Those to be Forgiven
Published: 4 Jan 2018
So this was all missed out of your report because you didn’t think it had anything to do with the case at the time?
Yeah.
Do you still feel that way?
Well everyone played their part in the final outcome but me getting lifted off of the streets by a bunch of wannabe Scorsese characters wasn’t worth noting.
But you mention it now.
I mention it now because you told me that you wanted to know everything.
And I do. And I appreciate the ‘background colour’.
Background colour…
It was the Samoan at the door to ‘Revelations’ who let us in. Whether he was posted there all night or whether he was just there to welcome us with his stony face I couldn’t say. When he saw the band-aid over the bridge of my nose and the two shiner’s I was sporting he managed to crack a smile. The look he gave my companion though suggested that they had met before and that he was less than impressed with seeing him again.
Pickman was nervous – as twitchy as he ever was. He’d been nervous all day but the whole taxi ride over he was rocking his knee and asking questions: ‘What happens if they don’t accept my story?’ ‘What happens if they won’t let us go?’ I tried my best to calm him. I didn’t need him bugging out if things looked like they were going to turn south. By the time we had entered the club he was a shaking bag of nerves.
Once past the coat check and through the foyer, into the club proper, with all the lights on and no music playing, the atmosphere in the place was very different to the previous night. The last days of Rome had become the clean-up the day after. It seemed more work-a-day and less like something out of a Brian Yuzna film: Barmen were stocking fridges and swapping out optics, a couple of cleaners were mopping the dance floor. It also seemed a hell of a lot larger; cavernous. But I guess that’s to be expected when a place isn’t packed wall to wall with gyrating sweaty bodies.
It was Nasal who saw us from the balcony.
“Hey! Dick!” he called down, his voice echoing. A cleaner and two of the bar men turned their heads – noticing us for the first time.
We looked up.
“Does he mean me?” Pickman mumbled.
“He means me.” I rolled my eyes and made a quick survey of the room: I clocked three fire exists; one behind the bar, another at the far end of the dance floor and the third to the left of the stage.
“Come on up.” He turned from the balcony and stood waiting at the top of the stairs while we slowly ascended, Pickman staying so close to me his shoulder kept grazing mine.
“Hold there.” At the top of the stairs I saw two others. Big guys in suits standing by the door leading to the stairs back of house. “Spread ‘em!”
“What?” Pickman looked to be unsure.
“I said spread ‘em!” Nasal pulled his Glock from his jacket and trained it on Pickman.
“Do as he says.”
“Against the wall.”
Palms flat to olive green wall and with Nasal’s gun on us, the two big guys stepped up and patted us down: shoulders, arms, chest and waist – outer leg and inseam. With rough urgent hands like big slabs of meat they checked us for weapons but wouldn’t find any. I suddenly wished that I had taken my Glock .22 from my desk. They took my wallet, my moleskine notebook and my pen from my trouser pockets and they took a pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter from Pickman – handing them back to us when Nasal nodded.
“You search all your guests?” I asked as I put my wallet back in my trousers.
“The ones who come upstairs we do.” Nasal lead the way and we followed, shadowed by the two golems, through the door and up the narrow staircase.
At the far end of the bare hall way, standing outside the closed door to the office of Marko Keena was Brooklyn and another goon in a suit: shaved head and sharp looking shoulders more like the wingspan of a Boeing. I figured that he must have had to have all his suits tailor made.
“Wait.” Nasal slid over to Brooklyn and the two whispered to one another while the big fucker by their side eyed Pickman and I in a way that put me in mind of how lions look at zebras in nature documentaries. Pickman nudged me with his elbow but didn’t say anything.
Brooklyn knocked on the door and waited for the voice behind it to call out. He entered and closed it behind him.
“You think it’s too late for me to change my mind about this?” Pickman asked me trying to be funny.
I snorted: “We could always just go and get a chinese takeout if you’d prefer?”
“Oh… I’d really fucking prefer.”
As I gave him a smile in the hope of easing his nerves some small fraction, the door opened and Brooklyn stood – hand outstretched beckoning us to enter.
“Gentleman… If you’d be kind enough to join us.” Marko Keena sitting on the edge of his desk.
Pickman and I followed Nasal into Keena’s office, further followed by the giant who had been waiting with Brooklyn outside, the two others staying in the hallway.
Keena’s office was classic well-heeled Hollywood tough guy. His taste in interior decor was as influenced by old-school noir thrillers as his career choice. Wall to wall red carpet and framed posters for various boxing matches dotting the walls. A stocked bar and a replica 1950’s record player. The blinds were pulled shut but I imagine that it had a good view onto the street below. I felt like Dick Tracy about to engage in a tête-à-tête with Flattop.
