The Best American Mystery Stories 2012

by Otto Penzler

  “What I’m saying,” she said, in case I hadn’t understood, “is that it would probably be best if you didn’t come down here anymore.”

  Then she slammed the door. In the parking lot, a little boy, ten or eleven, maybe, stepped from between two cars. He was small, delicate-looking, with huge brown eyes that seemed to swallow his face, but he already had the walk, the aggressively slumped shoulders, the sneer of a gang kid. Ten years from now he’d have the jailhouse banter, the dead eyes, and the rap sheet to go with them—if he lived that long.

  “You Raines, right? They some people want to see you.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said.

  “I’m telling you,” he said. “You pass that school up the block? See the courts in the back? Bop-Bop and Demond ballin’ up there.”

  “Thanks for the message,” I said, opening my car door.

  “So you going?”

  “Depends on what they want.”

  “Man, they don’t tell me what they want. They just say go get that white guy, tell him we got something to talk about.” He kicked at the pavement with the toe of a scuffed sneaker. “So?”

  “You want a ride?”

  He took an instinctive step backward and his large eyes got larger. “I don’t get in cars with strangers.”

  “You tell me who you think had Terrell killed,” Demond Jones said.

  He was a rangy kid with a bushy Afro, a slow smile, and a shark’s eyes. He sprawled on the icy metal bleachers near a fenced-in basketball court, his long legs stretched out in front of him, a Kool dangling from the corner of his mouth and a thirty-two-ounce can of Icehouse beer resting by his side. One row up, Bop-Bop Drake perched over his friend’s shoulder like an overgrown parrot.

  I wasn’t sure what I thought about any of what they had said. I looked away, watched the four-on-four game on the court. Most of the players were good, but one was spectacular, quick and surefooted with a smooth jump shot and a crossover dribble that could blow out a defender’s ankle. I recognized him from sports reports on the local news. A sophomore in high school, he was being recruited by half the major universities in America and destined to be an NBA star, but none of the kids gathered around the courts were paying him any attention. Down here Demond and Bop-Bop were the stars, the heroes that all these thirteen- and fourteen-year-old kids wanted to be. It made sense. None of those kids had the talent of Kyrie Taylor, but they all knew they could learn to deal drugs or use a gun.

  “You’re telling me you guys firebombed that truck for political reasons.” I finally said.

  “We ain’t saying we did anything illegal at all,” Bop-Bop said. “I’m telling you that Terrell threw that Molotov because he was drunk and angry that they was killing us.”

  “Genocide is the word Bop-Bop’s trying to think of,” Demond said. “That’s what Terrell kept saying when he was drunk. They’re committing genocide, just like in Rwanda, but nobody knows it. T-Bone was smart. Educated, you know?”

  “He was in your gang.”

  “What gang?” Bop-Bop asked. “There ain’t no gangs around here.”

  “Terrell wasn’t in nothing. He just came to us because he knew I’d listen to what he had to say.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Was there money involved?”

  He gave me a slow grin. “You act like ’cause I do a little business I don’t care about nothing else. Making money is the American way, ain’t it?”

  “He told you what was going on at the industrial park? Enlighten me.”

  “I’m not clear on the particulars, but I know something ain’t right around here.”

  “He said they were dumping?”

  “Chemicals and all kinds of shit like that. Illegal stuff from all over. T-Bone said it’s why his granddad died of bone cancer.” For the first time, Demond’s eyes softened and I remembered that he wasn’t just a gangbanger or a monster but also a nineteen-year-old kid. “He said it was the reason my baby sister got leukemia.”

  “There’s all kind of people sick down here. The apartments where I stay? I know at least six families got kids with cancer. You just go down to the Med, you’ll see,” Bop-Bop said.

  “T-Bone had all kinds of numbers and things he’d gathered,” Demond said.

  “He called it some foreign word,” Bop-Bop said.

  Demond gave him a look. “Dossier. It ain’t foreign, man. It’s American.”

  “Ain’t no word I ever used.”

