Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  The chief of Organized Crime, a burly Italian who packed his gun in an ankle holster, and who, for years, had coveted the C-of-D job, looked at Leventhal and asked, “In your opinion, Sam, has your boy Vinda covered all the bases?”

  You guinea scumbag, Leventhal thought, smiling at Organized Crime and saying, “Yes, he has. Every crime scene has been canvassed and recanvassed, they’ve been measured, photographed, vacuumed for trace evidence, and grid-searched. Every piece of forensic and physical evidence has been meticulously invoiced, and letters of transmittal attached to preserve the chain of evidence.”

  Organized Crime’s expression showed that he remained unconvinced. “We should consider designating a captain or above to head up this investigation, in view of all the publicity the case has generated.”

  A tense silence filled the room.

  Sam Staypress’s eyes roamed over the rows of photographs of former police commissioners, then settled on the twenty-sixth President of the United States. “I want to stay with Lieutenant Vinda.”

  The PC stared straight ahead, his face betraying nothing of his feelings.

  “With the movie star getting so much publicity, it might be wise to put more weight at the top,” Agent Orange said to the PC.

  When I was studying for sergeant, I never dreamed that one day I’d be dealing with such backstabbing cunts at the top, Leventhal thought, breaking in to head off the stampede. “If we assign more weight at the top, and the case is not closed satisfactorily, then the ‘captain or above’ who we assigned would see his career flushed down the toilet.”

  The PC looked at Leventhal. “The detective division is your shop, Sam. Go with whoever you want.”

  “Vinda,” Leventhal declared firmly. But he knew that John Vinda had very little time left to accomplish what seemed impossible. So he would be the first one who would have to be thrown to the wolves.

  “Bitch,” Worthington cursed, standing naked before the medicine cabinet, his head turned so that he could examine, in the mirror, the bloody furrows gouged into his back. Stretching his left hand around his shoulder, he bathed the wounds with a gauze pad soaked in hydrogen peroxide. Stinging froth bubbled in the wounds. “Bitch.”

  Carefully placing fresh gauze pads over the injured area, he fastened them in place with strips of adhesive tape. Straightening up, with his arms at his sides, he relaxed his body. Staring trancelike into the mirror, he tried to make contact with the Eternal One. He closed his eyes and saw ill-defined shapes, glowing white in the darkness. He strained, trying to make out what they were. Then he could see featureless faces framed in veils of pure black. The Eternal One was thanking him for sending Him more brides of Christ.

  He opened his eyes; overcome by dizziness, he balanced himself by grabbing the sink and resting his head against the coolness of the mirror. Tasting a lingering coppery flavor of blood, he savored the delicious mixture that bonded him and Valarie to the Eternal One, thus ensuring their protection. Their Trinity, their three-way bond. Now no one will ever be able to take her from me again, he exulted inwardly. He swallowed, and the warm wetness slid down his throat. His heart beat faster; blood flooded his penis. “Valarie,” he moaned, stroking his erection.

  Fifteen minutes later, his head resting on a pillow and his well-muscled, aging body stretched across the bed, a sheen of sweat covering his heaving chest, Worthington lazily moved his hand up to hold hers. Sunlight filtered through the blinds, reflecting on the ceiling. His eyes followed the golden movements of dust particles in the heavy, still air of the overly heated room.

  The beams of light creeping across the ceiling seemed to form constantly changing, suggestive shapes. “I wish I could cross over, without pain, from life to death and sleep.” He sat up, resting his cheek in his palm, and looked into her large, black, dead eyes. “The police are after us again, Val. But the Eternal One will protect us; He has shown me how to destroy them.”

  Vinda parked the department auto on Fifty-seventh Street, east of Fifth Avenue, and got out. It was not yet noon, and one of the city’s main shopping areas was almost deserted. He crossed west on Fifth Avenue and walked to the main entrance of Rue St. Jacques.

  The doorman saw Vinda coming, and left his door to greet him. “How ya doin’, Lieutenant?”

  “Good. How’s business?”

