Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  The detective’s ears pricked as he looked up from the open folder and glared his displeasure at the face on the screen. “Another asshole,” he growled, heaving himself up out of his seat and going over to the set and snapping it off. Striding back to his desk, he looked down the floor’s connecting aisle and saw that Missing Persons and Safe and Loft were busy. He also noticed the lights were on inside the glass-fronted office that had been commandeered by the task force working on the burgeoning murder investigation.

  He saw John Vinda pacing inside and recalled working with him in the Two-oh Squad. Jules Kooperman thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his sagging trousers, remembering that May morning when Jean Vinda had come into the squad to report the burglary of her apartment, and how he had ushered her into the Second Whip’s office. It seemed like a lifetime ago. His attention was suddenly snagged by the sight of the chief of patrol storming down the warren of cubicles toward the task force office. Chief Eberhart’s ruddy face was pumped up with anger, and his rust-colored hair tossed wildly about. Kooperman watched Agent Orange plunge into the task force office and thought, There goes one power-grabbing, erratic son of a bitch.

  As Agent Orange burst into the room, he immediately engaged the C-of-D in a heated argument over this month’s telephone bill for the detective division, which included two thousand dollars to dial-a-porn numbers. “Watsamatter, Sam, you got a bunch of preverts you can’t control?”

  Chief of Detectives Leventhal glared at the C-of-P and said, “Fuck off, Timothy.”

  Vinda looked down at the pile of copies of the composite sketch on his desk. The Distributing Room had already sent out thousands to every field unit of the department and every law-enforcement agency within the metropolitan area. Every newspaper and television station had also received copies. He looked up from the sketches and saw Moose and Marsella typing the names and addresses of witnesses who were inside the boutique and still had to be interviewed.

  He listened to Leventhal and Agent Orange going at it. The two of them had hated each other since their Academy days. Some ancient slight had developed into a lifetime dislike that increased with their rise to stardom within the Job.

  Moving over to the window, Vinda banished them all from his mind and looked out at the darkness over the city.

  A crescent moon was high in the sky. Gazing at it, he thought, How beautiful and peaceful it is, so far out there, safely away from the cruelty of man. He thought of the telephone calls he used to receive from Mr. Snow, and tension rekindled in his stomach. Mr. Snow was the pseudonym used by the Universal Collection Agency. Back then he had been behind two months on the loan he had taken out to pay off Jean’s medical expenses. He still felt angry when he recalled Mr. Snow’s condescending voice lecturing him on the importance of maintaining a good credit rating. Vinda had spent a week at a backgammon club on Tenth Avenue, playing the game and winning the money to pay off his medical bills.

  He felt hungry, tired, and dirty. Detective crud. It had been almost twenty-four hours since Operator 47 notified him that a homicide had gone down on Sutton Place. A hot bath was the best way of getting rid of the creeping crud of a long tour. The superchiefs were still locked in argument; the detectives ignored them, going about their business.

  Vinda recalled those two anonymous phone calls to the AP. Did it mean that the killer wanted publicity? Was he the kind of guy who got off on playing the puppeteer, remaining hidden but pulling the strings from the darkness, with the department dangling in the wind? He turned away from the window and walked past the chiefs, leaving the office.

  David Pollack was hunched over his desk inside the press room, devouring a meatball-and-sausage hero. His oversized Adam’s apple bobbed in time with his hasty masticating. When he saw Vinda, he reached down into his drawer and took out his backgammon set. “Wanna play a fast game?” he asked, taking another bite of his sandwich.

  Vinda’s grandfather had taught him the game when he was a child, and he had learned well. Pollack had been trying to beat him at it for years, and up to now had never been successful. “Don’t you ever get tired of me beating you at this game?” Vinda asked, opening the board and setting up the stones.

  Pollack rolled the first die for the privilege of going first; he rolled a three. Vinda cast a six, and won the first roll. He put the pair of dice into the cup and cast two sixes. “A double,” he said, with a grin.

