Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets

by David Simon

  Late one afternoon, D’Addario, Landsman and McLarney are huddled in front of the television, the lieutenant and McLarney checking the roll book, Landsman absorbing gynecological mysteries from a skin magazine. Wandering across the sixth floor, Colonel Lanham happens to step into his homicide unit and all three supervisors snap to attention.

  Landsman waits a good three seconds before handing the magazine, centerfold splayed open, to Gary D’Addario.

  “Here’s your magazine, lieutenant,” he says. “I appreciate you letting me look at it.”

  D’Addario, unthinking, holds out his hand.

  “Fucking Jay,” says McLarney, shaking his head.

  Even the colonel has to laugh.

  MONDAY, MAY 9

  Harry Edgerton needs a murder.

  He needs a murder today.

  Edgerton needs a human body, any human body, still and stiff and void of all life force. He needs that body to fall within the established limits of Baltimore city. He needs that body shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, battered or otherwise rendered inoperative through any act of human intervention. He needs a 24-hour homicide report with his name typed at the bottom, a red-brown case binder that declares Harry Edgerton to be the primary investigator. You say Bowman is handling a shooting call up in the Northeast? Tell him to hang on to that crime scene, because Harry Edgerton, his friend and personal savior, is already in a Cavalier and racing up Harford Road. You say the county police are working a murder in Woodlawn? Well, drag that poor bastard back over the city line and let Edgerton work on him. You got a questionable death in an apartment with no overt trauma or forced entry? No problem. Give the Edge a chance to write on that bad boy and it can be a murder before the next morning’s autopsy.

  “If I don’t get one soon,” says Edgerton, jumping red lights on Frederick Road in the early morning darkness, “I’m going to have to kill someone.”

  For two full weeks, Edgerton’s name has been affixed to the board’s wooden frame with a thumbtack, scrawled with a certain infamy on sheets of yellow legal paper that list the squad and detective expected to handle the next homicide call. The daily postings are another indication of D’Addario’s change in demeanor; detectives who have handled fewer murders are now being identified and designated as candidates for the next call. Most especially that means Edgerton. Having handled only two homicides this year, the veteran’s pace is not only a controversy within his squad but a loaded issue for D’Addario as well. For the last two weeks, every one of his postings began and ended with Edgerton’s name. It has become something of a daily joke in the coffee room:

  “Who’s up today?”

  “Harry’s up.”

  “Christ. Harry’s gonna be up ’til October.”

  For days now, Edgerton has bounced from shootings to stabbings to questionable deaths to overdoses, waiting earnestly for something-anything-to come back as a murder.

  And it hasn’t worked. On days when he has handled three or four calls, running from one end of the city to the other looking at bodies, other detectives have picked up the phone and been blessed with double-dunker massacres. Edgerton handles a shooting call and the victim is guaranteed to survive. He works an apparent bludgeoning and the ME is guaranteed to rule the cause of death an overdose, followed by injuries sustained when the victim collapsed on the cement floor. Edgerton goes to the scene of an unattended death and it’s A-1-guaranteed to be an eighty-eight-year-old retiree with a chronic heart condition. None of which means a thing to D’Addario. Edgerton is up until he gets a murder, the lieutenant repeats. If it takes the rest of his career, fine.

  This makes for one very irritable homicide detective. It’s one thing, after all, to be considered the resident flake on the shift and the problem child in the squad. And to have Kincaid and Bowman and God knows who else bitching about sharing the workload-normally Edgerton can handle that, too. But, he thinks, normal can be tossed out a window when I’m being made to handle three calls a day every goddamn day for what is beginning to seem like the rest of my life.

  Edgerton’s urgent need for a murder was evident a week ago, when he began cursing at an overdose victim in the Murphy Homes, demanding from the cadaver a little more cooperation and consideration than had thus far been shown to him.

  “You degenerate motherfucker,” Edgerton said, berating the dead man as two housing authority cops stared on in amazement. “Where the fuck did you fire up? I don’t have all fucking day to look at your fucking arms. Where the fuck is that fresh track?”

