Mission Flats

33

The triple-decker at 52 Vienna Road in the Flats had been vehemently rehabilitated. What had once been a fortress with a crack dealership on the top floor was now a trig little three-family home with October-colored mums out front.

On the third-floor landing — where crackheads had stood and passed rolled-up bills through a slit in the red door — there was a bristly mat so visitors could wipe their shoes. The red door was not even red. It was beige. The beautiful battered-down, rifle-blasted, wood-pane red door of my imagination had been replaced by a hollow-core steel job. The landing was tiny, about four by four — much smaller than I’d pictured it — and the two of us cha-cha’d around each other as different details caught our attention. When we were through, Kelly and I climbed up the next few steps, vaguely relieved to be out of the killing zone in front of the door.

Vega, who had been obliged to wait below on the staircase, stepped up onto the little stage. ‘Man, they really cleaned this place up,’ he said apprehensively, as if we would not believe him. ‘It didn’t look like this.’

‘It’s alright, Julio,’ I reassured. ‘Just tell us what happened, start to finish.’

Vega recounted the raid in detail. He named the cops on the entry team, where they were positioned, he described the dripping heat of that summer night, even the apparent strength of the door itself. Yet he did it all in the same hollow manner I’d noticed when he’d met me at the door an hour earlier. It was like listening to a dead man.

‘When Artie got shot, at first I didn’t see nothing. Just the sound. Like boom. People always say guns sound like firecrackers, like pop pop. This was no firecracker, this was BOOM! I was looking at the door, and the top of it just kind of blew out, like from the inside. I remember I’m thinking, That’s weird, the way the top of that door exploded like that. The things you think about, you know? I was kneeling beside the door, down here like this. I looked up and Artie had kind of turned around, like his back was to me. And then he just dropped, man. There was a lot of blood. I mean a lot of blood.’ Vega rubbed his eyes, which were dull and world-tired. ‘I figure the guy must have been standing right behind the door, right up close so he could aim at Artie’s head. He must have waited to figure out where Artie was hitting the door so he could line him up. Then he just shot through the door where he figured Artie’s head was at. Only it doesn’t make sense, because if he wanted to kill him and be sure of it, he’d have aimed at Artie’s chest, where the target was biggest. It’s like he knew Artie was wearing a vest… Sometimes I think, Artie was just such a big dude. I’m talking maybe six-two, six-three, two-sixty, two-seventy-five — big. And the shooter, he aimed so high, like maybe he did not want to hit him, just scare him. Only he did not know Artie was gonna be so damn big…’

‘Just tell us what happened next.’ My voice was cool, ministering.

‘Nothing happened. I, like, tried to reach out to Artie and see if he was okay. At the beginning I didn’t realize he was dead. I mean, I knew he was dead but part of me did not know for sure, you know? Then I had my radio and I called in and told them we were in trouble. I did not know what to do. The others were all up those stairs where you are now and down here, on the stairs down to the second floor. None of us knew what to do.’

‘Did you hear anything inside the apartment? Footsteps? Voices?’

‘It was all, like, crazy time in here. People were shouting and the radio was going and my ears were ringing and all this blood was coming toward me on the floor. I didn’t hear nothing.’

‘Did anybody look through the hole in the door to see who was in the apartment?’

‘No, man! Nobody was going to get in front of that door.’

I remeasured the little square of wood flooring in front of the door. Barely big enough to hold Trudell’s oversized body. No wonder Vega could not escape the spreading blood. He’d been paralyzed there, not brave enough to go forward, not cowardly enough to go back. How ordinary was his reaction, how like the way I would have reacted.

Vega stood up, sliding his back up the wall. ‘You know what I was thinking? I was thinking, “Artie, you stupid shit, you did this to yourself.”’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I mean. I just had this feeling the couple weeks before this all happened, like something was wrong. It doesn’t make sense. I know this wasn’t Artie’s fault, but it felt like it was. I felt like, Why did you do this? Why did you let this happen?’

Kelly, who had not uttered a word since we’d entered the building, said, ‘Why do you say Trudell did it to himself?’

