Cracker Bling

by Stephen Solomita

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Cellphones transmit a radio signal to a cell tower, a signal that includes the phone’s serial number. That’s how your carrier knows who to bill for the call. What cloners do is intercept the signal, then program your serial number into another cellphone. It’s no big deal. All you need is a scanner and a lot of patience. But you can’t intercept a signal if the phone isn’t being used.’

  ‘What about the cleaning crew?’

  ‘The Polish cleaning crew? The crew that doesn’t speak English? Look, you can pick apart any of the points I made, but not all of them. That prick is dirty and I plan to fuck him over. I just can’t figure out how.’

  Chigorin exits the Expressway at Lakeville Road. He makes a quick right, drives past a golf course and a small lake, finally turns in to Long Island Jewish Hospital’s emergency entrance. There’s a security guard standing outside the emergency room door. He’s smoking a cigarette and he approaches the car before it even comes to a stop.

  ‘You can’t park here.’

  Chigorin flashes his shield as he opens the door. He has to get both his feet on to the pavement, then put all his weight on his right foot before he can stand.

  ‘I gotta see someone about my ankle,’ he tells the guard.

  Hootie comes around the car and takes Chigorin’s arm. By now, he’s thinking of the cop as a force of nature. You don’t play his game, he takes his ball and goes home.

  ‘Well, leave the keys in case I have to move the car.’

  ‘They’re in the ignition.’

  With Hootie’s assistance, Chigorin limps into the emergency room and up to the intake window. The nurse on the other side of a wide counter glances at his badge and smiles. She’s a dark-skinned black woman with a round face and a narrow, fleshy mouth.

  ‘My husband’s on the job,’ she says.

  Chigorin returns her smile. ‘I got bit on the ankle two days ago and now I’m swollen up. And there’s pus, too. I gotta get the wound cleaned out.’

  ‘Bitten by a dog?’

  ‘Yeah, a little one.’

  ‘They’re the worst. Their teeth make puncture wounds that close up when they let go, trapping bacteria. Two days later you have an infection.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it exactly. The problem is that I’m on the clock right now, so I need to get out in a hurry. This investigation I’m workin’, it’s a kidnapping. I mean of a kid, too, a twelve-year-old girl.’

  Her maternal instincts properly stoked, the nurse straightens. ‘Don’t worry, we’re not that busy. I should be able to speed up the process. Lemme have your insurance card.’

  Ten minutes later, Hootie and Chigorin are inside a private cubicle usually reserved for patients with infectious diseases. There’s a gurney in the room, along with a heart monitor, a blood pressure cuff and an empty IV stand. A dispenser on the wall holds boxes of vinyl gloves. Chigorin’s sitting on the edge of the gurney, reaching for the knot on his left shoelace, but he’s not having much luck. Hootie lets him struggle for minute, then says, ‘You need some help, Detective?’

  Unable to raise his foot to meet his hands, Chigorin jerks forward and snatches at the lace. He succeeds in untying the knot, but the shoe remains firmly on his foot.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he says. ‘Leave it for the nurse. That’s why she makes the big bucks.’

  Hootie takes Chigorin’s foot and eases the shoe off. He’s about to do the same with the cop’s sock, but then notices that the sock is wet. He doesn’t know what the moisture is, only that he doesn’t want to touch it.

  ‘You figure it out yet?’ he asks.

  ‘Figure out what?’ Chigorin lays down on the gurney.

  ‘What you’re gonna do about Amelia.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, if it’s nothin’, tell me now.’

  ‘Why? So you can go back there? Force your way inside?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘First thing, you don’t even know if she’s there. I mean, she could be. There’s an attached garage with an automatic door – that’d make it easy to get her inside. But she doesn’t have to be.’

  ‘Wait a second. How do you know the garage has an automatic door?’

  ‘Because there’s no handle or lock on the outside, which is something you might’ve noticed when we pulled up.’

  Hootie sits down on the edge of the bed. He’s thinking the keys are in the car. All he has to do is walk out the door and offer to move it for the security guard. He’s thinking maybe the cop doesn’t have all that many cards to play.

