New Jersey Noir (5 page)
Authors: Joyce Carol Oates
Hal was grown now, a lawyer, married with two kids. He was weary of Janice’s soap opera, as he called it. Life is pretty simple when you don’t have many choices, he would explain to her as if she were the younger sister. You have two: you can make it hard on yourself or make it easy. You decide. Hal’s wife, who was in charge of medical records at the county hospital, had found Jinx this job. She couldn’t fault them, but still managed to sabotage their good turns. And Hal was always there to bail her out, like the time he got her a job as a secretary at his law firm in Newark. Her first week she was inadvertently interrupted in a bathroom stall, finishing off a fix. It was a Friday night, after all: payday. She could still see the shock mixed with fear on the face of the pretty little law clerk who’d walked in on her. There had been a moment of complete recognition—it was this fear that kept people respectable, that maintained the thin line between order and chaos. When you lost that, there was nothing left to lose. She’d felt sorrier for the girl, still clinging to her illusions, than for herself.
Later, though, she felt remorse, when she heard Hal in his mild voice saying he’d found a clinic for her and would foot the bill. “Try to make it easy on yourself this time, okay, Janice?” She saw the little boy screaming in the supermarket parking lot one hot, airless August day, “We do so have a mommy and daddy,” waving frantically at their aunt and uncle, now their legal guardians, as they walked to the car with the week’s groceries. “Shut up, Jan, you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re so stupid,” his words breaking into hungry gulps of air, nostrils whinnying with the effort. Aunt Rae, alarmed at the shouting, had turned and looked accusingly at her, rushed over with Hal’s atomizer, and, smoothing away hair plastered with sweat on his forehead, helped him breathe.
Jinx raised herself heavily from the couch, its plastic cover detaching reluctantly from her clammy skin. Her head ached. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, wan face, dark circles under her eyes, her own hair dull as dishwater blond, cropped short. Downstairs, the client waited on her work table. Jinx decided to finish her quickly and give Manny the goods. She’d let the others do what they had to do to get by, stop being the pathetic champion of the dead.
Don’t think too much—it’s not what they pay you for. Snap on fresh gloves. Dispatch digitals and prints. Dress her in a gown of institutional cotton, shorn of her mortal glory. So young for it all to be over, disembodied. But she is at peace now, whatever drove her to the nod behind her, the hunger past.
Request one last favor before she departs on this, her last earthly journey:
Tell me my destiny, I’ll tell you yours
. The Amazing Jinx who after close study could read the hieroglyphics of the body: its scars, bruises, lumps, ground-down teeth, stretch marks, wrinkles. They played dumb, these dead; they struggled to keep their secrets. But their champion, their confessor, shepherd of the poor wrecked vessels, will show you lives lived with their attendant pain and occasional distraction, step right up for the sinking in of flesh and the gaseous stink forecasting your corruption, watch in dread while memory, your only weapon, fails you.
With a gloved hand, she stroked the girl’s red tresses, pulling a metal comb through the unruly mass. Static electricity jolted the hair, attracting it to her gloves where it clung as if living. She took up the scissors with one hand and gathered the hair in the other, pulling it for the cut. The girl’s chin lifted as she sheared the coppery coil and Jinx saw it then, the puncture in the skin over the jugular. It was the vein of last resort: only the hardcore mainlined there. The blood had stopped running to her hand where the hair bound it. Without thinking, she freed it and pulled out the forensic technician’s preliminary epitaph from its plastic folder. (
Manner of death: Accident. Cause of death: Acute drug intoxication.
) She turned back to the girl, inspecting the usual points of entry, but saw none of the telltale marks on her arms or legs. A careless auditor of souls, the forensic tech, overworked, jaded, shuttling from one wretched ending to the next. This was no accidental overdose: it was homicide.
Jinx took the dead girl’s hands in her own and leaned down as if to comfort her. She swore she felt a flutter of air, heard a whisper:
He wrapped my hair in his fist yanked my mouth to his crotch “act like a woman cunt” when he finished he stuck a needle in me have a nice ride he said I am going now I promised my mom I wouldn’t be late she always said I’ll be late to my own—
She fumbled for the report. She could still catch the assistant M.E. on duty—they could do a DNA swab, find the fucker who did this to her before he could do somebody else. And it would be Jinx who cracked the case—who saw that there was a case, that the redhead wasn’t just another junkie but someone’s daughter done horribly wrong.
