Great Kills

by Kevin Fox

  As I thought about it, I realized how insane that sounded. Maybe I had slipped a gear and was losing my mind for good this time, or maybe I’d been fucked in the head for a long time and was just becoming aware of it. I couldn’t quite figure out how to ask if I was always a loon or not without sounding nuts, so I asked a question that got to the heart of something else that seemed so strange this particular morning.

  “You made breakfast?” I asked, and my mother turned around and smiled at me. Yeah. Something was not right. “I think I was twelve the last time you made me breakfast.”

  “So then you should kiss my ass and appreciate it,” Mom responded, bringing me back to reality. “Your lesbian friend made fresh bread. I have to say, I didn’t expect much from her, but damn, it’s nice and crispy outside and soft and warm on the inside.”

  “All lesbians are like that, Mrs. Collins. Crispy outside and warm and soft on the inside,” Kat said with a grin.

  “And she’s got a sense of humor, too. Who knew? She’ll make some girl a nice wife someday,” Mom said, and Kat was quiet, making me wonder if she had developed multiple personality disorder overnight.

  “She’s not a lesbian, Mom.”

  “No? She doesn’t like girls? I thought she did.”

  Kat shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter—which pissed me off, because any time I said something like that, Kat tore me a new one.

  “I do, but I’m bi,” was all Kat said.

  “Like there’s a difference?” Mom asked.

  “There is. Depends on the night. If you want me to explain it…” Kat offered.

  “Not in front of Jimmy, but I do have a couple of questions. I saw some stuff on the internet that was… interesting.”

  “Mom. Please,” I pleaded, pretty sure she was trying to get Kat to talk about her sex life just to make me uncomfortable.

  “I’m just looking out for you. If she’s playing for both teams, there’s still hope for you—if it doesn’t work out with the psych patient.”

  “Her name is Rigan.”

  “Right. Rigan. Maybe you should go get her so you can get moving and get out of here, though I can understand how tired she might be, since you kept all of us up as well.”

  Damn. I felt my face flush as Kat looked away to avoid catching my eye. So that’s what this was all about. Mom hated Rigan more than Kat, so Kat was on her good side.

  “Ignore her,” Dad interrupted from across the room. “She just thinks you upset me.”

  I turned to see my father, clear-eyed, focused on me with the look he’d always had when I was a kid—seeing everything, noting every detail, and reading my body language. I used to think of that look as “detective’s eyes.” I hadn’t seen those eyes in a long time, since he never had them when he was in the midst of an episode.

  “So, you’re with us this morning?” I asked carefully.

  “At the moment. Being around beautiful young women makes me feel alive,” he said, glancing at Dariya and getting a shy glance in response. This was good. I had questions he could only answer when he was lucid.

  “We need to talk,” I told him. This was going to be my one opportunity to ask my father about the old case and the plane while he was coherent.

  “I’m busy with Dariya,” my father said, glancing at my mother. Over the years he had taught me enough about body language to know that Mom was the real problem, and that, for some reason, he didn’t want to answer questions in front of her. I didn’t care. I needed to know what happened.

  “Dad, there are things that make no sense about all of this.” I sat at the table across from him and his face went blank, staring at me.

  “Who are you again?” he finally asked.

  “Don’t mess with me, Dad.” He looked at me again with those detective eyes, then nodded and looked away.

  “My advice? Don’t ask any questions you don’t want the answer to. I told you already—remember what happened last time,” he warned, and then I saw his eyes flick toward my mother.

  “Last time.” He had said that before, talking about the Toothless Giant and Mangy Goatee Guy.

  “Yeah. I remember last time. Those two guys went away after they broke your jaw—but what did they have to do with the case you were working with Uncle Joe?” I asked.

  Before he could answer, my mother glared at him and interrupted. “Nothing. They had nothing to do with it. And I’m tired of crazy conspiracy theories, understand? It’s in the past. Leave it there.”

