Close Pursuit

by Carsten Stroud

  They went down the list of CRUSHes first. There were nine black CRUSHes. One was listed DOA Lenox Hill three months ago. One was in Attica, according to the best information. Kennedy made a note of his name and address anyway. It had happened before. A guy gets out of Attica on a parole or a work-release, and he’s back in the neighborhood without anybody telling the local precinct, let alone CATCH or FINEST computer terminals.

  Two were wanted for armed robbery by the FBI. Kennedy wrote them out, but rated them at the bottom. New York was a hot town for any FBI targets. There were more FBI men in New York than in Washington. It wasn’t likely that an FBI armed robbery suspect would be mugging kids on The Deuce.

  The fifth had been paralyzed in a shooting incident at the Caamanos Bar in Alphabet City. Coincidence, but irrelevant.

  The sixth CRUSH was a stripper in Long Island City. Out, but let’s take her name anyway.

  Seven was DOA Yonkers a year ago. Out. Not a lucky street name, either.

  Eight was a definite possible—a string of felony assaults, some “criminal sale of controlled substance,” all five degrees for this kid, D felony, C felony, B felony, an A-11 felony, and an A-1 felony. Kid was a slow learner. Kennedy made a note.

  Nine was a minister in something called the Unification Church of Schaefer City. Possible.

  KRUSH gave them a boy with a series of felony assaults; a couple of hits for fraudulent accosting, probably for a three-card monte scam; criminal possession of stolen property, under second degree; a couple of weapons charges. The sheet was nasty but not big-time nasty. The kid was the right age, sixteen years old. His name was Dennis McEnery, and he’d been in and out of Spofford like a bread van. The profile was right. He showed an address on West 114th Street, near Morning-side Park. He was cross-referenced to an Apollo McEnery, same address, the subject of an outstanding homicide investigation. Apollo McEnery had had a series of street names, including Greek, Creed, Sundown, and The Duke. He had been found behind a building in his home area on February 17, 1984. Dennis McEnery was sometimes known as Skate. He had been sent to Rikers Island last year. The file listed his caseworker as well.

  Kennedy straightened up from the table. Maksins was riffling through a pile of computer paper and writing down notes on the edges.

  “Wolf … how’d you like to give the Spiegel kid a call? Ask him, does the name Dennis McEnery mean anything to him? Let him take his time.”

  Maksins went out to make the call. Kennedy and the operator went back to the terminal. They skipped CROTCH for no particular reason other than that it was a dumb name, and went through seventy-six CHRISes before Maksins came back from the phone. He had a very lupine leer in place, which was only natural.

  “Spiegel says it was Dennis! The John Doe called his partner Dennis. Or Dennis called his partner that. Who is the John Doe?”

  Kennedy didn’t agree there could be any doubt. “The kid was certain about the build, the body type, the skin, everything. No way the John Doe is Dennis McEnery. I figure our guy here, Krush, he’s the shover, not the shovee.”

  Maksins shrugged. “I still don’t see how you figure this. How’d they link the mezuzah, the cash, all the goods, to the stabbing up on Forty-sixth? That’s Midtown Central and the jumper is in the Eleventh. They post it on the teletype. I can’t believe Central Street Crime was that fast on the night shifts. Usually, you don’t get teletype CSCU until the next day, if you’re lucky.”

  Kennedy thought so too. “I don’t know, Wolfie. I didn’t catch this case anyway. Stokovich had it on his desk. You know how he prowls around downstairs, picking up the gossip. I think he came across it accidentally. Peruggio did get the effects out on to FATN and I guess somebody up at Midtown was listening, because they called him right up and got a positive on the goods. Stokovich is the man who called it a possible homicide. He jerked me off the Ruiz case and gave me this one.”

  Maksins was still working this through when Kennedy had signed the record sheet for the CATCH operator. They went down to the main floor and signed out at the desk. It occurred to Kennedy that they might put out an FATN for a Dennis McEnery, with a bullet for the desk officers at the 26th and the 28th precincts. Calls like that were only put out on the air in a hotpursuit case. Too many outsiders had access to monitoring equipment. Maksins said he’d take care of that, and Kennedy went outside to get some air. The precinct house smelled of the same thing that all precinct houses smell of: dust and dead air, sweat and coffee and shoe leather and sixty years of somebody else’s problems.

