Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  “What did you say to them?” Vinda asked.

  “I asked them if cops had to pay.”

  The banquet hall was heavily tainted by cigarette smoke. Long rows of collapsible tables stretched the full length of the hall, and were smothered with a conspicuous display of food. Only a few people were sitting at the tables; most of them stood around in the aisles, talking and drinking. A six-piece band played off-key jazz as corpulent men and women lurched clumsily around the dance floor.

  “What kind of a restaurant is this?” Vinda asked.

  “All you can eat and drink for forty bucks paid in advance. Reservations definitely necessary. They won’t sit down to eat until after midnight; the entrees aren’t served until around two in the morning, and it ain’t Lean Cuisine.”

  “Not too good for the digestion.”

  “Tell me about it,” Petrovich said, patting his budding stomach.

  They went over and stood to the side of the bandstand, the Samovar cop scanning the room. “Lou, see the three guys across the hall talking, a little to the left of the fire exit?”

  “I see them.”

  “They’re the mailmen. If anyone wants to guarantee delivery of anything inside the Soviet Union, they go through one of them. Now look to the right of the mailmen. The baldheaded guy in the bad-fitting blue serge.”

  “I got him.”

  “He’s Konstantin Turgenev. Used to be a top craniofacial reconstruction surgeon until arthritis and Parkinson’s disease bit him in the ass.”

  “Does he see us?”

  “He’s pretending we’re not here, but he sees us all right. We’ll wait here until he makes his move,” Petrovich said, going over to the table and pouring two glasses of vodka.

  Turgenev continued talking to the man he was with, seemingly unaware of the policemen’s presence.

  Petrovich sipped his drink. “Turgenev loves to talk about his medical talent, so give him his head and let him blab. Turn him off when you have to, or else he’ll go on all night, but cut him a little slack.”

  The policemen waited, sipping their drinks. Petrovich poured himself another, and started singing something in Russian. Vinda was no linguist, but the cop in him figured the song to be reasonably obscene.

  Vinda looked at him and muttered, “You better go slow with the firewater.”

  Turgenev laughed and headed for the front of the hall. He sat down at one of the empty tables with his back to the drapes, giving him a clear view of the entire room.

  “Showtime,” Petrovich whispered when Vinda jolted him. “I’ll wait here.”

  Vinda picked up a bottle of vodka and two glasses and walked down the aisle, edging around and through clusters of people. Coming up to the surgeon, he scraped back a chair and sat. Turgenev wore a ghastly wolfish grin. “Do you speak Russian?”

  “No,” Vinda said, and poured two glasses of vodka, putting one of them down in front of the doctor.

  Turgenev clamped the glass between his arthritically deformed hands, hands that used to lovingly clasp medical instruments, now crippled, uneven, useless fingers barely capable of working a doorknob. He brought the glass up to his mouth and drank.

  Vinda watched him, saw him looking at him, and picked up his glass and drank. Pushing platters of food aside, Vinda rested his elbows on the table. Then he leaned in close to Turgenev and said, “I understand you’re a plastic surgeon.”

  He scoffed. “I was a god, that is what I was, until this.” He held out a deformed hand. “Do you know what I used to do?”

  Sipping vodka, Vinda said, “No, I don’t.”

  “I used to create life. I used to take grotesque people, people who had spent their entire lives in hideous isolation, sexually repressed nomads who had never known the joys of another person’s body. I would give them new faces and new lives. I was a god.” He drank more vodka.

  Vinda said, “Your patients must have been grateful.”

  “Grateful! They were more than grateful. I saved a woman from suicide. She had fibrous dysplasia, which is a bony deformity of the forehead and eyes. The bone becomes fibrous, and turns the features into that of a gargoyle. This woman had spent her entire life hiding from the world. She was twenty-six when she came to me.” He held up his hands. “These, these, turned her into a beautiful woman, and gave her a new life. She became an unrelenting sexual dynamo. There was nothing that she would not do for me, nothing.”

  A skeptical smile crossed Vinda’s mouth.

