by Lee Lamothe
The dep laughed. He sounded like he hadn’t laughed in a long time and was out of practice but was getting the hang of it. “Short-handed for what? You guys aren’t actually doing anything, right?”
“Well, the bosses want us to take down this mutt, Captain Cook.”
“Just kidding, Gordo,” the newly minted dep said.
Then he called back: “We got a guy we’re sending you tomorrow, beef up the roster.” He paused. “The guy we’re sending you, he’s your top target. Orders from Beijing.”
The skipper felt a sinking feeling but he kept his voice casual. “What is he? What’s his degeneracy? Booze? Little chickies? Goats?”
“Don’t knock goats, Gordo. Goats is … If you haven’t tried it, don’t knock it, right?”
“What is he, then?”
“Well, he’s a gunner.” The dep hung up quickly and the skipper could tell he was smiling.
The next morning the interoffice line buzzed. “Skip? There’s … ah …” the receptionist faltered. “Ah, a party here? To see you?”
“Buzz him through.”
“If you say so.”
Through the glass window of his office the skipper recognized Ray Tate behind the straggly, grey-shot hair and the beard dripping down his face. Even in the lumpy sweatshirts and the windbreaker the skipper could see where stress had burrowed into Tate’s body and chewed its way out. In the media photos he’d looked buff and robust, a perfect poster cop. Now he looked like a fucked-out degenerate in sweatpants and a ratty sweatshirt hanging down under his windbreaker.
Tate stood in the doorway of the satellite office and looked around at the half dozen vacant desks, at the criminal organization charts tacked to the wall, at piles of mug shots and fuzzy surveillance photos of mutts. There were posters of various pills, warning that “Speed Kills,” and observing that “Ecstasy. Isn’t.” A close-up of a woman’s ravaged face was blown up and framed above the base radio: she had no teeth, corroded pits in her face, and straggling hair balding from the front. Block handwriting read: “Don’t Forget Your Mom on Mother’s Day.” There was a blown up photograph of a pile of pink pills with interlocking Cs stamped into them and under the pills a question mark.
Off to the side were photographs with “Captain Cook Crew” printed above them. The top box showed a question mark over a happy face. Beneath it was a surveillance photograph of a long-haired, middle-aged man with a badly burned face. The man, identified as Philip Harvey, wore a long, black leather trench coat and sunglasses hooked into his sweater neck. He glared directly into the camera as he walked out of a strip club. A handwritten note read M/I/XV followed by a series of exclamation marks and the 24/7 phone number for the SWAT teams. The M/I stood for Mentally Incompetent, the XV stood for Extreme Violence. Branched off from the burned man were assorted men and women, most of them young, all of them in groups with their faces circled in black ink and numbered.
With a rat’s toothy bon homie the skipper bounded out of his office and across the room, his hand out. “Fuck me. Ray Tate. They told me I was getting a first-rate guy, but … well, holy fuck. A real cop, for a change.” He shook his head as he pumped Ray Tate’s hand with one hand and hustled his holstered sidearm with the other. “Gordie Weeks. Welcome to the Crank Squad. Let’s get coffee.”
* * *
The Chemical Squad was housed on the ninth floor in a commercial building. The upper floors had a long, clear view to Lake Michigan. Visitors who stumbled onto the ninth floor were greeted with a bland, long corridor with light green doors down either side. Each door had a number pad. Each door, if someone knocked on it, was found to be steel instead of the flimsy hollow cores of the other doors in the building. Video surveillance cameras peeked out of the ceiling tiles. When someone stepped off the elevator a red-headed receptionist instantly appeared, as though coincidentally, from the first door on the right-hand side. She wore a small automatic pistol under her secretarial garb and a panic button disguised as a funky bracelet on her left wrist.
When the skipper and Ray Tate came out of the tactical room the redhead was whispering into a headset and keeping an eye on the hall monitors.
“Gloria, we’re going for some caffeine. Half hour, okay? I’m on the cell.”
She nodded and made a note. She stared at Tate.
“This is Ray Tate. The last real cop. He’s going to be with us so don’t get all tactical when he comes in, okay? He’s one of the good guys.” He winked at her and said to Tate, “Watch out for Gloria. She’s got two forty-fives. She’s also got a gun.”