  Pollack sighed.

  Moving his stones, Vinda said, “Those calls to the AP, you happen to know who received them?”

  “I’m way ahead of you,” Pollack said, rattling the dice and casting them on the board. “I’ve spoken to both of them. It would appear that the doer has a hard-on for the Job. He told both reporters that he intended to destroy the department.”

  Casting dice, Vinda asked, “And exactly when did you plan on telling me all this?”

  Pollack took a bite of his sandwich and said, “As soon as I finished eating.”

  Vinda walked into his apartment and felt the loneliness pressing in on him. He went into the bedroom and stared at the stack of cassettes on top of the VCR. They were all of Jean’s favorite movies. He pulled out Waterloo Bridge, turned on the set, slid the cassette into the slot, and sat down on the bed. Watching the opening credits roll across the screen, he recalled his life with Jean. It had been wonderful. Even as she lay dying, she had thought of him. “When I’m gone, don’t live in the past. Live in the present,” she would beg, over and over. Watching Robert Taylor toss his cigarette into the River Thames and walk off toward the waiting staff car, he recalled the last time he had watched this movie with Jean. As “The End” had rolled across the screen, he had switched off the set and turned, taking her sunken body into his arms, and slowly rocked her like a child until she drifted off to sleep.

  With tears seeping from the corners of his eyes, he said to the darkness, “I can’t get on with my life, Jean. I just can’t.”

  I have to get out of here, he thought. Getting up, he changed into jeans and a light shirt, and left.

  Elegibos was crowded. Margareth was at the door; when she saw him walk in, she gave him a loud greeting in Portuguese, threw her arms around him, and kissed him. “Will you dance with me later?” she asked.

  “I’ll dance with you anytime,” he said in Portuguese, taking out money to pay the entrance fee.

  “Put your damn money away; it’s no good here. You should know that by now. Why do you want to insult Margareth?”

  “Because I’m afraid one day you may want my body as payment for all the times you let me in here for nothing.”

  She moved very close to him and rubbed her body up against him. “That would not be so terrible, would it?”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” he said, lifting up her chin and kissing her nose.

  ELEVEN

  Early Wednesday morning a ruptured water main on East Fourteenth Street sent thousands of gallons of water cascading onto the tracks of the Lexington Avenue subway, bringing service to a stop. At eight o’clock the same morning a steel girder atop the Manhattan Bridge surrendered to years of neglect and broke away, crashing through the windshield of a car, decapitating its driver. At nine-fifteen, as workers streamed into police headquarters, fifty pickets for a group called Women Against Female Genocide appeared and attempted to storm the lobby. Out went an urgent transmission of code signal 10:46, Rapid Mobilization: one lieutenant, eight sergeants, and forty police officers responded forthwith with hats and bats to One Police Plaza.

  Within minutes, RMPs squealed to a stop inside the plaza, disgorging policemen wearing riot helmets and swinging nightsticks. Within a short time the demonstrators were corralled behind hastily erected barricades. Two attorneys from the Legal Bureau raced down from the tenth floor to advise the police commander on the scene of the constitutional rights of the demonstrators.

  The raucous protesters circled behind the barricades chanting slogans and hoisting placards at the television cameras: MALE DOMINATED POLICE
PERMIT CRIMES AGAINST WOMEN; STOP FEMALE GENOCIDE.

  On the fourteenth floor of the Big Building, the police commissioner glowered at the chiefs of detectives and patrol. “Why didn’t Intelligence have advance word on this?”

  “Commissioner, they’re not a mainstream organization,” the C-of-P explained. “They’re an ad hoc group from The Women’s Register.”

  The superchiefs were sitting directly in front of the PC’s antique desk.

  Leventhal lifted his gray trouser leg and stretched the recalcitrant sock back up over his calf. “It’s only the beginning. Every TV station in the city is devoting large blocks of time to the story. Panic is next. And Merrill’s involvement has stoked the political coals. Every feminist organization in town is going to try to get in on the free publicity that this case is generating.”