“Take a seat.” Keena beckoned to two leather wingback chairs that Pickman and I dutifully sat ourselves down in.
“Can I get you something to drink? You’re a whisky man right?” He looked to me. “Single malt… if we have it.” He smiled and I nodded.
“I… I’ll take the same.” Pickman stuttered.
When Keena stood from his desk was when we first clocked the man sitting behind him. He didn’t say anything to us as we sat staring at each other.
Mixed race and in his late thirties… maybe early forties. His hair was cut close and dyed golden. A dark gray suit was well fitted and a pale pink shirt and black tie completed his outfit. He was handsome. I mean… really handsome. Preternaturally so. There wasn’t much of an expression on his face though and it seemed to me, atleast, that he was looking through us rather than at us – which gave me chills.
“Pickman… Mr Quaid…” Keena handed us our glasses of whisky. “This is Mr Christiansands.”
You know… for the record… for your record… I had put two and two together… But still… hearing that name in connection with the man sitting in front of me rewarded my stomach with that knot that I had felt when Pickman mentioned it in his safe house.
“I believe you’ve a story to tell.” He wasn’t looking through us anymore but at us… into us… When I looked into his eyes I noticed that he had Heterochromia: One gray eye and one green.
“Mr Christiansands…” I started.
“Not you.” He looked at Pickman. “Him.” Christian pointed to my associate and it was the first time I saw that his hands were tattooed and covered in gold and silver rings.
It’s strange; you know? When you come face to face with an honest to god urban legend. The stories about Christiansands had been doing the rounds for nearly twenty years but I’d never met anyone who had actually seen him, who had been in the same room as him, who had been told (politely) to shut-the-fuck-up by him. Whatever this was with Red Hook and the Dutchman was enough to get the reclusive gang boss involved personally. I’m not going to lie, as well as being terrified, I was a little thrilled.
Pickman gulped audibly; like they do in cartoons when a character knows he’s in trouble.
“Mr Christiansands?” I could feel Pickman shaking through the floor. “It wasn’t my fault. Sincerely.”
Christian cocked his head but didn’t speak. I looked over to Keena now standing against the bar to our right and smiling. He was clearly enjoying this.
Pickman downed his whisky and then began. He told his story to Christian exactly like he had told it to me. He didn’t miss a beat, didn’t fudge any facts and didn’t make himself out to sound like a hero. He tripped over his words a little but it was his anxiety about losing his fingers that caused that. I saw Marko Keena eye me when he missed out the part that I had embellished about Pickman trying to take out one of the Dutchman’s men. I shrugged.
All through the story while my companion spoke with stutters and a sweat strewn top lip; Christian Christiansands didn’t take his eyes off of Pickman. He didn’t move at all; no nod of the head, no twitch of disbelief… I don’t think he even blinked. He just sat… silent; taking in every word of the tale.
“I promise you Mr Christiansands… I didn’t know… If I had’ve known I wouldn’t have got involved. It was a mistake…”
“A fucking mistake?” Keena, red faced and snarling, looked from Pickman to Brooklyn and Nasal behind us. “Your fucking mistake cost four of my best their lives! Your fucking mistake damaged the reputation of the largest syndicate in the city! Your fucking mistake…”
“Marko!” Christian didn’t have to raise his voice. The tone of it was enough to keep Keena in check and his mouth shut. There was something to the timbre. Something of honey laced with strychnine.
Christian Christiansands reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out the card that The Dutchman had given Pickman to hand over. The one that Pickman had given to me and that I in turn had passed on to Marko Keena.
“Had you ever heard this name before?” He asked as he rubbed the pad of his thumb over the symbol dotted in the corner. I wondered if he felt that sickness that hit me; that had hit Keena when we did the same… If he did then he didn’t show it.
Pickman shook his head. Christian then looked at me. Which I took as a sign to shake my own.
Christian turned the card over in his ring enveloped fingers. “It’s a shame that you’ve been caught up in this.” He placed the card on the table and looked to the two of us. “But you have been caught up in this… and the way I see it… and this is the way I see it… you owe me a favour.”
I looked to Pickman. We both knew that the best possible solution, the best possible outcome of that night and that meeting was that he would have to end up owing something to Christian Christiansands.
“Whatever you need.” Pickman was quick to speak. “Whatever I can do to fix my part in this.”
Christian turned to me.
“I’m just here for moral support.”
I think he sort-of-smiled. It wasn’t easy to tell.
“You’re a good friend.” Christian to me. “Most would have left Pickman with the mess he had made.”
