Mitchell Smith (8 page)

‘-Let’s not kid ourselves on this one. This one could be a problem.”

“How long is this meetin’ going’ to take?” Cherusco said, not famous for deference. “—I killed three appointments for this. I got people waitin’ for me, right now.”

“We all have people waiting for us, John,” Delgado said, reproof in the lack of any sounding.

Cherusco closed his mouth.

A pause in the conversation. These three men did not, as most men do, appear to fade when sitting silent. These three had, however many years before, been accustomed in line of duty to struggle physically with other determined and dangerous men—striking them, slugging, wrestling them down-kneeling, if necessary, on the downed man’s neck to hold and subdue him on filthy pavement while many people watched. Two had drawn and fired their revolvers in those days. One had killed a man. -These experiences, though long past, had left a coarse practicality behind, a ready knowledge of the men and women in hiding beneath clothing, behind faces—of the way this person or that would feel to the hands if struck, if seized and wrestled down, struggling, weeping, begging them to let him go … let her go.

All three men, despite their maturity, their grand positions, were armed.

The First Deputy’s wonderful black leather chair-a nine-hundred-dollar item in the Department’s budgetcupped and held him, for all his size, as easily and surely as a giant Negro mother might, when he leaned suddenly back from his desk as if taken faint and needing to nearly recline.

“Whose idea was it? Who thought the damn thing up?” The First Deputy had a heavy voice, and rather loud. A firearms instructor many, many years before, he had suffered some slight hearing loss.

The question rhetorical, since the idea had been realized under the previous administration, all of four years before, and by some Captain Nobody in the Public Morals Division. That Nobody and his small crew had-when the Intelligence Division rapidly took Operation Godiva over-received promotions with alacrity, solid (if obscure) assignments, and warnings dire concerning Departmental security.

“And why the hell did Frankenthaler let those federal people in? I thought Norm had more sense than that!”

Frankenthaler having then been an officer in the Intelligence Division, and rising.

“The Army people were surveillin’ that Russian; they followed him right to the woman’s apartment. -I don’t see Norm had any choice.” Cherusco glanced at Delgado to see if this was permissible utterance.

The Chief of the Department sat still in his slight shadow, unperturbed.

“Anyway, this thing is all cleaned up,” Cherusco said. -A long time ago.

Took out the two-ways and mikes, plastered the wall back up and everything. Watch apartment’s been rented to some jerk for almost two years, now.”

“Mention Costello, John,” the Chief said.

“O.K. There’s that. Costello already got a complaint from Goodman for taking District Homicide off the Gaither thing-givin’ it to the fuckups.

Goodman told him Major Crime is Major Crime.-And, the guy’s got a point.”

Sad news, since George Costello, who yearned to be the next Commissioner-and was presently Chief of Detectives-posed as adamantly upright, and was a bad man to cross.

“Who the hell is Goodman?” said the First Deputy.

Delgado gazed through plate glass, out into mazy morning air high across Park Row to the Federal Courthouse. The rich, late-summer sun was drenching that building in gold. “-Inspector, East Division Homicide,”

he said.

“What is he-trying to make trouble?”

“Goodman’s OX.,” Cherusco said. “—He was just curious. It’s not a usual thing to get a case pulled away from his guys like that.”

“It’s not his business to be curious about Departmental decisions,” the First Deputy said. “-He sounds like a big-nose, to me.”

“No, he’s all right,” Cherusco said, illustrating by this one of his pleasanter traits-a reluctance to do a fellow officer dirt. “He’s an O.

K. guy. His people were wondering’ about it, that’s all. -He went to Costello . . . Costello sent him to me . . . I set him straight-told him we were givin’ the oddballs downstairs a little waltz, remind them they were detectives-plus that class whore might have been screwin’ some state senator or something’ didn’t want that in the News.”

“Dumb,” the First Deputy said.

“Smart,” said Delgado, entranced by the Federal Courthouse, the long, long reach of Park Row. He noted, as well, two cars doubleparked along the western side resolved to mention it the Ed Lauter6ach, Chief of Patrol.

