New Jersey Noir

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Ten minutes later he stood facing a window in a small consultation area located within the emergency room. He gazed out across Haddon Avenue and eyed a squat building in the near distance. Emblazoned across the top, the words Camden Police Department gave fair warning to anyone in and around the hospital to behave themselves. Cooper had been as effectively isolated from the surrounding city as possible, Interstate 676 and parkland to the east, police headquarters to the north, renovated housing used as residences for hospital staff and medical offices to the south and west.

  It had been a rather profitable project, Cash mused as he scanned the scene, absentmindedly scraping a bit of soot from the sill before him, sleep stinging his eyes. Quite profitable.

  As he waited, Cash’s thoughts returned to the events of last evening: the quiet dinner with family in his sprawling Victorian home in Moorestown, some reading, the late-night news, sleep, and then the phone call.

  “Hello?” he had whispered into the mouthpiece, glancing to his sleeping wife as she gently stirred beside him.

  “Mr. Cash?” a tentative voice had begun. “It’s Ken, sir, Ken Barrows.”

  Jesus Christ, Cash had thought, what could the most junior member of the firm possibly want at this hour? “What the hell, Barrows, it’s almost three-thirty in the morning.”

  “Yes sir, I realize that. It’s just that … well, I’m on call tonight. For the FOP, you know, the police union. It’s my week to be on call.”

  Cash frowned into the mouthpiece, again glancing to his wife. She seemed resettled, her nightly sleeping pill working its wonder.

  “And?” Cash asked harshly.

  Barrows paused for a moment, perhaps suddenly rethinking the wisdom of the call. “There’s been a shooting, sir. A fatal police shooting. One person is dead, but no police were injured. The union rep called me from the scene a few minutes ago. He wants me down there.”

  Cash’s frown turned to a scowl. “Of course he does, Barrows. That’s the purpose of having a lawyer on call twenty-four-seven. It’s mandatory when you represent the unions. But why in God’s name did you feel it necessary to—”

  “I thought you’d want to know, sir,” Barrows interrupted, a new confidence in his tone. “You see, the shooting was in Camden City. It was a white officer, the dead man is black. And the officer involved, the one who shot the perpetrator, was … it was that new officer.” He paused here for effect. Barrows, despite his youth, was a good lawyer. “It was Anthony Miles.” Another slight pause. “I thought it best you knew, sir. Of course, I can handle it if you’d like … but I thought you should know.”

  Now Cash sat upright, indifferent to whether or not the movement would further disturb his wife. “Oh,” he said, his mind shifting sharply from disgruntled employer to defensive lawyer. “Oh,” he repeated.

  After a brief silence, he spoke again. “Call the union rep at the scene. Tell him to put Miles into a radio car and get him over to Cooper a.s.a.p. I’ll call ahead and get hold of whoever is in charge of the emergency room. I want Miles sedated. Tell the union rep to convince the kid that he’s stressed out and needs to see a doctor. Once the doctors get a drug into him, the law says he can’t be interviewed. It’ll buy us some time. I can be at the hospital in less than thirty minutes.”

  “Yes sir, I’ll call the rep. Shall I meet you there?”

  Cash considered it. “No. Just make sure the rep gets Miles to the ER immediately. I’ll grease the wheels. I don’t want some intern refusing to sedate.”

  “Yes sir,” Barrows said, his confidence even stronger now.

  “You were right to call, Ken. It shows good presence of mind.”

  “Thank you, sir. I thought you should know.”

  Cash slipped out of bed, shaving and dressing quickly. He left a note for his wife and drove to Route 38, leaving the lush, manicured splendor of Moorestown for a twenty-minute drive to the desolate wasteland of Camden City. As the BMW cut rapidly through misty darkness, Cash thought about police officer Anthony Miles.

  Miles had gone directly to the Camden Police Department after graduating the County Police Academy. Like all rookies, he had been assigned to routine patrol duty with a senior training officer. In most such cases, no one in any remotely influential position would have cause to notice or care.

