Black Midnight Read online

  The dealer smugly grinned. “You got the cash, Julio?” He indicated money with his fingers. His customer became more agitated, and the dealer enjoyed watching him cringe. Sadistically.

  Julio’s face was strained and pinched. Sweaty. “You playin’ fuckin’ games with me, man? I told you, Angel. Gonna have it all for you tomorrow. I’m good for it.”

  “An I told you, Julio. You got money tomorrow, talk to me tomorrow. Tonight smoke a joint. Send your old lady back to the street.”

  Julio’s eyes were red and slitted. “Don’t screw me, man.” He was angry and half crazed to buy a fix. At this point ready to do almost anything. “Don’t walk out on me, man. Hear me? Nobody walks out on me.”

  “Screw yourself, maricon.”

  “But you give it to the faggot nigger.” He grabbed Angel by the collar of his raincoat and weakly pushed him toward the alley. Angel ducked as he threw a wild, aimless punch.

  Angel spun on his heels like a cat. He stood in a crouch, panting. “I’m warning you, man,” Angel yelled, pointing his finger. “Back off. Come at me again and I’ll kill you. Fuckin’ maggot.”

  Link quickly interceded. Stepped between them both before the pusher could pull his knife. “Hey, stay cool. Here.” He strutted to where the junkie stood and took out the packet. “Give me your twenty, I’ll sell you some.”

  Julio was wheezing for breath. He scrutinized the tall black man, wary of the buy, but feeling desperate. “You gonna sell to me, man?”

  “Sure, man. I got enough shit to go round. Just give me your money.” Angel quietly slipped into the shadows of the alley. Out of sight, he made a beeline down the block. “You crazy, man? You let him go,” wailed Julio, jumping around at the hurried footsteps.

  “We don’t need him no more, sucker. We can take care of this ourselves.” Link beckoned for Julio to come up with his cash.

  His frail hands were trembling. So were his knees. His voice was raspy and dry. His chapped lips mouthed the words barely audibly. “Here. This is all I got. Take it.” He reached deep into a pocket, took out a folded bill, watching eagerly as the black man prepared to open the contents of his packet and divide it. “You gonna like this shit a lot, Julio. Promise you.”

  “Just give it to me, okay? Cut the bullshit.” He was shaking.

  Link smiled fully. “Okay, man, relax.” He handed all the crack over.

  Julio stood bewilderedly. He anxiously reached for the packet when Link’s hands unexpectedly lunged out. He threw the junkie hard against the wall. The packet fell to the ground. Julio staggered dizzily. “Hey, you fuckin’ rippin’ me off?”

  “Spread ’em, asshole. Hands up — against the wall.” Link was at his side, gun in hand. He indicated for him to move.

  Julio stared at him with huge surprised eyes. Terrified eyes. “You a cop, man? You a fuckin’ cop?”

  “Against the wall before I ram this up your ass.”

  “You bullshitting me or what?”

  “This look like I’m bullshitting, sucker?”

  He pressed the barrel of his gun against Julio’s face. Beads of sweat broke out everywhere. “You’re busted, maricon.”

  “Busted? I ain’t no pusher, man! What the fuck you doin’?”

  “What do you think I’m doin’?” He frisked the junkie deftly with one hand, finding a razor blade taped to the inside cuff of his pants. He yanked it free and held it in front of Julio’s glazed eyes. The blade glinted. “You gonna use this on someone, maybe? Roll somebody tonight?”

  “Fuck you, nigger.” He spat in his face.

  Link spun him around. His knee rammed punishingly into Julio’s groin. The junkie doubled over in pain. He held his groin, fell to his knees, tried to crawl, loudly crying, “I only bought a fix, man. That ain’t no crime. I done nothing.” He moaned as Link yanked him back by his hair sharply.

  “You ain’t goin’ anywhere.” He kicked him in the ribs.

  Julio had an uncontrollable coughing spasm. “Why me, man? Why you pickin’ on me? I don’t know you.”

  “Shut up, turkey.” Link held the .38 with both hands, glanced around to be sure no one was around. “You’re a loser, Julio. Lights out. Say a prayer.”

  Julio started to cry fretfully. He looked up at the looming black figure, the barrel of the gun, agony etched into his pained features. “Please! I told you, man — I ain’t no goddamn pusher — what you want from me, huh? Tell me. Just tell me.”

