Hipster Death Rattle Page 5

  CHAPTER NINE

  Taxis were once rare to see in Williamsburg, but more than a few passed by Tony as he walked home. He would have loved a ride, by taxi or car service or Uber, no matter the amount of reggaeton and pungent car deodorizer. But his wallet echoed with emptiness, and there was no train or bus going in that direction. So he walked, slowly and with steady perspiration. It was almost four in the morning.

  He thought about checking Facebook for leads on Patrick’s family, but he had a feeling he should keep his eyes and ears on the sidewalks and streets in front of him. He headed for home, but when he was halfway there he veered instead toward the Sentinel offices. He figured he would find the information he needed there. It wasn’t that he had been friends with Patrick, or that he’d ever liked him very much. But no one should sit in a morgue like unclaimed baggage.

  The air conditioning was off on Sundays, so the offices were warm enough to serve as a low oven. He went over to Patrick’s desk. It felt eerie to sit there, a dead man’s desk, as if the touch of death covered everything. Ridiculous.

  Tony booted up the PC. The Sentinel’s computers were more than five years old, ancient by computer standards, so they took a while to come to life. When the screen came on, Tony faced a password prompt. Ridiculous. Why did Patrick bother to put a password on a computer at the Sentinel?

  A halo of neatly aligned Post-It notes framed Patrick’s monitor. One or two had notes on it that seemed like passwords (such as “Awesomesauce!”), but they didn’t work. He tried to guess. “Skateboard.” “Patchouli.” “Ginger.” Nothing. He even tried “PASSWORDSARESTUPID5000” to no avail.

  There was nothing helpful on the desk, so Tony looked through the drawers for anything that could be an address book or a password. It was a violation of privacy, but he guessed Patrick didn’t have any privacy anymore. Who did? His hands were slippery with sweat, and paper stuck to him. Pay stubs and paper clips in the top right-hand drawer. In the middle drawer was a box with what looked like dozens of flash drives, neatly arranged and with a number written on masking tape around each one. He would say Patrick was paranoid about losing work, but the Sentinel computers did have a tendency to go comatose.

  In the bottom drawer were file folders, Sentinel story pitches, clippings. There was one particularly thick folder at the back. At a glance, Tony saw that it contained information about the missing person case of Rosa Irizarry. He pulled that folder out on the desk and kept digging.

  In the bottom of the left-side drawer, he struck gold—a Christmas card, paper-clipped to an envelope behind it. Tony picked it up—a snapshot slid out. He picked it up off the dusty linoleum floor. An older burly man in flannel standing next to an older woman in a black and white wool sweater. The card was signed, “Hope to see you sooner than later. Merry Christmas, Love, Mom & Dad.”

  He turned over the envelope. The Stollers lived in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Tony thought of coal mines and Billy Joel—that’s everything he knew about Allentown. But there was the address.

  “Optime.”

  He called information and got their number. He tapped it in but stopped before hitting the call button. He looked at the couple’s photo. It was very early in the morning, and he imagined waking them up, breaking the horrible news, tears, wailing, questions upon questions. Not something he was in the mood to go through. Instead, he called Detective Petrosino.

  “Thank you,” Petrosino said. “But we tracked them down ourselves. We’re the police. We do that.”

  “Well, that’s it then, I guess.”

  “Mr. Moran, just wanted to let you know: I told them the Stoller family were kind enough to come down and ID their son, so they asked for your number. Since you guys were friends, I figured it was okay for me to give it to them. Okay with you?”

  Tony looked at his phone and silently cursed the detective.

  “So, is that okay?” Petrosino said.

  “Sure. Why not?” Tony said. “That’s great.”

  When he got up to leave, he shut off Patrick’s computer. He said, “Requiescat in pace, Patrick,” and then he looked at the Irizarry file. He was going to put it back in the desk. What was he going to do with it, after all? But then he decided What the hell and put it in his bag.

  Tony finally made it home to his basement apartment on South 4th Street at just past 6 a.m. A bright (if he turned on all the lights) and spacious (if he were a dwarf) studio, close to transportation (under a mile), supermarket (bodega), and restaurants (affordable if he decided not to pay rent). No pets (but rodents seemed okay). He put his bag by his small metal desk and tossed his clothes on top of other ones on the faux parquet floor.

