by Mark Dawson
Milton got two cups of coffee and a Coke and went over to where the Blancos were standing.
“What happens now?” Freddy said to his father and Milton after he had sipped from the plastic cup.
“The people here have problems with alcohol just like I do,” Manny explained quietly. “Most of the time, we just listen. Someone will talk about their story, the things that have happened to them, and then people will say how what they’ve heard has made them feel.”
Milton had been to Al-Anon meetings in London; newcomers were encouraged to learn from members whose personal situations most closely resembled theirs. The goal was for them to begin to understand how much they had in common with the others who had been affected by someone else’s drinking, regardless of the specific details of their personal situation.
Freddy stared up at his father. Milton thought he looked younger than thirteen. “Are you gonna say anything?” he asked.
Manny looked over at Milton, as if for guidance, and Milton inclined his head a little in encouragement.
“Yeah,” Manny said. “Probably. I got a lot to get off my chest. I let you down, Freddy. I wanna start making that right.”
“You don’t have to tell anyone that,” Freddy said, indignant at the thought of his father embarrassing himself in front of these people.
“It’s okay,” Manny said. “No one judges. Everyone’s got the same issues. I’m the same as all the rest.”
The secretary came out of the main room and announced that the meeting was just getting started.
“Ready?” Milton suggested.
Manny bit his lip; his eyes were wet and he looked as if he was about to cry.
“It’ll be all right,” Milton said.
He took a gulp of air.
Freddy reached for his father’s hand and smiled at him. Manny took another lungful, tried to fake a smile, and nodded. He led the way into the room.
52
The three of them took seats at the front of the room—a little uncomfortable for Milton, who preferred the back—and they sat and listened to the share of a woman about the same age as Manny who had two teenage girls at the meeting to hear her speak. The woman told a tale that Milton had heard many, many times before: she had separated from her husband and had struggled to bring her daughters up on her own, relying more and more on alcohol until she was drinking first thing in the morning and hiding bottles of vodka around the house. Milton saw a flash of movement in the corner of his eye and looked over to see that Manny had reached over to hold Freddy’s hand.
The woman finished her story and the chair invited others to speak. Both daughters went first, explaining how their mother’s drinking had affected their lives, but then telling her that they both loved her, were grateful to her for what she had done for them and proud of her for admitting that she had a problem. The woman started to cry, and both girls went up to hug her. Milton looked and saw that Manny was crying, too.
The shares continued. Manny didn’t say anything, and Milton thought that he had decided to stay silent until the secretary looked at his watch and asked whether anyone else wanted to say something.
Manny raised his hand. He explained that he had been coming to meetings for a while and had said that he had thought that he was doing well. He said that things had got on top of him over the past few days and that he had fallen off the wagon. He said that he had let his son down when he had needed him the most. His voice was clogged with emotion, and he was unable to go on. Freddy reached over and took his father’s hand. Manny took a breath and then continued. He said that he had brought his son with him today so that he could see how seriously he was taking his problem, and so that he could tell him, with the others as witnesses, that he was going to stop drinking for good. He told him that he was never going to let him down again.
Milton usually found the meetings to be peaceful and meditative places. He rarely found that he had an emotional response to the stories of the others who shared, but he found that there was a catch in his throat as he joined the room in thanking Manny for his share. He tried to work out why that was. He felt some complicity in Manny’s relapse; he was already doubting the good sense in involving himself in their business—closing the drug den and replacing Freddy’s stolen sneakers—and worried that he had catalysed Manny’s drinking by making him feel inadequate as a father.
That, though, was not the reason why he had found the story difficult to hear. It was more personal than that: Milton had started to feel lonely. It had taken him months to admit it to himself, but, after what had happened to him in Manila, he couldn’t pretend any longer. He had ignored his instinctive caution and flown halfway around the world because someone he had known once, a long time ago, had told him that he was a father. It had turned out not to be true, and his gullibility had cost the life of the woman who had lied to him—and had almost cost him his own, too.
Milton had sublimated it all. He couldn’t allow himself the luxury of thinking that a normal life was something that he could ever have. He was a killer, with blood on his hands, and there were people in the world who would have dearly loved to see him murdered in as painful and inventive a way as possible. To bring anyone else into his orbit—a partner, or, even worse, a child—would be the ultimate act of selfishness. His life was full of paranoia and suspicion, and he could see no change to that. He couldn’t ask anyone else to share that with him. He had brought it upon himself; it was his burden to bear.
The meeting finished and they shuffled along with the others into the lobby.
“Who wants to go to Dave and Buster’s?” Manny asked.
Freddy was open-mouthed with excitement. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Manny grinned at his son, and Freddy enthusiastically bumped fists with him. Milton smiled; he remembered how excited he had been when his parents took him to McDonald’s when he was growing up and this, he guessed, was similar.
“John?”
“Sorry,” Milton said. “Miles away.”
