by Oliver Stark
Eddie looked at his partner’s face. ‘You were never handsome, Harps, not like me, but you weren’t no monster, either. But now, I gotta tell you, you look like someone took that ugly stick and beat you half to death with it.’
‘You’re way too sympathetic, Eddie, you know that?’
‘What you want sympathy for? No one forced you to fight. We all told you to stay clear.’
‘You’re right, no one forced me.’
‘A hundred bucks, Harps — where’s the sympathy for my losses?’
‘It’s boxing, Eddie — remember not to bet on the white guy.’
‘The other guy was a white guy, Harps.’
‘Then I really was no good.’
Eddie took one of the coffees he’d brought with him from the deli in the street outside and handed it to Harper. He sat down and shook his head. ‘Man, your face is like some close-up of a fungus. You should see a doctor.’
‘I’ll survive.’ He threw four pills down his throat and gulped back water.
‘And when the doctor’s finished with you, you should go see the psychiatrist and get your head mended. And when the shrink’s finished with you, you should take your gloves and throw them in the Hudson. You stank, man.’
‘That bad?’
‘It was like someone had switched you off. You didn’t land a single punch, Harps. Not a single punch. You let him boss you round the ring. He was taking pot shots at you. Using that pretty face of yours for target practice. It was a massacre.’
Harper stared across, unable to smile. ‘First time I slept that well in a long while, though.’
‘Being unconscious doesn’t count as sleep.’
‘It gets you from night to day just the same. Look, these injuries may look bad, but he wasn’t packing much in those punches. No lasting damage.’
‘It upset me, man, and I don’t like that. Come here, big guy.’ Eddie pulled Harper to his feet, wrapped his arms around him and squeezed him tight.
‘Go easy, Eddie,’ said Harper, pulling away and reaching out for his phone. ‘And where’s that ice pack?’ Harper looked down his messages. Lots of messages, probably heckling his performance, but nothing from Denise Levene.
He felt something like the beginning of grief again. Then it passed as the pain started up. He couldn’t move his neck too well, so he presumed he’d been caught on the point of his jaw from a right hook, snapping his neck fast and twisting the spinal column. Rotational force. Sudden drop in blood pressure, brain slamming to the right as the skull went left — concussion maybe. He must’ve been out for the whole ten count.
Eddie returned and handed Harper an ice pack. He took it and held it to his worst eye.
‘Seriously, Eddie, it’s good of you to drop by. Appreciate it.’ Harper walked to the bathroom.
‘I care, Harps, you know that. But there was one other thing.’
Harper took a mouthful of water from the faucet and swilled it around his mouth, then spat it out. The white porcelain turned a translucent red.
‘What’s that, Eddie?’
‘Captain’s called Blue Team together again.’
Harper appeared at the bathroom door. ‘What is it?’
‘They found a body this morning in East Harlem.’
‘They called the whole team?’ asked Harper. ‘Something I should know?’
Eddie nodded. Harper let the thought swirl around in his head and compete with the pain. Blue Team was the elite unit of homicide detectives from North Manhattan Homicide. The last time the whole of Blue Team was on a case, they were chasing a serial killer. Harper looked at Eddie Kasper, ‘Well, you might as well tell me, I’m going to have to see it soon enough. What’s the MO?’
‘A body all wrapped up in barbed wire,’ said Eddie. ‘And Lafayette wants you to lead this one. It’s nasty. Welcome back to our world.’
Chapter Eight
East 112th Street, Manhattan
March 7, 9.22 a.m.
East 112th Street ran all the way to Second Avenue and stopped adjacent to Jefferson Park. On Saturday morning, the pace was slow. The big blocks of public housing stood quietly in the morning sun. On one side of the street a gang of youths sat on a stoop; five big guys all stretching out, baseball caps backward, watching. The few stores were open, but there wasn’t much going on. A couple of eateries, a grocery store with everything on sale, a mini-mart and a store selling nothing but wheel rims. But business was slow for the moment.
