Mitchell Smith (11 page)

The Lieutenant rose, his briefcase in his hand, went to the near corner, where a massive Sony console squatted, knelt beside it, opened his briefcase, and took out a small video cassette player and a short coil of cable. He put those down on the carpet, then reached behind the console for connections.

“The difficulty of this matter is,” the Colonel said, “that any revelation at all—routine investigative reports, court records, gossip, newspapers … anything like that at all . . .”

“A special squad is handling this,” Delgado said.

“Yes,” the Colonel said. “-I wish I could say I found that reassuring.”

Delgado sat in his filmy shade (near his left foot, the climbing sun had laid a lemon-yellow shelf of light along the floor), looked at the Colonel, but said nothing further.

“May I ask what those ‘special squad’ people have been told?” the Colonel said.

“That it’s a confidential case. To keep their mouths shut.” Cherusco said. “-That’s what they’ve been told.”

“Heaven knows that’s the truth,” the Colonel said.

“-And minimal record-keeping, I hope. Not necessarily any resolution of the case at all . . . ?”

“Could be,” Cherusco said.

The Lieutenant finished his connections behind the Sony, stood, and said, “Ready, sir.”

“I hope you didn’t screw up that set,” the First Deputy said. “There’s a perfectly good VCR right in the console, in the top.”

“Let her roll, Bob,” the Colonel said.

The Lieutenant bent, took a cassette from the open briefcase, snapped it into the recorder, pushed the start button, then stood and took an easy stance at parade rest beside the TV, carefully clear of sight lines.

“This is a copy of Godiva tape four hundred and twenty-three,” he said.

“There was no sound taken for this tape.” The Southern Lieutenant had done many briefings-had done a course at Fort Sill on how to conduct them-and possessed a light, pleasantly penetrating tenor voice, full of pending information, though, in this case, he had nothing more to say.

“We have copies of all this shit,” Cherusco said.

The Sony’s screen had meanwhile expressed a sheet of fine-grained white, then faded to the same, but with letters printed in thick black across it.

SECRET-VERIFIED EYES ONLY

Log. 4771-Video File 676UI-881 New York City Police Department Auth.

Max. Tr.

GODIVA—OCt. 4, 1987 (Frankenthaler) (It.)

These titles held for a number of seconds.

“That’s cute,” Cherusco said. “You guys must have forgot to label this one Department of Defense.”

“We have all these tapes ID’d under DOD regulation logs,” the Lieutenant said.

“Sure you do,” Cherusco said. “-You guys wouldn’t be plannin’ to leave us holdin’ the nasty bag, would you?”

“We have no such intention,” the Colonel said as the titles flickered and faded, revealing-in slightly fuzzy black and white-a small, slender blond woman, short-haired and very pretty. Seen, by the slight softness of her narrow upper arms, her slim thighs, to be at least in her early thirties, she sat at the edge of a very wide bed in her bra and panties, watching with a sort of abstracted attention a monumental and moving geometry at the bed’s center.

There, in profile to the immobile camera’s lens, muscled, naked, and balding, a white man with an intent harsh-featured face and pale furry buttocks, was kneeling in attendance to the large, near flaccid penis of a lean, beautiful young black man, also nude, and distinguished by neat and lovely breasts.

This activity, rendered impressive rather than shocking by the strenuous tenderness the white man prove in is caresses, was nonetheless a confounding sight, the white man having been, at the time, a candidate for the Senate from Illinois. Being now, the Vice President of the United States.

“Can’t say the guy don’t care,” Cherusco said.

On the television screen, silent, softened by the uncertain light, the difficult conditions of filming, by duplication as well-the three people changed their positions, and held almost still on the broad bed, resting for a moment.

Then, viewed somewhat nearer in a change of lens that incidental pause apparently made time for, the lover-his guarded adult’s eyes now seen wide and wondering, certain as a baby’s to be pleased-reached out to the black man and recommenced his ardencies, and the blond woman, closer to them, pale as the sheet on which they played, stretched a slender left arm out and under to grasp the white man’s rigid sex and hold it-as if to anchor him from floating away, arched and kicking, out of consciousness from sheer delight.

“Turn that dirt off,” said the First Deputy.

As if hearing, and on cue-her companions distracted the blond woman turned her head to confront the hidden camera’s vantage, and, her narrow face forthcoming as a child’s, grinned, and merrily rolled her eyes.

