Backlash

by Paula Gosling

  ‘She moves like she’s pretty healthy,’ Pinsky pointed out. ‘I bet she works out, runs, something like that. You don’t get that kind of free swing without doing some kind of sport – tennis, or fencing, or dancing, maybe.’

  ‘I’ll tell you another thing,’ Neilson went on, doggedly. ‘She was glad as hell to see that Hawthorne guy on a slab, you know? Said – just for identification purposes – does he have a small circular scar on his ass? And Bannerman turned him over and there it was. I bet she put it there. Probably bit him.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’

  ‘No, I mean it. You don’t get that kind of smug look from grief. I bet they had a thing going and he dumped her, something like that.’

  ‘Does she look like the kind of woman who gets dumped?’

  ‘Well, no – but who’s to say whether or not this Hawthorne guy was some kind of creep who’d dump Miss America, for instance, hey? Some guys, they have the downs on beautiful women, like to make ’em feel like dirt.’

  ‘Not you,’ Pinsky observed, as Neilson pulled over to the curb and checked the number of the house against the one he’d jotted down in his notebook.

  ‘No, not me,’ he agreed. ‘I appreciate loveliness in all its many forms – especially the female of the species. This looks like it, number 4584 Pacific Avenue.’

  The living room of the small frame house was neat and clean, although the furniture was worn and there were traces of children everywhere. A tumble of toys boxed in one corner, a small, odd slipper caught under the sagging springs of an armchair. The top of the television set was literally covered with framed snapshots of children, gap-toothed and grinning for the most part, different ages, sexes, and hair colours, but all with the same long jaw and wide-set eyes of the man opposite.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Richmond said, sulkily.

  ‘Come on, man – this guy is blowing away cops,’ Neilson said.

  ‘I know – I saw him do it.’ Frank Richmond was a lanky, hard-bitten man with traces of a Georgia cracker accent still lingering in the back of his throat. His clothes hung loosely on him, as if he’d lost a lot of weight. The skin of his face was pale and dry, and his hands shook as he lit a cigarette. ‘How’d you like to have your partner’s brains all over your lap, hey? Listen, I’m still loyal to the Department and all that, but I had to get out, you understand? Next time it might be me, and what brains I got I want to keep inside my head.’

  ‘That’s why you quit, right?’

  Richmond looked defensive. ‘Goddamn right. I didn’t mind facin’ ’em down, I didn’t mind gettin’ beat up, I didn’t even mind gettin’ spit on now and again. We all get that, we all got to put up with that. But gettin’ mine from ambush, when I ain’t got no chance to defend myself? Hell with that.’ He tapped his cigarette again and again on the edge of the ashtray, although there was no ash to fall. His nails were bitten to the quick.

  ‘How did you get on with Randolph?’

  ‘I got on with him fine. Just fine. He was a good boy.’

  ‘I understand he was black.’

  ‘Yeah, he was black. So?’

  ‘That’s not a Boston accent you’ve got there,’ Pinsky said, quietly.

  ‘Not everybody south of the Mason-Dixon line is stupid,’ Richmond said. He also spoke quietly, but there was an element of warning in the tone. ‘I grew up with coloureds, I know their worth. I was proud to stand beside Sandy Randolph anytime, anywhere, you just put that down in your goddamn book, okay? Put it down.’ His voice rose, thin and sharp, as if to defend himself from invisible attack.

  ‘Okay, okay – take it easy,’ Pinsky said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘He was a good-looking kid, too,’ Richmond went on, angrily. ‘The bastard blew his face away, his wife couldn’t even look on him before she buried him. That’s what got me. His wife, Clemmie, hurtin’ so bad she couldn’t even cry, just stood there at the funeral, like a black statue, and their first baby still in her belly. He never even saw his daughter. I got four kids, and I don’t want my wife standin’ in the rain over my grave getting con-so-lation from Commissioner Moorhouse sayin’ what a great cop I was. I wasn’t. I was just an ordinary cop, did my best, that’s all. Sandy – he was getting there. He was getting good. But not on the street. He wasn’t really hard enough for the street – he was leavin’ the street. Goin’ on that new computer course the Federation set up, do Administration. Could have been the first black chief we ever had, now he’s . . .’ Richmond stopped as suddenly as he had started. ‘Now he’s dead,’ he finished, bitterly. He was a shaken, beaten man.

