Authors: John Cutter
“So I get there, and everyone’s hitting on me. Soon their guy comes in, big guy named Ernest the Pimp. I’m basically his specialty: runaways who hit the big city and get scared. Word was, he had a whole fleet of kids working for him, all from similar circumstances. Guess they didn’t call 8
th
Avenue the Minnesota Strip for nothing.
“Anyway, Ernest the scumbag shows up and asks me if I want some pizza. I say yes, and we head over to Sbarro. He said he was an outreach worker, in charge of getting help to girls in the area, and asked if he could help me get home. He explained some of the dangers of being out in the big city on my own, just enough to scare a girl who was actually stuck there. He had the perfect line of bullshit; it was perfect. So I got him right where I want him—my kel’s working and my backup teams are all good guys looking out for me. I feed Ernest the typical runaway story—tell him I don’t want to go home, I got an abusive dad, all that stuff. He acts real sympathetic, and offers to take me to the Welcoming Center, whatever that was supposed to be. He said he’d helped a lot of other girls like me. He even asked if I had ID on me. I told him I didn’t—I’d said I was fifteen already—and he said that wasn’t a problem, and that the folks at the Welcoming Center could help me get an ID.
“So he tells me we have to leave the terminal, and I’m thinking I’m good: I can see one of my backup teams out of the corner of my eye, and I’m real close to nailing this asshole. All I need is an offer of a sex act, or confer to offer as they say, and he’s mine. He has his friend pull this big-ass black Lincoln into the roadway at the terminal, and I’m looking around for the backup cars, and don’t you fucking know it, as I’m being hustled into this car I see Sergeant Veda in one of the cars, yelling at the guys in there, and none of them are paying attention to what’s going on with me.”
“Wait, what?” Morrison stopped her. “What the hell could he have been yelling at them for, and why would he choose that moment to do it?”
Tina smiled grimly. “I found out later that it was because he’d
found a
Hustler
in one of the cars. He was yelling at them for looking at a goddamn porno.”
“Jesus,” Morrison said, closing his eyes.
“So I try to back out, but Ernest shoves me into the car,” Tina went on. “Now I know I’m in trouble. The team didn’t see me get shoved in, and we’re moving. I’m hoping the other teams spot me, and they did, but none of them moved. That was another thing—I found out later that Veda told them to hold their positions. That pervert phony born-again motherfucker told them to sit tight, so he could yell at them some more, and now no one has my back.
“The Lincoln pulls out, and no one follows us. My kel wasn’t working at that point either, but I didn’t know that; I’m just thinking,
No way is this fucking happening to me,
right? They got me in the front seat, and this sick fuck Ernest, he doesn’t waste any time. He tells me all about how he’s going to make me his fuck toy, then turn me out onto the street. So I’m like,
Okay, we got the statement we need, where the fuck are you guys?
But nobody comes to stop the car, and nobody’s behind us—no plainclothes car, no radio car, nothing. They lost me. Ernest starts playing with me while he’s driving, and I tell him to stop. I don’t have a gun on me, or a tin—I’m just supposed to have three backup teams and a Sergeant, and I don’t. I try to get out, and the guy in back grabs me by the hair.
Nice red hair, pretty girl,
he says.
“At this point I realize I’m completely fucked. Next stop is the Martinique hotel on 32
nd
—classic hideout spot, total dump. No one gives a shit what happens there, and you can’t see any police on the block. There’s a park across the street and Sanitation’s picking up the garbage, so I scream when they drag me out of the car. The Sanitation guys are kicking the cans so the rats don’t jump out at them, and they look right at me, with me yelling for them to call the cops. No response.
“The three guys drag me upstairs and rip my clothes off, then Ernest rapes me. The other fuck—I don’t even remember his name—he sticks his dick in my mouth. At this point I pretty much wanted to die. I started to pray, wondering what the fuck I was doing there, and why
I’d trusted that moralizing piece of shit Veda. After the first two are done with me there’s a third guy, and I can’t even go into what that sick fuck did. They duct tape my mouth and cuff me to the bed, and I wanted to die. Sometimes I still do.”
“Tina,” Morrison said softly. “Are you sure you’re okay with telling me all this?”
