Keeplock: A Novel of Crime (36 page)

The hole was maybe three foot square and I had to kneel to get through. I was much closer to trusting Jocko, but I kept him in sight as I crawled into the adjoining apartment. When I got up, my knees and elbows were covered with dust.

“I haven’t started in here yet.” He swept his hand across the room, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “But take a look at this. You can get to the roof
and
the fire escape from here. If, like, someone you don’t wanna meet up with is comin’ through the front door.” He managed a weak smile. “So whatta ya think? Is it all right?”

“It’ll be okay for a couple of days, which is all I need.”

I took him back into the first apartment, laid out several thick lines of cocaine, watched while he snorted them up, then poured out several more. When I had his head where I wanted it, I started to talk. I told him about getting out of prison and how these two cops, Condon and Rico, met me as I got off the bus. How they told me they were going to have me violated, get me sent back to Cortlandt for another five years. How they were preventing me from doing what I had to do.

“It’s bad luck, ya know? I was away for a long time. They should’ve retired or been transferred to another precinct, but there they were, waiting for me when I got off the fuckin’ bus. Where’s the justice in that?”

Actually, I had several plans in mind. Or, more exactly, one plan with several methods of execution. The easiest, by far, involved my good pal Jocko making a phone call to Midtown South, locating Condon and Rico, then selling my ass for whatever he could get.

But there was always the possibility that Jocko would be satisfied with the two hundred, so I intended to phone Condon and make sure he knew where to start looking. I wanted him to come down to the Lower East Side armed with a mug shot, ferret out his own snitches, beg for the use of his brother officers’ snitches, canvass the area for however long it took to find me. When I was finished, he’d have no choice in the matter. But there was still a chance that Jocko wouldn’t make the call
and
Condon wouldn’t be able to pick up the well-marked trail I’d left for him. In that case, I was going to put the barrel of my 9mm against Jocko’s head and guarantee that Condon got the message from the horse’s mouth.

Jocko listened to every word I said. Stoned as he was, he would have listened to a Haitian translate a Japanese phone book into Creole. When I told him we were finished and that he should take off, he seemed positively crushed.

“I don’t have any other place to stay.”

“Try the subway. And give me the keys. I’ll leave the door open when I split.”

One more reason for him to hate me. One more excuse to sell me out. Just in case he needed an excuse.

After he left, I waited fifteen minutes, then went down the fire escape. I found a bodega and bought ten cans of tuna fish, a can opener, a dozen small candles, and four liters of Diet Coke. With no way to know how long this thing would drag out, I’d need some kind of nourishment and plenty of caffeine. Then I walked up the street to a pay phone and picked up the receiver.

Somewhere in the midst of my wanderings I’d remembered that the system I’d been warned about in Cortlandt was named Caller I.D. Condon would have the number of the pay phone before he took the call. The cops have a book that let’s them go from a phone number to a name and address. In this case the name would be New York Telephone and the address would be the northeast corner of 7th Street and Avenue D, a block from where I was holed up.

I listened for the dial tone, dropped in my quarter, punched in Condon’s precinct number, and was rewarded with a second dial tone. I did it three times before I gave up and walked to the next pay phone, a block away. This time I didn’t have to bother with the details because the phone had been torn off its support.

My brain formed the constructive phrase “dick, shit, fuck, piss.” I took it as evidence of a growing maturity and walked back the other way, to Avenue D and 5th Street. The phone on that corner was intact, a good sign, no doubt. I punched in Condon’s precinct number and heard it ring on the other end.

“Brelinski.”

“Who?”

“Brelinski.”

“I’m callin’ Officer Condon.”

“
Detective
Condon.”

“Yeah, Detective Condon.”

“He’s in the toilet.”

“You know when he’s coming back?”

“What am I, the towel boy?”

“What you are is the odds-on favorite for the cops’ ballbuster of the year award.”

He laughed appreciatively. “Hold ya water, mutt, he’ll be here in a minute.”

“Whatta ya mean by ‘mutt.’ You got radar?”

“You’re callin on the mutt phone. We got one phone for humans and one for mutts. You’re on the mutt phone.”

