Excerpts

Chapter Two The place they went to eat called itself a diner, but it was little more than a large coffee shop. It was empty except for the old Spanish cook and the middle-aged waitress, his daughter, who turned from where she sat smoking at the front counter. "Oh no, you again," she said. It was what she always said. They sat in the deepest booth and put their radios up on the table top next to the ketchup. They ordered burgers and ate them slowly. Nobody came in or out. The waitress took their empty plates and went for coffee. Baker shifted in the silence. "If it's about what I said about Karen," he said. "No," Coglin said, looking out into the rain through the plate glass. "It ain't that." "What then? That EDP? The lady? Coglin turned from the rain to his partner. "You notice how pretty she was?" he said. Baker nodded. "Now that you mention it." "Well, there was a picture of her in her apartment, when she was a kid. She looked like an angel, like a little girl in a fairy tale." "And?" Baker said. Coglin placed his hands on the table in front of him and stared down between them as if some answer lay there in the paled swirls of worn linoleum. "I guess I never really thought about how fucked up it is to be crazy like that," he said quietly, "so alone and fucked up." Baker looked at him in shock. He was at a complete loss for a response. "Does this have anything to do with that fancy TV you're watching now?" he said. Coglin gave him the finger as he looked back out the window. When the waitress brought the check, Baker grabbed it. "Gotta try something radical to cheer your ass up," he said, taking out his wallet. A thin, hunched form appeared up the block, pushing a shopping cart as they exited the coffee shop. As the figure passed under a streetlight, Coglin could see that he was an older black man with a messed-up face: his nose a swollen bag; his eyes purple, puffed slits; his lips split. "Is that Smilin' Ronnie?" Baker said. "Hey, Smilin'!" Coglin called, taking a step toward him. "Hey, Smilin'! What happened?" The old man slowed for a moment, his pulverized face turning vaguely toward the sound of Coglin's voice. Then he began to step quickly. The metal rattling of his cart off the breaks in the sidewalk was suddenly more rapid, like the clatter of a train skipping a stop. "What the hell happened to him?" Baker said. "Took a spill?" "Off a roof, maybe," Coglin said. "Ream knocked him out," said a voice behind them. They both turned. There was a recessed window in the old, dark building beside the coffee shop, and behind its rusting bars stood a small Hispanic boy of no more than seven. He gripped the bars with his little fists like a miniature, irate inmate. Blue television light flashed from the room behind. "C'mon," Coglin said. "You saw it? A little guy like you?" "Shit, yeah," the child said proudly. "Only happened right there on the corner. Ream and his crew, out drinkin' forties, see the bum roll up, so they play them some Knockout." Coglin exchanged glances with his partner. "Knockout," Baker said. "What's that?" The kid rolled his eyes and shook his head with a "where the fuck you been?" expression. "'Knockout,'" he explained slowly. "It's when you coldcock some sucka in his cranium an' try an' knock his ass out with one punch." "What happens after you knock 'im out?" Baker asked. "You rob him?" "Straight up. Stomp his sorry ass, too. But they didn't vic no bum." The kid rolled his eyes again. "What they gonna take? His cans? Shit." "They stomped on him, though, huh?" Coglin said. "Word," the kid said. "Beat his old ass." The dark child laughed for a second, the sound chilling for the unlikely innocence in it, a tickled baby. "And they pissed on 'im. He was lyin' on the ground and they whipped their shits out and showered the stinky old fuck." Coglin checked his desire to reach through the bars and wrap his hands around the kid's throat. "Little man," Coglin said "I don't believe a word of your bullshit. You believe him, Daryl?" "He's spittin' lies," Baker said. "Hey, I seen it," the kid whined. "I seen it right there." "Who did it then?" Baker said. "Who knocked him out?" "Ream did it. Ream turned that old nigga's fuckin' lights out." "Who the fuck's Ream?" "Ream deals rock in the park across from Tubman. Ask anybody. Tall ass nigga with a red Lex. Got silver loops in his ears." "Yeah, we'll see," Coglin said, pushing himself off the wall. "You playin' us," Baker said, "and we're gonna be comin' back." The kid kicked the bars with his small, sneakered foot. "Dang," he called after them, offended. "Why the fuck would I be lying?" Back in the car, Coglin looked off in the direction the bum had gone, a tightness spreading through his body. Adrenaline injecting into his bloodstream at the anticipation of contact. He rolled his neck, his