Special Delivery

 

Hipster Holocaust Chapter Twenty-Four- Special Delivery

McCarthy and Torrez sat on a bench at Valentino Park across from the Statue of Liberty. When you sat there, you felt like you could reach out and finger Lady Liberty as she seemed to be right in front of you. It never failed to soothe McCarthy’s spirit. He had gone to school with the fireman that the park was named after, and he would go there often to veg out and think. The kid had died in a fire long before 911, and his old man was a big shot in the longshoremen’s union and had a lot of political pull. He got a park named after his kid when all the firemen who died on 911 just got a plaque on the side of the railing facing where the World Trade Center used to be. It is all about who you know in this world. McCarthy liked to come here to remind himself of that fact.

The park was quiet today. Just a few sunbathers and a couple of old men fishing off the side of the pier. Two kids riding back and forth on skateboards. They should be in school, but who gives a shit? After all, they were homicide detectives, not the truant police. These kids were probably homeschooled entitled little shits who would make a beef with the rat squad if you ever questioned why they were out on a school day. McCarthy tried to look on the bright side.

Maybe they would roll out into the street and get hit by a bus. You can always hope.

The two detectives sat quietly on the bench and looked out at the harbor. The skyline of New York spread out in front of them. It’s funny, but when movies had those great shots of New York City, they were actually in Brooklyn, looking at lower Manhattan. That’s where you get the great views. Which they were not looking at. Instead, they gazed blankly at the water and thought about the case.

Torrez sipped from a cup of Cuban coffee that he had snagged from the bodega. McCarthy had gone old school and was nursing a small bottle of Yoo-Hoo. It gave him comfort as it reminded him of when he was a kid and he used to run out of the schoolyard on Cheever Place and go to Tony’s in the middle of the block for lunch. Tony had a big black cast-iron stove that he used to make the ingredients for sandwiches for the many generations of kids from Sacred Hearts and St. Stephen's grammar school he had fed throughout the decades. He had meatball heroes. Chicken parm. Even hot dogs that he would stuff in Italian bread with gobs of sauerkraut and mustard. But Dummy had a favorite. The 25-cent potato and sauce. A half a loaf of Italian bread stuffed with diced boiled potato covered in a rich red sauce. He would grab a sandwich and a Yoo-Hoo every day. It was the best food he had ever had in his life, and he longed to taste it again.

Tony’s was long gone. So was the school. And the generations of kids who went there. Everything changed. Change is never for the better.

“It looks like we are fucked, Dummy,” Torrez said as he scratched his leg under his black silk stocking. “It looks like the boyfriend is in the clear. It ain’t the guy from the app either. There wasn’t anyone from her job, and her roommates are all girls, so it wasn’t one of them. It looks like it has to be a stranger. That ain’t good.” McCarthy nodded in agreement. “Yeah, this is gonna suck if we have to find a rando. We don’t have any leads. Forensic sucks. The was just too much going on because she was in the Canal. It would take months to categorize what was on her body, and most of it would be bullshit.”

Torrez said, “I think we have to go in another direction. We need to look at any of the pervs in the neighborhood. It could be graduation day for one of them, you never know.” It happened all the time. A small-time criminal would stay in his lane, but every once in a while, they would graduate to a bigger and more dangerous crime. A shoplifter might graduate to armed robbery. A peeper might decide to become a toucher. A toucher might graduate to what they have here. It happened all the time. They had to touch all the bases on the perverts in the neighborhood.

“Yeah, that would be a good idea except for one thing. They all got rights now. We roll on them, and some Karen is gonna film us and put it on the Internet. We would be getting beefs right and left. We have to go easy when we do it. Out of sight of the street. Let’s get a list. I will have Holland look it up for us.”

Torrez sighed in frustration. “Do you think we have to look at that stiff from the dump? We might be able to see if there is a connection. At least, we will have more to look at when we compare the two.” McCarthy slugged down the last of his Yoo-Hoo. “Bite your tongue, Beaner. We don’t need another corpse on our tab. We might try to call them up and go over there to show them ours if they show us theirs. But I doubt it. That moolie has a hard-on for me. The only way we are going to get any dope is if we take the body, and I ain’t gonna do that unless they order me to do it.”

McCarthy hesitated but decided to bring up another possibility. “I got a call from the guineas. The old man wants us to look into a missing person. A girl from the neighborhood. She didn’t come home a couple of days ago. Supposedly, she is not a whore, so she isn’t shacking up. If the doer picked her, then he might have done a better job of hiding her.” Torrez thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I can see that. If the first one was an impulse, you can see how he just tossed over into the Canal. If the other body is part of the chain, then he tried to hide it by putting her in the dumpster, which ended up in the landfill. Maybe he got better at hiding his tracks. Except that doesn’t figure you know? Usually, they get worse at hiding it instead of better. They accelerate and get sloppy. They don’t get more careful. Not that I know about anyways.”

