Walking the Perfect Square

by Reed Farrel Coleman

  “If he’s alive,” I concluded, “I’m confident we’ll find him.”

  Only when there was a subtle shift away from Patrick himself and toward his upbringing, did the questions become more pointed: Did I think Patrick might simply have run away of his own volition? Had I heard any speculation from my police sources about that possibility? Was there anything about Patrick’s upbringing which might indicate Patrick was the type of person to drop out of sight? What did I know about the effect his brother’s death had had on Patrick? What did I know about Patrick’s mom? His sister? Wasn’t his father politically connected? Wasn’t his father a former member of the NYPD? Did I know why his father had left the job?

  That was my cue to regurgitate the information about Francis Maloney Sr. I had so conveniently received in the mail. Unfortunately, I had to disappoint Mr. Beaman and the men who had guided him to me. He tried prompting me several times, but I claimed ignorance. Poor Mr. Beaman was going to have to find another horse’s ass. I wasn’t playing.

  He thanked me politely and wondered if I’d be available to have a staff photographer take my picture later in the week. I said that would be fine. If nothing else, I figured he’d use the Marina Conseco story—without mentioning her by name, of course. Even I could see it would make good copy. But I hadn’t given him what he had hoped for. My sense was he didn’t know the specifics before he walked through my door. More likely, Beaman had been tipped off about me having dirt on a corrupt politico who was once a very naughty boy during his career as a New York cop. Throw in the aspect of the missing son and you’ve got a triple play, a Conrad Beaman kind of story. He must’ve been licking his chops on the ride over. Instead he’d be licking his wounds on the way home.

  “You’re a smart man, Mr. Prager,” Beaman shook my hand.

  “Oh, and why is that?”

  “Because you figured out you were being used before I figured out I was. I’d still like to hear what you’ve got,” he said, trying one more time to massage the story out of me.

  “No, Mr. Beaman. I’m not smart. I just have a conscience.”

  February 17th, 1978

  CARS DRIFTED SLOWLY into the fenced parking lot outside the Sanitation and Highway Department garage. Stories-high piles of asphalt crumbles, road salt and sand peeked over the ledge of the garage’s flat roof like distant mountaintops. The air smelled of hot tar, though I could see from where I sat that none of the paving trucks had fired up their rolling furnaces. It was similar to how airports stink of spent kerosene even late at night, when runways go unused for hours at a time. I suppose it’s a scientific impossibility, but sometimes it just seems that, like a rug or silk tie, the atmosphere can be permanently stained.

  I’d left Brooklyn hours ago under cover of darkness. Now as the sun was rising over the false asphalt mountaintops, the parking lot was nearly full. Both cars I’d been watching for were here. Somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to get out of my car and do what I needed to do. I tried several times, never getting more than my leg out the door. But when the coffee truck pulled into the lot and I recognized the faces of two men in the crowd who gathered around it, I knew I would finish what other men had started. “It’s not who throws the first punch that counts,” my old partner, Danny Breen, liked to say. “But who’s standing after the last one.”

  When the coffee truck had gone and all the men in their green thermal jackets and gloves had retreated back into the garage, I got moving. Starting toward the main entrance, I left my cane on the front seat. A man with a cane could not sell the lies I would have to sell. As I took the first few unsteady steps, my knee hurt like hell. I wasn’t sure if the pain was the result of walking unsupported for the first time in months or from the makeshift brace I’d rigged out of old Ace bandages and a wooden ruler.

  “Bill Tate, State Insurance Investigation Bureau,” I introduced myself to the man at the assignment desk. His back was to me as he busily marked up a wall-sized road map of Dutchess County.

  “Who? From where?” he said, turning around.

  I let him catch a glimpse of my badge as I quickly closed the credentials case: “Tate, Bill Tate. State Insurance Investigation Bureau.”

  “Yeah and so what?”

  That was one lie out of the way. He wasn’t impressed, but he wasn’t questioning me either. I didn’t even know if there was such a thing as the State Insurance Investigation Bureau.

