XIX
Taking a Piss in the
Airless Room
A beefy Cuban macho who looked like he smoked cheap cigars and ate bargain meats entered the white interrogation room and shut the door. There was a blue folder tucked into the crease of his left armpit.
Seated upon a gray plastic chair behind a small table of the same color and material was Task. A lot of things were going on in his head, but his face showed only calm indignation. This was easy for him to verify, since the wall to his right had a large one-way mirror through which anonymous people had watched him sit and do nothing for two and a half hours.
“I’m Detective Delgado.”
“Don’t expect me to remember that.”
The macho seized a folding chair and traversed the airless room. “We have some questions for you.”
“You’re not fat enough to be plural.”
Ignoring the remark, Detective Delgado set the folder upon the table, opened the chair, and seated himself. His belt was troubled, and his feminine eyes were too small for his face. “Tell us everything that happened this—”
“Two Hispanic guys driving a maroon lowrider tried to carjack us.”
“Go through it again so that we—”
“You have my statement already—” Task gestured at the blue folder. “Now go do something.”
“Go through it again so that we can be sure we didn’t miss anything.”
It was clear that the macho was hoping for some inconsistencies to appear in future retellings of the story, and the slick did not want to risk a slip up. “You have my statement.”
“We need to hear it again.”
“My jaw is fatigued.”
“We wouldn’t want you to strain yourself.” Detective Delgado reclaimed the blue folder, walked across the room, and opened the door. “See you in three hours.”
The latch clicked into the jamb.
Silence expanded throughout the airless room, and the awful morning crawled slowly forward. Task knew that a person could be held without charges for thirty-six hours in a murder case, and this bit of information did not hasten the progress of time. Lacking his cellphone (and anything else of interest), he avoided morbid ruminations by focusing on his current and future problems.
The Commerce Street parlor was exposed and would never again be used, and the top priority for the slick was to learn the names of the lowriders and that of the person who had given them the address of the private club. There was little chance that a rival consortium was behind this crime, since Strembicky was vast, and no established group would go after his affiliate for a few thousand dollars.
Ruling out organizations left the possibility of an inside job. This did not make sense either, since the managers were all trusted friends and the butterflies earned more money every three days than did the lowriders that morning.
The possibilities were thus whittled to a more chance happening—such as a person in the building (or a neighboring one) figuring out the nature of the parlor and its yield and then relaying this information to some small-timers who knew stick-up guys or were stick-up guys or would soon become stick-up guys. This less nefarious hypothesis seemed to be the most likely explanation of the clumsy and lethal event that had occurred that morning on Commerce Street.
In the very near future, Task would sit down with Strembicky and have a quiet conversation about the lowriders.
No shellfish would be enjoyed at this meeting.
The slick looked at his watch. Eighteen minutes had elapsed since Detective Delgado’s departure from the airless room.
Sluggish time slowed.
Task tried not to think about Nowski’s parents (for whom he had a great fondness) and Andrea. These people would be devastated by the bodybuilder’s death, an event that even now seemed unreal and impossible.
The slick had been obliquely manipulating people into doing what he wanted them to do for twenty-three of his thirty-seven years, and in almost all cases, he had threatened rather than committed acts of violence. Even when he had been a dealer, he had peddled feel-good luxury items like weed, blow, and prescription painkillers rather than the hard stuff like heroin and crystal meth that turned people into gibbering lunatics and created situations. Pleasure in one form or another had always been his product.
But today, violence had arrived. Nowski was dead, and the two lowriders who had killed him were still out there.
“Fuck.”
The slick glanced at his watch. Detective Delgado had been gone for thirty-four minutes.
Facing the one-way mirror, Task looked into his own blue eyes. “Can I get some water?”
Fifty-two minutes later, a squat Asian clerk whose DNA came from a bulldog, walked into the room. Held in his right hand was a glinting object that was perhaps the smallest bottle of water in existence. This vessel was soon placed upon the gray table.
Wiping moisture from his frowning lips, the Asian clerk turned away.
