Cover Story

by Gerry Boyle

  I watched for a half-hour, lulled by the sea chantey of the bailiff, by the defendants moving through, resigned and expressionless, as though they were in line to get their driver’s licenses renewed.

  And then I saw him.

  It was through the open door at the front of the courtroom, to the left. Dave Conroy peeked into the courtroom, glancing out at the assembled like the minister ready to start the service. He poked his head in three or four times, then didn’t reappear. I waited five minutes, then got up and went out into the hallway. There were cops, people in suits, defendants and reporters. I was about to go back into the courtroom when an unmarked door swung open.

  And the Boxer came out.

  He was wearing a suit and he stood for a moment and pushed at his tie. Then the door opened again and Conroy emerged. He started down the long corridor toward the atrium. The Boxer followed, thirty feet behind. I brought up the rear.

  Conroy walked down the corridor and took a right at the atrium. The Boxer turned, too, and I followed, down a hallway with office doors. A cop stopped and asked where I was going. I said I was looking for the men’s room. She said there was one at the end of the hall, and pointed the other direction. I walked slowly back the way I had come, until the cop turned off. I turned back in time to see the Boxer at the end of the hall.

  I broke into a trot and followed. When I turned at the end of the corridor, he was stepping into an office. The door closed behind him. I pressed close to the wall and listened.

  “We got a problem.”

  The Boxer’s voice.

  “What?” Conroy snapped.

  “That professor called.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Said he told McMorrow all about our man being arrested.”

  “Goddamn it. What is that son of a bitch doing?”

  “I don’t know, but the professor told him the arrest was in Brooklyn.”

  “Which McMorrow can check.”

  “He was worried it might sour things if it got in the paper.”

  “Shit.”

  “So I was right,” the Boxer said.

  Conroy didn’t answer.

  “What did I tell you? He’s handed it off to McMorrow.”

  “I know that. I just saw him across the street.”

  “He was here?”

  “Of course he was, Sherlock-fucking-Holmes. I’m glad to see you’re on top of things.”

  “I didn’t lose him, Derek did. Got caught in traffic and lost the car. McMorrow must’ve been hiding in the back. But he’ll report in. I mean, the homicide guys told him that. Unless he decides to run home to Maine.”

  “No, he’ll stick around,” Conroy said. “The man’s a loose cannon. Not a typical reporter. He’s . . . he takes things too far. That was his problem before. He gets tangled up in things.”

  “He’s tangled up good now.”

  “And you’re just going to have to untangle him.”

  “Got to locate him, first.”

  “You’re a professional. Figure it out. He’s talked to the professor. Where might he go next?”

  “Depends.”

  “That’s brilliant. Is that deductive reasoning or inductive?”

  “Don’t ride my ass,” the Boxer said. “We’ll pick him up. Casey said anything about it yet?”

  “Nothing. Says he doesn’t know anything about any killing, never touched Fiore, the thing with his wife is all in the past. And then he just sits there, almost smug, like everything’s going according to plan.”

  “Well, we’re gonna have to have a plan. We got cases scattered all over New York.”

  “So watch all of them.”

  “I’ll need more people.”

  “Get them, for Christ’s sake. Sometimes I think you forget what’s at stake here.”

  “A lot.”

  “Everything, that’s what,” Conroy hissed. “This is history, and you’re a part of it, believe it or not. So don’t screw it up. Come on. We’re late for the inquisition.”

  The Boxer’s response was muffled.

  And the door opened.

  I whirled away, started walking.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” I mumbled, still walking. “That guy said there was a bathroom.”

  I grabbed my crotch. Kept walking, with a limp.

  “God almighty,” I heard the Boxer say. “The shitbums that come crawling in here.”

  And then they turned and were gone. I let go of my groin, wondered what Butch had stumbled onto. I wished I could ask him, talk to him, even for ten seconds.

