The Big Fear

by Andrew Case

  The station was spare and quiet and wide open—beyond a front podium, there were twelve prim desks topped with up-to-date terminals, staffed by young cops transferring their handwritten reports to some centralized database. Working the eight-to-four tour at Property, arriving at Harbor Patrol at quarter to five, Mulino hadn’t expected to see Sergeant Sparks manning the fiefdom. But there he was, his collar brass orderly and his sharp jaw crisply shaved. Most precincts have a gate at the front, a clear physical barrier beyond which the rabble cannot go unless summoned. Here at Harbor there was only a blue line painted on the floor. Mulino wasn’t the general public, but he hadn’t exactly been invited.

  “Sergeant, I thought you worked midnights.”

  “They gave me a promotion, how well I handled everything on Monday.”

  The NYPD schedule is broken into three eight-hour shifts. The eight-to-four is reserved for guys who have made their numbers or fixed their partners’ paperwork or generally kissed their supervisor’s ass and put in for daytime so they can get back to Nassau in time for the Yankees game to start. The four-to-twelve is when most of the actual crime happens, when people are off work and the sun is down, but they aren’t asleep yet. It’s for guys who want in on the action and are still looking upward at their next promotion. The midnight tours are for the hard-core meatheads who can’t be trusted not to kill someone or let a new arrest walk out of the precinct. The guys they come across on the twelve-to-eights, it wouldn’t matter that much anyway. Sparks had been dumped on midnights just like he’d been dumped on Harbor, and now he was basking in his move up the ranks.

  “Good for you.”

  “You got some business here at Harbor I can help you with? Property doing on-site inspections now?”

  Sparks couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight, his hair gelled and his shoulders square. Mulino imagined him getting off work, going home to Staten Island, and getting free drinks at his local bar while the girls he went to high school with drew lots to get the chance to marry him. Sergeant by twenty-eight probably means captain by thirty-five, which means by the time his pension kicked in there would be a three-bedroom house in New Dorp and other such luxuries. His chest puffed out and his eyes already on the lieutenant’s exam, Sparks wasn’t unfriendly exactly, but he wasn’t really asking Mulino if he could help him.

  “As a matter of fact I’m here about the shooting.”

  “Not sure I’m supposed to talk to you about an open investigation, Detective.”

  Mulino looked past the sergeant to the aisle of quiet, uniformed officers, each pecking away at his terminal. None of them looked up, but both cops knew they were watching. The corners of a dozen pairs of eyes straining to see who was going to win this particular little pissing match, wondering whether their sergeant would give in to the detective or make him back down. Sparks was right, they all knew that the Patrol Guide instructions were to keep your mouth shut when anything was before IAB, DIMAC, the Inspector General. But they all also knew that the Patrol Guide went out the window when it came to protecting a fellow cop. Even the newbies, though, could see that Sparks and Mulino didn’t consider themselves brothers-in-arms.

  “You came up on the boat after, Sergeant.”

  Sparks looked to the floor. He would play along just enough. “I did hear a gunshot, Detective. I boarded the ship to provide assistance. I didn’t know whether an officer had fired or had been shot. Or both.”

  “You knew Rowson.”

  “He worked out of this precinct. All these guys knew him. Most of them better than I did.”

  The clattering at keyboards slowed for a moment. Cops straining to hear. Mulino felt a cool lonely silence. He had been stripped of his gun when he was sent to Property. He was alone in a precinct with thirteen uniformed officers. He was a fellow cop but to some of them, maybe, he was just the guy who had shot their buddy. And if something happened to him, they would all have each others’ backs.

  “When you came on the scene, Sergeant, you saw Rowson’s gun, didn’t you.”

  Sparks took a tiny step forward. Still at his little podium now, guarding his blue entrance line, he spoke slowly, his blue eyes hard on Mulino. “You know, Detective, I really can’t say. I got up to the deck and the ESU guys and the EMTs were there, and I saw that you were kneeling, and that someone had been shot. But really, I was pretty much in the back of the crowd. I can’t say that I saw anything one way or the other.”

