“Doesn’t take a genius to figure an ex-cop’s gonna answer the door with some backup.”
“’Specially some old fuck in a wheelchair, huh?”
“Especially.”
“You might just be alright, boy. I can see how you could of knocked Mark off his stride a bit.”
“The chair. From the disability?”
“Uh-huh. Damnedest thing. Come through Korea without a scratch, not even frostbite. Re-upped once, then twenty-eight years on the force here, not much more bumps and bruises than a bad sleigh ride. Until four years ago. I’m heading home after a midnight tour when I see smoke pouring out of this four-family, edge of a Porto neighborhood. They’re good people, mostly, but they get stiff as fish from that red piss they drink. I figure I better see what’s going down.
“Then I see this kid at the third-floor window. He’s big enough to know he’s in the shit, but small enough, he doesn’t know what to do about it ’cept scream his lungs out. So I kick in the front door, taking the steps two at a time and banging every door I pass. People run outta there like ants from a hill. You couldn’t count ’em all. One of the women, girl actually but they start young, you know what I mean, one of them had the balls to follow me up the steps, yelling something I couldn’t catch. Funny how you can live among ’em for so long, never get the hang of their talking.
“So her and me hit the top floor, there’s serious fire ’round us now, can’t barely breathe much less see for shit, and I had to damn near knock the door off the hinges anyway to get us in. Smoke’s worse somehow, but she gets hold of a little baby, and I grab the kid at the window, and we start down. She was hellbent scared, but she knew the stairs and I didn’t. Damned landing, they never nail the runners down right, suppose I shoulda been surprised there was any there at all. I catch my heel in it, going full tilt down, and tear the shit out of one knee while I’m breaking my fall with the other leg, all the time trying to keep the kid’s head from cracking open on the steps. I got all the way down, but it felt like somebody’d taken a bat to my legs, and the boys in one of our units had to carry me out like a dime-a-dozen halfback.”
“Hell of a story.”
“Damned right.”
“You have surgery on the knee?”
“Knees. Both of them. Wanna see?”
You can retire them, but you can’t keep the good ones from sensing where you’re going. “So I can check for recent knife wounds?”
Schonstein grinned again, but reached down to his cuffs, inching up the pants legs like a demented stripper until I could see the old stitch tracks. The calves looked toned instead of withered, but there were no new marks or scars.
He said, “Satisfied?”
“Some.”
Schonstein dropped his trousers back to normal. “Good. Good to be a bit skeptical, I mean. Lotsa cops forget that these days.”
“The motorized chair help?”
“Godsend. I figured I’d only be in this thing for two, three weeks, then braces, cane, and back to normal. But it didn’t work out that way. Barely ever got to use the braces. Docs said it was the arthritis. Always had some twinges going back to my thirties, never paid it much mind till the surgery and all sort of speeded things up. But I get by, I get by.”
“You’re still able to drive?”
“The car you mean? Hell, yes. The department—actually the city council technically, I guess. The boys let me bid on it when they were selling the fleet to buy new ones. Damned fine car, big engine, best suspension, which makes a difference when you feel the potholes a little more now. Had a guy alter it for me, makes it easier to drive with just the hands. Probably be my last car, too, but that’s alright. Saved the best for last.”
“Mind me asking about an earlier car?”
“Figured that’s why you’re here. Gotta give you credit for patience, though. Patience, that’s the most important thing for an interrogation, you know. Skepticism and patience, they’re in short supply on the force now.”
“That night with Hagan and the boy who was killed. Can you tell me your version?”
“No, but I’ll tell you what happened, you don’t get too puffed up with all my compliments there.”
“I’ll try not to.”
