Mission Flats (7 page)

‘Well, after. Will she be the new chief?’

‘I guess so.’

His mouth squeezed into a frown of deep concern.

Diane laid her cards on the table. Two pairs, kings and sevens.

The thought crossed my mind that all I had to do here was fold. Just put my cards down, let Diane have the pot and the badge with it. An ignominious end to my career in law enforcement, but what the hell, an end is an end. Then again, I don’t get the chance to beat Diane very often. I put down my three queens and swept the pot toward me, forty-five dollars or so plus a gold-colored badge.

‘You wouldn’t have let me keep it anyway,’ she grumbled.

I shrugged.
Hey, you never know.

Later, I watched Diane get out of bed to stand by the window. She was a big, haunchy girl with an athletic way of moving. I liked to watch her. The soles of her feet scuffed along the floor. At the window she lit a cigarette and puffed it distractedly, arms folded across her belly. She seemed lost in thought, her nudity forgotten, irrelevant. Outside, the hills were silhouettes against the moonlit sky.

‘What’s wrong, Diane?’ I propped myself on an elbow.

She moved her head vaguely but did not answer. The tip of the cigarette glowed orange in the dark room. ‘Did you ever think that maybe this is all we’re going to have?’

‘What? You mean’ – I wiggled my finger between us – ’this?’

‘No! Don’t worry, Ben, I know what
this
is.’

‘I only meant—’

‘I know what you meant.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, what if this whole thing is all there is for me? Shitty little apartment, shitty little town. This whole shitty life. So-called life.’

My neck began to stiffen and I sat up. ‘Well, you can change it. If this place isn’t for you, you can go anywhere you want.’

‘No,
you
can go anywhere you want. It’s different for you, Ben. Always has been. You could always go anywhere you want. I can’t.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘Ben, don’t. Just don’t. I’m not asking to be cheered up.’

‘Oh.’

I sneaked a glance at the clock. 2:17
A.M.

‘We’re not all like you, Ben. You’ve got choices. You’re smart, you went to a fancy college, fancy graduate school. You’ll be okay wherever you go. You’re not even as butthole-ugly as I say you are. You’re actually—’ She looked back at me, then returned her attention to the window. ‘You’re not that bad.’

‘You’re not bad either.’

‘Right.’

‘I mean it, Diane.’

‘I used to be not bad. Now I’m not even not bad.’

‘That’s just not true.’

She dismissed this with a wave of her hand. ‘Ben, tell me what you’re going to do when you leave here.’

‘Go home, I guess. I have a meeting in Portland tomorrow.’

She shook her head again, the long-suffering Diane. ‘Not when you leave the room. When you leave this fucking town.’

‘Oh. I don’t know. Go back to school, I guess. Maybe just go have an adventure somewhere.’

‘Right. Prague.’

‘You could come, you know. There’s nothing holding you here.’

‘I don’t know from Prague.’ She slid a hand over her hip, smoothing the clothes that were not there. A gesture to fill the space. When she was ready, she said, ‘I thought you were going to be a professor. Isn’t that what you were in school for? English or something?’

‘History.’

‘You’ve got a good name for a history professor. Professor Benjamin Truman. Very intellectual.’

‘It’s probably not going to happen, Diane.’

‘Yeah, it will.’

‘I only got through one year of grad school. It takes a lot more than that.’

‘You say it like you flunked out. You got called back here. That’s different. You came back to help your mother and now she’s dead, so – You don’t have to stay, you don’t have to be here anymore. You should go back to school. It’s where you belong. Join the chess club or the prom committee or whatever.’ She took a drag on the cigarette and looked out at the hills, then, as if she’d reached a decision, turned to me. ‘You should go to Prague. I have some money, if that’s what’s stopping you.’

‘No, Diane. It’s not about money.’

‘Well, you just make sure you get there. Go to Prague, then get back to school. You know, those guys – Bobby and Jimmy, even Phil, all them guys – they look up to you. They want you to do all that shit you talk about.’

I had no response.

‘It’ll make them happy to see you out there somewhere. Just to think of you out there, like, flying. It’s important.’

‘How about you, Diane? Would it make you happy if I left?’

‘I’d get over it. There’ll be a new chief after you. Maybe I’ll just use him for sex, same as I did you. Maybe he won’t even be a prude like you.’

