Close Pursuit

by Carsten Stroud

  Kennedy pushed himself away from the kitchen table. The readout on his microwave maintained that it was only a few minutes after ten in the evening. Kennedy felt as if it were the last hour of the last day in the universe. But the Muro case, rough as it was, had its own power as well. By the time the Force had come to the tentative conclusion that their best bet for the killer was Mokie Muro and an accessory, the inquiry had taken up the time and energy of three hundred people: the patrol officers who responded to the call, the Communications people who relayed the word to the Task Force, the Crime Scene technicians, the DA’s office, Charlie Marcuse and his people, the EMS bus crew, the Forensic lab technicians, some people at the FBI, several platoons of the 9th, duty sergeants, Anti-Crime Units, Street Narcotics Units, assorted finks and snitches, secretaries, clerks, telephone operators, a Health Services paramedic, some people over at MHR, detectives from Midtown North and Midtown South plainclothes divisions, Intelligence. The television image of the lone man doggedly pursuing his maniacal quarry through the Dantean landscape of night, alone, opposed at every step by stupid commanders and witless patrolmen, rumpled and sodden with weariness … well, it was mostly laughable, except for the “rumpled and sodden with weariness” bit.

  Kennedy stood in the middle of his living room, weaving slightly, seeing his apartment through the distance of emotional exhaustion. This is it, Eddie. This is what you’re working for. An eggshell shag rug, a burgundy leather and brass couch with a matching leather armchair, a low black marble coffee table, two Orient Express lamps from a mail-order house in San Francisco, a framed diptych print of the Brooklyn Bridge, a low black lacquer credenza with a Panasonic stereo system in flat black metal, satellite speakers in the bedroom, about seven hundred hardcover books, mostly secondhand from the Barnes and Noble Annex down on Fifth Avenue, historical fiction, a set of encyclopedias and the complete mail-order line of Franklin Mint Books, God help him—the “quintessential bourgeois library” was how that dragon lady from Barnard had described it, just before he put her out in the hall. A thirteen-inch Sony Trinitron with a remote control so he could turn the sound off when that godawful commercial for Grind came on, or yet another searing investigative exposé. He had three suits in a closet in his ten-by-twelve bedroom, a blue single-breasted, a gray double-breasted, and a brown. Three sport jackets, various slacks and jeans, his dress uniform, socks and shirts and ties in the shelves above it. A round kitchen table with fake-walnut veneer; four matching chairs, tubular aluminum, with padded seats, one of which had been shredded by Dudley; and a half-full litter box behind the bathroom door. Typical of the little monster. Bail out and leave Kennedy with the cleanup.

  It was funny how your life just happened to you, Kennedy was thinking. All his life he’d been making plans and working for one thing or another. The Academy, then his Gold, then Grade Money. A better apartment. Maybe someday a wife, a kid. Some of it he’d gotten. The rest of it … He couldn’t place the day, the year, when he’d given up on that part of the plan. Now he was fat and forty and tired, and the thing he missed most wasn’t even human.

  Kennedy woke up during the weather report. Storm Field was the weatherman for this channel, something no one in Manhattan seemed to find odd, and he was talking about a major storm front moving in to the East Coast area, promising celestial brimstone later in the week. Kennedy sat up on the couch and rubbed his eyes. The vision of a heavy storm ripping up Fifth Avenue along Museum Mile, scattering the brittle old ladies, maybe a cyclone sucking up all the Shih Tzus and pekes and Sharpeis … it had some appeal, he had to admit. Pack it in, Eddie. Bedtime.

  He found Dudley on the floor of his bedroom closet, lying on his favorite Harris tweed sports coat, on his side, torn up and clotted but still breathing, just barely breathing, and far too hot to the touch. His fur was dull and matted. When Kennedy picked him up, blood ran from his mouth in a viscous strand, like pulled toffee. Dudley’s eye was almost completely closed, but he was watching Kennedy, as if to say, So, Eddie, what’s happening?

  A few frantic phone calls later he had located a vet on the West Side. The cabbie got into the spirit of the thing, screaming through Central Park, honking at the limos, keeping up a running commentary on why cats are the best pets in the universe, while Kennedy held the carton fall of Dudley on his lap and watched for a blue-and-white. If they tried to pull him over, he was goddam well going to get a police escort for this run.

  CHAPTER 12

  THURSDAY

  “So what was it? Was he there all along?”