  But Miles was different. Miles was the son of Curtis Miles, United States Attorney to the State of New Jersey. The Republican United States Attorney.

  And Camden was ground zero for the Democratic machine that had maintained a strong and lucrative hold on New Jersey politics for more than two decades. Frank Cash, himself the son of a former county chairman, had lined his pockets and filled the coffers of his law firm with countless contracts, retainers, and fees financed with state and county tax dollars. Indeed, his firm’s representation of every police union in South Jersey was merely one such plum.

  So when Cash sat down to lunch some months earlier with the current county chairman, the implications had not been lost on him.

  Officer Miles, the chairman had suggested, was no ordinary rookie. His father was an ambitious, driven man who had chosen a pragmatic approach to what he hoped would be an unlimited political future: he would dedicate himself to fighting corruption in New Jersey—particularly Democratic corruption.

  “Like shooting fish in a barrel,” the chairman said between forkfuls of shrimp. “If he’s serious about it.”

  “Is he?” Cash asked.

  The chairman laid down his fork, then patted his lips gently with a linen napkin.

  “Yes, he is—it’s his ticket to the governor’s office.”

  Cash considered it. “What’s our exposure?”

  The chairman shrugged. “Any is too much. This young cop has his own political juice, courtesy of his old man. If becoming a cop was all he really wanted, his father could have gotten him assigned to bikini patrol in some shore town or crabgrass stakeout in our neck of the woods. Why would he want to go to Camden?”

  “Maybe,” Cash offered with little conviction, “he just wants to be a real cop.”

  “Yeah,” the chairman said, reaching once more for his fork. “And I’m Harry-fuckin’-Truman.” He leaned in across the table, speaking more softly. Cash had to strain his ears to make out the words. “Camden has about twenty-three hundred violent crimes per hundred thou population, compared to the national average of about four hundred fifty. It’s been named the most dangerous city in the entire country time after time. The state had to take over the entire police department and school system because they’re so fucked up. Tell me, why would the son of Curtis Miles, the guy who wants to be governor, maybe president someday, want to work in Camden? The kid’s a Rider University graduate, for Christ’s sake.” The chairman sat back. “He’s a fuckin’ plant for his old man. You have any idea what motivated and hostile eyes can find in that environment?”

  Cash sipped his wine before responding. “So you figure his father for a white knight sending his kid in to help?”

  The chairman laughed. “White knight my ass. He’s no better than anybody else. He’s already greased some wheels for his son. The kid isn’t on the job six months, and he’s assigned to HIDTA already. The worst fuckin’ place for him, far as we’re concerned. No, Curtis Miles is no white knight. He’s just so ambitious he’s willing to throw his own son into the fire to help get him what he needs to nail Democrats.”

  Cash shook his head. “We’ve chosen a nasty business for ourselves.”

  “Yes. And that kid working High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas can turn things even nastier.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  The chairman shrugged. “You’re the union lawyer. Sooner or later, this kid will most likely wind up in your lap. I want you to understand what you’ll be dealing with. I haven’t survived in this shit all these years without learning to anticipate.”

  Cash drained his wine glass and reached for the bottle. “I understand.”

  Now, forty minutes a
fter leaving his bed, Frank Cash stared out the hospital window into the Camden night and sighed. He remembered long-ago advice from his politician father. There are winners and losers. Be a winner. It makes life bearable.

  He turned as the door to the small consultation room opened. It was the union representative, Peter Negron.

  “Hello, Pete.”

  The man entered the room and closed the door softly behind him. “Hello, Mr. Cash. I didn’t figure you’d come down personally.”

  “Yes, well, I have. Has Miles been sedated?”

  “Yeah, the chief resident saw him soon as we got here. They jacked the kid up on Xanax. Five minutes later, two spooks from the county prosecutor’s office showed up. I told ’em the kid was medicated and couldn’t talk to them … They left, said they’d see him tomorrow. They seemed pissed off.”

  Cash grunted. “They’ll get over it. We needed to buy some time so I can get a handle on this.”

