The lawyer was talking. “What’s it about, Tony?”
“A few ends need tidying, Counselor.”
A thoughtful smile set on the lawyer’s lips. “Is my niece the subject of a criminal investigation?”
Scanlon’s answer was forthright. “No.”
“Might my niece be the subject of an accusatory instrument?”
“I cannot envision such a possibility.” Scanlon noted that there was a faint smile on Rena Bedford’s lips.
The lawyer waved his hand in front of him, making circles. He had the look of a man ready to expound life’s mysteries. “Permit me, if you will, the opportunity to paraphrase a few recent decisions.…” Scanlon raised his hand in an effort to stop the legal harangue but instead dropped it in defeat, resigned to listening. Cops learn early not to interrupt lawyers when they are giving a performance for their client; it makes the lawyer uppity and hostile.
C. Aubrey White droned on. “… during a criminal investigation, a subject who has an attorney may not be interrogated about the case even though he has not been arrested and is not in custody, after the subject’s attorney tells the police not to question his client in his absence, People versus Skinner.”
Scanlon’s nerves were sending strong signals to his phantom leg. Lew Brodie was sitting on a chair with the back turned front, listening and punching his palm with his fist. His eyes were bloodshot, his shirttail on the left side was hanging out, and the veins in his temples were throbbing.
Howard Christopher, who considered all lawyers to be communist, with the sole exception of Roy Cohn, was standing by the wall, glaring at the lawyer and munching julienne carrot sticks. A bad sign.
“… when a defendant is represented by an attorney in a criminal matter, the policeman may not question him about any unrelated matter without the defendant’s lawyer being present, People versus Rogers.”
Scanlon wondered why it was necessary for lawyers to always put their legal prowess on display. He glanced up at the department clock, which had the day divided by civilian and military time, and decided the time had come to end the performance. Other witnesses were scheduled after Rena Bedford, and he didn’t like the look on Brodie’s and Christopher’s faces. A shouting match between his detectives and the lawyer was most definitely not needed, so he let the lawyer say a few more things and then held up a pleading hand. “Counselor, spare us, please. We all read the legal bulletins. If your niece would prefer not to talk to us, that’s okay. I’ll just subpoena her before the grand jury. You of course realize that in that case, I’ll not be able to guarantee confidentiality. You’re aware of the tendency of grand juries to leak testimony to the press.” He sketched a gesture in the air. “‘Coed in love nest with hero cop.’ The mothers’ll sell an extra fifty thousand copies at your niece’s expense.”
C. Aubrey White gripped the cane with both hands, pouting. “No big megillah, Tony.” He glanced sideways at his niece. “You don’t mind talking to these gentlemen, do you, dear?”
“Of course not, Uncle Aubrey,” she said, casting her modest eyes downward.
Rena Bedford was a graduate student in Social Work and Human Development at the New School. A year ago she had taken a course in Urban Art. One of the requisites of the course was a visit to a subway train yard on Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York to study how urban Rembrandts profane public property with graffiti. It had been an elective course.
While driving her blue Porsche 944 along Linden Boulevard on the way to the train park, she had been stopped by policemen in an unmarked car. They had placed a flashing red light on their dashboard and motioned her to pull over. Two policemen in old clothes got out of the police car and came up to her. They told her that her car matched the description of a car that had just been used in a bank robbery. She protested and showed them her license and registration. An older man got out of the police car and came up to them. He was tall and had a commanding presence. He told her his name was Joe Gallagher, and they began to talk. He was an interesting man, and before she realized it they were discussing city planning. The other two policemen drifted back to their car. She liked the sound of Gallagher’s voice, and thought he was cute, and since she was into getting it on with older men, she gave him her telephone number. From that point on, Rena Bedford’s story paralleled those of the other witnesses. Only she was more graphic in her details of their sexual encounters.
Watching her sparkling face, Scanlon realized that she didn’t wear makeup and had the kind of look that advertising people called country-fresh.
