Pariah (4 page)

‘How’d you know her?’

‘Just from seeing her on the streets. Girl’s pretty new around here. I gave her some of the benefits of my extensive experience.’

‘When’d you last see her?’

‘About three, four nights ago.’

‘Where?’

‘Eleventh, Twelfth Street. Somewhere around there.’

‘She tell you anything about any of her johns?’

Floella puts a finger to her temple as she thinks. A theatrical pose. Her jacket swings open again, affording the detectives another view of her plump assets.

‘Nobody in particular,’ she says finally. ‘I mean, we talked about some of the crazy shit we get from time to time.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like this one guy she had, liked her to lick his bald head while they fucked. And then this black motherfucker, wanted Scarlett to put a cork up his ass and take it out with a corkscrew .
. .’

‘Okay, okay,’ Alvarez says. ‘But she didn’t mention any real psychos? Nobody she thought would try to hurt her?’

‘No.’

‘What about cops?’ Doyle asks, and he catches the sidelong glance from Alvarez. ‘She go with any cops?’

Floella smiles and jiggles her breasts in invitation. ‘Honey, do cops do that sort of thing? I mean, aren’t you highly trained to keep your weapons holstered and out of sight at all
times?’

Doyle sighs and Alvarez says, ‘Speaking of which, do you have a carry permit for those?’

As Floella laughs and turns toward Alvarez, Doyle feels a surge of irritation.

‘Who’s the pimp?’ he demands. Again he picks up on a glance from Alvarez, which tells him that the note of anger in his voice has not been missed.

‘I . . . I dunno,’ Floella says, and it’s clear that she too has detected the change in the air.

‘Floella, I’m gonna ask you one more time, and I don’t want to have to come looking for you again. We’re working a double homicide. Your girlfriend here was beaten until
the snot flew out of her ears, and then she had three bullets put in her head. The other victim is a cop. My partner, in fact. So you can guess how I’m feeling about that right now.
I’ll ask you again: who’s the pimp?’

‘Okay, but you didn’t hear it from me. Tremaine Cavell. Most know him as TC.’

‘Where can we find him?’

‘Prob’ly hanging with his boys. He owns an auto repair place on Houston. The Pit Stop.’

Doyle pulls a card from his pocket. ‘Thanks. You think of anything else, give us a call. Oh, and put those away before you get frostbite.’

They are walking away when Floella says, ‘She counted. Only other thing I know about her. She counted a lot.’

‘Yeah,’ Doyle says. ‘She still counts with us too.’

At the Pit Stop, a group of young black men is gathered around a brand new silver Mercedes SL convertible, red leather interior. One of the men is doing all the talking,
showing off his new acquisition. Despite the cold, he wears a tight black sleeveless T, emphasizing his muscular arms and chest. Around one wrist is a gold Rolex; heavy gold chains are on the other
wrist and around his neck. His hair is braided in cornrows. His face is boyish, the only thing putting any menace on it being a small moon-shaped scar high on his cheek.

As Doyle and Alvarez walk in off the street, the gang descends into silence and focuses its energy in a collective stony glare.

‘Tremaine Cavell?’ Doyle asks the apparent leader.

The man chin-points at Doyle. ‘Who you?’

Doyle flips open his wallet, flashes his own gold. ‘Detectives Doyle and Alvarez.’

Cavell looks to his boys, a hint of amusement on his lips. He gets a rumble of laughter in return.

‘Yeah, thass me,’ he says. ‘Friends call me TC.’

Doyle turns to Alvarez. ‘Close friends get to call him TC.’

Alvarez smiles. ‘The indisputable leader of the gang.’

Doyle points to a short, rotund man in blue mechanic’s overalls. ‘That Benny the Ball?’

‘Yeah, and you Officer Dibble,’ Cavell says. ‘Now what you want?’

‘Information. On one of your girls.’

Cavell puffs out his already-substantial pectorals. ‘I got more honeys than Winnie the fuckin’ Pooh, man. You gonna have to get more, like, specific.’

‘I’m talking about the girls who turn tricks for you, Tremaine.’

Cavell puts a finger to his neck chain. ‘Me? Running hookers? Nah, man, I don’t do that shit. Who gave you that?’

‘All right, Tremaine. This ain’t a vice bust. I just want to know about one girl. Blond, age nineteen. Goes by the name Scarlett.’

Cavell folds his arms. ‘Never hearda her.’

