by Toby Ball
Paul DeBerg was a twenty-two-year-old kid who’d found his way into the People’s Union while at City College. After LaValle’s connection with the Union became public knowledge, DeBerg had been the designated spokesman, strongly denouncing LaValle’s crime and reiterating the group’s non-violent philosophy. But it had been too late. Talk was worth little when one of your people had brutally murdered a public official. Less than a week after LaValle’s arrest, DeBerg, like everyone else who could be traced back to the Union, went underground.
Grip had picked up a tip from one of his street grasses that every few days, DeBerg would visit a Union house in the Hollows to pick up books or pamphlets or whatever he needed at the time. Grip and Morphy found the place, and the latter watched the street while the former picked the front-door lock. That moment had been captured in one of the photos that Zwieg had shown him at Patridis’s apartment.
He and Morphy waited for nearly three hours in this filthy house, a couple of threadbare couches and boxes full of radical leaflets, tattered books, clothes packed in mothballs. Morphy’s pacing became increasingly manic as the time passed. He was huge, a solid six foot five—he intimidated with his very presence, and he did what he wanted. By the time DeBerg walked in on them, Grip almost felt sorry for the guy.
DeBerg didn’t even have a chance to register surprise before Morphy had backhanded him across the cheek, putting him on the ground. He’d tried to scramble to his feet, but Morphy grabbed him by the shirt and threw him against a wall. DeBerg put his hands up, his face panicked, asking what it was that they wanted. Morphy hit him with an uppercut just below the ribcage and DeBerg fell back to the ground, gasping for breath.
They’d found a high-backed chair and tied DeBerg to it—both arms, both legs, a rope around the chest and another around the neck to keep his head still. They’d asked him questions, but they weren’t really after answers. They were there to scare the hell out of DeBerg—make him wish he’d never heard the words “People’s Union.”
Grip gave the guy credit—he hung in there. Morphy wasn’t giving it everything he had, but DeBerg kept his mouth shut, wouldn’t answer any of their questions. If they’d been after anything, it would have been frustrating. As it was, Morphy batted him around, making sure that DeBerg would look as bad as he felt the next day. It would send a message to his friends.
After a half hour or so of this, they decided that they’d done what they came for. They left him tied to the chair, figuring that someone would come looking for him before too long, and the sight of him bound and bloodied would be a good thing for them to see. Morphy gave him a last knuckle-tap before leaving, and that was what had made the difference.
Another of Zwieg’s photos had been of them leaving the house. They’d gone by Crippen’s for a few drinks that night, then headed home. The next day, they heard that DeBerg had been found dead in the house. He’d lost consciousness and been strangled by the rope around his neck.
The next couple of weeks were nervous ones as they waited for their complicity in DeBerg’s death to be discovered. But the days came and went and no connection was made. The stress ate at the two of them, though, and their police work reflected this. They became more reckless. They took chances that they would not have taken in the past. They fed off of each other, ignoring the pleas from friends on the Force to take it easy. They were on edge and found this type of policing cathartic.
Three weeks after Paul DeBerg died, Grip and Morphy went beneath the streets to arrest Tony Oddo and Grip’s life was again thrown into a tailspin.
48
RETURNING FROM HIS VISIT WITH ELGIN HOLLAND, FRINGS HEARD HIS name being called as he made his way into the News-Gazette building. Half a block away and walking quickly toward him was Fache, a small, fastidious cop and an occasional source. Fache leaked, Frings knew, out of fear as much as anything, wanting someone in the press to be on his side if he ever needed it, which, in his mind, was more than likely.
Frings waited for him, leaning on his cane, wondering what information would compel Fache to meet him here, of all places. As Fache approached, Frings could see the expression, both sympathetic and official, that cops wore when they had bad news. Frings’s stomach went heavy as he tried to think what this might be.
“Frank.”
“What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry, Frank, but I thought you should get a jump on everyone else. You’ve earned it.”