Rena Bedford had not shied away from Gallagher when he approached her with the vibrator and anal love beads; nor did she hesitate to pose for him, or join in the threesome. “A woman should experience all that there is to experience before she settles down,” she said calmly, staring at Scanlon with her wide, modest eyes.
When she had finished her tale, Scanlon asked casually for the name of the other female participant in the threesome. “Luise Bardwell.”
“Did Gallagher ever discuss money with you or tell you anything about his job, or his personal life?”
“No. The only thing we ever discussed was doing it. He was really into that.” She tilted her head, as though trying to recall a faint memory. “Once he told me that one of his buddies had come into some money and that they were thinking of going into business together.”
“Did he tell you the name of his buddy, or mention the kind of business?”
“No, he didn’t.”
Valerie Clarkson was the fourth witness scheduled to appear. She never showed. Repeated telephone calls to her home went unanswered. Scanlon sent a Telephone Message to her resident precinct, the Ninth, requesting them to dispatch an RMP to her home. The notification that the Nine-three Squad received back ended with the initials NR. Valerie Clarkson was not in her residence. A neighbor on the first floor of her six-story Manhattan walk-up stated that he had seen her leaving her apartment about midday. She was carrying an overnight case. She seemed to be in a hurry, the witness had stated.
At 1500 that afternoon the detectives gathered about a desk in the Nine-three squad room to eat lunch: three large pizzas, two six-packs of Miller Light, and a diet 7-Up for Higgins. Christopher was off in a corner watching his favorite soap, “The Guiding Light,” and eating plain yogurt mixed with raw cashews. Biafra Baby was leaning against a desk arguing with his wife over the telephone. Higgins waved a crust at the detectives gathered around the desk. “Joe Gallagher was a perv.”
“Women and the ponies are expensive vices on a married lieutenant’s salary,” Christopher joined in, intensely watching the screen. (John was about to confess his infidelity with his sister-in-law.)
Lew Brodie nibbled a strand of melted cheese. “Maybe Gallagher had a main squeeze who was picking up his tabs?”
Colon joined in: “And maybe this main squeeze didn’t cotton to him two-timin’ her and when she found out she got pissed off and had him whacked.” He began to slowly lick the end of his crust, staring pointedly at Higgins’s breasts.
“She’d know,” Higgins riposted, looking away from Colon and folding her arms across her chest.
Biafra Baby slammed down the receiver and stalked over to them, mumbling curses. He threw himself into a chair, grabbed up a slice, and sat shaking his head.
“Wassa matter?” Brodie asked.
“That damn woman!” Biafra Baby said. “She spends half my salary givin’ my kids lessons tryin’ to turn them into bionic black people. I pay for piano lessons, and ballet lessons, and elocution lessons so they can learn to speak like white folk. But this time she has gone too far. She’s givin’ my son basketball lessons! He’s the only black kid in the whole country who pays to learn how to play basketball.”
Lew Brodie nodded thoughtfully. “That’s what happens when you take ’em out of the ghet-to.”
A contemplative silence was broken by Brodie peeling off the top of a beer can and tossing the tab into the wastebasket. “I still thin
k one of his lady friends had him whacked,” Brodie said, reaching down the front of his trousers to scratch his testicles.
Higgins looked away.
Biafra Baby reached in for another slice. As he did he lifted one buttock up to one side and passed wind.
Higgins heaved out of her seat. “You’re disgusting!” she said, leaving the squad room.
“Where you going, señorita?” Colon called to her back.
“To a restaurant, to eat with normal people,” she said over her shoulder.
They watched her storm out of the squad room and slam the door behind her.
Folding a slice, Biafra Baby said, “They never shoulda let women in the Job.”
Scanlon pondered talking to them about their deportment in front of Higgins. The personnel and management texts said he should, but his instincts told him not to. It was something they were going to have to work out among themselves.
Higgins walked back into the squad room twenty minutes later. The other detectives were cleaning up the lunch mess. She hurried over to the ringing telephone and pushed down the flashing button.
