Red on Red (9 page)

But nothing else happened; nothing like it, not here, not yet. History departed for its old hunting grounds. Shopping resumed, at first under patriotic pretense. The anniversary ritual of listed names, flowers tossed into the still-gaping pits, grew more modest and peripheral to the public mind, and it was a matter of time before the event would be marked by department store specials: dinette sets, sectional couches, and throw pillows—everything must go!

People did keep on buying things, until the economy collapsed. Trillions of dollars disappeared, too much to contemplate, let alone count. Nick could picture his father asking,
Where was the last place you left it?
Though the statements from his retirement fund did not make for pleasant reading, Nick had far more troubling deficits, and he was struck by the economy’s lack of impact on him, on anyone he knew very well, even on the city as he knew it. No epidemic of boarded-up storefronts, and the men who loitered on corners were the ones who always had. Allison had prospered. She’d convinced her firm to make a big bet on a bad future,
and Nick wondered whether he flattered himself to think he may have played a part in her inspiration. When Nick arrived at the precinct, he cast these thoughts from his mind like evil spirits.

The precinct building was of recent construction, a box of cinder block three stories tall. It was built of the cheapest material by the lowest bidder, at the cost of a palace. On sconces beside the front door were two green lights, the centuries-old marker of a New York City police station; one cop in ten might have known what they meant, or noticed that they were green. Inside, a lieutenant stood before a desk that extended from one end of the room to the other, like a bar, and two cops and a prisoner stood before him, awaiting service. Nick slipped up a stairway beside them, half-nodding to two more cops, and walked into the squad.

The room was long and rectangular, with a central island of desks doubled up, face-to-face. It would have taken great effort to make an impression of order here, and little effort was made. Each desk had both a computer terminal and a typewriter, and a few had electric fans; all were littered with reports. Wanted posters lined the walls of the waiting area, some yellowing with age, others covered with more recent posters of more local priority, so that the posters formed sedimentary layers of newer and nearer crimes. Inside the squad, the posters were for their own consumption, warning against corruption and sexual harassment, although money and women were both in short supply. Fluorescent lights flickered over scuffed tile floors, and the air was filled with broken phrases of cop talk, as they hustled the phones.

“Like I said, I don’t know if it’s true. She said you hit her. I’m not here to judge, but come on in and tell me your side….”

“This is the police.
Sí, la policía
. Is Reuben Alvarez at home?”

“I need to know if the kid goes to school there, if he’s there today…. Yeah, I can get a subpoena, but that’ll just waste everybody’s time….”

“No, this is the detective squad, not the hospital. You got the wrong Number…. No, I don’t know why he’s not getting better, lady. Ask the doctor.”

“No, but you gotta come in to talk to me. That’s how it’s done….”

“Does anybody there speak English? No, you don’t speak English, believe me. Stop kidding yourself, you don’t. Get me somebody who does.”

“Tell you what, let me talk to your supervisor…. No, I don’t need a subpoena to talk to your supervisor. Just put him on the phone….”

“Like I said, lady, you got the wrong number….”

Napolitano, Garelick, Perez, Smith, Valentini, Crimmins. There were no strangers. Good. The phones kept ringing, and almost half the time, they were answered this way:

“Detective squad. Detective McCann. Can I help you?”

“Detective McCann. How can I help you?”

“McCann …”

There was no Detective McCann. He was a figment used to dodge wives or girlfriends, pesty complainants, or demands for administrative arcana from headquarters. Several angry letters had been sent to the squad accusing McCann of incompetence; one, which was framed and hung up on a wall, thanked him for talking a runaway son into coming home. Nick was never McCann, and neither was Esposito. Nick disliked lying altogether—almost altogether—and Esposito never felt the need for that kind of evasion. Garelick was McCann most often; he may have invented him. Garelick also minted any number of Jewish holidays when he wanted to take off, and though the boss was suspicious, he rarely denied him.

