Close Pursuit

by Carsten Stroud

  He took it in at a glance, Eddie flushed and breathless, and late besides, and the uniformed policeman standing behind him.

  “So, ye blasted devil!” Whack! He struck Kennedy across the side of his head with a folded newspaper. Whack! Whack! Kennedy was too stunned to object, and in those days no son negotiated with his father anyway. Whack again!

  The policeman, sensing the confusion, feeling at fault, put his oar in as tactfully as he could.

  He was only in the building to sell tickets to a policeman’s benefit dance, and the boy was innocent, so far as he knew, of any wrong, although he had no doubt the father knew him best, and capable of devilment he must surely be, else the father would not be setting about the little brute so freely and with such a will, but it must be said he’s no particular devil to the police, not at the moment, beggin’ his father’s pardon for intrudin’, and meaning no interference. Sir.

  The lesson stayed with Kennedy all the way through the evening meal, his father presiding unrepentant yet slightly uneasy at the head of the table, carving the roast and chivvying his brood. It was the police who had the power. Even his father had been restrained by it.

  Robinson and Kennedy had spent the entire morning and most of the afternoon in a brand-new navy-blue Plymouth Caravelle, casting about in the various Bronx precincts, talking to the Street Crime Units and the detectives at the local Task Force, at the 48th and the 40th, trying to get some hint of Mokie Muro. The day was hot and still. A pale sun rode high in a greenish dome of sky. The air was dense and steamy and there was a kind of swollen look to the sky, cloudless but thick with haze. The wind had died away in the early morning.

  Word had come in, finally, from the Identification Division, Latent Fingerprint Section, of the FBI in Washington, to the effect that the five sets of prints, plastic, visible, and latent, tagged Evidence 23, 25, 32, 33, and 37, had been compared with the recorded prints of the suspects named. The comparison prints matched perfectly with the recorded prints of Salvador Olvera, Hermenegildo Muro, and Rubio Muro. The latent prints taken from the victim had been positively matched with the file prints of Salvador Olvera and Hermenegildo Muro. Photos and hard-copy file extracts were being prepared and would be sent along as soon as the proper documentation was received at the FBI offices.

  The forensic odontologist had compared the photographs and castings of the bite marks observed on the victim’s torso with dental records obtained through the Health Services Department. Only one of the bite marks could be positively identified as similar enough in wear pattern, in bite radius and occlusion, and in the disposition of the incisors, canines, and molars, to the available records. The probability was, and the odontologist reserved her final decision until a casting could be taken of the suspect’s teeth, that the bite had been delivered by Hermenegildo Muro.

  Blood types and tissue types and semen-sample serological reports did not exclude the suspects.

  Although Salvador Olvera had been Mirandized and questioned at some length, he had so far said not one word. He was being held at Manhattan Criminal Courts and no bail had been set for him. Sorvino had promised the detectives that he would do his best to insure that, if bail should be negotiated, it would be at such an astronomical figure that even Olvera’s mother, who turned out to have extensive assets in T-bills and ITT stock, would not be able to meet it. The confusion over her identity had been resolved when it was discovered that she had applied for a legal change of name in 1966, changing from Olvera to Oliver. All that remained in the Muro case, aside from the usual collection of corroborative testimony and forensic support, was to actually get out there and find Mokie Muro.

  Stokovich had issued a citywide on Mokie. Every precinct in the five boroughs had been teletyped. Mokie’s description had been read out to every mustering platoon on every watch in seventy-five precincts. Anti-Crime Units, Citywide Street Crime, Citywide Street Narcotics, Vice, Robbery, and the Auto Squad were all advised to remember the description, and highway units were notified.

  So were the police forces in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, and Nassau and Suffolk counties, and the New Jersey State Police were asked to contact other New Jersey departments.

