Tainted Evidence

by Robert Daley

  "Did he die of the knife wounds or the gunshots?" asked Karen. "What does the M.E. say? Any witnesses?"

  "There were no witnesses except for the two guys going through the deceased's pockets."

  Again laughter.

  "--And a third guy who ran over and stole his sneakers.

  The laughter lasted a considerable time.

  Karen paged through the notes on the case. "This is the same guy that robbed the health store in that other case," she said. "Another time he shot a guy in the chest. And he's only 22 years old."

  "A victim of a deprived upbringing," said Tananbaum.

  Van Horn said: "We should put him a program."

  "It's been a bad month," Karen said. She paused. "We're not getting dispositions.” They all knew what this meant. There were too many murders for too few prosecutors, too few judges, too few courtrooms. However horrible these crimes, many would have to be plea bargained away. Defense lawyers knew this too. "You've got to push harder for dispositions," Karen said. "In cases that don't mean anything, you're going to have to give a little."

  Van Horn said: "The defense lawyers all want a lot, Karen. I've got one who won't plead unless I promise his client zero to seven."

  "Keep trying," Karen said, and returned to her office. For the last half hour she had been checking her watch constantly. Now she stuffed her briefcase, grasped her handbag and told her secretary she was going home. It was nearly 7 PM, and other elements of her life demanded her attention--elements far more important, she told herself firmly, than her job.

  She should have left the office ages ago. Fearing she was too late to take the subway she splurged on a taxi to Grand Central. Considering the tight budget she was trying to operate on, it cost a fortune, and she barely made the last train that would get her home in time, running down the ramp in heels, and just making it into the final car as the train pulled out.

  The car was hot, all seats taken, the aisle narrow, three seats to one side, two to the other, elbows and newspapers extending outwards, and she began to make her way through this car and into the next one, and then the one after that, and it was six cars before she could find an empty seat. She subsided into it and went to work on the folders she had with her.

  The train again slowed.

  "Bronxville," the conductor sang out. "Station is Bronxville."

  Karen gathered her folders in her arms and joined a line of commuters waiting at the end of the car.

  When she stepped down into the parking lot Henry was waiting with their small station wagon. He was a tall, sandy haired man, 41 years old. She dumped her folders in the back, kissed him on the cheek, and he backed the car out.

  "We'll eat afterwards," he told her. "We don't have much time."

  "Did you pick up my things at the cleaners?"

  "Yes.” They drove a little way in silence. "The car's supposed to be serviced tomorrow," he told her.

  "I'll drop it off on my way to the train."

  Karen came in the door of her house, and set down her folders and briefcase. Her daughter Hillary, 15, was there waiting.

  "Hurry up, Mom, we'll be late."

  Backstage at the high school auditorium, the hem of Hillary's costume was not right, and Karen was on her knees lengthening it. Out front the seats were filling up with other parents, and Karen could feel her daughter's mounting tension.

  "Hold still," she ordered.

  Hillary began running lines of the play with a boy of about 16, whose name, Karen believed, was Randy.

  Hillary: "I want to stay in Grover's Corners with you."

  Randy: "Emily, we can be together..."

  Hillary: "Mom, pull it down.”

  Karen, her mouth full of pins, gazed up at her daughter.

  "Mom, it has to touch the floor."

  Randy, ignoring both of them, concluded the scene: "Forever."

  Karen began again on the hem. Finally she stood up. "There. You look terrific."

  Hillary was looking around for a mirror, but there was none. "Do I really?"

  "The audience will love you.” Of course they will, she thought, they are parents.

  "I hope so," said Hillary.

  The other actors stood in a group on the other side of the stage, and Hillary went off to join them.

  "Good luck," Karen called after her daughter.

  The girl made no response. Karen didn't mind. Watching her, she beamed with pride and nervousness.

