Mission Flats

by Mission Flats

  Stop! Trudell has to silence the torrent of thoughts. For the next ten minutes, he has to block all that out. After the raid he can go back to dwelling on Frank Fasulo, but right now there is only room for one thought – get through that door and get home alive. This is the moment of supreme danger for any cop, and Artie Trudell knows it. Static could get him killed. Or is that what Artie wants?

  It is probably just the heat that is troubling the big policeman. The air is viscous. It is hard to breathe this stuff. Even the walls are damp. Trudell wasn’t built for this kind of heat. His clothes are soggy with sweat. His face is sweaty. His balls are sweaty. The palms of his hands. Sweat is running down the crack of his ass. Let’s just get this over, he thinks. Let’s just get it over and get back to the station where there’s air conditioning.

  He and Vega are standing on opposite sides of the door frame, backs to the wall. Vega nods toward the red door and gives Trudell a look: Bad door, Artie man. Bad juju.

  Trudell musters a smile. He used to be the carefree one, Trudell was. The big kid. The big kidder. Now he summons up a little of the old playfulness to smile and flex his biceps at his partner. No problem, JV. They haven’t built a door strong enough.

  The cops on the raid team are getting restless. It is dangerous sitting around out here. They need to go or call it off. They can’t just sit here with their dicks in their hands. Trudell can sense their itchiness. Everyone there knows he and Vega have never led a raid before. Everyone is watching to see what sort of leaders these two will be.

  Vega gives the nod.

  Trudell steps in front of the door, hoists the black battering ram off his forearm and grasps the two handles. The concrete-filled waterpipe is unbelievably heavy, even for Trudell. It looks like a torpedo that he is about to load into the back of a cannon.

  Vega counts down: five fingers, four fingers, three fingers, two fingers – on one, he points at Trudell.

  Boom!

  The battering ram shakes the door. The hallway reverberates.

  ‘Come on, big man,’ Vega mutters.

  Boom!

  There is sweat dripping off Trudell’s face but he does not have a free hand to wipe it. It runs into his eyes. It stings a little. He breathes deep. Work on one spot! Keep hitting the same spot till it gives way! He finds a point on the red door, about shoulder level. Trudell focuses on that spot – where a crack has begun to open——

  one more blow right there——

  a crack——

  and on the opposite side of the door, the same crack——

  inside the apartment, the same little fissure in the wood——

  and that is precisely where Martin Gittens stands with a rifle – a pump-action Mossberg 500 shotgun – the barrel just inches from the red door.

  Gittens is wearing dainty white cotton gloves, jeweler’s gloves, to avoid marring the fingerprints that are already on the gun. These are Braxton’s fingerprints, of course; the gun was seized nine months before. Gittens will have to pump the gun between rounds. That means he will have one shot, maybe two. Then he’ll have to bug out.

  He sights along the barrel to that weak point, the fissure in the door. That is where the battering ram is being held – and six inches higher – no, higher still, because Artie Trudell is so goddamn big – eight inches above the point of impact. Boom! The door rocks again, and the whole building shudders. The floor beneath Gittens’s feet quivers with the impact.

  Gittens raises the rifle to take dead aim at Artie Trudell’s head – deep breath – slow, cool breath – and squeeze.

  ‘I suspected it even then,’ Franny told us. ‘I didn’t know for sure, but I had my suspicions. Artie’d told me what Gittens did to Fasulo. Then the way Gittens got to the red door so fast that night and jumped in front of the door without a second thought . . . I had my doubts. But I kept my mouth shut because it still looked like Braxton was the guy. Now I’m certain. Vega’s dead, and I’m certain. Gittens shot Artie. I just know it.’

  ‘And Raul? Who was Raul?’

  Franny shrugged. ‘Maybe there was a Raul, maybe not. Maybe Gittens did get a tip from some rat and he used it to set up Artie. I figure there was no Raul – Gittens was Raul. But what’s the difference? Gittens was the shooter, that’s all that matters. Who knows, maybe Braxton was Raul. All those years Gittens had this know-it-all snitch in the Flats, and all those years Braxton managed to skate on just about everything. That sure sounds like someone was protecting him. But I don’t know. We’ll never get the truth about Raul.’

