Excerpt from 14 Peck Slip
At one a.m. we stepped out of the warm Buick to stretch and brush off the crumbs and ashes of a night
of surveillance. It was the tenth of December and fine wet flakes floated through the
lights of the New York waterfront and fell softly into the East River. My partner,
Detective Joe Gregory, walked toward the edge of the river, peering out toward Brooklyn,
squinting, as if to see his forefathers in the fog off an Irish shore.
"Check this out, Ryan," he said, pointing. "Is this wrong, or what?"
Fifty yards across the water, a forklift rumbled over the rotting
planks of Pier 18. The hazy silhouettes of three men could be seen as they moved in the
glare of overhead lamps. Through binoculars I saw a big man driving the forklift, his bulk
spilling over the seat as if it were a child's tricycle. He was wearing a suit. Two other
men, in windbreakers, walked alongside, steadying a white 55 gallon barrel, which trembled on the blades.
Joe Gregory said, "I'll give you odds there's somebody in that barrel."
"Right," I said. "It's a new cruise line. Cabins are cramped, but the price is right."
Gregory flipped a bag with empty coffee cups down into the icy black river. I handed him the binoculars and blew on my hands.
"My money says they're dumping a body," he said. "Two to one that barrel's a coffin and the guys walking are pallbearers."
"Please," I said.
The procession moved to the end of the dock, then turned to the
north side. They stopped at the edge, facing the Gothic altar of the Brooklyn Bridge. It
took all three of them to slide the barrel down the blades and it thumped off the end of
the old timber, slammed into the river like a ton of cement, bobbed once, then sank. Water slapped against the pilings.
"Maybe your x-ray eyes can identify the victim," I said.
We were standing in the darkness, on the lumpy blacktop under the
FDR Drive. We were on the uptown side of the six-block enclave called the Fulton Fish
Market, more than a hundred yards from the main action: sixty wholesale fish companies,
with two thousand workers who shouted and cursed under the glare of bare bulbs hanging
from tin canopies. Doing business in the raw night air as if it were hand to hand combat.
"Answer me this," Joe Gregory said. "Three guys to dump one barrel. Give me one reason."
"Laziness, weight, union rules," I said.
"You're stroking yourself, Ryan. These guys don't do grunt work. That's why they grease all those palms in Sanitation."
Water beat more insistently in the wake of the barrel.
"Maybe it's toxic waste," I said. "Diseased eels, something."
"What the hell do you need?" he said. "A guy with a bugle, playing taps? This is a funeral, guaranteed."
Gregory let the binoculars hang down on his chest. He hooked his index finger over the top of his cigarette, and blew smoke rings that faded in the mist.
"You have some imagination," I said. "We haven't lived down your last vision yet."
"Vision, shit," he said. "These are wise guys. That big bastard's wearing a suit. Dumping garbage? Give me a freaking break."
The forklift sputtered and backed up, then turned toward solid ground. The driver had a huge head, sliced off in the back, like the
cliffs of the Palisades. We could hear them talking and laughing.
"Being a little noisy aren't they?" I said.
"You telling me you never laughed over a dead body? They're like morticians, having some giggles in the hearse, after the ceremony."
A foghorn sounded in the harbor as we watched the forklift disappear behind the Tin Building. Gregory flicked his cigarette into the river.
I knew what was coming.
"I'm tailing them," he said. "I feel this one." He threw the binoculars into the car and smoothed down his hair.
"Let's go get a drink," I said. "We're wasting our time, and it's freezing out here."
For two nights we'd been trying to locate Bobo Rizzo, the hood
who had run the Fulton Fish Market since the fifties. The city was negotiating for a
multi-million dollar seaport mall on Fulton Street. Construction was slated to begin late
in 1983, less than a year away. The Police Commissioner wanted to know what kind of grief
he could expect from the Fish Market mob. Mob grief was our specialty.
"For once in your life, Ryan," he said, "do something bold."
Gregory snapped his raincoat collar up, walked twenty feet and
waited behind a highway support pillar until the forklift emerged from between the Tin
Building and the New Market. I shoved my hands into my pockets and positioned myself wide
to his right, backing him up, as I had for the last fourteen years.