thoughts racing back to the crazy woman. Maybe there were some problems that he or anybody couldn't do anything about. But luckily some punk kids torturing an old defenseless man wasn't one of them. "Whataya say we take a little spin by the park?" he said, starting the car. He stomped on the gas, making the engine roar. Baker smiled and nodded his approval. "Now, that's my Coglin," he said, grasping the dash as the car shot forward. "Let's see how much Mr. Ream likes havin' his own cranium cracked." The drug spot was empty when they pulled in front of the Harriet Tubman projects five minutes later. Normally, the wooden benches facing the street in the adjacent park would be filled with the dealers, circles of hooded young men glancing constantly about like some strange order of cautious persecuted monks. "I think Harriet would have skipped this stop on the ol' Underground Railroad, don't you?" Baker said. "I think she would have taken the express right on past if she had the choice. Business is slow with this rain." Coglin took a deep breath and looked out at the desolate complex of dark stone high-rises, the pale cement paths crisscrossing the mud between. "Yeah," he said. "I've seen that red Lex around, though." "Me, too," Baker said. A train blasted past on the El two blocks away, and its electric spark's soft blue glow lit up the dismal brick for a moment. "You think it was what? Some kind of gang thing?" Coglin said. "Yeah. Some kind of sick initiation," Baker said. "At least the LA gangs have the decency to beat the fuck out of each other." They sat in silence. "Fuck it," Baker said after a while. "We're gonna cross paths with the animal sooner or later. Hopefully sooner in one of these hallways with the back of his head opened up for him." He checked his watch. "It's time anyway. We gotta get back." Coglin turned to his partner. "Smilin' ever show you his union card?" "Used to be a plumber, right?" "Steamfitter," Coglin said. "He told me he used to be the house steamfitter at the Plaza hotel till he got fired." Baker shook his head grimly. "Pissed on him, Daryl," Coglin said. "Who does that? What species?" "I agree," Baker said. "That's some bothersome prehistoric shit. But it's still time." Coglin glanced out at the dark, desolate façades of the buildings. He blew out a pent-up breath loudly. "You're right," he said quietly, shifting the transmission down into drive. They pulled out and drove in silence, the rain on the roof a low, constant rattle. "I just wish he'd been there," Coglin said after a few blocks. "Me, too, man," Baker said. "Me, too." Back at the precinct house, they parked the radio car in the garage, handed in their paperwork and went up to the locker room. It took Coglin less than ten minutes to put away the belt and gear, change out of his uniform, and exchange his service automatic for his off-duty .38. He closed his locker and sat down next to Baker, who was still getting dressed. "So you want me to bring the cradle tomorrow, right?" Baker said. Coglin nodded. "I appreciate you letting me use your basement to work on it," he said. Baker shook his head. "You know I was just fuckin' with you about Karen," he said. "No," Coglin said. "I don't know that. But I think I know what you were getting at. Don't worry about it." "You gonna be OK," Baker said with a grin, "or you want me to call the rubber-gun squad for you, maybe? Ask if they got any openings?" "You're a sensitive motherfucker," Coglin said, shaking his head with a slight smile. "I ever tell you that? A real warm individual. It's easy to share with you." Baker smiled widely. "Glad to see you're feeling better, partner," he said. "Shoo, shoo," Coglin told him as he rose. "Under a hedge." Coglin left the locker room, walked out through the musty stationhouse and crossed the street to his car. He turned the engine over and waited, letting it warm. He glanced at the precinct, its narrow windows still burning with their grim but steady yellow light. He backed out. He was passing under the elevated track on his way to the highway when he saw them: a group of teens -- a half dozen or more -- crowded in the roofed stairwell leading up to the El. At first, the older man in their midst seemed to be a friend of theirs, a concerned father maybe taking his son home. Then a forty-ounce malt liquor bottle crashed across the side of his head, and he buckled and fell. Coglin was out in the rain and running almost before his fishtailing car had stopped completely. He was less than twenty feet away and closing when they noticed him. Young, hooded bodies spilled over the black-painted stair rail, through the thin opening, up the stairs. He caught the last one out -- a squat, overweight punk -- with a slap that set him down on the pavement. The kid managed to push himself to his feet and