Brotherly Love
He picked up on the first ring. "Yeah."
"Kevin?"
"Who's this?"
"Paul."
Paul who? He thought for a moment, and the man answered the question without it being asked.
"Your little brother."
"Oh." He paused. "What do you want?"
"I need your help."
Kevin could hear something in the voice now, tension, anger, stress. "What kind of help?"
"I can't do this on the phone."
That kind of help. It rocked him back, aside from the fact that his little brother hadn't ever called him, that he could remember, that his little brother would ask for his help, and the kind of help he couldn't talk about on the phone to boot. His mind went to the only logical conclusion, that his little brother was setting some sort of trap for him. Paully was a cop, Kevin remembered that much, even if he had to struggle to remember what the man looked like. "Are you serious?"
"Yeah, Kev, I'm serious."
"What do you want with me?"
"Not on the phone. Can we meet somewhere?"
Not in this jurisdiction, was Kevin's first thought, but he kept it to himself. Maybe Connecticut. "Sure. You have someplace in mind?"
"You tell me. I'm flexible. Someplace away from the city would be best."
Well, yeah. Kevin thought for a moment. "There's a rest area on I-95, just north of Rhode Island, right after you cross the state line into Massachusetts. I can be there tomorrow at, say, two in the afternoon."
"Tomorrow's Friday."
"Right."
"I'll have to get back to you. I'm supposed to be working."
"Let me know."
The call back came in less than fifteen minutes. Paul would meet him in Attleboro, Massachusetts, the next day.
Kevin got up there at one-thirty, wanting to make sure there was nobody waiting for him. He cruised through the parking lot, studying plates, looking for the obvious, the Fed plates on big black SUVs, the out-of-state plates on sedans with half-moon hubcaps. Nothing out of the ordinary. He tucked his Jaguar into one of the last spots toward the exit. Unfolding his long legs, he stepped out of the car, stretched out the kinks from the three and a half-hour drive and made his way to a picnic table with a view of the entrance.
Kevin knew Paully right away. His younger brother had cop-short dark hair, and stood shorter but heavier than Kevin. He looked an awful lot like their father, almost to the point of making Kevin uncomfortable.
Kevin was on his feet and walking towards him by the time Paul reached the table. Paul reached out a meaty hand and Kevin shook it, then moved back to his seat without turning his back on his brother. Kevin waited until he sat before sitting across from him, watching the parking lot.
"How you doing?" asked Paul.
"Guess I'm as well as can be expected."
"You look better than the last time I saw you."
"Yeah, it's been a while."
"Not that long."
"Feels like a lifetime to me."
"So what's different?"
"I quit drinking."
"Good for you. You do that on your own?"
"No. My wife and my boss hauled me to a hospital when I had a blackout. I did the whole detox thing, and I've been doing AA ever since. Seven months clean."
"You were shanghaied huh? But you're staying clean?"
"Yeah. So far."
"Didn't you have a cane the last time I saw you?"
"Yeah. I can get by without it most days now." Kevin stretched his sore left leg out under the table. "What about you? How're you doing?"
Paul sighed. "I've got trouble."
Kevin dug out his big silver Zippo and a Camel and lit it, waiting for his brother to talk.
"You remember my fiancé? You met her at Dad's funeral, last fall."
Kevin nodded, remembering a tiny little woman, half Paully's size.
"We got married on Valentine's Day." Paul hesitated. Kevin could see his hands shaking where they rested on the table. "She was attacked after work one night, she's a nurse, she was working at a hospital in Mount Vernon, she was going out to her car for God's sake, right in the parking lot. The guy..." Paul looked out towards the highway for a moment. When he brought his gaze back around to Kevin, there were tears in his eyes. "The guy dragged her to his van and raped her. She was pregnant, having a problem pregnancy to start with. He beat her up, she lost the baby."
"I'm sorry."
"We know who did it, he works as a janitor in the hospital, but there wasn't enough evidence, and Rosie doesn't want to go through a trial."
Kevin didn't want to hear what he thought his straight-arrow brother was going to say next.
Paul looked down at the table now. "Kevin, I ..."
"Don't."
Paul lifted his eyes.
"You don't want to ask me this."
"How would you feel, if it was your wife?"
Kevin shifted his eyes away from his brother's gaze. He knew how he would feel, and he knew what he had done about it, when his wife told him about the man that had molested her as a teenager. "Do you know what you're asking me, Paully?" He paused. "You know what you're bringing down?"
"I know who it is. I know his name, I can give you a picture, whatever you want."
