Invisible Streets

by Toby Ball

  Grip nodded. Then, without further delay, the cops pushed through the door and flooded into Crippen’s.

  BY THE TIME GRIP GOT INSIDE, THE COPS WERE ALREADY PUSHING PEOPLE up against the wall. Tables were overturned, drinks spilled on the floor; a couple of younger men who Grip thought might be off-duty cops were yelling back at the uniforms who were moving them toward a wall. One of the Negro cops cracked the bigger of the two across the knees with a nightstick, and the guy went down, curling up with his knees to his chest.

  A number of the patrons, guys who Grip had known for years, now noticed his presence and kept their eyes on him—some with surprise, some with anger. Wayne was leaning against a wall, smiling crookedly, holding in his hand a blond toupee that had apparently been knocked off during the commotion. He gave Grip a half-lidded glare.

  Flashes of light added to the chaos. Grip turned toward the source and saw the press photographer standing on a chair, shooting the bust. Deyna sidled up to Grip. He seemed uncertain.

  “What are you doing here?” Grip asked.

  “I got a tip.”

  “From who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Grip thought about this for a moment. Then he laughed.

  “What’s funny?” Deyna asked, his usual arrogance entirely missing.

  “You work with Zwieg, don’t you? That’s why you always know where to find me. He’s your big source.”

  Deyna didn’t bother to deny it. “So?”

  Grip shook his head. “Do you know what’s going on here? That tip was from Kraatjes. He knows. He knows that you were helping Zwieg make a move on him, and he’s letting you know that he knows. And it doesn’t matter if Zwieg used you or what, you were involved.”

  The blood drained from Deyna’s face.

  “Get the fuck out of here, Art. I can’t afford the trouble I’d get into for kicking your face in.”

  Deyna looked uncertain, and Grip walked away from him, toward Zwieg.

  Zwieg had not been moved to the wall, like the rest of the patrons. Instead he sat, isolated, in a chair flanked by uniforms. Dominguez walked over to him and it seemed to Grip that the rest of the noise in the room ceased.

  “Lieutenant,” Dominguez said, formally.

  “The fuck is going on?”

  “You’re being arrested.”

  “For what?” Zwieg sneered.

  “Why don’t we start with theft of the Kaiser Street explosives,” Dominguez said, evenly.

  “Fuck you. You’ve got no idea what you’re fucking talking about.”

  “No?” Dominguez snapped a punch to Zwieg’s face, knocking him backward. Both Zwieg and the chair flipped hard onto the tiled floor. With his foot, Dominguez pushed Zwieg’s head so that one cheek was on the linoleum, and then he put his foot on the other cheek, holding Zwieg’s head in place. “I think that before we go back to the station, you need to bring me to wherever you have those explosives stashed.”

  Zwieg managed to say, “Go fuck yourself.”

  Grip could see Dominguez lean some of his weight onto Zwieg’s head. Zwieg’s legs squirmed, but he stayed silent.

  “Tell you what. Why don’t we get into my car, and I’ll get the pliers from the trunk, and we’ll see if you can give me some directions, okay?”

  AS THEY WALKED OUT, GRIP STOLE A LOOK AT WAYNE, WHO WAS STILL leaned up against the wall, his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. Deyna and the photographer were gone, and when Grip emerged onto the street, they weren’t there either.

  84

  THE SIX PROWL CARS ROLLED WITH THEIR LIGHTS OFF THROUGH THE narrow blocks of the City’s South End. The neighborhoods here were small, low, cramped, the script on the signs constantly changing from Cyrillic to Arabic to Roman to any of a number of Asian alphabets. Rain had begun to fall steadily.

  The lead car carried Zwieg, cuffed, in the back. Grip was in the second car, riding in the back next to Deputy Chief Ving. Two uniforms sat in front. Grip was relieved that Zwieg had finally been arrested and that he still seemed to be in the clear. But he still didn’t understand what had happened, the details of the plot he’d been dragooned into.

  “You seem anxious, Detective,” Ving said, looking straight ahead.

  “Sir?”

  “I would have thought you’d be relieved that this is almost over.”

