Faith Pusher

Faith Pusher



Randolph squinted at his partner and then blinked to say “What?” He had to wait for Ortiz to finish the mouthful of pistachios to get a repeat on his last statement. Detective Danny Ortiz smiled with nut meat showing and spoke slowly, “I said…you can close the file on your buddy Wilson.” His tongue corralled the loose pieces to his back molars to finish the job. He picked up a glossy photo and sailed it across the desk. It landed right side up on a stack of cold case files. Randolph pulled drug store reading glasses from his jacket pocket and settled them on a nose busted and set too many times to care anymore. He left it broken after the last arrest in a projects drug raid. The mother of the suspect had hit him flat in the face with an iron skillet with total disregard for his Glock pressed against her boy’s head. He always said they don’t smoke crack to get smarter. He pinched the glossy between two fingers and brought it close enough to see.
“Which rooftop?”
“Bronx Lebanon,” Ortiz knew why he was asking.
“I thought it would have been St. Barney’s.” Detective Kerry Randolph turned and waved the picture at Ortiz, “I would have put your paycheck on it. If Wilson was going to crack his egg that it would have been where his daughter died. He called me from there every time. I figured he would end it there.”
Ortiz nodded and told his secret, “He lost it at Lebanon Hospital because last night his grandbaby died there right after being born…a little girl. I heard he had been asked to name her.”
Randolph said “Amy?”
Ortiz nodded, “Amy…she lived for 2 hours.”
Randolph took his glasses off. “I’ll miss those phone calls.”
They both laughed a little to shed some of the gloom. Randolph opened the drawer and took out a manila folder stuffed with handwritten notes. “Regular as the changing of the guard, he called every Thursday at 10:38 AM to tell me what he was going to do if he got his hands on her killer.” He pulled a sheet of paper with close spaced lines scrawled with transcripts, “Subject quoted as saying, I’m going to drag him to the fucking river and gut him then I’m going to climb in his rib cage and paddle him like a shit canoe to Jersey.”
Ortiz took his feet off his desk to sit up to keep from choking on the nuts, “Read,” he was waving the hand that wasn’t reaching for his coffee cup, “read the one from New Years Eve.”
Kerry riffled the stack looking at the dates, “Here it is, the only one he didn’t call on Thursday.” He cleared his throat, “Subject was quoted as saying, Let him out Randolph, I’ll meet you at the Statue of Liberty. I’m going to take him to the top of the torch and gut him and then I’m going to cut his asshole out and tie his intestines to the railing and climb down them like it was a fucking bedsheet in a jailbreak.” 
“That’s some harsh language from a street preacher.” Ortiz brushed a crumb from his tie. “The gangs were scared to death of him.”
“I don’t know about scared as much as they respect vengeance. To them he just wanted to do a crazy drive by and they didn’t want to be on that porch when it happened.”
Ortiz shook his head in agreement, “I can picture him doing it.”
Randolph slipped the transcript back in to the folder, “And I never had any doubt that he meant every word…he loved that little girl.”
The gloom returned.
Ortiz took the picture back and said, “How do you want to work this?”
Randolph shrugged, “It’s a suicide. What’s there to work?”
“Maybe you should talk to the witness,” Danny nodded to a chair in the corner. The man looked like a pile of sticks holding clothes off the floor. Randolph put on his interrogation face and pulled the gold badge on his belt around to the front.
Ortiz snorted, “I think he knows where he is at, Detective Randolph.”
Kerry gave him his middle finger down low as he stood up. To the seated man, “Excuse me, sir.” A soft snoring came from the clothes pile. Randolph walked closer and turned his head with pursed lips. He brought his hand to cover his mouth and nose, but the urine smell still made him cough. He nudged the chair with his shoe and stepped back when the man stirred and farted. A crusted face lifted to peer from a mess of gray hair. On the floor in front of him was a ball cap with World War II Veteran stenciled across the back. Randolph figured the geezer was old enough to have fought with Custer at Little Big Horn. “I understand that you were a credible eyewitness to a suicide on the rooftop of the Bronx Lebanon Hospital last night?”
The man dug at one eye. Ortiz suggested that he use shorter words. The middle finger appeared again. Randolph started to repeat his question when the man waved him off, “I’m not deaf. All you asshole cops think everyone on the street is fucking deaf and stupid.” He rubbed across his face, “Is that coffee I smell?” Randolph reached over and retrieved the fresh cup that Ortiz had just poured and gave it to the witness.
The man took it, “Cream and sugar?”