  “You’ve got two gentlemen employed here who were recently involved in an accident,” I stated authoritatively, being purposefully vague, “a Mr. Philip Roscoe and a Mr. . . .”

  I didn’t know the other man’s name, but I’d spotted him earlier at the coffee truck. His face covered in white tape and bandages, he was hard to miss. I scanned a sheet of paper I pulled from my jacket pocket, hoping I’d get his name momentarily.

  “Pete Klack?” the desk man wondered.

  “Broken nose?” I said, my eyes still focused on the paper.

  “That’s him.”

  “Good,” I looked up. “Have Roscoe and Klack meet me in Mr. Maloney’s office in about fifteen minutes. And do me a favor, don’t warn anybody off. Because if you do, your ass is gonna fry in hotter oil than either one of theirs. Capisce?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, point me towards a bathroom and to Maloney’s office.”

  In the bathroom, I pulled a neatly folded garbage bag out of my pocket and stuffed the coat I’d been carrying inside. I didn’t want to show Maloney all my cards early in the game. In front of his office door, I showed Maloney more courtesy than he’d shown or was likely to ever show me. I knocked.

  “Come.”

  His expression didn’t change when he saw who it was. I hadn’t expected it would.

  “I told you to contact me through Rico.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you told me,” I said in a strangely removed voice. “You’re in no position to tell me what to do and I don’t know what made you think you ever were.”

  “Nice speech,” Maloney sneered, then looked back down at the paperwork on his desk. “Now get out of here. Next time make an appointment.”

  I didn’t answer nor did I leave. I threw a plain brown envelope with no return address onto his desk. The force with which I tossed it scattered his papers everywhere.

  “What’s this?” he asked in spite of himself.

  “Take a look.”

  He seemed to know what it was even before he got it out of the envelope. There was almost a wistful look in his eyes as he scanned his NYPD personnel file and the Internal Affairs report.

  “So,” Francis Maloney Sr. said, as he held his bald head up to face me, “is it blackmail money you’ve come for?”

  I ignored the question. “You know I shouldn’t’ve been able to get ahold of those files. It’d probably take a court order or special dispensation from the pope for me to look at my own files let alone yours. Somebody wanted me to have those.”

  “How much?”

  “How much what?” I asked, annoyed that Maloney didn’t seem to be on the same page.

  “Oh, don’t play me for a stupid donkey, kike. People don’t get far underestimating me. It shows a proper lack of respect. I don’t like that much.”

  “I don’t want your money, you cold-hearted son of a bitch bastard. For all I care, you can stick those files up your ass and light a bonfire. And I’ll tell you what I don’t like much. You. From the second I saw you there, sitting at Molly’s with that cup of coffee in your hands, I didn’t like you. And the more I know about you, the less I like.”

  “Well, that just makes me want to kill myself,” he said sarcastically. “How much?”

  “That again. For the last time, I don’t want your money.”

  “Then tell me what you’re doing here and get out of my office. I’m a busy man.”

  “What I want,” I said, “is for you to answer some questions. Then maybe I’ll go.”

  “Maybe, he says! Okay, let’s have your questions.”<
br />
  “How long before Rico told your wife about me finding the Conseco girl did he ask you to put me on the case?”

  A light of recognition clicked on behind Maloney’s cold blue eyes. He now understood, as I did, that Rico had been working both sides of the fence. Rico, he explained, had been pestering him to use me for weeks. I was a good cop, Rico said, and recently retired. I could use the cash and I was bored to distraction. But Maloney didn’t see the point. Between volunteers and hires, he had hundreds of people working the case within the first few days, most of them with more experience than me. I’d just be an extra wheel. Besides, he had no use for Jewish cops.

  “We’re not reinvesting our retirement funds here, I told Rico,” Maloney delighted in recounting. “I haven’t met a Jew cop who was good for anything but filling out a neat complaint report. But then Rico, the stupid wop, had to go tell Angela about you and that girl. After my wife heard that, I had no choice.”

  I asked: “When did you get the call?”