  It was a practiced speech. One that Mulino knew well. He had given it himself at Ramsay’s trial. Sparks knew that. He was throwing it back in his face.

  “The kid’s locker is here?”

  Sparks turned from his roost and walked to the row of lockers on the far wall. The officers kept their noses at their terminals. Mulino wasn’t sure if they were really that devoted to their menial tasks or if they were simply terrified of their sergeant. He knew what it was like to be a junior cop, though, to hope that you could just be invisible while the storm passes by.

  At the lockers, Sparks turned, his eyes fixed on Mulino’s feet, checking to make sure he was behind the blue line. The detective was a civilian to him now. He fished a small key from his pocket and unlatched the cabinet, then reached into a cubbyhole like a magician proving his hat is truly empty.

  “I didn’t see it on the boat, Detective, but he didn’t leave it here. And I’ll be sure to tell the investigators and the evidence guys the same thing.”

  Mulino nodded. As Sparks turned back to the front of the precinct, Mulino scanned the row of rookies. There was one, near the back, trying a little too hard to look like he was working. It was cool in the stationhouse, but the kid had sweat on his temples, was breathing heavier than you’d think you’d need to sitting at a computer. A chubby face, short dark hair, sort of spacey eyes. Mulino looked down to the nameplate. Del Rio. He looked at the face again. The eyes. He thought maybe he remembered him from that night.

  “Officer Del Rio. You came on board the boat after, too, didn’t you? You were out there.”

  The kid gulped and looked up at his sergeant. The glassy eyes clouded over in confusion. Sparks didn’t take his eyes off Mulino while he addressed Del Rio. “Officer, you don’t answer that question or any other questions until you have permission from me to be released from duty.”

  Mulino smiled. “You get promoted up to four-to-twelves along with your sergeant, Officer? You do some exceptional work that night?”

  Sparks had made it back to his perch at the entrance to the precinct and nudged Mulino toward the door without ever touching him. “I am happy to chat with you a little off the record, Detective. I can handle it. But you don’t need to bring my men into this.”

  “I’m sure you can spare Officer Del Rio from his World of Warcraft league or whatever it is you have these guys doing.”

  “That’s going to be all, Detective.”

  “Officer Del Rio, you saw Rowson’s gun, didn’t you? Or are you the one who tossed it off the boat?”

  In retrospect it was a bad idea to walk past Sergeant Sparks, but Mulino wanted an answer from Del Rio before the sergeant could coach him. But before the detective was a foot past the blue line, Sergeant Sparks had grabbed his left arm, twisted it to the side, and flipped and pinned him to the ground. Mulino’s shoulder ached with pain, but he could feel the sergeant easing up on him. Sparks was not going to pour the pressure on. He was a fellow cop, after all. The sergeant loosened his grip and Mulino snapped his arm free, twisted himself out and sprang to his feet. In the moment, he could always summon the energy back, if it came to it.

  He stared down the sergeant, ready to have it out. Mulino could see the recognition in Sparks’s face, could see that he knew Mulino was faster and stronger than he looked. That Mulino had probably been on the force long enough to have gotten in a couple of scraps with other cops, and knew how these things went. Mulino knew that Sparks didn’t want to risk
losing a fistfight on the floor of his own command.

  But Mulino knew something else as well. He was a detective under investigation. He didn’t have his weapon. He wasn’t supposed to be in this precinct at all. If it came down to it, an incident report showing that he’d even been here could be the end of his pension, however the shooting case went down. He backed off behind the blue line. The standoff was over. He nodded to Sparks.

  “Thanks for talking to me, Sergeant. I appreciate it. And Officer Del Rio, you think that over. I’m sure someone else will be talking to you soon enough.”

  “Goodbye, Detective.”