  ‘Do me a favor, don’t talk down to me,’ he says. ‘I’m not your dog.’

  ‘OK, I apologize. But you need to think a little bit. Like, how did the chicken hawk move Amelia from that apartment into his car?’ Chigorin answers the question without pausing. ‘He put a gun to her head, that’s how. The same gun that’ll be put to your head if you try to force your way in there. Now my problem is that I don’t have probable cause for a search, with or without a warrant. I’m operating on gut instinct and nothin’ I find inside that house will be admissible in a court of law. So if Amelia’s dead and we find her body, her killers are gonna walk.’

  The admissibility of evidence being a topic in which he’s supremely uninterested, Hootie simply tunes out. The gun strapped to his ankle seems heavier now. He imagines it tucked beneath his waistband as he approaches Cole’s house. According to Chigorin, Hootie’s too young to be a cop and Sherman Cole must know it. Would that also render Hootie unthreatening? Would Cole hesitate long enough for Hootie to put the .38 in his face and cock the hammer? Hootie represses a smile, again recalling the many times Bubba pitched him. Despite his prison record, Bubba never came off as threatening, not once. In fact, he was a model of gentle persuasion. A weaver of dreams.

  What’s the expression? Trick me once, shame on you? Trick me twice, shame on me? Hootie’s thinking that from the minute he entered the subway station, his whole life’s been a trick. And he’s not free yet. Some part of his brain still hopes to put everything back together. Or maybe not his brain. Hootie’s thoughts have turned to the little Asian girl he met in the club. And yeah, he wants that, too.

  Hootie’s reverie is interrupted by the entrance of a nurse, an R.N. named Arroyo, according to the ID pinned to her uniform. A tiny woman with the doe eyes and small flat nose of a Filipina, she pulls two gloves from one of the boxes on the wall and slides them over her hands. ‘Shall we take a look?’ she asks.

  Chigorin levers himself up to a sitting position. ‘You might wanna go easy there,’ he cautions.

  Arroyo slides the sock over the Russian’s ankle. ‘Have you had a tetanus shot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you taking antibiotics?’

  The Russian winces when Arroyo lifts the tape holding the dressing in place. But the wet tape and the wetter dressing pull off easily. The ankle beneath is slick with yellow pus and obviously swollen, while the flesh surrounding the two puncture wounds is red enough to make Chigorin flinch.

  ‘Are you taking antibiotics?’ the nurse repeats.

  ‘I have a prescription, but I didn’t fill it.’

  Dr. Immanuel Branson chooses that moment to make an appearance. He’s a kid, maybe in his late twenties, with rumpled hair and half-moons the color of wet tea bags beneath his eyes. He introduces himself, shakes the Russian’s hand, then says, ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to excise that wound, Detective.’

  ‘Excise?’

  ‘I’ll make a small incision at each puncture, then manually clean the wound. But don’t worry. An injection will take care of the pain. You won’t feel anything.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘If I get my ankle numbed, will I be able to walk?’

  ‘Well enough to get home if you’re reasonably careful.’

  ‘But I should avoid chasing perps through dark alleyways?’

  ‘Absolutel
y.’

  ‘And what if I don’t take the injection?’

  ‘In that case, it’ll only be a matter of dealing with the pain.’

  Chigorin draws a long breath, then looks up at Hootie. ‘You wanna do me a favor, kid? Go wait by the car.’

  ‘You’re kicking me out?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What did I do?’

  ‘You didn’t do anything, Hootie. I just don’t want you to see me cry.’

  TWENTY

  Forty-five minutes later, his face the color of wet cigarette ash, Chigorin limps into the parking lot. Despite an ordeal that’s left him weak and nauseated, his ankle feels a lot better than it did when he walked through the emergency room door. The swelling is down, the pressure on the nerves greatly reduced. The Russian may not be prepared to run a hundred-yard dash, but he doesn’t feel like he’s about to fall over when he puts his left foot on the ground. Plus, according to Branson, the Russian’s head wound is healing up nicely. The headache he’s been suffering all day has vanished.

