Pleading Guilty (20 page)

"Nice digs," I said. He had a cubicle, steel partitions painted police blue, that rippled plastic stuff for windows, and a door. No ceiling. Life where you keep your voice down and can literally touch each wall when you stretch. Al worked Financial fourteen years. When Pigeyes was transferred in, he transferred out--discretion and valor, you know how that is--and went to the Records Division, which anyway is a better end to the road. He is now one of those coppers whose hard-charging days are behind them, who've found their cul-de-sac on the police life map and can hide here till it's retirement time, pretty soon now for Al, come age fifty-five. The Hall is full of these types, guts lik
e s
addlebags and smoked-out voices. He works 8
:00
to 4:30. He supervises the clerks and fills out forms. Nobody shoots at him, nobody kicks him in the ass. He has his memories to keep him warm and a wife to set him straight whenever he's had a brewski too many and begins that
lame brained
talk about how nice it would be to get back on the street. A good sod, with features blown out by alcohol.

"Need you to check me out on a couple things," I told him. "Shoot." I was seated right beside his little desk and he could reach out from there to shut the door, which he did.

"You worked Financial a lot longer than me. I've gotta get information from Pico Luan--
I.D.
on who controls a bank account.

Al shook his head. "No," he said, "forget it," then asked, trying to be casual, "Whatta we got here?"

I was dodgy. "I'm not completely sure. I'm real confused. Here, let me try this one on you. Guy tells me he had a conversation with the General Manager of a bank in Pico Luan, long-distance telephone, and the G. M. sort of gives him between the lines whose account it is. How's that sound to you?"

"Not like any of them I ever talked to. Not on the telephone. Those guys got a patter. Go over to the Embassy. See your diplomat with the palm oil. Fill out a form. Wait an eon. Then another one. They'll send you a beautiful document back, honest to Christ, you never saw so many seals and ribbons, you'd think it was the fuckin VFW on parade, but it's spit, they won't tell you momma's first name when it comes to whose money's really in the bank. You been down there. You know how it is.,'

I knew, but I hadn't thought twice on day one, when Martin told us about calling the bank, because, after all, it was Martin. Now suddenly I was wondering how I sat still for that. 'Like trying to grab hold of smoke.' Jesus, I thought.

"Once or twice," said Lagodis, "we were desperate, we hired some sickening creep called himself a lawyer who claimed he had inside connections at the banks. What a snake charmer thi
s c
haracter was. Ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent stinko, if you ask me. You could give him a try. Me, I believe more in the guys who get up and walk at the tent meetings." Al shook his head again, but I told him I'd take the name. Scraping his chair across the floor, he walked out into the clamor of the central Records area, computer terminals and files, a number of empty desks at the lunch hour. From where I sat, I saw a sole uniformed type eating a burger out of the wrapper and glancing over the Tribune. The Hall, the h
. Q
., units like Records especially, remain a sort of central backwater where it's like everyone took Valium, you'd swear every thirty seconds took a real-world minute, but I felt sort of cheerful to breathe again this gloomy bureaucratic air, this stolid, police thing of being utterly invulnerable.

The sad truth is that being a copper won't ever quite leave me. I never was in a flatter moral landscape. Or happier, as a result. Cops see it all--the Scout leader who scouts out the little boys, the business guy who makes 3ooK and gets caught stealing more, the mother who's beat her baby black and blue and wails in agony when you come with Child Welfare to take the kid away. You see her reach out, kneel and plead, tears a river, you see the utter knotted-up violence of her own agony, you see that you are taking her whole universe, cockeyed or not, that everything was in this child, not only her wild pain but some squalid hope, if maybe she could just get the suffering out of herself into some realm where it was more tangible, it might be easier to control. You see it and wonder how can you understand if some of that's not in you? It's just that today you're on the right side, you're wearing blue.

" 'Joaquin Pindling.' I was reading the card Al handed me. "Jesus, what kind of name is that?"

"He'll cost you a buck or two, I promise that. Course, maybe a guy like you," offered Lagodis, "lots of personality, you could go down there yourself and make new friends, get information on your own."

"Kind of friends who'll leave me lighter in the pockets?" "Anything's possible. Then of course could he somebody don't feel as friendly as you do. Then you become a sort of firsthand big-time expert on Due Process in Pico Luan."

"Now that's a subject, I'll bet."

"Oh yes indeedy. I talked with a couple visiting scholars once. Prison conditions in Pico Luan, friend, not like the Regency on the Beach. They let you crap in this big hole in the middle of the cell, deep, deep, goes down who-knows-where-the-fuck. Nighttime the guards like to play hide-and-seek with the white guys. Watch where you step, mon. You lose, you find out where who-knows-where-the-fuck is."

"Got it."

Al waited a bit, seeing how it was. He was still on his feet. He was wearing a tie and, here in the dead of winter, a short-sleeve shirt a little snug over the beer gut. I told him I'd run into Pigeyes, but he'd already heard. This was the Force. That was yesterday's news.

"He let me go too," I said.

"Better be no next time. He'll tear off your head and shit down your neck. From what I hear, he skins his knees he still mentions you. I think what it is is his feelings got hurt."

"That must be it." I had some idea to ask if Al knew what Gino was investigating, in hopes of getting a little more info on Kam, but all in all, I'd probably pressed my luck already. "Yeah," said Al, just filling in, hitching up his trousers, which dropped six inches every time he rocked on the balls of his feet. "You got a lot to watch out for," he told me.

That part wasn't news.

Chapter
XIII. WHO SAYS LAWYERS

AREN' T TOUGH?

