The Ninth Step (2 page)

The man stood in an aisle of a small deli on Coney Island Avenue, not far from Jack’s Midwood apartment. The morning sunshine barely made it in through the grimy, advertisement-plastered windows.

Using his teeth, Powker ripped open the package’s crinkly plastic wrap. “Don’t worry,” he said, grinning. “I’ll pay for it.” The detective from the Seven-oh house (the Seventieth Precinct), was a stout, shambling man with thatched red hair, a ruddy face, and the bulbous, veiny nose of a man who liked his whiskey. He was a good cop, though; Jack had worked with him on a mugging gone bad a year or so back. Now, again, as a member of the Brooklyn South Homicide Task Force, he was here to provide the local cop with expert help in dealing with the dead.

Jack noticed the picture on the snack package, a freckle-faced girl wearing a straw hat. A blast from the past. It reminded him of his own childhood, and then of course he was thinking of his unexpected visitor the day before.

“You okay?” Powker asked.

Jack rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t get much sleep.” He needed coffee—and needed to focus on his job.

Powker’s eyebrows went up. “Some hot date action? You’re divorced, right?”

Jack manufactured a polite smile but didn’t respond. Over the other detective’s shoulder, at the end of the aisle, he could see a couple of pathologists from the medical examiner’s office crouched down, poking around the corpse of the day, a big Caucasian male. Jack caught a glimpse of the guy’s pale face. (Then again,
everyone
looked pasty under these weak fluorescent lights.) Beneath the head, a pool of blood had spread out across the dingy blue linoleum. Jack gazed calmly at the scene. He’d get his chance to check it out soon, after the M.E.’s boys were through and Crime Scene had a whack at it.

He turned to his new temporary partner. “How long ago’d this happen?”

“About an hour.”

“You talk to the clerk yet?”

“Briefly. He seems kinda shell-shocked.”

The guy they were referring to, a plump young Indian or Pakistani, sat on a stool behind the counter, hunched over, hugging himself. He wore a Mets cap and a weak mustache and looked like he was fervently wishing that he had called in sick today.

“What happened?”

“He says he doesn’t know. Some customer just went nuts on the vic here.”

“Were they having an argument or something?”

“He doesn’t think so. He heard some kinda quick commotion, and he looked up and the vic was already down.” Powker took another bite of his cake, then brushed crumbs from the front of his too-small sports jacket. “At least we know who the dead guy was: we found a driver’s license. Name’s Robert Brasciak. He lived three blocks away, on East Eighth.”

“Did the clerk know either of the guys?”

“He doesn’t think so. He’s new on the job.”

“Any other wits?”

Richie shook his head. “Not inside the store.”

Jack noticed that nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the clerk, even though the kid was clearly struggling with the trauma of having just witnessed a murder. He walked over to the counter. “You okay? You want some water or anything?”

The kid shook his head.

“Don’t worry,” Jack said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’re gonna need to ask you a few more questions, but we’ll get you out of here soon.”

He returned to his partner’s side. One of the pathologists, a gangly, bespectacled young guy chewing a big wad of gum, glanced up at the two detectives, then nodded at a bloody object on the floor, a few feet from the corpse. “That looks like your weapon. The rim of it matches the kosh in our friend here’s head.”

Powker grinned. “The
kosh
? Is that a technical term?”

The pathologist shrugged. “It is now.”

In Jack’s decade and a half with the task force, he had seen a great variety of instruments of sudden mortality: the usual guns and knives, of course, but also a World War I bayonet, a heavy gilded picture frame, a clock radio (thrown into a bathtub), a number of baseball bats (wood and aluminum), even a poisonous snake (an East African Gaboon viper, according to the zoo employee who had managed to bag it up). Today’s weapon, though, was one of the most mundane he had ever recorded: a can of baked beans.

He glanced away, down the aisle of bright products arrayed in neat rows. A refrigerator case full of energy drinks and sodas; some bins full of unhappy-looking vegetables and overripe bananas. He frowned: here he was, assigned to the most humdrum case in the world, when there was another murder he desperately wanted to be investigating. The thing was, that one had taken place almost four decades ago.

Powker took out a notepad and started sketching the layout of the crime scene.

