Cop Job (3 page)

“You hated your corporate job,” she said.

“I loved my corporate job. I just hated the corporation. And its employees. Not all of them.”

“He’ll make enough money to afford an apartment we can both live in.”

“Don’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Never room with people you sleep with.”

“Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?”

“Are you still living on sour cream and potato chips?” I asked.

“You’re changing the subject and sounding like my mother.”

Allison somehow combined my intemperate approach to wellness with Abby’s native gifts. In other words, she could trash her health, bypass the gym, and still look like a million bucks. Though she was still young and unaware that nature really does play a relentless game of catch-up.

“Your mother is an intelligent woman.”

“She hates Nathan.”

“There’s a mark in his favor. Maybe you should move in together after all.”

“I’m not going to. I probably never will. I wish I could blame it on you, but it’s actually what I want.”

“If he’s worth anything, it’ll be okay with him.”

“I shouldn’t talk to you about this sort of thing.”

“No, you shouldn’t. We can chat about hydrocarbon processing or the relative merits of structural composites versus dimensional lumber. Safer ground.”

“He should have talked to me before accepting that new job,” she said, her voice a low growl.

“He should have. Next time I see him I’ll break his arms.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” she said, before hanging up.

I
BROUGHT
Eddie with me to the HQ. This was flagrantly manipulative. It took a heart of stone not to bend to Eddie’s canine charms. And lucky for the plan, he was pretty indiscriminate about whom he charmed, assholes included who were in good supply at the HQ.

To be fair, the majority of police I’ve known are not only decent, hardworking, and principled people, they’re mostly better than the rest of us. But positions of power have a way of attracting those who assume institutional prerogatives, resulting in a lot of struggle and strife for people like me who contend otherwise.

Since I was there for a command performance, I knew I’d easily breach the HQ’s first line of defense, a female pit bull named Janet Orlovsky. Eddie did his part by jumping up on the bulletproof glass that sealed her booth and giving her the full force of his dazzling personality.

“Look at you, you handsome guy,” said Janet, touching the glass that stood between Eddie’s big black nose and her eager fingertips. “Don’t tell me you brought along that curly haired, pain-in-the-ass Guinea.”

“Mostly pain-in-the-ass Canuck,” I said, which I often had to do. “Not that we favor ethnic pejoratives.”

“Try being a Russian Jew,” she said. “Then talk to me.”

“My grandfather was a Polish Jew,” I said. “On my mother’s side. Eddie was a mutt left in the woods to die. Do you want to hire an ethnologist to determine which of us suffered greater persecution? Or do you want to call Ross and tell him I’m here?”

She kept her disdainful eyes on me as she dialed Ross’s internal number. I held her gaze.

Without breaking eye contact, she buzzed us through the door. Eddie trotted along, staying mostly by my side with a minimum of urgent commands. The worst distractions were corners and baseboards, where the scatterings from hungry cops eating on the run had found their way.

Ross met me halfway through the squad room. I hadn’t seen him in a few months and was surprised that he’d put on some weight. It always seemed his nervous intensity made up for a prideful lack of athleticism, though as noted, nature catches up with everyone eventually.

“Sam Acquillo,” he said, “a sight for sore eyes.”

“That’s what eye drops are for.”

“What brings you to our humble abode?”

“Sullivan said I had to come,” I said.

He put a hand on his cheek.

“He did, did he? Follow me,” he said, turning and walking back toward his office. I followed.

His office had been a dump when I first saw it, and over the years had gone downhill from there. The piles of paper on his desk were only distinguished from the piles on the floor by a difference in elevation. He sat in the desk chair and waved me into the only other chair you could actually sit in. Only Jackie Swaitkowski was a bigger slob, which defined their sole patch of cluttered common ground.

Eddie lay on a low pile of periodicals, local newspapers, and law enforcement trade journals after letting out a sigh that sounded more like acquiescence than satisfaction.

Ross offered me a cigarette, which I turned down. I looked around at the surrounding combustibles and took note of available exits.

“So you really gave it up,” said Ross. “The smoking thing.”