Task looked at the bottle and saw that two thirds of its contents had been consumed.
The door shut. Diminishing footfalls sounded in the outer hallway.
The slick tossed the bottle into a garbage can and rolled his jacket into a ball, which he then placed atop the table. Leaning his head upon the ersatz pillow, he closed his eyes.
Darkness came. Thoughts turned into velvet notions as Task released consciousness. Underneath his eyelids lay the deactivated face of the dead bodybuilder. Hazel eyes stared.
Something thudded, awakening the slick and returning him to the airless room. With watery eyes, he made a survey of the white enclosure and saw that he was still alone.
Orders had probably been left to rouse the detainee should he fall asleep.
“Fucking machos.”
Task leaned back in his chair, put his Italians on the table, and waited.
Time crawled by for thirty minutes.
The slick asked his reflection about a toilet.
Twenty-five minutes passed, and the door opened. The Asian bulldog appeared and escorted the detainee to and from the bathroom.
Sometime afterward, Task drifted off to sleep, dreamt about the shooting, and was jarred awake by the pounding of a hard fist upon the door. Adrenalized, he was unable to again relinquish consciousness.
A subjective week later, it was eleven minutes after one in the afternoon. Three hours had elapsed since the disappearance of the Cuban macho.
Footfalls sounded outside of the airless room, and the slick did not alter his attitudes, which were reclining and unfriendly.
The door swung twelve inches from the jamb, and Detective Delgado leaned his head through the opening. “My lunch just arrived. Sandwiches. I’ll be back later.”
“Take your time.”
The latch clicked, and Task slapped a mask of indifference over his frustrations. He had hated the machos since childhood, but he begrudgingly recognized that they had in their ranks some expert assholes.
This Cuban sleuth was one such orifice.
At two twenty-four, the door opened, revealing Detective Delgado, who stood in the hallway with a small paper cup in his right hand. “How’s your jaw feeling? Still fatigued?”
“You win. I’m ready to spill the frijoles.”
The macho’s feminine eyes got smaller.
Task feigned confusion. “Have I misjudged your interest in beans?”
Detective Delgado shrugged, pitched the paper cup into the airless room, and shut the door. Footfalls departed along the outer hallway.
Once again, the detainee was alone.
The smell of café cubano filled the airless room, and Task’s empty stomach growled. On a regular day, he would have finished the roundup, returned to his apartment, slept two three-hour cycles, showered, and eaten by this time. The rich aroma of the Cuban espresso elicited a second grouchy remark from his stomach, and a yawn exploded across his face.
Weariness pulled at the edges of his mind.
The slick flung his Italians on the table and leaned back in his seat. In the mirror, he saw the bottoms of his shoes.
The left sole had a brown stain that was dried blood.
Task pushed Nowski’s face from his mind.
Tension and thoughts relaxed, and the airless room started to melt. A fist pounded on a door, startling the slick from a nap that had begun only ten seconds earlier.
Time staggered like a dying creature.
Eventually, four o’clock happened. Task was tired and hungry, but he knew better than to ask the machos for a pillow or food. It was more intellectually demanding to tell a lie than it was to tell the truth, and by depriving a detainee of sleep and sustenance, the detainers hoped to impede his ability to create fiction. This tactic had little effect on a calm guy who had been south for more than two decades, but it did make things uncomfortable.
Footfalls sounded outside of the room. The latch clicked, and the door swung wide. Standing in the hallway and chewing upon a crunchy something was Detective Delgado.
“Don’t hurt your teeth,” remarked Task.
The macho swallowed his food and wiped crumbs from his mouth. “Captain Alder says ‘Hi.’”
A decade earlier, Alder had been a Sergeant and the commanding officer of the team that had raided Task’s warehouse on One Eighteen Pine Street. This mouth-breathing slob had not been gentle when he applied stainless steel handcuffs to the slick’s wrists.
“Please give Alder my best,” said Task. “Him making Captain shows that anybody—regardless of his breath and ability to pronounce the word ‘nuclear’—can run a police station.”