  “Doesn’t matter, really, does it?” my father asked me, shrugging. “They were tied into local organized crime. The big guy, Morocco, he was sentenced on the three-strikes law back in eighty-six for dealing steroids, cocaine, and heroin. He was also suspected of being a rapist, arsonist, and all-around nice guy. The little guy got out, I think. So-called good behavior. But I heard the giant was dying last time I went to a parole hearing—bastards granted a conditional transfer for compassionate reasons.”

  “I saw that when I researched him last night. I’m going to the precinct this morning to find out where they sent him.”

  “Don’t need to go to the precinct. I know where they sent him. Corrections notified me since I was a witness at his trial. He’s in hospice—on a secure ward up at North Shore Medical, right here on Staten Island. So he could be close to his family. Ask me, they should’ve let him die in prison.”

  I agreed, but Morocco still being alive and on the island might just be the break I needed. Grabbing my keys off the counter, I got up to go, not even bothering to make an excuse as I made sure I had my gun and jacket, dialing my cell phone.

  “What are you doing?” my father called after me.

  “Following a lead,” I told him as I bolted for the door before anyone could stop me. Time was not on Alina’s side. If Morocco knew anything that would help—I’d get it out of him. As I walked out, I got the precinct on the phone.

  “This is Detective Killian Collins. I need status on the bridges and maritime traffic,” I told the sergeant who answered. Thankfully he was loud enough in his response, telling me that I had at least another four hours.

  “And you’re going to leave the psych patient, the lost girl and the lesbian here? What am I supposed to do with them?” Mom yelled, once again making it all about her.

  “Pretend they’re actual people who need your help.” I let the front door slam behind me, hoping it pissed off my mother as much as it usually did.

  I was already in the car when Kat came out the front door, carrying her clothes under one arm, running barefoot down the driveway. She bolted for the passenger door, pulling it open as I put the car in reverse.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “Coming with you,” she said. “You think I’m gonna stay with your bat-shit crazy mother and all that insanity? Besides, you’re in no emotional state to go it alone right now.”

  She wasn’t wrong.

  “What about Rigan and Dariya?” I asked, trying to deflect her attention from my mental state.

  “Rigan’s on her own, and Dariya, well, your dad’s half in love with her. She’ll be fine. Where are we going?”

  “To visit a giant. Get some information out of him.”

  “Great… Exciting. Are we gonna beat a confession out of him? Work him over? You know, I could—”

  “Help if you had a gun? Yeah, I know.”

  Once on the secure ward at North Shore Medical, a male orderly escorted Kate and me to the visiting room, passing windows covered by metal grates and alarm wire on the way. Through them I could see the Verrazano Bridge, still dark and shadowy in the mist—and beyond that—the skyline of Manhattan. Everything below 23rd Street was still dark. It looked like a dead city from one of those teenage dystopian movies.

  Fuckin’ Sandy.

  When we reached the last set of secure doors at the visitors waiting room, I turned to Kat and tried to be firm. “Wait here. I’ll be back in less than an hour.”

  “Th
e fuck you say,” Kat answered. I didn’t want to compromise with her this time, but I saw the guard look at her as he heard her tone. It was the same one used by every person who ever resisted arrest and it said, “I’m about to fuck up your day if you try it.”

  I didn’t need Kat distracting Morocco the Toothless Giant. He was on the verge of death, had been in prison for years and hadn’t had any contact with a woman since being locked up. The sight of her in yoga pants might send him into cardiac arrest—hell, it caused me to have health issues if I didn’t purposefully focus on other things. I tried to explain that to Kat.

  It didn’t work. Three minutes later we walked into the visiting room together, with Kat’s shirt pulled as far down over her ass as it would go without exposing her breasts. Lucky for me, the whole place was less than romantic. We had to sit on stiff chairs in the midst of sick or dying criminals who apparently weren’t quite up to showering. The whole place had the smell of death disguised by antiseptic, ammonia, and Febreze. Sliding into a chair with uneven legs and a cracked seat, I took in the room, looking for all the possible ways this could go wrong. That’s when I saw him coming through the gate.

  He’d shrunk.

