Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  “Why me?” the man asked.

  “Because you’re good, because you still care.”

  Vinda sighed. “I don’t care as much as I used to, Sam.”

  Leventhal refused to let his friend’s discouraged tone deflect him from his plea, for it was that. He knew that in spite of his right to command his subordinates, this was a case where you asked.

  “You just might be able to save another woman’s life.”

  Vinda looked around the office’s paneled walls covered with commemorative tablets and police memorabilia. He thought of his years on the Job, and recalled the anguish and shame he’d felt when they hung him out to dry. He knew that he could walk away from this. But he thought of the two murdered women with their throats torn out, and he knew that he needed to take on this case to regain his own self-respect.

  “I’ll need help.”

  “I’ll send down a telephone message transferring you into the Major Case Squad. If you need exotic equipment or experienced detectives fast, they’re there. You can reach out and bring in two of your own people. But I want a compartmentalized unit, free of any leaks.”

  “We’ll need wheels.”

  “I’ll notify the motor pool downstairs.” Readying his pencil over a pad, Leventhal asked, “Who are you picking up?”

  Vinda leaned back in his chair, toying with the hair at the back of his head that formed into a duck’s tail. “Moose Ryan and Tony Marsella.”

  Leventhal grinned. “You seem to like working with fallen angels.”

  “We try harder, Sam,” Vinda responded. “It’s our ticket back to the real world.”

  THREE

  The special investigation division was the umbrella command for the Major Case Squad as well as the Special Fraud Squad, the Joint Robbery Task Force, the Safe, Loft, and Truck Squad, and the Missing Persons Squad. The division occupied the eleventh floor of police headquarters at One Police Plaza, close to City Hall and Wall Street. The various units were separated from one another by portable partitions covered with wanted posters, department orders, and retirement party announcements.

  After leaving the chief of detectives, Vinda returned to his tiny, cramped office and gathered up the missing person index and the rest of his busywork. Stepping outside, he plopped the stack of official documents down on the clerical sergeant’s desk. “I’ve just been rehabilitated, Sarge.”

  The sergeant, a gaunt man with forty years in the Job, looked up at Vinda. “You’re going back out into the street, Lou?”

  “Yes.”

  Scratching his jaw thoughtfully, the sergeant said, “Some guys just don’t ever learn.”

  A long aisle ran the length of the eleventh floor, connecting the various SID units. Vinda made his way down the corridor into the Major Case Squad. It occupied the entire north corner of the floor, and had ranks of glass-fronted offices with outside windows along the east and west sides of the floor. These offices served as private work spaces for the bosses. As soon as Vinda stepped into the Major Case area he felt as though he was back in the real war. Every typewriter was being used, detectives moved about, consulting each other on active cases, and a radio muttered police calls over the special detective band.

  Vinda reported to the CO of Major Case, who told him that the chief of detectives had personally telephoned and directed him to be on the lookout for Vinda. After leaving the commanding officer’s office, Vinda was escorted by a sergeant to his new glass cubbyhole with a corner view of Police Plaza and the Municipal Building.

  Vinda sat down at the standard green metal desk and reread the homicide reports. Studying the crime-scene photos, he was again struck by the ferocity of the wounds. What kind of an instrument makes a hole like that while slicing into the body?

  Reaching down into the desk’s form drawer, he took out two DD 5s (Supplementary Complaint Reports), forms that were used to report on all phases of an investigation, and rolled one of them into the typewriter, thought a few seconds, and typed out the DD 5 transferring the Mary Lucas homicide from the precinct detective squad to the Special Investigation Division.

  Good move, he told himself, knowing that when the press got wind of the case, he and his men would be buried deep enough to buy some moving-around time. On the bottom of the report, he typed, BY DIRECTION OF THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES.

  Pondering what name to use in the signature box at the bottom, he took out the official roster and began flipping pages. The corners of his mouth spread in a gleeful smile when he saw the name of the commanding officer, Criminal Assessment and Profiling Unit. He typed in the name I. Jacob Cowan, and forged a signature to the report, hoping that his old friend still had his Bronx sense of humor.