  The car had been parked in the shade, but for the past hour it had been out in the sun, so when Kennedy cracked it open the dashboard and the vinyl bench seat shimmered in the overcooked air. He reached inside and took out the radio. It burned his fingers. So did the door handle when he leaned back into it.

  “One-oh-four to Central, K?”

  “One-oh-four, K.”

  “Central, get me the Task Force, Lieutenant Stokovich.”

  There was some cross-talk on the patrol channel. Kennedy listened to it idly, the way a man will follow the action of a game, hearing it but not letting any of it reach him. The block was crowded with blue-and-white patrol cars. Over everything in the bright street, over the hot chrome and the dusty paint and the tiers of dull-paned windows looking down into the street and above the ragged roof lines, Manhattan sounded throughout, a susurrus, like the sound of a crowd in a distant stadium or the slow sliding retraction of tide on a gravel beach. It carried you up and rolled you over and drove you down day after day, a murmurous roaring, a whispering vibrato rumor of strange half-heard calls, a familiar name, a soft suggestion, a hiss or a cry almost heard, almost remembered. In New York they learn not to hear it, because once it gets your attention you can never be free of it. If you said any of this to Kennedy he wouldn’t have known what you were talking about.

  … South boy south charlie shots fired shots fired that’s at B’way and Twenty-eighth see the woman no no eighty-five me at base that’s a ten fifty-four we’ve got a man down send a bus yes yes hold it up there no further no further are you out there north ida see the portable see the portable radio check central radio check north portable yes portable I read you five by five central k north boy north boy k north boy central yes north boy we have a barricaded EDP at the Holland House room two twenty-five slow it down slow it down all units we’ve got a bus on the scene no further no further emergency services is on the scene …

  Kennedy caught the Holland House reference and sent up a small prayer that it wasn’t Fratelli or Robinson who was involved. EDP meant emotionally disturbed person, and a barricaded EDP was a bad situation. If he picked up a Signal Thirteen, Kennedy was going to go right over.

  A uniform patrolwoman stepped in front of him. “Sir? Are you Detective Kennedy? There’s a Lieutenant Stokovich on the landline inside? He’s asking for you?”

  Going back into the precinct house was like stepping into a stone chapel, shadowed and cool after the heat on the street. Kennedy took a phone from the operator behind the duty desk.

  “Kennedy?”

  “Yes, it’s me, Bruno. I just wanted to let you know we’ve got a positive on that John Doe jumper. We saw the Spiegel kid and he gave us a lead, turns into an address on West a Hundred-fourteenth Street. Kid named Dennis McEnery. Wolfie’s putting it out on FINEST. You want us to let the guys at the Two-seven pick him up?”

  “No, Eddie. You don’t want to do the dog around the squad room right now. Besides, Internal called and I told them you were in a hot-pursuit situation and couldn’t be reached. I mean, they know that’s crap, but why don’t you fire on up to the Two-seven and chase their butts around for a while? I’ve got the Duty Captain on my ass with this one. The Spiegel kid’s a tourist, so he wants the muggers scooped fast. This case isn’t going to be a priority for the Two-seven. They’ve got troubles of their own. How’s Wolfie?”

  Maksins came across the large hall toward Kennedy, balancing two coffees and a pile of glaz
ed donuts, a patrolman’s lunch.

  “Wolfie’s okay. Am I taking him to Harlem?”

  “Jesus! Wolfie in Harlem! That oughta be interesting. Sure, take him along. Tell him Sorvino wants him to do a lineup with those Angel assholes. He’s supposed to bring his witnesses in whenever he can swing it. Eddie, you keep him out of trouble up there. Wolfie’s a nice kid but he’s got an attitude about the blacks, eh?”

  Kennedy looked up at Maksins, who was devouring a donut and smiling at a brace of PWs behind the desk.

  “Hey, Wolfie. We’re goin’ down memory lane.”

  Stokovich laughed and cut off. Maksins said, “Where?”

  “Harlem.”

  Maksins stopped chewing.

  “Harlem?”

  Kennedy headed for the door. “Yeah. North of here. Remember, Wolfie?”

  Down the steps of the station house, Maksins squinted into the light, closing up behind Kennedy, and said, “Yeah, Eddie, I remember.”

