Red Hook

by Gabriel Cohen

Go up already, he told himself. Go up, unless you want to make, a career as a lurker. He got out, the car door thumping hollowly in the canyon of row houses, a tranquil street in Prospect Heights. He stared up at the flower boxes hanging beneath the bay window and hoped the window and the light belonged to Michelle Wilber.

  The gate clanged shut behind him as he made his way up the walk.

  He located her name next to a buzzer; he ran his tongue over his teeth to make sure they were clean. He glanced at his watch: almost ten-thirty. Late, but not terribly so. He cleared his throat and pressed the buzzer.

  A crackle. “Hello?” Her voice.

  He cleared his throat again. “It’s Jack. Jack Leightner.” He was prepared for the jig to be up right there and then. If she didn’t want to talk to him. If, God forbid, Mr. Salesman from her office was up there right now, reclining smugly in her bedroom with his arms behind his head. He stared at the mute circle of holes in the intercom for what seemed like minutes.

  The lock buzzed open.

  He stared at the door in confusion and disbelief, then dove for it just as it click-locked. Sheepish, he buzzed again.

  Michelle stood at the top of the stairs. “Well,” she said dryly, “look what the cat dragged in.”

  He couldn’t read her expression well enough to tell if she was kidding.

  “Come on up.” She didn’t wait for him to reach to the top of the stairs, but moved out of sight.

  On the landing, he turned and saw an open door. And then he was in her apartment, but where was Michelle? He felt like a suspect ordered down to a precinct house, left sitting by the front desk. Make ’em feel like they’re not important, let their nerves fray and sizzle.

  He gathered quick impressions: a small Persian carpet, lots of plants, a peach-colored sofa, interesting paintings on the walls. (Unlike the ones in Sheila’s place, these didn’t make him worry about the emotional stability of their owner.) The apartment wasn’t fancy, but she had a real sense of style, an eye that tied together the colors and textures. Class.

  “I’m in the kitchen,” she called.

  He followed her voice.

  Halfway down the hall, he turned through a bright doorway. Michelle stood on tiptoe, reaching up into an old yellow kitchen cabinet.

  “I’m packing my lunch for tomorrow,” she said. “I’m not much of a morning person.”

  He watched as she took down a roll of tinfoil and wrapped a sandwich. She wore flip-flops, cut-off blue jeans, a spaghetti-strap T-shirt that revealed her bra straps. A simple rubber band held back her hair. A woman going about her own business.

  She took out a plastic bag and tried to open it from the wrong end. For the first time, Jack realized she might be nervous too.

  She dropped the sandwich in the bag, placed it in the fridge. Finally, she turned to look at him. “How did you know where I lived?”

  “Where there’s a will…”

  She weighed his answer. “Was it some sort of cop trick? Isn’t that illegal?” He thought he saw a hint of a smile.

  “Would you mind if I sit down for a minute?” he said. “It’s been a very long day.”

  She looked at him, unreadable again. “Sorry. Here.” She pulled a chair away from a mahogany table, the wood burnished to a fine dark gloss. “You want something to drink?”

  “Just some water,” he said. “Please.”

  He watched as she took a pitcher out of the refrigerator, tried not to stare at her as she reached up into another cabinet for a glass. He looked at the back of her neck, imagined wrapping his arms around her, pressing his lips there.

  She handed him the drink but remained standing; she leaned against the edge of the counter, arms folded across her chest. He couldn’t help thinking of an interrogation, where every move had its own meaning, its own purpose. He considered standing up himself, to level things out. He could make it look casual, as if he wanted to check out the view out the window, or the collection of antique postcards taped to the fridge. He could make them out from where he sat: old tinted photos of Coney Island, back in the days when it had been a place of wonder. Steeplechase Park. Luna Park. Dreamland.

  “Do you ever go out to Coney?” he asked.

  “Sometimes.” She looked at him coolly. She didn’t seem to be in a hurry to find out why he was sitting in her kitchen.

  “Where’s Mr. Nice Guy?” he couldn’t resist asking.

  She shrugged, conceded a small grin. “I hate to say it, but you were right. Nice isn’t everything.”

