The Dime Read online

I reached for the call button. “Are you in pain?”

  He stopped me. “Not too bad yet. Talk to me awhile. Once they dose me, I won’t know you from Eve.”

  He began to shiver and I found a blanket and tucked in the edges, like he was a child. I pulled up a chair at the bedside and took his hand in mine.

  “You got the paperwork taken care of?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “I leave for Dallas tomorrow.”

  He smiled. “You gonna get a horse?”

  I laughed. “The only horse I ever plan to ride is the coin-operated pony outside of Neergaard’s.”

  “You still running?” he asked.

  “Every day. Seven miles yesterday. Six this morning.”

  Benny stared at me for a long while. “You look good, Betty. Grown into those long legs and wild red curls of yours. Just don’t expect things to be any different in Texas. You end up with the same shit on the bottom of your shoes you’d pick up on Franklin or any other street.”

  “I know, Ben.”

  “And don’t take any crap from the yahoos.”

  My uncle privately called any cop outside of New York or Jersey a yahoo. But I hadn’t been too worried about the Texas cops. That is to say, I knew I was going to get crap. My biggest challenges had come from my own family members, many of them cops, who could dish out crap with the best of them.

  I bobbed my head once. “Right.”

  “Okay.” He nodded back, done with his lecture. “How’s Jackie?”

  I smiled gratefully at him. He was the only one in my family who had ever mentioned her name. “She’s good. We have an apartment lined up.” I rolled my eyes. “But she’s already house-hunting.”

  He wagged a finger at me. “Take my word for it, she’ll be wanting rug rats next.” His gaze drifted to the Saint Michael medallion hanging at my neck. “Your mom would be so happy to know you wear it. You’re the third Rhyzyk woman to have that medal.”

  I made a face. “Yeah, but probably the first to wear tactical boots.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” he says. “In World War Two, the Germans on the eastern front used to carry cyanide pellets in case they fell into the hands of the female Polish Resistance fighters. You come from a long line of fierce kobiety.”

  Grimacing, he pressed his free hand over his chest and breathed rapidly, as though he were racing the devil.

  “Christ,” he said. His breathing slowed after a moment and he turned his head to me. “Look me in the eye and tell me you’re happy.”

  “I’m happy, Benny.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s good. You know, your dad at one time was a great cop—”

  I began to nod my head in agreement, but he held up the finger again.

  “But that’s what helped make him such a miserable human being. No, now listen. He was my brother and I loved him more than anyone. But he was devoid of certain feelings that would have made him a better family man. Having his work be the most important thing in his life did that to him. You have a chance to find some balance.”

  He dropped his hand onto the bed. “Balance. Christ, listen to me. I sound like some New Age nut job.”

  I placed my palm on his cheek. “You are a nut job, Ben. ‘Stuck in the abyss of your own morass.’ Isn’t that what you always used to say to me?”

  He gripped my fingers tightly. His eyes were fever bright, shards of glass in a stretched, pain-filled mask, but he smiled. Soon the nurse came to administer more pain meds, and he fell asleep. I sat with him through the night.

  In between his narcotic drifting, we revisited his more memorable cases, some of which were solved (a naked dead guy in clown makeup) and some of which were never solved (a dead guy who was found in pieces scattered throughout Greenpoint and Williamsburg and Park Slope and Bed-Stuy).

  We cast into the ether familiar tales of other cops and families of cops, spinning out stories that I knew would never be told again unless I decided at some point to recount them to strangers, people who were not family. There was no more family, except for Jackie. Mother, father, brother, all gone.

  He asked me to promise him one last thing: That upon arriving in the wilds of Texas, I would drive somewhere that was purely Dallas, a place that was immersed in the land’s history, floating in the warp of its successes, stewed in the woof of its failures, and confront the beast. Hoist up both middle fingers, he had said, and tell the sidewinding, belly-crawling, sand-blown Fates of the West that the Polish cavalry had arrived.

  When I left him in the early-morning hours, he was sleeping fitfully. That was two days ago.

