This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or circumstances is purely coincidental.
* Alert, this is not your father’s hard boiled mystery; it rates R for content, concepts, occupations and language - banal and crude. I’d advise it is for mature adult readers.
Dead: D.W.I. - Driver Who’s Indiscrete
by L.A. Preschel
The NYPD made a mistake when they pinned a gold detective’s shield on my chest and promoted me to the homicide division. The error wasn’t in recognizing my talent. Immediately, I was the best detective at the table. Their mistake: leaving the M.B.C. (the Misogynist Boys Club) unprotected from me, a TNG (Take No Guff) woman on a constant mission of male-attitude adjustment.
At my first morning conference, Detective Hoguard, who never gave me any respect while I worked general detail, says, “Hey girlie, the black coffee mug with the gold writing, ‘World’s Greatest Dad’ is mine. I take my coffee black, and prefer chocolate-glazed donuts. In the box on the counter.” He sat up from writing his report and pointed to the coffee maker.
My answer, “Thanks, but no thanks, I brought my mug, and I don’t go for donuts.”
“No, the machine’s in the corner. Make it two-thirds full, so your delicate fingers don’t spill it.” He continues writing his report. “Then bring it right here, girl.” He pats the table.
A detective’s gotta make an impression, so I gather his cup and fill it to the brim. Then I walk it to his side. Four pairs of male eyes observe from around the six by eight foot wood table. They smirk. Hoguard is the only one sitting.
I deliver the java, wearing an innocent smile, and then deliberately dump the hot coffee over his crotch and the report. “Oops. Sorr-eee,” I sing.
Hoguard erupts, knocking over his chair. “What the hell? I said be careful woman!”
I gently place the empty cup on the soggy paperwork. “Wanted it here, right?” I stare into his angry eyes, without flinching. “It is a little less than half full now. No worries ’bout spilling anymore.”
Hoguard huffs, tugging his pants as they cling to his thighs, but remains speechless.
I pat his shoulder. “The way my world works, Hogie, if you want it done right, do it yourself.” I walk around and sit on the dry side of the homicide work table. “The paper towels are between the coffee machine and the donuts. It’s called wiping up after yourself.”
While several detectives smother laughter, Hoguard stomps over to retrieve the towels. His pants from his knees to the belt loops are drenched, like a failed potty trained child who had an accident.
Good morning homicide bureau. I’m your newest member Samantha Cochran.
I am the first woman admitted to the team. I work with seven old-time male detectives, who sit in their Neanderthal man-cave of an office, thinking my job description reads: secretary, follow orders, keep my valueless theories to myself, and shake my cleavage, while I hustle my bustle. Don’t talk, you’ll only be annoying. I’m not guessing, I’ve been told each of those suggestions to my face. Each author was dead serious, not pranking.
I do not play that way; never did, never will. An armed independent thinking woman, I know how to express myself, and be heard even over male voices.
Life’s a bitch, filled with disappointments, deal with it, ‘cause boys, I’m no one’s slave.
Detective Frank Ryan is my first partner, although associate is a more accurate term. His attitude prevents partnership. At 38 years old, twice married and twice divorced, he actively stalks personal servant number three. His Adonis build and blue eyes come with Paleolithic attitudes. He expounds to me as he drives back to the precinct house after I worked my first crime scene as a homicide detective. “Let me tell how it is in this world, Wonder Woman.” He gives me a glance and returns his view to the road. “Frivolous and incompetent, women are tolerable only because of their inherent ability to satisfy male wishes and needs, like Aladdin’s genie.” His eyebrows question my comprehension of his meaning. “It’s that simple. okay? Learn to stay out of my way, and I’ll take you to the top.”
“Learn this.” I flag him my raised middle finger.
He response was a soft chuckle. “Ok, and so it’s on.”
I am not his cup of coffee, and he will never be mine, not even a demitasse.
Each morning he asks, “Girl, how can I make you look good, if you don’t hold up your cute little hind end?” Then he jiggles his Robert-Pattinson-eyebrows at me. “Cover my back now, and later, I’ll cover your —”
“Consume excrement and expire, dumb-ass,” I answer, or words to that effect.
Everyday, we grow less cordial. After each shift, as I ride the subway home, I think how could tomorrow be more bellicose. The next day, surprise, it is.