  It wasn’t just the aggravation of a missing needle mark, but the frustration that had been building with each successive call. And at that moment, standing over yet another body in a Murphy Homes stairwell, Edgerton was deeply disturbed that the dead man had done nothing more than kill himself with heroin. What the hell, he pleaded silently, was a murder too much to ask anymore? This was Baltimore, for Chrissakes. This was a dead man in a stairwell at the George B. Murphy Homes housing project. What better place to be shot down with a high-caliber weapon like a dog? What the fuck is this asshole doing with a syringe by his left hand, staring up from the cement floor with that ridiculous half-grin on his face?

  “What are you, left-handed?” said Edgerton, rechecking the right arm. “Where the fuck did you shoot your shit?”

  The dead man answered with his grin.

  “Why,” Edgerton asked the corpse, “are you doing this to me?”

  A week later and Edgerton is still the point man for D’Addario’s shift, racing across Southwest Baltimore to yet another shooting call that will, if bad luck holds, be nothing more than a grazing. There will be no crime scene, no suspect, no dead man sprawled at the intersection of Hollins and Payson. Edgerton conjures up not a corpse, but an eighteen-year-old sitting on a gurney in the ER at Bon Secours, fully alert, talking, with nothing more than an Ace bandage wrapped around one arm.

  “The El Supremo’s gonna have to give me a break already,” he says, weaving between two lanes in the emptiness of Frederick Avenue. “I just can’t buy a murder.”

  He does a Texas stop at the Monroe Street signal, then wheels right onto Payson. Blue strobes from the radio cars greet him, but Edgerton immediately notices the absence of fire department cherry tops. No body on the ground, either. If there was an ambo, Edgerton tells himself, it’s long gone.

  The detective marks his time of arrival and slams the driver’s door. A Southwest uniform, a young white kid, sidles up with an earnest look on his face.

  “He’s alive, right?” Edgerton says.

  “Who? The victim?”

  No, thinks Edgerton, Elvis fucking Presley. Of course the victim. The detective nods.

  “I don’t think so,” says the uniform. “Not for long anyway. He looked pretty bad in the ambo.”

  The detective shakes his head. The kid doesn’t understand what he’s dealing with. I don’t do murders, Edgerton wants to tell him. I just handle calls.

  “We got you a witness, though.”

  A witness. Now it’s definitely not a murder.

  “Where’s this witness?”

  “Over there by my car.”

  Edgerton looks across the intersection at a short, wire-thin doper who stares back and nods with what appears to be mild interest. This strikes Edgerton immediately, because eyewitnesses forced to remain at the scene of a murder are generally uncooperative and sullen.

  “I’ll be over there in a minute. Where’s the victim?”

  “Bon Secours. I think.”

  “This is the scene right here?”

  “This here, and over that way you’ve got some more shell casings. Twenty-twos, I think.”

  Edgerton moves slowly into the street, carefully gauging his own steps. Ten shell casings-.22 rifle by the look of them-are scattered across the asphalt, each circled by a yellow chalk mark. The pattern of the spent shells seems to travel west across the center of the intersection, with most of the casings lying near the southwest corner. And at that corner, two mor
e chalk marks note the location of the body when the paramedics arrived. Head east. Feet west at the curb’s edge.

  The detective walks the scene for another ten minutes, looking for anything out of the ordinary. No blood trail. No fresh scuff marks. No tire patches. Truly an unremarkable crime scene. In the gutter near the northeast corner, he finds a broken gelatin cap with traces of white powder. No surprise here-the intersection of Hollins and Payson is a drug market after dark. Moreover, the capsule is yellowed and dirty enough to make Edgerton believe it’s been in the street for several days and has nothing to do with his shooting.

  “Do you have this post?” he asks the uniform.

  “Not usually. But I’m in the sector, so I know this corner pretty well. What do you need to know?”

