The Cross: An Eddie Flynn Novella

by Steve Cavanagh

  “Come on, don’t play me. If you didn’t need help, you wouldn’t have come running like you did. You want to know what really happened to Chilli. There’s a lot you don’t know.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like if you haven’t guessed it already, you’re in a whole shitload of trouble, son.”

  Chapter Five

  I’d been in tight spots before. The kind that can get you killed. I thought all of that was behind me. When I gave up the life of a hustler, the short cons, the insurance fraud, even taking the odd shortcut in a poker game, I’d imagined that things would be a lot calmer and safer. I’d hardly ever used married guys in my crew. A loved one is powerful leverage when you’re sitting in a cell and the cops are pressuring you to snitch. Back then I didn’t allow myself to get attached to anyone. Besides, it wasn’t an entirely selfless act. Some of my favorite marks were drug dealers. If they figured out they’d been conned, I didn’t want anyone I cared about to get caught up in a reprisal. Dealers carried a lot of cash—and couldn’t use it until it was clean. Conning them was pretty easy. It was making sure they didn’t know they’d been conned that was the hard part. Eventually I came up with a con that covered me. It was all about a frog and a horse.

  Every couple of years I got a friendly, local, off-track bookie to give me fifty cents on the dollar on all bets placed on a particular horse running in the Kentucky Derby.

  It took a couple of months to set up, but the payoff was phenomenal. I bought weed once a week, regular, from a couple of gangbangers, and eventually we got to know each other and we got to hanging out a little bit. I didn’t smoke. I flushed the product. Over time I spent maybe a grand on middle-grade weed just to get to know these guys. Three days before the Triple Crown event, I’d pull up at their corner and buy double my usual. They’d ask me where I got the dough. I told them I got cash for making a special delivery, and on the passenger seat beside me, I had a cardboard box full of holes. The guys are curious and ask to see what’s inside. So I show them. Inside the box is a frog.

  I tell them it’s a Water Tree Frog from South America. It came off a ship this morning, and I need to drive it to Louisville for the Derby. They have no idea what I’m talking about, so I take them for lunch and lay it all out. If the frog is stimulated, it excretes a slime. That slime is a dermorphin—a drug that when injected makes horses both impervious to pain and hyperactive. The Racing Commission do random drug testing on horses. But they can only test for known illegal substances. The more exotic the stimulant, the greater the chance they won’t test for it. I tell the dealers how cobra venom was used for years for the same purpose but that nothing compares to this slime—in short, this frog produces untraceable guaranteed Derby winners.

  After a while I pay for lunch and leave.

  A few hours later I call the guys from a pay phone in the 86th Precinct. Spin them a line that PD pulled me over and got a hit on an outstanding warrant. And the cops got my dope. I’m going to be sitting in a police cell for a day. The frog is at my apartment and I can’t make the drive to Louisville in time for the race. Can they drive the frog to Louisville for a grand a piece? There’s five thousand bucks on the dresser in my apartment beside the frog, and I want them to go to Lucky’s and throw it all on our doped horse. I tell them that the bet has to be made in Lucky’s because they have the best price for the horse—seventy-five to one. The guys get to talking, telling their bosses and all their friends.

  Before five o’clock that day, Lucky has taken bets totaling three hundred grand on the worst horse in Kentucky.

  After a ten-hour drive, the guys get picked up on the outskirts of Louisville by the Highway Patrol. The cops don’t find any drugs or weapons, and this pisses them off. So the cops take the frog and let it go in the marshes. I’d never seen it myself, but I hear from the cops who do this for me that the sight of two drug dealers from the Bronx frantically searching for a frog in the bayou is one of the funniest things you’ll ever see.

  The frog doesn’t make it to the race, the horse comes last, and they lose money, I lose money, and it’s all down to the dealers themselves. One time, a guy from the Diablos felt so bad about losing my frog that he came by my apartment and refunded my five grand. It took it, and a hundred and fifty grand from Lucky’s, who was only too happy to take huge bets on a horse that was so bad, nobody in their right mind would bet on it.

  Hardest part of the whole thing was catching the frogs from Long Island in the first place.

