Marked Man

by Jared Paul

  The radio on the officer’s hip bleeped and a dispatcher’s voice came through.

  “All units we have reports of multiple shots fired at the Kronenberg Motel. All available units please respond.”

  “Copy that.” The cop answered.

  “Well Mr. Wallace, it looks like tonight is your lucky night. Ordinarily I would paper the shit outta ya for going that fast butcha gonna get off with a warning. Now I want ya to drive straight home and take it easy on that heavy foot, alright?”

  Eagerly Jordan nodded and let out a breath he had been holding for half a minute.

  “Yes sir thank you.”

  The officer gave him back his fake driver’s license and insurance and walked away. After the squad car made a U-turn and drove back in the direction of the motel Jordan sat in the car with his eyes closed for a long time. Nearly every part of him was shaking. He sniffed and wiped away at a tear that had been threatening to form on his eyelid. Jordan turned the radio back on but the music went in one ear and out the other, he couldn’t hear and he couldn’t think. All he was capable of doing was looking up helplessly at the few stars that were visible through the drifting steam and light pollution and think thank you. Thank you, thank you.

  Chapter Nine

  Detective Morris Castillo raised the yellow crime scene tape and stepped into the motel room. One of the forensics specialists was putting out little placards next to each round he discovered in the carpet. He was up to fourteen already.

  Under the springs the dead pimp Mikhail Polzin had been shot through the sternum several times by a very powerful weapon at close range. The girl in the corner had only taken one, but in the worst possible place. Castillo remembered from the academy that the stomach was the absolute most painful area to take a bullet. Luckily for the girl it also struck an artery so she bled to death before going through too much suffering.

  By the looks of it some 24 kilos of heroin had been hidden under the mattress. A regular uniformed officer with a thick Queens accent was picking at one of the packages.

  “Say Detective. Ya wanna take a look at this?”

  Castillo moved through the room, feeling like he was floating. The Russians were going to go completely ballistic if they lost this much product. Standing over the cop, Castillo answered him.

  “Yeah? What is it?”

  The cop pointed to a blank space between two of the bricks in the third row. Going slow so as to make absolutely certain, Castillo counted them up.

  “Twenty three kilos.”

  “Ya think maybe one of them went missing?”

  “Well that’s fucking slick, officer. It won’t be long before you make detective.”

  Officer Queens muttered a comeback under his breath that Castillo couldn’t make out. He let it go.

  Feeling light headed, Castillo wandered back outside to share a smoke with his partner Detective Casings. He lit a cigarette and held in the smoke as long as his lungs would tolerate. The smooth wash of the nicotine rush allowed Castillo to think clearly again. This was very bad. Someone had talked. This was only the preliminary delivery. Whoever was responsible for hitting Polzin knew too much already, if they also knew about what was coming in at the docks…

  “Let me ask you something Casings.”

  His partner blew a puff of smoke out into the breeze and waited for the question.

  “What kind of person hits a dealer and then leaves almost all the product behind? Why take just one kilo?”

  Not surprisingly Casings admitted that he did not know.

  Once the bodies had been loaded onto gurneys and taken away, the detectives cleared the crime scene, banishing forensics and everyone else so that they could begin the investigation in proper. Casings retrieved a set of three gym bags, which they filled up with the packages of heroin and then stuffed into the trunk of Castillo’s car.

  …

  On Sunday morning Bollier visited Jordan’s lair on the fourteenth flour of a condo on 116th overlooking Morningside Park. She and Agent Clemons both had keys as part of the arrangement. She found Jordan shirtless, doing bench presses with a pair of gloves on in a chilly room with all the windows cracked open.

  “How do you not have a shirt on? It’s freezing.”

  Jordan finished his reps and hooked the bar back into place.

  “It’s invigorating.”

  “I brought some of that protein shake stuff you asked for.”

  “Great thanks, I have something I need to show you.”

  Bollier let Jordan lead her into his bedroom. He climbed up a step ladder and then pushed aside a panel on the ceiling then reached in and took out a packet and tossed it to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “You tell me.”

  Bollier slit the package open with a nail file and examined the chalky white powder. Although narcotics were not her forte she knew enough to recognize heroin when she saw it. She stared at Jordan.

  “Where did you get this?”

  Jordan recounted the story about his gun battle at the motel with Polzin. He left out the part about later on when he almost shot a perfectly innocent police officer. Several times as he was telling the tale Bollier looked like she wanted to drink his blood but she let Jordan talk. When he was through she squeezed at the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes shut tight.

  “How many of these did you say there were?”

  “Had to be 20, 25 at least. I didn’t exactly have time to count them individually. Why? Is that a lot?”

  “Jesus Christ. Is that a lot? You stumbled on several million with-an-m dollars-worth of dope, Mr. Ross. That’s a number and then six little zeroes behind it. Just one of these, this is a kilo, by the way… just one of these kilos is worth a hundred thousand dollars easily, and that’s if it’s total crap. If the purity is high it could be fifty percent more, maybe higher.”