  A little later the play began. Sitting in the audience beside her husband, Karen studied her case notes while waiting for Hillary's entrance. Not until the girl appeared onstage did Karen put her notes away. Thereafter she watched almost breathlessly, hanging on Hillary' every speech. She had to laugh at herself: one would think this the most serious moment of her day, so intent was her focus.

  In another part of the auditorium her son Jackie, along with two of his friends, also watched the play, though with much less reverence.

  "My sister is the one who looks like a frog," one of the boys remarked.

  "Mine's the one in the moo-moo," said Jackie. "Anything for attention."

  When the performance ended a crowd of parents and students milled around backstage. Karen hugged her daughter. "You were wonderful, darling."

  Hillary was in a state of exhilaration and delight.

  "In the first act you had me laughing and in the second act I was in tears," her mother told her.

  "I thought you were going to forget the words," said Jackie.

  "Who asked you, fatface?"

  "No name calling," said Karen.

  It was midnight before she and her husband were in their room getting ready for bed. Henry stood half in his closet folding his trousers over a hanger. His legs looked very long with no pants on. Very hairy too. His shirttails hung down over his boxer shorts. At her dressing table, watching him in her mirror, Karen was putting away her necklace, removing her earrings. She felt strangely excited. Her whole life seemed to her exciting. Her job was exciting. Watching her daughter tonight was exciting.

  Once she had been in school plays herself, and she remembered them well, the tension of going onstage and then the exaltation afterwards, and the dreams she had had of becoming an actress. High school years. She gazed at herself in her mirror and remembered when her whole life was ahead of her but so far ahead she imagined she would never be able to wait that long. All that had happened since was then ahead of her: husband, children, her job, but she didn't know it and at times was filled with despair thinking it would never come. Or if it did she'd never get any of what she wanted. Instead she had got almost all of it.

  Across the room Henry had begun humming. Their eyes met in the glass. In a moment, she knew from experience, would come a song of his own invention. Anticipating it, no longer a school girl, pushing to one side her nostalgia but not her excitement, she began to smile.

  "Have I told you this week that I love you?" sang Henry from the closet.

  "You've barely seen me this week.” She pulled a comb through her curls.

  "Have I told you I miss you so much?" sang Henry, coming closer.

  "Tell me again."

  Putting his hands on her shoulders he began to nuzzle her neck. For a moment she watched him in the mirror, after which she closed her eyes and enjoyed it.

  "Why are you so interested in me?" she said, standing, breaking away from him, starting to take her clothes off. "I'm an old married lady.”

  Watching him, not really expecting an answer, she undid the sleeves of her blouse, the buttons down the front. Henry hovered near her. All her attention was on him now and he knew it.

  "Who said I'm interested in you?"

  She moved away from him again, and continued undressing, her movements becoming more and more provocative. She got a nightgown out of a drawer. They were extremely aware of each other. All the while watching her, Henry too had been getting undressed, and when he came close to her she turned suddenly and bit his bare chest.

  Then they
were in bed in the dark, with nothing to be seen and only their voices and the movement of the bed to be heard.

  "Sssh, the children will hear," murmured Karen.

  "They won't know what it means."

  The bed was squeaking badly. It made Karen giggle. "They're older than you think."

  So he slowed what he was doing until the bed made less noise, almost none, his movements long and gentle now and oh so smooth, and his voice in her ear was almost a whisper.

  "When we first started making love, every time I saw you I couldn't wait."

  "Yes, I could tell."

  "You always looked so cool."

  "Cool? My knees were like jelly."

  "Mine too."

  "I was barely out of high school," she said. "Weren't you ashamed?"

  "No."

  "I wasn't either.” She was writhing under him and could not have stopped if she wanted to. "You were the experienced older man."

  "A junior in college."

  "By now of course you're blasé."

  "Do I feel blasé to you?"

  "How can you still want to. It's been eighteen years.” But it was becoming increasingly difficult for her to speak.

  "Longer. We've been married eighteen years."

  "Henry."