The forklift veered right, going toward Peck Slip. I stepped into
the hollow of a steel girder. Behind me was a parking area, then the stone supports for
the century-old Brooklyn Bridge. I could feel the velocity of the cars on the highway
above, and smell the stench of urine. Gregory walked into my peripheral vision, a long
flickering shadow. For a second I thought he'd decided to forget about it, but he was
swinging a wider circle, a tailman's arc. A good tailman changes the angle, doesn't get too close.
Gregory sprinted across South Street in front of a slow moving Con Ed truck. He followed the forklift, heeding his instinct.
It's not instinct my wife says, it's cop paranoia. She says that people who trust no one are bound to be right often enough to believe they can see through
any lie. I tell her that cops deal exclusively with deceit and learn to read the signs. The signs flash in neon to Joe Gregory.
Icy snow pelted down as I left the cover of highway and hustled
across to Peck Slip to a row of parked cars. Peck Slip was a wide, deserted street, named
a century ago when fish arrived by boat. The wind off the river pinned my raincoat to my
back as I crouched and felt my way along the wet, cold cars. I could see Gregory within
spitting distance of the forklift. At forty-seven, five years older than me, he was doing
a Chuck Berry duckwalk, behind the bones of a stripped Camaro.
The forklift stopped in front of an open garage door at 14 Peck
Slip, a grimy brick warehouse on a street of sooty brick buildings. The big guy in the
suit climbed down from the forklift and lumbered over to a dark Plymouth, parked in front
of the warehouse, just beyond where an angle of yellow light cut across the wet pavement.
My ears and nose burned from the cold as the big man slapped a forearm on the car's roof
and leaned in. The car had an antenna on the trunk, like one of ours.
In the quiet I could hear traffic humming on the FDR, and the
roar of commerce from the market. I touched the .38 against my hip, ran my fingers along
the cylinder to feel the shell casings. I've been known to forget to reload for weeks
after leaving the firing range. Not a good habit for a detective with a partner like the Great Gregory. But Joe was being patient.
The fat pallbearer with the Mets hat drove the forklift up a ramp
into the warehouse. We'd seen "Mets Hat" all over the fish market, bullshitting
everyone like a politician, always wearing that greasy blue hat. He disappeared behind a
wall of crates and boxes. Crates were everywhere inside the warehouse, in random stacks, water running all over the floor.
Finally, the big guy stood up and banged the top of the Plymouth
in a gesture of dismissal. He walked heavily up the ramp as the car pulled away, tires
hissing on the wet stones like the steam radiators in my old apartment. The overhead door at 14 Peck Slip clanked down returning us to darkness.
Joe Gregory walked backward for a few steps, staring at the
warehouse, at a light that came on on the second floor. The rooms above the warehouse were
known as the Box Hook Club, a long time meeting place for mobsters and the union reps they
owned. Gregory turned and broke into his rolling walk, head down, shoulders hunched, arms swinging, the backs of his meaty hands facing forward.
"Were those guys cops?" I said.
"What guys?"
"In the Plymouth?" I said.
"Chrysler. It was a Chrysler."
"Were they cops?" I said.
He stopped and patted his pockets for his cigarettes.
"I don't think so," he said. "But we better get the scuba divers."
"Are you serious? For the body in the white barrel?"
He nodded and flipped up the lid of his chrome Zippo lighter, embossed with a blue anchor over the words USS Francis Marion.
In the light of the flame I saw that his face was set. The Great Gregory was on the case. Nothing I could do.
"Let's call the divers from Brady's," I said. "Get our feet warm, get a drink."
The wind off the river blew wet snow in our faces. But it wouldn't amount to enough to slow down the early morning commuters.
We walked back to the Buick with short measured steps, on streets deceptively slippery, cobblestones coated with grease from a century of fish.
Please report any technical problems to the webmaster.
Copyright 2000-2008 Edward Dee
To order books from Amazon.com, please click on these links:
The Con Man's Daughter
Nightbird
Little Boy Blue
Bronx Angel
14 Peck Slip
| 
