we were rocking along the FDR drive with a cop’s casual disregard for speed limits. He swerved around other motorists in long swooping moves that would have induced motion sickness in the less stalwart.
I was sitting in the back of their car. The shocks were mushy. The back was awash in clipboards and old newspapers. A paper coffee cup rolled wetly around on the floor. I inched the window down a bit and sipped at the air in quiet desperation.
“I gotta say, Connor,” Micky commented, watching the scenery whiz by, “I thought, ‘no way’ when this call came through. I mean, come on.”
“Strange,” Art said in a thick, choked up weird voice.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, and tried to focus on something other than Art’s atrocious driving. “The Brooklyn cops called you in on a homicide because some bright light had read about what happened to us last time?”
“Famous, we are,” Art said in that same voice.
“Yeah, well,” my brother responded. “We got some Japanese guy. Apparent homicide victim. The only clue? Some calligraphy.”
“Come on!” I protested.
“Mystery, there is. And danger,” Art intoned.
“Art, I swear to God if you don’t cut that Master Yoda shit out right now I’m gonna go insane!” my brother yelled.
Art just chortled and swung around a slow-moving vehicle. “Yeah,” he said in his normal voice, “so we thought we’d bring you with us to take a look.”
“Great,” I said.
“You bet.” Art smiled as he glanced up at me in the rearview mirror. We coasted onto the ramp for the Brooklyn Bridge. “Only one change in plans,” he said, looking at my brother.
“Oh, yeah?” Micky asked skeptically.
“Yeah. If there’s a guy with a sword, you go after him this time.” Then Art put both hands on the wheel, as if suddenly remembering something disturbing. Micky looked at the side window, his face a mask.
There was a variety of uniformed types milling about the house when we arrived. Cops have a herding instinct. Most of the workday is indescribably boring. So when something big happens, they’re drawn to it. From all over. There were marked and unmarked cars sitting at various angles along the street. The nicely tended trees tended to break things up, but you could hear the chatter from a number of radios, like the sound of nasty insects. There were a few plainclothes guys smoking on the sidewalk and a few patrolmen in the traditional blue uniforms of the NYPD milling about. They all seemed to have large, square automatics riding on their gunbelts.
I looked at Art and Micky. They wear rumpled sportcoats and pants whose manufacturers claim never need ironing. This is not true. I, for one, had left my shinai in the trunk of the car and, bereft of a belt loaded with cop hardware, I felt conspicuously under-dressed.
How Art and my brother got sent from Manhattan on this call was anyone’s guess, but they threaded their way through a variety of suspicious uniformed people. We stopped briefly to ask questions at numerous points, getting shunted farther and farther back through the house and eventually into the yard at the rear.
Where the total crime scene experience was in full swing.
A guy in his early fifties was standing outside the hut and talking with a woman from the forensics squad. His suit was a stylish olive three-button number, but it was slightly wrinkled at the thighs. His hair, which was a speckled iron gray, looked freshly cut. Various people kept coming up to him to give brief reports. He didn’t say much. His face looked tired.
“Lieutenant Strakowski?” Art asked. The man turned to look at us with a “what now” expression.
“You the guys from Manhattan?” he asked. Micky and Art flashed their shields, introduced themselves, and shook hands. All part of one big happy club.
Strakowski turned to look at me. “You are?” Cops don’t waste much energy with the niceties. Micky and Art tried to explain my presence as if subtly conscious of my shameful lack of an appropriate firearm.
The Lieutenant nodded. “Oh, yeah. You’re the guy I read about. With the swords and all.” He turned to Micky. “He doesn’t look that dangerous.”
My brother shrugged.
“The Burkes are tricky that way,” Art chimed in. “I speak from experience.”
You could see Strakowski making connections as we talked. He was the one who had asked for us to come over. I saw him glance once at Art’s hand. The one that had been reattached. But that was it. Strakowski was not easily distracted.
“Lemme show you what we got,” he said and motioned us toward the hut. He trudged through the grass and we followed. “I gotta say,” he commented, “your Lieutenant was awful cooperative. Almost eager to send you here.”
“That’s easily explained,” Art answered.
“Yeah,” Micky concluded. “Lieutenant Colletti hates us.”
Strakowski paused and turned his head slightly in our direction. But he didn’t say a word.
I was pretty clear about my role in the crime scene investigation, since I’ve done this before. I was to avoid touching anything. To speak only when spoken to. In short, I was expected to avoid annoying the adults.
It’s just as well. Crime scenes give me the creeps.
First, there are all these cops stomping around with the heavy reinforced shoes they wear. You’d think a death scene would be quiet, reverential. It’s not. The little cop radios that are clipped to their shoulders squawk intermittently. The officers call loudly to one another about various things. The forensics people are quieter, but they add a sense of bustle to the whole thing that is unseemly. Particularly if the dead guy is present.
Fortunately, he wasn’t.
It was a relief. There’s something about the undignified postures and often messy conditions that are the frequent accompaniment to violent death that get to me. Besides, I was still feeling faintly nauseated from the car ride.
The calligraphy hut wasn’t a large place. It was meant to be a solitary refuge. Now, it was crowded with cops. Life is full of irony. Strakowski paused at the door and took a deep breath. A Hispanic plainclothes detective was lounging against the doorjamb, watching the forensics team working intently inside, but he looked up almost immediately at the Lieutenant. “Pete, give us a minute, here, would ya?” Strakowski said.
He gestured at the man with a thumb. “Sergeant Pete Ramirez.” Then he pointed at each of us in turn. “Detectives Burke, Pedersen from Manhattan PD. The other Burke.”
“The sword guy?” Ramirez asked.
I let out a long sigh. Some things are not worth getting into.
Micky smirked. “Hey, Connor. You’re famous.”
“Everyone’s famous for fifteen minutes, Mick,” I told him.
“Yeah, well, time’s
