Robert Tanenbaum - Outrage

Brock pushed the intercom button again. “Number five, I’d like you to repeat after me. ‘Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off. Now you and I are going to get busy.’”

Number five, another detective in the Four-Eight detective squad who was working undercover, said, “Don’t scream or I’m going to cut your fucking head off… Uh, now let’s get busy.”

“That wasn’t quite right,” Tate said.

“You want him to repeat it again?” Brock asked.

Tate bit her lip and shook her head. “Ask the other guy first.”

The detective pressed the button. “Number three, repeat after me, ‘Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off. Now you and I are going to get busy.’”

“Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off,” Felix said awkwardly, “now you and I are going to get busy.”

“That’s him,” Tate declared. “He said it perfectly. And now that I’ve seen him a little longer, I think he looks more like the guy.”

“You’re sure?” Brock asked.

Tate nodded. “Yes, I’m sure.”

“Thank you, Ms. Tate,” Marks said. “You’ve really done well. Can I ask you to step outside for a moment while I talk to my detectives?”

Tate glanced one last time at the lineup. A look of concern passed over her face, but she answered, “Of course,” and left the room.

“What do you think?” Brock asked.

The sergeant pursed his lips and then shook his head. “I think it’s pretty good,” he said. “It’s a positive ID, but a defense attorney is going to make hay with her hesitation. I sure would like a confession just to nail it down. And if he’s good for the Atkins murder, we’re going to need him to talk.”

Brock looked back at the lineup. The men were being led out of the room; Felix was filing out with a smile on his face. “I don’t know if he’s good for Atkins,” he said.

“Why not?” Marks said with a shrug. “This assault on Tate would match up pretty well-sudden blitz attack on a young woman, using a knife, during daylight hours.”

“You’re right there, Jon,” Brock agreed. “But the guy who did Atkins… he was a pretty smooth operator. He gets into the apartment with no sign of a break-in, murders Atkins, cleans himself up, and then leaves-all without anybody noticing him or hearing anything. But our boy Felix here, he’s sort of bumbling and not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Hell, he’s half-blind.”

“Maybe he was wearing glasses,” the sergeant replied. “And despite what they try to portray on TV and movies, not all killers are masterminds. Sometimes they’re just fucking animals; clever animals, maybe, and they only get away with it for so long before they mess up. Like your boy Felix did this morning. I’m not saying he’s good for the Atkins murder, but let’s not assume he isn’t. I tell you right now, I’d love to get the captain off my back on this one. Anyway, let’s get a confession out of him for Tate and use that for leverage; maybe it will get him to spill his guts.”

Felix was escorted back to the interview room and told to sit down. As he waited, he fidgeted and tried not to look at the mirror. He could feel eyes on him, like he was being watched from the bushes by some unseen predator.

When the door suddenly clicked and Detective Brock walked back in with another man, Felix about jumped out of his seat. He looked nervously at Brock and then at the other detective, who appeared to be younger, though he couldn’t make out his features very well due to his poor eyesight. The second detective introduced himself as Scott McCullough, but he moved around to stand behind Felix, who couldn’t see him without turning.

“Felix, we know that you attacked that young woman this morning,” Brock said matter-of-factly.

“No! That’s not true,” Felix whimpered. Frightened, he started to stand up. “I want to go home now.”

“Sit down!” the detective behind him, McCullough, thundered. “You were just positively identified as the attacker. She even says you sound like him.”

“She’s wrong,” Felix said, trying to turn to where he could see the detective, who kept moving to stay just out of his sight. “I was just walking to the park to tell my friends about my new girlfriend.”

Brock slammed his fist on the table, making Felix jump and spin back around to face him. “Goddamn it, Felix, quit fucking lying to me. You’re just going to make it harder on yourself.”

“If I tell you I did it, will you let me go home?” Felix cried.

“Just tell us the goddamn truth!” McCullough barked.

“You’ll feel better for it, Felix,” Brock told him.

Breathing hard, his eyes bugging, Felix thought about what Brock said. He hated it when people were mad at him. He would feel better when these detectives stopped yelling at him. “Okay, I did it,” he cried out. “I attacked her. Now can I go?”

Brock looked over Felix’s shoulder at McCullough. He then looked back at Felix and smiled. “You did a good thing, Felix, to get that off your chest, but I have a few more questions I need you to answer. To start, I need you to tell me how you attacked her.”

Felix thought hard about what he’d been told. Someone had said something about a knife. “With a knife?”

“You tell me, was it with a knife?” Brock asked.

Felix read the intonation of the detective’s voice and nodded. “Yes, it was with a knife.”

“How did you get that bruise on your face?”

Again Felix recalled Brock asking him if the woman had struck him with her elbow. “She hit me with her elbow.”

Brock stood up. “When she hit you, was she standing in front of you facing you like this?” he asked, pantomiming the action. “Or were you standing behind her, with her back to you, and she hit you like this?” He then simulated her striking him with an elbow.

Felix couldn’t remember anybody saying anything about this. “She was in front,” he guessed.

Brock scowled. “Really? In front?”

Picking up on the detective’s negative reaction, Felix changed his story. “No, I meant I was behind her. She hit me like you showed me the second time.”

“That means she used her right elbow, like this,” Brock said, demonstrating, “and caught you on the right side of your face?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

Brock frowned and made a note on his pad, which at first worried Felix. But then the detective smiled and seemed to relax. His voice was nicer when he asked, “Did you say something to her when you grabbed her from behind?”

Felix was happy that the detective seemed pleased. But he wasn’t sure what was expected of him next. Then he remembered what he’d been asked to say in the other room. “I said, ‘Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off. Now you and I are going to get busy.’”

Brock furrowed his brow but then shrugged. “Just like in the other room.”

“Yes.”

“What does ‘sooka’ mean? Is it Spanish? Or are you saying ‘sucker’?”

Felix had no idea what it meant, but it wasn’t Spanish. “Sucker.”

“And is that something you like to say, like when you attacked the other woman?”

Felix frowned. “What other woman?”

Brock shrugged. “You know, Dolores Atkins, the woman you killed a couple of weeks ago?”

Felix blinked. How had the conversation turned from a woman he attacked this morning to one he had killed weeks ago? “I didn’t kill a woman.”

“Sure you did, Felix,” Detective McCullough said, “and you ‘got busy’ with her.”

The detectives traded off like a pair of tag-team wrestlers. “And then you took some of her things, like her wallet and money,” Brock said. “Maybe that diamond ring we found in your wallet.”