The red-headed woman stared at the skipper without expression. The skipper was shrugging into his suit coat at the elevator when the doors opened. A tiny black woman in a smudged, stained pantsuit was leaning bonelessly against the back wall, looking as though she’d just jolted awake from nine floors of deep sleep. She had almost white bleached hair that exploded from her head. The butt of a holstered compact automatic pistol hiked her ghastly jacket above her hip. Her face was thin and the colour of scummy, forgotten coffee. Her eyes had an Asian, catlike slant. She’d made herself up by stabbing a tube of lipstick at her face, giving her mouth an arterial aspect. With effort she detached herself from the wall and stared dully at the skipper until he moved out of her way. She passed them and shuffled ghostly past the receptionist. She wore tiny embroidered slippers.
When the elevator doors closed the skipper hit the ground floor button and shook his head. “Dyke. A Statie.”
Tate noticed he was gnawing his lip and blinking rapidly at the crack of elevator door.
Across the street they made their way through the breakfast crowd and sat at the farthest booth. The skipper held two fingers up to the counterman. When coffee was delivered the skipper poured an inch of sugar into his cup. “You know anything about us? About our satellite? That’s okay. Nobody does. The Feds put in the infrastructure, the radios, the prosecutors, and the brainiacs who do the chemistry work. The Staties put in a few bodies and some cars. We put in the workers. Essentially, we handcuff pills. The Feds pick the target, we chase down the pills. We grab mutts if we have to, some labs, sometimes some dough. But what we want is pills, great fucking mounds of them. There’s not much overtime and mostly, I got to say, we’re Sleepy Hollow. We mostly work on ecstasy since some club kids croaked on it, but I haven’t sweated in months. We’ve been getting a lot of crank lately.”
“But sometimes we get to beat people up, right, lieutenant? Real police work?”
The skipper held up his palm. “Fuck that lieutenant stuff. Skipper’s okay in front of the troops, Gordie if we’re off campus. We get a lot of white trash guys. Some Chinamen come down from Canada with barrels of precursor chemicals or shipments. A few bikers. The main guy we’re looking for is Captain Cook, if he even exists.”
He held his cup up and the cook came down with a carafe and refilled it. The skipper poured in another inch of sugar. “I got to tell you also, there’s some dead meat in the squad. Feds use us for training their young guys. They’re okay, just stupid. Our guys dumped some slobs in. The Staties managed to dump one of their zombies in. That’s the black broad in the elevator. You heard of her? Brown?”
“Don’t think so. But I’ve been with the dogs in the weeds for a while.”
“Dyke. Psycho. Nobody’ll work with her. Djuna Fucking Brown. She’s sleepwalking but we can’t get rid of her. She’s a triple threat: black, a dyke, and a broad. The commissioners can’t sleep at night, the thought of her filing a suit. The mayor’s fucked now that she’s with us and if she goes off, having a black dyke broad screaming he’s a sexist, racist fuckpig to the media won’t look good. She’s his entire constituency, for Christ sakes. Even got some Chinaman in the eyes, you notice?”
“Yeah.” Tate made a nasty laugh. “Yeah, sure, I heard of her. She’s the one from up in the boondocks, took out her partner, right? Beat his gums in with a baton.”
“Yeah. Her. Fucking horror story, that mess was. He said some redskins off the Reserve grabb
ed him on the roadside and tuned him up. But word got out and nobody’d partner with her after. They shifted her around but guys took sick days, wives complained she was hitting on their hubbies. Fuck, as if. Anyway, when the Feds set up the Chemical Squad they asked out for bodies and the Staties must’ve thought they were in heaven. Two days later she’s seconded down here.”
“Tough chick, if she took out her partner.”
The skipper looked into the distance over Tate’s shoulder. His face took on a fearful fascination and in its nakedness Ray Tate saw the marks of the mean, feral boozer, of the paranoid, the frightened guy who could tell you how many minutes were left until he could hit happy hour. Two inches of sugar in ten minutes told the tale. The skipper blinked a couple of times. “How the fuck? I mean, you saw her. Weighs about fifty pounds. Beats a big strong cop so bad he cringes whenever a bird flies over his head?” He shook his head. “Fucked if I know. I’d ’a aced the bitch. Put her in the ground.”