Tina shrugged. “Yeah, of course. I always talked to you. Besides, I’ve started; I’m not stopping now. It gets worse, if that’s possible.” She thought for a second. “You know, I think I will take that drink.”
Morrison got up and poured one for her without a word. After a long sip, Koreski went on.
“Well, anyway, they smack me around a bit, but not bad enough in the face to damage the property, if you know what I mean. That first night I’m still praying they find me, because Ernest has already decided that this fat disgusting white guy from Scarsdale will be my first customer. Like, who would believe some money guy out of Scarsdale would even know where this fleabag hotel was, much less come to it for this?—but the guy is a freak, and he pays for the whole night. I’m still tied up when he comes in, and he does things I still don’t want to talk about.
“So I’m still waiting for the troops to show up, but I’m a prisoner, and I’m really starting to lose hope. This terrible, low feeling had come over me—it was indescribable. I have to say, I truly value my freedom every day now. And I guess they had two hundred cops kicking in doors for me all over the city, and the pressure out on the street was
severe
. All the drug dealers, prostitutes, and pimps on the street were getting rousted. I was told later on, you couldn’t sell a hotdog on the corner, much less crack. I can never thank Inspector Harrington enough for what he did—everything was shut down.
“At some point—fatso from Scarsdale’s still having his fun with me—I hear Ernest and these mopes talking outside the room. They’re getting nervous, because word’s come up from the street that I’m a cop. I figure I’m dead at this point—any minute they’ll come in and
kill me—but they don’t, and soon they’re gone. At 0500 the door comes crashing in, and Cap, I was never so happy to see the boys from Emergency in all my life. I just cried and cried.
“I went to Bellevue for treatment, and that’s where I met Angela. Now the whole job knows my story, or at least they think they know, and everywhere I went after that they just look at me weird. At least it felt like everyone did. I was embarrassed and depressed and there wasn’t enough medication for me to take—Lexapro, Prozac, every fucking drug, till I didn’t even know who I was and I couldn’t drink enough. Angela helped pull me out of it. I owe her my life and my career, really; without her support I’d probably be dead. And still it didn’t work out.
“Anyway, if that’s what it takes to make Detective as quickly as I did, I’d say it definitely was
not
worth it. I’m just glad I didn’t end up with HIV. I went to therapy for a long, long time, believe me.”
“I believe it,” Morrison said. “What happened to Ernest what’s-his-name?”
“Good old Ernest Stanley Jackson. He fled off to Baltimore; they picked him up within a few days. They got his friends, too, in another fleabag hotel in Manhattan. Thought they were hiding out, the morons—they just went from the west side to the east side. On their way back from picking up Ernest in Baltimore, I heard they beat the shit out of him at every rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.”
“They put him away for a good while?”
“He got twenty-five to life under the state RICO statute. All his buddies got the same.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah, small victories. The fat guy from Scarsdale was the guy I really wanted. He was the most disgusting animal, this motherfucker. Sweaty, fat, big rolls, real small dick. God, did I hate him—he was a rich fuck, and just, I don’t know. He
paid
for me. I learned a lot about humanity and inhumanity that night, not that I really needed that type of lesson.”
“So did they get him?”
“Oh, yeah. That was more vindicating than any of the rest of it.
Sergeant Devallo took good care of that one too—when he was putting him in the wagon for arraignment, he made sure to tell everyone else in the back that hey, this guy raped a young black kid. Now
that’s
the way to get someone paid back.”
Morrison laughed through a grimace. “It sure is. And Sergeant Veda—I’m assuming you heard what happened to him, right?”
“I heard he hung himself. I was sorry for his family, but it was hard to feel sorry for him.”
“Why would you want to?”
“Well, you know…it was a lot easier to be mad at him when he didn’t show any moral compass, but suicide? I couldn’t believe he felt that bad about what happened to me.”
“Wait, stop right there,” Morrison said, holding up his hand. “What do you mean,
felt that bad?”
“About screwing up with me. I assume he killed himself behind what happened to me.”
Morrison laughed and shook his head. “Oh, no—no no, Tina, don’t even think about it like that. He really did do the wrong thing by you, and his suicide had nothing to do with it. Didn’t anybody brief you on what happened to him?”