Schonstein slid the Browning under the blanket, rotating his shoulders on the back of the chair. “Neil and me were in the cruiser, regular patrol. He was on the job maybe eight, ten months. No, eight, eight sticks in my mind. It was summertime, we were doing the four to twelve, nice and easy. Not too hot, not too much humidity, no real reason for anything to happen. We turn a corner two blocks off The Strip, Neil’s at the wheel, and we go by an alley. I see this skinny kid in blue jeans and a tee shirt playing with the back door of a store. Well, you don’t have to be no fortune-teller to know what he’s getting ready to do, so I tell Neil to turn right, and I reach for the passenger side spot. I flip it on, the kid’s off and running like a deer. Neil had this bad knee from football, lucky he passed the physical with it, so after he takes the cruiser as far as it can go, I get out and sprint after the little fuck. He’s maybe five-ten, one-forty dripping wet if he ever took a bath, which I doubt. But he ain’t no Olympic threat, and I catch up to him just as he stumbles and goes down near this abandoned building. I didn’t see any weapon, so I don’t pull mine. I just reach down for him, but when I lift him up by the left arm, he’s got this brick in his right, and he bashes in my nose. How many times your nose been broke?”
“Twice.”
“Yeah, it looks it. Well, I had mine busted maybe three times before this, but they didn’t hurt like this one. I just plain wasn’t ready for the pain. It was like a killer wave crashing onto a beach in a storm. It put me down and near out. Then the kid comes down with it again, and almost tears my cheek off, over here.” Schonsy tapped under his right eye. “I was about out of it when Neil tackled him. I mean, those days, no question he coulda just shot the kid. But no, he tries to be the good cop, take the kid without deadly force, and the kid falls funny and breaks his fuckin neck. Neil realizes the kid’s dead and breaks down. He was like that, too sensitive for the damned job, I thought then. But he don’t know what all to do, so I tell him, pick up the kid and bring him to the cruiser, we gotta radio, alert the hospital. So Neil picks the kid up like he was somebody’s new baby, me shagging my ass out of the alley. Lucky I had the sense to bring the brick he used. We called it in, then headed to the emergency room.”
“Justifiable.”
“No question. For God’s sake, the kid was braining me with a brick. Neil could’ve put six into him, and even today, with the damned shooting teams and paperwork and plaintiffs’ lawyers like bucks around a bitch, it woulda been a good shoot. What got the guy in trouble was he tried to take the kid without a gun, like I said.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“Oh, just the usual newspaper shit. The department, the city, everybody backed him on it. Lucky we had a camera of ours at the hospital, they got some shots of me with more blood coming out than a butchered cow. But the papers still played it up, and the kid’s mother tried to start some shit, but nobody paid her much mind, and that was that.”
“The mother still around?”
Schonstein flapped his lips. “Wouldn’t know.”
“Would you remember her name?”
“Probably not.”
I said, “The mess doesn’t seem to have held Hagan back much.”
“Why the hell should it? That’s what really burns me, you know? That’s what woulda driven me off the force, the knees hadn’t done it first. You’re a cop, you spend half your time locking up guys you know are gonna be on the street before the end of the shift, you gotta be so careful to say ‘alleged’ and ‘supposed’ so you don’t violate their rights to a fair trial, and then when they get a trial it’s about as fair as the Celtics playing a school-ground team, the way the system’s rigged for the guilty. So they get off entirely. Or, if they do get convicted, the judge hands them three to five, w
hich means maybe eighteen months if they don’t try to fuck the chaplain, and then we’re not supposed to single them out once they’re released. We’re supposed to treat them like they paid their debt and all. Well, how about us, huh? When a cop like Neil saves his partner’s life, and I’m telling you that’s what happened here, he saved my fuckin life for me. When a cop does that, and he hurts the perp by accident, by accident now, and it comes down as justifiable, how come that has to drag him down for the rest of his life, huh? Why the fuck is there one standard for them and a different one for us? Tell me that.”
“How about you tell me about your son, instead.”
“He’s a good cop.”
“I’ve seen how he is as a cop.”
Schonstein pretended I meant what he meant. “Then what else you want to know?”
