PT4 Slash & Burn

The diner a few blocks from Grand Central had seen better days. A lot of the regulars were still probably nursing New Year’s hangovers. Lt. Daniel Delgado was waiting in a booth where he could see the front door. Jack slipped in through the kitchen door, crept up behind Daniel, and snapped his bubble gum loudly. 

“Jesus Christ, Jack. Don’t sneak up on people with guns.”

Jack grinned in his face, “Happy fuckin’ New Year to you too, Danny boy.”

“What are you doing in town?”

“Nunya business, now I’ve killed two birds with one boring train ride. You’re lucky I even picked up the phone.” Jack shucked off his worn field jacket and balled it up on the seat beside him. “We were leaving when you called. Anna’s at a library in New Haven.” Daniel looked up at the mention of her name just the way Jack intended him to. “You look like shit, by the way.” Despite the suit and tie, Delgado looked ragged. Chewed on. 

  Daniel pulled a pack of Marlboros from his jacket and lit up. Jack grimaced and dug the aluminum ashtray out from under the table-side jukebox and started flipping through the songs. He slapped a crumpled single on the tabletop and said, “Gimme some quarters and one of those damn things.”

  Daniel shook a cigarette out of the pack and grumbled, “Three plays for a quarter. Who’s getting rich?”

“It ain’t the fucking band.” Jack plugged in the coins, lit the cigarette, and looked at it. “She’s gonna kill me. So, what gives?”

Before he could answer, a waitress pulled up at their table like a pony express rider and started tapping her toe. Jack was ready. “Coffee, cheeseburger, fries. Please.” Jack’s engineer boots, greasy jeans, and Stones t-shirt earned him a look of scorn. She turned to Daniel. “This used to be a classier joint.”

Daniel nodded, “The same. Thanks.”

She stabbed her pad with her pen, said, “Mutt and Jeff,” and was off. She was back with the coffee and no further judgment in seconds. Daniel gripped his mug with both hands like he wanted to wring a neck.

Jack tapped the table in time to “Bang a Gong", lowered the volume, and looked at Daniel. “Well?”

Daniel put his head down on the table. “The girls kicked me out.”

“Ouch, dude.” Jack snickered.

“Two months,” Daniel said. “They tried to fuck me dead. Every night. 

Jack clapped both hands over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

“When I got home Friday, there was a note asking for the key back. Today I found out Sylvie took a transfer.”

“Not your fault, Danny Boy. I told you, it’s only good if they want you ‘cause they don’t really need you. So you’re homeless, and what else?”

“I got a place for now, but I need your help with a case.”

Jack stood up, looking around for the waitress. “I told you I’m not doing this.”

“Sit down, fool. I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t out of options. And I think we’ll always owe each other a little...grace.” That grace would always be about Anna.

Jack dropped back into the seat and held up a finger. “One time. You got a suspect for me to interview?”

“No.”

“Witnesses?”

“No.”

Jack shrugged and spread his hands wide. “Nothing I can do for you.”

“I have a survivor.”

“A victim?” Jack shook his head. “Nah. The worst possible witnesses.”

Daniel took a folded manila envelope from his jacket and dropped it on the table. After a long, finger-drumming pause, Jack picked up the envelope and pulled out the paperwork and a photograph that he glanced at briefly and turned face down. He shuffled through the documents without really seeing them.             “When?”

Daniel looked at his watch. “If it’s still Monday, we’re coming up on seventy-two hours. She was dumped at the hospital, unconscious. We didn’t know she’d been grabbed after her shift until she woke up in the hospital screaming.”

“And you want me to stand by with my mouth shut and my hands in my pockets while you question her?”

“Is that how it works?”  

Jack heaved a sigh. “No. You know what I’m going to get from her? You did it. I did it. Hell, the ambulance guys did it, too. No. If she knows who it was, she’ll tell you if she’s ever ready and you can do your thing. If she doesn’t know, sorry.”

What he couldn’t tell Daniel was that it worked the other way around. He didn’t start following the deserving until he knew, through the killer’s gruesome internal monologues, about the victims. How easy that made the work. And how he missed doing it. The killing.

Jack finished half the burger in two bites and set to work, burying the fries under a mound of ketchup. Daniel turned the photograph back over. “Look again.” It was a forensic shot, the woman’s face a quarter turn away from the camera’s gaze, the focus on the hastily taped-up gashes that ran from her mouth to her ear, the fiercely dark, finger-shaped bruises around her neck. “She’s a cop, Jack.”

“Makes no difference to me.” Against his will, the photo forced him back to the day he found Anna after Ray had beaten her. But just for a moment. “Shit.” He put down the burger and spit the bite he couldn’t swallow into a napkin. “I gotta make a call, but I don’t think I can help you.”

“But you’ll try?” Daniel said. “There’s a pay phone in the back. Need more change?”

Jack gave him the finger behind his back as he dodged past the waitress. The woman who answered the phone at the library promised she’d find Anna and deliver the message. By the time Jack finally made it home, Anna was already in custody and lucky to be alive.

###

Daniel was furious. “What the hell are you talking about, gone?”

The woman inside the glass cubicle had a fat clipboard in one hand and a phone in the other. She peered down at the badge holder that Daniel had slapped on the counter when she asked him for ID. She flipped up the stack of papers and read, “Officer Baer refused further treatment and checked out against medical advice about an hour ago. Anything else?”

“Was she alone? Did she call anyone?”

She pointed to the exit sign. “Once they walk out that door, they are on their own.”

