Rican boys, there remained only madness, and no pretending. Then, after that richest afternoon of all, a woman might spend the rest of her days in girlhood, in her girlhood room, her skin as clean and smooth and white as girlhood sheets and only dream she was a monster in the streets.

The bag lady in a haze of fiery light, the slender handsome circling boys-dressed in bright orange, yellows, greens, reds-dancing around her, screaming in chorus. Screaming in celebration of the birth their presence has occasioned. The bag lady going perfectly mad her face, her head exploding silently in pale, pale blue . . . the quietest color.

Her face dissolving in the blue.

Under her, as she rises in pleasure on her toes, out from under the layers of dirty skirt, crawling out from between the woman’s thick and rotting legs, coming out … still wet, still with a rope of red attached, the girl crawls newborn across the pavement.

First picture.

Second picture. The boys gather around the girl, so very pleased-and wipe her clean with their bright shirts, lick a spot of blood from her naked shoulder-pick her up, fon e her, tug gent y at her nipples, squeeze er pale buttocks, tickle her until she laughs, while the smallest, most thoughtful boy bites the red cord in half. -Hold her high on their shoulders in the burning sunlight, and she now white as powdered crystal. They hold their madness girl up higher on thin brown strong arms, with delicate brown hands. Hold her up as high as they can, so that a crowd of people across the very wide street can see her.