The Lieutenant, who hadn’t moved to the First Deputy’s command, stooped with alacrity when his Colonel nodded-and pushed a button to OFF.

Silence-into which the Lieutenant introduced small sounds, disconnecting and packing up.

Then, the First Deputy, struck by the superior weight of witness over report, said, “Holy Mary . . .” reached to his redlacquered box, opened it, and took out a cigarette.

“Two buttered bagels, four Danish-a prune, all the others I’m takin’

cheese. Five coffees and a tea. Lemon.”

The refreshment-cart woman-a small, slender young black girl with slanted eyes, who wore her hair straightened to seem to hang softly to her shoulders-refused to take the long detour down the supply corridor to the Squad’s office, which meant that the morning duty officer (Serrano, this week) had to go out to the hall every morning at eleven to get the orders.

She stood now, silent, unfriendly, looking at her own dark reflection in the coffee urn’s bright, curved steel while Serrano collected his order, took a throwaway paper tray from the stack beside the wooden stirrers, loaded his goods, then handed her a twenty to change.

“How you doin’, honey?” he said. Serrano was a friendly man, balding, dark, small, and diffident. -Nothing from her, though (perhaps an expression of slight distaste, then back to her own reflection).

Appeared to believe he was coming on to her. -Fat chance. He hadn’t stooped that low, that he’d try to make a cart woman—especially a stuck-up black one. It was too bad; she was nice looking, or would be, if she’d smile a little.

Serrano wanted people to like him, and didn’t see why they shouldn’t. He felt he was a pretty nice-looking guy. —Getting a little thin on top, but still a nice-looking guy.

He’d never let himself go-never started to act like a son-of-a-bitch on the job, either. Never roughed anybody up he didn’t have to…. He’d been married, once, when he was a kid.

She handed him his change, bent to the wide handle and shoved the heavy cart into motion, brushing past him, heading down the long strip of indoor-outdoor gray carpet, past the elevators-service elevators in this I corridor-heading way down the hall to Accounting and Personnel. -Those offices, she took her cart into.

“Take it easy, sweetheart!” She’d come around. It was a question of time. People could tell when other people meant no harm. -After all, she didn’t know him. No way she could know what kind of guy he was, just ordering coffees and shit like that.

When Serrano came back with the food and coffee, Ellie was already stuck in Leahy’s office, wishing she’d smoothed her skirt better before she sat down; it was almost new, a summer stripe in light pink-and-gray linen that went with her gray blazer perfectly, and she was probably sitting nice big wrinkles into it. Ellie could hear Serrano’s distribution through the open door. -By the time she got out there, her coffee would be cold.

She had the only chair in the little room, except for Leahy’s burdened swivel. The squad commander’s office had been the large walk-in sink-and-storage closet for the much larger L-shaped supply room. The Commissioner’s i Squad occupied the supply room; their commander, this storage closet. The big sink, flanked now by a small metal-legged Formica table supporting a hot plate, yellow plastic cups, plastic sugar dispenser and a small coffeepot, was the Squad’s kitchen-traffic to and from it constantly wearing away the Lieutenant’s solitary dignity.

A detective would knock, and-if a tough guy like Nardone or Samuelson-would then come lurching in without a say-so, banging the door open, bearing a plastic glass with a spoonful of instant pink lemonade waiting on its bottom. Use the sink-not a word of apology-and barge right out again, stirring his lemonade with a white plastic spoon hoarded from the coffee cart.

Lieutenant Leahy was a fat man in his fifties, with a rosebud mouth and small, upturned Irish nose. A girl had once told him he looked like Captain Bligh-by which she meant the old Charles Laughton version on TV.

Leahy had hard, china-blue eyes, and an odd handshake; first, one felt a cushioned squeezing, unpleasantly soft with fat-then, surfacing against one’s palm like weights of metal pressing through a pillow, a consider able pressure of bone and muscle. Leahy always held his grip long enough, on a handshake, to be certain that these last were felt.

It was a numbing grip, unpleasantly challenging-a bully’s grip-and had likely been learned as a fat boy’s offensive defense in a tough Newark high school. The Lieutenant was from New Jersey, originally.

