Fifth Monday Fiction

Jimmy High Tops (a short story)

By Steve Glossin

The slap to the back of Kenny Mayberry’s head made a sharp popping sound that echoed briefly as it bounced off the soundproofed walls of the interrogation room. The Fourth Street Station in the Twelfth Precinct had three “confessionals,” as they were called by the detectives who used them. Two of the rooms had one-way mirrors through which conversations could be observed. This one, a twelve-by-eight-foot room, was isolated and soundproofed, with a reinforced steel door that could be locked from the inside.
    Kenny’s head had jerked forward then back, flipping his long, greasy blond locks over his pale blue eyes and causing more shock than pain. “What the hell did you do that for, Molly?” he asked. Eighteen-year-old Kenny Mayberry, a.k.a. “Stretch” on the street for his ability to squeeze his emaciated-looking six-foot frame through the narrowest openings of apartments or businesses that might have something worth stealing.
    “That was for the lie you’re going to tell me,” replied Detective McCarty. Detective Sergeant Mort McCarty was called “Molly” by the men he worked with on the force and “Dirty Molly” by the perps on the street who knew him, and who did everything possible to stay out of his way. Molly had been in the New York City Police Department for eighteen years. He had been a detective the last four years and worked his last two on the Robbery and Special Victims squad in the Twelfth Precinct. Molly stood five feet, nine inches tall from his size-twelve brogans to his thinning brown hair. He looked thirty pounds overweight, but surprised many of the young perps when he jumped out of his unmarked Chevy and chased them down. Their second surprise was when they tried to break free, only to learn that there was solid muscle under the older detective’s fat, and they were physically manhandled into submission.
    “I ain’t gonna lie.”
    The force of Molly’s second slap was harder and the sound of the impact took a second longer to die away. “I can keep this up all day or until the back of your head looks like the oatmeal I had for breakfast…if that’s what you want.”
    Kenny kept his mouth shut as the sharp sting on the back of his head took his mind off the discomfort of the hard wooden chair and the handcuffs. He stared across the room and focused on the gray cinderblock wall.
    “That’s better,” said Molly when Kenny got quiet. He looked at the palm of his right hand. It was tingling and red from the last blow to Kenny’s head. He blew on it. “What were you doing in the alley behind the dry-cleaners?”
    “We were taking a shortcut to the diner on 7th Street—the one built from an old train car.”
    Molly caught the we, and was a little surprised to hear it. Kenny Mayberry, had been found unconscious behind a green city dumpster, a hundred yards from the dry-cleaner’s back door. He was found by a patrol responding to the cleaner’s silent alarm. “I suppose you decided to take a nap behind the dumpster before getting a bite to eat at the diner?”
    “I slipped and fell,” said Kenny. “I must have hit my head on something. I don’t remember.”
    “Speak to me, Stretch. I ain’t got all day.”
    “I was on the first level of the fire escape that runs up the side of the tenement building.”
    “Planning a late night B & E?”
    “No, honest. I was smoking some weed with a couple of guys. I ain’t been into breaking and entering for a couple of years—it don’t pay,” said Kenny, thinking about the eight months he had spent on Riker’s Island after getting busted for a warehouse break-in.
    Molly had read the initial report and knew that the patrol had found a plastic bag of grass on the ground next to Mayberry. “So, did you get into a pissing contest over the dope?”
    “It wasn’t like that,” said Kenny. “When the door to the laundry suddenly opened and two guys came out screaming something, I thought they were yelling at us. It startled me. That’s when I slipped and fell off the railing.”
    “Did you get a look at the two guys?”
    “Yeah, but you don’t want to know.”
    Molly’s hand shot out more quickly than a mongoose after a cobra, giving Mayberry a resounding slap on the head.
    “Ouch, that hurt!” exclaimed Kenny, ducking his head and expecting another blow.
    “What did they look like?”
    “Like you did, before you made detective. They were wearing NYC blue.”
    Molly looked at him intently for twenty seconds before asking, “What are you saying?”
    “They were street cops. I told you, you don’t want to know.”
    What Mayberry was saying fit the MO of a half-dozen robberies that had taken place in the precinct over the past three months. One witness claimed to have seen two uniformed officers fleeing the scene of a jewelry store break-in and another at a savings and loan. “Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be back in a minute.” Molly walked toward the door.
    “Yeah, I’ll be here.” Kenny shook his wrist and rattled the handcuff that married his arm to the bolted-down chair. “Bring me back a cup of coffee,” he added, watching the detective unlock the door and walk out of the room. He looked at the scarred table, its dark accumulation of coffee stains. Kenny wondered if they were dried blood.