  Link menacingly hovered over him, brandishing the pistol, aiming it directly at Julio’s head. “Okay. I’m gonna tell you what I want, scumbag. And you’re gonna tell me.”

  “Tell you what, man? What?”

  That was when Warren appeared.

  Warren flashed his badge. “Police. What’s going on?”

  Julio was more frightened than ever. “This guy gonna kill me, man!” he wailed to the stranger. “This clown’s gonna blow me away.”

  “Right on, pussy.” Link chortled. The barrel aimed between the eyes.

  “Don’t let him do it!” cried Julio.

  Link pretended to squeeze the trigger.

  Julio started to scream. He was terrified. Frozen with fear. In the background, the blare of Latin brass helped muffle his pleas.

  Julio covered his head with his hands, shut his eyes tightly. “Bang,” said Link, laughing.

  Julio gasped for air. “He’s nuts, man! Make him leave me alone.”

  As he rose to his knees, Link dragged him further into the alley, pushed him to the ground. “Lay flat and stay that way.”

  Julio flattened on his back, arms and legs outstretched. He could feel the damp urine along the cracks of broken cement. “Okay. Okay. Anything you say. Only go easy, that’s all.”

  “Gonna kill me a spic junkie,” said Link to the white cop.

  “Please, no! Don’t let him do it! I ain’t done nothin’!”

  Link showed his badge to Warren, acting as if the two men had never laid eyes on one another before. “I’m with Narcotics. Been trailing this one all night. He buys, then resells the stuff.”

  Tears were streaming down Julio’s face. He sobbed as he stammered to the white cop, in horror of the black one. “I don’t sell no junk to nobody, man. I swear it. I don’t. Believe me.”

  “He’s been seen in front of schools, pushing it to kids,” said Link.

  Warren grimaced. “That true? You get off that way — kids?”

  “He’s crazy, man! Loco. What I gotta do to make you listen?”

  “Let me settle this here and now,” said Link. He pointed his pistol again. “Save the taxpayers a fortune. Clean the streets of vermin like him.”

  Julio was vomiting. “I’m sick, man. Can’t you see I’m sick?”

  “Sick? You gonna be dead if you don’t do what I say,” Link told him. “Get on your knees.” He gave him a small kick in the ass.

  When Julio complied, Warren kneeled down beside him. He grabbed him roughly by the hair, lifted his head. “Only the lowest scum pushes to kids. Understand what I mean? Filth like you doesn’t deserve to live. Think I’ll let the man do his thing if you don’t cooperate. Comprende?”

  Julio nodded as he wiped vomit from his mouth with his sleeve.

  “If I bust you, you go to jail for maybe thirty years. How old you gonna be when you get out? How many faggots gonna ride your ass?”

  “Oh God.” Julio was wailing again. “I never sold nothin’ to any kid. Never! You must got me mixed up with somebody else.” He was trying to think as fast as his tortured brain would permit.

  “Listen. Angel — he’s a pusher,” he cried. “He sells dope to kids. Sells them anything. I seen him do it. I’ll swear to it, man. I’m a witness. I swear to God. But let me go. Just let me go.”

  Link kneeled also, pulled Julio closer and whispered into his ear. “I can fuck you up bad. Real bad. You hear me?” Julio nodded.

  “Then listen, and listen good, my man. There’s a car down the block. You an’ me are gonna walk to it and g
et in. Then we take a ride, have a talk.”

  “I got rights. You can’t do this — “

  Link stood there and grinned. “No? Try me. Just try me.”

  IX

  “We kept him up all night. Asked the same questions over and over. At first he panicked. Then he calmed down. But now he’s in no shape to tell us anything much. Question is, do we keep holding him or let him go?”

  The noise from the street made it difficult to hear. Yvonne held a hand to one ear, the telephone in the other. “Where are you now?”

  “Not far from Farmer’s Market.”

  “Don’t do anything yet. I’ll take the responsibility. Give me about an hour, I’ll be there.”

  “Right.” He gave her a few brief directions, then hung up. Yvonne gulped down her coffee. Ten minutes later she was out of the house.