  ‘But you stood up in court, you vouched for it. You said the whole story about Raul was the truth.’

  ‘Chief Truman, I’m a lawyer. I wasn’t there. I only know what my witnesses tell me.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ John Kelly, who’d been listening to the entire tale in silence, practically spat the word in Franny’s face. ‘Gittens lied, and you played along. You knew something wasn’t right, but it was easier to prosecute Braxton with lies than to figure out what Gittens was really up to.’

  John Kelly glared at Franny with obvious contempt, as if Kelly, not Braxton, had been the victim of Franny’s cowardice and lying.

  ‘I—’ Franny fell silent. The little burst of composure and vitality that had carried him through the story was extinguished. You could almost see the light go out. For all his brio and talent, Franny Boyle’s life since 1987 had been a relentless ebbing. He must have felt himself receding from that time, carried off by the current.

  ‘If you need me to testify,’ Franny said to no one in particular, ‘I’ll do it. I said the same thing to Danziger.’

  Kurth asked Caroline, ‘You want Gittens picked up?’

  She shook her head no. ‘We have three murders and no proof of any of them. There’s no one left who was on that bridge the night Fasulo was killed. With Vega dead, there’s no one who can tell us firsthand about the night Trudell died. And there’s no one who was in that cabin when Danziger was shot. Three murders, zero witnesses. I’d say Detective Gittens covered his tracks perfectly’

  ‘We do have one witness,’ I said. ‘Harold Braxton.’

  54

  Chelsea, Massachusetts, just outside the Boston city limit. 6:34 A.M.

  We waited for them in a desolate parking lot. At our backs the Tobin Bridge soared a hundred feet in the air, its exoskeleton of I-beams topped by a vertebral elevated road. Dick Ginoux stood with us, having driven the department’s Bronco down from Versailles the night before. He stamped his feet in the cold, looking slightly bewildered in his uniform and Smokey the Bear hat. Kelly wore his usual flannel coat, but this morning he had pinned his little six-point star on the breast pocket: OFFICER, VERSAILLES POLICE DEPARTMENT. He spun his nightstick contentedly and whistled under his breath ‘I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover.’ It was hard to tell if the nonchalance was a deliberate attempt to keep me cool or if Kelly truly felt blasé about being here. For my part, I struggled to suppress an adrenaline smile. The scene reminded me of an exchange of spies in a Cold War novel. In the Bronco I found my Versailles Police Department jacket, with its little embroidered Chief Truman.

  We did not speak much. The sky was ash gray, the air intensely cold for November. For a long time the only sound was the traffic noise on the bridge high above us, Kelly’s whistling, and the spin-slap of his nightstick.

  Inevitably, Dick picked up the tune and began to sing softly, ‘I’m looking over, a four-leaf clover, that I’ve overlooked befo-o-ore. The first is for sunshine, the sec-und for rain—’

  ‘Dick.’

  ‘The third’s for my ba-by that lives down the lane.’

  ‘Dick!’

  ‘Oh, let him sing, Chief,’ Kelly advised. ‘There’s nothing better to do.’

  ‘Come on, Ben,’ Dick prodded. ‘I’m lookin’ oh-ver, a four-leaf cloh-ver, that I oh-ver-looked be-fo-o-ore.’

  Incredibly, Kelly sang too – and horribly. ‘The first is for sunshine, the secund for ra-a-ain. The third’s for my baby
. . .’ It was like watching a beloved uncle fast-dance at a wedding. You didn’t know whether to laugh or avert your eyes. ‘There’s no use explainin’, the one ree-main-in’, is sum-one that I a-do-o-o-ore! Come on, Ben Truman.’

  I gave in and moaned along with them for the finale. ‘I’m lookin’ over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked – bum-bum – that I overlooked – bum-bum – that I overlooked bee-fo-o-ore.’

  Kelly looked down and indulged me with an approving nod. ‘Attsaboy,’ he said.