“He made a lot of great arrests as a Sergeant. Tossed some stinky meat into the broiler.”
“Why lock up murderers and rapists when you can focus on real problems like luxury drugs?”
“You don’t sound very changed by your time in prison.”
“I used to put gel in my hair. Now, I choose pomade.”
“Your jaw seems to be working.”
“It’s operational.”
Detective Delgado walked into the room.
“Too bad about his marriage…” remarked Task.
The macho paused. His aloof manner could not conceal the dark suspicions that percolated inside of his brainpan.
The slick crossed his legs. “Mrs. Alder didn’t seem like the type to do something like that—though it seems like a lot of you guys neglect your wives.”
Shortly after getting out of prison, Task had paid a male prostitute to seduce Sergeant Alder’s wife, who was a lonely and very approachable target. This plot concluded when the macho received a DVD in the mail that showed his naked spouse performing fellatio on the rent boy immediately after engaging in a vigorous act of sodomy. Both of these sex acts had been suggested by the woman (who had not known that she was being filmed), and the professional had earned himself a sizable bonus.
Delgado stared at Task.
“And with a black guy—though I suppose there’s a reason for going with them.” The slick removed a piece of lint from his beige slacks and leaned back in his seat. “Two if they play jazz.”
The macho’s face was hard and ugly as he elbowed the door, set the blue folder upon the table, and reclaimed the plastic chair that he had used seven hours earlier during the first interview. “Tell us everything that happened on Commerce Street this morning.”
“I did.”
“Your statement doesn’t say anything about why you were on Commerce Street at five in the morning.”
“It does.” Task gestured to the blue folder. “May I?”
“Sure.”
Task opened the file, flipped to the second page, and rubbed some sloppy handwriting with the tip of his index finger. “Right here. ‘We were cruising around, listening to music, and Bronowski pulled over to take a piss.’”
“That doesn’t answer our question.”
“No? When I take a piss, I look for a suitable location. A bathroom is my first choice, but in an urban environment, an alleyway is a very close second.”
“Why were you and Christopher Bronowski on Commerce Street at five in the morning?”
“Why am I being treated like a murder suspect when there’s absolutely no chance that I’m the murderer?”
“There’s a chance.”
“Really? You’re saying ‘there’s a chance’ I shot my friend with a gun that doesn’t exist and then shot at myself while leaving skid marks for two different vehicles up and down Commerce Street?” The slick scratched his skull. “That idea wouldn’t stick to flypaper if you stapled it.”
“There’s a chance you shot Bronowski.”
“Why? And with what?”
Grinning, Detective Delgado leaned back in his seat. “Some of the guys found something in the storm drain. Wanna guess what it is?”
Task was a convicted felon, and thus, he had not wanted the machos to find him with a firearm, but the discarded snub-nosed revolver (which was legally registered to Nowski) had no fingerprints, and its ballistics would not match the head wound.
This was a bluff.
“Any guesses what was down there?” prompted Detective Delgado.
“An alligator?”
“Guess again.”
“A Chihuahua ironically named Giant?”
“I’ll give you a hint. It’s covered with fingerprints and made out of metal.”
“I give up.”
“A snub-nosed revolver.”
“Should I gasp?”
“Should you?”
Leaning back, Task put his Italians on the table. “I’m not inspired.”
Detective Delgado shoved the shoes off of the gray plastic. “Don’t.”
Heat flashed on the slick’s face. “Don’t touch me.”
“Tell us what happened this morning on Commerce Street, and we’ll let you go.”
“So, then you’re admitting I’m not a suspect. The plural ‘you’—” Task gestured at the one-way glass. “If I were, an anecdote wouldn’t get me out of here.”
No reply came from the macho.
The slick cracked his knuckles. “I’ll answer a question for you, if you answer one for me.”
“What’s your question?”
“Are you married?”
A ponderous silence sucked the oxygen from the stale air. Hatred shone in Detective Delgado’s eyes.