At the entrance to Jenson House XI across the street, a small dark alley ran behind the huge municipal trash loaders and led through to House VI. There was nothing remarkable about the alley, except for the single patrol car parked neatly in a 90-minute wait slot and a single uniformed NYPD officer standing beside a piece of yellow police tape.
Within seconds, the quiet street erupted with the sound of traffic. Left and right, trucks and cars started to stream towards the alley, except they weren’t police vehicles. They were all marked with the bright logos of television networks.
About a half-mile away a red Pontiac belonging to Eddie Kasper swerved through the corners towards the crime scene. Harper kept his head low and his eyes covered with shades. His head hadn’t let up the dance beat of pain. ‘Promise me you won’t ever drive an ambulance,’ he said.
‘I’d get to the hospital quick enough, wouldn’t I?’
‘Sure, but the question is — would you get there with anyone alive?’
Eddie turned to look at Harper and grinned. ‘You made a joke, Harps! That’s real progress. You keep up like this and you’ll be human one day.’
He reached out and slapped Harper on the arm. Harper winced. The painkillers were only keeping out half of the pain coming from various parts of his body. Eddie swung into 112th Street. They came upon Jenson House XI almost immediately and Eddie slammed on his brakes.
Harper pushed up his shades and stared out. ‘What the fuck is going on?’ The street was log-jammed with cars and trucks. There were rows of TV trucks, seven or eight TV crews with reporters, cameramen, sound crews and even a few executives, all milling between the street and Jenson House. The presence of the networks had attracted a crowd of thirty to forty people standing round the fringes and trying to see what all the fuss was about. There were only a few patrol cars at the scene and the uniformed cops were having trouble keeping order.
Eddie pulled up to the curb and switched off the engine. The two Homicide cops glanced at each other.
Harper pushed his shades down again. ‘What’s going down, Eddie? I thought this was a fresh kill. Why are they all here?’
‘I don’t know, Harps. And how did they hear about it so quick?’
‘Question is, why the hell are they so interested? There’s been no ID, right?’
‘Right.’
Harper pushed his body out of Eddie’s old Pontiac and on to the sidewalk, a grimace crossing his face. A cold breeze ran across the street even though the sunlight was bright. The effect, through his bruised eyes, was surreal. It was like a circus had come to see a homicide in action.
Eddie moved around and said to Harper, ‘Keep close, champ, or someone’s going to mistake you for the victim.’
There was a battle going on up ahead, with the two police officers trying to push back the TV cameras and reporters. Harper lowered his head, held up his shield and muscled his way through, ignoring the pain.
A smiling brunette from CNN spotted the shield and turned her TV crew through 180 degrees. ‘We’ve got another detective coming through, let’s try for a comment.’ As she said it, a minor stampede headed Harper’s way.
She moved across, ahead of the pack. ‘Detective, can we get a statement? Can you confirm the identity of the body?’
Harper looked up. ‘I just got here. I haven’t even seen the body.’
The reporter saw Harper’s beat-up face and shrank away. ‘We all got an email, Detective, about a body found early this morning in a Housing Project in East Harlem. They are saying that it’s
Judge Capske’s son, David. Email said it was a political statement for America. What have you got to say about that?’
Harper shook his head. ‘I don’t know nothing about this as yet. No comment.’ He pushed forward, more confused, wondering why the networks had been sent this information. The press rounded on him, coming from all sides at once, throwing lights and microphones in his way. ‘I’ll give you a statement, ladies and gentlemen, if you let me take a goddamn look at my crime scene.’
Harper and Kasper made their way through to the rising volume of eager and excited questions.
Inside the makeshift compound, there were four police cruisers and a white truck belonging to the Crime Scene Unit. All the red and blue lights twirled without sound, hardly visible in the lights of the TV crews. Over to the right, a dark rectangle of shadow marked the entrance to the alleyway. Canary-yellow police tape crossed the crime scene and flapped in the breeze. They’d managed to get a rudimentary screen up, but Harper guessed that the cameras would’ve caught the image of the corpse already.