  “Damn, Bop-Bop, I know you went to school. Maybe you should have paid attention.” Demond looked back at me. “Terrell had pictures he’d taken on his cell phone while he was working there, notes about things his granddad had told him, this research he’d done on the Internet. He showed us that stuff ’cause he knew I’d be interested, since I watched my baby sister die of cancer.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “We ain’t got it. That’s for sure.”

  “Why did you firebomb the truck?”

  “Let’s just say Terrell might have put away a few too many and claimed he was going to take care of things his own damn self. A couple of his buddies might have gone with him, you know, maybe ’cause they thought he wasn’t really going to do anything.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Or maybe they went with him ’cause they were hurting pretty bad and wanted to strike out the same way he did because a little sister had died. Say this little sister was just six years old and crying for her brother to hold her hand but he was too scared because it hurt too damn much to see her that way.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “We all sorry, man.” He took a long drag from his cigarette and then elbowed Bop-Bop’s knee. “Tell him all of it.”

  Bop-Bop cleared his throat and fidgeted. He seemed as nervous as an actor on opening night.

  “Well. It’s like this.” He halted, coughed into his fist, tried again. “Okay, say these two friends and Bone are . . .”

  “Just tell him what happened,” Demond said. “He ain’t a cop no more. Besides, if he says anything, it’s our word against his.”

  Bop-Bop thought it over a moment and then shrugged. “We were all wasted, you know, and T-Bone, that’s what we called Terrell ’cause he was always talking about steaks, he kept saying they’d killed Paula, Demond’s little sister, kept saying they poisoned her and wasn’t no one going to do nothing but us. We were going to throw them bottles of gasoline through the front gates at the park, but on our way we saw the broken-down truck. T-Bone went crazy, yelling at them that they were child killers and as bad as the Nazis. Then he threw the Molotov and the truck caught on fire.”

  “You keep saying them,” I said, remembering Don Ellis saying we broke down. “Were there two people in the truck?”

  “That’s where things get complicated,” Demond said.

  “Yeah, there was a guy in the passenger’s seat. He jumped out of the truck with a gun.”

  “Maybe he had a gun,” Demond said. “But it don’t matter. He came out of the truck running toward us, and I put three bullets in his chest.”

  Bop-Bop glanced around and then leaned a little closer. “Guy’s name was Giacomeli. We ran into him here and there in the kind of business we do.”

  “Sam Giacomeli?”

  “Called himself Sammy the Saint,” Demond said, snorting his disgust.

  “You guys killed Paul Cardo’s nephew,” I said. “And Cardo is . . .”

  “He’s with the Montesis,” Bop-Bop said.

  “Not just with,” I said.

  “We know who he is,” Demond said. “That’s why we sent for you.”

  Bop-Bop nodded. “Word on the street is you’re in tight with Montesi.”

  “That’s not . . .”

  Demond cut me off before I could finish. “Just name us a price, man. I ain’t saying we’ll pay it, but it’ll give us a place to start negotiating.”

  “You want to hire me?”

  “We don’t care what you call it,” Demond said. “We just want you to make it go away.
”

  My first thought was that this was some kind of joke, but their eyes were desperately earnest. They kept watching me, waiting for me to say I could do something to help, the shaky smiles on their faces caught somewhere between hopeful and damned.

  At eleven o’clock the next morning, I sat on a bench outside of the Physical Rehabilitation and Therapy building on the campus of Baptist Memorial Hospital and tried to make sense of it all. After I’d left Drake and Jones, I’d headed for the main branch of the Memphis library. Two hours later, I’d walked back out into the cold night with words like benzene, dioxin, and dichloromethane buzzing in my head. One sentence echoed: twenty-two billion pounds of toxic and hazardous chemicals released each year through illegal disposal. From New Jersey to Alabama, the mob had used its experience in late-night burial to make millions by handling sticky and usually toxic messes for corporate bosses who were more concerned with profit margins than questions. Whether they were in urban industrial wastelands or backwater burgs, the dump sites had at least two things in common: they were always located on the edge of poor, usually black neighborhoods and they continued to poison generations long after the dumping had been forgotten and both the mob’s and the corporate shareholders’ profits had been spent.