  Agent Orange nervously ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “Perhaps Lieutenant Vinda’s personal distractions have caused him to conduct a less-than-zealous investigation. We might want to consider replacing him with someone without his personal problems.”

  Leventhal withered the C-of-P with a scornful glance. “Replace him with who, one of your cronies from the Patrol Bureau?”

  “I was only—”

  “You were only trying to piss on the detective division,” Leventhal snapped. “In case you’ve forgotten, homicide investigations are the purview of the detective division, not Patrol.”

  The PC leaned forward, hands clasped, and responded coldly, “True, Sam, but as you are well aware, tables of organization are fluid things. We could always, if things didn’t go the way they should, move the detective division under Patrol’s umbrella.”

  Agent Orange smiled smugly.

  “But then, Commissioner,” Leventhal said, his voice heavy with derision, “you would also have to replace the current chief of patrol because as everyone in the Job knows, he’s incapable of commanding a rowboat.”

  “I resent that,” the C-of-P shouted.

  “Resent it all you want,” Leventhal shot back, his eyes cold and hard. “The fact is that every command you’ve ever been given has had to be run for you by your XO.”

  The PC was more than a little aware of the political constituencies of both superchiefs. They represented large ethnic voting blocs necessary for the Mayor’s reelection. The PC had been told to put these two men in these jobs, and he did not want to get rid of either of them, just yet. He smiled. “Calm down, both of you. Sam, are you satisfied with Vinda?” he asked the C-of-D.

  “Yes, I am,” Leventhal answered firmly.

  “Then he stays on the case,” said the PC. Then he scowled unhappily and added, “The Mayor telephoned me at home this morning. It seems Jessica Merrill’s manager thinks his meal ticket might be in danger and wants us to provide round-the-clock police protection.”

  “We don’t bodyguard civilians unless they’re material witnesses or there is a pressing necessity,” Leventhal said.

  “The pressing necessity, Sam, is that the Mayor wants us to do it. Besides, we simply can’t afford to have anything happen to her.”

  Vinda roosted on the edge of a stone bench in Police Plaza, holding a container of steaming coffee and idly watching the circling demonstrators. They were a mixed bag: straights and gays, well-dressed and slovenly, old and young, some of them familiar faces from bygone protests, gentle faces, dedicated to the cause of equality.

  The barricades had been set up on the east side of the plaza in front of the wide staircase leading down into the Equipment Bureau. He studied the protesters, trying to pick out the organizers. As his eyes went from face to face, he zeroed in on a tall, attractive woman with short gray hair who was wearing a long cloth coat and a knitted gray cap pulled down over her high brow. The woman was standing off by herself, outside of the barricade, shouting instructions to the marchers. He smiled, took a final sip of coffee, tossed the container into a nearby stone garbage receptacle, and strode purposefully across the plaza.

  May Gold had been a cop in the Two-oh when Vinda worked there. She’d worked steady late tours so that she could go to Brooklyn Law School during the day. She had also helped Vinda prep for the lieutenant’s examination. When she was admitted to the bar, she had resigned from the Job and opened her own law practice. Now, seven years later, she had a flourishing practice overwhelmingly devoted to matrimonial matters, a large part of which entailed getting cops divorces.

  Vinda drifted up behind the lawyer and whispered, “Out soliciting, May?”

  She whirled around and threw herself into his arms. “John,” she said, kissing him.

  “This your parade?” he asked.

  “Guess I’ll have to cop a plea on that one,” she said, giving him another hug.

  “Why are you doing this, May? What the hell do you care about some bimbo movie star? And you’re an ex-cop. Why are you looking to embarrass the Job?”

  “This has nothing to do with Jessica Merrill. It has to do with preventing another woman from being murdered. I happen to know that there have been four homicides, all by the same perp. The Job is sitting on two of them in an attempt to conceal the fact that there is a serial killer out there doing a number on women.”

  “C’mon, what makes you say that?”