“No,” Tina said, her eyes wide. “I just heard his family found him hanging in his bedroom after he killed himself. Was there more to the story?”
“Oh, yes,” Morrison said. “Even though it was a suicide, they investigated it as an untimely death, and they turned up a
lot.”
“Well then! Do cut me in on it, Cap.”
“It
is
my turn, I guess! And then we can get down to business.”
“Deal,” she smiled.
“Okay.” He took a swallow of whiskey. “After your incident he got suspended with pay, you know, out on administrative leave—tie goes to the runner, innocent until proven guilty, and all that. So one day he’s out at Kennedy Airport, waiting for an Aeroflot arrival; he’d apparently paid for one of those Russian mail-order brides online.”
“You’re shitting me. And him already married?”
“Yep. He’d told the Russians he was going to leave his wife for her. But the girl never shows up. Instead, two guys meet him at their prearranged spot in Long Term Parking, and explain to him that they need fifteen thousand dollars up front, so their company doesn’t lose out. He explains that he already has an apartment set up for the girl in Bayside, but the guys don’t bite; they tell him they have to protect her. In the end, he pays the fifteen grand and they tell him they’ll meet him the next day in Bayside.
“So the next day they meet up, and tell him they’ll let him know when she’s in the country, and to just sit tight until then. He goes home, the jerkoff, and finds an email waiting for him, where they tell him they need proof that he’s going to marry her, because he’s already married and they don’t believe that he really loves this girl they’re supposed to bring him. For proof, they demand that he take some pictures of himself with—let’s just say, without any clothes on. So what does the genius do? He sends them some real explicit photos of himself, with his goddamn face in the picture.”
“What a fucking idiot,” Tina laughed in disbelief.
“Oh, big time,” agreed Morrison. “And these guys are good—they make him send more photos, with some really sick, sexually explicit stuff in them. These emails, you’d have to see to believe. They really got him going, telling him they need to make sure he’s a real man, and can satisfy whatever her name is, and so forth. So he sends more, and a few days later they meet up in Cunningham Park and tell him they need ten thousand more.”
“Jesus. Don’t tell me he gives it to them!”
“No—but just wait. So Veda goes nuts, and calls the cops. A car from the 107 shows up, and Veda tells them the Russians are trying to beat him out of money. He doesn’t mention the photos. The Russians tell the cops they’re there to sell him a car and he won’t pay, and that he’d just given them pictures of his dick. Veda freaks out, tells the cops it was all a misunderstanding, and sends them off. So now he’s really
fucked—the Russians tell him they want more money, or they’ll show his pictures to his wife and kids.”
Tina whistled. “Man. And how bad did you say they were?”
“Well, I’d say you’ve been through enough today—suffice it to say, they’re real degrading. Anyway, so here he is, somehow still thinking there’s a mail-order bride waiting at the end of this nightmare. Except now they want twenty thousand, and they’re not fucking around. So he begs them to bring his bride around and swears he’ll give them the last of the money from his 401(k). They actually set him up with her—she flies into Newark.”
“So there was a woman after all?”
“Yeah, a really pretty one. He takes her to a motel in Jersey City, and she gets him completely hooked. The two Russian guys meet them the next day, and he turns over the twenty grand; then they tell him they want his car.”
“His
car?”
“Yeah. A Ford Explorer. They tell him just to sign it over to them right there, and they’ll give him his photos back.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Nope. And remembering what happened the last time he called the cops, he does it.”
“He
gives
them his
car?”
“Signs it right over. His new Russian bride was very supportive of him.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“Well, so then he calls a car for them, and while they’re waiting, she goes to use the ladies’ room. Next thing he knows, she’s in his Explorer with the other two scumbags, waving at him as they drive away.”
“Holy shit.”
“Yeah. And it’s not even over yet. They later tell him they want ten percent of his paycheck, or they’ll send the pictures to his wife and Commanding Officer, and tell the cops that he sexually assaulted a woman in Jersey City. His DNA’s all over her underwear, they say,
and she has all the details. In that kind of a corner, what was the poor cowardly fuck going to do?”