Doyle surveys the faces of the other young men in the garage. Their faces, like their souls, are hard. He wishes that, just for once, people in this city would be a little more cooperative.

He drops his gaze to the Mercedes. ‘Nice ride.’

There is a sudden softening in Cavell. He lowers his arms, becomes more animated.

‘You like that, huh? It got DVD, multi-CD, GPS. Shit, it even got a Playstation in the back . . .’

Doyle sits down on the vehicle’s hood. He doesn’t do it lightly, but throws his whole weight on there.

‘Whoa!’ Cavell shouts.

Doyle bounces heavily up and down a few times. ‘Good suspension too,’ he says. He is aware of the consternation among Cavell’s boys, but he knows that Alvarez has his back.

Doyle points to his left foot. ‘Will you look at that? Damn shoelace coming untied again.’ He lifts his foot, plants the heel securely on the fender.

‘Oh, man . . .’ Cavell says, raising his arms to the sky.

As Doyle reties his lace, he pretends to peer at something on the spotless hood. ‘I think you got some dirt on here, Tremaine. Some tar or something, man.’

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a bunch of keys.

Cavell is getting worked up into a frenzy; his voice goes up an octave. ‘What the fuck?’

Doyle leans over the hood, brings the jagged teeth of a key within millimeters of the paintwork.

‘Aiight!’ Cavell screams. ‘I know the bitch, yo. Thass all I’m saying. I know the bitch. Aiight?’

Doyle slides off the car and points a finger at Cavell. ‘Gotcha, TC.’ He drops the keys back into his pocket and swaps them for the photograph. ‘This her?’

Cavell takes a look, then a closer look. ‘Shit!’ He turns to his buddies and says, ‘Bitch be dead. Fuckin’ bitch be dead, yo,’ like it’s a line from an
updated
Wizard of Oz
.

‘You sound awful cut up about it, Tremaine.’

‘Shit, you don’t know how fuckin’
inconvenient
that is.’

Doyle suddenly feels like getting his keys out again and playing tic-tac-toe on the Mercedes.

‘Inconvenient? Yeah, I guess that just about sums it up. What’s her real name?’

‘Danielle O’something. A mick name like yours. O’Hara, yeah thass it.’

‘Right. Hence the street name.’

‘What?’

‘Scarlett O’Hara. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’

Cavell turns to his crew for enlightenment, gets no help there. He says, ‘First of all, I ain’t your “dear.” Second of all, the fuck you doing wasting my time if you
don’t give a shit?’

Doyle sighs. He flicks the corner of the photograph. ‘You do this to her?’

‘Hell, no. Why I wanna go waste my own merchandise?’

‘What about the beating she took? You behind that?’

‘No. What fool gonna pay for a ho looks like she Herman Munster’s sister?’

‘Ever take a hand to her? Slap her around a little when she gets out of line?’

‘Not my style. My charming personality is all I need to get the ladies on my side.’

Around the garage the others smile and nod, as if profound truth has just been uttered to a gospel congregation.

‘Any idea who might have killed her?’

‘Ain’t that your job?’

‘When’d you last see her?’

‘I checked her ass out last night, ’bout seven, seven-thirty.’

‘What about later? Toward midnight?’

‘Nah. I was too busy getting it on my own self, know what I’m saying?’

‘Did she call at any point, let you know who she was with?’

‘I don’t need no running commentary. She doing her job is all I gots to know.’

‘She ever talk to you about any johns she was worried about? Anyone who threatened to hurt her?’

‘No. Tell you somethin’, though: whoever did this is gonna be hearing from me.’

‘Nice to know you care.’ Doyle fishes out a card. ‘Okay, Tremaine, this is how it’s gonna be. You hear anything, and I mean
anything
, about the person who did
this, you call us. And just so you know, we ain’t about to let this drop. This ain’t a show we’re putting on here, this is for real. Any part of you want to know why this is so
serious?’

Cavell just shrugs.

‘Because your girl Scarlett wasn’t the only one killed last night. A cop was murdered too. You know anything about that?’

‘No. Real shame, though. Now I really am cut up.’

‘Sure you are. Just know that it’s personal now, and that if I hear anything about you holding out on me, I’m coming right back. And next time I won’t be so
nice.’

With that, Doyle licks the back of his card and pastes it on the inside of the Mercedes windshield.

‘Call me,’ he says.