  “I think I’d feel better about it if I knew the full story.”

  “We’re still trying to get a handle on that ourselves.”

  Grip didn’t say anything to that.

  Ving waited a moment—maybe calculating how much he was willing to share—before continuing. “The way the Chief sees it, is something like this. Zwieg wanted to make a move, get rid of the Chief, probably put himself in line as the successor. He thinks Zwieg figured out that there was some kind of link between headquarters and the radical community—and he probably thought, or maybe just hoped, that it led to Kollectiv 61. In any case, he thought he might be able to use it to undermine the Chief. So—and this is still unconfirmed—he, and he obviously has help here, he pulls the Kaiser Street heist. He plans to spray-paint one of those sayings that Kollectiv 61 leaves, but is interrupted by something—probably an after-hours delivery. Kaiser Street is on his turf, so he figures he’ll be able to keep it relatively quiet. Canada’s people won’t want to make it a big deal because it’ll make people nervous. He lets his pet reporter know it happened and tells him to sit on the story, that he’ll get the real scoop later, meaning when he makes his final move on the Chief. He gives the guy a hint, though, tells him that the spray-painted message was there, even though it wasn’t.

  “So, they need someone to do the investigating—someone who they have some control over, who they don’t think can hurt them. They choose you, because, quite frankly, you don’t have many allies. They get Nicky Patridis to provide the connection between the explosives and Kollectiv 61. From there, they hope that you can turn up the connection between Kollectiv 61 and the Chief. You found it, but it wasn’t with Kollectiv 61, it was with Ben Linsky. Zwieg thought that this, along with the connection between Linsky and Kollectiv 61, would probably be enough once it hit the newspapers. But it won’t be. Linsky was an informant.”

  Grip sighed. “So Zwieg is history?”

  Ving looked over at Grip. “He’s history.”

  THE LEAD CAR TOOK A LEFT ONTO A STREET BARELY WIDER THAN AN ALLEY, each side dotted with makeshift awnings above doors and windows with signs in Chinese characters. The car hit its lights, and the driver of Grip’s car did the same, then tapped on the siren and performed half a k-turn so that they blocked the entrance. The other cars stopped in the middle of the block. Cops emerged slowly into the rain. Grip slid out of his car, pulled the hood of his gray rain jacket up. He counted about a dozen cops.

  There were groups of men huddled under most of the awnings, drinking from teacups or eating from bowls. Rainwater, thick as curtains, poured off the low roofs.

  Three police cars—lights going, sirens off—pulled into the far end of the block. Six uniforms emerged and walked toward Grip’s group, aggressive, hands on their holstered guns.

  “This ain’t your turf,” said a uniform with painful-looking cauliflower ears. “What the fuck business you got here?”

  Grip scowled at him beneath half-lids. “See him?” Grip nodded at the handcuffed Zwieg. “You think this is something you want to screw with?”

  The uniform tensed, his hand tightening on the pistol grip. Ving, who had been watching, stepped forward.

  “You know who I am, officer?” Ving’s voice was calm, almost quiet.

  The uniform stopped, looked from Ving to Zwieg.

  “Turn around and go, before I read your badge number,” Ving said.

  “Yeah, okay,” the officer said and retreated with his crew.

  “I thought so,” Grip taunted.

  The uniform turned back to him. “We ain’t done.”

  Grip waved.

  Ving was calling the shots.
Grip walked down the block to where he stood with Zwieg.

  “That one.” Ving indicated an unmarked door between what appeared to be two teahouses. “Down in the basement, he says.”

  Zwieg stared at Grip from behind swollen eyes. His right cheekbone had turned purple and yellow. His lips were ragged, misshapen. He looked resigned. He’d lost, and somehow Grip had come out okay.

  “He got a key?” Grip asked.

  “No.” Ving nodded toward two uniforms pulling a battering ram from the trunk of a squad car.

  Grip led the two men to the door. It was steel, four locks. It took eight blows from the ram before the hinges finally gave way and the door hung useless from two bolts. One of the uniforms held it out of the way, and Grip led the men into the darkness. He felt against the wall, found the light switch.

