D.C. Noir

  The priest said, “Is there a problem? The officer didn’t look too happy.”

  “No problem,” Cort replied, nonchalantly. “That detective has to get back to headquarters, but I just paged another investigator. One of the best on the force, and he’s bilingual.” To the workers, in Spanish: “Don’t worry, the detective’s on his way. He’s Latino, he’ll speak to you in Spanish.

  Father Dave said, “Well, okay.” The workers nodded. Cort threw them a tight little smile.

  Three minutes later, Cort’s cell phone rang. He stepped just out of earshot of the others. “Phil, thanks for calling back so quickly. Where are you?”

  “I’m on Georgia Avenue, I’ve been working my network all night. I’m headin’ over to see my girl Darlene now. What’s up?”

  Phil was a detective with NSID, the citywide Narcotics and Special Investigations Division. His network consisted of winos, dope fiends, hookers, gamblers, and street-level crack slingers, along with legitimate business owners and straightarrow residents. His wife and five-year-old daughter were at home in Arlington.

  Darlene was a slender redheaded Assistant U.S. Attorney who prosecuted gang conspiracies. She lived in Capitol Hill. Darlene was Phil’s side dish.

  “I’m in Mount Pleasant, and I’ve got a situation.”

  Cort explained quickly, about the murder, Father Dave and the three witnesses, and Piazza.

  “Rockhead Piazza,” Phil said. “Imbecile.”

  “Felony-stupid,” Cort agreed.

  “They still there?”

  “Yeah, Father Dave too. But I don’t think they’ll be hanging around long. I don’t think they’ll cooperate if they’re not interviewed tonight.” Cort paused, letting the idea sink in. Then, “Look, I know you’re not Homicide, but could you take their statements. They saw the killer. This could be a quick lock-up.”

  Phil sighed.

  Cort said, “Come on, this is a real murder. The victim and one of his buddies have gang tattoos, but they’re working guys now. This doesn’t vibe gang beef.”

  Phil thought about it.

  Cort said, “I’ll get good play on this one.”

  Phil was Cort’s best source. Phil liked press. In a resigned tone of voice, he conceded, “All right. I’ll call over to Homicide and smooth things out with Rockhead or whoever’s running the shift. I’ll tell them I got a tip. Can you keep those witnesses there for five minutes?”

  Cort looked over to Father Dave and the three witnesses and gave them a thumbs-up. The four men nodded back.

  “Yeah.”

  “Darlene’s been waiting up. She’s gonna be pissed.”

  Phil killed the flashing cherry light on the dash of his unmarked sedan and pulled up across from the corner where Cort, Father Dave, and the three witnesses were waiting.

  Cort ambled over and met him as he stepped out of the sedan.

  Phil was a little taller, a little leaner, and, at forty, seven years older than Cort. His black hair was tinged with gray and thinning on top. He had thick eyebrows, brown eyes, and a neat mustache. His mother was Costa Rican, his father was Dutch, and Phil was fair-skinned.

  Cort was five-foot-nine, with olive skin, brown eyes, and wavy black hair. If Phil were darker, or if Cort were lighter, they might have passed for brothers.

  Phil wore white canvas Converse high-tops, faded blue jeans, a yellow polo shirt, and a thin blue nylon jacket. The get-up made him look like a suburban dad.

  Cort knew otherwise; the front of the jacket covered Phil’s shoulder rig, which contained his department-issued Glock 9. The back of the jacket concealed the leather-covered metal sap and handcuffs that were always clipped to the back of his waistband. A .32 Smith & Wesson revolver was strapped to his right ankle.

  “You know Father Dave?” Cort said as they crossed the treet.

  Of him.”

  “I’ll introduce you. I told the witnesses that you aren’t interested in their immigration status.”

  Cort made the introductions. Phil shook hands with everyone.

  Father Dave said, in Spanish, “These gentlemen would like to help the investigation. But they don’t want to bring any legal trouble onto themselves.”

  In impeccable Spanish, Phil responded, “I want to find the killer. There won’t be any problems.”

  Father Dave nodded. Chicago nodded. Phil pulled a notebook and pen from his jacket.

