Hipster Death Rattle Read online

  “Very good,” Petrosino said. “Can you tell me anything else?”

  “No,” he said. “Please.”

  Petrosino wiped his face with his hand. He didn’t want to push. “All right. I understand.” He stood and dug in his wallet for a business card. “Call me when you feel you can talk some more. In the meantime, for your safety, we’re going to post an officer with you at all times.”

  Pak took the card and looked at it for a while. “We should have talked to the police sooner. I knew it. And then you could have stopped him.”

  Pak said nothing and continued to hold the dog close, as it whimpered to be set free.

  Hadid tapped Petrosino on the shoulder.

  “Petro. C’mere, c’mere. We gotta go.”

  “What is it?”

  “Not here.”

  Outside, it was mid-afternoon and the air sizzled with heat. Petrosino pulled out a cigarette and asked what the hell Hadid was so excited about.

  “We gotta go,” Hadid said. “They just found another one.”

  “Two in one day? That’s a complete change of M.O.”

  They began moving toward their car.

  “Yeah, two and both daytime. But get this: There was a witness this time. Some guy getting a blowjob in a car twenty feet away.”

  “Modern romance,” Petrosino said. “Did he see a face?”

  “No, but you know what Mr. Pak in there just said, about the hoodie?”

  “Yeah, matches what that screwy guy Cook said.”

  “But not what witnesses today said about Mrs. Pak.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And this new vic, the witness says it was a guy in ski mask.”

  “Okay. Time frame?” Petrosino said, worrying his cigarette.

  “About an hour after Mrs. Pak,” Hadid said.

  “What, did he go home to change?”

  “Maybe he was covered in blood.”

  “Maybe. And witnesses get cock-eyed. Mask becomes a hoodie. Hoodie becomes a baseball cap. I’ve seen it happen. Anything on the color of the bike?”

  “Didn’t say, but I’ll double-check when we get to the scene.”

  “Now, we got a killing spree,” Petrosino said, chucking his cigarette and getting in the car. “But is it really gangbangers having a field day, or is it one particular guy in a ski mask going wacko? Or, even, for Christ’s sake, copycats?”

  “Or all three?” Hadid said. “The Internet’s going to love this shit, and everyone in this ’hood is going to be looking over their shoulder.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Hours before, Vishal Raghavan had been walking toward his house on Havemeyer Street, but he stopped in the underside of the BQE. The expressway ran aboveground through the northern part of the neighborhood, and people who lived on the second or third floors in housing adjacent to the expressway enjoyed a charming view of streaming vehicles all day long, if they bothered to raise their smogged-over windows. The underside of the expressway was used for parking as well as for ersatz housing for many homeless, since the width and height of the expressway provided good shelter from the elements. Like shade on a hot day. Which was why Vishal had stopped there to text.

  “U must try new Sardinian wine bar,” he had texted his friend, Caitlyn. “They have raw cheez.”

  “Im lacto intolerant,” she had texted back.

  “Wine select is 2 dye 4.”

  He wore cutoff jeans, vintage sneakers, and a new T-shirt that read “hipster death rattle.” He had stopped by a large steel column to retype the word “artisanal!” which the autocorrect on his phone had turned to “artificial.”

  Vishal had moved to Williamsburg from Illinois two years ago. His first apartment was a $2,100/month decrepit railroad underneath a woman whose kids seemed unable to walk without stomping their feet. The whole family hung out on the stoop at all hours of the night, being loud, and playing Spanish music constantly. Did those kids not have to go to school? He had called the city’s complaint line thirty-five times on them. But the cops would come around and the neighbors would shut up and go inside, and as soon as the cops were gone, sure enough, they’d go out again. And they knew that he was the one who had been calling the cops, so they called him what sounded like nasty names in Spanish whenever they saw him. He moved from there to a $4,700/month, one-bedroom box with a remodeled bathroom and new kitchen fixtures. Next door was a guy who screamed about every kill he made on whatever video game he played all day and all night long.

  He had been looking to move again.

