by Mark Dawson
The older cop and the black man in civilian clothes disengaged from their embrace and started to talk. The younger cop said something and the black man turned and spoke sharply to him; Milton was too far away to hear what was being said, but body language made it very clear that the younger man did not share the same chemistry with the older man as the other cop did. The black man’s gait was unsteady and he emphasised whatever it was that he was saying with declaratory finger prods and wide gestures, overcompensating in the way that drunks often do.
Milton held the camera steady and took photograph after photograph, the shutter clicking as he pressed down the button again and again.
The two cops spoke and the younger one took his leave and made his way into the precinct.
The remaining cop put his arm around the shoulders of the black man and ushered him back toward the Honda. He opened the door and pressed down on his shoulder, impelling him into the cabin, and then shut the door behind him. He paused there, turning around so that Milton could see his face clearly. He held down the button and shot a dozen pictures, a sequence of him as he turned away and then made his way to the driver’s side.
Milton focused on the car and made doubly sure that he had a clear shot of the license plate.
The engine started; the car pulled out into Sutter Avenue and then swung around to the east and drove away.
Milton flicked the camera’s selector so that he could look through the photographs that he had taken. He had a good range, with clear views of the three men and the car.
The cop had driven away in his uniform and in the other man’s car. Milton guessed that he would be back and, clapping his arms around his torso to try to keep warm, he resigned himself to another wait.
58
Carter drove Shepard back to Port Washington, made sure that he got into his house, and then turned back. He returned to Sutter Avenue, parked the Honda, and went into the building. It was one thirty in the morning and it was much quieter than usual. He made it through the main room and into the offices without being seen by anyone other than the desk sergeant, whom he greeted with a raised hand.
He went into the back, but, instead of going down to the locker room, he went up.
The detective’s office was upstairs. It had last been decorated in the nineties, and it was sorely in need of attention. It was accessed through a pair of double doors at the top of the stairs, the doors supposed to offer privacy and security but perpetually wedged open with door stops. There was a photocopied sign on the opaque glass—CRIME PREVENTION, with a large rip in the paper—and then two cabinets, three boxes perched precariously atop the cabinets and a plastic documents box balanced atop those. Junk from the main office was stored in the short antechamber that opened into the main room: folders, more boxes, an old rotary fan.
Carter continued on, passing a closed door that was marked ROLL CALL and on into the main office. It was a large space that seemed smaller thanks to the amount of furniture that had been forced into it. Each detective had a desk with an old terminal-style PC, the desks arranged with degrees of organisation or chaos that spoke volumes to the personalities of the detectives who had claimed them as their own. There were more filing cabinets, cork boards with posters and notices, and a water cooler that burbled incessantly. The walls were painted a drab municipal green and bore yet more paraphernalia: an American flag, with ‘United We Stand’ and ‘9/11’ written across it; a sticker from the Detectives’ Endowment Association that read ‘Overworked and Underpaid’; a blown-up reproduction of the NYPD police shield; wanted posters, most of them offering cash rewards for unsolved homicides. There were no windows, and the illumination was provided by eight large square apertures in the ceiling through which flooded harsh UV light.
There were eleven desks for the seven detectives and three sergeants who made up the complement. Their commanding officer, Captain Donald Winter, had a small office at the end of the room. The office was empty, just as Carter had expected that it would be. He crossed the room, sat down at Mackintosh’s desk and looked down at the items laid out before him. Most homicide dicks still kept a murder book: a collection of interview transcripts, follow-ups, crime lab reports, victim information, sheets of paper that were hole punched and filed in plastic files. Mackintosh was no different. There was a collection of files on the desk in which she kept her papers. Carter sat down and selected the file with the legend GONZÁLEZ, JOSÉ LUIS written on the tab. He opened it and quickly thumbed through the papers inside.
The main report noted that the victim, identified as José Luis González, had been found in the men’s room at Euclid Avenue subway station. The dead man’s address and next of kin were noted, together with the assumption, still to be confirmed by the pathologist, that the cause of death was that his throat had been cut. The body had been found by a young boy who had reportedly entered the restroom minutes after the supposed time of death. He had seen two suspects outside the door just before he went inside. A second witness, an older man, had then entered the restroom, seen the body and found the boy hiding in a toilet cubicle.
Carter gritted his teeth in frustration, but read on.
The man was identified as John Smith, with an address on West 24th Street in Coney Island. Smith had said that he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary as he approached the bathroom, nor anything as he exited with the boy as they went to report the murder to the woman working in the station’s token booth. This woman—identified as Felicia de la Cruz—also reported that she had seen nothing amiss that evening, and that her position in the booth meant that she did not have clear sight to the door that led into the bathroom. Smith said that she had been asleep. Mackintosh had asked Ms. de la Cruz whether there was any video coverage and she had reported that the cameras had been out of order for several weeks.