Nick signed in and went to his desk. There was a mild apprehension as he checked his new cases, the fresh feuds and afflictions. None would be heavy ones, since on-duty detectives would have been called out to the scene, but the little cases were frustrating, all the effort spent on petty disputes. Three cases today. Not too bad. A missing teenager, described as a chronic runaway; a fistfight between neighbors; a series of threatening phone calls, made from tenant to landlord over a leaky sink. The advantage to the sluggishness of the system was that the day or two the report took to make it to the squad often acted as a cooling-off period. Three phone calls closed all three cases. The runaway girl had returned, the neighbors had sobered up and shaken hands, and the tenant had gotten his sink fixed and had sent an apology along with the rent check. As Nick hung up the phone, relieved, there was a rap at the glass that separated the lieutenant’s corner office from the main room.

Lieutenant Ortiz was a veteran of thirty years on the Job, most of them with the Detective Bureau. He hadn’t spoken with a criminal in nearly two decades and hoped never to do so again. His battles were fought entirely within the police department, in his office and the slightly larger offices belonging to the captains, inspectors, and chiefs he had to answer to; they would drop by in the middle of a shooting and complain that the
desks were messy, or too much overtime was being made, or the vehicle inspection logs were not up to date. For his subordinates, the lieutenant’s management skills consisted entirely of a determination to make miserable those who caused him misery. It was rumored that his wife cut his hair, an irregular brush cut, and he expected that someone else should make coffee, even if he was the only one who wanted a cup, and his smoking was so constant that it even bothered the smokers in the office. He also treated the men with a kind of mock belligerence that Nick found in the long run was better to feed than fight. Nick now stood before the lieutenant’s desk, allowing his moment-ago calm to sustain him through the impending interrogation.

“What the hell happened last night? I heard you and Esposito killed an old lady!”

“We did, more or less.”

“What?”

“Well, we did. Not on purpose. But—well, there you go.”

The lieutenant seemed slightly deflated at the lost opportunity to argue. “Don’t take it so hard, Meehan. I mean, don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Okay.”

“Esposito … he didn’t do anything I should know about, did he? You guys seem to get along. I’m glad about that. You got a level head, Nick. Esposito—you know how he gets … a little enthusiastic sometimes.”

The question troubled Nick; he was briefly worried that the lieutenant was aware of his status. No, he couldn’t know. They were careful about these things downtown. As for enthusiasm, Esposito had once chased a perp with a gun down an alley, breaking his ankle just as he closed in. He tackled the perp and cuffed him, then ordered the perp to carry him on his back to the street. Nick shrugged. “It was a disaster, but everything was by the book.”

The lieutenant seemed satisfied by the response. He put out a cigarette solely for the purpose of lighting another, pausing to think.

“The guy you locked up last night, did you get a statement out of him?”

“Yes.”

“And how—Never mind, I don’t want to know. Where’s your partner?”

“I don’t know. I’ll take a look for him. He’s probably in the dorm. I went home for a bit. He kept rolling.”

“All right, let him rest a little. So, basically, with last night’s scorecard, we closed an old homicide, but the new one’s still open, with nothing on it, right?”

“Right. Plus, the suicide’s still unidentified, and there’s the old lady. I don’t think the ME is gonna do anything crazy like make her a homicide. Do you?”

The medical examiner could theoretically determine that the death had been caused by another person, and it was not a bad theory. It didn’t seem right to call it natural. Nick believed Miz Cole would have lived had they not done what they’d done. Even if her heart had had only one more day of beating in it, another hour, another single beat, and they’d deprived her of it, it was in that sense a homicide. The ending is all that counts. But in practice, it put too great a burden on the bearer of bad news. In fact, Nick had already called the ME. They’d done the autopsy first thing in the morning, and had deemed the death natural. Miz Cole and Milton had already been shipped to the funeral home. The suicide hadn’t been examined; she was scheduled for later in the day. The lieutenant didn’t know any of that yet, and Nick did not feel the need to enlighten him.

“How could they?”

“When the old lady in Harlem with the heart condition died after the cops knocked her door down, they made it a homicide.”

Lieutenant Ortiz pressed his hand across his temple and brow.

“Don’t try to cheer me up. Go. Some days, this is not my cup of shit.”

