by Lee Lamothe
He’d reflect everything in the mirror of Jerry ripping off the money.
He’d ask himself, Why would Jerry do something that didn’t get him the dough?
He’d ask himself, Why would Jerry use Petey to rip eight-thousand? Why would Jerry aerate his summer Mercedes, burn down the stash house, set up Abner Hussey in his red bikini underwear? How would he profit by setting up Julia Gurr to get snaffled up in Spicetown and put through for a week? To what end? She wasn’t carrying powder or dough. It made no sense because it made no profit.
Alone in the diner, Jerry Kelly reflected on Julia Gurr.
Setting her up with the evil meanies in Spicetown hadn’t been necessary or even profitable. Before Spicetown she’d meant nothing to Jerry Kelly. She was just a way to kick a jackboot of anarchy into Markowitz’s nuts. But things went a little wrong. Jerry Kelly, who never desired anything, began to find her desirable, post-Spicetown. Maybe, just maybe, even loveable.
When one of the Spicetown thugs, after kicking her out of the van, told him all the good details, Jerry Kelly, who had been watching a television program about alligators taking their prey underwater where they lodged them in little caverns until they rotted enough to pull the flesh apart, shrugged. The guy mentioned someone powdering Julia Gurr’s cheek with a baseball bat and Jerry Kelly shrugged again. It wasn’t the kind of thing you ordered like a meal, hold the MSG or getting salad dressing on the side. You had to allow, good or bad, for individual creativity. It was the spark at the root of anarchy.
But when she returned with Marko from out west, things changed. She cringed and moped. He began desiring her after she wasn’t so perfect. Her damaged face gave her a knock-around appearance that he found engaging; her fall into filthy life began to make her tasty to him.
And, of course, he’d enjoyed the endless amusement when she moved in with Marko, only to find Jerry a-hover, lurking silently, unblinkingly, a ghostly knowing shadow that reminded her of Spicetown, but in a way she never understood.
When she pissed herself on Marko’s carpet one night, well, that was that. It was love. He was smitten.
She was nearly ready. A little more dirt on her and she’d be well marinated.
Chapter 17
Jim Cash whistled them down as they passed by his office. “Kids, I need a continuation, bring your notes and anything else you’ve got for me.”
Ray Tate went in while Djuna Brown went to their office for the case file. He collapsed in a chair and yawned. His Hawaiian shirt was wrinkled and creased as though he’d slept in it. “These fucking guys, boss. They’re here, they’re there. They’re gone.”
“This is shaping into a good one, Ray. The brass up at the Jank is taking an interest. I need to give them something, anything, but if you got a good strong lead we’ll keep it to ourselves. They might want to put a headquarters inspector on it, exclusively. One of their guys. Can’t have that, man. No way he’ll deal you a trip back to Paris. Probably he won’t even try to keep you guys out of jail.”
Ray Tate blearily stretched. He didn’t believe or disbelieve any of it. There was a managerial tactic, a subtle way to apply pressure, creating a scenario of us-against-them. He didn’t mind. He’d had worse bosses than the Cashman and their tactics were a lot more brutal.
Djuna Brown came in with a sheaf of papers. She wore a fresh batik tank top and a gypsy skirt. Her sparkly slippers were threaded with gold. Her hair was spiked and there were smudges under her eyes. She yawned back at Ray Tate. “Busy night, boss.”
“Ray was telling me. I just told him, so I’ll tell you. I think they’re going to try to pirate this out from under us up at the Jank. We’ve got to move. We’ve got to get so far ahead that replacing us will jeopardize the whole thing. So, tell me where we at?”
Ray Tate let Djuna Brown deliver the good news. She said: “We think we got the shape-out. The breakout guy, the blond mutt that Marko here …” she put a picture of Markowitz on the desk, “… met up with at the Sparrow. Interesting guy, this guy.” She put a photograph of Bobby Preston beside Markowitz’s. “He’s a border rat.” Next, she added a photograph of Julia Gurr. “And this chick, is his ex-wife. She’s a major currency manipulator. She’s in a lot of the surveillance photographs with Markowitz.” She tapped each photograph in turn. “Marko’s got a shitload of dough. Gurr’s a money manipulator. Preston’s the guy with the border channels. These three, for sure. Maybe some others, this Jerry Kelly guy among them, but these are the three. One, two, three.”