This was another annoying thing about Fache, these little compliments, trying to buy extra favor. “What are you talking about?”
“Ben Linsky, he was murdered.”
The information didn’t register at first. There was hardly a less likely person in the City to be murdered than Ben Linsky. Who the hell would want to kill him? What would be the point? Yet here was Fache, grim-faced, telling him that this was exactly what had happened. Frings felt his breath go shallow. Ben was so young and was, in a certain way, important—important to the City, to its future.
“Do you know who did it?”
Fache shook his head. “Nothing right now, but we just found the body. Frank, the killer, he wrote the word “snitch” above Linsky’s body.”
Snitch? This, too, made no sense: first, that Ben Linsky would be a snitch; and second, that he would have information that would be of any interest to the police. Part of Linsky’s aura was his anti-establishment values. Frings couldn’t imagine what it would take to get Linsky to be a snitch, and nothing in Linsky’s life seemed to warrant the police investing much in what he could tell them.
“Do you know why that was written? Is there any chance he was a snitch?” Frings suddenly felt very tired.
Fache shook his head. “Again, it’s early.”
FRINGS WATCHED FACHE WALK AWAY. THERE WERE SO MANY REASONS to grieve for Ben Linsky, but he kept coming back to one. Frings had reached the age where his contemporaries had begun to die. These people died too young, of course, but many of them had lived substantial lives. But Linsky, though he’d certainly accomplished much, far more than most—Linsky had been cheated out of half his life.
He gazed down the street, watching the stream of car traffic, the working men walking the sidewalk in their suits, the steel and glass rising above the street, and even higher, the skeletons of the new buildings that seemed to enclose the streets, cut them off from all but a sliver of sky.
49
THE WHISKY FLASK WAS LIGHT IN GRIP’S POCKET—WHATEVER INHIBITIONS he had against violence had slipped cathartically away, leaving him with itchy fists.
For hours he’d waited in that goddamn apartment, with goddamn Woody Woodpecker laughing every fifteen minutes, followed by that goddamn blast of static. He’d heard footsteps in the hall, knocks on doors on the same floor, retreated to the bedroom where the couple had again lain unconscious. The banging came, strong and staccato, followed by cop voices identifying themselves, asking for the door to be opened. Grip pulled his gun and wedged himself into the closet. He heard the guy who’d been sleeping in the living room pad to the door, then voices in a conversation that he, frustratingly, couldn’t make out. It seemed to go on for too long. Grip was sure that the guy on the mattress had no idea he was there, but worried that the cops would find the scene in the living room too strange not to investigate. That, or find his shoes, which he now remembered leaving by the door. But nothing happened. He heard the door slam shut and waited for the sounds of multiple footsteps, but, instead, he heard only the squeak of the mattress as the guy lay back down. The tension left Grip’s body. He had a rush of delayed panic as he realized that Woody Woodpecker had not laughed while the cops were at the door, and that this fortunate timing had saved him.
He’d waited another couple of hours in the apartment, the guys both sleeping through, the girl emerging once from the bedroom wrapped in a sheet. Her body was thin beneath the linen, but, even in her disheveled stupor, she held for Grip the appeal that women her age held for men of his. She’d looke
d at him, not seeming very surprised, and then walked slowly back into the bedroom. Grip had watched her through a crack in the bedroom door, half-expecting her to wake her boyfriend. But she’d just crawled back into bed and stared blankly ahead of her.
HE WALKED BLOCK AFTER BLOCK, DRY LEAVES SKITTERING ACROSS THE sidewalk. He kept to the building side of the sidewalk, moving with the pedestrian flow, trying not to stand out. Police cruisers drove by, and Grip fought the instinct to duck or turn, give himself away. He made it to the Tech campus and walked through the gate. He followed the sidewalk away from the street, feeling some safety here, where the police wouldn’t happen upon him.
He sensed he was skirting the edge of something vast and dark—a feeling he hadn’t had since Morphy’s death.
