the Black Marble (1977)

by Wambaugh, Joseph

  "Captain, you've got to listen to ... "

  But it was too late. His head was hurting too much. And Clarence Cromwell came flying through the door triumphantly. He slammed the door and said, "Natalie, do you know what last Friday was?"

  "It was January seventh. What the hell do you mean?"

  "I mean it was only January seventh to you! To him it was Christmas! It was Russian Christmas! Now how do you feel?"

  "For heaven's sake," Captain Hooker said, actually smiling a little, another crisis averted. "Is that all it was! Natalie, why don't you just go to work now ..."

  "I don't give a goddamn if it was Russian Christmas. That wasn't the only thing. "

  "Yes, well, Natalie, this is very juvenile for an officer of your years and experience. I just . . . God, I've got a headache, Clarence!"

  "I'll get you some aspirin, Cap," Clarence said, glaring at Natalie Zimmerman, who was looking at her Friz, pushing her oversized glasses back up on her nose. "I'll git you some aspirin, Captain, after Natalie goes back to work with her partner, Valnikov."

  "Yes, yes," Captain Hooker said. "Look, I know you don't like burglary detail and you don't like Valnikov, but try to get along for a while. And if there's any evidence of, oh, bizarre behavior, report to me and we'll take further action. But do some investigating first, Natalie. Russian Christmas. God! Don't make rash accusations, please! I've got enough trouble!"

  Clarence Cromwell started massaging the neck of the captain again, while he stared Natalie Zimmerman out of the office.

  When Natalie returned to the squad room, Valnikov was sitting, drinking his third cup of tea. Why did he have to drink tea? Why couldn't he drink coffee like every other goddamn cop in the station? She plopped down in the chair beside him in utter frustration and looked at the tea bag on the saucer. She looked at Valnikov. His eyes were red and watery. He wore the same necktie Clarence Cromwell had loaned him. He'd changed his suit from Friday. This one was gray, but even so, it looked just like the other. He never looked any different. Watery bloodshot eyes. A faint boozy smell early in the morning. Hair growing every which way, sometimes stuck down by a wet combing, sometimes springing up in a clump of cinnamon cowlicks. He was smiling amiably, that dumb patient smile. Natalie could think of only one thing at the moment. She said, "Valnikov, do you mind opening your suit coat?"

  "Pardon me, Natalie?"

  "I said, would you please just unbutton your coat, and hold it open?"

  "Of course," he shrugged. "If you're afraid that I forgot my gun, no, I'm very careful about such things."

  She reached over and flipped open the coat. As she suspected, the inside pocket was repaired like the other suit, not with thread but metal staples.

  "I figured."

  "Figured?"

  'That you'd do all your tailoring with the stapler here on your desk."

  "I'm going to sew it. I've been meaning to do that, in fact."

  "Doesn't matter," she sighed. "Except you couldn't pass through a scanner to get on an airplane. Not with all the metal you have holding your clothes together."

  "Are we taking a flight somewhere?" asked the detective, blinking his watery eyes in confusion. "An extradition or something?"

  Vm taking a flight, you dingaling, Natalie Zimmerman thought. I'm flying right over Hipless Hooker's head to the area commander, if I have to. And you're taking a flight right to the police department psychologist. Then she got a pang of remorse as she thought of his heavy body shielding her, keeping her from being hit by flying lead when William Allen Livingston exploded. But goddamnit, he's crazy!

  "I've got all our reports logged, Natalie," Valnikov smiled, belatedly realizing she had been joking about the airplane. "I saw you had business with the captain so I got everything taken care of. We can go out in the field now if you like. We've just got one body in jail."

  "Let's go see him, get it over with." She sighed.

  "Okay, let's handle our case." He smiled.

  You handle the case. I'll handle another case, she thought. And from that moment, as Valnikov was nearing what would be his most important case, Natalie Zimmerman decided that her case, the only case with which she would be concerned, was the case against Sergeant A. M. Valnikov. She was on her own investigation. And she would bring them irrefutable proof. The detective was not eccentric, not a "bit strange." The detective was mad.

  Just before they got out the door, Clarence Cromwell came laughing out of Hipless Hooker's office and handed Natalie Zimmerman a burglary report. "Here's another one, jist came in, Nat! Somebody stole eighty-three pounds a bat guano from a store in your area!"

