Tainted Evidence

by Robert Daley

  Finally the eyes opened.

  "What happened, man?" Muldoon said.

  "Dude stuck me."

  The eyes were half glazed over. It was a look that Muldoon recognized from other nights, other victims.

  "Who stuck you, man?"

  "I tell him his woman have a big fat ass, and he stick me."

  The eyes kept going in and out of focus.

  "Try to remember his name."

  Muldoon could tell as accurately as any doctor which victims would live, which die.

  "Why'd he have to stick me, man?"

  "You know him, don't you?” Muldoon said. This guy is on the way out, he thought. "What's his name?" Muldoon said, thinking: come on, come on, in two minutes you'll be dead, so how about giving me his name before you go.

  "You know him from somewhere," Muldoon insisted.

  "I knows him, but I don't know his name."

  "How do you know him?” There was a long wait for each response. "Tell me how you know him."

  "Dude live in my building."

  "Where in your building?"

  The silence this time was the longest yet. Then: "Somebody tell me he live on the top floor. Yeah."

  There might be eight or ten apartments on each floor, maybe more. "Where on the top floor?" said Muldoon. "Where?"

  Though the eyes had closed, Muldoon continued shaking him, repeating his question several times. He stopped only because he thought the guy was dead.

  The ambulance careered into the hospital entrance and stopped with a jerk that nearly threw Muldoon over backwards. The doors were yanked open from the outside and the stretcher was run into the hospital. Because he had work to do still, Muldoon followed. He didn't even know the guy's name yet. Once inside he inhaled the hospital odors that were as familiar to him as those of the stationhouse. Though the victim was out of sight now, he knew exactly where he had been taken, exactly where to go. He figured he came into this place, or Harlem Hospital, three nights a week at least, sometimes several times a night. He couldn't count how many men he had watched die.

  There were a number of emergency operating rooms--not real rooms but cubicles closed off by curtains. Muldoon kept parting curtains, sometimes surprising people, until he located his victim. The doctors were working over him, four men in all. He supposed they were men. They wore gauze masks and green hats and those loose green smocks, so you couldn't tell. A technician with a clipboard was in there going through the guy's clothes, and in a moment would come out with what Muldoon needed. Meantime he watched the surgeons, not the technician. He watched the knives rise and fall. The victim was being stabbed again but didn't know it. When the technician came out past him, Muldoon let the curtains fall back. The final moments of another ghetto tragedy were being played out. Tonight he had no desire to see it.

  The technician had the victim's effects in a manila envelope, which he handed over.

  "How's he doing in there?" Muldoon asked. He didn't expect an answer and didn't get one. The technician only shrugged and moved off. Muldoon upended the envelope on a counter top and stirred through it. Some loose change, some keys, a pocket knife, a handkerchief clotted with snot, a cheap watch, a wallet containing four dollars. No contraband, anyway, no weapons, no drugs, no credit cards in someone else's name, so maybe he was a decent enough guy. Muldoon's notebook came out and he copied down what he needed: name, address, date of birth and so forth, then poured everything back into the envelope.

  One of the surgeons came out through the curtains.

  "How's he doing, Doc?"

  "You the detective?"

  "That's me," said Muldoon. "Whatta we got, murder, or only assault?” This detail too he needed to know.

  "Oh, he's down the shitter."

  Muldoon said: "That's one of those highly technical medical terms, isn't it? Would you mind couching it in words a layman can understand?"

  The surgeon did not crack a smile.

  "He rolled a seven," Muldoon said. "Is that what you're trying to tell me?"

  Still no smile.

  "Post the vacancy sign," said Muldoon, "That's your message.”

  The surgeon's eyes went skyward.

  "He still in the picture, or what?" demanded Muldoon.

  "We're doing all we can to save him," the surgeon said, and he walked away without looking back.

  Two uniformed cops had ambled in a few moments before. They were glancing around, not knowing where to go.

