Black Water Transit

by Carsten Stroud

  The point here is, the Two Five CO liked her anyway—who knows why—but it turned out to be important later. About where she came from or what her childhood had been like, the guys at the Two Five never heard a word from her, but her sheet from the academy had her down as born upstate, some little town called Carthage, and the space for the father’s name had deceased scrawled across it in big blunt letters, an angry scrawl, somebody pissed off just at the thought.

  Now the Two Five Sex Crimes Unit worked out of a puke-green and baby-shit yellow squad room at the top of a flight of wooden stairs in the back of the house. It had no windows, so it was always lit by two banks of fluorescent tubes. All the white folks looked lime-green and all the black folks looked purple. Sex Crimes at the Two Five was eight guys and two women, all white shields, a couple or more years out of the academy.

  Casey and her partner—a no-neck ex-linebacker named Levon Jamal, who had washed out of a Jets walk-on four years back—were on a domestic dispute at the Taft Houses when they got a 10-10 call just after ten o’clock, a male witness had just seen a young black girl get snatched, nine, he knew her, said her name was Shawana Coryell.

  He had watched her from his third-floor window as she walked along Paladino by the Wagner Houses, green dress, red Keds sneakers, and a baggy black silk windbreaker with a Yankees logo, lugging a huge sack of groceries, apparently on her way back from the corner market near Guvillier Park. It was a load no nine-year-old would have been asked to carry in a decent neighborhood, but her mother was doing a court-ordered tour in detox and her aunt was in a wheelchair, dying of HIV picked up off a grubby spike; her little brother Antowain had the flu and needed some baby aspirin, and the fridge was empty, and there was nobody else, so there you go.

  Anyway, she’s on the street and this is when two—maybe three—men in a rusted blue van, partial plates from Jersey, Whisky X ray Nevada something, ducked out of the traffic and pulled up alongside the little girl, and then—for some insane reason—Harlem kids are as street sharp as cats—little Shawana Coryell steps right up to the passenger side window. Ba-bing. She’s gone.

  Six seconds for the hook, maybe less. The blue van then bolts northbound before the witness can get out of his chair. But the witness, a security guard at Gondorff Jewels on 125th Street, got a good look at the whole thing, including the partial, and called it in to 911, where it was patched through to the Two Five, who handed it straight off to Casey Spandau.

  Casey and Levon moved on the 10-10 fast. While all the Two Five RMPs—radio motor patrol cars—hit the streets looking for the rolling blue van, she and Levon scooped the witness up at the Wagner project and took him straight into the station, where he described the takers as white males, the driver hard to see, a blur inside the tinted windshield, but the guy who snagged her, he had to lean out of the window, and the witness pegged him in the shaft of sunlight, a guy maybe in his early thirties, pale skin, almost an albino, buggy eyes, with shiny black hair hanging down past his shoulders.

  Casey and Levon got right back on the street and went north, looking hard for that partial marker, and Casey said later she knew it in her belly that they’d see it just around the next curve. She wanted that marker so hard it was hurting her throat. But they missed it. Somehow the Jersey marker flanks the cordon.

  It happens. They go to ground, or make it to one of the bridges. New York’s a big town. So now Casey and Levon go totally postal, they spend the next two hours ripping up the streets and shaking down the sex-trade crowd—what they liked to call a WHAM tour—winning hearts and minds—and by one o’clock they managed to connect with a baby-faced hustler named Two-Pack, looked to be maybe eleven but wasn’t, worked the short-eyes beat—the pedophile market—doing stuff that would make a hyena gag all along West 125th Street. Casey put the witness sketch of the guy with the long black hair down in front of Two-Pack and—bingo—they got a name out of him. Tony. Last name sounds like “gash.”

  Two-Pack paints a picture of a wiry little guy, late twenties, has an Italian accent, and it matches the witness ID right down to the waist-length black hair. Word is that Tony no-name was in and out of Rikers like a swinging gate and last year got sent upstate for a sex beef. Tony the Gash was known to be hanging with a pair of brothers whose names Two-Pack cannot remember, they’re heavy into the kiddie-sex circuit, always cruising for prospects on the Net or trading deeply twisted videos.