  He typed another Five transferring the Thelma Johnston homicide to his unit, and tossed both reports into the department mail basket. Next to it was another wire basket, full of incoming mail. On top was a brightly colored brochure, a mailing from the Lieutenants Benevolent Association offering package tours. He was about to throw it away as he was clearing out the remaining mail for forwarding to the office’s previous occupant when he noticed that a nine-day package to Portugal was featured on the front cover. Vinda couldn’t resist looking quickly at the pictures inside, of the beloved land where he had spent so many childhood vacations.

  Then his mind was filled with powerful memories of that spring day eleven years ago when he was the Second Whip of the Two-oh Squad. His official day had started with his checking the details of investigation reports to “insure that they fell within the parameters of detective division guidelines”—which meant that all asses were covered, especially his own. It was a perfect and warm early-May morning. He had gone out into the squadroom to read the latest batch of department orders when he spotted her being interviewed by one of the detectives.

  He thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her lips were exquisite, and her perfectly oval face had dimples in the corners of her mouth. Her auburn hair touched her shoulders; it seemed to glow in the rush of sunlight flooding into the squadroom. He saw the excitement dancing around inside her green eyes. Her light blue spring dress softly molded the contours of her shapely body.

  Pretending to read a Personnel Order, he looked out of the side of one eye and was consumed by an urgent need to meet her. She glanced his way; their eyes met and held. He smiled; her lips smiled back. He returned the clipboard holding the orders to the wall hook and walked back to his office. Sitting on the edge of his desk, he counted to twenty, snapped up the telephone, and dialed the extension number of the desk where she was being interviewed.

  “Detective Kooperman, Two-oh Squad.”

  “Is she married?”

  “Negative.”

  “What kind of case?”

  “Ten-twenty-one,” Kooperman said, using the radio code for a past burglary.

  “Do the right thing.”

  “You got it.”

  Vinda hung up and rushed over to his locker and checked himself out in the mirror. He smoothed down his hair, straightened his tie, grabbed down some after-shave, and rubbed a few drops onto his face. He was at his desk, taking copious notes on absolutely nothing, when Kooperman led the complainant into his office.

  “Sarge, this is Jean Wilson. Her apartment was burglarized last night.” Offering her a chair, Kooperman explained, “Sergeant Vinda supervises our burglary investigations.”

  “Really?” she said, looking at Vinda, who was still occupied with his notes. When Kooperman left the room, Vinda picked up the Complaint Report that the detective had put on his desk, and began reading the details. “How long have you resided at your current address, Miss Wilson?”

  “Twenty-four years. I was born there, Sergeant.”

  “Do you live alone?”

  “Yes, I do. I used to live with my parents, but they’re both dead.”

  “Has anyone dusted your apartment for fingerprints?”

  “Not yet,” she said with a knowing smile, “but I suspect you are goin
g to volunteer to do the job yourself.”

  “What’s so funny?” he asked indignantly.

  “When I was a teenager, my uncle always made me laugh with his stories about the Job …”

  Her use of the word made his stomach plummet.

  “… especially when he talked of the tricks detectives used to meet women. Perhaps you’ve heard of my uncle? Assistant Chief Dan Wilson, CO of Brooklyn North Detectives?”

  “Oh?” he said, his hand groping the air in front of him, searching for an escape hatch to crawl into. “I know the Chief.”

  They drifted into silence. He decided that honesty was the best policy. “Looks like I’m going to have to cop a plea. I just had to meet you, you’re beautiful.”

  Her appraising eyes looked straight at him. She got up and announced, “I don’t date married men.”

  “Not married, never have been,” he said, standing up, afraid that he’d blown it.

  She opened the door and looked over her shoulder. “My phone number is on the Sixty-one,” she smiled. “’Bye.”

