Creepers Page 2

Corelli shook his head. “Won’t they ever learn?”

  “Times are rough, Frank. Hunger and anger is a bad combination.”

  Anger. For a moment Corelli tasted the bitter gall that signaled the presence of his personal demon. Five years he’d lived with a blinding rage. Christ, was it really that long since Jean was taken from him? It hardly seemed possible. Five years. When the hell would the pain ever go away? Or would it ever?

  “Lots of people are hungry and even more are angry, Quinn, but they don’t go around ripping off their neighbors. Most of the easy targets in this city don’t have much money themselves. Christ, when I think of the number of old ladies these punks manhandle to get a few bucks for the movies…”

  “Yeah,” Quinn replied listlessly. He’d heard Corelli’s sermons too many times before to pay much attention now. “So, how ya feeling?” He veered the conversation toward a safer topic.

  “Like shit,” Corelli admitted. “But I’m needed here.”

  “You and an army. The City Council should change the name of Labor Day to Sitting Duck Day.”

  “Did Dolchik get in any extra men?”

  “Three. But with our roster down by four, that still makes us one short.”

  “Who’s not here?”

  “DiBattista and Amory are on vacation. Harper’s still in the hospital and Valeriani is still… out.” Quinn pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket and began assailing his front teeth. “Need I say more?”

  “I’ve heard too much already.” Corelli’s stomach began to twist into a tight knot. “How the hell can we do a good job when we’re understaffed? Don’t those fucks downtown realize the city is being taken over by the yahoos?”

  “Tell it to the Marines, Frank.” Quinn slid off the desk. “Glad to see you’re back.” He ambled away to a desk he shared with three other cops.

  Corelli stared after him a moment, then shook his head. Jesus, there I go again, spouting off about bureaucratic stupidity. No wonder Quinn beat it. He should get some kind of special recognition from the TA for putting up with two years of my shit. Still, there was a lot to complain about-two cops on vacation when they should be at work. Labor Day is a tough one. The summer is over for most people. Kids are getting ready to go back to school. Everyone is restless, looking for that one last good time before settling down to work for the fall and winter. For some it would be the last blowout-ever. If there were more cops there’d be less trouble. But two men were on vacation, one was in the hospital, and the other was “out”-on suspension.

  Corelli turned his attention to the reports Quinn had filed so neatly, but after a minute of rereading the same sentence over and over, he gave in to the uneasiness picking at his brain. This time anger was overshadowed by simple, direct fear. Chick Harper was in the hospital with a bullet wound in the chest. It could have been worse. He was lucky. Still, he had a collapsed lung and a fractured rib and that was no picnic. Frank shook his head in wonder at the ease with which he accepted the ugly status quo of life as a cop in New York. “Lucky” meant being shot by some kid who’d probably never fired a pistol before. A pro would have offed Harper without batting an eye.

  That was lucky? It was lucky to live in a city-in a society-where handguns were as available as a pack of cigarettes, and where they were used indiscriminately against innocent people? That’s what scared Corelli. Not that he might be the next one gunned down, but that the basic fabric of the society was unraveling. Every day it became clearer to him that people no longer held themselves-or anybody else, for that matter-in reverence. Dammit, it was the jungle reclaiming the land in an insidious and highly sophisticated form.

  And what happened to Detective Joe Valeriani was the lousiest form of that creeping erosion. He’d been caught shaking down the food and newsstand owners at the Forty-second Street access to the crosstown shuttle. It was penny-ante stuff, five bucks a week to be there when help was needed. And it always was. In that particular station the churning rivers of the city’s low life formed a confluence with the homeward-bound middle-class office workers. Some punk was always trying to rip people off, and it was the TA police’s duty to protect them. Yet somehow it became Valeriani’s aim to rip off the very people he was paid to protect. To Corelli Joe was no better than a punk looking for quick cash for a fix. There was no honor in being a punk-less in being a cop gone bad.

  Corelli had known Valeriani in police academy. He was honest then; a good cop. Knowing that scared the shit out of Frank. What was to guarantee that he wouldn’t go looking for his palm to be greased one day? Being a TA cop was a thankless job-both financially and spiritually. And it was getting tougher every day. The loss of integrity was a slow-moving, patient process. Corelli often wondered if Joe had felt himself going rotten, or if he just woke up one morning to discover that “us” and “them” had simply become “us.”

