‘But, Jesus . . .’ Pinsky couldn’t get the words out.
‘Maybe that’s got something to do with it,’ Rivera agreed.
‘What has?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Rivera said. ‘I got a strong faith, Ned. It helps a lot, having a strong faith, down here. Being like this. The hard part – the hardest part – is having to ignore things. I mean, you and me, we’re trained to do something if we see pain or crime or whatever, right? That’s why we became cops in the first place. Here, I just have to let all kinds of crap slip by. I’ve seen some things you wouldn’t believe, and I had to do nothing, say nothing, just stand back and let them go down. I don’t know, maybe that’s what will beat me in the end. You do your time at the Academy, work for years trying to uphold the law like they say, and then end up wearing rags and standing look-out while some pusher does a deal in an alley. I even committed some crimes myself, what do you think of that? But it’s part of the cover, part of the game. I hate it, but I have to do it if this thing is going to work, right?’
‘Like the crap at the hostel?’
‘You mean Feeney taking a five per cent rake off on all the food bills? Sure. Like that.’
Pinsky was shocked. ‘Does he?’
‘What do you mean, does he?’ Rivera looked at him. ‘Isn’t that what you wanted me to find out about?’
Pinsky shrugged. ‘We thought it was more than that.’
‘What – ten per cent?’
‘No, no – something other than that. Five per cent of damn-all isn’t enough to kill someone over, is it?’
‘Not for you or me, maybe. But down here they kill each other over a pair of shoes. That’s life to them, a pair of shoes. When it’s all you’ve got, well, it’s your entire fortune, right? Wouldn’t you fight to keep your entire fortune – family, house, car, bank account? Sure you would. Well, a pair of shoes is that to them, sometimes. Or a coat, maybe. Or a bottle of booze. Their whole fortune. So they fight. Sometimes, they kill.’
‘You’re going native, Mike.’
Rivera chuckled. ‘I go back to my own apartment every ten days. I got my whole pay to spend on me. Carla has a good job, she doesn’t want alimony now, so I got this really great apartment downtown, fixed it all up myself from scratch. I have a bath, I put on clean clothes, I walk around my clean rooms, I eat in good, clean restaurants, I do office work at the precinct house, stuff like that. Ordinary. Like before. Then I come back here. It’s the first day that’s hard. After that, like I said, it gets easier. And I never stay longer than ten days. Never.’ He paused and took a swallow from his bottle. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he spoke quietly. ‘We been nearly down the whole street, Pinsky. You sure he’s here?’
‘Oh, yeah. I think we should go back to where they had that fire going.’
Rivera shrugged. ‘Suits me.’ They turned and made their way back about a block to a vacant lot, where some of the local denizens had built a fire in an old rusty oil drum. Through the holes in the sides could be seen the smouldering glow of burning rubbish, and heat pulsed out, causing the air around the drum to shimmer and waver. Pinsky and Rivera approached slowly and waited until a space opened up, then they gently moved in and held out their hands. Pinsky had rubbed his hands in the dirt of his garden at home before slouching downtown, but his hands were practically clean next to Rivera’s.
‘We share,’ one of the tramps said, eyeing the brown paper bag in Pinsky’s jacket.
‘Oh, right,’ Pinsky said, and handed the bottle to the man next to him.
‘I share first,’ said the man who had spoken, apparently the leader of the little group. He was tall and bulky, and looked better fed than the others. His face was heavily boned, and there were thick ridges of scar tissue on his eyebrows. He might have been an old prize fighter, for he had the sullen look of unreason that a battered brain might produce. He understood confrontation, he understood dominance – and there it ended.
The man who had taken the bottle from Pinsky hurriedly passed it to the big man, who took a long, long swallow from it, emptying nearly a third of the contents.
‘That’s a big share,’ Pinsky observed.
The big man eyed him, his expression hostile. ‘So?’
Pinsky shrugged. ‘Nothin’ – I just figured everybody would get some, and then I’d get it back, you know?’
‘And if you don’t?’ the big man asked.