then ran off. The victim was middle-aged and Hispanic. He was wearing a suit that was wet and soiled, and he raised his bloodied head with a moan. Coglin looked up the stairs in time to see the sneaker soles of one of the pack gain the top landing. He helped the man into a sitting position and reached at his side for his radio that wasn't there. The man spit a stringy gob of blood onto the worn metal rim of one of the stairs. Coglin stepped over him, started up the stairs. "Stay there," he called back. "Wait for an ambulance. Don't move." He sprinted up the long flight of stairs, across the wooden boards at the top of the landing and burst through the station door. It was empty. Being one of the last stops on the line, there was no token-booth clerk, just a barred, revolving turnstile that required a token he didn't have. He pressed against the bars scanning the platform beside the tracks, but he couldn't see anything. Then he heard something clatter above his head. He ran back out the door to the top landing's outside stair rail. Blinking up through the rain, he made out a drainpipe that snaked upward to the eave of the station's sloped terra cotta roof. He squinted down at the sidewalk thirty feet below and listened for a moment to the ceaseless pounding of the rain. Then he leaned out and grasped the drainpipe. By the time he swung himself onto the roof, he was completely soaked. He drew his gun from his ankle holster with a Velcro rip, looked around, but there was nothing. When he gained the crest of the roof, he was just in time to see a figure drop off the other side onto the platform. He'd started down quickly and had almost reached the other eave, when he slipped. His left boot shot out from under him on some slick piece of flashing, and then the right one, and his face slapped against the wet stone. His gun flew out of his hand, slid away with a clatter and dropped off the eave. He was only a second behind it. The platform smacked him hard and his breath was gone. Through his shock he registered that he'd landed on something hard and metal that might've cracked a rib. Once, as a small kid, he'd caught a line drive in the chest while standing in foul territory at a men's softball game, and he felt that same sensation now. The same torturously slow suffocation, same dancing spots of black and malignant nausea, dreamy death like a lead blanket swaddled around his chest. Frozen needles of rain dashed unheeded off his unprotected face as he couldn't breathe and couldn't breathe and couldn't breathe. Then the rain suddenly stopped. The face of the figure that stared down at him from an impossible height above was young and black and had eyes cold and glistening as the silver hoops in his ears. A chunky multifinger ring of gold, billboard-huge from where Coglin lay, was sprawled across the wide fist of his right hand. R-E-A-M. Coglin's breath came back in a loud wheeze. Backbeat by his pumping heart, a single refrain began to play in his head as he unsuccessfully tried to move. I should've stayed a carpenter I should've stayed a carpenter I should've stayed a carpenter. He felt his wallet come free from the front pocket of his jeans. His badge flashed in front of his face. "Five-O, bitch," the dealer whispered in his ear. "'Gainst the wall." Coglin managed to jerk up slightly when the man went into his breast pocket for the engagement ring. The blow that fell an instant later crackled white fuzz across the insides of Coglin's eyelids. The back of his head bounced up off the cement. Blood ran over his teeth, dripping down his throat in a copper stream. Hurricane storm clouds of black arrived now, swirling above even blacker, crashing waves. As Coglin was about to pass out completely, he felt a shudder that he feared was the final tremble of something vital failing in his body. He felt it again, this time accompanied by a far-off bleat, like an alarm clock through a dream. He wished the noise would stop, so he could get his much-needed rest. It dulled for a moment. The platform shook again with the enormous weight of the approaching subway train. Its horn issued another short blast. Ream was lifting Coglin's legs when he managed to crack open his left eye. "Yeahhh, bitch," Ream said, starting to drag him across the cement. "Train's a comin, bitch," he said. And it was. Coglin could hear the wheels of the subway car clearly now, the rising metal screech of its approach like the sharpening of a thousand knives. "Chugga, chugga, woo, woo," Ream said, smiling. Even dazed, Coglin could see he was a handsome kid. "Chugga, chugga, woo, woo." He's going to throw me in front of the train, Coglin thought with the astonishing simplicity of panic. When he opened his mouth to protest, he found he couldn't speak. It took Coglin another second to notice that the piece