Snitch.
The word seemed to hover before him as he walked, black spray paint on a white wall. The memo he’d planted in the apartment—the wrong play. One of the two roommates had discovered the note, then either killed Linsky or given it to someone who had. He wanted to hit something.
For the most part, he didn’t regret the occasional consequences of intimidation or violence—they were outweighed ten-to-one by the advantages, because no matter how out of control things might seem to get, he always had a sense of when to pull back before it went irretrievably wrong. But Linsky’s death was a result of his tactics, and it had left him a tangle of nerves, second guesses, and intense regret. This was worse than DeBerg—it felt like an assault on his core as a person, and the hours spent in that fucked up apartment, alone with his thoughts, had him fighting to maintain his calm.
He emerged from the other side of the campus, two blocks from Cafe?. He paused in an alley and took another long draw from his flask, caught a sensation behind his eyes that felt as if centuries of civilizing restraints were falling away, leaving him only with his instincts. His area of vision narrowed. His adrenaline flowed.
He strode the two blocks quickly, gaining some momentum for what was about to happen. Speed was going to be key. Speed and force. He needed to be out of there before Schillaci and his partner showed up.
He blew through the door, looking first to the table where he had seen Linsky and his friends. The table was populated again, and he recognized some of the same faces. Still moving, he registered their expressions as they turned to him. They looked tired, distraught, grieving. They also looked high, at least some of them. Grip showed his badge to the place with a sweep of his arm. He approached a kid in a flannel shirt and old khakis, a wispy beard on his face. He grabbed the kid’s collar and pulled him up with a jerk, knocking the chair a couple of feet onto its back. Grip pushed him up against the wall, saw him try to focus his hopped-up mind on what was happening: should he be scared shitless or not?
Grip put his face right up to the kid’s. “Ben Linsky’s roommates—where are they?”
The kid stared back at him, too stunned to speak.
“Where do I find Norman Lane and Oliver White?” More urgent this time.
Grip saw motion in his peripheral vision, swung around to a short, soft kid in wired-framed glasses approaching with his hand held tentatively out. Grip used one hand to keep pressure on the kid against the wall, turned to the kid with the glasses.
“I know you’re not going to touch me,” Grip growled. “Once you touch a cop, there’s no turning back.”
Glasses blanched, froze. Grip turned back to the kid against the wall. “Where,” he yelled in the kid’s face.
The kid was shaking, tears starting to flow.
Grip held the kid’s eyes, saw that he was too scared to be cagey, pulled him off the wall, and pushed him toward his fallen chair. The kid looked at it, stunned, unsure whether to set it up again.
Grip looked to the table. “Lane and White, where can I find them?”
Faces stared back at him, scared, clueless.
Grip grabbed the table, tipped the assembled glasses and mugs off, the drinks landing in the laps of the people sitting facing the wall. Empty theatrics, but he thought it would be effective with these kids.
A girl—it figured that it would be a girl who had the guts in this crowd—spoke up, trying unsuccessfully to keep her voice strong. “We haven’t seen them today. We thought we would, but we haven’t. We’re grieving. I’m sure they are as well.”
This stopped Grip for a moment. He hadn’t thought that something also might have happened to the roommates. The moment quickly passed—there’d only been one body. He scowled at the table and turned to leave.
“You’ve still got it, Detective, despite your advancing years.”
Grip turned to the voice, bristling. Art Deyna leaned against the wall, cocky smirk in place. Grip stalked over to him, moved into Deyna’s space, their noses inches apart.
Grip gave Deyna a half-lidded stare. “The fuck you here for?”
Deyna laughed through his nose. “From the sounds of things, the same reason you are. Detective, why don’t we sit down and talk this over for a minute.”
“Fuck you.”