  So minutes later, I stood on the back side of the courthouse, across from a little paved park with a beat-up Chinese pavilion. There were pretzel guys in the park, and the sidewalks near the entrance were blocked off by barricades and cops.

  The media waited.

  There were twenty or more TV crews, twice as many reporters. People primped, smoked, talked on cell phones. Helicopters, some news and some police, hovered high overhead, their woofing clatter echoing off the buildings. I stood by two TV cameramen who were wondering whether Bill Clinton would come to Fiore’s service or the White House would just send Al Gore.

  “You think they’ll make this cop do the walk?” one cameraman said to the other. “Interesting situation. He’s a detective and they stick together like glue.”

  “You kidding? He killed the mayor. They’ll tar and feather the bastard, bring him in on a rail, but I could be wrong. Hey, you hear who he’s got for a lawyer? Lemme tell you, it’s gonna be a heavyweight. You can’t buy this kind of publicity. I was talking to some guys from France here this morning, and the Japanese are all over it. Right up their alley. They eat this—”

  He looked to his right, past me. Grabbed his camera off the ground and broke into a run. The other cameramen followed, sweeping by me in a clattering herd.

  There was a blue-and-white radio car turning the corner. Behind it was a big NYPD van, and they both slowed and stopped opposite a single unmarked door. Motorcycle cops appeared from the rear, veered around the two marked vehicles, and stopped. A police truck swung out from behind the procession and two guys in blue jumpsuits got out and started unloading more barricades.

  The park was emptying. The street was full of people. I started to move with the crowd and then I thought, what was all this cop stuff? Wouldn’t he be in the custody of Corrections? What color were their—

  A car slipped in behind me, from the opposite direction.

  I turned. It was black, a big Mercury with tinted windows. There was a second car behind it, identical to the first. The doors popped open, and men and women in suits tumbled out. Ramirez was there. Donatelli, too. Some stood in a phalanx. It was Ramirez who turned back to the second car, the backseat. Leaned in.

  And helped Butch out.

  His first step was almost a stumble, and with his wrists cuffed in front of him, it looked like he was going to drop to his knees and pray. But then he stood straight, put his shoulders back, and looked around, as if to commit the scene to memory.

  His jail suit was medium blue and the trousers were too long. He was wearing brown shoes and his legs were shackled.

  I moved toward him, ten steps.

  “The envelope,” I called. “What is it?”

  Butch turned and looked and his gaze fastened on me. His eyes widened and he stopped, Ramirez still holding him by the upper arm.

  “It was all arranged,” he called to me. “There was a plan. Fiore had a—”

  Ramirez turned, saw me, and pointed. Said, “Hey, he can’t be—”

  “It’s all there,” Butch called. “Just put it together. You’ll see—”

  And the mob descended.

  They were jostling for position. Rattling equipment. Cursing and shoving. A camera hit me in the back and I was elbowed aside and I held my hands up to protect my face. As I spun away, Butch disappeared through the courthouse door.

  “Son of a bitch,” someone said, and then there was a cacophony of curses and catc
alls.

  “When’s he coming out?”

  “You bringing him out here?”

  “What kind of bullshit is this?”

  “Who you guys trying to protect, anyway?”

  The two uniform cops guarding the door stood their ground, said nothing. But now I knew the answer was out there, like the prize in a giant scavenger hunt. Conroy and the Boxer knew, too.

  The race was on.

  21

  The Red Hook housing project was near the piers, and that afternoon it teemed with life, like a brick coral reef. There were kids on the playground, boys tossing basketballs at chain-link hoops. Women sat on benches, strollers parked in front of them. Young guys hunched at the curbs, leaning into the windows of cars. A Monte Carlo. A Lincoln. A Porsche Carrera. When the Range Rover rolled through—heavily tinted windows, steel brush bars front and rear—the young guys raised up and stared.

  It was a little after one o’clock. Butch probably was just leaving court to go back to Riker’s. I’d come here first, knowing it was on the list, hoping I was a step ahead of the Boxer.