  The packet on his kitchen counter was lying open inconspicuously. Jordan poked at the wrapping and tried to imagine what one hundred thousand dollars in cash would look like, and if it would even fit into a package that size.

  “So this is bad.”

  “Well, yes it’s bad. But it’s good that you found it. I don’t know. Jesus Christ I don’t know, did you have to shoot the guy? You couldn’t have… water-boarded him or something and made him tell you where he got it?”

  “I told you already. He pulled a gun the second I came into the room. It was purely a me-or-him kind of a situation. Plus I didn’t even find the stuff until after he was dead.”

  Bollier was frustrated but she knew better than to criticize Jordan’s methods in the heat of the moment.

  “Alright. Alright I get it.”

  “So what do we do about this?”

  “I’m going to have it analyzed. Find out how pure it is, maybe where it came from. With luck maybe we can pull a print too. You didn’t touch it with your bare hands did you?”

  “Give me a little credit detective.”

  “Ok. Sorry. It’s just that this case is just spiraling out of control. It keeps getting bigger and bigger. Think about it. When the NYPD makes a huge drug bust you always see the brass go out in front of the evening news cameras with the drugs on the table and they make a big deal of it. But the police find a pimp and a prostitute dead in a seedy motel room in a two million dollar pile of opiates and there’s not even a blurb on the radio? It makes no sense. None of this makes any sense if things are operating the way they should be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means one of two things, neither of them is good. Either someone higher up in the department is trying to keep a lid on this, or someone is suppressing evidence. Maybe worse, maybe it’s both. It means I can’t even bring this to a department lab because I have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. I’m going to have to take it to Clemons.”

  Jordan Ross felt a shiver crawling up the base of his spine. It settled into his shoulders and goose bumps popped up all over his ripped physique.

  “Are
you frightened by the implications, detective?”

  Steadily, detective Bollier met Jordan’s gaze. Her irises were green with solar flares of gold.

  “Yes I am.”

  “Me too.”

  …

  Detective Morris Castillo was spending his Sunday afternoon the same way he always did, slouching in a bar stool in the dive bar on Barry Street. Two high definition screens were set up behind the bar. On the one side the Jets were on and the Knicks were on the other. Castillo had placed bets with his bookie on both, and because the universe operated by a relentless, meticulous kind of cruelty both were losing.

  Draining down the last dregs of a pint of hoppy pale ale, Castillo raised his hand and called for another. The bartender was screwing a rag around the bottom of an empty glass sopping up the water stains and making new ones. Because she did not immediately jump to respond to his request, Castillo pounded his glass on the bar and lifted the glass up.

  “Another!’

  “Yeah yeah.”

  As the tap opened and poured a thick amber liquid for him a skinny man in a fedora and a gray sports jacket slid onto the bar stool immediately to his right. Out of the corner of his eye Castillo watched him reach into his jacket, pull out a packet of cigarettes and light one. Smoking had been banned in New York bars back in 2003, but the dive bar on Barry Street never bothered enforcing the law and as a result had grown a loyal cadre of customers. It was one of the reasons that Castillo liked the place.

  The bartender put the pale ale in front of Castillo and took some of the money that he’d laid out a while back. Castillo never counted it, he just laid all the cash he had out when he arrived and drank until it was gone or he got cut off.

  Next to him the man ordered a vodka martini and blew smoke at the Knicks game.

  “Why no zone?” He asked, craning his neck up at the television.

  Castillo swiveled his stool around to face the thin man with the fedora, which was now resting on the bar next to the man’s packet of cigarettes.

  “What’d you say?”

  “Zone. Why do not they play zone defense? Always they are beat one on one, and still no zone.”

  As if on queue, the screen showed a slow motion replay of the Knicks’ point guard getting beat off of the dribble by his man and committing a silly foul that failed to stop his man from scoring. The Madison Square Garden crowd rained boos and in some cases popcorn down onto the court. It was late in the game and the outcome was already decided.

  Although Castillo enjoyed watching the game he understood none of the subtleties, the fine details. He was attracted primarily by the wide variety of betting lines that basketball offered. Which team would score more in the first quarter? Which player? How many turnovers in the game? How many fouls? Which player would be ejected first? The possibilities were limitless.

  “Beats me.”

  Castillo took a gulp of the fresh pint of ale and let out a deep breath of air. Using his girth, he angled the stool back so that he could take a look at the Jets game, just in time to watch them fumble on second and goal. The skinny man had produced a small spiral notebook from his pocket. He licked his thumb and flipped the pages back until he reached the appropriate one.

  “So detective, the Jets makes for 15, plus ten more for the Knicks. Will you be paying in cash or credit today? Heh. Heh heh.”

  “There’s still time left!” Castillo shouted and rubbed his features into a mask of self-pity.

  “Yes. That I can see. We can wait of course. Miracles have been known to happen.”

  Losing $25,000 in a single day would have put Castillo in a suicidal state of mind several years back, but his income and his habit had both bloated to the point that it was no more than a moderate disappointment. There was still time left but both games were in the fourth quarter. Realistically there was no hope of recouping any of that sum but the Russian bookies never paid out until the final buzzer sounded and so neither would he.

