Beating the Wind

When the police cruiser came to a stop by the #123 bus stop, Freddie Storm recognized the officer in the passenger seat and ran for his life. Freddie turned left on Newark Avenue and tore down the long straightaway to Dickinson High School, a fortress on the flat hilltop above.

The evening breeze kicked up and buffeted Freddie’s skin, slapping his face. The wind snapped him out of the fitful thoughts screaming in his brain as he tried to work out what was happening. Freddie knew from what was happening that he’d made a terrible mistake. But what had he done?

Freddie knew the four officers from the rip at the truck stop a few weeks back. And he knew that they wanted him dead. Freddie’s asthma kicked in. His throat was dry, and it was hard for him to swallow. The air was coming in like he was sucking through a coffee stirrer. He gasped for air as his legs churned.

Freddie knew they were coming for him, because of what he had seen, just like they’d promised, but he still couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t said a word to anyone except his pastor at St. Nicholas’s, but there is no way they could have known about that. It seemed like a paranoid delusion that would pass. They couldn’t be coming for him. But it was very real. He knew it in every nerve of his being.

Freddie’s legs burned and ached from climbing up the hill. His chest heaved from the effort. His labored breath crackled loudly with the wheeze of his constricting airway. The anxiety that pressed on his chest and stomach surged with electric shocks of fear as the sirens blared. He could hear the cycling of the sirens, which whooped in the night behind him. Getting closer. The sound grew louder.

Louder still, Freddie could hear his footfalls against the blacktop. He could hear his heart in his chest. Where should he go? The only safe place to hide which would be full of people this late in the evening was the High School.

Freddie scanned the road ahead leading up to the entrance to the high school, a wrought iron gate that led to a set of zigzagging concrete stairs. There were a handful of people loitering in the lobby of the auto repair shop across the street. Two out front were smoking pre-rolls, and laughing as one of them filled a man’s semi-truck with diesel. There was a couple out on their balcony looking down from across the way, smoking cigarettes over a bottle of Carlo Rossi. And a few students further up the road laughing. Would any of them hear his cries? Would the Irish officer who had tried to help him do anything? Freddie knew that if he could just get into the entrance of Dickinson High, there were video cameras, and he would be safe. He would have a chance.

Looking back over his shoulder, Freddie saw the skinny one, Delgado, in plain clothes, red-faced, running up Newark Avenue after him with his gun drawn and held down by his right side, his left hand steadying the barrel. On the streets, he was known as the Weasel because he was quick, nasty, and relentless. And he was bearing down on Freddie as he cried out, “Help! They’re gonna kill me.”

Right behind Delgado was Sgt. Danny Gelbin, the red-headed one who spotted him at the truck stop, sucking wind and flushed from the exertion. His skin was blotchy and his arms were engorged with blood from the edema from his pill habit.

Freddie wanted to call 911, to call someone, to ask for help—but who do you call when the protectors themselves are the threat? These were the ‘Jump Out Boys’ as they were known on the streets, and they were Chief Lahmi’s own personal Praetorian Guard, untouchable on the streets.

Freddie had been unfortunate enough to stumble on a crime scene and witness enough to take them down. Freddie had gotten mixed up with a militia that a few of his friends had joined, and that was how he had heard about the rip. They had heavily recruited young men like himself in their early twenties. After receiving a tip off, he’d gone to see for himself without ever knowing that the Jump Out Boys were behind it. And that was his fatal mistake. They would never risk Freddie telling what he knew.

The well-built black officer, Olsen, and the squat, fat, bald Polish one, Poland, were still in the SUV, which had just turned the corner and was accelerating, cutting the night with an aggressive roar of exhaust.

Freddie had been headed to his girlfriend Roxanne’s down by Christ Hospital, to her red-bricked two-story duplex apartment on Palisade Avenue. She would be waiting for him. Calling his cell phone. Wondering what had happened to him. And then she would get a call and get the news from his mother, Grace.

Freddie climbed the fence, hopped the gate leading to the high school entrance, and started running up the winding concrete stairs, making it up two flights, screaming, “Help! Help! Anyone.”

That was when Delgado caught him and shoved him forward, holstering his weapon as Freddie went down. Despite putting his hands out and absorbing the shock of the concrete, which scratched and bruised his palms, so that they stung, Freddie’s jaw still hit the edge of the concrete stair in front of him and Freddie could taste blood in his mouth and feel the warming of a deep gash across the bottom of his jaw. He was momentarily stunned. Instinctively, Freddie tried to turn away and get back to his feet, but it was too late.

