American Gangster

6. Dick Down

Richie Roberts had never meant to hurt his wife. He had loved Laurie, and he still did love her, he supposed, in a mother-of-his-child kind of way. He’d never had an affair on her; he wouldn’t do that to her, he wasn’t some disloyal prick.

But he would knock off a piece here and there, strictly one-night-stand stuff, and yet the times she’d found out, Laurie reacted like he’d been seeing somebody behind her back.

He’d never bothered trying to explain it to her. That his job was high stress, max pressure, life or fucking death, and the only things that took the edge off, that took him out of his crowded head and into someplace free of thought, were the roll of a joint or a roll in the hay.

And that didn’t count making love to your wife, with the kid in the next room and bills to pay and inlaws and PTA meetings and all the issues that made a bad habit of coming into the bedroom with you.

Yesterday was a (literal) textbook case of high stress and max pressure, and even in its way of life or death: he’d taken his law board exams. Maybe that anonymous chamber with its fifty or sixty student-type desks and as many asses dropped down in them, and the pinched-puss exam proctors prowling their beat, wasn’t as literally dangerous as going down a dark alley or busting into some junkie shooting gallery.

But Richie’s life did depend on it.

He felt he’d done okay, and anyway it was over. So he’d celebrated by calling up that sexy little brunette paramedic who’d stitched up his mitt last week. He took her out for steaks and a show (M*A*S*H) and they hung out in a bar a while, and his place was closer, so that was fine, and she hadn’t even minded his overgrown closet of an apartment. They’d done it twice last night, once a fast frantic hump on the floor with their clothes half-hanging off, and then in bed, slow and sensual and romantic.

She’d stayed over and they rubbed against each other all through the night and at dawn he was balls deep in her again — what was her name? — and she was making so much noise, he was worried his neighbors might call the cops, and when the phone rang, it was almost a relief.

He reached for the receiver, but she slapped his hand, panting, looking up at him with big demanding eyes and orgasm-flushed cheeks; but the ringing wouldn’t stop.

Neither would the paramedic, and he answered the phone in action and out of breath.

The voice on the other end was exploding words so fast, Richie wouldn’t have had a chance to respond right away even if he could have.

Javy Rivera was saying, “Richie? Richie, man, I’m in trouble. This guy, this fuckin’guy, I don’t know how, but he made me. And he went for his piece, Rich, Jesus Christ, he went for it like John Fuckin’ Wayne and what choice did I have? I had to do it, swear to God. Now they’re gonna kill me.”

The paramedic was looking frustrated and annoyed, because she had lost Richie’s full attention; and she didn’t even protest, when he rolled off her and sat on the edge of the bed and got intense with the phone.

“Who, Jav? Who’s gonna kill you?”

“Man, there’s a hundred people out there, that heard the damn shots. I mean, if this goddamn fuckin’ shit were any deeper I’d be gargling. Richie, man, you gotta help me. You gotta do something. Or my ass is grass, man.”

Richie was getting it. “He’s dead? Perp’s dead?”

“He’s dead, I’m dead. They’re gonna kill me!”

Doing his best to calm his partner out of his hysteria, Richie said, “Cool it. Stay cool. Where are you? Javy?... Talk to me. Where are you, buddy?”

“... That’s the problem.”

“What is?”

“Where I am is.”

“Which is where?”

“Projects. Stephen Crane.”

Oh shit, Richie thought, then said, “No problem. Stay cool. If it’s not my voice, don’t answer the door.”

“Don’t fuckin’ worry.”

And Javy gave him the building and apartment number.

Richie threw on a shirt, jeans, gun and his brown leather jacket, responding to his bedmate’s question of “Should I wait?” with “Up to you.”

Within minutes he was in his Plymouth Fury, moving quickly; this was Sunday, not long after dawn, traffic dead as Javy’s perp.

The radio kept cutting in and out on him, but he didn’t have any trouble hearing the male dispatcher’s nasty news: “There are no cars in that area, Detective Roberts.”

“Bullshit,” he spat into the mike. “I got a man in trouble and I need backup an hour ago.”

“... missed that... you... breaking up...”

“Put the call out again!”

“... still can’t... you’re breaking...”

“I said put the fucking call out again—”

“I just did, Detective. Nobody responded. I’ll try once more, but it won’t do any—”

“Fuck you very much,” Richie said, and slammed the mike into its slot, thinking, I’ll bet he heard that.

When Richie’s car rounded the corner onto Central Avenue, the three dark thirty-floor towers of the Stephen Crane Projects loomed like massive tombstones from the war zone landscape. If a more forbidding place existed on the planet, Richie had no desire to see it. A torched and abandoned patrol car sat silent sentry just beyond the curb, dating back to one riot or another.

