Superbia 2 (6 page)

“Daddy
is tucking me in.”

“Daddy has to work tonight, honey.”

“You said you’d read me a story.”

Frank looked at his little girl’s
face and said, “I’m sorry peanut.  I have to go to work.”

Dawn picked up their dishes from the table and said, “Are you making a buy or
patrol tonight?”

“Both.  My CI called me to say she has a new target, and after that, I’m covering the overnight shift.”

“Again?  What’s the point of being a detective if you have to keep jumping into uniform?”

Frank pointed at his older daughter’s plate and said, “Come on.  Your little sister is going to be done before you are.”  He opened the dishwasher and started to load it with plates from the sink.  “I just need to keep Erinnyes off my back for a little while. 
The longer he stays fat, dumb, and happy, the better off I’ll be.”

“Well, he can’t keep doing this to you.  One day you’re in detectives, the next day you’re on patrol.  It isn’t fair to you, and it isn’t fair to us.  Can’t your union do something about it?”

“Not when I’m a not-even-promoted detective, babe.  It’s just an assignment.”

“You would think after Vic
…” she stopped talking when Frank looked up at her.    

***

Frank pulled into the shopping center and saw Ophelia’s grey Acura.  He pulled into the spot next to her.  The bass from her car stereo made his teeth vibrate.  The green and gold plastic beads wrapped around her rearview mirror shook.  She rolled down her window and said, “Nice soccer mom van.”

“It’s a work car.”

She sat up in her seat, “With two kid’s car seats in the back?”

“Will you turn that shit down?  The whole idea is not to draw attention to ourselves.”

She bounced up and down, dropping her rear end on the seat like she was crashing into the lap of a paying customer.  He looked down, seeing the dark blue g-string under the low waist of her pants.  Her tight tank top swooped low from her neck, showing the edges of her bra as it crushed her breasts together and thrust them forward.  Frank looked away.  “So what’s up?  We got a new friend?”

Ophelia
fished a small piece of paper out of her purse.  “His name’s Rico.  He says he can get me whatever I want.”

“Weed?”

“Probably.  I thought you wanted harder stuff?”

Frank nodded, “I’d rather get pills or heroin or cocaine if he has it.”

“He just said whatever I want.”

“You think he was just trying to impress you?”

She pointed to the phone number on the piece of paper and said, “Only one way to find out, babycakes.”

Frank got out of his van and into the passenger side of
Ophelia’s car.  “Okay, text this guy and ask him if he can still get you something.”

“Tonight?”

Frank looked at his watch.  “I have to be back at work by eleven, so probably not.  But don’t tell him that.  Let’s just see how for real this guy is.”

Ophelia
nodded and started typing on her phone. 
Hey honey!  It’s Tink from last night. 
She showed Frank the phone, “Do you want to take a picture of it?”

“Not yet.  Let’s wait to see if he gets back to you.”

The phone buzzed with a reply. 
Who the fuck is this?

“Tinkerbell. From the club.”

“Apparently you didn’t make much of an impression on him,” Frank said. 

“Bullshit.  I was wearing my nurse’s outfit last night.  Guys were eating out of my hand.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“You didn’t see me in that outfit.”

“I meant eat out of your hand.  I’m pretty sure they’re dirty.”

Ophelia
squeaked in disagreement and rifled through her purse for a bottle of hand sanitizer.  “I go through fifty of these a week!  My hands are
always
clean.”

The phone buzzed again. 
Da 1 wit da nice boots?

“Boo
ts?” Frank said.

“He means boobs.  See?  I told you I have cute boobies.”

She texted again. 
Yup!  U coming out tonight?  I was looking to get something.

Like wut?

Ophelia looked at him.  “Ask if he’s got 30’s.”

“How many?”

“Let’s see how much he wants for them first.”

Ophelia
nodded and wrote:
U said u had whatevs.  Whats your $ on 30’s? 
“Now what?”     

“Now we wait.”

Her phone buzzed again. 
Thirty per, less u buy 15.  Then its $29.50.

“Wow, a whole fucking fifty cents,”
Ophelia said.  “He’s trying to rip me off, Frank.  Let’s go bust his ass.”

“If he gets back to you, just ignore it.  We’ll reach out to him tomorrow night or something.”

“Want to see something cool?” Ophelia said.

“Sure.”

She handed him her phone and said, “Go over to pictures and click on it.”

Frank ran his thumb across the screen and touched the photographs icon.  The first one was of a small dog with ribbons tied around its ears.  “Not that one.  The modeling photos after it,” she said.

It was Ophelia, naked in a field.  She was stretched out across the grass, perfect in the sunlight and daisies with her back arched.  “Keep going,” she said.

Frank scrolled through the series, until the setting changed.  It was
Ophelia in a locker room shower, covered in soap.  Each photograph was of her sponging the soap away, revealing more and more of her body.  The pictures captured her from different angles, even from behind as she crawled across the tile floor.  Frank went to the last picture and said, “Very nice.”

“I just got them back from the photographer.  Aren’t they awesome?”

“I’m thinking the one in the shower where everyone can see up to your tonsils would make a nice Christmas card.  I could hang it on my fridge.”

“Ew, why were you looking so close at it then?  I bet you like that one, don’t you.”

Frank laughed and said, “Careful who you show them to.  People are weird out here.”

“But you liked them?”

“Yes.”

“That’s it?  No smart assed answer?”

Frank opened her car door and said, “I’ll give you a shout tomorrow.  Be good, okay?”