Twenty minutes later, Molly returned to the “confessional” after reviewing the police blotters and talking to a detective who had investigated the jewelry store break-in. He walked to the stained wooden table and set a paper cup filled with murky black coffee in front of Kenny. “You can have your coffee anyway you like as long as it’s black.”
    “Thanks, Molly,” said Kenny, wondering if the detective had slipped something else into the cup. It wouldn’t be the first time, he thought as he used his free hand to pick up the cup, take a sip, and set it back on the table. He winced at the coffee’s bitter taste.
    “Who were the guys with you?” asked Molly.
    Kenny knew the question was coming and decided there was nothing to gain by lying. “Chegui the Rican and Jimmy High Tops.”
    “You talking about old man Chegui or his son?”
    “The son.” Kenny picked up the cup and took a larger sip.
    Molly knew that the father had pretty much retired after being shot with a .38 when he tried to heist a numbers carrier in a disputed area near Harlem. The son was twenty, meaner and dumber than his father. Molly doubted whether little Chegui would live long enough to see his twenty-first birthday. “Who’s Jimmy High Tops?” It was the first time Molly had heard the name.
    “All I know is what Chegui told me,” said Kenny. “He’s a guy out of Boston. Chegui introduced him to me.”
    “What were the three of you planning?”
    “Nothing, I swear. We were smoking a little, to put an edge on our appetites.” Kenny raised his unshackled arm and repeated, “I swear, that’s the truth.”
    Molly took the handcuff key from his pocket and reached down and unlocked the cuff on Kenny’s wrist. “If I catch you climbing into any windows, I’m going to bust your balls.”
    “Can I go?” asked Kenny.
    Molly looked at his watch, grinned, and said, “Sure kid. If you hurry you might even make it to the crapper before you make a mess.”
    Kenny stood up and felt a churning in the pit of his stomach like a toilet bowl that swirled the water round and round, but wouldn’t suck it down. He hurried to the door, opened it, and stepped into the hallway, where he stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “You bastard!” He clenched his sphincter and rushed down the hallway, taking fast but tiny steps, holding his legs close together.
    “You get anything on the floor, you’re gonna mop it up!” Molly called after him. He chuckled at the sight of the receding figure hurrying down the hallway with his buttocks squeezed tighter than a whore’s hands on a fifty-dollar bill.

An hour later, Detective McCarty sat in the back seat of the light blue and white NYC police car. He was accompanying two patrolmen with an arrest warrant to pick up one Manuel Hortega, a Panamanian immigrant, wanted on a felony assault charge. The tip on Hortega’s location came from a nark working an undercover drug case in the neighborhood.
    “How do you want to work this, detective?” asked the driver after parking and getting out of the car, two blocks from the address where the suspect was spotted.
    “I want one of you to watch the front entrance and the other one to cover the back,” said Molly. “If the residents see either of you in the building, he’ll be long gone before we can make the collar.”
    “What about backup?” the second patrolman asked.
    Molly lifted one side of his coat, revealing his .38 police special in a belt holster. “I got it here.”
    The two patrolmen followed Molly, who was walking at a crisp pace toward the building. When Molly reached the brownstone and saw a lady with an armload of shopping bags being buzzed in, he took the steps two at a time and managed to grab the door with his left hand just before it swung back and locked. He hesitated a moment after entering the building, studying the bank of brass mailboxes on the foyer wall until the woman with the bags stepped into an elevator and the door closed. The information he had been given said that Hortega was at his mother’s, Apartment 210. He mounted the stairs quietly then pulled the door to the second floor open and checked the hallway. Everything good, so far, he thought when he saw it was empty. Molly walked casually as if he were a resident, or a guest of one, then stopped when he came to 210. He reached into his mouth with two fingers of his left hand and extracted the gum he was chewing and stuck it over the peep hole, while his right hand unholstered the 38. Molly tapped on the door lightly and waited.
    The door opened the length of the security chain and a woman’s voice asked, “Who is it?”
    Molly put his extra thirty pounds to good use when he shouldered the door, breaking the security chain and knocking the woman to the floor. “Where is he?” he whispered, pointing the pistol at Hortega’s shocked mother, who he thought wasn’t a bad looker, even with the blood flowing out of her broken nose.
    Unable to speak, she shook her head. The force of the door connecting with her face had also broken her jaw.
    Molly edged into the room, his pistol held in a shooter’s stance, when he heard a toilet flush. He lifted his size-twelve brogan and gave the bathroom door a kick that would have made a professional wrestler grimace. When the door burst open, its top hinge shattered, leaving the door dangling at an angle. He saw Hortega dumping white powder into the porcelain toilet bowl. “You shit!” he screamed, rushing into the quickly crowded bathroom and bouncing the barrel of his pistol off Manuel’s head.