  He sipped his water, taking this in. Perhaps the field was clear, but she wasn’t exactly bounding into his arms. If he was going to be allowed to make progress, he’d have to start out on his knees.

  She smoothed a hand along the counter and looked at her palm, as if checking for crumbs. Judging by the neatness of the kitchen, he doubted she’d find any. She wore pale nail polish but it was chipped; that made him like her even more.

  “So,” she said. “Where are you coming from? Work?”

  “No,” he said. “Not work.”

  “Where, then?”

  He pinched his lower lip. He looked toward the window, then back to her. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Oh?” She didn’t seem to care enough to ask more.

  He stared at her until she returned his gaze, until the silence, the looking, became unbearable. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “Look, it’s late, You have to work tomorrow.”

  She didn’t answer.

  He took a deep breath. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to tell you that I’m ready for you.”

  “Why?” she asked. “What’s changed?”

  He reached out, and smoothed his palm against her cheek. “I’m ready,” he repeated, and stood there, shivering, until finally she turned her head toward his palm and closed her eyes.

  Later, they lay in bed, letting the sweat evaporate off their warm bodies. She laughed, “You weren’t really going to just get up and go home, were you?”

  “I would have,” he said. “I mean, I didn’t want to. But I didn’t want to assume anything. I don’t want you to think I came here for sex. I mean, I’m glad we did this, but it’s not why I came.” He groaned. “I’ll just shut up now.”

  “I’m going to brush my teeth,” she said. He lay in her bed and watched the warm light hum out of the bathroom doorway. After a moment, he got up and padded inside. He stepped behind her, wrapped an arm around her stomach, and hugged her to him as she brushed her teeth. Together they stared into the mirror, a naked man and woman, grinning.

  They settled back into her bed, bathed in the street light flowing in from the window, floating in it. He thought he didn’t deserve such happiness, but he was ready to accept it.

  As a test, he willed himself to picture Randall Heiser’s face. He probed his heart to discover that it wasn’t filled with anger and frustration anymore. Maybe his colleague Mickey would bring Heiser down. Maybe he wouldn’t. Or maybe he was just plain wrong about the man. Maybe it was time to stop being obsessed with crime and criminals, time to retire and get a job where his clothes didn’t smell of the slaughterhouse at the end of the day.

  Maybe, after all these years, he could recognize the difference between the devil without and the devil within.

  He felt bad about Red Hook, though. What if the neighborhood was turned into a garbage heap? He shrugged. Maybe he should just let the memories go, like Mr. Gardner burning photos of his wife.

  Suspects had a million ways to lie, but all veteran cops knew one almost infallible sign of guilt. If you threw a guy into a holding tank and left him there for a while, and when you came back he was asleep, you knew you had your perp. Any innocent person taken into custody would be shaken up: anxious, wired, unwilling to even sit down. But a perp, especially a novice, might have already been juiced for days after the crime. By the time he got arrested, he’d be burnt out from waiting for the hand on the shoulder. If you put him in a cell, you could often watch him fall into a deep sleep, ev
en with an arm handcuffed to a wall. There was a certain peace in knowing that the worst was over.

  Jack thought about that for a moment. He thought about his father, standing in a crowd of soldiers holding up a sign that said Peace. And then he wasn’t thinking at all—he sank into his first full sleep in weeks.

  A chirping woke him. Groggy, he opened his eyes, disoriented until he remembered he was at Michelle’s. The red LCD of a clock on a bedside table told him that it was 1:37 A.M. He’d been woken by his pager. He turned to his right: Michelle was sleeping soundly. The page was probably just a misdial. But he hadn’t told Ben he wasn’t coming home—what if his son was worried? Maybe the boy felt bad about what he’d said. Jack was ready to forgive him. Maybe now that the kid had gotten the poison out, finally, they could come to a new and better understanding.

  He reached over the side of the bed for his pants and turned the pager toward the light coming in through the window. An unfamiliar number—a misdial. He set the pager down and pulled a pillow over his head.

  A few seconds later, as he was falling into a rich, sweet sleep, the chirping tugged him back. He pushed the pillow away and reached for the pager. Same number.