  Mrs Richmond appeared with mugs of coffee on a tray. She was a small, faded woman with large, luminous eyes. There was a plate of home-made biscuits on the tray as well. ‘I thought y’all might be peckish,’ she said, shyly. She made as if to leave the room, but Richmond reached out as she went. He said nothing, but held her hand to his face. She stroked his hair, as if he were a child, then smiled over his head at them, as if in apology. When she was gone, Richmond avoided their eyes. He picked up a mug, stirred in sugar from the bowl, and gestured to them to help themselves. He held the mug in both hands, as if to draw its warmth into his body.

  ‘What was the call?’ Neilson asked.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The call you were on When . . .’ Neilson gestured vaguely with his mug, nearly spilling coffee on the rug.

  ‘Oh. Arson. Somebody set some itty-bitty fires in the basement of a condemned building, real amateur stuff, but if it’s arson the fireboys have to call us, so we went. Kids, we figured. It was so dumb, kerosene everywhere and newspapers crumpled up. Call went in before it hardly took – they wanted to hear the sirens, see the engines roll up. We took the details from the fireboys, then started back.’

  ‘The fire was where?’

  ‘In them tenements – you know the Gallo district?’ When they nodded, he nodded back. ‘In them tenements on Evergreen. We were headin’ back on Polk when this car overtakes us, and the driver lifts up his arm and blows Sandy’s brains out.’ His face was stiff, as if he were afraid a show of emotion would shatter it, and a pulse was beating in his temple and throat. He swallowed, sighed, looked away. ‘This is all in my report, I did all this before.’

  ‘The story is, we have to start again, from scratch. Before your interview was local – we’re Downtown,’ Pinsky said. ‘It’s a bitch, but there you go. We got your reports, they’re real clear and all that, but we just wanted to hear your impressions for ourselves. Something extra might come back, now, some little thing.’

  ‘I been tryin’ to forget it, not remember.’

  ‘We want the bastard – don’t you?’ Neilson burst out. Richmond stared at him bleakly. ‘I did. Our preacher, he says I shouldn’t be vengeful, so I’m tryin’ not to be. It won’t bring Sandy back, or them others.’

  ‘No, but it might stop him before he kills any more!’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right, I know you’re right.’ Richmond sighed – his defences seemed suddenly exhausted. ‘I didn’t hardly see him, he was on the other side of Sandy, you know? Sandy was drivin’, I was on the radio, when this Camaro pulls alongside. Black Camaro it was. And the sun was coming from behind it, so the guy was just a dark blob inside. Sandy cursed because the guy was crowding him and there wasn’t a lot of room, and then the guy lifted his hand and the sun caught a glitter off the gun and then there was blood everywhere and we went into a wall and that was it. I don’t remember anythin’ until wakin’ up in the hospital all strapped up. They didn’t tell me about Sandy, they didn’t say nothin’ about him – that’s how I knew he was dead. Knew right away.’

  ‘You said Randolph wasn’t “hard enough” for the street,’ Neilson said. ‘What do you mean, exactly?’

  Richmond shrugged. He was wearing a beige V-necked sweater over what had been a pale blue uniform shirt, and the wool of the sweater caught on t
he nap of his chair’s upholstery, giving him a lop-sided appearance as he sat there.

  ‘Sandy was always reading books on psychology and sociology and all that stuff. Show him a kid caught cold with a crowbar in one hand and the other in the till and he’d try to “understand” him instead of arresting the little bastard. We had some go-rounds about that – couple of times he – well – he “used his judgement”, you know?’

  ‘Sometimes that’s good policing,’ Pinsky said, mildly.

  ‘Maybe sometimes, yeah. Maybe others, no. Not when you know the little sons’a bitches are just going to go around the corner and do it again, right? They laughed at him, but he never saw it. Give him his due, he was beginning to see it. The Gallo district isn’t exactly Bloomsbury Hills, after all. Day after day out there, you learn what’s what and what isn’t. Not that it matters now.’

