Mitchell Smith

by Daydreams

  Reedy had talked to Ellie-catching her as she walked into the courthouse-and asked for some details (with as much gravy as possible) on the two lesbo thrill killers.

  “It wasn’t like that at all,” Ellie said.

  “I didn’t ask you what it was like, honey. -I want you to tell me what it could have been like, with lots of gravy.”

  “I’m not commenting on the case, Avril,”

  “Not very good. Not very cooperative, Detective Klein. -Don’t you want a friendly press?”

  “More than you know.”

  “Meaning? -What does that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is your no-longer-chicken but still shapely ass in some sort of sling?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  ” ‘Not that you know of . . .7’

  As she walked away, Reedy called after her, “Sorry about Tommy, honey.-He was one of the good ones.”

  The arraigning magistrate was a black woman, Margaret Baxley, and she didn’t appear to intend to waste much time with it. She called the Assistant D.A., a big, blond young man named Richter, who had a hiprolling limp and used an aluminum cane; he called Ellie and swore her, and Ellie answered his questions-one, two, three. He’d done his homework. All through this, Rebecca, in a dark blue dress (no jewelry permitted), sat beside her attorneys thin, balding young man Ellie didn’t know-and smiled at Ellie encouragingly (exposing two broken teeth), made confirmatory faces, once rolled her eyes in disbelief, and gave the thumbs-up sign (her hands bandaged) as Ellie left the chair.

  Susan Margolies, seated separately at the table’s other end, sat in a dark gray suit, her head down, and didn’t answer when Birnbaum, sitting beside, spoke to her. A man and woman sat just behind them in spectators’ seats, uneasy-the man resembling Susan a good deal. -Her son, Ellie thought . . . and couldn’t remember the name.

  Having ordered the defendants held on a charge of murder in the first-no motion for bail being considered, though both attorneys made that plea-Judge Baxley remanded the defendants to the custody of the state in a rapid Brooklyn patter at odds with her-ponderous body, her deliberate manner of moving onto the bench-and now, after a snappy rap of her gavel-off it. Friday, late, was not a favored time for judicial duty.

  Rebecca first, then Su ‘ , were led away through a san side door by stocky women in blue skirts and white blouses—Rebecca looking over at Ellie, mouthing, Come . . . see . . . me . . . as she went through the door.

  “I’m sorry,” Todd Birnbaum said. “I hope you don’t think I’m being ungrateful in representing Susan. . . .”

  He’d persisted through the casual crowd, and caught Ellie at the door.

  “No, I don’t-“

  “She’s such an old friend. -It would have been too cruel not to.”

  “Counselor-it doesn’t bother me at all. Susan’s entitled to be represented-and who by, is none of my business,”

  “O.K. -I just didn’t want you to think I was being an asshole. . . .”

  “I don’t-“

  “You’re not the asshole here, buddy,” Leahy said, the fat man having appeared and taken Ellie by the arm.

  “The asshole around here’s somebody else entirely.

  ut of the crowd, -Excuse us. He tugged Ellie o ‘ started her down the corridor toward the stairs, walking beside her without talking, then took her arm again to steer her to a space past several phones. There was no one near them.

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. . . .”

  “Don’t even say that,” Leahy said. He was wearing his trench coat, its blue complementing his eyes’ light, furious color. “-Shit like that is just a waste of time. What do you have? You have some idea doin’ this Gaither thing makes you special around here? Makes’it so you can go an’

  fuck up a major investigation, ‘cause the guy was your partner? You think that, you been watchin’ too much TV. You understand me? -You are headin’ right for a Departmental trial, and I’ll tell you something-you earned it. You got me in bad trouble; you made the whole Squad look lousy.”

  “But I got something up there.

  “You got shit.”

  “I know where their witness is-is that shit?”

  “Who do you think you’re talkin’ to? I’m your fuckin’ commander. -You lie to me?”

  “I’m not lying.” Two lawyers walked past them, arguing, briefcases swinging at their sides.