“What happened?” Detective Ambrose was watching Molly write up his report in the squad room. The detective squad was located on the third floor of the Twelfth Precinct and had eight cubicles with lime-green cloth security panels set around them, providing a semblance of privacy for the detectives who worked the different shifts.
    Molly spoke as he continued writing. “Like I told the desk sergeant, I went to the door and flashed my badge at Mrs. Hortega. That’s when she tried to coldcock me with a baseball bat. We got into a shoving match and she ran into the door trying to get out of the apartment. I found Manuel flushing his dope down the toilet.” Molly stopped for a moment. “How do you spell boisterous?”
    “Why the hell you puttin’ that in your report?” asked Ambrose.
    “When I rushed into the bathroom, he got kinda boisterous.”
    “Jeez, Molly, you ain’t writin’ a frigging poem.”
    “Yeah, I guess you’re right…He got ass-kicking mad…How’s that?”
    “That’s better. At least it explains why he’s missing two front teeth, got a broken nose, black eye, and a cut on his head. Not to mention the broken arm.”
    Molly, let out a light chuckle thinking about Hortega asking for his rights to be read.

Chegui unlocked the door and walked into the small three-room apartment. Thick black hair covered his head, combed back into a ponytail over his sinewy twenty-year-old body. The tight-fitting black leather trousers he wore matched the jacket draped over his white silk shirt. The tenement was nestled in a drab brick building. Its original color was long ago covered by the grime and smoke of the city’s smoke stacks and chimneys, then assaulted again when the automobile replaced the horse as a means of transportation. It was built in the ’20s and was first filled with Irish then Italian immigrants, until the Puerto Ricans invaded the neighborhood and made it a Spanish-speaking enclave. Living in the building were fifty families whose roots went back to the island. Chegui’s father was semi-retired after being shot a year earlier. He felt a sense of security living in the mini-colony surrounded by his own kind.
    “Chegui, is that you?”
    “Sí, Papá.” Chegui set the cardboard box he carried on the red marble coffee table. The apartment reminded Chegui of his aunt’s house in San Juan. He had visited her twice with his father because she refused to fly. She didn’t want to tempt the evil that roams the streets of New York. The couch was upholstered with a chintz fabric designed with bright red and yellow flowers, and was covered with clear plastic to protect it from dust and wear. Everything from the floral cloth-covered rattan chairs, handmade monkey wood dining room table and sideboard, to the heavy yellow curtains had been imported from the island, making the apartment “New York Rican,” as Chegui and his friends called it. It had been decorated by his mother, who had died three years earlier. His father, Chico, refused to change anything in the apartment, in memory of his wife.
    “What you got in the box?” asked Chico when he walked into the room.
    Chegui pulled up the cardboard lid and lifted out one of the twelve bottles of Bacardi Spice Rum. “It was a steal,” he said with a toothy grin.
    “Yeah, I bet it was.” Chico took the bottle and looked at the label. “What did you pay?”
    “Two dollars a bottle.”
    “That’s a good price, but not worth a year in the slammer.” Chico cracked the seal, lifted the bottle, and took a sip. He smacked his lips then put the cap back on and slid the bottle back into the box. “You got a phone call from the skinny Anglo you hang with.”
    “Stretch?”
    “He said Kenny something.”
    “Yeah, that’s Stretch. What’d he want?” Chegui picked up the case of rum and carried it to a closet.
    “He said something about meeting him later.”
    Chegui set the box down and closed the closet door. “He say where?”
    Chico stuck an unfiltered Chesterfield into his mouth and used a wooden kitchen match to light it. He blew out a stream of smoke, set the cigarette in an ashtray and coughed once. “Somewhere on 7th Street. I didn’t catch the name of the place. Chico coughed again.
    “You outta quit. That bullet didn’t do any favors to your lungs,” said Chegui, picking up the cigarette and taking a drag.
    “Hey, buy your own.” Chico grabbed the cigarette out of his son’s hand.
    Chegui laughed and headed for the door. “I gotta go, Papá. Save a bottle of the spice for me.”
    “Don’t get busted, I ain’t got enough for bail.” Chico watched his son hurry out the door.