  “Between you and I, it stinks. My tips are way off. You’d better hurry and get this guy.”

  “I have to go upstairs,” Vinda said, walking away into the store. Salespeople stood idle behind uncrowded counters. He went up the staircase to the mezzanine, entering the rainbow-colored world of swimwear, and thought again about the vacation that Linda Camatro never had. He walked along the aisle to the stairs leading up to the designer dress department.

  A single well-tanned woman browsed in the racks of expensive dresses.

  One of the saleswomen recognized him and rushed over. “Hello again.”

  “Hi. Mind if I look around?” he asked. Not waiting for an answer, he walked down the aisle toward the dressing room where the homicide had occurred.

  The bloodstain in the carpet outside the room had been cut out, and a matching patch inserted. A smell of paint was still in the air. He opened the door and saw all signs of the carnage had been removed. The Queen Anne chair was upright; the shattered glass of the winged mirror had been removed and a new panel substituted. The blood-spattered curtains were gone. Stepping inside, he closed the door behind him and took out the composite. He hung his overcoat on a hook, pulled the fragile chair away from the wall, and sat. Leaning forward with his forearms on his knees, he held the composite in his hands, studying it, attempting to force himself into the killer’s psyche.

  “You saw her come in and needed to touch her, to run your hand between her warm legs.” He stopped. “Naw. That’s not your bag. You’re not into ordinary sex. You’re into sucking on blood, you have to feel their struggle for life, to see the sheer terror in their eyes. But that’s only the foreplay, isn’t it? You really get off on taking their lives.”

  He felt his anger growing. “You’re crazy, yet you take precautions not to get their blood on you, not to be seen. Yeah, you’re sane enough to do that. But why do you have a hard-on for the Job? And why did you telephone the press? I know why. You wanted to raise the ante, didn’t you? See if you could get me mad at you.”

  He thought about the swimsuit tangled around Camatro’s ankle. “Why didn’t anyone see you bust into the dressing room? You had to be suited up before you broke in, because you knew you’d need both hands to control her. Yet no one saw you. No, Worthington saw you, but he said you didn’t have your clean suit on.” He repeated, “You didn’t have your clean suit on.”

  He sat in the room for another half hour, thinking, hoping for an epiphany.

  Inspector Paul Acevedo was standing next to a file cabinet inside the Safe, Loft, and Truck Squad, digesting the list of names that detectives Agueda and Hagstrom had just handed him.

  Walking up to the detective division’s executive officer, Vinda smiled at the two women. “How’s it going, Inspector?”

  “We’re about organized at this end,” Acevedo said, adding, “Unfortunately I had to waste half the morning playing grab-ass with squad commanders. I send down telephone messages transferring detectives here on a thirty-day steal …”

  “… and they sent you the names of detectives on vacation or terminal leave,” Vinda interrupted.

  Acevedo nodded annoyance. “You got that right. The Two-four Whip had the balls to send me the name of a detective on extended sick for a year and a half.”

  Vinda grinned knowingly and commiserated. “Squad bosses hate to lose people to temporary assignments. The work keeps piling up.”

  “Know what I did?” Acevedo said, looking over at the two female detectives. “I sent down another telephone message transferring two of his best detectives by name.” He pointed. “That’s them sulking in the corner. That’ll teach ’em to play grab-ass with the king o
f grab-ass.”

  “Your people checking out the names of all those mental cases?”

  “We’re on it. Anything jumps out, I’ll give a holler.” Acevedo walked away, heading for the two unhappy-looking detectives.

  Vinda looked at Agueda and Hagstrom and said, “Continue with the CCRB records—and while you’re at it, check to see if any of our victims ever made a civilian complaint.”

  A press information officer was holding a media briefing on the mezzanine of One Police Plaza. Vinda edged his way around the crowd, and went inside the press room.

  David Pollack’s bow tie was undone, the collar of his salmon-and-gray shirt was open, and his pea coat was thrown hastily over a nearby typewriter. Its rumpled form reminded Vinda for some reason of one of the corpses he’d seen at the makeshift morgue.