  On their first date, a week later, they ate in a trendy SoHo restaurant and afterward they strolled the busy streets of Chinatown, making their way across Canal Street into Little Italy, trying to decipher some of the graffiti scrawled on the sides of buildings. She wore a yellow dress, and her legs were bare. They ambled into Carmine’s on Mulberry Street and squeezed into a curbside table, blissfully ignoring the crowd flowing along the narrow, brightly lit street. They drank cappuccinos and shared a dish of zabaglione and raspberries, while they took turns talking about their lives.

  She was a special-ed teacher who worked with brain-damaged and retarded children at Humanities High School. A lover of animals, opera, dance, and movies, Jean particularly loved the “two hankie” romantic movies of the late thirties and forties.

  He told her about his childhood summers visiting his grandparents in Silves, Portugal, and of how he and his friends used to play, despite strict injunctions not to, on the battlements of the tenth-century castle that the Visigoths had built on the hill overlooking the ancient city. Portugal represented the side of his life and identity that he never talked about on the Job.

  It was two in the morning when a waiter’s diplomatic cough made them aware of all the empty tables around them. “Let’s walk,” she said, putting her arm around him and pressing close.

  It took them almost another two hours to stroll uptown to her rent-controlled apartment in a massive old building on the east side of West End Avenue at Eighty-second Street. The sun was up and the birds were singing as they ambled arm-in-arm into the marble lobby with its high Doric columns.

  He rode up with her to the seventh floor and left her unkissed at her apartment door, secure in the knowledge that he had met the woman he was going to marry.

  They married that August, and honeymooned in Portugal. She met all his aunts and uncles and cousins, savored the rich Portuguese sauces at family meals, enjoyed the biting taste of freshly caught fried sardines, and posed happily for family photographs under the castle’s portcullis.

  The newlyweds set up house in her three-bedroom apartment on West End Avenue, and several blissful years faded into happy memories. To their mutual disappointment, Jean did not conceive. There were tests and more tests, and always the doctors gave the same report: there was nothing wrong with either of them. Rx: Relax.

  One day three years ago, soon after he had been dumped into Missing Persons and the stakeout unit disbanded, he arrived home after doing a day duty to find Jean in the bathroom, running the fingers of her hand over the right side of her neck. Watching her watch herself in the mirror, he saw her frightened eyes lock on his reflection and heard her say, “It’s swollen.”

  The next day a surgeon did a needle biopsy that revealed a line of swollen lymph nodes. Further tests revealed the primary source to be a mole concealed in her hairline. The final answer came a week later, exploding from the doctor’s mouth in an irreversible sentence of death: Melanoma.

  Vinda tossed the brochure into the wastebasket and swung around to face the window, preventing anyone outside his office from looking in and seeing his tears. He pulled his handkerchief out, wiped his eyes dry, and shoved the cloth back into his trouser pocket. He spun back around, picked up a yellow legal pad, and began outlining the case. First he listed the times and dates of occurrence, the names of the victims, and their pedigrees. The more he examined the crime-scene photos and studied the similarity of the wounds, the more convinced he was that the killer was someone who needed to kill.

  He went over to the portable blackboard pushed flush against the wall. Checking the notes he had made on the tablet, he wrote out the key elements of the crime on the board. He took a few of the crime-scene photos and thumbtacked them to the board’s wooden edges. Then he stepped back, examining his work.

  He knew that he needed the Job more than ever now. His Jean had died four months ago. The void left by her death was filled now only with loneliness and regret. It was good to be back. It was all he had to hold on to, all that he had to give his shattered life any meaning.

  The slam of the door to his office made him look up and see Tony Marsella and William “Moose” Ryan standing in front of his desk, silly grins plastered on their faces.

  “Good to see you guys,” Vinda greeted them.

  “When that telephone message came down from the C-of-D transferring us to SID, we ran out to our cars and drove like hell to get here,” Moose said, looking around the office. “We both felt our former leader’s devious hand lurking somewhere in the background.”

  “They had me and Moose invoicing auto wrecks at the Whitestone Pound,” Marsella said. “It was getting time for us to abandon ship anyway. So? What kind of a dirty job they got for us this time?”