  He thought he should take a shower, but he sniffed himself and figured it could wait. He plopped onto his futon, bought off of Craigslist and barely used (“There’s a stain, so I knocked off twenty bucks,” the ad said), and tried to fade into sleep.

  He closed his eyes and saw Patrick’s shredded face. He tried to think of other things: the asinine poetry he’d heard at the reading, the look on Magaly’s face as she said good night, the weather, upcoming pétanque tournaments, draft beer, puppy dogs. Slowly he began to relax.

  Then his phone rang.

  “Hello, is this Tony Moran?” said an older man’s voice. It sounded beaten, tired.

  Tony didn’t recognize the voice and hoped it was a dream.

  “Hello? Hello?” the voice said. “This is Ken Stoller, Patrick’s father.”

  “Mr. Stoller,” Tony mumbled. He knew he should say something, the expected condolences, but he didn’t know what to say that would mean anything.

  “Yes, Tony. Well, the police, they called us this morning, and, well…I, I wanted to…to thank you for…doing what you did for my son. I’m glad a friend was there.”

  Tony said, “No problem,” and he winced as soon as he said it.

  “He mentioned you many times. You were a good friend.”

  “Sure thing.” Tony winced again.

  Stoller said, “Tony, I wonder if I could ask a favor of you.”

  Tony could tell from the thickness in his voice that the old man had been crying. And he knew that whatever the old man was going to say, he was going to want to say “No.”

  Ken Stoller said, “We’re, uh, we’re driving up this morning. Hopefully, there won’t be too much traffic. We’d love to meet you while we’re in town.”

  “Oh,” Tony said, fumbling. “Yeah, I think I’m going to be pretty busy this week actually.”

  “That’s too bad.” Stoller sounded disappointed. “It would’ve been great to meet you. Well, maybe you could help us move Patrick’s—his stuff. We have to pack it up, you see.”

  Before he could stop himself, Tony said, “Sure. Maybe.”

  Afterward, Tony sank back into the futon, feeling like an ass but not so much that it stopped the train of exhaustion from running him over and dragging him to sleep.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In the parking lot of the 90th precinct police headquarters, Detective Hadid held his arms out to the sides, hoping to get a breeze to pass under his armpits and cool him off, even just a little. His polyester knit tie felt like a battle rope around his neck, and his socks felt wet. It was only nine in the morning, and the day was already damned hot. Brooklyn felt hotter than the Bronx, for sure. He wondered why that was and made a mental note to google it later, once they got inside.

  “It sure is hot, brother,” Hadid said. “Hot enough to melt shoe leather. I feel like I’m going to turn to steam.”

  “Thanks for the weather report,” his partner said.

  The precinct building sat ugly and blunt on a triangle of land, surrounded by ninety-nine-cent stores, closed storefronts, and one fast food joint after another. Woodhull Hospital was a short distance away, and in less than two weeks in the 90th, they had been back and forth over there so much Hadid thought it should be annexed. Maybe they could build a bridge connecting them. An enclosed, air-conditioned bridge.

  In t
he meantime, he had to stand there because his partner Petrosino was taking his sweet time with a cigarette.

  “I can’t believe people still smoke,” Hadid said.

  “Everyone needs a bad habit,” Petrosino said, exhaling a cloud of cancer.

  “You should really quit.”

  “Oh, I’ve quit. At least five times. I felt good and healthy. I could walk up a flight of stairs without wheezing.”

  “You see.”

  “I was never so bored in my life.”

  Hadid was pretty sure his new partner didn’t like him so much, and he thought he knew why. But he was a friendly guy, after all, everybody liked him once they got to know him. He said, “Hey, thanks again for that apartment lead, Petr—. Uh, it’s tiny and parking is hell, and that blue discount sure helps out.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Petrosino took out a comb and touched up his helmet of white hair.

  “Yeah, it’s got tin ceilings and crown molding and—”

  “Uh huh.”