“Strike you as just a little odd that your son and his partner Cronan both have corroborated alibis for the night Charlie Coyne was killed?”
“No, it don’t. I spent twenty-eight years scraping the Charlie Coynes of this city outta car wrecks and gutters. Pieces of shit like Coyne die as regular as old folks in a nursing home. You know you’re gonna lose a couple this week, you just don’t know which one’s gonna go any particular night, that’s all.”
“Without Coyne, your son couldn’t be indicted.”
“With Coyne, I don’t see how they’re gonna prosecute him, either. Look, I understand you talked with the Rust girl about this before she took the pills, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, I didn’t know the woman myself, except to see her across the room once in a while, but I hear she wasn’t too tightly wrapped, you know?”
“I know what you mean.”
“Sure you do. Well, what she believed, what Coyne maybe told her she oughta believe so he could get his dick wet, that don’t necessarily add up to what happened, get me?”
“You mean your son didn’t have his hand out.”
Schonstein’s face clouded, and I got a sense of what a terror he must have been on the street. “That’s what I mean, boy. When I come on the force here, how many Jews you figure they have in uniform?”
“No idea.”
“None. I got back from the service, I was a veteran, they didn’t like it but they didn’t have a choice. The law was clear as a bell on that one. If it’s alright with you, we can skip over the things they wrote on my locker and car in those days, and the jack-offs they partnered me with. Took maybe five years for me to whale the shit out of every guy wanted to know how tough I was. I got through that, things were okay. Better than okay. There was a time when the cops ruled this city, boy, the way it’s supposed to be done. And I was part of it. But then with the Supreme Court and the lawyers and all, somehow it all just slid into the shit. The laws never did protect the citizens, but now not even the cops can.”
“You got a point in here somewhere?”
The face got darker, then he burst out laughing. “You don’t swallow the bull too quick, do you.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“Well, see if this goes down a little easier. Coyne said Mark was on the pad from Bunny Gotbaum, right?”
“That’s how I heard it.”
“Alright, you’re Schonsy’s son on the force here, you figure Mark’s gonna take money from another Jew? When his father had to whip half the force to get any respect as one himself?”
I said, “You know Gotbaum?”
“I know him. Uniforms don’t cover vice here, but I know him.”
“I mean from growing up around here.”
“Why?”
“Seems to me you’re about the same age, same religion, reasonable you knew each other as kids.”
“Yeah, we knew each other. No temple or nothing for either of us, but we were only a grade apart in school.”
“You ever introduce Mark to Gotbaum, maybe?”
“Working vice, Mark would have met him on his own. Believe me.”
“Most of the time.”
Schonstein seemed tired. “You got any more questions?”
“They ever figure out what started it?”
Just a glimmer of understanding before he set his face for confusion. “How’s that?”
“The fire?”
“My … the one where I got hurt, you mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Naw. Nobody died, and nobody fessed up. Why?”
“You ever think about suing?”
“For getting hurt helping a kid? You kidding?”
“You must have thought about it.”
“No.”
“Who owned the building?”
“You’re better than I thought, boy.”
“You going to save me a trip to the paper and the tax assessors?”
“Take you a few more steps than that, the way I hear he’s got his corporations and trusts stacked one on top of the other.”
“And if I sort of kept unstacking them till I got to the bottom?”
“You’d find another local who made good.”
“Named?”
“Richie Dykestra.”
“And you didn’t think about suing him?”
“Didn’t have to. He settled with me. Fair and square. No damned lawyers involved.”
I stood up. “I can see myself out. Thanks for your time.”
As I reached the door, Schonstein said behind me, “Gonna have to watch out for you, son. Yes, I will.”
Sixteen
IT WAS MUGGY when I left Schonstein’s. Not being due at Liz Rendall’s until seven-thirty, I drove back to the motel, showered, and changed. I reminded Emil as obliquely as possible that I might be getting a telephone call from Vip. Emil reminded me that he wasn’t no goddam message center and that he hadn’t gone goddam senile since the first time I’d mentioned it.