Voices echoing down the hallway woke her from her reverie, the click of pumps and a whiff of Tabu signaling that Ruby was escorting identifying next of kin to the small waiting room. They would have questions, might object to the autopsy, would be told that their consent was not required, but that the procedure would not delay the funeral arrangements or prevent an open-casket viewing. The digital photo of the redhead with her flowing tresses would be up on the computer for the grieving family, unless they insisted on seeing their loved one beforehand. Which they apparently had, as Manny, hustling in to warn her, found her stuffing hair into a Ziploc bag, most of it spilling onto the floor in a spray of red like a salon massacre.
Later—after it was all over, out of work again (Ruby’s shrug tinged with unmistakable morning-after malice telling Jinx that she couldn’t expect her to save her ass this time, could she, sweet cheeks?), a wheel click away from the drop and anticipating relief (
LIVE FOR TODAY
inked like a tattoo on a glassine envelope)—she walked to the train, the dawn rain running down her face passing for tears.
I
n certain places there exists a permeating pointlessness to life, with an aura of despair so acute that its inhabitants come to be unafraid of or, at the very least, indifferent to the inevitability of death. Camden City is just such a place.
Camden is a torn-down, ravished ghost of a city, blighted by poverty and corruption, violence, drugs, and disease. Its residents wallow amidst the decay which lies like a sickened, dying animal prostrate in the sun’s heat.
Within this city, in stark and ironic contrast, the modern glass and steel complex of Cooper University Hospital rises awash in bright, artificial light, a towering monument to mainstream mankind’s fierce desire to live. The hospital exists on sprawling acres of urban renewal, restored row houses lining its borders, a false oasis of promise in a true desert of desperation.
Frank Cash, senior partner of the distinguished Haddonfield law firm of Cash, Collings and Haver, slowly turned his shiny new BMW into the hospital’s enclosed parking garage. He stopped just short of the barrier arm as the dashboard digital flickered: 4:01 a.m.
As the driver’s window lowered silently, a cold dampness from the dark November morning intruded into the car’s warm interior. Cash shuddered slightly against it, reaching a hand to the automated ticket machine and pressing a manicured finger against the glowing green button. He frowned unconsciously at the cheerful computer-generated male voice which accompanied the dispensed parking stub.
“
Welcome to the Cooper University Hospital parking facility
.”
Tucking the stub into his pocket, Cash swung the car left and accelerated quickly up the smooth concrete ramp of the nearly deserted garage. It occurred to him that perhaps it would have been more prudent to use the family minivan as opposed to his 750. He noted a small cluster of parked vehicles at level two, centered around the elevator bank. He parked quickly and strode to an elevator.
Ten minutes later he stood facing a window in a small consultation area located within the emergency room. He gazed out across Haddon Avenue and eyed a squat building in the near distance. Emblazoned across the top, the words
Camden Police Department
gave fair warning to anyone in and around the hospital to behave themselves. Cooper had been as effectively isolated from the surrounding city as possible, Interstate 676 and parkland to the east, police headquarters to the north, renovated housing used as residences for hospital staff and medical offices to the south and west.
It had been a rather profitable project, Cash mused as he scanned the scene, absentmindedly scraping a bit of soot from the sill before him, sleep stinging his eyes. Quite profitable.
As he waited, Cash’s thoughts returned to the events of last evening: the quiet dinner with family in his sprawling Victorian home in Moorestown, some reading, the late-night news, sleep, and then the phone call.
“Hello?” he had whispered into the mouthpiece, glancing to his sleeping wife as she gently stirred beside him.
“Mr. Cash?” a tentative voice had begun. “It’s Ken, sir, Ken Barrows.”
Jesus Christ, Cash had thought, what could the most junior member of the firm possibly want at this hour? “What the hell, Barrows, it’s almost three-thirty in the morning.”
