Pipe Dream

by Solomon Jones

  Once he had taken care of that problem, he could go over to Abbottsford Hospital and eliminate the final loose end.

  When Ramirez and Hillman walked into the Command Center on Park Avenue, it was like walking into a monastery where everyone had taken a vow of silence. The commissioner sat draped over a computer, his eyes glued to the monitor as if the answer to it all were going to jump off the screen. And Ramirez and Hillman stood awkwardly, looking and feeling very out of place.

  “Commissioner,” Ramirez said quietly.

  Nelson waited a few minutes before he responded. “Good morning, Lieutenant,” he said, still looking at the monitor. “I guess you have the warrants.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you have any new leads?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Sir, we believe we’re looking for the wrong suspects in this shooting.”

  Nelson leaned back and formed his hands into a church steeple. “Do you have evidence to prove that someone else committed this crime?”

  “We’ve got a priest who says that Leroy was going away from the shooting right before it happened,” Ramirez said. “Which would make it nearly impossible for him to have committed this crime within the time frame we’re looking at. We believe that Black was committing a burglary at the time of the shooting, and Hillman has a witness who says that Black wasn’t with Leroy when Leroy left the scene of the shooting.”

  Nelson stared at Ramirez and said nothing.

  “Sir,” Hillman said, filling in the empty space, “there’s also the matter of the only eyewitness to the shooting—Darnell Thomas.”

  “What about him?”

  “I interrogated him this morning. He says that a tall white man with blond hair and blue eyes shot Podres.”

  “Was that the extent of the description he gave?” Nelson asked.

  Hillman flipped through his notes. “He said the shooter was tall, with blond hair and blue eyes, and that he was wearing a white shirt and black pants.”

  “That could be anybody!” Nelson said, throwing up his hands and walking over to the door.

  Hillman continued to flip through his notes. “There was something else,” he said. “I’ll find it in a minute.”

  “If you ask me,” Ramirez said, “that description almost fits the captain.”

  “If that’s supposed to be some kind of joke, Lieutenant, I fail to see the humor in it,” Nelson said, turning to face Ramirez.

  “Where is the captain anyway, sir?” Hillman said.

  “He went to get something to eat. He’ll be right back.”

  Ramirez and Hillman looked at each other.

  “How long ago did he leave?” Ramirez said.

  Nelson looked at Ramirez with an expression that bordered on contempt.

  “You know, Ramirez, instead of standing here questioning me, you need to have your ass out there finding these suspects.”

  “Whether or not they shot Podres?” Ramirez said, his words drenched with sarcasm.

  “It’s not our job to determine guilt,” Nelson said. “Our job is to gather enough evidence to allow the district attorney to try them.”

  “Commissioner,” Ramirez said, “what real evidence do we have? Some lady saying she saw Leroy go in the house a few seconds before the shots were fired? Some paperwork on some theft cases that indicate Leroy and Black like to get arrested together?”

  “I understand your concerns, Lieutenant,” Nelson said, choosing his words carefully. “And your points are valid. But Leroy Johnson, Samuel Jackson, and Patricia Oaks are the best suspects we have right now, and you’re the best detective we have right now. As far as Clarisse Williams, we’re going to wait until at least this afternoon to call that a kidnapping, if we choose to go that route. But the long and short of it is this: We have to find these people and I need to know if you’re committed to doing that.”

  “I don’t know if I—”

  “I need to know if you’re committed to doing that, Lieutenant.”

  Ramirez thought of what would happen to Leroy and Black if someone else found them first. He thought of how cops treated suspects who were involved in police shootings or police assaults. He thought of how he would feel knowing that he had let innocent people die at the hands of cops who blamed them for something they didn’t do. He thought of all those things, and the question he had been burning to ask came tumbling out before he could stop it.

  “How many times have you watched innocent people go to jail?” Ramirez said, looking at Nelson with weary resignation.

  Nelson gave him a long, hard look. Then he walked back over to his chair and sat down, staring into his terminal with the faraway gaze of a man staring into his past.

  “Never,” Nelson said. “I’ve never watched an innocent person go to jail, Lieutenant. You know why? Because it doesn’t matter whether someone is guilty of committing a crime. What matters is that we make an arrest, gather enough evidence to make it stick, and let the district attorney prove that person’s guilt in a court of law. If the district attorney can’t do that, the suspect’s innocent and he walks.”

  Nelson’s face took on the hard lines of a man who had long ago stopped believing in the very system he was sworn to uphold. Ramirez thought he saw something between those lines. Sadness, maybe. But he couldn’t be sure.

  “What matters is that the system works. Not whether some piper pulled the trigger. Now, I need to know if you’re still with us on this investigation, Lieutenant. Because if you’re not, I’m going to have to find someone to take your place.”

  Ramirez didn’t answer. So Hillman spoke for the both of them.

  “Commissioner, I’m going to be straight with you,” he said. “I’ve been around this department as long as you have, and I’ve seen all the things you’re talking about, more times than I care to recall. I know that I’ve helped send innocent people to jail. We all have. But I can’t stand here and watch it happen this time. I just can’t.”

  “And what makes this time so special, Detective?”

