The Striver

by Stephen Solomita

  As he rolled toward Sanda, Teddy gave himself a deadline for the entire project: six months. ‘Hey, baby,’ he whispered, ‘are you awake?’

  Teddy leaned over the stove. He had two thick pieces of sourdough rye bread, hand cut from a loaf that had to weigh five pounds, toasting in a pan. He’d smear them with the remains of a salmon salad as soon as they browned.

  Fifteen feet away, perched on a stationary bike, Sanda pedaled away. She wore a black leotard and her dark, sweat-soaked hair clung to the side of her head. Yet her breathing, when she broke their silence, was only a bit labored.

  ‘If you are coming back here tonight I must be telling customers to cancel. If you are coming back.’

  Teddy flipped the bread onto his plate with the toasted side up. He added dollops of salmon salad and smoothed them with the back of the spoon. Did he really need this obligation, this commitment? A voice too loud to be ignored yelled right in his ear: ‘Fuck, no!’

  Teddy had been responsible for one human being and one human being only for the whole of his life. He hadn’t seen his sister in years and rarely thought about her. And though he wasn’t absolutely sure, most likely his mother was already in the ground.

  In his first year at Manhattan Community College, Teddy had taken a required course in business history. They were all there, all the big boys, each lovingly profiled. Astor, McCormick, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Gould, Rockefeller, Morgan, Edison, Ford. Teddy got the point before completing the fourth biography. Folks who knew Cornelius Vanderbilt, the Commodore, claimed that he never had a thought in his life that wasn’t about profit. Ditto for the rest of them. They had families, true, but families weren’t a thing you could get out of back then. It was different now. Teddy could have all the sex he wanted and none of the responsibility.

  ‘What I told you before,’ he said between bites. ‘It holds true. I’ll set you up with an apartment and pay your expenses. That would make you my mistress, not my whore. And if you want a job, I’ll find something.’

  ‘Teddy, I have asked you if you are coming back this night.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Teddy finally admitted. ‘Yeah, I am.’

  NINETEEN

  Jill found Boots in the basement lifting weights. Ordinarily, as Jill knew, Boots preferred to work out with other cops at the Six-Four. He liked the atmosphere, the stupid jibes, the stories, even the smell of human sweat which had permeated the very walls of the precinct weight room. The workouts also enabled him to keep in touch with street cops. If there was a bad actor out there, Boots was sure to hear about him, as Boots was sure to make him a special project if the actor was bad enough.

  ‘How long have you been awake?’ Jill asked.

  ‘About an hour.’

  ‘And you went to sleep …?’

  ‘Around four.’

  Jill nodded appreciatively. The weights, for Boots, served the same purpose as the many hours she spent on various gun ranges. Sooner or later, the streets punished weakness. You had to project power at all times. Physical strength did the job for Boots. He was big and strong and had a temper that quickly gave way to fearlessness. You sensed it before he opened his mouth.

  ‘So, any burglars we need to apprehend before we go to work?’

  ‘No, but there’s a turnstile jumper I’ve been after for years.’

  Jill laughed. ‘Silvy Mussa. You think the shooter meant to kill him?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘So, we’re looking at a simple robbery that took a bad turn. Maybe Silvy resisted and the thief shot him to make a point?’

  ‘I don’t think that, either.’ Boots grunted as he drew the weight bar from his waist to beneath his chin, held it for a few seconds, then dropped the bar to his waist. He repeated the sequence four more times before lowering the bar. ‘The shots were fired from a twenty-two-caliber handgun at a distance of less than two feet. If Silvy was shot in the arm and leg, he was meant to be shot in the arm and the leg, which in turns means that he was meant to survive. I think Silvy saw something he was supposed to see, something he was supposed to describe to his boss. The rest was smoke and mirrors.’

  ‘But …?’

  ‘But the victim won’t tell us what that something is, which makes us spectators. All we can do is wait and watch.’ Boots grabbed a towel and wiped his face. ‘Give me twenty minutes to shower.’

  Twenty minutes later, right on time, Boots came out of the bedroom to discover Jill and Joaquin sitting on opposite sides of the kitchen table. Jill had a cup of coffee in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other.

  ‘Are you staying for breakfast?’ Joaquin asked without turning his eyes away from Jill.