  As he texted, he sensed more than heard something approaching nearby. Some part of his brain registered that he would have to step out of the way, but he didn’t because he was busy trying to attach a picture of what he called “outRAGEous amarelo da beira baixa,” words that had somehow escaped autocorrect unscathed when he realized the lower left part of his screen was getting all “hinky” again. But then he finally got it to send and—

  When the cut came it had been well aimed. It went clean through Raghavan’s neck, banging into the steel column. His last thought had been blissfully of cheese.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Danny “D-Tox” Campos was listening to his girlfriend, Zoila, screaming over the phone. She was begging him to take her to McCarren Pool. He lay in bed, groggy, hungry, and hot. He would have gone to the kitchen to get his mother Iris to make him some breakfast, but Zoila would get louder if she didn’t think he was listening.

  “It’s such a hot fucking day, Pa,” she screamed. “Me and the kid are fucking getting cabin fever. We gotta take this kid to the pool or something. C’mon, Pa.”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” he said, then he threw on his swimming trunks, got his keys on their keychain, and was leaving when his mother asked him where he was going.

  “I gotta go out. I can’t stay cooped up in here no more taking five showers a day to stay cool, no joke. I’m going to the pool.”

  “Con quien?” his mother said.

  “With Zoila and her stupid kid, Mami. C’mon, don’t be like a parole officer.” He laughed and kissed and hugged her, and she wasn’t happy, but she smiled and told him to be careful.

  He slammed the door and was out into the blaze of the day.

  D-Tox picked up Zoila and her rambunctious, spoiled shit of a son, LeJuan, and they walked from her house to the pool. Even though the sky was mad cloudy, it was still humid as hell, and D-Tox couldn’t wait to jump in when they got there.

  First thing, though, he took a long drink of rum and pineapple juice that Zoila kept in a thermos. Then he was checking out Zoila, who stripped down to her bikini on the side of the pool, those sexy globes of hers ’bout ready to bust. He was about to give her a little sugar and whisper something nasty in her ear, when that freaking huelepe’o stringbean LeJuan ran and jumped right into the water, and Zoila said, “Go watch him, Papi. Please! I don’t want the kid to fucking drown.”

  So, D-Tox turned from his lady and cannonballed right into the pool, splashing everywhere and ending up right by the stringbean who told him, “Do it again. Do it again.”

  After a while, Zoila got in, too. She didn’t swim or anything. She just splashed herself a little and then got out of the pool quick.

  “Ai, Pa. Do me a favor,” she said. “There’s too many people. I’m going to lay in the sun. Could you watch LeJuan for a little while for me, please?”

  Then she went back to her towel and started working on bronzing up that fine skin of hers.

  “D-Tox!” the kid screamed. “Look at me! Look at me!” The spoiled stinker was doing backflips into the pool, getting out and doing it again.

  The lifeguard nearby started giving them shit, blowing on the whistle.

  “What?” D-Tox said. “Let him have a good time. That’s what the pool is for, for the kids.”

  The lifeguard backed down. That’s right.

  But then there was this little white kid, pale as milk and freckled like a motherfucker, and with those inflated things
on his skinny little arms. LeJuan did a backflip and landed on the kid, just a little. LeJuan didn’t mean nothing by it. But then the kid went crying, “Oh, mommy, mommy.”

  And then she went to the lifeguard and told him to do something.

  The white lifeguard came to D-Tox and had the nerve to say, “Sir, I’m going to have to get you to remove yourself and your child from the pool.”

  “This shit ain’t happening,” D-Tox said. “This is our pool. You can’t be telling people how to have a good time.”

  Whitey lifeguard backed down. “Please, sir, please make your child behave.”

  So, then LeJuan goes back to having a good time, and then he does his backflip again, and again, he lands right back on the milky freckled white boy, who again started crying.

  “Shut up,” D-Tox said, “You’re not bleeding or anything like that. You’re a kid. You get bumped and bruised. Deal with it.”

  And that was when a big white guy, not the kid’s father, it didn’t look like, shaved head, sideburns thick like fur, came over to the edge of the pool and pointed a finger at D-Tox.

