The Way Things Are (4 page)

“Kenny,” Malcolm snapped. “Stop drooling over my suspect.”

“I wasn’t drooling over him,” Ken insisted.

“Yeah? You’re checking out Kowalski, then? Because I’m pretty sure you’re not his type. Frankly, I hope you’re not that guy’s type either. What are you thinking?”

“Okay, first of all, he’s fucking hot. And second, he’s the guy I’m looking for.”

Malcolm groaned. “Seriously, Kenny?”

“Not like that. I came over here looking for him. Patrick Connelly, right?”

“How the hell do you know him?”

“His son is in a holding cell over in the Youth Services Center. He was assigned to my caseload this morning. He said his dad works nights, but it’s morning and his dad still hasn’t shown up. I was trying to pull up the remand form from the kid’s arrest, and I found out his dad was being booked in here this morning. I came over to see if he’s going to be able to bond out. But if he’s your suspect in a triple homicide, there’s no way he’s going to be able to post bond. That means I need to hand the kid over to CPS.”

“Seriously? His kid is in jail too?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, don’t send the kid to foster care yet.” Malcolm gestured to the empty chair in front of the mirror. He pushed an intercom button and activated the speaker from the other room. “This whole mess blew up when he called to report a fight,” Malcolm explained. “He was the only one left standing at the end of it other than the victim. He says he saw three men attacking a kid and tried to help him. The officers who were on the scene said the kid pointed at him and appeared to be trying to say he was responsible. Once I get a translator to actually take a statement from the kid, I’ll know what to charge this guy with, if anything. Can you hang out for a bit in case the victim’s statement backs up his story?”

“Is there any reason to think he’s telling the truth?”

“The 911 call came from his cell phone. But the other suspects are pretty messed up. They’re not little guys and they were both armed, so there’s got to be something he’s not telling us.”

“Then I’ll hang out. You want me to wait on the booking platform?”

“It doesn’t matter. Kowalski’s just killing time in there. He thinks your guy is the type to explode if he’s left to his own devices.”

“He doesn’t look riled up,” said Ken.

Malcolm shrugged and reached across the control panel to the speaker button.

“No, it doesn’t work that way,” the redhead behind the glass was explaining to Malcolm’s partner.

“How’s it work?”

“I pull them off a ship with the crane, they go onto a flatbed truck that’s sitting on a big industrial scale. A computer checks the weight against what the manifest says it should weigh. If the weight checks out, it automatically routes the container to one of the storage yards based on where it’s going. Then a straddle carrier—they’re cool, they’re like giant mechanical spiders that can literally straddle a container and pick it up off the truck bed—puts it on the in-yard rail system.”

“That’s the only time they’re weighed?” Kowalski asked.

“That’s it. And even then, they’re not put aside for inspection unless they’re off by more than ten tons. That’s about a quarter of the container’s total weight, most of the time.”

“But some are set aside, right? What’s that entail? Who inspects them?”

The redhead yawned and rolled his shoulders. Ken caught himself licking his lips just a moment too late. Rather than watching his partner talking with his suspect, Malcolm’s eyes were fixed on Ken.

Inside the interview room, the redhead continued. “The terminal manger checks the manifest. If it’s coming from a secure port, usually he just lets it go. If not, after the ship’s unloaded, he goes down and checks the security seal on the door. If the security seal’s broken or tampered with,
then
he calls the Port Authority. If the seal is okay, he lets it go.”

“So, how many people are actually working on the ground with these things?”

“Only one or two, in case there’s a problem with the straddle carriers. It’s all automated, run by remote control. The terminal manager’s supposed to make sure everything works together. I come closer to the containers than most guys working on the docks, and that’s while I’m dangling two hundred feet above the pier.”

“Dangling?”

“Yeah. It’s like playing a giant real-life game of
Tetris
, from way up there.”

“That sounds kind of creepy,” Kowalski admitted.

The redhead laughed. “Only if you’re afraid of heights.”

“So you never get close to the containers. And the guys who move them around the terminal are up in a tower too. If there was someone inside one of the containers, if they needed help, there wouldn’t be anyone around to hear them?”