  A UPS van cut away from the curb, crossing two lanes of Eighth Avenue in a kamikaze maneuver. Robinson, who was looking at Kennedy and not at the road, saw Kennedy’s expression and slammed on the brakes, spilling their briefcases and their suit jackets onto the floor in the back seat. Horns and curses erupted all around them, but the brown van kept moving until he hit a cab and bounced off that. Kennedy picked up the radio.

  “One-oh-four to Central, K?”

  “One-oh-four, K.”

  “Central, you’ve got a Ten-Fifty-three at Eighth and Fortieth Street, by the Port Authority. A UPS van just clipped a cab. They’re out of the cars and it looks like they’re going to scrap over it.”

  They were. The uniformed driver of the UPS van pushed the cabbie up against his car. The cabbie lashed out with a boot, catching the UPS driver in the crotch. Traffic stopped dead in a knot, windows were rolled down, and angry red faces popped up as people said inaudible things at the top of their voices. A crowd of black teenagers was gathering on the sidewalk to cheer the combatants, who were now grappling and scuffling in a wrestlers’ tango. Within seconds the intersection was locked up solid with trucks and cars. A ten-speed delivery boy hurtled through the morass. Somebody opened his car door and the boy rode right into it, flying over the top in a cartwheel, packages and radio flying, too, then bouncing off the hood and disappearing between the cars.

  “Roger, one-oh-four. Do we need a bus?”

  “You do now, Central.”

  Kennedy put the receiver down and turned up the air-conditioning. “What was the question?”

  Robinson offered Kennedy a cigarette and lit one for himself. “Dudley. Was he in your closet all the time?”

  Kennedy shook his head through a cloud of smoke.

  “No, I was all over that place. The son of a bitch must have come in through the screen while I was flaked out on the couch. I found some blood on the window ledge, and there were muddy pawprints all over the toilet. He crawled in, got himself a drink out of the can, and then sacked out on my jacket in the closet. I was looking for a shirt to wear for the morning and there he was.”

  “He gonna make it?”

  Kennedy didn’t answer immediately.

  “Well, I don’t know, to tell you the truth. The vet says he’s infected, and he’s lost all kinds of blood. He has rat bites all over his neck and his belly. Could be he’s got something from them. The vet cleaned him up, shot him full of antibiotics. The poor bugger’s on intravenous right now. I have to phone him later.”

  “How’re the rats?”

  “How do you think?”

  Robinson chuckled. An EMS bus came whooping out of a cross street. Some brownies were waving the lead cars through the intersection. Overhead a pale sun glowed in a thin gray sky. The air smelled of ozone and burning bread.

  “Is that the Portable? Up there?” Robinson was pointing at a blond PW waiting on the curb on the far side of 42nd Street. She had a hand up, shading her eyes, and she was looking down Eighth, squinting into the smog. Robinson blipped the siren a couple of times and bulled the squad car around a taxi. The driver swore at them as they went by his window. Kennedy shot him a finger. He got one back.

  The policewoman was very young, no more than twenty at best, with a solid little dancer’s body and midwestern features, eyebrows as pale as the sky overhead, and a flush in her cheeks as if she had been running and had not yet caught her breath. She was talking before Kennedy got his
window all the way down.

  “Are you the guys who wanted this Jesus Rodriguez kid? They told me to hang on to him for you. Which one’s Kennedy?”

  “I am, ahh, Officer vanDongen. Where is he?”

  She pushed her cap back, showing a thin line of sweat along her forehead. “My partner’s holding him inside here. You want him in the car?” She was standing in front of a grubby little theater called the Show Palace, a gay strip joint alternating porn flicks and live performances.

  Robinson, in a falsetto trill, said, “Well, what’s on, you bitch? Let’s see, Bullet, Pick Up, and Preppie Summer. Golly, I just don’t know, Eddie. What do you wanna do?”

  “Easy, Frank. No, we’ll talk to him inside. He might be a little tense out here in the street.”

  They found Jesus Rodriguez sitting on the floor just inside the darkened lobby. Through a set of padded doors, they could just make out some kind of stage performance in progress. A hot-pink spotlight was moving slowly up a pair of oiled and naked legs. When it reached an erect cock thrusting out from a sequined jockstrap, Robinson and Kennedy lost interest quite suddenly. Jesus Rodriguez was crying.

  “Okay, Officers. Can you give us a little room here?”

  The PW’s partner was a black patrolman named Sweet. He stepped away from the Rodriguez boy and went over to his partner. Kennedy pulled the boy to his feet.