  It was nearly seven when Beck’s black Mercedes sedan slid into the parking lot. The car came to a stop in front of us, and Beck and Braxton stepped out. Braxton wore an oversize, hooded sweatshirt under a leather Avirex jacket. He scowled at us.

  I stepped forward, but Kelly caught my wrist. ‘You’re the senior officer here,’ he reminded me. ‘Let me do this.’

  Kelly frisked Braxton while reciting the familiar litany: ‘Harold Braxton, you are under arrest for the murder of Robert Danziger. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have an attorney present at all questioning. You have the right . . .’

  Braxton stood with his arms extended, glaring at me, resenting this whole procedure and resenting me for failing to exonerate him. By his furious stare, he seemed to be proclaiming that he was not submitting, not really, not in his heart. He did not recognize our authority or his own impotence.

  Kelly pulled Braxton’s arms down to cuff him behind his back.

  ‘Chief Truman,’ said Beck, ‘is it necessary for him to ride all the way to Maine with his arms behind his back? Why don’t you put the handcuffs in front? It’s a long ride.’

  Braxton looked down. He wanted no part of a plea for leniency.

  I nodded. Kelly uncuffed and recuffed Braxton so his hands were in front, then led him to the backseat of the Bronco. This was the trophy arrest every cop in the city was stalking, yet there was little pleasure in it.

  ‘Arraignment will be tomorrow morning,’ I said in a muted voice.

  Beck nodded and turned to leave.

  I glanced up at the bridge for one last look – the same bridge Frank Fasulo had jumped off twenty years before. All that exposed framework, miles of girders. It was one of those ugly places where a city’s substructure is revealed. We see them – train yards, power plants, manholes – and we are reminded of the hidden complexities. It is as if the skin has been pulled back and the skeleton of the city is exposed, the pumping veins, the secret systems. I’d had enough of all that.

  ‘It’s done,’ I told Kelly and Dick, and myself. ‘Let’s go home.’

  55

  I had been away from Versailles only seventeen days, but I had the sense I’d been away longer and traveled farther. I came back with the peculiar feeling that accompanies the end of a long trip: the pleasant tension between at-homeness and alien-ness, the sense of being an outsider in your own home. You notice details. You find beauty in a street or park or building where somehow you’d never discerned it before. It is the shock of the familiar, the same jolt you sometimes feel when you see your wife or your lover standing on a street corner, and for a split second you see her as a stranger would. You realize, She’s lovely. I forgot how lovely my wife really is. Versailles seemed profoundly beautiful, even the parts that I know are not beautiful at all.

  Behind the hills, thunderheads were drifting in from the west. From the looks of it, we were in for a cold, wintry rain. Leaf-peeping season was over, the tourists gone. Time for winter, time for the ‘hard cold’ to make its first appearance.

  A group of kids played touch football on the green, unconcerned by the storm clouds.

  On Central Street, Jimmy Lownes and Phil Lamphier were loafing outside the Owl, smoking cigarettes and glancing up at the sky. Jimmy gave us a little two-fingered wave, a Marlboro pinched between his fingers. Before long, he’d be spreading the word that I had returned with a black kid under arrest, and the whole town would be aware of it before supper. That was fine too. It would save me the trouble of announcing the news.

  At the station, we moved Braxton into the holding cell. Whatever misgivings I might have had about his guilt, Braxton was still under arrest for murder. Procedures had to be followed.

  Then Kelly, Dick Ginoux, and I lingered a moment at the front door of the station.

  ‘Gorry,’ Dick said, ‘it’s gonna be a gullywasher.’

  ‘Why don’t you go home, Dick, get some rest. I’ll sit with him.’

  ‘No, Chief—’

  ‘It’s alright, Dick. I’ll be alright.’

  He gave me an appraising look. ‘Alrighty, Ben. If you say so.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘for keeping an eye on things while I was away.’

  Dick looked away. ‘I’ll stop by to check on you later.’ Before ambling off, he gave Kelly a little wave that resembled a salute. ‘Officer Kelly.’

  ‘Officer Ginoux.’

  Kelly emitted a tired sigh. ‘Well, looks like you made it back home, Ben Truman.’

  ‘Looks like.’

  ‘You want me to take the first watch?’

