The Assistant DA remained tight-lipped, staring like a statue at the Oriental rug. At the Chief’s words the whole room seemed to sway; Becky felt her head tightening, the blood rushing, her heart thundering. What in the name of God was he implying! Was Dick in trouble? She knew that she herself was an honest cop. And Dick had to be too. Had to be. Like Wilson. He had to be as honest as Wilson.
“You think we’re incompetent,” Wilson said mildly, “why not convene a Board of Inquiry? Present your facts.”
“Shut up and get out. Your superior officers will handle this from now on.”
“Which means there’s going to be a Board?”
“Shut up and get out!”
They left, even Wilson perceiving that the meeting was terminated. “I’m going home,”
Becky said to her boss as the elevator dropped toward the garage. “Want a lift?”
“Nah. I’m gonna go over to Chinatown, get some supper. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“See you.”
That was that for today. Another charming day in the life of a lady cop.
Traffic was heavy and she had missed the evening news by the time she got home. No matter, the Chief’s statement wouldn’t make it on the air until eleven o’clock.
When she arrived at their small upper East Side apartment, Becky was disappointed that Dick wasn’t there. Mechanically she ran the Phone-Mate. Dick’s voice said he’d be in about three a.m. Great. A lonely night just when you need it the most.
At eleven the Chief appeared with his terse statement—carbon monoxide, wild dogs, TPF roundup of dogs, case closed in one day.
The hell it is, she thought, the hell it is.
Chapter 3
Mike O’Donnell hated this part of his daily journey. The streets around here were sullen, dangerous and empty. Openings in the ruined buildings exhaled the stench of damp rot and urine. O’Donnell liked the bustling crowds a few blocks away, but on the money a blind man made you couldn’t take cabs through these areas, you had to walk. Over the years the deadly stillness had grown like a cancer, replacing the noisy, kindly clamor that Mike remembered from his childhood. Now it was almost all like this except the block where Mike lived with his daughter and the block near the subway station a twenty-minute walk away.
Those twenty minutes were always bad, always getting worse. Along this route he had encountered addicts, muggers, perverts—every kind of human garbage. And he had survived. He let them shake him down. What could he lose, a few dollars? Only once had he been struck, that by some teenagers, children really. He had appealed to their manhood, shamed them out of their plan to torture him in one of the empty buildings.
Mike was tough and resilient. Sixty sightless years in the Bronx left him no other choice. He and his beloved daughter were on welfare, home relief. She was a good girl with bad taste in husbands. God knows, the kind of men… smelling of cologne and hair grease, moving around like cats through the apartment, voices that sneered every word… actors, she said. And she was an actress, she said… he groped his way along with his cane trying to put trouble out of his mind, not wanting to bring his feelings home, start an argument.
Then he heard a little sound that made the hairs rise along the back of his neck. It didn’t quite seem human, yet what else could it be? Not an animal— too much like a voice, too little like a growl.
“Is somebody there?”
The sound came again, right in front of him and down low. He sensed a presence.
Somebody was there, apparently crouching close to the ground. “Can I help you? Are you hurt?”
Something slid along the pavement. At once the strange sound was taken up from other points—behind him, in the abandoned buildings beside him, in the street. There was a sense of slow, circling movement.
Mike O’Donnell raised his cane, started to swing it back and forth in front of him. The reaction was immediate; Mike O’Donnell’s death came so suddenly that all he registered was astonishment.
They worked with practiced efficiency, pulling the body back into the abandoned building while blood was still pumping out of the throat. It was a heavy, old body, but they were determined and there were six of them. They worked against time, against the ever-present danger of being discovered at a vulnerable moment.
Mike O’Donnell hadn’t understood how completely this neighborhood had been abandoned in recent years, left by all except junkies and other derelicts, and the ones who were attracted to them for their weakness. And now Mike O’Donnell had joined the unnumbered corpses rotting in the abandoned basements and rubble of the empty neighborhood.
But in his case there was one small difference. He had a home and was missed. Mike’s daughter was frantic. She dialed the Lighthouse for the Blind again. No, they hadn’t seen Mike, he had never appeared for his assigned duties. Now it was six hours and she wasn’t going to waste any more time. Her next call was to the police.
Because missing persons usually turn up on their own or don’t turn up at all, and because there are so many of them, the Police Department doesn’t react instantly to another such report. At least, not unless it concerns a child or a young woman who had no reason to leave home, or, as in the case of Mike O’Donnell, somebody who wouldn’t voluntarily abandon the little security and comfort he had in the world. So Mike O’Donnell’s case was special and it got some attention. Not an overwhelming amount, but enough to cause a detective to be assigned to the case. A description of Mike O’Donnell was circulated, given a little more than routine attention. Somebody even questioned the daughter long enough to draw a map of Mike’s probable route from his apartment to the subway station. But the case went no farther than that; no body turned up, the police told the daughter to wait, not to give up hope. A week later they told her to give up hope, he wasn’t going to be found. Somewhere in the city his body probably lay moldering, effectively and completely hidden by whoever had killed him. Mike O’Donnell’s daughter learned in time to accept the idea of his death, to try to replace the awful uncertain void with the comfort of certainty. She did the best she could, but all she really came to understand was that her father had somehow been swallowed by the city.
