Mission Flats

14

The radio is the soundtrack of every cop’s working life. Bravo six-five-seven, adam-robert… Acknowledge, bravo six-five-seven

… It is a constant presence in police cars, the voices almost indecipherable, a blizzard of information. Gittens and Kelly had acquired the ability to filter out the white noise, to hear selectively. But my ear constantly sought out the pidgin messages. One-five, could you swing by 75 Leinengen Road. We have a report of a stripped car… One-five, we have it, sir… Bravo K-one, I’m ocean-frank…

‘Where are we going?’ I asked Gittens.

‘This place Ray hangs out. Kind of a social club.’

We drove south on Mission Ave, past a series of parking facilities. On the sidewalk, people eyed us. Suspicion naturally attached to three white guys in a Crown Victoria — as suspicion always seemed to attach to racial difference in the Flats. It was in the air here. You were conscious of your race, you wore it like new clothes.

Bravo four-three-one. Tremont and Vannover with a hot box, Mass. two-six-oh-paul-victor-john, beige VW, two Hispanics.

Gittens parked in front of a massive industrial plant just off the avenue, one of the only thriving businesses I’d seen in the area. A sign read,

ZIP-A-WAY WASTE DISPOSAL SERVICES, INC. BOSTON CENTRAL RECYCLING CENTER

Bound by high fences topped with cyclone wire, the plant consisted of three enormous warehouses. A conveyor rose out of the roof of the largest, hauling plastic bottles and containers up and dumping them into a shredder. There was no activity outside the building, though. You got the impression the plant was empty, operating on its own, robotically

‘This is the place,’ Gittens announced.

He led Kelly and me through a gate at the front of the complex, and once inside we walked along the fence to a back lot. Here great driftpiles of garbage were sorted by type, newspaper, metals, plastic. Gittens guided us through the garbage dunes to a forty-foot industrial Dumpster. The enormous container sat in a corner, seemingly abandoned. Nearby were piles of old bricks, all sorted and mounded up. I presumed that the Dumpster contained more of the same: construction materials or other junk. It was impossible to imagine why Gittens had led us here. There was a narrow corridor between the Dumpster and the heavy-gauge chain-link fence, and we had to edge in sideways to reach the rear corner of the Dumpster.

‘Let me go first,’ Gittens whispered.

‘Go where?’

Gittens winked and promptly disappeared through the wall of the Dumpster. More precisely, he pulled back a rough cloth curtain that was hanging against the steel sidewall, and he stepped through a gap in the wall. There were voices inside, and after a moment Gittens poked his head back out. ‘Come on,’ he encouraged us, ‘it’s not as bad as it looks.’

Kelly and I looked at each other. ‘You first,’ I said.

Inside the Dumpster was perfect darkness. Blind, I was acutely aware of the smell — rotting garbage, urine, the musky smell of sweat, and a more acrid odor, burned plastic maybe. After a few seconds, I was able to make out a little sitting area. A wooden cable spool had been turned on end to make a table. It was flanked by two battered chairs, one of them missing a leg. Sunlight filtered through the curtain and dimly illuminated the table and chairs. The tabletop was cluttered with needles, a lighter, scraps of blackened tinfoil, discarded containers of heroin and cocaine. The drug packages — plastic envelopes about one inch square — were ink-stamped with two different symbols. One showed the black silhouette of a dog, the other a red boxing glove — Knockout. From the looks of the table, Knockout and Black Dog seemed to be the Coke and Pepsi of the local heroin world. The table was also littered with tie-offs, cheap packages of cocaine formed by placing the rocks or powder in a corner of a plastic sandwich bag then twisting the corner off to form a little sachet. The drug packets were all empty. The party was over, for the moment.

In Versailles there is a lot of pot, misuse of prescription drugs, and a tsunami of alcohol. Occasionally a few bags of cocaine will turn up at the high school and I go over to Mattaquisett if the kid is from Versailles. There is a rumor that Joe Grasso, who drives an eighteen-wheeler between Montreal and the Florida Keys, keeps a stash at his house out on the Post Road, but there’s never been any evidence to support a search there. Freebasing, speedballing, these things I’d never seen.

Gittens poked through the empty packets on the table. He pocketed one with the Knockout label on it, but it was obvious he had no intention of making any arrests or even searching for more drugs. The drugs were beside the point.

Something shifted in the dark interior of the Dumpster. Then a groan.

I jumped back from the table, startled. Squinting into the gloom, I could just make out the contours of three or four men — impossible to see exactly how many — lying on the floor. Their movements were languid, heads and shoes lolling, shadows, no more.

‘Jesus,’ I hissed, feigning anger to mask my embarrassment.

‘Hey, that’s my works, brother,’ a voice said.

