"Jesus Christ. What happened to you?"
Dorian sidled up to the shop counter, looking sheepish with a monstrous welt below his eye.
"Got punched in the face."
"I knew that mouth'd catch up with you sooner or later." Althea said.
"How about a little sympathy?"
"For you or the other guy?"
Dorian shot her a sideways grin.
"Very funny."
Althea was the kind of girl who didn't mind if you monopolized dinner conversation with every detail of the Heaven Spa rub n' tug you'd had that afternoon, but she wasn't much for warmhearted sensitivity. Come to think of it, maybe the one quality precluded the other. But at least he didn't have to constantly worry about stepping on her delicate petals.
"You know that Polish Meathead you let sit back there and spin records for you girls, while really he’s just ogling your tits?"
"Why’nt you go ice your face?"
"You got his number?"
"You're not still hung up on my going dancing with Emil that night at The Living Room?" She said.
"Sort of, but that's not why I want to talk to him. The guy's a cop right?"
"He's a detective," she said. "Why you got some investigating you need done?"
"This kid from Rosarita's who sucker punched me--"
"The pizza guy did that to you?"
Dorian’s lips pursed.
"No?"
"Look, will you just set me up with your boy toy?"
"All we did was dance, which is…" she said, holding something back. "What's in it for me?"
"My undying gratitude."
"Thought I already had that."
Althea picked her phone off the jewelry display.
"You wanna press charges, why not just go to the precinct?"
"I'm not sure I do yet. The kid's kind of important to this thing I'm working on. He just needs a talking to."
Althea raised an eyebrow.
"Maybe I just want to put the fear in him a little."
"Oh, is that all?"
She started dialing the number.
"Well, Dorian always knows best, doesn't he?"
Dorian sat on a well-worn bench just inside the front doors of the 7th Precinct.
He would have been bored senseless if it wasn't for a tall woman sporting such a distinctive wash of bling and boobs, that he didn't quite know where to rest his eyes. She had the etched plastic receiver of an old pay phone pressed to her burnt sienna lips.
"Mammy, those kids are all special ed. Retarded. All of them. Good for her. Good for her fucking ass. Goofoher," she was yelling. "Nobody comes in my crib. She let all them bad mothafuckas in her house. Now she's up in this shit."
Dorian wasn't sure as he blinked in disbelief what surprised him more; the sight of someone talking into the relic of a pay phone in this age of techno-fetish, or the incriminating scraps of bile the crazed girl was spewing mid-precinct into the oversized receiver.
"You don't let all those people come to your house. That house is for you. Mmmhhhmmm. You got to know how to have your shit and be humble. But have your shit."
He couldn't agree more.
"You should see how they talk to Millie. Cursing and shooting guns and shit in her house. No sir, I didn't do shit.”
He could see himself hanging at the precinct more often.
"Those used to be free lunch bitches. Now they're section eight bitches. That's why Millie don't wash her hands when she goes to the bathroom. That nasty bitch. I would fuck all of them. They would have to jump me. I would throw that bitch on the couch, and POW."
The way she said the word pow was so violent, Dorian realized for the first time that he was staring. He averted his eyes, but it wasn't more than a second before he was creeping back up her camel colored UGGs to her ruffled tights again, resting for a moment where the metal phone chord brushed the chasm between her Rubenesque rack. He damned himself for not bringing along a sketchpad. He was getting good and stiff.
"Teasdale?"
The nubile figure was replaced by a tired looking steroid-case with neck tattoos, dark sunken eyes and a receding crew-cut spiking in clumps as if he'd just stepped out of a palm oil shower.
"You Teasdale?"
Dorian wasn't sure whether to nod or run. Neck tattoo reached out his hand and took a tight grip on Dorian's, squeezing his knuckles into a ball.
"Rozycki."
Dorian squinted, unsure if this was the same guy he'd seen sitting at the back of A&D flipping Benny Golson 45s on Althea's rickety turntable.
"Alright, let's go."
"I fuck her up! She kept on talking about her hair. She looked like a hooker security guard!" his busty friend at the pay-phone was yelling now.
"Go where?" Dorian asked.
"For a ride." Rozycki said, as if it was the stupidest question he'd heard in a morning filled with stupid questions. "To find your guys."
Rather proactive for a cop. Even a cop doing his sexy bosom buddy a favor. Dorian had at best envisioned a half-hearted diagnosis at the desk and a quick prescription of the run-arounds.
