The Big Fear (14 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

It was too bright and it hurt too much. Leonard squinted. He wasn’t dead. He figured that if he were dead it wouldn’t hurt so much. He couldn’t move his right arm. He tried to open his eyes. There was a window in front of him and it was too big and the shades were open and that’s why it was too bright. Better to keep them closed. Think things through a little.

He remembered the pain in his hand the most. The look of the heel as it dug in. Cops wear sensible, quiet, shoes. But that doesn’t mean it’s a picnic to get stepped on by one. And that is if Davies was even a cop. It had passed through Leonard’s mind, briefly, that he wasn’t. That he had been the victim of a random street crime by someone who had found his way into a uniform and a badge. Then why hadn’t anything been stolen? Leonard reached into his pocket to see if the flash drive was still there. But he didn’t have a pocket; he was wearing a hospital gown. His arm stung as he reached. He curled back up in the bed.

His shoulder had been wrapped with an Ace bandage until it bulged under his gown, so tight on his arm that he could barely feel his fingers. The pain now was concentrated in his back and upper chest; he felt as though he could feel every blow of the nightstick again, across his clavicle and through the knotted flesh. There weren’t any broken bones or he would have been in traction.

His eyes had adjusted enough that he could open them. He could feel dry gobs of sleep crusting each eyelid. Instinctively he reached up with his right hand, but the pain caught him. Instead he cleared his eyes with his left. He must have been out for days. He blinked and stared out the window just past the foot of his bed.

It was a magnificent panorama. He was only seven stories up, but facing east. There was nothing between his hospital room and the water. He could see the merry traffic fluttering along the FDR, the rocky sea wall beneath it, then the broad East River and the Queensboro Bridge. Someone had picked him up and shunned Kings County, up the road, or even Methodist in Park Slope, and dumped him onto the doorstep of a Manhattan hospital. He would have to figure that out too.

Leonard had always been impressed with his view out of Ebbets Field, onto the park and the sea of Brooklyn ahead of him, but it was nothing compared to what the hospital room offered. His own view petered out with the hill beside the park, the East River miles away and blotted out by a series of low-rise housing projects. Now he could barely move with the pain, but at least he was looking directly out over the water. Every New Yorker’s dream. He was somewhere on the East Side, high sixties. He had been beaten up on the streets of Crown Heights and had woken up in one of the best hospitals in the city.

He sat up. The pain wasn’t so bad anywhere but his back and the one hand. He couldn’t even feel the bruise that used to be on his hip. Aside from the thud across his shoulders, he felt kind of rested.

Leonard looked around his room. There was another bed, but no one in it. The whole room was dead still, plain white, and alarmingly empty. The only times Leonard had been in a hospital room was as a well-wisher. Rooms that had been stuffed with cards and flowers and people patting a shoulder or wrist. He realized when he looked around his cell that no one knew he was here. His clothes were folded neatly on a squat indestructible chair by the door. Other than that, nothing. He pivoted in bed. He might as well try to stand. He might as well try to feel like himself.

He put the pants and shoes on without trouble. His undershirt stretched over the bandage, but he couldn’t force his arm through the button-down shirt. And forget about the jacket. It was okay. He could manage in a hospital with a T-shirt on. He slid his hands into his pockets. The flash drive was secure in his left. The cop hadn’t even taken it. He figured he could go out into the hallway and ask a nurse how long he would be here. He still had work to do, after all.

As he stood up, he heard the door open behind him.

“It’s good to see you’re doing better.” It was a deep, gruff, familiar voice.

Leonard turned around. It was a man wearing a beaten tweed jacket and slacks that didn’t quite match, no tie. It was a face that seemed familiar, but coming out of consciousness as he was, Leonard couldn’t place it. The man was holding two cups of designer coffee. He held one out to Leonard.

“This is a lot better than what comes out of the machines. I didn’t know how you like it, so I got it both ways. Me, I’m not particular, so whichever you don’t want I’m happy with.”

Leonard stepped forward, still in a daze. The face came into view. Those soft creases around the eyes. Leonard was awake enough to recognize it now. He took one of the cups of coffee. The back of his neck pinged with fear. He thought about trying to leave. But the man in front of him had a gun on his belt, and he was on the seventh floor of a hospital. He wouldn’t get far. He swallowed and spoke.

“Thank you, Detective Mulino.”

“Please. Call me Ralph. And have a seat. I’ve got just a few questions for you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

UP TO SOMETHING

The coffee was still hot and rich and gave a little life back to Leonard. Mulino sat in the squat chair, the picture of calm. Leonard boosted himself back up on his bed and looked over the cop’s shoulder, trying to see if there was a nurse or a doctor in the hallway. He might already be trapped.

“We were worried about you for a little while.”

“We?”

“I was worried about you.”

“That’s very nice of you. The last two cops I spoke to, one accused me of murder and the other beat the crap out of me.”

“You’re saying police did this to you?”

“Why would I tell you, Detective? You wouldn’t believe me anyways. Your friend Harrison wanted to lock me up for killing Davenport.”

“Yeah. Harrison closed that case already. Turns out your boss was a jumper.”

“What?”

Mulino shrugged. “The woman wasn’t shot. She wasn’t injured at all. She had taken a couple of Valium. You know your boss to take Valium, on a regular basis?

“I wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t ask.” He bit his lip.

“They have footage of her getting on the Staten Island Ferry. They don’t have any footage of her getting off.”

“Are you in homicide all of a sudden? I thought you were reassigned given the shooting.” Leonard instinctively checked Mulino’s waistband. He still had his gun. That didn’t mean he was out of Property. He certainly wasn’t working the murder case, or the suicide, or whatever it was called now.

