Red Hook (2 page)

He tugged the knees of his slacks and squatted down. Baseball was fun, but not nearly as interesting as a fresh murder. The vic lay on his left side, splayed out in the grass in front of a chain-link fence. A beefy young man, he wore a pair of cheap gray dress slacks and a T-shirt beneath a red plaid shirt. Hispanic, probably mid-twenties. Several nasty bruises mottled his face but the cause of death was not apparent. The kid stared out, his eyes gray as the sky above; they glinted silver in the photographer’s flash.

A chain joined two cinder blocks to his ankles. The fence, which marked the rear boundary of a lot filled with abandoned delivery trucks and a rusted black crane, curled up at the lower edge; a rusty spike had pierced the cuff of the victim’s pants. The cloth was bloodsoaked: closer inspection revealed that the wire had also pierced the vic’s calf.

Jack duckwalked around to look at the corpse’s back. The man’s well-muscled arms were tied behind him with rope and his legs were similarly bound. “Hey, Dupree,” Jack called out, “you get a close-up of these knots?” A particular knot could be a signature, linking this case to other murders.

“Got it,” the photographer said curtly, annoyed by this questioning of his expertise.

The vic’s T-shirt was raised above his belly, which hung to the side like a sad, soft gourd. If Jack didn’t know better than to touch a corpse before the Crime Scene guys finished their job, he would have reached out to pull the shirt down.

“Who found the body?” he asked the young detective.

“We got an anonymous call early this afternoon.”

“You ID him yet?”

“Nope.”

“Okay,” Jack said, rising. “Why don’t you make a sketch while we wait.”

Daskivitch took out a steno pad and began to draw the position of the body in relation to the fence and the canal.

Down on the water, a breeze jigged the reflections of the sky and the straggly trees and bushes that managed to cling to the banks. Across the way ran a long factory wall with no windows. Farther along, the canal was bordered by warehouses and industrial lots. A drawbridge crossed the water seventy yards to the north, but the sightlines were obscured by trees and tall grass. Whoever killed this man had picked a spot so isolated you could dump a body there in broad daylight.

Half a mile to the south, the F train shuttled across the skyline, a centipede on its elevated track. A mile over the horizon the canal would pass through Red Hook—where Jack was born, where his father had worked the docks—and then open into the Gowanus Bay and New York harbor.

Jack sidestepped down the bank. He watched a Clorox bottle and a potato-chip bag float south on the oil-slick water. Which would reach him first? He put his money on the Clorox bottle.

A minute later the chip bag slid by in first place.

“Hey, Jack!”

He turned and clambered back up, pleased to see that Daskivitch had been joined by Anselmo Alvarez, the head of the Crime Scene Unit, a short Dominican man with ramrod posture. A few strands of hair were combed carefully across Alvarez’s bald pate, in tribute to what his ID photo revealed had once been a proud pompadour. The investigator was the best forensics man in Brooklyn—he took seriously the responsibility of standing up for the dead.

“Let’s start,” Jack said.

Daskivitch shut his notepad. The men pulled on white latex gloves and crouched down.

First Jack checked the victim’s pants for identification. Due to the execution-style disposition of the body, there wasn’t much chance of finding any, but he had to check. Even after twelve years in Homicide, it still felt odd to reach his hands into someone else’s pockets. They were empty.

The victim’s kinky black hair was pressed out awkwardly against the dirt.

“We can surmise one thing right off the bat,” Alvarez said. “The deceased is having a very bad hair day.”

Jack smiled. Alvarez himself could not really be said to have hair days at all anymore, but he kept the thought to himself.

He noted the soul patch, the tuft of beard under the vic’s bottom lip, and the tattoo of a jaguar on the right tricep. The red and green lines of the tattoo were crusted over—it was either fresh or had just been renewed. Jack had never gotten a tattoo, even during his time in the Army: a tattoo would brand you forever. He avoided bumperstickers on any car he owned for the same reason. It was better to go through life unmarked.

“What should we do next?” he asked Gary Daskivitch. When it came to murders, the kid was a rookie. (With only four homicides in the past year, the Seventy-sixth Precinct was hardly a crisis zone.) He’d learn better if he was pushed to do more than just watch.

The young detective frowned in concentration. “How about we check to see how long he’s been here?”

