Brainquake (3 page)

“Accent?”

“No.”

“Profanity?”

“No.”

“Stutter?”

“No.”

“Cough?”

“No.”

“Did he talk fast?”

“No.”

“Slow?”

“Normal.”

“Who were Frankie’s black friends?”

“I don’t know.”

“Any friends of Frankie been in a mental ward?”

“I never met his friends.”

“Why not?”

“Wouldn’t like them.”

“Because they’re into narcotics?”

“Wouldn’t like them.”

“How long did you know Frankie before you married him?”

“One week.”

“How did you meet him?”

“I got out of the subway. It was raining. He had an umbrella and walked me to where I lived.”

“Where did you live then?”

“504 West 176th Street.”

“How did Frankie make a dollar?”

“I never asked.”

“Did you move in with Frankie?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Saint Charles Hotel, West 96th Street.”

“Did you work when you met him?”

“Cashier. French rotisserie restaurant. 137th and Broadway.”

“Still work there?”

“No. I’m at the Rex Western Grill on…”

“I know it. What daycare do you leave the baby with when you go to work?”

“Daycare? Can’t afford daycare.”

“Who looks after your baby when you work?”

“I do.”

“At Rex Grill?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s the carriage kept?”

“A storeroom off the kitchen. The owner, his wife and the help all chip in. They all love my baby.”

“Did Frankie give you the ten thousand?”

“You kidding?”

“It wasn’t on his body.”

“That’s Frankie’s problem.”

“It’s your problem now.”

“Are you crazy? I have nothing to do with him or his money.”

“It was a business bullet, Mrs. Troy. You get hit, Frankie pays. Frankie’s hit, you pay.”

Through the window Zara saw the Bomb Squad van pass. She stood up, bending over to clear the low roof of the ambulance. She spoke very quietly. “Mrs. Troy, they’re going to check the carriage. The man who planted the gun could’ve planted some kind of a booby trap too. To do the maximum damage, and cover his tracks.”

“
Booby trap?
”

“Your baby will be okay, Mrs. Troy. We’ll see to it. And we can give you protection for the day, maybe the week. But we can’t protect you forever. One day you’ll be right back where you are now. There’s no guarantee we’ll find the man who did this. And if we don’t, even a year from now, he’ll look you up and he’ll be very mad. Raise that money.”

“I can’t.”

“Pay him or your baby’ll die a baby.”

Camera crews on the roofs of three network trucks were ready when Zara climbed out of the ambulance, strode past a whiteclad doctor sneaking a smoke, then marched through the opening made by cops keeping the press and the crowd back.

Shoulder-mounted cameras weighed heavily on operators keeping their balance by their assistants’ grips on their hips. News photographers and a platoon of reporters fell in behind the Pied Piper of the NYPD without firing a single question.

They knew Zara’s trademark. When ready, she’d make only one statement. To some of the print buzzards, Zara was arrogant, to others she was eccentric, but to all she was news. And professionalism, brevity, honesty. But most of all news.

Zara knew how they saw her and embraced it. Journalists had made her a tabloid figure, a star, rather than the working cop she was. So be it. If it helped bring killers in, she’d tolerate the headlines, the photos in the
Post
and the
News
, the insinuations from some in the department that she sought the attention out. She didn’t. A case was a case. A pro hit man or a domestic killer were the same to her. They killed. They must be put out of circulation.

She didn’t believe in redemption when it came to taking a human life. To her that was breaking the law of life, not the law written somewhere on a piece of paper. She didn’t believe in the why of murder, in any medical or psychological explanations for it. The hell with why. What, where, when, who. You kill, you’re caught, the door slams behind you. You can spend the rest of your life in a cage, or you can do the decent thing and kill yourself. That was fine. She never begrudged a killer a second killing, as long as the second victim was himself. And if he needed to be helped along a little, she didn’t mind that either. She had a dozen shootings to her name, every one of them righteous.

Of course it made her a target, too. For wanted fugitives, for criminals who hated that there was a cop they couldn’t buy, couldn’t finagle, couldn’t blackmail. This was her city, and she walked its streets, didn’t hide behind bulletproof glass or an office posting, strode with balls, but was always alert. Even now, tailed by the press, anyone masquerading as a cop or a reporter could open up the back of her skull with a bullet. She didn’t let it bother her. Fear came with the badge. No one forced her. It was her choice.