‘Just the way he was acting: real quiet, like he was upset, nervous. I knew something was bothering him. I even asked him about it. Me and him used to talk all the time. But he swore it was nothing. I told him if he was in a beef with someone, did he need any help? Cuz Artie was my boy. I’d’a never let anything happen to him. Only he didn’t want any help. Maybe when you’re that big like Artie was, you figure you can do it all yourself because you’re untouchable. Like elephants, you know? They’re so big nothing can kill them, in the jungle. Then they get shot and it’s like, they must be surprised because they thought nothing could kill them and then there’s this little human with a little stick and, bang, they’re dying. They must be surprised. Because they’re so strong.’

I didn’t quite follow the point about elephants, but I did not blink at it. I did not want anything to interrupt the momentum of Vega’s narration. He’d held all this in for ten years.

‘I figured maybe it was something at home,’ Vega continued, ‘like it was none of my business. Artie had a wife and a couple of kids. Now I don’t know. Maybe he knew something he shouldn’t have known. There are things you don’t talk about. Anyway, I figured if he wanted to tell me what was up, he would. Artie always told you everything sooner or later. He wasn’t one of these guys that keeps shit secret. So I figured, just let it go. We were both so busy putting together this warrant for the red-door coke and there wasn’t time. This was it for us, man. This was it. I figured whatever it was, we’d talk about it later.’

Kelly shot me a glance to underline the importance of the point. Remember that!

‘Go on, Julio,’ I coaxed. ‘Artie goes down. What happens next?’

‘Well, like I said, we were there, just like ten guys, no backup-’

‘Why wasn’t there any backup?’ Kelly interrupted.

‘That’s how we always did it. We had to get in here quiet. If they seen us coming with cruisers and all that, there’d be nothing left by the time we got inside. We had to surprise them. Plus, in the A-3 you didn’t tell anybody anything, not in that station. It was the Hotel No-tell. We had guys there that were tighter with Braxton than with you. Some of them were on the take, some of them just knew a kid from the neighborhood or whatever. If they heard about the warrant, they would have made a phone call. So we didn’t tell nobody about that raid till the night we did it, and we picked those guys by hand because we trusted them. You know what I mean.’ This last was directed at Kelly.

‘Alright,’ I prodded, ‘we get it. No backup. Keep going.’

But before Vega could reply, a man’s voice behind the apartment door announced, ‘I don’t know who you all are, but I’m getting ready to call the police.’

None of us said anything.

The man opened the door partway and spied us. A seventyish African-American man with a formal bearing. A gentleman retiree maybe, the sort who puts on a tie every day to read his newspaper at the kitchen table. ‘This isn’t a place to hang out. What are you fellas doing out here?’

I stepped forward (I was technically the senior officer), flipped my badge, apologized for disturbing the man.

‘Nobody called the police to come here.’ He took up a guard post at the threshold.

‘Well it’s an old case. It’s nothing to worry about.’

The man did not react.

‘There was an accident here a long time ago,’ I said. ‘A policeman was killed.’

‘I know all about it. They set up that boy for it.’

Vega’s eyes swelled, a bubble of sadness.

‘That’s not necessarily what happened,’ I offered without conviction.

‘Mmm-hmm. You mind if I stay here?’

‘Yes,’ Vega blurted.

‘No,’ I overruled him. ‘No, I think it would be helpful if you stayed, Mr…?’

‘Kenison.’

‘Mr Kenison. Ben Truman.’ We shook hands. ‘John Kelly, Julio Vega.’

The old man hesitated before taking Vega’s hand — did he remember the pariah’s name? — but he shook it, then returned to his post at the door like a Beefeater.

The presence of this interloper seemed to inhibit Vega. He studied the floor as if he’d dropped a coin there. ‘Anyway, like I said, I had the radio and there’s blood all over and I can hear Gittens calling the turret. I knew Gittens was going to be around because it was kind of his warrant. You know, in the sense it was his snitch’ — a glance at Mr Kenison — ‘I mean informant. Plus, he was our friend, he watched out for Artie and me. So I hear him call in and he says he’s coming up. Next thing I know, here comes Gittens up the stairs. Out of nowhere, he’s just here. It was like some cartoon, like “Super Friends” or something. So Gittens comes up behind me and he says, “What the fuck happened?” And I tell him, “Artie got shot through the door.” So Gittens is all pissed. He stands up and he grabs the pipe and he starts breaking down the door himself. No vest. He just jumps in front of the door and starts banging away. He kept slipping because of the blood on the floor, and he had Artie lying there around his feet. But he was going in that door no matter what. It took a while, but Gittens got through and we followed him in.’