I should have known. “I’ll try to catch him later.”

“Who should I say called?”

“Tell him Old Yeller.”

“Wait a second, he’s comin’.” He let the phone crash down onto the desk.

“Condon.”

“It’s Pete.”

He took a deep breath. “Jesus, Pete, where ya been? We nearly gave up on ya.”

“Where I’ve been is none of your business.”

He took another deep breath. “All right, I’m not gonna argue about it. So where do we go from here.”

I wanted to say, “Upward and onward,” but I didn’t. “I’m trying to figure a way out of this.”

“Why don’t you stop being such a hardhead and let us help you? We can handle Eddie and others. You can’t, Pete. You can’t do shit to stop them. How long are ya gonna hide? A week? A month? Sooner or later you’re gonna have to run and then
everybody’s
gonna be after you. Eddie, the parole board, me, everybody. What’s the point?”

“I don’t trust you. If you get the chance, you’re gonna blow me away.”

“Pete, you
gotta
trust me. You don’t have any other choice.”

“I have a choice, Condon. I definitely have a choice.”

He took a third deep breath. This was exactly what he
didn’t
want to hear.

“And I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t take advantage of it,” I continued. “You set me up. You told me you were going to prevent a murder and now I’m a co-conspirator in
two
murders. Correction,
three
murders. I forgot about Simon.”

“Who’s gonna believe you? You got no proof. Most likely
you’re
the one who’ll get arrested.”

“We could go on like this forever. You want me to trust you, you gotta prove yourself.”

“And how am I supposed to do that? You want me to take a lie detector test?”

“I want you to kill Eddie. And I’m giving you forty-eight hours to do it. If you don’t get it done, I’m gonna take the money and my story and walk into the D.A.’s office.”

“I need more time, Pete. Two days ain’t enough.”

“Bullshit. We’re talkin’ about four people on the run, three ex-cons and a woman. They don’t have any money and they can’t
all
be staying with relatives. One or two of them gotta be on the streets somewhere. You find that one or two and convince them to take you to Eddie.”

“Pete, don’t hang up. Don’t—”

On the way back to my hole, I tossed the rest of the cocaine into a storm sewer. At the time, I considered it the noble thing to do. Maybe it was, but half an hour later, I wanted that coke almost as much as I wanted to lock the sights of my 9mm on Condon’s head.

I knew from past experience that if I held on for another couple of hours, the urge would disappear. I understood that my desire was chemical, even though it felt like my very soul was crying out for cocaine. Somewhere along the way, I began to tell myself not to be a fool. Cocaine would give me the energy to stay awake until Condon showed up, even if it took a few days. What was the point of playing the reformed convict? All I had to do was climb down the fire escape. They were selling coke two blocks away.

I ignored it all, but in the end I had to pay another penalty. After the cocaine pushed through my system, I flipped from energetic and alert to exhausted and nearly unconscious. I crawled through the hole into the adjoining apartment. There was an ancient sofa near the wall furthest from the window that led to the fire escape. I wedged myself behind it and fell asleep.

I woke to the sound of sirens. A dozen voices screamed in my head. The cops were coming, hundreds of them. Condon had found a way out of it, a way to keep himself clear. I was going away forever, away from Ginny and back to the hell of the Cortlandt Correctional Facility.

Mmmmrrrrowwwwrrrrrr.

My head was up and the gun was out before I could form anything like a coherent plan. What were the sirens doing in the room? How did they get sirens in the goddamned room?

Mmmmmrrrrrrowwwwrrrrrr.

What I saw, when I was able to focus my eyes, was a large gray tomcat sitting on the windowsill. The son of a bitch had a meow that spread itself across three octaves.

“Jesus, cat, you have any idea how close you came? Maybe you
do
have nine lives, but you oughta consider that what I’m gonna shoot you with is called a
nine
millimeter.”

He stared at me with calm cat eyes, then jumped down into the room. I opened one of the Diet Cokes and drank directly from the bottle. There’s enough caffeine in regular Coke to raise the dead. If you take away the sugar, you get the full effect. I won’t say the taste of warm chemicals was pleasant, but a few minutes later, I was close to being awake.