  "Maybe the first time we did this I was more eager than tonight, but I doubt it."

  "Do you want to know something? I'm in love with my husband."

  "Maybe the first time it seemed more fabulous than now, but I doubt it."

  "Don't--talk."

  Later, her nerve ends still tingling, she lay awake, and it surprised her to realize how much, some nights, she liked to make love. Did other women her age enjoy it as much? Not from the way they talked. In her circle of women friends, suburban women mostly, the subject rarely came up, only occasionally, but from what they said, if you could believe them, they would most often like to pass. Usually she tried to say nothing at all, or if pressed agreed with them, though she didn't agree. Sex had its place, she would say firmly. But she would stop there. She didn't want some woman asking what she did, what Henry did.

  In fact she could go days, weeks practically, sublimating it to her work, and to the needs of her children, submitting to Henry as necessary, sometimes with bad grace, and then a night like this would come along. How did you explain it? Was there something wrong with her? She shouldn't like it this much, perhaps. Tonight they had gone on and on, it had lasted almost forever, she had got all lathered up, and then at the end all the stars in the sky had seemed to fall on her at once. The sweat on her was only now drying, a sensation she luxuriated in, sweat honestly earned. Her skin still tingled. They had made love all different ways, she was embarrassed to count how many, including on her knees which she usually didn't like much, would do only do when terrifically excited, but which sometimes, tonight certainly, aroused her beyond belief, she didn't know why, it didn't even feel that much nicer, except that presenting herself that way felt wicked. It stimulated her anew now just to think about it, her buttocks waving in the air, almost perverse, as if forbidden, him slamming into her. Anyway, terribly, terribly sexy.

  Beside her, her husband slept peacefully, though she herself was in a state of sexual tension still.

  Chapter 3

  In Harlem the day had been hot and the night had brought no breeze or coolness. As Barone and Muldoon moved through the dark streets the windows were down and the hot air came in on their faces, their hands. Their shirts, their trousers were stuck to the seat. To stir in their seats they had to unglue themselves first.

  The radio was lying on their coats on the seat between them, but it was silent. In the Three-Two all was quiet, no assaults, robberies, homicides so far. Again tonight Barone drove. Their pace was as slow as always. One could walk as fast. They eyed each group of street corner idlers, studied each shadowy face. Any furtive movement would have stopped them, the hint of a crime being plotted or in progress, the glimpse of credit cards changing hands, or guns, or drugs.

  "Fucken hot," said Muldoon. He had an open bottle of beer between his feet and a handkerchief on his lap with which from time to time he mopped his forehead.

  There was a difference in the way they studied the groups they passed. Barone's gaze merely flicked from face to face, whereas Muldoon tried to lock eyes with anyone who would look at him. His cold hard stare was meant to intimidate the mutts, to reinforce the police presence in their minds if they had minds, a calculable weight on their lives and on their neighborhood. He dared any one of them to incur his displeasure, to step out of line in any way. Without the constant police pressure, himself and a few others, he believed, this place would become an even worse jungle than it was.

  From time to time they crossed one of the sector cars on its rounds. Always the two cars gave each other horn toots, or brief waves of recognition. Muldoon felt sentimental about this. He was glad these other men were there. In a time of crisis, all you could count on was another cop.

  Suddenly Barone braked hard and they jerked to a stop. "The one in the blue jacket," Barone cried, "grab him."

  Both detectives threw their doors open, leaped out and ran back the length of several parked cars, hands on their guns which, for the time being, remained holstered.

  "You mutts up against the wall," Muldoon ordered.

  It was two detectives against ten or more men--there wasn't time to count. Despite the odds no one questioned the authority in Muldoon's voice, or the right of two detectives, any two detectives, to jump out of a car and do what these two were doing. The men, all ten of them, moved sullenly to obey. They turned to the wall, their hands went up, and they leaned their weight against the bricks.

