Chapter 1: Odd Saint
My name is Detective Thomas Nolan, and I am a saint.
This is neither boasting nor an exaggeration.
I only had an inkling on the morning I chased Anthony Young, purse snatcher...again. Kid was four years older than my son. Young Anthony (see what I did there?), a 20th time offender, had upgraded to double duty, on this day both snatching the purse as well as the iPhone of Malinda Jones. Malinda was one of many careless New Yorkers who are so deep into their phones that they barely registered oncoming traffic, to heck with noticing a thief running up on them.
My radar was already up after Anthony bumped against me as he brushed past. I didn’t bother checking for theft. I had nothing in the pockets of my tan overcoat, and my pants pockets were out of the reach of even a skilled thief. I merely continued my morning offering as the Opus Dei had taught me and was about to go into the Our Father.
Then Anthony charged forward, sweeping Malinda’s purse from her shoulder, and plucking the iPhone from her hand. It was the latest model, over a thousand dollars’ worth of technology in one easy-to-steal package.
Obviously, Anthony didn’t see the all-caps NYPD emblazoned in gold letters on the front AND back of my policeman-blue baseball cap.
To make matters worse—for him—was that he did this in front of the mental health court for Queens, heralded by the black wrought-iron fence about ten feet high, which was serviced by the NYPD as their security. Further down the block was a housing community with its own private security.
In short, there was no real way that Anthony was going to get to the end of the (admittedly very long) block.
I was still under an obligation to chase the idiot. “Freeze! Police!” I barked before I took off after him. As expected, it made him run faster, but he obviously heard me, so he had his fair warning.
I pounded along the pavement behind Anthony, who was built for speed over anything else. He was short and slight, but he could run. I was bigger, a bit over six foot, and broad in the shoulders. Every big man will tell you one thing—running was just a great way to destroy your ankles and your knees if you do it right. I was a lumbering truck chasing after a motorcycle, but the moment Anthony ran out of gas, the impact would be similar.
As I ran, I mentally recited the Our Father and was on the Hail Mary when the strangeness happened. Suddenly, I could see myself ahead of Anthony... while at the same time, standing in front of him, I saw myself chase behind Anthony. It was a strange, vivid experience, with each view of Anthony as clear as the highest definition television—with almost more clarity than real life.
It was odd, but I was also too busy to ponder it. I held out an arm, leaned into it, and Anthony just ran into my arm. He clothes-lined himself so hard, his feet left the ground. I swept back under him as fast as I could, catching him just before his head hit the concrete. It wouldn’t do for him to have brain damage over a stolen purse—it wasn’t like he had little gray cells he could afford to lose.
I smiled into his face. “Hi Anthony. Would you like to tell me your rights? We’ve done this dance too often.”
He merely smiled widely and shrugged, even as I hauled him to his feet. “Eh, you win some, you lose some. Still ain’t gonna serve any jail time.”
Anthony was a poster boy for juvenile recidivism and a great example for anyone who agitates for prosecuting all criminals as adults. He wasn’t necessarily a bad kid, but he could use an extended stay in Boys Town—or an overnight in Rikers Island to scare him straight.
“It would help if you won any,” I suggested.
“Can I cuff myself this time?” he asked as I took his wrists behind his back and cuffed them. “Guess not.”
I rolled my eyes. “Anthony, have you considered that if you want money, you get a real job?”
He laughed. “You mean work for a living? Hey, that’s racist, yo.”
I shook my head and sighed. This kid was going to give me a headache. “Meet me halfway, find a crime you’re at least good at?”
Malinda caught up to us at long last. She was 48, 4’9”, and 180 pounds, so it took her a while. She looked at the perpetrator and frowned. “Anthony Young! I should have known. Just wait until I tell your gramma! Wait until I tell Father Pawson!”
Anthony finally looked concerned. “Aw, come on, Missus Jones, do you have to? I didn’t know it was you.”
Malinda wound up for a smack to the back of his head, and I twisted him around to put myself between them. “Mrs. Jones, you can’t do that. I’ve got him cuffed already.”
Malinda glowered. “Fine. But you take him right to the station. I’m going to meet you there. Taking my stuff. How dare you, Anthony!”
She stormed off ahead of us, not even waiting for me to hand her stuff back. I pocketed her phone and slung the purse over my shoulder—it was big enough to be a satchel, if worse came to worse.
“How’d you get in front of me, anyway?” he asked. “I don’t remember you being that fast.”
I blinked. That was a good question, to which I didn’t have a good answer. I had heard that deja vu was simply a matter of slow communication between two halves of the brain. Perhaps it was serious brain lag?
No, that explanation didn’t even work for me at the time, but since I didn’t have a good answer for him, I merely told him the truth: “I haven’t the foggiest notion.”
“Ugh. Do you gotta use all the big words, Tommy?”
Argh.
As we walked down Winchester boulevard, we had a brief conversation in which Anthony read me his rights, and we confirmed that he wouldn’t be getting a lawyer but a phone call to his mother.