  That was all behind me now. The rush from the con was gone. I had a family. Putting a target on my back was not on my list of priorities.

  Albert Frost could’ve been from Kentucky himself—the accent was south of Ohio but definitely north of Georgia.

  “You’re playing with the big boys now, Eddie. Lot of people don’t want you to win this case. From what I’ve been told, there isn’t too much danger of that happening.”

  “Watch me,” I said.

  “Let me see if I got this right. Marzone strangled Chilli Hernandez last year. The department is saying Marzone was fighting for his life, but even so, NYPD banned choke holds in the 1980s and he was acting in breach of policy. That might be enough to get the city off the hook. They’ve done everything they can to ban choke holds. This officer was acting alone, and if anyone has to pay compensation, it’s him, not the NYPD. The department’s lawyers can argue Hernandez was a dangerous killer and Marzone acted in self-defense. If that argument fails, they say they’re not liable because Marzone was trained not to use a choke hold. If they get home on that, even if you win against Marzone, it leaves you with a multimillion-dollar judgment against a guy with no assets and no money. That a pretty fair assessment so far?”

  I nodded.

  “What if I told you the NYPD brass regularly turn a blind eye to cops who place suspects in choke holds? What if I gave you enough evidence to prove that in court?”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  “The Civilian Complaint Review Board has compiled a study on choke hold complaints. It’s not due to be published for another year—but I’ve got the figures. They make for interesting reading. Anyhow, we’re just getting to know each other, Counselor. Believe me, I’ve got more. But that kind of evidence doesn’t come cheap.”

  I knew it. Frost wasn’t doing this out of some notion of civic duty. He wanted to make a buck. That made me nervous. Bought testimony is never as good as that which is freely given.

  “How much?” I said.

  His pale eyebrows furrowed, and he shook his head. “Oh, I don’t want money. Don’t you know it’s illegal to bribe a police officer?”

  “So what the hell do you want?”

  “Justice. You are in a unique position, Mr. Flynn. There are forces at work behind this case that you haven’t even contemplated. That’s what I want: I want the men behind Marzone. I want the Morgue Squad.”

  Chapter Six

  Albert Frost had it all wrong. For a second I thought he’d taken leave of his senses. Maybe he’d been on the job for too long. When you are the cop responsible for arresting your fellow officers, it can have a devastating effect on your perception of reality. Most cops don’t want to go near Internal Affairs. You’re seen as one of the rats. Since the Mollen Commission, the NYPD had taken steps to reimagine Internal Affairs, to take the stink out of that department and make it work fairer and more efficiently than ever before.

  As a young cop in NYPD, if you want to make detective, you submit your application and choose your preferred assignment. The candidates with the best results normally get absorbed into Internal Affairs. Policy dictates that IAB gets first pick of the best candidates. For those who choose to accept the offer from IAB, you must do a minimum of two years on the job. After that you can pretty much name any assignment you want and blow in as a full detective. Organized crime, homicide, robbery—take your pick.

  Those two years can be as rough or as easy as you make them. IAB suits a lot of young mothers and father
s because they can choose their own shifts. Nine to five is perfectly acceptable in Internal Affairs. The downside of that is there’s no overtime, so you get home for dinner but with less money in your pocket at the end of the month. Any old friends you’ve still got from the academy stop calling; your current friends from your last precinct don’t want to know you either. Most cops see it as turning to the dark side. And the nice pool cars, the guaranteed job after two years, the regular hours, the extra equipment training, and the tick on the résumé just aren’t quite enough compensation for most cops.

  The police that I knew, the career cops with twenty years on the street, they’d say that only one thing matters to them—their good name.

  Frost looked like he’d put in serious time in Internal Affairs, and that takes a special kind of dedication and sense of duty. It was written in the keen blue eyes. But as far as I knew, the morgue boys were untouchable.

  “I thought IAB had their shot at the boys.”

  “No, not the morgue boys. I think it might have been a newspaper that gave them the name morgue boys. You know about them? Cops robbing drug dealers. A few eventually pleaded guilty. They were called the morgue boys because they usually met at an old abandoned coffin factory to split the proceeds. No, I’m talking about a crew that’s very different. This squad runs the morgue.”

