CHAPTER 16
Big Ben had been right about the blanket being perfect camouflage under which to hide a dead body. Of the seventy or so people who walked directly by him that night, only one so much as paused – a winsome goth chick who had just left a holiday party at a nearby club. The club had been handing out fake patent-leather Santa Claus hats as door prizes, and the girl dropped one of these hats onto Big Ben’s close-cropped head, the top of which was poking out from under the edge of the blanket. In her alcohol and Ecstasy haze she failed to even register the body’s unmistakable immobility, even when she actually reached out and touched it.
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Nash had called an emergency all-staff meeting for eight on the morning of Black Friday in the office. After the fiasco of the previous day’s attempted rout on Darscun, he’d told Mike that he’d come to the conclusion that if the Bureau had restrictions on how many people he could have looking for Darscun, that was just tough shit. He needed every pair of eyes he could get.
Mike’s cell rang at 6:30 that morning – someone needed to go post bail for the McCoy brothers, two mammoth fuckups whose mother was a long-term client. The two idiots had thrown a bag of flaming dog feces, anchored with a brick, through the ground-floor window of an office building that housed a small weekly newspaper who’d made disparaging remarks about their heavy metal cover band’s show at a local club. The resulting fire had caused several thousand dollars’ worth of damages.
After taking the call Mike rose, groaning, from bed and staggered naked into the bathroom. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard Reggie call out from the kitchen, “Towels, mon. Know dem. Live dem.”
After urinating for what felt like an eternity, Mike wrapped a towel around his waist and poked his head into the kitchen. “The McCoys need bailing out again. A biggie this time, arson, ten grand. You up to it?”
“Sure mon,” Reggie shrugged. As Mike focused his eyes he noticed that Reggie looked like he’d been up for a while already – he was fully dressed and groomed (such as it was for him) and he was halfway through a pot of coffee.
“What time did you get up, anyway?” Mike asked, clutching his side. He was already mentally searching for some more Vicodin, and vaguely wondering if he’d have to hit Lisa up again.
“Bout five tirty, mon. So, where dey holdin’ em?”
“Down at the seventh precinct,” Mike said.
“Best get goin’, den,” Reggie said. He pulled a thick spliff out of his hair. “Start your day off wit some a dat,” he said. “Work better dan dem pills.”
“I can’t smoke that and be able to drive, and I gotta drive,” Mike said. “Meeting this morning at the office, remember?”
“Ho, shit,” Reggie said, widening his eyes at the wall clock. “I and I gotta get a move on. I’d give you a ride to de office but I won’t have time to come get you after dis.”
“Thanks anyway, Reggie. I’ll smoke this tonight.”
“You better, mon. You doan wanna make a habit of dem pills.” He paused on his way out the door. “Wait, mon, tell you wot – I and I try to get dem back to de office and have dem Mum pick dem up, and I might be able to come back. Skin up, mon.”
“I’m not even gonna try to handle smoking this thing this morning, Reggie,” Mike said. “But thanks. I’ll see you in the office at eight.”
It was a cold, clear morning; Reggie shivered as he waited for the car to warm up. He’d lived in northern Jersey for two years and before that he’d spent seven in Boston, but he’d never grown fully acclimated to the winter climate of either northern city. He performed much like the car itself after a cold start, jerky and stiff. He turned the heat and defrost up full-blast as he pulled onto VFW highway, headed for the seventh precinct holding pen downtown. He’d been driving ten minutes before he and the car were sufficiently warm.
He got to the seventh precinct station and waited in line to fetch the two brothers, Johnny and Donny. The McCoys ran a scrap yard next door to an abandoned ward school in the economically depressed Hastings neighborhood of the city and they lived on the premises in a ramshackle double-wide with their functionally retarded, beleaguered mother, Serene. Neither of the guys, now both in their thirties, had enough sense to pour piss out of a boot, but they had plenty of ornery disposition to make up for the lack of brain power. Their offenses ranged from public drunkenness and indecent exposure (public pissing) to petty theft to auto-chopping to this newest twist, unwitting arson. When they were finally released to Reggie’s custody this morning, after a twenty-minute wait, they were already engaged in one of the petty and aimless but unbelievably violent squabbling matches that seemed to be constantly ongoing between them. Judging from what Reggie heard this morning, this one had ignited over which of the Desperate Housewives was hottest. The sound of their idiotic argument and of bodies – Johnny’s bony, stoop-shouldered one and Donny’s rotund, flabby one – being bounced off the walls of the hallway leading from the holding pens preceded the actual appearance of the McCoys by about a full minute.