“Nine-three Squad, Suckieluski.” The fictitious Detective Suckieluski was a cop’s equivalent of an answering machine. There was one such phantom in every squad. Higgins listened. Covering the mouthpiece, she signaled Scanlon with a glance and mouthed, “It’s Dr. Zimmerman, the son.”
Scanlon took the receiver and said, “Hello.”
A deep voice at the other end demanded to know what progress had been made on his mother’s murder. Scanlon was told that many family members were distressed that no police official had taken the time to come and inform them of the details of his mother’s death.
“We thought it appropriate to wait a day or two before contacting you,” Scanlon said.
“We are sitting shivah at my home. I’d appreciate it if you would come by tomorrow.”
Saturday was his regular day off. Scanlon had nothing planned except to do his laundry and some vague inclination to spend some part of the evening with his hooker friend, Sally De Nesto. He plucked a pencil from the empty coffee can and wrote down the address and told the doctor that he would be there tomorrow afternoon, about one.
When he hung up, Colon gave him a bewildered look. “Tomorrow’s your RDO.”
“Noblesse oblige,” Scanlon said, walking into his office.
“What’s this noblesse oblige?” Colon said.
“It means that you don’t gotta be a fucking putz all your life,” Brodie said, arching a dead soldier into the wastebasket.
Sgt. George Harris had applied for and was granted four successive tours of emergency leave with pay. He was going to stand by the coffin in his dress uniform, with white gloves, and a mourning band stretched around his gold sergeant’s shield.
All the members of Gallagher’s buy-and-bust unit would be in attendance. They were authorized by the Patrol Guide to wear mourning bands on their shields when they were in uniform from the day of death until 2400 hours on the tenth day after death. Other members of the force were permitted to display their grief from the time of death until 2400 hours on the day of the funeral. As the dead lieutenant’s friend and close colleague, Harris had incurred traditional responsibilities. It would be he who would greet the grieving members of the department as they lined up to pay respects at the closed coffin; it would be he who would be responsible for seeing that the gold lieutenant’s shield was removed from the top of the coffin when it was removed from the funeral home and would return the badge to the chief clerk’s office; it would be he who would be assigned to see to the needs of the bereaved family.
When Harris walked into the Nine-three squad room shortly before 1500 he was wearing jeans and a blue work shirt. “The grapevine says that Joe was hit,” Harris said to Scanlon after introducing himself.
Scanlon stared at Harris’s manicured nails and black cowboy boots, and noticed the way the man tilted his lithe body to the right. His thumbs were tucked into the side pockets of his jeans.
“Where did you latch on to that information?” Scanlon said.
“That’s the word that’s going around the One-fourteen.”
Scanlon was solemn. “Well, we don’t want the word to leak out, especially to the press.”
“So it is true.”
“We’re not sure. It might be.”
Harris casually stretched out his boot and hooked the tip around the leg of a chair and dragged his seat over. He sat. “Not to worry, Lou. I’ll see to it personally that every cop assigned to the One-fourteen puts a zipper on his mouth.”
Leaning back in his seat, Scanlon locked his hands behind his head and said, “Answer a few questions?”
“You kiddin’ or somethin’? Joe Gallagher wasn’t only my boss, he was my friend. We were partners, worked the adjoining posts in the old Seven-seven. He brought me into the junk squad. You better believe I’ll do anything to get the cocksuckers who wasted Joe.”
“Did Joe ever discuss his gambling or his love life with you?”
Harris was annoyed. “Chasing pussy and gambling are a national pastime. Don’t look to paint Joe bad just because he was human.”
“I’ve spoken to a few of his lady friends. They tell me that his bedroom tastes ran the gamut from strange to kinky.”
“Come on, Lou! What the hell is kinky today? Especially in this town. The damn city is being run by a clique of goddamn faggots. The Thirteenth just arrested two morgue attendants for screwing corpses. You got ten- and eleven-year-old boys peddling their asses along the Great White Way, and the movies’ leading lady is into fucking German shepherds.” Harris was agitated, shaking his fist. “And you talk to me about kinky sex? Joe Gallagher never forced any woman into bed. They went because they wanted to, and they did whatever they did because they wanted to.”
