Well that was a shitty few days that started well. I had something akin to a weekend, or I was meant to. So much for optimism.
My Thursday was spent waiting to testify on a wanna be white gangbanger who’d smacked the fuck out of his under-age girlfriend. This is the 3rd time we’ve tried to have an arraignment of sorts. The first time the DP had bought the wrong files, the second we ran out of time on the docket. To be honest, I kinda hoped that there would be another adjournment. I’ll tell you why.
When Dennis and I collared the fucker he was kneeling on her back laying into the side of her face like he was some kind of cage fighter. This was in broad daylight on a Thursday arfternoon back in March. It was just off Van Brunt before the tunnel, we weren’t even on the horn. We saw it, well Dennis saw it, while I was driving by. The perp is white and scrawny and looks like he crawled out of the Appalachians. He’s all foul mouthed and strung out. I pull up and flash the sirens as Dennis grabs him and wrestles him to the ground. It’s snowy as all hell, so neither of us was keen to get out of the car. It must have dropped about 4 maybe five inches that morning alone. Normally it’s not good when people resist, there’s paperwork and it’s legitimately dangerous. And I know we get a bad rep for being rough, but it only takes a few stray elbows to the face to make you callous, you know. This was one occasion where it wasn’t a bad thing that he resisted, it took some pepper spray and some hits with my Taser to get him “compliant”. That and Dennis sitting on anyone for a prolonged period of time will settle you down, eventually. He’s gotta be at least 250-280 pounds of Midwestern man meat. Because of the snow it took about 35-40 minutes for a wagon and a bus to show up. I got lucky, Dennis being all chivalrous and shit was cool with me sitting with the woman in the car while he used whiteboy as a foot-stool. What started it all? She’d dropped the pizza, while he was trying to touch her up. She had some superficial cuts, and some swelling but nothing broke, fortunately. Poor thing was terrified of him. Both of them were meth heads. He had a mouth on him, even with him under Dennis and us in the car I could hear him running his mouth like Jesse Pinkman or Action Bronson. We charged him with assault, aggravated assault, and strangulation. He’ was in the bullpen for about 2 days while he waited for a transfer to Riker’s. And he’s been in GP since then. The woman hasn’t shown to any of the arraignments and hearings, but we’ve got a handful of witnesses and the vehicle camera. While he waits for trial he’s at a loose end though, and the last time he came in he was looking like he’d been in Riker’s for four months. And now, a trial date has been set for November. He’s looking at about 9 years, but he’ll probably do about 5 if it sticks. Which I’m determined it does.
But knowing he can’t afford bail makes me happy as he sits in limbo. You see, the system here is so full that a lot of the minor things like possession or turning tricks will land you in somewhere like Riker’s or Queensboro because you can’t make even minor bail or afford a lawyer who will argue you for you to be out on your own recognizance. If you can’t make those hurdles immediately, then you’re in the system. The number of young hustlers it happens to is sad. And once they’re in the machine they never get out. Their record is never expunged and they just go round and round, accruing fines and the like while they’re in, going back in for them when they can’t pay for them when they’re out. It’s like Kafka.
I remember reading Kafka as a child, I had one of those omnibuses my Gran foisted on me instead of a new dress or something else I actually wanted, or needed. It was well thumbed and tattered, it was a hardback with a worn dewy decimal number on its spine and it was full of margin notes. After the first couple of times reading it through I used to just read the notes and the underlined passages. I was intrigued by what people found essential or important in books. It wasn’t my favourite story, but one passage that was underscored so blackly it appeared like a divine truth. Its relevance struck me years later when I began working in the five boroughs. It comes from The Trial. The Trial is about this perp who’s stuck in prison waiting to be tried and sentenced, but he doesn’t know why he’s there or what the charges are. The more he looks the less he finds, and the more he tries to escape the system the more the optimism is ground out of him. It’s a fucked up tale, but it sums up the system I’m part of. I shouldn’t say it out loud, but screw it, you know. I can’t say it to Nathanial, I don’t trust him to keep doctor patient confidentiality. None of us trust our shrinks, they’re more of the system like us. Checks and balances to keep the machine being the machine rather than fixing shit that needs fixing. That’s kinda while The Trial is such a potent analogy, it’s been bouncing round my head for the past 30 odd years. So at one point K says “One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the dispositions of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery – since everything interlocked – and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless.” And that’s New York policing and incarceration in its purist essence. Now, for dickwads and scumbags, like the whiteboy I was waiting on on Thursday, such a system is fine. But for the kids, the ones who have a chance to not be part of this monster, it’s unforgiving. They’re like little seemingly insignificant sacrifices we feed into the corporate fires to keep the wealthy fed and watered.
And people wonder why I drink.
