Backlash

by Paula Gosling

  There was a serious risk that Stryker might have to grow up.

  Then there was the partnership of Neilson and Pinsky.

  When Detective Harvey Neilson had first been transferred to plain-clothes at Central Homicide and been partnered with Sgt Ned Pinsky, he’d figured the thing would last maybe four or five days. Neilson was young, athletic, single, good-looking, quick-witted, and extremely attractive to women – a blessing he took no trouble to disguise. As far as he could see, Pinsky was slow-thinking, slow-talking, and a real hick. Of course, everybody liked Pinsky, but Neilson figured this was because Pinsky was no threat to anyone and apparently always good for a contribution to somebody’s birthday present collection. Neilson figured he’d look so good next to a loser like Pinsky that his natural ability would soon be rewarded, and he would quickly be promoted to Chief of Police by a grateful Commissioner.

  It hadn’t happened yet.

  At first Harvey found this lack of recognition pretty galling. After all, he’d come tops in all his exams from Day One, had been fast and tough in uniform, and had been transferred to plain-clothes quickly because he and everyone else knew he’d be a terrific detective, right? Whereas Pinsky, on the other hand, must have gotten to Central Homicide by some kind of bureaucratic mess-up, or he was somebody’s brother-in-law. Had to be something like that.

  But when old Pinsky kept getting the answers before Quicksilver Harvey the Shining Hope of Homicide, it began to be apparent even to Neilson that there must be more to the hick than first met the eye. True, Pinsky looked as if he had been put together with string and sealing wax by a blind one-armed puppet-maker, but he gangled along pretty smartly when it was necessary.

  In fact, he’d had to move very fast in order to save Neilson’s life, about a year back. They had been called to the scene of a robbery with violence, arriving within a minute of the call as they had been only a street away. The owner of the liquor shop was lying dead in his own doorway, and the killer was rifling the cash register as they pulled up. He fled out the back door and they followed. Within another minute, the killer had put a slug into Neilson, but five seconds later had gone down himself with Pinsky’s snap shot in his heart. Ned checked the perpetrator was dead, called in, then gave Neilson first-aid until the ambulance got there.

  ‘How did you know the bastard was waiting back there?’ Neilson had gasped as he lay in the alley trying hard not to bleed to death.

  ‘Rat,’ Pinsky said.

  ‘I agree, but how did you know he was there?’

  ‘I saw a rat running away,’ Pinsky said, patiently. ‘Also he was casting a shadow.’

  ‘The rat was casting a shadow?’ Neilson’s head was swimming.

  ‘No – the guy that shot you was casting a shadow.’

  ‘I – ouch – never saw a shadow,’ Neilson objected. ‘I was looking.’

  ‘You didn’t look up,’ Pinsky said. ‘The lights were on in the basement disco, right? With lights below, you get shadow above. In his case, on the bottom of a fire escape.’

  ‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ Neilson muttered.

  ‘He never said that, you know,’ Pinsky said, conversationally, as he pressed his handkerchief down hard over Neilson’s wound, watched his eyes and the pulse in his temple, and listened for the sirens. ‘Never exactly that, anyway. The closest he ever came was simply “Elementary”, in “The Crooked Man”.’

  ‘No kidding,’ Neilson said, and passed out.

  In the following months, Neilson gradually began to understand about Pinsky. Pinsky was not a boy genius, or a master of insight, or a hot-shot anything – Pinsky was the Practical Common Man. Pinsky was a pipe-smoker. He read a lot. He went skiing in the winter, sailing in the summer. He had a big family – an adoring wife, decent kids, a dog that did tricks. He believed in justice. A psychiatrist would have said he was a well-integrated personality.

  As Neilson was still trying to thrash out why life was always sneaking up on him, he came to find Pinsky’s calm in the face of adversity a source of strength. Waiting for Pinsky to come up with something gave him time to clear his own head. This was exactly what Stryker had hoped would happen when he suggested pairing the two of them. ‘When they’re together it will be common sense illuminated by flashes of lightning,’ he had told Captain Klotzman. ‘Trust me – they’ll mesh.’ And they had.