of metal he landed on was moving with him. It was his gun. He raised himself off it slightly and managed to hook it with his elbow, dragging it along with him. The rumble and horn of the train mounted an unbelievable notch higher, like an unstoppable tornado now down in the front yard. Ream stopped abruptly. He pulled Coglin parallel to the edge of the platform and dropped his feet. Coglin could feel the humming power of the train reverberating through the wet cement at his cheek. He stared down at the silver rail tops below. He reached out blindly with his right hand and wrapped it around the hard rubber handle of his gun beneath his other elbow. He fumbled at the checkered metal safety with his thumb. It wouldn't come. His thumb wasn't working. His hand was too cold. He was too weak. Too weak to live. Please. No. Then the safety finally flicked down with an almost imperceptible snick. Ream stepped away for a moment as if suddenly deciding to stop this insanity. Then Coglin felt the sole of his sneaker begin to push at his back, inching him off the platform. He passed the gun across his body, found the metal filament of the trigger with his finger and squeezed. The shot was only a slight, muffled pop against the now rising roar of the train, but it caught Ream in the foot. The pusher looked down slowly at the mess that had blossomed across the flawless white leather of his Reeboks. Coglin pulled the trigger of the suddenly heavy gun again, and the bullet bit out a piece of the platform between Ream's feet with a whine. Ream looked down at Coglin with puzzled annoyance, as if perturbed by the distraction from his newly interesting foot. Then Coglin squeezed and shot again, and the round went through Ream's knee, and he dropped. The driver of the train had the horn pulled in a constant scream as Coglin rolled himself away from the edge. When he looked back he saw Ream, a few yards away, gripping feebly at the platform, his bloody legs hanging over the space above the tracks. In the brightening light of the oncoming train, Ream's expression had softened to a look of childish regret as he reached out a hand toward Coglin. Then the train hit him. One moment, he was there and the next instant, there was a sound, a kind of hollow sickening bump and like a magic trick, the dealer was gone, replaced by the flying metal wall of the train. Staring at the blurring steel with the darkness coming for him again, Coglin suddenly thought of the ring. He had to have it for Saturday. He patted at the wet concrete around him, probing the pocked cement blindly with his fingertips. Then he toppled over and passed out. It was still dark and still raining when Coglin opened his eyes, but the train had stopped. It was sitting there at the station, right in front of him, with its doors open and its bright light spilling onto the platform. A black man in a transit uniform was stepping in and out of the doors, clenching and unclenching his hands. He was crying. "Johnny! Johnny! Wake the fuck up!" Coglin turned up to his left toward the voice. It took him a moment to recognize the face out of uniform. It was Martinelli. Martinelli, his first partner. His old friend. "Are you shot?" Martinelli said. Coglin shook his head. "Who's the kid under the train?" "Saw him beatin' an old man," Coglin mumbled. "Chased him." "Did you shoot him?" Coglin blinked, nodded slowly. "Goddamn," Martinelli said. "Goddamn...Here, sit up." Martinelli pulled him off his back. Coglin sat and wrapped his hands around his knees. There was blood on the sleeve of his coat. He looked up as Martinelli took a white handkerchief out of his coat pocket. He thought he was going to give it to him to stanch some wound, then he saw there was something in it. Black and heavy, gleaming with oil. A small automatic. Coglin squinted at him, confused. "Gotta drop it," Martinelli explained somberly. "What?" "On the kid. The kid," Martinelli said, annoyed now. "It's the only way." "No," Coglin said weakly. "That's not the way it happened." Martinelli put a hand behind Coglin's head and pulled him in until their foreheads touched. Coglin could smell the alcohol on his breath. "You think that matters? That don't mean shit. I got you covered, kid." Martinelli let go of him and walked quickly down the platform. Coglin sat there watching him. At the front of the train, Martinelli stopped and took out the handkerchief. "No," Coglin said quietly as he watched the gun fall toward the tracks, tiny and black and irretrievable. He heard it click on the street below. A small, but portentous sound. Like the last punch on the timecard of a man clocking out on his very last day. Copyright (c) 2003 by Michael Ledwidge Excerpted from Before the Devil Knows You're Dead by Michael Ledwidge All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.