“Ray says you lost him, the border rat.”
“Yeah, that was bad shit. Twice in a row. This guy’s a pro. He leaves the restaurant through the back, she waits a while with his coat, then takes a cab four blocks to his place. Goes in. Lights are on until two a.m., they were on when we left.”
“So, you’re thinking, what?”
“I’m thinking,” Djuna Brown said, “we’re thinking, we’re in the right place at the right time. First you got Marko getting pressured by the Colombians. They’ve burned some property he owned, they aired out his car, they want their dough. Who knows what else they’ve done to him that we haven’t heard about? According to our little friend, Abner Hussey, Marko’s got the dough but he can’t move it because there’s too much of it in small denominations. That’s why we’re seizing little fishes, tens and twenties. Dunno why Marko didn’t already boil it. I mean, he’s got a good money manipulator right there in half the pictures, Julia Gurr. And he’s got his old pal from the neighbourhood, Bobby Preston, who knows how to penetrate the border. I guess the pressure from the Colombian guy, Pavlov —”
Ray Tate said, “Pavo.” He gazed at her fondly and got a winning smile in return.
“Whaaaatevs. Him. Marko’s getting this pressure from Pavo and now he’s gotta use all his resources. So, the meeting at the Sparrow diner, then Gurr hooking up with Preston. They’re gonna go, boss, I can feel it.”
“Okay, good, that’s good shit. I can parlay that.” He made some notes on a pad. “I have to make it look good, but not so good that the bosses … You know? We’ll have to make it look like we’re still in the preliminary, setup phase. By the time they pirate us, we’re already done. What do you need?”
Djuna Brown looked at Ray Tate. He shrugged. “Teams. Preston’s place, for sure, we’ve put two of them in there. Marko’s condo. We don’t got an addie on Julia Gurr yet, but when we do, we’ll need somebody set up over there.”
“Right, give me the addresses for Preston and Markowitz and I’ll get some ISS clowns out.”
“On that ISS thing,” Djuna Brown said, “see if you can get Joey Jeff Watson and his partner. They’re cool, they know the players.”
“Done. And? What’re you guys going to be doing?”
“I’m thinking,” Ray Tate said, “that we go back into the files. We take them apart and find someone who knows who’s who in the zoo. If Marko’s got as much money as Hussey says, they’re going to need some staffing. There’s a lot of pictures of associates in the files. We squeeze someone until we get somebody to give us a head’s up.”
They made a list of names from the back of each photograph. There weren’t many, most were unknown individuals. None of the subjects looked to be much above street level. Several looked below street level. Djuna Brown doubted most of them had actual residences.
“They’re skels and skanks. Most no-fixed addies.” She picked up the photograph of the man being kicked in the head by Jerry Kelly. “But this guy, here, getting his bouffant shaped. He’s dressed a little better.” Djuna Brown leaned her face close to the photograph. “Not much, but that’s a serious pair of boots he’s got on and he’s at least shaved.” She flipped the photograph and read off, “Gary Dorset. Maybe he’s pissed that Jerry kicked the shit out of him, maybe he’ll talk to us.” She picked up the phone, called the duty desk, read off the badge number of the photographer, then tracked him down at Intelligence.
Ray Tate took the long way to the address listed for Gary
Dorset. As he drove he fiddled with the radio, going from Sector band to Sector band, listening to the calls, hoping for something to respond to.
“You missed it, eh, Ray? When we were away? The streets. Riding the radio?”
“Felt weird, sometimes, I gotta admit. No gun, no reason to be anyplace. A couple of times I went down to the Internet room and rang up the newspapers, make sure something hadn’t happened I should know about.”
“Me too. Sometimes I started thinking about Indian Country, how bad things might be up there for them now.” As a State Police sergeant who’d put a bad guy into the ground she had cop weight, even in Indian Country. The knuckle draggers and farm boys on her roster could hate her for being a tiny woman, for being black, for having rank, but they couldn’t disobey her. Wiping someone’s shadow off the wall brought its own credibility. When she was up there she stopped the night rodeos where the Natives were rounded up, hogtied, and thumped. She stopped them liquoring up teenage girls and taking them in the bush. But then she’d abandoned them and gone back to the city to work a task force with Ray Tate, went nuts, and fucked off to Paris.