Jack was leaning against a vending machine, hands in his pockets. “I’m here now. Let’s do it.” Lights and sirens, Daniel had them downtown to the address on the paperwork in minutes. It was a nice neighborhood on the lower west side, a block from Abbington Square Park. Genteel compared to where Jack grew up, but neighborhoods are all the same in one way. He knew that somebody always knows someone’s business. 

No response from 2B. Jack reached over Daniel’s shoulder and hit 2A and 2C. A buzzer unlocked the lobby door, and Jack sprinted up the stairs first. He wanted Officer Baer’s immediate reaction to a stranger, not the investigating officer.

An elderly man was standing in his doorway with a baseball bat in his hand. Jack hung back and let Daniel lead with his badge in his.

“Sorry to bother you, sir, police business. Have you seen or heard from your neighbor in 2B today? Officer Patricia Baer?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I wish we had a cop living in this building. I think she’s a meter maid. Downstairs, we got the Broadway boys and a pair of stewardesses. Or maybe it’s just a hot pillow joint. Up here we got Elsie with too many fucking parakeets, the meter maid and the boyfriend of the month in 2B, and me, minding my fucking business.” The slammed door echoed in the tiled hallway with the frantic chittering of too many parakeets.

Daniel checked the paperwork; it was the address on the hospital release and on file with the department. Jack knocked on the door at 2B like he was delivering Chinese. Three, pause, two, then he stepped back and to the side and yelled “Delivery.” The first one who answered the door with cash in hand got the food, no matter who ordered it. Someone was moving around inside, coming to the door. Daniel was holding his badge holder where it could be seen through the peephole.

A muffled male voice said, “What do you want?”

“To speak with Officer Baer.” 

The pause was just long enough for Daniel to move his hand as if to unholster his weapon. Locks were being turned slowly. The door opened half as far as the chain would permit. The room was dark, but there were sounds and light coming from the next room. Cooking noises. The apartment smelled of something frying and the man said, “Just a minute. I’ll get her.” He left the door chained, but ajar.

Patsy Baer came from the kitchen, spatula in hand. Despite the bandage that covered half her face, she looked fine, but highly pissed off. “Delgado. What the hell do you want? Honey, put on the damn light before this asshole shoots you.”

The ordinary-looking, middle-aged man groped for the chain in a lamp beside the front door, held it open, and gestured Daniel and Jack inside. Jack said, “I’ll wait out here.”

Police work was harder on women than men. Not that they couldn’t handle the physical aspects of the work; the running, the climbing, the physical confrontations. They had to do all that just to graduate from the academy. It was the desks that got them; eight out of ten female officers wound up pushing pencils or filing and they were usually pissed off about it. The donuts and birthday cakes, the lack of exercise, bad sleep, and shitty relationships ruined their bodies and beat down their souls. Patsy had been a cheerleader. A golden spark plug with no desire or aptitude for college, so she took advantage of the NYPD’s push to hire women. In just ten years, she’d gained twenty pounds, let her teeth go bad, and hated her life. Until recently.

Jack was standing outside on the stoop when Daniel came down two minutes after he’d been let in. “What the hell, Jack? I thought you were going to,” he groped for the words, “sit in on the conversation.”

“The one where she told you to get out and mind your fucking business?”

Daniel sat down on the top step and lit another cigarette. “If she doesn’t give a damn about finding her attacker, I guess I better get used to the idea of working in Queens.”

“Yeah. And no loving tonight, dude. Sorry.” A cab was coming down the block and Jack backed into the street, his fist in the air. “I got a train to catch.”

Daniel lofted a middle finger. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t do that.”

Right now, Jack needed a little time to process what he’d learned in just moments and at arm’s length from the angry woman and the unremarkable man who answered the door of the apartment. He had the cabbie stop around the block and ducked into a neighborhood bar to wait for Officer Baer’s attacker. Their bar. Her lover. A serial killer already on the hunt for his next victim. Jack didn’t have long to wait.

They met there over drinks. Gin and rage. Whiskey and fear. Beers, many beers, and collusion. Within a month, he’d moved in with her. Made her feel special. The sex was the best of her life even as it turned violent. The violence was just what she was looking for until he went too far. But he was there by her side in the hospital whispering it would never, ever happen again even if she couldn’t forgive him, even if she turned him in. Of course, she did, and she didn’t.

    Eleven’ll wait. Gin Rickeys and hospital Percodans. Nice and quiet, lumpy bitch. Hot how she handled that stupid pig, though. I’ll give her that. She’ll keep ‘til I get back with number twelve. Then we’ll see.

Jack sat in the rear booth, nursing a beer and working his way through the Post. As the man made his first trip to the men’s, Jack casually said, “Dude, I heard you mention Percodans. If you’re shopping, I’m holding.”

The unremarkable man stopped in his tracks. Did I? Out loud? Stressful springing eleven from the hospital. Dealing with nosy pigs. Taping her doped dumb ass to the bed. He blinked. “What else have you got?”

“Not here, dude.” Jack opened one side of his jacket as if he had products to display. “Pay your tab, go out the front, and meet me in the alley.”

 

    The anonymous call came from a pay phone. Patsy Baer was found alive, drugged, and bound to her bed in her own apartment. The next morning, a sanitation worker discovered an unidentified male in an alley behind a lower west side dive, his throat cut from ear to ear. In his pocket, a handful of unidentified pills and a pink copy of a hospital discharge for one Patricia Baer.

Jack missed his train by fifteen minutes, had dinner with Chang at the Pearl, and was back at Grand Central in time for the last train home, but there was no one to meet him and no answer when he called.