Ray Tate warmed up the bullshit. “So, except for us, you and me, skip, how many real cops on board?”
“Not a lot, Ray. Not a lot. Mostly I got slobs waiting to die or get their papers.”
“But we’re doing real work, here, right? Chain up the bodies?”
“Oh, yeah, once in a while. Bodies and pills. Pills make a great press conference. Everybody’s happy. Somehow we manage to meet our projections. We’re doing okay. We haven’t got anything into our main target, this Captain Cook guy yet, if he even exists, but we’re doing okay.” He looked around. “Look, I gotta be straight with you, Ray, they want me to get the stuff on the dyke, put her to sleep once and for all. I know you’ve got troubles. That’s okay. You came by them honest, doing the job. No real cop’s gonna fuck you up for carrying the water. You’re safe here with us. I stand by my guys, especially my city guys.”
Ray Tate nodded and drained his coffee cup. He kept his face neutral. “I ’preciate that, skip. All I want is to get back in my blue suit and stripes and drive around the town, harassing citizens.”
They stood up. The skipper bounced some quarters on the table. “If that’s what you want, Ray, you’re on your way. First step, though, is we spike the dootchbag in the ground. I’m gonna partner you guys. You up for it?”
“Sure. That’ll let me see a close-up, see what I’m after here.”
“Good. I’ll memo her. I gotta keep an eye on her. She’s here then she’s gone. Working a source she says, but I think she’s got some real bad habits. Be nice to find them.”
* * *
Ray Tate was assigned a desk in the empty tactical room. He looked around for Djuna Brown but she was absent. He was staring at the duty roster on the wall, memorizing the names and emergency contact numbers, when the skipper came out of his office and said he had three guys off with on-duty injuries, two were out someplace doing something, and the others were sitting on a chemistry set in the east end. “The dyke said she’s out working, but she’s probably just licking something.” Tate saw he was gnawing his lip again.
“Who’s this Captain Cook guy?”
“Don’t know. That’s his product, the interlocking Cs. We grabbed up a bunch of them on some dealers, but no one’s copped where they came from.” The skipper pointed to the photograph of the pile of pink pills. “That’s the logo. One of the mutts said it stood for Captain Cook.”
“Could be Cook County, over Chicago way.”
“Naw, the Captain Cook thing has come up a couple of times since we first heard about it.”
“We got any intell on the guy?”
The skipper shook his head. “We don’t got dick. People are talking about him, though. The hydroponics guys took down a farm out in the badlands and somebody said it was Captain Cook’s. A crank lab in the hills, same thing: Captain Cook’s. Could just be a nickname, you know? Like he’s a cooker, so they call him Cook.” The skipper stared at the photograph of the pile of pink pills. “Fuck it, Ray. Take the day. Come in in the morning, at eight or nine, unless we give you a call out.”
“No problem, skip. But sign my notebook out, okay? I know you’re not going to put the hat on me, but if they come looking to rub admin shit on my head, I don’t want you caught in the middle, things go for a shit at the Swamp.”
“Good thinking, I appreciate that. We got to look out for each other,” the skipper said. “Leave your coordinates with Gloria at the desk.”
Chapter 3
Agatha Burns thought the people at Chanel might be a problem. “They already got the interlocked C’s,” she told Cornelius Cook, frowning with officious concern. “You use that stamp, Connie, they’re gonna come after you.”
Cornelius Cook used a flat razor to make a little nick in the flesh on her wrist. The skin was thin and pale. Her blond hair was dying by shades. Not a grey, exactly, but a leaching absence of colour. He licked the droplet of blood and put his finger tightly over the hole, feeling her pulse. It was slowing: she was coming down.
Agatha Burns said, “Six, that’s six, Connie. You filled your daily diet.”
Her wrist was a red blizzard of tiny nicks in various stages of repair. He thought her blood was starting to taste a little different, sour, less sweet. “I think if there’s a knock at the door, Ag, it won’t be the guys from trademark infringement. It’ll be a whole bunch of cops with dogs and shotguns, wearing white bunny suits and gas masks.”
“Still …” Agatha Burns took her wrist back. “Enough, Connie.”