"Why don't you take care of it yourself?"
"Come on Kevin, I'd be the first one they'd come after. But you, not that many people even know you're my brother."
"I don't want you to ask me this."
"We're family, Kevin."
"And you're a cop. What's this going to do to your job?"
"We're leaving anyway. We're moving up to western Mass."
"What about Mom? She's been in that same Red Hook neighborhood for what, forty years? You're going to leave her alone?"
"She's coming with us. I've got a job already, Rosie will find one, Mom will live with us. It's all arranged. I just need you to take care of this one thing for me."
"Do you know what you're talking about?" Kevin lowered his voice and leaned across the table. "You said it last fall, you said I was a murderer, a cop killer, that you didn't even want to be seen with me. Now you come to me, begging me to commit murder for you."
Paul winced.
"Yeah, that's what you're doing, and you know you'd be as guilty as me if I did this for you."
"What do you think this guy did to me? He killed my baby. It was a little girl, Kevin, a tiny, perfect little girl. He killed her."
Kevin sat up and looked around as he took a drag on his cigarette. The other picnic tables in the rest area were empty. There were a few tourists walking in and out of the low brick building, but nobody came their way. He brushed away a mosquito, lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned across the table towards his baby brother again. "Do you know what I do, Paul?" No more Paully, it was serious now. "What I did last week? I took a guy out to the Catskills, stuck a gun in his mouth and blew his head off. Sprayed his brains, what he had of them, all over the pretty trees and left him there to rot. That's what I do. That's what you're asking me to do for you." He let his upper lip curl in a snarl. "You want to call out the big dogs, little brother? You want to be responsible for what happens? Suppose you're wrong? Maybe this isn't the guy. What are you gonna do then, call me for another meeting so you can pick somebody else?"
Paul turned red.
"How many are you going to go through? Your wife isn't sure, you don't have enough evidence for an arrest. You think you have enough evidence for an execution? You think this is going to fit in your moral landscape?"
"What right do you have to lecture me about morals?"
"What right do you have to assume that my morals are lower than yours, that I would do this for you, that I can just kill whoever I want, that it doesn't matter because I've already killed so many that one more isn't going to hurt anything. Right? Is that what you're thinking? Suppose I get caught this one time and they decide that I should go to the chair or whatever the hell they're using for the goddamn death penalty now. You want that on your conscience too?"
Paul shook his head. He reached for the rear pocket of his jeans in a move that made Kevin's pulse jump. Kevin had to dig his fingernails into the wood of the picnic table to keep from drawing down on Paul. Paul pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, a photocopy of a mug shot, with the name and description underneath. It showed a thin white man with a scar across his chin, wearing ugly heavy framed glasses. He looked like he was about twelve, but the rap sheet said that Terry Goldman was in his late twenties.
"He's a loser, Kev. He's already gone down for rape."
"What's next, you want me to knock off some internal affairs guy because he thinks you're on the take? You see where this can go?"
"It's not like that. I'm asking for this one thing. That's it."
"It won't end. You take this step, you lose your moral compass. Next thing you know you'll be robbing banks in your spare time." He paused. "You'll be like me."
"You won't do it?"
"Put it behind you. You're moving away. Your wife will get pregnant again. Live your life, be content with what you have. Don't do this. Don't make me part of this." Kevin sat back and looked around again. The sun was still shining, the birds singing above the traffic noise on the interstate. But there was a metallic taste in his mouth from the exhaust and he wanted to throw up. He brought his attention back to Paul, waiting.
"How can I live with this, knowing that this guy did this, knowing that he's out there ready to do it again?"
"If he's already a one time loser, it won't be long before he's a two-time loser and then goes down for life. Let him fall on his own. You don't have to do this."
Paul looked down at the table, then got to his feet, in a hurry all of a sudden, holding out his hand. "Thanks anyway."
Kevin reached across the picnic table and shook his little brother's hand. "Sure."
He watched Paul leave, taking note of the faded paint on his Pinto hatchback. A car that only a squeaky clean cop would drive. The little car melted into the traffic on the interstate while Kevin considered his options. Looking down at the paper his brother had given him, he thought about what a guy like this would be doing in his spare time. Strip clubs? Adult movies? He was grasping at straws, stereotyping, but knowing that every stereotype originated in some grain of truth. Could he set him up?