“I’ve ambitions of sainthood.”
That sort-of-smile again.
“You’ve both heard my name. You’ve both heard what I’ve had to do to get where I am today. Some of what you’ve heard is correct and true. Some of it isn’t.” He picked The Dutchman’s card off the desk and looked it over one more time before returning it to the pocket inside his jacket. “I don’t mind the rumours. I don’t mind the conjecture. It helps me carry out my business. It helps me stay where I am. What I do mind is being challenged.”
“I can help. I want to help.” Pickman was quick to answer his call.
“Dieprink is looking for something. He wants something that I have.” He looked behind us to the giant with the Boeing shoulders who placed a red carpet bag on the desk in front of us. “He wants something I have because he’s too much of a coward to go and get it himself.” Christian opened the carpet bag and I felt every muscle in my body tense as I waited for him to pull out a machete or a machine gun… even a fucking bazooka wouldn’t have surprised me. Instead he had in his hands a small clear plastic tupperware tub filled with seeds.
Christiansands removed the lid from the tub while Keena looked at him like he was unsure what his boss was doing; Christian either didn’t notice of didn’t care.
“Why are you telling us this?” I asked, immediately regretting speaking when he looked directly at me.
“Because you’re a detective and your friend is a fixer.” He took the carpet bag from the desk and dropped it to the floor to the left of him; leaving the tupperware tub of seeds between us – his ringed fingers pinching and releasing the little brown and ochre kernels. “Because you owe me a favour and you should know how I want that favour satisfied.”
I felt Boeing stand behind us, a hand on the back of each of our wingback chairs.
“Anything you need Mr Christiansands. Anything at all that I can do to prove to you that I had no direct knowing hand in what happened.” Pickman might as well have been on the floor on hands and knees.
“I’m here for Pickman, Mr Christiansands. This isn’t my problem. Your men here have already roughed me up and I’m working a case that’s taking up a lot of my time. I don’t really…” I don’t know why I spoke. I really don’t. I should have kept my god damned mouth shut. Too many tough guy heroes in film and literature and you come away with notions… know what I mean?
“Marko told me he looked through your briefcase. He told me what you’re working on…”
“Then you appreciate that I’ve got my hands full.”
He cracked a recognisable smile while he looked me over: “Considering your… history… I can see why it’s so important to you.”
I think my eyes must have popped out of my head.
“I get it.” He stood from Keena’s desk. “Past failures find redemption through your present actions..”
I was shaking… a mixture of fear and anger, my eyes on his.
“It wasn’t difficult to dig into your past Detective.” He opened the top drawer of the desk and withdrew a club hammer and ran his thumb over the smooth surface of the heavy squared off head.
I took a breath. More than anything I wanted to kill him in that moment. Feel his throat in my hands, his trachea crushed and the light fading from his eyes… I could feel Pickman’s eyes on me: questioning and desperate to know what demons kept me awake at night.
As I was about to speak Boeing’s hand gripped my shoulder and forced my body forward up and out of the chair. His other hand grabbed my wrist and slammed my arm on the table. I would swear that the grip force on that fucker was near a metric ton. At the sudden violence Pickman jumped from his chair like a startled cat – falling at first over the desk and knocking the tub: he scrambled under Christian’s glare and darted out of the way… but made no move to intercede on my behalf, instead sinking his hands into his pockets.
“Open your hand.” Christian’s calm voice – something of the way a disappointed parent might talk to their spoilt brat.
What I wanted to do was to scream ‘Fuck You!’ and raise my fist to him. To beat him to a bloody pulp. What I knew I needed to do was stay calm and speak to him with the respect he believed he deserved. What I managed to do was somewhere in between: I kept my fist closed. “Look Mr Christiansands…”
“I said open your hand.” He never raised his voice. I wonder if he’s ever had to. Or whether people just find themselves naturally inclined to respond no matter how he talks.
Boeing raised me off of the desk and slammed me back down forcing my hand open as my elbow caught the edge of the desk and my cheek hit the surface. My struggling against him got me nowhere. I might as well have been a kitten in the jaws of a Great Dane. The imagined flashes of violence I wanted to bring to Christiansands would only ever be that: Imagined.
I didn’t see it… Just felt it: the excruciating pain as Christian crushed my hand with the heavy club hammer. Before my own scream of pain I heard the five bones of my metacarpals crack under the weight of the blow. My body shifted but my arm stayed where it was under Boeing’s weight. When I did scream I imagined that it couldn’t have gone unheard in the near silent club below.
Boeing pulled me back into the chair where I crumpled into it like tissue paper. His look to Pickman was enough force him back into the chair beside me.