Vega moved to enter the apartment, but Mr Kenison was blocking the door.

‘Excuse me.’

The old man stepped aside. His eyes never strayed from Vega’s face.

Vega led us into the apartment just as Gittens had led the search-warrant team a decade before.

‘We get in and it’s empty. Nothing. No shooter, no gun, no coke. Not even furniture. Just some little stuff in the cabinets, cereal, shit like that. Paper and shit all over the floor. It was dark too. The only light was from the street outside.’

Vega’s description jarred with the bright, well-scrubbed apartment we stood in. The walls were freshly painted in a creamy yellow, there were new appliances in the kitchen, even the windows had been replaced with up-to-date vinyl-sash models.

‘Did you do all this?’ I asked Mr Kenison.

‘Yes, I did.’ His tone carried the hint of a challenge.

‘It’s really nice.’

Vega went on: ‘Like I said, we’d never been inside this place. We didn’t know what the fuck it was going to look like in here.’ To Mr Kenison: ‘Excuse me, we didn’t know anything about what it was going to look like. Sorry. We come in, we secure it, next thing I know Gittens is running down a back staircase and everyone is running after him. We did not even know there was a back staircase. After that I’m kinda unclear. I didn’t go with them. I went back to stay with Artie.’

‘But do you know what happened?’

‘Yeah. Gittens found the weapon in the back of the apartment near the door. Big pump-action shotgun. Ballistics made it the murder weapon, fingerprints made it Braxton’s. We tore the place up, found all kinds of other evidence Braxton had been here. There was a back stairway and a back door, which was how the shooter got out. Simple case. It was Braxton, no doubt about it.’

Mr Kenison said, ‘That boy admitted he’d been here other times. So you found his fingerprints or whatever; doesn’t mean he was here that night.’ His tone was neither angry nor deferential. He was simply stating a fact, unabashed by the fact that we were police officers.

‘His fingerprints,’ Vega exclaimed, ‘were on the gun!’

‘They could have taken that gun from the boy anytime and dropped it in the yard.’

‘Oh come on!’ Vega said.

‘It happens.’

‘You really believe that?’

‘I believe it happens, yes.’

‘But do you believe that’s what happened here? We planted the gun? I mean, you live here, you see what goes on. Do you really believe that’s what happened?’

‘I don’t know who of you-all to believe. I don’t believe that boy and I don’t believe the police. That makes him not guilty.’

‘You think he’s innocent.’

‘I didn’t say innocent. I said not guilty. Could be he did it. But you police officers should have done a better job.’

Vega’s chest and shoulders drooped perceptibly. After all, this was the common wisdom on the Trudell case. Braxton’s guilt or innocence was almost beside the point. It had become a case about civil rights and police lying — Vega’s lying — not murder. A morality play for the masses, with Braxton the incidental beneficiary.

Vega looked around the apartment, searching for something familiar, a portal back to that night. In the kitchen, he ran his palm over the Formica counters. It was as if the refurbished apartment disoriented him. It mediated between himself and his own history. Vega had replicated the coordinates along the Y-axis of place only to find the X-axis, time, completely blocked, the grid itself inaccessible. The moment of fracture — August 17, 1987, 2:25 A.M. — was lost.

He murmured, ‘That kid killed Artie.’

No one responded.

‘That kid killed Artie.’

Vega was drenched in remorse, and it occurred to me that he’d reached a terrible decision: He intended to kill Braxton. But it was a fleeting suspicion, crowded out almost immediately by a more pressing concern.

Framed by the apartment windows, the strobe of a cruiser’s lights glinted from the street below. I looked down to see Martin Gittens and a backup car, three cops in all. They had come for me.