‘Then he don’t,’ Rivera said, quickly. ‘Listen, Ham – he’s new in town. He doesn’t know anything about anything, okay?’
‘Maybe he should be learned something, then,’ Ham said, passing the bottle to the man next to him. The recipient quickly drank what he could before the next man grabbed the bottle from his mouth and put it to his own. Soon they were all jostling to get a swallow, but Ham just stood there glaring at Pinsky.
‘Sorry,’ Pinsky said, humbly. ‘Didn’t know it was your fire.’
‘Oh?’
‘I mean, if it’s your fire, well then, you get more, right?’ Pinsky mumbled on. ‘Took the trouble to make the fire and all that . . .’
‘Where are you from?’ Ham demanded.
‘Cleveland – he’s from Cleveland, he said,’ Rivera put in.
‘Don’t they know much in Cleveland?’ Ham asked, enjoying himself now that Pinsky had grovelled a little.
Rivera laughed. ‘They don’t know nothin’ in Cleveland, that’s why he come here, right Bugs?’
Ham scowled. ‘Why they call him Bugs?’ he asked, suspiciously. ‘He got bugs?’
‘Man, we all got bugs,’ cackled a little man in about fifteen layers of shirts and sweaters from which his legs in badly split drainpipe jeans descended like two blue toothpicks stuck into a ball of rags.
‘I got no bugs on me,’ Ham said, loudly, glaring at the little man. ‘I washed last week at the hostel.’
‘They call him Bugs because he looks like Bugs Bunny,’ Rivera improvised. The name Bugs had just come to him, and Pinsky gave him a look designed to prevent any such thing ever happening again.
‘I don’t look like no goddamn bunny,’ Pinsky said, crossly.
‘You got big ears,’ said a hunched, raincoated figure that had joined the gathering just too late to partake of the last of the whisky in Pinsky’s bottle. Everybody looked at Pinsky’s ears.
‘His ears aren’t so big,’ Ham said.
‘I didn’t mean like size,’ the newcomer said. ‘I mean he’s got big ears ‘cause he’s a cop. Isn’t that right, “Bugs”?’ The nickname came out riding on a sneer. Everybody in the circle stiffened. ‘I said, isn’t that right?’
Rivera stepped back from Pinsky, as if he’d just heard his companion was a plague carrier. Which, in a way, he was – as far as Rivera was concerned. ‘Jesus – you’re kidding!’ Rivera gasped. ‘I been talking to him for twenty minutes, he never—’
‘What did you say?’ Ham demanded. ‘What did you tell him?’
‘Nothin’, I told him nothin’ about nothin’,’ Rivera said, in desperate tones.
‘What did he ask you about?’ Ham persisted.
‘Nothin’ – he didn’t ask me nothin’!’ Rivera’s voice was shrill.
‘Did he ask you where you could get anything?’ Ham demanded. ‘Did he ask you about you-know-what?’
‘No, no – nothin’ like that!’
‘What’s you-know-what?’ Pinsky asked, without thinking. Force of habit opened his mouth, and his life fell out.
‘You bastard,’ Rivera said to Pinsky. He shoved him, hard, toward the open street. ‘Get out of here, you bastard. Go on – get the hell out of here!’
Pinsky started toward the street, but the voice of the raincoated figure followed him. ‘He busted me once,’ the man in the raincoat said. ‘Just for walking down the street, the son of a bitch. Just for walking down the goddamn street.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ Pinsky said, over his shoulder. ‘You got me all wrong, I ain’t no goddamn cop. You guys piss me off, I’m gonna get another bottle and I ain’t gonna share no more!’
All the men who had been standing around the oil drum began to follow him. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry. Everybody seemed to know what was coming. Everybody but Pinsky seemed to be looking forward to it.
‘So what are you doing down here, cop?’ Ham asked, grabbing his sleeve and forcing him to stop.
‘I’m not a cop,’ Pinsky insisted, trying not to sound desperate. He knew a patrol car passed down French Street every twenty minutes, but he couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d last seen it go by. ‘That guy is just sour because he needs a drink.’ He knew it was hopeless now. They were all around him. It was going to happen. There was nothing he could do but brace himself.