“You wanna come with us?”
Milton had nowhere that he needed to be, and he found that he was growing more and more comfortable with the Blancos. He also wanted the opportunity to talk to them both about the best way to handle Freddy’s involvement in the murder investigation.
“I’d love to,” he said.
53
Carter was distracted for the first three and a half hours of their shift. He kept flashing back to the previous night and the knowledge that they had left a witness. It was unprofessional and, more than that, it was dangerous. Mackintosh was one thing, but, as he allowed the thought to fester, he realised that Acosta was worse. They had always sold themselves to him as smart operators who got things done with the minimum of fuss and with no possibility of exposure for him. They were problem solvers.
This time was different.
They might have solved one problem, but, in doing so, they had created another. Acosta was ruthless. It was impossible to rise as high and as fast as he had risen without being able to move decisively, to be able to put aside everything for the sake of building and then protecting the business. Carter knew about the rivals who had sought to keep him down and the upstarts who had tried to usurp his throne. He knew where the bodies were buried; in three cases, he had buried the bodies himself.
Rhodes must have sensed that something was on his mind, for, after a failed attempt to start a conversation as they set off, he had been largely quiet. They listened to the dispatcher on the radio, the squelches of static that bookended each call to assign officers to incidents. Carter looked over at him and felt resentment. Rhodes was at the start of his career, with every option open to him. Carter had chosen his path and now he was destined—or doomed—to follow it. He was yoked to Acosta. It was true that he had made a lot of money, but most of that had been spent. There was only one way to leave Acosta’s employment, as González had discovered. Carter was trapped.
He knew the resentment was
irrational, but still he let it stew. Rhodes’s naivety, his stupid questions, his blindness to the reality of life on the street—it made him angry, and he decided to do something about it.
They were cruising west along Pitkin when Carter saw the guy. They were fifty feet away from him. The man was standing on the corner of Elton. He was a big guy in a leather trench coat with a black beanie on his head and dreadlocks spilling down his back. Carter knew who he was.
“Pull over,” Carter said, pointing to a spot behind an AT&T truck.
Rhodes did as he was told, pulling out of the flow of traffic and slotting in behind the van.
“There’s a guy on the corner up ahead,” he said. “Big black guy. See him?”
“Sure.”
“His name’s Otto. Pushes weed on the street. I’ve arrested him half a dozen times in the last month, but the fucker don’t take no for an answer and keeps coming out here. Looks like we’re gonna have to remind him not to do that no more.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“Back me up,” he said. “Otto’s a runner. Soon as he sees me, he’s gonna book. We’re gonna have to chase him down. Ready?”
Rhodes nodded.
Carter opened his door and immediately started to run. Otto was looking the other way, and Carter was almost on top of him before he noticed and started to sprint in the opposite direction. He turned onto Elton Street and headed south. It was a rough street, with decaying houses on either side and cheap cars parked outside them. Otto had been a marine in a previous life and had complained once that he’d been shot in the leg during a tour of Iraq. Whatever the truth of that, he walked with a limp that became even more pronounced as he tried to run. Carter reeled him in, catching him as he reached the church that was halfway between Pitkin and Belmont. He grabbed his coat and flung him into the railing at the side of the church. Otto crashed face first to the ground; Carter dropped onto him, planting his knee in the centre of his back, grabbing his right wrist and yanking it up behind his back.
“Why are you running, Otto?”
“Because you gonna roll me again,” the man said, grunting from the pain.
Otto took the opportunity to struggle, trying to free his wrist. Carter took his pistol and pressed the barrel against the back of his head.
“You fucking mutt,” he said to Otto. “Keep still.”
He frisked him with his left hand, going through the pockets of his jacket and dumping the contents on the ground. He found a thick roll of dollars fastened with an elastic band and a double handful of small clear plastic vials, each with a red cap, about an inch long and the width of a pencil, similar to the vials that stores used for perfume samples. Instead of perfume, though, these vials each contained a half gram of off-white nuggets with jagged edges.
“Crack, Otto? I told you I didn’t want to see you selling this shit again.”
Carter took the vials and put them in his own pocket. He guessed that there were forty of them, and he knew that each would retail for twenty bucks. He would be able to offer those to his dealer at a discount and take seven hundred dollars for himself. He guessed that the roll of bills amounted to about the same again. He would clear a grand, and all he’d had to do was chase down a one-legged dealer. Easy money, just like always.
Rhodes caught up with them both.
“You okay?” he gasped.
“We’re fine,” he said. “Just finishing up.”
He pulled the gun away, removed his knee from Otto’s back, and stood. Otto turned over so that he could look up at them, but he made no effort to get up.
“Go home,” Carter said. “I don’t want to see you here when we come by later.”
Carter got back into the car and waited for Rhodes to join him.
“What happened back there?” the rookie said.
“What do you mean?”
“You let him walk. You said he was dealing.”