‘They might hire a woman. They do that now.’

‘That’d be just my luck.’

Neither of us spoke for a while.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore, Ben. It’s starting to feel like a bad idea.’ The tip of her cigarette hovered at the window like a firefly. ‘We both got places to go.’

5

Monday, October 13. 10:00
A.M.

We met at the Attorney General’s office in Portland, a two-hour drive from Versailles. There were twenty or twenty-five people there, a number that necessitated theater-style seating. At the front of the room – onstage, as it were – was the Boston Homicide detective Edmund Kurth. He stood off to the side, arms folded, watching people find their seats. There was still that luminous intensity about Kurth. He looked like he was itching to knock somebody’s hat off.

The audience consisted mainly of state troopers from Maine and Massachusetts, husky guys with buzz cuts and friendly smiles. There were prosecutors from the Maine AG’s office too. It had been a long weekend for the lawyers; they had a gray, haggard look. Cravish, the Game-Show Host, stood off to the side.

I slipped into the back row of metal folding chairs, feeling vaguely like an eavesdropper. My invitation to this meeting was a formality, a courtesy extended to the locals. There were no illusions about that. My job was to show up, have my ticket punched, and go home. I hadn’t even bothered to put on my uniform. I wore jeans and a sweatshirt. (The outfit was more than an expression of my outsider status, though. The truth is, the Versailles police uniform is pure hayseed and I try not to wear it any more than necessary. The uniform consists of a tan shirt, brown pants with a tan accent stripe, and a ridiculous Smokey the Bear hat, which my father insists on calling a ‘campaign hat.’ I dislike the whole getup, but it’s the hat especially – no citizen could respect a policeman wearing that hat.)

Kurth struggled to remain still as the troopers and prosecutors found seats. The muscles in his face played under the skin. After a while – but before his audience had completely settled – he’d had enough of waiting. He walked to a corkboard at stage left, tacked a mug shot to it, and announced, ‘This is the man we’re after: Harold Braxton.’

I craned my neck to see the photos, the traditional twin frames showing the suspect face-on and in profile. Braxton looked to be in his twenties, African-American. The sides of his scalp were shaved and the remaining hair was pulled back tightly and gathered in a little tuft at the back of his head. The hairstyle seemed more Tibetan than hip-hop. His skin was as smooth and dark as a seal’s.

Kurth added: ‘He’s an absolute fuckin’ animal and we’re going to hunt him down.’

The audience shifted uneasily. Kurth was from away, and the Maine troopers didn’t like being lectured by him, much less informed what they were going to do. His melodramatic tone caused some eye-rolling too, even among the Massachusetts guys.

‘Do you have some evidence?’ an older guy finally asked. ‘Or should we just take your word for it?’ He smirked, proud of the sarcasm.

Kurth tried to smile too, but the smile flickered and died on his lips. ‘Evidence,’ he said.

He went to his briefcase and fished out a bulging manila folder. He riffled the folder until he found a few photos, then returned to the corkboard. First a color eight-by-ten of Danziger’s mutilated face, the right eye and forehead obscured by a dry cookie of blood. ‘Our victim, Robert Danziger.’ Then he added two rows of similar photos. ‘Vincent Marzano. Kevin Epps.’ With each name, Kurth punched a pin through one of the photos. ‘Theo Harden. Keith Boyce. David Huang.’ The victims were all young, in their early twenties. Marzano was white, Huang Asian, the rest black. All bore the same dark stain on one half of their face. Harden’s features were a blur beneath the blood. ‘All shot in the eye with a high-caliber weapon, like a .44,’ Kurth informed us. ‘That’s his signature.’ Kurth leaned against one of the tables. This was supposed to be a relaxed pose, but he managed to look like a two-by-four leaning against a barn. ‘Harold Braxton runs a crew called the Mission Posse. The Mission Posse moves a lot of rock, makes a lot of money, and they’re willing to do just about anything to defend their business. All these guys here’ – he gestured toward the photos – ’threatened Braxton’s business in some way. Some of them were cooperating with the police. Some tried to open up a corner in Braxton’s neighborhood.’

‘Why a bullet in the eye?’

‘It’s a message. In Mission Flats everybody understands. It means, Close your eyes, don’t see what we do.’ Kurth locked his gaze on the guy who’d needled him moments before. ‘That’s called evidence.’

