Night Raider (2 page)

“Come on in,” he said, “there are a couple things we have to talk over.”

The spindly man gave Davis an inquiring look.
Fuck this
, Davis thought, I
don’t owe him nothing. He’d do the same to me anytime and that’s the truth.
“Yeah,” he said, “we’ve got to discuss something about arrangements.” The big man seemed to smile. He opened the door, stepped out lightly, pivoted to push down the front seat and motioned the spindly man inside, then joined him in the back, wedging him in there tightly, yanking down the front seat fast, pulling the door closed all in one graceful motion.

“Just drive,” he said to Davis, “just take this machine and drive. Head over to the Harlem River and head upstate and keep it very quiet because my new friend and I want to have a long talk back here. Make like a chauffeur, Davis.”

“Now what the shit is
this?
” the spindly man said in a high, piercing voice. In the rear view, Davis could see him raise his arms to hug himself, surround himself with his own joints, sinking back into the seat, his eyes wide and stuporous. Definitely a user after all.

“We’ll talk it over,” the big clown said.

Davis just drove.

Sure he knew what was going on. Hadn’t he been a narco? But it wasn’t even as if you had to be a narco to get the score: all that you had to be was a reader of the newspapers, an average American who was able to see what was going on around him and how it all related back to one central fact: everybody was getting a piece of it. The enforcers were only another arm of the operation.

Sure he knew this: he knew that the police narcotics room downtown was nothing more than another stash for the stuff, he knew that the quiet men who came in their Cadillacs from Teaneck or Rego Park or Scarsdale to do their official business in the city before going back to the wife and kids at five like every other commuter, these quiet men were as deep into it as the police who wandered in and out of the stash room twelve hours a day; he knew that everything in the city had broken down to the point where drugs were the secret of control; he who sold the drugs administered the territory. He knew all of this and a good deal more; Wulff could have worked it out and made a pretty good thesis out of it or even a newspaper story. They would have loved it in the newspaper offices. Every six months or so, just to keep circulation staggering along in the few newspapers left they would have an expose of the drug scene and some firm recommendations for how the situation must be reformed. They would love an article by an ex-narco. He might even have parlayed it into television appearances: he could have shown up late at night on a panel with a prostitute disguised as an actress, a famous author and maybe a juggler or two to give his insights into the drug business. The juggler would have nodded solemnly, the actress would have asked him well then why didn’t the law
do
something? Three hundred and twenty dollars standard fee. That would be wonderful. That was a career to look forward to.

Wulff had other ideas. He had a much better idea. It was founded in what he wanted to think of as reality. He would start from the beginning. He would start as if he knew nothing about the drug trade which in a sense was almost true and would begin from the origins. He would, he decided, take a dealer and working out from that dealer like tracing the sick flowers spreading from a poisoned tree, he would follow it all the way up. Or down.

He figured that if he could approach the problem in just that way, taking it from the very top as it were, he would be handling the matter in the most direct and efficient manner. The other way was the one that had never worked; collaring the dealers say and putting them away laughing for thirty days or then again using the breaks on narco duty to bitch about the politicians and businessmen, hidden behind their gates and walls, who were really making the thing go while the narcos were concentrating on picking up the insect droppings. That wouldn’t do any more.

No. You had to be patient and thorough and start in on this thing as if it made sense. Because it
did
make sense, that was the point: it was the weak man’s excuse that nothing could be done because it was all too mindless, murderous, cancerous, ingrown. It was not. It was none of that. It was simply that no one had ever approached it practically and patiently, from the very top, with all the time in the world, all the hatred in the world, all the dedication…

At 145th Street and the Harlem River Drive his chauffeur did something a little stupid; tried to run the car off the road, either to simply ditch it and make a run for freedom or worse yet to contrive some kind of accident which would leave Wulff shaken and the driver in pretty good shape. And the hell to the spindly man, the other passenger, who looked at him wide-eyed and began to sob like a child when Wulff put a little pressure on. Without quite giving information yet. Give them time. The driver took the Eldorado toward an emergency area between an opening in the gate, playing the brake and accelerator alternately with moderate skill, the big car booming and shaking, then diving into the cobblestones on two wheels, shaking. Wulff reached an arm around the driver’s neck, put moderate pressure on the jugular. Davis flopped against him, hopelessly trying to move sideways.

“Cut it out,” Wulff said.

Davis made frantic gestures with his hands, indicating that wind was cut off. The man was suffocating against him. Murmurs like those of an infant pulsed in his neck. Wulff felt the suffering. He loosened the pressure slightly.