Ortiz rolled his eyes and handed over two packets of each. Bums always negotiated for the best deal when they had useful information.
Randolph waited for a couple of seconds before asking, “Your name, sir?”
The bum emptied the packets into the cup and looked around, “Spoon?”
Randolph gave him a pencil from the nearest desk, “Stir it up, drink it up, we don’t have all day.”
This made a toothless grin, “See, kids, therein lies your problem. I do have all day.” Randolph backed off while he sipped the coffee.
Ortiz interrupted, “You want to read the report to date?”
Randolph palmed both his hands up. He had been so wrapped up in the news he had forgot that protocol required an initial report with the facts to date. He took the file from Ortiz and did a speed read through the standard jargon until he got to where it started with “Subject Wilson, upon being informed by the attending physician that his grand daughter had passed away from complications, smashed a drinking glass with his right hand. Subject Wilson then proceeded to draw a heart on the floor approximately three feet across by smearing his bleeding hand on the floor. Subject Wilson then slapped the palm of his bleeding hand in the center of said heart and exclaimed, “I told you to take me instead.” Subject Wilson repeated this statement over and over up to the point when he took two automatic pistols from under his coat and ran to the stairwell. The attending physician notified hospital security to call 911.” The report had a picture of the bloody heart graffiti paperclipped to it.
The drunk said, “I’m ready, now.”
Kerry ignored him and looked at Ortiz, “They must have been crapping crab cakes at Bronx Lebanon.”
Ortiz pointed at the man shuffling towards the door. Randolph got a piece of the greasy peacoat and pulled him back to the chair, “Time to pay for the coffee, citizen.”
The man stared at the checkerboard linoleum, “I don’t want no trouble for being on that roof.”
Randolph said, “I figured you were catching some air after visiting a fellow vet in the psych ward. Tell me what you saw.”
Satisfied he wasn’t making a case against himself; spoke up, “My name is Litchfield. I wasn’t always like this…I had a job, wife, kids…” he was setting up to ramble on. The detective cut him off, “That’s all you’re getting, coffee and the door.”
“Okay, okay, I was sitting on the roof by the vents kinda enjoying the quiet when this white guy in the suit comes busting out onto the roof. He is one kind of pissed.” Litchfield pushed strands back from his face. “I saw them guns and I melted to the shadows…just like in the war.” Randolph scratched the back of his neck to show his impatience. The man picked up the pace, “He is all screaming at the sky, waving them guns.”
Randolph asked, “Could you hear what he was saying?”
“Oh, no problem there, no problem there. He was clear as a bell…well that was until he started firing those pistols. Then I couldn’t hear so good because my ears was ringing.” Randolph rubbed his face, smoothing his mustache, “Can you tell me what he was saying?”
The bum looked at the Styrofoam cup and decided it was most likely going to stay empty, “He kept saying,” he paused to get it right, “the same thing again and again; he kept saying “I told you to never take one of mine again” and then he would fire at the sky. Screaming at God and then shooting at Him.” Litchfield imitated the scene with his finger pistols pointing at the ceiling in the office. “Pop, pop, pop.”
Randolph interjected, “So you think he was shooting at God?”
The man nodded, “Oh, I know he was. And if you ask me he meant to put those bullets right through the seat of the throne. Like I said, he was one kind of pissed off. Then he reloaded the one pistol and put it to his head.”
Detective Randolph said, “And this is when he committed suicide, you saw that?”
When Litchfield laughed, the overhead light in the office made the gray stubble on his face shine like silver. “Sir, that man put that gun to his head and looked up to heaven and told God he was coming up there to kick His ever loving ass. Then pop.” He laughed some more before getting up and walking out the door. Randolph watched the door until it shut.
Ortiz spoke to break the silence, “So, boss, you want me to put this down as a suicide…close it like that?”
Randolph sat in the chair vacated by the bum, “Unless you know of a city municipal code for Assault and Battery consummated on the Almighty.”
Ortiz stamped the file closed, “Fucking Wilson.”
Randolph dropped the cup into the trash can on the way to his desk, “Yeah, fucking Wilson.”
The cup fell in slow motion. “I hope God was on His “A” game last night.”
“I hope he can take a nine millimeter to the nuts.”
They both looked out the window at the New York skyline.
“He loved that little girl…I’ll always give him that.”
Ortiz moved the bag of pistachios to reach his phone, “I need to call my kids.”
“Yeah, me too.” Randolph leaned forward to look down at the street below, his breath fogged the pane. A tear spattered on the sill, “I’ll miss those phone calls.”