Mean Business on North Ganson Street (6 page)

“Nobody's claimed her yet.” The woman pointed at a chart on the wall. “She gets two weeks before cremation. Standard procedure.”

“We need to—” Something snagged the detective's attention. “What's that under her tongue?”

Dominic and Meredith Wong looked at the corpse's open mouth, and Bettinger switched on his penlight. The beam shone past smashed teeth and upon the bottom tip of her tongue, illuminating a tattoo of four inverted teardrops.

“Hold on.” The coroner walked over to a sink, filled a paper cup with warm water, and returned to the body. Then she brought the beverage to the dead woman's mouth.

“Wait,” cautioned Bettinger. “You don't want to crack—”

Meredith Wong upended the cup, and the corpse hissed, fog billowing from its mouth and nostrils. The coroner then donned a latex glove, seized the tongue, and pulled. Frozen blood crackled.

The detective leaned closer, shining his penlight. Tattooed to the underside of Elaine James's tongue was a hairy phallus that squirted four teardrop-shaped bullets.

Meredith Wong contemplated the penis as if she were a math professor. “Hmmm. Didn't see this.”

Bettinger looked at Dominic. “You've seen a mark like this before?”

“No.”

The detective was not convinced that the big fellow was telling the truth. “Any idea what it might mean?”

“Dick was her favorite flavor?”

“Be polite,” said Bettinger. “And take a picture of it with that phone you're so excited about.”

“Whatever.”

The detective returned his attention to the coroner. “We'll need to do an autopsy.”

“Because she has a tattoo?” asked Meredith Wong, annoyed.

“Because she was murdered.” Bettinger let his words settle inside the woman's head. “We need to get evidence before you incinerate her.”

“I already swabbed semen from her vagina and rectum, and the cause of death is known.” The coroner pointed to the iridescent, bluish-black indentation that encircled the corpse's neck. “She asphyxiated.”

The detective was surprised that the woman knew such a big word. “You've performed forensic autopsies?”

“Of course I have. Who else would?”

Bettinger thought,
A qualified medical examiner,
but did not voice his inflammatory response. “When can you have the body ready for autopsy?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“What time?”

“Ten thirty.”

Dominic looked over. “There aren't any movies?”

“Muzzle that.” Bettinger returned his attention to Meredith Wong. “We'll be here at ten thirty.”

“Make it eleven.”

*   *   *

Bettinger scanned the Elaine James file as the elevator carried him and his partner toward the lobby. Locating the address, he said, “We're going to six twenty-four Ganson Street.”

“That's where they found the body?”

“So you were a detective.”

“You got any idea where that is? Ganson Street?”

“My driver does.”

The elevator chimed like a bell in a boxing match, and the policemen entered the lobby, where an elderly black man kicked the vending machine in a futile attempt to free one of the fiber bars.

Dominic pulled a few quarters from his pocket and gave them to the oldster, who was too angry to thank him.

 

IX

A Big, Educated Maybe

The silver car sped west on Fifty-sixth Street. Twenty minutes later, it carried its two silent inhabitants from the edge of the lower-middle-class area into a dilapidated region that resembled the one through which Bettinger had driven earlier that morning. Poverty surrounded the policemen, and overhead, the sun hid behind dirty clouds.

“What's this part called?”

“The Toilet.”

The detective saw an abandoned building that was covered with so much graffiti that its original color was now a fable. “This whole area's like this?”

“Gets worse up north.”

“That's possible?”

“Very.”

“What's that part called?”

“Shitopia.”

On the far corner, Bettinger noticed a dead cat that had been nailed by its head to a telephone pole. “Christ's uncle.”

“You gonna object to some music?” inquired Dominic.

“You listen to that shit that glorifies violence, criminality, and misogyny?”

“Rap?”

“That's what I described.”

The silence that followed this reply was an obvious affirmation. Gordon played rap music at home, claiming that he enjoyed it “for the beats,” but Bettinger would not suffer it at work as well.

Ten quiet blocks later, the big fellow broke the silence. “So we just listen to each other breathe?”

“We can discuss the case.”

Dominic ignored the suggestion, tapping the wheel with his fingers as if he were experiencing some kind of rap music withdrawal.

Bettinger asked, “What do you think about that tattoo on Elaine James's tongue?”

“Dick.”

“And?”

“And nothin'.” There was a defensive edge to Dominic's voice, as if he did not want to look stupid.

“What do you think she did for a living?”

“What'd the file say?”

“She's been collecting unemployment for three years.”

“Glad to see taxes payin' for things like fake tits and dick tattoos on white girls.” The big fellow guided the car away from a pothole. “America.”

“That obviously wasn't her only income. Her apartment's in a decent area—relatively speaking—and she had fifteen nuggets in her safe.”

Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Fifteen grand?”

“Yeah.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think she made a living with her hide and just collected because she could.”

“She had the equipment.”

“And that tattoo … it's her only one, it's vulgar, and it's in a painful place. Not the kind of ink a girl usually gets the first time.”

“She probably just wanted a little dick to wiggle.”

“Seems like something she might've been forced to get,” posited Bettinger. “Maybe something a pimp makes all of his girls get—like a cattle brand. A label that says, ‘This property belongs to me,' or maybe, ‘This girl is under my protection.'”

Dominic spun the wheel clockwise, guiding the car onto a riven street that ran north. “That's a big bucket of ‘maybes' you got.”

“Educated ones.”

“Like you, Detective.” The words were not said with any affinity. “A big, educated maybe.”

“Turning maybes into yesses is what I do.”

“Mr. Humble.”

“Modesty's a form of dishonesty I don't subscribe to.”

Applying the brakes and cutting the wheel, Dominic turned onto a dirt road where the pavement was kept in heaps. The silver car rattled, and a moment later, the big fellow flung the vehicle around a bent sign, which read
GANSON STREET.
Tires ground gravel into grit and pounded that into dust as the automobile rumbled north.