  These four, along with the assistance of other detectives as available, had been assigned to head the hunt for the cop-killer. All leads, tips, suspicions, and rumours went to them, filtering up from the thousands of officers covering the city. Copies of all the paperwork went to them. Crank calls and voluntary ‘confessions’ went to them. Complaints went to them. Questions from the press, from the public, from other officers went to them. The pressure came up from below and down from above and in from outside.

  And with each new death the pressure increased.

  Stryker and Tos went into the precinct station to continue their conversation with Captain Corsa and to check out Yentall’s reports and assignments over the past few weeks. Neilson and Pinsky stayed in the courtyard. As they watched the coroner’s men take away what was left of Detective Yentall, Pinsky was reflective, going over it again, going over it as they had gone over it every hour, every day, since it had landed in their laps.

  ‘If it’s random, we’re stalled, right?’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Neilson said, furiously taking down notes of the scene.

  ‘So let’s assume it isn’t random.’

  ‘I’m open to offers,’ Neilson muttered.

  Pinsky gazed at the photographers packing up their equipment. ‘We started with long shots – now we’ve got a close-up.’

  ‘You what?’ Neilson asked, still writing.

  ‘Maybe three strangers, one friend.’

  Neilson’s pen stopped and he looked up. ‘Some friend.’

  ‘Acquaintance, then,’ Pinsky conceded.

  ‘Okay, it’s a way in. But it could be the reverse – three from a distance because he might be recognised, one close up because the guy didn’t know him from Adam,’ Neilson said. He closed his notebook. ‘I think we’d better start this one by talking to Yentall’s partner – what was his name?’

  ‘Sobell,’ Pinsky said. ‘I know him – he’s a good man. He’ll be pretty broken up about this.’

  Neilson looked at him with some curiosity. ‘Would you be broken up if I got blown away?’ he asked.

  Pinsky looked at him and thought about it. ‘I suppose it might get me down for a minute or two,’ he finally conceded.

  Neilson raised an eyebrow. ‘As long as that?’

  ‘Would you go into mourning for me?’ Pinsky asked in turn.

  ‘I would wear black for a year,’ Neilson said, firmly.

  ‘Yeah, well – you look good in black.’

  Neilson grinned. ‘I know.’ He closed his notebook. ‘Shall we adjourn to the drawing room and see what the rest of the party are doing? Then we can start running background comparisons with the others and see if the computer comes up with anything. I’d be grateful to find out if they all chewed the same kind of bubble gum when they were kids. I’m telling you, Ned, this thing is getting me down. I keep feeling this hot spot on the back of my head, as if it was a bright shiny target waiting to be hit.’

  Pinsky nodded. ‘As Sherlock Holmes would say – it’s a bitch,’ he murmured as he shambled after Neilson.

  THREE

  Sobell was a balding man with a fat moustache over a thin mouth. He was sitting at his desk, staring blankly at his torn blotter and ancient typewriter. He looked up when Pinsky and Neilson approached. For a fleeting moment, the sight of Ned Pinsky lit his brooding features, and then he relapsed into his former state.

  ‘Harry,’ Ned said. ‘How’re you doing?’ He sat on the edge of Sobell’s desk.

  Sobell looked up. ‘I found hi
m, Ned. I saw his car, I went over, and I found him. I recognised his jacket. His jacket for Chrissakes, not him. I thought I knew what it was like, losing somebody. We see it every day, don’t we? But not this. This I can’t handle. I’m sitting here, I’m dead inside, I don’t know where each breath is coming from, I don’t know how they keep coming, you know? Each one, I think, last time. I stop. And then I breathe again. Nothing to do with me, it just goes on and on and on . . .’

  ‘Take it easy, Harry,’ Pinsky said.

  ‘He was a good man,’ Sobell said. ‘We all say that, all the time when somebody dies, but Phil was a good man. A sweet man, you know? Everybody liked Phil. I loved him like a brother, we worked together maybe ten years, and I only recognised his damn jacket.’ Sobell was crying now.

  ‘Had he said anything lately?’ Neilson asked. ‘Like, anything about the sniper or anything?’