“The grapevine reaches all the way to the basement of Property.”

“That’s a pretty full boat for people to not notice a jumper.”

“People pay attention to their own affairs.”

“Still.”

“Drowning was the cause of death. So either someone throws her off the ferry—struggling with her while she’s screaming—or she jumped. Which do you think is more likely to draw attention?”

“She didn’t kill herself.”

“Well, you can take it up with Harrison. Case is off his docket and the city doesn’t need to record it as a homicide when the numbers come out.”

Leonard could see how it made a certain degree of sense. Davenport was languid, cold, and ambitious. She had left a job where she was the center of attention and joined the faceless rat race. Maybe that had been enough to drive her over the edge. Maybe after one whole day. At least if you were a police officer worried about the homicide rate, you could make yourself believe that. But Leonard couldn’t. She had a husband, a son. And Mulino didn’t know what Leonard had been through. What he knew Davenport had learned. And what had happened to him to bring him here. Once upon a time, Leonard would have been afraid to bring it up. But he wasn’t afraid of as many things anymore.

“A cop could have taken her.”

“What?”

“No one pays any attention when an officer frisks someone in the street. Makes an arrest. The doorman to her building wouldn’t remember a cop coming by. Cops can walk someone along a crowded room and no one pays attention.”

“And they just throw her off the ferry.”

“Or he takes her somewhere.”

“A lot of people on the ferry would see that.”

“There is a difference between seeing and noticing, Detective. We see things every day that we don’t notice. He walks her off quietly. Takes her on another boat. Or to the shore.”

“You get some rest. Your theory needs a little work.”

“Okay, Detective. But the suicide needs work too. She had too much going on to kill herself.”

“Like what.”

And with that Mulino had stumped him. Because Leonard couldn’t tell the detective what Veronica had said. What Davenport had found out about the investment company. The little disasters. He trusted the detective a little more than he had when he’d interviewed him. But not that much more.

“I can’t tell you that, Detective.”

Mulino stewed. He looked closely at Leonard. He bit his lip.

“All right then. We’ll leave it at that.”

Leonard spoke despite himself. “She was up to something. She had an investigation going on. I learned something about it. And the next thing I know some officer from the Seven-Oh shows up on my street and beats the crap out of me.”

Mulino leaned back. When a detective doesn’t believe what you’re saying, he doesn’t make a show of pretending he does. Mulino spoke in his slowest, sweetest voice, which still wasn’t very slow and wasn’t at all sweet. “This is what I actually came to talk to you about. You actually see this person?”

“Yes. Officer Davies. From the Seven-Oh. You can go look him up.”

Mulino nodded.

“Look, Leonard. I have my own problems. As you know. I came here to talk to you because I wanted to let you know that I was totally honest in there when you interviewed me. I waited on that ship until I was absolutely sure. And I’m being railroaded for it and I don’t think you mean to be doing it. But you’re a part of it. So if you tell me there is someone out there in the department doing you wrong, it’s not like I don’t believe it. But my first thought when I hear about a cop beating you up at three in the morning is someone found a uniform at a fun shop.”

Leonard shook his head. His word wasn’t good enough. And why should it be, anyway. This detective had no reason to trust him. Just before all this had happened, Leonard was the one accusing him of doing something wrong. And, frankly, Davies as an impersonator made a certain degree of sense. The pain was spreading down his back again. He must have been given a painkiller in his sleep. It was wearing off.

“Okay, Detective. I understand. I haven’t finished your case yet. You said your piece. But Davenport had something on these cops. You should care, if you think you’re being railroaded. Maybe she was on to something. I’m just putting my case together from the evidence that comes in.”

“If someone killed your boss, he did a great job of making her look like she did it herself.”

“You’ve mentioned.”

“Someone is going to come and talk to you about this thing too. About you being in here hurt. It isn’t going to be me. I just came by to check in on you. You’ve been out three days, this morning is the first it got announced you were here.”

Leonard looked up at the detective. “What do you mean?”

“Just that. Head of DIMAC found on the street and taken to the hospital. No one heard from you for days. You were here. I hadn’t known and I figure I’d stop by.”

“You’re not investigating this.”

“I’m on my meal from Property. I gotta get back to 100 Gold.”

Mulino stood up, shaking out his bad knee. He took out his card. “I know you have some ideas about Davenport. I don’t know, myself. Maybe I’m not supposed to talk to you. But I figure you are interested in the truth same as anyone.” He handed the card over and Leonard pocketed it.

Mulino turned and walked down the hallway. Leonard watched him leave. Mulino would go back to the outside world and to his normal life. Maybe it was a life filled with petty crimes, dirty streets, and fights with kids who had stabbed each other over how to split up the dime bag. But as a detective, those were fights Mulino would get to win. Even in Property, he got to hold a little bit of authority over the rest of the world. And he’d head out at the end of his tour and drive out to Long Island where his own family was probably waiting, safely walled off from the world he worked in all day, with Turkey Tetrazzini and a game of Chutes and Ladders. That was over for Leonard now.

As he watched Mulino leave, he thought of one more thing. It had been in the papers, that he’d been hurt. Until then, nobody knew. Nobody knew if he had even survived. Now whoever had done it could find him. And a hospital guard would wave through a badge just like anyone else. No one ever asks questions. Leonard set down his coffee. He stood up. His shoulder hurt like hell, but he didn’t have much time. He walked out into the hallway of the hospital, leaving his view behind.