McCarthy had to agree. He didn’t have a hotshot psychology degree like the profilers you saw on TV. He did have almost forty-five years of street smarts, which was way better than any of the bullshit they teach you in college. Perps like this deteriorate. They didn’t get better at hiding their tracks. He remembered when he was on the task force for the Son of Sam. He was just a baby at that time. He remembered how they had rousted and tuned up every weenie-wagger and kid toucher in the five boroughs, and it was all for nothing. Berkowitz got caught because of a parking ticket.

“Maybe we look into this other kid just in case. This way, we don’t have to take on the other body. Plus, it never hurts to do a favor for the old man,” McCarthy said. Torrez turned to look at him. “Don’t try and bullshit me, man, I know you have to jump if he yells froggy. So don’t fool yourself and try to justify it. We can do it anyway because it is a righteous case. You know, I think it could quite possibly be related.”

They both turned to look out at the water and contemplated their next action. Then some sounds penetrated their brain fog. Yelling. Screaming. Cursing. What the fuck.

They looked down the pier to Coffey Street. There was a UPS truck parked at the entrance of the park. Packages were strewn all around, and the UPS guy was struggling with a thin guy in a wife-beater t-shirt. They were grappling with each other as a woman in a tight-fitting tank top and shorts was screaming her lungs out in a mixture of Spanish and English. A small crowd had gathered to watch and film it like it were a show put on for their benefit. Nobody did anything. Nobody ever did. They just filmed it for their Instagram.

McCarthy and Torrez got up and walked toward the melee. Torrez took his phone and called the precinct and told them to send a car. It was faster than 911. Unfortunately, it would take a minute, so they might have to intervene.

The UPS guy was holding onto the other guy’s arms for dear life. As they got closer, they could see that the other participant was a Spanish dude with plenty of tats and a shiv in his right hand. Even though the UPS guy outweighed him by about a hundred pounds, he was wiry and strong. If they didn’t intervene, this moron would be getting shanked for his birthday.

“Help, help! Stop it, Paco. Stop it. You can’t go back to Rikers! Please!” the woman wailed as the two combatants struggled in a weird dance on the sidewalk. She was attractive in a blousy sort of way with dyed blond hair and a curvy figure. She was just a little off to be considered a real beauty. Sort of like a J-Lo action figure that someone put in the microwave and melted a little, so it didn’t look quite right. Still, she seemed to have two dudes fighting to the death about her if that was what this was about.

“Okay, okay, break it up, you assholes,” McCarthy said as they got on the scene. He grabbed the Spanish dude in a bear hug since he seemed the more dangerous of the two, and Torrez pushed the UPS guy back. McCarthy realized he knew this guy. “Calm down, Paco, before I light you up. Drop the shiv now!” McCarthy still had a lot of strength even though he was an old fuck these days. He couldn’t haul off and bop this skell in the noggin because of all the cell phones. But he couldn’t let him open up this UPS package on Coffey Street either. So, he went for Paco’s package. He grabbed his nuts and twisted. Paco dropped the knife as you would when you had excruciating pains in your balls.

“Okay, okay, Dummy, I give, stop, stop, you’re killing me, man,” he said as the knife fell to the floor. McCarthy had him enveloped in a bear hug and stepped on the knife so it wouldn’t disappear. Two uniforms hustled from their patrol car that had just pulled up and parked behind the huge brown UPS truck. They grabbed the two combatants and hooked them up with handcuffs and separated them. They ignored the kids who were stealing packages that were all over the street. Finders’ keepers was still the law in Red Hook.

McCarthy followed Paco as the uniform dragged him toward the patrol car. “Hold on a second, Mills,” Dummy said. “I want to talk to him for a second.” “Okay, Dummy, but this prick is going in. He is on parole, and I am going to enjoy violating his ass.” Mills was a burly black police officer who had a hard-on for Spanish people. This is something that the incessant discussions of racism in mandatory sensitivity training classes never discuss. The woke police always harped on white supremacy and white racism and never examined the interpersonal relationships of other segments of the police department. The blacks and the Latins just did not get along. Nobody liked the Asians because they always aced the tests. They were all in competition for the slots in various promotions, and that led to really bad feelings. Like crabs in a bucket, they were always going at it. Or like Sonny Mills, they had a personal hard-on and just hated Spanish people. Sonny was notorious on the job for arresting any Spanish guy he got his hands on and tuning them up if he got the chance.