  Good, thought Muldoon, seeing them. They'll give me a ride back to the crime scene. And he beckoned them over.

  Turned out they had been the first officers on the scene so they needed the victim's particulars also, and Muldoon handed over the manila envelope.

  "Be my guest," he told them. He watched them open it and peer inside. "Watch out for the snotty handkerchief," he advised. Needing the ride, he was being nice to them. "What else do you need?" he asked. He was anxious to get back to the crime scene. He intended to go up to the top floor and knock on every door. Hope somebody did something nervous. That would give him the correct apartment, after which he would improvise. You broke a case like this in forty eight hours or never. Often it was two hours or never. He sensed he had very little time. Right now the perpetrator was probably packing a bag. If he had any brains he was. In a few minutes he'd be out of the precinct, and then they'd never find him. Assuming that the victim died they'd never even identify him. "I need a lift," Muldoon told the two cops. "Let's go. You can look at that shit in the car.”

  He led them out of the hospital, spotted their blue and white, and climbed into the recorder's seat in front. Though Muldoon did not outrank him, the guy whose seat it was let him do it. Detectives were merely patrolmen assigned to work as investigators. They outranked nobody. But civilians didn't realize this and neither did most cops. Without protest the cop got in the back.

  "Your partner found a girl who may have seen it," said the cop who was driving.

  Though he said nothing, Muldoon was surprised. He had worried that Ritter would not know what to do. That by the time he got back there the possible witnesses would have vanished.

  When the car pulled up at the scene all the other blue and whites were gone and Ritter was standing on the curb waiting for him. There was no sign of any witness. Ritter had sent her back to the stationhouse in a radio car, he said.

  "She actually saw it?" said Muldoon. He had turned and started toward the building.

  "She was coming along the path," said Ritter, who was hurrying to keep up with Muldoon. "She knows the guy lives here somewhere. She's terrified. I doubt she'll identify anyone."

  At the doorway stood two black detectives. Their shields hung from chains around their necks. "You can't go in there," one said.

  "Who the fuck are you?" said Muldoon.

  "Housing Authority Police. We been detailed to safeguard the crime scene."

  Muldoon was fixing his own shield, identical to their’s, to his lapel. They were New York cops same as himself, but they belonged to a different police agency.

  "It happened in a housing authority building," the other detective said, "it's our case."

  "It happened outside your building."

  "Same thing."

  "It's a fucken murder," said Muldoon. "Murders revert to us."

  "We heard he was still alive."

  "By now he's cashed out, you can count on it."

  "We're only doing what we been told."

  Muldoon turned to Ritter. "Go back to the stationhouse and get the witness. Hold her here until I call you.” Plucking the radio out of Ritter's pocket he said: "Gimme that," after which he gestured toward the tallest of the two detectives. "Sherlock and I are going upstairs and make an arrest. Come on, Sherlock," he said to the tall one, and he brushed past him and entered the building. Not to his surprise, the detective followed.

  "What's it all about, man?" the detective asked him in the elevator, but he made no answer and they rode up to the top floor in silence.


  There were only seven apartments. Muldoon was glad enough to have a black detective at his side. People would be more willing to talk to him in the presence of one of their own. He began ringing doorbells.

  "There's been an accident outside," he said to whoever answered the door. "We're trying to find out if anyone saw it. Did you just come in by any chance. Did you see anything."

  In two of the apartments no one was home. No one answered his ring and when he put his ear to the door he could hear nothing inside. Two other apartments were occupied by young women with small children. The women told him they were alone except for their children. They appeared to answer his questions frankly, without tension, but he asked the little kids if their daddy or uncle were home, just to make sure.

  In the fifth apartment he hit pay dirt, he believed. A big man answered and seemed tense. He admitted he had just come in from outside. He was aware of the commotion and had seen the pool of blood, he said. What happened out there, he asked.