  All the way up Eighth Avenue, Kennedy thought about Porfirio Magdalena Ruiz, and Maksins emptied and reloaded and emptied and reloaded his Dan Wesson with the zebra-striped grips and the interchangeable front sights. They switched the set to the uptown frequency when they got to Columbus Circle, bouncing over the ruts and potholes, working their way through the pedestrians milling around at the western edge of the hotel row.

  The Columbus monument was surrounded by smalltime coke and smack dealers, bums and winos, pushcart peddlers, undercover cops, tourists, couples. A lot went on in a gore formed by the intersection of Eighth and Broadway and Central Park South. They broke through the pack and headed straight up Central Park West. The trees and glens of the park swept by off Maksins’ right shoulder. He rolled the window down and flicked off the air conditioning. A dry wind blew dust and the scent of ripe greenery, dead leaves, blue scorch-smoke from a pushcart stand, diesel fumes, horse manure, pretzels, cigarette smoke; not fresh air, not a zephyr from the coast or even a hint of salt water, but New York air, spicy and rich and close. On Kennedy’s side, block after block of clean bright apartment towers went by: spotless granite facades and reliefs of robber barons, bronze casement windows hung with heavy damask, here and there on the lower floors the sheen of brass, or the fragmented scintillations of a clustered chandelier. They bounced over a section of thick metal plating, both of them holding on to the dash, as the Dakota loomed up on their left, a Victorian pile, turreted and spired, cloaked in its own light and air, like a faded painting. They drove at forty miles an hour, taking every light, past the mansions and the apartment towers with the canopies and the uniformed doormen, the carved wooden doors, the smoked-glass doors, the discreet brass plaques, the buildings with old bronze numbers coated in verdigris, the broad walks, the little dogs in fans of five tugging and yapping, dragging a young black girl in nurse’s whites around the corner at 96th, the buildings failing only a little but still failing as the border of Harlem got closer, and the sunny little doorsteps got older and grubbier.

  Maksins was still in a good mood. He counted off a door, a canopy, another door, three people at the side of a long black car, a woman with long blunt hair and a broad red mouth, laughing, tossing her head in the afternoon light, an old man waving to them from a bench in the shade, a Porsche, a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Porsche, a woman wheeled by a bored black maid, southbound taxis cruising at the curbline, a balloon-seller losing his hat, a blind closing, coming down slowly but steadily. Central Park West was alien territory to Wolfie. Somebody else ran things here.

  At 96th Street and Central Park West the beat falters, recovers; there’s another fading pile and the Porsches are falling away. The park is denser past Maksins’ window. They bounce across a loose steel grid. There’s a crack, a bong, a rolling boom from the roadway, and here’s where Gershwin gets off, at Duke Ellington Place. They pound over the fault line at 110th Street. There’s a burned-down supermarket on their left. Three black boys are kicking a burning ashcan over at the edge of Frederick Douglass Circle. Wolfie puts his piece away. He’s in Harlem.

  Drunk and rolling, Maksins had once driven into Harlem on his way to racket at Saint John the Divine; he’d come jolting over the potholes at 111th Street, singing “Dixie” at the top of his throat, when the railyard scene from Gone With the Wind had taken him over. He had a sensation of riding a crane, a boom, a dolly, whatever the hell they called it, up into the sky at the northern end of Central Park. Whatever the machinery, he had gone up five hundred feet and Harlem was spread out in front of him in exactly the same way that the railway station in the movie was littered with wounded Confederates, rows and rows of them in blankets, arranged in files, tagged and orderly, but wounded. Harlem had looked just like that: rows and rows of low flat roofs, set out in ranks, set down in files, all of them out of the combat, flat on their backs. Waiting for Scarlett O’Hara to come along. He had been drunk and fanciful, nor did he mention the illusion to Kennedy now, but whenever he crossed 110th Street he felt the same sensation, going up fast, seeing it all at once.

  There are hills and high places in Harlem where Wolfie used to park his car and open a beer and look south toward midtown and lower Manhattan. If he set it up right, putting it at the top of Park, at the corner of 125th Street, a few long strange blocks east of the Apollo Theater, Wolfie could see the floodlit crest of the Helmsley Building all the way down at 44th Street, and behind it a dark rectangle, the Pan Am Building, the white pinnacle of the Citicorp Center tower, the arcs and bars of the Chrysler Building, and the illuminated steppes of the Empire State Building. All around these landmarks, a compressed glittering wall of lit spires, pulsing lights, the city itself blazed away in the dark like a ship far out at sea.