A ride-along, no less. He had to admit that sounded rather promising.
Dorian took in a last eyeful of bulging cleavage wondering if he should try to get the crazy woman's number, if she even had a number, as he followed Rozycki out the precinct.
Up in the front seat, Rozycki's partner, detective Jared Serilo, wasn't the talkative type. Swishing round each corner in a long slow stride, the detective's ride appeared as a regular yellow cab from the outside, but had all the inner riggings of NYPD Radio Motor Patrol on the inside. Rolling from the Williamsburg offshoot up Houston, Serilo leisurely spun the unmarked taxi cruiser, splitting his gaze between streets and rearview, sizing Dorian up for such long periods he was surprised they didn't pop a curb and plow a line of pedestrians.
Detective Emil "The Razor" Rozycki on the other hand, wouldn't shut up. He wanted to fill in any holes he'd somehow missed about the A&D Dress Co "gals".
"For sure, smart and cool is rare. Been pretty tight ever since they opened the shop."
"Lucky you."
"Yeah," Dorian said, more than ready to change subjects. "So are we undercover here?"
"Not exactly, Operations 6, plainclothes task force." Rozycki said. "You been in that building upstairs from them how long?"
"Going on twelve years."
"Twelve years. Twelve years's a long time, same building. You seen some changes in this neighborhood."
"Yeah. I've seen some changes. Not for the better."
"No shit," Serilo muttered underneath his breath, the closest he'd come to a sentence so far.
"Your landlord, that's Moshe Axlerod right?"
"Yeah, you know him?"
"Of him."
"You ever know Salvatore Agnelli?" Rozycki asked.
Serilo was really drilling into Dorian with his rearview stare now.
"He was a tenant."
"Salvatore Agnelli? I don't think so..." He thought it strange they knew someone in his building, then he realized who they were talking about. "Oh, Sal."
"Yeah, Sal. He lived in your building like forever, right?"
Of course Dorian remembered Old Sal. Sal with the raincoats, with the umbrellas on sunny days, Sal always out walking the block, always ready with a jowly smile when Dorian passed. Till his disappearance. "Sal. In 10. Yeah I never heard what happened to that guy. You know something about that?" Dorian asked.
"Never said goodbye, huh?" Serilo betrayed just the faintest touch of a sneer.
"No, not that I… recall."
"Your super, he put in a missing persons report." Rozycki asked.
"What? Really? No. I mean. It makes sense, I guess."
"Sal. He just disappeared. Poof. Didn't even notice, huh?"
"Well, I mean--“
How long had Sal been gone? Hadn't Dorian seen him just a few months back, or was that "Free Stuff," the hoarder on three who obsessively dumpster dived just to hang everyone else's first world disposables on the fences of abandoned lots around the neighborhood. The lifers all kind of ran together in Dorian’s mind. Except of course for Morris. If that guy ever disappeared, the entire building would be thumping for days with the epic rager Dorian would throw.
"You guys figure out what happened to Sal?"
"We tried. For a little while. We was the assigned detectives. Had a nice line on him too or at least the guy who did him."
"Did him?"
"Couple steps away from a first-degree collar. Till the Feds took interest."
Serilo let out a little snort, "Smelled a bigger fish,” barely audible, but there all the same.
"Those Alphabet Boys got involved, no further investigative response required from our end," Rozycki said, not bothering to hide his animosity in front of a lowly civilian.
"Like murder in the first degree?"
Serilo pressed his foot down on the brake pedal.
"This your boy's pizza place?"
Dorian looked out the window, the taxi cruiser sat catty corner from Rosarita's.
"Yeah, but I don't see him."
The three watched a plump woman plating slices through the glass for the sparse mid-afternoon patrons.
"You sure? Maybe he went and turn middle-aged Mexican broad overnight?"
"Pricey operation." Serilo jeered.
"Coulda been saving up," Rozycki turned to face his passenger. "It wasn't that lady gave you a black eye, when you didn’t go down on her right, Sleazedale?"
"Pretty sure."
Was Dorian suffering from auditory hallucinations, or had this dimwitted pig just called him Sleazedale? What had Althea told this guy exactly? They always made a point of keeping their extracurricular entanglements on a need to know. Dorian now wondered if he'd somehow misjudged the arrangement.