  “Dude,” the guy said. “Get your kid to play nice.”

  “What if I don’t? What you gonna do?”

  “Come up here and I’ll show you.”

  D-Tox pulled himself out of the pool. This shit was on.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The feast must go on.

  No matter that the heat wave had hit record lethal highs for the fifth day in a row. No matter that the local weather personalities had forecast deluge-level thunderstorms for that Sunday, and that the dark churning clouds above Brooklyn seemed poised to prove them right. No matter that the Williamsburg Slasher (New York Times) or Southside Slashers (Daily News) or Hipster Slashers (New York Post) were still at large, eight incidents reported, the last five fatal and one just a block from the twinkling kiddie ferris wheel.

  The feast must go on.

  Just as sure as Tony “Chino” Moran had to be there to cover it. The bad food, the teenagers in heat, the loud morra players (“Quattro!” “Cinque!” “Otto!”). But the annual street carnival was always good for a cover article and an inside spread in the Sentinel. It had to be covered.

  He had his digital recorder out, ready to collect the usual candid quotes: “It’s a great tradition that will never die.” “It gets better and better every year.” “I don’t live here anymore, but I always come back.”

  Gabby followed him, digital camera in hand. As they waded into the crowd, Tony told her to take lots of pictures, especially of the food.

  “Especially the zeppoles,” he said. “People love the zeppoles.”

  While she was there, he introduced himself to the zeppole vendor and asked her about the feast.

  “It’s a great tradition that will never die,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said. “And I’ll have a bag of half a dozen.”

  When she gave him the bag, she added, “I was worried about the slashing man. But he won’t come here. There’s too many people.”

  As they walked away, Gabby said, “How can you eat that? It’s not even lunchtime.”

  “It’s just like a beignet, better than a donut. Just about every human culture has some sort of fried dough food. Don’t eat the fried Oreos, though, they’re amazing but deadly in the gut. Hey, get pictures of those kids on the rides.”

  “All right! I know, Tony!”

  Tony knew, from almost thirty years of going to the fair, that they could almost use the same pictures every year. But there were differences every year. Besides the sizzling sausages and mounds of peppers and onions and the endless pizza, there was now Mexican corn, fresh hot falafel.

  But some things didn’t change. The creaky rides still threatened to break and send little children flying. Sleazy carnival barkers still inveigled people to throw basketballs and shoot water at clowns, all for the glory of stuffed corporate merchandising. Or a tiny bear.

  “Tre!” “Nove!” “Sette!”

  And the morra players were still there.

  The sky rumbled. Things had better get going soon.

  “Looks who’s here.”

  Oh no. In mid-bite, Tony turned, dropping a cup of powdered sugar on his T-shirt. There was Magaly walking straight toward them with Luis De Moscoso. She had a nervous smile. Her boss looked constipated.

  “Hi, Magaly,” Tony said. “You’ve met Gabby.”

  “Yes, your co-worker.”

  “Assistant editor at the Sentinel,” said Gabby. “Oh my god, I love your hair. How do you get it like that?”

  “Thank you,” Magaly said. “It takes a lot of TLC and the right conditioner.”

  “That’s just it—I don’t have time for TLC.”

  “Do they work you too hard at the Sentinel?”

  “Oh my god, no, it’s easy work. Actually, it’s kind of boring.”

  “What do you mean, boring?” Tony said.

  Magaly turned to Tony and said, “Oh, Chino, you remember Luis, right?”

  “Checking out the feast for a story?” De Moscoso said, shaking Tony’s hand.

  “Yes. It fills pages, creates goodwill, gets advertisers.”

  “Then I hope you do a story on the Three Kings Parade we have every year.”

  “Of course,” Tony said. “It gets a full spread. We quote you every time. You make sure of it.”

  Magaly gave him an angry look. “We do have an information booth here, in case you wanted to find out about our community programs,” she said. “And we also have one set up by McCarren Pool all summer long.”

  “You should do a story on us,” De Moscoso said.

