Scorch City Read online

  Westermann nodded.

  They were nearing City Hall. Kraatjes turned in his seat and mumbled something to the driver. The Chief gently gripped Westermann’s arm. This close, Westermann could see the tension in the Chief’s jaw, the stress lines spreading from his eyes. “You need to clear this case, Piet.”

  Westermann held the Chief’s gaze and nodded. The Chief didn’t even know.

  26.

  A yellow haze hung low in the City, refusing to dissipate, obscuring the tops of the taller buildings even in the slum just west of Praeger’s Hill known as the Cauldron. Morphy drove with Grip riding shotgun, a literal description in this neighborhood where even cops felt their backs tighten and the usual prowl-car banter fell mute. Morphy crept the car along, letting Grip get a good, menacing look at the action on the street. If there was a truly heterogeneous neighborhood in the City, this was it. All manner of color, creed, and nationality were here, having only poverty and desperation in common. On one corner they saw three men with long beards and turbans sitting Indian-style passing a flask and talking in high, staccato voices. More typical were the furtive transactions taking place on the sidewalks. Deft exchanges only halfheartedly disguised as handshakes or embraces. Whores were out, too, even at this hour—just after noon. Grip recognized a few from the station, in particular a red-haired Irish girl whose high cheekbones and startled eyes had transfixed him.

  “Weird thing yesterday with the boss giving us the up-and-down for bracing Mel Washington,” Grip said. It had been at the back of his mind.

  “Yeah,” Morphy replied without much interest.

  “Not usually his way, you know, second-guessing his men.”

  “No,” Morphy agreed.

  “I mean, how did he even know about it? Who the fuck told him?”

  Morphy shrugged. “I don’t know. Who the fuck cares who told him? One of those guys we ran off. Maybe Washington. We know the lieut doesn’t like the heavy stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Grip muttered.

  “He’s not going to start running a tight ship, Torsten. It’s not in him.”

  Grip nodded without the confidence that Morphy seemed to have. He thought about burning the commie press operation, about Ole Koss scaring everyone in sight.

  They crossed Wolffe Boulevard and entered a block of town houses that, although squalid, were practically palaces compared to most Cauldron residences. They drove by the address they were looking for, took a right at the end of the block, and parked the car at the curb.

  Three boys materialized from nowhere, their clothes hanging from their slender frames and their eyes, even at this age, hard.

  “Watch your car for a buck,” the tallest of the three said.

  Morphy ignored him and opened the trunk of the car. Grip gave the boys the once-over.

  “A buck,” Grip said, making a show of mulling it over, “to watch the car.”

  “Each,” the boy shot back.

  Grip spat into the gutter. “A buck total. You want it or not?”

  The boy frowned judiciously, then shrugged. “A buck.”

  “When we get back,” Grip said, and saw that Morphy was holding a crowbar now.

  Morphy said, “You make sure no one gets out the front.”

  Grip nodded and marched around the block to the front of the house. Morphy strolled down the alley that ran behind the row houses. Trash was everywhere, huge rats enjoying it, ignoring Morphy. A couple of young kids playing with an old tire saw Morphy coming and beat it. An old-timer with a long gray beard lay in a large crate, snoring, wearing a jacket made for fifty degrees cooler.

  Morphy swung the crowbar lazily in his right hand while he hummed something by Mozart under his breath—he didn’t know the name, but the tune was his favorite, he having heard it at a gala affair in Admiralty Park, carried away to the point that he had almost forgotten that he was on security. And composed by a kraut, he thought, which was generally a negative in his book (it was doubtful that the distinction between Austrians and Germans would have made much of a difference to him). He had done his bit against the Germans in northern France and into Belgium and Holland.

  He came to the right house and walked up four wooden steps to a small stoop by the back door. He paused for a moment, listening. There were voices, but not natural ones—the radio. He lifted the crowbar above his head and gave three vicious hacks to the doorknob, destroying it and ripping a small hole in the door.

  He heard a man’s voice yell, “Hey, what the hell?” and heard a feminine whimpering.