  “But never the real thing?” asked Levon.

  Two-Pack seems to think it over while Casey and the linebacker do silent inner work on their personal anger management issues in the front seat of the DT car.

  Finally, he says that the last time he was with Tony … guy was sort of a regular customer … maybe he heard Tony say something about nailing the real thing, about having “a fresh mango.”

  “What did he say, exactly?” says Casey.

  “Hard to say,” says Two-Pack. “I was upside down. I had my face up against the door. A lot was going on at the time.”

  “These brothers got names?”

  Two-Pack has no idea.

  “Where do we find this Tony mutt?”

  “You guys know a place in the Village, no nameplate, a walk-down in an alleyway off Gansevoort? Kind of a water sports club? Private?”

  They had heard about it.

  “Could be, you go there tonight, you look around, maybe you’ll see this guy there. Like I said, short, wiry, really pale, almost an albino, but has long black hair, never in a ponytail, likes to let it hang way down his back. Shiny black hair, looks blue under a street lamp. He’ll be in the back. Way in the back there. You won’t miss him.”

  Levon sat in the DT car—a detective car—this one is an unmarked dark-blue Crown Victoria—he stays there with Two-Pack, waiting while Casey, whose cell phone battery was dead, went off to make a phone call to the assistant district attorney assigned to Harlem and the Uptown Sex Crimes Task Force. The ADA was a woman named Veronica Stein, mid-twenties, Upper East Side background, black hair in a tricky razor cut, always dressed in pinstripe suits and sneakers, and Casey loved her because she hated sex offenders very deeply and always made a project out of the ones she could get a net around. Casey laid out the state of the case so far. A confidential informant with corroborative information that supports a warrant for the suspect.

  “What would that corroborative information be?” she asks.

  “Pattern of behavior. Verbally expressed a pedophile kidnap fantasy to the informant.” Casey knew that was weak.

  “Under what circumstances?” she asks.

  “Ah, under … during a sexual contact.”

  “So your informant is a hooker?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. What did you get out of NCIC?”

  They had run a search on the National Crime Information Computer database and got a hit on a Tony LoGascio—pronounced “lo-gashio”—DOB October 18, 1969, place called Agrigento, in Sicily. Naturalized in 1978. Got right into crime. Popped for Section 130 beefs, also a history of drugs and violence. Got a 120 for assault police too. His intake photo matched the witness ID eight points out of ten.

  “Not enough for an arrest warrant,” says the ADA.

  Casey thinks about case law.

  “How about something under Section 130 of the code?”

  “What have you got?”

  “Our CI says that this LoGascio guy had consensual sodomy with him last week.”

  “Your CI under seventeen?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You say LoGascio has a date of birth of October eighteenth, 1969? He’s thirty-one, then. So that’s a class E felony. Will your CI support the charge? Lay an information?”

  “Yes. If I tell him to.”

  “We’ll run it by a judge,” says Veronica Stein. “Where’ll you be?”

  Casey says she and Levon will go downtown and locate the place on Gansevoort, and they’ll get the snitch to lay the information in front of the duty desk at the Sixth and she’ll fax Stein
the sheets. They’ll wait for Stein’s call at the Sixth Precinct on West Tenth, phone number there is 741-4811. Okay? Okay.

  Then on the way downtown, the Sex Crimes Unit CO from the Two Five gets on the radio to say that Shawana Coryell has been found and would Casey or Levon call him on a land line. Casey pulled over at Third and Forty-ninth and made the call from a booth inside Smith and Wollensky. She listened to the CO as he described the condition of the victim. What had been done. The damage. Little Shawana Coryell would live, but her childhood was now officially over.

  Back in the cruiser, Levon gives her a look. She sends it back and he sighs. They go down to the Sixth Precinct and wait. Thirty-seven minutes later the phone rings at the desk sergeant’s post.

  It’s Stein. They have the warrant.

