The Ninth Step

by Gabriel Cohen

  Carpsio came up the steps. He laid a hand on Jack’s shoulder, and Jack was tempted to spin around and take a swing at him, but the mobster spoke calmly, in a low voice. “Think about this, Leightner. Do you really want to make a scene out here, put your job on the line?”

  It was exasperating, how the criminal mistakenly thought Jack had once done him a favor, how he seemed to think they shared some kind of bond. But while Jack would never have backed down due to a threat of violence, Carpsio’s even tone got through to him. He wasn’t afraid of personal harm, but he was concerned about keeping his job.

  With fists still clenched, he turned, stepped around the mobster, and stalked off.

  MICHELLE CAME TO HIM once more that night, in his dreams. He was thrilled to see her, but again she was hurrying ahead of a terrible dark cloud, a swift-moving storm that threatened to devour their whole city.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “JUST GIVE ME A few hours.”

  “Take a break,” replied Sergeant Stephen Tanney. “Enjoy your days off.”

  “Come on. This is not exactly an ordinary case.” Jack was sitting at his kitchen table, groggy from a night of poor sleep. He noticed that his bare feet were sticking to the linoleum: time to mop.

  “I understand that, Leightner. But we’ve had word from above to not interfere with this one.”

  “You realize what’s at stake here?”

  “Of course I do. And Charlson has promised to work closely with the FBI and the JTTF.” The Joint Terrorist Task Force, which included a new post-9/11 unit of the NYPD. “They don’t need Homicide on this one. So we’ll see you Monday.”

  The sergeant was fond of an obnoxious saying: “There are two kinds of problems in this world: the my problems and the not my problems.” Jack could actually hear the relief in his boss’s voice: if something bad went down here, it wouldn’t be Tanney’s responsibility. He grimaced, struggling to come up with a better argument.

  “I know you want to help out,” Tanney said. “But they’re on it. And we’ll be available in a support capacity. I’ve let them know how to reach me twenty-four/seven if anything new arises.”

  Wonderful, Jack managed not to say. I can’t tell you how much better that makes me feel. “All right. I’ll be in on Monday.”

  He hung up, wondering how much investigation he could get away with on his own.

  As he pulled a mop out of the kitchen closet, the memory of what he had done the previous night rose up like a bubble of indigestion. Oh well, at least it was obvious that Frank Raucci had not called in to gripe. The Mob avoided contact with the NYPD like vampires shunned garlic. And if they got really pissed off, they certainly wouldn’t bother with any official complaint. It was rare for them to stir up scrutiny by messing directly with a cop—but not unheard of.

  As Jack mopped the kitchen floor, he remembered how Michelle had enjoyed teasing him about being a neat freak. He should have explained it to her: putting things in order at home gave him some little relief from the appalling disorder he saw at work every day.

  There were a lot of things he should have talked with her about, instead of playing the stoic cop all the time. But would that have made the difference, if he had talked more? He frowned: maybe her new lover had been more exciting in bed. He’d always thought he did okay in that department, but who knew? If the guy was younger, maybe he’d learned some new tricks from reading those new magazines about men’s health and grooming and crap. Maybe they had discovered some new female erogenous zone in the past few years. It happened. When he was young, who talked about all this G-spot stuff? Back then, foreplay was some flowers and a nice dinner in an Italian restaurant.

  He vacuumed the front room. Forty-eight hours to kill. He wondered what Brent Charlson was up to this morning, wondered if the man and his squad were getting any closer to shutting down the terrorist cell. He thought about how the feds had mismanaged their confidential informants before the 1993 Trade Center bombing and that hardly boosted his confidence—not to mention the way that warning signs had cropped up in the first few months of 2001, picked up by field agents for the three-letter outfits, only to be ignored at the national headquarters. He sat down and reorganized the papers on his desk.