  “What call would that be?” he played dumb.

  “Come on, you know what call. The anonymous one that gave you a heads up I was nosing around about your time on the job and that Conrad Beaman was doing a story on Patrick.”

  Dropping the pretense, Maloney said he’d received the call about a week after we met at Molly’s.

  “When’d you decide to sic your boys on me?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, sheeny,” Maloney feigned innocence and goaded me for distraction. “Have you been drinking? I thought Jews didn’t drink.”

  I didn’t take the bait. My proof would come walking through the door in a minute or two. In the meantime, I rambled on about my confusion.

  “I couldn’t figure out what was going on, exactly. Finally there’s some progress in the case and the next day you fire me. But Rico brings a thousand in cash and the name of the guy at the liquor authority. I guess you thought that was pretty smart. You didn’t want to piss me off, but you didn’t want to give me too much money. Too much money might make me suspicious. Then boom, you have my car torched. You have your boys rough me up. Was it that I was fucking your daughter?” It was my turn to goad him. “Nah, I said to myself, Maloney’s an anti-Semitic prick, but he couldn’t risk Katy finding out. That would drive her right into my arms. He couldn’t afford to lose her too.

  “What then? Was it some of the things I was finding out about Patrick? So what if he knocked up two girls and they didn’t want the babies?” I walked past Maloney and stared out his office window at the parking lot. “That couldn’t be it, though, because I’m pretty sure no one else knew. Besides, you’re just the charming old-world type to take pride in your boy for getting girls pregnant, but managing to clean up the mess. So what was—”

  “Look, sonny boy,” Maloney growled, “I don’t know what you’re going on about, but I think you’ve wasted enough of my—”

  There was a knock on the door. I remained at the window, forcing myself not to turn around. Before Maloney could respond, the door pushed in. Having only the back of my head to work with, they didn’t recognize me. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined Maloney’s eyes got as wide as saucers.

  “Joey at the desk says there’s a guy from the State Insurance Bureau here to talk to us,” a monotone voice I’d heard twice before addressed his boss.

  When I did turn around, there was a .38 in my hand. “Hello, gentlemen. Remember me?”

  Philip Roscoe, the voice on the phone and the man over whose head Katy had broken my cane, was unexcited. Guns didn’t frighten him. The other man, Pete Klack, was more agitated and fidgeted nervously, staring back and forth from my gun hand to my face. My lucky punch hadn’t done a lot for his looks. Deep purple bruises crept out well beyond the edges of the bandages protecting his broken nose.

  “You were saying something about me wasting your time,” I reminded Maloney.

  Cool as could be, he said: “You’re in need of help, Prager. These men were involved in a one-truck accident along the Bainbridge Service Road last week. Would you like to see a copy of the hospital report?” He reached to open his desk drawer.

  “No thanks. Keep your hands on top of the desk. Get behind the desk with your boss,” I ordered, motioning to Roscoe as I circled in the opposite direction. “Not you, Klack. You stay. So, is your boss right? You two were in a truck accident on the Bainbridge Service Road?”

  “Yeah,” they harmonized, better than the Beach Boys.

  I hit Klack square on the nose with the butt of my revolver. Just as on Greene Street, he collapsed into a pile of himself. The gauze covering his face turned a wet, angry shade of red. I repeated the question about the truck accident. Roscoe stuck to his lie. Understandably, Klack was too preoccupied to answer.

  “You broke it again,” he moaned.

  “Last chance,” I said, bending over Klack. “Were you two in an accident or what?”

  Roscoe put his left hand on an imaginary Bible, raised his right hand and lied. I stuck the .38 against Klack’s temple, pulled back the hammer and ran my finger flirtatiously along the trigger. Klack got stiff with fear. His moaning came to an abrupt halt. I looked Roscoe straight in the eyes. He kept mum. I pulled the trigger. Click.

  “That was just for practice,” I joked. “But the next chamber’s live. There’s a hollow point on deck with your name on it. Hey, Klack, how fucking stupid are you? Didn’t you notice your two friends over there were willing to let me put a cap in your brain? You gonna keep protecting them?”

