Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

it off? Christ –«
    »They went that-a-way,« I said, pointing, figuring they were long gone.
    » That’s the fuck,« the Italian said, coming up and shoving me against the el stanchion. I really wished he hadn’t been such a responsible citizen. »He was with ’em all the time.«
     
    Now in the Big Onion, only difference between being a material witness and being a suspect is that if you’re chalked on the first cue, nobody beats you up until you get to the precinct house. Every twenty years the feds launch a new investigation into New York police brutality and, my luck, this was year nineteen. Back when the bosses built my precinct’s pigsty this was the noted Gas House District, which took in the terrain from Third to the river south of 23 rd ; home turf to the Gashouse Gang, the East River Pirates, Sweeney’s Gadabouts and the Kerosene Boys; by the time I came to town the gangs were long canned. The place was built when Bryan was president and should have been condemned before he left office. No matter how often they renovated, the screams still stuck to the walls and, my brothers, I wasn’t keen on slapping on a layer of mine. My prints were filed, and as they bore the federal stamp they would have guaranteed my quick release, but no one seemed willing to look for them. The desk jockey tossed me in a one-bum drunk tank so I could consider the errors of my ways. A doped-up Chinaman two cells down caterwauled Beatles tunes.
    Hour or so passed, then a cop led me down a hall lined with wooden file cabinets and pieces of broken chairs. He dragged open the vault in the back wall and bade me enter. The interrogation room had a damp concrete floor, tile walls and a row of lockers – only one with a door – and a big fan. Inside, two of New York’s finest cooled their heels. Both wore Korvettes suits, tight on their arms as sausage skin. The taller one had slapped on so much Vitalis that his head looked flammable, and to enhance his tango-gaucho silhouette, let a tamed caterpillar snooze on his lip. The wider cop had toothbrush hair and a nose that couldn’t have been broken less than eight times, no good for anything except supporting shades. I’d never met the day shift at my local establishment. They had me try out a wooden chair that wasn’t broken yet. A sunlamp hung overhead, set on low instead of deep-fry.
    »My name’s Arnold,« said Nosey. »Detective Arnold. This is Detective Benz.«
    »Officers.«
    »Construction worker’s gonna live, but he’ll need a hook,« said Benz. »You get used to it, I hear.«
    »Think his wife will?« said Arnold. »Kids?«
    »What’d your friends have against him? Just busting chops?«
    »They weren’t my friends,« I said. »I’d just met them at the corner. Told me they were tourists. Kinda told me. No speaka the lingua real good.«
    »Tourists.«
    »Said they were looking for the Statue of Liberty.«
    »They find it?« Arnold opened his jacket, so my view of his sap and his brass knuckledusters in the inside pockets wouldn’t be blocked. »Tourists. Where from?«
    »Didn’t ask.«
    »Too busy looking to ask.«
    »Witnesses said they were lookers,« said Arnold. »You must have been looking.«
    »Never saw anyone like them. Officers, speaking as a witness I –«
    Benz shook his head like he was waking up. Not a hair came loose. »A hook. How’s he gonna pitch a few to the boy?«
    »Lopped off like he stuck it in a meat slicer.«
    »Like ham. Thin sliced ham. What’d she use? Machete?«
    »I didn’t know what happened till it happened,« I said, figuring it would do no harm to tell the truth. »Guys were bugging ’em, I told them to ignore the assholes and keep walking.«
    »Thought they didn’t speaka the English.«
    »Not well,« I said. »Officers –«
    »Boy probably won’t make the team,« said Benz. »Not without practice.«
    Arnold walked over to the sole working locker, which he unlocked. He banged around inside for thirty seconds or so before he took out a radio aerial snapped off a car – sharpened, I thought, although that seemed unnecessary – a length of black rubber hose that dribbled its sand filling, and a Louisville Slugger with five long rusty spikes driven through the thick end. »Then they just took off after that?«
    »Yes,« I said. »Seriously, officers, you ought to look me up in the files.«
    »We gonna find something?« asked Benz.
    »All in good time,« Arnold casually cuffed my right wrist to the chair’s arm.
    »Why am