  Half an hour later Frank had read the reports and forgotten most of them. Quinn was right; it was the usual run-of-the-mill crap that plagued the subway system day after day, year after year. Nothing special. Nothing different. Except for that one MP-missing person. What the hell was her name? That report was right on top. Penelope Comstock. Her friends probably called her Penny. Nice name. Like Jean was a nice name. He quickly shook off the thought. Not now. There was no time for reliving that night now. He lit a cigarette, and when he still found himself thinking of Jean, headed for the john.

  Once inside the tiny, airless room, Corelli flicked the butt into the toilet, stretched, and stared at himself in the cracked mirror over the permanently stained porcelain sink. He’d lost a couple of pounds from being sick, but he’d needed to. Angel’s doughnuts, unlike the coffee, were something special, and two a day, week after week, had begun to take their toll. Corelli worked out three times a week at a West Side gym, but age and the erratic diet of a bachelor were giving his body-building stiff competition. Even so, he was in good shape. He flexed in the mirror, and as the hard definition of his chest and biceps pushed against his shirt, he smiled with satisfaction.

  Frank Corelli stood just over six-feet-two and tried to weigh no more than two-ten. He was big, but agile; muscular, but lithe. And he looked less formidable than he actually was. That was good. Punks usually thought they could topple him, and by the time they discovered it was the wrong thing to try, it was too late.

  And best of all, Corelli didn’t look like a cop. Quinn called his buddy a handsome sonofabitch. His dark complexion, inky black hair, and piercing blue eyes combined to create a striking appearance; a moody guy who could get deeply involved-when he wanted to. Corelli’s facial impassivity was as much a part of his professional equipment as his badge. But the rare glimmer of fear or love or compassion that flickered in his eyes told that, like the old saw, they were the windows to his soul.

  A thick, perfectly maintained mustache capped his heavy upper lip. The facial hair was to disguise his mouth. It was the mouth of a man who would last exactly one minute in the rotten world of subway crime, the mouth of a man who appreciated the better things in life, the mouth of a man who cared deeply about other people… the mouth of a lover.

  The bathroom door flew open and bounced against the wall. Corelli instinctively braced himself as his right hand sprang across to his left hip, scant inches below his shoulder holster. His breathing grew shallow, and surprise turned to readiness.

  The man blocking the doorway hadn’t missed Frank’s reflex actions. He smiled at Corelli’s hand, then let his eyes travel slowly to his face. “Shit, Frank, I’m just here to take a leak. The way you act, you’d think I was checking to see you weren’t playing with yourself.” Stan Dolchik smirked at the joke and edged into the room. Corelli relaxed and started for the door. “Don’t let me scare you out. You combing your hair or something?”

  “Something,” Corelli replied tartly. In his book, Captain Dolchik was a perfect example of a man who had risen far beyond his level of competence. He was ignorant, prejudiced, and looked like a sausage with too much filling fo
r the size of the casing.

  Dolchik positioned himself in front of the urinal and kept talking. “Glad to see you’re back after being so sick. I never thought a cold was much to sneeze about. Guess you did, huh?”

  They both knew nothing short of pneumonia could keep Corelli from work, but needling was Dolchik’s style. “Next to pig ignorance, the worst thing that can happen to a man is a summer cold, Captain,” Corelli replied.

  “You’re a real pisser, Corelli.” Dolchik bellowed with laughter. “I never knew a man with a college degree didn’t think he was king shit.” He gave himself a few exaggerated shakes, zippered up, then flushed. “’Round here, brains is just something to get blown out of your head.” He moved to the sink and began washing his hands.

  Corelli watched him with contempt. Rednecks like Dolchik still got under his skin. “What’s the story on this M.P.?”

  “Which missing person are you talking about?”

  “She was snatched from the Fifty-third Street IND.”

  “Oh, that snatch.” Dolchik paused, realized he’d inadvertently made a joke, then bellowed with laughter once again. “Don’t take no degree to be clever, Corelli. That’s the problem with you guys.”