  He was on a service landing. In front of him, narrow steps led steeply down to a tiny room, barely touched by the light. A cop handed Grip a flashlight from behind and he led the men down, the stairs squeaking under their feet. At the bottom, the tiny room was empty, except for a door and the smell of must. Grip held his hand up, pressed his ear to the door. Silence. Still, they’d made a racket on the stairs coming down, and anyone inside would have been alerted.

  “Police,” Grip yelled. “Anyone in there?”

  Still silence. He tried the knob. Locked.

  He yelled up the stairs. “Bring the ram.”

  The battering ram team eased past the cops waiting on the narrow stairs.

  “Guns out,” Grip said. He held his gun in his right hand and his flashlight, trained on the door, in his left. The guys with the battering ram looked to him, waiting for the go-ahead. Grip nodded.

  The door came down with the first blow. The cops next to him tensed. The flashlight lit the room—no one home.

  It was a storage room—eight by twelve, he guessed—boxes of stick dynamite stacked against the far wall. There was a lot there, but not enough. Not even close.

  Grip nodded one of the uniforms in. “This look like enough dynamite to fill a trailer?”

  “No way. A quarter, maybe. Probably less than that.”

  Grip shook his head, climbed the stairs two at a time, shouldering aside startled uniforms. He stepped out onto the street, felt the cold rain on his face. He found Zwieg, grabbed him by the coat with both hands, slammed him into a wall. Zwieg barked in pain as his hands and arms, cuffed behind his back, took the impact.

  “The trailer, how full was it when you cleaned it out?”

  Zwieg looked at him, weary and condescending. Grip tapped Zwieg’s forehead with the heel of his hand, bouncing his head off the wall.

  “You’ll regret that.” Zwieg said.

  “How full?”

  “Nearly full. Four-fifths.”

  “’Cause there’s less than a quarter trailer’s worth in there.”

  Zwieg didn’t smile, but his eyes were amused. He shrugged.

  Grip walked away, paced in the street, hair soaked, shoes soaked. He felt the eyes of the assembled cops, most of whom could not have heard his conversation with Zwieg over the rain and urban noise. Anger, frustration, the feelings of powerlessness and humiliation that had tormented him these last few days—all of it built up within him as he paced.

  “Fuck,” he muttered to himself, turned, and advanced with speed on a startled Zwieg. Four uniforms intercepted him, held him back, prevented him from getting himself into trouble again.

  • • •

  EXCERPT FROM TRANSCRIPT OF DYADIC INTERVIEW WITH SUBJECT 8

  3/8/60

  because then I would …

  Interviewer: You would what? What do you think you would do, because you say that you value the equality of men, isn’t that right? The equality of men: those are the words you used.

  Subject 8: Yes, I think that … equality … I’m …

  Interviewer: You say it, you use those words, but I know that you don’t really mean them. Look at you. Look at where you are. You’re at the Tech. You think that’s a place where you can find equality? You think that there is anything equal about people who are at the Tech?

  Subject 8: I guess, I think that it’s hard to say what’s equal because when I look at you now and I think that you’re like another human and just the same as someone else like maybe a farmer or something in Peru.

  Interviewer: Peru? You think that some impoverished Peruvian farmer is equal to me, much less you, who are at the Tech? You don’t believe that. You are lying to me. You lie to the world when you say that you believe things like that. You say them because it makes you feel better about the fact that you take every explicit opportunity, equality be damned. So stop it with this bullshit. Stop lying to me. Stop putting forward a false image to the world—it rots the soul. I look at you and I think that your soul must be rotting because you are incapable of being honest even when you write your own personal fucking philosophy, which will not be shared with anyone. You are so rotted and degraded that you will tell lies to no one, you will try to deceive yourself about the truth of your own corrupted nature.

  Subject 8:

  Interviewer: That’s it? You have nothing to say for yourself—no defense, no admission?