The 302-cubic inch, 220-bhp, red ’69 Mustang turned the corner, just passing the yellow traffic light before it switched to red, and drove into the parking lot of the Santa Fe Diner. The converted caboose named after the rail line it had operated under gave the diner its name. The driver put the Hurst shifter in neutral then pressed his foot on the gas pedal and released it. The deep rumble that came out of the glass-pack muffler made the driver smile and announced his presence. James Michael O’Leary, a.k.a. Jimmy High Tops, shut off the engine, opened the door and stepped out of the car. He stood five foot, eight inches tall, had a shoulder length red ponytail, green eyes, and freckles on his pudgy pale face. Jimmy was nineteen and the youngest of three sons born in America. His parents had migrated from Ireland after WWII and settled in the Boston area, where many of their countrymen, fleeing poverty and the hated British, had made their new homes. His oldest brother was a Boston firefighter and the other a Boston policeman in Boston’s District 7. Frances O’Leary, their mother, had planned for her youngest to become a priest, but the lure of street life changed everything. Jimmy had been called “High Tops” since he was five and was always seen wearing the worn-out high-top tennis shoes his older brothers discarded.
    In New York he was staying at the apartment of a cousin who had introduced him to the Puerto Rican. Chegui had called an hour earlier and asked him to meet at the diner. Jimmy walked through the door and spotted Chegui and the guy he had met the previous night—Stretch—sitting in a back booth. He waved then sauntered toward the back of the caboose, passing the green booths on the right and the chrome swivel chairs with round red cushions lined up in front of the counter on the left. He noticed one other occupant, a white-haired black man wearing a heavy winter overcoat, which for summer tagged him as a street person.
    “Jimmy, how you doing?” Chegui set his glass of cola on the table.
    “Fine, man, and you?” Jimmy sat down on the green vinyl bench and propped his elbows on the white Formica table.
    “Stretch was just telling me what happened after he fell off the fire escape.”
    Jimmy looked at Stretch for a second and said, “We would have stuck around, but when those two bulls in blue came out the door, we figured it was time to leave.”
    “Hey, I understand,” said Stretch.
    Chegui said, “The bastards hauled him to the station.”
    “They wouldn’t even take me to county to see if I was okay,” said Stretch. “Sorry about the weed, Chegui. If they found it, they probably took it home to smoke.”
    “Hey, man, don’t worry. There’s plenty on the street,” said Chegui, picking a French fry off the plate sitting in front of Stretch. He dipped it in ketchup before sticking it in his mouth. “Tell Jimmy the rest.”
    “That bastard, Dirty Molly, slipped something into my coffee cup. Almost caused my insides to bust out my backside. I just made it to the toilet.” Stretch winced from the memory.
    “Who’s Dirty Molly?” asked Jimmy.
    “He’s a dick working the Twelfth Precinct,” said Chegui. “The city’s got some bad asses on the force, but few as mean as Molly. My old man warned me about Molly when I was a kid. I met him the first time when I was fourteen.” Chegui took another fry, stuck it in his mouth and chewed a couple of times before swallowing. After a sip of coke he said, “I was hanging with a couple of guys in the park when Molly showed up…I guess I was kinda cocky back then.”
    “You’re still cocky,” said Stretch, wiping ketchup off the corner of his grin.
    “The other guys beat feet. Like a fool I stood there. Molly asked me who I was and I told him. He said something about my old man and I said something back that he didn’t like.
    “What happened?” asked Jimmy.
    Chegui unbuttoned the shirt sleeve on his right arm and rolled it up. On the inside of the forearm were three scars, each about the size of a quarter. “This is from the cigar he was smoking.”
    A shiver shook Jimmy’s body. “We had a dick like that in Boston. They called him ‘Truncheon O’Toole.’ You don’t want to know what he did with his baton.”
    “What happened to him?” asked Stretch.
    “He pulled the pin and retired to Ireland. Afraid someone would hear he was off the force and come after him.”
    “Yeah, I’d like to see Molly retire to Ireland,” said Stretch, picking up the last fry before Chegui could get it.
    “Amen, bro,” said Chegui. Disappointed at not getting the last fry, he ran a finger through the ketchup and stuck it in his mouth.