  Preferably two.

  Lorraine Street ran through the center of the project, and 123 to 131 was the second building in. I circled the block and parked in front of the Project Food Store. When I locked the Rover, its lights flashed once, like a lighthouse beacon. The men leaning against the wall by the store looked at me without any expression at all. When I walked up the street, two of them followed.

  There were bars on the windows but not on the doors, and the entrance numbers were posted on bright-blue signs. I turned down the walkway at 123, saw a metal door with a small window in the center. I stopped and leaned on the black steel fence.

  Little kids walked by and stared. Two teenage boys—big pants, blue bandanna headbands—glared as they shuffled by. A woman watched me from a fourth-floor window. The two men from the store stood by the street and waited.

  I took out my reporter’s notebook, my Red Cross flag of neutrality. Opened it and scribbled. The boys came back across the courtyard but there were four of them now, all showing the same colors. My polo shirt was dark green.

  I hoped green was not significant.

  And then an older woman came down the sidewalk, pulling a wire grocery cart. She passed the men, said hello to one of the boys. It embarrassed him, made him seem a little less lethal. She looked me in the eye, said “Good afternoon,” and went to the door. Opened it with a key. As she wrestled the cart inside, I slipped in behind her.

  We got in the elevator together. She said wasn’t it hot, and I said, yes, it was. She asked if I was “from the city,” and I said, no, the newspaper. The elevator stopped and I got out and she called after me, “You take care of yourself.”

  The doors closed.

  There had once been numbers on all the doors, I supposed, but no more. I found 203 and started counting up. Nine doors down the hall, I knocked, and in the silent hallway, it sounded like a sledgehammer.

  I waited. A man’s voice said, “What?” I heard more voices down the hall, from the direction of the elevator.

  “Is this 212?” I said.

  “What? Who’s that?”

  The voices down the hall were louder.

  “Is this apartment 212? Mrs. Stephens?”

  “You got 217. Even numbers, across the hall.”

  I turned, started back toward the elevator. The four boys came around the corner, two by two. When they saw me, they slowed but kept on coming. They had their hands in their pockets, a spring in their steps.

  Ten feet away, I stopped.

  “Hey,” I said.

  They didn’t answer.

  “I’m looking for Lester John. You know him?”

  They looked at me.

  “Who are you?”

  It was the smallest kid, light-skinned, handsome as a dancer.

  “A reporter. From the New York Times. I need to talk to Lester John.”

  “What for you want to talk to Lester?”

  “For a story. About something he was arrested for, but he may not have done it.”

  “So you gonna help Lester with your story?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They moved closer.

  “You pay for people to talk to you? Like on TV?”

  “No.”

  “Then we don’t gotta tell you shit.”

  The others were smiling.

  “You got a hundred dollars, I tell you everything I know about Lester.”

  “Sorry. No money.”

  They snickered. The kid looked at them, then at me.

  “You got a fuckin’ downtown job, you going around with no money? You fuckin’ crazy, telling me that? You think we’re fuckin’ stupid?”

  The others laughed. He moved closer.

  “Come on, man. Fifty bucks, I tell you about Lester. I’ll take you to him. You can take his picture for the New York mother-fuckin’ Times.”

  The others grinned.

  “Sorry.”

  “You don’t think Lester’s worth fifty? My friend Lester. That’s a crazy-ass thing to do, here in my block. You understand? You coming in here, fucking with me? Fucking with my friend Lester? Pay me the money, reporter fucker.”

  He took a step closer. A knife came out of his pocket. He gave it a shake and the blade swung out. I started to back away. The kid moved with me.

  His eyes were fixed on mine. He smiled.

  “You ain’t scared, are ya? You ain’t scared a dyin’? Happens to everybody, my man. Just happens to some sooner than others.”

  He jabbed. I jumped. The men from the street came around the corner. The older woman was behind them, minus the cart.

  “Hey,” one of the men called. The kids turned.