  Sobell shook his head. ‘Nothing the rest of us weren’t saying, like why don’t we get the bastard and so on.’ He looked at Neilson. ‘Why don’t we?’

  Neilson sighed. ‘We’re trying. You know how it is. You know how hard it is . . .’

  ‘I know Phil is dead today,’ Sobell said, flatly. ‘I know the first guy got it weeks ago.’

  ‘Yeah, but it was only last week somebody decided to put it together and drop it on us downtown,’ Pinsky said. ‘It’s like climbing a mountain, Harry – stuff keeps sliding down into your face. We keep looking for connections, we keep hoping for a pattern.’

  Sobell’s face twisted. ‘Then lucky you – here’s another guy down to add to your goddamn pattern.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ Pinsky said.

  Sobell slumped in his chair and rubbed his face, wiping away the tears with the flats of his hands. ‘I know you didn’t. I know the job. I can imagine what you’re up against. But Jesus, Ned – why Phil?’

  Pinsky looked around the room. Normally, as any precinct house at mid-morning, it would be crowded with people shouting and arguing and hectic with activity. Now it was unnaturally quiet, and what business there was was being conducted in low tones. This was a house of mourning. One of their own was gone. Every phone that rang seemed to jerk a knife through the atmosphere. The uniformed and plain-clothes officers moving about their work were grim-faced and tense.

  Pinsky looked at Sobell. ‘Why any of them?’ he asked.

  ‘The obvious thing is somebody with a grudge,’ Stryker told Captain Corsa. ‘We’re concentrating most of our efforts on old convictions at the moment. Looking for somebody they all put away who’s been maybe building up a grudge while in prison. Somebody recently out would be first choice. Following that, we’re working backwards through those not so recently out and so on. It’s a hell of a job, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Which one isn’t?’ Corsa said, staring out of his window at the street in front of the precinct station. It was filling up with the curious and the morbid, who were drawn by the increased activity around the building – ambulance, Medical Examiner’s car, cars belonging to the forensic team, the investigating team of detectives, and the uniformed officers searching the area for clues. This latter activity was largely pointless as any possible clue would have been long since obliterated by the crowds, the cars, the ambulance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

  But it had to be done.

  ‘It all has to be done,’ Stryker said. ‘It’s bad enough when you’ve got one scene of crime, one death, but four – four scenes, four sets of forensic, four backgrounds, four separate investigations intersecting with one another and one overall investigation . . .’ He ran his hands through his hair in exasperation. ‘And all the time the bastard is out there, laughing at us.’

  Corsa turned to look at him. ‘You feel that? You feel one guy?’

  ‘You bet your ass I do,’ Stryker said.

  ‘What does he feel like?’ Corsa asked.

  Stryker sighed and began to walk around the room. As it was small and crowded with furniture and filing cabinets, his passage was neither easy nor straightforward. Corsa’s question was not a facetious one, especially not to Stryker. Most detectives investigating a crime – particularly homicide – get a sense of their quarry. Whether it comes through eyes and ears or past experiences or instinct or something unqualified and unnamed, it nevertheless comes.

  ‘Cold,’ Stryker said. ‘He feels like a cold bastard to me. Not hot, not crazy. Careful, deliberate. Implacable.’

  ‘Man with a mission? Sounds like you’re describing a soldier, maybe. Someone like that.’

  Stryker nodded. ‘Maybe. An executioner. That’s what he feels like.’

  ‘Professional hit man?’ Corsa asked.

  Stryker raised his shoulders high, then let them fall. ‘Maybe. We haven’t gotten that far yet, we’re still up to our asses in local psychos and old grudges, like I said. If somebody is paying him to do this, we’re into a whole new line of country. Could be somebody with a reason to hate or fear these particular victims, or a campaign against the whole Department, in which case we’re probably back to random targets again.’

  ‘Christ – there’s too much to get hold of there.’ Corsa was sympathetic. Being a local precinct captain, the scope of Stryker’s investigation hadn’t really hit him yet. He dealt with the day-to-day problems of his men and his area. Even now, when one of his own was part of it, he was shaken by the task Stryker had been set. ‘What if it’s political? What if it’s some fanatical group . . . ?’