  “Cut the shit Stan, I’m not interested in your sophomoric prejudices.” Using Dolchik’s first name was a sure sign Corelli meant business. “What’s been done on it?”

  “Nothing’s been done on it, that’s what’s been done on it,” he mocked. “It was late, it was hot. The token clerk said she’d been crying. Probably ’cause she didn’t get laid. So she goes down into the station, gets spooked by something, and takes off.” He dried his hands, wadded the soggy paper towels into a ball, then tossed them into the basket “You want to make something of it?”

  “She left her purse on the platform.”

  “So?”

  “So, it was full. Wallet comb, lipstick.”

  Dolchik was clearly becoming annoyed by the conversation. “What’s bugging your ass, Corelli? I’m a busy man.”

  “The report says the clerk investigated her screams. When he got down there, she was gone, but the purse wasn’t. And you want me to believe she got scared and ran away leaving the one thing women value most, a purse? It’s bullshit, Captain, and you know it.” Dolchik would cut as many corners as possible to make life easy for himself.

  “I don’t know nothing, except what the investigating officer reported. He checked the roadbed, he checked the stations, he checked the goddamned cracks in the walls. She was gone. Kaput! You’re the one who’s full of bullshit, Corelli.”

  “I want to pursue this further.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Has anyone tried to contact her since that night? Has she called in to claim her purse?”

  Dolchik’s face reddened. “You understand English? I said forget it! The purse is already down at Jay Street. If she wants it back, she can go get it.” He pushed past Corelli and opened the door. “The station was quiet with you out sick, Corelli. No one busting ass, no loudmouth questions, no smart-ass answers. I like it that way, so don’t push me.” He took two long steps away, then turned back. “We got real business today; none of this disappearing-lady shit. So be in my office in ten minutes. And try to act like a cop instead of a drugstore cowboy, okay?”

  Corelli watched fat-ass Dolchik waddle across the office and into his glassed-in cubicle. He was the kind of cop who gave cops a bad name with the public. Corelli headed back to his own desk. Dolchik didn’t have enough brains to come in out of the rain, and he was a prick, to boot. But he was honest. And for that reason Corelli was almost able to forgive him the rest.

  There were four of them in Dolchik’s office for the meeting: the captain and three plainclothes detectives- Corelli, Quinn, and Hector Hernandez, HH to his friends and co-workers. The cramped office was crowded and Dolchik’s cheap cigar polluted what little air there was with thick strata of gray smoke. Dolchik sat behind a desk waist-deep in unfiled reports, TA memoranda, and old copies of the Daily News. Once a week he usually got a rookie to tidy up, but they were shorthanded this week and the room remained a pigsty. Several filing cabinets against the wall and two scarred and torn naugahyde chairs reserved for official visitors were submerged in the same effluvia. The only personal touch in Dolchik’s office was a carefully hidden collection of photographs from Hustler magazine of nude women apparently preparing for gynecological examinations.

  “We’ve got trouble, men,” Dolchik informed the group importantly as he blew a torrent of acrid smoke toward the ceiling. “That cocksucker Willie Hoyte has been onto the press boys again. I wish someone would shut that smart-ass nigger up.” His eyes darted to Hernandez for a second to see if the racial slur would have any effect. HH was of Mexican-American descent and considered himself more white than black.

  “What’s the problem with Hoyte now?” HH asked, not batting an eyelash. When he was fourteen years old, he’d killed a pig just like Dolchik who was trying to rape his sister. But that was back in Texas. And it was many years ago.

  “The same thing’s always the problem with him. He’s media-happy. Hoyte’s called every newspaper in town complaining that we’re hassling him. West Side News is sending someone to follow him and his goddamned crew of pickaninnies today. We’ve got to be on our toes.”

  “West Side News is nothing more than a pisshole in a snow bank,” Quinn threw in cheerfully. “There’s nothing to fear from them.”

  “Don’t be so sure, Francis,” Dolchik said with a sneer. “If they come up with something juicy, the other rags will start sniffing around and pretty soon it’ll be last June all over again.” He sucked on his cigar a few times, discovered it was dead, then threw it disgustedly into an ashtray. “I want you three to keep on your toes today.”