Jack returned his attention to his present surroundings. The place was like a thousand other New York delis, though the detective did notice a few items that indicated the specific ethnic makeup of the neighborhood: some fat green Mexican cactus leaves in the vegetable display, a product labeled Bakar Khani in the baked goods section. The front window was half-covered with beer posters and Lotto ads—bad sight lines for any potential witnesses who might have been outside.

“That reminds me,” Powker said, following Jack’s gaze. “My wife wants me to buy a bunch of tickets today. It’s up to eighty-something mil.”

Jack frowned. “The lottery’s a sucker’s game.” Then, realizing that he had just offhandedly insulted his new partner’s spouse, he held up a hand. “No offense.”

Powker shrugged good-naturedly. “None taken. But I’m not gonna send you a postcard when we get to Acapulco.”

Jack pulled out his own pad. “Let’s see what else the register guy might have to say.”

Just as they reached the end of the aisle, the front door opened and a young uniform, the First Officer on the Scene, poked his head in. “Excuse me, detectives. A guy out here says he’s the owner. He’s pretty jazzed up.”

Jack nodded. “Let him in.”

In marched a short, imperious-looking Indian or Pakistani wearing a long linen shirt over pajama-like pants. He glanced toward the back of the store, then stared at the detectives. “What on earth is going on?”

Jack stared back. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

The man peered down the aisle at the victim. His air of indignation deflated a bit. “This is terrible, terrible. Who is this man?”

Jack shrugged. “We don’t know yet. Does the name Robert Brasciak mean anything to you?”

The owner shook his head.

“Would you mind taking a closer look at him?”

The owner looked away, uneasy.

“The sooner we can find out what happened here, the sooner your store can get back to normal.”

The man followed the detectives down the aisle. From about six feet away, they stared down at the body. The victim lay faceup, with his eyes rolled back in his head. It was a hard-planed face, like that of a backstreet boxer, with an oddly small mouth, which hung open slackly, as if he was sleeping off a bad three-day drunk.

“You recognize him?” Jack asked.

The owner nodded gravely. “I think so. He comes in sometimes. A customer.”

“Did you notice anything about him?”

The owner frowned. “Not a friendly man.”

Jack sensed that he was holding something back. “What? Anything you can tell us might help.”

“I think … he does not like us. Pakistanis, I mean. He will buy our products, and he will give us his money, but he does not respect us.” He frowned down at the bloody floor. “This, ah, this mess here. Do the police clean this up? I don’t want my people to have to touch this.”

Jack nodded in sympathy. “We can recommend a professional service. They specialize in these matters.”

The owner unstiffened a little more. “So what happened? Have you spoken to Aban?” He nodded toward the front counter.

“Your guy says he didn’t really see what went on. And he says you don’t have video surveillance.”

The owner glanced at his employee, then lowered his voice. “Please, come with me.”

Jack and his new partner exchanged puzzled looks, but they followed the man as he marched briskly down the left aisle, the one unpopulated by dead bodies, past a display of mops and cleaning supplies, through a back door, and into a dim hallway full of a sour foreign cooking smell. An open doorway on the right revealed a small storeroom packed with boxes and product-crammed shelves. The owner turned toward a closed door on the left. He pulled out a key, opened it, and gestured for the detectives to enter. They did, and found themselves in an even smaller room, not much bigger than a walk-in closet. An office. The owner marched over to a gray metal cabinet, pulled out another key, and yanked the door open triumphantly.

Jack and his partner stared at a small TV perched on the top shelf. On its little black-and-white screen, Jack could see a grainy bird’s-eye view of one of the store’s narrow aisles, facing toward the window, with the edge of the front counter just visible on the left. One of the M.E.’s boys stood up, emerging into view.

Next to the TV sat a VCR.

“Sweet baby Jesus!” said Powker.

The owner smiled, sheepish. “My employees don’t know. This way, I can see if they are behaving.”

“Is there a tape in there?”

“Yes indeed.”

Jack grinned at his partner. “Maybe you just hit the lottery after all.” The case might be wrapped up before lunchtime.

It took a few minutes of rewinding, watching customers pop in and out of the store like hyper little windup dolls, before they found the crucial scene.