“Molly,” Detective Ambrose called from across the room.
    “Yeah?”
    “You got a call on line three.”
    Molly picked up the receiver and punched the plastic button that was lit up. “Detective McCarty.”
    “McCarty, this is Sweeny, out of the Fourth Precinct. We met a couple of years ago at the Plaza. We were there to listen to the commissioner give a pep talk or some crap like that.”
    Molly thought for a moment and remembered going to NYPD Headquarters at One Police Plaza a couple of years earlier for something, but didn’t recall anyone named Sweeny. “Sweeny, has it been that long? What can I do for you?”
    “We got a snitch who overheard something that I thought I ought to pass on.”
    Sweeny, red-headed Mick, about six foot with glasses, he recollected. “Sure, what you got?”
    “The snitch heard two guys talking in a bar about a couple of smart low-lifes who dress up like cops before doing a heist,” said Sweeny. “Sound familiar?”
    “Yeah…What else did he hear?”
    “The two guys mentioned a pharmacy on 9th Street.”
    Molly ran 9th Street through his memory and thought he knew the place. “Did you get a date?”
    “No, only that it would go down over the next couple of days.”
    “Thanks, Sweeny, I owe you one.” Molly set the receiver on the phone, grabbed his hat, then headed for the door. “Ambrose, if I get any more calls, take a message. I got a couple of things I need to do.”

Molly poured a cup of coffee from his chrome thermos, screwed the lid back on, and took a sip. The coffee was getting cold after sitting in the car for the past four hours, but the Irish whisky he had mixed with it still had a kick. He set the cup on the open glove-box lid and looked at the luminous dial of his watch. “Quarter past one,” he said to himself. “I’ll give them three more hours.”
    Molly quietly opened the Chevy’s door and put one foot then the other onto the packed dirt. He slid out of the seat then slipped behind a wooden fence and took a leak. He had driven through the area during the day and seen that the pharmacy’s back door exited into an alley. He thought there might be a chance that the snitch was telling the truth.
    Molly quietly got back in the car, took another sip of coffee, and waited. He was parked fifty feet from the rear door of the pharmacy, in a small vacant lot located on the opposite side of the alley. The lot nestled against the back of a condemned building. The wooden fence along the alley side of the lot, which had been built to keep trash from being dumped behind the building, was trying its best to fall down, and had an opening large enough for a car to be backed into it.

When Detective Ambrose saw Molly dragging into the squad room he shook his head. “You look like shit.”
    Molly grunted as he walked to his cubicle. “I look better than I feel. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”
    “You been rousting the hookers for freebies again?” Ambrose didn’t get an answer and didn’t expect one. “There’s a message on your desk from someone named Sweeny. Said he works the Fourth.”
    Molly threw his hat on the desk, sat down in the caramel-colored swivel chair, and picked up the note. The snitch said it’s on for tonight. Sweeny. He read it twice. “It that all?”
    “Word for word. He asked me to pass it on. Consider it done.”
    Molly leaned back in the chair. The springs groaned from lack of oil and the weight pressing down on them. Last night while sitting in the alley he had debated whether to inform the precinct captain and get backup. But, being a loner by nature and not trusting the rookies who would be assigned to the stakeout, he decided to make the collar himself. To be on the safe side he planned on wearing his vest and signing out a shotgun from the armorer.