  He looked at his watch. The day was crawling, and he hated to think about how he was going to make the time pass during the next two evenings. He thought about calling Michelle again, but then scowled: to hell with her. There was no reason he couldn’t find someone else. For months now, his son had been urging him to try online dating. Jack liked the way computers helped out at work, the way you could search databases so easily or find common elements in different cases, but he didn’t like to use the things at home. Old dog, new tricks. He glanced at his watch again, then gave up and turned on his computer. What was the name of that dating service his son had recommended? He finally remembered it, then called up the Web site. It asked him for some basic info: his gender, zip code, what age range he was looking for.

  He sighed. If he entered anything, he was probably gonna get bombarded by spam. He was tempted to just turn off the computer, but he heard his son’s voice in his head. Dad! Just give it a try! What do you have to lose? My dignity, he muttered. Not to mention my self-respect. But he entered the info, including the age range. He went with women close to his own age; he knew he could have gone for perky tits and wrinkle-free skin, like a lot of guys, but he wasn’t interested in dating someone who had never heard of Brenda Lee. Or the Beatles.

  A column of women’s faces came up onscreen.

  Christ, it was like a precinct mug-shot book. Not that these women looked like the usual scarred, dented, snaggle-toothed bunch. No, at most, these would be misdemeanor criminals: bad check passing, DWIs, maybe possession of a controlled substance. He scrolled down a bit … yikes: this one had definite serial killer potential. He kept going: so many hopeful faces, so many forced smiles, these women posing in their bridesmaid dresses or their ski jackets, holding their beloved little dogs. His heart sank lower with every face. I’m too old for this, he kept repeating to himself. His marriage had been pretty rocky, but at least it had saved him from ever having to date again. Or so he had been foolish enough to believe.

  He looked at all the eager faces. What was wrong with them, that they couldn’t get a date the old-fashioned way? After a moment of reflection, he realized how uncharitable he was being. After all, he was hardly awash in offers. No, this was just what people did these days: they met in “cyberspace.” It was normal.

  He turned his computer off. Some other time.

  He went into his bedroom to get dressed. As he was picking out some clothes, he glanced over at the bed. He could picture Michelle so clearly, sitting up on her side of it, deep into some book, her brown hair draped over her shoulders, her face so serious as she read, her silky nightgown giving him a tantalizing hint of her lovely breasts.

  He stared at his cell phone, seized by the urge to call her. But he had no idea what he might say.

  He dropped the shirt and slacks he’d picked out and traded them in for a T-shirt and some shorts. He went for a long run in Prospect Park.

  MR. GARDNER WAS A reliable source of company whenever Jack needed one; his elderly landlord never had other plans.

  After he managed to kill most of the day with stocking his refrigerator, picking up some dry-cleaning, and doing other errands he didn’t have time for during his workweek, he picked up a pizza and a six-pack and went upstairs for a visit.

  He knocked on the door but heard no answer. After a moment, he knocked again; Mr. Gardner had grown hard of hearing in his old age. Jack felt a sudden bad premonition and opened the door without invitation, remembering the morning, four years before, when he had found his landlord lying on his kitchen floor, felled by a stroke.

  The apartment was dark. “Mr. G?” he called out, heart sinking. No answer. He made his way down the hall by touch, until he came to the front room. He reached up, found the pull chain for the overhead lig
ht (three delicate antique globes), and found the old man sitting in his battered recliner over by the front window, staring down at the street.

  Mr. G turned in his chair. “That you, Jackie? Is Mrs. Kornfeld all right?” Their elderly neighbor across the street.

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “The last couple’a nights, I ain’t seen no lights on over there.”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  They sat and ate the pizza and drank their beers. For once, Jack was eager to talk; he had been thinking about calling Michelle all day, and he wanted some advice. But now, as he chewed his pizza, he considered the photo of Mrs. Gardner resting on top of the TV. The old woman had been very nice; Jack had only known her for a short time because she had passed away soon after he moved in. He remembered that she was always baking something; he could never stop by to pay the rent without sitting down for a slice of her lemon poppyseed cake or some warm cookies.