  Morphy switched the crowbar to his left hand and without rushing pulled his gun from his shoulder holster. He held the gun outstretched at shoulder height and nudged the door open with his foot. He took three steps and was at a door to his left when through it walked a man wearing only boxers and carrying a pistol. His momentum stopped when his forehead hit the business end of Morphy’s gun. The man’s eyes looked up. Morphy gave the man’s gun hand a tap with the crowbar and the gun rattled to the floor and the man barked in pain.

  “Back in the room,” Morphy ordered, and backed him into the room with the pressure of the gun barrel on the man’s forehead.

  “Okay, Jack, okay,” the man said, hands in the air.

  He had come from a bedroom and on the bed cowered two women, barely more than girls, the sheet pulled up to their chins. Morphy could tell from the outlines beneath the sheet that they were both naked. A radio played in the corner—one of those serials.

  “Who else is here?” Morphy asked the room.

  One of the women—dark-skinned, maybe Italian—shook her head violently.

  Morphy engaged the man’s eyes. “You have already pulled a gun on me. I could kill you right now and it would be self-defense all the way. Now you have five seconds. Is anybody else here? If you lie, I will kill you.”

  “Come on, Jack, ain’t no one else here. Don’t pull the fucking trigger.” The man was sweating now as if he’d run a goddamn marathon.

  “Okay,” Morphy said, looking at the women this time, “get in the fucking bathroom.” He nodded toward a door leading off the bedroom.

  The women struggled for a moment with the sheet, not sure how they could both use it and move at the same time.

  “Leave the sheet,” Morphy said slowly, as if to children, “I won’t look.” To demonstrate his disinterest, he turned his attention back to the man.

  “You Kaz Plansky?”

  The man nodded. Kaz Plansky was a known pimp, part of a pipeline for young women just off the boat. He was a broker, accepting the women when they arrived and then funneling them to the crime organizations that controlled prostitution in much of the City or to smaller-time freelance pimps. He was just over five feet tall and, in his boxers, looked like a standing goddamn hedgehog. He rubbed his hand, which Morphy noticed was ballooning and turning an angry shade of yellow.

  The women had made it to the bathroom, pulling the door closed behind them. Morphy grabbed a chair and propped it hard under the doorknob.

  “Okay, let’s go to the front door.”

  They walked down the hallway, Plansky in front, hunched over a little from the pain in his hand. Morphy followed a couple of paces behind, gun trained at the shorter man’s head.

  When they got to the front door, Morphy shouted, “Officer Grip, it’s Officer Morphy. Kaz Plansky is about to open the door. Do not kill him. Do you understand?”

  “Don’t kill him?” came the response from outside.

  “Correct.”

  Plansky looked nervously back at Morphy, who nodded toward the door. Using his left hand, Plansky fumbled with the lock and then pulled the door open. Grip stood in the doorway, an unpleasant smirk on his face.

  “All right,” Morphy said, “let’s head on back.”

  They went back to the bedroom and made Plansky sit on the bed. Morphy and Grip stood before him, a little closer than necessary.

  “Shit, Jack,” Plansky said, “I think you broke my fucking hand.”

&
nbsp; “Yeah, that don’t look too good,” Grip confirmed cheerfully.

  “Look, if this is a shakedown, I’m already paying off LaRue and Riise. Maybe you should—”

  “Shut up,” Grip said.

  Morphy put his face down at Plansky’s level, their noses almost touching. “This isn’t a shakedown, Kaz. We need some information. And you call me Jack one more time, I’m going to put a fucking bullet in your head.”

  It didn’t seem possible, but Plansky looked even more worried. “Okay,” he said uncertainly.

  Morphy produced a photo from his breast pocket—head and shoulders shot of the corpse from the river. “You recognize this girl?”

  Plansky squinted at the photos. “She’s dead.”

  “No shit,” said Grip. “You ever see her alive?”