And drink I did, all Thursday night down at the Brazen head. Sometimes their Whisky selection is worth the damage to the wallet. I love a rough and ready bar, especially when it’s not all cocktail umbrellas and a 10-30 on your wallet. Friday I got some training and ring time in before going out with my ladies. Saturday morning was a hangover in Nick’s bed. I don’t remember getting there, but he had a bloody Mary and an omelette waiting for me when I surfaced. He’s definitely friends with benefits. Even if he is a complete slut, he’s a gentleman and a considered, if not entirely considerate, lover. And then I had a barbeque at Dennis’ nest. Him and his wife, Sandy, have a brownstone over in Caroll Gardens. It’s a banging little number, they have two kids that actually have some square footage to swing cats in the back. Sandy’s a podiatrist and has her own practice. I don’t know how she works with feet all day, but she keeps mine in order. We’d just embarked on a second six-pack after eating far too many ribs when Stan called on the landline. He knew we were all together. He was meant to be there, too. Charlie and Quarles and Simon from the precinct were all there. It was one of those few opportunities to enjoy sunshine and beer and some brief respite from the humidity.
But instead we end up at a motel looking at the rather grisly remains of one of Dimitri’s friends. We‘re waiting for the DNA and other forensic work to get back and find out if it’s the same boy we spoke to last week. We got called to a hotel down on 39th, and so reluctantly leaving behind a mecca of beer and ribs we were just in time for humidity to hit close to 50 percent we headed towards a butchery site. There were the remains of a young male and female there. We assume it was Dimitri’s friend from under the bridge because of a neck tattoo he had. It looks something like a strange European character. I don’t think it’s Cyrillic, but Dennis seems to believe it is Russian or Ukrainian. I’m not so sure. There is something about it that doesn’t strike me as old world. It looks, to me at least, like some new found religion or cult creating a symbol that tries to look all old world and authentic. I’m going to get off here and have a trawl through Google images when I’m done with you, Dear Diary.
We don’t have a name, and the only reason the tattoo is so important is that it was the only skin left on the poor bastard. He was propped up in front of the bed, his legs had been severed at the knees and his arms at the elbow. He’d been skinned from the legs up to his neck. His head had been scalped and skinned too. I nearly lost my ribs and beer. We’d been told to expect bad, but not this. There wasn’t much blood, forensics figured he’d been killed in the bath with the other one. There was a woman in the tub, she too had been flayed and had her lower legs and arms removed. The limbs were in the bath with her, they weren’t skinless but the fingers and toes were gone. Only her breasts had been left untouched. Whoever she was had been white. Both of them had had their genitals removed. It’s obviously connected to the Dickless Wonder from the other day. It’s early to say, but Jo from forensics seems to think that they may have been alive during the mutilations. Dimitri had died from the slit throat. These two appear, according to her expert opinion, to have bled out or died from cardiac arrests, probably from the shock. I shall likely find out tomorrow after the autopsy.
The strange part (if you don’t consider skinned and limbless torsos in a downtown Brooklyn hotel room strange) was the method of discovery. Somebody had knocked on the door to the opposite room. The occupant, an Australian tourist, said he saw nobody when he opened his door. The hallway was empty. He didn’t recall hearing the elevator or the fire-door. But the lucky man had a clear view across into the other room and what was left of Stumpy (don’t blame me for that one; Dennis is the one with the Macabre sense of humour, I blame his parents). The room to the left had been unoccupied, and the old couple on the other side had been out at the time. There are six rooms on the floor. Nobody heard a peep. They had to have been drugged, there is no possible way those two could have had that done without some serious cacophony. The Australian guy heard nothing before the banging on the door. There are no cameras on the floors or in the lift, only in the lobby. So we’re in the dark. The room was registered to a woman named Clarisse Sugerman from Delaware who’s been dead for eighteen months. We’ve got an organised serial murderer on our hands.
We spent much of the rest of Saturday interviewing people at the hotel and going through the surveillance gear from the lobby. I figure it is the girl from the tub who checked in, they have the same small slight build. The boy we’d spoken to, Stumpy, comes in about fifteen minutes later. The booking had been made online. We’re waiting for the booking company to give us the details, but the payment had been made online through a PayPal account belonging to Ms Sugerman. We’re waiting to track down the other concierges and cleaning staff to see if there is anybody on the tapes they don’t recognise. But the woman we spoke to didn’t spot anybody she hadn’t booked in. There is somebody leaving the lobby at about 5pm, they’re dressed for a blizzard and we can’t even tell if it’s a he or a she.
Dennis and I spoke most of this morning going back around the beats and trying to chat to the same kids we spoke to the other day. Word seems to have travelled pretty fast. Nobody wants to speak to us. And who can blame them, the last informant we had is now very dead. The shelters are on weekend staff, so nobody will talk to us. So, there’s not much to run on till next week.
I can’t help but think of Kafka again. We put these kids into this machine. We send them into the world underdeveloped, with nowhere near enough knowledge to deal with adults and then we treat them as if they are not children. We lock them up. We arrest them. We toss them about. We criticise their choices. We punish them. Kafka wrote another story, The Penal Colony, it’s about an execution and the bloodiness and senselessness of it all reminds me of it
“He doesn't know the sentence that has been passed on him?" "No," said the officer again, pausing a moment as if to let the explorer elaborate his question, and then said: "there would be no point in telling him. He'll learn it on his body."
We’ve passed judgement on these kids, they just don’t know it. Sometimes I wonder how culpable we are. I mean, even if we, or I, don’t hold the knife, isn’t feeding them to the machine, being part of the machine, part of the process that leads to becoming a bloody stump in a nondescript hotel room?