  The Toothless Giant that had stood six-foot-six now looked to be about my height, if not shorter, and at least thirty pounds lighter. The corrections officer assigned to the ward led Vinny Morocco over, and he smiled as he saw Kat. His teeth had gotten worse, and the muscle tone that he’d used to punch the van window and break my father’s jaw had wasted away to loose skin, bones, and what seemed like a few random tendons that held them together. I stood when Morocco got close, getting between him and Kat.

  “You remember me?” I asked.

  “You look like a cop. You arrest me for something?” he asked, peering around me to look at Kat.

  “I caught you digging for Swamp Pink once. I’m Detective Killian Collins.”

  Morocco sat down hard in the plastic chair, trying to put it all together. When he did, he smiled again. “Holy-mother-fucking-shit. It is you. I see it now. Fuck. Never expected you. Last time I saw you, you was a little punk ass.”

  “And last time I saw you, you were a giant,” I reminded him.

  “Shit happens. Got a dirty needle in the ass at some point. Got the AIDS,” he said matter-of-factly, then turned to Kat. “Condoms work great, though, no worries.”

  “I’m a lesbian,” Kat said with a smile to shut him down. It didn’t seem to deter Morocco. He kept grinning.

  “You got AIDS while you were in prison?” I asked.

  “Nah, before I met you even. When I was juicin’ with the ‘roids… But havin’ the AIDS saved me from gettin’ worse stuck in me in the joint. The meat syringe, you know?” he asked, winking at Kat.

  “I got it,” Kat told him. “We’re here to ask you some questions, not hear about your sex life.”

  “Questions? Why don’t you ask this guy why he took a wrench to my head,” Morocco snapped, with just a hint of bitterness.

  “It was a ratchet.”

  “Felt like a wrench.”

  “Well, either way, it didn’t do much. You kept coming.”

  “Yeah. Barely felt it. I was stoned to the gills.”

  “Look, Vin, can we talk about something else?” Kat asked sweetly. “All this talk about AIDS is ruining my fantasy of you.”

  Morocco laughed out loud, getting stares from the C.O.’s and prisoner/patients. “Sorry. Yeah. I get it. Your girlfriend here is right. I talk too much about the AIDS and takin’ it up the ass. My mom says the same thing.”

  “Your mom?” I asked, trying to reconcile the shrunken man in front of me with not only the giant I remembered, but also with a boy who once had a mother. If there ever was a motherless prick, this guy was it.

  “Sure, kid, everybody gots a mom. Mine thinks I could use a little human contact. A hug, even if it is from some moolie with a pot sticker. …Like she ever hugged me when I was a kid.”

  “His mom’s kinda cold too,” Kat chimed in, leaning forward to give him a glimpse of cleavage.

  “A heartless mother explains a lot. That how you ended up a cop? All discipline, no love,” Morocco asked, his eyes never leaving Kat’s chest.

  “I’m looking for Pete, your old partner,” I told him, changing the subject. “I saw him, and I think he can help me find a girl who’s in danger.”

  “Sounds exciting. She a hot little number like this one?” he asked, but I just went on, ignoring the comment:

  “He was in the same woods where you two were digging for Swamp Pink—up by Clay Pit Ponds,” I told him, trying to goad him into revealing his connection to that place and expecting him to maintain the decades-old lie.

  Instead Morocco laughed so hard that he started to wheeze. “Swamp Pink? Yeah... Right. Only the pink was green,” he gasped through laughter.

  “Cash? From the IRA gun-running?” Kat asked, distracting Morocco from the point—finding Pete and Alina.

  But Morocco stopped laughing. “…Yeah. Somethin’ like that. A lotta fuckin’ money anyway. I don’t know. They hired us to look and dig. Said it was out there in some kind of box, but if we came across any bodies, we were supposed to let ’em know that too. Some major player had a brother go missin’ out there. I thought it was crazy, but they was payin’—just a straight job until we seen you spyin’ and chased you down. When Pete told the boss what you looked like and that about scar of yours, he practically lost his mind.”

  “My scar? What about my scar?”