  Negron nodded. “Okay. I was with Miles when the shooting went down. We were workin’ HIDTA citywide, me and Miles and Sanchez.”

  “Where’d it happen?”

  “Line Street, between South 6th and Roberts.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  When Negron finished, Cash ran a hand through his hair thoughtfully. “Sounds pretty clean,” he said. Then pointedly added, “If that’s how it went down.”

  Negron smiled and raised his right hand. “I swear on my eyes, counselor, I ain’t dumb enough to lie to the lawyer. ’Specially for this kid.”

  With their eyes locked, Cash nodded. “Go get him. Bring him to me.”

  Negron turned and left.

  When Miles entered the room, Cash was immediately stricken by his youthful appearance. Although twenty-two, he looked seventeen. His black hair was long, unkempt. It spilled over the collar of the faded navy peacoat he wore. Dried vomit stained the front panel of the coat, its sour odor touching at Cash’s nostrils. Dark blood was splattered across the left cuff and forearm. The young man’s eyes were hollow and listless. A stubble of light whiskers covered his chin and cheeks, giving him a dirty, unpleasant look. While the clothing and grooming fit well with Miles’s antinarcotic assignment, he seemed a little too comfortable in the outfit. Cash found a mild disliking begin to dawn.

  “Have a seat, Miles,” he said, and watched as the cop slid a chair back from the small, round table. Cash sat opposite him, folding his hands on the smooth plastic tabletop. How much bad news, he wondered, had been discussed in this very same room?

  “All right,” he said as Miles’s eyes lifted to meet his own. “My name is Frank Cash. My law firm represents members of the local chapter of your union, the Fraternal Order of Police. I’m here to help you deal with all this.”

  Cash saw Miles’s gaze fall away, dropping to the tabletop, his body shaking with a sudden chill. His appearance seemed to suddenly morph into that of a frightened boy caught in some youthful transgression and summoned to his father’s study. Cash found his initial suspicions and dislike begin to waver. In all his fifty-one years, he had never taken a life, not even that of a small animal or rodent. And here was this boy, barely out of school, who had violently sent a man to hell in what surely must have been a horrifying, desperate moment.

  “All right,” Cash repeated, gentler this time, softer. “State, county, and city headhunters will be hounding you tomorrow, son. I need you to tell me what happened, everything, every detail. Get it straight in your head. Let’s see where I can help. Just start from the beginning and go slowly. Tell me everything, even if it doesn’t sound very good. It’ll sound worse said cold tomorrow, believe me.”

  Miles raised his eyes. “Negron said he told you everything already.”

  Cash nodded. “Yes. He told me what he did and what he thinks he saw. I need you to tell me what you did. What you saw.”

  Miles’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes. I understand.”

  The young policeman shifted himself in his seat, fixed an unblinking stare at the darkened window behind Cash, and began to tell his story.

  “We were on patrol, the three of us, me in the front recorder seat, Negron driving, Sanchez in back behind me. It musta been about two in the morning. We were cruising known drug locales; just eyeballing. Cold, crappy night like this, most of the deals were going down indoors. Anyway, we wind up on Line Street, heading east, just rolling past the broken-down houses along there.”

  “Where is Line Street?” Cash asked.

  Miles shrugged. “’Bout six, seven blocks south of here, just east of Broadway.”

  “What neighborhood is that?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t know. Whitman Park, I guess.”

  “Go on.”

  “So we’re just rolling along, real slow—maybe ten, fifteen tops. The street is narrow, a few parked cars here and there, some just abandoned. So we cross South 6th Street heading toward Roberts. Northwest corner of Line and 6th is an empty lot where some condemned buildings got demoed. There’s a fence around it, chainlink. Even though we’re kinda looking around as we roll, none of us saw this old lady till she was right in front of us, like she just appeared out of the dark, you know? Negron almost ran her over. Well, she makes us for cops and starts banging on the hood of the car and screaming at us.”

  “Was she black? Hispanic, Caucasian, what?”

