23 SHADES OF BLACK

by

K.j.a. Wishnia

from CHAPTER ONE

"There ain't no clean way to make a hundred million bucks."

- Raymond Chandler

All this happened a few years ago, when Ronald Reagan was busy making tuna fish hash out of the national budget and trying to learn which countries belong to South America, and the second wave of Punk still ruled the East Village.

I was riding around with my partner, Bernie, a Cabeza de chorlito so cerebrally-challenged he couldn't see a hole in a forty-foot ladder without the aid of a telescope and a detailed map, when we both spot what looks like a typical Saturday night street fight. A local loser and three college-age kids are scuffling and groin-kicking in front of a glass-enclosed restaurant.

Bernie says, "I'll handle this," as he swings the car up onto the curb, hops out, and proceeds to take command of the situation by doing his Elvin Jones imitation on the head and shoulders of the loser, who looks like the principal cause of the whole mess.

I get out of the car and get my nightstick between the two peripheral participants, and move them over towards the glass walls of the restaurant, where a yuppie foursome delight in getting some free entertainment.

It turns out to be a $30 rip-off involving a quarter-gram of what tastes like mannitol and baby laxative, and the big, curly-headed blond kid is blubbering just like a baby. I can't blame him. He's obviously not used to the way real dealers work.

It's clear that the other guy, the one on whose spine Bernie is conducting an acoustical test, is a crackhead, which is unusual. The street vendors tend to be pretty sharp on their toes--for those occasions when we try to remind them that selling pharmaceutical products without a prescription is frequently against the law. But the crack junkies are definitely starting to move in, making a dirty game even messier.

Bernie cuffs him while I give the three college kids a good "Don't-let-me-catch-you-around-here-again" speech, which disappoints my glassed-in audience, who want to see their tax dollars working for them.

"What's going to happen to him?" they ask.

I'm about to tell them that it would be better if they just got out of there, when Bernie says, "I'm going to kick his ass all the way to the precinct house, that's what's going to happen."

This seems to satisfy the kids, and they move on into the crowd which is already dispersing. Bernie's beating has turned the guy green.

"Help me shove this snotrag in back," snarls Bernie.

"Oh no, I'm not cleaning this guy's vomit up off the back seat," I tell him.

"Well what do you want me to do?"

I notice part of the crowd has decided to stick around for more.

"You could try letting him get some air first," I can see that Bernie is wracking his brains to come up with a way of telling me off without using improper language in front of the public.

"Piss on that," he says, stuffing the Junkie's head inside the car with the heel of his hand and leaving the door open for me to deal with as he goes around to the driver's side. I'm not sure if Bernie is aware that "piss" is considered improper language in some circles.

I waste my time waiting for further instructions as Bernie parks himself behind the wheel and slams the car door. The remainder of the crowd is staring at me wondering, What is she going to do? Then the Junkie gives me something to do.

"I'm going to be out by tomorrow morning, babe!" he says, climbing halfway out of the car. "And I'm going to come looking for you!"

"Just get in there," I say, replacing his body on the seat and slamming the door. Bernie guns the motor as I go around the other side and climb in next to him, then he pulls off the curb and away down the street.

"Why don't you just leave me there, Bernie? You got everything under control all by yourself."

"You're damn right I do, Buscarsela. I didn't need you in there." He turns to shout through the cage. "It was just two puppies slapping each other over some baby powder."

"Watch the traffic, will ya?"

Bernie decides not to run over a young woman pushing a baby carriage, aiming instead for an old man with a walking stick.

"You blew it, Bernie: An old man with a cane is only forty points. A mother and baby is eighty-five points," I say. Pregnant nuns are one hundred and fifty points, if you can find one. "Okay: So it turned out to be two puppies slapping each other over some baby powder, but it could have been two psychos knifing each other over three thousand bucks. And one of them could have had a gun."

"I'm hungry. Let's eat," is how Bernie chooses to wrestle with that particular enigma.

"We can't call in a meal break with a prisoner in the back."