During these weeks Neff and Wilson worked on other assignments. They heard nothing about the O’Donnell case; they were investigating another murder, locked in the endless, sordid routine of Homicide. Most crimes are no less commonplace than the people who commit them, and Wilson and Neff weren’t being assigned to the interesting or dramatic cases these days. It wasn’t that they were being muscled aside, but word was out that the Chief of Detectives wasn’t exactly in love with them. He knew that they didn’t like his handling of the DiFalco/Houlihan murders and he didn’t want to be reminded of it, primarily because he didn’t like it any more than they did. He was a more literal man than they were and much more concerned with his own potential appointment to the job of Police Commissioner than with following up bizarre theories about what genuinely looked to him like an even more bizarre accident. So the two detectives were kept away from big cases, effectively buried in the sheer size of the New York City Police Department.
The first words Becky Neff heard about Mike O’Donnell came from the Medical Examiner. “I thought you two had retired,” he said over the phone. “You got a heavy case?”
“The usual. Not a lot of action.” Beside her Wilson raised his eyebrows. The phone on her desk hadn’t been ringing too often; an extended conversation like this was of interest.
“I’ve got a problem up here I’d like you two to take a look at.”
“The Chief—’”
“So take a coffee break. Just come up here. I think this might be what you’ve been waiting for.”
“What’s he got?” Wilson asked as soon as she put down the phone.
“He’s got a problem. He thinks it might interest us.”
“The Chief—”
“So he said take a coffee break and come up to see him. I think it’s a good idea.”
They pulled on their coats; outside it was a bright, blustery December afternoon and the cold wind coming around the buildings carried a fierce chill. The cold had been so intense for the past three days, in fact, that there weren’t even many cars on the street.
The usual afternoon jams were gone, replaced by a smattering of taxis and buses with great plumes of condensing exhaust behind them. The M. E. had been circumspect on the phone, no doubt savoring what little bit of drama might be in this for him.
They didn’t speak as the car raced up Third Avenue. In the past few weeks Wilson had become more than usually taciturn; that was fine with Becky, she had problems enough of her own without listening to him complain about his. The last month with Dick had been stormy, full of pain and unexpected realizations. She knew now that Dick was taking money under the table. Strangely enough the money wasn’t from narcotics but from gambling. He had tracked a heroin network into an illicit gambling casino about a year ago. Dick’s father was in a nursing home, he was sick of the bills, he was sick of the treadmill; he collared the junkies but left the gambling establishment alone—for a few thousand dollars. “It’s gambling,” he had argued; “what the hell, it shouldn’t even be a crime.” But since it was, he might as well let it pay the six hundred a month his father was costing. God knows, they might even be able to put enough aside for a decent apartment one of these days.
It hurt her to see this happening to Dick. The truth was, she had sniped at him for it but she hadn’t tried to stop him and she hadn’t turned him in. Nor would she. But Dick was a corrupt cop, the one thing she had sworn she would never be, the one thing she had sworn she would never allow him to be. Well, he hadn’t asked permission.
She had always assumed that she would never give in to the temptations that were so common on the police force—and he had sworn it too. But he had and by not stopping him she had too. Now they bickered, each unwilling to confront the real reason for their anger.
They should have had the courage to stop; instead they had let things happen. They had disappointed one another and were bitter about it.
Bitter enough to spend more and more time apart. Often it was days between shared evenings or monosyllabic breakfasts. They used to work their schedules to fit; now they worked them to be apart. Or at least as far as Becky was concerned she just stopped making an effort with her schedule. She drew what she drew, and overtime was just fine.
Eventually there would be a confrontation, but not now, not today —today she was heading up to the M. E.’s office to be let in on a new case, maybe something really interesting for the first time in too damn long.
Evans was waiting for them in the reception area. “Don’t take off your coats,” he said,
“we’re going to the freezer.” That meant the remains were in an advanced state of deterioration. The Medical Examiner’s office had a claustrophobic freezer compartment with room enough for three surgical tables and a few people squeezed in tight. Wilson’s eyes roved as they went down the disinfectant-scented hall toward the freezer; his claustrophobia had a field day in the thing. More than once he had commented to Becky that the freezer had figured in his nightmares.
“It’s rough stuff again,” the M. E. said conversationally. “I only call you folks in when I’ve got some real gore. Hope you don’t mind.” It could be that Evans lacked taste or it could just possibly be an attempt at banter. Becky didn’t bother to laugh; instead she asked a question.
“What are we going to see?”
“Three DOA’s, very decomposed.” He ushered them into the starkly lit freezer and pulled the door shut behind them. He didn’t need to say more; the bodies had clearly been attacked the same way DiFalco and Houlihan were attacked. There was something chilling about seeing the same type of scrape marks on the bones, the same evidence of gnawing. Becky was frightened, too deeply frightened to really understand her feelings.