The Razor lifted an eyebrow towards his partner, who gave a little one-sided lip twitch in response.
"Whatta-you-wanna-do-here?" Serilo mumbled.
"Hit L.E.S. 1?"
Serilo craned his neck sideways, releasing a pair of audible pops, "why the hell not." He shifted the cruiser back into gear, hanging a right. The Razor took his sweet ass time gazing in through the window of A&D as they sailed past. The Razor's face was obscured, but Dorian imagined the Polock licking his chops at this little misadventure. Enough date night chatter to fill an entire evening on Althea’s wanker artist beau riding his backseat all afternoon like a pansy. Rozycki humoring the wet blanket to staunch any residual bad feeling she might harbor over poor little Sleazedale's getting a likely well-deserved fist in the face. Dorian could picture the Razor’s neck tattoos pulsing as he went down on Althea just right.
"Rube and Deuce?" Rozycki checked to make sure he had the names right.
"That's what they told me," Dorian did his best not to sneer back.
"Pair of winning thoroughbreds," The Razor said as he stuck a Camel in his mouth and lit up.
The sizzling tip filled the cruiser with delicious fumes. A surge shot up Dorian’s body, his heart rate escalating, making him dizzy. He felt his right deltoid's twitch, his muscles instinctively pushing his arm forward to bum a smoke, or at the very least a drag.
It took the entirety of his self-restraint to tip his head back, open his jaw wide and satisfy his craving with a lung-full of second-hand smoke. He wasn't going to give this fucking swine the pleasure of doing him any more favors.
The Razor tapped Serilo on the shoulder and told him to hold up.
Down the block sat a purple Scion xB with a "Brooklyn Attitude" decal emblazoned on the front windshield in cursive. A pair of giant subs poked out the open trunk ready to rumble the block with gangster Reggaeton any hour of the day or night. A half dozen Hispanic kids lounged around the car. A couple of them noticed the discordant taxi and grabbed up rags, feigning to buff the side of the pimped out whip.
Dorian squinted. Three in from the right looked familiar. "That's him."
"Which one?" Rozecki asked.
"Cornrows."
"That's Rube?"
"No, Deuce."
"Alrighty then." The Razor threw open the passenger door and hit the street.
"Should I keep my head down?" Dorian asked his driver.
"You should shut the fuck up," Serilo said, as he popped the clip on his holster and flipped open his door.
The Razor moved on the Scion buffers, whipping a badge from beneath his shirt, "Fellas working for Angel?"
"Ain't working for shit," a scrawny kid with a cue ball 8 carved in his hair replied.
"I'm here to drop me a Deuce."
Deuce took two steps forward, fronting.
"Didn't I toss you less then a month ago?" the Razor asked. "And here you are with your dick up my ass again. You a glutton for punishment Huelebicho?" The Razor reached out and grabbed Deuce by the strap of his wife beater. "What's up player? Am I fucking with your flow here Deuce Bigalow the pussy ass wanna-be jigalo?"
Deuce recoiled, instinctively making a fist with his free hand, a perceptible smile shone on The Razor's lips.
"YOU GONNA FUCKING CHIN CHECK ME DAWG?"
The Razor grabbed Deuce's neck with both hands, cutting off his windpipe. "You're lucky I'm not a fucking rookie, you'd be a pool of blood on the concrete now."
"Yo, police brutality," one of the teens muttered.
"You fucking mopes can take a walk."
"Hey ease up man. We're just cleaning cars here."
The Razor pulled out his cuffs.
"Alright who wants my first collar of the day?"
Deuce's homies reluctantly started to back away. "That's right you little ball lickers, skedaddle."
The second the others were a few feet back, The Razor jammed his boot into the side of Deuce's knee, dropping him to the ground, ripping his arm from its socket, and tossing the kid's pockets.
"What's this?" The Razor asked as he produced three baggies of white powder.
"This on some bullshit. Ain't mine."
"Look Fuckface, this the way you wanna play, I'll cuff you right now and frog march you all the way to central. Where'd you get this shit? The dealer's name."
"On the corner."
The Razor grabbed a handful of cornrows and slammed Deuce's face into pavement.
As Deuce's grill hit the sidewalk, the feeling of inadequacy that Dorian had been experiencing all afternoon hit a deafening pitch. Dorian tried to remember the last time he'd thrown a punch himself, but he came up short. He'd never thought himself a pacifist, certainly wasn't shy when it came to verbal assault, but he couldn't help flinch from the violence he'd set in motion now.