A. Toots's Walls

I was received in Toots's law offices with the air of ceremonial grandeur undoubtedly lavished on every guest. Stumbling along on his cane, his cigar extinguished but comfortably couched inside his jaw, he introduced me to each secretary and half his partners, the greatly renowned Mack Malloy, who was helping out the Colonel on that ethics thing. Then he showed me into his office and propounded a lengthy commentary on each memento on the walls.

Toots's office should have been moved intact to a museum somewhere, if not as a monument to twentieth-century political life then to one individual's capacity for self-appreciation. It was a virtual Colonel Toots Nuccio shrine. There were of course signed photos of the Colonel with every Democratic President from FDR forward, and two with Eisenhower, Toots in uniform in both. There were plaques from B'nai B'rith (Man of the Year), Little Sisters of the Poor, and the Kindle County Art Museum. There was a special award from the symphony, a clarinet cast in bronze; religious relics received from grateful clerics; and a lengthy salutatory letter from the Urban League, perhaps th
e o
nly compliment Toots had received from people of color in the last thirty years, but which nonetheless had been framed. There was a gavel he'd been given from the City Council upon his retirement, his years of service engraved on the brass hand that circled the mallet head, and scores of photos of Toots with sports stars and political luminaries, some so long gone that their names had vanished from memory. At the absolute focus of attention, mounted immediately above his ponderous old desk, were his medals, aligned in a glass-doored case with a separate little high-intensity lamp that trained on Toots's silver star, which was pinned to black velvet. I spent the required instant marveling at it, wondering as I always would if it had been awarded for real bravery or as part of one of Toots's inevitable deals. Within these walls, one tended to realize that self-congratulation, the collection of banners and ribbons, was far more real to Toots, far more important than the events they were intended to commemorate.

"So," he said, finally seated, "I didn't figure you made house calls."

"Occasionally. There's something I want to talk to you about." "This here hearing?"

I told him it was something else and hiked my chair a little closer.

"Toots. Can a fella ask a question? Between friends?"

He gave me the usual fulsome stuff, for me anything. I replied in kind, saying he was the only person in the tri-counties I knew who might be able to answer this. He smiled, deeply pleased by any compliment, without regard to its sincerity.

"I wondered if you might have heard something around town. There's an insurance guy, an actuary, who the papers say is missing. Vernon Koechell. They call him Archie. What I have to find out is if you know any reason for somebody to pop him." Toots laughed quite merrily, as if I had made a saucy remark just within the borders of good taste. The shrunken old face showed not a sign of even vague offense, but I noticed that h
e h
ad drawn back on his walking stick and within the milky elderly eyes was perhaps lodged a trace of something lethal.

"Mack, my friend, can I make a little suggestion?" -Sure."

"Ask another question."

I stopped on that.

"See, Mack, I got a rule for life. Always followed it since I didn't even have hair on my chin. I known you a long time now. You're a smart fella. But let me share my thinking with you: Don't talk about other people's business. It's their business and it's for them to worry about."

I received this advice solemnly. Looking at me, Toots winked. "I hear you, Colonel, but I've got a real problem." "Whatsa matter? He rate you on your policy or what?"

"Here's how it is, Colonel. I have a partner missing, a guy named Kamin. Bert Kamin. Where he's gone, I haven't the foggiest. But this guy Archie, he's got a white shirt on and a nice tie, but he's keeping a book. And my guy Kamin's laying bets with him. At least that's the way it looks." I peeked up at Toots. I had his attention.

"Anyway, Archie, he's quite dead. That's a fact. Something I know. And pretty soon, any minute now, the coppers are going to show up to talk to me about that. And I'm frankly not interested in getting myself in Dutch with the wrong folks. So that's why I ask. I gotta know what's doing here, because I may have to do some fancy steppin'." I tried to look hangdog and sincere, reverencing one of the many powers that dominated Toots's life. He wasn't really buying it.

"You a straight shooter, Mack?"

"As much as the next guy."

Toots laughed. He liked that. He removed the cigar and in the gloomy light of the room considered the mangled end. It looked like a hunk of seaweed pulled up on a line.

"You understand with bookies," he said.

"Not everything."

"See this here-- Guy makes a book, you know, he's got to lay off, right?"

"Like insurance companies. He doesn't absorb all the risk. I understand that much."

"This guy, he had some very good luck. Somehow he always had laid off his losing action."

I waited.

"How could he lay off only losing bets? Doesn't he lay off beforehand? I mean, before the event. The race, the game, whatever?"

"That he does," said Toots.

I was on very delicate ground. Toots worked lovingly on his cigar.

"You mean he knew how these events were going to come out? Is that what you're saying? He knew these games were fixed?"

"You see," said Toots, "you share risks, you share no-risks. Capisc'? A fella's gotta look out for his
. F
riends. Otherwise he don't got friends, he got enemies. Right? That's how life is, right?"

"That's how it seems to be, Toots. There are no victims." Toots liked that one. No need to explain it to him.

"So you see," he said, "you asked a question, you asked another question, you told me some things, I told you some things, we had a talk. Okay? Somebody asks, some things you know, some things you don't know. Right?"

"Right."

"Sure," said Toots. He gave a quick, smug, frightening little laugh. "So. We gonna win this hearing?"

"I wish I could tell you yes, Colonel. The hill's pretty steep." He shrugged, here in his element capable of seeming worldly-wise, ripened by life.

"Give it your best. I ain't gonna get the death penalty, right?" We agreed on that.

"And who's there, you or the skirt?"

"The skirt's good," I told him.

"They say," said Toots. "So they say. Bit of a punchboard, I hear." I'd known he would check her out.

"Woman of the world," I answered.

"A big world," he said.

"I'll try to be there, Colonel. I have to worry about this too. Archie. Bert."

He understood. Sometimes a fella got himself into a spot. He walked me to the door.

"Remember my rule." He pointed with the cigar. Don't talk about other people's business. I had it firmly in mind.