Creepers (3 page)

"Cut the shit Stan, I'm not interested in your sophomoric prejudices." Using Dolchik's first name was a sure sign Corelli meant business. "What's been done on it?"

"Nothing's been done on it, that's what's been done on it," he mocked. "It was late, it was hot. The token clerk said she'd been crying. Probably 'cause she didn't get laid. So she goes down into the station, gets spooked by something, and takes off." He dried his hands, wadded the soggy paper towels into a ball, then tossed them into the basket "You want to make something of it?"

"She left her purse on the platform."

"So?"

"So, it was full. Wallet comb, lipstick."

Dolchik was clearly becoming annoyed by the conversation. "What's bugging your ass, Corelli? I'm a busy man."

"The report says the clerk investigated her screams. When he got down there, she was gone, but the purse wasn't. And you want me to believe she got scared and ran away leaving the one thing women value most, a purse? It's bullshit, Captain, and you know it." Dolchik would cut as many corners as possible to make life easy for himself.

"I don't know nothing, except what the investigating officer reported. He checked the roadbed, he checked the stations, he checked the goddamned cracks in the walls. She was gone. Kaput! You're the one who's full of bullshit, Corelli."

"I want to pursue this further."

"Forget it."

"Has anyone tried to contact her since that night? Has she called in to claim her purse?"

Dolchik's face reddened. "You understand English? I said forget it! The purse is already down at Jay Street. If she wants it back, she can go get it." He pushed past Corelli and opened the door. "The station was quiet with you out sick, Corelli. No one busting ass, no loudmouth questions, no smart-ass answers. I like it that way, so don't push me." He took two long steps away, then turned back. "We got real business today; none of this disappearing-lady shit. So be in my office in ten minutes. And try to act like a cop instead of a drugstore cowboy, okay?"

Corelli watched fat-ass Dolchik waddle across the office and into his glassed-in cubicle. He was the kind of cop who gave cops a bad name with the public. Corelli headed back to his own desk. Dolchik didn't have enough brains to come in out of the rain, and he was a prick, to boot. But he was honest. And for that reason Corelli was almost able to forgive him the rest.

There were four of them in Dolchik's office for the meeting: the captain and three plainclothes detectives-- Corelli, Quinn, and Hector Hernandez, HH to his friends and co-workers. The cramped office was crowded and Dolchik's cheap cigar polluted what little air there was with thick strata of gray smoke. Dolchik sat behind a desk waist-deep in unfiled reports, TA memoranda, and old copies of the Daily News. Once a week he usually got a rookie to tidy up, but they were shorthanded this week and the room remained a pigsty. Several filing cabinets against the wall and two scarred and torn naugahyde chairs reserved for official visitors were submerged in the same effluvia. The only personal touch in Dolchik's office was a carefully hidden collection of photographs from Hustler magazine of nude women apparently preparing for gynecological examinations.

"We've got trouble, men," Dolchik informed the group importantly as he blew a torrent of acrid smoke toward the ceiling. "That cocksucker Willie Hoyte has been onto the press boys again. I wish someone would shut that smart-ass nigger up." His eyes darted to Hernandez for a second to see if the racial slur would have any effect. HH was of Mexican-American descent and considered himself more white than black.

"What's the problem with Hoyte now?" HH asked, not batting an eyelash. When he was fourteen years old, he'd killed a pig just like Dolchik who was trying to rape his sister. But that was back in Texas. And it was many years ago.

"The same thing's always the problem with him. He's media-happy. Hoyte's called every newspaper in town complaining that we're hassling him. West Side News is sending someone to follow him and his goddamned crew of pickaninnies today. We've got to be on our toes."

"West Side News is nothing more than a pisshole in a snow bank," Quinn threw in cheerfully. "There's nothing to fear from them."

"Don't be so sure, Francis," Dolchik said with a sneer. "If they come up with something juicy, the other rags will start sniffing around and pretty soon it'll be last June all over again." He sucked on his cigar a few times, discovered it was dead, then threw it disgustedly into an ashtray. "I want you three to keep on your toes today."