  “—the bathroom is cozy, but the plumbing needs work. My wife’s going to love it when sh—”

  “Yeah, that’s great. Come on.” Petrosino chucked his spent cigarette onto the sidewalk. “Handsome is waiting for us.”

  They went into the precinct building—Hadid felt the cool air enveloping him. “Ah. That’s the good stuff,” he said—and they walked up to the second floor, where Petrosino put a toothpick in his mouth and knocked on the frame of an open door.

  A tall African-American man in a pinstriped suit was on his cell phone. He waved them in.

  “I looked at a property this morning. Right off the park. Amazing views, amazing,” the man said. “Yes, we have the place in Forest Hills, a lovely Tudor, three-bedroom. But the commute can be a drag. Traffic and the like, especially on late nights…this is going to be more than a little pied-à-terre for me. It’s also an investment for the future…Of course. Of course…Yes. Exactly. But when this thing gets moving, it’s going to move fast, so I want to give you a high sign so we get all our ducks in a row…Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, I forgot to tell you the best part: garage. I get hard just saying it: garage.”

  Hadid noted there were lots of pictures of this guy on the wall: one of him trying to look fierce in goggles and a paintball rifle. Hadid sneered inside. A sport for idiots who don’t know how to handle a gun. Then there were pictures with the mayor, with the chief of police, with Sylvester Stallone, George W. Bush, and was that Mel Brooks? Beneath that was a small red and blue flag with a white cross in the middle, and a menorah made out of Star Wars characters.

  The man hung up and said, “So, if it isn’t the ‘Christmas Cop’ and his partner. I caught your picture online. How are you, Petrosino? You look good.”

  The two shook hands, and Hadid thought that Petro looked at this guy the way Petro looked at him. Like, not in a happy-to-see-you way.

  Petrosino turned to him and said, “Detective Hadid, this here’s Lieutenant Esteban Tuchman, precinct gang task force leader.”

  Esteban? Hadid noted. Okay, so not African-American but maybe Spanish, but maybe both and something else? That last name.

  “A pleasure,” said Tuchman, shaking Hadid’s hand. “I’ll save you the trouble. I’m a Dominican Jew.”

  “No, why would I—”

  Tuchman grinned widely and cut him off. “You transferred down from Mott Haven, I hear? Vice.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Wife wanted to be closer to her family and whatnot, so.”

  “Fantastic,” Tuchman said. “Now you might think of this as a rank-pulling exercise, but you can be assured that it is not. It’s what the mayor wants, what the commissioner wants, what the chief wants, so it’s what we want.”

  “Right-o.” Petrosino chewed hard on the toothpick he had in his mouth. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

  “Exactly.” Tuchman picked up a small statue from his desk. It took Hadid a second to realize it was a well-worn Batman figure. “This meeting is in the spirit of twenty-first-century police work, to ensure that information, leads, hunches, what have you, are all being shared, for complete and utter transparency.”

  Hadid said, “But if you got the report, we already showed you ours.”

  “But it’s so much better to hear from the horses’ mouths,” Tuchman said, pointing the Batman at them.

  “I guess we’ll go first,” Petrosino said. “The news has been reporting only about the recent attacks. But we’ve had reports for at least a year about people on bicycles with a machete. Buzzing people. Cutting bag straps. Defacing property. All relatively juvenile stuff. About two months ago, we saw an escalation.

  “On April 13, Maxine Channing, twenty-three, at the corner of Broadway and Berry Street. Slashed, both hands, very deep. Lucky her, she had her phone up to her face, or else she might have lost a nose. She fell back, didn’t see the guy. Too fast, she said. But she did say she thought the bike was red.

  “On May 3, Elijah Sackler, twenty-seven, South 9th Street, cut deep across the left leg. Lost a lot of blood. He remembers the bike disappearing around a corner. He says the bike was green, by the way.

  “On May 10, we get our first fatality. Ty Nelson, twenty-five, on North 10th, walking home from Teddy’s. Got it right in the back of the neck. Died on the spot. Our guess is whoever slashed him was not on a bike. The street’s pretty narrow, so either he got off his bike or was on foot. Still, it was one blow.”