  “Fuck them and fuck you!” he yelped.

  I pulled the hammer back again and moved the barrel of the gun. “Tough shit. Maybe I’ll save you the trouble of having it reset and just shoot it off.”

  “Okay, okay,” Klack pleaded, “enough already.”

  “Shut your mouth!” Maloney seethed.

  “It was him, Maloney. He gave us both an extra week’s paid vacation and three grand to split.”

  I wasn’t sure who should have been more insulted: me for costing so little or Roscoe and Klack for coming so cheaply.

  “Whose idea was it to torch my car?”

  “Phil worked the Bomb Squad when he was a cop,” Klack volunteered as I pulled the gun away from his bloodied nose. “He said fire makes more of a statement than slashed tires or a broken windshield.”

  “All right, get up. Roscoe, help your buddy and get the fuck outta here.”

  Roscoe had a suspicious nature: “That’s all?”

  “Just watch your back,” I said. “You don’t have to work the Bomb Squad to know how to make things go boom. And your protector over here, Mr. Maloney, he’s got enemies with more juice than him. I wouldn’t be counting on him in the future to cover your asses. Now go!”

  When they’d gone, I holstered my gun and sat down across from Maloney.

  “How’d you find them?” he wanted to know.

  “You’ll love this,” I laughed sardonically. “Katy got a partial tag number the night they worked me over in the city and I got Rico to run the plate. Did Roscoe tell you it was Katy that cracked him over the melon with my cane?”

  He let that slide. “But how did you connect Roscoe’s car to me? There must have been hundreds of cars with similar tag numbers.”

  “I figured it was you to begin with, so I knew where to look. And the way Roscoe operated, I thought he might be an ex-cop. When he torched my car, he called it in straight to the precinct and the firehouse, not 911. He knew if he called 911, there would’ve been a record of his voice. And when he pulled his gun on me—”

  “He pulled his piece on you?”

  “Yeah, with your daughter a foot or two away,” I educated him. “Oh, I guess he left out the part where he threatened to blow a hole in her, huh?”

  Maloney turned redder than Klack’s bandages. “That stupid son of a—”

  “You get what you pay for. So anyway, his gun was a .38 Special. He just smelled like a cop to me. I took a list of names to the PBA
office and got a hit on Roscoe. It was a little too much of a coincidence for me that he happened to live three blocks away from you. I didn’t know Klack’s name until this morning.”

  “It’s the second time you impressed me.”

  The first time, I knew, was the night I’d gotten to the Gowanus Canal and had a look at the floater before him. That wasn’t my doing, though: I’d been tipped off about the floater.

  “The people who were using me to take you down wanted me there,” I admitted, “just like they wanted me to get a hold of your personnel files. I was like a dog thinking I was taking my master out for a walk. And I was such an obedient dog, they didn’t even have to use a leash. I got curious and asked for your files on my own.”

  “Instead of finding me out, don’t you suppose you should have used your energies to find the boy? That’s what you were to be paid for, wasn’t it?”

  “Speaking of that . . .” I leaned down, retrieved the plastic garbage bag that had sat on the floor unnoticed and tossed it on his desk.

  “What’s this?”

  “A gift. Open it up.”

  As he pulled Patrick’s blue parka out of the bag, Maloney’s face was torn in half by a startling display of fear and relief. Joy was nowhere to be found, not even in the folds around his eyes nor in the creases at the corners of his mouth. When I blinked my eyes, the emotionality was gone. His face again was cold and blank.

  “They sell these by the truckload.” He thrust the coat at me.

  “Who you trying to convince? You know that’s his.”

  “Bullshit!” he blustered. “How do I know you’ve not been a part of the scheme to take me down from the get-go? This is just meant to shake me, get me off my game.”

  Wrong though he was, he had a point.

  “I was told you were the reason Patrick split,” I paraphrased Jack’s words to me. “What could have happened between the two of you? What could you have said?”