He and Alvarez head out of the garage, but pause on the sidewalk. Cavell and his boys have pulled together into a tight knot.

Doyle calls back to them: ‘You know what they’re saying on the street about TC, don’t you?’

‘What’s that?’ Cavell says.

‘Word is, he’s a pussy.’

Doyle cups his head in his hands, supporting its weight before it rolls off his neck and thuds onto his paper-strewn desk.

The desk is in a squadroom in a building of white stone and red brick close to Tompkins Square Park, which is in an area of the East Village sometimes referred to as Alphabet City. There are
only four avenues in Manhattan with single-letter names; running from west to east these are Avenues A, B, C and D. There was a time when it was said that A was for the Adventurous, B for the
Brave, C for the Crazy, and D for the Dead. Was a time when this was one of the most violent, drug-ridden areas of the city. Was a time when the main reasons to visit the park were to shoot
victims, shoot dope, or shoot your load into a hooker.

Those fun-filled days are gone. Most of the scum have been driven out. Drug dens have been replaced by shops, bars and nightclubs. Property prices have soared. Alphabet City is about as
dangerous as Alphabet Soup.

Well, okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration.

Maybe there is still the occasional burglary, the odd mugging, the infrequent assault, the surprising rape.

And yes, perhaps murder does sometimes feature in the crime figures.

But, hey, nobody would want to see the dedicated cops of the Eighth Precinct being put out of a job, now would they? Got to throw them a few tidbits to prevent the vultures from circling
overhead.

Doyle is finding this particular morsel difficult to digest. At his left elbow is a teetering column of brown accordion-style case files, each associated with an investigation in which Joe
Parlatti was involved. Inside each file is a ‘61’, the form completed when a crime is originally reported, plus a stack of DD5s, the Detective Division follow-up reports familiarly
known as ‘fives’. Doyle has been plowing through these for hours, a task not aided by the fact that some reports are out of place and others are missing. He is searching for an event
which, however seemingly innocuous at the time, could have lit the fuse with Parlatti’s name on it.

Around Doyle, other detectives are performing similar duties. One is systematically and noisily pulling open and rifling through the contents of file cabinets. Another is sifting through the rap
sheets on some of the perps that Parlatti arrested, rousted or otherwise encountered during his police career. Another is working the phone, trying to ascertain the current whereabouts of the
likeliest suspects.

And so it goes on. It is tedious work. Unglamorous work. The sort of daily grind that is never reflected in TV cop shows. Doyle is aching to get back on the streets, but at the same time he is
beginning to feel a lack of sleep settling on his shoulders.

Lieutenant Franklin leaves his office and enters the squad-room, overcoat on and briefcase in hand. He approaches Doyle’s desk, weariness in his walk.

‘I’m going home. You should too.’ He gestures toward the detectives who are only a few hours into the evening tour. ‘Leave this for fresher eyes.’

Doyle glances at his watch and is surprised to see that it’s past seven-thirty.

‘Over nineteen hours since Joe got it.’

Franklin absent-mindedly taps the head of the bobbing leprechaun on Doyle’s desk. A ‘welcome gift’ from the squad when he first arrived.

‘You’re thinking not much to show for it.’

Doyle shrugs in reply. Most of the squad on one case for nearly a full day, and not one whiff of a lead. It isn’t looking good. He is not alone in having at least a couple of dozen other
cases waiting in the wings, and the numbers are building. Criminals are inconsiderate that way: never willing to give a busy cop time to catch up. At the moment, Joe’s case is at the top of
everybody’s priority list, but it won’t stay there forever. Every detective working a homicide knows that unless something breaks in the first forty-eight hours, more often than not you
can forget about it. Despite any other reassurances of the city’s COMPSTAT figures, homicide clearance rates continue to blot the record.

‘I have a bad feeling about this, Mo.’

Franklin closes his eyes. It seems an effort for him to open them again. ‘Tomorrow,’ he says. ‘We’ll get a break tomorrow.’

He leaves the squadroom, looking every inch a man already in his twilight years.

Doyle runs the same gamut of emotions every time. He parks, gets out of his car and looks lovingly up at his apartment building, thinking how fortunate he is to be living
here.

By the time he has planted his foot on the first step, the unease has already set in. He imagines the curtains twitching, the neighbors peering out at him and nudging their partners and pointing
to his rust-bucket of a car and muttering about the area not being what it was.