Alex Ankrom - [Gabriel Carter 01]

by Hard Times (epub)

  They sat across from each other in the Quality Diner on Rising Sun Avenue in silence. As with most everything else in this city their sitting across from each other was a product of The Game. The Game was not a playful thing. It was not like hop-scotch or tiddlywinks. The Game did not have dice or chutes or ladders. The Game had vials, and bullets, and bodies, and blood. The President called it a War on Drugs. But to the citizens of Philadelphia it was just trying to make due with what you got. Everyone from the unemployed union men on the docks to the yuppies in Old City and the Nuevo Riche in Penn’s Landing to the ghettos of Kensington and Fairhill, everyone was a player in a game where most thought they were Kings, only to find out too late they were pawns. But still The Game had a way of bringing the least likely people together.

  They met because some unidentified bastard was thrown out of a fifth story window of The Old Lexington Hotel. As a victim of Reganomics, The Old Lexington was abandoned back in the eighties, but today squatters still called it home.

  A patrol car had found him a few minutes after midnight, and they placed the call into the murder police. When Detective Gabriel Carter arrived at the scene he found himself staring at the body of a half nude black man with a shaved head. He was wearing just a pair of pale blue boxer shorts and a white undershirt, but that didn’t matter because the rain made him look as though he were in some morbid wet tee-shirt contest. He was almost six feet tall and looked as if he had a decent build, once upon a time. He lay on top of a crushed ‘94 Ford Taurus that smelled as though it had more recently been used as a toilet than it had been used as an automobile.

  His gut was large and pronounced, appearing almost bloated. His body was naturally positioned like the crucifix, arms thrown out to the side, hugging the car’s dented roof, face turned to his right, and his legs resting side by side. Injuries to the body suggested torture prior to the coup de grace. He was beaten, his face swollen and lip split open, and stabbed in the side of the torso twice. His arms were lined with cigarette burns and track-marks. And as a final insult, he was thrown out the window like a discarded piece of trash.

  Dylan was a junkie, who while fighting off Mr. Jones latest attack was in the wrong place at the wrong time and too weak to run for it, and his eyes told Carter that he knew more than just the average bystander. Carter was a homicide detective, who slept too little and drank, smoked, gambled, and fucked around too much. And as though they were two grandmaster chess players, they eyed each other up, searching for a weakness, plotting their next moves, patiently waiting for an opening to attack. They sat in this fashion for over an hour, only opening their mouths long enough to tell the waitress that they needed more time with their menus. And even then they played a slight game of wills to see which would break the silence.

  Every few minutes the waitress would come over to see if they needed anything, but each time Carter sent her away. He wanted Dylan to make the first move.

  Growing bored and his skin itching, Dylan broke the silence. “You buying, right?”

  “I believe that’s what I said.”

  “In that case,” Dylan said, and he turned to the waitress. “I’ll have a bacon double cheeseburger, cheese fries, and a shake.”

  The waitress chomped on her bubble gum and tapped her pen on an order pad. “‘Munch and Bolander’ or ‘Pembleton and Bayliss’?”

  The boy scrunched up his face. “The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

  Carter took a smoke from his deck and tapped it against the hard pack. “She’s asking you if you want vanilla or black and white.”

  “Black and white. That’s like chocolate, right?”

  “Yeah. Vanilla ice cream, milk, and chocolate syrup.”

  “It good?”

  “I’m more of a strawberry man, but yeah, it does its job.”

  “Okay then black and white it is.”

  The waitress turned to the cop and smiled. “And you, Detective Carter?”

  “How’s the Tuna Melt today, Sidney?”

  Her smile dropped faster than an avalanche. “Shitty. And my name’s Nancy.” She tapped her pen against a small black clip-on name tag that had “Nancy” printed on it in large white letters.

  Carter gave her a guilty smile. “But of course you are. What was I thinking? You know you do look a lot like each other. You’re both very pretty and have similar hair.”