Four months into our pairing, we are up when a call comes in. A transit bus never made its morning run. They found it in the terminal, with a dead driver behind the wheel. His skull’s contents splattered on the driver’s side window. His company shirt perforated and turned from light blue to dark purple from his blood. His face kissing the steering wheel.
My fifteen-minute ride to the crime scene with Ryan at the wheel is more demoralizing than investigating the murder of a guy whose brains are strawberry yogurt served-on-the-side-view-window of his bus.
Congested traffic causes Ryan to wail like he is giving birth, “Women drivers, jeezes. Look at that one. A gray-haired snail.” He honks the horn and gesticulates.
Granny drives down Seventh Avenue, maintaining her 10 mph, straddling two lanes.
“Honey, police, pick your favorite lane and own it.”
Granny creeps downtown, maintaining a “middle of the road” presence.
At the terminal, the local-beats have taped off the crime scene. They announce to Ryan, with body language meant to exclude me, “The vic’s already in rigor. A human-sized cherry Popsicle, red, rigid and frigid.” The officer makes a grand show of turning to me. “Pixie, even his wild thing.” His ignoramus partner fist bumps him. Then they dance the floss together.
Childish jerks. Dealing with this constantly is a learned art. I try not to let the term pixie upset me as much as it once did. With blond hair and being just over five feet tall, its use is meant to demean me.
Am I that threatening to male officers?
Ryan gives them a thumbs up and ducks under the tape onto the bus platform.
I attempt to follow.
Patrolman Borracho, a wrinkled-faced cop with at least twenty years on the job (half of it cooping in a bar), smiles over a cratered, glowing, globular nose. He blocks my way. “Stop. This is work meant for Police-men.” To emphasize his opposition, his pelvis cruises into my path, like a Chippendale dancer looking for a tip.
“Very funny, move, I’ve got work to do.” I attempt to step around him.
“Pipsqueak woman, where do you think you’re going? I’m controlling the crime scene.” His smirk grows as if he is pranking on a tv show. Alcohol-breath wafts my way.
I allot five minutes per day for male-morons to amuse me and vice versa. Three of those minutes had been wasted on Ryan during the drive. The flossing follies was another minute.
I flash Borracho my badge. “I’m investigating. You are obstructing justice.”
“Got a badge in Crackerjacks?” He remains in my way, while eyeing the floss boys, who snicker at his rolling eyes. Borracho stood between me and the unloading platform number 419 that held the crime scene.
I’m investigating a murder and the good-old boys are giving me crap?
Borracho deepens his voice, “No sightseeing. Stay on your side of the tape. Police-men’s work.” He pointed to Ryan as he enters the bus. “See, not police-girl’s.” He smirks and rolls his eyes at the flossing twins.
I grew up with a cop father, and two brothers, future police-men. At an early age, I became fluent in asshole and all its masculine off-shoots. Not every man or cop speaks it, but this group was learned in the dialect. It’s a language that has no feminine equivalent, but my familial education gives me fluency. I take no shit.
“Patrolman, do your job, sit on your dumb-ass and guard the purdy-yellah tape, but sit down gently the ground is hard, don’t want a concussion.” I re-flash my Gold Shield under his nose. “It’s gold, and I solve cases. Step out of the way, or go to jail.”
“Just havin’ fun, Pixie.” In mock chivalry, he lifts the tape letting me under.
That used up my moron-amusement time, so I ignore his remark, and stomp to the bus.
Ryan stands on the bus’s entrance steps; his outstretched arms hold both railings. Right foot on the top step and his left on the next one down as if he stopped in mid-climb. Is he preventing me from entering, or is he steadying himself? He’s frozen and a little green. With a slight wobble, he blocks my view.
I peer under his arm at the crime scene. The cadaver’s necklace ID card says, Stephon St. James. He sits in the driver’s seat. He leans forward and what is left of his skull rests on the center pad of the steering wheel. The two empty cellphone holders hang from his belt.
Was he on a phone when he bought the farm? Then there is at least one audio witness.
Sixty feet away, in the next bus bay, a few local beats interrogate a sobbing woman in a clean light blue bus driver’s uniform. Maybe because she is heavy-set, they decide to out-number her four to one. They create a half-circle of NYPD, taking turns asking questions, I can’t hear them, but by the look on their collective faces, they aren’t asking for her phone number or a date.