Freddie felt an arm around his neck and kicked his feet, as he was being dragged backward down the staircase, but Delgado was tall, and he couldn’t find firm footing. He could feel Delgado’s left hand on the back of his head, and the tensing of the left bicep as the blade of Delgado’s right forearm pressed on his Adam’s apple, his trachea collapsing. Freddie had dabbled in jujitsu to help with high school wrestling and knew this was the bad kind of chokehold—an air choke, not a blood choke. He tried to cough but it remained muffled in his airway. “I can’t breathe,” he screamed, but the words came out all jumbled.

Freddie could feel a pulse in the arteries on either side of his neck as he struggled and dug his nails into Delgado’s arm. There was a feeling of lightheadedness, a dull ache in his temples, and a warm fuzzy glow to his dizzied vision. But also, an uneasy feeling that something was very wrong. Irreversibly wrong. “I can’t breathe,” Freddie mumbled and gasped.

As Freddie flailed and dug his nails into the man’s arm harder, the clamped vice under his chin beginning to cut off his ability to breathe altogether, Freddie began to pass out. His consciousness came through in staccato frames, like a jumpy film. Womp, womp, womp. He could smell the Brut aftershave and Marlboro cigarette smell of Delgado’s breath on him. And then everything faded to black.

When Freddie Storm came to, he saw a gun pointed at his chest. The man’s shadow was directly over Freddie from the streetlights above, obscuring his view of the man. But he knew it was Sgt. Martin Poland.

“Don’t move,” the bald, fat officer said. “Put your hands on your chest. Don’t reach for your pockets.”

Freddie tried to pull his hands up as instructed. “I’m not resisting,” he managed in a raspy wheeze. “Don’t shoot.” He felt the rounded metal armrest of the metal bench he was resting on and the arm around his neck squeezing tighter, causing his trachea to narrow, a feeling like something caught in his throat, his neck wrenched at an unnatural angle.

Then Freddie heard a crack in the back of his neck. It was like the sound of a tree cracking and falling. Loud. Unmistakable. Resonant. “I can’t breathe.” A rush of pain flooded the crook of his neck and it felt like the worst migraine he’d ever had. His left arm went limp and hung down lifelessly over the side of the bench. He could feel lightning running down the left side of his shoulder.

It was Sgt. Danny Gelbin, the red-headed one who was now wrenching his neck and applying the chokehold. Delgado was behind him with his gun drawn.

“Oh shit,” the Weasel said as Freddie’s neck cracked. And he could hear the men talking about what to do with him as he blacked out again.

When he briefly came to, Freddie could hear Poland talking into his radio handset, pressing transmit and saying, “Newark Avenue. The suspect fled to Dickinson High School. The suspect was apprehended by Delgado. Minor injuries to the neck. Laceration on the jawline, self-inflicted, from a trip and fall. Copy.”

“What’s your position?”

“Newark Ave. Entrance to Dickinson High.”

“I am sending Lieutenant Murphy for backup. He is in the area down by the courthouse.”

“Affirmative. Need transport. Subject in custody,” Delgado said.

“Copy.”

When Freddie came to, he was face down on the leather seats of the patrol cruiser, his hands handcuffed behind his back. And he couldn’t feel his toes. Drool was pooling on the leather seat where his head was propped. Freddie struggled with the restraints and tried to log roll to his side.

“He’s awake,” Olsen said, slamming on the brakes and pulling the car over to the curb. Freddie jolted forward and hit the seat backs in front of him, his hip jamming into the center console. And he found himself on the floor, in a heap.

“Get him off the floor,” Delgado said.

“Keep him cuffed,” Gelbin said.

Frank Murphy had joined the three at the High School, and he was in the back seat with Freddie. Frank looked down at the lump of what used to be a human man and grabbed him around the torso, hoisting him back up on the seat, and draping his legs over Murphy’s lap.

“I think you broke the kids fucking neck, Reggie,” Murphy said. “His legs are limp. You may have pinched a nerve—could be nerve damage. We need to get him to a hospital.”

“No shot,” Olsen said, turning his head from the road and shooting Murphy a glance. “Not until he’s booked, and the reports are written. If he’s injured, he can be transported from the precinct then. Little shit ran. He was resisting.”

“We both know he isn’t going anywhere,” Reggie said. “Except maybe the morgue. After what happened at the truck stop.”

“If anything happens to this boy,” Murphy said, “All of you are going down with him. I’ll make sure of it.”

“We picked him up because he saw us. Now he has seen us twice. You think we are going to double down on this street rat staying quiet?” Poland said.

“Rizwan’s soldiers know how to keep quiet,” Murphy said, “But if you do this, I’m coming for all of you.”

“A little late to come to Jesus, don’t you think?” Olsen said, without looking back.

“Fuck you Olsen,” Murphy said. “The last thing this kid was going to do was talk, you fucking simpleton.”