"Fuck that." That's Bernie talking. "I said I'm hungry."

I turn and get my first good look at our detainee. He's young, but already got the face of a lifer. Glazed, sunken eyes, a few requisite knife scars, and a sallow malnourished complexion that bleeds right through what in a WASP would be considered a healthy tropical tan. Without that extra melanin, he'd be as pale as chalk, pale as that powder he's trading in the world for. At least he's calm. He's been through this a few dozen times before.

"What are you trying to do, selling for yourself in this neighborhood? You want to end up as dog food?"

"Fuck you, cop," is what he says. So much for the civics lesson. "Puta traicionera de tu propia raza." That's supposed to burn me real bad, I guess. But I've been through this a few times before, too.

"En cambio tu eres el ejemplo para todos, ¿no cierto?"

"Fuck you," he says. So we're back to that.

"Is that all the English you know? ¿Y porque no me lo dices en español?"

The Junkie opens his mouth to speak.

"You say 'Fuck you' one more time and I'm going to feed you this," I say, shoving my nightstick through the mesh close enough for him to use it as a tongue depressor. "It's a perfect fit, too." Now he shuts up. That's the only language the lifers understand. And me a B.A. in Spanish Literature.

Bernie jerks the car to a halt in front of an all-night deli with one of those cheap, glaring neon signs that always has a couple of letters sputtering on and off and makes you feel like your eyes are going. Blink. Gddzt. Blink. Gdzzt. You could go blind trying to focus on them.

"What do you want?" Bernie asks.

The Junkie says he'll have a hotdog with everything.

"Not you, snotrag," Bernie informs him.

"Get me a whole can of salmon on rye and coffee, extra extra light." Guayaquil style.

Bernie gets out and goes into the deli. Normally, that would be my job, but tonight, staying in the car with the "snotrag" is the chickenshit detail, so I don't have to play waitress. Not this time, anyway.

Bernie does not exactly have a poker face. I can see that he's planning something by the way he is smirking at the Korean guy behind the deli counter. Hmm. Will today's gag be on me or on the prisoner? Bernie doesn't always differentiate. I see him stuffing some Devil Dogs into the pockets of his jacket when the Korean man has his back turned.

He comes back with his hands around a paper bag that is dripping wet. He has already spilled my coffee. I roll down the window of the car, letting in some of that crisp March breeze, which isn't too bad tonight. You can tell that spring is coming.

"You adding shoplifting to your growing list of petty crimes?" I kid him.

"Oh, he won't charge me for them," says Bernie, handing me my bag.

Of course he won't charge you for them if you stick them in your pocket when he isn't looking, I'm thinking, but my coffee cup is already tearing through the bottom of the bag, and I have to grab the bag to keep from getting soaked, but Bernie's got his hands around it in such a way that I can't get a grip on it.

"You owe me $4.50," he says, as if unaware of what he's doing. I'm about to put my hand under the bag when it gives up the ghost (it must have had help) and an uncovered styrofoam cup of hot coffee drops into my lap, spilling about half of it down my thighs and onto the seat and elsewhere. This makes the snotrag laugh. I'd like to dump the rest of the coffee on his head for that, but at this point in the game that would be considered excessive, and he obviously knows it. I peel myself up off the seat as best I can, but the damage is done.

"Sorry, Buscarsela," says Bernie, doing a lousy job of trying not to laugh. "You know how cheap these Koreans are with them plastic tops."

I'm struggling to keep some kind of cool here: "Bernie--wet paper bags are receptacles not noted for their strength."

"Huh?" he replies. You can't put anything over on Bernie.

The snotrag coninues to laugh.

"Here you go--this is for you," says Bernie, passing a hotdog with everything behind me to our prisoner, who greedily starts to gulp it down. "Hey, that'll be $1.25, pal."

I'm not sure, but I think the Junkie says "Fffk yuf" through a mouthful of hotdog--with everything. Then without warning the Junkie's face goes sour and he starts spitting out half-chewed "everything" all over the back seat of the car. It seems that there are five or six live roaches crawling around between the hotdog and the lettuce.