  Jesus couldn’t have been older than sixteen, a dark-eyed Latin exotic, with smooth tanned skin and heavy purple eye shadow around his gray eyes. His mascara had run badly, so he looked a little like a trapped raccoon. He spoke with no trace of accent, wiping his hands compulsively down his thighs, stepping into and out of his high-heeled slippers as the detectives talked things over with him.

  His story was fairly ordinary. He had been working the cross streets above 42nd, not making a great deal of money. Monday nights were always slow. Tinto Olvera had come along in a Lincoln Town Car … yes, it was a rental. Budget Rent-a-Car had a weekend deal and he had just kept it over the limit. No, he hadn’t seen the rental sheet anywhere. It was two-tone, light- and dark-blue. Blue interior. Tinto was a regular customer. Jesus knew what he liked. They had driven over to the 30th Street Terminal yards. Jesus knew a spot over there where you could relax and not be disturbed. After it was over, they had gotten dressed and instead of the money, Tinto had offered him this cameo. There had been a bit of a spat over that one. Jesus liked cash. But Tinto had cried a little, saying he had no money but that he loved Jesus and would Jesus not take the cameo, even as a gift? As a security deposit? But he wasn’t to show it to anyone. In a few days, Tinto would come back with cash. They would get together again.

  “Was he with anyone?”

  Robinson’s voice was hard-edged. It frightened the boy. He started to cry again. Robinson softened his tone, putting a hand on the boy’s cheek. “Look, we know you’re not involved. You’re not in any trouble here. All we want to know is, was Tinto alone?”

  The boy nodded, rubbing his hands along his thighs.

  “Can you reach him, if you want to? Have you ever been to his place? Has he ever given you a number?”

  A nod. A tear. “Yes, he has.”

  Bingo. “Do you remember that number?”

  He didn’t. He had never been able to remember numbers.

  “He said he’d see you again. Did he say when?” Soon. The rubbing got more rapid. Tears came faster.

  Kennedy broke in. “You’re sick, hah? You need something to make you feel better?” The boy turned to Kennedy as if he were the materialization of an archangel, shining in glory. Yes, he was so sick. Could they help him out?

  “Hey, you help us, we help you.” Kennedy held up a five-dollar bill. “The number, Hay-soos?”

  It was … no, he couldn’t remember. Kennedy held up another five. It was coming to him. No, not yet.

  Frank Robinson reached across and backhanded the kid into the wall. He bounced off it and collapsed to the sticky carpet, wailing and sobbing, one hand up along his cheekbone, staring up at the detectives with his dark eyes wide, his cheeks running with tears and black streaks of mascara, a slender ribbon of mucus looping from his nostril onto the Ralph Lauren polo shirt with the embroidered horseman galloping across a cotton field.

  “Did that help?” said Robinson, as soft as sleep.

  Budget had no record of a Lincoln Town Car being rented out to anyone by the name of Salvador Olvera. But there were several two-tone blue Lincolns still out on rental. They would run a check on all the credit cards for each Lincoln rental, but that would take some time.

  Kennedy set them to it, and sent out a notice on the FINEST that the Detective Division was very interested in any two-tone blue Lincoln Town Car with a rental plate—a Z number. Any units observing such a car should stop it and approach with caution. They included an updated description of Salvador Olvera and Mokie Muro, and stressed that although the men were wanted, it was not necessary to terrify every poor son of a bitch who was driving a blue Lincoln Town Car. Just pretend it’s a traffic problem or a tail-light violation.

  The telephone number belonged to a Brooklyn commerical establishment called the Ducky Donut Shop, at Palmetto and Myrtle. Frank Robinson pulled the car over at a pay phone on Delancey Street and borrowed some change from Kennedy. While he was in the booth, Kennedy got a patch through to the squad room and told Farrell to tell Stokovich, when he came in, that they were going to take a run out to Olvera’s address on Myrtle and then fire along to a place called the Ducky Donut Shop. Farrell told Kennedy that there had been no report from any of the Bronx units about Mokie Muro, but that Farrell would ride them all hard until somebody up there got his thumb out of his ass and did some real honest-to-god police work.

  “You do that, Ollie,” said Kennedy.

  Robinson got back behind the wheel, chuckling to himself.

  “So who are we today?” said Kennedy.