  “Do you know what happened after I talked with Darnell Thomas this morning?” Hillman said, his eyes drilling into Nelson’s. “A reporter got a tape of the interrogation and he was killed in the parking lot by a police officer. He was murdered, Commissioner, by Lieutenant Darren Morgan of Internal Affairs.”

  Nelson returned Hillman’s stare. “If you can prove that, Hillman, we can go out and bring him in right now. But if you can’t, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “What’s the difference, sir?” Ramirez said. “How come we can bring in Black and Leroy on next to nothing, but we have to have irrefutable proof that Morgan killed the reporter?”

  “You know why.”

  “Let me guess,” Hillman said. “Because we take care of our own? Because we’re supposed to look the other way when an officer breaks the law? Commissioner, Morgan and someone in this department conspired to kill Podres, and now they’re killing anyone who gets too close to the truth.”

  “Hillman, you’re making all these allegations without a shred of proof,” Nelson said. “The two of you come marching in here like the gestapo, and I’m supposed to just take your word for it that police officers are going around killing people?”

  “We’ve got an eyewitness at the hospital who saw Morgan leaving the scene of the shooting this morning,” Hillman said. “He gave us a partial license plate of 342. I checked. The only operational city vehicle with the numbers 342 is assigned to Internal Affairs.

  “You don’t have to take our word for it, sir. But the longer we wait, the worse it’s going to get. We just saw Morgan leave the Roundhouse with another reporter. And I believe that she’s going to wind up dead, too.”

  Nelson turned his head, as if to say he was no longer listening.

  “Don’t you see?” Hillman said, his voice filled with exasperation. “They’re covering their tracks.”

  “You keep saying they, like you know for sure
that this other person is someone from within the department,” Nelson said. “But you don’t know that.”

  Hillman flipped through his notes again. “You’re right, sir. I don’t know. But I do know this. Morgan killed Henry Moore over a tape containing this description: a tall white man with blond hair and blue eyes, wearing black pants, a white shirt, and . . .”

  Hillman flipped through his notes some more. “Here it is . . . a heavy gold link bracelet.”

  Nelson’s mouth dropped open. “What did you say?”

  “I said a white man with—”

  “No,” Nelson said. “Repeat the last part.”

  “A heavy gold link bracelet.”

  “Oh my God,” Nelson said.

  “What?” Ramirez said. “What is it, sir?”

  “That’s Sheldon.”

  Nelson agreed to allow Ramirez and Hillman to search for Sheldon and Morgan, but he stopped short of calling off the search for the original suspects. If they were completely innocent of the charges, he reasoned, they would never have fled in the first place.

  Ramirez and Hillman tried to convince Nelson that fear, not guilt, motivated the suspects’ flight. But Nelson would not be moved. So Hillman and Ramirez set out to find the suspects, knowing that if someone else found them first, the results would be catastrophic.

  As they rode away from the Command Center, Ramirez fought against the cloud of disillusionment that formed in his mind, and wondered if he’d ever look at the department the same way again.

  Nelson’s words haunted him: What matters is that the system works. Not whether some piper pulled the trigger.

  “Thinking about Nelson?” Hillman said, rousing Ramirez from his thoughts.

  Ramirez pursed his lips angrily. “Do you believe that guy?”

  “I’ve been on the force almost as long as you’ve been alive,” Hillman said. “There’s not much I can’t believe. But I learned a long time ago that you’ve got to go along to get along.”

  Ramirez looked at him sharply.

  “Not that I always go along,” Hillman added quickly, sensing that Ramirez misunderstood what he was trying to say. “I guess what I’m saying is, when the job goes against what I believe—and there have been a few times over the years—I do what I have to do. But I do it quietly.”

  “Well, you didn’t do it quietly in there,” Ramirez said.

  “I’ve only got six months to go,” Hillman said. “I don’t have a whole lot to lose now. But Nelson does, and I think he knows it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve got to put yourself in Nelson’s shoes,” Hillman said. “If you’re him, you’ve been presiding over a corrupt department for the last two or three years. It’s impossible that all the corruption has gone on without your knowledge. You know it, and everybody else knows it.

  “So after a while, you get nervous and you try to distance yourself from it. You stop letting things go on as much and you stop turning the other way as much. You even crack down a little bit. But then the Police Civilian Review Board starts to get a little too powerful. With each investigation it conducts, they get closer to the top of the department. And now, if you’re Nelson, you’re really scared, because you know you were right in the thick of things about six months ago, even if you’re not doing anything now. Then the head of the board gets smoked.

  “At first, you’re happy. I mean, you’re really happy. And then the news coverage starts, and you’re even more scared than you were before, because you know how it looks. So what do you do? You close ranks. You get everybody in the department in lockstep. You latch on to a suspect or two you can convict, conduct a quick investigation, get a quick trial date, and you do it all knowing that if this thing doesn’t go over just right, it’s your ass.

  “So if anybody stands in your way, you remove them. Because as long as it’s the little guys getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar, it’s okay. They’re supposed to get caught. But not you. You’d rather die than get caught.”

  “So what does arresting the wrong people have to do with them getting caught?” Ramirez said.