  ALBANY

  NEW YORK STATE

  1300 HOURS

  Earlier the same day, at around the same hour that Casey and Levon first connected with Two-Pack down in Harlem, a few miles down the Hudson from Albany, in a place called Castleton, on one of those shining days where the trees are all greened out and a smoky haze is drifting in the air, making everything glow like you were seeing it through stained glass, we’re at the Frontenac Hotel, right on the river, in an old wood-paneled room called the Long Bar, with a man named Jack Vermillion, a sort of western look to him: deep lines around the eyes, a white cowhand mustache, his hair white, wears it long and brushed back, big chest, and a flat belly like a drumhead.

  On this particular day he’s wearing a pair of creased blue jeans, a white T-shirt, blue blazer, light-brown cowboy boots. He’s here with Raleigh “Creek” Johnson, his business partner, they’re leaning back in those big leather sofas with the brass buttons stuck all over them, mahogany paneling on the walls, rose glass shades, a tall and frosty waitress with hair like the meringue on a lemon pie. What he’s doing, he’s listening to an aerodynamic little mook named Martin Glazer.

  Jack is staring at Martin Glazer, at these three guys from Galitzine Sheng and Munro, this private investment bank from down on Wall Street, here to make a pitch to take over the employee pension fund, manage it better, make it even fatter—he’s watching them over the marble coffee table, over the coffee cups and heavy glasses full of single-malt scotch, thinking—these three guys remind him of something. But he can’t figure what. He can’t quite get the answer. Martin Glazer is prosing on about “P-and-E ratio” and “no-load mutuals” with his rounded-off head and his hair gelled right back and his soft brown eyes behind the wire frames and his weird habit of barking out critical statistics in short sharp yelps.

  His assistants, the veeps, Kuhlman and Bern, little goatees, crew cuts like boot camp pukes, only they’re in two-thousand-dollar Armani suits, wing tips wider than shovel blades, they’re sitting up ramrod straight with tumblers of Glenfiddich in their hands and staring at him so hard that Jack feels he ought to throw them a—and then Jack gets it.

  Seals.

  They look like harbor seals.

  He grins to himself at the picture. Glazer sees this, it puzzles him, he hesitates, and then he starts in again. Yap yap. Bark bark. The services they offer … how they can make Black Water Transit a better company … growth funds … employee share plans … payroll deductions … global investment management … dotcoms … the NASDAQ … operational streamlining … Jack finds he has to work very hard just to follow the man.

  He cares, he knows this is important, he wants the deal. Black Water Transit has over eighteen hundred employees. Dockworkers, drivers, barge pilots, warehouse staff, office people. He had big trouble with the Teamsters last year, a union takeover bid, very aggressive, and only got out of it by offering his employees, who were all market-struck just like the rest of the country, a great pension package and a chance to make regular stock investments through a payroll deduction plan. Out of nowhere, while he was still thinking about this project but doing nothing solid about it, he gets a call from Galitzine Sheng and Munro, offering exactly that kind of pension fund service.

  Jack figured somebody on the inside had given them a heads-up, but he could never find out who. It didn’t seem to matter. Now they were here at the Frontenac and Glazer was making an impressive pitch.

  It looks like a great business opportunity. Good for the workers, good for Black Water Transit, even good for Jack and his only partner, Creek Johnson, since they would also share in the market investment program.

  He stretches, looks left at Creek, who seems to be taking in Glazer’s pitch with a wary look in his watery blue eyes, his hands folded across his big belly. He’s saying nothing, his thin blond hair is combed back, his skin is sunburned from the golf course. Around his eyes Jack can see a fan of white lines on the tanned skin. His hands are bumpy and knotted and the veins in his thick forearms are bulging. Creek always had good hands for work. Not that he ever used them.

  Creek had been real active in Black Water Transit Systems in the early years after Vietnam, he’d drive all day and load all night, a bear for the heavy work. But then he got lazy. Lately it seemed to Jack that Creek had spent most of the last ten years cheering him on from the nineteenth hole, while Jack built Black Water Transit from a two-truck outfit hauling clean fill out of Rochester all the way up to the point where they’re both sitting here listening to Martin Glazer tell them how Galitzine Sheng and Munro can make their employees rich.

