LITTLE FAITH
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(Continued)
4.
Sergeant
Jeff Czerniak planted his wife at home after the banquet,
changed out of his suit and left the house again without
even bothering to apologize. He couldn’t stay in
at night anymore. Once he got the itch to go out, there
was no fighting it. He thought for sure the banquet would
be enough excitement for one night. His feet told him
otherwise.
He
drove down I-35 and into East Austin and turned in and
out of the blocks around the club, then parked two blocks
up Poquito and walked back. He was wearing his deliveryman
jacket and matching pants. He figured that, if spotted,
he’d look like a working stiff on the prowl, and
not like an off-duty cop trying to make rank. The truth
was somewhere in between.
These
night crawls had become Czerniak’s regular pattern.
It wasn’t that he was such a great cop or so dedicated.
The chase gave him a rush. So on a free night, between
staying home with his wife, going out with his buddies,
and the chase, he always went for the chase. Like it was
up to him.
He’d
made some easy collars: a john in the act of making a
deal with a whore, possession of a few joints. These weren’t
even worth the booking and the paperwork, hours of anticlimax
on a night off. He’d get their license information
and use them for stoolies if he could. But he’d
caught a few bigger ones. Back when he was on Criminal
Investigations, he witnessed a drug deal, a transaction
in the street where he was parked. He radioed for backup.
Chase the seller or chase the buyer? Can’t get both,
and there’s no law against walking around with money.
But a dealer is worth more. He climbed from the car, raising
his badge and gun and shouting “Police!” then
chased the dealer a block, finally tackling him. Czerniak’s
bulk threatened to crack the dealer’s ribs and made
him more willing to submit to handcuffs. The arrest made
Narco look dumb, but Pete Marks noticed and mentored Czerniak
onto Homicide.
Now
Czerniak was on Organized Crime. His prowling could get
him promoted. If it went right.
He’d
put on weight as a cop, over a naturally big trunk that
he’d built up in his football days. His ruddy complexion
made him look drunk most of the time, though he was actually
pretty drunk now.
He
didn’t see the surveillance van anywhere in the
area. It should have been there. A months-long investigation
wasn’t taking a night off just for a banquet. Tonight
especially, while most of the department was celebrating,
while only the lowest of the patrols were out on the street.
It was like turning off the lights and letting the roaches
have run of the kitchen. Someone should be there.
The
one-story brick building housed the club, a gun store
and a liquor store. A neon martini glass, fifties style,
hung in the club window and lit up the cars in the front
lot. Neon spelled out the name of the bar in glowing green
script: Sueño. Dream. The operation was
code-named Mal Sueño, Bad Dream. Boyle, the club
owner, was suspected of running drugs and whores out of
his club. A bust under the RICO Act required a long investigation
and a warehouse of evidence. Czerniak breezed by the liquor
store and gun store and glanced into the bar window deep
enough to see he’d be the only white man in the
club if he went in. He kept walking.
He
sauntered past a cheap furniture store and turned, walked
around the back of the darkened store and scoped the side
of the bar. His heart pounded.
Think
hard, Czerniak. Get yourself sighted and blow a big, long
case. Lieutenant Clay will bust you down to patrol. Go
home now. You’re drunk. This ain’t the time
to make points.
But
his feet wouldn’t listen. And where was the van?
Should he call Clay now? Risk pissing him off after the
banquet?
He
noticed a Dumpster behind the club. No cars in back. A
back door. The bartender would come out to dump bottles
now and again. People would come out the back way to smoke
a joint. He crossed the alley and stood behind the club.
No
windows. Music, laughter. Heart pounding, Go home, Czerniak.
You got no audiotape, no video. The back door, a fire
exit with no alarm, not quite latched. Czerniak listened,
then pulled the door open.
No
one was there to notice as he peeked in. He stood at the
end of a dark brown hallway; at the other end, he could
see the neons from the front of the club. Jukebox music,
R&B and laughter. Like any bar, the unreal lighting
that set up a different universe. All rules of normal
life are suspended. Back here another door, maybe the
crapper. And a staircase leading down. He headed down
the steps.
Stupid,
stupid, what are you doing? he thought as he dropped down
the steps as softly as his two hundred–plus pounds
would let him. No cameras, no microphones. If they find
you, you blow everything. And still he couldn’t
turn around, drawn by a pulse in his heart and another
in his feet, his stupid fucking feet. A faint light at
the bottom of the stairs, another hallway. At the end
a single bulb, maybe forty watts. And to the right of
that, a single door, a kitchen-type swinging door with
a round window at eye level. Czerniak could hear chatter
down the hall and more music, something in that room.
As
his heart pulsed, Czerniak felt something else, not the
excitement of nearly catching a crime in progress, not
the fear of fucking up a big case, of getting found out
as a cop, maybe killed. It was the same jolt he felt the
first time he went into a porn parlor at fifteen to look
at girly mags. The ammonia smell of the floors, the perverts
in raincoats and the endless supply of squack, the mother
lode of miles and miles of naked women. Czerniak was a
divining rod for it. He could find anything that had shadows
around it: He could sniff out porn hidden in a church
library or a crap game in a small town miles from the
interstate. He could find drug dealers in an underground
club in a strange city in his first hour. He just couldn’t
stay away from them. The arrests were just an excuse.
He
contemplated this, the refusal of his feet to listen to
his brain saying, Get out, get out now! as he stepped
to the end of the hall, stood back from the window and
adjusted his stance to peek through the dirty glass without
being seen, he hoped.
Eureka.
Czerniak
swallowed hard. Two white chicks in G-strings tongue-kissed
each other, standing between two men, one clamped to the
back of each of them. A heavy white man, Boyle, the club
owner, sat laughing in a chair. He held a mirror for a
third stripper, a smallchested brunette with freckles.
If she wasn’t underage, she would do till underage
came along. She snorted two lines, wiped her nose, hawked
it back and swallowed. Then she unzipped Boyle’s
pants.
Czerniak’s
heart pumped. His throat buzzed down to his crotch.
While
the freckled girl was bent at the waist, a man in a black
suit pulled her G-string down and mounted her from behind.
Czerniak clapped a hand to his mouth. His knees wobbled.
The man leaned forward over the girl, slobbering on her,
with his slicked-back hair and drooping mustache, and
the man turned toward him, the cockeyed smile freezing
on his face as he caught Czerniak’s eyes in the
round window and Czerniak realized that he was looking
into the face of his commanding officer, Lieutenant Harland
Clay.
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