Black Water Transit

by Carsten Stroud

  By the time they rolled down the long driveway to the portcullis that sealed off the prisoners’ section, the bruises on his wrists had changed from bright pink to deep purple and the pain had settled down into a dull throbbing ache that he could, with a concentrated effort, almost manage to ignore.

  The guards changed that situation for the worse when they dragged him out of the transport van by his wrist shackles thirty seconds later, forced him to bend over and step across the connecting chain between them, pulled him back upright with a jerk, twisted his arms up behind his back so hard he felt his sinews cracking, and then frog-marched him up a flight of slick concrete stairs under a bank of blue-white fluorescent lights. He fell twice on the way up the stairs, tripping over his ankle chains, which they seemed to enjoy.

  PEEKSKILL, NEW YORK

  1150 HOURS

  While Jack Vermillion was being processed at the Albany holding cells, Nicky Cicero and Casey Spandau were walking down a darkened hallway on the third floor of the east wing of the Sisters of Providence Palliative Care Clinic in Peekskill, New York. They were following a nun in a gray habit that flowed out around her like gauze curtains blowing in a wind from the sea.

  Her slippers made a whispering sound on the terrazzo flooring. She moved in and out of the circles of light coming from the ceiling fixtures, and Casey Spandau, her mind weighed down with grief and a dreadful fear of what might be coming, concentrated on the way the light changed across the nun’s narrow shoulders and the way it rippled along the material of her habit.

  As they passed by open rooms, she could see sleeping forms of patients in dimly lit rooms, hooked to machines and connected to monitors. Now and then there’d be a parent or a relative at the bedside, a pale face floating in the half-light, staring upward, counting ceiling tiles and heartbeats.

  Nicky was carrying a new Beanie Baby named Halo. He’d stopped at a mall in the suburbs of Peekskill and bought it without much in the way of explanation to Casey, other than to say it was for a relative of Jimmy Rock’s.

  “What relative?” Casey had asked, but Nicky shook his head gently and refused to say anything else. Halo was a white angel bear and had a silver ring floating above her head.

  They reached the door to the room where Jimmy Rock’s “relative” was staying. The nun, whose name was Sister Mary Angelus, turned at the door. Light glimmered on her narrow gold-framed glasses. Her wimple was very tight across her forehead and her face seemed almost an animated mask. Her skin looked as soft as whipped cream, and she had a faint scent of sandalwood.

  “She has been sleeping very well, Officer Cicero. She has some bedsores, but we’ve been taking care of them. They can’t be helped, you know. We try to ease them.”

  “I know, Sister,” said Nicky. “Don’t worry.”

  “Will either of you want some tea?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Then I’ll be down the hall. If you need me, you just press that little button by the bedside table. I’m informed that Mr. Rule has passed away?”

  “Yes,” said Nicky.

  “That’s very sad. Was it sudden? I wasn’t aware he was ill.”

  “It was very sudden,” said Nicky. “No one was expecting it.”

  Sister Mary Angelus studied their faces. The light on her face made two reflective pools out of the lenses of her glasses. Her mouth was thin and her lips very pale.

  “He was a police officer?”

  “Yes. He was.”

  “Was his death related to that?”

  “Yes.”

  “We heard of a confrontation in New York City last night. Four men were killed. One man gravely wounded. Terrible. Such a terrible time. So much grief in one family. So much violence. So much sorrow and loss. Mr. Rule was a good man.”

  “Makes you wonder where God was in all of it,” said Casey. Sister Mary Angelus looked at her calmly.

  “God is with all of us. But He does not create evil. Evil is in the world. Do not imagine that evil things come upon us because God allows it or wishes it. That makes the world a very dark place. You must not allow your hatred of evil things to make you hateful.”

  “Yes. Of course,” said Casey, an age-old reflex of obedience suddenly surfacing, to her own surprise.

  Sister Mary Angelus smiled at her, turned, and floated away down the hall. Casey put out a hand and stopped Nicky as he reached for the doorknob. Nicky waited, feeling cruel and more than a little ashamed.