  Cort said, “Excuse me, I need to check in with the office.” He walked across the street, pulled the cell phone out of his satchel, and pretended to make a call. He didn’t want to be within earshot of Phil’s interviews. It could boomerang.

  Cort had met Phil a year before, at a drug raid in the Barry Farms public housing project in Southeast. Two weeks later, Phil invited him to a drug raid in the Trinidad section of Northeast. Phil and his squad were decked out in Ninja outfits and bulletproof vests. He told Cort to stay close. Phil’s squad stormed a two-story row house. Three slingers surrendered. A fourth ran upstairs. Phil, another cop, and Cort chased him. They found him inside a bedroom, straddling a window ledge. The punk tried to worm his way off the ledge. Phil holstered his Glock, flew across the room, and grabbed his ankle; the other cop dropped his shotgun, sprinted over, and grabbed the other ankle. Cort stepped close and took notes. The punk pulled a piece from his waistband and, hanging upside down, squeezed off two shots. Wood and plaster exploded. Phil pulled his Glock and shot the punk’s oe off. The slinger dropped his piece and screamed. Phil and the other cop pulled him inside. The punk’s foot spewed blood like a small geyser. Phil tied his ski mask around the toe stump. The punk spit at Phil. Phil picked up the shotgun and slammed the butt into the punk’s groin. Phil said, “Listen, Tyrone you don’t ever shoot at the po-lice.” Phil then looked up and saw Cort scribbling. He saw his fellow cop eyeballing Cort, looking real nervous. Phil braced Cort and led him into the hallway. “For the record, I fired my weapon to protect you, my partner, and myself. And that groin shot was off-the-record.” Cort snapped to the Big Picture. He could nail Phil. Write one great story. And no cop would ever talk to him again. He slipped his notebook inside his black leather jacket. “What groin shot?”

  A week later, Toeless Tyrone’s public defender hit Cort with a subpoena. The P.D. wanted Cort to validate Tyrone as a civil-rights victim. The Trib’s in-house attorney stiff-armed the subpoena with a blizzard of motions. Cort sweated it for a month. A hearing was held. The judge sided with the Trib Toeless Tyrone pleaded out to a gun violation and assault on a police officer.

  Cort learned a valuable lesson: Keep some distance from the story. Don’t put yourself in position to be jammed up.

  Cort watched Phil wrap up his interviews. Phil would have let him listen. But suppose Gato’s defense attorney found out? He’d ask what Cort had heard. He’d ask if he knew how a narcotics man ended up on a homicide. He’d expose Cort’s role. Better not to take that chance.

  Phil slipped his notebook and pen inside his jacket and shook hands with the witnesses and Father Dave. The priest accompanied the Salvadorans as they walked toward their building.

  Cort ambled over to Phil. “What do you think?”

  “Gotta get this lowlife motherfucker.”

  Cort’s eyebrows went up. He’d never seen Phil take a case personally. “You seem ticked off.”

  “I am. I don’t think this is a gang beef. These guys seem straight. Gato knows they can’t retaliate because they’re undocumented. He’s a parasite, victimizing his own people. I’ve got more respect for a hit man. A hitter knows someone might come back.”

  Cort licked his upper lip. “Do you have to hand this off to Rockhead?”

  “Nah, Rockhead won’t care, so long as he gets credit for the clearance.”

  “What now?”

  Phil turned and pointed at Don Juan’s Restaurant. “Our boy makes a regular pickup every Monday from a waitress at Don Juan’s. Always shows between 7 and 7:30. I’ll talk to the waitress and stake out the place. Nail him there.” r />
  “Okay if I hang out inside Don Juan’s tomorrow?”

  “It’s a public place.”

  “One more thing. If you get him—” Phil shot Cort a look. “I mean, when you get him, could you play up the coyote angle in the charging document?”

  Chuck Ross might balk at publishing the shakedown scenario from three unnamed sources. But a police charging document was golden.

  Phil caught the drift. “I’ll write it in haiku if you want.” He broke into a wide grin. “What?”

  “I just realized—this is my first coyote hunt.”

  Cort stood on Mount Pleasant Street across from Don Juan’s fifteen minutes before 7:00, thinking, Uh-oh

  A dozen young men were trashing and torching a fried chicken joint a block south of the restaurant. Another angry horde was milling about nearby, itching for action.