Deyna tutted regretfully. “So hostile. You never seem to quite understand that we’re on the same side, the side of the angels.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play stupid, detective. We both know the real threats to this city. Let’s sit down, talk about Kollectiv 61, Commissioner Kraatjes. Compare notes. Have a seat. I’ll buy.”
Grip stared at him, feeling exhausted. “You stay out of my way.” He shook his head. “Just stay the fuck out of my way.”
50
KAPLAN’S WAS AN OLD BAR LOCATED OFF AN ALLEY LESS THAN TWO blocks from the old Gazette building. It had been popular with some of the Gazette reporters because it wasn’t the kind of place you happened upon—it didn’t even have a sign out front. You could really talk there, not worry about who was listening. That was the old days. With the News-Gazette now twenty blocks east, Frings wondered how old man Kaplan kept the place going. But he did, somehow. The clientele was more depressing these days—older, wearier. Of course, Frings was, too.
He had a cigarette and a reefer going, alternating between the two, the cigarette covering the smell of the dope. Kaplan didn’t care, so long as the tobacco stink overwhelmed the marijuana. It was dark, as always, a little natural light seeping through the tinted window cut into the door. The ceiling lights seemed somehow underpowered, the illumination barely penetrating the smoky haze. Small wooden chairs surrounded even smaller wooden tables. The bar was made from the timber of a barge that had sunk in the river within spitting distance of the cargo docks, sometime in the last century.
Frings nursed a pint of beer, thinking about Ben Linsky, trying to make sense of his death. It didn’t fit with Frings’s understanding of how the City worked, and, after so many years on the beat, there wasn’t much that surprised him. He looked down the bar at a couple of old-timers playing cards. The one furthest from Frings laid down his hand and began laughing a toothless laugh as he looked toward Frings, mouth gaping, eyes hard.
FRINGS MADE A CALL FROM THE PHONE AT THE END OF THE BAR, THE OLD-timers moving down a couple of seats to give him room. The line hissed as he was connected to the detectives’ room at Headquarters.
A Detective Molloy answered. Frings asked for Grip and was met with a beat of silence, then a curt “hold on.” Frings listened to the hiss, a palm covering his other ear against the old men’s chatter, the jukebox.
The voice that answered was not Grip’s. “Can I help you?”
“I’m trying to reach Detective Grip.”
“Who is this, please?”
“Frank Frings. Who is this?”
“Frank, it’s Anders Ving.”
Frings paused, puzzled. Frings had known Ving for twenty years, regarded him as a competent and honest cop. Frings had been optimistic about the future of the Force when Kraatjes became chief, and the appointment of Ving as deputy chief had only seemed to confirm his initial enthusiasm. Frings was confused, though,
by Kraatjes’s brief tenure to date, which seemed to be characterized by a certain neglect. Frings hadn’t expected that.
“I was trying to reach Torsten Grip,” Frings said.
“That’s what I understand. What did you need to talk to him about?”
Ving’s guardedness struck Frings as strange. “I just need to talk to him. Following up on a story. The usual.”
“Frank, I’m sorry, but can you be more specific?”
“A case that he might have been working.”
A sigh. “Which case?”
Frings considered his answer. Normally, he wouldn’t have worried about divulging this kind of information to a senior cop that he trusted. But with Ving’s tone of voice, Ben’s death, and Grip’s obviously tenuous standing in the police department—he hesitated. Finally, he said, “Ben Linsky.”
Ving answered too quickly. “What about him?”
“Look, Anders. Ben asked me about Grip the other day, out of the blue. He thought that I knew him. A couple days later, Ben’s murdered.”
Another sigh. “What did he want to know about Detective Grip?”
“I’m not saying anything else until you tell me what’s going on here.”
“Frank, we have a relationship, right? Have you known me to hold back on you before? But I can’t talk to you about this. I need to know what Ben Linsky asked you about. It’s important.”
Frings thought about this. Ving was basically right that he’d always been honest with Frings, didn’t play games like so many of the other brass did. But Frings didn’t like giving up information like this.
