In This Rain (10 page)

Ann came up behind him. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”

“No.”

“Yes, Joe. You do.”

“I can’t leave the county.”

“You could for a job.”

“I have a job. Seven to three, five days a week.”

“Digging ditches.”

“I’ve had practice. Ann, goddammit, I didn’t want to hear any of this and I don’t want to hear the rest.”

“Hear it?” A note in her voice made him turn toward her; she was smiling. “Joe, were you listening? You were the one who said it.”

He stretched for a clump of clover that was already flowering. It came up easily (clover always did) but he had to untangle it from a young hollyhock’s leaves before he could toss it away.

Ann said, “We started by looking at the Buildings Department.”

“You started? I thought you were being rehabilitated in the countryside.”

Though never accused of anything, she’d been his partner. At his conviction she’d been expected to resign. Above her, the Inspector General and the Commissioner had already been replaced. The suggestion came down from the new Commissioner’s office that she clean out her desk; the new IG made it clear he was sorry to have to lose her and he’d recommend her anywhere she wanted to go.

You should have seen their faces, she told Joe on her first prison visit, Shapiro and Lowry both, when I said I wasn’t going.

She was civil service; she couldn’t be fired without cause, and no one could pretend to find any. From that day, she was reassigned to the outer boroughs, to low-level, off-radar cases. They couldn’t make her disappear, but they arranged things so she was rarely seen.

“Three Star started as Dennis Graham’s case. I just followed the gossip. From the rice paddies.” The excitement in Ann’s voice was unmistakable; when she sounded like that, her eyes would be shining. Joe didn’t look to see. “But that was then. Now that everyone’s watching, Shapiro and Lowry had a high-level meeting, and everything’s suddenly reshuffled. Dennis got promoted to some high-profile joint-FDNY thing in Brooklyn. And Shapiro and Lowry gave this case to me.”

“You?” Now Joe did turn. Ann flashed the fire-eater’s grin that would have warmed him, would have sparked a matching grin from him, years ago. Seeing it today, her eagerness and her excitement, sent ice up his spine. “Ann— you’re being set up.”

“Of course. If I nail Three Star, the Commissioner will call a press conference. He’ll put his arm around me and tell everyone I was always one of DOI’s top people, lately working highly sensitive cases in the outer boroughs.”

Joe moved hollyhock stems, searching for hidden weeds. He said, “Then they’ll send you back to Siberia for busting the mayor’s pal. They’ll keep you on the payroll but you won’t get another case, ever. Or another job. That’s why they moved Dennis. To keep him safe. In case there’s something to find and the finder has to be sacrificed, they don’t want it to be him. But they don’t think it’ll come to that, do they? They’re counting on you filing a clean report. What’s the carrot?”

“There’s a corruption task force forming. Building-industry-wide, open-ended. FBI, State Police, NYPD. Even the Port Authority and the MTA. They haven’t picked the DOI people yet.”

“Nice. And all it takes is a clean report.” His voice was bitter and he was surprised to hear it.

At the time of his trial the department had hung him out to dry. Early assertions from the then Inspector General that Joe Cole was an outstanding investigator with a spotless record had been squelched by the Commissioner, who modulated them through a reasoned insistence on withholding judgment until the process was complete to, finally, a saddened gratitude that our great American system of jurisprudence could be counted on to get at the truth even when the truth was painful.

Joe hadn’t expected anything different. Ellie, for her part, was shocked, as though the department Christmas parties and outings to Shea, the commendations, press conferences, and public shows of appreciation meant something. But Ellie had never worked in city government.

It would have been gratifying to have had the support of the department he worked for, but Joe knew the drill. The Commissioner’s distancing was predictable, it hadn’t gotten Joe convicted, and he had bigger things to worry about. It hadn’t saved the Commissioner’s ass, either, or IG’s. A week after the verdict, Hizzoner vowed to the citizenry they’d never again find DOI asleep at the wheel, and gave them both the boot. Reading in the Post in the prison dayroom that the Commissioner had been replaced by that SCA stiff, Mark Shapiro, and the Inspector General for Buildings by a Sanitation lifer named Lowry, had given Joe a cold glimmer of satisfaction. Beyond that, up until this moment in this garden when he heard the venom in his own voice, he’d thought he didn’t care.