  Under other circumstances, Boots might have had mercy on his son. He might have reminded himself, for instance, that Joaquin had been sleeping by himself for the past week. But not this time. This time there was real urgency to Boots’s personal schedule. That was point number one. Point number two was the cigarette Jill held in her hand. Boots wanted to make sure they were in the car when she lit up.

  ‘Sorry, we gotta move.’ Boots took his coat out of the closet and checked to make sure the gun was still in its pocket. He was hoping to get into the coat before Jill noticed that the holster hanging by his left arm was empty. No such luck.

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’ Jill asked.

  Boots stole a glance at Joaquin as he tapped his pocket. The glance was a message to Jill, but Joaquin had always been quick to spot a tell.

  ‘Is that a gun in your pocket?’ he asked. ‘Or are you just happy to see Jill again?’

  ‘I trained him to respect his elders,’ Boots said to Jill. ‘But as you can see, it didn’t take.’

  ‘Cut the crap, Boots. Last time you carried a gun in your pocket, your father had to go into hiding.’

  ‘Not this time.’

  That part was true. The Italian mob didn’t kill innocent family members. Nor, Boots admitted to himself, did the Italian mob ordinarily target cops. But the memories were too much, the memories that jumped into his consciousness just before sleep, the van drawing closer and closer, the shotgun in the window, chunks of mortar and brick dropping onto his head and shoulders. There was no forgetting, not for him. The barrel of that shotgun, that hollow tube, had seemed infinitely dark, a black hole from which there was no escape. And there was another factor at play, one Boots had only begun to acknowledge. Maybe Crazy Jill’s insanity was contagious. Maybe she’d infected a dumb flatfoot named Boots Littlewood. For sure, some part of him wanted to confront Johnny Pianetta, now and in the future. Some part of him wanted to make the gangster a special project, consequences be damned. Some part of him knew he’d been wanting this for many years.

  TWENTY

  Boots drew a deep breath as he started the Nissan. His nicotine cravings had retreated, inch by inch, over the past months. Now they were back, descending on him with the speed and the force of a trapdoor spider on an unsuspecting lizard. Yo, dinner.

  ‘Off to work,’ he said as he drew a sharp breath. ‘Another day, another dollar.’

  Jill stared out the window while Boots, for unexplained reasons, made his way to the Pulaski Bridge, then pulled to the curb. To their left, a single strand of canary-yellow tape fluttered in a breeze much too cold for early November. At the back of the yard, a man in greasy coveralls fitted a socket to one of the nuts on the left front tire of an Amoroso pickup truck. A pair of workmen in jeans and heavy boots stood to either side of him, shoulders hunched, hands in their pockets.

  ‘Carlo was committing a violent rape when he was killed,’ Jill said. ‘I know that for a fact because I called a friend of mine at the morgue while you were in the shower. They did the autopsy last night. First, the blood on Carlo’s hands was Type A and Carlo’s blood is Type O. Second, the pathologist who performed the autopsy found vaginal fluids on his penis. They’ll test the DNA and the alleged fluids, just not right away.’

  ‘We need to find the victim now,’ Boots said after a moment, a point h
e’d already made. ‘And just for the record, I don’t believe the shooter would have left her alive if he thought she could identify him. She was probably unconscious by the time he arrived.’

  ‘So, why is she a priority?’

  ‘She’s a priority because I know what Johnny will do if he gets his hands on her. That’s the difference between normal human beings and men like Pianetta. Most people would consider what she’s already been through, about Carlo beating her until his hands were covered with blood. Most people would go out of their way to ease her suffering. Not Johnny. Johnny will hurt her until he’s sure she can’t help him find his son’s murderer. Then he’ll kill her and leave her body where it’ll be found. All part of the lesson, the one about messing with the Pianetta family.’

  Jill didn’t question her partner’s priorities. Protecting the victim had to come first. But the part about the woman not being able to identify her rescuer struck Jill as coming from the male blind spot. Women commonly retreated from their bodies in the course of a rape, aware and not aware. They played dead in the hope of staying alive, knowing, instinctively, that rapists like Carlo Pianetta were fueled by resistance. Resistance got them hot. Resistance and the pleasure of quelling that resistance.