  But there were perfect creases in the man's trousers. Noting them, Muldoon reasoned that he must have just put them on. He hadn't even sat down in them yet. He admits he's just come in from outside, Muldoon reasoned, it's eleven o'clock at night, and he changes into a fresh pair of pants. Why? Because there was blood on the other ones, that's why. There was no other conceivable explanation. Which meant that this guy was the perp. Had to be. Inside the apartment, if he had a warrant, Muldoon would find bloodstained trousers and a bloodstained knife. Of course he didn't have a warrant. Nonetheless, the murderer was this guy in front of him.

  Muldoon kept him talking but couldn't trip him up on his answers, nor would the man invite him into his apartment. Without a warrant and with Sherlock the Housing Authority cop at his elbow Muldoon felt he could not just barge in, much as he wanted to, and nearly did.

  Finally he let the guy go and when the door had slammed shut he continued on along the corridor to the final two apartments. There were men in each, four men in all, and Muldoon gave out his fairy story and then interviewed them. They were all forthcoming. He noted nothing suspicious.

  When he had finished he went to the far end of the corridor, as far from the suspect's apartment door as he could get, and got on the radio to Ritter. Tried to rather. He was talking right past Central trying to make contact with Ritter who surely must be on the radio by now, either en route back with the witness or already waiting with her downstairs.

  He was talking in a low voice that would not carry as far as the apartment in which the suspect was probably pressed against the door listening hard to find out if he was still out there ready to grab him.

  But Ritter did not answer any of his repeated calls.

  There was an alternative. Muldoon might have gone downstairs himself, found Ritter himself, but he had no intention of leaving Sherlock alone on this hallway, either to screw up the case or grab the arrest for himself.

  Keying the radio again, holding it close to his lips, almost whispering, he tried to make contact with whichever detective was monitoring the radio back in the squad room. Someone was supposed to be monitoring it there at all times, but at the moment no one was, apparently, for no answer came back.

  Finally he made contact with the uniformed desk lieutenant downstairs in the stationhouse. He asked him to send out a radio car to find Ritter and tell him to bring the witness up to the top floor in the building.

  Muldoon settled down to wait. He was standing where he could watch both the elevator and the door to the suspect's apartment. The minutes passed exceedingly slowly. He had nothing to say to Sherlock and did not want any talking out here anyway. Fifteen minutes went by. Thirty. Where the fuck was Ritter?

  The answer was downstairs on the sidewalk with the witness but without a radio, and waiting to be told what to do. Two uniformed cops found him and sent him up.

  Muldoon lit into him as soon as he stepped off the elevator. "You call yourself a fucken detective?" he hissed, and he launched into a series of whispered, strident curses.

  Ritter simply took it, and said nothing.

  Muldoon turned to the witness, the girl. She was very young, very black and, he saw at once, very scared. When he tried to question her she blurted out: "It was dark, I didn't really see nothing."

  So Muldoon took her out into the stairwell and sat down with her on the steps and talked to her quietly for ten minutes or more. He told her the perpetrator was a murderer, she didn't want to live in the project alongside a murderer, did she? Who knew who he might murder next. She was the only one who could put him in jail where he belonged. And she needn't be frightened. She could make her identification from out here in the stairwell, for Muldoon had noted that there was a small square window in the stairwell door. He pointed to it. The guy would be on the other side of the door in the hall. He would never see her face, he said.

  "He'll see me through the glass," said the girl.

  "No," corrected Muldoon. "We'll cover it over so you can see out, but he won't be able to see in.” In his pocket he had a DD-5 form which he unfolded and held over the window. "You'll be perfectly safe," he told the girl. "My partner will be with you the whole time."

  Ultimately she said she didn't know if she could identify the guy, but she'd try.

  Muldoon decided to march the four non-suspects past the window first. He believed he was about to break this case wide open but he was worried about it standing up in court. The lawyers had so many rules now they could get a case thrown out on almost any technicality. Show a witness only one mug shot, for instance, and no matter how firm that witness's identification might be, that case would get thrown out instantly, and never mind what outrage the hump in question might have committed.