While Ray Tate had his streets and appreciation for the America of hope, she had her Indian Country and an angry sadness for an America that left people isolated, marginalized, victimized.
To change the stream of their thoughts, she said, “So, Gary Michael Dorset, getting his head kicked in, is twenty-three, five foot eight, one fifty-five, brown and brown. Dagger tats on his forearms. Done for meth, done for possession, possession, and possession, the last possession for an unregistered. He was taken by the gang task force sitting in a bar in Tin Town, wearing a bulletproof vest and a nine mil in a shoulder holster. He said it was very hard to get served in the place so he came prepared to alert a waiter to his needs. A planner, our Mr. Dorset.”
“He didn’t plan too good that night on the town with Jerry Fucking Kelly. Forgot to wear a football helmet.”
“Seems so. The guy at gangs said Dorset is an up-and-comer, ran with a street gang until about a year ago, then turned up with Kelly.” She made an unsignalled illegal left off Erie and headed east serenely in a cloud of blaring horns.
“How come the guys on surveillance didn’t jump in when Jerry was tuning Dorset up?”
She laughed. “I asked the gang guy that. I said, ‘How come you didn’t jump in, help out?’ He said, ‘Oh, Jerry was doing okay, didn’t need any help.’” She smoothly ran around the left-hand side of a city bus and made a wide right hand turn in front of it. The bus driver let loose a trio of loud honks. Djuna Brown laughed and hung him the finger. “The gang guy said they heard Dorset said something outrageous, kind of like, Hey, nice night. And Crazy Jerry just went off.”
“Jerry Fucking Kelly, he doesn’t have to take that kind of lip, I guess.” Ray Tate laughed. He felt free and loose. He saw the case opening and he saw Paris not far down the road. “Our Jerry-boy’s a stern taskmaster.”
“The gang guy said Gary lives with a chick, Mona Smith. Eighteen, five-nine, black and brown, hooking and hooking.” She peered at an address. “Here, this one.”
They were on a grim one-way block in south Tin Town. All the houses on one side were single-floor with peeling shingles. It looked as though the garbage hadn’t been picked up for a month. On the opposite side of the street were looming abandoned factories with shattered windows behind hoarding that had collapsed in on itself. “Sixth house back with the fridge and crap on the lawn.”
“He’s got a dog. Ten bucks, Djun’. Poodles don’t count, dogs that sleep in a teacup don’t count. At least one motherfucker with a chain around his neck.”
She looked up and down the street. Chain-link fencing, appliances on porches and lawns, windows covered with bed sheets, a couple of Confederate flags, rusted beaters with For Sale signs in the windshields, untended dead lawns. “No bet,” she said.
He folded the envelope of photographs and tucked it into his belt under the tail of his shirt. They walked up the sidewalk scoping the houses and the parked cars, the stacks of waste and garbage at the curb. Handmade posters taped or stapled on the telephone poles showed appliances for sale, cheap babysitting services, several missing cats and dogs. There were a lot of photocopied pictures of missing pets. It looked like a tough area for animals.
The porch was made of new bright unpainted wood with a sagging chesterfield under a patchy coverlet at one end and an upside down plastic milk carton with a hubcap full of cigarette butts on it. At the other end two chairs with linoleum seats and chrome legs faced each other. There were hundreds of dents in the legs of the chair; the linoleum had been badly ripped, revealing tufts of brown filler over a plywood base. Ray Tate looked at the chesterfield, then lifted the coverlet: the wooden legs of the chesterfield were splintered. He held up a finger.
Djuna Brown watched him, her fist raised up to knock. Ray Tate whispered to her to wait and went back down the steps. At the side of the house the basement windows were covered with thick cloudy plastic sheeting. He put his nose to the edge of a window and sniffed. He put his ear there, then went to the rear of the house. The yard was fenced higher than the municipal limit; the gate was well-made and firmly set to the fence and was secured with a stainless steel padlock. He pulled himself up and looked over into the yard: well-trimmed grass except for what looked like a running track worn into the outside edges in a circle. No plants or shrubs. The lock to the side door of the house was new and shiny. He went back to the front.