“He was dealing.”
“So why didn’t we arrest him?”
It was time for some home truths. “You know how many drug dealers work this part of Brooklyn?”
“I’ve got no idea.”
“Dozens. Let’s say there are fifty I know of and probably three times that who I don’t. They ain’t hard to find. We could cruise up and down this street and find another in five minutes flat. We could arrest our friend back there, add the new guy… we could have three of them back there in no time. You know why we don’t do that?”
Rhodes shook his head.
Carter took out the roll of money that he had confiscated from Otto. He reached into his pocket again and took out a handful of the crack vials that he’d taken.
“What are you doing?”
They were going to have the conversation at some point, Carter decided. It might as well be now.
“How much good do you think arresting them would do—I mean really do?” It was a rhetorical question, and he waved his hand to forestall an answer. “Look what we got: overcrowded jails, prosecutors who are so busy they don’t know what day it is. Add in unreliable witnesses and you got a messy situation. Now let’s say we arrest Otto and take him back to get charged. There’s a ton of paperwork that we gotta fill out. He gets an interview. We deal with some lawyer, a precinct crawler who knows how to make us look bad and gets him out with minimal effect. Otto is back on the street tomorrow like nothing has happened. Back on the same corner, selling the same shit to the same shitbirds.”
“So?”
“So,” Carter went on, “there’s a better way. Rather than go through the hoops, eventually you figure out that it’s easier to let the suspect go. Maybe you work him over with your stick a little or, if you’re feeling generous, you give him a warning. The dealer is grateful, and maybe you can go back to him later and turn him so you can work up the chain to his supplier. Take the supplier down and you take out a dozen dealers all at once, not just one.”
Rhodes listened quietly. When Carter was finished, he pointed to the crack and the money. “And that?”
“Listen, kid,” he said. “Let me ask you a question. How much do you figure to clear after tax this month?”
“Two and a half.”
“And you think that’s fair for the amount of shit you’re gonna have to go through to get it?”
“That’s the job. I knew what the pay was like going in. No point bitching about it now.”
“But you’ve got no idea what life on the street is like, do you? This ain’t the subway. This is Brooklyn.”
Rhodes didn’t answer.
Carter didn’t know whether he had gotten through to him or not. He reached up, took the money and the crack and put it in the glovebox. He looked at the kid. Rhodes had watched as he put the money and the drugs away. His face was eloquent with the confusion that he was wrestling with: he was sucking and biting the left-hand corner of his top lip, and his forehead was furrowed with a deep frown.
“We got more talking to do,” Carter said. “Drive.”
54
The nearest Dave and Buster’s was in midtown Manhattan. Milton tried not to watch the meter as they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge and headed into the jungle of glittering spires and minarets of the financial district. He knew he had to stop worrying on Manny’s behalf, but the cab was going to cost them sixty bucks for a round trip and, given Freddy’s excitement about their destination, Milton guessed that it wasn’t somewhere that they visited very often. That meant it was probably not going to be a cheap meal. He wondered whether there was any way that he could help defray the evening’s expenses without offending Manny or making things worse and concluded that there wasn’t.
Milton had never heard of Dave and Buster’s, but, as he learned quickly in the back of the cab, it had made a mark for itself by combining the basics of an arcade, sports bar and burger restaurant under one roof.
The place was full. The main floor was a restaurant that could also be turned into a sports bar, and Milton guessed that there was room for at le
ast two hundred customers. There was a staircase up to the second floor, where Milton guessed—given the pulsing lights and the clamour of noise—the arcade could be found.
Freddy started for the stairs as soon as they entered.
“After we’ve eaten,” Manny said, smiling, as he anchored his son with a restraining hand.
The place was full despite the capacity and they were given a table at the back. Milton looked at the menu and picked the Buffalo Wing Burger. Manny was about to order the Maker’s Mark Burger, but realised his error and changed it so that it came without the bourbon sauce. Freddy picked the cheeseburger with sautéed mushrooms. They added extra waffle-cut French fries and three sodas. The waitress took their order and disappeared into the kitchen.
Milton cleared his throat. They had to have the conversation. It would be better to get it out of the way now so that they could enjoy their meal.
“So,” he said. “Did the police come back this morning?”
Freddy nodded.
“What did they ask?”
The waitress came back with their drinks.
Freddy waited and then said, “They wanted me to go through what happened last night. What I saw.”
“Did you tell them?”
He took a sip of his Coke. “I told them what you said I should tell them.”
Manny leaned forward. “What?”
“You didn’t say anything about the man in the precinct?”
“What?” Manny said. “What does that mean?”
“No,” Freddy said. “I didn’t say.”
Manny held up a hand. “Hold up,” he said. “Let’s run through that again. He didn’t tell them what?”
Milton took a sip of his drink to give himself a moment to compose what he wanted to say. He knew that it had the potential to wreck the evening before it even began.