  “Sid’s a blonde,” said Nancy the waitress with flaming red hair.

  “Did I say hair? I meant height. You’re very similar in height.”

  “I’m almost five-ten. She’s five-four. In heels.”

  Carter laughed nervously. “Yeah. That’s right.”

  Dylan leaned back in his seat, enjoying the shit out of the proceedings. He smiled and couldn’t help a bit of audience participation. “You need help with that shovel?”

  Carter snapped his attention back to the boy and gave him a look hard enough to send a dog running with its tail between its legs. “Shut up you.”

  He looked up at the waitress, but he didn’t have the guts to meet her eyes. “I’ll have a Rueben and a coke.”

  “Excellent choice,” the tall, redheaded waitress named Nancy said, but she said it in such a way to tell the table that she didn’t think it was excellent choice at all, and she could rather give a shit what he wanted. She turned and walked away from the table without writing down the Detective’s order. After a few steps she muttered to herself, “Asshole.”

  Dylan and Carter heard the parting words, and they stared at each other for a moment. Both of them trying to act like the past few minutes hadn’t occurred. But Dylan couldn’t hold back any longer. His face stretched into a wide smile, exposing surprisingly clean teeth for a junkie. After a few more seconds, the smile turned into a chuckle, and the chuckle into full hysterical laughter.

  Carter popped his cigarette in his mouth, crossed arms across his chest, and looked away from the kid, but soon even he was smiling and chuckling.

  The waitress poked her head of the kitchen and glared at them.

  Carter forced himself to settle. “I would stop laughing kid. Unless you want your food fucked with too.”

  Dylan’s eyes widen, and he shakes his head. “Now that’s a joke, right?”

  “Do you really wanna take that chance?”

  “But come on.”

  Carter played with his lighter, snapping open and closing the hood. “I guess you don’t have too much experience with women.”

  “Well, not crazy ones.”

  “She’s not crazy. She’s just pissed.”

  “Nice going then, Detective.” He placed much of the emphasis on the syllable “tect.” He shook his head. “No wonder this city’s so shitty. They teach you those deductive skills at the academy? Or do they just come natural?”

  “They would come natural. We Kerrs are notorious for our social retardation.”

  “Kerr? I thought she called you Carter.”

  “She did.”

  “Then she fuck up too?”

  “No, I go by my mom’s name. Kerr’s my dad’s.” Carter lit his cigarette, took a drag, and blew the smoke into the air. He knew the kid was sucking too much information out of him; he needed to shift to the balance of power. “It’s complicated.”

  Dylan sat back in the booth and knowing that he had just won round one, laughed to himself. He felt he could press the offensive. “You know you can’t smoke in restaurants anymore. It’s illegal.”

  Carter arched an eyebrow and took another drag. “It is?”

  “Yep.”

  “Oh shit. Someone better call the cops.” Carter rolled his eyes, took another drag, and blew it toward Dylan.

  “Then you got another o
ne of those?”

  “How old are you?”

  Dylan looked at the ceiling. “I’m old enough. Come on just one smoke.”

  “My hypocrisy only goes so far.”

  Dylan closed his eyes. “Okay riddle me this, who’s Munch and Bolander?”

  Carter smiled wide. “It’s from ‘Homicide.’ A tv show.”

  Dylan shrugged his shoulder. “Never seen it.”

  “I guess you wouldn’t have. A bit before your time. It’s a police show. This diner is a frequent hangout of the Police.”

  “So what you’re saying is that while you were kind enough not to drag my skinny black ass to a white bricked room with a two-way mirror, you still have home court advantage.”

  “It’s more of a beige color, but yeah.”

  The cop and the boy both leaned back in their seats and laughed. Dylan nodded, knowing that he was fucked either way. Carter returned it, knowing that he now had the upper-hand.