  Pollack sat in front of a computer screen, inputting his follow-up story on last night’s explosion. Three stained Styrofoam cups stood beside the keyboard. Lowering himself onto the edge of the table, Vinda looked down at the grimy butts floating in the cups, and asked, “How come you’re not outside with the rest of the assholes?”

  “Because I don’t waste time listening to that ‘arrest is imminent’ bullshit. Most of those assholes out there are television assholes, and therefore too dumb to realize your press guy is pulling their chain.”

  “And I thought you aspired to be an anchor on the seven-o’clock news.”

  “I do.” He turned and looked at Vinda. “I paid my dues, John, and I’m tired of living like a peon.”

  “So am I. Why don’t we both try a new line of work?”

  “Have you come up with any new leads?” asked Pollack.

  “I’d say that the solvability factors definitely do not justify the allocation of additional manpower.”

  “What you’re telling me is that the Job has decided to use the media to generate external pressure in order to justify assigning a lot of troops.”

  “That’s the way it works when the bosses are really worried. It’s known as the boomerang effect.” Vinda looked around the room. “What can you tell me about Jessica Merrill?”

  “American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. Went out to L.A., where she broke into small parts, playing sultry ladies in nothing movies. Her break came in Mora Flats. Why do you ask?”

  Vinda shrugged. “Don’t really know. She’s getting a lot of free publicity on the backs of my homicide victims.”

  “You can’t seriously think she’s involved in any way?”

  “No, I don’t,” Vinda said, sighing wearily. “I just like to know all the players. I never bought her as a target—but I just know she’s a factor in this somehow.”

  “Want me to check her out with our Arts and Theater guy?”

  “I’d appreciate that, David. And while you’re at it, check out Worthington, the other actor, her friend.”

  “Consider it done.”

  “Find anything in your newspaper morgue?”

  “Not yet.” Pollack turned around and took the backgammon board and dice cup out of his center desk drawer. “Got time for a quick game?”

  Vinda smiled and shook his head with regret. “David, I got no time at all.”

  Riding back upstairs at One Police Plaza, jammed into the corner of the crowded elevator and worrying that he had overlooked something, Vinda overheard a cop announce to a friend, “I’ve got five years on the Job today.”

  Five years, Vinda thought, snatching the vaguely familiar words and running them past his mind’s eye. Where had he heard those words recently? Where? he pondered. Oh, yes, Otto Holman had told them he had sold Semtex to Dinny’O five years ago. Five years? There was somebody else connected with the case who had recently mentioned something that happened five years ago. Who? He tried to remember.

  Getting off on the eleventh floor, Vinda hurried into his office, lifted his desk blotter, and slid out his “squeal envelope,” a white department form containing his cryptic inadmissible and illegal notes on the Holman interrogation. Detectives used to keep their personal notes inside the case folder until a recent court decision made all notes made by an investigating officer subject to defense subpoena. Now detectives squirreled their coded jottings in nonexistent squeal envelopes that never saw the inside of a case folder or a court.

  Vinda slid out a sheet of paper containing his notes made just after the interrogation that never was: “H 5x Semtex = D/O,” he read. Scratching his chin, he wondered what Dinny’O had blown up five years ago. Who the hell else had said something about five years ago to him? He flipped open the case folder, trying to retrieve the vague memory.

  Windowboxes for flowers gave hope of an urban renaissance in spring. Vinda pressed the doorbell and stepped back from the heavy wooden door. A black woman’s polished nails pushed aside the vestibule’s lace curtains, and Vanessa Brown peered out. He had not telephoned ahead; she looked surprised and not particularly happy to see him. She opened the door. Her hair was in long braids. A black wool dress draped her attractive body; she was wearing dark hose but no shoes.

  She led the policeman into the parlor, and turned to face him, her expression asking the question, Now what?

  “Last time we talked, you told me your father was killed in a freak accident five years ago.”

  “What has that to do with my sister’s murder?”

  “What happened to your father?”