  It was nearly eleven-thirty when a part-time home health aide parked Don Ellis’s Dodge minivan in front of the building and scurried around to help him to the front door. When I walked into the second-floor cafeteria, Don was waiting at a table near a row of vending machines, sipping Dr Pepper through a straw. “I’m glad you called. Since you came to the house I ain’t thought about nothing else. You left the picture of that kid at my house.” He shrugged. “I’m a coward these days, Charlie. I lost what little nerve I had.”

  I felt sorry for him, but that didn’t stop me from asking questions. I’m still enough of a cop that it rarely does.

  “We hauled lots of stuff,” he said. “Don’t ask me what it was, because I don’t know, other than there were vats and barrels of it, and it came in from everywhere. Even I could tell the logs and inspections were phony, but no one seemed to ask any questions.”

  “How long?”

  “For me, five years off and on.” He slurped his Dr Pepper, stared at a point somewhere past my head. “They’ve been dumping down there since the early seventies, I think, but that’s just a guess.”

  “Why was Giacomeli with you?”

  “It was just one of those things. He was at the industrial park on some kind of business. I don’t ask questions. I just drive trucks. Anyways, his Mazda broke down. I offered to take a look, but it was late and he said forget it, he’d just catch a ride back with me. Then the truck started acting up. The last thing I remember him saying was ‘Jesus Christ, two engines in one night, maybe I’m frigging cursed.’ Then those kids came from nowhere and . . .” His voice trailed off, and he chased his straw around with the tip of his tongue, finally gave up and licked his lips instead. “After the fire started, someone must have made a phone call, because when I woke up everyone was saying I was alone. A guy visited me in the ICU, told me that’s the way it happened and I didn’t want to complicate matters by saying any different.”

  “Listen, Don,” I said. “I still got a few friends on the force.”

  “Forget it,” he said, his voice loud enough to turn heads in our direction. “I’m telling you this ’cause it’s been on my mind a lot and you knew about it anyway, but I’m not talking to anyone else. Ever.”

  “Don, something needs to be done.”

  “Listen to me, Charlie. The thing I thought about while I was in the hospital was that maybe I had this coming, that maybe I deserved to die. But I got my boys and my ex-wife to think about.” He licked his lips again. “I said what I got to say. And I’m never going to say it again.”

  I was furious. I wanted to tell him that he was right: he had become a coward. Maybe I even opened my mouth to do it, but the sight of him struggling to stand, his ruined face straining from the effort, left me wordless and ashamed.

  Two hours later I lay on the asphalt outside my apartment building and stared up at the flushed and bloated face of the man who’d dented the back of my head with a pool cue and cracked a couple of my ribs with the toe of his snake-skinned cowboy boot. He looked familiar, but my mind was reeling from shock and pain, and I couldn’t quite get a handle on his name or who he was or why he seemed intent on killing me.

  “Look here, Charlie. Moan a lot, thrash around like you’re really hurting, and this will go a lot quicker,” he said in a voice that sounded as if he started each day by gargling broken glass. “I tried to beg off this one, but you know how it is.” He stomped my left hand, ground the bones under his heel, grinned down at me. “You don’t recognize me, do you?”

  If I’d had the strength to do anything except whimper and cringe and try to remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer, I would have told him that I didn’t really give a damn who he was. He could have been Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or the frigging Easter Bunny for all I cared. I just didn’t want him to hurt me anymore.

  “It’s me, Frankie Giageos,” he said. “I guess I put on a few pounds, huh?”

  I blinked cold sweat from my eyes, squinted up at his face, and saw a guy I used to know buried beneath a fresh fifty pounds of fat. Frankie Gee. The last I’d heard, he was in federal prison for conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

  “You got out,” I said.

  “Couple of months ago.”