  “Then on May 25, Murray Hewitt, one superficial slash across the head and then stabbed in the back, right through the kidney. DOA at Woodhull. We’re still waiting to hear confirmation about the size and shape of the blade, but it is looking like the same weapon. Also, one witness, who didn’t see the attack but saw someone speeding away from the area of the crime on a Citibike.”

  “And then just this Saturday, things escalated like a rocket. Patrick Stoller, twenty-six, on North 3rd and Kent. He got slashed to pieces.”

  Hadid piped in: “Coroner estimates thirty-seven wounds.”

  “Right-o. Thirty-seven,” Petrosino said, not looking at him. “Otherwise, the M.O. looks to be the same. These all took place late at night, in spots where there were few to no other people around. The attacks all took place incredibly fast, so the few people who were around saw very little.”

  Tuchman twirled with the Batman in his fingers. “And so what’s your conclusion, detective?”

  “I know we have conflicting reports on the color of the bicycle, but eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable,” Petrosino said. “My gut tells me this is a lone whack job who started out small, testing the waters, and is getting braver and braver.”

  “And what’s this hack j—excuse me—this whack job’s motive, do you think?”

  “I think maybe he’s got a bone to pick with these hipsters, for whatever reason. He started with scaring them. That used to be enough. But now he’s actively hacking them to death. Look, all the victims are young and white, mostly male. We don’t need Langley to get a profile going. This is basic stuff.”

  “Is it?” Tuchman said. He finally put down the stupid Batman.

  “I bet you’ve got a theory,” Petrosino said.

  “You know me too well, Jimmy. Detective Hadid, you’re from the Bronx.”

  Hadid sat up. He didn’t realize he had been slouching. “Actually I’m from Long Island, but I was stationed in the Bronx. Melville, originally, then we moved to Massapequa.”

  “Great. You get some heavy-duty gang action up there. In the Bronx, I mean.”

  “Oh, sure. Let me tell you,” Hadid said, “these gangstas and wannabees, I think we should put them all in a stadium and let them fight it out to the death. Clean up the streets one-two-three.” He laughed to himself, then he realized no one else was laughing.

  Tuchman just nodded. “While gang situations can often seem untenable, we have found what I feel are more effective ways to deal with gangs in this part of the city.”

  Hadid took out his notepad and made a q
uick note to look up the word “untenable.”

  Tuchman smiled broadly and then took a deep breath, like he was getting ready to give a speech. “Just to get you up to speed, Detective Hadid, in the 90th, the primary gang organizations are the Trinitarios, DDP, the Latin Kings, MS-13, and the Southside Quistadoreys, who the largest and most violent. These gangs all have initiation rituals, some involving beatings of the new member by all the other members, and some involving some random act of violence, for no reason but to show if the new member has the guts. What you’re describing to me is obviously a series of gang attacks, most likely initiation rites.”

  Petrosino shook his head. “I was thinking along the same lines, until they started to kill people.”

  Tuchman placed the toy figure down right in front of himself, facing them. “Okay. I hear you. But the M.O. of these gangs is to terrorize the neighborhood. These gangs want us to think they’re in charge. Let me share this with you: Eladio Cortés, one of the prime movers in the local Quistadoreys, was released from Sing Sing eight months ago and we know he found his way right back to the ’hood. Cortés is one vicious motherfucker. He was serving time for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, but he’s suspected of at least fifteen murders on his scorecard.”

  “Guys like that get out of jail all the time,” Petrosino said. “Why connect this to him?”

  “Wanting to reassert his power, no doubt,” Tuchman said. “But here’s the tickler: At Cortés’s trial, the lone witness against him was a white dude, in his twenties. Some dude who had just moved into Cortés’s apartment building.”

  Hadid saw where this was going. “Anybody know where this dude is now? Is he one of our vics?”

  “He moved to Cali and works for a software company now. But the point is Cortés could be trying to even the score in a general way. You know: ‘Kill all the white dudes.’”

  Hadid looked at his partner, and he didn’t seem to be buying it. “That’s a stretch,” Petrosino said.