“I’ve confined reducing life expectancy to straight vodka and watching professional basketball.”

“My dad smoked till the day he died, at eighty-five. Got hit by a car.”

“The luck of the fathers doesn’t always descend upon the sons,” I said.

“You ought to hope that’s true, if you don’t mind me saying.”

He meant that my father had been murdered in a restroom at the back of a crummy old neighborhood bar in the Bronx. Beaten to death, though the damage to his knuckles showed he didn’t go easily.

“I don’t mind, though I don’t like talking about it.”

“Who would. Speaking of untimely death, what’s your take on Alfie Aldergreen?” he asked.

“No idea. Nowhere near enough data.”

“I forgot. You’re Mr. Empiricist.”

“You didn’t forget. You know I never speculate on things I know nothing about. Neither do you. Sometimes we have testable hypotheses. Tracks to follow. But not with this one. Not yet. Clean slate.”

“Tabula rasa.”

“So why all the questions?”

“I’m the chief of police. They pay me to ask questions.”

I breathed in his cigarette smoke and fought the powerful urge to ask for one of my own. I’d quit the year before, and this moment confirmed what I already knew. Quit all you want; you’re never free of it.

“What about you?” I asked. “What can you tell me? Not that the chief of police has to tell me anything,” I added, sparing him from saying it himself.

“We got nothing,” he said, pushing back in his battered desk chair and sucking in a huge drag of smoke. “I can’t stop you and Jackie from sticking your noses into this thing. We know that from past experience. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. So let’s try something different this time. You guys can go to places it’s hard for us to go. But we’re the police, and can do things you can’t do. If we cooperate, if you communicate as you go, and tie us in as a resource rather than an adversary, it could mean a swift and just resolution to this tragedy.”

That really was a first. Ross Semple, undisputed master of Southampton law enforcement, asking me and Jackie, unrepentant meddlers in police affairs, to let them in on our investigation, before we even had one.

The role reversal was so startling and abrupt, it almost wrenched my neck. Though I tried not to let it show.

He flung himself back in his chair and took another huge draw on his cigarette, causing the burning tobacco to outrun the paper, and consequently dropping a large dollop of glowing ash on his polyester pants. He brushed if off as well as he could, but I could imagine his dry cleaner confronting a constellation of irreparable pinprick holes.

“Sure, Ross. Whatever we find out, you find out. I’d like it if Joe Sullivan stayed on the case. Your other guy is a little competitive. But that’s your call.”

“Joe’s on it,” he said. “And me, too. My brother was wounded in Vietnam. Lived in a chair, like Alfie. Though not that long. Too many complications.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m sick of conflict. I don’t want to fight with anyone anymore, especially you. Maybe it’s age. Just stay inside the legal lanes—Jackie knows what they are—talk to us on a regular basis and don’t get in our way when things heat up.”

Ross grew up like me in Southampton, but spent the first half of his career as a homicide detective in the most savage neighborhood in New York City during some of the bloodiest, crack-infested times. It was hard to overlook the weirdness, but the wise never underestimated the man.

“I hear you,” I said.

His face slipped into serious.

“The same goes for that freckle-faced cyclone. Latitude doesn’t mean carte blanche. Remind her of that, if you would.”

“Jackie’s her own girl, Ross. You know that. Anyway she’s my boss. She tells me what to do.”

“Interesting role reversal. You know you need a license to be a PI in this state.”

“I’m not a PI. I’m a personal assistant.”

“Right. You know Esther Ferguson accused us of harassing Alfie,” he said.

“I didn’t.”

“He lived in the Village. Not even our jurisdiction. But he insisted that Town cops were threatening him.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Looking at him, as it turned out. Even Esther backed off after that.”

“The Town and Village have different uniforms, patrol cars.”

“He described us,” said Ross. “Pretty accurately.”

“Alfie surprised me plenty of times.”

“Terrible thing to be afraid of your own mind,” said Ross. “It scares the hell out of the general public, but their fear is nothing compared to what people like Alfie go through. Did you know the incidence of violent crime perpetrated by paranoid schizophrenics is roughly the same as the population at large?”