“Okay. How we gonna do that?”

“I guess…first we need to get him off the fence.” Daskivitch took a breath, then reached out and hesitantly prodded the corpse. Jack traded a subtle wink with Alvarez; the rookie hadn’t yet seen enough bodies to be comfortable with the task. Hell, the kid didn’t even look comfortable wearing a suit.

It took the men several minutes to disengage the victim’s leg and pants cuff from the rusty chain-link.

Daskivitch rolled the body forward; he noted that the weeds underneath had not had time to brown.

“You’re doing good,” Jack said.

Alvarez took out a flashlight and shone it into one of the victim’s eyes: the cornea was clouded over. The forensics man pressed his hands against the face, arms, upper body. Jack followed his example. The body was rigid until he reached the thighs, where the flesh still rolled under his palm.

“Feel this,” he told the young detective.

Daskivitch winced as he patted the body. Other veterans would have baited the rookie with wisecracks, but Jack refrained. He liked the young detective. The kid was brash—he’d recently come from several years of playing cowboy with a narcotics squad, leaping out of vans and making tough with crack sellers—but he took his new job seriously and was eager to learn.

“What do you think?” Jack said.

“Rigor mortis hasn’t set in all the way down.”

“Correct. How many hours since the lights went out?”

“I dunno.” That was another good thing about the kid—he didn’t bullshit. “Less than twelve?”

“I’d say six.”

Alvarez nodded. “I’ll have to take an internal temp to make sure, but that sounds about right.”

The back of the dead man’s neck was purple, a different tint from the bruises. Jack pushed a finger into the flesh and pulled it back. The spot momentarily whitened. He knelt down and pulled, the back of the T-shirt up: same purple discoloration, same white spot when pressed.

“The body was moved postmortem,” Jack said. “How do I know?”

Daskivitch frowned again. “Uh, lividity, right? After the blood stopped circulating, it would have pooled in the lowest parts of the body. That should be his side, not the back.”

“Good.” Jack turned to Alvarez. “Could these blows to the face have done him in?”

The forensics man stared down thoughtfully. “I think that was just a warm-up.”

“Help me here,” Alvarez said to Jack. They rolled the body over and Alvarez pulled aside the plaid shirt. The T-shirt underneath was stained with a big patch of rust-colored blood. There was no blood on the ground, confirmation that the body had been moved.

Alvarez rolled the T-shirt up the victim’s chest. “There you go.”

At first Jack didn’t see what he was talking about, but then Alvarez pressed down on the corpse’s side, opening the thin ugly slit of a stab wound. Jack pressed his hands against the spiky grass and squeezed his eyes shut. Sweat beaded his upper lip.

“You okay?” Alvarez asked.

Jack nodded, but swallowed, fighting the bile rising in his throat. His head swam and he was afraid he might black out.

“Jack?” Daskivitch said.

Weakly he shook his head, lurched to his feet, staggered a few yards away, and heaved up his guts.

He took a deep breath and wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, ashamed to turn around. A veteran getting queasy over such a well-preserved corpse—it was as pathetic as a surgeon fainting over a nosebleed.

He patted the sweat from his forehead, straightened up, and turned back to the other detectives. They seemed to have trouble meeting his eyes.

“Whew. Must’ve been something I ate. Bad shrimp, maybe.”

“What is it with you and the stabbings?” Alvarez said quietly.

Jack looked up sharply. “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business!”

“Whoa.”
Alvarez raised his hands.

Daskivitch’s eyes widened. The kid had seen the veteran lose his lunch; now he was losing his cool. Jack cleared his throat. “Sorry. I just got a little dizzy, is all. I’ll be fine.”

The forensics man shrugged, then knelt down by the corpse and started doing something unpleasant with a thermometer.

Jack turned away, queasy again. He glanced at Daskivitch, alert to any condescension or contempt.

The kid just looked concerned. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Let’s just drop it, all right?”

Daskivitch nodded and looked away.

“Okay,” Jack said, taking charge again, “the vic died somewhere else and was shlepped here. He could have been carried from the bridge, but that’s a long way and there’s no stairs. I think they just chucked him over the fence, and he got snagged on the other side.”

“They?”

