Mission Flats

38

Bullshit was John Kelly’s favorite word, shorthand for anything he did not respect. The Kennedys, the designated-hitter rule, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, National Public Radio — all these were bullshit. There was quite a lot of bullshit in the world, Kelly believed. It wasn’t always clear what this Wrong Stuff was, but Kelly could spot it readily enough to divide the world into the bullshit and the not bullshit. It was all pretty simple to him, just ones and zeroes. I did not yet have the knack of distinguishing the bullshit from the non-, especially in the nonbinary world that cops inhabit. So it came as a surprise to me when Kelly pronounced Gittens’s behavior that afternoon bullshit.

True, when we met him at the Homicide office around two o’clock, there was an exuberant, cocky swagger to the detective. ‘Ben Truman!’ Gittens beamed at me. ‘Looks like I just saved your sorry ass!’ He hugged me, welcoming me back to the fold. No hard feelings. All a big misunderstanding.

And it wasn’t just Gittens. In the Homicide office, cops sat on desks and smiled and laughed over their paper coffee cups. The corked-up anxiety of a stalled investigation had finally been released.

Gittens announced to the room, ‘I’m getting tired of carrying you all on my back!’

‘Bullshit,’ Kelly whispered to me.

I was not so sure. Didn’t Gittens have a right to be exuberant? He had plunged into Mission Flats like a pearl diver with a knife clenched in his teeth and emerged with the solution. It was a tour de force. And the fact that — by finding Danziger’s killer and maybe Trudell’s too — Gittens had cleared my own name only magnified his accomplishment. So I wrote off Kelly’s comment to old-fartism and, inside at least, joined in the general celebration.

The cause for all the self-congratulations sat in an interview room, a doughy, caramel-skinned kid squirming with a case of phantom hemorrhoids. Andre James struck me as one of those boys who radiate vulnerability, sensitive boys at the edge of the playground whose victimhood is so inevitable it evokes both pity and its opposite, a desire to distance oneself, to avoid the oncoming crash. How on earth did such a kid get tangled up with a roughhouse crew like Braxton’s? The boy’s father sat beside him, earnest, slight, a churchgoer in tortoiseshell glasses.

Gittens swept past us and, in the high spirit that pervaded the office, invited us to ‘come check out this kid’s story. It’s fuckin’ dynamite.’

I shook the kid’s damp hand, then his father’s. Gittens introduced Kelly and me as ‘the officers leading the investigation’ and instructed Andre to tell us the story ‘just the way you told me.’

Andre squirmed until his father chastised him, ‘Do what the officer told you.’ The father assured us, ‘He wants to help.’

Clearly the kid wanted anything but. He spoke only after another bout of fidgeting and a sharp look from his father. ‘It’s like I told ‘Tective Gittens. I seen Harold like a couple weeks ago. His mother lives in this apartment next to us in Grove Park. That’s like the project. Harold doesn’t live there no more, but his mother still does. I don’t really know him. I know his mother. She’s a nice lady. I used to know Harold a little, back in the day, like before he blew up. He still comes around sometimes, he helps out people in the neighborhood, like he gives money to people sometimes if they can’t get groceries and stuff, like old people, you know?’

Gittens rolled his finger in a circular motion. Get on with it.

‘Anyway I’m coming out of the elevator and I see Harold coming out the stairs. So I say like, “Yo, Brax, wuzzup?” Like, “Why you taking the stairs?” cuz we live on the eighth floor, right? So he doesn’t really say anything. Or maybe he just says like, “Hey, Dre” or something like that. And he goes in his mother’s apartment and I just figured, like, whatever, and I go into my apartment.’

‘Did you notice anything about his appearance?’ I asked.

He glanced nervously at Gittens.

‘It’s alright, Andre,’ I reassured him. ‘I’m just asking. Did you see any marks on him?’

‘What kind of marks?’

‘Scratches, stains, rips in his clothes, anything.’

‘No. I don’t remember anything like that.’ He gave Gittens another glance, then continued. ‘Anyway, I heard Harold like banging stuff around in there, like pots and pans, you know. Because the walls are really, really thin. We hear everything. Sometimes we hear the TV shows playing next door and we can just sit and listen, you know?’

Gittens rolled his eyes and rolled his finger.

‘So I’m thinking Harold isn’t acting right, and then I hear him go back out into the hall. It made me kind of curious, like maybe something was wrong. So I open the door and I see Harold out there in the hall with this bucket and a bottle of Clorox. It was weird. I knew Harold didn’t go running up all them stairs just to do his laundry out in the hallway.’