  I turn off onto Riverfront Street and see two large, white cylindrical tanks with red and blue lettering announcing FUEL CITY WASH. The parking lot’s already full, so I drive around until I find a space next to a life-size bronze statue of a buffalo that’s planted in the shadow of a rusted oil derrick, before which stands a pay phone. The first pay phone I’ve seen since leaving New York.

  The Dallas skyline behind the buffalo swells like a contained mountain range, and I can make out the red Pegasus sign, the old Mobil Oil logo, a tiny, wavering mirage on top of one of the office buildings.

  The taco stand is a large convenience store and kitchen, with lines forming at several outdoor food windows as well, but I’m drawn to the back of the lot, where, standing behind some metal fences, are half a dozen longhorn steers. Beyond the steers is a concrete wall on which brightly colored balloons and beach balls have been painted around an inscription: WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE.

  Next to the pen is the car wash humming like a North Korean nuclear plant; dozens of cars and trucks queue up for a rapid wash and rim polish. Most of the SUVs in line are white, the pickups red. The men and women scrubbing down the vehicles are all brown.

  Leaning against the metal fence rail, I contemplate the nearest steer, wondering at the strength that keeps his head up under the weight of his sweeping horns.

  My mind wanders to Jackie, who’s in our new apartment, unpacking. I told her this morning that I needed to do something for Uncle Benny. I had gotten the call from the hospice nurse that he had passed away during the night, transitioning peacefully out of his narcotic slumbers and into death. But I had cried angry, guilty tears that he had gone alone, without family, after so much suffering. Thinking on it now, I’m amazed that he lasted the forty-eight hours.

  I stare at the huge, spotted red-and-white beast in front of me, expecting to feel derision, but instead I find dignity in his stillness—in his utter disregard for the chaos of the car wash, the determined picture takers, the shouts from the kids at the nearby picnic tables. The rheumy eyes gaze in my direction, shoulder hide twitching, the bony outgrowths as long as an elephant’s tusks. He has outlasted all comers, the upward-tilting ends of his horns already a dismissal to the taco stand, the oil derrick, the vans overflowing with overfed gawkers and underweight poseurs. Even to the life-size bronze buffalo hulking in the background.

  “You magnificent old bastard,” I tell him.

  So I turn and, in solidarity with him, hold up my two middle fingers toward the skyline.

  “The Polish cavalry has arrived,” I whisper.

  Then I take out my phone and send one final text to Benny’s old number: Message delivered. Love you always. Betty.

  3

  Dallas, Texas

  Sunday, September 1, 2013

  The setup is perfect. It should all be working, except for the woman who’s just crossed into our surveillanfce zone, a Good Samaritan with more free time than common sense. The kind of woman who wears full makeup and a diamond tennis bracelet to walk her dog. The well-intentioned, moneyed type who would lean over the homeless guy lying on the sidewalk to feed the hungry dog next to him.

  The Good Samaritan out walking her schnauzer does not notice the white surveillance van with service logos on the side panels where my partner, Seth, and I are stationed, or seem to have any awareness of another van, maroon in color with three more undercovers in it, pa
rked across the street from the target house we’ve been watching: a McMansion identical to the other faux-Tudor dwellings in this part of North Dallas, all packed together in zero-lot lines, VOTE REPUBLICAN signs prominently displayed in the beds of drought-hardy geraniums like pit bulls on neighborhood-watch duty.

  The five of us have been keeping vigil over this particular house for weeks, collecting hundreds of duty hours, acquiring a federal wiretap through a special FBI task force, and calling in countless favors for intel support. And this woman sprints over to the Mercedes parked in our target’s driveway and starts talking to someone or something inside the car.

  I hear Hoskins’s voice over the radio. “The hell…?”

  It’s surface-of-the-sun hot outside. In Brooklyn this time of year, the sun would already be softening into a gentle, sticky caress. The midday sun in Texas will burn pale, freckled skin like mine as quick as a grease cooker. No one else is on the sidewalk, and I watch the woman circling the car, cupping a hand over her eyes against the glare to peer inside.

  A backseat window in the Mercedes has been left partially open and a frantic, furry nose appears through the crack. It’s a small dog, maybe a poodle, panting mightily, and the woman looks toward the house questioningly. She pats the dog and coos to it, letting it stick its tongue into her water bottle. She caps the bottle and takes a few uncertain steps onto the front walkway.