After he parked, Richie moved through the agitated all-black crowd swiftly and confidently, which was the only way to survive; the morning was unseasonably warm and, early as it was, the Crane residents and other neighborhood gawkers had come out to enjoy the fun and outrage. He spotted an ambulance pulled up on the sidewalk in front of one tower, and headed for that building.

Just inside the doors, a frightened female paramedic, pretty cute — stop it, Richie told himself — pointed the way for him: fifth floor. He went up the graffiti-adorned elevator and down a graffiti-adorned hall. Outside the apartment, two more scared shitless medics, male, were milling.

Richie displayed his badge in its wallet.

One medic, a white guy pale as his uniform, said desperately, “He won’t let us in there, officer. There was a shooting and—”

Richie held up a hand and said, “I’m his partner. Give me a minute.”

He knocked, said, “It’s me!” and Javy, in jeans and a dark brown leather jacket, let him right in. Jav’s shoulder-length dark hair, muttonchops and mustache overwhelmed his hangdog face.

“Thank God you come, Rich, thank God.”

Then, without waiting for Richie to say anything, Javy made his zombie-like way over to the couch and sat, slumped, hands folded prayerfully, head bowed, though Richie was fairly confident nothing religious was going on here.

On the other hand, the skinny black guy on the floor in a blood-spattered yellow undershirt and jeans and no shoes was making like Jesus, in a crucifixion posture. Brains and lots of blood had drained out of him making a mostly scarlet Rorschach pattern on the cream-color shag throw rug. The dead dealer lay next to a low-slung white coffee table whose glass top was littered with drugs and drug paraphernalia, as well as a few empty beer bottles and soda cans.

Richie let the paramedics in; they wheeled in their gurney while the detective called in the shooting.

Before long he was saying into the phone, “Sergeant, does it sound like I’m asking? I’m fuckin’ telling you: get some patrolmen over here, right now.”

Richie hung up, hard, and the paramedics — their gurney not even unstrapped — were staring at him like his fly was open and his dick was hanging out. They’d been listening.

“You got no backup?” one of them asked.

The other added: “Why don’t you? Have any backup.”

Richie pointed at the corpse and said, “Bandage that asshole’s head.”

“Detective,” the pale paramedic said, “he’s dead.”

The other paramedic, a heavy-set guy, asked, “Should we even be moving him? Isn’t this a crime scene?”

Richie walked over; the dead guy on the throw rug was between him and the paramedics. On the couch, hunkered over, despondent as hell, Javy sat staring at the shag rug, like a gypsy reading tea leaves.

“This will be a crime scene,” Richie said, “if a couple hundred people start rioting and kill all our asses. As for our pal on the floor here? Yes, he’s fucking dead, I know he’s fucking dead. Now bandage his head, clean him up, put him on your gurney and... prop him up a little.”

The pale paramedic squinted. “Prop him up...?”

“Yeah, so he’s sitting, kind of. Can you open his eyes? Use a little tape on his lids or something.”

The paramedics were goggling at him, as if maybe they should be skipping the corpse’s gurney and instead going down to get a straitjacket out of their ambulance for the detective.

Richie pointed to the stiff. “He needs to be less dead. Way less dead.”

Pretty soon, Richie came out of the building fast — holding up his badge in its ID wallet Olympic torch-style — motioning and yelling at the crowd to get back, like it was a matter of life and death.

Which it was. Even more than his damn Bar exams...

“We need a path here!” he called. “Step back — injured man coming through! Let these fellas do their job and he’ll be all right... Ma’am, excuse me. Step back. Sir! Please...”

The paramedics were right behind Richie bearing a gurney whose rider had tubes in his nostrils, an IV in his arm and eyes open wide. If anybody had gotten a closer, longer look, the corpse would still have seemed a corpse; but nobody got much of any kind of look, and, wham, bam, the gurney was hauled up into the ambulance with one paramedic alongside, the rear doors shutting behind.

“Nothing to see here!” Richie called, motioning for Javy to come out of the building and join him. He was guiding his partner away in one direction, as the crowd began spreading out in the other, to trail after the siren-wailing ambulance as it pulled away from the ominous towers.

Richie and Javy walked.

Quickly. Not so quickly as to draw attention, but quickly enough, and in a nearby commercial area, Richie ducked into an alley, taking his partner with him, and they cut through almost to the next street. Near its mouth, they found a place between a bin and some garbage cans to stand and catch their breath and talk.