  “-No? Anderson just happened to tell me Connors asked you if you got anything—guy was willin’ to let you walk! “

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t tell him.”

  “If I tell you-what then?”

  “Oooh . . . you gotta be out of your mind! What’s the matter with you? What am I dealin’ with here? -The change of life, or what?”

  Ellie laughed. It was a relief to be able to laugh.

  “Ha, ha-you think that’s funny? Well, I got news for you, you better come up with something’ medical, or you could lose your shield over this. I already tried you were still in shock from that scramble you had yesterday-an’ let me tell you, Anderson didn’t buy that one for a minute. Oh-an’ there’s something’ else. Anderson wants those letters that whore wrote her kid. He wants ‘ein right up in his office-but quick.”

  “But there’s no need-“

  “Don’t give me that. -Just obey a fuckin’ order for once!”

  “But I promised I wouldn’t-unless we needed it.

  There’s no evidence in there for a court, Lieutenant there’s just some personal stuff that would be embarrassing for her daughter. Stuff that doesn’t need to be on the public record!”

  “That’s great-that’s what you want me to tell Anderson, so he can tell the Chief?”

  “I don’t care.”

  ” 7 don’t care. Who the hell do you think you are-fuckin’ Joan of Arc?

  You think because we worry about you, you get cut up-what do you think?

  You think you’re different from everybody else ‘cause you got tits an’

  you lost a partner? You better wise up, lady. You are a policewoman-and you obey your orders, or you get your ass off this police force. Period!’

  “I don’t think I’m better-“

  “You shut up. You said enough.”

  “The witness is in Vineland-“

  “Shut up! I don’t want to hear it!”

  “Vineland, New Jersey, It’s Maurice Garrison; he works at DiNunzio . .

  . Produce . . . something.”

  “Christ - - - Thanks a lot,” Leahy s-aid, his fat face flushed. A really appreciate your shittin’ on my shoes like this. You had to tell me-right?”

  “-And I’ll say you ordered me not to interfere in Tommy’s thing in any way. . . . You take it to Connors, Lieutenant.”

  “Great. I see. It’s all right if I make an asshole out of myself, tellin’ Michael Connors his business. -You didn’t want to do that, I notice. You got a habit, you know, lettin’ other people take the shit for you. . - - This Gaither thing is the ‘one an’ only you did on your own-and now you fucked up with Connors, stickin’ your nose in where you didn’t have any business.”

  Ellie said nothini.

  “So? What’s this-‘no wise-ass answer? No excuses … ?

  Well, I got news for You-tomorrow mornin’ eight-thirty on the dot, you’re going’ to be up in Anderson’s office talkin’ to Connors again.

  That guy in Vineland an’ all the other shit you got to say. You-not me, an’ not anybody else, either.”

  A don’t trust him. . . . I think it was cops—”

  “Oh, please, please don’t give me that ‘cops’ shit!”

  Leahy paused as a group of people came by . . . jurors, they looked like. “-I think Tommy got that all wrong, an’ I think you got it all wrong. An’ when you’re talkin’ about not trustin’ Connors, I know you’re full of it. I know about Connors. Everybody knows about that guy. —Connors would book his mother, he caught her playin’ wrong bingo.r />
  The guy’s so fuckin’ honest he’s a royal pain in the ass! -You can’t trust him, let me tell you, you can’t trust nobody.”

  Leahy turned to go, then turned again. “You get up to Anderson tomorrow-eight-thirty. An’ I don’t mean eight-thirty-one! An’ even if you kiss enough ass up there you don’t get bumped, I don’t want to see you in the Squad for anyway a week. You had enough fuckin’

  congratulations in there. You had maybe too much; maybe we been treatin’ you like a fuckin’ baby in there-‘you will do this, you won’t do that-so Tommy had to work for the both of you, sometimes. You think I don’t notice who’s in that office getting’ the shit work done? -You been ridin’ free a long time, lady’-and lumbered swiftly away to the head of the stairs, and on down them, the tail of his blue trench coat flapping behind him.