  "So what's funny?"

  "The captain asks me, he says, Clarence, we got a fertilizer store that big in Hollywood? I mean eighty-three pounds a bat guano? I say, no, Cap, it ain't no big company or nothin. It's jist some fly-by-night outfit!"

  Clarence had to lean against the door, ready to collapse. Even Hipless Hooker had his head on his arms, laughing uproariously. They were in a good mood now from talking about the Channel Island voyage next weekend.

  Valnikov didn't get it until Clarence turned and screamed: "Bat guano! Fly-by-night outfit! Git it?"

  Then Valnikov got it, and while Natalie Zimmerman talked to her Friz, Valnikov chuckled politely.

  _ _ _

  The body they had in Central Jail belonged to Bernie Mitchell, better known all over Hollywood Station as "Itchy Mitch." So called, because he broke out in hives every time he got busted for a felony, which was, they said, only in the months with r s in them. Itchy Mitch went to jail a lot all right, but since he only stole cars he seldom got more than a few months of county jail time. As a matter of fact, Itchy Mitch only decided to switch to burglary because he was afraid some judge might finally send him to state prison. He had been told that burglary, like auto theft, rarely drew a state prison term, unless you had lots of priors. Itchy Mitch had no prior arrests for burglary, so he decided he might be able to get busted four or five times without getting some judge mad at him.

  He was making Natalie itch just looking at him across the table in the jail interrogation room. He was six feet two and weighed less than Natalie, who weighed in very nicely for five feet nine. He had a long fringe of brown hair and only fuzz on top. He was broken out in hives on his ai ms and neck and on his fuzzy skull. His filthy white dress shirt was torn open from all the scratching. He was sitting across the table from Valnikov and Natalie, looking from one to the other. Both hands were moving ceaselessly. Scratching.

  Itchy Mitch scratched his neck, his sunken chest, his back as far up as he could reach, deep in both armpits, his legs. He wanted desperately to scratch his balls, but in deference to Natalie, he didn't. Then he started all over again: the neck, his chest, both armpits . . .

  "Never shoulda got hooked up with the broad, Sergeant. Never shoulda," Itchy Mitch whined after they advised him of his constitutional rights, for perhaps the eighty-third time in his life.

  "What broad?" Natalie asked mechanically, not really caring what broad. Valnikov had his case to work on, she had hers.

  "Always a broad gets an honest man in trouble, Sergeant. Always a broad," said Itchy Mitch, scratching.

  "Do you want to talk about the warehouse you were arrested in?" Valnikov asked.

  "Shoulda stuck to being a used-car salesman, Sergeant," said Itchy Mitch, reaching clear down to his raw ankles. "Great job, great job. Then one day I'm sitting there looking at this limper. And I done it."

  "Limper?" said Natalie, scratching.

  "You know, a lemon, a dog. This lousy lemon we took in trade on a Buick. I'm sitting there thinking, who'd miss it? It's just growing hair. A bum stove and organ. Phony white shoes."

  "I don't really get it, Mitch," said Valnikov, scratching.

  "What?"

  "Stove and organ? White shoes?"

  "Radio and heater, Sergeant! And whitewalls!"

  "Oh, well don't get mad, Mitch, I never worked auto theft detail," Valnikov apologi
zed.

  "So I drive it off to Arizona, hut I never get there. I just picked the black marble. All my life I pick the black marble. Why me?" he demanded, reminding Valnikov of Natalie, the way he rolled his eyes back. "Why me?"

  "About the warehouse, Mitch," Natalie prodded, scratching.

  "So I'm on my way to unload his limper in Arizona and I decide to stop at a carwash cau^e I got my girlfriend and I don't want her riding in no dirty car. Imagine that! Sadie s so cruddy I oughtta have her washed and polished and I'm worrying about mud on those phony whitewalls. Then up walks a spade, six feet thirteen or something, big moustache hanging down his mouth. I say who's this, Genghis Coon? He tells me who he is, all right. A cop! A goddamn detective, works that bad-cat auto theft detail. Puts the arm on me and I'm in the slammer and my boss won't believe I was just test driving it. All heart, my boss. That lemon wasn't worth five hundred bucks!"