But she knew the moment she saw these corpses that the Chief of Detectives had made exactly the mistake they had feared he was making—this was not an ordinary murder case and it was not a fluke.
“Goddamn,” Wilson said.
The Medical Examiner smiled, but this time it was without mirth. “I don’t know how to explain these bodies. The condition makes no sense.”
“It makes sense,” Becky said, “as soon as you assume that they weren’t killed by human beings.”
“What then?”
“That’s what’s to be found out. But you’re wasting your time with us, Underwood took us off the case.”
“Well, he’ll put you back on.”
“There are a lot of detectives in this department,” Wilson put in. “I’m sure he’ll find others. And it’s likely he’ll want more. This is going to be a big embarrassment for him.”
Wilson shook his head. “A hell of an embarrassment. Let’s get out of this icebox. We’ve seen all we need to see.”
Evans opened the door. “You’ll get back on,” he said, “I’ll make sure of that. So start to work. You need a solution.”
They didn’t bother to ask the M. E. how the bodies had come in; instead they called headquarters and got referred to the right precinct. As soon as he was off the phone to headquarters Wilson called the 41st Precinct in the South Bronx and asked to speak to the Captain. Sure they could come up, but there were already detectives on the case.
“Might be a tie-in to another case, one of ours.” He put down the phone. “Let’s move.”
They battled their way across town to the FDR Drive. Despite the fact that the weather had reduced the amount of traffic in the city, getting across town was still difficult. “I read somewhere that it takes longer to cross town in a car today than it used to in a carriage.”
“And longer than that when I’m driving, right?”
“Yeah, if you say so.”
“Goddamn brass,” Becky growled.
“Hey, getting our dander up, my dear.”
“Damn right I am. Here we’ve got two cops buried and forgotten and we knew damn well something wasn’t right—damn these politicking bastards. It’s a black day when the NYPD won’t even mount a proper investigation when officers are killed. Seedman never would have done this.”
Wilson sighed, expressing in that single sound all the feelings he could or would not express about the Police Department he so loved to hate. The department had hurt him as well as helped him; in the past few years he had seen its emphasis shift away from solving crimes toward preventing them. Citizens demanded protection in the streets; the once-proud Detectives diminished and foot patrol became the thing. The old-timers were fewer and fewer; Wilson was one, sharp-eyed and careful. And the fact that his young partner was a woman was just another sign of the deterioration of the department. He stared out the window. Becky couldn’t see his face but she knew what the expression contained. She knew also that there was no sense in talking to him now; he was beyond communication.
They made their way through the devastated streets of the 41st Precinct, past the vacant brick-strewn lots, the empty buildings, the burned, abandoned ruins, the stripped cars, the dismal, blowing garbage in the streets. And Becky thought, “Somewhere, something is here. It is here.” She knew it. And by the way Wilson changed, the stiffening of his posture, the darkening of his face, the little turning-down of the edges of his mouth, she saw that he also had the same feeling.
“Every time I’m up here this place looks worse.”
“What street was it again, George?”
“East One Hundred and Forty-fourth Street. Old One Forty-four. Sure is a mess now.”
Wilson was in the neighborhood of his childhood, looking at the ruins of where he had been a boy. “It was a pretty good place then, not the greatest, but it sure wasn’t like this.
Jesus.”
“Yeah.” Becky tried to leave him alone with his thoughts. Considering that the little upstate town where she had grown up was still exactly as it had been, still and seemingly forever, she couldn’t imag
ine what seeing this place must do to Wilson.
“God, I can’t believe I’m fifty-four,” he said. “I’d swear I was sitting on that stoop last night.” He sighed. “We’re there,” he said, “the old Forty-first.” The precinct house was a dismal fortress, an unlikely bastion of reasonable decay in the surrounding ruins. A neighborhood of unabandoned houses clustered around it. The danger and destruction were beyond. In fact, with the strange fecundity of the Bronx, this immediate two blocks showed signs of mild prosperity. There was traffic in the streets, neatly swept sidewalks, curtains in windows, and a well-kept Catholic church on the corner. People were few because of the cold, but Becky could imagine what the area was like when the weather was good—filled with kids on the sidewalks and their parents on the stoops, full of liveliness and noise and the sheer exuberance that can infect city neighborhoods.
The Captain of the 41st Precinct looked up from his desk when Neff and Wilson were shown in. It was clear at once that he still didn’t know exactly why they were there.
Normally detectives from another borough would have nothing to do with this case— and as far as the Captain was concerned it probably wasn’t much of a case. Just another couple of rotting junkie corpses and a poor old man. About the score for the South Bronx these days. Becky knew instinctively to let Wilson handle the Captain. He was the infighter, the resident expert on departmental politics. Look where his political skill had gotten him. The best detective in New York City at dead end. First Grade, true, but never a division, never a district of his own.
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