She wails, “No, no, no. Even if he is, I did not do it.”
The wolf pack of officers’s body language makes her their prey. She scurries on the platform trying to peek in the bus through the open doors. The pack corrals her before she travels twenty feet.
The cop in her face says, “You know how he looks, since you did it. Why look now?”
My deduction: the dead man’s significant other, always the first suspect.
Ryan glances her way. “She’s fat.” Then he studies the vic. “He was handsome and fit, like me. He dumped her. Told her here. She killed him. Let’s get her.” He pushes past me.
Ryan competing in word problem solving with a second grader is a toss up. Maybe neither gets it right the first time.
I’ve told Ryan jumping to convictions without getting evidence first leads to landing on conclusions as strong as balsa wood. The landing’s aftermath could hurt you and/or your reputation.
While Ryan catechizes the lady on the platform, I find the victim’s two phones hiding under his butt. Wearing latex gloves, I pry them free and out from under. Early rigor plus dependent edema (swelling) makes the phone leave a mold in his butt. They’ve been there since the murder.
Phone number one’s battery is dead as if it was never turned off. That suggests he was on it right before he was shot and hid it under himself while it was on. Phone number two’s battery has a ten-percent charge. It is off. I turn it on. Password protected, useless for now. I drop them into separate plastic bags and hand the bags to Sid the CID man. “Sid, you know the deal. Last caller, each phone?” I like CID Sid. His unisex vision sees me as a detective, without the female modifier.
“Sammie.” He pulls from his large black bag, an evidence ziplock with a gun inside. “Here’s a weapon, caliber appears right. A guy, “E.Z.” Eddie Smith, found it in the trash. He works in bus maintenance. The office and lockers are on the second floor. The vic caught six 9-millimeters. Overkill?”
“Passion.” I inspect the weapon inside the evidence bag. I crack the seal. The acrid bite of burnt powder floats out. “Browning Hi-powered 9 mm pack enough punch to have painted that window with blood and brains.” I give the closed evidence bag back.
The woman that Ryan interrogates shrieks, “No! We weren’t fully broked-up. Ronella still loved him. Still do.”
Ryan grabs her by both shoulders setting up his shake ’em-up-baby maneuver. I’ve seen it before. If he weren’t a cop, it would be called assault. The cops that had circled the woman, step back, as if clearing space. There is enough room to open up a ten foot circle. No one says, “Stop.”
I jump down the bus’s stairs and run to intervene. Ryan only uses this maneuver on female suspects. Men fight back, so Ryan uses guns on them. Ryan’s Revolver Roulette is his preferred modus operandi for males. The ACLU will not certify either technique, but Ryan reckons what they don’t know can’t… however, a good defense attorney would… have to move to stop this or we’ll both be in hot water.
Ronella is larger than Ryan usually shakes, and his first attempt is weak. I arrive as he is leaning her back for his second try. He widens his stance for leverage as she outweighs him by forty pounds. He takes in a deep breath. “Lady gimme the truth, or…”
“Ryan wait.” I grab her left shoulder. “This cannot end well, partner.”
He squints at me with one eye closed. “Wonder Woman, I got this. Let go.” He slowly, gently leans his victim back into the pre-snap position; his arms extended. You could hear a tire iron drop. A bus arrives three dock-bays down as I continue to prevent his next mistake.
The look in the woman’s eyes is pure terror. “What you be plannin’ to do to Ronella?” However, she is frozen and does not resist.
He’s planning to snap your neck like a whip.
“No, stop.” I pull one of his hands off her. “Let go. Calm down.”
“Wonder Woman, this girl looks faint.” Ryan winks at the four male officers watching us. “You saw it. She practically fell over backwards. I saved her. I’m a hero.” His free hand thumps his chest. “Here-oh.”
The woman stares to her shoes, and shuffles back a step, scraping the platform.
Ryan follows, maintaining his other arm’s grip on her shoulder. “We’re not finished."
“Leave me alone.” She shrugs off his arm. “Ronella is just fine. You may be a cop, but you has no right. Nope, not one reason in hell of touching me that way.”
“Ronella is it? Come over here please.” I usher her ten feet away.