  Well, that was okay with Jack, Creek being a little to the left of the big picture, because Jack wasn’t a man who had a strong need to consult with anybody. Black Water Transit was totally private, owned by just the two of them, no shares, no IPOs, no public involvement at all—other than the federal regs he had to live with—and that was how it was going to stay if Jack had anything to say about it. Creek had effectively retired from the day-to-day operations of the company and was here mainly because Jack liked him and wanted him to have a say in the matter.

  Creek had shown up for this meet in tan Dockers and a pink polo shirt, white socks and Sperry Top-Siders, which indicated just how seriously he was taking this whole proposition. Has his cleats and his clubs in the trunk, Jack figured. Creek will be on the links as soon as this is over.

  Glazer’s voice is like a busy signal, like a very stupid bee bumping into a window over and over again, and in a little while Jack begins to drift. He looks out the leaded-glass window at the big willows on the river’s edge, they’re swaying in a summer wind off the river, the long narrow leaves showing silvery undersides, and he gets this image in his head, the way he used to see big schools of amberjack on those gunship sweeps down from Soc Trang. From a thousand feet up they looked like silver ribbons in the blue water. This is in the South China Sea, maybe a mile off the Ca Mau Point, southern tip of Vietnam. Anyway, Glazer’s into an aria now. Jack’s eyes begin to close.

  “So what do you think?” somebody asks him.

  He’s thinking about the Corps, Parris Island, Camp Lejeune, the sand ticks they had there, a month at Quantico, and then the 121st Helicopter Assault Team. RVN. Thirty-five years ago? Couldn’t be. Otts. Gorman, the door gunner … who the hell was—

  “Mr. Vermillion?”

  Jack came back, blinked at them all.

  Damn, he thinks. This won’t do.

  He shakes his head, sits up straight, puts his glass down hard.

  “Sorry … the heat.”

  “It is warm,” said Glazer, his eyes flat as little pebbles. There was something in there, and Jack considered it. Glazer was a touchy guy, had a mean streak. A guy to watch.

  Creek looked at Jack and grinned at Glazer.

  “Jackson here, he’s old. He needs his nap,” said Creek.

  “I like it, Mr. Glazer,” said Jack.

  “We like it,” said Creek, smiling the smile he had for people he didn’t like very much but had to be nice to anyway.

  “We do,” said Jack. “I think we should do this thing.”

  “So do I,” said Creek.

  “Mr. Vermillion, I can’t te
ll you how delighted we all are. This is going to be a very productive enterprise. I can assure you and your employees that no matter what your questions, we—all of us at Galitzine Sheng and Munro—are ready to help at any stage of the process. You won’t regret this decision. It was the smart thing to do. In the current job market, keeping good employees happy and prosperous is a smart business move. You’ll never regret it. We can make this pension fund a powerful instrument for Black Water Transit, for your people, even for you and your partner.”

  Jack smiled. Creek stood up. Glazer looked at his veeps.

  “Gentlemen?”

  The three of them rose together. The leather couch sighed. Big smiles and meaningful eye contact all around. Firm manly handshakes from the veeps.

  “You take all the time you need, Mr. Vermillion.”

  “Call me Jack.”

  “Jack.”

  “Call me Creek,” said Creek.

  Glazer bobbed his seal head. Highlights moved across his polished cheeks. His wire frames glittered with gold light.

  “Please call me Martin.”

  “I will, Martin,” said Creek.

  He turned to Jack, winked elaborately, did his trademark W. C. Fields finger twizzle.

  “Walk with me, Jackson.”

  They left the Wall Street boys packing up their papers and poking at their Palm Pilots, the three of them chirping at each other, birds on a wire. The teak-lined hallway of the Frontenac was paved with flat granite blocks and the sunlight was so strong outside that the trees and the cars in the parking lot were bleached, colorless. The cicadas were droning and the air filled with drifting seed pods from a stand of cottonwoods. The Hudson was wide and mud-brown, but the sun on the water sparkled in a broad golden arc.