“Dude, that blonde looks like she’s been rode hard and put away wet,” Johnny was sneering as two deputies dragged the brothers apart and tried to thrust them at Reggie. “The young dark-haired one’s got it going on. You’re fucking blind, dude, I tell ya.”
“You’d do that blonde in a hot second and you know it, asshat,” Donny shouted back.
“Indeed he would,” Reggie cut in, “and dat’s about how long he’d last too.”
“Haw, haw,” Donny gloated at his brother as Reggie and one of the deputies escorted the pair to Mike Roan’s car. “You’re a fuckin’ stooge, Johnny. That Rasta dude just called you a three-pump chump.”
“Kiss my ass,” Johnny snarled, trying to get in a head-butt. Reggie palmed Johnny’s back, slamming him face-first into the side of the car.
“Get in, you two,” he said. “You mama waiting for you.”
As they made their way toward Center Bolton, the two brothers grew restive. “Is Ma meeting us there?” Donny whined.
“No, I call her when I get dere. Now hush up,” Reggie snapped.
“Why doncha call her on the way there?” Johnny demanded. “We don’t feel like sittin’ around waitin’ for her all morning, goddammit. Black Friday’s always a big day at the scrap yard. We need to be there.”
“I doan use dem cells,” Reggie sniffed. “I call her when we get dere.”
“Why don’t you use a cell phone?” Johnny demanded.
“Dem waves are bad for your brain,” Reggie said. “Dem give you tumors. I try to warn everybody but nobody listen. Dey learn one day.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Johnny scoffed. “What kinda voodoo shit is that?”
“I doan know notting about no voodoo. You got de wrong brand a nigger, pasty. Get it straight.”
Johnny sat back in the seat and pouted for a moment, then elbowed his fat brother in the chin for no apparent reason. Donny responded with a marshmallowy punch to Johnny’s gut.
Reggie pulled Mike’s car up to the curb in front of the office, not exactly legal but acceptable at this hour. The shorter distance he had to cover while trying to deal with dragging both of the shackled brothers into the office, the better.
But there was more lousy Jah in the air: a bum sleeping in the office doorway, clearly visible to Reggie and both McCoys. The brothers found it hilarious for some reason. Reggie got out of the car, remote-locking the McCoys in as he strode purposefully towards the doorway.
“Okay, brudder, time to get up and move it along,” he said, leaning down to gingerly touch the bum. “Come on.” He tried to shake the man’s shoulder, but drew his hand back as if he’d been burned. There was a dead weight and a cold stiffness to the blanketed figure that was not right. He went back to the car to grab a pair of rubber gloves from the glove box. The McCoys were watching him intently, Donny drooling slightly. “Stay put,” he snapped.
“Whassup?” Johnny asked.
“Notting good. Dat bum, he dead.” Reluctantly, he started towards the body. With his hands now covered, he turned back the blanket to look at the man’s head, still wearing the shiny Santa hat.
“Ho shit,” he sighed. He’d never actually met Big Ben, but Michael Roan had pointed him out to him before, and his image was burned into Reggie’s brain – Reggie happened to have a photographic memory when it came to faces. “Ho, no,” he muttered as he hastily beat feet back to the car. “Dis bad Jah.”
“Well, you gonna let us in and call Ma or what?” Donny whined at him.
For reasons of respect, Reggie did not want to step over the body to go into the office, but he knew that a police report would need to be filed and that moving the body was out of the question. The back door was no good either – Nash had the only key to that one. He had a cellie that Nash had provided to him for text and beeper messages, and he weighed his aversion to using it to make an actual phone call against the potentially disastrous Jah of stepping over the body to get inside the office. Fuck it, he decided, just this once he’d run the risk of a tumor.
“You hold your pants on,” he snapped at Donny, and pulled out the dreaded cellie to call Nash.
“Hey, I thought you said you didn’t use those,” Donny protested bitterly. “You made us come back here and wait around and then you forced us to look at that dead body on purpose.”
“Shut up, fucktard,” Johnny snarled at Donny, shoving him violently against the car door. “Seeing a dead body rocks!”
“Shaddup, bote of you!” Reggie thundered. He waited for Nash to answer his cell.
“Nash,” the voice finally came.
“Hey boss, it me,” Reggie said shakily, holding the phone as far away from his head as he could manage and still hear. “You already hear I got dem McCoys out dis morning?”
“Yes, I’ve spoken to Mr. Roan. We’re still having the meeting, so I hope you’ll have them out of there before we convene.”