"Oh, I didn't see them roaches," says Bernie. "They're extra. That'll be $2.25."

"(SPIT) Fuck you."

Must be his charm: He sure doesn't get by on originality.

Bernie keeps jabbing: "Hey, I thought you asked for 'a hotdog with everything.'"

"What do you carry them around in a test tube where your log's supposed to be?" I really am curious how he pulled that off.

Bernie is laughing, and I'm wondering, was this the gag or was mine the gag? Sometimes it's hard to say. Meanwhile, the Junkie is spitting half-chewed food all over the back seat, and I'm using every napkin I've got--how nice of Bernie to provide so many--to clean up my mess, asking myself if I can get compensation for scalded thighs as a job-related injury: "Uh, yes, your Honor, that's correct, my asshole partner poured hot coffee on my lap. Well, he didn't exactly pour it. Maybe we could settle for half a million in damages?"

"While you're at it, Buscarsela, why don't you clean up the rest of that stuff?"

"Bernie--fuck you."

I am hungry, however, but somehow no longer desire to eat in the same car with the Junkie who is busy spitting on every available surface. So I step out of the car and start to unwrap my sandwich, leaning on the cold car door. The breeze is a bit nippy, but I prefer it to being in there with the Great Expectorator. I finally get half of my sandwich unwrapped, and take a bite, only to get a mouthful of cold sardines in oil, complete with bones. This is not my favorite meal.

So now it's my turn: I spit my mouthful into the gutter and storm inside the deli and shut the door behind me.

"What's the big idea charging $4.00 for a sardine sandwich?"

The Korean man looks at me in that half-perplexed way of someone who is new to a culture, and still dreads every new encounter in this strange new language. I realize that he's not the regular owner.

"Fo dolla price for salmon sandwich," he says.

"Yeah, I know: The price says salmon, but the mouth says sardines. You trying to make me sick?" The man now looks truly worried, and I can tell this is not his fault. Hmm. "Uh, could I see the can?" Nothing. I pick a can of peaches up off the shelf, and show him: "The can." Now he understands, and pulls a flat, ellipsoidal can off of a pile of twenty or so identical cans and hands it over the counter towards me. "SARDINES," it reads, in big red letters. I now play a little charades, pointing out each and every noun, and trying to fill in the verbs with meaningless gestures. "Did Officer Morgan [point out the door] tell you [point at him] that this [the can] was salmon? [emphasis added]" Vigorous nodding on the part of my Korean friend. I nod back in order to show him that, See?, we can understand each other. I'm about to walk out when I spot the Devil Dogs on a display rack.

"How much are these?"

"Senty-fi."

I plant down a buck-fifty on the counter and walk out empty-handed, leaving the Korean man even more in the dark about the ways of these crazy Americans. And he doesn't even know the half of it. I go around to the passenger side of the car and get inside.

"Where's my $4.50?" asks Bernie.

"Some of it's on the front seat, and the rest of it's back with the store owner. Let's move."

"Not until you get in back with the perp."

"I'm not getting in back with that guy."

He wants me to clean the crap up.

"Listen, girlie, I was pounding a beat when you were still swinging through the trees in the Amazon jungle. Hell, they didn't even have phones down there 'til we discovered you had some oil there: But we had to find it for you."

Bernie's in-depth sociopolitical analysis of my country-of-origin's economic situation is cut short be a radio call to respond to what is reported to be a toxic leak at a food stamp center, with as many as fourteen possible victims. Now it's my turn to bust procedure. I pick up the mike and roger the call.

Bernie says: "We're not supposed to respond to a code with a perp in the cage. That's procedure, Buscarsela."

"Since when have you cared about following procedure?" Three more points and I'm a detective and I can dump this lousy partner. "You know how fast insecticide fumes can kill someone?"

Bernie throws on the lights and siren, and we go wailing out into traffic. The food stamp center is just a few blocks away, but it is next to the Lilliflex factory, where, among other things, they make insecticides.

