Pete Hamill - Brooklyn Noir

“Nine-four George, K?”

Russo fires up the engine, shifts into gear, and pulls away. “That’s us, Dave,” he reminds his partner.

Lodge brings the microphone to his mouth. “Nine-four George, Central.”

“George, we have a 10–54 sick at one-three-seven South 4th Street. See the man. A woman unconscious in the hallway.”

“That’s in Boy’s sector, Central.”

“Nine-four Boy is on another job, K.”

“Ten-four, Central.”

Russo proceeds down Metropolitan Avenue at trolling speed, passing beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, before turning onto Morgan Avenue. The job on South 4th Street is now far behind them.

“Where we goin’, Dante?” Lodge adjusts the louvers on the air-conditioning vents, directing the flow to his crotch. “The job’s in the other direction.”

“We’re goin’ where we always go.”

“Acme Cake? You serious?”

Lodge steals a glance at his partner when his questions go unanswered. Dante’s thin nose is in the air, his jaw thrust forward, his lips pinched into a thin, disapproving line.

Not for the first time, Lodge feels an urge to drive his fist into that chin, to flatten that nose, to bloody that mouth. Instead, he settles his weight against the backrest and faces the truth. Without Dante Russo, David Lodge wouldn’t make it through his tours, not since he started having black-outs. Nobody else will work with him, he knows. Shitkicker is what they call him. As in, You hear what the shitkicker did last night?

“What about the job?” he finally says. “What do I tell Central if they wanna know where we are?”

Russo sighs, another irritating habit. “C’mon, Dave, wise up. We both know it’s gonna be some junkie so overdosed her buddies dumped her in the lobby like yesterday’s garbage. Now maybe you wanna go mouth-to-mouth, suck up that good HIV spit, but me, I’m gonna let the paramedics worry about catchin’ a dreaded disease. They got a better health plan.”

When Lodge and Russo finally roll up on the scene twenty minutes later, two Fire Department paramedics are loading a gurney into an ambulance. A woman strapped to the gurney attempts to sit up, despite the restraints.

“You see what I’m sayin’?” Dante Russo washes down the last of his frosted donut with the last of his coffee. “Things worked out all right. No harm, no foul.”

Three hours later, Russo breaks a long silence with an appreciative whistle. “Well, lookee here, just the man I want to see.”

Lodge brings a soda bottle to his mouth and takes a quick sip. The one-to-one mix of 7-UP and vodka lifts his spirits. He is on the verge of a blackout now, and predictably reckless.

“What’s up?”

“The Beemer.” Russo jerks his chin at a white BMW trimmed with gold chrome, stopped for the light at the intersection of Metropolitan and Kingsland Avenues.

“What about it?”

“That’s our boy.”

“What boy?”

Russo pauses long enough to make his annoyance clear. “That there car belongs to Mr. Clarence Spott.”

“Who?”

“Spott’s picture is hangin’ in the muster room. He’s one of the bad guys.” Dante’s mouth expands into a humorless smile. “Whatta ya say we bust his balls a little?”

“Fine by me.”

When Russo momentarily lights up the roof rack and the BMW pulls to the curb, both cops immediately leave their car. They are on Metropolitan Avenue, a main commercial street in the northside section of Greenpoint. The small retail stores lining both sides of the avenue are long closed, their gates down and padlocked, but several men stand in front of an after-hours club across the street. David Lodge stares at the men till they turn away, then he joins Russo who stands a few feet from the BMW’s open window. Lodge knows he should approach the vehicle from the passenger side, that his job here is to cover his partner on the driver’s side. But David Lodge has never been a by-the-book officer, far from it, and knowing his partner won’t object, he settles down to enjoy the show.

“Why you stoppin’ me, man?” Clarence Spott’s full mouth is twisted into a pained grimace. “I ain’t done nothin’.”

“Step outa the car,” Russo orders. “And that’s officer , not man.”

“I ain’t goin’ no place till I find out why you stopped me. This here is racial profilin’. It’s unconstitutional.”

Russo slaps his nightstick against the palm of his hand. “Clarence, you don’t come out, and I mean right this fuckin’ minute, I’m gonna crack your windshield.”

The door opens and Spott emerges. A short, heavily muscled black man, his expression — eyes wide, brows raised, big mouth already moving — reeks of outrage. Lodge can smell the stink from where he stands. And it’s not as if Spott, who keeps his hands in view at all times, isn’t familiar with the rules of the game. There’s just something in him that doesn’t know when to shut up.

“Ah’m still axin’ the same question. Why you pull me over when I’m drivin’ down a public street, mindin’ my own damn business?”

Russo ignores the inquiry. “I want you to put your hands on top of the vehicle and spread your legs. I want you to do it right now.”

Spott finally crosses the line, as Lodge knew he would, by adding the word pig to his next sentence. Lodge slaps him in the face, a mild reprimand from Lodge’s point of view, but Spott sees it differently. His eyes close for a moment as he draws a long breath through his nose. Then he uncoils, quick as a snake, and drives his fist into the left side of David Lodge’s face.

Taken by surprise, Lodge staggers backward, leaving Spott to Dante Russo, who assumes a two-handed grip on his nightstick before cracking it into Spott’s unprotected shins. When Spott drops to his knees on the pavement, Russo slides the nightstick beneath his throat and pulls back, choking off a howl of pain.

“How you wanna do this, Clarence? Easy or hard?”

As Spott cannot speak, he indicates compliance by going limp and crossing his hands behind his back.

Russo eases up slightly, then pushes Spott forward onto his chest. “You all right?” he asks his partner.

“Never better.”

David Lodge brings his hand to the blood running from a deep cut along his cheekbone. Suddenly, he feels sharp, even purposeful. As he watches his partner cuff and search the prisoner before loading him into the backseat, he thinks, Okay, this is where it gets good. His hand goes almost of itself to the soda bottle stuffed beneath the seat when he enters the vehicle. He barely tastes the vodka as it slides down his throat.

“You got any particular place in mind?” his partner asks as he shifts the patrol car into gear.

“Not as long as it’s private. One thing I hate, it’s bein’ interrupted when I’m on a roll.”

Lieutenant Justin Whitlock sets the precinct log aside when David Lodge and Dante Russo lead Clarence Spott into the nine-four. Both sides of Spott’s face are bruised and he leans to the left with his arm pressed to his ribs. His right eye, already crusting, is swollen shut.

Whitlock is seated at a desk behind a wooden railing that runs across the nine-four’s reception area. He glances from the prisoner to Russo, then notices the blood on David Lodge’s face and Lodge’s blood-soaked collar.

“That your blood, Lodge?”

“Yeah. The mutt caught me a good one and we hadda subdue him.”

Whitlock nods twice. The injury is something he can work with.

“I want you to go over to the emergency room at Wyckoff Heights and have that wound sewn up. Count the stitches and make sure you obtain a copy of the medical report. Better yet, insist that a micro-surgeon do the job. Tell ’em you don’t wanna spoil your good looks.”