  He was waiting for her by the bus stop. Yvonne tightened the belt of her raincoat as she stepped out of the cab. Hands in her pockets, she casually walked toward him. Her gray leather pocketbook swung from her arm.

  They met without greeting. Trucks and van lined both sides of the busy street. Warren bought two cups of coffee at a doughnut shop, and they drank it while they walked. It was a chilly, winterlike morning. It wasn’t raining, but the sky remained forebodingly thick with clouds.

  “You look frazzled round the edges,” she said. “Like you had a really rough night.”

  “Gone through worse.” He rubbed his stubbled chin, feeling he needed much more than a shave. His salt and pepper hair was disheveled and uncombed, fingernails dirty. He felt more than just unclean. Like he’d have to scrub under a hot shower forever to wash away the grime and odor.

  “I’m beat. Caught a few hours’ sleep before dawn, relieved Link. I don’t think he’s slept for thirty-six hours.” Shoppers and neighborhood workers jostled around them. Store signs hung in a variety of languages: Korean, Greek, Italian, one Chinese, a few Spanish. Little English could be heard on the street. Mostly foreigners worked in the area of the city’s largest market.

  A veritable convoy of heavy trucks carrying produce rumbled in procession over the badly paved road. Deliveries coming in from Long Island and New Jersey. “There’s a small park over there,” said Yvonne, indicating a wedge of greenery amid the concrete. “Let’s sit and talk.”

  The bench was damp from yesterday’s rain. Fallen leaves were scattered everywhere. Warren sat wearily, leaned back against the wooden slats and stretched out his feet. Pigeons flocked about, eating away at a scattering of breadcrumbs someone had tossed.

  Yvonne stared down into her coffee container. “Anything useful come out of this?” Like her partners, she was seriously concerned with the ramifications of holding a suspect illegally. Julio could press grievous charges against his captors, she knew. The law commonly referred to it as kidnapping.

  “We’ll have to let him go soon,” said Warren, as if reading her thoughts. “Fortunately, he’s too messed up to recognize anyone. Doesn’t even know where he is. Needs a fix of something badly.”

  “He wasn’t beaten or anything?”

  “No. Just withdrawal symptoms.”

  “Drop him off at a hospital when you’re done. Bellevue will admit him.” She said it without emotion. Warren nodded.

  “Did he cooperate willingly?”

  “At first he was too scared not to. Later he became belligerent. Demanded a lawyer. Guess he thought we’d taken him to a precinct.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Link did most of the interrogating. Kept asking him how he knew so much about One Hundred Thirty-Fifth Street. How he could be so sure it was going to happen again. He told us he read the newspapers. Denied he knew anything about anything. That whatever he’d been saying about what would happen next was just a story. To impress his friends. Raise his stature in the neighborhood, make everyone believe that he’s somebody important, not just a wiped-out junkie. It was pathetic.”

  Yvonne drew a deep breath and sighed. “Dead end?”

  “Probably. Managed to get a few other names, though. Ran down a list of local pushers half as long as your arm. One of them used to be tied in with Los Campions de Liberdad.”

  “We’ll pass it all on to City wide.” She was disappointed and didn’t try to hide it. She offered him a cigarette. Warren took it gratefully, accepted a light. It was windy, and he rubbed at his arms.

  “By dawn he was starting to convulse,” he went on, exhaling. “We had to ease up. Link ran out and bought some candy somewhere. Fed him as much chocolate and sugar as he could swallow. It helped ease him for a while. Get a little sleep. When he woke he ranted on, crying, telling us how he never was respected by anybody. That by talking big he could make people listen. Take notice. Earn a reputation for himself.”

  “Pitiful.” The city was infested with such sad, poor creatures looking for any measure of recognition in their sorry dilemmas.

  “Yeah. Twenty-three years old. He’ll never make it to twenty-five.”

  “Any conclusions?”

  Warren ran his fingers through his hair, grimaced. “One recurring theme, Yvonne. At first it almost slipped me by. But it became a pattern. Link noticed it, too. While he was insisting he didn’t know anything about the bombing, he kept referring to the bomber as ‘she’.”

  “What?”

  “Kept saying things like, ‘How would I know why she did it.’ Or, ‘if cops are so smart why don’t we already know what she’s going to do next.’ Things like that. Eerie.” He felt chills.