  Barone had gone straight to a parked cars, and then down on his knees to peer under it. After a moment he dragged out a kind of cloth purse closed by a drawstring which he pulled opened. He began nodding, and he showed his find to Muldoon: a small wad of money and a thousand or more crack vials.

  Muldoon's face broke into a vast smile. "Well, well, well."

  It was Barone's habit to watch in the rearview mirror after driving by each group of men--watch how they reacted after the car was past and they thought they were safe. It was a technique he had learned early in his career and it had brought him some good arrests. He took no particular credit for it, it was what a skilled detective did.

  "The one in the blue jacket had this bag," Barone said. "I saw it in the mirror. He dropped it to the sidewalk and kicked it under the car."

  "Stupid fuck shoulda just stood there," chortled Muldoon.

  "He shouldn't have tried to get rid of the evidence," agreed Barone. "We were already past, for God's sake.”

  Along with so much crack there ought to be a gun nearby, both detectives knew. At least one, maybe more, and additional money, the proceeds, unless the guy had just come out onto the street, which was possible. One by one Muldoon bent them over the nearest car, tossed them for weapons or money or drugs, then made them empty out their pockets onto the hood. Touching them was distasteful to him and he made sure they knew it. He found nothing. "Put that stuff back in your pockets," he told them one by one. "Now beat it. Scram. If I see your ugly face again tonight, I'll lock you up."

  Barone, meanwhile, looked elsewhere for the missing gun or guns, and for the missing proceeds if any, and he started by feeling in under the fender wells of the nearby parked cars, patting the tops of the tires, feeling for whatever might be stashed there. When he found nothing, he moved to the curbside garbage cans, lifting the lids one by one, even stirring through the loose garbage on top. Next he went into the building where he felt atop the various ledges, and pushed at the letter boxes looking for a loose flap. But he found nothing.

  They threw the man in the blue jacket, his hands cuffed behind him, into the car and as they headed back to the stationhouse, they began to interrogate him, Barone first, then Muldoon.

  "What's your name?”

  "Maurice."

  "Maurice what?"


  "Maurice Jackson."

  Still watching the prisoner in the mirror, Barone said to Muldoon in a low voice:

  "How much money in that sack?”

  "Nothing. Forty dollars."

  Barone at the wheel was silent.

  "In the old days," said Muldoon, "Any cop worth his salt would take it."

  Barone grinned at him. "There's no corruption in this department anymore."

  "Not for years now."

  "You can read it in the papers."

  "And it's only $40."

  Barone resumed talking to the prisoner. "How old are you, Maurice?"

  "Twenty two."

  "You been inside before, Maurice?”

  Maurice enumerated the various prisons in which he had done time. There was no point lying. The cops would call up his record.

  "When you get out this time, you're going to be an old man, Maurice."

  "I know that.” For a moment all three men contemplated the vagaries of life: five minutes ago Maurice was imagining the night's profits, where he would go after work, who perhaps he might sleep with. Now he faced twenty years in jail.

  "We could help you," said Muldoon. "You give us something, we give you something. That's the way it works."

  Barone was driving even slower than before, making it last. "Give us something good," Muldoon said, "and maybe we let you go.”

  "You'd let me go?"

  "You give us something, sure.” Usually Muldoon would take whatever information the prisoner had, promising whatever it took, and then arrest him anyway. The deepest dungeon was too good for these mutts. He began to throw out names. "Give me one or the other, I'll let you go."

  Maurice, obviously suffering, didn't know these people, he said. "Name someone else.”

  Muldoon went further afield: a major drug dealer named Leroy. Or a man known as Assam who was believed to have killed a cop in the Two-Five a month ago. But Maurice didn't know them either.

  "This mutt's not a dealer," Muldoon told Barone disgustedly. "He's a fucken mule. He's got nothing to sell. Let's take him in and lock him up."

  Instead Barone pulled to the curb where he spoke into the radio. "Two squad holding one, Central. Request additional unit.” After giving the address, he got out of the car to wait.