  Turgenev saw, and said, “Yes, she and a lot of other women begged me to fuck them. They wanted to thank me with pleasure. But I never once fucked a patient. And do you know why? Not out of any sense of propriety or medical ethics, I assure you. I didn’t do it to any of them because they all worshipped me, and it is far better to be a god than a moaning, grunting, sweaty human who loses his godliness when he ruts like an animal.”

  Vinda drank more vodka. He put his glass down, took out the picture of Griffin, and set it down on the table, propping it up against bottles, facing Turgenev. “Did you make him handsome?”

  That grin again. “My money?”

  “You’ll have it Monday morning.”

  “Then come back Monday morning.”

  Vinda drank, put the glass down. “I need the information now. Our word is good, Doctor.”

  Turgenev looked across the hall at the Samovar Squad cop, Petrovich. He made a quick jerk of his head and said, “Yes, you have always lived up to your word.” He put his hands down on his lap as if suddenly ashamed of them. “He was sent to me by the daughter of a friend who had to vouch for him.”

  “Jessica Ramenki?”

  “Yes. He wanted me to make him a pair of real fangs.” He saw Vinda’s surprise and said, “I am also a dentist. Don’t be surprised by that. Many plastic surgeons start out as dentists. Reconstructive surgery was invented by a dentist during World War One. Anyway, I told him that I could make them for him, but that his teeth were too badly bucked. He then asked me if I could change his appearance, and I told him that I could.”

  “Didn’t you realize that those fangs were deadly weapons?”

  “He told me he needed them for a theatrical production.”

  “A theatrical production, my ass.”

  The awful grin came over Turgenev’s face. “Don’t you want to know how I changed his face?”

  “Sure, tell me.”

  “I did his ears first. After making an incision behind the ear, I opened up the helix and, with a burr, scooped out the excess cartilage. It is the cartilage that blocks the flow of blood, forming the cauliflower. After I unroofed the cartilage, I reshaped the ear and redraped the skin. I saved the excess and used it on his nose. I opened up his nose and reshaped the tip.”

  He drank more vodka. “Then I made an incision across his mouth and, using mini-plates and screws set into the bone, elevated his upper jaw, setting back the anterior segment of his teeth six millimeters. In the process he lost two of his teeth, but the net benefit was that he also lost his ugly smile.

  “Now, with the upper jaw impacted superiorly, his lower jaw automatically came forward. I then had to make an incision behind his lower lip and cut away a piece of the small chin bone in such a way as to allow the smaller portion to be advanced one centimeter. And your friend had a new face.”

  Vinda looked at Turgenev with a mixture of awe and anger. He opened the folder he had brought with him, and took out several photographs. Holding them up so that Turgenev could see them, Vinda said, “Tell me when to stop,” and began showing them to him, one at a time.

  Excitement rushed through Vinda as the doctor pointed his deformed hand and said, “Stop. That is the man with my face.”

  Vinda felt a sense of anticlimax as the old man eagerly grabbed the publicity still of a smiling Michael Worthington.

  The bells of Saint Andrews pealed out across Police Plaza as bent-over parishioners fought blustery wind to make Sunday morning’s nine-fifteen mass.

  On the fourteenth
floor of police headquarters, a well-dressed but gaunt police commissioner looked out from behind his desk at Vinda, Inspector Acevedo, and the deputy commissioner of legal matters, Israel Sabba.

  “We hit Worthington’s apartment around one this morning,” Vinda said. “He was gone. I have the building under surveillance on the chance he’ll return.”

  The DCLM leaned over to Vinda. “You know, of course, Lieutenant, that you lacked reasonable cause to conduct a warrantless break-in of Worthington’s home?”

  Vinda glared at Sabba. “I was in close pursuit.”

  The DCLM countered, “Close pursuit, Lieutenant, is unrelenting continuous pursuit immediately after the commission of a crime or escape.”

  Vinda had an urge to yank out the clumps of nose hairs jutting from the DCLM’s nostrils.

  “I want this guy stopped, and I don’t care what it takes to do it,” Leventhal said. “Forget these legal hangups. We have a total maniac running around out there.”

  “Sir,” Sabba said, “I was only trying to point out that if Worthington should be the subject of an illegal arrest, he’ll walk in court.”

  Vinda said, “Bullshit! He’s not going to walk anywhere except into a looney bin.”