  Officer Joey Del Rio looked down at his computer. Mulino watched a single drop of sweat spill out onto his keyboard. He backed out of the precinct, his eyes locked on the sergeant’s the whole way.

  Standing at the lip of the curb overhanging the waterfront, Leonard watched the detective amble up the dock toward the stairs. Mulino had been in and out of the precinct in ten minutes. Still, that was plenty of time to cook up a story with Sparks. No one really got a rip for talking to another cop during a shooting investigation: you weren’t supposed to do it, but with the forty-eight hour rule and the tight bonds of blue, there was no way to stop them. And if you forwarded a case to the DA saying you couldn’t find evidence of a bad shooting but you could show that the guys had spoken to each other, it wasn’t as though they were going to bring charges for witness tampering.

  But on another level, it didn’t make that much sense. It wasn’t Mulino’s story that was a problem, and Sparks hadn’t shown up on the deck until after the shooting. Mulino’s problem was the evidence. Mulino’s problem was that he’d said that Brian Rowson had a gun, and as Leonard had learned when the full packet had come in just after lunch, no gun had been recovered. It had been enough to send Leonard into the field, and watching Mulino hail a car service on Gold Street had been enough for him to try an impromptu stakeout.

  Mulino stopped at the base of the rickety staircase. Leonard ducked back behind the railing. He could explain himself if he had to, but better just to leave. There was nothing more to see, just a middle-aged man struggling up a couple of flights of stairs. Whatever he had wanted to see had gone on inside the precinct. A search for the missing gun. A hunt for a suitable replacement. The dead cop was already dead. The living cop was still a brother. If the sergeant still had Mulino’s back, then the next day Leonard would get a fax with a statement about seeing the gun, how it slipped into the water. Or better yet the gun would appear itself.

  If nothing came from the precinct though, even after an in-person from the detective, then that meant that they didn’t have his back. That they didn’t see him as worth protecting. And that was its own kind of mystery. Leonard slipped into the car he had borrowed for the night from the city, lurched forward into the wicked heat, and turned toward home.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  SHORTS

  The numbers streamed past on the terminal, blinking and changing faster than Veronica Dean could keep track of them. Mineral deposits in Asia, recycling plants in New Jersey, a reinsurance company in the City of London. Ten years ago she had kept a tight watch on a few sectors, but as things had gone to hell and back she needed to keep both eyes open. Once upon a time she’d actually gone out to see the companies. Visiting gold mines in Indonesia, impressing the hardened prospectors by not flinching when she was bitten by a bug the size of a sparrow. Standing shin-deep in mud and whipping out a flip phone to tell New York that the reported core samples were all a fraud, that the operation itself was one big swindle, and thereby getting out of the scandal before any of the big investors. Not to mention that she’d made it back to the airport alive after telling the man with a machete that she was on to him and that her investors would be pulling their funding that very day. She was remembering it wrong, maybe. The mud couldn’t have been much past her ankles. Still, nowadays she wouldn’t even float down to the sidewalks for lunch; the days were spent pacing the pristine carpet and looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows from Wall Street to the two bridges and Brooklyn beyond. A trace of mud was unthinkable.

  She had sensed something about the woman who had looked in this morning. Dull. Severe. Some sort of prosecutor or regulator or lawyer coming by to slap Eliot very gently on the wrist and pick up complimentary tickets to the opera, no doubt. There had been enough of them through the oak office over the past few years. Enough at first that Veronica had dared to hope. That maybe someone would find out and then the whole mess would be over. She would be able to speak up. But each one left with a smile and a backslap, leaving Veronica locked down in her own little terror. Speaking up would only make it worse.

  Veronica never went into the field any more. She visited her companies over the wires, occasionally calling in reinforcements on the ground, eager apprentices that someday hoped to wield her power. They would fly off to remote mines and villages to stomp around and report back on the facts behind the rumors of foreign speculators. Even these kids had it easier than she did; they could use their digital toys to call in a videoconference at a moment’s notice. When she had hit the trails it had been without 3G, without a satellite phone, just her and the toothy man who told her that he had found real gold and dared her to call him a liar.