“Jesus, Rich,” Javy said, shaking his head, sighing in relief, even grinning a little. “Thank you, man.”

Richie shoved Javy against the brick wall. “You dumb bastard — you ripped him off, didn’t you?”

“What?” Javy’s eyes popped. “Are you high, Rich?”

“Look who’s asking.”

Javy held both palms up in “back off” fashion. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about, Rich.”

Upper lip curled over his teeth, Richie leaned forward and stuck his hands into the deep pockets of Javy’s leather jacket; he found the thickness of cash in both.

With a violent downward tug, he simultaneously ripped open both pockets — “Rich! What the fuck!” — and money spilled out, twenties, fifties, hundreds, onto the filthy alley floor.

“This,” Richie said, indicating the fallen cash. “I’m talking about this, Jav. Where’d the bread come from, man?”

Javy’s eyes were wild. “You fucker!” He got down on his hands and knees and recovered the money, stuffing it in his pants pockets and in his waistband, saying, “This is my money. Hard-earned! I never took dirty money in my life, you know that.”

“What I know is,” Richie said, watching his partner scramble after the literally dirty money, “you’re a lying piece of shit.”

Javy was on his feet again. “Jesus, Rich! Take the stick out of your ass. Every cop takes the occasional... you know, gratuity. You gonna tell me that’s wrong?”

“It’s wrong. Yeah.”

“Hell it is!” Javy leaned in, not quite in Richie’s face, and said, “It’s part of our pay, guys like us. Above and beyond the salary, for little things, like getting the fuck shot at! You risk your fuckin’ life to serve and protect, and in return? Certain courtesies are shown. In gratitude, like.”

Disgusted, Richie grabbed his partner by the lapels of the leather jacket and tried to decide whether to shake him till he rattled or knock his damn head onto those bricks till it splashed or... shit.

He let loose.

Embarrassed, near tears, Javy said, “You’d begrudge me a little goddamn shitting consideration — a discount on a TV, a Doughboy pool in the backyard... a new dress for my girl, maybe once a fuckin’ year.”

“Wrong is wrong.”

Javy’s eyes flared. “Jesus fucking... All I’m talking about is guys like you and me not living under the fucking poverty level! You wanna call it wrong, go ahead! Call it wrong.”

“It’s wrong.”

Javy threw his hands in the air. “Fine! Then, goddamnit, let the sons of bitches pay me fifty K a year, like the manager of a goddamn supermarket. Pay me something for putting my ass on the line, for getting shot at... You got a short fucking memory, man.”

“Do I?”

His eyes were welling, his lips quivering. “Next time... next time four guys come into your place, with sawed-off shotguns? You take care of your own ass.”

Richie sighed. Held up a “stop” palm to indicate a shift in conversation. “Okay. So you robbed him, and then you shot him. And now I helped get you out of there.”

Javy said nothing.

Richie went on: “How many other pathetic low-end dealers have you ripped off and shot over the years, Jav? Two? Twenty?”

Suddenly Javy grew some spine, shoving Richie, who stumbled back a step.

“Hey, you know what, Rich? Fuck you and the white horse you rode in on. Guy accuses his partner of something like that, accusing his own kind. You should be ashamed.”

And Javy got his car keys out, and bumped by Richie, only Richie grabbed him, yanked his coat half-off to get at Javy’s left sleeve, which he pushed up. The time had come to confirm a suspicion Richie had denied for too long.

There they were: the puncture scabs and scars, the needle tracks of the junkie.

Richie pushed his partner away. “You’re the one should be ashamed. You’re a fucking disgrace.”

Now Javy did get in Richie’s face. “I’ll tell you what I am — I’m a fucking leper! And why? Because I listened to you, because I went along with Saint Richie of Roberts and turned in a million fucking dollars! God! Damn!”

Javy backed off and staggered around in a little half circle, saying, “And you know who wants to work with me after that? Same people wanna work with you, Rich — no body!”

Richie went to his partner, ex-partner, and grabbed the man’s hand holding the car keys and squeezed and squeezed and finally the jagged teeth of the keys did their work and blood dripped from Javy’s forced fist.

“Here’s what I’ll do for you,” Richie said to the trembling Javy, “for that time at my place, when you saved my ass? I will write this up the way you say it happened. I will back you all the way.”

“Richie...”

“But that is it. That is it for us, Javy. Far as I’m concerned, that was you dead on the floor today.”

Then Richie backed off, held his hands high as if in surrender and headed out of the dark alley into sunshine, not watching Javy slump against the brick and clutch his bleeding hand.