He made his face sad. “I’ll worry about the finer things of commerce, you worry about those chicklets, okay? Harv’s coming by later and I want them bagged and counted. Harv’s making me a snowbank.”
Agatha Burns looked at the hundreds of bottles of cold pills scattered around the living room of her apartment. She hated dumping them out and separating and counting the chicklets. There were bottles of all sizes, all brought to the stairwell at the end of the hall and left by thieves and scammers who scoured the county’s drugstores. After dropping the bottles in the stairwell, the bandits walked down the hallway and tapped three times on Agatha Burns’s door. Agatha Burns hit speed-dial on her cellphone, let it ring once at the other end, then clicked off. A man sitting with a shotgun at the top of the stairwell walked down the stairs and checked the drop. He hit speed-dial on his cellphone and told the guy at the other end, who was sitting on a patio on the ground floor apartment with a big, unleashed Rottweiler, what the drop was. The man on the patio used a clothes peg to attach a couple of bills to the patio rail and waited for the delivery folks to pick it up. Sometimes he was feeling bored and he pegged the money to the Rot’s collar. Agatha Burns, watching the scene from her balcony, went down the hall to the stairwell and retrieved the bottles.
Connie Cook didn’t like being in the apartment. He didn’t like being in the building. He was a ghost, a status he carefully crafted. He saw himself as the elusive Mr. Big, the unseen hand. But he had urges to visit Agatha Burns, to eat a bit of her flesh and bleed her. He’d loved her and he’d hated her and would ultimately consume her for one reason or the other.
Like an artist, he signed his work: each ecstasy pill had two Cs, the first one backwards, interlocking with a C printed correctly. He had pressing machines with other logos. Apples, death’s head, RIP, hearts, stars, tombstones, USA. But he gave his interlocking Cs pride of place, monitoring its chemistry and production closely.
He glanced at his watch. “I gotta go, Aggie. Deal with a problem.” Another bunch of Chinatown cookers, Willy Wong’s boys, were jealous of his success and superb product and had taken to stamping the double C logo on their X. Complaints had been instant: the X pills crumbled and turned to paste the moment they hit saliva. There’d been overdoses, some deaths, because the Chinamen didn’t have his precision. Connie Cook’s henchmen had traced the stream of product back to some high school chemistry whizzes in east Chinatown.
Agatha Burns offered him another hit of her blood. “Stay a while, Connie. I don’t like being here alone al
l the time. I’m gonna miss you. I got to work late, getting the stuff done. Give me a tap, eh, get me through?”
Naked, she was all long limbs and deteriorating muscle tone. Her habit was voracious. He slid himself around and ran his finger up the tracks behind her knee. “You’re running out of vacancies, here, Ag. You’re getting all full up.” He felt a huge satisfaction but an unaccountable sadness, too. The loss of love.
“C’mon, Connie. I got work to do, I need a boost. Huh, huh?”
He sat up. She put her hand into his scant crotch, disappearing it under his flowing stomach. She didn’t notice any longer that he was a victim of almost morbid obesity — when he lay on her she was drowning in a fleshy sea of grunts and grinds. But he had the product and she had the need.
“You take a pack for it?”
“I don’t like that, Connie. It hurts.” She leaned forward to suck, hoping to allay his desires. He was a thruster and a biter and she feared both.
“I get to pack you or nothing,” he said, pushing her away, the ruthless businessman replacing the sad romantic. “You let me know before I leave.” He ran his hand over her ass, humming. He was just about done with her and, with a little regret he admitted, he started putting her lights out. “You hearing anything? About the Chinaman and the X? Maybe Harv or somebody’s helping them out?”
“I don’t get out. You know I don’t hear nothing about nobody. Will you be careful? If I do? If I let you?”
He stared at her ass. “You think Harv’s got funny?”
She tried to read him. If Harv was on the way out, maybe she could be on the way in. If she could get a job outside the apartment, it would make it more difficult for Captain Cook to pirate her ass. She could avoid him and stay high.
She kind of liked Harv. He was sad and tragic but she had her own need to think about. “Well, I dunno. Maybe. I guess. He’s in the rub and tugs lots. The girls make him put a towel over his face while they do him. Maybe, maybe he’s with the Chinamen. If I take the pack, can I move up? Move out of here, maybe go to the country?”