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘This dark blob in the other car – could you see anything about him at all?’ Pinsky asked.

  ‘Nope – he was just a blob, a – what d’ya call it – a silhouette.’

  ‘Broad shoulders or narrow?’ Pinsky asked, putting his empty mug back on the tray and taking another biscuit. ‘Was the silhouette wide or narrow?’

  Richmond’s eyes closed. ‘Wide,’ he finally said.

  ‘Short neck or long?’ Pinsky said, his mouth full.

  Another pause. ‘Long.’

  ‘Shape of head?’

  ‘Round. No – solid, more square than round.’

  ‘And the top of it?’

  Richmond’s eyes opened up – he was no longer focusing on his memory, but on Pinsky’s face. ‘What do you mean, the top of it?’

  ‘Was it fuzzy or smooth?’ Neilson said, calmly. ‘Did he have hair or was he bald? Or was he wearing a hat?’

  Richmond grinned suddenly. ‘He was wearing a cap, goddammit! When he was facing forward you could see the peak, and then when he turned, there was just the shape of his head. If it had been a hat, the brim would have stuck out, whether he was facing sideways or frontwards, right?’

  Pinsky leaned back and inserted the remains of the biscuit into his mouth. ‘Right,’ he said.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Richmond said. ‘I never thought of it before.’

  They went on talking to Richmond for another twenty minutes, but aside from that one detail, they got nothing new from him. When they emerged, Pinsky was pleased.

  ‘Well, we got that about the cap,’ he said.

  Neilson looked at him with some degree of pity. ‘Ned – there are eight million caps in the naked city. That was just one of them.’

  SEVEN

  ‘Who actually owns the Cot?’ Stryker asked his spaghetti carbonara.

  ‘Some church or something, probably.’ Tos answered, when the pasta declined to reply. ‘It’s not Catholic, though – I’d know if it was Catholic.’

  ‘I think we should check it out,’ Stryker said, passing the Parmesan cheese to Dana. ‘Because from what Brother Feeney said, Hawthorne was checking it out.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ she asked, sprinkling cheese on her ravioli.

  ‘Don’t you remember? He said Hawthorne talked to all the men. He said he volunteered to “help out” in the office.’

  ‘I thought the Cot didn’t keep records,’ Tos said. ‘No names, nothing like that. It’s why the bums figure they can go there and not get hammered.’

  ‘Oh, they don’t keep records of the men who stay there, no. But they must keep records of everything else – expenditure, personnel, stuff like that. My guess is, he was trying to run down who financed the place, maybe. Who had an interest.’

  ‘Why should he do that?’ Dana asked.

  ‘Because – I don’t know. Because there’s something funny about it? Didn’t you say he was working on corruption in charitable institutions or something like that?’

  ‘Yes – but what’s that got to do with your sniper?’

  ‘What’s our sniper got to do with Washington?’ Stryker countered. ‘Maybe nothing, maybe everything. Maybe the killer figured Hawthorne for a cop because he was asking questions. In which case, God help all cops. Either Hawthorne got too close to what he was after on the charity thing and had to be killed – in which case, why by that person with that gun? Or he was investigating his charity thing and got killed by that person with that gun for some totally different reason. Until we get that out of the way, we won’t know for sure which trail to follow.’

  ‘This is a hunch, right?’ Dana asked.

  ‘Yeah, this is a hunch.’

  ‘A hunch is what you’re sitting in,’ Tos pointed out. ‘Sit up straight or you’ll get an ulcer.’

  ‘I have an ulcer.’

  ‘There you go then, it’s only proof,’ Tos said, complacently, digging into his salad. ‘You should sit up straight, drink lots of water, chew thoroughly. Masticate, irrigate, masticate, irrigate. Like that.’

  ‘So you keep telling me,’ Stryker said, resignedly.

  ‘Do I look bad on it?’ Tos asked of Dana. ‘Do I?’

  She took her time evaluating his appearance. Six foot two, about one hundred and ninety well-distributed pounds of bone and muscle, gleaming thick black hair, clear complexion, bright eyes, perfect teeth.