  "Uh, can you tell me what that's got to do with this burglary?" Valnikov asked.

  "Huh? You don't get it?" Mitch said, scratching.

  "I don't get it," said Valnikov, scratching.

  "Sergeant, I had to get some money to pay the fine for the auto theft conviction! What the hell could I do? And I get caught inside the warehouse on my first try. That just goes to show I'm no burglar. Any kind a halfass creeper could burgle a warehouse, for chrissake! Do they send burglars to state prison?"

  "Not very often, Mitch," said Valnikov, making his last notes on Itchy Mitch's confession.

  'That's some consolation," said Mitch to Natalie, who had an unbearable itch under her bra strap.

  As they were escorting him back to the jailor, Itchy Mitch turned, scratching, and said: "One thing, Sergeant. You been around this world awhile. Tell me something."

  "If I can, Mitch," said Valnikov, unbuttoning his collar and loosening his tie to get at an itch on his collarbone.

  "Why do some people always have to pick the black marble?"

  _ # _

  Unlike the violent Friday, Natalie Zimmerman found this Monday to be a typical detective s workday, which meant that ninety percent of the day was spent writing reports like a good bureaucrat. Just filing one count of second-degree burglary on Itchy Mitch took four hours, what with cooling their heels downtown in the district attorney's office, along with twenty other detectives. Valnikov was good at waiting. Natalie was miserable. She read the newspaper all the way through. She read every dumb magazine that was lying around, even the sports and girlie magazines one of the cretins had in his briefcase. She paced the halls, smoked, passed some time with another policewoman from Hollenbeck Division.

  Whenever she'd return, Valnikov would just be sitting there like a dozing grizzly. He'd open his eyes from time to time for a pleasant nod of the head and a "Good morning" to any detectives who spoke to him, and go back into hibernation.

  After the waiting room thinned out, when there were only two other detectives there, both of them nodding in their chairs, Valnikov began to whimper in his sleep. Natalie glanced up from her newspaper at her snoozing partner. He was sweating. Then he started whimpering so loudly he awakened another detective who looked at him and at Natalie and shrugged. Then Valnikov started to sob.

  It was the rabbit. The wounded rabbit cringing in the snow. The snow, the land, stretched to eternity. Siberia. The hunter's veiny hands slashed the rabbit's throat and gutted him with two swipes of his blade glinting in the frosty sunlight. The rabbit's body jerked around on the log while the hunter pulled the guts out and broke its jaws and pulled on the face until the face was peeled back over the skull. The muscle and tissue hissed as it tore free in the powerful hands of the hunter.

  "Valnikov!" She was shaking him.

  'The rabbit!" "What?"

  "Natalie."

  "Yes, you were sleeping. Having a nightmare or something."

  "I was?" Both of the other detectives, strangers to Valnikov, were sitting straight in their chairs staring at him.

  "Yes, you were . . . well, you were crying. Sort of."

  "That's impossible," Valnikov said, reaching for his handkerchief with hands that trembled. "Impossible."

  He wiped his face and was grateful when the receptionist said, "Valnikov and Zimmerman, Mr. Holman is available."

  When they were back in their car, bound for Hollywood, Valnikov realized it was lunchtime. "Where would you like to eat today, Natalie?" he smiled.

  "I don't care," she said.

  It had been a quiet ride. That sobbing. He was crazy and had to be taken off the street, but God, that sobbing in his sleep. "Wherever you want to eat, Valnikov. It's up to you."

  "Really?" he smiled. She hadn't been so kind to him since they'd been together. How long had it been? He had to stop and think for a moment. A week? Then he realized that it only seemed that long because Friday was the first day and the weekend intervened. The weekend. Lots of drinking this weekend. Stolichnaya. He had to watch that drinking. Some people might think he was an alcoholic.

  "Where the hell are you going?" she asked as he suddenly wheeled off the outbound Hollywood Freeway and headed back toward downtown.

  "You said we could eat anywhere today," Valnikov smiled. "If it's okay with you I'll take you somewhere a little different."

  "Different?"

  "You might like it," Valnikov said, looking a bit worried now. "Don't expect too much. It isn't much really. Just something I like to do for lunch from time to time."