  Cursing under his breath, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. He had to pee, anyhow.

  Down the hall, he stopped off in Michelle’s bathroom, admiring her respect for cleanliness and order. (Unlike Sheila’s bathroom, which had always been a disaster area of used cotton balls and wadded-up, lipsticky tissues.) He clicked off the light and continued down the hall to the kitchen, where he found a phone, slumped in a chair, and dialed the mystery number.

  “Detective Leightner?” A man’s voice, muffled, nervous. It sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  “Speaking. Who’s this?”

  “You wanna know who killed that Berrios kid?”

  He sat up straight. “Yeah, I do.”

  “I can’t discuss this over the phone. Can you meet me in a few minutes?”

  “Where?”

  “The corner of Imlay and Commerce. “You know where that is?”

  “In Red Hook.”

  “That’s right. And Detective? One more thing: come by yourself. I’m afraid to think what he’d do to me if he saw me talking to a bunch of cops. All right?”

  “Yeah.”

  The line went dead.

  Wide awake now, he dialed the Homicide Task Force. The call was answered by Scott Cooney, one of the detectives on the night watch.

  “Scotty, it’s Jack Leightner. Do me a favor, will ya? I need an address for this phone number.” He squinted at his beeper and read it off. “I don’t know if it’s residential or commercial. Could be a pay phone.”

  “You got it.”

  While he waited, he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and poured himself a glass of water.

  “Sorry,” Cooney said. “It took me a minute to find it. You’re right, it’s a pay phone.”

  “Where?”

  “Brooklyn. Corner of Van Brunt and Commerce, You need anything else?”

  He debated whether to tell Cooney about the call. He considered asking for backup, but he knew that it would get back to Sergeant Tanney that he was still working on the Berrios case. It was better to be suspended than fired outright.

  “Nah,” he said. “Thanks, Scotty. I’m good.”

  thirty-four

  DEEP IN THE HEART of Red Hook, Imlay Street was home to the New York Dock Company, two huge block-long warehouses with a Moorish architecture. Widely spaced streetlights cast pools of light along the dark cobblestones and made the metal-capped curbs gleam. Above the lights, the upper floors of the warehouses floated up into darkness.

  On the other side, the street was lined with vacant lots overrun with weeds and little ailanthus trees. At this late hour, the street was so quiet that Jack could feel his heart beating over the quiet purr of the engine.

  A block ahead, at the corner of Commerce, a lone gray car was parked on the right side of the street. A big car from the seventies, a Chevy Malibu, he guessed. He stopped for a moment, opened the glove compartment, pulled out his own personal .38—to hell with Tanney—leaned forward, and tucked it into the back of his belt.

  He drifted up behind the Malibu and pulled into a regulation stop: his car not directly behind, but staggered to the left, so that when he got out it would provide him with partial cover. He left the lights on for further protection, to dazzle the other driver.

  There was only one person in the other car, a man who kept his hands in plain sight, gripping the steering wheel. Something about the set of the man’s head seemed familiar. He sneezed.

  The manager of the Coffey Street garage.

  Jack’s heart rose. This was the icing on the cake. He’d nail Randall Heiser, get his job back—it would be Sergeant Tanney’s turn to apologize.

  He got out and walked up to the other car.

  “How you doing tonight, Mr. Greenlee?”

  The manager’s head dipped down out of the deep shadow inside the car. “How’d you know it was me?” He sneezed again. “Oh.”

  “Thank you for coming forward.”

  “Thanks for comin’ down so late. You didn’t bring anybody, right?”

  Greenlee opened the door warily and eased his bulk out from under the steering wheel. He wore a baggy brown suit. “You can’t be too careful,” he said. “He’d kill me if he knew I was talking to you.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “You’re not wearing a wire or anything, are you?”

  Jack shook his head.

  “You mind if I make sure?”

  “Go ahead.”

  The manager reached inside Jack’s jacket and patted his chest and sides.

  “So what do you have for me?” Jack said.