  “Detective Klein?”

  Ellie, her face hot, knowing she must be blushing, turned and saw the young Assistant D.A. some distance down the hall. He must have stayed back when he’d heard the tone of Leahy’s voice.

  “Yes … ?”

  He walked over in his rolling, dipping gait, leaning heavily on the cane. “I didn’t want to interrupt .

  “I was getting my butt kicked, Mr. Richter.”

  “Happens to the best of us. . . .” Richter said. “I thought the boss was going to murder me last week. I forgot to prepare an indictment.”

  just plain forgot it,” He was trying to make her feel better.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Two things. I need to go over the case with you, step by step-not the paperwork, that was very complete. I mean the little things . . .

  what you felt about each defendant, what made you particularly suspicious of them …. anything specific they said, even if it doesn’t seem germane.

  In other words, anything you have that you didn’t put on paper. Point is, you knew them before they were defendants-before they had lawyers. I need to know what they were like, then. -It’s fill-in, shouldn’t take long……

  “O, K.”

  “That was the first thing. The second thing is, I’d like to cover this stuff over a drink. -This is not a pass; I’m married. I’ve just had a long day … and I’m buying.”

  “Counselor,” Ellie said, “-you’ve made a friend for life.”

  Tucker, in white shirt and gray tie, a dark blue suit and gray raincoat, rode over the river just after dark. It was his first trip on the tram, and he loved it. It was like flying, without flying’s unease. The machinery, he’d heard, was Swiss-and that was a country another NCO had told him was loaded with trams and funiculars, which made sense with so many mountains. White man’s machinery at its most reliable 2he hoped-took off his dark glasses and put them in his raincoat pocket.

  He’d used ice packs, and his face was looking better, felt a little better, too.

  Below him, the East River, glossy black, held all the lights of its banks-but elongated, shimmering out from the shores in long, wavering fingers of blue and red, yellow and green, This would be a great trip for the kids.

  … He turned and excused his way through the passengers to the downstream side. Through the windows there, the Queensboro Bridge loomed from another age-all brutal iron in angles and pillars, riveted, welded and hammered together, bearing, as Tucker watched, an entire hurtling train, up out of the subway tunnels and high into the air-and at other levels, a steady threading of cars, trucks and buses, all lit, as the train windows were lit in endless small shuttling rectangles, by lights of their own. Headlights, running lights, tail-lights, brake lights in every shape and shade of blue-white-, yellow, orange and ruby-red. It would be something for the children to see, Tucker thought, worth keeping them up a little late.

  It was his experience that gorgeous things rich with light, seen young, stayed with men and women all their lives-‘as the sun, the out-islands and sea of South Carolina had stayed with him.

  At the island end, when the tram car sank down to dock, Tucker walked off and along the ramp, passed the parked bus, and crossed the street to stand back against a fence, out of the light. When the bus pulled out, he watched the way it went, then strolled after it through the cooling night. On the main street, after a few minutes walking-the street well-fit, fairly busy with shoppers, people going home-he paused beside a travel agency (Hawaii posters in the windows … Diamond Head, Maui, the Pipeline . . . ) to glance at a small piece of paper, put it back into his raincoat pocket, the same pocket with the glasses. The posters reminded him of Schofield . . . all those times.

  He found the building, right on this main street-looked to be the only street they had-and walked past it, turned around a little farther on, came back and walked past it again. There was a night security-man on the desk.

  Tucker crossed the street, and walked all the way down it, this time, to the mall beside the big parking garage—empty except for two couples walking home on the other side-then turned left, went down to a low fence along a strip of grass above the island’s edge. He strolled there until he found a narrow shadow thrown by a streetlamps pillar, then walked along this shadow to the fence, put his hands up on the wire, the horizontal pipe supporting it, vaulted over and down into the grass on the other side, and walked away into deeper dark.