  Subject 8: I …

  Interviewer: You are as diseased a subject as I have had the misfortune to come across. Based on what I’ve read and heard, I don’t think I can trust you about anything—I don’t think that you can trust yourself …

  85

  FRINGS KNOCKED ON THE DOOR TO EBANKS’S HOUSE, BUT NO ONE ANswered. He knocked again and waited, but again there was nothing, just a stillness that made him think that the place was empty. The previous day’s rain had passed through and the sky was brilliant, the air clear and cold. Frings limped away from the house, leaning on his cane, his knee throbbing.

  He walked slowly to the Tech campus and then along a brick pathway toward Bristol Hall—the psychology building. He had the keys that Milledge had left behind, and thought he’d have another look at Ledley’s files. If nothing else, he could retrieve the files that Sol wanted. He saw no reason to deny Sol that small favor. Classes were in session, so the paths were mostly empty. Frings thought that final exams must be coming up. The usual protestors were nowhere to be seen.

  He was startled to see, approaching him on the path but oblivious of his presence, Will Ebanks. Ebanks seemed to be lost in thought, staring at the pavement ahead of him as he walked.

  “Will?”

  Ebanks started at the sound of his name and looked at Frings with wide eyes. His irises were nearly entirely black. “Frank,” he said, vaguely. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m going to take another look at Ledley’s files.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a great idea.”

  Frings noticed now that Ebanks’s hands were trembling; in fact, his entire body was shaking slightly.

  “What’s going on?” Frings asked, cautiously.

  “Frank.” Ebanks was clearly trying hard to figure out what to say. Frings wondered if he was on LSD.

  “I need to hear something, Will, or I’m going to Ledley’s.”

  “Sol Elia came to see me this morning. He came to kill me. He was going to end my life. It’s hard to fathom that my body might very well not have made it until now. Do you know? The thing, though, the thing that I needed to make Sol understand was that ending my life didn’t accomplish anything for his soul. If his act was truly to get some redemption for his life, my death would be of no use.”

  Frings wasn’t sure that Sol would see it that way—but here was Ebanks, alive.

  “Where is Sol right now?”

  “Where is he? He’s with Si.” Ebanks gave a strange laugh. “The thing with Sol is that he … he was part of those experiments that Si did, the ones that he conducted in the hall behind the door. Sol—the way he is—it goes back to that time with Si and that weird little assistant he had. The experiments. He came out a different person. That’s what he needs to exo
rcise.”

  “Is that what you told him?” Frings asked, incredulous.

  “I was faced with my own mortality. It was unjust. It’s not my time.”

  “Is Sol in that building with Ledley?”

  “Yes. Sol and Si and Andy Macheda.”

  Ebanks was dazed.

  Frings wanted to say a number of things to Ebanks, but there wasn’t time, and he could confront Ebanks later. Instead he fixed Ebanks with a quick, furious glare, and limped off as fast as he could toward Bristol Hall.

  Classes were letting out as he entered the building against a tide of students. All of these kids were oblivious to what Frings suspected was happening just below them. He took the steps down to the basement as fast as he could. The lights in the hallway were on, bathing everything in greenish illumination. Ledley’s door was closed. He tried it, found it locked. He knocked, the sound echoing back to him. No answer. Satisfied that Ledley wasn’t around, he walked to the door that divided the hallway. He unlocked it with Milledge’s keys.

  The first thing he noticed as he opened the door was a patch of light coming from a room down the hall. He was immediately on his guard. He took a step in, heard talking—Ledley’s voice, strangely pitched. He left the door dividing the hall open behind him, just in case. He moved slowly, not using his cane because he didn’t want anyone to hear the tapping. He paused just outside of the light. He hadn’t yet heard another voice, couldn’t make out what Ledley was saying, but Ebanks had said that Sol and Macheda were in there with him.

  He peered around the corner, saw Ledley sitting in a chair under bright lights, reading from a sheaf of papers in his hand. To his side, Sol half-sat against a table, papers in one hand, gun in the other, watching through slitted eyes. In front of Ledley, with his back to Frings, Andy Macheda peered through the eyepiece of a movie camera aimed at Ledley. They were in a big room, one door down from the storeroom where Frings had gone through Ledley’s files. The area around them was dark, except for the wall behind Ledley where the men’s black shadows were carved out of the brilliant light.