  What do I need to know. Edgerton is beginning to like this kid, who not only knows enough to grab hold of anything at the scene that resembles a witness but is also talking like he knows the area he’s working. In the Baltimore department, this is a situation worthy of nostalgia. Ten or fifteen years ago, a homicide detective could ask a uniform a question and expect an answer. Those were the days when a good man owned his post and one dog couldn’t fuck another at Hollins and Payson without word getting back to the Southwest station house. In that era, a patrolman who worked a post and caught a murder could expect to be asked who hung on that corner and where they could be located. And if he didn’t know, he found out in a hurry. Nowadays, Edgerton tells himself, we’re lucky if the post man can get the street names right. This kid here is a real police. A throwback.

  “Who lives in that corner house there?”

  “Bunch of drug dealers. It’s a fucking shooting gallery is what it is. Our DEU hit it last week and locked up about a dozen of those fuckers.”

  Fuck that. No likely witnesses there.

  “What about that corner?”

  “Corner house has junkies. Junkies and an old wino. No, the wino lives one house down.”

  Priceless, Edgerton thinks. The kid is priceless.

  “What about over there?”

  The uniform shrugs. “I’m not sure on that one. That might be a real person living there.”

  “Did you canvass?”

  “Yeah, we did half the block. No answer at that house, and the assholes over there say they didn’t see shit. We can lock ’em up if you want.”

  Edgerton shakes his head, writing a few lines in his notepad. The uniform leans over to get a look, just a little bit curious.

  “You know this guy you grabbed?” Edgerton asks.

  “Not by name, but I’ve seen him around. He sells off this corner and he’s been locked up, I know that. He’s a piece of shit, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Edgerton smiles briefly, then crosses the intersection. The wire-thin dealer is leaning against the radio car, a black beret pulled down straight across his forehead. High-top Air Jordans, Jordache jeans, Nike sweatshirt-a walking pile of ghetto status. He actually smiles when Edgerton walks up to the car.

  “I guess I hung too long,” the dealer says.

  Edgerton smiles. A homeboy who knows the drill.

  “I guess you did. What’s your name?”

  The dealer gives it up in a mumble.

  “Any ID?”

  The dealer shrugs, then pulls out a state proof-of-age card. The name checks.

  “This your right address?”

  The dealer nods.

  “What was the shooting about?”

  “I can probably say what it’s about. And I can say what it looked like from down the street, but I didn’t see who it was did it.”

  “What do you mean you didn’t see them?”

  “I mean I was too far. I was down in the middle of the block when they came up shooting. I didn’t-”

  Edgerton cuts him off as another radio car, cruising south on Payson, pulls to the curb. O.B. McCarter, having returned to Southwest patrol after being detailed to homicide for the Karen Smith case, leans out the driver’s window and laughs.

  “Harry Edgerton,” he says, unable to contain himself, “is this your call, man?”

  “Yeah,’ fraid so. You been to the hospital?”

  “Yeah, I been there.”

  Fucking McCarter, thinks Edgerton. He’s been gone from homicide three weeks and I haven’t missed him even a little bit.

  “So? Is he dead?”

  “You got a suspect?”

  “No.”

  McCarter laughs. “He’s dead. You got yourself a murder, Harry.”

  Edgerton turns back to the dealer, who is shaking his head at the news. The detective wonders whether his witness is putting on appearances or is genuinely upset about the murder.

  “Did you know the guy?”

  “Pete? Yeah, I knew him.”

  “I got his name as Greg Taylor,” says Edgerton, checking his notes.

  “Naw man,’ round here, he was Pete. I just talked to him a couple hours ago. This is some shit.”

  “What was he about?”

  “He was selling burn bags, you know. He was selling people shit. I told him that shit would get his ass killed…”

  “You told him, huh?”

  “Yeah. You know.”

  “You kind of liked the guy, didn’t you?”

  The dealer smiles. “Yeah, Pete was okay.”