  Chigorin spots Hootie standing next to the car. He feels a momentary compassion for the kid. Talk about in over your head. The Russian recalls an encounter with an emotionally disturbed prize fighter, way back when he was a gung-ho rookie on foot patrol. Against the advice of his partner, he had approached the fighter, intending to ‘talk him down’. One little problem, though. The man didn’t want to be talked down. He was off his meds and wanted to kick some cop ass. The punches came so quick, and from so many directions, Chigorin felt like he was being attacked by a mob.

  ‘Everything cool?’ Hootie asks.

  ‘Never better. You ready?’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘We’re goin’ back to Cole’s. I’m gonna describe the investigation, taking care to emphasize the damsel in distress part, then ask for permission to search the house. Just so we can eliminate him as a suspect.’

  ‘What if he says no?’

  Chigorin’s reaching for the vodka before he shuts the car door. He drinks greedily, with his eyes closed, a baby at the tit. ‘Fuck me,’ he mutters as he caps the bottle, then starts the car.

  ‘Let’s suppose,’ he tells Hootie, ‘that Sherman Cole’s exactly what he appears to be. A retired widower victimized by someone who either cloned his cellphone or used it without his permission. Wouldn’t you expect him to be moved by the plight of a kidnapped little girl? Wouldn’t you expect him to cooperate? I mean, we’re only tryin’ to clear him, right? And it’s not like we’re gonna conduct a close search, like we’re gonna look through his drawers or examine his computer.’

  ‘So, if he refuses, then you’ll do the search?’

  ‘Actually, I’m gonna toss the house whether he likes it or not. But I wanna see how he reacts first.’

  In the silence that follows, the Russian finds himself recharging. The booze, probably. But he’s thinking clearly now. Sherman Cole has put himself in a bind. He’s established himself as a sad sack widower. He can’t suddenly become the outraged libertarian protecting his right to privacy. Not without giving the game away. Chigorin’s only regret is that he didn’t reach this conclusion while he was still at the house, a failure he blames on his injured ankle. The pain had been so bad, he couldn’t focus on anything else. He kept imagining a doc sayin’: ‘Of course, we’ll have to take the leg.’

  The Russian’s clear thinking extends to the warning he gave to Hootie. Beware of kidnappers with guns. If the house contains evidence of Amelia’s fate, there’s every reason to expect a violent response to a forced search. Especially if Amelia’s already dead. Back in Manhattan, he might convince a buddy to cover him while he conducted an illegal search. But not in the 111th Precinct where he doesn’t know a soul. There’s just him and Hootie.

  Chigorin would like to be rid of Hootie, but that’s not possible. If the man who kidnapped Amelia is in the house, Chigorin needs Hootie to make an identification. That way he can invent some bullshit about seeing the man through a window, or maybe claim the man was standing behind Cole when Cole opened the door. But that’s for later. For now, the situation facing him is extremely simple. There’s a citizen in need of immediate aid and he’s the only one who can aid her and he’s a cop. Case fucking closed.

  Surprisingly, Chigorin had come to this conclusion while Dr. Branson was cleaning out his wound. The pain was beyond anything he’d ever experienced. And yes, the tears did flow. Yet somehow, along the way, he became resigned. He couldn’t back off. Not after all the years in Homicide. There were just too many bodies, too many innocent bystanders, too many grieving families. Notifying those families, watching their lives fall apart, bearing witness to their loss, that was always the worst part. The wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

  Chigorin takes another drink, a parting shot, so to speak. He’s parked in front of Sherman Cole’s stately mock-Tudor home, admiring a neatly-trimmed hedge. The hedge is so thick, the top so flat, it appears to be a single plant.

  ‘Alright,’ Hootie says, ‘so how do you wanna play it?’

  ‘Apologetic. We’re sorry to bother you again, we know it’s an inconvenience, do you mind if we come inside for a moment? And I wanna maintain that tone until he answers the million dollar question.’

  ‘You’re giving him every chance to do the right thing.’