“No, but it doesn’t surprise me.”

“I didn’t think you were such a sensitive guy,” said Ross.

“Sensitivity’s got nothing to do with it. Simple fairness. Even lunatics have a right to life.”

“You almost just improved my opinion of you, Sam.”

“Always the underachiever.”

“I’ve got another Alfie problem,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Alfie himself. Can’t find any next of kin. Carlo’s okay keeping him on ice for now, but he’ll be needing the drawer space.

“Jimmy Watruss might know,” said Ross.

“I’ll talk to him.”

Despite all that talk about cooperation, Ross knew a lot more than he was willing to share, but it was all I’d get. So we tossed around the Latin allusions, semi-non sequiturs, and trivia one-upsmanship that served as conversation between us, and then I got the hell out of there.

E
STHER
F
ERGUSON
’
S
office was on the way back to the cottage, and it was still early, so despite some trepidation, I stopped in to see her.

The Social Services Department for Eastern Suffolk County was in a converted Victorian house in a mixed residential-commercial zone at the western end of Hill Street in Southampton. Not in the Village exactly, though not all the way out. The porch was deep, the ceilings high, and the smell was all damp, moldy rugs and stale cigarette smoke. The interior surfaces were freshly painted, though no one thought to strip off the underlayment. This turned the elegant old crown moldings and baseboards into congealed, linear blobs. I stood in the foyer and tried to remember behind which of the unmarked four doors Esther captained her social welfare ship.

I picked the one in least repair.

“Come on in,” I heard in response to the knock. I walked in and she said, “Sam Ah-cquillo. I been expectin’ you.”

“I figured.”

I sat in one of her visitors’ chairs. The office was sparsely decorated, but bright and inviting, nearly elegant, as if the shopworn foyer was a ruse to throw off intruders. The walls were paneled in the original wide-board chestnut tongue and groove, which nicely set off Esther’s academic credentials and accomplishments, including a master’s in sociology from Princeton.

Esther herself was equally well kept, slim, poised, and handsome. Her perfume filled the room like a bunch of fresh-cut flowers. Her face would have been pretty if it hadn’t spent so much time expressing wariness and assumed affront. Like your mother always warned, if you keep crossing your eyes like that, they’re gonna stay that way.

“What went down with Alfie—wrong, wrong, wrong,” she said.

“Any ideas?” I asked.

“ ’Bout what?”

“Who killed him.”

“That’s a leap. Somebody killin’ him. Didn’t just fall in the water?” she asked.

“After he duct taped himself to the chair? Neat trick. I’d like to see you do it.”

“No you wouldn’t. I’d prove you wrong.”

“Probably would, but you know what I’m saying,” I said.

“I do. It’s just too depressing.”

“So no ideas.”

“You keep sayin’ that,” she said.

“What else should I say? I want to know who killed him. Maybe you have an insight or two. You were his case manager. Nobody knew him better.”

“I already told the police what I know,” she said, like that should be the end of the conversation.

“I don’t care what you told the cops. I want to know what you really think,” I said.

She sat forward in her red leather chair and gripped the arms, as if preparing to leap at me.

“You think I wouldn’t be totally forthcoming with the police? You think I’m crazy, or just self-destructive?” she asked.

“What was Alfie’s general mood in the weeks before he died? Anything unusual?”

“His mood was the same mood as always. Paranoid schizophrenic. The man was exceedingly clinical. Livin’ right on the line. A little shove would’ve sent him right over.”

“That’s what he got. A little shove into the harbor.”

She shifted papers around her desk without looking at them, since her eyes were fixed on mine.

“You know, Alfie wasn’t the only character in town people would call crazy,” she said. “That people would be scared to death of.”

I couldn’t tell if that was a threat or an insult, or both. I just knew I wouldn’t take the bait.

“Jackie Swaitkowski thought he was more agitated than normal,” I said. “More fearful.”

“Some people are separated from society because of mental illness, or unfortunate circumstances,” she said, not wanting to let it go. “And some are just antisocial.”

“Not me. I got lots of friends.”

“Yeah. Like Alfie Aldergreen. And look where that got him.”