  Acevedo asked, “Where do we now stand, John?”

  “Worthington is among the missing, and we don’t know if he went for a drive in the country or to visit friends, or if he knows we’re looking for him,” Vinda said. “He telephoned me Friday night and told me he’s going to surrender Monday morning. The point is, I don’t want to unnecessarily drive this guy underground.”

  “You’re saying we don’t go public, and wait,” the PC said.

  “Yes. Until tomorrow morning. I not only want him in custody, I also want his supply of explosives. I get very nervous when I think of how much Semtex and God knows what else he’s got hidden somewhere in town.”

  “Have you applied for a search warrant for his apartment?” the PC asked.

  “Not yet. I have the place staked out, but I don’t want to panic him. I’ll get the warrant tomorrow if he doesn’t show in the morning,” Vinda said.

  “Let’s all say a prayer he comes in Monday,” Sam Leventhal said. The soft sound of a church bell crept into the tension-filled room. “But I don’t believe he will,” Leventhal said gloomily.

  The Chelsea Bayou featured blackened redfish on its Sunday brunch menu. A Dixieland band was at full throttle when Vinda and Agueda entered the Seventh Avenue restaurant late Sunday afternoon. Vinda had cut the team loose around two, telling them, “I’ll see you all in the ayem.”

  Agueda had loitered behind, doing busywork, mustering the courage to say, “If you’re not doing anything this afternoon, I’ll spring for brunch.”

  She caught him off guard; he still felt uncomfortable about the other afternoon, but he quickly decided that it would be better to clear the air between them. “That would be nice, Adriene, but the tab is mine.”

  During the drive to the restaurant they chatted amiably about the case, the latest scuttlebutt in the Job, both of them careful to avoid any mention of what was happening between them. Once seated, they both ordered Bloody Marys, and turned their attention to the music coming from the tiny bandstand.

  Their drinks came; she began to stir hers with the celery stick jutting out of her glass; he kept his eyes fixed on the band. The silence between them grew until it hung over them like a gloomy sentence of death.

  Minutes passed. Without looking at her, he said, “I’m sorry about the other day.”

  She took his head in her hands and turned his face to hers. “John, you’re not an invalid. You need to have an emotional life. You need to make love to somebody. If not with me, then with somebody else.”

  “Every time I think about you, or we’re together, I feel unfaithful. I can’t help it, it’s the way I am. Don’t waste your time with me, Adriene, you could end up being the queen of leftovers.”

  She rankled. “Don’t flatter yourself, John Vinda. I haven’t been exactly waiting for you all these years.”

  “I’m sorry. That was not a nice thing to say. Toward the end, Jean used to tell me to live in the present when she was gone. I wish I could.”

  She squeezed his hand. “Let’s order.”

  Late Sunday night, with most of police headquarters in darkness, and Madison Street deserted, a bus drove into Park Row. The policeman assigned to the guardhouse busied himself by studying flash cards for the forthcoming sergeant’s examination.

  Worthington sat behind the wheel of the rented black sedan he had parked under the Brooklyn Bridge’s colonnade, with an unobstructed view of Madison Street and the guardhouse. He had been there for ninety minutes, and during that time not one car had driven down into the garage. He switched on the headlights and pulled out into Madison Street.

  Slowing the car as he drove up onto the curb cut, he braked to a stop in front of the guardhouse, rolled down his window, and was about to hold up his bogus credentials when the policeman inside looked out at him, and waved him down into the garage.

  Coming off the ramp, Worthington drove past the dispatcher’s cage; the man inside was watching television. He drove into an empty space and parked. Consulting the drawing he had made on tracing paper in the Department of Buildings, he got out of the car, taking his knapsack with him. As he looked around at the sweep of cars, he heard the thunderous hooves of horses and a bugle sounding the charge coming from the dispatcher’s office, but he saw no one, and headed for the steel door with the glowing Exit sign.

  He hurried down the staircase, exiting into a long empty corridor lined on both sides by blue doors. Constantly consulting his drawing, he moved along the hall. When he came to the door he wanted, he tried the knob, found it unlocked, and quickly slipped inside.