  Dylan was skinny. He tried to hide the fact by wearing a black, overstuffed, down jacket. He thought that it would make his body look larger to the predators, like the puffer fish he learned about on the nature channel his uncle always watched, but his frail, shaking hands told the real story. He like the idea of God giving tiny animals natural defenses. It was as though God was looking out for all the small creatures and not just the apex predators. It was something that strengthened his faith. Though God didn’t give the boy the ability to blow up his body to a Herculean size, God gave Dylan something much better, the ability to adapt to his surroundings.

  An instinctual street-smarts that made him a true Darwinian urban creature. It was the only thing that kept a kid his size alive in North Philadelphia, and the only thing he could thank God for giving him. He would not thank God for his dead mother, his dead father, his step-dad serving a dime in Graterford for trafficking, or the knocko sitting across from him. But when it came down to his gift, Dylan got down of his knees everyday and thanked the Almighty.

  Detective Gabriel Carter and God, on the other hand, really weren’t on speaking terms. The last time he even recalled saying anything to the Big Guy was the silent prayer he said at his grandmother’s funeral. His grandparents raised him as if he were their own son. His grandmother died from an aneurysm when he was in high school. He stood next to her casket and viscerally spat his two-word prayer up to the heavens: fuck you.

  Since then, it seemed to Carter that God had been going out of his way to make his life shitty. God wanted his pound of flesh for some unknown crime, and that made Carter’s hate fester a little bit more. He was a man that thought respect and love were two things that should be earned, not given blindly. God hadn’t earned anything.

  After they stopped laughing, the duo returned to their quiet routine. In the silence, Carter produced a deck of cards and played solitaire, while Dylan took the opportunity to fool around with the sugar packets, building an elaborate color coordinated pyramid. While he worked on the structure, he watched Carter play with the cards.

  The boy used the whites for a wide, strong base. The pink ones for the middle. But just as he was about to place the last blue for the apex, his left hand started shaking violently. The structure toppled in on itself, but Dylan just shrugged and pushed the strewn packets to the side of the table.

  He tried to hide his shaking from the cop by tapping on the table in tune with the song playing from the jukebox, but he struggled in keeping with the beat.

  Carter wasn’t stupid, and he saw it as an opening that might be good enough to get Dylan talking about who killed the John Doe at the Lexington. “How long has it been since your last hit?”

  “Low blood sugar, I just need some food.”

  “You smell that?”

  “Smell what?”

  “The shit you shoveling. Now, how long since your last hit?”

  “Yesterday.” Dylan stared down at his shaking hand.”

  “How long you been on that shit?”

  “A couple years.”

  The boy didn’t look as though he were in that deep. The answer shocked Carter. “A couple years? Shit. How old are you? Really? How old?”

  “Fourteen,” Dylan said. “What can I say? The Game can do that to a nigga.”

  And with that the boy closed his eyes.

  “You okay?”

  He held his eyes shut, but he tilted his head toward the cop. “Yeah.”

  “What ya doing, then?”

  The shake slowed to a mild tremble and then stopped. “Mind over matter. I don’t mind, it don’t matter. So my hands shake because of a chemical dependency. Why do yours shake?”

  Carter looked down. The Jack of Clubs he held was trembling, making it appear as it were laughing at him. “Chemical dependency.”

  “Yeah, what kind of shit you on?”

  “Sleep. Or lack there of.”

  The waitress returned with their food. Nancy dropped their plates right on top of Carter’s game with a loud clang and left in a huff.

  Dylan, through a mouthful of fries, called out a muffled thanks, but she wasn’t listening.

  While the boy dug wholeheartedly into his meal, Carter looked at his sandwich with skepticism. He leaned his head down closer to the plate and with an eyebrow raised took a peek at the contents of his sandwich. “Ahh!”

  He flipped the top piece of bread off of the sandwich to reveal a fresh, white, gooey, glob of spit. Carter put his cigarette out in the center of it, the saliva hissing and letting off steam as it made contact with the cancer stick.

  Dylan laughed. “Damn! That is some repugnant shit. That bitch is super pissed.”