  “Jesus,” Plansky said slowly, shaking his head. “I don’t know. I see a lot of girls. And her, look at her shoulders, it’s like someone didn’t feed her. And the shit on her face.”

  “Think hard,” Morphy asked. “Because if you’re wrong, and this girl has crossed your path, we will find out and we will come back here and fucking kill you. Do you understand that I’m serious when I say this? I will kill you and I will walk because it will be so goddamn ugly that they’ll say no way a cop could ever do this. Get it?”

  Plansky nodded his head quickly. Morphy could almost see the thought process on his face. Plansky was desperately trying to come up with something that would be useful.

  “This the bird they found on the riverbank?”

  That got Grip’s attention. “Yeah, why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “What is it, Kaz?” Grip asked with a grin that showed his teeth.

  “Shit. You know, a lot of girls come through here, but I sell them off to other guys who work them on the street.”

  “What’re they, fucking slaves?”

  Plansky looked at him funny. “They’re whores. Anyway, maybe this one looks familiar. Like I said, she don’t look like she’s in such good shape.”

  Grip nodded encouragingly and Morphy just continued to stare.

  “Well, I don’t know that I remember the girl’s name or anything. But she might just be with Joey Stanic down in the Theater District. You know Joey?”

  Grip shook his head, looking at Morphy. Morphy shrugged.

  “Ask around down there, you’ll find Joey. People know him.”

  “And you think this girl, whatever her name is, you sold her to this Joey Stanic?”

  Plansky shrugged. “Like I been telling you, it’s hard to tell with her all skinny and those sores. But, yeah, I think I might have.”

  Morphy shook his head, tapping the crowbar against the bedroom wall. Grip looked his way, eyebrows up.

  “Come on, Jack,” Plansky said; then paused, wondering if Morphy would really shoot him. When he realized he would survive the next thirty seconds, he continued, “LaRue and Riise, they said that I pay them, I’m good with the force.”

  “What do you think?” Grip asked Morphy.

  Morphy frowned. “We find Stanic and it turns out he doesn’t know what the fuck’s going on, I’ll come back and take my time with our chum here.”

  “Fuck,” Plansky said, clearly hoping that his memory was right, but having his doubts under this pressure.

  Grip and Morphy turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Plansky said. “Don’t mention my name down in the Theater District. It don’t look good, people think I’m peaching on Joey Stanic.”

  Morphy laughed and kept laughing. He laughed all the way out the broken back door, Grip shaking his head behind him, thinking about Plansky shitting himself back in the bedroom.

  The three boys were still there, sitting on the curb by the front of the car, looking harder than any kids that age should.

  The one who had done the talking before got up as Morphy and Grip approached. “No one touched your car.”

  Grip took a trip around the car, putting on a show of judiciously inspecting it from all angles. When he was done, he fished out his wallet. He took three bills and gave one to each boy.

  “Keep this in mind if we ever need you again. We need good men from time to time.”

  Morphy looked at Grip as if he’d lost his mind.

  27.

  A block from the Uhuru Community shantytown, Frings leaned against a burned-out light post and smoked a reefer, his hat tilted back on his head, feeling the sun on his face. He was here early, not wanting to make Carla wait, what with her doing him a favor.

  He’d stopped off at the office before coming over and been rewarded with a call from Klein over at Police Records. The Community assaults had been assigned to a Sergeant Ed Wayne, who had that beat. The name rang no bells. He’d run it by Westermann, see if he was familiar with Sergeant Wayne.

  He saw a cab several blocks off, headed his way. He took a last drag off the reefer and tossed it down a storm drain. The sky, he noticed, was a particularly deep blue, with high white clouds hanging almost motionless. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and tilted his hat down to get the sun off his face. A hell of a lot of birds were chirping away up on the power lines and pecking around in the field by the shanties. Frings didn’t like birds. He wasn’t sure why.

  The cab pulled up and Carla stepped out, looking, Frings thought, very prole with a scarf over her head and her modest, brownish clothes. Frings kissed her on the cheek.