  Two boilers filled most of the room; a jumble of chalk-white pipes snaked across the ceiling, sharing the space with wide, shiny ducts. Large electrical switch cabinets were fixed to the walls. In the center of the cavity, spread out around the boilers, eight steel girders rose vertically up from the bedrock below and disappeared into the ceiling, part of the building’s support system that ran through the entire structure. He heard the hiss of escaping steam.

  After looking around and seeing no one, he went over to the first girder, removed a charge from his knapsack, and saddled it around the column, with triangles of Semtex fastened on both sides of the girder. He primed the detonator at the apex of the charge, and set the twenty-four-hour timer for 0800. Examining his handiwork, he smiled. Shaping the plastic explosive into isosceles triangles and priming them at the apex would direct the energy of the explosion inward, crushing the steel and causing the building to cave in on itself.

  He took out the hand-painted sign he had made at home, and taped it around the column, hiding the charge. It read, DO NOT REMOVE. Policemen obey orders. Even to the death, he thought, walking over to the next girder.

  THIRTY-ONE

  A ragtag line of men began assembling outside the Third Street Shelter shortly before seven o’clock Monday morning. The doors would open soon, and breakfast, consisting of coffee, American cheese on white bread, and oatmeal, would be served.

  Across the street from the shelter, on the fourth floor of a five-story walk-up, Jessica Merrill rose up out of the bathtub and began toweling herself. Outside, in the apartment’s minuscule kitchen, Laura Steward made breakfast.

  Fifteen minutes later, Jessica, dressed in jeans and a sweater, came out of the bathroom. Laura was pouring coffee.

  “Perfect timing,” Laura said, and asked, “Must you leave?”

  “Afraid so. I’m flying to Saint Barts this morning. I must get away. My life is closing in around me, suffocating me. I need to be alone, someplace where it’s warm.”

  “I understand.”

  They sat at the tiny table next to the window, sipping coffee and staring down at the zombie-eyed men shuffling into the shelter.

  “Pour souls,” Jessica said.


  “Sometimes I dream that I’m homeless, that I haven’t worked in a year, and have to choose between becoming a hooker or scavenging garbage cans for food.”

  “And what do you choose?” Jessica asked, breaking off part of a croissant.

  “The garbage cans.”

  Holding her cup up to her mouth, Laura asked, “Did you ever speak to your producer about that part for me?”

  “He’s agreed to test you.”

  “Oh, Jessica.” Laura put her cup down and leaned over and gave Jessica a hug of gratitude. “Thank you, dear friend, thank you.”

  “When I get back, we’ll start rehearsing you for the test. I’ll get you ready.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me last night?” Laura asked with a smile.

  Jessica looked slyly around at the door to the bedroom. “You didn’t give me time.”

  Vinda watched the second hand sweeping around the face of the wall clock. Hagstrom sipped tea. Moose was reading a copy of Audubon magazine, and Agueda was working the New York Times crossword puzzle, occasionally looking up to glance over at Vinda. Cleaning his nails with a silver penknife, Marsella announced, “I don’t trust this hump to show. Why is this guy so insistent that we all be here at eight?”

  “He wants to surrender,” Moose said, “and he’s afraid we’ll whack ’im if we catch him out in the street.”

  “Bullshit. Psychos like him don’t surrender. They go on doing their thing until we corner them, and even then they don’t give up. They go out of the picture in a blaze of psychotic conflagration.”

  Everyone looked at Marsella. Agueda whistled; Hagstrom said, “Psychotic conflagration? Very good, Tony.”

  “You know what I mean,” Marsella said, cleaning the blade on the edge of the desk.

  At seven-thirty that morning, Andy Fowler walked into the boiler room of police headquarters and heard the familiar sounds of his domain. Entering his small office, he switched on the desktop radio to 1010 WINS to further reassure himself that all was as it should be in his world. He opened his locker and changed into his blue workshirt and trousers. Sitting at his cluttered desk, he paged through the morning paper to the sports section, and peeled the plastic lid off his coffee container. An announcement came over the building’s loudspeaker system, breaking his concentration on the list of the day’s races. Reaching up, he switched off the speaker and returned to the sports section. After making his selection, he picked up the telephone and called the building’s bookmaker in the Printing Section.