“On the day shift, maybe. Overnight, we’re running the minimum number of guys we need to keep the port operational, so no. But that’s why each container’s weighed.”

“And there’s no way to open one up from the inside?”

“No. Do you think there would still be cases where stowaways died in transit if there was a way to escape from a sealed container? If the container was partially loaded, it could get past, but the transit times across the Pacific are too long to tuck people into a partially loaded container. They’d need food, water, air, someplace to take a shit. The scales usually catch them. Unless they’re not coming from Asia. But, hell, everything we unload comes from Asia, so….” The man’s eyes narrowed.

“Where else would they be coming from?”

The man folded his massive hands and glared at the mirror, then looked back at Kowalski. “British Colombia. The transit time is just a few days, so you could maybe hide a person or two in a partially loaded container. As long as the weight is within ten tons of what’s recorded on the manifest, the computer would just shuffle it on. A couple of people with food for a few days wouldn’t trigger an inspection.”

“Sounds like it’s something you’ve given a lot of thought to,” said Kowalski.

“Not really. I just got hired two weeks ago, and there was a training video on human smuggling when I was filling out paperwork.”

“A training video?”

“Right between a really old tape on sexual harassment in the workplace and an OSHA video on how to properly deadlift a cinderblock.” The man’s glare turned cold, almost vicious. “Please tell me you notified the Port Authority before you decided to waste four hours dicking me around?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You think that kid tonight was a stowaway.”

“I don’t believe I said that.”

“You might as well have. Do you have any idea how long it would take the Port Authority officers to organize a search of the storage yards? Those containers are stacked in cubes and blocks, five to eight containers high, sometimes twenty containers deep. They have to be shuffled around before they can be checked. It could take days to search the entire port. And if you think he came here in one of those containers, you can bet your ass he didn’t come alone! Tell me you’ve got guys looking, at least? Because even if you had guys looking from the moment you fuckers arrested me, it could still take days to find them! People die that way.” The redhead shut his mouth, grinding his jaw and glaring from Kowalski to the mirror and back again.

“Hold on, there. If the boy you encountered in the storage yard came out of one of those containers,” said Kowalski carefully, “wouldn’t anyone else who was with him also have been able to get out?”

“He was little. Not young, but half-starved. He could slip through tighter spaces than an adult.”

“We’ve got a translator coming in to talk to him.”

The redhead glared at him again, but the grinding of his jaw stopped. His features softened and he hunched over the table. In that moment he looked so much like the boy Ken had seen in the Youth Services Center—his expression an equal mixture of defiance and bashful shame—it was uncanny. “I hadn’t considered he might have come out of one of the containers. I just assumed that he jumped the fence to try and get away from the guys chasing him.”

“You assumed he jumped a ten-foot fence topped with razor wire?”

“Some things are worse than getting cut up a bit.”

“Like what?”

The redhead sighed and rubbed his eyes. “Being raped. Getting beaten to death. The guys who were chasing him were chasing him away from the fence, toward the storage yard. They were shouting, calling the kid a fag. That’s not a word I like at the best of times. I thought they were going to kill him.”

“You thought he was the victim of a hate crime?”

The large man nodded slowly. “Yes,” he whispered. “But even if I was wrong, he still needed help. They weren’t fucking around. One of them pulled a gun on me before the cops showed up.”

“The third man? The one who ran away?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?” Kowalski took a deep breath and seemed to hesitate. “Why would you care? Did you know the victim? Encountered him before, maybe?”

The loathing in the redhead’s glare spoke volumes. He leaned back in the plastic chair and folded his arms across his chest. “I care,” he snapped, “because I’m not an asshole. But the fact that you need to ask why someone might help somebody else makes me wonder about you.”

A soft knock on the door of the monitor room made Ken jump. Malcolm rushed to open the door, and a worried-looking woman in a patrol uniform leaned in. “The Port Authority managed to get the security footage from the scene burned onto a CD for you, Detective.”