The trace of light the moon shed on the alley disappeared as its path carried it toward the horizon. It was 2 a.m. and Molly was getting antsy. He placed his right hand on the thermos and patted it, then on the Mossberg pump shotgun and did the same. He opened the Chevy’s door then swiveled on the seat and placed both feet on the ground. One more piss, he thought, and I’ll be ready for anything. The steaming jet of urine splattered against the decaying wooden fence then slowed to a few drops before he finished and zipped his pants.
    The sharp sting of the needle entering the back of his thigh and the rush of liquid from the syringe caused him to jump and utter, “What the fu—” before he passed out and fell hard onto the ground.
    “You sure that won’t kill him?” asked Stretch, prodding Molly with his boot.
    “Nah. He’ll be out for a couple of hours, but he’ll be okay.” Chegui tossed the syringe into a pile of trash. “A guy I know fixed it for me.”
    “Good.” Stretch lifted his boot, pulled it back, and gave a solid kick to the side of Molly’s head. “That’s for the coffee, you shit.”
    “Hey, man, don’t do that!” said Jimmy.
    “I owed him that.”
    “You two take his legs, I’ll get his hands. We still got a lot to do,” said Jimmy, bending over Molly’s prone figure.

New York City Police Commissioner, James P. Callahan, stood behind the podium in a conference room at One Police Plaza. “We’re here today to pay tribute to one of our own, Detective Sergeant Mort McCarty.” The room was filled with a dozen captains and detectives representing various precincts as well as with reporters from the city’s major newspapers and a news crew with camera. “Detective McCarty served on the New York City Police Department for eighteen years, his last four as a detective. The valor he displayed in confronting and taking down the two men who had been impersonating New York City’s finest while committing crimes against our good citizens cannot be told with mere words. Captain Willoughby, please join me.”
    Captain Raymond Willoughby, commander of the Twelfth Precinct, walked to the front of the room and stood next to the commissioner.
    The commissioner shook hands with Willoughby then faced the onlookers. “I know it’s a sad occasion for the fine men and woman at the Twelfth Precinct, as well as the neighborhoods they protect and serve. The loss of Detective McCarty darkens the hearts of everyone, but life must go on.” Looking toward the back of the room, he raised his right arm and pointed. “Detective McCarty, please step up here and join Captain Willoughby and me.”
    The people parted and let Molly walk to the front of the room. There were hushed comments when they saw the stitches on the side of his head, which were surrounded by black and blue marks, and his right arm in a cloth sling.
    The commissioner shook Molly’s left hand and patted him on the back. In light of his outstanding service, Detective Mort McCarty is being reassigned to the Queens Detective Borough, where I’m sure that Deputy Chief Sorenson will make good use of his many years of police work. Detective, the microphone is yours.”
    Molly smiled for the cameras as the flashes went off in rapid succession then leaned over the microphone, still dumbfounded by everything that was taking place. “…Thanks, commissioner.”

Stretch emitted a high, piercing laugh that sounded like a high school cheerleader rooting for the home team. “He’s going to Queens. Do you believe that, dirty Molly’s going to Queens.”
    Chegui was jumping up and down yelling amen and giving high-fives to Stretch and Jimmy. Jimmy grinned then reached over and turned off his cousin’s TV.
    “You did it, High Tops, you did it!” said Chegui, slapping him on the back. “Man, you are some kind of genius!”
    “We were lucky.” Jimmy’s face beamed. “If your old man hadn’t learned about the pharmacy heist and if your homeboys hadn’t taken down those two phony cops, it would never have worked.”
    Stretch said, “I wish I could have been there to see Molly wake up in the back of the pharmacy lying next to a coupla dudes dressed in blue, both out cold. The next thing he sees is the cavalry arriving with their lights on and sirens blasting. He probably asked the first guy through the door, ‘What the hell’s going on?’” Stretch turned to Jimmy. “Who did you use to feed him the pharmacy crap?”
    “My cousin, Sweeny. He was a cop for a couple of years in Boston before leaving the force and moving to New York.” Jimmy grinned. “Look at it this way. No one’s going to jail for killing a cop and you get rid of him. The best of both worlds.”

“Come on, Molly, we been partners for a coupla years,” said Detective Ambrose, watching Molly clean out his desk. “You can tell me. How’d you do it?”
    Molly looked at Ambrose blankly. “If I told you everything I know, you’d be after my job in a year or two. Some things are better left unsaid.”
_______________
Copyright © 2014 by Steve Glossin

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