The Man Who Came Uptown
- Автор: Пелеканос Джордж
- Год: 2018
- Язык: английский
- Год: Mulholland Books / Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN: 978-0-316-47982-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Man Who Came Uptown». Краткое содержание книги:
Phil Ornazian and Thaddeus Ward sat in Ward’s Crown Vic behind the shuttered general store, waiting. They had rolled the dice, hoping that the three vehicles they had seen outside the tan-siding house in the pines the night before would be headed off to work the following morning. They had met up at Ward’s bail-bond office before dawn.
A traffic alert on Ornazian’s phone had told him that a tractor-trailer overturn on 270 North had shut down the highway, so they headed toward Baltimore in darkness and caught Route 70 in the direction of Frederick.
“They call this the Heroin Highway,” said Ward as they hit 70 East. “State police randomly stop cars with West Virginia plates. Those boys make their pickup in Baltimore and drive the product back to their home state. Lots of heroin transactions in the parking lot of that Walmart in Mount Airy too.”
“How do you know all this?” said Ornazian.
“Fella I worked with in Four D, name of Burnside. Moved out to West Virginia after he left the force. You know how police do. Burnside took his tier-two retirement and put the big city in his rearview. But he never stopped being a cop. Burnside knows what goes on in all these towns up here, Maryland, West Virginia... Pennsetucky too.”
“Did you ask him about Hillville?”
Ward nodded. “He says Hillville is the meth capital of Maryland. Told me to mind myself up here, ’cause these Hillvillies don’t take kindly to strangers they think might be law. ’Specially the federal type.”
“We’re not law,” said Ornazian.
“Who don’t know that?” said Ward.
Coming off Route 15 onto Hillville Road, they saw a sign in a plowed field announcing a pending housing development. On the sign was spray-painted the words Get out.
They had arrived in a kind of town center — a church, a gas station and small market, and widely spaced houses. Farther along, the houses were smaller and in disrepair. Some had weed-ridden cars, trucks, and farm equipment in their yards. beware of dog signs and multiple satellite dishes were common. They came to a shuttered general store at the foot of the Catoctin Mountains. There the road wound up toward the house where Terry Kelly stayed with his friends. Ward pulled the Vic around back of the store, put it nose-out so they could see the road, and cut the engine.
Back behind the store was a semicircle of houses so small they were nearly shacks. In the center of the semicircle was a rusted-out jungle gym and swing set. One of the houses had an open, unhinged front door. Another had windows spray-painted black.
“Meth pads,” said Ward.
An hour past dawn, the Charger came down the hill, followed by a boxy Jeep with oversize tires and a Chevy half-ton truck.
“That’s them,” said Ornazian.
“The new Klansmen.”
“More like wannabe Nazis.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Their playbook is Mein Kampf. They carved the number fourteen into the Weitzmans’ dining-room table.”
“And that means what?”
“Fourteen words. The white-nationalist slogan. ‘I am a coward and a loser and I blame my failure on other people.’”
Ward counted it out on his fingers. “That’s fifteen words.”
“See? These guys could fuck up a wet dream. Let’s go to their house.”
Ward drove up the hill. He passed the house with its now empty driveway and kept going for another two miles. The road ended at a county watershed area with no trespassing signs mounted on a closed gate.
“I don’t like it,” said Ward. “Only way out is back down that hill.”
“Always with the negative waves, Moriarty.”
“Now you’re losing me, man.”
Ward made a three-point turn and drove down the grade. They went by a ramshackle home set improbably on a steep hill, where three young men sat on a porch and hard-eyed them as they passed. Ward continued on and parked on the shoulder of the road, just a bit north of the tan rambler set in the stand of pines.
“We’re out of the sight lines of the other houses,” said Ward.
Ornazian looked around at the surrounding woods and nodded. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
They went to the trunk of the Crown Vic and opened it. They gloved their hands but did not use stockings on their faces. Ward checked his Glock, holstered it, and left his shotgun where it lay. Ornazian slid the .38 into his dip and reached for his retractable baton.
“You won’t need that today,” said Ward. He unzipped a duffel bag and extracted a twenty-five-inch-long Blackhawk special-ops entry ram, gripping it by its top handle. There were also handles on both sides of the batterer.
“You police love your toys,” said Ornazian.
“This is a nice tool right here. It weighs thirty pounds. Even you could handle it.”
“Why’s it got three handles? You only have two hands.”
“It’s designed so right-handed dudes and left-handed dudes can use it. Dumbass.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I’m a little sensitive right now.”
“Is it your time of month?”
“I hate when you blame all of my emotions on that.”
They looked around once more, crossed the roughly paved road, and walked to the back of the house.
“I don’t hear no dogs,” said Ward.
The house backed to a hill of weed and boulders. The rear door was up three concrete steps, where there was a small landing. Ornazian tried the door to negative effect, then stepped back as Ward stood before it, feet planted firmly, and gripped the forward handle of the ram with his left hand, one of the rear handles with his right. He swung the ram into the jamb, and the door opened, its frame splintering cleanly. Ward placed the battering ram on the concrete landing and both of them stepped into the house.
They were in a kitchen that smelled of garbage. A sack of it was full and open in a plastic basket, and there were dirty dishes, cups, and silverware piled in the sink. A cheaply made dining table outside the kitchen held four chairs. There was an open living area with a couch, cable-spool table, recliner, and wide-screen television.
On the cable-spool table sat an open laptop, many empty beer cans, a bong, a bag of buds, rolling papers, plastic lighters, and an ashtray full of cigarette butts and roaches. Posters showing Aryan faces and accompanying slogans were thumbtacked haphazardly to the walls. WE HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST. FIGHTING TO TAKE BACK OUR COMMUNITIES ONE STREET AT A TIME. OUR FUTURE BELONGS TO US.
Ornazian scanned the posters, the words, the bold fonts and art deco — style images typically found on Ayn Rand book covers.
He went to the laptop and looked at the site that was still up on the screen, a music label promoting its product and its racist ideology. Ornazian hit one of the songs on a downloadable list, something called “When the Righteous Day Comes” by a band named Blood Duty. Growls and red-needle guitars filled the room.
“Even their music sucks,” said Ornazian.
“Turn that shit off,” said Ward. “What we’re looking for ain’t out here. Let’s go to the bedrooms.”
There were three of them. Ornazian and Ward worked each room together. They opened drawers and shoeboxes, tossed closets, sliced up mattresses. In the largest bedroom, the last one they entered, boxes of a prescription medication, a combination of promethazine and codeine, were stacked on a small throw rug in a corner. Next to the stacks, lined up, sat bottles of NyQuil. Christopher Perry, the kid from Northeast, had been right. These guys were cutting their Lean with over-the-counter cold medicine.
“Fuck is that mess?” said Ward.
“The latest trash high.”
“In my day, the burnouts huffed glue out of paper bags.”