  “We’ll put it on the list,” Tony said. “Gabby, put it on the list of stories we have to do.”

  “What list?”

  “It was good to see you,” Tony said. “We have to get back to our boring work now.”

  “Us too. Take care, Chino.” Magaly and De Moscoso turned back into the crowd.

  “She’s pretty,” Gabby said. “So, you used to date her?”

  “Pictures,” Tony said, pointing.

  He stopped in front of a booth that sold T-shirts lettered with slogans like “Not Only Am I Perfect. I’m Italian Too,” “FBI: Full Blooded Italian,” and “Leave the Gun. Take the Cannoli.” He’d seen those for years. But one T-shirt looked different. It read: “hipster death rattle.” What the hell did that mean?

  Tony introduced himself to the vendor and asked how the fair was going.

  “It gets better and better every year.”

  “Okay. That’s great. Hey, how much is that T-shirt?”

  “Yeah, that’s a big seller. Twenty dollars, but I only have extra large.”

  “Tony.” Gabby interrupted them. “The priest is starting.”

  The vendor said, “I have a few in small for the lady.”

  But Tony had to go cover the dance.

  The Our Lady of Mount Carmel’s Feast of the Giglio, or what the neighborhood called the Italian Feast, was held every summer on the streets around Havemeyer and North 8th. The highlight of the feast was the Dancing of the Giglio, the Giglio being an eighty-foot-tall structure that rose above the three-story row houses that lined the streets. The structure was dominated by a tower decorated with papier-mâché representations of flowers and religious icons, and at the very top of the tower stood a statue of Saint Paolino. At the bottom of a tower was a twelve-piece Italian marching band. All of this, five tons’ worth, rested on a platform. The Dancing of the Giglio involved the lifting—and agile movement—of this platform by one hundred and twenty men. After the Giglio was blessed, and the national anthems of the United States and Italy played, the capo parranza went to work. The muscles and the wills of the one hundred and twenty lifters had to be bound together. So it was up to the short man in the front, the capo, to be the conductor of the Giglio, using a cane to direct the lifters up, down, forward, backward, in a circle, around corners. To make them dance.

  It had been
a long time since Tony had really paid attention to the whole thing. The band played “Funiculì, Funiculà,” brassy and loud. The crowd around the Giglio, even the very probably non-Italians, seemed engaged, not cynical or blasé. And there was joy—and serious, strenuous effort—in the faces of the lifters as they performed a gently swaying dance in unison. Despite himself, Tony was impressed. Even after the band launched into a brassy version of “Eye of the Tiger.”

  Little drops of rain began to peck at his face. He went to wipe away the rain and noticed something ahead, behind the Giglio.

  The crowd was surging forward. There was a sound like a scream, but it was hard to tell with “Eye of the Tiger” filling the air.

  Gabby noticed the movement and said, “Something’s happening. Tony.”

  “Pictures,” he said, but he was looking, too.

  The scream had come from down the block, where Havemeyer Street meets Union Avenue. The crowd surged forward again and began to part.

  Tony saw what was causing the commotion.

  Cutting through the crowd was a man on a bicycle. He had an arm held up high. In his hand was a machete pointed straight to heaven.

  Two burly guys tried to stop the man, but they jumped back as he slashed at them.

  He kept coming, heading for the Giglio. Or rather the men under the Giglio. He was behind them, and they couldn’t see him coming, and they blocked the capo from seeing what was happening.

  How fast could a mass of one hundred and twenty humans react? There was no way they could just jump out of the way.

  The man on the bicycle struck one lifter after the other on the left side of the Giglio. He was laughing a giddy wild laugh the whole time.

  The lifters turned away, broke their concentration, broke away from the single mindset controlled by the capo.

  The crowd that had once been unified by the sight of the Giglio broke into chaos.

  The mighty Giglio began to wobble.

  The band, however, never missed a beat.

  The capo was yelling for the lifters to lower their burden to the blacktop, but the man on the bicycle was swinging wildly and people were screaming like children and everyone knew there was a slasher in the neighborhood killing people and it looked like there he was, chopping right through them.