Task leaned back in his seat and gestured with his right hand. “I didn’t see a ring on your finger, but lots of guys take them off at work. Or maybe you’re just going steady with someone…?”
No response emerged from the macho.
“Jaw fatigue?”
Detective Delgado reclaimed his folder, rose from his seat, and crossed the airless room. The door opened, and two Italians smacked the surface of the plastic table.
Silently, the macho departed. The latch hit the jamb, and a bolt snapped.
Reclining, Task looked at himself in the one-way glass. His aloof manner well hid the apprehensions that now filled his food bag.
He knew that he had made an error.
Hunger, sleep deprivation, and egotism had launched the remarks about Mrs. Alder from his mouth. The dynamic of the conversation had been changed for the better, but the provocations had been shortsighted and stupid. An airless room was a very dangerous place for a guy who was south.
“I’d like to call my lawyer right now,” the slick said to his reflected face.
This request received no response.
Time crawled forward.
Twenty minutes later, Task looked at his reflection. “I need to use the bathroom.”
This request was also ignored.
Time slowed. The slick’s eyelids grew heavy, and he laid his ponderous head upon his rolled-up jacket. Sleep instantly dissolved the airless room. A weird tapestry of women and childhood replaced reality. The lowrider shot Nowski.
Startled by his subconscious, Task awakened. A glance at his watch told him that it was twenty-one minutes after six o’clock. He had been out for more than an hour.
This was the first time that the slick had slept for more than thirty seconds since his confinement had begun, and he knew right away what this allowance meant. Nobody was behind the one-way glass. His requests for a lawyer and a toilet had been made to an empty room.
A cold finger of apprehension poked Task when he considered why Detective Delgado would have dismissed the staff from the observation room.
Footfalls sounded in the hallway outside. These were made by more than one person.
Dread filled the slick, and all around him, the airless room shrank. The footfalls grew louder as the approaching group neared the locked door.
For a moment, there was silence.
The bolt snapped, and Task felt his neck tighten. His heartbeats changed from waltz to salsa.
The door swung wide. Detective Delgado rolled up his shirtsleeves as he walked into the room, escorting a big black macho who had a blue uniform and a sizable collection of sinews. Walking behind these two fellows and dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a charcoal t-shirt was Captain Alder, a stocky fellow who had a cracked leather face and a crooked nose. His hands were big and hard.
“I was just thinking about you,” remarked Task, who was trying to sound nonchalant.
A cowboy boot kicked the door shut. “Bolt it,” said Captain Alder.
Somebody in the hallway turned the lock. Metal snapped into place, echoing.
“You work at this precinct?” inquired the slick.
“Nope. Came all the way from downtown.”
“Should I be flattered?”
“How about flattened?”
“Your alliteration’s really improving.”
Detective Delgado and the uniformed macho flanked Task on his left and right sides while Captain Alder stalked directly forward.
These odds were impossible.
The slick leaned back in his chair, put his Italians on the table, and tried to slow his pounding heart. “What did—”
Captain Alder shoved the shoes away and lowered his wrinkled face. “You have anything you want to tell me about my ex-wife?”
Task waved the onion-scented question away from his nostrils. “Your breath might’ve driven her off.”
The superior officer eyed the flanking machos, who then braced the slick’s arms.
Captain Alder leaned toward Task. “Tell me what you told Delgado about my ex.”
“I forgot.”
An open hand smacked the slick’s face. His right cheek burned.
“Remember now?”
“Remember what?”
Captain Alder seized Task’s hair. “Tell me what you told Delgado about my ex.”
The slick’s mouth went dry, and his heart pounded.
“Talk,” said the wrinkled macho, who then made a fist with his free hand.
Burning pains radiated from Task’s scalp. This conversation would end with physical abuse, and there was no reason for him to delay the inevitable.
“Talk!”
“You’re still not over that whore?”
A fist pounded the slick’s left eye. Fluorescent lights flew through the air, glaring, as his head snapped backward. The flanking machos tightened their grips upon his arms.
Dazed, Task righted his skull.
Captain Alder swept aside the table, which sailed across the room and smacked the far wall.