A nod of the head, a flash of teeth. Scanlon recognized a good argument when he heard one. “Did his wife know that he was stepping out on her?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think it would have mattered. Joe once told me Mary Ann was frigid.”
“How is she taking it?”
“Pretty bad.”
“I’m going to have to interview her, I’m afraid.”
Harris thought it over in silence and then said, “I know. But can’t it wait till after the funeral?”
“I guess so. When is it?”
“Monday morning.”
“Did Joe ever talk to you about his gambling?”
Harris examined his boots. He buffed the right one on the back of his jeans. “He never discussed it with me, because he knew how I felt about it.”
“And how did you feel about it, Sarge?”
“It’s strictly for assholes. Only the bookmakers and the shys come away winners.”
Scanlon changed the subject. “How do you like living on Staten Island?”
Harris shrugged and said, “It’s okay. It beats driving in from the Island. But it’s no bargain having to drive over the guinea gangplank every day, and it’s expensive.”
Scanlon felt his adrenaline rise at the sneering reference to the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The complete urban cop, he thought bitterly. Jeans, cowboy boots, and a big mouth. “Did Joe change much after he became a boss?”
“Hah. Joe was always the public relations type. I remember when we worked in the Seven-seven, old Captain McCloskey called us into his office because our summonses were off. In those days the quota was ten parkers and five movers a month. We hadn’t given out any in three months. McCloskey was really pissed off. He called us the worst cops in the precinct. Named us Useless and Lukewarm. Joe was Useless. McCloskey yelled at us, demanding to know why no summonses. Joe got his Irish up and yelled back. He told McCloskey that he didn’t believe in hanging paper on working stiffs’ cars, costing them a day’s pay, while across the river the rich bastards are allowed to double- and triple-park all over the place and nobody does shit about it. He asked McCloskey if he’d ever driven through the theater dist
rict, or past the Waldorf, or down Fifth or Park Avenue, and seen the mounted cops who’d been assigned to help the rich triple-park their limousines. McCloskey had a shit fit and threw us out of his office. We were lucky he was transferred the following week, because he was getting ready to come down hard on us.”
Summonses were a familiar sore spot for policemen. That was why precinct commanders were forced to have summons men. For doing this onerous duty summons men were taken out of the patrol chart and worked days, with weekends off. Statistics must be maintained.
“What was Joe like as a boss?” Scanlon asked.
Harris gave him a half-smile. “He was different, I’ll say that much for him. And he’d gotten over the ambivalence of being a boss. He made it damn clear to everyone in the unit that he was the boss man. ‘Don’t do as I do, do as I say,’ he’d tell them.”
Scanlon leaned forward. “Herman the German told me that Joe wasn’t much of a leader.”
“Lou, you know as well as I do that there are a lot of ways to supervise people. Joe really hated the paper connected with the job. Herman the German is a paper pusher. That was the main reason why Joe had me brought into the unit, to take care of the paper while he played cops and robbers and partied. He was one of the greatest PR men I’ve ever known. But he was a tough cop when it came to things that he took seriously. And junk was number one on Joe’s hit parade. Our unit led the entire Narcotics Division in buy-and-bust collars. There was no bullshit about him when it came to the Job. Every person in the unit was personally picked by Joe. And if a guy produced for him and needed a day, and had no time on the books, Joe’d give him the day and swallow the Twenty-eight.”
“Where do you think he got his gambling money from?”
“I don’t know. I never asked him.”
“I’ve never been assigned to the junk squad, so I’m not too clear on how the buy money works. Tell me, will you?”
A hostile edge crept into Harris’s voice. “Forget it. Every nickel has to be accounted for.”
“I understand that, Sarge. But tell me anyway, please.”
Suspects Page 9