To him, Mount Vernon didn't seem the kind of place where this sort of thing would happen, and this skinny little white guy didn't seem like a typical rapist. That brought him back to his original suspicion, that his brother was trying to set him up, but the hysterics were real enough. He didn't think Paul could fake those tears. It wasn't like his cop persona. It didn't really matter anyway. There was no way he could do any of this, he could no sooner set this guy up than kill him. He couldn't draw that kind of attention.
Kevin got to his feet, ground out his cigarette, then carefully picked up the butt and dropped it in a trash can on the way back to his car. He sat in the hot car for a moment, debating whether to fold the top down, finally settling on the air conditioning. The drive back to the city gave him plenty of time to puzzle it out, to figure out what to do.
In the morning he took everything out of his pockets, taking the cash from his wallet and folding that into the pocket of the ratty blue jeans he slipped on. He shrugged a loose faded blue tee shirt over his head and grabbed his old running shoes. Peeling back the insole, he placed his apartment key under it, then slipped his bare feet into the shoes. The laces were broken and he carefully knotted them to keep the shoes on his feet. He jammed a faded Yankees cap on his head, pulling the long ponytail through the hole in the back. His Camels went into the pocket of the tee shirt. He tucked his Colt auto into the waistband at the small of his back and shifted it into a comfortable spot before letting himself out the door.
He took a bus to Elmont, where he knew there was an AA meeting at noon. He sat in the dark and cool of the church basement, listened to other drunks talk, swallowed two cups of vile coffee, chewed on an impossibly stale sandwich cookie and brushed aside the tracts handed to him as he was leaving.
He rode a bus from there into the city and took a train out to Mount Vernon.
Walking the sidewalk near the hospital, he sized up the crowds around him. All minding their own business, nobody staring at the tall skinny white dude. He liked places where people paid attention to themselves and not everybody else. He headed through the front door of the hospital, slipped down the hallway and started scouting around for maintenance staff. It didn't take long. A black man with stooped shoulders and a head of Brillo hair was pushing a bucket with a mop sticking out of it.
"Hey."
The man looked up. "You talking to me?"
"Yes sir."
"What for?"
"I'm looking for a friend. His name's Terry. Terry Goldman."
"Man, Terry Goldman ain't got no friends. What you want with him?"
"I knew him in the joint. I remember he worked here. Is he around?"
"You were in the joint with Terry Goldman?"
"Yeah, now come on, does he work here?"
"He works from 3 to 11. He should be around here somewhere. I'll tell him you were looking for him. What's your name?"
"No, that's okay, he wouldn't remember my name anyway. Will he be up this way, you think?"
"If there's something to clean up he will."
"Thanks."
"Yeah, whatever. Still don't know what you want with that boy. He's an asshole."
"Yeah. I know."
The old black man narrowed his eyes. "Where were you in?"
Kevin hesitated. He had no idea where Mr. Goldman had done his time. He didn't want this old man checking up on his story with the mark. Still, there wasn't anything to lose by telling the truth and hoping to hit paydirt. "I did some time waiting trial out on Riker's. Spent about a month at King's County Hospital. Served my real time at Fishkill. I guess I might have met him out at Riker's." That was a good guess, as almost anybody arrested in the city would spend time at Riker's Island awaiting trial.
The man snorted. "Fishkill's only medium. You don't look like the kind of guy that'd be in the kind of trouble our Terry was in. Course, he says he was set up." He shook his head. "I don't believe him." He lowered his voice and leaned in towards Kevin. "He was bragging about raping one of the nurses. Can you believe that? She's a nice girl too. Had to leave her job." He shook his head. "Oh well."
"I heard Terry can get stuff, you know?"
The old man glanced up and down the hallway. "Yeah, I heard he can get pictures, little kids. Disgusting. That what you want?"
Kevin shrugged.
"I got to get back to work. I'll tell Terry you're looking for him."
"Thanks."
"Just go ahead back out to the lobby and keep your eyes open and you'll see Terry. Can't miss him, with his glasses and his scar."
It didn't take long for Terry Goldman to show up. Kevin spotted him the instant he poked his narrow face around the door to the lobby. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and entered the room slowly, as though he was going to run back out at any minute.
"Hey Terry," Kevin called out, trying to sound as if he had just spotted an old friend.
Terry stared. "Do I know you?" He approached the chair as Kevin got to his feet.
"Man, you don't remember me?"
"Joe said you thought you were in slam with me, Riker's Island maybe, but man, I would of remembered someone like you. What are you, like seven feet tall?"
Kevin produced his best chuckle. "The important thing, Terry, is I remember you."
The man narrowed his eyes and pushed his glasses back up again. "What you talking about?"
