David Jackson - Pariah

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a bunch of keys.

Cavell is getting worked up into a frenzy; his voice goes up an octave. ‘What the fuck?’

Doyle leans over the hood, brings the jagged teeth of a key within millimeters of the paintwork.

‘Aiight!’ Cavell screams. ‘I know the bitch, yo. Thass all I’m saying. I know the bitch. Aiight?’

Doyle slides off the car and points a finger at Cavell. ‘Gotcha, TC.’ He drops the keys back into his pocket and swaps them for the photograph. ‘This her?’

Cavell takes a look, then a closer look. ‘Shit!’ He turns to his buddies and says, ‘Bitch be dead. Fuckin’ bitch be dead, yo,’ like it’s a line from an updated Wizard of Oz .

‘You sound awful cut up about it, Tremaine.’

‘Shit, you don’t know how fuckin’ inconvenient that is.’

Doyle suddenly feels like getting his keys out again and playing tic-tac-toe on the Mercedes.

‘Inconvenient? Yeah, I guess that just about sums it up. What’s her real name?’

‘Danielle O’something. A mick name like yours. O’Hara, yeah thass it.’

‘Right. Hence the street name.’

‘What?’

‘Scarlett O’Hara. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’

Cavell turns to his crew for enlightenment, gets no help there. He says, ‘First of all, I ain’t your “dear.” Second of all, the fuck you doing wasting my time if you don’t give a shit?’

Doyle sighs. He flicks the corner of the photograph. ‘You do this to her?’

‘Hell, no. Why I wanna go waste my own merchandise?’

‘What about the beating she took? You behind that?’

‘No. What fool gonna pay for a ho looks like she Herman Munster’s sister?’

‘Ever take a hand to her? Slap her around a little when she gets out of line?’

‘Not my style. My charming personality is all I need to get the ladies on my side.’

Around the garage the others smile and nod, as if profound truth has just been uttered to a gospel congregation.

‘Any idea who might have killed her?’

‘Ain’t that your job?’

‘When’d you last see her?’

‘I checked her ass out last night, ’bout seven, seven-thirty.’

‘What about later? Toward midnight?’

‘Nah. I was too busy getting it on my own self, know what I’m saying?’

‘Did she call at any point, let you know who she was with?’

‘I don’t need no running commentary. She doing her job is all I gots to know.’

‘She ever talk to you about any johns she was worried about? Anyone who threatened to hurt her?’

‘No. Tell you somethin’, though: whoever did this is gonna be hearing from me.’

‘Nice to know you care.’ Doyle fishes out a card. ‘Okay, Tremaine, this is how it’s gonna be. You hear anything, and I mean anything , about the person who did this, you call us. And just so you know, we ain’t about to let this drop. This ain’t a show we’re putting on here, this is for real. Any part of you want to know why this is so serious?’

Cavell just shrugs.

‘Because your girl Scarlett wasn’t the only one killed last night. A cop was murdered too. You know anything about that?’

‘No. Real shame, though. Now I really am cut up.’

‘Sure you are. Just know that it’s personal now, and that if I hear anything about you holding out on me, I’m coming right back. And next time I won’t be so nice.’

With that, Doyle licks the back of his card and pastes it on the inside of the Mercedes windshield.

‘Call me,’ he says.

He and Alvarez head out of the garage, but pause on the sidewalk. Cavell and his boys have pulled together into a tight knot.

Doyle calls back to them: ‘You know what they’re saying on the street about TC, don’t you?’

‘What’s that?’ Cavell says.

‘Word is, he’s a pussy.’

Doyle cups his head in his hands, supporting its weight before it rolls off his neck and thuds onto his paper-strewn desk.

The desk is in a squadroom in a building of white stone and red brick close to Tompkins Square Park, which is in an area of the East Village sometimes referred to as Alphabet City. There are only four avenues in Manhattan with single-letter names; running from west to east these are Avenues A, B, C and D. There was a time when it was said that A was for the Adventurous, B for the Brave, C for the Crazy, and D for the Dead. Was a time when this was one of the most violent, drug-ridden areas of the city. Was a time when the main reasons to visit the park were to shoot victims, shoot dope, or shoot your load into a hooker.

Those fun-filled days are gone. Most of the scum have been driven out. Drug dens have been replaced by shops, bars and nightclubs. Property prices have soared. Alphabet City is about as dangerous as Alphabet Soup.

Well, okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration.

Maybe there is still the occasional burglary, the odd mugging, the infrequent assault, the surprising rape.

And yes, perhaps murder does sometimes feature in the crime figures.

But, hey, nobody would want to see the dedicated cops of the Eighth Precinct being put out of a job, now would they? Got to throw them a few tidbits to prevent the vultures from circling overhead.

Doyle is finding this particular morsel difficult to digest. At his left elbow is a teetering column of brown accordion-style case files, each associated with an investigation in which Joe Parlatti was involved. Inside each file is a ‘61’, the form completed when a crime is originally reported, plus a stack of DD5s, the Detective Division follow-up reports familiarly known as ‘fives’. Doyle has been plowing through these for hours, a task not aided by the fact that some reports are out of place and others are missing. He is searching for an event which, however seemingly innocuous at the time, could have lit the fuse with Parlatti’s name on it.

Around Doyle, other detectives are performing similar duties. One is systematically and noisily pulling open and rifling through the contents of file cabinets. Another is sifting through the rap sheets on some of the perps that Parlatti arrested, rousted or otherwise encountered during his police career. Another is working the phone, trying to ascertain the current whereabouts of the likeliest suspects.

And so it goes on. It is tedious work. Unglamorous work. The sort of daily grind that is never reflected in TV cop shows. Doyle is aching to get back on the streets, but at the same time he is beginning to feel a lack of sleep settling on his shoulders.

Lieutenant Franklin leaves his office and enters the squad-room, overcoat on and briefcase in hand. He approaches Doyle’s desk, weariness in his walk.

‘I’m going home. You should too.’ He gestures toward the detectives who are only a few hours into the evening tour. ‘Leave this for fresher eyes.’

Doyle glances at his watch and is surprised to see that it’s past seven-thirty.

‘Over nineteen hours since Joe got it.’

Franklin absent-mindedly taps the head of the bobbing leprechaun on Doyle’s desk. A ‘welcome gift’ from the squad when he first arrived.

‘You’re thinking not much to show for it.’

Doyle shrugs in reply. Most of the squad on one case for nearly a full day, and not one whiff of a lead. It isn’t looking good. He is not alone in having at least a couple of dozen other cases waiting in the wings, and the numbers are building. Criminals are inconsiderate that way: never willing to give a busy cop time to catch up. At the moment, Joe’s case is at the top of everybody’s priority list, but it won’t stay there forever. Every detective working a homicide knows that unless something breaks in the first forty-eight hours, more often than not you can forget about it. Despite any other reassurances of the city’s COMPSTAT figures, homicide clearance rates continue to blot the record.