Christian was already at the bar when I looked up; handing the club hammer to Brooklyn and filling a bucket with ice and water while Keena stood smiling by his side.
“Put your hand in here.” He handed over the metal ice bucket to Pickman who held it out for me. “It’ll lessen the swelling and help with the pain.”
I cradled my hand while he stared at me, keeping my tear filled eyes on him while he sat down again behind the desk. I won’t say that it was nothing. It was fucking painful. He’d broken all the bones between fingers and wrist. It was a stable fracture so at least it set back easily enough… A couple of months after the cast came off and a little physiotherapy twice a week though and I still can’t ball my left hand into a fist.
When my hand hit the bucket of ice water there was an instant bit of relief. Not a lot. But enough to stop it feeling like it was going to burn off.
“I’ll say it again Detective: You owe me a favour and I need that favour satisfied. Would you care to assist… or would you care to lose the use of your other hand?”
I looked up at him with undisguised hatred and he knew it. But he didn’t care.
It was Pickman who spoke for me: “He’ll help. He’ll help.” He looked at me pleadingly. “Won’t you Ramsay?”
It took me a few seconds; long drawn out seconds where I burned the club I now sat in to the ground leaving the bodies of Christiansands and Boeing and Keena smouldering in the cinders. Burn it down and salt the earth was all I could think.
“Ramsay?” Something in Pickman’s voice: something urgent and afraid.
I acquiesced and nodded,
“The seeds here come from an island south of the West Coast.” Christian continued talking as if the past few minutes hadn’t happened. “A little bird wanted to keep his sweetheart out of trouble after the sweetheart’s family displeased me. Like you he begged to help me. Like you he did what I asked.” Christian pulled out a pinch of the seeds between his fingers. “The seeds belong to a strain of marijuana called Rackham’s Purple Kush. It grows wild in one small square on one small island. Nowhere else.”
Pickman’s eyes lit up at the thought of a new strain of weed he’d never tried.
“I had some farmers try growing some but the seeds don’t produce the same results in any other soil. There seems to be something rather special about the volcanic makeup of that island.”
“W… Why can’t you just ship some soil over from the island?” I asked with a slight stutter, the pain in my hand still my overriding concern.
“We tried that… It doesn’t work. It still grows but it doesn’t produce female plants. No female plants. No more seeds. And more seeds are what I need.” He folded his hands on the desk in front of him and looked between Pickman and I. “The cannabinoids that the male produces are still surprisingly strong but I’m not looking to become a pot dealer. Again… the seeds are what I need.”
“Couldn’t you grow them on the island?” Pickman using the logic processing part of his brain.
“I’m not welcome there. My men aren’t welcome there. If it’s not fat old hippies bearing ancient grudges on one side it’s pseudo-religious fish cults on the other…”
“If… If you don’t mind my asking.” I tried to be cordial despite the rage that he had fired within me and despite how much agony I felt in my hand. I honestly don’t think I’d ever felt anything quite like it. “If you’re not looking to grow to sell, why do you need more seeds?”
“That is not your concern.” Christian smiled to himself, I imagine remembering something with a certain amount of fondness. “What is your concern, is Dieprink.”
“What do you need from us?” Pickman looking from Christian to me.
“What I need from you two, is to aid Marko in finding The Dutchman.”
Marko stood from resting at the bar: “I don’t need…”
Christian’s small turn of the head and cold eyes resting on the face of his lieutenant had Marko silent and submissive.
“Once again… You’re a detective…” He looked to me. “And you’re a fixer.” He looked to Pickman. “Between the two of you you should be able to locate him. Dieprink has a flare for the theatrical. Finding him should be easy for a couple of well regarded professionals like yourselves.”
“If we find The Dutchman? We’re square?” I hated him but thoughts of my hand and my husband and where the two might intersect made the desire to play ball the be all and end all.
“Find The Dutchman and we’re square.” Christian reached into the inside jacket pocket of his expensive dark gray suit and placed a silver signet ring on the table between us. “Marko and I already have someone at work trying to locate Dieprink. Wear this…” He nodded to the ring and smiled. “On your good hand… He’ll know to trust you if he sees that you have that.”
I picked up the ring: A wolf headed turtle encircled by flame. Looking back to Christian – his eyes stayed on me expectantly. I struggled with only the one working hand but still managed to put the ring on my middle finger.
“Excellent. He already has your number Detective. He’ll be in touch in the next few days. Use that time to get your hand looked at. From now on everything goes through Marko. All going well, we won’t have to meet ever again.”