  Kids hung around the perimeter of the shantytown, throwing a makeshift ball of twine back and forth while younger kids chased. Carla smiled at them and they stopped, waiting for the adults to pass before they picked up their game again. Frings winked at the kids and followed Carla through a gap between two sheets of corrugated steel and into what felt like an oven. The stagnant air was heavy with the smells of spices, cooking meat, exotic incense, and cannabis smoke.

  The alleys between the shacks were narrow, and Frings saw that most doors were open, allowing a view into hovels where women in bright dresses cooked over open fires and children played on the dirt floors. People, sweat beading on faces, eased sideways to let them by in the narrow passages. Some people clearly knew Carla, people nodding to her, some calling her by name. But Frings was aware that others looked at them with wariness and even hostility. It was understandable, he thought. There were no other white faces.

  They ventured farther into the maze, Carla navigating between shanties made of cardboard, tin, and scrap lumber. Symbols were painted on many of the doors—intricate patterns, crosses—sometimes numbers, or words in French. On some walls hung plates of tin painted in bright colors, simple portraits of Negro men and women—their heads huge and topped with halos—framed by complicated and colorful patterns. Sometimes names were painted below the portrait. Senjak. Senjon. Samedi. Mama Loa. Brown.

  “These are interesting. What are they?” Frings asked.

  “Religious symbols. Portraits of saints. Many of the people here are from the islands. They brought their religion with them.”

  “How does this fit with Father Womé?”

  Carla laughed. “I don’t think he worries very much about it. From what I’ve heard, he seems to embrace the Square.”

  “What’s the Square? Womé mentioned it, too.”

  “The Square? I can show you the place. It’s where the islanders hold their rituals. I’m told the whole Community comes out sometimes. It’s kind of the center of the Community. The Square and Father Womé, of course. It’s over here.”

  She led him to a dirt plaza, maybe twenty yards to a side, bordered by shanties. Chairs were placed sporadically along the edge, and large, unlit candles sat bunched in the center. A group of older men had pulled chairs in a circle and were chatting and drinking coffee from battered tin cups. They turned in their chairs, postures wary, to see Frings and Carla.

  Carla waved. “I’m here to see Billy Lambert.”

  One of the men, thin, wearing a bowler and dark glasses, asked, “What you want that boy for?”

>   “I’m his friend. I heard he was hurt.”

  The old man nodded. “He was beat down good. In yonder house.” He motioned with his head to the opposite side of the square.

  “I know where he lives,” Carla said. “Thank you.”

  Frings flashed a smile and noticed they were passing a pipe. No one smiled back.

  * * *

  Billy Lambert lived in a tiny shack amid dozens of other similar shacks. While they were essentially the same size, their construction was incredibly diverse because they had been pieced together from whatever materials were available in whatever quantity: tin, steel, wood, cardboard, canvas, plank, parts of abandoned cars. Again, the symbols and the paintings. Lambert’s door was marked with a symbol that looked like a cross on a stand, outlined and then filled in with loose cross-hatching.

  Carla knocked lightly on the door. “Billy?”

  “Yeah. Come.”

  Carla pushed the door open and they entered the dim shack, a cot taking up about a quarter of the floor space. On the cot lay a young man with very dark skin, wearing only a pair of slacks.

  “Billy,” Carla said again, tentative.

  “Mrs. Bierhoff.” Billy raised himself up on an elbow. His voice was slurred, the words indistinct around the edges.

  “Oh my God, Billy.” Carla said it calmly, more in sympathy than in shock. Frings took a closer look. Somebody had really had a go at the kid. Both eyes were swollen, the right one basically shut. His lips were bruised and puffy, and an angry gash ran above an eyebrow. If the rest of his body was in the same shape as his face …

  Carla fussed over him, folding his pillow so that it propped him up a little. She retrieved a bottle onto which someone had shellacked a newsprint image of a saint—Frings thought it might be St. George slaying a dragon. Billy accepted it, took a couple of shallow sips, and lay back into the pillow. She noticed a guitar case and bedroll in the corner and asked Billy if he played.