  She was watching one number as it flashed by. Every few seconds a little bit lower. She would have to time it just right. From twenty-two to eighteen, to seventeen, to fourteen. The panic was under way. Panic was something that Veronica understood. Panic was different than fear. Fear would gnaw slowly, cloud your judgment, lead you to do something you knew you shouldn’t. Panic was clear and straightforward and meaningful.

  Together, all of the prices flowed into unfathomable noise. But if you could pull out one stream of numbers, keyed to one price, and you knew that price’s final destination, that was when everything was worth it. She had been watching the news for the past two years as much as anyone. She knew that all was not right with the newly reborn metropolis. It was easy to point to a host of villains—and Veronica knew that as a speculator on the eighteenth story of a Wall Street office, she was everyone’s idea of a villain in the new regime. She thought she was part of the solution, or that she could be, if she could come out from underneath the fear. If only someone could give her a chance to explain. The number dipped again.

  Little downfalls might be terribly sad for the people involved with them, but for Veronica they were just another opportunity to turn a quick profit. The toothy man with the machete, when his gold mining fraud had been exposed, had jumped out of a helicopter as it surveyed his ruined fortune from a height of eight hundred feet. It wasn’t Veronica who’d killed him, she reasoned. She had only let a gullible world know that he had been lying. His own deceit had been his cause of death.

  The numbers were dropping further. Twelve, then a huge jump to nine. At seven and a half, it was almost down to a third of the price it had been less than an hour ago. Veronica smiled and leaned into her terminal. There would never be mud on her shoes again. It was time to make some money.

  She didn’t hear him come into her office. You never do. Eliot’s soft pale face barely registered. He always floated in silently, awash in expensive clothing and designer accessories, taking in the world he had built.

  “All right.”

  He was holding a thin vinyl binder, crisp tabs taunting her from it. It looked unusual on him. She had never seen him touch a computer or a telephone. The dull facts of the tabs, the binder, the paper, jarred against his gentle fingers.

  “When you have a moment, I’d like to talk to you about some of these.”

  She looked up. She knew it was a mistake as soon as she’d done it. He had marked up the pages. With a pen, maybe even the calligraphic one he kept on his desk that looked ceremonial. She couldn’t tell anything from the markings but she turned her face back to the computer as quickly as she could, hoping he hadn’t noticed her fear. This is h
ow they do it. They find a fall guy. Nothing to see here, just another corpse out the window. So if you have to, take action first. Hit back before they even hit you. It wasn’t so much about what Eliot knew about her, but what she knew about Eliot.

  But don’t give any indication. She squinted at her machine, feigning confusion. “Sure. I’m busy until close-of-market on this, but tomorrow morning?”

  “That would be fine.” He tucked the binder under his sleeve and pirouetted back toward his office, shutting out the howl of the modern machines that worked so hard to bring him so much.

  Veronica noticed a single pulse of sweat wriggling down her temple, past her cheekbone and on to her chin. She didn’t deserve to be afraid. She had done everything right. No one she had met in the corridors of power was as frightening as the man she had stood down in the mud eight years ago. But deserve it or not, she was afraid.

  And she knew why too. She carried all the fear because she was carrying all the risk. It had started so simply, it had been so easy, it had gone so well. But it’s the easy ones that hook you. The first one is always free. And before you know how deep you are into it, you cannot turn around.

  The droplet skidded off of her chin and onto her desk. It seemed out of place in the dull meaningless office. Too much life. Veronica had never had so much as a plant on the windowsill or a photograph of a pet. The office was angular and anonymous and if she didn’t come in one day, they wouldn’t need to change anything more than the name on her door. And that day was coming, one way or the other. She knew that much, as her eyes locked in on the machine.