  “Let him outta here.”

  “He’s interviewing me. ’Cause I’m a friend of Lester.”

  The knife went back in the pocket. I brushed by him, stepped through the others, and one of them shoved me from behind. I kept going and brushed by the men, too.

  “Look at that reporter run,” the kid called.

  I slowed, walked to the elevator. Pushed the button. The men came and stood behind me. The door opened, graffiti sliding into the wall.

  “You better get in there and keep on going,” the older man, the talker, said. He was fortyish and big and solemn. His hands were in the pocket of his sweatshirt. The pocket showed the shape of a handgun.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “ ’Cause we don’t want white cops here,” he said. “Ugly-ass white apartheid cops.”

  “Did white cops come and take away Lester John?” I said.

  “Just go,” he said, and the door rolled shut.

  I closed my eyes and exhaled slowly. The elevator rumbled down and ejected me on the first floor. I went out the door and down the walk, hurried along the street. When I looked back, the men were on the sidewalk, watching me. When I turned back toward the Range Rover, I saw a brown Taurus parked beyond it on the other side of the street.

  There were two men in it, white men, and they were watching me, too.

  The Taurus pulled out. I kept walking. It drove slowly toward me and I walked faster, broke into a jog.

  And then the Rover was between me and their car. It sped up and passed, and I got only a glimpse of the driver, the back of his head. Hair shorn on the sides, long in back. The Taurus drove between the buildings, drew stares from the loiterers. I watched it as I circled the car and got in, watched it in the mirror. It turned around in a tree-lined circle on the other side of the project, started back.

  I started the Rover, put it in gear.

  Jumped as someone banged the window.

  She was fiftyish, young skin and tired eyes and a hand balled into a fist.

  “You the reporter?” she said through the glass of the passengerside window.

  I buzzed the window down.

  “Yeah.”

  “You asking for Lester?”

  “Yeah, I was.”

&nbs
p; “They took him,” she said. “And I can’t find out where he’s at. You find him for me, I’ll pay you for your time.”

  I looked in the mirror, saw the Taurus waiting in the distance. I unlocked the door.

  “Get in,” I said. “We can talk about it.”

  She did, arranged herself in the seat next to me. She was wearing black bicycle shorts and a red T-shirt that read red hook tenants assoc.

  “Mrs. Stephens,” I said. “I’m Jack McMorrow.”

  Lynette Stephens glanced at me knowingly.

  “You looking for somebody and somebody else is looking for you?” she said.

  I paused. Looked in the mirror at the Taurus, still sitting.

  “Something like that.”

  “I saw you on the TV, but I know better than to believe most of what I see on there. I read the story in the paper, too.”

  “You still want to talk to me?”

  “I’ll talk to you if it’ll help me find Lester.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “He didn’t leave. They took him.”

  “Who?”

  “Police. Detectives.”

  “When?”

  “Two weeks ago tomorrow. Came at night. Said, ‘Unlock the door, ma’am. We need to speak to you. We have bad news about your brother.’”

  “You have a brother?”

  “In Detroit. But there wasn’t news about him. I unlock the door and they knock me down on the floor and Lester, he’s in bed. They got guns and they kick the door in and they scream at him, put those guns on him and drag him right out of bed in his shorts. He tried to talk and one of ’em hit him in the mouth with his gun, and there’s blood all over his face and he’s saying, ‘Call the cops.’ And I’m saying, ‘They are the cops.’”

  “Did they show badges?”

  “Hell, no. Just guns. I said, ‘You got a warrant? You got ID?’ They say, ‘Shut up, you dirty whore. We’ll take you, too, you bitch.’ I say, ‘Well, just a minute. Who you think you’re talking to?’ I work for the Transit Authority and I know the Transit cops and I know what’s what.”

  “So then what?”

  “Then they were gone. They took him. I went running after them, but they got the elevator first, and by the time I got down the stairs, they’re putting Lester in a car.”