Kevin motioned him closer, looking around the room. The other occupants were mostly reading magazines or watching television. "I remember you could get some good porn, am I right?"
Terry swallowed.
"Little girls." Kevin could see from the look in the man's eyes that he was right.
"Man," Terry whispered, "I don't even know who you are. How do I know you're not some undercover cop?"
"How many cops you know done time?"
"Maybe you're lying."
Kevin snorted. "Fine." He paused. "I can pay."
"How long are you going to be here?"
"As long as it takes."
"I'll meet you around back, the shipping entrance, at 11 tonight. That's when I get off."
Kevin grabbed Terry's uniform, pulling him in close. "You got some good stuff for me, Terry, my man?"
His face went white, but he nodded.
At eleven precisely Kevin wandered around to the back of the building, where he spotted his mark.
"How you doing?" asked Terry, stepping out of the shadows.
"You got something for me?"
"Not here. We need to go back to my place." He ran his eyes up and down Kevin's frame in a way that made Kevin's skin crawl. "You're sure you're not a cop?"
"Man, the cops have an APB out on me. I'm on your side, okay?"
"What you wanted for?"
"Parole violation."
"Hell, I know what you mean." He started walking across the parking lot as he talked. Kevin dropped in behind him. "I almost fell into that, it's like, I have to check in once a week and if I'm a couple of minutes late they call the cops. Then they show up at my work every other day, checking on me."
"Yeah, it's a real hassle."
"Look, you want anything else while we're out? I can get you some crack."
"No, man, I'm doing the whole 12-step thing, I ain't gonna screw that up, you know?"
"Do I ever." Terry unlocked the door of a Chevy van, at least ten years old, with an airbrushed painting of a half-naked mermaid on the side. The inside was covered with shag carpeting, floor, ceiling, walls, even the dashboard. Kevin thought he was going to throw up.
"What's with this?"
"This is my love machine, you know what I mean?"
"Really. You have a lot of luck with chicks?"
"Oh yeah. I have to beat them off with a stick." Terry laughed as he climbed in.
The building was a squat three story tenement, surrounded by other wooden buildings, all the same age, but all painted different colors, as though each of the owners had tried to stamp some sort of individuality on his place. Terry's building was shabbier than the ones on each side, the paint peeling. Kevin took note of the flat roofs, the fire escapes, the huge windows. If he was going to take a shot, he'd get a good angle from one of those other buildings, depending on where Terry's apartment was.
As Terry unlocked the three locks on the door, Kevin began sizing up the security. Terry opened the heavy metal door and Kevin stepped into a dark room. The apartment was worse than the van, if that was possible. He scanned as he waited for his eyes to adjust, taking in what he could see, the velvet curtains, the shag carpet on the floor, the love beads in the doorway opening to the kitchen. Terry slammed the door behind them.
"In here." He opened another door, switched on a light and led the way into what could have been a bedroom, set up as an office. "I'll just show you the stills and you can decide if you want the videos." He rifled through a filing cabinet and pulled out an envelope, fanned out a group of photographs. "Young enough for you?"
Kevin swallowed. "How much?"
"Five hundred each."
"I haven't got that much on me. I'll have to come back. What's a good time?"
"I work 3 to 11. I'm here most of the time other than that."
"Thanks."
"No problem. You like what you see?" Terry licked his lips and flashed yellow teeth.
"Yeah," Kevin said, his hand on his weapon as he looked around the apartment, at the unbarred windows, the fire escape outside, the lack of alarms. "I like what I see."
This time the phone rang when he was asleep, and it took a minute to come to the surface, fighting his way out of the quicksand he had fallen in, looking up into the face of his younger brother laughing at him from the edge of a pit.
He grabbed for the phone, knocked it onto the floor and pulled on its stretchy cord to get it to where he could talk into it. "Yeah?" His head was pounding, and his mouth was dry. It really wasn't fair to feel as if he had a hangover without having a drink.
"Thanks, Kevin."
"Paul?"
"Yeah. I saw the paper this morning."
"Which paper?"
"Just a local. Big news around here, that whole pornography thing. Two teenagers broke into Goldman's apartment, looking for money or drugs. They found his porn, and basically called the cops and sat down to wait for them. It was enough to get Goldman thrown back in prison, those kids finding all that shit."
"Makes you think I had anything to do with it?"
"Whatever. Okay. Thanks just the same."
"Leave me alone, 'kay?"
"Take care of yourself."
"Right." Kevin dropped the receiver and had to hunt around for the base of the phone to put it on, then rolled back over and closed his eyes again.
- END-
