Jim Cogan - The Dirty City

Lt Wails himself was hammering on my door, this already sounded like a whole heap of crap I could do without.

It was clear that the time it would take me to get even half dressed would be too much to save my door from being kicked in. In truth I wasn’t overly worried about my door, it’s wasn’t as if I couldn’t afford to have it replaced, but it wouldn’t go down well with my landlord to have the cops getting up to that kind of crap in their property. I opted for compromise and donned my dressing gown. This really sucked. No man about to face what was obviously going to be a confrontational situation could really pull off an air of control and authority whilst wearing a dressing gown.

I opened my door and there stood Wails, nostrils flared and eyes wild, alongside Glenn, looking as he usually did when he was in the company of the Lt – like he’d rather be elsewhere.

“Well good morning Lt Wails, Scotty, to what do I owe your atrociously timed and frankly irritating visit?”

“Shut your hole, Jerome. We are taking your sorry ass down to the station,” announced Wails with masses of overly dramatic bluster.

“Marcio Riccardo was found murdered early this morning, we need to ask you a few questions down town,” said Glenn, evidently destined to be the good cop today.

“Marcio, shit! He called me, about 2am.”

“No-one is surprised that that scumbag was an associate of yours, but now it’s a question of figuring out how much you really know about this. Right, Jerome?”

“I know only what you’ve told me, Lt. Are you going to arrest me?”

“Not if you come down the station with us voluntarily, Johnny. We just want to talk.”

“Well, if you’ll give me a minute, I trust you’ll permit me to put on some sensible attire?”

“Just get your ass ready and be outside in five minutes.”

I clocked Glenn’s expression as he rolled his eyes in exasperation of Wails. He’d used the word ‘ass’ three times in under a minute, always a bad sign. I’m pretty sure we both had the feeling it was going to be a long morning.

Being sat in an interview room brought back so many memories from my time on the force. However, I was a not exactly used to being the interviewee.

Glenn and Wails sat opposite me, both chain smoking. Being a non-smoker this was beginning to get on my nerves, but I was determined not to let it show.

“Right, where were you between the hours of 4 and 5am this morning?”

“Why, Lt Wails, I was tucked up in my bed like a good little boy.”

“Cut the crap, Jerome. You met up with Marcio Riccardo yesterday, when and where?”

“Around 11am, lower East side. In a bar that I believe none of us are supposed to know or talk about.”

Everyone knew of the Speakeasy, but as long as the mob paid its dues to the right people, no-one would ever do anything about it, so it remained neutral territory to mobsters, and off limits to the cops.

“What did you and Marcio discuss?” Glenn was doing his best to keep things moving and prevent Wails from getting too excited.

“My latest case, missing person. Anton Jameson, the lawyer’s son.”

“Richard Jameson? His son is missing? He hasn’t filed a report with us.”

“And he won’t. The kid was in some deep shit. Wouldn’t look good for the legal practice if it became common knowledge.”

“So he hired you to find him? And I thought lawyers were supposed to be smart?” Sneered Wails, obviously pleased with himself and his cheap little jibe. I gave him an ironic faux-smile, which I hoped would convey at least some of the dislike I held for him.

“Johnny, did Marcio tell you where Anton Jameson was?”

“Not exactly, he knew that the mob had gotten hold of him, but he had no idea what they’d done with him.”

“Why were they so interested in him?”

“All Marcio said was that he had seen some things he shouldn’t have, and then had made the mistake of shouting his mouth off about it.”

“Okay, Jerome, lets skip forward a few hours. You say you had a call from Marcio in the early hours, tell us about that?” Wails was getting impatient with Glenn’s subtlety.

“He didn’t make much sense, kept saying for me to drop the Jameson case. It sounded like the kid might have been in deeper than he suspected.”

“He was trying to warn you off?”

“That’s how I took it, yeah.”

“Which leads us up to around 4am this morning, when someone caved Marcio’s skull in with a blunt object and dumped him in the river on the lower East side. Got any opinions on that?”

“Why should I have, Lt?”

“I don’t know, Jerome, but my instincts are telling me that there might be more to this than you’re letting on?”

“You know what I think about your instincts, and where you can stick ‘em. You know I didn’t kill him, right?”

“Do we, Jerome?”

“Well, I assume so – I mean, if there was a shred of evidence then you would be waving that in my face about now, wouldn’t you?”

And so it went on and on. For over an hour Wails tried to trip me up on silly little details, trying to pry open my story. I didn’t have a verifiable alibi, but I had no motive either. And at the same time, I had to play it careful and remain consistent - I had to conceal quite a lot of the details as I simply didn’t want the cops to know too much about my business.

Eventually Wails got bored of wasting all of our time and cut me loose. If I thought my day might improve at that point I was severely mistaken.

I had to flag down a cab to get back to my apartment. Once there I called the office to let Lydia know I was running late - she was suitably unimpressed, then I grabbed a quick shower and headed out again.

I always parked my car a block away from my apartment, just to make it generally harder for people to keep tabs on me. As I turned into the street where my car was parked up I noticed someone quite blatantly staking it out, no doubt waiting for me to make an appearance. He was a skinny guy, late twenties, neatly attired – not muscle but definitely mob. If it had simply been a tough guy I’d have not been so cautious, tough guys are almost always pretty damn stupid. No, it’s always the more innocuous looking goons who are the ones to worry about – in my experience they’re almost always smarter than tough guys, and often what they lack in physical presence they make for by being either ruthless or downright psychotic. However, in my desire to give this guy a wide berth, I’d taken my eye off the bigger picture. I should have realised there would be more than one guy on me.

“Hey!” Boomed a familiar voice from somewhere behind me. I glanced round and saw the burly figure of Hugo, some fifty yards away and bearing down on me fast. His call had alerted the guy watching my car, the two of them began to close in on me in something akin to a pincer movement.

I bolted up the nearest side street then around the first corner. Now, having lived in this neighbourhood for many years I should have known every little rat run – but God damn it if I didn’t run straight down a blind alley with a dead end. From a strategic point of view this was a massive faux pas on my part, I was not only outnumbered but also cornered in a location that was secluded enough to ensure that there would be no witnesses.

“Get your fuckin’ hands up in the air where I can see ‘em, Mr Jerome.”

I turned around to see the skinny guy with the foul mouth, gun drawn at the ready, walking confidently towards me. Hugo skulked along behind him, trying to look menacing. This time, with the disadvantage they had me at, he sort of almost managed it.

“I’ve met Hugo, there, but I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure before?”