This surprising handshake, and his manner on the jobbrusque and tough-talking-were Leahy’s only social aggressions. Even with his latent physical power, so perfectly cloaked by the fat swelling in every motion within his trouser thighs, tugging inside his shirt to open it despite his buttons, pouring softly over his collar all around even possessing this submerged, potent muscle and bone, his position as commander of the Squad, the Lieutenant was shy as a turtle in any but his purely professional capacity-there, he was occasionally stubborn, often angry, never cruel.

After his wife had left him, she phoned him one Sunday afternoon, out of the blue, and said awful things.

This fat man, who had struggled with great courage from the beginning of his service in the Department to deal with the tidal urges of his appetite, managing by heroic measures of starvation and denial to meet and pass physical examinations that might have ruined his career if he had not been able to lose, from time to time, twenty pounds … thirty pounds … fifty or sixty pounds of fat barely in time for his annual visits to the police surgeon’s office-this obese man, exhausted rather than strengthened by these struggles, and whose great reliance had always been on a steady and energetic talent for proper paperwork, now sat sausaged into his clothes, waiting with Ellie for snack comfort (his prune Danish, his coffee with three sugars) while looking up from his swivel chair to accept from Captain Anderson-tall, lean (almost bony), handsome in a light-gray summer-weight wool suit-a small stack of reports, one by one.

Ellie sat and Nardone stood against the wall behind her, waiting. The four of them crowded the storage closet.

“What about Harrison?” Ellie and Nardone had been working on and off for some weeks on the case of Wilfred Harrison, a British Member of Parliament for Iseley who was a registered heroin addict and a spokesman for the conservative wing of the Labor Party. Harrison-invited to the city with a British trade delegation (Aquascutum, Burberrys, etc.) to arrive in October-presented a nice problem in law enforcement, since, NYPD had been informed, he intended to carry his British-legal supply of pop with him-to shoot up, possibly, in Gracie Mansion, right after lunch.

The newspapers had had this story for some time, and were not being helpful.

:‘Fuck Harrison,” said Lieutenant Leahy.

‘-But don’t give him lunch,” joked Captain Anderson in his pleasing baritone, handing Leahy the last of the files. Anderson glanced at Ellie to see if she got it, and saw that she did. He was wearing a blue-and-cream tie, a white shirt. “We need your activity reports on these,” he said. “Some Internal Affairs people are spending way too much money.”

“But, what about the Gaither thing?” Ellie could see that important case already flown out of their hands, back to the regular squads.

“You two have that,” Anderson said. “-They still have that one, don’t they, Ed?” Leahy’s full name was Phillip Edwin Leahy.

“Oh, sure,” Leahy said, “-they’re assigned to that.”

“We don’t expect anything fast on that one,” Anderson said.

“No?” Nardone, from the wall.

,‘We want you to take your time on that one. Careful handling. -No use embarrassing a few honest citizens for wetting their wee-wees until we really have a solid case made. Chief wants this one handled in a grownup kind of way no reporters at all. Absolutely no leaks, no bullshit.”

Nardone said, “Uh-huh.”

“Any questions at all develop on that one, you check with Ed, or you check with me. O.K.? -Now, the Internal Affairs problems are a little more front-and-center.

We want to get on that one fast, so I’ll need your activity reports and summaries upstairs every couple of days. -All right, Ed?”

“You’ll get ‘em,” Leahy said, and sat back a little in his suffering chair. He was wearing a light-blue sports jacket that couldn’t close and button across his ‘shirt front. “-We’ll turn ‘em out.” He picked up the stack of reports, and held them out across his desktop. Ellie stood up, took them, and remained standing to see if Leahy had anything more to say.

“That’s it,” he said. “-Get on ‘em.”

“Won’t hurt,” Anderson said as Ellie turned to go, Nardone heaved forward off the wall, “-won’t hurt to be a tad obvious about these investigations. We’re as interested in correcting behavior as getting indictments.”

Ellie picked up her bagel and coffee at her desk (Serrano had left them beside the phone with a note-You owe me twenty cents) and crossed the squad room’s narrow aisle to Nardone. They were lucky, their desks resting in the long leg of the squadroom L, where there were two vents along the back wall (decorated otherwise with bulletin boards and blackboards) though no windows. The short leg, around the corner to the right, was a four-desk Cubby, and airless. No vents. There, Graham and Classman sat crowded in with two young black detectives, only nominally members of the Squad. Nobody knew these young men’s assignment, which was believed to involve some scandal in the pari-mutuel system as odds were computed. And that notion might be mistaken, since the young men spoke very little, and were hardly ever in the office.