  Stryker smiled, and nodded. ‘Now you’re getting the idea. What if it’s a pogrom against the whole of society? That’s supposed to be the recommended pattern, isn’t it, to destabilise the established order? Good place to start, killing off the police and scaring the shit out of them so they can’t function efficiently. Because we aren’t functioning efficiently, city-wide, at the moment. You can’t do a decent job if you’re always looking over your shoulder. So, what if it’s the beginning of a goddamn revolution? Where do I look for the bastard then? Hey? Nobody has come forward to say “This is down to us”, but maybe they’re just waiting for the best opportunity. Or maybe they want to take out a few more before they hit the headlines. And every time they kill, the problem gets bigger, the possibilities get more numerous, and the work expands to fill and overflow the available hours and men. Got any suggestions, Captain?’

  ‘Tranquillisers,’ Corsa said. ‘You’re wearing a hole in my carpet, already.’

  Stryker smiled, bleakly. ‘Sorry – I always do this when I’m thinking.’

  Corsa nodded, then tilted his head back, as if listening. ‘Maybe you should sit down and take a few deep breaths. It’s going to get worse any minute now.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Corsa directed his thumb over his shoulder toward the window. ‘Can’t you hear the baying of the hounds? The Press have arrived.’

  ‘Jesus, I hate this,’ Stryker said, standing just inside the entrance.

  ‘Let Neilson do it, he’s prettier than you,’ Tos suggested.

  ‘No thanks,’ Neilson said.

  ‘Don’t look at me.’ Pinsky put his hands up, as if to ward off Toscarelli’s eyes. ‘I freeze up when Nell gets out the kids’ camera.’

  ‘Besides,’ Neilson pointed out, ‘you’ve done it before. You’re used to it.’

  ‘You never get used to it,’ Stryker snapped, looking down to see if his flies were zipped and his tie was straight. ‘Jesus, I hate this.’

  They went out through the precinct doors and stood on the top step. Immediately a volley of flashguns went off, temporarily blinding them and momentarily stopping their hearts.

  They sounded like so many shots.

  A bouquet of microphones blossomed under Stryker’s chin as radio and television reporters surged forward and broke through the ranks of their newsprint colleagues. The questions surged over them like the waves off Molokai. ‘Who
’s the latest victim?’

  ‘Is it true it’s another woman?’

  ‘Have you got the killer yet?’

  ‘Why haven’t you got the killer yet?’

  ‘How many are dead now?’

  ‘What are you doing to catch the killer?’

  ‘What’s the dead man’s name?’

  ‘Who is responsible for the investigation?’

  ‘How do you spell your last name?’

  ‘Do you think it’s some kind of revenge thing?’

  ‘Is it true they call you “Jumping Jack”?’

  ‘How was he killed?’

  ‘Was he shot in the head like the rest?’

  ‘Was he in uniform?’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘When was he killed?’

  ‘Why was he killed?’

  ‘Is it true he wasn’t discovered until this morning?’

  ‘Was it a rifle?’

  ‘Was it a handgun?’

  ‘Who’s going to be the next victim?’

  ‘Is it only cops – or is it anyone?’

  ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  The noise was deafening, one question overlapping another, each shout louder than the one preceding it. The crowd was jostling its way up the stairs, like some amoebic monster with many heads and feet and hands. Dotted here and there were the blank glassy eyes of the hand-held television cameras, staring at him, closing in. Stryker stifled the impulse to turn and run. He took a deep breath. Now then.

  He raised his hands and felt like a magician must feel when a trick works out. Everybody fell quiet, instantly. He raised his voice and spoke carefully.

  ‘This morning a police officer was found dead, here in his precinct parking lot. He had been shot. We have no way of knowing at this time whether it is an isolated incident or part of a larger investigation. His name will be released this afternoon, when his family has been properly notified. It is true that a number of police officers have been killed—’

  They couldn’t stand it. First one voice interrupted, then another, then another.