“I told you to drive,” he said.

Davis fell against the door, writhing. The spindly man thought he saw an opening, lurched toward the front seat. Wulff put an elbow into the man’s stomach, slammed him back. Now the two of them were gasping and choking. He looked at the scene with distaste. If he didn’t control himself he would have them vomiting all over him and the car. Pleasant in a way to see their agony but he didn’t want to be soiled. The spindly one was a user too; he had to remember that. Low tolerance level for pain. He could bop around street corners, he could crawl around in his Buick and threaten, but pushed to the wall there was nothing there. Muscle was not their specialty.

“Let’s see it,” he said to the spindly man. “Let’s see the stuff.”

“What stuff?”

Wulff felt himself abruptly becoming tired with the process of investigation. He hit the spindly man in the stomach hard enough to double him. Sympathetically in the front seat, Davis moaned, gagged. “Give me the shit,” Wulff said.

“I don’t have no shit on me. I don’t know what you talking—”

Almost tiredly, Wulff hit the man in the stomach again. Saliva flew out of him as if from a tube; he felt droplets on his forehead. Casually he slammed the man across the cheek, knocked him to the seat. “Inside pocket?” he said. “Outside pocket? In the groin, up the ass? Give me the shit or I’ll take you apart piece by piece to make it.”

“Christ,” Davis said, hunched over the wheel, “give it to him.
He’s not kidding around.
”

“Good advice,” Wulff said, “I’m not kidding around.”

The spindly man collapsed over the seat. His breathing was shallow, uneven. There was even less to the man than he had thought. Davis didn’t look too good either. Here he was, in an Eldorado pulled over on the Harlem River Drive with two dying punks to the front and right of him, traffic lofting by at a good and true fifty-five miles an hour, but sooner or later some patrol car was going to get curious about a stranded Eldorado and pull over. That would not be good. That was definitely not going to help anyone. Despite his long association with the New York City Police Department, Wulff wanted as little to do with it right now as the two fish in the car. “Okay,” he said and prodded the spindly man, snaked a hand inside his clothing, feeling the frailty of the man, the thudding, uneven heartbeat. “Let’s get it.”

An envelope fell into his hand as if it had been evacuated from the man’s body. He felt the weight, the shape of it, his fingers met somewhere near the middle and he felt a sensation of crumbling. Delicately he took it all the way against him, shielded it, opened the flat cautiously and looked through.

Saw the white sands of death.

“Give me the money, Davis,” he said.

“I’ll give you the money,” Davis said. He was still racing the engine in neutral, desperately, nervously, as if the sounds of the car itself could somehow save him. “Man, I’ll give you the money. I don’t give a shit about this.” He handed Wulff an envelope. “You lucky I’m not heeled,” he said with a last flare of defiance, “I come out on this heeled, you are dead—”

Wulff hit him in the face. “I’m dead,” he said, “I’m dead already, you understand that?” Davis fell across the dashboard, unconscious. Wulff reached forward, grasped the ignition key and turned off the engine, carefully, quickly taking in the traffic pattern on the Drive. No signs of interest yet, no patrol cars perched above on the cliffs taking note of the Eldorado but his business here was almost done. To stay much longer would be to push his luck. Although it had been a pleasure socializing with Davis and his friend; this is the kind of relationship he should always have had with these people. That was the social work, the police work they understood: a pressure point, a punch in the mouth. Send a memo on this to the commissioner’s office. He’d love it.

“All right,” he said, turning toward the spindly man. “What’s your name?”

A slight line of drool came from the man’s mouth as he opened it. “Jessup,” he said, resistance gone. “Richard Jessup.”

“Good deal, Jessup. All right. Tell me,” Wulff said, showing him the heroin-filled envelope, “who gave this to you to pass on?”

The man breathed raggedly, his windpipe rattling, but he looked at Wulff with painful, level eyes. “If I tell you that I’m dead,” he said. “You know that.”

“You’re dead already,” Wulff said and almost absently hit him again. “I’m dead too, all of us are dead. The whole
fucking country is dead.
Make my life easy, Jessup. Who supplies?”

“You ain’t no cop.”

“That’s right,” Wulff said and again, matter-of-factly, hit the man. The touch of flesh rimming bone was satisfying. After a long time Wulff guessed this kind of thing could become boring but that was a long way in the future. He would not be running out of people to hit for a long time, if ever. It was good for a man to enjoy his work. “Who gave you the shit?” he said.