  ‘The real issue,’ Jill said, ‘is what happened next, after Carlo was dead. Did the shooter aid the victim? Did he take her away? Drive her somewhere? Leave her to fend for herself? What?’

  Boots put the Nissan in gear. ‘You want an educated guess, based on a series of educated guesses, any of which has a forty percent probability of being utter bullshit? And which, by the way, we have to accept because we don’t have time to run down multiple scenarios?’

  ‘I’ve been waiting all morning. In fact, your educated guess is the only wish you didn’t fulfill last night.’

  ‘Then there’s no point to stopping off at my place for lunch.’

  ‘Actually, I’ve got to be home by three. That was the deal I made with Simone, the aide that let me spend the night with you. It’s some kind of parent-teacher day at her daughter’s school and she needs to be there by four.’

  Boots turned left, drove alongside the bridge for a single block, then down a narrow alley to the edge of Newtown Creek. He stopped the car with the bridge to his left, the expanse of the Alltel Petroleum Depot to his right. Straight ahead, a long oil slick, stirred by the bobbing waters, flashed a brilliant iridescence.

  ‘More guesses,’ Boots said. ‘I’m saying the shooter was on foot, not driving. I’m also saying that he had a big problem after he shot Carlo.’

  ‘The gun?’

  ‘Yeah, the gun. The neighborhood’s a hundred percent industrial next to the bridge. There’s not an apartment building within two blocks and it’s as quiet as a graveyard on Saturday mornings. Still, he couldn’t be sure the shot wasn’t reported, which, in fact, it was.’

  Boots gestured to the tanks in the depot on their right. The largest of the white cylinders rose a good fifty feet in the air. ‘That’s Alltel, a joint venture between Exxon and the Kuwaiti sheiks. There has to be half a million gallons of home heating oil, diesel fuel and gasoline stored in those tanks. And there has to be a security detail to make sure nobody steals it.’

  Out on the water, a loaded barge, its red decks almost at the waterline, slid beneath the bridge. Boots remained silent as the barge passed them by, its destination one of the many tank farms located along the creek.

  ‘All right, so the shooter couldn’t be certain that the shot wasn’t overheard and reported,’ he finally said. ‘He had to take off and he had to get rid of that gun. As it turned out, the police response was slow. The two cops who caught the job interviewed the old guy who reported the shot before they searched for the shooter. But if they’d searched for the shooter right away, if they’d come upon a man walking alone in an industrial neighborhood on a Sunday morning, they would definitely have searched him.’

  Jill didn’t have to be convinced. ‘Why not leave the gun at the scene?’ she asked. ‘Because it could be somehow traced to him?’

  Boots turned the heater down. ‘The why doesn’t matter. The shooter didn’t drop it at the scene, but he knew he had to be rid of it. The first part is certain, the second is a guess. Maybe he kept the weapon because he liked it. Or maybe he decided that he’d shoot it out if he was confronted. But I don’t think so. I think he tossed the gun into the water, figuring it was gone forever. And I also think we’ll recover the weapon if you convince your boss to authorize an underwater search.’

  Jill grinned. Newtown Creek was one of the most polluted bodies of water on the east coast. The SCUBA team would be overjoyed at the news. ‘Sorry, partner, but the bosses won’t authorize a row boat and a grappling hook on the basis of a guess, educated or not.’

  ‘True enough, Jill, but we can verify this particular guess. Lucky for us.’ He pointed to the chain-link fence surrounding the Alltel property, and to the security cameras that topped the fence. ‘It’s a new world,’ Boots said as he backed the car into a U-turn. ‘Instant replay for cops.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Don’t forget to smile,’ Boots said as they approached a guard shack alongside the main gate. ‘If security decides not to cooperate, we’ll have to get a subpoena for the tapes. That’ll take most of the day.’

  Alltel functioned strictly as a storage depot. The company owned no vehicles, and thus assumed no liability for its products as they made their flammable way along city streets and highways. On this busy morning, the eight fill stations were all in use.

  ‘How may I help you?’ The security guard in the booth was young, polite and firm. His nametag read Zeman. He watched Boots and Jill flash their shields and nodded to himself. ‘You look like a cop,’ he said to Boots.