“Dat no problem,” Reggie said, “but we got anotter one now. You need to come down right away.”
“What is it, Reggie?” Nash sighed. “You didn’t unshackle them in there, did you? I’d better not come in and find my office trashed.”
“No, no, we doan make it inside yet,” Reggie chuckled. “I and I got dem in Mike’s car and I’m callin’ dem Mama right after I talk to you. Listen, boss, we got a dead body in de doorway of de office. I call you before I call de cops.”
“Oh, God,” Nash said. “Is it a client?”
“No, mon, it” – Reggie paused, trying to figure out a way to respectfully word the awful news – “It your brotter, Mr. Nash. It Big Ben. I ain’t look at de body too close, but I’m tinking it might be suicide.” Reggie made a small gesture of prayer as he said this last word.
There was a long pause, then Nash’s stiff voice. “Thank you, Reggie. You may call Mrs. McCoy while you wait for me to get there. Do you have all of her pertinent paperwork with you – her copy of the bond, the collateral form, the terms, and whatnot?”
“Yes,” Reggie said.
“Good,” Nash said. “Don’t have her come to the office – I don’t want her to get there with that body still there. I’d like you to hand-deliver the brothers to the scrapyard if you could. Wait until I get there, though. Stay with that body.”
“Okay,” Reggie sighed. “Whaddabout dem cops?”
“Don’t call them. I will when I get there.” Nash paused again, then added, “Wait, Reggie – if you didn’t go inside yet, where are you calling me from? You didn’t leave that body unattended, did you?”
Reggie sighed. “No, mon. I and I on dem cell phone you give me.”
“Thank you, Reggie,” Nash said after another pause. “Thank you very much. Hang tight till I get there. Call Ms. McCoy and let her know you’re perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes out, but that you will bring her sons home. I’ll be down in about ten minutes.” He hung up and Reggie put the cellie away, relieved not to have it near his head anymore.
“Reggie,” Mike Roan’s voice said from over the Jamaican’s shoulder. “What’s up? You finally decide to join the digital age?”
Reggie wheeled around with a stricken expression on his face. “Oh, Mike, mon, dis bad. Very bad.” He motioned at the body in the office doorway. “I just get off de phone wit Nash. Dat man in de doorway, dat Big Ben. He dead.” Reggie leaned in closer to add in a whisper, “I tink suicide.”
“Oh, fuck,” Mike said, striding toward the body and pulling on a pair of rubber gloves. Pulling the blanket back, he carefully looked Big Ben over, noting the weird angle of his neck. “Call the cops yet?” he called to Reggie.
Reggie reluctantly joined him beside the body. “No, Nash tell me to wait and he call dem.”
“Did you look at him over at all?”
“No, mon – I couldn’t,” Reggie admitted.
“Well, I doubt it was suicide,” Mike said. “Look at his neck.”
“Ho shit,” Reggie breathed.
The McCoy brothers, who’d opened the rear driver’s-side door on Mike’s car to lean out into the street and smoke, began hooting and hollering at Mike, who’d beaten the snot out of Donny the last time he’d bailed them out on an auto-chopping rap that was later dropped. Donny had made the mistake of attempting a chokehold on him while he was driving; Mike had pulled the car onto the shoulder and yanked Donny to the pavement, kicking him into submission. When he’d finished with Donny the overweight McCoy had looked much as Mike did today; this irony wasn’t lost on the McCoys now.
“Ooh, check it,” Donny squealed. “Tough guy got his ass kicked.”
“By his mom,” Johnny added, giggling.
“You’d know all about getting your ass kicked by your mom, huh?” Mike called casually as he continued to look Big Ben over. Johnny said nothing; as luck had it, Mike had indeed once witnessed Serene smacking him in the head with a cast-iron frying pan.
“Somebody did him,” Mike told Reggie. “We’ll wait for Nash to come and call the cops, but they’ll tell you the same thing.” He rose and shucked off his rubber gloves, depositing them into the open door of his car, where they landed on Johnny’s lap. “When are these asswipes going home?” he asked.
“Nash say to wait till he get here before I leave wit dem. I spoze wit you here I could go now.”
“Yeah, Reggie, you may as well,” Mike sighed. Waving, he called to the McCoys, “See ya. Enjoy the time before your next court date. Arson’s pretty major. I doubt you’ll be able to dance out of doing time on this one.”
“Aw, man,” Reggie sighed. “Doan rile ‘em up before I gotta bring ‘em home. Now I and I in for a ride.”