  “Nicky, what’s this supposed to do for me?”

  “Vince wanted you to meet this person.”

  “Why you? Why do you have to be the one to show me?”

  “Why me? I don’t know. I’m here. The guy has his ways.”

  “Do you know who’s in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever been here before?”

  “No. Vince … filled me in.”

  “This is a palliative care center. That means a place for dying people to get comfort. Is the person in there dying?”

  “They don’t know.”

  “Nicky, this is just plain mean.”

  “Yeah. It is. You don’t have to go inside.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah. I think I am.”

  Casey found her eyes were filling up and her chest was hurting.

  “Okay. Goddammit. Okay. I’m ready.”

  Nicky paused, steadied his breathing, and made himself calm. Then he turned and went into the room, and Casey followed him.

  A small child lay on the hospital bed, bathed in an amber glow from a light clipped to the headboard, the pale-yellow sheets pulled up to her shoulders. She was on her right side and seemed to be curled up around a pillow. She was tiny, her limbs thin, the skin over them like parchment. A tracery of blue veins pulsed under the skin at her temple.

  Her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open. Her blonde hair was clipped short and brushed back from her face. A breathing tube projected from her throat, and the machine in the corner huffed and wheezed in a slow cadenced cycle. Above the bed, a monitor showed five glowing green lines pulsing on a black scale. Her right hand was open and underneath it was a Beanie Baby.

  Casey stepped around Nicky and stood by the bed, looking down at the sleeping child. She glanced around the room. It was filled with Beanie Babies. And flowers, and games, and a Spice Girls poster, and a South Park poster. She looked at Nicky.

  “She’s his daughter?”

  “Yes. Her name is Morgan.”

  “She’s in a coma.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. Vince said Jimmy Rock came up here all the time. He was trying to guess what his little girl would be like if she was walking and talking. He figured she’d be into Beanie Babies.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Six.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She’d been playing in a schoolyard at Pope Pius the Tenth, up in White Plains. A six-pack of juveniles stoned on glue lit up the schoolyard with a stolen tool. Just for a jolt. A thirty-two-caliber round caught her in the back of the head. On the jungle gym. She was three years old. Apparently Jimmy Rock’s wife saw it all happen. Couldn’t handle it. She split on both of them a year later. Living in Oregon now. Refuses all contact. The shooters were caught. The oldest was fifteen.”

  “The shooters. They were all black, am I right?”

  “Oh yeah. Actually, it was an all-black cast. Just a coincidence, but it made things worse for Jimmy Rock. According to Vince, I mean the way he told it to me, a black female PD cited fetal alcohol syndrome and crack-baby syndrome and early childhood abuse and even black rage in front of a black female judge in youth court, and the court-appointed social worker—also black—did a home environment study and she agreed with the PD and the PD talked to the ADA—also black—the little shits took a plea for involuntary manslaughter and pulled their time at a work farm up in the Adirondacks, where they learned valuable life skills like how to make cedar-shake birdhouses and how to tell your dec
iduous trees from your coniferous. Most of them were back on the street in a year.”

  “I see.”

  “Vince said one was already a daddy. One was already dead.”

  “And that’s why Rule hates—why he hated—all black people?”

  “Short answer would be yes.”

  There was nothing to say to that. Casey stood and watched the breathing tube where it entered the little girl’s throat; it was misted and droplets of clear water ran down the inside of the tube. The machine pumped and whirred and chuffed and the five green lines on the monitor blipped in a steady rhythm. Casey knelt down at the side of the bed and leaned in close to the child. She smelled of soap and Nivea cream and Penaten lotion. Nicky came over and handed her the Beanie Baby named Halo, and she replaced the Beanie Baby under her hand with the new one.

  “Her name is Halo,” she said in a whisper. “She’s a bear.”