Andre smiled at his own joke and looked around for one of us to reciprocate. His desire to please was as plain as a dog’s wagging tail. ‘So Harold, he had water in the bucket and he pours in this bleach and he sticks his hands in there and he starts washing his hands in it. I figured it must burn but he washes it around, like on his hands and arms. So I stick my head out and I ask him, “Brax, what are you doing? That stuff isn’t for your skin,” and I make some joke like “The black won’t come out” and “Who are you, Michael Jackson?” Only Harold doesn’t answer, he just tells me, “Shut the door and never mind.”’

I interrupted again: ‘Did you see anything on his hands? What was he washing off?’

‘I didn’t see nothing. Whatever it was, I guess he didn’t want it to get on the floor in his mother’s apartment so he took it out in the hall. Anyway, when he was done with that, he went back inside.’

I looked at Gittens and shrugged. So?

‘Keep going,’ Gittens instructed.

‘Like I said, this was all kind of buggin’, so I kept on listening. And the walls are real thin, right? So I could hear everything. And I hear Harold get on the phone and he tells somebody, ‘We don’t have to worry about that DA no more.’ And then he keeps talking and he says like, “I put a cap in him and then I jelled up.”’

‘Jelled up?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, that’s what he said, “I jelled up.”’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know. I guess he, like, froze.’

‘Did he say anything else?’

‘No. He just said, “I capped that DA and then I jelled up and I took off and I drove his car into the lake so nobody would find him for a while.”’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that.’ The kid looked at Gittens to confirm he had not left anything out.

‘What else did he say?’ I pressed.

‘I don’t know. I guess I didn’t hear the rest.’

‘I thought you could hear everything.’

‘I could. I mean, I guess I just don’t remember every word he said.’

‘But you remember that part?’

‘Yeah. I definitely remember that part.’

Kelly was listening from a corner of the room. ‘Did you ever tell this story to anyone before today?’ he asked.

‘Nah. I didn’t want to tell anybody cuz this was MP and everybody knows you don’t want to get mixed up with them. But then Officer Gittens came by this morning and he asked, so I just decided to tell the truth.’

‘You waited all this time and then all of a sudden you decided to tell the truth?’

‘Nobody ever asked before.’

I studied the kid’s full-moon face.

Gittens broke in to explain. ‘Andre has been doing some work for me. He got caught up in a little drug thing. He got talked into doing something stupid. These sliders recruit the good kids to act as mules because they know the cops won’t bother them. Andre got caught with a little coke. I’ve been letting him work it off.’

The kid looked at Gittens with an eager expression.

‘He’s been doing some undercover stuff for us, some buys outside the Flats where no one knows him. Sometimes if he hears something, he passes it to us. He’s doing just fine. In six months if he holds up his end, we’ll drop the charge. Andre has a clean record. He’s got a three-five at English Academy. He belongs in college, not jail.’

The father put his hand on Andre’s hand to reassure him, to protect him.

The kid looked down at his father’s hand. He seemed to realize there was not much the old man could do for him now.

‘Andre,’ I said, ‘are you sure about everything you just told us?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And you’d be willing to tell it to the grand jury? And at a trial?’

‘If I got to.’

In the hallway outside, I asked Gittens, ‘Will that kid really show up to testify?’

‘Let me tell you something about Andre. I have to hold him back. He’s always after me to do more, more, more. We can’t even use him in the Flats anymore because everyone knows he’s cooperating. They call him Five-O. No one will even talk to him, never mind sell to him. So now he’s all hot to do more buys in other neighborhoods, Roxbury, Dorchester. He can’t get enough. Believe me, Andre will show up.’

‘I feel bad for him,’ I said. ‘Braxton’ll kill him.’

‘Well,’ Gittens replied philosophically, ‘he made his own bed. We’re just offering him a way out.’

‘A first-offense simple possession? Wouldn’t they just dismiss it anyway?’

‘Maybe.’ Gittens shrugged. ‘But look, we got to do what we got to do. It’s no fun for me either, jamming up a kid like that. Andre’s a good kid. But the alternative is to let Braxton walk and then maybe he kills someone else. Besides, I didn’t make Andre a witness. He happens to live there. Somebody has to live there.’

Kelly folded his arms, apparently satisfied with this explanation. It was a rough game Andre had chosen to play. It would get a lot rougher when Braxton heard about his testimony.

‘You mind if I talk with him, alone?’ I asked Gittens.

‘Be my guest. Caroline Kelly’s on her way down, though. She won’t like it if we take too many statements. It creates inconsistencies.’

In the interview room, Andre and his father both had their hands on the table with fingers laced, as if they were praying.

‘Sir,’ I said to the father, ‘do you mind if I talk to Andre alone?’

‘No, of course not.’ He stood up slowly, reluctant to leave his son. Mr James stood there with his spectacles and narrow shoulders, hovering over the boy, impotent, and I projected onto him all the Everyman virtues of the nine-to-fiver: humility, dignity, decency, discipline, generosity. I saw him getting up before dawn to catch a bus. I saw him reading quietly at night. I saw him bragging on his son who was going to go to college. I wanted to tell him, Take your kid and get out of here. Run. Disappear. Don’t be so damn virtuous. For once, don’t tell the truth. Stay out of this.