Ann smiled and straightened up, brushing dirt that wasn’t there from her gabardine slacks. “Doesn’t that kill your knees?”

“You get used to it.”

He started for the shed at the back of the property, for some stakes and ties to help out the heavy peonies.

“Joe? The third accident. A woman. Killed by falling bricks.”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“She left three kids.”

“Let the police handle it.”

“The police don’t have a crime.”

“Yet.” Oh, Joe, if that’s the best you can do, you’re in trouble.

“The bricks were on a roof tarp. High wind caught the tarp, bricks got tossed over the side. They fell five floors and smashed the skull of a woman named Harriet Winston, a nurse’s aide just off a double shift. On her way to pick up her three little kids at her mom’s. The contractor— Three Star, Joe, Walter Glybenhall!— says tragic confluence of circumstances, site super’s been fired, sorry, see you around.”

Joe plunged into the shadows of the shed. Through the open door behind him he heard the birds and the wind and the creek; he saw blurred green forms beyond the cracked, unwashed window.

Finally, because he had to, he emerged into the sun. Beside a white peony, he pushed a stake into the ground; as usual, the whites were unfurling first, while the reds, always a few days behind, were still round, waxy fists. Now open, heads too heavy for stalks, the whites were starting to lean, threatening to fall.

Ann said, “I want Three Star.”

“The FBI,” Joe said. “Port Authority, the MTA. On the other side: Siberia. It’s cold out there.”

“I can’t be bought that cheap.”

“You can’t bust Walter Glybenhall.”

“ ‘Can’t’? You’d never have said that before.”

The breeze wound itself around them. He looked away from Ann, let his gaze wander. Except for the larkspur, nothing yet blooming was blue; and it came out early and was going by already. Its fading color was no match for Ann’s eyes.

Still he turned to her and said, “No, Ann.” Looking into those beautiful, mismatched eyes, he said, “Go home.”

City Hall

Charlie Barr closed the door behind Mark Shapiro and Greg Lowry. He turned to his deputy mayor, who was fumbling with a cigarette. “Well?” Charlie demanded. “What?”

“What, what?”

Charlie flopped on the sofa and stretched out. “Those things’ll kill you, you know.”

“Not faster than working for you will.”

“Okay, you’re fired.”

“Fine.” Don Zalensky puffed out smoke. He held his cigarette between straight fingers and smoked it from the center of his mouth, like a clueless nerd trying to impress the cool crowd. Probably, Charlie thought, Don’s pack-a-day habit had started from just that situation. Don was a New York City first deputy mayor now. Charlie wondered what the cool kids had become.

“So?”

Don began tentatively, “I don’t know

”

“Yes, you do. That tells you have. The thing you do with your chin.” Charlie rubbed his jaw. “This thing.”

“I did that?”

“Umm-hmm.”

“Damn. I’ve been trying to stop.”

“You’d be better off stopping smoking.”

“The universe would unravel.”

“Your altruism is noted. Now: the meeting?”

“Well, just

when Lowry looked at you.”

“He looked at me funny?”

“No, he looked at you. When you asked whether their people were squeaky clean.”

“Why shouldn’t he look at me? I was talking. And I’m the friggin’ mayor.”

“Yes, I know, but

Shapiro was looking at him. Every other time you asked something, they looked at each other before they answered. It’s kind of normal, people at different levels. Like when you and some staff are at a meeting, and they have the data.”

“We look at each other?”

The deputy mayor nodded. “They’ll wait a second to see if you want them to answer. You’re the boss, so in case you want it yourself. All the Deps do it.”

“Really?” Interesting; Charlie would have to watch for that. “Except, of course, for you.”

“Except for me,” Zalensky agreed. Don never spoke in meetings, at press conferences, in public forums of any kind. Charlie had gotten used to that years ago; in their business it was refreshing.

“But Shapiro and Lowry didn’t do that?” Charlie asked. “And you think it matters?”

“They did it except when you asked about their people. Then Lowry just kept looking right at you. As though

” Zalensky sucked on his cigarette, frowning. “As though he wanted to look like this wasn’t a problem he’d thought about.”

“Meaning it was?”