  Most of the young men wore bandanas across their mouths. Some were swigging from beer bottles. A TV cameraman on the sidewalk zeroed in on the burning chicken joint.

  Tension from the previous night’s riot had been percolating all day, and now it was boiling over. Cort had assumed the cops would lock down the neighborhood with a massive show of force. Three other Tribune reporters and a photographer were roaming around the area. Cort figured the scene was covered and he’d be free to shadow Phil.

  Cort figured wrong. On the way over, he had listened to a radio interview with the new mayor. She said that showing too much force might be provocative.

  A block south, a Metro bus paused at a stop sign on its way across Mount Pleasant Street. A dozen men rushed the bus, pelting it with bricks and bottles. Someone yelled, “Fuck the police!”

  Cort reached into his satchel for his cell phone as his pager went off; Alonzo Reed’s number came up. Alonzo was the City editor. Cort punched the digits.

  “Where are you?”

  “Mount Pleasant Street, about a block from the fried chicken place.”

  “It’s on TV. What’s happening now?”

  A block south of the besieged bus, eighty cops in gas masks and full riot gear materialized. The mob gravitated toward the cops. Some of the rioters wielded long metal rods like spears: yanked-out street signs.

  “A mob’s forming. There’s cops in riot gear out here now. Looks like they’re about to square off.”

  “Stay with the mob.”

  “What?”

  “No matter what, stay with the mob until it’s over.”

  Cort couldn’t argue. “Will do.”

  He clicked off, and started to punch in Phil’s pager number. Maybe they could devise an alternate plan. He’d hit three digits when a riot cop with a bullhorn announced, “You are unlawfully assembled. Disperse now.”

  From behind, Cort heard a handful of voices chanting, gently, “Paz, queremos paz.” Peace, we want peace. Cort turned. Father Dave was leading a half dozen church people on a march into the bedlam. They were holding hands, with the priest at one end.

  Cort slipped the phone into his bag and hustled over. Ten cops loaded their tear-gas shotguns. In his mind’s eye, he flashed on a mug shot of Ruben Salazar. Salazar had been a prominent Los Angeles Times columnist in the 1960s. He was shot dead by a sheriff’s tear-gas projectile after covering an antiwar march. Tear-gas projectiles were basically ten-inch bullets.

  “Father, they’re about to fire tear gas. Maybe you all should veer off.”

  Without breaking stride, Father Dave braced Cort on the shoulder. “I appreciate your concern, Cortez. Sometimes, you just gotta have faith.”

  Cort turned in time to see the riot cops level their shotguns at the mob. To his left, he spotted a short brick wall on the side of a corner apartment. He thought about Ruben Salazar. He sprinted and dove behind the wall as the cops fired.

  Chaos: The rioters and Father Dave and his group turned and hightailed it away from the thick, dark smoke.

  Cort was on his knees, the tear gas burning his eyes, his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He stumbled to his feet. Choking, gagging, he weaved his way one block west, to 16th Street. He paused and bent at the waist. He wiped his eyes and jogged north for one block on 16th, then hooked a left back onto Mount Pleasant Street. Had to stick with the mob.

  Half the mob had scattered, the rest were now in the street. Someone lit a Molotov cocktail. Someone else tossed a brick through the front windshield of a Toyota sedan. The Molotov flew into the sedan; the interior went up in flames. A TV cameraman backpedaled on the sidewalk.

  Cort was reaching into his satchel for his notebook when he noticed a muscular Latino wielding a metal spear over his right shoulder in the middle of the street, thirty feet away. The man had a blue bandana over his mouth. He wore jeans and a black tank top. His hair was slicked back and he had a tattoo on his left bicep: a big dollar sign.

  Gato

  Cort scanned the street, looking for Phil, for a random uniformed cop. No Phil, no uniforms, just turmoil.

  The sunlight dimmed. Twilight was descending.

  Word would get around the neighborhood that a cop was looking for Gato. He might even know already. Gato would be in the wind the next day, on his way to El Salvador.

  “Goddamnit.”

  This half-assed, adrenaline-drenched, crazy idea popped into Cort’s head: Maybe he could get a quote from Gato. A pro forma denial. Maybe delay him. What’s the worst that could happen?