  He couldn’t see asking Mr. G for advice about forgiveness for a cheating lover. The old man and his wife had been happily married for almost sixty years, and Mr. G was hardly a worldly character; he tended to change the channels when anything remotely sexy came on TV. Did your wife ever cheat on you? No, his landlord would hardly react well to such a question.

  Who else could he talk to? Not Ben. His son seemed to blame him for Michelle’s departure, and he wasn’t anxious to open that can of worms. Someone on his squad at work? He liked his colleagues except for his boss, and he might have raised the matter if he was sitting in a car with one of them, staking out a suspect’s residence, but he couldn’t see calling out of the blue. Richie Powker, maybe? No, he barely knew the guy—and Powker seemed happily married too.

  Who would know something about this situation?

  Inspiration struck. Jack finished his beer and turned to his landlord. “I gotta go. I’ll check on Mrs. Kornfeld in the morning, okay?”

  Mr. G nodded, then turned back to his vigil at the window.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  TONIGHT, THE DOWNSTAIRS DOOR was open. As Jack tromped up the staircase, which smelled faintly of incense, and also of feet—a bunch of shoes were lined up on the upper landing—he glanced at his watch: five minutes to nine.

  He entered the Dhammapada Buddhist Center and was about to call out, but something warned him not to, which was lucky, because as he came into the big main room he found about fifteen people sitting on cushions on the floor, facing away from him, in absolute silence. In front of them, sitting on a raised little platform, sat the woman he had come to see. Tenzin Pemo, the center’s director, was a little middle-aged Caucasian nun with a rather mannish face. She wore wine-and-orange-colored robes, and sat cross-legged with her hands linked in front of her. She didn’t see him because her eyes were closed.

  Jack considered sneaking away, but nobody was paying the slightest attention to him. It was hard to tell much from behind about the people sitting facing the nun, but a few things were obvious: none of them were Asian, they all wore normal street clothes, and they were of varied ages. No one was saying anything; they were meditating. It looked awfully dull. They just sat there.

  Jack stood in the rear, wondering how long it might go on. He glanced around; the room was pretty spare. Next to the nun sat a little table with some bright flowers in a vase; behind her were some elaborate pictures of the Buddha. Out in the street below, a car passed by thumping rap music; nobody stirred. Jack was restless, but he figured he’d wait. A few minutes later he noticed that the calm in the room seemed to be contagious; he was okay with standing there, and was even tempted to sit down.

  Tenzin Pemo began to speak, though she didn’t open her eyes. “We’ll close with a brief metta meditation,” she said in her British accent. “May all living beings be happy. May all living beings be free of suffering. May all live in security and peace. Let no one do harm. Let no one, out of anger or ill will, wish anyone harm.”

  The little nun went silent for another minute, then shifted on her cushion. “And now, slowly, we can open our eyes.”

  After a moment, the room began to rustle with movement, then people started getting up, stowing their cushions in a corner of the room, and chatting with each other. Jack didn’t look out of place—they were a bunch of mostly middle-aged white people, like him—but he felt conspicuous nonetheless, and he waited in the back until he caught the nun’s eye. She finished talking to one of her congregation, then strode over to say hello.

  “Good evening, sister.” He frowned: “Is that right? I never know what to call you.”

  “You can call me whatever you like, but just don’t call me late for dinner.”

  The little nun looked very serious, and Jack blinked, unsure of how to react, until he remembered her wry sense of humor. “It’s been a while,” he said. “How have you been?”

  “Very good, detective. And yourself?” She gazed up at him with her clear blue eyes and he felt as if she was seeing right into him.

  “Would, uh, would you have a few minutes to talk?”

  “Is this official business?”

  “Not really. No.”

  She smiled. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  After the last of her little group left, she returned to Jack and gestured toward her office in the back. “Would you like to sit down?”

