‘What? Tell me!’
‘It means she’s thirty-seven years old, she has a son at home. A lot of guys don’t want that. It’s not easy for her. Where’s she going to meet a man?’
‘You know, Mr Kelly, don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe she doesn’t want to meet a man.’
‘You think she’s gay?’
‘No. It’s just, maybe she doesn’t want to get married. Maybe she likes her life the way it is.’
‘Jesus, you think she’s gay’
‘Trust me, she is not gay’ Then: ‘I mean, I don’t catch a gay vibe off her. I have a pretty good sense of these things.’
‘So you’re just not interested in her.’
‘I’m just saying, I think she wants to be out on her own right now. She’s like a man that way’
‘“She’s like a man”?’
‘With the independence, not… the other thing.’
‘I look at her and she’s beautiful. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?’
‘Oh she’s-’ I puffed my cheeks and exhaled heavily, the way a mechanic does when you ask him how much it will cost to rebuild the engine in your Saab. ‘She’s very, very attractive, yes,’ I said carefully.
‘I just don’t want to see her wind up alone, that’s all.’
‘Well, you don’t have to worry about Caroline. I think she can take care of herself.’
‘Everybody tries to look that way, Ben Truman, but nobody can really take care of themself. Not even Caroline.’
‘Maybe.’ I shrugged, uneasy with the topic. ‘Anyway, if she knew you were talking like this, she’d kill you. Besides, I don’t think she’s especially interested in me.’
He shook his head, disappointed in me. ‘Ben, I bet you could tell me what color Martha Washington’s eyes were, but if there was a real live woman in front of you, you wouldn’t know which end was the front and which was the back.’
‘Martha Washington’s eyes were green.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No. It’s in the correspondence.’
He grunted and shook his head some more.
We returned to surveilling number 111 St Albans Road. And waiting.
And waiting.
An hour later, the ninjas arrived.
41
They emerged from the back of a modified panel truck, ten guys in commando-chic outfits, black from their Wehrmacht-style helmets to their combat boots. They even wore gloves so their pink hands would not draw attention. The ninjas jogged along the sidewalk then crouched behind a low wall, out of sight of the house.
Their appearance caused a ripple of excitement on the street. Kids gaped at the men before running off with high-pitched screams and laughter. Maybe the cops seemed funny to them — grown-ups in soldier outfits playing war games — or maybe it was just nervous laughter. The adults did not laugh or run off. There were mostly women on the street, a dozen or so gathered in twos and threes. They were old and young, mothers and girls. Most of them stood and stared, mesmerized by the sight or just rubbernecking. But at the time I had the sense there was something more distinctive and sinister going on. The awareness of race hung in the air like fog. Not racism or racial tension, nothing as grand as that. Just racial awareness, or maybe it is better to say racial wariness — the quickening attentiveness to race that lives under the thin membrane of civility.
Kelly and I jumped out of the car and ran across the street to join the ninjas. We waved our badges above our heads all the way across, just in case.
The commando leader grimaced at me. Under all that equipment, it took me a moment to place the El Greco face of Ed Kurth. ‘He show up?’ Kurth asked.
‘No,’ I told him in a distracted way. Then: ‘Is all this really necessary?’
‘Tactical Operations Unit. They’re trained for dangerous situations. Hostages, riots.’
‘But we don’t have any hostages or riots.’
‘We do have a dangerous situation, Chief Truman.’
I looked the cops over. Metallic rattles emitted from their equipment. ‘All this for one kid?’
‘The kid’s killed a cop and a DA. You think we’re going to fool around with him?’
‘No, but — These guys look like they’re ready to invade Poland.’
Kurth blinked twice and reassured me, ‘We’re not going to invade Poland.’
Our conversation might have stalled there, but Gittens and his own crew pulled up in three unmarked sedans, four men to a car. No lights, no sirens, no uniforms. No particular urgency. They wore jeans, sneakers, and vests, and carried rifles. Most had paunchy bellies and receding hairlines. But they had a scruffy, jock confidence, and I guessed they’d done this hundreds of times.
One of them, a burly fifty-something with a drinker’s flush and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, greeted the commandos with an archetypal high-school taunt: ‘Afternoon, ladies.’
With all the old swagger returned, Gittens said to Kurth, ‘Are you guys here to back us up?’ Then to me, ‘How about you, Ben? You in?’ If he was still upset about my comments earlier in the day, he wasn’t showing it.
I said I would come along, imagining a complete rehabilitation from suspect to arresting officer in the space of one day.
Gittens directed that somebody issue equipment to Kelly and me. The red-faced guy with the cigarette escorted us to one of the cruisers and produced rifles and vests from the trunk. Up close, the man’s face was fascinating, distorted as it was by a bulb-tipped nose and a web of burst capillaries. I doubted this guy could chase Harold Braxton across a room, never mind across the neighborhood.
‘You know how to use one of these?’ he asked as he handed a rifle to me.
‘Yeah, you pull this thingy here, right?’
The guy smirked, pleased to have found a fellow smartass.
But Kelly saw through my bravado. ‘Pay attention,’ he said.
Suitably fitted out, we rejoined Gittens and Kurth at the head of what was now a sizable contingent.
‘We’ll go first,’ Gittens said.
‘No,’ Kurth told him. ‘It’s my scene. I’m the senior Homicide officer here. We’ll go first.’
‘Bullshit,’ Gittens retorted. ‘These guys know the neighborhood, they know Braxton. We’ll go.’
Kurth removed his helmet. ‘Gittens-’
‘I guarantee we get in without a problem.’
Kurth shook his head no.
‘Ed, how do you think he’s going to react when you burst in with the fucking Eighty-second Airborne? Don’t be stupid.’
Though Kurth was the ranking officer, the fact is the police are not the military — politics matters as much as chain of command. Kurth was not going to ram anything down the throat of the precinct detectives, with whom he had to work every time there was a homicide in the Flats. He put his helmet back on, resigned. ‘Fine. We’ll both go.’
It was a bad decision. There was bound to be confusion. Looking back on it, though, it probably didn’t matter which team went in, Gittens’s Rough Riders or Kurth’s ninjas. Emotions were running too high. We were looking for trouble.
The lobby of 111 St Albans Road was fairly noisy considering there was no one in it. Sounds drifted down the stairs: babies crying, TVs blaring. Somewhere a couple was arguing. (A man’s voice: Right now. What’d I just say? Right now!) The canned laughter of TV laugh tracks mixed with my adrenaline to create a druggy, funhouse atmosphere. Ha ha ha ha…
Up the staircase, Gittens and Kurth in the lead.