Gittens pointed to a needle and syringe on the table: a works. ‘No one’s touching your works, brother. Everything’s okay’

Kelly, who had to stoop to avoid bumping his head, poked at the things on the table with his nightstick, careful not to touch anything barehanded.

Meanwhile Gittens moved into the darkness at the other end of the trailer. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he cooed to the men who lay on the floor side by side, ‘everything’s peachy’ He snapped rubber gloves onto his hands and straddled the first of the sleepers, bending over and laying a latex hand on the man’s side. ‘How you doing down there, my friend?’ There was no response. ‘Who do we have here? Come on, Sleeping Beauty, show me that pretty face. Any of you fellas seen Ray Ratleff? Huh?’ He stepped across the bodies as if they were fallen logs. ‘Who do we have here? Bobo! Hey, pal. Come on, Bobo, wake up a minute, I need to talk to you.’ The figure groaned and tried to push Gittens away. ‘Come on, Bobo, nap time’s over.’ He reached under the guy’s armpits and pulled him up to a sitting position. While Gittens steadied Bobo with one hand, he reached into his coat pocket and fished out a pair of rubber gloves for me. When I’d stretched the gloves over my hands, Gittens and I walked Bobo over to the table.

Bobo turned out to be a frail, bone-thin man in his late twenties. Lifting him was like lifting an old woman. Bobo wore filthy work pants and a Lakers sweatshirt. On his head was a Greek fisherman’s cap, though Bobo’s cap was made of black leather, a design modification no Greek fisherman would approve. He was suffused in body odor.

We deposited Bobo in the good chair, and Gittens perched on the three-legged one, bracing himself to keep from toppling forward. He slid the empty drug packets to one side, careful not to drag the sleeve of his sweater on the tabletop.

‘Bobo, we need to find Ray.’

Bobo groaned sleepily. His head slumped. I held his shoulders so he wouldn’t slide right off the chair.

‘Bobo, come on, I know you can hear me. Have you seen Ray Rat?’

Bobo managed to force an eye open a crack. ‘Gittens,’ he moaned.

‘Bobo, have… you… seen… Ray… Ratleff?’

‘Gittens.’ Bobo laughed at a joke that only he’d heard. ‘Gittens, what are you doing here?’

‘Where’s Ray?’

‘I don’t know no Ray.’

‘Come on, don’t fuck around. You know who Ray is.’

Bobo thought it over. ‘Oh, Ra-a-ay. With like a big ‘fro? Doctor-J-lookin’ motherfucker?’

‘Yeah, Bobo, that’s the one. You seen him?’

‘No, man, he gone away. Ray’s away.’ He laughed. ‘Ray zway’

‘Where’s he away to?’

‘I think he’s in that — whaddaya call it? — witness p’tection program.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. They made him, like, a farmer.’

‘Bobo, we don’t have a witness protection program. That’s the feds.’

‘No, it’s true. He lives in Connecticut someplace.’

‘Bobo, Ray can’t even spell Connecticut.’

‘Enough of this bullshit,’ Kelly cut in. ‘Detective, may I?’

Gittens gestured with his arm, Be my guest.

Bobo sensed what was about to happen. He struggled to his feet, ready to defend himself.

‘Sit down,’ Kelly ordered.

Bobo did not sit down — unwisely, as it turned out.

Kelly’s baton whirled squarely into Bobo’s crotch. There was a liquid thwop! and Bobo dropped to the floor.

‘There,’ Kelly announced, ‘I think we have his attention now. Ben, put him back in the chair. Detective Gittens, you can ask your questions now.’

‘My balls!’ Bobo gasped. I said, ‘I know. Your balls.’ I stole a glance at Kelly, who was wiping the nightstick on the leg of his pants. He saw me looking but avoided my eyes.

Softly, Gittens asked, ‘Bobo, have you seen Ray?’

‘Yeah. I seen him.’ Bobo was still bent over, wheezing, cupping his genitals.

‘When was that?’

‘I don’t know, like a couple nights ago. He come here looking for a package. He was all like, can I help him out?’

‘Did you sell him the package?’

‘You want to read me my rights, Steve McGarrett?’

‘What time did he show up?’

‘I don’t know. Late. I was occupied.’

‘Did he say where he was staying?’

‘No.’

‘How did he get here? Did he walk, drive?’

‘He drove.’

‘Drove what?’

‘Some Japanese thing. Shitsu, something like that.’

‘A Shitsu?’

‘Yeah, Shitsu.’

‘What the hell’s a Shitsu?’

‘It’s a car.’

‘There’s no car called a Shitsu.’

‘What can I tell you? That’s what the man had.’

Gittens frowned. ‘What color?’

‘I don’t know. Brown, orange maybe. I couldn’t see.’