‘Did the department get sent the same information about Judge Capske’s son?’ asked Harper. ‘Is that why the whole of Blue Team got the call out?’
Eddie looked around, scanned the trucks and microphones. ‘No, we didn’t get shit. Must’ve gone straight to the TV stations.’
‘Someone out there wants to cause maximum fucking chaos,’ said Harper. ‘Does anyone know what the hell’s going on?’ he shouted.
A tall cop standing in the shadow at the edge of the alleyway moved into the light, thumbs hitched in his belt. It didn’t matter that there were several cameras pointed his way, world-weary nonchalance emanated from every pore.
Harper felt another sudden sharp pain cross his forehead, and he moved over the yellow crime-scene tape. ‘You know what’s going down here, Officer?’
‘They just rolled in about fifteen minutes ago,’ the officer replied. ‘Said they got a warning. We were here quick, so I’d guess they were told before we were.’
Harper stared out at the circus and felt anger rising in his blood. ‘I want this whole fucking street cleared, you hear? I need more patrol cars and uniforms right now.’
‘The whole street?’
‘The whole street. Every fucking TV truck. This is a crime scene, not a sideshow. Move them out now. Right out of my sight.’
Chapter Nine
East 112th Street
March 7, 9.28 a.m.
Harper spotted his team further up the alleyway, congregating as close to the corpse as possible, as if the lifeless body would somehow reveal the secrets of the crime as long as they got in tight enough. Harper knew that they weren’t just clinging to the case, but that they were standing around the corpse clinging to the fragments of the victim’s humanity.
Detectives Garcia, Greco, Ratten and Swanson, the other four members of Blue Team, were talking in brief sentences and looking around. No detailed forensics work going on — just experienced cops getting a feel for what had happened. Looking for the story, talking down options, trading insults and jokes. Each of them opening their account on the next dead body.
Harper moved towards his team. ‘They’re going crazy over there,’ he said. ‘The media said this is Judge Capske’s son David. Has anyone ID’d our victim?’
‘Can’t do it. Take a look for yourself. Can’t tell who it is.’
Garcia stopped as he saw Harper’s face. ‘Lafayette gave you the lead looking like that? You look like shit,’ he said. ‘And for the record, you fight like shit.’
‘I’m leading this, that’s right,’ said Harper. It was going to be a day of soaking up the jibes and jokes.
Harper looked at the ground. There was a spread of white powder on the wet asphalt, with three or four small wraps, torn open. ‘The email to the networks said this is a political statement. That might or might not be true. Could be drug-related. A gang maybe? You know of any gangs with a barbed-wire calling card? Maybe it’s some anti-drug thing. Vigilantes? Who the hell does this?’
‘Never heard it used,’ said Garcia, ‘but, who knows, there’s new gangs forming all the time.’
‘Anyone going to ID this corpse?’ said Harper. ‘The reporters are going to break through sooner rather than later.’
‘We can’t get near the body. It’s wound up tight. Crime Scene are just finished and the Deputy Coroner is on his way.’
Harper looked down the alleyway. ‘I’m going to take a look.’
‘Has anyone checked whether the body is infected?’ Eddie joked. ‘Our lead detective is carrying open wounds.’
Harper and Eddie walked towards the corpse, looking down at the body covered with a bloodstained sheet, the breeze lifting the edges and rippling the white cotton. A pair of bright white sneakers, spotted with black circles of dried blood, stuck out from under the sheet.
‘Small feet,’ said Eddie. He turned to Harper. ‘How you feeling?’
‘Don’t ask. Let’s take a close up.’
‘Out of the way, people, we got the Cyclops coming through.’
‘Concentrate, Eddie,’ spat Harper.
‘The humor is medicine, man.’ Eddie patted Harper’s back. ‘Humor is the door out of the dungeon, that’s all it is.’
Harper moved towards the body. ‘Gerry,’ he shouted. ‘Get back to the precinct and find out everything you can about Judge Capske.’
Gerry Ratten nodded. ‘Already done a quick search on my phone. He’s the judge who shut down that New York local radio station after one of the shock jocks made death threats against the anti-gun lobby.’