  Mokie Muro was a very hot item by Thursday evening. Reports of him were coming in from every compass point. Finks were coming up with vital information all over town, none of it worth a damn. The detectives of the 46th Precinct in the University Heights area of the Bronx were asked to shake up members of the Ching-a-lings motorcycle gang. Finks in the Fordham sector got rousted from their sleep or pulled out of bars and basements. At any one time, a thousand men and women were thinking about and looking for one Latino male, DOB 09/06/58, NYSIIS M21176544, five eight, 140 pounds, last seen wearing black motorcycle boots with chains, black jeans, a ripped white T-shirt with a DEAD KENNEDYS logo under a light-brown leather vest with cowboy fringes, small triangular scar beneath the left ear, considered to be armed and dangerous, wanted on suspicion of murder. A circular was set for printing if the hunt went over the weekend.

  At 1530 hours on Friday afternoon, both Kennedy and Robinson were beginning to suspect it would.

  They pulled up at the curb a few hundred feet away from the Blue Flame bar at Third and 155th Street. The air-conditioning labored at FULL. A fine white dust had settled over the squad car. Now and then Kennedy would turn on the windshield wipers, just to get the film off the windshield. They had used two whole tanks of gas since they had come across the 145th Street bridge out of Harlem at 0955 hours that morning. Their throats were sore from talking with detectives and patrol officers. They had not yet eaten, and both men were stiff, hot, weary, and frustrated. Salvador Olvera had been a cakewalk, running straight and true to his only refuge. Tinto had always been a small-timer. His flight had been panicked, careless, and clumsy. His infatuation with Jesus Rodriguez had led him to a stupid indiscretion, a phone drop at the Ducky Donut Shop, mainly designed to fool his mother, who claimed she had no knowledge of her son’s homosexuality. But Mokie was turning into a real pain in the ass. Literally and figuratively. Kennedy put the lever into PARK and stretched his arms above his head, groaning, feeling the vinyl cling to the sweat underneath his legs. Robinson looked as if he had been carved out of ice. Frank was leaning forward in his seat, craning his neck to get a view of something across the huge square.

  Kennedy looked around the block. He saw nothing.

  “What is it? You see something?”

  “Yeah, the courthouse. Quite the pile, isn’t it?”

  Kennedy looked back across the street. Well, yeah, the courthouse. He felt a little stupid for missing the thing. It was a huge Roman-looking structure, eight stories of blackened granite, now empty and falling into ruin, but still magnificent. All around it the low flat stores and the side streets seemed even grubbier in its shadow. Latin letters carved into the face announced it: BRONX BOROUGH COURTHOUSE.

  “Yeah, quite the pile, Frank.” So what?

  “My law professor says it’s one of the finest examples of High Victorian Neoclassicism in the New York area. Too bad it’s a pile of shit now. Sort of suits the Bronx, though. You know, a blasted heath. Ozymandias and all that stuff.”

  Kennedy was just about to say something vulgar when he realized, quietly stunned at it, that he did remember an Ozymandias. Pete Garibaldi was always quoting something about it, just after he’d kicked in a door or trashed a bar.

  “ ‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ ”

  Robinson had the grace not to look too surprised.

  “Where the hell did you get that from? I always figured you Irish cops only knew two things.”

  “Yeah? Shit floats and payday’s Thursday, right? No, an old buddy of mine, he was always saying that. He’d wreck a bar or trash somebody’s Caddie during a bust and he’d say to them, looking down on them, you know, standing over them with a baseball bat in his hands, and he’d thump his chest, like King Kong, and scream that line out. Kind of a w
eird fucker, but we liked him.”

  Robinson knew better than to ask who the man had been. Most of the squad had filled him in, one at a time, each man solemnly imparting the legend to the new boy in an act of initiation. Robinson had listened to the tale, respectfully, each and every time he heard it. It was only polite, and anyway, Garibaldi sounded like a good cop. Robinson would have liked him.

  “You’re a bit of a weird fucker yourself, Kennedy.”

  Kennedy looked over at Robinson, thinking exactly the same thing about the black detective.