  Greenlee sneezed. “Excuse me,” he said, and reached into his baggy jacket. Expecting a handkerchief, Jack saw metal. Immediately, he stomped down on Greenlee’s instep. At the same time, he grabbed the hand holding the gun and bent it back fiercely. In a second, he had the manager down on the cobblestones and was jamming his arm up behind his back. With his free hand, he reached back for his .38.

  A fierce pain exploded in the back of his head and then he was lying facedown on the cool cobblestones himself. Someone grabbed his hands roughly, yanked them behind his back, and trussed them together. He winced at the splitting pain in his head, but twisted to look up. The nimbus of a streetlight blinded him, but he could just make out the dark figure of a stranger standing at its center.

  Greenlee pulled the gun from Jack’s waistband. He stuck it in his own jacket pocket.

  “We’re wasting time out here in the open,” the stranger said. “Let’s get him in the car.” He looked down at Jack and shook his head. “If I was such a hotshit detective, I would’ve had the brains to call for some backup.”

  thirty-five

  THEY FORCED JACK INTO the passenger seat of his own car, and then the stranger drove it slowly down Imlay Street, holding a gun below the level of the dashboard. He didn’t say a word. When he turned slightly to make sure Greenlee was following in the Malibu, Jack glanced over: the man was his own size, perhaps fifty, drawn cheeks, liverish complexion. He wore a dark windbreaker over a black polo shirt. The passing streetlights played over his deep-set eyes. He worked a piece of gum as if rolling a pebble on the tip of his tongue, calm as a truck driver on a long night drive. Unlike Greenlee, he was clearly a professional.

  They didn’t pass a single soul during the dark ride. They turned onto Coffey Street. As they neared the garage, the stranger turned off the headlights. Behind, Greenlee also extinguished his lights. The little house next door to the garage was completely dark.

  Through the windshield, Jack watched Greenlee come around and open the garage door. The stranger pulled into the dark left-hand bay. Greenlee pulled the Malibu into the right. The manager got out and the sliding door rattled down behind them.

  Greenlee turned on a small caged light in one of
the work pits. Above, a car perched on a hydraulic lift like a guardian lion. The shadowy cave was full of wrenches, crowbars, and other potential weapons, but with his hands tied, Jack knew he wouldn’t be able to use them. Greenlee opened Jack’s door and the stranger nudged him out. The manager held up a gun while the second man pulled out a couple of surgical gloves and worked his hands into them. Jack flinched at the rubbery squeaking.

  Greenlee jabbed the gun against Jack’s temple. “Don’t you move,” he said, all jocularity gone from his voice.

  The stranger picked up a roll of duct tape, used his teeth to tear off a couple of lengths, and stretched them over Jack’s mouth. Then the two men force-marched him around the pit and across the oil-stained concrete toward the back of the garage. In the dim light, the Playboy pinup grinned coyly from the wall. Greenlee clicked off the light. Jack stood still, trying to adjust to the darkness. A door in the back opened, Greenlee stepped out, and the other man pushed Jack forward.

  It was dark outside, but a new moon gave just enough light for him to make out a yard filled with junk. The men led him through a narrow passage between heaps of twisted metal and trash cans spiky with scraps of wood. The murky form of a dog detached from one of the heaps with a low growl, but Greenlee kicked it in the ribs and it slunk away.

  At the back of the lot, the manager hauled aside a huge metal Coke sign leaning against a fence. The sign covered a gap in the chain links. Greenlee ducked through first, then the stranger pushed Jack’s head down and guided him on, into another dark yard.

  As soon as Jack was through, he dodged around Greenlee and ran. Five yards on, something snapped against his thighs and he flipped over. Sprawled on the rough asphalt, he realized he’d run straight into a low-slung chain. He moaned into the duct tape and took quick pained breaths through his nose.

  The manager trotted up, snickering. “Well, that was cute.” The men yanked Jack up off the ground and shoved him, stumbling, on.

  Ahead rose the abandoned warehouse; a sheet of metal glinted dully from each window frame under the faint moonlight. At the back, under a fire escape, a set of concrete steps led down below ground to a door. Greenlee forced Jack down into the stairwell and then, cursing the darkness, he produced some keys and fiddled with a hasp lock.