“No loose ends. Remember. Chief Lahmi’s orders,” Gelbin said.

“There’s more than one way to tie up loose ends,” Murphy said.

“Not where I come from,” Olsen said.

As the cruiser rolled through the Heights, the men sat in silence and Freddie Storm faded in and out of consciousness. Olsen took a left at Central and Manhattan.

“Pull over here,” Delgado said.

Olsen stopped at the entrance to the baseball fields about halfway to Manhattan Avenue.

“Why are we stopping?” Murphy asked.

“Just stay in the car, choir boy,” Olsen said.

The other four grabbed Freddie. Olsen grabbed the front of his shoulders, Poland got his legs, and Delgado gripped the back of his jacket and pulled hard to keep him prone as they carried him over at a jogging pace to the grassy knoll that was just past the outfield fence. Gelbin took up the rear. Delgado and Gelbin unrolled a small plastic tarp and the other two dropped him on top of it in a heap.

Murphy rolled down his window and reached for his service weapon, but it wasn’t in his holster. He remembered Olsen bumping into him when he arrived at Dickinson but hadn’t realized that Olsen had taken his weapon. From where he was sitting, he could have taken out all four men in under three seconds, well before they could have fired back. Not that this would necessarily have saved Freddie.

But without his gun, there was nothing he could do except call it in, and that wasn’t an option. And there wasn’t time to get outside help from his handler. He sent a text from his second phone, took out the sim card, cracked the phone, and tossed it and the sim card out into the street.

Freddie tried to crawl but was only able to get to his right elbow. He gasped for air. The pain in his neck was overpowering. The air came through in small, shallow breaths. The withering breeze against his skin reminded him that he was still alive and still had a chance of escape. He looked at the men, who all had their hands on their guns. He trembled. An icy black veil of terror covered him and froze him in place. What was this tarp for?

A man came out of the shadows in a black overcoat, the gleam of his badge sparkling from his belt. He had a bald, black head and ivory-white eyes that glistened in the moonlight. He had on a suit, like Olsen, a charcoal suit, a white starched shirt, and a black tie, with an American flag pin on the lapel. The full moon hung just to the right of the spire of the tower at St. Nicholas Church, which bordered the park. The man approached. There was a second man with him in army fatigues from head to toe, and he had a rifle.

“Too bad kid,” Olsen said, “You should have never been at that truck stop that night.”

Freddie’s head was locked into his chest with mucous and drool bubbling from his mouth and nose, and he scrambled on his one elbow trying to get his head in position to see the bald-headed man. But the man’s face was obscured by the light of the big-bellied moon just over his left shoulder.

Freddie saw the man’s face as it briefly emerged from the shadows. Then he saw the barrel of the Glock-19 service weapon gleam as he raised and pointed it at Freddie’s chest. “Please…” Freddie said. But before he could finish, he heard two loud pops. And he felt a warmth in his chest and watched the world fade away for good.

Murphy came running out to the field, but it was too late. And the man in the overcoat put one finger to his lips and pointed back to the police cruiser where Olsen, Poland, Gelbin, and Delgado, were already busy hauling the tarp into the back seat. Murphy ran back to see if Freddie was still alive, knowing he was not.

The second Frank got in the rear seat with Freddie’s body, Olsen pulled away, flashing the sirens. Streams of Freddie’s blood had pooled in the tarp, where it was tied together. Freddie’s head and his lifeless eyes sat on Frank Murphy’s lap. Frank waved his hand over Freddie’s eyes and closed them.

They pulled into the West District precinct. Hands grabbed at Freddie’s legs and pulled him out of the cruiser and back to his feet. Delgado and Poland propped him up and walked his limp body into the precinct, half dragging, half pulling, the stiff body, careful to keep the bloodied front of Freddie’s black sweatshirt out of view of the cameras above. Most of the blood pooled in his chest and some leaked out and rolled down his torso into his underwear or onto the belt loop of his jeans, but most of the leakage had been collected in the tarp, which would soon be disposed of. Olsen, Delgado, and Poland positioned Freddie in the holding cell on his back, as Frank Murphy continued issuing threats and excoriating the others for what they had done.

“Sorry, Murphy,” Olsen said, “The kid should have never been at the truck stop that night, and you should have kept your big mouth shut.”

Two duty officers came running in, guns drawn. And Frank Murphy raised his arms.

Olsen handed them the Glock-19 service weapon from the scene and said, “He’s right there. Take him into custody.”

The two men placed Murphy’s hands behind his back and locked the cuffs.

“What’s going on here?” Frank Murphy said.

Olsen looked him in the eye and said, “Get this murderer out of my sight.”