  “And who was this boss?” Kat asked, keeping the interview focused. I was letting my personal involvement distract me.

  Morocco leaned back and folded his arms, looking at Kat, not me. He had information that we wanted, and that meant he had leverage.

  “I ain’t no rat, and I’m not stupid, so forget sellin’ the boss out. At least not without a deal on the table,” Morocco said, smirking.

  “Fine. Tell me what the deal was with my scar and then we can get back to the boss.”

  “The scar? Don’t really know. He just seemed to know who you were ’cause of it. Said we should bring you back to him Æcause we needed you or the girl to find what was missing.”

  “What girl?” Kat asked, suddenly more interested

  “How the fuck would I know? She went missing like six years before. Nobody knew where she went. She ran away.”

  “Ran away from who?” I asked, trying to get him to focus.

  “The boss. Ain’t you listenin’? He’d been buyin’ and sellin’ kids for years. Used to do it through bogus church adoptions, had a bonanza with all them Amerasian kids after Vietnam, and then all the Russian kids after the Soviet Union went all fakakta. He was a coyote before coyotes were cool.”

  “If your boss was selling kids, where did the cash and guns come in?”

  “Kids was the boss’s regular trade and I guess somebody along the line was short on money—so they were using the kids as cash to get themselves even. Paying for guns with people. They brought him in as a consultant like, to get top dollar and say what they were worth. They needed a pro.”

  “Why?”

  “How do I know? Someone on the inside knew the boss had a way of breaking kids. Getting them to talk and cooperate, you know?”

  “‘Someone on the inside?’ Prison?” Kat asked, trying to follow his train of thought.

  I knew what he meant and wasn’t really surprised. I remembered enough of my dream that I’d started putting pieces together. Someone had killed Tompkins and Germanario. Someone was helping the IRA get guns.

  “He doesn’t mean inside prison. He means inside the establishment. Law enforcement,” I explained to Kat.

  “Exactly. This guy came to the boss with a deal—break the kids, smuggle the guns,” Morocco confirmed.

  “Did he break the kids?” I asked, wondering how far this went.

  “I have no fuckin’ clue. I wasn’t there at the time. But I bet he did. All kids get turned out the same, and all
kids break at some point,” he said.

  “He ‘broke’ the kids? You’re proud that your boss ‘turned out’ kids?” Kat asked, thankfully restraining herself enough that she didn’t launch across the table at Morocco.

  “So, how did you ‘break in’ these kids?” I asked, trying to silence Kat with a look.

  “Same way we usually did. First you make ’em feel like they’re worthless and all alone in the world. Parents, family, teachers—all gone. It’s easy really. You just gotta destroy everything they love. Everything that makes ’em who they are. Then you build ’em back up. We thought this time’d be easier, ’cause all we needed was information. Shoulda been easy. There’s a method. Take away sleep, take away food. Do whatever you want to their bodies. The worse and more degrading the better, if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m afraid I might.”

  “It can be fun, but it’s real work, you know? It usually pays off in the end, ’cause when they’re all broke down and you give them anything, and I mean anything—a slice of bread, a touch without pain—you’re like a savior. You can starve ’em for a week and then buy them a slice of pizza and you’re an angel. Rape them five times and then let them sleep eight hours in a warm, dry bed and you’re their favorite person. It’s like Sweden syndrome.”

  “Stockholm. It’s the Stockholm syndrome,” I muttered.

  “Norway, Sweden, what’s the difference? Whatever. It works. It’s why prostitutes always go back to their pimps and abused women go back to their men. They want the only kindness they’ve ever had. Even if it’s fucked up and vicious, it’s all they know. Never fails, always sticks. They get to like it.”

  “No. They don’t,” Kat snapped.

  “What would you know? You see these kids all grown up, they’re all hooking or stripping, still using the same tricks on other people. Sex as a weapon. They fuck anyone just to get something out of ‘em. If you was abused, you’d be some kinda nympho too. If it’s your stock in trade, you use it… But them kids were just gone after that plane went down. Like ‘poof’—in the wind. The cash too. That’s why we was still looking years later.”