‘And Braxton’s never been prosecuted for any of this?’

‘Nobody talks.’

‘But why Danziger?’ one of the troopers asked.

‘Bob Danziger had a pending case against a member of Braxton’s crew, a carjacking case. No big deal except the defendant was Braxton’s second-in-command. The trial was scheduled to open a couple weeks ago, in early October, which is about the time Danziger was murdered. So that’s your motive – no DA, no trial for Braxton’s buddy. Braxton protects his own.’

One of the prosecutors asked, ‘Why kill him in Maine?’

‘That’s where Danziger happened to be when they reached him. On vacation, apparently’

‘It’s all circumstantial,’ someone argued.

Kurth shrugged. ‘Of course it’s circumstantial. It’s a homicide; the best witness is dead.’

Cravish stroked his chin and frowned. ‘I’m not convinced, Lieutenant Kurth. Why would a drug dealer murder an assistant DA? It doesn’t make sense. There will always be another prosecutor to take his place, and another and another. The government is the biggest gang around. Why declare war on it? Besides, I’ve prosecuted guys like this before. They don’t consider the prosecutor an enemy. It’s all professional, they know that.’ The Game-Show Host was proud to announce he’d prosecuted tough guys. A supercilious look crossed his face.

‘Mr Cravish,’ Kurth drawled, ‘I don’t think you’ve prosecuted anyone like Braxton.’

‘Oh, I’m quite certain I have.’

‘Are you, now?’

From his briefcase, Kurth plucked two more eight-by-tens, which he stuck to the board with the others. The first showed a jolly-looking man with an orange beard. The second image was harder to identify. It was a dark-colored object dangling from a rope over a crumbling driveway. It might have been a laundry bag.

‘What the hell is that?’ a trooper asked.

Kurth, thinking the question referred to the man with the beard – or pretending to – pointed to the first photo and said, ‘This is Artie Trudell. He was a cop. About ten years ago Trudell was on a drug raid in the Flats. Braxton was cornered inside an apartment. He was trapped, so he blew Trudell’s head apart. Fired one shot through the front door, killing Trudell, then took off through a back door.’

There was a moment of silence. Out of respect for the fallen cop, everyone hesitated to ask about the second photo. Finally someone said, ‘What about that thing? What is it?’

‘It’s a dog,’ Kurth said.

The image came clear – the carcass of an animal suspended by its hind legs. The dog’s head was hidden behind a flap of skin that hung from the back of its neck like Superman’s cape. For some reason this photo seemed more gruesome than the others, whose subjects were merely human.

‘Braxton and his crew had a pit bull. They wanted to see how mean he could be. So they tied up this dog and turned the pit bull loose on him. This is what was left.’

‘But . . .
why
?’

‘Why?’ Kurth shook his head. ‘Because Braxton’s a fucking animal, that’s why’

A rustle went through the room. The audience was visibly uneasy, but it took a few moments before anyone screwed up the courage to murmur, under his breath, ‘Come on.’

Kurth fixed us with one of his reptile stares. ‘Listen to me, you can roll your eyes all you want, but this is what guys like Braxton do. Why? There is no why. It’s like asking, Why do sharks eat swimmers? or, Why do bears eat hikers? That’s what predators do. This guy is a predator.’

Kurth removed the photos one by one and returned them to his briefcase. Then he paused to share a philosophical thought, or at least as nearly philosophical a thought as he ever voiced: ‘The system isn’t built to handle a guy like this, who kills without even thinking about it. The system presumes that crime is logical, that people do it by choice. So we build prisons to deter them, or we offer programs to rehabilitate them. Carrots and sticks, all so these people will make the right choice. That whole model does not contemplate a Harold Braxton, because Braxton doesn’t weigh the consequences in the first place. He doesn’t choose to kill, he just kills. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t care. So there’s only one thing to do with him: Take him out of circulation. We all know it, everyone in this room.’

The audience, cops and lawyers alike, squirmed at Kurth’s directness – the police because there was no ironic distance here, none of the cool cynicism that cops swaddle themselves in when confronted with the real danger of their job, the lawyers because Kurth did not share their genteel uneasiness with calling for Braxton’s ‘removal from circulation.’ Kurth was too frank. Still, no one objected. None of us had wanted to be intimidated by Edmund Kurth, the flatlander, but we were.