  Behind the buildings, though, the areas were lit. Tucker paid no attention. People rarely looked out their windows at night-reflection was all against it; the coziness of warm, lamp-lit rooms turned people inward in their views.

  The apartment, numbered for the ground floor, had to be one of two.

  Children-a small boy, a smaller girl-were watching television in the back bedroom of the first.

  In the second, there was a cat on the windowsill, a woman singing in the kitchen-a melody to no song he could recall.

  Tucker reached into his other raincoat pocket, took out his Swiss Army knife, opened it, and lightly sliced the window screen in a large L, across the bottom, and up one side-then folded the blade, and put the knife away.

  When he pushed this flap aside, the cat, quite small, leaped past him and out into the night. Tucker took the cat’s windowsill place for a moment, then was in.

  The singing stopped, and Tucker stood still in the living room-then heard a pot clatter, eased his raincoat off and let it fall, and walked across the room, smelling cooking potatoes. . . .

  He paused beside the kitchen door, looked along the short hall, lit by a ceiling fixture . . . noticed a dark doorway to the left-into the bedroom, he supposed and felt the rest of the apartment empty. The woman was humming, now. A pleasant sound.

  Tucker walked through the door as she turned from the stove-and saw a big saucepan behind her, and a Teflon frying pan with two hamburger patties starting to brown.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Barefoot, startled in a white terry-cloth bathrobe-frightened, but still in balance. His tie, his blue suit helped.”

  “I’m a police officer,” Tucker said to this small, dark woman-not the one he’d come for-and still saying it, stepped into the kitchen, reached out and got her by the hair.

  He’d intended something neater, a blow of some sort, but the woman fought him handily, savage as a small animal, saying, “Oh, no . . .

  oh, no - . .” while she bit and kicked. Finally, for room, he dragged her out and into the hall, and, after a tussle, managed to hug her hard with his right arm to hold her still, catch her frantic head in a simple lock with his left-squeezing to choke off her commencing scream-and twisting one way with one arm, the other with the other, broke her neck or something deeper down, feeling and hearing faintly her spine’s muffled crack and split, She grunted and shuddered as though he’d fucked her, then a little muddy shit ran down her legs—and though Tucker bundled her up into her robe, and carried her into the dark bedroom right away, there was some of it left in the hall.

  in the bedroom, he turned on the bedside lamp to take a look at her, be certain she was gone-reached down and rolled her to him. Nothing on, under the robe �
�� a nice-looking girl. Both her eyes were open, though one, the right, showed only white. In her left eye, the pupil was a gulf of black. The bedspread, dark blue, showed smears of manure from her legs. Brown. Shit brown …

  shit black … Is that, Tucker wondered, feeling a little odd as usual in the circumstances-is that why they despise us so?

  He thought of searching for the letters-getting that much done while he waited-then remembered the feces in the hall. The right woman would be armed and was due. . . It seemed stupid to alert her with turds in her hallway. Tucker turned out the bedside lamp, went back to the kitchen-where the smell of cooking french fries, hamburgers, now fought the other, less pleasant one collected a bundle of yellow paper towels, and went out in the hall to clean up.

  He’d gotten it off the floor (hardwood floor, thank God, and not a carpet), had thrown those towels in the kitchen trash, turned off the hamburgers to keep them from burning-and was looking under the sink for ammonia for the smell, when he heard a key in the frontdoor lock.

  Ellie opened the door, still in the midst of deciding whether to apologize in the morning, somehow without begging-or just to tell them to kiss her ass. Leahy had frightened her-not such a funny fat man, now. Had made her feel guilty, too, saying Tommy had done her work …

  which, sometimes, he had. The thought of losing her shield made her almost sick. She couldn’t believe they’d do it. But if they tried, those fuckers would think it was World War Three. She’d get hold of Avril Reedy and she’d beat those motherfuckers to death with him….

  She closed the door behind her, wondering where Mayo was … and smelled an odor of shit, right in the halland cooking, of all things.

  “-Mayo, you little bastard,” she said. You better hide!”