  “I don’t follow,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow, leaned back, and appraised me again. Maybe he was thinking he’d overestimated me. After a long moment he readjusted himself on the seat and pulled his coat around his neck.

  “I can’t tell you too much. Fact is, we have no evidence for any of it. But we know Marzone is in the Morgue Squad. He runs it.”

  “Runs what?”

  “The squad is a select group of cops. What they do is highly illegal—and it’s a lot worse than robbing drug dealers.”

  “So what do they do?” I said.

  The wind buffeted my shirt and the spray coming off the river kept it moist. Seagulls followed the ferry. Their calls were loud enough to momentarily drown out the low thunder of the engines. I was aware of all of this as Frost stared at me in silence. He was making a decision.

  “I’m going to keep my mouth shut for a little while longer, Counselor. If you do as I ask, I’ll tell you everything. I can show you what really happened to Chilli Hernandez. That’s a promise. The officer who left you the note on your windshield is Detective McAllister. You’ve got her cell number already. She sat beside you on the bench just now. McAllister will give you everything you need.”

  “I still don’t know what you want me to do in exchange for this.”

  “I don’t want you to do anything apart from your job. The Review Board data is reliable, damning, and true. All you have to do is use it. I don’t want the case to settle; no payoffs under the table with confidentiality agreements. This has to come out. That’s the favor. If we give you this evidence, it’s on the understanding that you use it in open court. Sound fair?”

  “How does this information relate to this Morgue Squad?”

  “That’s really none of your concern,” said Frost. His lips were dry, and his gaze wavered for the first time. The pitch of his voice had altered, too. And his hands had slipped, unconsciously, into his pockets.

  A lie.

  I took a long look at a line of sailboats slipping past the buoys that covered Diamond Reef and beyond them, in the distance, I could make out the lights springing to life on Governors Island.

  “The man who followed me to the ferry . . .” I began. And before I could finish, Frost had turned away.

  It was the worst possible deal. There are no free lunches, no files of precious documents, and no million-dollar judgments that come without a price.

  We were only seconds from the ferry terminal at Pier 11. The ferry was cooling its speed, engines low, getting ready to come into port. I heard car horns blaring from the quickly approaching shore. Frost walked away and gripped the rail, so he could watch the ferry dock. He had his back to me. I couldn’t blame him.

  “Frost, you can keep your precious information.”

  That turned him quick enough. “What? Don’t you want to win? A judgment like that could put you on the six o’clock news.”

  “I won’t pay the price.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “I already told you I didn’t want money.”

  “You want something that costs a lot more. You knew this Morgue Squad was following me. They’re bound up with Marzone and Chilli Hernandez. They want to keep a close eye on the Hernandez case to make sure they’re not exposed. You called me here so they could see our meeting. You wanted them to know I was talking to you. My guess is this conversation will make them nervous, and you think that will make them come after me. You and McAllister will wait until they make a move, and then you’ll make your arrest. If they don’t kill me first. You’ve got nothing on the Morgue Squad. So you’re trying to force them out of hiding. You just made me the bait in your little game. I’m nobody’s bait.”

  The car horns grew louder. We both stole a glance at the tour buses and yellow cabs parked beneath the FDR Drive overpass, waiting to pick up our fellow passengers on South Street. Already a crowd had gathered on Pier 11, ready to take the last ferry back to Brooklyn. I heard the cars speeding past on the FDR.

  When Frost gave me his attention again, he was a little pissed off that I’d called him out, but he knew he’d already accomplished everything he’d set out to do.

  “Too late now, Eddie. They saw you get on the ferry. In fact, they saw you run for the ferry and they saw you come up here and sit with me. The Morgue Squad know I’m talking to you, so, yeah, you’re right, that makes you a target. Shit happens, Counselor. You sue the toughest homicide cops in the city, you’ll become a target. We won’t let you get hurt. If one of them tries to take you out, we’ll be waiting and we can grab him. Then he becomes our bait. You need a little fish to catch a big fish. Didn’t your daddy ever tell you that?”