  ‘No, Mr Kelly, I think it’s time for you to go home too.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘You’re retired, remember?’

  ‘Oh, that. Well.’

  ‘There’s nothing left to do here. It’s Boston’s case now. They’ll pick up Gittens, if they haven’t already. This here is just guard duty. We’ll arraign Braxton in the morning, then the staties will take him away until the trial. Really, go home. It’s alright.’

  ‘You’ll be alright with him?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ve seen worse.’

  Kelly snorted. He produced the nightstick from inside his coat. ‘Well, take this. In case he acts up.’

  ‘I can’t take that.’

  ‘Of course you can. What am I supposed to do with it? I’m retired.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Take it, Ben Truman.’

  I took it.

  ‘Alright then,’ Kelly said, as if relieved to be unburdened at last of that little baton. ‘Alright then.’ He stood there a moment, apparently unsure what to do next.

  I told him, ‘I’ll stop by soon, let you know how it all worked out.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  Kelly went to his car and folded himself into it like a daddy longlegs receding into a crack in the wall. He rolled down the window. ‘It’s a shame, you know. You might have made a good professor someday.’

  ‘Who says I still won’t?’

  He made a knowing little smile then said, with a nod toward the nightstick in my hand, ‘Don’t hurt yourself with that thing.’

  Back in the station I pulled a chair in front of the entrance to the back room and stretched my legs across the doorway. The nightstick weighed heavy in my lap.

  Braxton said, ‘Just you and me now, huh, Chief Truman?’

  By late afternoon the thunderstorms began rolling through. Rain gusted against the stationhouse windows with a snare-drum sound.

  Around four I asked Braxton what he wanted for supper. He had barely spoken during the five-hour ride from Boston or in the four hours since we’d arrived.

  ‘I’ll have a lobster,’ he said.

  ‘You’re thinking of a different Maine. Try again.’

  ‘Steak.’

  ‘Steak? How about like a burger or a sandwich?’

  ‘I told you: steak.’

  ‘Okay Steak.’

  When the food was delivered from the Owl, I brought it back and unlocked the cell. There was no place to sit in the little hallway, so I sat on the chair inside the cell while Braxton sat on the cot. His steak was gray and cupped in the middle like a recently vacated pillow. He took a bite and grimaced. ‘What is this, moose or some shit?’

  ‘Yeah, I probably should have warned you about the steak.’

  He worked his steak awhile in silence. My supper was better, a turkey sandwich. I offered to trade but he waved me off.

  ‘Aren’t
you afraid I’m going to get out?’ He nodded toward the open cell door.

  ‘Nah. Where would you go? You’re a hundred miles away from the middle of nowhere. Besides, right now the safest place for you is probably right here in this cell.’

  ‘Might be the safest place for you too.’

  There was a shadow conversation going on here. Braxton had not murdered Bob Danziger. He knew it, of course, and by sitting down to supper with him I signaled that I knew it too. My every polite comment carried the same coded message. What do you want for supper? and How’s the steak? and all the rest were understood to mean I know you didn’t kill Danziger.

  Braxton said, ‘Gittens is coming, you know.’

  ‘I figured.’

  ‘What you gonna do?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Well, you better think of something, Chief True-Man, ’cause Gittens is already rolling, I promise you.’

  ‘What would you do, Harold, if you were me?’

  ‘I’m not you, dog.’

  ‘But if you were, and Gittens was coming?’

  ‘Call my niggers.’ He used the word easily. It held no political charge for him.

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘You’ve got cops. Call them.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’ My eyes sought out a dusty spot on the floor. ‘It just doesn’t work that way’

  ‘What about the tall guy? Call him.’

  ‘Kelly? No. I can’t.’

  Braxton nodded – not because he understood, I think, but because he didn’t want to waste his breath on a dumb cop who wouldn’t listen.

  ‘You want me to call mine, get ’em up here? We’ll get your back, if you want.’

  ‘No, Harold. No, thanks.’

  The phone rang. It was nearly five, daylight faltering. The stationhouse groaned in the wind and rain. I knew before I picked up that it was Martin Gittens.