I pay for my food and leave. When I get back to my shit-box apartment, I take a bottle of bourbon from the cupboard and sit looking at it until the clock on City Hall strikes twelve. But I do not take a drink.
I am in bed by twelve-fifteen. The nightmares don’t normally come until around three, when the whole world is silent. Tonight they might be about Bobbie Hopgood as well as little Jeannie Quail.
14
It is the morning after my first dream – my first nightmare – about Bobbie Hopgood, a child with a man’s body, who I didn’t even know existed two days ago.
My partner and I are in the squad room. We are surrounded by other cops. There are khakis typing out thick reports, detectives talking to possible suspects, uniforms hastily swallowing down a cup of coffee before setting out to investigate the latest break-in. The overall confusion is about average for this time of day, which puts it somewhere between a riot at a heavy metal concert and the aftermath of a nuclear explosion.
Williams and I are both sitting at my desk, so close together that our knees are touching. This isn’t a come-on from either of us. We need to talk, and because we don’t know exactly which of our fellow officers are the Chief’s snitches, we want to do it quietly.
“I figure Ringman’s going to take us off the case real soon now,” I tell my partner.
“Why?”
“Because the way his mind works is, if he’s got enough evidence to charge Bobbie, then he’s got enough to convict him. So what he really doesn’t need right now is a couple of smart-ass detectives coming up with fresh evidence which points the finger somewhere else.”
“But the DNA—”
“What about it?”
“That’s going to prove that Bobbie isn’t guilty.”
“Then it won’t ever get to court. It’ll either get lost, or else the Mayor will make sure Judge Hanson rules it inadmissible.”
Williams licks her lips, like they’ve suddenly gone dry.
“I’m thirsty,” she says. “Want some water?”
“Sure.”
She walks across to the water cooler. Today she is wearing a claret dress which sets off her blonde hair. Like everything else she wears to work, it hides her reputedly sensational legs, but it is far more feminine – more form-hugging – than anything I’ve ever seen her in before.
“Hey, Williams,” some guy calls out, “anybody ever tell you that you got really great buns?”
I look in the direction of the voice. It is Duffy, one of the uniformed men. He is a big guy – round about 6ft 4in – and most of the other men talk about him like he’s the station super-stud. Right now, he’s sitting on the edge of his desk, his legs swinging, a smirk on his face. He thinks he looks real cool, and his comment to Williams is loud enough for half the Squad Room to hear.
Williams goes over to the cooler, and fills two cups.
“I mean it about your buns, Williams,” Duffy persists. “Why don’t you and me get together some night?”
This kind of thing is nothing new to my partner. There are only a few women cops in the Department, and Williams – as the only one in plain clothes – has had to take more hassle than most. I remember the Playboy centerfold, with her head pasted over the model’s, which some clown pinned to the notice board. I think of the rubber, stretched till it would fit a bull elephant, which another caring brother officer kindly left on her desk. And there has probably been a lot more shit I don’t even know about.
The Police Handbook says that all such cases of sexual harassment must be reported to the commanding officer, but since the commanding officer, in this instance, is Ringman, I guess that Williams has decided to simply try and ignore it, like she is doing now.
Duffy has brought about a miracle. For the first time in living memory, the Squad Rom has fallen silent. No typewriters click, no questions are being asked. Most of the male officers have smiles on their faces. The few women in the room are trying to pretend they’re invisible.
“What’s the matter?” Duffy asks. “You a dyke?”
“Lay off her, Duffy,” I shout.
Duffy swings around to face me, annoyed at losing the spotlight for even a second.
“You got a problem with this, Lieutenant?” he demands. “She puttin’ out for you or somethin’?”
I feel my fists clench, and I stand up.
“Let’s you and me go for a walk, Duffy,” I say. “See if can find somewhere we can discuss this like gentlemen.”
“It’s okay, Lieutenant, I can handle this,” Williams says, and while her expression lets me know that she appreciates what I’m trying to do, it also warns me that she will not welcome any interference.
She turns back to Duffy. “Time you and me had a talk, honey,” she tells him.
“Whenever you’re ready, honey,” Duffy replies.
Williams places the two cups of water on the desk closest to her. She looks down at them, and frowns slightly, as if the arrangement is not pleasing. She moves one cup slightly to the right, nods, and then swings round and heads for where Duffy is sitting.
Duffy’s shit-kicker grin has grown so wide it’s about set to crack his face in two. Jesus, but he feels good. He’s the first guy in the entire building to ever get any kind of reaction out of Williams, and that makes him about as big a star as if he was playing Vegas.
Williams reaches Duffy’s desk and stands in front of it – legs spread, arms akimbo, like she was in some kind of Bette Davis lookalike contest.
“You wanted to know if I’m a dyke?” she asks. “Well, the answer’s no. I like men. Real men! Are you a real man, Duffy? Think you could keep me happy in the sack?”
“Sure I could. Any time, any place, anyhow.”