  So he knocked on the first of the two doors and asked the two men to step out into the hall with him for he had one or two more questions. They were agreeable and he moved them to a point where they could be seen through the window. No reaction from behind the door. He thanked them and knocked on the second door and did the same. Again no reaction.

  All this time Sherlock was at his elbow, saying nothing.

  He rapped on the suspect's door and made the identical request. The suspect did not want to come out into the hall but he was trying to appear innocent, so what the hell else could he do?

  This time Ritter rapped sharply on the door, the signal.

  "I'm going to have to ask you to come to the stationhouse with me," Muldoon told the suspect.

  "Am I under arrest?"

  "No.” There was no sense wrestling the guy to the ground and putting cuffs on him if it was not necessary. "But I'll arrest you if you prefer."

  "Just let me tell my woman.” He started to go back into the apartment.

  "No," Muldoon said, taking no chances with the guy, "call her out here and tell her."

  When he came out into the street Muldoon saw that a cold rain was falling. He called in a radio car and told the two cops to take the suspect back to the stationhouse and hold him there. He said that he and Ritter, who was walking the witness back to her apartment, would be along shortly.

  He waited for his partner in the car. The rain was coursing down the windshield. Presently Ritter climbed in beside him and he started the engine and backed carefully past all the parked cars and out of the long narrow driveway and into the street.

  Muldoon had no intention of going back into the stationhouse any time soon, and told Ritter so. "Let the fuck sweat," said Muldoon happily. "The more nervous he is, the more he's likely to blab something when we start interrogating him. Also, the later we start interrogating him the more overtime we can pile up.” He grinned at his partner. "There is absolutely no corruption in this department anymore, as you know. The only corruption we can still work is overtime."

  Muldoon was feeling great. Nobody else could have broken this case as quickly and solidly as he had. He was feeling really well set up. Proud. And thirsty. He would have given his teeth for a beer. But the stores in the precinct were all closed no
w and he did not want to step into a bar in front of Ritter.

  So he sat behind the wheel and they cruised up and down streets. The mutts were out even tonight in the rain. They were standing under overhangs or in doorways, but they were out. To say he didn't understand these people was an understatement. Early in his career he had tried, but it was impossible, he gave up. Nowadays he didn't even bother to try.

  They passed a woman in a raincoat walking her dog. It was some kind of miniature, a schnauzer maybe, really tiny. Slowing almost to a walk Muldoon rolled down his window. "Hey, lady," he called. "Your dog shrunk. You better get him in out of the rain before he disappears.” Chortling at his wit, Muldoon rolled the window shut and speeded up.

  He felt good even toward Ritter tonight. If the guy really was working for headquarters, let him report the way Dan Muldoon had broken this case. Let him check the overall clearance rate for homicides in the Three-Two as far as that goes. He would see it was the highest in the city, thanks to the detectives assigned there, of which he was the most experienced and the leader.

  They came up on a man walking along, and on his head he wore a wok. He was using a wok for a rain hat.

  "Look at that," said Ritter.

  "What do you call those things?" said Muldoon.

  "That's what you call a wok. It's a Chinese cooking pot."

  "I know what it's for, for crissake. What do you think I am, some kind of jerk? The name of it slipped my mind, is all."

  But he was in too good a mood to stay mad at Ritter. "These people wear the most astounding things on their heads sometimes," Muldoon said as he turned into the next street. "Berets. Cowboy hats. I saw a guy wearing a German helmet once. I saw a guy wearing a Mexican sombrero that must have been five feet in diameter.” Muldoon began laughing. "It was wider than he was tall."

  They could see the rain pouring down into the headlights.

  "It's really quiet," Ritter said presently.

  "We've had our investigation for tonight," Muldoon told him confidently. "Rainy nights, snowy nights, icy cold nights, the mutts don't do much. The crime rate goes way down."