‘We all need a drink,’ somebody said. ‘If you’re a cop, then you got a gun. We could sell that gun. Maybe you got money, too. You got any money on you, cop?’
‘Let’s see,’ said Rivera, moving in, fast, before the other eager hands got there. His hand went straight in under Pinsky’s jacket and closed on the badge folder. He pulled it out. ‘Yeah, he’s a cop, look at this!’ He waved Pinsky’s folder so the gold badge flashed in the thin sunlight.
They were on him in a flash.
Pinsky did the best he could under the circumstances – he had a long reach and big fists – but there were too many of them. The big, burly man seemed to be given priority here, too, getting in the best kicks and the best punches, primarily because of superior size and strength. But the others had specialities, too. Scratches and bites began to bleed into Pinsky’s clothes as he swung and connected and tried to drag himself away from the clutching hands and the blows. Out of one rapidly swelling eye he saw Rivera capering around the fire, waving his badge and gun in the air.
Pinsky, in the midst of disaster, didn’t blame Rivera. What was happening to him had been inevitable from the moment the raincoated man had said the word ‘cop’. Even if he had proven to be innocent of such an accusation, they would have beaten the hell out of him, just for existing, and being new on the street, and on the off chance that if he had enough to buy one bottle he might have enough to buy two. It was bad enough to get beaten up – but to lose gun and badge would have been worse.
Rivera would make sure nobody else got them – and they would find their way back downtown. But even as he went down under a hail of hate-propelled blows, Pinsky knew that was the only help Rivera could give him. What was it he’d said?
It was ignoring things that was the hardest.
On the ground now, Pinsky saw the raincoated man who had fingered him moving away from the seething mass of filthy clothes and stinking bodies that pulsed around their victim. He tried to crawl out from under, but they were holding his arms and legs and keeping him open for the blows and kicks that were coming in fast. So fast. Too fast.
Now he couldn’t see Rivera, either. Maybe he’d gone for help. Maybe he’d seen where the raincoated figure had gone, and had followed him, leaving Pinsky to his fate. Not death – these men would stop short of killing.
But they wouldn’t stop far short.
Suspect Number Two was getting away.
‘Oh, shit!’ shouted Pinsky, making one last superhuman effort to throw off the weight of men that pinned him down. But it was no good. Everything was turning red and black and the world seemed to be made of noise and snarling faces and kicking legs and pain. He felt the hummocky dirt of the empty lot under his back, felt the sharp edge of an empty can, a rock. Somebody picked up the rock. Somebody lifted it high and Pinsky could see its rough surface gripped in the dirty talons of a stranger who hated him.
And then Pinsky couldn’t see anything at all.
TWENTY-THREE
Neilson was getting excited.
Maybe Stryker had something, after all. There were connections – some pretty tenuous, but connections – between Leary and almost every single victim brought down so far.
He had served in the same precinct as Randolph. He had taught a detection class at the training college which Santosa had attended. Santosa had gotten the top mark, too.
It took a long time to make the connection with Yentall, but when it finally came together, he grinned and patted himself on the back. Leary and Yentall had been in the same graduation class at Madison Heights High School. They had both been on the football team there, too.
Making the connection with Merrilee Trask had taken even longer. Try as he might, Neilson could not make them touch. And then it came – not a direct connection, but a connection. And not with Merrilee Trask, but with her ex-husband, who had been the khaki officer handling administration in Leary’s precinct when Leary had been made up to Detective Sergeant.
And of course, it had been Stryker and Toscarelli who had uncovered Leary during the Bronkowsky investigation.
But he could not make it work with Hawthorne.
Try as he might, all he could come up with was differences. Despite being the same age, they had gone through police training two years apart, because Leary had done two years of college first. They had both grown up in Grantham but on opposite sides of the city, different neighbourhoods, different schools. They had never served in the same precinct or done any courses or co-operated in any inter-precinct assignments during the three months that Hawthorne had worked for the Department. They had no family or relatives of any kind in common. They had never even attended court on the same days to give evidence.