“Hold on, Sonny, I need to talk to Paco for a minute,” McCarthy said as he took the perp's arm and pushed him onto the trunk of the patrol car. “Paco ...  buddy, you stepped in this time. Why are you waving a shiv around and trying to stick that dumb fuck UPS driver?” Paco looked at Dummy with such hate in his eyes that he wanted to take a step back, but he didn’t do it. You can’t back down to a skell. They are like dogs. They smell fear and will attack even if they are chained up. “Look, I know you. I arrested you more than once, pally. You ain’t stupid. Talk to me and I will see what I can do for you.” Paco spat out a small amount of saliva mixed with blood. You could see that he was thinking if he should say anything to a cop he despised. He decided that he would.

“That maricon did something to my cousin. I know it. He had been after her for years. Even since she worked at the deli. He followed her from store to store, asking her out and trying to get over. He thinks his shit don’t stink and he can get any pussy he wants. Now he’s bothering her at the bank. I am gonna fuck up his shit,” Paco expelled his words venomously in a stream of invective in Spanish and didn’t take a moment to catch his breath. McCarthy stopped and thought about what he had just said. “Wait a minute, this Lydia is your cousin? The one that’s missing?” McCarthy asked. Now it was Paco’s turn to be surprised. “You know about that? How do you know?” “I know she is missing. Somebody asked me to look into it. What do you know about it, Chico?”

Paco couldn’t believe it. A cop was worried about his cousin. “Who asked about her?” Dummy knew he couldn’t say it was the old man. Luckily, he was a world-class liar. “Her son wanted to know. He is really worried about her. If you know anything that could help me, tell me now. For the kid’s sake.” Paco didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t trust this maricon. But he was going to Rikers for sure. Somebody should be looking for Lydia.

“She is a good girl. She wouldn’t be mixed up in any trouble. She lived for her son. Worked like a dog in every shit job you could to pay her rent and get him medicine. I know she would not wander off. Or forget about Julio. Something happened to her, and I think this hijo de puta knows something. Give me a minute in the cells, and I will find out for you. Then you can help. You do that and I owe you, man. I owe you big time, maricon.” Paco looked at McCarthy as sincerely as a career criminal and gang banger covered in prison tats could look at a cop. “I wish I could, Paco. If it turns out this fuck had something to do with it, well, you will get your chance. I promise you. In the meantime, do you have anything other than the fact that he was after her to go out with him?” “No, but he likes to hurt them. Ask around. You can find out.” “Ok, Paco, I will.”

McCarthy took him to the back seat and put him in the patrol car. He turned to Mills. “Sonny, I want him to get to the shop without any marks. You hear me motherfucker. Don’t make me mess up your shit.” Sonny chortled like he had heard the best joke in ages, “Yeah, you going to fuck up my shit for fucks sake. You ain’t got the balls, Dummy. You are on the way out, you cracker piece of shit, so why don’t you go fuck yourself.” McCarthy stepped up until he was right in the beat cop's face. “Don’t make me show you how wrong you can be fuckface. I still got enough juice to have your ass transferred out to Sunset Park so you can hang out with all those Latin Kings, that I know you love so much. Just get him back because I need him for a case. You fuck up, I will sic the captain on you. You know she likes destroying a man’s career. She will do it just for fun.” The beat cop gave Dummy a glare and got behind the wheel. His partner was already in the front seat, and they drove away.

When McCarthy got back to the UPS truck, they had some semblance of control of the scene. They had stopped the recreational looting, and two beat cops were taking a statement from the driver as he was throwing packages into the back of his truck. Torrez was standing at the side, looking at his phone.

“Hey, O’Brien, what do you have so far?” McCarthy asked the young Irish cop who was questioning the driver. She was the exception to the rule that they didn’t want Irish kids from Long Island on the force. It was fine if they were women. They had a quota, and she helped them tick a couple of boxes. “Nothing much. He says the guy came out of nowhere and tried to stab him.” “Yeah, well, that is not all there is to it. Right, boyo?” The driver looked at him and saw trouble looking back at him. “That’s exactly what happened. I know you. You’re Dummy McCarthy. I’m Angelo Federici. I’m from the neighborhood. You knew my old man. Youse guys went to school together. He tells stories about you. We came from down Sackett by the highway.” McCarthy laughed. “Yeah, I did, and I never liked the greasy Dago fuck. Looks like the meatball didn’t fall far from the tree. You’re coming with me, greaseball. Lock up the truck. O’Brien, you call UPS and tell them to send someone to pick it up if they want it to last through the night.” McCarthy grabbed the incredulous driver by the arm and started marching him toward the car. “Wait a minute, I am the injured party here! You can’t take me in. What did I do?” he pleaded. McCarthy pushed him into the back seat and made sure he banged his head on the roof when he pushed him into the car.

“I don’t know what you did, but I am sure I can come up with something.”

He always did.