Instead I told him, ‘It’s okay. I just want to ask him a few more questions.’

When the man had left, I said, ‘Andre, the thing that bothers me is, how come you waited so long to tell anybody this?’

‘I was scared.’

‘But you’re not scared now.’

‘I talked to Detective Gittens. He told me it was the right thing.’

‘It is the right thing, Andre. I just want to be sure. I know Gittens is letting you work off that drug charge. I just want to be sure this is the truth.’

‘It is the truth, straight up.’

‘And if I told you I could have that drug case dismissed myself and you wouldn’t have that hanging over your head anymore — you wouldn’t owe Gittens or the DA or anyone else — would it still be the truth?’

He smiled to let me know he understood the question, he spotted the trick. ‘The truth is the truth.’

And so it is.

By the time Kurth and Caroline arrived, we were beginning to realize what the Homicide detectives already knew: The case had been broken. The evidence against Braxton had reached critical mass, and by some mysterious fission a very complex case had suddenly become very simple. Harold Braxton had murdered Danziger. There were loose ends to tie up, of course. We had not recovered a weapon or any other physical evidence. And the motive was still shadowy. (Even there, we were already down to a few likely candidates, though. Choose your favorite motive: (a) to protect a gang lieutenant, Gerald McNeese, whom Danziger was preparing to prosecute, (b) to protect Braxton himself by ensuring that G-Mac would not cut a deal with Danziger to avoid prosecution by squealing, or — the most credible — (c) because Braxton had acted viscerally, lashing out at a tormentor just as he would on the street.) There was still work to be done. But the anxious, baffling initial phase of the investigation was over. We were no longer asking Who done it? We’d moved on to the lesser mystery of How to prove it? All the agita I’d been feeling since the day I found Danziger’s body in the cabin — flop sweat and confusion, guilt and mother loss, and the hysteria of being accused myself — all of it was lifted and a tipsy sense of relief set in. I grinned and, looking around the room, saw the same dumb grin on any number of cops.

Even Kurth was swept up in the euphoria, in his reptile way. He tried to apologize for blowing up earlier at the courthouse, which may sound like a perfunctory thing but for Kurth was like gnawing off his own right arm at the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry about… what happened… Caroline… you know, this morning… what I said…’

Needless to say, Caroline ran her sword hilt-deep into him. ‘Well thank you, Boo Radley, that was very articulate.’

Our group laughed loudly, Gittens loudest of all. I doubt Gittens knew who Boo Radley was, but he had the sense of it and anyway he was the hero of the moment.

Caroline gave Kurth a blithe hug and even Kurth smiled. At least his mouth twitched a little.

Caroline hugged me too. A tight, unembarrassed hug. She whispered, ‘I’m very, very happy for you. I’m so sorry you had to go through this.’ As condolences go, it was a pale thing. But at the time it felt profound.

We made our way to Kurth’s office to assemble the evidence for an arrest warrant. Gittens recounted what Andre James had overheard: ‘I put a cap in that DA, then I jelled up and I took off.’ Kelly and I then related how Braxton had been seen in Acadia County in a white Lexus. The Lexus was registered not to Braxton, but to an ophthalmologist — I-DOC, the license plate read — in suburban Brookline. I called the car a loaner, which, it turned out, was the wrong term.

‘It’s a half-G car,’ Gittens corrected. ‘Dealers borrow them from these rich junkies from the suburbs. They take the car for a few hours instead of taking cash for the drugs. That way they get a clean ride. For a few hours the cops don’t recognize them and don’t bother them. And the junkie gets a free score before he goes back to Weston or Wellesley. We’ll need a warrant for that car too.’

‘Nice car,’ I said. ‘Lexus coupe.’

‘Yeah, well Harold had a long ride all the way to Maine. These kids love the Benzes, but Lexus is a nice ride too. Nobody buys American anymore. It’s a shame.’

Caroline was anxious to bring Gittens down a peg.

‘Detective,’ she said, ‘if you can fit your head through the door, it would help if we knew where to find Braxton.’

‘Ben and I will find him,’ he announced.

I grinned, delighted to be back among them, accepted. ‘How are we going to do that?’ I asked.

‘It’s garbage day,’ Gittens said. He checked his watch. It was just after two-thirty. ‘Come on, Cinderella, while there’s still time.’

On the way out, Gittens and I passed the interview room where Andre and his father sat waiting stoically. That was the only qualification of our mood at that moment, the only blemish on our sense of triumph — a reminder that somebody was going to pay a price for all this happiness.