Edward Lee: Creekers

“My guys pulled it off. All you did was take a walk and talk shit.”

Phil smirked. Typical. “Fine, Dig. Look after the cleanup. Your guys check all the halls?”

“You ain’t gotta tell me how to do my job, Straker.” Dignazio glared, torqued-up, wiry, and with a face with more cracks in it than the original Mona Lisa. Then the sergeant walked off, taking his two gunners with him. Then:

chink

Phil jerked his head.

He strained his eyes down the concourse and thought he saw something flutter. A shadow? No…

A glint?

What the hell is that?

Not a dozen steps into the dark concourse, and Phil realized it wasn’t what but who.

A small shadow seemed to whisk from one open doorway to another

A spotter, he thought. A kid.

Phil slid his Kel-Lite from his belt, then began down the dusty, linoleum corridor. His light roved. Then—

“Jesus!”

The kid popped out of one of the storage rooms and sprinted toward the dead EXIT sign, his feet scuffing frantically.

TSD had already chained that exit from the outside.

“Come on, kid. You can’t get out that way. Let’s you and me have a talk, all right? I won’t hassle you, I promise.”

It was sad, the way these dope-gangs indoctrinated kids into their business. Of course they grow up to be criminals—it was the only thing they knew. And how old was this one? Ten? Twelve? Christ, Phil thought drearily. The kid hit the door, found it locked, then turned around, wide-eyed in his terror.

This kid looked about seven or eight.

“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” Phil assured. “But you’re gonna have to come out here now so we can get you squared away.”

The kid’s face looked like a dark skull in Phil’s Kel-Lite beam. Tears glistened on lean, dark cheeks. He’s shit-scared, all right, Phil realized. The worst part was the district court’d just stick them in an orphanage, and nine times out of ten they’d just run back to the streets at the first opportunity.

“You’re gonna have to come with me now,” Phil said.

He never saw what was coming—he never even saw the gun. At once, the ever-familiar sound of a small-caliber pistol clapped his ears

pap! pap! pap!

The moment was mayhem. Fierce tiny lights blinked in his eyes; Phil only had time to let instinct haul him behind an empty refuse drum. His Kel-Lite rolled across the cement floor when another bullet pinged into the drum. Phil drew his service revolver

“Goddamn it, kid! Are you nuts?”

Then he fireda shot high over the kid’s head.

The kid stopped shooting.

How could I have been so stupid? Too busy worrying about the goddamn Yankees. A second later, two S.O.D. men were aiming lights down the corridor. “Don’t shoot!” Phil hollered. “It’s just a kid!”

Now more cops were trotting into the hall. “You all right, Lieutenant?” Eliot was asking, and helping him up.

“I’m fine,” Phil replied. “But I’m not sure I can say the same for my shorts.”

“What happened?”

“Just some shit-scared kid. I popped a cap over his head.”

But Eliot was giving him a funky look, and then Phil thought he heard some guys down the hall calling for an EMT.

No, no, Phil thought, and sprinted down the hall himself. “I swear to God I fired over his head!”

More cops spilled into the hall, flashlights bobbing…

“Fired over his head, huh?” Dignazio was striding loudly behind. He glared at Phil. “That’s a real piece of work right there, Straker. The deputy comm’s gonna love this.”

The words groaned in Phil’s mind like an old house in the wind: Good God Almighty…

The kid lay at the foot of the chained exit doors, blood pumping from the bullet hole in his upper-right chest. He was dead before they could even get him on the stretcher . . .

««—»»

Phil peered into the memory. Six months ago I was a metropolitan police lieutenant about to make captain, and now I’m a nightwatchman making $7.50 an hour. The death of the kid had been ruled a justifiable homicide by Internal Affairs, even though Phil swore up and down that he’d fired well over the kid’s head. “Not high enough,” the chief investigator had told him. But that wasn’t why he’d resigned…

Dignazio, he thought.

It had to have been Dignazio.

The IAD chief investigator was an anal-retentive stoneface named Noyle. “Lieutenant, what kind of ammunition were you using in your service revolver on the night in question?” he asked.

“Thirty-eight plus P plus,” Phil answered, taken slightly aback at the undue inquiry.

“Thirty-eight plus P plus. Hmm. And what type of service ammunition does the department authorize for sidearm use?”

“Nine millimeter hardball, and thirty-eight—”

“Thirty-eight plus P plus?”

“Yes.”

“And does the department authorize the use of any other type of service sidearm ammunition, Lieutenant?”

What the hell is he driving at? Phil pondered. Why this roundhouse of irrelevant questions? “Only for S.O.D. personnel,” he replied, “but only when specifically authorized by Special Operations Division Deputy Commissioner.”

“And are you an S.O.D. officer, Lieutenant?

“No,” Phil said. “I’m in Narcotics.”

“And on the night in question were you for any reason authorized by the Special Operations Division Deputy Commissioner to use ammunition in your service revolver other than thirty-eight plus P plus?”

Phil was hard-pressed not to frown. “No.”

Noyle leaned back in his chair, centered at the long conference table like a low-rent Caesar, with Cassius and Brutus to his left and right. His steely eyes never blinked. “Lieutenant, do you know what a quad is?”

Why’s he asking me about quads! This was getting aggravating. “Yes,” he answered, perhaps a little testily. “A quad is a special kind of bullet.”

“And why is it ‘special’?”

“Because it fires four cylindrical slugs instead of a solid, one-piece projectile.”

“And what is the purpose of this?” Noyle asked.

“Increased stopping-power. On impact the slugs separate in the target and disperse. Quads, in other words, do a lot more damage than standard one-piece projectiles.”

“A ‘dum-dum’ bullet, so to speak.”

“Yes,” Phil answered. “A factory-made dum-dum, I guess you could call it… But, sir, if you don’t mind, what’s the purpose of these questions? If you want to know about tactical ammunition, you’d be better off talking to the rangemaster or the S.O.D. armorer.”

Noyle outright ignored Phil’s query. “Lieutenant, do you know of any occasion when quads have been or would be authorized for use in this department?”

“No,” Phil said.

“No, Lieutenant?”

A pause followed, then Noyle was whispering with his IAD counterparts. Phil took the opportunity to probe their faces. They all looked the same: similar suits, similar blank expressions. They looked like inquisitors, and Phil felt like a warlock on trial for heresy. What in God’s name is going on here?

Noyle’s rodent eyes returned to Phil’s face. “Lieutenant, you’ve just admitted to myself and the other hearing officers that quads are unauthorized for use in this department.”

“Right,” Phil said. He was starting to feel itchy, hot.

“Then why were you using them?” Noyle asked.

The question fell on him, like a wall collapsing. His temper had begun to simmer. He wrung his hands in his lap.

“I was not using quads,” he affirmed very slowly. If he didn’t speak slowly, he’d get mad, and one thing he didn’t want to do was pitch a fit in front of three IAD investigators. These three poker-faces were the department’s ball-cutting crew. Instead, Phil took a breath, exhaled, and repeated, “I was not using quads. I’ve never loaded quads on duty or off. And if you want to know the truth, I’m getting really confused right now. I can’t make any sense out of this line of questioning.”