She lived alone in a small East Harlem apartment in the heavily populated Spanish area that once was inhabited almost entirely by blacks. She slept on the ground floor with unbarred window always unlocked. In the summer, she left it open, let in some air. She breakfasted round the corner, hating to make coffee. She hated to cook. She’d grab a sandwich for lunch, but dined like a queen at Dinty’s Chop House.

Her clothes cost a heavy dollar. Immaculate, she always smelled good.

A born bloodhound, though she had lost the scent of many fugitives too. Which is why she’d given Michelle Troy the advice she had, as much as it pained her to do it. Paying a murderer disgusted her, but it wasn’t the widow’s job to fight one. That was the police’s job, and until they did it Mrs. Troy had to do what she had to do, to keep herself and her baby alive. Meanwhile, Zara would work the case, do her damnedest to nail the killer. She’d nailed 77 to date, killed twelve of them. It wasn’t an art. It wasn’t a science either. It was shoe leather and sweat, and sometimes luck, though you could help luck along. She was helped by informers. Some stoolies informed for vengeance. Pros were paid. She preferred pros.

Majority of them were ex-cons. Without a canary, she was in trouble. It was ball-breaking enough to find the spoor of a killer in New York City. Almost impossible without a tip. Every homicide cop had a roster of informers. She had one of the best. She never paid them grudgingly. They had their way of earning a living, she had hers. In murder, every Judas was an angel. She had always wondered what would have happened at Little Big Horn if there had been a stoolie in the Sioux. Probably Custer would have been made president.

She was approaching the police-blocked dirt path leading to the carriage. The press knew that in a moment they would lose her. This was their last chance to get a statement. So they dashed past her and walked backwards facing her, quickening their pace so she wouldn’t steamroll over them before she vanished behind the final cop barrier.

She stopped. The cameras focused on Zara’s black eyes under groomed black hair, not kinky at all at the moment since just two days earlier she’d had it hot-pressed straight. Face black marble. Heavy breasts covered but not hidden by buttoned, custom-tailored gray jacket. Holster bulge invisible. Handcuffs invisible. Shirt white. Tie black. Long, lean legs striding under matching gray skirt. Black shoes with spike heels that had doubled as a weapon in the hands of the 34-year-old, six-foot-three-inch legend that give the New York Police Department such élan. She lived up to the reporters’ expectations and made her one statement:

“Here’s what we know. There’s been a murder. When the baby in that carriage pulled the tail of the toy monkey, it triggered a loaded gun concealed between the baby’s feet. Frankie Troy was shot dead. His widow, Michelle, is waiting in the ambulance for her baby. There is reason to believe there may be a bomb under the baby. Our job is to get the baby out safely and you’re going to help us do it by staying the hell away. Come within three feet of that carriage and I’ve given instructions to shoot. I’m dead serious.” No one doubted it.

She turned to go. Jaediker of the
Daily News
shouted:

“Any suspects, Lieutenant?”

“A threat was called in, by an unidentified male who may go by the street name ‘Black Psycho.’ ”

“Black…?”

“Psycho, that’s right, Mr. Jaediker. They come in all colors, even mine. Now move back.”

The media and the cops parted for her as she strode forward, as single-minded as a torpedo. She saw the men in the crowd watching her, and knew there was something in their eyes other than respect. Sometimes it was lust, sometimes fear. Sometimes anger. Sometimes…

Zara imagined what it had been like for her ancestor Jero Zara, the first nigra cop assigned to protect Andrew Johnson in New York. Jero Zara was killed by a bullet intended for Johnson, who became President when Lincoln was assassinated. She imagined her grandfather, Tom Zara, the first nigger to command the pioneering Vice Squad in the Force. Tom Zara was shot in the back by the pioneering Murder, Inc.

She walked with her head up and her back straight.

From a distance came the crying, the baby in that carriage busting its lungs to live in the world of savagery it had been born into.

Like Zara had cried, a baby sitting on her father’s knee, her mother standing beside them proudly, the three of them posing for the newspaper cameras the day her father, Ray Zara, became the first colored Captain of Detectives. He never liked the word colored, preferring Negro to the day he was hammered to death in a Harlem race riot.