  Apparently, the same could not be said of Detective Kelly. The look Zeman conferred on her was clearly appreciative. This Boots expected. But Jill’s return smile came out of nowhere, a thousand-watt special he was certain she’d never bestowed on Boots Littlewood.

  ‘We need a few minutes with the head of security,’ she said.

  ‘That would be Al Hanford. I’ll call him.’

  Zeman picked up a clipboard as a full tanker pulled up to the gate, made a series of notations and waved the truck through.

  ‘Any chance,’ Jill said, ‘that you were out here on Saturday morning around seven thirty?’

  ‘No chance whatsoever. The yard is closed on weekends and we don’t man the booth. We do have somebody in the office, but when he’s not sleeping, he sits in a chair watching the monitors. The security cameras do all the work.’

  Altell’s offices, including the security unit, were contained in a one-story building made of gray concrete blocks. A pair of corrugated wooden panels flanked the main entrance, the only decorative touch on the entire structure. From the back, where Boots and Jill approached a man standing beside a small door, the building might have been a meat locker.

  Boots wasn’t surprised. An Exxon-Kuwaiti joint venture sounded impressive, but industrial life in Greenpoint had always been about function. About getting the most out of every buck.

  ‘Detective Littlewood,’ Boots said, flashing his ID and his shield. ‘This is Detective Kelly.’

  ‘Al Hanford.’

  Hanford wore a suit, a cheap suit to be sure, an off-the-rack suit, but he was still out of uniform. He was about fifty, heavily built, with a square, flat face and a two-inch buzz cut that somehow managed to emphasize the fact that he’d kept his hair. He shook hands with both detectives, then announced, ‘I was on the job. Twenty-two glorious years in the South Bronx. So, what can I do for you?’

  ‘You heard about the shooting on Sunday morning?’ Jill asked.

  ‘Yeah, under the bridge. Some gangster.’

  ‘We think the shooter came your way,’ Jill said. ‘We’re thinking he threw the gun into the Creek somewhere between seven forty-two and maybe eight fifteen AM.’

  ‘You want to review our data? That abou
t it?’

  ‘There’s no about to it. We’re tryin’ to make the jump from a theory to a fact. We really need to see the footage and we don’t have time for a subpoena.’

  ‘Forget subpoena. As long as you’re not asking to copy the data, Alltel doesn’t give a damn.’ He waved Boots and Jill into the building. ‘The company’s not worried about theft anymore. The pumps are computerized, so you could only pull off a heist from the inside. The main fear is terrorism. The cameras give us visual access to every corner of the depot, even the loading dock on Newtown Creek. You’d need forty guys on foot to cover what two men cover in a roomful of monitors.’

  ‘What about on Sunday mornings?’

  ‘We only use one man when the depot’s closed. Not my choice because I think quiet weekend mornings are prime time for terrorists, but I don’t write the budget.’

  He led Boots and Jill into his office. The space was just big enough to hold a desk and four metal office chairs with padded seats. Several black cables ran from a desktop computer to six monitors lined up on a shelf. No filing cabinets here. The Alltel depot, including the security cameras, ran by computer.

  Hanford waved his guests to a chair, took his own chair and tapped the keyboard in front of his computer. After less than a minute, he turned to Boots and said, ‘You remember the old days? A hundred video tapes locked in a cabinet somewhere? It took forever to find the tape you were looking for and even longer to fast forward to the time you wanted to look at. Well, check this out.’

  Boots watched Hanford raise a dramatic finger almost to his nose before dropping it on the Enter key. Four monitors lit up, the day and date time-stamped into the lower right-hand corners of each image: 07:42, Saturday, November 4. The views were from the four cameras spaced about a hundred feet apart along the fence, from the corner of Paidge Avenue to Newtown Creek.

  The images on the screens were definitely sharper than most of the video tapes Boots had reviewed over the years. Still, nobody would confuse the system with IMAX. The washed-out colors left the scene a series of blotchy pastels. Worse yet, the cameras were angled toward the fence line. That left the middle of the street fuzzy and the far side of street, overshadowed by the bridge, in near darkness. Nevertheless, all three – Hanford, Boots and Jill – saw the figure moving through that darkness, a shadow within a shadow, the moment it came into view at 07:49.