Mrrrowww.

Now that he had my attention, he was shortening his act.

“C’mere.” I opened a can of tuna fish and put it by my feet. The cat paid no attention until the smell hit his nose. Then his whole body stiffened and his eyes locked on mine.

I gouged out a chunk of tuna and ate it. “You better get in on this before it’s too late.”

There’s no way to know what a cat’s thinking by looking into its eyes. I knew there was something behind that stare, but I couldn’t guess what it was.

“Last chance, brother.”

The cat must have read my mind. He came across the room slowly, his body in a crouch, every muscle alert. I pushed the tuna away from me with my foot and he jumped back ten feet.

“You wanna—”

I heard a crash down in the yard behind the building and a dog began to bark. My heart froze for a moment, then I crossed to the window and looked out, careful to conceal my body and as much of my head as possible. I found an elderly man picking through the rubble and a Latina woman shouting at him in Spanish from a window.

I turned away, sighing, resolving to get my fear under control. I couldn’t afford to react this way if I meant to be in command of the situation when Condon finally showed up. I needed to be more like the cat. He’d taken advantage of my panic to enjoy a free meal.

I watched him pick at the food. A hungry dog would have eaten the whole thing, can and all, by this time, but the cat only nibbled at the tuna, its ears and whiskers pulled back, its eyes narrowed to yellow slits.

“Chew your food. You wanna make yourself—”

The
dog.
An idea formed in my brain like it’d been shot from a cannon. When the commotion started, a dog had barked. It was the same dog that’d barked from inside the second-floor apartment as I made my way up and down the fire escape last night.

I gave the dog a name on the spot. Radar. Which is exactly what he’d be. For the first time I began to think I might actually do what I had to do and still get away to Ginny. Good ol’ Radar was a big break for me, a personal Distant Early Warning Line.

Something touched my arm and I felt my skin curl. The damn cat had finished the tuna. Now he wanted love and understanding. I ran my hand over his skinny body. The poor bastard had scars everywhere. One of his ears looked like it’d been put through a paper shredder.

Cats born on the streets never come close to people. Once upon a time, this cat had had a home. Then his trusted humans had tossed him out into the street like so much garbage. I wondered what he’d done? Had he missed the litter box once too often? Or scratched one of the children?

Maybe they just got tired of feeding him. Maybe they just opened the door and dumped him in the hall. He’d hung out for a while until hunger overcame whatever need he had for humans. Then he’d gone out onto the streets where he’d been (and was) subject to vicious children, careening vehicles and, most of all, other street cats. Now his life was nothing more than an expression of the will to survive and to reproduce.

“You keep this up,” I told myself, “you’re not gonna be able to see Condon through the tears. Stop feelin’ sorry for yourself. You know you don’t give a shit about the cat.”

I opened up another can of tuna and found the cat’s face in it before I could grab a chunk for myself. I pushed him away and tossed him a piece.

“Look here, cat, this ain’t the supermarket. You gotta pace yourself.”

Good advice for the both of us. I finished the tuna, took a healthy pull on the soda, then went back to the window and looked outside. I wanted to get an idea of the layout before it got dark again. It’d been near dawn when I fell asleep and, without a watch, I had no idea of the current time.

Peering through the open window didn’t help much—the sky was carpeted with heavy, dark clouds—but I could see well enough to know there was only one way out, the alley between my building and one to the east. The small yards separating the buildings on the north and south were fenced. In the dark, I’d be a blind man running an obstacle course. Much better to kick out the front door if I had to leave before Condon showed up. That alley was ambush heaven.

The rain began an hour or so later. Accompanied by distant thunder and an occasional flash of lightning, it came straight down, exploding against the concrete, brick, and stone of the city. I had no particular problem with April showers (or May flowers either), but the noise of the rain, echoing in the courtyards, would provide cover for Condon and Rico if they came before it ended.

Well, those are the breaks—a dog for me, the rain for them. I got up and went back into the front apartment, lit several new candles, and found a sharp knife. Then I cut a hole through the back of the couch, just big enough to see the window and the far wall, and settled down to wait.