  He shifted from foot to foot. “Would it be okay if we took a little drive instead?”

  “Certainly. I’m still in your debt, you know.”

  He brushed away the suggestion; he hadn’t done much for her young bottle thrower, but the prosecutor had agreed to a charge of manslaughter instead of premeditated murder.

  Downstairs, out on the dark street where the death had taken place, they settled into Jack’s car.

  “How’s the kid doing?” he asked. “You still visiting him?”

  The nun pulled the seat belt across her robes and sighed. “Yes. It’s incredible to me that the state can think that there might be any possible positive outcome from imprisoning a child in a place like that.”

  Jack didn’t answer. His job was to arrest the guilty; what happened to them after that was more than he could worry about. He smiled. “Have you converted him yet?”

  Tenzin Pemo smoothed her robes. “We don’t proselytize, detective. Anyway, he seems quite content being a Baptist. I just go so that he has someone to talk to now and then. And I bring him comic books.”

  Jack smiled: it was pretty weird to think about, a white British Buddhist nun bringing a black Baptist kid from Flatbush comic books in Juvie. He turned on Flatbush Avenue and drove north, instinctively heading for the waterfront, where he and the nun had last discussed his personal affairs—in the midst of their official business, he had somehow ended up telling her about his girlfriend’s abrupt departure.

  They made small talk until they reached the neighborhood between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, a quiet area of big old factory buildings that were being converted into condos and co-ops. Jack parked and they walked through the dark echoing streets until they came to a little park next to the East River. High above them, a subway train thundered over the Manhattan Bridge, which was strung with white beads of light. Across the river, the glowing office towers of Manhattan rose into the darkness.

  “I hope this isn’t too personal,” Jack said. He cleared his throat.

  The little nun strolled along with her hands clasped behind her back. “What’s on your mind?”

  “The first time we came down here, you told me a story about how you became a nun.”

  Tenzin Pemo nodded and waited for him to say more.

  “You told me about how your husband was cheating and left you for that other woman.”

  “That’s right,” she said simply. This was one of the things he appreciated about her: she seemed to take everything in stride, without getting huffy or passing judgment.

  He took off his sports jacket and slung it over his shoulder. It wasn’t that the night was so warm, but
he was starting to sweat. “I was wondering something. After that happened, and you became a nun and all … Were you able to forgive him?”

  She gazed up at him calmly. They were walking along an asphalt path above a little riverside beach layered with pebbles, which shone faintly under the park’s streetlamps.

  “I don’t mind discussing my marriage,” she said. “Not at all. But I don’t think you’re asking me this out of some casual interest.”

  Jack chewed his bottom lip. “No, I guess not. Do you remember what I told you about my fiancée? I mean, the woman I asked to be my fiancée?”

  The little nun nodded. “She left rather suddenly, as I recall.”

  Jack looked down at the sidewalk, embarrassed. “I’ve been thinking about calling her up again. And, uh, about this whole forgiveness deal.”

  Tenzin Pemo thought for a minute. “If you called her, what would you expect to get out of it?”

  Jack pulled back. “Get out of it? What do you mean?”

  “What would you hope to achieve? Would you just want to forgive her for her sake, or would you be hoping she might respond in a certain way?”

  There it was again: that sense that she was able to look right into him. He sighed. “I dunno.” Yet when he looked into his heart of hearts, he could see that in fact he did; he hoped Michelle might apologize, and couldn’t help fantasizing that she might want to come back.

  “Forgiveness is an interesting beast,” said Tenzin Pemo. “It’s not really something we can do in hopes of a certain result. What would happen if you forgave her but she refused to admit any wrongdoing? Or if she told you that she was still in love with that other man?”

  Jack’s face tightened.

  “Would your forgiveness be a failure then?”

  He didn’t answer. The conversation wasn’t going the way he’d hoped.

  “Here’s a thought: What if you forgave her but didn’t tell her?”

  Jack squinted. “What good would that do?”