"Don't give me that mierda," The Rozor yelled, his knee pressed into the small of Deuce's back. Between the detective's neck tattoos and his hood mannerisms, it was hard to tell the cop from the thugs.
Picking up one of the baggies, The Razor shoved it into Deuce's face. "What's this little funbag called? Foo-foo dust? Three strikes you're out? Ten-to-life?"
"It's called go fuck yourself."
The Razor smacked Deuce across the mouth.
Dorian pulled the door latch to put an end to this, but it was locked, like a stiff rubber band cutting the circulation to his balls. Serilo eyed his passenger with an "are we gonna have a problem here?" stare. Dorian unfurled his fingers from the handle, knowing better than to try for the window.
"Jesus you're a smart assed little cunt," The Razor continued outside. "You really want me to charge you with intent to sell? Violate your ass back upstate a couple decades?"
"No--"
The Razor's eyes lit up. He knew he'd won.
"Who you out here for? Crazy Vasquez? Daddy Daz?"
"Angel."
"Christ. Isn't that how we started this shit out? Always with the tough guy business. That's how you get your fucking nose broken." The Razor flicked Deuce's bleeding snout and snatched up the baggies, rising.
The Razor hopped back into the cruiser’s passenger seat, throwing the bags of dope into the glove box.
"Well that was educational."
"What'd you find out?" Dorian asked.
"Nothing. I just did a little educating."
Both cops laughed.
"You're not gonna bring him in or anything?"
"Looking for a bullshit arrest, talk to a rookie. Cuff anything to boost their stats. I'm just doing Althea a favor here."
"But that wasn't even the guy who--"
"Listen, that skell who face pumped you, he'll get the message. Word travels the rat-vine quick."
But as Serilo and Rozycki dropped him in front of the tenement, Dorian couldn't help but feel he was in more danger than he’d been that morning.
"Hey yo, say hi to our girl for me."
And with that, the sham taxi drove off down Ludlow leaving a traumatized Dorian to contemplate just what words were travelling the rat vine now.
CHAPTER 02
CHAPTER 03
CHAPTER 04
CHAPTER 05
CHAPTER 06
CHAPTER 07
CHAPTER 08
CHAPTER 09
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
UPDATE: LOOKING FORWARD - CHAPTER 18
BEHIND THE KEYBOARD
It’s easy to be complacent in everyday situations and miss the gold. Believe it or not, much of the conversation Dorian overhears in the precinct I overheard directly when I was called in for jury duty. It’s amazing what incriminating things people are willing to spill to a roomful of potential jurors and court workers. Classic New York City. Priceless story fodder.
Pictures I took during an NYPD takedown I watched for a full hour recently in SOHO. Soaking in every world, gesture, mannerism, and picking anyone associated’s brain who was willing to talk.
To get the police language right, I’ve talked to dozens of cops and criminal lawyers over the years to pick their brains and get a sense of their speech patterns. It’s one of my favorite parts of being a storyteller. Getting a better understanding of human motivation. What drives us to do what we do, and how we go about it is endlessly fascinating.
Yours In The Chain,
Doug Karr
SPECIAL THANKS to my wife @zenmommas for years of support during the writing process, @ericvancewalton for his trailblazing, inspired collaboration and incredible guidance, @andrarchy for his mind blowing insight and friendship, @bakerchristopher for being an inspiration as a human artist and bro, @complexring for his brilliance and enthusiasm, Masie Cochran, Taylor Rankin and @elenamoore for their skillful help in editing the manuscript, and to @opheliafu for the fantastic illustrations she created exclusively for the novel's launch on Steemit and to Elena Megalos for her wonderful character illustrations. I’d also like to thank Eddie Boyce, Jamie Proctor, Katie Mustard, Alan Cumming, Danai Gurira, Stephan Nowecki, Ron Simons, Dave Scott, Alden Karr, Missy Chimovitz, my dad Andy Karr and late mother Wendy, and everyone else who helped lead me to this moment.
I am a Brooklyn based writer, film & commercial director, and crypto-enthusiast, my projects include @HardFork-series an upcoming narrative crypto-noir and my novel Dwelling will soon be premiering exclusively on Steemit, and you can check out more of my work at dougkarr.com, piefacepictures.com, and www.imdb.com/name/nm1512347
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