“Nancy Drew derails the lead detective’s interrogation.” Ryan stomps over to the four cops, who are joined by the Flossie boys. Ryan expounds, “Another three minutes, I’d have a confession,” Ryan’s stage whisper delights his audience.
They offer smug confirmatory nods, huddling like pigeons on a apartment building’s ledge.
One pats Ryan’s back. “Policewomen so softhearted, workin’ with one, how’d ya get anything done?”
I walk Ronella farther away. “You know the deceased? How?”
“He is, or was my boyfriend. I planned to break it off. I never hadda chance. That liar cop, he say the evidence points to me. I didn’t kill Stephon. I couldn’t. I didn’t.” Ronella pulls a tissue from her purse. She covers the corners of both eyes and presses. “I loves him."
“I believe you. Why’d you want to break it off?”
“Why’d I tell sister-fuzz?” She aggressively eyeballs me, in a way, she never do to a mister-fuzz. “You a woman on donut patrol?” Her face puckers. “I wants me a lawyer. Not saying no more, ’cept I did not shoot him nor nobody ever. I don’t own a gun.”
“She knew he was shot. I never told her.” Ryan has snuck back. “The guilty demand a lawyer.”
“Yes you did. You told me, whens you asked if I owned me a gun,” Ronella wails. “Cops. Can trust none of you.”
I walk her from Ryan. “If you can’t afford an attorney, here’s the number of the public defenders office.” I hand her a card. “Come to the homicide department tomorrow around noon. I’ll take your statement. Bring counsel. Ask for me.” I hand her my card, with the address. “But if you don’t show, I will hunt you down. Your employer has your home address.”
She takes a calming breath. “I don’t need this. It was over, but...” She bites her lip.
“Then we’ll prove you’re innocent.” I offer a half-hearted smile. “My job is to get justice and find his killer. If it is not you, you have no worries. I trust you.”
“My ass you do.” Her face darkens with rage. She steps to me, and I appreciate her size as she towers over me, but I stand my ground. “I’m not no donkey,” her scolding finger is in my face, but she doesn’t make contact, so I let her rant. “You won’t pin this tale of murder on my ass. I can go now?”
I point away from where Ryan is bullshitting with a gaggle of cops. “Yes you can.”
She escapes through the silver and glass door to platform 412 and into the terminal itself.
Narcissistic Ryan holds court so intensely, he’s too busy to notice her exit.
The bus terminal is more a warehouse than a way station. The open maze of roadways stretches over three floors, winding through glassed-in waiting areas with wood benches and silver posts to lean on while a passenger marks time. The city’s perpetual budge crisis leaves no money to clean the terminal’s windows. The ventilation system can’t keep up with the traffic, so the soot-filled roadways live in the stagnant murk of bus exhaust.
I walk to and re-enter the bus, to take another look at the crime scene. The body has been removed. You can appreciate the blood splatter better. It’s spray-painted everywhere but the seat the victim sat in. The rest of the area looks routine with his personal bag stowed under his seat. I crouch down to see what else might be in his floor cubbie and… wait one minute. Something yellow lies on the floor under the gas pedal. You can only see it from down here. Being tiny has its purposes. Using gloves, I deposit the tag of rubber in an evidence bag.
I pull out a panatela from the box, since I cannot smoke it here, I chew on it. Need to think. Need to relax. That yellow rubber tag bugs me. Drivers don’t usually wear rubber gloves. I walk to the second floor locker rooms. E.Z. Eddie Smith might still be around. No one has bothered to talk to him. Ryan still carouses on level three.
My cigar is my carousing. She promotes more valid conclusions than my partner. Plus, I don’t have the same sense of humor as those men. What’s funny about a murder? How do you get cozy where someone was just killed? Do your job, find the killer.
I come across E.Z. Eddie Smith exiting the locker room, in civilian clothes that appear to be from the 14th Street mission. His Mets t-shirt says “E.Z.” on the back. He opens a pack of blue rubber work gloves. He hangs them on a cart labeled, “E.Z.’s Wheels.” It’s a clean up cart the maintenance people keep supplies on, so that they can be efficient, when they prepare the buses for the next day. E.Z. locks his cart with a chain to the thick brown metal beam that helps to support the whole building. He looks at the cart and smiles. “That be good now.”
I introduce my badge and donate my card to him. “Everybody has their own personalized cleaning cart?” I tap the side of his.