  Two car horns blasted, the pitch changing as they went roaring by on the overpass. The ferry nosed into the terminal, slowed, and stopped. A flock of seagulls on the pier took to the air just as Frost’s face exploded.

  Chapter Seven

  It could’ve been shock, or simply instinct, but I managed to hit the floor before Frost’s body. A wet slap on the deck, like somebody throwing a cup of coffee on the floor—only this sound was duller, the sound of the back of Frost’s head painting the deck. I could feel flecks of blood on my shirt and my cheek. No one else was on the deck. The Internal Affairs man no longer had a face. His feet twitched and spasmed. My voice died in my throat. No breath, no control.

  Footsteps on the stairs.

  My knees scraped against the hardened plastic flooring as I scrambled beneath a seat. Urgent feet on the floor, running toward Frost’s corpse. The pounding stopped. I bent my chin to the ground, trying to melt away into the boat while my body trembled. A face appeared in front of mine. The East River Ferry employee in the blue company shirt had fallen to the deck. He was lying on his side, a confused look on his face. He had an NYPD badge in one hand and a Glock in the other. I heard the report of a rifle and screams of surprise in the distance. A black-red stain enveloped the logo of the ferry company, and the cop died lying on the floor in front of me. The life simply poured out of his eyes.

  A sniper.

  Think.

  The car horns. They weren’t from South Street. Traffic had been easy there, and plenty of vehicles were parked, awaiting a payload of ferry passengers. The FDR. A car must have stopped on the outside lane, and vehicles were sounding their horns as they went past. The elevated position that the overpass provided would be perfect for a rifleman firing from a car window.

  I heard the caterwaul of tires and a big V12 engine. Glancing over the rail I saw a blue SUV taking a smoking start on the FDR Drive. This was the shooter. If someone on the Brooklyn side of the river saw me on the top deck, it would’ve bee
n simple enough to prime a sniper to tag me as I cruised into Pier 11 on the ferry. The Morgue Squad. Whoever they were, they worked fast, they worked as a team, and they played for keeps.

  Whatever Frost knew, somebody didn’t want him talking to me. I could’ve easily been the one to take a round. But whoever was pulling the trigger thought Frost was more of a threat.

  I stood and saw the gates open on Pier 11. Passengers on the lower deck began disembarking. It was eight thirty and the ferry would make one more trip. I thought about making that return trip. My jacket was in my car in Brooklyn. And my car would be a likely spot for someone to wait for me to return so they could plant a bullet in my back as I slid the key into the door.

  At first I couldn’t find my cell phone; then I saw it on the floor. It must’ve fallen out of my pants pocket. I wiped the blood from my face with my tie, then redialed the number for McAllister. Somehow I found my voice, which cracked and broke as I pushed out the words in between guttering breaths.

  “It’s Eddie Flynn. Frost is dead. So is the cop in the ferry uniform. Rifle shot from a car window on FDR Drive. I couldn’t get a license plate, but it was a blue SUV. Maybe a Toyot—”

  “Hold on. Calm down. What did you just say?”

  “Your boss is dead.”

  “Is Jones alive?”

  “If he’s the guy pretending to work on the ferry, then no, Jones is . . .”

  My attention was elsewhere. Two men holding handguns were running toward the ferry, NYPD badges hanging around their necks, bouncing off their chests as they ran. Plainclothes cops in suits. Detectives.

  “Have you called this in?” I asked.

  “I’m about to.”

  “If you haven’t reported it, then why are there two cops running toward the ferry?”

  “Are they in uniform?”

  “No.”

  “It’s them. Get out of there, now.”

  My feet were already skidding down the steps. I vaulted the chain that roped off the top deck, checked that no one was around. The passengers waiting to board the ferry were still in the terminal. The two cops were also on the other side of the terminal. Probably getting the deckhands to let them through. They’d be here any moment. Nowhere to go. No choice. The ferry was turning, ready to land. I had maybe five seconds before everyone on the pier saw me standing on the deck. I took one stride, then flipped my legs over the rail and slipped into the East River.