  “A quick investigation means less media coverage. Less media coverage means less scrutiny. Less scrutiny means less chance of their little extracurricular activities coming out.”

  “Maybe it’s more than that,” Ramirez said. “Maybe Nelson is the one who set Podres up to be murdered in the first place.”

  “I doubt it,” Hillman said. “Nelson’s one of those guys who’ll cut your throat politically, but he’s not a killer. Whatever Sheldon and Morgan were doing, Nelson wasn’t getting a piece of it. If he was, this whole thing would have went down a whole lot smoother than it did.”

  Ramirez was silent as he considered the truth in Hillman’s words.

  “Can I tell you something?” Ramirez said.

  “Sure.”

  “I never pegged you to be the type of guy to stand up to Nelson. To tell you the truth, I’ve never known quite how to take you.”

  “Join the crowd,” Hillman said.

  “I mean, you give off this vibe like you just want to be left alone.”

  Hillman took a moment to think about what Ramirez had said.

  “When you’ve been around as long as I have,” Hillman said, “your life is full of memories. And memories are like diamonds: Each one is precious in its own way. Some of them are round and brilliant, and you can look at them all day long and never get tired of them. But some of them are ugly and damaged, and you can’t stand the sight of them, because you know that you made bad investments when you bought them.”

  Ramirez glanced over at him.

  “I guess I’ve spent too many years trying not to look at the bad memories,” Hillman said.

  “You can’t live in the past,” Ramirez said.

  “I’m getting old now,” Hillman said. “I’ve got a lot more past than future. The future belongs to guys like you, Ramirez. If you just learn to listen, I think you’ll probably be all right.”

  Ramirez smiled. Then the radio crackled to life.

  “Dan 25, take the airport, outside the international terminal,” the dispatcher said. “Meet Southwest Detectives for a founded job. Use caution, an officer may be involved.”

  “Dan 25, okay.”

  “Sounds like one of our friends made an appearance at the airport,” Ramirez said as he placed the handset back in its cradle.

  “If you’re going to check that, why don’t you drop me off at the 39th?” Hillman said.

  “For what?”

  “I’m going to get a vehicle and take a ride up to the hospital. I’ve got a hunch that Sheldon might show up there.”

  Ramirez turned on Hunting Park Avenue and drove toward the 39th District. As he dropped Hillman off and watched him walk into the building, his mind drifted back to the suspects.

  If they were still in Philadelphia, it would be that much harder for them to escape from the city with their lives.

  Chapter 16

  When the cab got down to the Center City exit, which would have taken them to the Broad Street exit and Hahnemann Hospital, Leroy told the cabbie to double back and take I-76 East, which would take them to 30th Street Station. The driver started to protest, but Leroy gave him one of his looks and the driver just turned it around and took them where they wanted to go.

  Clarisse toned down the moaning just enough to convince the cabbie that it wasn’t quite as urgent as before, and Pookie and Black sat on either side of her, patting her hand and making soothing sounds. The whole thing looked like something from a movie set. But it was more convincing.

  When they pulled Clarisse out of the cab, she pushed against her lower back and arched it like she was carrying a baby that weighed at least ten pounds. It looked so genuine that Black almost dropped her hand and started clapping at her performance. It was all he could do to maintain his composure until they got into the station and walked past the information booth.

  “What now?” Pookie said
, whispering under her breath as they walked Clarisse past a group of Amtrak police.

  Black had to think about it for a minute, because he hadn’t planned that far ahead.

  “To the souvenir shop?” he said, making it more a question than a statement.

  “To the souvenir shop?” Clarisse repeated, making the idea sound really stupid.

  “Yeah, we tourists now,” he said, trying hard not to look at the police officers. “And you not in labor no more. You just real pregnant and you havin’ a hard time walkin’ up and down in this big train station. So we just helpin’ you ’cause we love you so much.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re going to have to love me enough to let me go to the bathroom right about now.”

  “You need to do somethin’,” Leroy said. “ ’Cause that blanket look like it’s just about to fall out from underneath that coat.”

  They all looked down and saw the bulge beneath her coat dropping lower and lower, as if she were going to have the baby any minute.

  “Come on,” Clarisse said, pulling Pookie toward the ladies’ room.

  In an instant, Leroy and Black were left standing there, alone and exposed. Leroy looked after Pookie and Clarisse like he expected them to run away. After all, there was really no reason for them to stay.

  “They comin’ back,” Black said, reading Leroy’s thoughts and trying to sound reassuring.

  “How you know?” he said, looking at Black with skepticism.

  “I don’t.”

  “Well, shut up then.”

  Black was too tired and too wrong to argue his point. Because the truth was, he didn’t have a point. All he had was the money Leroy had given him and a vision of the four of them getting on the train. But he didn’t have what he really needed at that point. He didn’t have any faith.

  “We might as well go ’head over here and sit down,” Black said.

  “Man, I ain’t sittin’ nowhere waitin’ for five-o to walk up on me.”

  “We in a big-ass train station,” Black said. “Ain’t nobody just gon’ instantly recognize you in here with a suit on. You look just like everybody else that’s goin’ outta town.”