***
  

Halfway through his shift, the car in front of him swerved slightly, going over the double-yellow lines once, twice.  A sudden brake, then it began building up speed. 

“Son of a bitch,” Frank muttered.  The process of elimination began.

I’m the only one working. 

But this guy is dangerous.

I’ll follow him out of town and then he’s somebody else’s problem. 

And what if he crashes into a car full of kids?

I’m not even supposed to be out here doing this stupid fucking job. 

So who is supposed to do it, then?

“Mother fucker,” he shouted as he threw on the overhead lights.  The street lit up red and blue all around both cars and the vehicle reared to the right and scraped against the curb, leaving a long black smear of tire marks along the cement. 

Frank slammed his door open and stormed forward, banging on the driver’s side window with his fist.  “Get out of the car, asshole.”

The driver looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes.  The whole car reeked of booze.  “Three
-six-nine,” he slurred.  He tried to reach behind his back, but stopped when Frank shouted at him not to move.  “I’m not carrying, officer.  I’m on the job.  My shield’s back here.”

“You serious?  How much did you have?”

“A lot!” he said.  “I’m lost brother.  I’m so, so lost.”

Frank opened his door and said, “Come on.  Get out.  I’ll take you home.”

***

The city was quiet and covered over by a fog so thick Frank’s spotlight stopped just past the hood, blocked by a wall of swirling gray.  He inched down the street, ready to brake at any moment for whoever wandered in front of his car. 

“You a detective?”

Frank nodded, seeing that his passenger was looking at the gold badge pinned to his uniform shirt.  “I have to cover the street sometimes.  We lost two guys last year and are running really short.”

“That sucks.”

“Losing the guys or covering the street?”

“Both.”

“You’re right.”

“I appreciate you not locking me up.  I really do.  I’ve got fifteen years on the job.  My wife doesn’t work.  It’s funny, but you take stuff like health benefits and steady income for granted until the moment you realize you might lose it.  I’m not gonna fuck around anymore after tonight.  This shit is too important.”

Frank squinted to try and read the street sign above them.  “My old man always told me we had to look out for one another.  Unfortunately, I haven’t seen much of that since I came on the job.”

“What district was your Pop in?”

“He wasn’t.  He grew up here but worked in the county.” 

“But still, he was a stand up guy, yeah?”

Frank laughed, “You have no idea.”

“Turn right over here, pal.”

Frank went down the back alley slowly, grimacing at each narrow pass the sides of his car made at open iron gates and diagonally parked cars.  The cop still smelled like a brewery, but it was starting to wear off.  He held out his hand and said, “I owe you one.”

“I’ll keep an eye on your car.”  Frank watched him head up the driveway, then navigated his way back to the street.  Frankford Avenue’s traffic lights shimmered in the thick, turning the billowing haze shades of brilliant emerald and menacing red. 

At the intersection, a bright light. 

It swung back and forth a few feet above the street.  Frank drove closer and saw it was a lantern, carried by a man in a dark, heavy trench coat.  The man was twirling what looked like an umbrella, holding it by the wrist strap and flicking it back and forth so that it spun and danced in his hand.  Frank’s headlights caught the man and he realized it was no umbrella.  The man was carrying a long wooden nightstick. 

The frontispiece of the man’s hat and the dull metal shield on his left breast were the same.  Frank had seen them before in old photographs of city policemen back in the Prohibition era.  Frank slammed on the brakes, but the man was already past his car, moving deeper into the fog and vanishing. 

***

“Dad, I’m telling you, it was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen.  This guy looked like he stepped right out of the nineteenth century.”

Frank Sr. nodded as he squirted a pile of ketchup onto his hash browns.  One of the waitresses looked up at the gastric noises coming from the ketchup bottle as he squeezed.  “Uh huh.  Sounds like it.”

“That’s enough ketchup!  Do you know how much sugar that is?”

“What sugar?  It’s healthy.  It’s made outta tomatoes.”

“No.  It’s made out of tomato paste and sugar.”    
   

Frank Sr. reached for the salt and started shaking it over his food.  “There, now it’s balanced out so it won’t be so sweet.  You happy?”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Look, you eat what’s on your plate and I’ll do the same.  Do I pick on you for
making the poor waitress go find you skim milk?  No, I don’t.  Even if I am embarrassed by it.”

“Anyway, this guy had to be coming from a costume party or something.”

“Or you imagined it.”

“I didn’t imagine it.”

Frank Sr. stabbed his hash browns with his fork and stuffed them into his mouth.  He chewed thoughtfully for a moment before he said, “Maybe you saw the Night Watchman.”

“Who?”

“The Night Watchman.  Old Philly cop got kilt back in the twenties walking a foot beat.  Supposedly he’s still out there walking around, trying to get back to his old station house.”

Frank looked at his father in disbelief, then smiled abruptly and said, “Get the fuck out of here.”

Frank Sr. instantly reached across the table and smacked his son on the cheek.  He picked his fork back up and started to eat again.  “You’re in public.”

Frank looked around at the empty tables.  “There’s nobody here, Pop.”

“It’s the principle of the thing.”

“All right, all right.  I’m sorry, okay?  But this guy, he had to be pulling a prank or something.  You think Philly guys dress up like that every once in a while to scare rookies?  Maybe they saw my police car and figured I was one of them.”

“Maybe,” Sr. said.  “I can’t see anybody putting on a costume like that, though.”

“This from the guy who spent half his career dressed up like a homicidal bunny rabbit?”