The slick cleared his throat. “That table was innocent.”
“Tell me how you know about my ex.”
“Did a search online. Put in, ‘Alder’ and ‘dick’ and ‘sucks a,’ and this video with your wife just turned up.”
The remaining oxygen disappeared from the room.
“Seven hundred thousand people had watched,” the slick continued, “though there were a lot of negative comments about her cellulite.”
A right hook slammed into Task’s stomach. Air rushed out of his lungs, and he doubled over. A fist grabbed his hair and raised his head.
Gasping, the slick tried to inflate his lungs. “Did I mention…that I forwarded the link?”
A straight jab slammed into Task’s throat. Pain exploded, and suddenly, he was choking on oxygen.
“Nice one,” remarked Detective Delgado.
The wrinkled macho leaned into the slick’s face “Got some more jokes?”
“Some.”
A left hook pounded the side of Task’s head, and everything shook. His battered ear beeped like a smoke alarm.
“Still feeling humorous?” inquired Captain Alder.
Task gathered saliva and blood, turned his head, and spat on the white linoleum. “Less.”
“You gonna tell me how you know about my ex?”
The slick shot a second red gob directly beside the first.
“Is that your answer?” inquired the wrinkled macho.
“It isn’t artwork,” rasped Task.
“You sure you’ve got nothing to tell me about her?”
“I really think it’s time for you to move on.”
Detective Delgado and the uniformed macho tightened their grips.
A cowboy boot stomped Task’s pelvis.
Bright red pain filled the slick, who suddenly could not breathe. The next thing that he felt was urine warming his boxer shorts and spreading across his left thigh.
His limbs were released.
Detective Delgado gestured. “He wasn’t kidding about needing to take a piss.”
Unable to breathe, Task leaned forward until his forehead touched his knees. His entire body was cold.
“Don’t let him ruin that chair,” said Captain Alder. “It’s good plastic.”
The uniformed macho seized a chair leg and dumped Task onto the floor.
Prone, the slick rubbed his pelvis and sucked oxygen.
A shadow and two cowboy boots straddled the nearby tiles.
Task wiped moisture from his eyes and looked up.
Hatred and misery shone upon the face of Captain Alder. “Anything else you wanna say about my ex? Or about anything?”
The slick shook his head. “No.”
A cowboy boot slammed into Task’s stomach. Pained and unable to breathe, he writhed upon the white linoleum.
“Worm,” growled Captain Alder, who then turned around and walked away.
A bolt snapped. The door opened, and the wrinkled macho departed, followed by his uniformed underling. A latch clicked in the jamb.
Task and Detective Delgado were once again alone in the airless room.
Wheezing, the slick pressed his palms to the linoleum and pushed himself into a sitting position. His smashed ear rang, and the right one, his pelvis, and his left eye throbbed. Wet fabric clung to his groin. A glance at the one-way mirror showed him that he should not look at a one-way mirror.
“You got off easy for what you did,” Detective Delgado said while picking up the capsized table.
“I didn’t do anything,” croaked the slick. “I just heard about it.”
The macho set the plank of gray plastic in the center of the room. “Even if that’s true—and it probably isn’t—you still deserve what he gave you for talking that way about the dead.”
Task felt a chill. “She’s dead?”
Detective Delgado picked up the toppled chair. “You’re saying you didn’t know?”
“I didn’t.”
“She died.” The macho placed the seat behind the table. “A couple of weeks after the divorce.”
“What happened?”
“She killed herself.”
Disturbed, the slick looked for his voice and cleared his throat. “They’re sure it was suicide?”
“She drank until her blood was point four and drove into the ocean.”
Task was nauseated. Cold sweat dripped down his face as he considered Mrs. Alder’s suicide, which was a terrible and completely unanticipated consequence of his plot against her husband. For the first time in many months, he thought about the dead imbecile who had been his mother.
Detective Delgado said, “You don’t look so hot,” walked through the doorway, and left Task alone with his conscience.
His inner self was poor company.