  Then he kicked me again, left side this time, and I felt a rib crack. Say what you wanted about Frankie Gee, he was a professional. Another kick to the solar plexus and then he took a step back and stood looking down at me, breathing hard, the air whistling through his nose and rattling in his chest.

  “I’m getting too old for this crap,” he said, gasping for air.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “That’s pretty good, Charlie.” He wiped his face on his coat sleeve and pulled a pack of Camels from his inside pocket. “I got a message for you.”

  I coughed hard, nearly passed out from the pain, but felt a little better when I saw that I’d spat out a mouthful of phlegm instead of blood. “Let me guess. Stay away from Parrish Industrial Park.”

  He lit a cigarette with a gold Zippo. “You know this stuff already, why am I here?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at a silver Lexus parked in a handicapped space. A heavyset man with gray curly hair was sitting behind the wheel, sipping from a Styrofoam cup while he watched us. I recognized him as the man who’d been driving the SUV when Terrell Cheatham was murdered. Seeing him here with Frankie Gee brought his name back to me. Jackie Marconi, a bottom-feeder who’d been doing grunt work for the mob since he was sixteen. It looked as if he’d taken a giant leap up the ladder.

  “Jackie Macaroni sits in the car while you’re out . . .”

  “‘Jackie Macaroni.’ That’s good,” Frankie said. “Since Tony retired and Vinnie’s been so screwed up over his kid, God rest his little soul, things ain’t the way they used to be. Between you and me, they ain’t right at all.”

  “Cardo’s calling the shots,” I said.

  “And Jackie there is the king turd in the toilet bowl.” He flicked his cigarette away, grunted as he stooped to retrieve the sawed-off pool cue. “Cardo’s serious about this one, Charlie. Next time I’ll have to put a bullet in your head. Only reason you got a pass this time is because even though Tony ain’t the boss no more, his opinion carries weight.” He took another quick glance back at the Lexus. “If he were to make a direct request on your behalf, people would be inclined to listen. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “I hear you, Frankie.”

  “You listening?”

  “I hear you.”

  “Same old Charlie R,” he said.

  I wasn’t expecting the kick in the crotch. It caught me off-guard, sent stars shooting behind my eyes and the bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit I’d gobbled for breakfast spewing onto the pavemen
t. He hadn’t pulled the kick or tried to soften the blow. Like I said, Frankie Gee was a professional.

  “When you talk to Tony, give him my best wishes,” he said.

  I wiped the vomit from my mouth. “What makes you think I’m going to talk to Tony?”

  “You’re stubborn, Charlie. Not stupid.”

  When the Lexus pulled out of the lot, I curled up into a ball and lay on the asphalt, taking deep breaths of cold air until my stomach settled. A few curtains ruffled in the apartments across the way, but no one bothered to come out to help or took the trouble to call 911. Five minutes later, I crawled to my car and drove myself to the emergency room.

  In a perfect world, his loyalty as an old friend and his commitment to justice, decency, and the American Way would have led Nate Randolph to use his influence to get the department to launch an investigation into illegal dumping and Terrell Cheatham’s murder. But no one seemed particularly interested.

  “Call the EPA,” Nate said. “They got a hotline for things like this.”

  “That’s all you got to say?”

  “No,” he said, nodding at the can of Tecate I’d set on his new coffee table. “Either keep that damn thing in your hand or use a coaster.”

  I reached for my beer, winced from the pain in my ribs. I’d gotten lucky. Only three were broken. The rest of me was so sore and swollen that I felt like I’d been locked into a barrel with a rabid wolverine and pitched over Niagara Falls.

  “You’ve got nothing and you know it, Charlie,” he said. “The word of a couple of street punks? The truck driver’s going to deny everything.”

  “Frankie Gee didn’t pay me a visit just to catch up on old times.”

  “Being right don’t change anything.” He finished his beer and set the empty back down on a coaster. “Call the EPA. They go in with a search warrant and find anything out of the ordinary, the feds will be on Cardo like stink on an outhouse.”