Malcolm took the CD, thanked her quickly, and inserted the disc into one of the three large desktop computers beneath the desk. After a little fiddling, a dark, grainy image filled one of the monitors mounted to the side of the mirrored window. The scene showed a poorly lit, nearly empty parking lot with a few shipping containers stacked to the left. Malcolm impatiently fast-forwarded until a large man in a heavy Carhartt jacket wandered into the parking lot from the right, clutching a cell phone to his ear.

Malcolm sniggered. “That’s definitely our guy.”

They watched Patrick Connelly unlock a large white truck and, just as quickly, watched him turn away. His head turned slowly to the side, tracking a small figure bolting through the corner of the parking lot, toward the containers. Three more figures ran after him, and Patrick Connelly followed, tapping on the glowing screen on his cell phone as he broke into a run.

“Holy shit,” Malcolm whispered as Patrick dropped two of the men attacking the boy in an instant. The third man backed off, and even though Ken couldn’t see a gun on the video, he held both of his arms up and held his feet in a wide, stable stance.

Malcolm paused the playback. “One kick and one punch.”

“Looks like he knows how to handle himself,” Ken agreed.

“The reason we’re questioning him,” said Malcolm, nodding toward the interview room, “is because the other two suspects are in the hospital. The first one has a shattered kneecap. The second one has a cracked jaw and a concussion. He did all that with two hits. I don’t think ‘knows how to handle himself’ quite covers it. And that”—Malcolm tapped the monitor where the third man stood with his back to the security camera—“that’s a Port Authority patch on the third suspect’s jacket. If he’s one of the Port Authority officers, I can find the fucker.”

Malcolm draped his trench coat over the desk, then hurried into the other room. He smiled at his partner, took the chair beside him, and leaned over the table with an open smile on his face. “Mr. Connelly, we’ve been able to get a copy of the security camera footage from the employee parking lot, so we’ve finally been able to verify your statement. I have a few more questions, then we’ll get you out of here and on your way. Both men you fought with are currently under arrest, even though they’re still hospitalized. I’m absolutely confident I can find and arrest the third man today. Will you be available later today so we can get a positive ID?”

“You had to verify it from the security cameras? Why not just ask the kid?”

“We have a translator coming in so we can talk to him, but with rush-hour traffic, she hasn’t made it in yet.”

“What about the others?”

“Others?”

“You really expect me to believe that this guy spent two hours working around to asking about container stowaways because he was actually curious about how the shipping terminal works?”

“I’m a curious guy,” Kowalski insisted.

“And I’m not an idiot. Is a search underway? Has anyone found them? Hell, even if the kid can’t speak English, he can walk. If you take him back to the docks, he can probably help.”

Malcolm chuckled and glared at his partner. “Mr. Connelly, we can’t discuss any of the details of this investigation beyond your own statement. But, I can assure you, we are working very closely with the Port to investigate this matter fully. We’ve got it.”

“Whatever. Anything else you want to ask?”

“Where did you learn to fight?”

“My elementary school playground, like everyone else.”

“That’s bullshit,” said Malcolm. “You’ve got a series of assault charges and disturbing the peace charges on your juvenile record, but no one was actually hurt, and nothing since then.”

“That stuff when I was a kid was mostly blowing off steam. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.”

“And you were trying to hurt those men?”

“Uh, yeah. Only an idiot would walk into a three-on-one fight and try to play fair. If I’d pulled my punches, one of those fuckers would have gotten back up and slit my throat. Better to make sure they couldn’t get up.”

“You don’t have so much as a parking ticket on your adult record. No military service, no history in law enforcement, but you move like a trained fighter.”

The redhead relaxed his posture a little. “I used to box.”

“Boxing?”

“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to get back into it, but I haven’t really had time since I moved here.”

“That’s right, you said you’ve lived in New York until recently?”

“Yes.”

“We didn’t turn up any convictions from New York on your record either. An arrest for aggravated assault, but no charges were ever filed. Care to tell me about that?”

“You can’t figure that one out on your own? You’ve arrested me for, I’m just guessing here since you both have done nothing but dodge my questions, aggravated assault. Do you expect I’ll face charges?”