  ‘I must confess, you look well,’ she conceded.

  ‘He got like that stuffing pasta down his gullet for the first thirty-two years of his life,’ Stryker revealed, with some irritation. ‘Plus genetics. He only started on this health kick a few years ago. Since then he’s had pleurisy twice and appendicitis with complications, to say nothing of two sprained ankles.’

  ‘You can’t count the ankles,’ Tos said. ‘That was ice.’

  ‘That was retribution,’ Stryker said. ‘For all the crap you keep giving me. Masticate, irrigate, pontificate – that’s you. Pass the salt.’

  ‘Poison, pure poison,’ Tos said. ‘Leave it alone.’

  ‘How would you like a faceful of dangerous spaghetti?’

  Tos handed him the salt. ‘Don’t blame me,’ he said.

  ‘The case Hawthorne was chasing involved a very particular charity,’ Dana said, slowly. ‘The Abiding Light Association. There was some question of pay-offs to a few corrupt IRS officials not to pursue investigations involving certain establishments thought to be funded by Abiding Light. A couple of gambling houses, a brothel, a smuggling network, a drugs factory – stuff like that. From the protection they get, I figure the people behind Abiding Light are pretty powerful, but we’ve never been able to trace them. If Gabe got on to the end of some thread that led back here . . .’

  ‘You might have mentioned this little item before’ Stryker said, trying not to grind his teeth.

  ‘I know – sorry. But the fact that he was shot with the same gun as the others . . . sort of confused the issue. It still could be completely unconnected, you know.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Stryker said, scraping up the last of his spaghetti with a piece of bread.

  ‘What would you like me to do?’ Dana asked.

  He was pursuing an errant sliver of smoked ham with the last piece of crust. ‘Go back to Washington.’

  ‘I see.’

  He looked up and shook his head. ‘No, you don’t. Go back to Washington and get hold of everything you can that Hawthorne was working on. Clear his desk, check out his files, all of it. And bring it back here. If we can figure out what brought him here, we might find what killed him here. Either that, or it will eliminate the connection. Can do?’

  ‘Are you sure this is necessary?’ Her voice was cold.

  ‘Very certain. You must see the logic of it.’

  ‘Oh, yes – it’s logical, all right,’ she conceded.

  ‘Well then – go,’ Stryker said.

  She glanced up at the clock. ‘Can I have my z
abaglione first?’

  Tos closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Eggs, sugar – I can hear your arteries clogging.’

  Dana’s glance met Stryker’s. ‘Does he always go on and on like this?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘Do you ever get the impulse to kick him?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘What stops you?’ she asked, in some curiosity.

  He looked at his partner, looming large on the other side of the booth. ‘I’m afraid he might fall on me,’ Stryker said.

  ‘I think we’re being talked about,’ Kate said, watching two swans glide past on the silvery Avon, twinned by their reflections.

  Richard Cotterell stretched out under the tree and stared up through the branches at the intense blue of the Oxfordshire sky. ‘Does that worry you?’

  ‘In a way, yes. It makes me think I should pull myself together and stop giving in to your every invitation. We keep seeing sights and missing lectures.’

  ‘As you Americans would say, I “majored” in Blandishment, followed by Advanced Lures, and Higher Level Temptation. I have a degree in Comparative Cajolery, as well, but I don’t talk about it as it was only an honorary degree awarded by the Nether Wallop College of . . .’

  ‘Oh, shut up.’

  ‘. . . Animal Magnetism and Upholstery. Are you very much in love with him?’

  ‘With whom?’ Kate picked a small daisy and turned it round and round between her fingers, making its head spin. ‘Oh, good – you’ve forgotten his name already.’

  ‘Of course I’m very much in love with him. That’s the trouble. The only thing we have in common is being in love. He’s all flash and zap, I’m all sit-around and contemplate. He goes for a brisk two-mile run after dinner, while I sit and do patchwork or correct essays. He loves being in danger, I panic when a door slams unexpectedly.’

  ‘From what you’ve told me about your recent experiences, I’m hardly surprised.’