  "All right, Valnikov, all right," she sighed. "Anything's better than McDonald's. I can't look another Big Mac in the eye."

  "Charlie Lightfoot," he murmured. They always said old Charlie Lightfoot was so cranky in the morning the only thing in the world he didn't hate was an Egg McMuffin. Charlie Lightfoot.

  "Who's Charlie Lightfoot?" Natalie said.

  "Why did you say that, Natalie?" He was stunned.

  "Why did I say what?"

  "I was just thinking about Charlie Lightfoot, and you said his name! That's amazing! Like a psychic ..."

  "Valnikov, you said his name!"

  "No, I was just thinking about old Charlie Lightfoot and ..."

  "And you mumbled Charlie Lightfoot. Jesus Christ!" "I did?"

  Then he started looking alarmed. Like when she'd shaken him awake from his dream. A bull of a man like this. Frightened. She had to get evidence. For his own good as well as the police department's. It wasn't just for herself. "I sometimes mutter and mumble, too, when I'm thinking hard about something," she said. "It's no big thing."

  "But I wasn't even thinking hard," he said, turning down Spring Street. "I just thought about old Charlie Lightfoot. He was my partner for years at homicide."

  "Did you like it there, Valnikov?" she asked, offering him a cigarette as he drove ever cautiously through the heavy downtown traffic, blinking into the smog-filtered sunshine.

  "I seldom smoke," he said. Then he thought about her question and said, "Well, I liked homicide work all right. I liked it okay. There's the prestige. You know, everybody thinks you're the varsity if you work homicide downtown. It was okay sometimes. Charlie Lightfoot was the best partner I ever had." Then he added, "Of course we ll be good partners, I'm sure, Natalie."

  "Why did they . . . you decide to transfer to Hollywood dicks?" she asked suddenly.

  "Well, I ... I ..." He didn't like that question. That was something that scared him lately. If he didn't like a question, if it troubled him, he couldn't quite get the handle. He wasn't even sure what she'd said. There was the murky picture again. All the sparkly shapes, something like a deja vu experience. Something . . . something was there! If it would only take shape among the sparkly dots from the flashbulbs. If he could just see it once. And then it started to fade, as always. Come back. I almost had you that time!

  Charlie Lightfoot. He had been a good partner. The best. A quiet man like Valnikov. Like Valnikov, years with a bad marriage. But a wife who hated him instead of one who drank and played. A child who drifted away. Strange, how they grow and dr
ift and lose their respect for their fathers. The ancient inherited shame of fathers and sons. A good partner. The hardest single logistical task of police work. Find that partner. That good partner you can live with. Then keep him. Especially a homicide detective.

  He hadn't answered her question about the transfer. Natalie was turned in her seat staring at him. She knew he had lost his direction. She knew he was somewhere else. Driving, just driving.

  "Do you still see Charlie Lightfoot?" Natalie asked quietly. How do you make notes on this? What do you tell the captain? Did he have to go berserk before they'd believe her?

  He was driving aimlessly. He'd lost his sense of direction. His whole life in this city and he was lost.

  "Tell me about Charlie Lightfoot," she said carefully.

  He turned east on Fifth Street and looked at the sign as though he'd never been there. Then he said, "Charlie was old for his age. Twenty-six years on the job when he pulled the pin and went to Arizona. He bought a trailer there by the big river. Charlie was some kind of detective, though."

  "What could he do, Valnikov? Tell me about him. What could he do that you admired?"

  "Admired," Valnikov said. And now he was looking vague and confused, as confused as when he had awakened from the dream. He was starting to perspire. She noted that. She would remember when she went to the commander. When she described his symptoms to the department psychologist.

  "Charlie could get through it all better than anyone," Valnikov said. "Better than me. Do you know how many calls you get from policemen? From the bluesuits and even from soft clothes guys? Do you know how many murders they discover that aren't murders at all?"

  "No. How many?"

  "Lots. A vice cop finds an encyclopedia salesman dead in a motel room when they're staked out on a whore. He's lying on his back across the bed. His head is down to the floor. There's a pile of blood under his head. The carpet can't soak it all up."

  "A pile of blood," Natalie said quietly.

  He turned south on Wall Street and unbuttoned his collar.