The same savage world had awaited the baby sitting on Ray Zara’s knee, now working as the first black female Homicide Detective First Class, battle-scarred, with five citations for bravery, and as contemptuous of pithy epithets as her daddy had been. Nigra, nigger, colored, now black. What would they next change the color of black to?

Her mind turned to Frankie Troy. The dead man rankled her.

If he had no record, she had nothing. If he had no friends, she had only the widow’s word based on Frankie’s word that a man called Black Psycho had threatened his life. She only had the widow’s word about the ten thousand dollars Frankie supposedly owed.

If she could find out what business transactions Frankie Troy was involved in, maybe she’d have something to go on. But Michelle Troy looked to be no help there.

Was Black Psycho an actual psycho, a psych ward patient, a medicated schizophrenic? Or was it just a sobriquet, a nom de guerre? In gutter business or pavement conning, characters called each other psychos. Like Crazy Eddie wasn’t really crazy. Just his prices were insane.

Her watch said 10:30. Kelleher should be finished checking Frankie Troy’s prints. Zara was banking on those prints. She had to know all about Frankie Troy before she could go after his killer.

A sudden roar made her look up. A news helicopter was hovering above the carriage. They were filming three men wheeling a big machine down the ramp of the Bomb Squad van, moving it across grass to the side of the carriage. One officer waved the helicopter away but it remained. A second camera was on the crying baby.

Zara pulled out her gun, aimed it at the cameras. The chopper swept off like a hawk.

Would she have fired? Didn’t matter. What mattered was, they believed she would.

Reputation. It cost something, but it was worth something too.

* * *

Paul watched Zara put her gun away. He’d seen her first only at a distance, a woman crossing No Man’s Land. Not a single cop ran out to order her behind the cordon. Which meant she was a cop herself. When she got closer, he saw who she was. Black female detective, over six feet tall—there was only one. The Boss had told him about Zara, how she’d shot a pirate who killed a bagman and got away with his bag of cash. Zara tracked down the pirate, who drew first. She shot him between the eyes, read his rights to the corpse. In the hijacked bag was $12 million, which she turned over to her captain. The pirate was black. The Boss said that Zara was color blind when it came to homicide.

Paul looked over toward the ambulance, saw Ivory Face sitting up, watching the scene anxiously. He wanted to go over to her, find out if she was all right, tell her she didn’t have to face this alone.

But when he made a move in her direction, the cop on the Blood Bay drove Paul back to his spot.

* * *

Zara watched the Bomb Squad ready the X-ray. If there was a bomb…if it exploded with that baby still on top of it…

What happened six years ago could happen again. Six years ago Tolly Coleman used the headline
BLACK MAN BLOWS UP WHITE WOMAN WITH GRENADE
to cause a riot. A massacre—fourteen blacks had been killed. The men who held the bats, the pipes, the bricks were punished, sentenced, but Coleman? Coleman’s weapons were words. Zara failed to nail Tolly Coleman with multiple murder.

Of course Tolly Coleman was dead now. Four months later Tolly Coleman had raped a 15-year-old black girl in her basement. In court, found guilty, Tolly Coleman went berserk, seized a cop’s gun, shot him, ran out into the street shooting people, and was shot dead by another cop in front of the traffic-jammed Criminal Courts Building.

But Tolly Coleman’s organization, White America First, was still alive. The headline
BLACK PSYCHO MURDERS WHITE BABY
could bring another massacre.

But then, hell, so could
BLACK PSYCHO USES WHITE BABY TO KILL ITS FATHER
.

Zara had to talk to the Police Commissioner. He’d listen to her. A battalion of cops at the White America First headquarters would be enough to stop them from using this incident as a reason to butcher more blacks.

She would speak to the Commissioner right after the Bomb Squad did its job.

But the baby came first.

Caked blood stung the baby’s face. Its howls could be heard all over Central Park. Zara squatted down beside the three men at the foot of the carriage.

She had seen baby skeletons in the remains of fires; hoisted from a rotted barge; under garbage; in stinking wooden boxes abandoned by mothers; in sewers, attics, excavation dumps.