Jessup’s eyes opened wide, stunned in pain. “I told you; I tell you that and I’m dead,” he said, “a dead man. Finished.”

“You’re dead already, Jessup,” Wulff said, “the narco stash room of the police department is just another part of the supply train. They’re running the stuff out of that like little pack rats.
The whole world is into it, Jessup
: do you think anyone except you and me really gives a shit who your supplier is? Scratch a street and find the users, scratch the users and find the pushers, beat up the pushers and find a supplier, back up the line and maybe you catch a dealer. Maybe not. Set a rat to catch a rat.” He hit the man again in the jaw, just above the line of the epiglottis so that speech would be conserved. “Tell me Jessup,” he said, “last time.”

Jessup made a hopeless butterfly’s gesture toward his inner coat pocket. Wulff thought that the man might be going for a gun and waited, almost incuriously to see if he would. In his condition Jessup would barely be able to hold a gun now much less aim it. But that would give him an excuse to separate the man’s arm from his body. Quick look above the highway; still no signs of patrol. Thin light traffic storming by. Davis moaned on the front seat as if in sleep. Time to move it on. Time to move it.

It was not a gun but a slip of paper that Jessup presented to him, hand trembling like that of a very old man. Wulff had aged him fifty years in this car. “Name’s on this,” Jessup mumbled, “I don’t even know his name. Wrote it down for me once.” He put the paper into Wulff’s hand like a caress.

“He’d write down his name?”

“Don’t ask me,” Jessup said, “don’t ask me how he does or what he does. He said I wanted to know his name he’d give it on a sheet of paper and I’d walk around with it. Said he didn’t give a shit what I did with it. Let me go, man,” he said putting his palms flat on the seat, “let me go out of here. Leave me alone. I didn’t do nothing—”

Wulff looked at the sheet of paper which said
Jack Scotti.
“Where does he live?”

“Oh now shit man, I don’t know where he
lives!
Nobody gonna tell you where they
live
for Christ’s sake.”

“Where do you meet him?”

Jessup looked out through dumb, narrowed eyes, “Oh, shit, I meet him here and I meet him there. It’s just like hanging around; sometimes you bump into a guy—”

Wulff sighed and hit him again on the upper cheekbone. Jessup screamed like a child, doubled over, sobbed.

“Where do you meet him?”

“Bar,” Jessup said between bright little burbles of sound, “bar in the west seventies near Amsterdam.”

“Not good enough. Name of the bar. The address.”

“Tell him you stupid son of a bitch,” Davis said from the front, “
will you tell him?
He’ll kill us.”

“Half Moon Lounge,” Jessup said, “on 76th between Amsterdam and Columbus, right side of the block I think as you walk to the river. Thursday. Thursdays and Sundays around three o’clock I—”

“It’s Thursday today,” Wulff said. “It’s about one o’clock Thursday.”

“Well sure it’s one o’clock Thursday, I’m supposed to meet him this afternoon—”

“Pass on the money, right?”

Jessup nodded once, confined, stricken. “I’m shamed,” he said, “you’ve shamed me. You’ve—”

“I’ve shamed you?” Wulff said, “I’ve shamed
you?”

“Yes,” Jessup said, he was crying. “I’m a
man.
You’ve made me—”

“Bullshit,” Wulff said and hit the man in the mouth. Again. Soft, yielding; he felt the mouth pulp underneath. “I haven’t shamed you. You were shamed long before I came around.”

“Man, that’s not true. I—”

“You’ve shamed yourself. You know what you are? You’re a hyena, Jessup. You eat dead bodies and then you laugh at the moon.”

A green and white patrol car, far above their level, came to a stop on the other side of the Drive, near the Eldorado. Wulff caught all of this with peripheral vision that he had learned the hard way; narrowing down the line of sight he could see two small dots that could only be police moving within that car. Looking down.

Time to go. He looked at the two shivering, trembling hulks in the car to his right and in front of him, two hulks that not an hour ago had been prancing and dancing their way down the lane of 137th Street and Madison Avenue, cool and easy, in command of the premises as of course they indeed were. How truly easy it was to reduce them to the broken, sniveling wrecks which they had become, which they deserved to be. It was the easiest thing in the world if you only took on the job directly, without intermediaries of every sort and did it right. But of course it didn’t matter; the Jes-sups and Davises had to be multiplied by a thousand and then by a thousand again before you could get any understanding of what they had done to the city alone. And that was just New York City: it was a countryside you were thinking about and eventually a world and it was impossible, simply impossible, to pulverize them all.