It was a shotgun house and through the window he could see a woman at the other end was standing side-on, doing dishes at a sink. She was naked from the waist up and wore a black leather full-face mask with chrome studding. She had long blond hair at odds with the medium brown of her skin.
Ray Tate told Djuna Brown: “We have to get her out of there. We’re not going in.” He pointed at the marks on the chair legs. “Biters. Windows smell of dog shit. There’s a running track around the backyard and it sounds like a conveyor belt in the basement. And those missing animal posters. I’ve seen this before. Fighting dogs.”
He took his gun from his ankle holster and held it under the flap of his shirt. He reached past her and pounded on the door. “Stay a little behind me. But if Scooby Doo answers, it’s every man for herself.”
She was making a small nervous laugh and had her hand on her gun when a woman’s voice plaintively called out, “What?”
Ray Tate played off the tension in her voice. “I’ll be the asshole, you do the interview.” He pounded on the door several times and kicked at the wood. “Mona, open up. Police police police police.”
A whining voice from inside said, “You got the wrong place?” Claws scrabbled against the other side of the door. “Maybe you should go down the street, eh? They’re doin’ stuff, not me.”
“We’re here for Gary. Open it up, Mona, and come out. Leave the dogs inside. I see a dog, it’s going to go out of there through the toilet pipe.”
“Gary’s not here?” Her voice rose into questions. Claws scrabbled harder at the inside of the door. “Come back, like, tomorrow?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Open the fuck up.” He began kicking again.
“What I do? What I do?”
She began disengaging locks, chattering that she didn’t do nothing, Gary didn’t do nothing, nobody no place did nothing and if they did, it wasn’t her fault, someone made her do it? Every statement was a question, as if needing the verification. Unmasked, her face appeared over a chain across the opening, her huge eyes going from Ray Tate to Djuna Brown and back again. She was tall, stunning, perfect, but he could see the blond hair had the black skid mark of an old bad dye job down the centre. “Who you guys?”
“Mona, quit fucking around. Get out here and leave the pooches inside. I see a pooch and you’re going to be dog food.”
“I gotta get something on.”
“Get it fast. Remember, no dogs, right? You got that, Mona? No dogs?”
“Yes. Yes
, no dogs.” She seemed to be memorizing it. “Okay? No dogs?” She closed the door and the locks re-engaged.
“She sounds pretty fucked, Ray.”
He saw she looked wobbly. Dealing with people wasn’t the same as counting cash. “We’ll just play her loose, see what she’s got. We’re not going to find Gary here, I don’t think. This might be a wash.”
They heard the locks again and Mona peeked out over the chain and seemed surprised that they were still there. She closed the door, the chain rattled, and she limped out saying, “No, Artie, no …” and pushing her foot at a growling snout trying to get past her. She wore saggy cotton shorts and a man’s sleeveless denim shirt, loose and fastened with a single button at the midriff. The leather mask had left creases on her face.
Ray Tate kept his eyes on the dog’s efforts, determined to park one in its head, until she got out and onto the porch and closed it in behind her.
Djuna Brown sucked in air. Mona’s legs were an array of deep scratches and bite marks. Some seemed to be festering. A bloodstained bandage had been secured to her left calf with a piece of duct tape. She had bruises up and down both arms. Only her face was unmarred and it was blankly beautiful. The bones on her face were high and her cheeks deep. A blond young Cher, Djuna Brown thought, but she’s more beautiful than Cher ever was on her best day.
Djuna Brown went with instinct and put her hand on Mona’s shoulder. She said, “Jesus, what … Hon’, who did that to you?”
“The dogs. It’s the dogs, they like to … play?”
“Sure, Mona.” Ray Tate looked at the bruises. “Fuck, girl, you must’ve pissed somebody off.”
Mona hung her head and walked past him to the chesterfield. She fished a long butt from the ashtray and looked for a light. Ray Tate ignored her and sat his ass against the porch railing and lit himself a cigarette.
“What you want Gary for? We didn’t do nothing.” She looked at the cigarette in her fingers as if she expected it to light itself.
