David Jackson - Pariah

As he rinses the shampoo from his hair, he lets out a shout, a roar of anger and emotional pain. The noise fills his head, distracting him from the images. For now at least.

When he steps from the shower cubicle and wraps a warmed towel around his waist, there is a ringing in his ears. It takes him a second or two to realize that it’s coming from his cellphone. He walks back into the living room, finds the phone in the pocket of his jacket.

‘Hello?’

‘Tony, it’s Vic, down at the house. I hope you don’t mind me calling you like this.’

Vic is one of the detectives on duty at the station house. He will know that Alvarez has put in a very long day, and that there has to be a good reason to disturb him now.

‘Go ahead, Vic. What’s up?’

‘I took a call just now. Very weird. Guy won’t give his name, but says he’s got something on the Joe Parlatti case. I ask him for the details, but he refuses. Says the only person he’ll speak with about it is you.’

‘Is that it?’

‘No. He gave me a number you can call him back on. Said it can’t wait, neither. You want to hear what he has to say, you need to call him straight away. Oh, and one other thing. .’

‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t know if it means anything, but he said to tell you that Fancy and Choo-Choo send their regards.’

TC, Alvarez thinks. Tremaine Cavell.

He dips a hand back into his jacket pocket, takes out a notebook and pen.

‘Okay, Vic, thanks. You got that number?’

He writes it down and hangs up. He looks again at the number, starts dialing, but changes his mind. Moving into the bedroom, he opens a drawer in his bureau and pulls out an Olympus voice recorder and a TP-7 cable. He plugs one end of the cable into a jack on the recorder, and pops the other end into his ear. Switching the recorder on, he dials the number he’s been given.

‘Yeah, who that?’

Nice telephone manner, Alvarez thinks.

‘Tremaine, it’s Detective Alvarez. I hear you want to talk to me. You got something for me?’

‘Nah, man, not on the phone. What I got for you got to be face to face.’

‘You prepared to meet me at the precinct station house?’

Cavell barks a laugh. ‘Fuck that shit. Only time you get me in there is when you arrest my ass. Niggers see me walking in there without ten cops on my back, I might as well write my obituary now.’

‘Okay, so where?’

‘One of my girls got a crib on West Seventeenth. Meet me there.’

‘What’s the full address?’

Cavell gives him the building and apartment numbers, and Alvarez scribbles them below the phone number that Vic gave him.

‘Okay, let me get in touch with Detective Doyle-’

‘Whoa! Hold up! I ain’t throwing no party here. This is me and you, man. That’s it.’

‘Detective Doyle was with me earlier today. He’s working the case with me.’

He hears a sigh from Cavell. ‘You don’t get it, do you? What I got for you is some heavy, heavy shit. A cop like Doyle be the last motherfucker I want around me when I break this out.’

Alvarez feels like a bony finger has just stroked his spine. What’s the problem with Doyle? Why exclude him?

‘What makes you think I’m any better than Doyle?’

A pause. ‘I don’t. Let’s just say your name didn’t crop up in what I heard.’

‘And you want to take that risk? Why the good citizen act all of a sudden, Tremaine?’

‘Because some motherfucker took out one of my bitches, and that makes me mad. So if the only way I can get back at him is through you, then that’s what I have to do.’

Alvarez considers this, and knows that he’s hooked. Tremaine is too stupid to make up a story like this, and too unadventurous to follow through on such a lie. He knows something, and he wants to capitalize on that knowledge.

‘All right, Tremaine, I’m coming over. This better be worth it.’

He hangs up, then switches off the recorder.

Quickly drying himself off, he dresses in jeans, Timberlands and a woolen sweatshirt. He shrugs on a tan overcoat, then clips his Glock to his belt and drops three more loaded magazines into his pocket. He picks up his cellphone and the recorder, with the intention of returning the latter to the bedroom drawer, then thinks better of it and slips both gadgets into his other side pocket.

As he heads out into the night, his thoughts are troubled by one thing. Or, rather, one person. And it’s not Cavell.

Alvarez parks up on West Seventeenth, close enough to get a good view of the apartment building Cavell specified, but not directly in front. He turns off his lights and remains in the dissipating warmth of his Toyota for a good ten minutes while he watches the five-story walk-up.

He sees nobody go in and nobody come out, and as far as he can tell, there is no sign of anybody else keeping an eye on the building from out here on the street. The only indication that anyone is aware of his presence comes when a coiffured poodle takes an interest in his car’s front bumper. The dog’s owner, a middle-aged man in a long coat and wide-brimmed hat, warns the pooch that the cute-looking driver probably isn’t ready for that level of intimacy, and they continue on their merry way.

Alvarez takes out his cellphone and voice recorder, then connects up the cable microphone and inserts the earpiece. He searches the phone for the last number he called, then redials. As he listens to the ring tone, he switches on the Olympus.

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s Detective Alvarez, Tremaine. I’m gonna be a little bit longer. My car’s decided it’s too cold to move.’

‘Fuck is this, man? You want to hear this shit or not? I don’t need to be taking no risks like this.’

To Alvarez, Cavell sounds a little flustered. Not quite the cool gangsta image he had adopted in the garage.

‘All right, Tremaine. Keep it puckered. I’ll be with you in fifteen, twenty minutes tops.’

‘Aiight, but any more than that and I’m gone.’

Alvarez hangs up. He disconnects the recorder and puts it into the glove compartment, then drops the cellphone back in his pocket. He pulls his Glock, checks the indicator telling him there’s a round in the chamber, then reholsters it.

When he climbs out of the car and locks it up, the cold hits him. He feels as though he will freeze to the sidewalk if he stands here too long.

He walks toward the building, glancing into the interior of each vehicle as he passes it. At the lobby door he doesn’t ring the bell for Cavell’s apartment, but instead buzzes the superintendent.

When the super opens the door, Alvarez flashes his badge and ID.

‘I need to speak with one of the tenants. Unannounced.’

The super, a gray-haired, grumpy-looking man, has spaghetti sauce around his mouth and is still chewing.

‘There gonna be shooting?’ he asks, losing a strand of spaghetti as he does so.

Alvarez says, ‘Well, it’s not on my to-do list.’

The super sucks the pasta back in, chews some more.

‘’Cause I don’t need no holes in my building. And not in my tenants neither. I just want a quiet night. Good food, cold beer and Barbarella .’

‘Your wife?’

‘I wish. The movie. Jane Fonda stripping off in zero-G. My wife, she looks more like Henry Fonda.’

Alvarez is already heading for the stairs. ‘Enjoy the movie,’ he says.

‘No holes, remember,’ the super calls after him, and then Alvarez hears a door shutting.

He takes the stairs two at a time, but with stealth, listening as he goes. Outside apartment 3C he puts his ear to the uniform slab of a door.

He doesn’t fear Cavell. Cavell is a young punk. But Alvarez doesn’t like the fact that, right now, Cavell is calling the shots and acting kinda weird. And so it seems sensible to Alvarez, especially acting without backup like this, to proceed with some caution.