I found a decent bottle of Sauvignon Blanc at my friendly liquor store. Heading downtown, I cruised Main Street till it intersected with Armory, and took Armory to The Quay. More a cobblestoned walkway than a street, The Quay led downhill, wrapping around the perimeter of the harbor before dead-ending at an old dock with a big tug and some runabouts snugged against it. No house in sight. I got out of the car with the wine and tried the last building before the water, a supply shop called Joe’s Marine. Murky fluorescents made the place look ghostly. The reversible sign, on a triangle of twine inside the glass door, said CLOSED. I stepped back to check the windows on the second floor. No lights on, but the reflection from a streetlight suggested the upper level was used by Joe for storage, not by Liz for residence. I could hear some music coming from the direction of the tug, and a lantern shimmered in its wheelhouse as the boat rode ugly over the chop of the waves. I decided it was time to ask for corrective directions.
The tug, pointing in toward land, looked brand-new. The hull appeared to be wooden, though, and I couldn’t imagine they still made them that way. Stenciled along the bow was the word Shepherd. A metal gangplank successively barred by two tined gates spanned the water from dock to deck.
I said, “Ahoy the Shepherd! Anyone aboard?”
A small black door at deck level opened, and Liz Rendall came out with a spatula in her hand and a short apron over even shorter shorts. “Welcome to paradise. Surprised?”
I moved my eyes from stem to stern. “A little.”
She reached back inside the door with her free hand, and a grating sound rose from the locks on the gates. “All the modern conveniences. Come aboard.”
Pushing through the gates, I was struck by how heavy the second one was. “Who was your security consultant?”
Liz cocked her head at me.
I said, “This second gate. Electrified, right?”
She nodded slowly. “They said you were good.”
“Who did?”
“The people I called about you. Let me just turn down dinner and then I’ll give you the tour. Come in.”
I gave her the wine, accepted her compliment on it, and took in the galley as she
iced the bottle. Jenn-Air double stove, butcher-block counters and preparation island, all copper pots and pans. “Better Homes and Gardens been by yet?”
“Let me show you the rest of it.”
I followed as Rendall moved aft through an opening that seemed about twice as wide as a working tug would have. “This is the dining room.”
The table was Danish modern, four chairs around it. She continued to a balustrade. “And this is the living room.”
I joined her at the rail and looked down a full set of steps into a cavernous space. Elaborately casual sectional furniture, complemented by some rattan chairs and matching tables. Stereo and television consoles mounted in recesses at just above head height from the floor. Or hull. On the opposite wall, a half-staircase led up to a door. Draped between the portholes were tapestries whose country of origin I couldn’t even guess.
I said, “Liz, this is spectacular.”
She beamed. “It wasn’t as hard as it might look. I bought this beauty from an offshore oil company for four thousand bucks when she couldn’t pass inspection anymore.” Liz moved her hand in an arc. “They’d already lifted the deck and pulled the twin diesels. I had my people remove the old boilers and put in a 3,500-watt generator. Joe—he’s the guy who owns the marine shop at the end of the dock—Joe and the utilities let me tie into his lines, so I really don’t need the generator except as a failsafe.”
“Must have cost a fortune.”
“Not as much as a studio condo in Boston. Since the basic structure was only four, the rest came in under a hundred thousand.”
“That’s still pretty steep for a reporter.”
“I was married once. He was close to rich. When we got divorced, the property settlement was enough for this, the Alfa, and a sixteen-footer lashed down the dock aways.”
“Those other stairs lead to the porch?”
“Yes, but let’s go out and around.”
Rendall retraced her steps back through the dining room and galley, then outside and around to the ten-by-fifteen porch, facing southwest toward the ocean. “This space used to be a chart room, but I wanted a screened area for enjoying the sea breeze at night. Plus with the sun deck beyond it to the stern, I can sit outside so long as the bugs cooperate.”
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