“No.” He adjusts the gloves on the cart. “There, that be better and don’t be messin’ with my stuff. I lock it up, so no body do.” He gives an effortless laugh, and moves his cart away from me. “My title: senior maintenance engineer.” He flashes a gold front tooth when he smiles. He hands me a card. “Long-jet-it-tee. I be the shift boss.” He nods slowly, confirming that fact. “Yup, the king rates special privileges.” He finishes tucking in his Mets t-shirt. His waist looks like its twenty-six inches around.
I’m jealous of that.
His smile widens, but his eyes are Antarctica cold. E.Z Eddie is as calm as an Asian monk praying while on Quaaludes. He looks older than his stated age, 45, but has a rubber face, a classic Clark Gable mustache, and that easy smile. His eyes are tired slits until he speaks and then they explode wide, as words flow from them like beer from a tap at a frat party. If he were not called E.Z., I would think his chatter is from nerves. However, he is smooth. He could sell heating units in the Sahara. He stands shielding his cleaning cart from me. It goes beyond protective to possessive.
“Is that cart so special?”
“What’s mine is mine. No one messes with it.” He tilts his head, laughs loudly, and offers a quirky smile. “I claims it. No one else but me touches it. Till I’m done. Then you can have it. See, that’s how my world works.” He snorts and steps aside. “Look all you wants, but no touchin’. I’m funny that way. Always have been and always will be.” His eyes never laugh. “Smart peoples stays ’way, ’cause we don’t need us no drama.”
I walk around the cart. “No drama offered. Just wants some simple answers.” His cart doesn’t look different from the other seven parked nearby it, except half the others have blue gloves and half have yellow hanging on them.
I receive a brusque purse-lipped nod. “Okay, but I’m off duty. Let’s us be quick.”
“Where did you actually find the weapon last night.” I pull my index cards from my jeans’s back pocket so I can take notes. Cards are painless to rearrange when I change how I’m thinking.
“My job be to clean buses on the first floor. I find that gun up on three. We done? ’Cause I got me no other answers for you.” He walks past me. “Don’t clean no buses on three.” He tries to herd me away from his cart. “Bye now,” Having moved me twenty feet from his cart, he circles past me and starts to leave.
I follow as he leaves to the stairs down to the street.
He turns, “Don’t be following me. I’m off.”
“To where?” I ask.
“Wife’s waiting. Gotta drive us home. She be mean, if-in she wait too much for my ride. Lucky for her, her old man is the easy one.” He gives me that smile. It’s got mischief in it, even while he taps his foot. “Gotta go. So come or don’t.” He resumes walking.
“So you don’t mind if I walk with you?”
He shrugs. “Nope. Free country. Can’t stop you. See? Easy.”
We walk. “How did you find the gun?”
He talks without looking at me, as if focused on the stairs. “Drop my wife off at 24 Hour Donuts and come here. She works night shift. I clean the buses. thirty of ’em most nights. At the end of my shift, I goes to dump the trash in the bins on the third floor. This morning, I sees alotta commotions here, but I don’t give it no never-mind ‘cause the bins be far away from it. I minds my business. Then I sees a hand cannon trashed by someone. It be lyin’ on top of some newspapers. Right there on top, like some turtle sunnin’ itself on a log. I knows, even wearing my gloves, don’t touch it. Don’t want my fingerprints on it. I calls one of them boys in blue from over on the platform. I be done with it.”
I’d been up to look at the bin that morning. The roof’s atrium glass window let in enough light to see in. There were newspapers right on top, as E.Z. had said. “Never touched it?”
“No ma’am.”
“You did not hear any shots?”
“Nope. I works two floors down on level one. Buses comin’ in and out. I hear ‘em, but no guns, nope. Don’t needs level three ‘cept to dump my work in the bins at the end of the night. That’s what I know.” He gave a firm nod.
“See anyone suspicious or a person you did not recognize? On the platform or hanging around while you cleaned up?”
“Always people I don’t know coming off those buses. Lotta people.”
I’ve perfected the art of writing on index cards while walking. It’s become a job requirement. When I glance up, his facial expression doesn’t change. His voice sounds strong and sure. I ask, “No one running away?”
“Nope, gotta go. Don’t need an unhappy wife.”
* * *
End of Part 1
End of Part 1