We are the first to arrive at the scene, and let me tell you it's a mess. People are lying face down on the sidewalk and clouds of toxic smoke are wafting out of the building. We hop out of the car, leaving the doors open, and try to get a reading on the situation.

I ask: "Any more inside?" Nobody knows. Bernie and I look at each other.

"Should we be heroes or what?" Bernie asks me.

"I don't know, I've heard about this kind of stuff: Your lungs fill with fluid and you drown." People are standing around, more are hanging out of windows, looking down at us. I say, "Oh, shit, let's do it."

I run to the glove compartment and rip each of the pair of surgical gloves that we keep there in half. We put them over our faces, our noses lodged in one of the fingers. We look like stagecoach bandits, except for the long rubber noses. I rip the one towel we've got in half and wrap that around the gloves. It's hard to breathe, but that's the idea.

We run inside. The fog stings our eyes like triple-strength tear gas, but we plow through it. Dead bugs are dropping from the ceiling like rain. I hadn't counted on this. We can barely breathe, and my eyes feel like they're being soft-boiled in hydrochloric acid. I try to get a fix on where some of the bodies lie, then shut my eyes tight and start feeling around where the afterimages tell me they should be. I grope around in the dark, my eyes sizzling away in their sockets, until I find one. It's a leg. I find the other leg, get the knees over my shoulders, and try to stand up. I can't. I get my knees right under the weight and try again. I can't budge this one. Much as I hate to, I drop the legs and open my eyes. No wonder. In a flash I see that the guy can't weigh less than two-hundred-and-ninety pounds. I spot a young Black woman sprawled backwards over a desktop, grab her, and run out of there, slipping and sliding on a uniform layer of dead bugs, my eyes screaming a three-alarm fire. I stumble out through the corridor and onto the street, where I can see through a veil of tears that the ambulance squad has arrived. Somebody takes the woman off my back and flings her onto a stretcher.

One of the onlookers is drinking a beer--I think. I grab it from him--or her.

"Excuse me, I need that," I explain, and begin dousing my eyes with the contents of the bottle, which are a soothing relief to my scorched cornea. I suppose tabasco sauce would probably be a relief at this point. Then the burn starts to come back, even worse.

"Allow me," says one of the squad guys, and he turns me around, forces me to my knees, and starts pouring quarts of clear fluid into my eyes, where it runs all over my face and uniform. After a few minutes, when it begins to feel like my eyes are not sizzling like two slices of pepperoni on a hot pizza, I breathe easier, knowing that, once again, I may yet live to see my grandchildren. If I ever get around to children.

"Feel better now?" the blurry mass above me asks.

"Much. Thanks. What is that stuff?"

"Water," he says. I had to ask.

By the time my eyes clear, he's gone, and the people who are prepared for toxic fumes show up. Protective coveralls, face masks, oxygen tanks. They go in and pull out nine other victims and get busy feeding them oxygen and the same water treatment. Most of the victims are the usual shades of black and brown, but one of them sticks out like a Klansman at a Knicks game. Basically, he's white--which is not all that remarkable, I'll admit, but on this block it's a novelty, and at the food stamp center, it's practically unheard of. Other cops from the 34th are keeping back the crowd, letting only the ambulance crew through. A reporter is trying to get in to see the victims, but they keep her out. I walk over to the rescue worker who is treating the white guy.

"You need help taking these people to the emergency room?" I ask.

"Nah," he says, not looking up. "We can treat them right here, none of them is injured seriously. Just for a couple days they might get nauseous, thirsty, with headaches and chest pains."

"Oh is that all?"

Now he looks up at me: "Look, you wanna do this? I could be home watching The Late Show."

He goes back to attending to the victim, not waiting for a response. I tilt my head sideways and get a good look at the prostrate form of the one white victim. He's pale and blond, with reasonably delicate features, but even in this condition the muscles of his face are hard, pushing up through his skin. Looks like a nice kid who fell on hard times, or maybe one of the middle-class New Jersey suburb Punk crowd who willingly embraced hard times rather than put on a white shirt and a tie and work the cash register at Toys "R" Us. Yes, now I see it: He's probably a musician or a painter. He's definitely not an employee at the food stamp center. Either way, I'm not getting any answers out of this guy for awhile.