Carter took out his phone, swiped across to the camera app, and photographed the relevant pages.
Mackintosh wasn’t as scrupulous about order as Carter had expected, and he shuffled through a collection of handwritten notes that had yet to be typed up and filed properly. He found one note, halfway through the slim pile, that recorded the name and address of the youngster who had seen the two suspects outside the restroom. His name was Freddy Blanco, his age was reported as thirteen—the detail was circled in red pen—and his address was listed as 4 Danforth Street, Cypress Hills.
Carter photographed the page and put his phone back into his pocket. He replaced the file where he had found it, made his way out of the office and went down to the locker room. He changed out of his uniform, dressed in his street clothes, and went back up to the ground floor. The desk sergeant was occupied with taking the details of a hooker who had been brought in by police officer Joyce Rogers, and neither he nor Rogers noticed him as he made his way through the room to the steps and the door outside.
He got into his car and took his phone out of his pocket. He swiped through the photographs that he had just taken, and skimmed through Mackintosh’s notes once again. He was tired and ready for bed, but he wanted to check out the address he had just found. He drove north to Atlantic and then followed Crescent Street to Danforth.
He slowed and stopped at the side of the road as a late-running train rumbled above him on the elevated track. Number four was on the corner of Danforth and Crescent. It was an old building that looked in need of restorative work, surrounded by a wire mesh fence and with a rickety old fire escape that clung to the wall and offered access to all three floors. It was late, and there was no sign of light or any kind of activity through the barred ground-floor windows or the windows on the second and third floors.
Carter waited for a moment, just watching. He wondered whether he would need to return here. The kid had said that he hadn’t gotten a good look at them, but how realistic was that? Carter knew that he would have to talk it out with Shepard once he had sobered up. They had two choices: trust that the kid really hadn’t seen them, or tie up the loose end and ensure that he would never be a
problem for them. Carter didn’t like the idea of going after a kid, but he liked the idea of an Internal Affairs bust or a problem with Acosta even less.
He would think about it. At least he knew where the kid was. That gave him options.
He put the car into drive and set off. He wanted his bed.
Part III
Tuesday
59
“Time to prepare for the worst snow in years, New York. As you probably know, we’ve been tracking a very unpleasant storm and, if we’re right, it’s going to hit the area tonight. The National Weather Service is warning residents of the upper Midwest, the Northeast and the Middle Atlantic of widespread heavy snowfall and possible blizzard conditions in the coming days, so you might want to keep those warm clothes out and make sure you’ve got everything you need to get around in the snow. How much snow are we talking about? Well, we’re talking about a lot.”
Milton pulled the duvet up around his chin as he listened to the forecast on the radio.
“If you live in or around Washington, Baltimore or Philadelphia, you could see as much as a foot of snow later today or early tomorrow morning. A winter storm watch has been issued for those areas. But things are likely to be more severe for us who live in and around the Five Counties. We’re predicting snowfall of one to two feet. Things look pretty heavy with a significant winter storm for much of the I-95 corridor.”
Milton reached up and pulled the curtains aside. The sky was dark and grey, but there was no sign of any snow yet.
Time to move. He rolled out of bed and got into his running gear before he gave himself a chance to change his mind. He followed his usual route along the boardwalk, passing Café Valentin and reminding himself that he had promised to visit Alexei Fedorov and his family that evening. He continued to the eastern end of the boardwalk and, for a change, turned left and followed 15th Street up to Brighton Beach Avenue and then followed that for two and a half miles to the west all the way back to his apartment.
He showered, shaved and dressed in his jeans, a T-shirt and a thick sweater. He went into his tiny living room and took the camera out of its bag. He ejected the memory card, slotted it into a reader and pushed that into his laptop’s USB port. He transferred the photos that he had taken last night and then looked through them. There were more than five hundred. He worked through all of them, finding the ones toward the end of his vigil that showed the Honda CR-V that had pulled up at the precinct house and waited, the patrol car that had pulled up alongside it at the end of the four-to-twelve shift, and the three men who had met outside the vehicles and the conversation that had ensued. He also had pictures of the cop who had driven away with the drunken black man, and pictures of him as he had returned ninety minutes later. Milton had snapped him getting out of the Honda, going into the station house, coming back outside in civilian clothes, and then getting into a big Ford F-150 pickup. Milton had close-ups of his face and the license plate of his truck.
Milton scrolled back and looked more closely at the black man. He had thirty good shots of him, several offering a clear view of his face. He took out his phone and compared him with the man in the video whom Freddy had identified.
It was the same man.
He selected the best photographs of all three men, emailed them to himself, and closed the laptop. He called Manny’s number, left a message on the machine to say that he was coming over, grabbed his leather jacket and made his way down to the street and his motorbike.