  Hoskins’s voice on the radio to me. “Detective?” He has a panoramic view of the house from the maroon van, but anyone looking at the vehicle will see only darkly tinted, reflective glass.

  “Give it a minute,” I respond into the radio and look briefly at Seth, who is shaking his head.

  The owner of the Mercedes—an older guy named William Bender who looks like the manager of a local supermarket chain—has just gone into his house. He’s waiting for the arrival of the biggest cocaine supplier in North Texas, one Tomás “El Gitano” (Gypsy) Ruiz, a Mexican national. Ruiz grew from being a drug runner, carrying product in his school backpack on the streets of Juárez, to leaving headless bodies of people on the streets of that same city because they’d refused to work as his mules or had threatened his distribution channels.

  We have the house monitored to the rafters and have been working a long time to get on tape the names of the participants, the date, and the location of a large drug deal. Not epic in Mexican-cartel terms but, in North Dallas terms, sizable—a significant amount of cocaine with a street value of over two million dollars. Bender was graduating from a successful meth-distribution business in the trailer parks and lakefront shanties of East Texas to a more expensive product. He had been caught on wire saying he wanted a better brand of client in Big D.

  The woman reconsiders approaching the house and goes on her way.

  Hoskins again on the radio. “Uh, Detective?”

  Here it comes. It’s either a dig or a bad joke.

  “Yes, Hoskins?” I say.

  “You disappointed you didn’t get to frisk her?”

  I can hear Ryan and Craddock in the background, laughing.

  “I’m deeply morose. Now shut it and pretend you’re working.”

  Hoskins, a scrawny, barely-made-it-through-community-college type, likes putting a sexual spin on everything, typical cop bustah-balls humor. But he seems to take special glee in skating on the edge of protocol with me.

  My partner for a year, Seth, knows better than to laugh at Hoskins’s jokes in my presence. “He does remember you’re lead on this one, right?” he asks.

  “Why do you think he’s riding my ass so hard?” I answer.

  Hoskins is the kind of guy who appears to nurture a constant seething disappointment with the world, using his cop status to settle long-standing personal scores. His favorite (and overused) mantra is “Never trust a man who won’t get angry and a woman who doesn’t seek revenge.” Uncle Benny would have advised me never to trust a short man with a tall list of grudges. Hoskins, with more years on the force than me, expected to be lead on this case.

  “I have to admit,” Seth says, “the look on Hoskins’s face when the sergeant picked you is something I’ll savor for a long time.” He smiles, scratching at the stubble on his chin and stretching his legs out.

  Tanned and fit, Seth Dutton is absurdly handsome in a Scandinavian/Midwestern sort of way. At six feet, Seth is almost exactly the same height as I am. The joke in the department, or one of them, at least, has been that I’m the only woman in all of North Texas who does not get the vapors every time Seth walks into a room.

  He picks up the conversation where we left off, one of the golden triangle of topics for a lot of Texas men: sports, women, and church—which is different than talking about religion. Telling someone what Dallas church you attend is similar to a Jersey local mentioning what exit he lives off.

  “So, Riz, your family Yankees fans?” he asks.

  I give him a sour look. “Why do all straight people assume that I follow sports?” Seth is the one person I let call me Riz, a contraction of my almost unpronounceable—at least to Texans—last name: Rhyzyk. But anybody who’s had my back as much as Seth has and carries a SIG nine-millimeter gets to call me Riz.

  He shrugs apologetically, and I cut him a break. “Mets fans,” I say.

  “What self-respecting New Yorkers root for the Mets?”

  “What can I say? And my family’s not from New York. They’re from Brooklyn.” I shift in my seat, pulling aside the long mass of hair that always seems to have its own core of animation—the hair that my mother jokingly called hussy red—and rub the muscles in my neck. I’ve promised myself to cut it a thousand times, because at work it can be a liability. But a stubborn vanity always takes hold and I let it grow. Maybe it’s my personal war cry, a Polish Amazon with her ruddy helmet or an Eastern European Boudicca raised from the dead with her head on fire. I rake the hair off my neck with my fingers and tie it up with a rubber band.