“Yes sir, I realize that. It’s just that … well, I’m on call tonight. For the FOP, you know, the police union. It’s my week to be on call.”
Cash frowned into the mouthpiece, again glancing to his wife. She seemed resettled, her nightly sleeping pill working its wonder.
“And?” Cash asked harshly.
Barrows paused for a moment, perhaps suddenly rethinking the wisdom of the call. “There’s been a shooting, sir. A fatal police shooting. One person is dead, but no police were injured. The union rep called me from the scene a few minutes ago. He wants me down there.”
Cash’s frown turned to a scowl. “Of course he does, Barrows. That’s the purpose of having a lawyer on call twenty-four-seven. It’s mandatory when you represent the unions. But why in God’s name did you feel it necessary to—”
“I thought you’d want to know, sir,” Barrows interrupted, a new confidence in his tone. “You see, the shooting was in Camden City. It was a white officer, the dead man is black. And the officer involved, the one who shot the perpetrator, was … it was that new officer.” He paused here for effect. Barrows, despite his youth, was a good lawyer. “It was Anthony Miles.” Another slight pause. “I thought it best you knew, sir. Of course, I can handle it if you’d like … but I thought you should know.”
Now Cash sat upright, indifferent to whether or not the movement would further disturb his wife. “Oh,” he said, his mind shifting sharply from disgruntled employer to defensive lawyer. “Oh,” he repeated.
After a brief silence, he spoke again. “Call the union rep at the scene. Tell him to put Miles into a radio car and get him over to Cooper a.s.a.p. I’ll call ahead and get hold of whoever is in charge of the emergency room. I want Miles sedated. Tell the union rep to convince the kid that he’s stressed out and needs to see a doctor. Once the doctors get a drug into him, the law says he can’t be interviewed. It’ll buy us some time. I can be at the hospital in less than thirty minutes.”
“Yes sir, I’ll call the rep. Shall I meet you there?”
Cash considered it. “No. Just make sure the rep gets Miles to the ER immediately. I’ll grease the wheels. I don’t want some intern refusing to sedate.”
“Yes sir,” Barrows said, his confidence even stronger now.
“You were right to call, Ken. It shows good presence of mind.”
“Thank you, sir. I thought you should know.”
Cash slipped out of bed, shaving and dressing quickly. He left a note for his wife and drove to Route 38, leaving the lush, manicured splendor of Moorestown for a twenty-minute drive to the desolate wasteland of Camden City. As the BMW cut rapidly through misty darkness, Cash thought about police officer Anthony Miles.
Miles had gone directly to the Camden Police Department after graduating the County Police Academy. Like all rookies, he had been assigned to routine patrol duty with a senior training officer. In most such cases, no one in any remotely influential position would have cause to notice or care.
But Miles was different. Miles was the son of Curtis Miles, United States Attorney to the State of New Jersey. The
Republican
United States Attorney.
And Camden was ground zero for the Democratic machine that had maintained a strong and lucrative hold on New Jersey politics for more than two decades. Frank Cash, himself the son of a former county chairman, had lined his pockets and filled the coffers of his law firm with countless contracts, retainers, and fees financed with state and county tax dollars. Indeed, his firm’s representation of every police union in South Jersey was merely one such plum.
So when Cash sat down to lunch some months earlier with the current county chairman, the implications had not been lost on him.
Officer Miles, the chairman had suggested, was no ordinary rookie. His father was an ambitious, driven man who had chosen a pragmatic approach to what he hoped would be an unlimited political future: he would dedicate himself to fighting corruption in New Jersey—particularly Democratic corruption.
“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” the chairman said between forkfuls of shrimp. “If he’s serious about it.”
“Is he?” Cash asked.
The chairman laid down his fork, then patted his lips gently with a linen napkin.
“Yes, he is—it’s his ticket to the governor’s office.”
Cash considered it. “What’s our exposure?”
The chairman shrugged. “Any is too much. This young cop has his own political juice, courtesy of his old man. If becoming a cop was all he really wanted, his father could have gotten him assigned to bikini patrol in some shore town or crabgrass stakeout in our neck of the woods. Why would he want to go to Camden?”