PARKS WAS AMBIVALENT: DISGUSTED by what it must be like to live in Fusco’s body, but intrigued by his mind. Here he was, on his own time, spending the night in a van he cashed in a favor to unofficially borrow, working an off-the-books stakeout on a Brooklyn cop-spot, while Parks, admittedly, was home eating veggie burgers with his wife and kids. He might have been less impressed if he knew that Fusco was twice-divorced, that his kids didn’t speak to him, and that if he hadn’t been here, surrounded by soda bottles, candy wrappers, McDonald’s bags, and, good Lord, were those Funyuns, his night off would have been spent losing at blackjack, but still . . . he’d put in the work, followed his hunch, and now he’d called in his partner to show him what he’d found: an honest-to-God clue. Classic detective work that Parks had to respect. This was why, as he discreetly shut the van door, and crept into the spare seat, he was feeling proud to be partnered with Francis “Fartso” Fusco. Then he kicked over the piss bottle.
“Oh Jesus fuck!” Parks called out as his foot, shod in an expensive soft leather boot that he was wearing with clean, new jeans and a button down shirt on his night off, kicked over a one-liter soda bottle that he realized, with horror, was full of urine and not very well sealed. Liquid gurgled out.
“What’s wrong?”
“You disgusting pig!” Parks jumped up, pointing.
“Oh shit . . .” Fusco reached down and grabbed the bottle, moving it to a more stable spot. “Watch where you step.”
“Watch where I step?” Parks was furious. “Watch where you empty your diseased bladder you gross animal.”
“It’s a stakeout,” Fusco wheedled, in the same tone Parks’s kids used when they wanted to skip flossing on a camping trip.
“Look, why the hell am I even here to witness this horror?” Parks asked, keeping well away.
Fusco checked his watch. “Because the show’s about to start. Sit down and quit bitching.” He patted at the chair and Parks gingerly sat so that he could see out the rear windows, filled with one-way glass. “And if you’re thirsty,” Fusco added, “help yourself to some soda.”
“Fuck you, Fartso.”
Fusco chuckled, then reached for his camera as he saw something. “Okay, here it is. Look.”
They were in a dusty, graffiti-covered old van, parked up the block from the projects, with a good view out the back of an entrance between two brick towers. Young lookouts steered customers around the corner and into one of the buildings while civilians came and went, minding their own business. A car approached, slowing as it reached the spot.
“Black Mercedes?”
“Exactly. It’s the re-up. But never mind the dope, watch the guys.” He put the camera to his face and began shooting. Parks watched as the Mercedes, black metal gleaming and chrome glaring in the streetlights, rolled to a stop at the corner. The driver, with slicked-back hair, a thick gold chain, and a lot of ink showing under his white sleeveless T-shirt, peered out his window, watching for cops. The front passenger, a big man dressed in a tracksuit, with a shaved head and also a lot of black, prison-style tattoos, stepped out as a young kid rushed up from the closest doorway. The big man grabbed a paper grocery bag and handed it to the kid, who immediately scurried back over the sidewalk and vanished into the projects. The big guy jumped back in and they rolled.
“So kid, tell me what you see,” Fusco said, still snapping away, getting the plates, till the car turned the corner.
“Nothing. A typical re-up. But we already know they’re selling dope here. Maybe if you followed them.”
“Not in this. They’d spot us in five minutes. We need a real team to do that. But what else did your keen detective mind notice?” He showed him the screen of the digital camera and scrolled through pictures he’d just shot. “Or are you one of those jerk-off liberals who claims not to see skin color?”
Now Parks grinned. “They’re white.”
Fusco grinned back. “Exactly.”
“White gangsters dropping off the stash at a Black cop spot, in the projects.”
“Not something you see every day is it?”
“Not something you see ever.”
“So the plot thickens.”
“No doubt, we got ourselves a bona fide mystery here.”
“See,” Fusco said, patting his shoulder. “I knew you had a detective’s mind behind that pretty face.”
“And I always knew you had some wisdom buried in all that fat and bad breath,” Parks answered, happily. “But now what? I mean, you had me at heroin. You really think this is going to make the boss fall in love with this case?”
“Nope. I’m playing the long game here. But the next move is yours. That’s why I called you in.”
“Oh yeah?”
Fusco peered into the interior of the projects. “I need you to go in there and cop us a bag of this bomb dope everyone is talking about.”
“Why me? Cause I’m Black?” Parks asked, incredulous.
“Exactly,” Fusco said. “Look at me. I’m an old fat white guy who looks like a cop, as you never get tired of pointing out.”
“And I’m dressed better than you, motherfucker. You think I look like a junkie?”
Fusco shrugged. “You look like a pansy. But pansies get high too sometimes. I’m not prejudiced.”
Parks shook his head. Then he noticed something. “Here we go. Give me that camera.” He took the camera and started shooting, as an emaciated white boy with stringy hair, dressed in rags, came loping along. “Now that’s what a junkie looks like.”
The junkie passed the van and went up to the lookout, a Black teenager, who nodded him in, then waved and whistled to his cohorts.
“Yeah okay, so what?” Fusco asked.
“So you wanted dope, I’m getting you dope,” Parks said. “For free.” The junkie disappeared around a corner and emerged seconds later, a new spring in his step. “Let’s give him a block or two before we roust him.”
Two blocks later, as the junkie turned a corner, Fusco pulled up sharply, and Parks jumped out, grabbing him up. They cuffed him, patted him down, took his dope and dragged him back to the station, where to his great relief, they told him they would turn him loose in exchange for surrendering his drugs and signing a statement about when and where he’d obtained them. He eagerly agreed. The dope was in a small wax paper envelope, taped shut and stamped with a crude design: an angel, wings outstretched as though in blessing or mid-flight.
“Now what?” Parks asked as they finished the paperwork and added this newest piece of evidence to the growing file on the case they were definitely not supposed to be working.
“Now,” Fusco said, with a belch as he guzzled a Diet Coke (I mean, really, Parks thought, Diet? Why bother?), “I call a guy I know at the FBI and ask a favor.”