  She watched her face the way a fisherman watches a pool of water, alert to a ripple or a flicker of movement. After a while Casey’s right knee began to tremble, so she sat down on the chair and leaned on the edge of the bed, and after a long time the light changed in the room and Casey and Nicky looked up at the window, at the sun beginning a long slow slide into the western skyline, far past the midway point of a long and terrible day, and Morgan Rule knew none of it. Nicky touched Casey’s shoulder.

  “Come on, Casey. It’s almost two. Time to go.”

  Casey stood up shakily, ran the tips of her fingers over the child’s face, and walked out of the room behind Nicky Cicero, closing the door softly behind her, although she knew that no sound on this earth was going to wake that little girl. On the way back down the hall, Casey put a hand on Nicky’s arm and stopped him by the exit doors.

  “Who’s responsible for her now?”

  “Vince says the Detectives’ Endowment people will cover all her costs. And Jimmy Rock was insured.”

  “I know. But who will … take care of her?”

  Nicky shook his head. “The nuns, I guess.”

  “They going to look for her mother?”

  “They called her. She hung up on them.”

  “What was I supposed to learn from this, Nicky?”

  “Jesus, Casey. I don’t know. What did you learn?”

  “I guess I learned why Jimmy Rock was such a good hater.”

  “Yeah. He was. So you and he had a lot in common, then.”

  Casey pushed through the exit doors without looking back. When they got outside, it was as if somebody had left the oven door open. They walked in the narrow shadow of the rambling Victorian pile until they reached the parking lot. Nicky had parked the 509 unit under a stand of willows at the far end of the lot. They could see the shattered glass around the driver’s window from fifty feet away. It lay all around the left side of the car, glittering in the hard light of a match-head sun.

  “Oh Christ,” said Nicky, breaking into a run. Casey followed, her hand on the service Glock she wore on her belt under her suit jacket. As she came forward she studied every car in the lot. The ones without tinted windows looked empty. The others, it was impossible to say. Nicky was at the driver’s door now. He slammed the roof and the gypsy cab bounced on its springs. A section of glass broke loose and dropped to the ground at his feet.

  “Goddamn! Goddamnit!”

  “Very helpful, Nicky. What’s missing?”

  They checked out the inside of the cab. It had been effectively rifled by someone in a hurry. The glovebox lid had been jimmied open, the storage box on the floor cracked and looted. Bits of paper and shards of broken plastic littered the interior. Broken glass lay all over the front seat. Casey popped open the rear door.

  “Oh hell,” she said. Nicky stepped up behind her.

  “What?”

  “My briefcase. I left it in the backseat. It’s gone.”

  “Great. What was in it?”

  “My life. Oh God. My whole fucking life.”

  “In your briefcase? Why?”

  “Nicky, I don’t even have a desk yet. I brought it with me from the Two Five. There was no safe place to leave it.”

  He considered the wreckage awhile longer and then turned to walk back toward the hospital.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get a broom and call a cop.”

  He was almost to the entrance when he turned back to look at Casey and saw her sliding down the side of the car, folding. He came back at a run and knelt down beside her. She had her face buried in her arms. He touched her shoulder. She flinched.

  “Can you just fuck off, Nicky? Please?”

  Nicky sat back on his heels and watched her cry for another five minutes. People walked past them and whispered, but when Nicky made eye contact, they left. He reached out and put a hand on her shoulder again, and she let him keep it there. After a time she moved her left hand and placed it on top of his. Her skin was hot and she smelled of cigarettes. He fumbled in his pocket, found a Kleenex, held it out to her. She raised her head, studied it. The tears that ran down her cheeks made two shining paths and the skin underneath looked like polished wood.

  “Where’s that been?” she asked him.

  But she took it anyway.

  FEDERAL HOLDING CELLS

  ALBANY COURTS

  1430 HOURS

  Three hours after his arrest, while the rest of the city of Albany was getting itself well into the business afternoon and talking around the water cooler about the big bust over in Troy, how some kind of Mafia kingpin got himself busted for running stolen cars, Jack Vermillion, beltless, shoeless, minus his watch and his Marine Corps ring, got collected from a cell in the basement of the Albany federal buildings by a guard large enough to have his own climate.