"Such as?" Corelli asked, knowing the captain hated Hoyte because he'd labeled him "a dumb flatfoot" in a New York magazine interview.

"Such as don't let the reporter think we don't like Willie and his Sarrybrus." Dolchik purposely rumbled the pronunciation of the group's name.

"That's Cerberus, Captain; Dogs of Hell," Corelli corrected him. "Hoyte named his group after the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades." An appropriate name for a group of civilians who volunteered their time to protect subway passengers from crime. "It's also the name of a popular comic book."

"I know why it's called Cerberus," Dolchik yelled, "And I don't care if it's a three-headed prick that guards the entrance to the tightest twat in New York. Willie Hoyte and his Dogs of Hell have caused enough trouble for us already."

"Dogs of Hell" was the informal name for Cerberus the media had concocted back in June when they sprang to national prominence after a clash with the TA cops. The thirty-five-member Dogs of Hell had been formed the year before as a local uptown group dedicated to protecting elderly subway riders from harm. Its founder, Willie Hoyte, knew as well as anyone in Harlem that many of New York's muggings were done to blacks by blacks right on their own home turf. The old black credo of slicking together and protecting your own no longer even received lip service in the city's ghettos. Uptown, midtown, downtown, it was every man for himself. People of every race, creed, color, and age were targets for the malcontents the city churned out like spillage from a defective sewerage plant. The police were helpless to stop the mounting subway crime, so Hoyte decided to lend them a hand.

Dogs of Hell was so successful uptown that Hoyte decided to expand. The members, in their green vinyl windbreakers emblazoned with a snarling tri-headed dog in white, soon became a common sight in the subway system. And the TA cops began to get angry. They didn't know what to make of this para-police quasi-vigilante group that had sprung from nowhere, eschewing approval from both the city government and the police. Dogs of Hell wasn't doing anything illegal, but they began to make it look like the ranks of the TA police were composed of a bunch of doddering bozos who couldn't deal with crime in the subways.

In June two of its members were subduing a young Hispanic purse-snatcher when three TA cops intervened. In the ensuing melee, the mugger escaped and both Dogs of Hell sustained a beating that required treatment in a local hospital emergency room. The cops claimed they hadn't seen the signature jackets, and the injured men claimed the cops singled them out in an overt act of police brutality. The story caught the eye of local New York newspapers and magazines, and within two weeks Willie Hoyte and Dogs of Hell were front-page news. National coverage followed soon after.

"This Hoyte is nothing but a glory hound," Dolchik continued, "and he's dangerous. I don't want any trouble today. It's Labor Day and the shit is going to hit the fan, so let's not let the reporters get anything to report, okay?"

The three detectives stared at him in silence.

"Quinn, I want you to stay at the Circle here. There'll be a lot of downtown traffic on the way to the beach. A lot of the boys will be working the crowds looking for marks." Columbus Circle was a main interchange for the Eighth Avenue IND and the Seventh Avenue IRT lines. The station was a hodgepodge of shops, greasy spoons, and service areas that stretched under four city blocks.

"Hernandez, I want you on the AA shuttling from 125th Street to Fourteenth." This run was where the most trouble was likely to occur today. To HH and his cohorts it was known with little affection as the "shit chute." Being assigned to it was generally considered punishment.

"And last--and least--Corelli. You stick by Hoyte's side all day. I want you there when he's talking to the reporter, when he's on the move, when he shakes off the last drop of piss after taking a leak. Today, you're his shadow. Got it?"

Corelli only smiled. Dolchik needed an articulate spokesman to deal with the press. It was the only time the captain deferred to Corelli's education.

"Okay, now get moving. The system's crawling with blues so there's plenty of help today." Mentioning cops in uniform was pure bullshit, but Dolchik sometimes forgot who he was talking to and his official persona took over. "And, Corelli, if that shithead Hoyte as much as drops a gum wrapper on the platform, I want you to pinch him. He's nothing but trouble."