‘A brown Shitsu. That’s very helpful. Was anyone with him?’

‘I don’t know, Gittens. It’s getting hard to remember.’

Gittens pulled out a roll of cash in a money clip. He peeled off two twenties and dropped them on the table. ‘It’s important, Bobo.’

‘How important?’

Gittens threw another twenty on the table. ‘Bobo, I need to find Ray Rat before Braxton does.’

‘This is me and you, right? ‘Cause me and Ray, we go back, alright? Back in the day we was-’ Bobo held up two fingers together to indicate how tight he once was with Ray Ratleff.

Gittens nodded but gave no assurance he would keep the tip confidential. ‘Ray’s dead, Bobo. Braxton’s looking for him. Unless I find him first, Ray’s dead.’

Bobo studied the three bills on the table. ‘Ray’s got a sister lives in Lowell. The cops already talked to her, only she told them Ray wasn’t there. I don’t know her name. She stays with this guy Davy Diaz. He drives a Harley. Ray might be there.’

Gittens nodded again to signal he understood.

‘I said he might be there, right, Gittens? You remember that.’

‘I’ll remember, Bobo. It’s alright.’ Gittens dropped another twenty on the table, like an afterthought.

‘Gittens, you find Ray, you’ll help him out, right? Ray didn’t do nothing. It was that DA put him in the middle of all this. The DA was the one put all these ideas in Ray’s head.’

‘I know, Bobo.’

‘You can see what’s happening here, right? You can stop this, I know you can. You help him.’

‘Gittens, you just gave that guy eighty bucks.’

‘Not a bad five minutes’ work for Bobo.’

‘Where did you get the cash?’

‘It’s drug money. We forfeit it from dealers. Let the bad guys finance our investigations. It’s only fair. Hey, if there were no bad guys, we wouldn’t need cops in the first place, right?’

‘How do you get it, though?’

‘Oh, Ben, if you work narcotics, money’s everywhere. You raid a place, there might be five, ten, twenty thousand dollars sitting on a table, all cash, all banded up like a bank. You make a pinch on a street corner, some slider will have a pocketful of tens and twenties. So we take it.’

‘Nobody ever fights it?’

‘Of course not. What are they gonna say? If a dealer shows up in court and says, “That’s my money,” then he’s got to explain why he has so much cash, or why he keeps his money in a stash-pad full of coke, or why he only carries tens and twenties. The cash is evidence of the crime, see. If they claim the cash, they’re admitting the crime. So they never say boo about it.’

We were speeding along I-93 on the way to Lowell, the decayed mill city forty-five minutes north of Boston. Gittens had the wigwags on but no siren, and we glided past miles of stalled commuter traffic.

‘We don’t do many forfeitures in Versailles,’ I offered. ‘It’s never worth the effort.’

‘Well, Ben, I’m talking about a more informal procedure here.’ He looked at me to see if I understood. ‘We don’t always actually report it.’

There was an awkward pause.

‘I’ve got to pay these guys somehow,’ Gittens said in his uninflected tone. ‘That’s just the way it is.’

Lowell seemed a good place for Ratleff to hide, just far enough from Boston that word of his location would not filter back, yet not so far away that he had no one to support him. It was a grim place, though. Downtown, the old mills had been converted into shopping malls and museums as the city tried to Disneyfy its industrial past. Whatever effect these cheerful renovations may have had on the downtown area — and even downtown the act was not completely convincing — the cheer quickly evaporated as we worked our way toward the city’s grimier precincts. On Shaughnessy Garden, the street where Ray Ratleff had holed up, the earth’s natural color was utterly smeared away. The neighborhood was one long smudge — the world through a dirty windshield. Davy Diaz’s place was in one of these monochrome buildings, a two-family built on a crumbling concrete foundation. There was a Harley and an old Mitsubishi — a Shitsu — parked out front. A dog’s chain lay in the front courtyard. It looked heavy enough to hold a destroyer at anchor; I was not sorry the dog it belonged to was absent.

A woman answered the door. She was a very tall, very dignified black woman. ‘Can I help you, officers?’ she said, though we wore plain clothes.

We could hear the dog barking inside.

Gittens asked for Ray Ratleff, and the woman politely told him he was not there. ‘I haven’t seen Ray in years,’ she demurred.

Gittens looked at her a moment, taking her measure. ‘I tell you what,’ he said, ‘tell Ray it’s Martin Gittens. I just want to talk to him. Tell him “Martin Gittens,” and if he’s still not here, we’ll be on our way, alright?’

The woman studied Gittens, taking his measure now, then disappeared behind the door.