  “A couple of homicides,” Vinda said, picking up the case folders and handing them to the detectives.

  “Will the illustrious Sam Staypress fuck us over again if the media screams for fresh meat?” Moose asked.

  “No one ever promised you any tomorrows in this job,” Vinda said, watching them read the reports.

  The detectives exchanged folders. Moose asked, “You’re the Whip?”

  “Yeah,” Vinda answered.

  “That’s good enough for me,” Moose Ryan said. “I’m tired of all that pencil-pushin’ bullshit. I wanna get back out in the street. I miss all that blood and carnage and down-to-earth, dome-dirty shit.”

  Watching them digest the reports, Vinda thought how much alike the two detectives were, yet how different. Both were street-smart cops who believed in the rights of crime victims, both were married and had children, and, like most of their contemporaries in the Job, both were deeply in debt to the Municipal Credit Union.

  Moose Ryan was a big man with a fat neck that bulged out over his shirt collar. His tiny brown eyes were partially hidden under his heavy, overhanging brow. Moose was, in short, a liberal’s nightmare of what cops should look like. And he could indeed be a hard-ass when he had to be. But buried inside of him was an amazing degree of sensitivity. Only his wife, children, and a very few other cops knew that. He and his wife were animal-rights activists, and Moose was forever wearing an assortment of animal-rights buttons pinned to his lapels. People often did a double-take when they saw these unexpected decorations on him.

  Marsella, in contrast, was a handsome man with a swarthy complexion and a trimmed mustache that gave him the look of a Latin gigolo. He was an elegant, thin man who favored European-cut clothes and double-breasted sport jackets, while his partner consistently dressed in an unmatching rainbow of polyester.

  “Whaddaya think, Lou?” Moose Ryan asked, looking up from his folder.

  “I think we’re dealing with a major wackadoo.”

  “Similar MO,” Marsella observed. “According to the ME’s report, there was no rape. Underclothes undisturbed. No sperm in any of the orifices, or on the clothes. None of these reports mentioned if any money was taken.”
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  “Neither of the ladies lived in a high-rent district,” Moose said.

  “Where do we start?” Marsella asked.

  “I want you two to go to Central Records and duplicate all the paper. Then go to the precincts of occurrence and interview the detectives who caught the cases. See if they have any information scratched on the back of a matchbook that they didn’t put on the Fives,” Vinda said.

  Holding a pack of cigarettes in front of his mouth, Marsella took one between his lips and asked, “And if they want to know why the case was transferred?”

  “Tell them the Bias Unit Investigation Section is interested in a possible racial motive,” Vinda said, adding, “That’ll make them happy to be rid of the case.”

  Moose Ryan said, “This could be a racial case. Both victims are black.”

  “That’s something we’re going to have to take a look at,” Vinda said. “I want you to recanvass the scenes, interview friends and relatives. According to the Fives on the Mary Lucas homicide, the victim’s mother was too distraught to be interviewed when detectives went to her home. She has to be interviewed.” Vinda handed them index cards. “Give me phone numbers where you can be reached.”

  Marsella wrote down an extra number. He didn’t bother to tell the Whip that it was his girlfriend’s.

  “What about wheels and communications?” Moose Ryan asked.

  “Two cars have been assigned to us,” Vinda said. “I’ve arranged for Radio Operator Forty-seven on the City-Wide band to be our communication link.” He picked up a large manila envelope and shook out three beepers. Handing one to each detective, he said, “If these things go off, get on land line to Operator Forty-seven.”

  The detectives clipped the instruments to their belts.

  “Let’s get back to work,” Moose Ryan said, making for the door. He paused with his hand on the doorknob, and said quietly, “You know, Boss, I’ve got my twenty years in, come April. I don’t wanna get jammed up on this one.”

  Marsella edged the department auto between two snowbanks to park across the street from the Seven-eight Precinct. The detectives got out and hurried through the blustery wind into the station house. Walking across the muster room toward the staircase, Ryan held up his shield to the desk officer and announced, “We’re going up to the Squad, Lou.”