Pickman and I were bundled out the office, down the stairs and out of the office at speed. Practically thrown onto the street by Nasal and the two big lugs that acted as security. They let me keep the ice bucket.
“Where to now?” Pickman starting to light a cigarette.
“A hospital.”
We took a cab to Mount Sinai Beth Israel where we waited in A&E for a few hours. Pickman was ‘kind enough’ to fill out the insurance forms seeing as I had limited maneuverability. He was still fidgety but considerably less wired than he was when we were at Keena’s club.
While he made a coffee run I looked at the ring that Christian had given me: the floating turtle shell and with the head of a wolf poking out, flames running around the edges of the circle that rung the beast; the art worked looked Asian – Chinese maybe? There were no characters so no real clue other than the brush stroke looking design.
When Pickman sat down and handed me a shitty plastic cup of shitty vending machine coffee, he smiled. “You know, all in all… that could have have gone a lot worse.”
I wanted to punch him.
“I mean it’s like you said, the best outcome was that we would end up owing him something and if all we need to do is find The Dutchman…”
“Fuck. You.” I sipped at the coffee wondering if I threw it in his face what kind of mark it would leave.
“Oh!” Suddenly remembering we were in a hospital and that my hand was broken. “Yeah… Look! I’m real sorry about your hand. But you have to admit, considering the stories about Christiansands and what he’s done to others for a lot less… a few broken bones isn’t such a bad deal.”
“Fuck. You.”
He took the cue to be silent but Pickman being Pickman couldn’t help himself. After a couple of minutes of sitting in silence and sipping our coffees as the general commotion of the A&E department went on around us he asked: “What Christian said in the club… About you… past failures and redemption and all that… Can I ask what he meant?”
“No.”
“Don’t you think that…”
“No.”
He went quiet again. And we returned to silence for the next fifteen minutes.
A nurse eventually came and and took me through to orthopedic surgery where a junior doctor reset the bones in my hand and a technician applied a cast. I had movement in my fingers but not much and the cast meant I couldn’t bend my wrist. I thought about David and what lie I’d have to tell him about how I ended up this way. I did get a nice line in painkillers though; made me a little loopy… which probably accounts for the fucked-up dreams I had that night.
I’d half expected him to make a run for it but when I came back out into the waiting room Pickman was still there. I sat down beside him and he looked at the cast.
“You want me to sign it?”
“What are you? Twelve?”
He smiled and we sat in silently watching the thrum and tumble of a Saturday night in a New York A&E department.
“I meant to say…” He began but stopped to look at me expectantly.
“What?”
Pickman reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pinch of seeds.
“Are these Christians seeds?”
He nodded with a shit eating grin. Proud as punch.
“How did you?”
“When the big bastard picked you out of the chair I knocked into the pot of… pot… and lifted a few.”
I shook my head and smiled: “And what are you going to do with them?”
“Well… I have a guy.”
I wasn’t surprised. Of course he knew a ‘guy’. It’s his job to know ‘guys’. “And what do you expect your ‘guy’ to do with a handful of seeds?”
“You can’t tell me you’re not interested to see what the big deal is?”
“I’m not interested.”
“Not even a little?”
I thought about it. I was very interested to know what was so special about those seeds. What it was that would call for murder and intrigue. Why the most powerful boogeyman in New York was getting challenged for them… “OK. I’m a little interested.”
Pickman’s smile was wide as he dropped the seeds back into his pocket amidst all the lint.
“So… where to now?” he asked.
“You still got that shitty Ford Pinto?”
“In a lock up yeah.”
“It runs?”
“Yeah.”
“Looks like you’re driving me to North Carolina.”
“What?”
“I’ve still got a case to work.” I got up from the seat, bag of painkillers in hand. “And Christian gave us a few days before Keena’s guy would get in contact…”
“But..”
“No! No ‘buts’ I need to get to North Carolina and you owe me more favours now than you can ever hope to repay.”
He thought about it with a typical Pickman put-upon grimace.
“We have two days. Three tops. We use those days where you help me or you’re on your own from here on in. Your choice.” Of course I wouldn’t have actually have left him on his own to deal with Christian, Keena and The Dutchman: for his own sake; for mine, for fear of what might happen to David if Keena followed through on his threat.
“OK!” He stood up and tried to eyeball me. “But three days. No more. We go do your thing and then we go deal with mine.”
“Deal.” I stuck out my hand which he took with his sweaty paw and shook a little too keenly.
As we made our way to the door passing drunks and junkies and the occasional actual emergency he finally asked: “What’s in North Carolina anyway?”
“That we won’t find out until we get there.” I said as we hit the sidewalk.
To be continued…
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