  That’s how Wolfie had seen it, as a young cop, like a freighter at least a thousand miles away from the low flat brownstones of Harlem, as if all of Harlem were floating in the dark, floating in the wake of that receding, shining city.

  Grace McEnery’s front parlor had a woven rug on the plastered wall, an American Primitive scene cranked out by a computer-driven loom in Pittsburgh, endlessly generating blurry and confused echoes of Edward Hicks and Winslow Homer. The rug had been nailed to the plaster above a vinyl couch the color of an old tangerine, and there was a carpet on the floor beneath a spindly Danish table with rubber caps on its legs. At one end of the room there was a kitchen, scrubbed and spotless. A hall led away toward the rear of her ground-floor flat to three small boxlike bedrooms, each with a single overpainted window covered with a rusted mesh screen. Her bedroom had a crucifix above the bed, quite a fine one, in carved rosewood. The Christ figure writhed on it in pious counterfeit pain, far less convincing than Grace McEnery’s hands.

  “My boy is not home,” she said to the two detectives standing in the door. “He has gone to my sister’s place in Great Notch—that’s near Little Falls? In Jersey? He left on Monday morning, took the bus from the Port Authority. I can’t remember just when he was supposed to call me, but if you want you can call me back later, I can let you know the bus he took?”

  Grace McEnery had dense and gleaming black hair which she wore in a scarlet kerchief, pulled so severely back that it seemed to stretch the skin at her temples. She was young, perhaps no older than thirty-five, but she was growing heavy in the face and hips from eating foods too starchy and too cheap—canned macaroni, canned spaghetti, cheap white bread and pasta from the Sloan’s store—making her food stamps last at the expense of the body she used to have. She was still beautiful, and she looked directly at the policemen, speaking carefully and calmly, not shaking more than one would expect. Whenever she forgot about them, her feet would tap restlessly on the table leg, but when she became aware of this she compressed her lips and tightened her body again, angry with herself.

  The detectives at the 27th had been having a bad day when Maksins and Kennedy pulled up—a break-in at the General Grant Houses, a nurse raped on her way to Saint Luke’s Hospital, and a number of smaller collisions around the precinc
t area. They’d been only too happy to let Kennedy and Maksins go over alone to the McEnery flat on West 114th. They knew Dennis fairly well. He’d been arrested by the precinct Street Narcotics Unit guys for some minor drug offense and a few felony assault raps. He hadn’t made much of an impression on any of the detectives, but they all remembered his older brother, whom they referred to simply as Apollo. A good-looking kid, said one of the men, leading a handcuffed girl out of a holding cell. Could have been a great defensive end. Went to the same school as the Perry kid, who’d been shot by a cop.

  Kennedy stopped at the door. “What, Exeter?”

  “Shit, no,” the man said. “P.S. One-thirteen. Perry was in a grade ahead. Funny how the shit turns out up here. Perry goes to Exeter and gets shot a block from home. Apollo could have been anything he wanted, even gone to Exeter. Everybody wanted to go to Exeter in this neighborhood—any kid who knew the Edmund Perry story. But Apollo had to be a shmuck. He blew his shot at ABC grants.”

  “That’s still open, isn’t it? His case?”

  “Yeah. But there’s a lot of stuff happening. The Task Force has it in their book, but I think it was somebody from the Bronx, one of those Cuban wackos. Good luck with the mother. And go easy on her, will you? She’s a nice lady, had a lot of bad luck.”

  Kennedy and Maksins knew Mrs. McEnery was lying, but there was something about the room and the way she held herself that made Kennedy want to be as gentle as he could. He stood and listened for a good five minutes, letting her wind down, letting her do what she could for her kid. Maksins was less sympathetic. He radiated supressed aggression and impatience so clearly that Kennedy asked him to go and talk to the old man sitting in the back bedroom, listening to an old Philips radio and drawing wetly on a scorched Medico pipe. Maksins thumped off down the hall. As soon as he was gone, Kennedy raised his hand, palm out, and came closer to the woman on the couch.