I step over some of the emergency paraphernalia, glancing at each of the victims. There's a grandmother asking to see her children in a Puerto-Rican-accented Spanish; I go over and talk to her. I tell her everything's all right now and I even radio in her name and her family's telephone number so someone at the station can call them and tell them she's OK. There's a young Black man who isn't moving yet; There's my three-hundred pound friend, draining an entire tank of oxygen all by himself. It took three men to carry him out of there. Then I see the young Black woman who I brought out slung over my back. She's recovering, and is trying to push off the oxygen mask, but the rescue worker is slapping her hands away and holding the mask in place. I tap the rescue worker on the shoulder.

"How soon will she be able to talk?"

Hearing this, the Black woman tries to say something, but the rescue worker redoubles the pressure with which he is holding the mask in place. He looks at me.

"Get out of here, will ya? Can't ya see I'm busy?"

I look at the woman. Over the mask, she looks like she is trying to tell me something with her eyes, which have the wild, petrified look of an ensnared doe. But then I suppose it's normal to look that way after a brush with death. I get down on one knee and take the woman's hand in mine. I tell her we got everyone out okay. Her eyes appear to relax almost immediately. I stroke her forehead with my other hand, and she breathes deeply for the first time since I've been watching. She even closes her eyes. When she opens them, the panic is gone. She knows now that she's going to be all right. I nod and continue to stroke her forehead. I ask her is there someone she wants me to call and say she's all right. The rescue worker gives me a look.

"Don't you have something else to be doing?" he says to me.

"Look, pal, I may not be a paramedic, but I know something about helping accident victims. And treating them like people's a big part of it."

"Go arrest some pimps, awright?"

That reminds me, I left the Junkie in the back seat of the car--How long ago? Five minutes? Ten minutes? A half an hour? My sense of time is shot, which looks real bad on a report. I check my watch, which reads, "9:40," so it's only been about fifteen minutes, and I start looking around for Bernie and the car. I spot Bernie through the modern-ballet movements of the rescue workers rushing back and forth with tanks of life. He is trying to write a memo or a summons of some sort, shaking his pen like a thermometer to get the ink flowing.

I give the Black woman some more comforting. She points to my notepad with her free hand. I take it out and pass it to her. She manages to write "Kim Saunders" and a local number.

"This is your name?" I ask. She tries to nod. The medic presses the mask down harder. "I'll call 'em right now. You're going to be fine," I say, and start to get up. She won't let go of me. She squeezes my hand tightly. Then I gently remove it and get up and walk away.

I make the call as promised, from a pay phone, and keep at least one grandmother from having a heart attack tonight. The thanks I get from her make it just about worth it.

Bernie is standing near the car, and I can see that the Junkie is still in the back. The Junkie's wrists look terrible. They are bloody and torn. I think he actually tried to bite through them in order to get away while we were busy with the rescue.

"Let's get this punk down to the station before he bleeds all over the car," I say.

That's all right with Bernie. I go around to my side, and a woman stops me and says, "Excuse me, Officer--" she tilts her head to read my nameplate "--Buscarsela, Sergeant Kroger says you were the first to arrive on the scene. What do you think happened?"

She is wearing a grey trenchcoat and woolen winter hat that sets off her trim figure and reddish-brown hair a lot better than my box-shaped off-the-rack uniform does mine. I tell her, "Either General Westmoreland tried to defoliate North Harlem, or the Lilliflex factory sprung a leak."

She chuckles. "I can't print that. General Westmoreland'll sue the shit out of us and win."

"Sorry, but if you really want to find out what happened, talk to Lilliflex. It's their mess."

"But what do you think happened?"

"C'mon, Buscarsela!" says Bernie. "Haul some ass!"

"I gotta go," I say.