With a deft flick of the wrist, Willie Hoyte sent a buckwheat pancake sailing toward the kitchen ceiling. It arched lazily just high enough so he had to glance up to track it, made one midair turn, then floated down, where it hit the edge of the frying pan and split in two. One half of the maimed flapjack slid back into the bubbling butter of the skillet, the other half oozed down into the stove's burner well, where it was immediately incinerated by the gas flame.

"Sheeeit," Willie howled in disgust as he dragged the smoking remnant from the burner. He'd made flapjacks perfectly a thousand times before, and this mishap infuriated him. Not only was his jerkoff second-in-command, Ted Slade, nowhere to be found on this important morning, but he was going to be late to meet his men if he didn't haul ass out of the house soon. But first Willie wanted his momma to have a good breakfast. Of all the people in the world who worked hard for their daily bread, Celia Hoyte topped the list.

He turned off the burner and discarded the pancake. The three warming in the oven would have to do. With the care and skill of a downtown caterer, Willie removed the plate and centered it on the tray set out on the kitchen table. His eyes scanned the setup--knife, fork, spoon, linen napkin, a half-grapefruit with brown sugar, flapjacks, a small pitcher of real maple syrup, and a bud vase with a single rose--it was all there. Momma was sure to like it. If nothing else, it meant today was a holiday, and that meant she didn't have to work.

As he washed his hands, Willie tried vainly to avoid the small photograph of his father that confronted him from the windowsill over the sink. It was no use. Ralph Hoyte's brilliant smile and flashing eyes were too provocative. Willie finally gave in and began the ritual of staring his father down in absentia. Everyone said Willie was the spitting image of Ralph, but he didn't see any likeness. Ralph was broad and well over six feet; Willie was slender and barely five-eleven. Ralph's skin was as dark as pitch, a throwback to his African ancestors; Willie was so light-skinned he was embarrassed that in his face could be read the proof of two hundred years of mistreatment by--and interbreeding with--whites. Were it not for the same cat-green eyes and the ingratiatingly sly smile, Willie and Ralph Hoyte were as opposite as night and day. More so now that Ralph was doing time for armed robbery.

Willie shook his head in disgust and quickly dried his hands, suspecting he'd never forgive his father. Not that Willie didn't understand the toll poverty can take on a man's pride, but shit, he'd risked not only his own future but also Willie's and, more important, Celia's when he took part in the robbery of that liquor store. And he'd lost the gamble. He'd been caught less than an hour after the heist in the back room of the same bar on Lenox Avenue where the plans for the job had been made. No, Willie could never forgive his father--because Ralph hadn't confided in his son before fucking up their lives. And that made Willie feel insignificant. It was a judgment he was still trying to repeal.

"What's all this, Willie?" Celia asked as he entered her room. She'd been dozing, dreaming of the day Ralph would return.

"Breakfast in bed. What else?" He waited expectantly by the bed as she pulled herself up and fluffed the pillows.

"Boy, sometimes I wonder 'bout you. Sometimes I suspect you ain't all there." She tapped a finger mischievously on her right temple.

"Don't take brains to cook, Momma, just a skillet and some grease." He began to fidget. A fourth call to Ted Slade had been fruitless. Something was wrong; Slade was a good man, even though he was white. "Come on, Momma, let me put this down so's I can get goin'."

Bolstered by three pillows, Celia lay back, tingling with pleasure at the attention her only son paid to her. There was a time a while back, just after Ralph went away, when it looked like Willie would be joining his daddy behind bars. Those tense months after Ralph's sentencing, something got into Willie. He started goin' bad. It was as if whatever malaise had infected his father was spreading throughout the household. Overnight Willie became a problem and Celia prayed to God to deliver him from his troubles. Then, just as quickly as it'd begun, it was over. Willie had his boys riding the subways and her prayers were answered. Seeing him now all dressed up in khaki slacks, a powder-blue dress shirt open at the neck to display the gold cross on a chain he was never without, and the running shoes he seemed to live in, Celia found it hard to imagine she'd ever worried about him at all.

"You did all this by yourself?" She suppressed a smile. It wasn't the first or even second time he'd done exactly this.