That was Esposito’s phrase, Nick thought, and he wondered who’d copied it from whom. As Nick left the lieutenant’s office, Esposito entered the squad, his hair wet from the shower, freshly shaved, in yet another clean suit, though the tiredness told in his eyes. He began to rummage through papers on his desk, then stopped and shook his head before turning away and walking to the meal room for coffee. Nick followed him.

Nick asked, “What do you need?”

“I started to look, but then couldn’t remember what I was looking for.”

“Can’t be important, then. We gotta go.”

“Yeah. You hungry?”

“I am. Let’s get some breakfast first. We got a little time.”

There were three or four diners they went to for breakfast, on a sporadic circuit motivated by obscure grudges. The bacon was chewy in one, the owner was rude in another, and they only had milk instead of half-and-half for coffee in a third. Otherwise, there was not an iota of difference among them. The detectives only sat down for breakfast on occasion, weekends mostly, and so they were somewhat familiar faces in each of the diners, rather than regulars in any. When Nick proposed breakfast to Esposito, Garelick announced that he was hungry, too, and within a few minutes, there was an outbreak of sympathetic pangs. Napolitano suggested the Athena, because the last time he’d gone to Joe’s, there’d been a scattering of white pellets in the bathroom that he’d thought was rat poison, and he didn’t want to think about it while he ate. Perez seconded the motion, on the grounds that the Washington had an inferior grade of pancake syrup, and it was thus decided.

Napolitano was dapper and stout, all sharp creases and round curves, with a deliberateness of movement that made him seem as if he might be more at home in the water. He had a genial demeanor and a stubborn streak, which suited his role as the union delegate. Though he had an Italian name and African skin, he was of indeterminate Caribbean origin, and on the phone, he was adept at making residents of most continents believe he was a cousin. Garelick was the oldest man on the squad, nearing sixty. He was thin and pale, with fine wild white hair and baleful eyes. He had decades of experience, keen powers of observation, and a chess player’s intellect, strategic and roving. None of these abilities were dedicated in the slightest to police work. Office politics were his sole concern, and he was a vigilant guardian of custom and tradition. He didn’t retire, he admitted frankly, because he couldn’t stand his wife. Garelick couldn’t stand Perez either, but to Perez’s credit, he didn’t seem to notice. Perez was the youngest of them, and though he had a menacing aspect, with his shaved head and fixed stare, in truth he was sweet-natured and considerate, anxious to please. He should have been a natural fit for Garelick, as Perez endorsed Garelick’s every opinion, but Garelick was unused to a steady diet of respect, and it disagreed with him, like rich food. The five of them took two cars to the diner, so they could proceed afterward to their separate errands.

As they walked in, they met two detectives coming out. In the
customary split, there was a younger and an older one, the first fit, the other thick. Esposito and Napolitano recognized them, and Garelick pretended not to. Hearty handshakes were exchanged.

“Hey!”

“How you doin’?”

“You look good!”

“It’s been a while! You’re still at …”

“Special Victims?”

“Yeah.”

“Whadda you guys got, way up here?”

“The pattern rape, the guy who pretends to be the plumber’s helper, with the old ladies and kids. A bullshit lead. This wacko says his neighbor keeps askin’ where he can buy Girl Scout cookies—but we gotta talk to everybody. It’s a phenomenal operation—three twenty-four-hour surveillance vans, we’re up on wiretaps, they got the youngest-looking hottest female undercovers on the Job, playing jump rope next to whorehouses. Every chief calls every day, has to know the latest. Not bad, though. We make our own hours, weekends off, unless something happens. Tons of overtime. What about you guys?”

Death by rope, gun, and misinformation.

“Ah, the usual shit.”

“Anyway, gotta go. Good to see you.”

“Likewise. Good luck.”

“Yeah, stay safe.”

“Take care.”

They found a corner booth and slid inside. Esposito, Napolitano, and Garelick exchanged testimonies of grievance and outrage.

“Can you believe those guys?”

“So fucking full of themselves. Can you believe that?”

“Unbelievable.”

“They get three vans and cheerleaders.”

“We’re lucky we don’t have to pay for gas for the squad cars.”

“The other day, I had to.”