Of course, in the private areas of their lives that were not covered by the extensive personnel records, they could have met in a hundred ways. They could have used the same barber. They could have bowled at the same alleys or done rounds at the same golf courses. They could have bought cars from the same dealer and met in the service departments while waiting for their bills. They could have dated the same woman. They could have shopped at the same supermarket. They could have even met in a gay bar and fallen in love, for all Neilson knew.
Every possibility he thought up, every way-in he could think of, resulted in no known connection, or a question mark. From growing excitement Neilson gradually slid into deep depression.
And then they told him about Pinsky.
He’d been uneasy about Pinsky all day. He’d called his home several times, but had no reply after the initial call when Nell had told him Pinsky was asleep. He knew Nell helped out at a local nursery school, and was waiting for her to come home to call again, but then it became unnecessary. He knew where Pinsky was.
In Mercy Hospital.
‘What the jumping hell were you doing on French Street, for Chrissakes?’ Neilson demanded of the battered figure on the bed. ‘Now look at you. You really got a sick day. Maybe a sick month. Goddammit, Ned, you shouldn’t have gone down there on your own. Why the hell did you go down there, anyway?’ Neilson was talking and walking in circles.
‘I wasn’t on my own, I was with Mike Rivera,’ Pinsky mumbled with some difficulty.
‘A fat lot of good he was,’ Neilson growled.
‘Couldn’t break his cover,’ Pinsky said.
‘Him and Batman.’
‘He got my badge and gun away,’ Pinsky said. ‘They would have got back to you.’
‘Oh, and I would have been thrilled to get them, too,’ Neilson said. He was really angry. ‘I could have waved them at the funeral and told everybody how he’d let you go down but the goddamn fucking hardware was safe, right? Saved the city’s money, let my partner get the living shit beat out of him. What a hero!’
‘Don’t shout, Harve, and watch your language. There’s sick people here,’ Pinsky whispered. ‘One of them is me.’
‘In the head. In the head you’re sick, running around French Street. So Big Hero Rivera, the Man of a Hundr
ed Faces, or maybe just two, goes off with your ID, huh? And what if you hadn’t woken up in the ambulance? You’d be a John Doe in the charity ward, we’d be looking for you from here to Tuesday, and Nell going up the wall . . .’
‘I didn’t know you cared so much, Harve,’ Pinsky said.
‘Care? Who cares, you dumb cluck? Not me.’ Neilson was slowing down to a simmer. He stood glaring out of the window now, instead of at Pinsky, his hands jammed in his pockets. ‘Who the hell is Suspect Number Two, anyway?’
‘Brother Feeney,’ Pinsky said. ‘Rivera said he was taking a five per cent rake-off from the suppliers on the food bills.’
Neilson turned from the window and regarded Pinsky’s bandaged head with disbelief. ‘What the hell has that got to do with knocking off the city’s finest, one by one?’
‘Well, it sounds kind of funny, I know, but it’s a theory of Jack’s.’
‘I should have guessed, they’re always funny,’ Neilson grumbled.
‘The way he worked it out, Jack thought he recognised a couple of the guys working at the hostel, and he checked them out. Pushers, they are. Jack thinks that the hostel is being used as a distribution centre and that guys dressed up like bums filter out through the city and carry the stuff to the street dealers. Who the hell looks at a bum, he said.’
‘And Feeney is supposed to be doing this?’
Pinsky tried to shrug, but the strapping on his broken collarbone prevented much movement. ‘I don’t know. Jack told me you and Dana had found out that the hostel is owned, through a lot of dummy companies, by that Abiding Light outfit?’
‘Oh, yeah – so we did,’ Neilson recalled. It seemed a hundred years ago.
‘Well, that’s probably why Hawthorne was interested in it. Jack seemed to think it was a pretty good scam, using bums like that to make a network for drugs.’
‘But is Feeney supposed to be killing our people or what?’ Neilson demanded, coming back to the bed to look Pinsky in the face. It was not a pretty sight, but it was one he was glad to see in a bed instead of on a slab.
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