“Thing is, I’ve had so many disappointments in the past that this time I really wanna make sure.” Williams lets her eyes drop to the space between Duffy’s legs. “You see, before we get down to the serious business, I gotta make sure you’re well hung. Are you, Duffy? Are you well hung?”
Duffy knows he has lost the initiative, but he’s not quite sure how – or what is coming next.
He shifts uncomfortably on his desk top. “I … uh …” he begins.
“Do I got to spell it out for you?” Williams asks. “Just how big are your balls?”
“Come on, Williams,” Duffy says, his grin now only a distant memory. “There’s people listening, you know.”
“I just want a rough idea,” Williams purrs. “Are they bigger than nickels? Smaller than cantaloupes?”
Duffy has turned a bright red, and though his mouth flops open, no words come out.
“Let’s see for ourselves,” Williams says.
Her hand shoots between his legs, and forms a fist around his scrotum. Duffy’s face registers first surprise, and then pain. He starts to lift his arms to break himself free, but then Williams gives his balls a warning squeeze, and he decides it would be safer not to struggle.
“Are you listening to me, numb-nuts?” Williams asks.
Teeth clenched, Duffy nods his head. From his expression, I wouldn’t say his nuts were numb yet – but it’s only a matter of time.
I look around the Squad Room. Most of the other male officers are hardly breathing, like they had their own family jewels in a vice. The female cops, on the other hand, are starting to have a good time.
“You ever heard of sexual harassment, you dumb shithead?” Williams asks Duffy.
“I … ugh … yeah,” Duffy gasps.
“I am a victim of your sexual harassment,” Williams tells him. “It could go down on your record. Did you know that?”
“Mmmph,” Duffy says, which probably means yes, because he is in no position to argue with her.
“Next time you speak to me like that, they’ll have to write in your file that you can sing soprano.”
Williams releases her grip, retrieves the cups of water and starts to walk back to my desk.
Duffy hasn’t moved. In fact, he looks as if he is wondering whether h
e will ever move again. Or want to.
The male cops now have two choices. They can look on Duffy as their representative – like they were doing until about thirty seconds ago – in which case they’ve all just suffered a humiliating defeat. Or they can treat him as some kind of aberration who really has nothing to do with them.
No contest!
“Just how big are your balls, Duffy?” one of them calls out in a high-pitched voice that is supposed to sound like Williams’.
“Bigger than nickels? Smaller than cantaloupes?” another one shouts.
And then almost every man in the room is suddenly whistling, stamping his feet or banging his hand on his desk.
Almost unnoticed by the Duffy-baiters, Williams has reached my desk.
“Way to go, Sergeant,” I say. “To hell with the rule book.”
She puts the cups down on my desk and looks up at me. Now that she is no longer on show, her face is pale and strained.
“God, I hate this place sometimes,” she says.
“Want to get out of here for a while?”
She smiles gratefully. “That would be good.”
15
Williams and I cruise around for maybe half an hour, with neither of us saying very much, and then we pull into the diner on Lee called Lucy’s Eaterie. We take a table by the window and place our order with a waitress who looks like she would rather chew her own leg off than serve us.
When she returns with our order, I almost wish she hadn’t. The coffee could have been dredged straight from the river, and my Danish tastes like it was baked by Hamlet’s mother – on one of her bad days. But the joint does have one big advantage after what has just happened in the Squad Room – it is not a place which is ever used by other cops.
I am just trying to persuade myself that the pastry I am eating does not taste of re-cycled cardboard when Williams says: “There’s a woman over there looking at you.”
The woman my partner has spotted is at the other end of the diner, near the counter. She is a pretty brunette with a button nose. She has deep green eyes, and they are not so much watching me as fixing me, so that I get the feeling that if this was a science fiction movie, I’d already have started turning brown at the edges.
“Excuse me a minute,” I say.
I walk across to the brunette’s table, and sit down uninvited. I gaze at her, and she gazes back. She is looking much better than the last time I saw her, six months ago. The whites of her eyes are clear, her hands are only shaking a little and her fingernails are less jagged than they used to be.
Maybe she’s stopped popping Valium with her cereal.
Or maybe she doesn’t even need pills, now she no longer has to face a Polish-American husband across the breakfast table.
“Hello, Joanna,” I say. “How are things going?”
“Pretty good,” my wife replies. “Yeah, pretty damn good.” She turns away from me and examines Williams. “New girlfriend?” she asks. “Sure didn’t take you long.”
“She’s my partner.”
“Pretty flashy dresser for a cop. She pretending to be a hooker? You two working a john-entrapment scam?”
“No, we’re not.”
Joanne clicks her fingers like she’s suddenly remembered something.
“Of course you’re not,” she says. “You’re far too important to be working vice. I saw on television last night. You’re the big hero who arrested Bobbie Hopgood, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to fight you, Joanna,” I say. “I just came over to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”
My wife’s eyes have narrowed, like they always do when she’s thinking of a new way to get under my skin.
“Have you seen the New York Review of Books this week?” she asks.
She never read it when we were together, but now, it seems, she does.