  Almost despite himself, Edgerton is amused. His victim was working out on Payson Street, selling baking soda to junkies at $10 a cap-an act of unrestrained capitalism guaranteed to bring a man more enemies than can ever be put to good use. Christ, Edgerton tells himself, my luck is turning. Every doper along Frederick Avenue must have hated this sonofabitch and I find the one guy who’s a little sorry to see him dead.

  “Was he out here tonight selling burn bags?” Edgerton asks.

  “Yeah. Off an’ on, you know.”

  “Who’d he sell to?”

  “Boy named Moochie bought some. And a girl with Moochie, she lives over on Pulaski. And then these other two came by in a car. I didn’t know them. Quite a few people paid money for that shit.”

  “What happened with the shooting?”

  “I was down the block. Didn’t really see from where I was at, you know.”

  Edgerton shakes his head, then gestures to the back seat of the radio car. The dealer climbs in and Edgerton follows, slamming the right rear door behind him. The detective cracks the window, lights one cigarette and offers another to the dealer. The kid takes the offering with a soft grunt.

  “You been doing all right with me so far,” says Edgerton. “Don’t start fucking up now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you’ve been straight with me up to this point, so I haven’t dragged your ass downtown like I normally would. But if you’re gonna hold back…”

  “No, man, no,” says the dealer. “It’s not like that. I told you I saw the shooting, but I was down the street coming up from where my girl lives. I saw them chasing Pete and I heard the shots, but I can’t tell you who they were.”

  “How many were there?”

  “I saw two. But only one was shooting.”

  “Was it a handgun?”

  “No,” says the dealer, stretching his arms to the length of a long gun. “It was one of these.”

  “A rifle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where’d he come from?”

  “I don’t know. He was right there when I first seen him.”

  “Where’d he go afterward?”

  “After?”

  “After Pete got shot. Where’d the boy with the rifle run?”

  “Back down Payson.”

  “South? That way? What’d he look like? What was he wearing?”

  “Dark coat and hat, I think.”

  “What kind of hat?”

  “You know, like with a brim.”

  “Baseball cap?”

  The dealer nods.

  “How was he built?”

  “Average. Six feet, you know.”
r />   Edgerton throws the last third of his cigarette out the window and reads through the last two pages in his notepad. The dealer breathes deep, then sighs.

  “Ain’t this some shit.”

  Edgerton grunts. “What?”

  “I just talked to him a couple hours back. I told him that this shit was gonna get his ass killed. He just laughed, you know? He laughed and said he was gonna make a little money and then go buy his own shit.”

  “Well,” says Edgerton, “you were right.”

  At the sound of voices on the adjacent sidewalk, the dealer slumps down inside the car, suddenly aware that he has been talking on the street with a police detective for a quarter of an hour. Two young boys glide past the car and turn the corner onto Hollins Street, eyefucking the uniforms but never bothering to look into the back seat. Except for the uniforms, the intersection is once again empty.

  “Let’s hurry this up,” the dealer says, suddenly uncomfortable. “A lot of people know me around here and this don’t look right.”

  “Tell me this,” says Edgerton, still scanning his notes. “There had to be some people out on that corner, right?”

  The dealer nods almost gratefully, content to know the price of his own noninvolvement.

  “There were five or six people around,” he tells the detective. “A couple girls that live over that way on Hollins with some other boy I don’t know. I don’t know their names but I see them around. And there was another guy who I do know. He was right there when it happened.”

  Edgerton flips to a fresh page of his notepad and clicks the top of his city-issue pen. With nothing else said, both men understand that the price of anonymity will be another witness’s identity. The dealer asks for another cigarette, then a light, then expels both the smoke and the name.

  “John Nathan,” Edgerton repeats, writing it down. “Where’s he live?”

  “I think Catherine Street, right off Frederick.”

  “He deals?”

  “Yeah. You all have locked him up.”

  The detective nods, then closes the notepad. There is only so much cooperation that a detective can expect at the scene of a drug murder, and this kid has just exceeded Edgerton’s monthly quota. Instinctively, the dealer reaches over to close the bargain with a handshake. A strange gesture. Edgerton responds, then offers a last warning before opening the car door.