First, the empty aisle. Then someone strolled in the front door. The picture was lousy, but you could see that it was a young guy, maybe mid-thirties, with a dark complexion and shiny black hair. Pakistani also, or Indian. (Jack had no idea how to tell the difference.) The guy picked up a shopping basket from a stack by the door, then walked toward the camera, casual and calm. He stopped to pick out a few items from the shelves, then drifted past the camera and disappeared from view.

Jack turned to the deli owner. “Do you recognize this man?”

The deli owner shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Not a regular.”

They returned their attention to the screen. Less than a minute later, the door opened and a big Caucasian walked in. The victim, alive. He ignored the clerk at the register, then ambled down the aisle toward the camera. He stopped to pick something off a shelf and stared down, reading the label.

The first customer returned into view, facing away from the camera. He walked a few feet down the aisle, looking at the shelf on his right, then looked ahead and stopped. The vic didn’t look up. Maybe five seconds elapsed, Guy One just standing there, carrying his plastic shopping basket with his left hand, staring at the vic. Suddenly, he reached into the basket and lifted something out: it looked like the can of beans. He rushed forward. The vic just had time to look up, startled. Still holding the basket in his left hand, Guy One raised his right arm, then brought the can arcing viciously down against the victim’s head. Once, twice. With the second blow, a small spray of blood flew out. The vic staggered back against a shelf. One more blow and he went down.

His killer stood there for a couple more seconds, staring, and then he stepped over the vic and rushed toward the door. As he came to the front counter, he dropped his shopping basket on the floor, and then he pushed through the door and disappeared out into a rectangle of bright sun. Once he was outside, he ran right: you could see him flicking past the posters in the window.

Jack rewound the tape; in reverse, the spray of blood looked like it was getting sucked back into the victim’s head. He played the scene again. “You see that?” he said to his partner. “The vic didn’t say a word before he got hit.” He was thinking about what the owner had told them about the man disrespecting Pakistanis, but there was no evidence of that on the tape. “And I don’t think the perp said anything either, or else the vic would’ve looked up.”

Powker shook his head. “Weird. They didn’t have time for any kind of argument, at least not inside the store. And if they’d been arguing outside, they wouldn’t have just strolled in and gone shopping.”

“So the perp walks around from the other aisle, and
bing
, he runs into this Robert Brasciak. The question is, did he know him? If not, maybe we’re looking at an EDP.”
Emotionally Disturbed Person.
Jack scratched his cheek again. “If he
did
know him, he must’ve had a hell of a beef.”

THEY HAD TO WAIT
for the Crime Scene Unit to show up, take fingerprints, and check for other evidence. Jack found himself thinking about yesterday’s visitor again. “I’m gonna step outside for a little fresh air,” he told Powker. He stopped by the front door to pour himself a cup of watery coffee, then paid for it at the cash register, along with some money for his partner’s snack. He glanced down: the perp’s shopping basket was still there on the floor. A liter bottle of Coke. Three oranges. A stick of butter. A couple of eggplants. Some ice cream. Hopefully the items would have picked up some good fingerprints.

Outside, the sidewalk had been blocked off with a reel of yellow crime scene tape. A couple of radio cars were parked at the curb, and their uniforms leaned against the hoods and shot the bull, awaiting instruction from the detectives. Their walkie-talkies squawked intermittently; the brakes on a city bus squealed as it pulled in toward the curb a few yards away.

Jack took a deep breath of the spring air and looked back at the store. Several tiers of cheap floral bouquets graced the front of the little bodega. A sign ran above:
BEER, SODA, CANDY, COFFEE, LOTTO, CIGARETTES.
Reflexively, the detective sought out the pattern. When you thought about it, he mused, the place was a regular pit stop for minor vices, for people seeking some reliable little hit of pleasure during their daily grind. And who could blame them?

He glanced down at his watch. The Crime Scene Unit could be delayed for a while, if their teams were busy with other cases. Sometimes the job seemed to be all about waiting.

A big truck came lumbering along Coney Island Avenue, which was a drab commercial stretch of car washes, auto parts emporia, international phone card stores, and humble Middle Eastern food joints that fed the many brown-skinned local taxi and car service drivers. Their wives strolled by, wearing bright saris or somber head scarves, surrounded by lively children. The area was home to Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and other Muslim immigrants.