“I don’t subscribe anymore,” I say. “It doesn’t really interest me—”
“There’s an article on a new writer, just out of college,” she interrupts. “It says that his first book is absolutely brilliant. The thing is, Mike, it isn’t necessarily his first book at all, is it?”
“Isn’t it?” I ask, though I know what’s coming.
“No, because maybe he’s one of those writers who hasn’t got the balls to write a second one – which will make it his only book.”
I find my thoughts drifting unwillingly back, to that morning, just under a year ago, when we got the letter from the hospital.
Joanne had read it first, and then silently handed it to me.
She’d maintained her silence while she watched me read it. Then, when it was clear I’d understood what the gynecologist had written, she’d said, “You blame me, don’t you?”
“No, of course not,” I’d replied – moving towards her, planning to hold her in my arms and comfort her.
She’d taken a step back, and held her hands out, palms towards me, to tell me that any contact wouldn’t be welcome.
“Why don’t you blame me?” she’d demanded.
“Because it’s not your fault.”
“Then whose fault is it?”
“Nobody’s.”
“You’re so fucking perfect, aren’t you’” she’d screamed. “Harrisburg’s answer to gentle Jesus!”
“Joanne—”
“Don’t you see that if you’d just blame me a little bit, I wouldn’t have to blame myself quite so much?”
I could have lied to her, but I’d never have carried it off with conviction, and so I said nothing.
We broke up a couple of months later, but that’s only a calendar calculation, because the real break-up had already happened. I don’t pretend to understand her logic, but then I’m not a woman who’s been told she can’t fulfill the function that most of society insists she was born for – so I’m in no position to judge. All I do know is that the moment she’d read that letter she started to hate me – and every time I’ve seen her since, the hatred seems to have grown.
She has not finished yet. There is still, she thinks, a little blood left to draw.
“Yeah, maybe in ten years’ time, this brilliant young guy won’t even think of himself as a writer at all,” she says. “Maybe he’ll think of himself as a garbage collector – or a cop.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a cop,” I say softly.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a garbage collector – if that’s all you can do.”
I get up.
“I have to go,” I say. “Listen, if there’s anything you need … any way that I can be of help …”
“Just keep the checks coming, Kaleta,” she says. “That’s all I want from you.”
Plus the occasional pound of flesh, I think, as I make my way back to Williams.
I do some rapid damage assessment. My heart is beating at its normal rate. My breathing is regular. My face, I’m fairly sure, is almost a stress-free zone. And I do not feel the urge to rush out to the nearest bar, and get smashed out of my skull.
Yeah, the meeting could have gone worse for me.
They usually do.
Williams is still gazing intently out of the window onto Lee. She seems completely absorbed with the scene on the street, but when I tap her on the shoulder she doesn’t jump – not even a little – so I know she has been faking it. At the other end of the diner, Joanne calls loudly for her check.
“Your wife?” Williams asks.
“Brilliant,” I say. “You should be a detective.”
I have set the tone, and according to the unwritten rules of partnership, Williams should now bounce back with another joke.
She doesn’t.
“You must really have loved her a lot, once upon a time,” she says.
“Oh yeah, smart guy? How d’ya know that?”
Another chance to reduce the conversation to a superficial level, and yet my partner blows it again.
“If you hadn’t really loved her,” Williams says seriously, “she wouldn’t still
have the power to hurt you so much.”
16
Attorney Tait moves like a man who has played half an hour’s hard squash, then breakfasted on orange juice and lightly buttered wholemeal toast.
Healthy, he looks – happy he is not.
“Why is my client still in the holding cells?” he demands. “He should have been moved to the County Jail yesterday.”
The answer is simple. In the DA’s unseemly haste to get Bobbie arraigned, everybody overlooked the fact that most of the clerical staff had already gone home. So the paperwork wasn’t done – and in a town like Harrisburg, nothing moves without all the paperwork being done.
If it was anybody else, I would tell them this immediately – and maybe even apologize. But Tait is not anybody else. Since he screwed up on Bobbie’s arraignment, I distrust everything he says and question the motive behind everything he does. So if Tait wants Bobbie in the County Jail, then I am automatically against it.
“It bothers you he’s still here, doesn’t it?” I ask.
“It bothers me,’” he agrees.
“Why? If he was in County, it would be a longer drive for you.”
“The law is quite clear on this point, Lieutenant Kaleta,” Tait says, with a weariness which is fake as hell. “An alleged felon, once he has been charged, must be moved to an official institution, which, in this case, is the Harrisburg County Jail.”
He’s right. I don’t have any grounds for arguing – not a legal leg to stand on. But I wish I knew why Tait was so eager to get Bobbie into County.
“He’s due to be transferred within the hour,” I say. “Want to talk to him before he goes?”
“I’d appreciate it.”
I dispatch two officers to fetch the prisoner – one of them (Duffy) is walking bow-legged after his confrontation with Williams – then conduct Tait to Interrogation A, the interview room with big windows in both the door and the wall.
Tait looks at the window quizzically.
“That’s not normal, is it?” he asks.
Too right it isn’t, Mister big-city-lawyer.
“It’s to let more light in,” I lie.
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