Rough Justice Read Free

Posing as cops, yeah, that was it.”
    â€œI mean, they weren’t posing, Wells. They were cops, I mean. They were really cops.”
    My hand fell away from my shirt pocket. I almost said something. Then I didn’t. I sat on the edge of the empty bed. I watched the man’s sagging gullet work each breath over. I watched the cloth of his pajama top shudder.
    â€œYou,” I said.
    He frowned. His lips trembled. A tear spilled out of one eye. It ran into his crow’s-feet, worked its way through the map of crevices on his face, dripped onto his pillow. He had to take an enormous gasp for air, and he coughed it back out again.
    Goddamn it , I thought. It was a good story. A very good story. But I did not want a good story right then. I wanted to go home. I wanted to watch the Mets.
    â€œMy partner brought it to me,” Frank D’ Angelo whispered. “A favor for some guys, he said. Wiseguys, but okay, he said. Good money in it.” He shifted his head a little so he could look at me. Look at me with those burning eyes. “We were plainclothes, then, you know. We were way on the pad, deep on. It seemed like just another thing, you know. That’s what he said it was, my partner. Just another thing. A favor.”
    I took a breath, tried to keep steady. I wanted a cigarette bad now.
    â€œYou know …” He faltered. A strange sound came out of his chest. “You know that school, that kid’s school. On Mulberry Street.”
    I shook my head. “I guess. Sure.”
    â€œThat’s where we took him. E.J.—” He fought back a coughing fit. “They were building it then. Making a sort of yard, like a … like a playground. Filling in the foundation. A dump truck … They had a dump truck there. Rough stone in it, you know. Like gravel, only big. Big pieces of gravel.”
    â€œWho? Who had them?”
    â€œFour guys. Wiseguy types. Muscle. They were waiting for us. I didn’t know them.”
    â€œOkay,” I said.
    â€œYeah. So they took E.J. out of the car. And E.J. started screaming. So one of the guys stuffed a rubber ball in his mouth. Taped it shut. One of the other guys, he says to me, ‘You wanna watch this?’ He’s laughing. ‘This is gonna be good,’ he says. ‘Hang around and watch this.’” Sergeant Frank D’ Angelo’s whole body shook. “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to know about it, you know? But my partner, he got all excited. ‘Let’s hang around,’ he said. ‘Let’s hang around and watch.’ I figured they were gonna, you know, bust him up a little.”
    I rubbed a hand over my face. I’d begun to sweat. “Hot in here,” I muttered. My lungs were working hard, really itching for that smoke.
    â€œThey tied him up,” Frank rasped. “E.J. They tied him up, hands and feet so he couldn’t stand, he just could lie there. Then they tossed him into the hole, the foundation hole. It went down. It was deep. And there was a big construction fence there so no one could see from the street. But the people in the other buildings—some of them … They must’ve seen. Some of them.”
    â€œWait a minute,” I said.
    â€œThen they backed up the dump truck …”
    â€œWait a minute, didn’t they shoot him?”
    A second tear spilled down that wasted face.
    â€œDidn’t they shoot him?” I said.
    â€œThey said, ‘Wait around and watch this.’ They said, ‘This is gonna be funny.’ They just backed up the truck and dumped the gravel over him. He was still alive, Wells. They poured the gravel over him. Slow-like. I could see his face for a long time. I could see him thrashing around. Then after … after he was all covered …” He stopped for a second, but he didn’t cough. He hardly breathed. “… you could just see the gravel shifting. Moving, you know, with