  Jack was then forced to waddle, chained and cuffed, down a long hallway stinking of urine, clanging and clattering of steel and tin, boiling with heat and voices, until they reached a doorway—solid steel with a thick glass window reinforced with chicken wire—and burst through it into a small windowless room with smeared and pitted dark-green walls, lit by a lamp hanging inside a steel cage.

  The guard shoved him into a wooden chair that had been bolted to the floor beside a heavy wooden desk—also bolted—and locked his ankle chains to a ring set in the concrete floor.

  He had spoken no more than seven words to Jack during the whole process, and left without a kiss. Jack was then left to consider his situation for an indefinite period, a time he passed by studying the gang tags and obscenities carved into the wooden tabletop.

  Among the other insights, such as the numbers and prices and sexual appetites of assorted bail bondsmen and public defenders, Jack found out that all white people were “fuk-ass honki dugs,” that all federal law enforcement officers were “sukking anamal shetpimpuls,” that an individual named “Lobo” was prepared to do almost anything in return for “hot nasty stick,” and that the governor of New York was cordially invited to perform a physically challenging sex act upon somebody whose name, scratched in blunt capitals, was Khan Mohammed Jah.

  Jack’s introductory course in jailhouse graffiti was eventually terminated when the door clanged open and the same guard bulled into the room, followed hard by Flannery Coleman, still in his crisp blue suit and Yale tie. Jack, whose sense of smell had been sharpened by his stay in the federal cells downstairs, picked up on Flannery’s fresh bay rum splash and it pushed him over the edge.

  “Where the bloody hell have you been? I called your office as soon as I got through booking. That was …” Jack checked his watch and realized it had been taken from him, which didn’t help matters. “I have no fucking idea when it was—hours—days—it was twelve-thirty.

  That’s two hours ago! Where the hell have you—”

  “Jack, I apologize. I had a voir dire with Brunelle and—damn, the sneaky little bitch assured me that she wouldn’t be laying any charges—that if she did, she’d let us know first!”

  “Just get me out now, Flannery. This place—”r />
  Jack stopped short as he registered the sudden flush of something mealy-looking under Flannery’s polished hide.

  “Look, Jack, you’re going to have to get a grip here. I’ve just come from the U.S. attorney’s office. Greco’s been busy as hell.”

  “Busy doing what?”

  Flannery leaned in close, crossed his hands on the table.

  “You’ve been charged under the RICO laws. Racketeering-influenced and corrupt organizations. You know what they are?”

  “I run a shipping company, remember. We get watched.”

  “Yes, of course. Well, basically, they allow her a great deal of latitude in the scope and direction of her investigation. And she’s using it very well, I have to say.”

  “I’m glad you like her style. Just give me the worst of it.”

  Flannery studied his hands and drew a breath. Jack didn’t like the color of his skin and the thin sheen of moisture on his forehead.

  “Okay … you’ve heard of the asset seizure laws? If the state can persuade a federal judge that some or all of your assets are the proceeds of organized crime—that’s where RICO comes in—then the judge will allow the U.S. attorney’s office to seize control of those assets until a determination can be made as to what part—if any—can be linked to criminal activities.”

  “I know all this.”

  “Greco is going for the seizure of Black Water Transit Systems, the warehouses, the ships, the trucks, the rolling stock, the dock facilities. The bank accounts. The whole package.”

  Jack felt blood leaving all his outpost stations. His belly churned and then slowed.

  “Christ. Will she win?”

  “The drug-tainted money was very damning, Jack. The short answer is, if she gets the seizure order, they stop you from using your resources to defend yourself—pay lawyers, pay for a lot of delaying motions, drag the case out for years—or flee the country. She—the feds—control your money, your entire business. Greco thinks she can ride your case all the way to Washington.”