  He was a good detective, but not the kind of man you could kid easily. Frank Robinson always held something in reserve. Kennedy felt the reserve was a racial thing. He had a hard time remembering that the man was black, though. And it was a little intimidating to work with a B.A. from Columbia. Kennedy had a high school education and that was it, aside from the endless courses at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. There was word going around that Frank Robinson was in line for one of the Police Foundation scholarships to John Jay, and the guy was studying part-time for a degree in law. One of the new lawyer-cops, like Benjamin Ward. Robinson was a strange kind of cop-scholar. He tried to deal with the street by analyzing it in a clinical, sociological way. Sometimes he just gave it up and whacked a guy, as he had whacked Jesus Rodriguez yesterday. A contradictory man, moving in precise steps, thoughtfully brutal. He was said to have a Minnesota-blond girlfriend, a teacher’s assistant at Hunter College. Robinson was far and away the best-educated man on the Task Force. That wasn’t unusual. Statistics in the NYPD show that black police officers, male, female, in Patrol or in the Detective Division, tend to be far better educated than white or Latino officers. Considering the shit they had to put up with, it wasn’t surprising.

  The only thing that puzzled Kennedy was how Robinson and Wolfie managed to work together. It was one of life’s great mysteries.

  “You know we’re getting nowhere fast, Eddie. Got any ideas? We know the guy’s not with the Ching-a-lings around the Four-Six. Maksins’ fink says he’s an addict, so he’s got to be getting sick right now. He can score anyplace in the Bronx, so that’s not much of a help.”

  “True. What do you get from the fact that none of the units have spotted him? I make it that he’s gone to ground somewhere. Staying out of sight.”

  Robinson agreed. “But he’s got to eat. He’s got to score sometime soon—unless he’s got enough of a deck to see him through this week. He’s been running since last Thursday.”

  “Yeah. What else does he like to do?”

  Robinson thought it over.

  “He likes to fuck boys, doesn’t he?”

  “So, where do you go to find a boy to fuck if you’re a long way from home? Where do you go if you need to rent a boy who’ll do your running for you? Pick up your smack, get you a new deck? If you’re in the Bronx, where do you go?”

  “Shazam!” said Robinson.

  * * *

  Hunts Point Market is a flatland of low warehouse buildings and truck yards, sitting on a muddy delta that projects into the East River just below the Bruckner Expressway, in the southern tip of the Bronx. Most of the produce that comes into Manhattan is delivered to and dealt with in the Hunts Point food terminals, in that grid of streets between Lafayette and Ryawa, a hundred different companies running import-and-export and transport trades. The Terminal Market is a vast complex of store and trading halls where deals are made for the supermarkets like D’Agostino’s, Sloan’s, Red Apple, or Gristede’s. Sixteen-wheelers and panel trucks clog the roads from sunset to dawn. There’s always a lineup of out-of-state rigs along Hunts Point Avenue. Every city has a place like Hunts Point, where the goods get bought and sold, the bribes get paid, the Mafia and the Latin gangs take their cut—an organized-crime culture packed with undercover agents working for various local and federal departments, the DEA, AT&F, the IRS, Justice, the Department of Agriculture, now and then the CIA and even Military Intelligence. Hunts Point was a little Casablanca of intrigue disguised as an industrial park. And since there was no shortage of weary long-haul truckers and dockworkers with money in their pockets and some time to kill before the gates opened, Hunts Point was also the hooker heaven of the South Bronx.

  Whatever your pleasure, there was bound to be some creature with a high nausea threshold and no gag reflex at all who would be only too happy to take care of you, cash up front, no vice cops need apply.

  They rolled into the neighborhood around 1620 hours. The place was jumping, every long barren block around Halleck and Oak Point had a collection of mini-skirted, tank-topped Madonna clones, made-up and glossed, lifting their skirts as the squad car went by, selling it in every package, male, female, transvestite, butch, rough trade, and Other. Kennedy drove slowly down Manida and back up Baretto, looking for someone he knew.

  A girl close to six feet tall, with flaming blue hair, waved to him as they went by.

  “Ed-deeee! Hey, Kennedy! Stop!”

  Kennedy pulled over to the curb, grinning.

  The girl hobbled over to the window and waited for it to roll down, resting her forearms along the doorline.

  “Kennedy, you motherfucker! What brings you back up here? You want some strange change? Who’s your friend? Nice lookin’. Hi, I’m Magenta, like in the color.”