  “The perp told me.”

  Vinda’s mouth fell open and his eyes widened with surprise. “What?”

  “Your perp telephoned The Women’s Register yesterday. I happened to be the one who answered the phone.”

  He raised an inquiring chin. “What did he have to say?”

  “Only that he had done four homicides, two of them black women, and that the media and the police were in collusion to suppress the facts.” Looking him straight in the eye, she asked, “Is it true?”

  “There is no collusion, May. The media hasn’t picked up on the other two homicides yet. And we don’t volunteer information. We don’t want unnecessary outside pressure forcing us to get careless.”

  She brushed a snowflake off his shoulder. “Are you the Whip?”

  He shrugged, grimaced haplessness. “Yes. Why do you suppose he telephoned you?”

  “The Register has been getting a lot of publicity lately with our pro-choice rallies. I guess he trusted us to get his message out.”

  “What did this guy sound like?”

  “Like the real thing. I was on the Job long enough to hear the difference between a guy who is for real and a guy who’s faking it. The man I spoke to was serious, deadly serious.”

  Looking at the chanting demonstrators inside the barricade, Vinda asked, “What else did he have to say?”

  “That he was going to kill again and again, and that the police were powerless to stop him. He also said that the police were only good for destroying lives—that he was going to destroy the department.”

  “And why didn’t you report this conversation to anyone on the Job?”

  “I did,” she snapped. “I telephoned the information into the First Squad and spoke to a Detective Gotlieb. He treated me like just another stupid civilian.”

  “May? You should know that the Job has its share of idiots. Don’t blame the department because of one guy.”

  “John. I checked. This idiot did not bother to report my call. He didn’t make out a Complaint Report or a Five. He canned it. So I decided to organize this little party, knowing that someone inside the Big Building would wake up.” Her voice dropped and became soft. “I was sorry to hear about Jean.”

  “Thank you.” He gazed across the Plaza at a woman with spiked orange hair who was petting a police horse. “What time did he telephone?”

  “About eleven A.M. I’d just gotten back from court.”

  He telephoned before the Camatro homicide, Vinda thought. “Did you give any of this to the press?”

  “Once a cop, always a cop.”

  “Good. As a favor to me, please keep it to yourself. And pack up your troops and head for home.”

  She faced him, rested her hands on his shoulde
rs, and said, “I can keep his call to myself, but I can’t afford to close up shop without getting some little goody in return. The Register is a political organization; I’m the president.” Her eyes drifted around the Plaza. “Bringing a case like this one to a successful conclusion usually means grade money for the detectives who worked on it. Tell me, John, how many women are assigned to the investigation?”

  Vinda’s lips pursed with understanding. “I’ll see if I can transfer two women into the unit.”

  “Four,” she countered.

  “Two is the best I can do.”

  “And Gotlieb?”

  “I’ll take care of him.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment or two before conceding, “You have a deal.”

  “What kind of a guy is Gotlieb?” Vinda asked the Whip of the First Squad. He was sitting at his desk with his hands coiled around the mouthpiece, and his back to his detectives.

  “Guy acts like he’s retired on full pay,” the annoyed First Squad Whip said. “He was flopped out of the Fifth because he pissed off his boss.”

  Vinda related Gotlieb’s failure to take proper police action on the information furnished by May Gold. An angry silence came back over the line. “I’ll take care of it,” the Whip from the First said, and hung up.

  At 11:27 that morning a message was sent from the chief of detectives’ office transferring Detectives Adriene Agueda and Joan Hagstrom from Brooklyn South Sex Crimes to Special Investigations on a thirty-day temporary assignment.

  Vinda looked up from the Lucas-Johnston case folders, and studied the crime-scene photos pinned to the blackboard’s border. The composite sketch of the killer along with some more crime-scene shots were also pinned on it. Unconsciously he spoke his thoughts out loud. “So far the media hasn’t connected the two black women and the Webster and Camatro homicides. Two whites and two blacks.”