  “Warren,” she said, leaning toward him, “did he repeat this all the time?”

  “Only after he became really agitated. At times he was delirious. At that point we couldn’t take anything he was saying seriously.”

  “Someone may not realize what they’re saying in a delirium, but they’re too fevered to fabricate a lie, either.”

  He looked at her with a peculiar stare. “Don’t play shrink all the time, Yvonne. We can’t trust a word he said. I doubt he could give you his proper address.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.” She sat thoughtfully for a while, swilling the coffee around in its container, mulling it over. Finally, she said, “He may be totally wiped out, I agree. But don’t let our man go just yet. I’ll take full responsibility for it. Because this much I am sure of: For some reason, real or imagined, our friend Julio really believes the bomber is a woman.”

  “You expect me to swallow this?” asked Winnegar.

  “I think it could have promise,” Yvonne replied cautiously.

  It was obvious in his expression he didn’t give this development much credence. Nor was he pleased that her squad had used last-resort illegal tactics to kidnap a junkie. “Do you have any idea how stupid a stunt like this was?”

  “We had no other way to obtain immediate results,” she explained.

  He leaned forward, hands clasped in a gesture of irritation. “Ever heard of having a judge issue a warrant, DiPalma? Legally?”

  “Yes, captain. But we didn’t want an arrest. Didn’t want anything formal to be put on the books.”

  “Kidnapping is a federal crime. They don’t ‘put it on the books’ — they throw the book at you.” He lifted his hands up in the air. “Four veteran detectives — professionals — acting like hot dogs in a movie. What the hell do you think this is?”

  “An investigation, Captain Winnegar. I employed TTF tactics. Took a suspect off the street and held him. We had a lead — okay, maybe a weak one, but under the circumstances — ”

  “You’re lucky you’re not in court today posting bail, you know that? Think you’d look good on camera, DiPalma? Handcuffed?”

  “I’m not asking you to buy this lead, sir. Only understand it.”

  He regarded her with squinted eyes staring over the rim of his bifocal glasses. “But you do? You buy it?”

  “Not exactly. It does bother me, though. Why he kept referring to the bomber as ‘she.’ Wouldn’t you say it’s at least peculiar?�
��

  Winnegar had no answer.

  “How many other leads had P.D. followed up, already?” said Yvonne.

  “We have fives by the hundreds.”

  “And the FBI? What have they come up with?”

  “You know the answer to that. Their hands are full trying to sort out the radicals. This kind of investigation needs time.”

  “And how many field investigations show the slightest promise?”

  He heaved a sigh. “None.”

  “That’s my point, captain.”

  “Damn it, you’re trying to obscure the issue, DiPalma.”

  “No, I’m not. Respectfully, sir, all I’m trying to show is that we had due cause for our actions. Look, there’s this helpless junkie. A punk, a nothing, a zero. Scorned by everybody on the street. So he shoots off his mouth. And what do we discover? That he’s not as clean as he looks. Ask me if he has any knowledge whatsoever about what happened and I’ll tell you he doesn’t. He’s a clown.”

  “Now you’re making my point for me. Waste of valuable time.”

  “But wait. Somewhere in his background we discover a sister. A woman with connections to a radical cause. And for some reason no one can explain, he’s convinced Armageddon is a woman.”

  Winnegar lifted his brows. “His sister, I presume?”

  Yvonne shook her head. “Definitely not.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve already done some background checking. This came off the computer about an hour ago.” She handed Winnegar a single page file. “Vanessa Santiago. Julio’s older sister.”

  Winnegar scanned the document. “Deceased. Committed suicide in Albany, New York, about a year ago.” He gave it back to her. “So we’re back where we started.”

  “Not completely. This Vanessa, radical politics aside, was a known lesbian. She’d had a number of lovers, and several of them have been linked with former members of Los Campions.” She handed him another page. “This one’s a copy of a newspaper article buried in the files at HQ. Vanessa wasn’t a junkie. She had a lot more smarts than her kid brother. In fact, she’d spent three years on campus at the Albany State University, majoring in political science. The article names her as an organizer and leader of campus demonstrations against government activities in Central and Latin America. She got herself arrested three times. Once for possession of an unlicensed handgun.”