  “The gas tank of his car exploded while he was driving on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.”

  “Do you remember the date?”

  “Wednesday, February nineteenth, 1986, at two-sixteen in the afternoon.”

  Vinda jotted down the information on a scrap of paper. “What was your dad’s full name?”

  “James Ellis Lucas. What has this all to do with Mary’s death?”

  “Perhaps nothing. What was your dad’s shield number?”

  “I don’t know that.” She walked over and picked up the photograph of her father on the piano. She held it out in front of her, attempting to see the number of the young patrolman’s shield. “I can’t make it out.” She handed Vinda the frame. He strained to see the number but couldn’t, so he put the picture back. “That’s okay. I can get the number from the Personnel Bureau.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Is it really important?”

  “It might be, yes.”

  “Wait here,” she ordered, and walked out of the room. While he waited, Vinda admired the carefully restored, elaborate ornamentation of the molding. He looked out to the porch and the wicker rocking chair standing empty and somehow forlorn on it. The bookcase under the windows was crammed with books. On the first shelf was a photograph of a little girl and her mother. Both were dressed in their Sunday best. Mary Lucas’s face was glowing with the undiluted happiness of childhood. How different from her last photos, he thought. Hearing movement behind him, Vinda turned.

  “I remembered this was down in the basement,” she said, handing him a dusty plaque.

  The redwood had a gold plate with Lucas’s name, dates of service, commands, and a replica of his shield. Below the shield were two rows of decoration bars that he had earned while a member of the NYPD. A medal was fastened below the bars. Vinda stared at the Maltese cross with the medallion in the center bearing the seal of the City of New York and surrounded by a circular inscription: FOR VALOR POLICE DEPARTMENT. The cross was piped with black enamel surrounding a green enamel field and suspended by a ring from a green watered-silk ribbon. He read the inscription on the reverse side: NEW YORK CITY POLICE. PATROLMAN JAMES ELLIS LUCAS. FOR VALOR, 1979.

  Vinda looked at the daughter. “Do you know the circumstances surrounding your father’s being awarded the Combat Cross?”

  She shook her head. “Dad never talked about his work, never.”

  “Is your mother home?”

  “Upstairs. I must insist you not bother her unless it is absolutely necessary.”

  He looked down at the medal. “I guess I can get what
ever I need from department records.” He thought of the many retirement parties he had attended over the years, recalling the glow of pride on the retirees’ faces as they rushed up out of the audience to accept their plaques. “I won’t miss the Job, but I’ll miss the guys,” was the usual opening to the tearful acceptance speeches. He could not help wondering how many other discarded medals lay forgotten in damp basements.

  TWENTY

  A dusting of snow coated the streets as Vinda drove down police headquarters’ curving driveway. He parked in his allotted space, got out, and walked through the sounds of squealing tires to the door that opened into the cinderblock elevator bank, where he joined other waiting policemen. He was anxious to get upstairs and find out everything he could about the fatal accident involving his first victim’s father. Before leaving the Brown house on South Elliott Place, he had telephoned ahead and told Agueda to check out the CCRB files for any civilian complaints lodged against retired patrolman James Ellis Lucas. He also told Moose to go into the Personnel Data Unit and pull the retired cop’s folder.

  Where was the damn elevator? He checked the time. Five after five. Which meant the evening rush to go home, which meant having to wait longer than usual for the perpetually slow elevators. One by one, cursing policemen peeled away, heading for the door with the illuminated Exit sign.

  Deciding he could use the exercise anyway, Vinda took off his coat, tossed it across his arm, and walked over to the “Wishing Well,” a hollowed-out space partially filled with a winding metal staircase, a place where policemen who were about to sit for promotional exams tossed coins, wishing for luck.

  Going up, Vinda became conscious of the clanging treads ahead of him, and the echoing sounds of indistinct conversations. Exiting on the eleventh floor, fighting to catch his breath, he propped his back up against the brick wall and thought, I’m not as young as I used to be. He grinned sheepishly and realized that clichés are clichés because they’re true.