  “Such as?” Corelli asked, knowing the captain hated Hoyte because he’d labeled him “a dumb flatfoot” in a New York magazine interview.

  “Such as don’t let the reporter think we don’t like Willie and his Sarrybrus.” Dolchik purposely rumbled the pronunciation of the group’s name.

  “That’s Cerberus, Captain; Dogs of Hell,” Corelli corrected him. “Hoyte named his group after the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades.” An appropriate name for a group of civilians who volunteered their time to protect subway passengers from crime. “It’s also the name of a popular comic book.”

  “I know why it’s called Cerberus,” Dolchik yelled, “And I don’t care if it’s a three-headed prick that guards the entrance to the tightest twat in New York. Willie Hoyte and his Dogs of Hell have caused enough trouble for us already.”

  “Dogs of Hell” was the informal name for Cerberus the media had concocted back in June when they sprang to national prominence after a clash with the TA cops. The thirty-five-member Dogs of Hell had been formed the year before as a local uptown group dedicated to protecting elderly subway riders from harm. Its founder, Willie Hoyte, knew as well as anyone in Harlem that many of New York’s muggings were done to blacks by blacks right on their own home turf. The old black credo of slicking together and protecting your own no longer even received lip service in the city’s ghettos. Uptown, midtown, downtown, it was every man for himself. People of every race, creed, color, and age were targets for the malcontents the city churned out like spillage from a defective sewerage plant. The police were helpless to stop the mounting subway crime, so Hoyte decided to lend them a hand.

  Dogs of Hell was so successful uptown that Hoyte decided to expand. The members, in their green vinyl windbreakers emblazoned with a snarling tri-headed dog in white, soon became a common sight in the subway system. And the TA cops began to get angry. They didn’t know what to make of this para-police quasi-vigilante group that had sprung from nowhere, eschewing approval from both the city government and the police. Dogs of Hell wasn’t doing anything illegal, but they began to make it look like the ranks of the TA police were composed of a bunch of doddering bozos who couldn’t deal with crime in the s
ubways.

  In June two of its members were subduing a young Hispanic purse-snatcher when three TA cops intervened. In the ensuing melee, the mugger escaped and both Dogs of Hell sustained a beating that required treatment in a local hospital emergency room. The cops claimed they hadn’t seen the signature jackets, and the injured men claimed the cops singled them out in an overt act of police brutality. The story caught the eye of local New York newspapers and magazines, and within two weeks Willie Hoyte and Dogs of Hell were front-page news. National coverage followed soon after.

  “This Hoyte is nothing but a glory hound,” Dolchik continued, “and he’s dangerous. I don’t want any trouble today. It’s Labor Day and the shit is going to hit the fan, so let’s not let the reporters get anything to report, okay?”

  The three detectives stared at him in silence.

  “Quinn, I want you to stay at the Circle here. There’ll be a lot of downtown traffic on the way to the beach. A lot of the boys will be working the crowds looking for marks.” Columbus Circle was a main interchange for the Eighth Avenue IND and the Seventh Avenue IRT lines. The station was a hodgepodge of shops, greasy spoons, and service areas that stretched under four city blocks.

  “Hernandez, I want you on the AA shuttling from 125th Street to Fourteenth.” This run was where the most trouble was likely to occur today. To HH and his cohorts it was known with little affection as the “shit chute.” Being assigned to it was generally considered punishment.

  “And last-and least-Corelli. You stick by Hoyte’s side all day. I want you there when he’s talking to the reporter, when he’s on the move, when he shakes off the last drop of piss after taking a leak. Today, you’re his shadow. Got it?”

  Corelli only smiled. Dolchik needed an articulate spokesman to deal with the press. It was the only time the captain deferred to Corelli’s education.

  “Okay, now get moving. The system’s crawling with blues so there’s plenty of help today.” Mentioning cops in uniform was pure bullshit, but Dolchik sometimes forgot who he was talking to and his official persona took over. “And, Corelli, if that shithead Hoyte as much as drops a gum wrapper on the platform, I want you to pinch him. He’s nothing but trouble.”