  She reached out and took Frank’s hand. Both breasts slipped out of her lavender teddy-top and brushed against Kennedy’s cheek. Very fine breasts. Kennedy managed to ignore them while he introduced Detective Frank Robinson.

  Magenta winked at Kennedy. She had done that on purpose.

  “How do you do?” said Robinson, through a very wide grin. “Pleased to meet you. Very.”

  Magenta tucked her breasts back into the teddy, talking low and soft to Kennedy.

  “Eddie, I haven’t seen you in three months. Do you ever hear from Alvin? You tell him I want to see him soon? Are you still seeing that Trudy creature? No! Good. She was not a nice person. Rude! Are we going for a ride? I love your car. It’s new, isn’t it? I can smell a new car. Let me hear the siren!”

  Kennedy hit the switch and bounced a fist off the wheel twice. Whoop! Whoop!

  “I love it! Look at them jump!” She turned back to Kennedy and lowered her voice. “So! I only see you when you want to do that thing with the scarves or when you want something. Which is it?”

  Kennedy went slightly red. Robinson smoothed the moment by handing the CATCH shot of Mokie Muro over to Magenta. She took the shot, pursing her lips.

  “This the guy? Everybody says you’re all worked up over some asshole. Vice has been real nasty lately. You know that guy, Eddie? What’s his name? The one with the gold earring? Looks like Nick Nolte?”

  “Solarski. Or Crittenden? Which one?”

  “Who knows! Anyway, he and his partner went through here last night and they just drove right along the sidewalk, making everybody run into the street, banging on their doors and blowing that siren. Then Solarski gets out and slaps Nunzio around. You know Nunzio—he can’t take rough treatment. How’s he supposed to remember which cock he’s been nibbling on with some asshole vice cop slapping him around in the street? It was not a nice thing to do!”

  “Who was he looking for?”

  “This character, Mokie Whatsit! Had his picture and everything. Poor Nunzio just absolutely collapsed. And Solarski just kicked him in the face. Eddie, you have to do something about that one. I think he’s a little unstable.”

  She prattled on like that for a few minutes, until a woman called her away. Kennedy drove off, angry. Bronx Vice gets energetic, starts fucking up the hookers, looking for Mokie Muro. So naturally the place was still buzzing with it the next day. The trouble was that the cops had been so rough that nobody wanted to talk to any new cops. Kennedy and Robinson cruised around the area, talking to young girls and young boys, the regular street trade in the market. Nobody seemed to have anything to tell them. They did a complete circuit of the place, up Lafayette, right on Halleck, and then b
ack and forth along Drake, Whittier, Bryant, Spofford, until they were back on Baretto.

  Magenta was still there, but she was holding on to a slight black male. “Eddie! Hey, Kennedy. Get over here!”

  The kid had wild hair dyed the brightest orange and a bright-yellow sweater over Calvin Klein jeans. He also had a white bandage across his nose, and both eyes were red and swollen. When Kennedy pulled up, Magenta jerked the back door open and clambered inside with her companion.

  “Thank God you came back around. I wanted you to see this! Say good afternoon to Detective Kennedy and Detective Robinson. Guys, this is Nunzio.”

  Nunzio was in bad shape, perhaps from his encounter with a Bronx cop last night, perhaps from withdrawal. His nose was running. There was blood on his upper lip. He dipped his head shyly and kept it down. Robinson leaned over the car seat and handed him a Kleenex.

  “What’s his problem, Magenta? He want to lay a charge against Solarski? Crittenden? Whoever?”

  “No, you assholes. What good would that do? Anyway, Nunzio doesn’t always mind getting slapped around, do you, Nunzio? No. I was talking to him while you were driving around. He’s got something you might want to know.”

  Kennedy and Robinson came to point, like a brace of hounds. “What is it, Nunzio? What do you want to say?”

  They let him get himself together. For three minutes they watched him try to speak. This kid should have been in a home, being tended to, being sheltered. But he wasn’t. He was out here on Manida, getting fucked up the ass at ten bucks a crack.

  When he did speak, it was in the small cracked voice of a child, feminine in its cadence.

  “I … I have to go to the doctor. I’m sick.”

  “What kind of sick?” asked Robinson.