  ‘Hootie, that’s it exactly. That’s my modus operandi. Talk nice. Save the threats for when you really need ’em.’ Chigorin removes the keys from the ignition and slides them into his pocket. ‘But I do have one problem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I can justify conducting an illegal search to my bosses, even if the evidence is thrown out of court. But what I can’t justify is taking a civilian into a life-threatening situation. Now I need you here in case the man you saw in Washington Square happens to be in the house. I need you to make an identification, which is why I brought you along in the first place.’

  ‘Yeah, so?’

  ‘So, you’re gonna stay in the car until I finish the search.’

  Hootie laughs. What he’s feeling, mainly, is relief. He’s done it. Despite all his doubts. He’s going to find Amelia, one way or the other. And when he thinks about it, his doubts were definitely grounded. Without the cop, he’d never have seen through Cole’s bullshit. No, he’d have backed away, made his apologies, driven off, given up. He’d have sent Bubba to jail for nothing.

  Hootie opens the door. ‘I’m goin’ in, with you or without you,’ he announces.

  ‘I knew you’d say that, Hootie. But one thing you might wanna think about. Failing to obey a lawful order from a police officer is a crime. I can arrest you here and now.’

  ‘Not without shooting me you can’t.’

  Hootie’s not exactly bluffing, but he steps out of the car before Chigorin can grab him. There’s nothing to be gained by fighting cops. Chigorin follows, though it takes him longer to gain his feet.

  ‘Can you at least keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking?’

  ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ Hootie’s surprised by how easily the lie flows from his mouth. It’s almost like someone else is speaking, an actor reciting a piece of dialogue. He gestures to Cole’s front door. ‘Ready when you are,’ he says.

  They walk up the path side by side, Chigorin limping along, Hootie’s stride tense. Though both steal a sidelong glance at the leaded windows, all seems in order until they’re within a few feet of the double doors. Then Chigorin notices that the door on the right is open. Not much, just a fraction of an inch.

  Chigorin gives the door a little push, allowing in enough light to reveal a cluster of red stains on the foyer’s stone floor. The stains are droplets and perfectly round. They could only have been created by blood dripping from a stationary human being.

  Hootie watches Chigorin draw his 9 mm Glock. The sight of the weapon shocks him and he becomes acutely aware of the .38 strapped to his ankle. He even considers pulling it. But no, not yet. In New York City, possession of an illegal han
dgun carries a minimum, mandatory sentence of three and a half years. Better to stay cool for the present.

  Chigorin turns to Hootie, but Hootie merely shakes his head. ‘Forget the lecture,’ he tells the cop. ‘I’m goin’ in, with you or without you.’

  Navigating the blood trail in the house doesn’t require the expertise of a Navajo tracker. The drops form a gentle arc, crossing the living room and the kitchen to the head of a stairway that drops into a shadowy basement. There are shoe impressions in the blood, smears mostly, but Chigorin’s pretty sure the impressions were left coming and going. He flicks the light switch, but is not surprised when the basement remains dark.

  ‘Police,’ he bellows. ‘Is anyone down there?’ He pauses briefly, then adds, ‘Police. I’m coming down.’

  Hootie feels his heart jump in his chest when the Russian begins to descend. Something’s stirring in his gut, something beyond emotion, or even sensation, though not at all unpleasant. There’s blood on the floor and whoever left it is in that basement. Maybe dead or dying. Or maybe laying in wait, the monster in the closet. Twice, Hootie’s been caught in shoot-outs, both times an innocent bystander. He didn’t panic, diving to the ground on each occasion. But his hands shook for ninety minutes afterward.

  Stay cool, he tells himself as he takes the first step. Stay cool, little brother.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Chigorin’s not feeling much more confident than Hootie. He’s facing a corridor with darkened rooms on either side. The only light fills a doorway at the end of the corridor, perhaps sixty feet away.

  ‘Police,’ he repeats, this time even louder. ‘Is anyone back there?’ His voice echoes in the confined space, seeming to mock him. What he needs – what he knows he needs – is a squad to clear the darkened rooms. But that’s not going to happen. There’s just him and the kid and the light at the end of the tunnel.