A moment later, Ray Ratleff came to the door. He was tall, nearly as tall as Kelly, and his head was haloed by a great airy Afro. It floated over him like an atomic cloud. He wore a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, accentuating his long, muscle-less arms. The right arm had a horrible scar just below the elbow where the forearm muscle was simply missing, torn away. It looked like something had taken a bite out of his arm. Tracks scored the underside of his forearms, the stigmata of needle use. A bandage covered his forehead and right eye. I recalled that Danziger’s file listed Ratleff’s date of birth as July 25, 1965, but it was impossible to believe this man was only thirty-two. He looked fifty.

‘Gittens,’ Ratleff sighed in a deep bass.

‘Hey, Ray’ Gittens’s tone was not threatening. ‘You got a lot of people looking for you.’

‘Looks like they found me.’

‘Well, someone was going to find you eventually. Lucky for you, it was me.’

‘Yeah, lucky me. Am I under arrest?’

‘No. You haven’t done anything wrong.’

Ratleff nodded, slowly.

‘If you want, I can take you in, charge you with something or other. It’d keep you off the street for a while, away from Braxton.’

‘Nah, that’s okay’

‘You need anything up here, Ray?’

Ratleff crossed his arms. He looked like a cigar-store Indian. ‘I’m alright.’

Gittens stood beside him, staring out at the swaybacked buildings on Shaughnessy Garden. ‘This is some shit-storm, Ray’

‘You going to tell them where I am?’

‘I guess I’ll have to,’ Gittens said. ‘How’s your head?’

‘I’m alright.’ Ratleff patted the bandage on his eye as if he’d forgotten it was there. There must have been panic and confusion behind that bandage, but he managed to mask it all. ‘I didn’t do nothing wrong.’

‘I know, Ray’

‘I didn’t do nothing wrong,’ Ray repeated.

Gittens nodded his understanding.

Ratleff continued to stare, and you could practically hear him repeating the phrase like a mantra: I didn’t do nothing wrong, I didn’t do nothing wrong.

‘Ray,’ Gittens said gently, ‘these guys want to ask you some questions. They’re working the Danziger case, the DA that got shot.’

‘Mr Ratleff,’ Kelly said, ‘did Gerald McNeese or anyone from Braxton’s crew ever talk to you about the carjacking case? About dropping it?’

‘They didn’t have to talk to me. I knew what they wanted. They wanted me to drop the case.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘It’s MP. That’s just how it is.’

‘But you decided to go ahead and testify anyway?’

‘DA told me just go and tell the truth.’

‘But you knew about Braxton, about what he might do?’

‘Everybody knew. The DA knew too.’

‘You mean Danziger?’

Ratleff nodded.

‘Danziger knew you were in danger?’

‘Course he did.’

‘So what did Danziger say to you? How did he convince you to go forward?’

‘He had a case on me. I sold a bag to a cop.’

Gittens snorted. ‘One bag? Ray, that’s just distribution! It’s a few months of house time. You could do that standing on your head. You did all this just to avoid a six-month ride in the house?’

‘It wasn’t like that.’

I put my foot up on the bottom step, which left me looking straight up at Ratleff. ‘What was it like, Ray? What was going on?’

He looked down on me.

‘What was going on?’ I repeated.

‘I couldn’t go to the house. I didn’t have the time. Besides, the DA, Danziger, said it wasn’t going to happen anyway.’

‘What wasn’t going to happen?’

‘There wasn’t going to be no trial. The DA had some kind of deal. He said all I had to do was say I was going forward, let it keep going till we got to the trial, then the whole thing was gonna go away.’

Again Gittens was surprised. ‘G-Mac was going to plead?’

Ratleff shrugged. ‘That’s what the DA said.’

‘I don’t believe that, Ray,’ Gittens said. ‘Those guys don’t plead. You know that.’

Ratleff just shrugged again. I don’t know, I don’t care.

I coaxed him, ‘Ray, what was going on, do you know?’

‘All I know is Danziger told me if I just stuck with the program, let him work on G-Mac awhile, he could get G-Mac to do what he wanted. I told him McNeese wouldn’t give anybody up or nothing like that, but Danziger kept saying it wasn’t like that. He said he had something G-Mac would want.’

‘And what was that, Ray? What was Danziger doing?’

‘I told you, I don’t know.’

‘Ray,’ Gittens said, ‘what are you gonna do when Braxton comes after you?’

‘Let him come. I didn’t do nothing wrong.’

‘That doesn’t matter, Ray. You know what he’s gonna do.’

‘Let him come. Doesn’t matter what he does to me. I got the bug.’

We looked at him, uncomprehending.

‘I got the bug.’ He injected his arm with an imaginary needle, presumably to signal needle-borne AIDS. ‘I’ve got no time to go to the house or noplace else, and I got no time to waste on Braxton and his foolishness. There’s nothing Braxton can do to me now.’