  Castillo drank his beer and watched the final minutes of the Jets debacle. When the coaches and the players began ambling off the field towards the locker room Castillo sighed and slid an envelope across the bar towards the skinny man. He counted the money in front of him.

  “Good. This appears to be in order. And now this other business.”

  Face flushed, Castillo pushed himself up from the stool and slung his coat on. He grabbed a handful of peanuts from a basket on the bar then placed a coaster over the brim of his pint.

  “It’s out in my car.”

  The fedora was back in its proper place atop the skinny man’s scalp. He did not look amused.

  “You kept… in your car?”

  “Relax. Nobody’s breaking into a cop car.”

  Castillo chewed the peanuts while he talked. He led the Russian bookie out into the sunlight, which was blinding bright and made Castillo squint until his face looked like a pug’s. Just up the block his silver BMW with the NYPD plates was parked. Castillo walked up and looked around the street, then turned the key in the trunk and yanked it open.

  Three gym bags were crowded in around the spare tire and a couple of bottles of blue antifreeze. The skinny man nodded and addressed him.

  “Now this man, the mystery man who shot Mikhail, before you should arrest him Vladimir would very much like to speak with him in private.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Castillo carefully removed one of the gym bags and handed it over to the skinny man. Total the three of them had to weigh around fifty pounds.

  “They’re heavy. You need any help?”

  Tipping his fedora, the skinny man replied that he did not. Castillo shrugged and gave him the other two. Despite his slight frame the man walked off up the sidewalk with no problem, showing no strain. At the end of the block a black SUV pulled over to the curb. The man got in and it sped away. Castillo returned to his barstool, lifted the coaster from his drink and asked the bartender for the remote so that he could put on the Nets game.

  …

  Katz’s Delicatessen on East Houston boasted the best corned-beef sandwiches in the city, or so Special Agent Clemons had heard. It was also spacious, brightly lit, and constantly thrumming with customers. This made it the ideal space for the three conspirators to meet in public. With all of the people and noise around it would be next to impossible for anyone to overhear their conversation. Tails could be lost in the crowd as the three of them went their separate ways.

  As was his habit, Agent Clemons arrived fifteen minutes early and picked a table in the rear with a clear view of the entire restaurant. An emergency exit door was only a few paces away. Agent Clemons ordered an iced tea at the counter and used it as a paper weight for the Sunday edition of the Times. He scanned the headlines for any news that might be pertinent or alarming. Half way through an article on a European conglomerate hoping to win a city bid to build a new massive parking garage in Tribeca, he glimpsed Jordan Ross walking in with a slight limp and making his way over to the table.

  Setting aside the paper, Agent Clemons pushed out a chair for him.

  “Afternoon. What happened to you?”

  Jordan waved it off.

  “It’s nothing twisted my ankle on the stair master. Where’s Bollier?”

  “Stuck in traffic but she’s on her way. How did your meeting go with mister Polzin?”

  Leaning back in his chair, Jordan gave the G-man an insincerely apologetic sort of look. The idea was to draw information out of Polzin but what was one more deceased Russian gangster more or less?

  “Not as well as I may have hoped.”

  “So I heard.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  Agent Clemons grabbed at his iced tea and took a long satisfying slurp that sank the level of liquid in the glass several inches. He watched Jordan Ross lounging back in his black windbreakers and hoodie and wondered what kind of an animal he had released out into the wild.

  “I wanted to see your reaction.”

 
“And?”

  “I hope you’re not taking this lightly. Anyone can kill a guy. Anyone can kill a couple of guys. Bringing down a whole criminal enterprise isn’t so simple. It’s like taking down a building. My uncle used to work construction, he was a demolitions expert. Controlled implosions was his thing. He brought down structures that were condemned or had to be removed to make way for something bigger and brighter and so on. He taught me that destroying a building is much more complicated than people think. You can’t just walk in and light a stick of dynamite then throw it wherever you want. The explosives have to be placed in very specific locations, so that they take out load-bearing columns. You can waste several dozen tons of dynamite and you wouldn’t collapse a condo like the one you’re in now, but if you put it in the right places, then it can be done with just a few sticks. These Russians have built up a very tall tower over the years. Polzin was nothing. He’s out of the way, that’s all fine and good he was a piece of shit, but we needed to know where his boss hangs his head. His boss is a load-bearing column. You follow?”

  Jordan Ross yawned and fiddled with a pack of sugar he took from the condiment basket.

  “I’m going to say this once, Agent Clemons. So that it will be very clear. You don’t need to treat me like an idiot. I’m not a jarhead and I’m not a blunt tool. I know full well what we’re trying to accomplish and that killing Polzin did not advance that goal. Like I told Bollier, I didn’t have a choice. It’s all fine and good to have a plan but in the real world in combat in situations unexpected things happen and you have to adjust. Could I have taken him alive? Maybe. Was I going to risk taking a slug to the gut to do it? No.”

  Agent Clemons saw detective Bollier come in through the door and folded up his newspaper to make room on the table. He tried to finish up his lecture with Jordan Ross before she found them in the back.