Anthony was sulking by the time we got to 222nd street, and we passed in front of his public school on the way to my precinct. The school and the precinct were diagonally across the street from each other. An outside observer could tell that it wasn’t a typical precinct, since the patch of grass to the right of our walkway had a full-color statue of Our Lady of Lourdes about two feet high, and the left had a statue of Jesus. Did our Catholicism show any? Just don’t tell the ACLU.
This was the 105th precinct, otherwise known as the “French Bread” precinct. Since it was on the border of Queens and Nassau, Long Island, the boundaries of the Precinct followed the border. You could almost see that it was the last precinct established as the population went East—the 105 got whatever was left over. It went from Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Laurelton, Rosedale, Springfield Gardens, Bellerose, Glen Oaks, New Hyde Park, and Floral Park. If you’re looking on a map, that means it stops at Rockaway Boulevard at the south end, Francis Lewis Boulevard at the west, and the Grand Central parkway to the North. Since the boarder on the East was uneven, so was our boundary. And, since the western boundary followed Francis Lewis, it came down at an angle. (Manhattan has the famous grid pattern layout to their streets. In Queens, they followed former cow paths that wandered all over the place.)
We entered the station, and I waved to the black woman at the front desk, Sgt. Mary Russell. She was 5’8”, stocky, with short cornrows that didn’t travel too far down the neck. As far as fashionable hairstyles for women cops went, it was probably the closest equivalent to a crew cut.
“Hey, Tommy,” she called. “You brought us a repeat customer, and you didn’t even sign in yet? You bucking for another promotion?”
I nodded at her as I tugged on Anthony’s cuffs, bringing him to a stop. “Mary, I found this wayward son on the way to the office this morning.”
Sgt. Russell rolled her eyes. “I don’t think community policing works like that.”
I smiled. “It is when you live and work in the parish.” I patted Anthony on the shoulder. “If you could call his mother? I think she’s number nine in the speed dial by now. I—”
At that moment, I was hit by the smell. It was so repulsive that when it hit me, I gagged, and nearly vomited. It was horrific, and ungodly, and those were adjectives I used before I knew the source. If you’ve ever found a rotted human corpse, perhaps one dredged up from a body of water, you have an idea of what the stench was like. Then add in rotten eggs, fecal matter, sit and stew on a hot summer day for six hours.
This was worse.
I spun around for the nearest waste basket, expecting to vomit. I gathered myself together, and slowly composed myself, struggling to keep my breakfast down.
“Hey, Nolan, you okay?” Russell asked me.
I stayed there a moment longer, then straightened and turned back towards her. Even Anthony looked concerned.
Hand over my nose, I asked, “Don’t you smell that? Smells like something died in the vents and cooked there.”
Russell and Anthony shared a glance and a shrug. “Nope.”
I took a slow, controlled breath, then scanned over the station. There wasn’t anyone there who appeared that dank, dirty and unwashed. For someone to smell that bad, the only presumption was that he, she, or it looked like they had slept in garbage. But everyone there looked relatively tidy. Even one or two of the obvious drunks (red noses, half asleep, barely responsive to the officers with them) looked cleaner than I expected for such a repulsive odor.
I cautiously moved forward, taking small sniffs every few steps, just to keep tabs on the smell. Even that little was unbearable. Anthony stayed with Russell, and I worked my way through the station methodically. Whatever it was had to be toxic—and if only I could smell it, that didn’t bode well in the long run for everyone else. If I were going insane, all well and good, but if it was real, things like a generally odorless, colorless gas, unleashed in a police station, could have all sorts of implications, and could end badly all around.
The source was what most civilians would picture as a “typical” junkie—the type who has obviously hit bottom, He was anemic, malnourished, scrawny, and painfully underweight. At 5’8”, he may have weighed all of one hundred pounds. His hair was black, stringy, and greasy, and his eyes were a pale, watery blue. I couldn’t tell if he was about to cry or bite someone’s nose off ... or just curl up into a ball and die, since he looked close enough anyway. Sunken cheeks, protruding cheekbones, and he hurt to look at. His hands were cuffed behind his back, but the elbows were so bony, I was concerned he could stab someone with those alone.
And he smelled like death, decay, and made the stench of garbage trucks smell sweet in comparison.
“Okay, Hayes,” one of the officers told him, “you’re almost done. You can be in your cell in a bit.”
As I approached Hayes, he started, his back becoming ramrod straight. He turned to look at me. His face went from being passive and wishy-washy to a mask of rage. He roared loud enough to hurt my ears and make the cops around him flinch.
With a loud crack, his arms shot forward. He’d dislocated his left thumb to get out of the cuffs. He grabbed the nearest policeman, hurling him across the room with maniacal strength. The cop slammed into a desk, then smashed through a window.
The cop behind him grabbed on, and the perp whirled, smacking him aside. He grabbed the cop’s nightstick, and cut the leg out from under the officer.
Hayes whirled on me, bellowing, “Era uoy tahw wonk I!”
Then he lunged.