Harper considered it. ‘So this could be a political hit. We need to know more. Go and dig, Gerry. Find out what you can about David Capske too. Call me the second you got something. We’re going to have to speak to the press within the hour.’
‘I’m on it,’ called Gerry, heading towards his car.
Harper glanced about. ‘Garcia. Go and question the networks. I need to know what time the information came in. The exact message. Get me what you can.’ Harper paused. ‘Jesus.’
‘What is it?’ asked Garcia.
‘Looks like some Colombian drug deal gone wrong. We’re in fucking East Harlem.’ He stared down at the wraps. ‘Not enough to kill for, surely, but maybe they’re just trying to smear Capske’s family. Shit, if this is a political execution, then the organization responsible wants it known. Garcia, find out if any political organization has made any previous statement against Judge Capske.’ Harper felt nauseous as he stared across the bloody asphalt. The whole alleyway was a big stage for someone’s hatred. ‘This set-up is too good for some gangbangers,’ he said to Eddie Kasper.
‘Premeditated,’ said Eddie. ‘Unless the gangs have started to carry barbed wire around with them.’
Harper stood for a moment in the dark of the alley trying to readjust his sight. He looked at the water that was still pooled in parts of the ground. ‘Was it raining last night?’
‘Yeah, some time early morning. Why do you ask?’
‘Just find out for me. It’s still wet in here, but the streets out there are pretty dry.’
‘Not much of a breeze to dry it off down here.’
Harper stared at Eddie, then he noticed something. ‘You were in those clothes at the fight. Same stupid T-shirt.’
‘They make a good outfit,’ said Eddie. ‘Tried and tested.’
Harper nodded. Then he recalled the blanket on his armchair in the apartment. ‘You didn’t go home, did you? You were sitting in my apartment all night.’
‘Hey, Harps, don’t go fantasizing! I got a life to lead,’ Eddie said and flapped a hand in the air.
Harper smiled briefly, then looked at the scene in front of him. Two different stories were forming in his head. The location, presence of drugs, reported gunshot and the victim’s white sneakers all pointed to a gangland drug shooting. The barbed wire and the presence of the TV crews, the possible killing of a judge’s son, all suggested someone with a b
igger and possibly political agenda. But there was a third story forming in his head and it was an even worse one.
In the alley, the rain still sat in droplets all over the plastic trash sacks. Harper looked down at the body, at the shoulder of the victim peeping out from under the red and white sheet. The jacket hadn’t dried off, either. Harper kicked a piece of trash away from the victim’s legs and then reached out and pulled off the white sheet.
Harper stared down at the strange sight. The body had been tightly wound in barbed wire; it was so thick that most of the man within was hidden. There were so many cuts that the victim’s clothes were all completely dark from the blood. The barbed wire continued over the victim’s face and head. Harper moved in close with a flashlight. Many of the barbs were bent.
‘That’s some cruel work,’ he said to Eddie. ‘And the body’s been rolled about, by the look of things.’ He snapped the latex glove on his right hand and crouched by the corpse. He touched the barbed wire, its metallic surface hard against the softness of flesh. He spanned his hand between the barbs. ‘Galvanized steel. The barbs are approximately seven and a half centimeters apart; each barb is two centimeters long. Nasty. He’s got to be full of hundreds of holes.’
Through the gaps in the wire, Harper could see how the barbs had gone in deep and torn the flesh. The ground was covered in blood, seeping in every direction, smeared as the body was rolled or moved. The victim had clearly been alive for most of this ordeal, while his poor heart kept pumping fresh blood to the wounds. Someone was pushing this body around, possibly enjoying hearing the victim’s cries of pain.
Harper tried to understand. He searched Eddie’s face. ‘This is some mean bastard. Are we sure that no one heard this? This victim must have been in excruciating pain. Eddie, I want a ground team talking to every person in these blocks. Someone heard this man dying. Probably lots of them heard it. Shake these people and shake them hard. I don’t want any of the usual shit. Someone heard this man and I need to know about it.’