“One guy could never have gotten him over. So—first of all, they would’ve had to untangle him from the wire. Then they’d have to carry him down to the water. The question is, why didn’t they finish the job?”

“You think somebody eyeballed them from the bridge?”

“Too far. The sightlines are crap.”

He looked down at the water. “At least the scubas will be glad they don’t have to go in.” Once he’d seen a couple of miserable Harbor Scuba Unit divers kneeling by a hydrant near the canal as they hosed off a thick layer of scum and muck. Perhaps they were remembering a scuba whose mask had slipped off while he was down: the poor bastard inhaled a mouthful of typhus and cholera and ended up in intensive care.

Daskivitch grimaced. “A few minutes in that poison would strip a body like frikkin’ piranhas.”

Alvarez pulled out a couple of paper bags and taped them over the victim’s hands. If the man had died fighting, he might have tissue from his murderer under his nails. Unfortunately, they’d have to wait until after the autopsy to take fingerprints.

Jack and his partner took a walk along the canal, discussing the possibilities. A few yards on, they came upon the first officer on the scene, a young uniform anxiously checking the yellow tape he’d stretched between the fence and a tiny tree. In one hand he held a clipboard, his log of everyone who entered the perimeter. He coughed awkwardly as the two detectives approached, unsure whether to look at them or away.

“How’s it going, kid?” asked Daskivitch. That he was only a few years older than the patrol cop didn’t matter—a detective’s shield hung on the pocket of his jacket.

“Very good, sir,” the uniform replied. “Do, um, did you find out what happened?”

“Yeah,” Daskivitch said. “The vic was offed by a big guy, probably an American Indian, left-handed, wearing a blue-jean jacket and Air Jordans.”

The patrol cop’s brow furrowed.

Jack remembered his own days walking a beat. Half the time, dealing with the public, you felt like a big wheel; the other half your superiors made you feel like shit. “Don’t worry about it,” he told the young cop. “He’s just busting your chops.”

A deflated soccer ball drifted downstream. Jack watched it for a moment, then turned to his partner. “The canal.”

“Huh?”

“Someone was sailing down the canal.”

“What, are you kidding? It’s a cesspool—nobody’s sailed here in a hundred years.”

On the bridge, a knot of gawkers had already assembled, drawn by the Crime Scene truck and the flashing patrol cars. Jack and his partner pushed through and made their way to the bridgehouse, a squat brick tower rising next to the far end. They peered over the side of the bridge. A crusted metal ladder descended to a half-open door. The detectives climbed over the railing and made their way down.

“Hello?” Jack called.

Inside the tower, a musty stairwell brought them up to a small office, where an old man sat facing a gleaming metal control panel covered with knobs and gauges. In front of him, a picture window offered a broad view of the canal and the metal-grated roadway. He wore headphones over greasy gray hair and flipped through a copy of the
Post
, whistling tunelessly with the music inside his head. ‘If you wanna be my lover,’ he suddenly sang, falsetto.

Jack rapped on the door and the bridgekeeper spun around. The detectives badged him, then explained their disagreement about canal traffic.

“Well,” the man said, “nobody
sails
on the Gowanus, but we get some barges. Did you know this used to be the end of the Erie Canal? Back in the eighteen-eighties—”

“How much traffic do you get?” Jack said.

“I lift the bridge a couple times a day.”

“How many people on the barges?”

“They usually run with a crew of two—they trade watches, six hours on and off.”

“They have radios?”

“Yeah. These days some of them carry portable phones too.”

“You keep a log?”

“Of course I do. It’s the law.” The keeper lifted a large open notebook from a desk and handed it over.

The
Volsunga
, captained by one Al Perry, had passed by at 9:47 that morning, and the
Chem Trader
, captained by Raymond Ortslee, had passed at 12:40 that afternoon. The anonymous call to the Seven-six had come in five minutes later.

Jack lit a cigarette as he and Daskivitch stepped out the bridgehouse door. Across the canal lay a squat grass-covered berm, an oil company depot, surrounded by coils of barbed wire. Along the front of its loading dock No Smoking was painted in red letters six feet high.

“Jesus, don’t drop that cig,” Daskivitch said. “Don’t worry about the oil—the canal itself’ll catch and we’ll have a river of fire all the way to Red Hook.”