“I figured,” Cherusco said, “-it was better they think we’re coverin’

small . . . nothin’ out of the ordinary.” He nodded to himself, a quick pecking motion, confirming the sense of this. “-Should be my people handlin’ it, though-not those fuckups downstairs.”

“We want those fuckups downstairs handling it, John,” Delgado said, watching a third car doublepark-far down the block after next. Looked like a rented limo. “-We want a limited inquiry, a limited paper trail.” He turned back to the room, looking at Cherusco, blinking once at the change of light. Tapped the arm of his chair as if this —Iqqp were his office, not the First Deputy’s. “We want it all kept right here, where my man—he meant Captain Anderson—can keep his eye on it.”

“O.K.,” Cherusco said. “-All right.”

“We want this one to just drift away, John,” the First Deputy said. He made a gentle fluttering gesture with the fingers of his raised right hand. The hand was red, and huge, and bristled with gray-black fur, but the motions it made were rather subtle, delicate, and controlled. “-Just drift away . . .”

“You keep out of this, John,” Delgado said, and Cherusco shrugged and spread his hands apart to show how far the Intelligence Division now stood from interfering in the matter in any way.

“I don’t see,” he said, “why it has to be such a big deal. That particular shit was more than three years ago, for Christ’s sake! No way is anybody going’ to find out about that. -The guy was just some candidate for the Senate. -Wasn’t even elected yet! Nobody special.”

“He’s special, now,” Delgado said.

The First Deputy sighed and exercised his wonderful chair, swinging full forward upright without a squeak.

“Who is this Goodman with the mouth, complained to Costello? -Is that Buddy Goodman?” The First Deputy was a persistent man.

“No,” Cherusco said. “He’s an Irish guy. Pat Goodman.”

“Ah . . . I got him. He’s a brain-right?”

“That’s right.”

“He better be careful he doesn’t get to be a nose. He’ll do a lot better when he learns to mind his own business.”

The Commander of Intelligence decided to let it ride. -It was unlikely, now, he’d be free this afternoon in time to meet Joyce at the Hilton.

Wouldn’t get to see those small breasts-long nipples on them, the rest of that soft meat white as cream cheese-revealed for him, trembling, when she climbed up on the bed. One big bite each-that’s all.

And that smile-so sweet you wouldn’t think she even knew what a fuck was. You knew it when she got those skinny little legs in the air, though. Then you knew she loved it. . And there was more to the whole thing than that, even if she hadn’t said a word, give her credit. They were feeling closer and closer-and complications were coming. He knew it, and she knew it, but the little sweetheart hadn’t said a word, had never bugged him, not once. -The Department didn’t like divorces among senior officers. Showed a man couldn’t handle a problem couldn’t’t live with one, either. Both, prerequisites for high command.

He had a weakness, of course, just like everybody did.

He knew that. Enjoying trouble was his weakness. Dorothy would be shocked-really stunned-just like when he’d reached across the table with Jennifer watching (Jennifer four at the time) and hit her in the mouth over that high school reunion thing. Knocked a tooth out for her.

Got her attention. -This was probably going to get her attention again.

Would sure as shit break the monotony.

“Costello,” the First Deputy said. “-What did he have to say?”

“Costello said he didn’t remember talkin’ to Goodman about it… said he wouldn’t remember talkin’ to me about it… said if I ever mentioned it to him again, I’d be sorry.”

“Smart,” said Delgado from his almost shade.

“Too fucking smart,” the First Deputy said, who rarely used the vulgar word. The First Deputy considered Costello a threat, though still distant, to the Commissionerpreening himself as he did on his rectitude, giving news conferences. . . . Costello, who’d been a herocop—exchanging gunfire at a range of ten feet with a perpetrator who’d just killed a bank messenger-had then been adopted by a senior commander of the Tactical Division (a black man), who, years later, had become Commissioner under the city’s last white mayor. Costello (Irish on both sides) had risen with his rabbi, and was known therefore, by some white and Hispanic officers, as the Easter Eggborn of a chocolate bunny.

“Let’s have them in,” Delgado said. ‘-I’rn due uptown at eleven.”

The First Deputy opened the shallow center drawer in his wide mahogany desk, looked for something, and didn’t find it. “-This is not a subject for discussion at the meeting,” he said, meaning the regular executive board meeting on Tuesday afternoons, which all deputy commissioners attended—commissioners of Legal, of Depart mental Trials, of Administration, of Community Affairs, of Organized Crime Control.