“Shitopia,” announced Dominic.

Bettinger scanned the area. The sidewalks and streets were deserted, and the tenement windows were nothing but black openings, wholly bereft of glass. Vandals had not even bothered to put their initials on these buildings.

The detective's theory was confirmed by what he saw. “Elaine James—blond, white, pretty, with engineered cleavage and fifteen nuggets in her safe—isn't working out here.” He tapped his index finger against the window. “This is where her abductor brought her.”

“Then why're we botherin'?”

“Same reason we're doing the autopsy.”

“What's that?”

“Looking for crumbs—things that were missed.”

“'Cause everyone out here's so incompetent?”

“We don't have anything solid right now—just a handful of maybes. Going to the crime scene and requesting an autopsy are standard procedures.”

The silver luxury car rolled past a street that was blocked off by an overturned pickup truck, which had been torn open like a zebra on the plain.

Dominic motioned to the wreck. “The procedures are different out here.”

“They're not different anywhere—that's why they're called ‘standard.'”

Snorting derisively, the big fellow flashed his hand.

Bettinger saw a building that had some of an address, and he surmised that the crime scene was on the opposite side of the street and a little to the north. A few moments later, the silver car entered a strip of abandoned shops and landed outside a red market that was adorned with police tape, which had been cut up and turned into celebratory festoons. The big fellow killed the engine, pocketed his keys, and withdrew his gun (which was a semiautomatic with an extended clip), while beside him, the detective armed himself.

Brandishing weaponry, the policemen stepped onto Ganson Street.

Harsh wind seared Bettinger's face and eyes. Although it was still midday, the temperature seemed to have dropped fifteen degrees since he was last outside.

The policemen surveyed the hundreds of black windows that yawned on either side of the street, any one of which might conceal a crook. Nothing was visible beyond these openings but shadows and ruin.

The detective and the big fellow hastened directly to the store that contained the crime scene. Pressing their shoulders to the façade, they examined the entrance.

The door was ajar.

Bettinger leaned forward and looked through the opening.

Nothing stirred within the dark interior.

The policemen exchanged a nod and attached tactical lights to their weapons.

“Police!” shouted Dominic, loud enough to make his partner's ears ring. “If anybody's in there, let us know right fuckin' now!”

The words echoed and died.

Nobody responded.

Bettinger flashed four fingers at the big fellow, who nodded in response.

“We'll count to ten,” said the detective. “One.” He let the number echo inside of the store. “Two.” Again, he paused. “Three,” he said, raising his firearm. “Four.”

Dominic slammed an elbow into the door. “Police!”

“Don't move!” shouted Bettinger, pointing his gun inside. Nothing stirred within the darkness, excepting the dust that swirled like a specter around the beam of his tactical light. A smell like a homeless man's armpit climbed into his nostrils.

“We're coming in,” announced the detective. “If you're hiding, come out. If you're a rat or dog, learn English.”

Bettinger strode into the market, breathing through his mouth and scanning the aisles, while behind him, Dominic straddled the entryway. Although the detective did not have a high estimation of his partner, it was clear that the guy could shoot things.

Bettinger walked across rotten floorboards toward a battered front counter that had six off-white lumps, each of which was decorated with a series of gray lines and squares. He soon recognized that these masses were moldering newspaper deliveries.

“There's a guy watchin' us from down the block,” reported Dominic.

Bettinger glanced at his partner, who stood silhouetted in the doorway. “Doing anything?”

“Just watchin'.”

The detective circumvented the counter and entered the far aisle, where his tactical beam illuminated something that knotted his stomach. Lying on the floor fifteen feet away from him was a severed human head. Tangled brown hair covered most of its face.

Bettinger turned to Dominic and called out, “Where's the civilian?”

“Stayin' put.”

“Let me know if the situation changes.”

“Like if he gets a bazooka?”

“Like that.”

Pointing his tactical light at the severed head, Bettinger walked up the aisle. Floorboards groaned beneath his boots, and as he drew nearer, he saw that something was wrong with the blood that surrounded the bodiless specimen.

It was the color of ketchup.

The detective stopped and looked over his shoulder.

Nobody was there.

Facing forward, he swept his tactical light across the ground between his boots and the severed head, and in that space, he saw an open newspaper. Unlike the sodden periodicals on the front counter, this one was still white.

Bettinger kneeled beside the newspaper and swept it clear, revealing a shallow hole that contained the sharp, stainless-steel teeth of a bear trap.

“Christ's uncle.”

“See anything?” inquired Dominic.

Bettinger shone his tactical beam up the aisle, illuminating a dirty rubber mask and a brown wig. Suddenly, the setup was clear: The fake head was there to lure some hapless police investigator into the bear trap.

“They don't like cops here, do they?” asked the detective.

“Somebody leave a message or somethin'?”

“Something.”

The detective doubted that a necrophile would return to a crime scene to set up what was essentially a very nasty prank. Most likely, this bit of stainless-steel ugliness had been arranged by some civilian who just hated policemen.

Bettinger claimed an unopened can from the shelf and threw it into the hole. Steel teeth flashed, and the tin ruptured, spilling coffee grounds.

“The fuck was that?” asked Dominic.

“A bear trap.”

“Man … haven't seen that in a while.” The big fellow's remark sounded nostalgic.

Looking at the device that could have removed his foot, Bettinger knew for the first time how much the people of Victory hated the system and its servants.

Dominic leaned outside. “We saw your bitch-ass bear trap, nigga!”

“Why're you yelling that?” asked the detective.

“He's runnin' off.”

“Is that a strategy?” Bettinger was incredulous. “This thing could've taken off my foot, and you—”