  Miles glanced briefly at Cash. “Hispanic.” He paused for a moment before continuing. “Anyway, she’s all excited, so Sanchez gets out of the backseat and approaches her. He tins her and starts talking in Spanish, and she starts bawling and pointing to the only house on the north side of Line Street that’s still standing. It was the house she had come out of.”

  “Had you seen her come out of it?”

  “No, like one second the street was empty, the next second there she was, in front of the car.” Cash noticed the trembling begin to intensify, apparently overcoming the dosage of Xanax the cop had received. When Miles spoke again, there was a rise of pitch in his voice. “So anyway, I get out of the car and Sanchez winks at me and makes a face, like he’s saying, Look at this old bitch, do you believe this?”

  “How old would you say she was?”

  Miles shifted in his seat and leaned forward slightly, still directing his words at the black rectangle of the window. “Old. Pushing sixty. I don’t know.”

  Cash smiled slightly. “Go on.”

  “So when I reach them, she starts speaking English, telling us there’s a black guy up on the second floor of the house, been acting crazy all night, people coming and going and she was trying to sleep and told him something and he cursed her and tried to hit her, and she got scared and ran out and saw us. So by now, Negron is standing there too, and he asks her if she called the cops. She says no, there’s no phone in the house, no water, no electricity, nothing. We can see it’s boarded up, abandoned, and we figure her for a squatter. She tells us the black guy deals H, sometimes crack, the building is his base, everybody is afraid of him and all this kind of shit. So Sanchez starts writing it down, you know, to sort of appease her a little. We figure maybe she’s stoned, you know, old and stoned and half nuts. So then Negron says he feels like a little action, let’s check it out. Well, I’m a little bored myself, it was a slow tour and I figure, what the hell. So Sanchez stays at the car with the old lady to call in our ten-twenty. Me and Negron start walking toward the house.”

  “Describe the house.”

  “Two-story brick, like all of them around there. Most of the windows boarded up. There was a narrow, covered front porch with side steps leading up to it. The front door was missing, it was just a dark open hole. The east side of the house was just like the west, another empty lot.”

  “All right. Go on.”

  “Well, me and Negron get to the house and I walk around the porch to the side steps. Just as I reach them, I hear Negron cursing. He stepped in dog shit. At least he hoped it was dog shit. The place really stinks—piss, garbage, shit, everything. The nearest stree
tlight is burned out, it’s dark as hell …”

  Now Miles’s body seemed to tighten on itself, the trembling turning sharply into a steady shake. He tried desperately to moisten his mouth before speaking again.

  “So, I’m laughing at Negron, he’s wiping his shoe on the edge of the porch. I start up the steps.”

  “How many steps?”

  “Four, maybe five.”

  “Where’s your gun at this point?”

  “Well, I have two guns on me. My Glock is in a belt holster under my coat, and a .38 revolver is in the right coat pocket.”

  “Both regulation sidearms?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is your coat open or buttoned up?”

  “Open. You know, it was warm inside the car, so it’s open.”

  Cash glanced at the now tightly closed coat, the warmth of the room unable to reach Miles’s chill. “Go on.”

  “The old lady told us this guy didn’t have a weapon, none that she saw, anyway. We figured it for a dispute between two homeless squatters, we’d check it out and then leave. So while Negron is still scraping shit off his shoe, I go up maybe two, three steps and I hear something coming from inside the doorway.”

  “What did you hear?”

  Miles’s shoulders twitched and his right hand jerked out of his lap, fisting. “A sharp double metallic click. Like a weapon being locked and loaded. Negron heard it too. He said, Fuck! and I saw him duck in front of the porch and go for his gun. I just stood there, frozen.”

  Cash sat back in his seat, eyeing the young, trembling cop. “Go on,” he said softly.

  “All of a sudden this guy, this enormous fuckin’ guy, is right there, right in the doorway, maybe eight, nine feet away from me. A huge, crazy-looking guy, and he’s got a fuckin’ rifle in his hands. A rifle!”