“I hope to hell not.” -Cherusco, who would not be invited to attend in any case, meaning, as did the First Deputy, particularly the Deputy Commissioner for Community Affairs, Jorge Molina, an ex-journalist and desperate police buff with wacky notions of making mayor someday. This young Hispanic, handsome as a demigod and clever at his job, had proved to have a mouth the size of the Holland Tunnel.

“You heard what Molina did last week?” Cherusco said-the question rhetorical, since they certainly had, but their silence indicating some interest in Intelligence’s version.

The Deputy for Community Affairs, taking advantage of his technical elevation to peace officer, though intrinsically civilian, had purchased a large military-model automatic pistol in gleaming stainless steel, and was pleased to brandish it while answering any possible call for response overheard on his limousine radio before his patrolman driver could manage to reach over and change channels. -This change too late, the call overheard in the back seat, the Deputy for Community Affairs might instantly order a response—siren yodeling, tires squealing at the turns-and would, his driver swore, have the big automatic drawn, its numerous safeties and switches clicked this way and that, its fat grip ponderous with innumerable rounds of high-speed hollow-points, its sneering muzzle swinging at times in the excited hand to cover the back of the patrolman’s head, so that he hunched lower and lower in his seat as he drove.

On arrival at the scene, the Deputy for Community Affairs would leap from his limo all ready for action, making most circumspect any cop within pistol range demanding the situation, his sleek, handsome head swiveling for possible newspeople, for microphones, for cameras-and then go bounding up any steps present, preceded by his baleful glittering great gun, which made men part like the Red Sea before him.

Cherusco related the latest and best-how the Deputy for Community Affairs, last week, on Wednesday, having caught a call to Assist Officer before his driver could obscure it, had responded with great speed, to discover on Henry Street a parked patrol car, and, inside the entrance way of a small apartment building there, one patrolman standing at the open door of a first-floor apartment-and his partner within, talking in a small living room with a fat man holding a kitchen knife to his young daughter’s throat.

Her father had already cut her, lightly, along the side of her neck (apparently for insisting on continuing a relationship of which he disapproved) and still seemed quite upset. The girl, held firmly at his side, was only glum, though her blouse was ruined by the blood.

All, to this point, was perfectly proper. One patrolman inside, talking, and the other-so as not to overheat a situation already warm enough-just outside in the hall, visible, but not too close. They were waiting for a Hostage Team—expert talkers, delayers, understanders, sympathizers, and sudden seizers.

Enter the Deputy Commissioner for Community Affairs, who, to do him justice, might have behaved quite correctly had he not seen a columnist for The Village Voice-not ordinarily the man to be answering police calls (but, as it happened, a resident nearby)—come trotting along the sidewalk to see what was up, evidently having recognized the Deputy’s handsomeness and shining weapon.

With that small, sweatshirted man hurrying behind him, then, the Deputy came to the apartment doorway, took in the situation, shouldered past the astonished patrolman at the door-the cop reached out and grabbed the Deputy’s jacket tail (gray Italian silk) and, afraid to tear it, let go when the Deputy angrily jerked away-and entered the room, a Superior Officer taking charge. Didn’t seem to him there was time, considering the girl’s bloody neck, her ruined blouse, to wait for the Hostage Team at all.

The patrolman beside him in the living room reduced to silence by surprise, the Deputy was enabled to deal with the troubled sire as only a truly practiced public speaker could-rapidly reassuring the fat man that children, however loved, could plague a decent person to death, were such a responsibility, were so foolish, so ignorant of what was best for them, it was no wonder even the most loving father might lose his temper-and so on and on, and not to no effect. The troubled parenthis knife blade trembling with eagerness at his daughter’s throat, as if the steel had requirements of its own, impatient of fulfillment-listened and appeared to ease until he stood somewhat slack, his attention equally divided between the stream of murmured commiseration issuing from the movie-star face, and the wandering small bright circle of the automatic’s muzzle.

From the street outside, faintly, the soft whimpers of brakes as the Hostage Team came, siren-less, to rest.