  Robinson fished out a leather card case and riffled through a collection of business cards. He had over a hundred of them, all in good shape, from about ten different businesses. Most detectives made it a point to scoop up a handful of business cards whenever they got the chance, from insurance firms, brokerage houses, real estate agencies, the EPA, Manhattan Human Resources. Robinson held up two quietly impressive cards from a New Jersey law firm. “Let’s see, I’m Edward Carlson and you’re Dennison Woodruff.”

  “What did you say to them?”

  “Hell, I just told them that we were trying to find a Mr. Salvador Olvera and that we were acting on behalf of the New York State Lottery Division.”

  Kennedy took his card. “Did they say they could get a message to him?”

  “They said that if he came in they would have him phone our number. Very Spanish voice. It didn’t sound as if they were surprised to get a message for him.”

  “What number did you give?”

  “The lunch-room phone. Let’s call up Ollie and tell him who he’s supposed to be. He likes that part.”

  Halfway across the Williamsburg Bridge, stalled in a jam, they got a call from Farrell saying that the clerk from Budget had called back and that three of the credit cards used to rent Lincoln town cars had been flagged by the credit issuers as delinquent, and that one card had been reported stolen out of a hotel on East 44th Street three days before. Due to a procedural error, the card had not been listed on the company’s computer.

  What was the name on the card?

  Julian Wendell McAllister, with an address in Santa Barbara, California. The point was, Julian Wendell McAllister had rented a two-tone blue Lincoln Town Car from one of the Budget hotel offices on Saturday afternoon, and that blue Lincoln had not yet been returned to the depot. It was now being listed as stolen, and a citywide was going out on it.

  Kennedy and Robinson sat in the squad car listening to the radio cross-talk from the 84th Precinct and staring out over the slate-gray surface of the East River. Downstream a thick yellow fog was riding low to the water. The feathery
fan of the Brooklyn Bridge and the hard shadow of the Manhattan Bridge came through a sheen of hazy air.

  “God, this is an ugly bridge,” said Robinson.

  “Is it?” said Kennedy. “I never noticed.”

  Brooklyn greeted them as they swept down beside the elevated BMT lines: WELCOME TO BROOKLYN USA. The bridge dumped them out into a vast crowded landscape of small wood-frame houses, endless neighborhood blocks of dusty scrub trees, peeling wooden billboards, a maze of tiny streets and avenues looking more like a New England slum than something this close to Manhattan. It was a tired-looking area, as if it hadn’t seen anything of the boom money that was transforming the Manhattan skyline, or, for that matter, any of the boom money from the last time around either. The BMT rode on an elevated rail line all the way along Broadway, covering the street like the hull of a massive iron ship, looming over block after block of spray-painted storefronts, spray-painted wooden fences, spray-painted tenement walls, all of them crowding right up to the curb line in the permanent twilight of the elevated. The line was marked off by a receding vista of paired steel pillars supporting the elevated railway, each pair coated with indecipherable spray-painted gang slogans: ZAKA, ZIGGY NINE, POWER, I HEART MY GUN, RAMONES, BABAY, RUFFIO, COPS DIE, KOCH FOR QUEEN, KNICKS, the words overlapping, shining up through one another, wrapped around one another, dripping down into one another, wearing away from on top of one another, the product of years and years of pointless dedication. Here and there a less anarchic hand had painted scenes from Caribbean dreams. Opposite the Bushwick Tire Service someone had rendered an abstract fort with a degree of art to it. Beyond that someone else had set up a hubcap business in a vacant lot surrounded by wire fencing. Three liquor stores sat in one block, each a squat little bunker wrapped in sheet metal and chicken wire, and inside there were shotguns under every countertop.

  A dirty sun burned in smog. The two detectives spoke little as they cruised up underneath the elevated. Now and then some kids would wave at the DT car, or send them a finger. Mostly the street life was just that, boys hanging out with girls, mothers shopping in the Woolworth’s or the Red Apple in baggy print dresses and open-toed sandals, heavy-hipped Spanish ladies with glittering black hair and full bodies and broad Indian faces. Now and then a side street would flash by and the detectives would catch a glimpse of a trellis heavy with hot scarlet roses, children playing in a yard, grandparents rocking, in the violet shade of a black-and-white striped awning, on a seat taken from a car. Wisps and fragments of rapid talk reached them, girls laughing, a radio set in an upper window sending raucous mariachi music into the dusty street. Gangs of hard-looking boys played basketball on a crumbling court or jacked up a car on cinder blocks and passed tools up and down.