  “Yeah, I probably deserved that.”

  “You should probably remember their names after you fuck’em, you know?”

  Carter cracked a grin. “How did you know?”

  Dylan held his palms up and to his sides. “Nigga please.”

  “That obvious?”

  “The only way it could be anymore, would be if she was wearing a name tag that said, ‘Hi, my name is I fucked that guy.’”

  The cop laughed at that, and he realized that he was starting to like the kid, but he didn’t want him to find out.

  “Shit, it’s like my Uncle used to say, ‘Dylan, there’s only three things you need to know in this world. One: always go to church on Sunday, they serve free breakfast. Two: never welch on a bet. And three: never, and I do mean never, forget the name of the bitch you fuckin’. A nigga can git killed that way.’”

  “Sounds like on hell of a guy.”

  “Yeah, he was a’ight.” Dylan took a bite of his burger.

  “You still live with your Uncle, Dylan?”

  “Your wife know about you and fire bush?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Then what’s up with the ring?” He pointed at the gold band on Carter’s hand.

  “I can’t take it off.”

  “But you’re not married?”

  “No, I’m not married. But I still can’t physically take it off.” Carter tugged on it. “I broke the knuckle a couple years ago and due to the scar tissue, I now, short of cutting off the finger, can’t remove the ring.”

  “What about cutting off the ring?”

  Carter shrugged. “I guess I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Why’d you get divorced?”

  “Eat your fucking food. Okay?”

  “What? I hit a sore subject? Why’d she leave ya?”

  “Fuck you. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Come on? This actually sounds like a story.”

  “No.”

  “The more you say no, the more I know this is actually worth hearing.”

  “I said no. I’m the police. You’re the prick I’m questioning. Not the other way around.”

  The kid narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, shifting his pucker back and forth. “Okay. Cut the deck for it.”

  “What?”

  “Cut the deck.” Dylan pointed at the cards. “I
get high card, you spill. You get high card, I shut the fuck up and finish my meal. I’ll even let you shuffle.”

  Carter took a deep breath, gathered up the 52, and gave them a quick shuffle. Dylan picked his card, it was an eight of spades; Carter’s was the four of hearts.

  Dylan smiled. “So, why’d she leave you?”

  “She didn’t. I left her. Satisfied?”

  The crooked his head to one side in a manner to suggest “Is that all?”

  Carter breathed hard through his nose and picked another card: ten of diamonds.

  As he picked his next card, Dylan’s face shifted from disappointment to joy. He held up the queen of spade. “Oh, ain’t that a bitch! So why did you leave her?”

  “She was fucking my partner,” Carter said flatly and devoid of feeling.

  “Shit.” He let it slip out as if it were a reflex.

  “Yeah, shit. I can’t really blame her, though. She married me, but I was already married. Still am.”

  “To the job? You really wanna give me that cliché.”

  “I love it. I really do.”

  “So, how’d you find out?”

  “I love the job, but sometimes it really sucks being a detective.”

  “What no cutting the deck on this one?”

  “Naw, this one’s free.” Carter took a sip of his coke. “She gave him a look.”

  Dylan narrowed his eyebrows. “A look?”

  “Yeah, a look. Now if you’ve ever been in love you know this look. It’s engrained in your memory. Hell, it’s what keeps you going from day to day. Three months before I actually found out, she gave my partner that look. I mean it was for the briefest of moments, if I blinked I would have missed it. But I didn’t blink, and I didn’t miss it. It was there. I told myself that I was just seeing things, my mind playing tricks on me. My subconscious trying to sabotage my own marriage.”

  “So when did you get the hard evidence?”

  “Roni, my wife. My ex-wife, Veronica, got pregnant.”

  “And it couldn’t a been yours?”

  “Not likely, we had been trying for—shit, for a while. And I was told that my, uh—my little guys aren’t strong swimmers. That and I found a pair of his drawers while doing the laundry?”