  Cort yelled, “Gato!”

  Gato turned, looked at him. “Gato!” Cort held up his hand.

  Gato cocked his head to the side, studying Cort now. Three seconds later, he looked away, turned his attention back to the street.

  Something inside Cort snapped: “Hey, Gato. Asesino.” Assassin.

  Gato’s head snapped toward Cort like an agitated cobra. His face went dark. He started sprinting toward Cort, clutching the metal rod like a lance, rage in his eyes.

  Cort’s heart skipped a beat, maybe two.

  Gato was closing fast. He got within twenty feet, fifteen, en…

  Cort quickly slipped his satchel off his shoulder—maybe if he timed it just right he could sidestep the rod and slam Gato in the head, knock him off balance. Maybe.

  Gato closed in. Cort locked in on the sharp tip of the rod—it was aimed at his chest, there would be no chance to even take a swing at Gato…

  He half-closed his eyes, started to throw up a truncated Hail Mary.

  He saw a flash of movement on the right. He heard a thump, then another. He braced for the tip of the spear. It never came. He opened his eyes.

  Gato was sprawled facedown on the street, the rod clanging on the sidewalk at Cort’s feet.

  Phil Harrick stood over Gato, clutching his leather-over-metal sap in his right hand. Phil put his knee into the small of Gato’s back. Smoothly, quickly, he slipped the sap into the back of his waistband, brought out the cuffs, and snapped them on.

  Cort said, “Where’d you come from?”

  Phil stood up. “I was tracking Gato in the crowd, waiting for my chance. Then you called him out. Good thing I had the angle. Ballsy move.”

  Cort was about to say, “Stupid move.” Instead, he said, “Sometimes, you just gotta have faith.”

  JEANETTE

  BY JIM BEANE

  Deanwood, N.E.

  I should’ve listened to Pop. He warned me off Jeanette right away, said she was nothing but trouble, but I was too far gone from the first time I saw her to ever listen. “Jackie, she’s a snake pit,” Pop said, like she was the bottom of evil.

  Last fall, Pop and I painted the office where Jeanette worked. That’s when we met. Her boss, a guy named Olivet, operated a chop shop in the far Northeast corner of the city, in Deanwood. Olivet kept two steps ahead of the law and two steps behind Jeanette. Before I knew her a week, she told me she hated him, hated his hands always trying to touch her, hated his eyes undressing her.

  “Quit,” I told her, like I knew what to do.

  “And do what?” she fired back.

  I couldn’t say.


  She called herself a secretary, but I never saw her type one word. Olivet spent his days yakking on the phone, and watching Jeanette’s ass. He leaned his chair back, propped his feet on his cluttered desk, plastered the phone to his ear, and followed every move her hips made with reptile eyes. If Jeanette bent over at the file cabinets, he moved, but only for a better view. Her body made your mouth water.

  The first day on the job, Pop dropped a daub of paint on the corner of Olivet’s desk, and the slob let him have all hell. Jeanette slid between me and Olivet, before I acted stupid, and held her finger to her lips, for my eyes only. She strolled across the room to the files, opened the bottom drawer, bent at the waist, and swelled inside her skirt. And Olivet gasped. Jeanette swayed her hips to the music piped in through speakers mounted in the ceiling. And Olivet forgot all about Pop. I thanked her when she brushed past me. She blew me a kiss.

  “Call me,” she whispered.

  Pop stared at me the whole ride home.

  “She wants more than you got,” he said in the alley behind our house on 12th Street. He’d already had too many beers. After my mother ran off, he soured on all women.

  “You don’t know her,” I said.

  “A slut’s a slut, it don’t matter what you feel below your belly.”

  Nothing he said could change her lips blowing that kiss.

  Nothing.

  Jeanette started bringing me fresh coffee every morning when we got to the job.

  “Jesus Christ, he can’t work when you do that,” Olivet said.

  “I take care of those that take care of me,” she replied, glancing at me to make sure I heard.

  After a few dates and a Christmas ring, she started in about Olivet.

  “He don’t deserve all that money,” she said, “his boys in the garage do all the work. He just counts it, the fat prick.” She laid her open hand on my inside thigh.

  By Valentine’s Day, she was talking about Olivet’s money like it should be ours.