  My mind wanders back to the dog in the Mercedes. It’s pretty cruel leaving a dog in a car in this heat, but its owner, who knows full well that his cocaine is going to end up being sold to kids in a high school not a mile away, can’t be expected to be a PETA supporter.

  “Actually,” I say, “I’m the Yankees fan. It was the best way to get under my dad’s skin. My dad was a Dodgers fan and stuck with the Mets even after they’d broken his heart too many times.”

  “Loyal,” Seth says.

  “Stubborn,” I say.

  “Hey, I hear you. You gotta be dedicated to be a Cowboys fan. On paper they are the most talented team. But Jerry Jones is a control freak. And Romo can’t win in a tight situation. He’s a better player than Manning, but Manning always comes through in the clutch. Every time—”

  I sit bolt upright. The woman out walking her dog must have changed her mind because she’s returned. She marches up to the front porch, and even before Hoskins can contact me, she’s knocking on the door.

  “Stay put,” I radio to Hoskins.

  Bender opens the door, words are exchanged, and the door is slammed shut. The woman pulls out her phone and makes a call.

  “Do not move,” I instruct the maroon van.

  We wait, observing her standing on the front lawn, hands on hips, and within four minutes a neighborhood patrol car pulls up.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” I say to Seth.

  The patrolman, in freshly creased black shirt and pants and sporting Ray-Bans wrapped tightly across his face, gets out of the squad car. The woman approaches him, gesturing to the car and then to the house. I know by the way he hangs his head, crossing his arms over his chest while listening to her, that the last thing he wants to do is get involved.

  Seth asks, “Do I contact the local station? Get them to back this guy off?”

  I tell him no. Contacting the locals, explaining to them the scale of our operation and the scope of the drug deal in their backyard, will complicate things. As in them initiating their own bust for the sake of making th
e five o’clock news.

  “Come on…” I whisper, willing the patrolman to disengage and get on with his real job, ticketing moms talking on their cell phones while driving in their kids’ school zones.

  But the woman is insistent and the officer goes to the door of the McMansion and taps it briskly with the brass knocker. The door is opened and Bender steps out onto the porch to talk to the patrolman. The woman has stayed some distance away, reluctant to repeat the earlier confrontation.

  Bender goes digging around in his pocket, all the while running a nervous strand of dialogue with the cop, and pulls out what must be his car keys. He walks out onto the lawn, toward his Mercedes, making a windmill of placating gestures. I can see Bender looking up and down the street in front of the house because he knows that Ruiz is due to arrive soon.

  Seth elbows me hard just as a white Ford Expedition cruises by our van, slowing as it approaches Bender’s house. There are two occupants in the vehicle, both male, but the windows are too dark for me to identify the driver. It comes abreast of the house, passing close to the squad car, and the officer, noting the reaction on Bender’s face—which, even from this distance, I can see registers hair-raising alarm—turns around to look at the slowing car. The officer’s gleaming bald head follows the movement of the SUV, his shades now pulled up and resting on his forehead. He takes the universal I’m-watching-you stance, legs wide apart, chin jutting out, brow furrowed importantly. The SUV regains speed, drives to the end of the street, makes a left, and disappears.

  Hoskins comes over the radio, his voice strained. “Do I follow the SUV?”

  My hands are throttling the console.

  “Detective Rhyzyk, do I follow?”

  “No,” I tell Hoskins, sweat beading my forehead. “Stay put. Let’s see how this plays out.”

  I’m hoping that our guy will bring his poodle inside, the lady will be satisfied, and the patrolman will just go away. I’m also hoping that Ruiz will circle around and, after a while, reappear. But I’m willing to bet the farm that’s not going to happen. El Gitano didn’t stay alive in the drug game by making second pass-bys. He and his bodyguard will be checking the rearview mirror as fast as marmosets on speed, and any vehicle that appears behind them will be suspect. It’s a sorry stroke of fate that our drug dealer appeared on the scene at the same time Patrolman Good Deeds showed up.