60
Milton parked the bike outside the Blanco house, opened the gate and went up to the door. He rapped on it and turned to look out into the street as he waited. The drug den was still vacant. A man came out of the adjacent house, descended the steps to the sidewalk and went over to a white panel van that had been graffitied with a crude drawing that resembled Pac-Man.
“John.”
Milton turned back. Manny was standing in the open door.
“Good morning,” Milton said.
“Come in. It’s freezing.”
Milton stepped into the house and went through into the living room as Manny shut the door behind him. Freddy was sitting on the couch, a bowl of cereal balanced on his lap as he watched something on the iPad that he had propped up against the arm of the chair.
“Hello, Freddy,” Milton said.
The kid looked up and smiled. “Hello, Mr. Smith.”
“It’s John,” Milton corrected. “Call me John.”
“I got your message,” Manny said. “What’s up?”
“I’ve got some photographs for Freddy to look at,” Milton said. The kid looked up again. “Would you do that for me, Freddy?”
“Photos of what?”
“People.”
“Okay.”
“Put the iPad away,” Manny told his son.
Milton went to the table, sat down and took out his phone. He selected the photographs that he had culled from the collection that he had taken last night.
Manny looked down at them. “Is that the precinct house?”
“Yes,” Milton said. “I found a place where I could watch them without being seen.”
He turned the screen around so that Freddy could see it. “Do you recognise any of them?”
The boy came closer and looked at the image.
He froze.
“Freddy?”
“Him,” the boy said. He pointed, his finger quivering.
Milton looked down at it, too. He was pointing at the black man in the Honda.
“You’re sure?”
“That’s him. He was outside the restroom. That’s the man I saw.”
“Are you absolutely sure?” Manny said.
“Yeah. Definitely.”
“What about the other two?” Milton said.
Freddy stared at the screen. He shook his head. “Don’t recognise them.”
“Let’s look through a few more,” Milton said, reaching for the phone and swiping right to bring up the next image.
Freddy did as he was told and looked through the remaining images. He shook his head again. “I don’t know the other two,” he repeated. “But I didn’t… you know, I didn’t really get a good look at the second man.
“All right.” Milton pocketed the phone. “That’s fine. Well done.”
Manny stood awkwardly, reaching down to rub the place where his stump and prosthesis met. “What now?”
“I find out some more about him.”
“Like?” Manny asked.
“His name would be a good place to start. It wasn’t in the video or on the website. The other guys, too. I’d like to know who they are.”
“You think one of the others is the other man he saw?”
“It’s possible.”
“What about us?” Manny said. “What do we do?”
“Nothing,” Milton said. “Whatever you would have done if this hadn’t happened. Freddy’s not going to school?”
“I’ve said he’s sick,” Manny said.
“But I’m not,” Freddy protested.
“I don’t want you out of my sight until we figure out what to do,” his father said firmly. He turned to Milton. “You agree?”
“Actually, I think school might not be a bad idea. If he feels up to it—”
“I do,” Freddy interrupted.
“—then it might help keep his mind off what happened.”
Milton walked over to the door and gave a gentle incline of his head. Manny noticed the gesture and followed him. “And I’m not sure it’s clever to make it look like he’s frightened,” Milton said in a low voice. “It might make someone think that he has something to hide.”
“I don’t know,” Manny said.
“You’re his father,” Milton said. “I’m just telling you what I’d do. But it’s your call.”
“I’d rather walk him to school myself when he goes back,” Manny said. He looked at his watch. “I was going to go to a meeting this morning and then I’ve got to get to work.”
“Yo
u want me to take him?”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I don’t have anything else to do,” Milton said.
Manny paused, considering it. “You wanna go in?” he called over to his son.
“I told you I did.”
“Get your things. John says he’ll take you.”
61
Freddy went to Grover Cleveland High School. It was in Ridgewood, Queens, a bus ride to the northwest. The boy led Milton up to the corner of Etna and Crescent. There was a bus stop there; Freddy turned and saw the B13 bus rumbling toward them, so they bolted for the stop and flagged it down just in time.
They took empty seats next to each other and caught their breath as the driver pulled away from the stop.
“How long does the bus take?” Milton asked.
“Twenty minutes.”
“You don’t have a closer school?”
“There was Franklin K. Lane, but they closed it down. They had a shooting there. And I don’t mind the bus. I usually read or listen to music.”
They sat in silence for a minute as the bus swung hard left onto Jamaica Avenue and then right onto Cypress Hills Street, passing through the middle of the park. They went by an enormous cemetery, with white headstones lined up in neat lines for hundreds of feet, nestled beneath the sheltering boughs of ancient oak trees.
“You think my dad is gonna be okay?” Freddy asked him.
“I can’t say that,” Milton said. “But he’s trying as hard as he can.”
“What about you?”
Milton smiled. “What about me?”
“How do you do it? You seem like you’ve got it together.”