“Not necessarily. It’s just, I think the reason they moved those people out and brought in someone new might not only be because they wanted ‘new eyes.’ ”

“What? Oh, Don, say it ain’t so. Not again. You’re telling me someone at DOI is bent?”

“I’m not saying that. I’m saying, there may be some other reason they wanted to use Montgomery on this, besides what they said.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have to know. They have to tell me. If there’s shit between Three Star and Buildings, that’s bad enough. If this is going to blow up, if it’s DOI again

Shit. Ah, shit.” He ran his hand across his head. “I’m calling Shapiro. What? I shouldn’t call? Or there’s something else? Shit. What else?”

“Ann Montgomery.”

“You’re worried about that?”

“I don’t know. You think she still hates you, from back then?”

“She thought I should’ve kept my mouth shut. That my public statements poisoned the jury.”

“How do you know she thought that?”

“She told me.”

“Just walked up to you on the street and said that?”

“Our paths sometimes cross. Benefits, openings.”

“Oh, the nightlife.” Don, who spoke nine languages and read ten-pound books in all of them, wasn’t much for the social whirl.

“Don’t knock it. They vote, they contribute, and the food’s good. She’s your type, by the way. A blonde shiksa. I could introduce you. Could mend your broken heart from that Eliot girl you used to date.”

“I didn’t date her long enough to get one.”

“Hey, come to think of it, they know each other. You could date Montgomery, keep an eye on her, piss Jen Eliot off at the same time— ”

“I already pissed Jen off when I broke up with her, Charlie. She forgave me, though, as soon as she found a new guy. So Montgomery: do we have to worry about her?”

Charlie pondered. “Maybe not.”

“You said she was a showboater.”

“What it really is with her

If you sing louder than everyone else, your voice’ll get heard. It may not be because you want to drown everyone out, just that you like to sing loud. Jesus Christ, Don, you’re actually smiling.”

“I never heard you do that before. A metaphor like that.”

“I’m a man of undiscovered talents. Pass me the phone.”

Harlem: the Riverbank

“The job,” the Boss said. “It went all right?”

“Ain’t no thing.” Kong squinted against the sun-gleam on the river.

“Glad to hear it.” The Boss smiled. Guy could always be counted on for a smile. Kong smiled back. Wasn’t that something was funny, but he had a secret: he knew who this guy was. “Just call me Boss,” guy said on the phone, first time he called. Seriously? Fuck that shit. Kong wasn’t about to work for no man he didn’t even know his name. When they met first time, Kong had the bike hid. Easy to follow the Boss’s car: ain’t no one in New York gonna notice some crazy bike messenger. Kong watched the car slide down into a garage, saw the Boss come out, watched what building he went in. Then all he had to do was wait until lunchtime next day, and here come the Boss, going to some important appointment for lunch. Kong got next to a few pretty things coming out to sit in the sun. “Hey, baby, ’scuse me. Don’t mean to bother you. That dude over there, I used to work for him. Can’t recall his name, you know who it is?” Got the guy’s name, and the cell phone digits of two hot bitches, too. That was the difference between him and that loser, T. D. Tilden. T. D. never even ask Kong who they working for, why they doing all this. Just took his pay and rolled a blunt, every time. Kong, he was different: he got game.

Not that he was about to let on what he knew, not yet. Just, someday when he needed it, there it’d be.

“You do good work,” the Boss said. He was wearing Ray-Bans but Kong could tell his eyes were jumping around like he was nervous.

“Hey, chill, man. You see anyone else here?” Of course he didn’t. Even the old guy sometimes fished from the broken concrete wasn’t there today. He never came on Sundays, that guy. The Boss told him, As soon as it’s done, somewhere no one’s gonna see us, and Kong knew what he was doing when he picked this place. That’s what this guy didn’t appreciate about him, the way he knew what he was doing.

“Well,” the Boss started, but now was time for Kong to say his other piece.

“Was one thing, though.”

“What thing?” The Boss pushed his hands deeper into his jacket pockets like some worried kid at school. Well, good. More worried he was, more likely to keep Kong on the payroll.

“Thought you ought to know,” Kong said. “T.D. say he got copies.”

“Copies? Of what?”

Kong grinned. Of course, he could have said what the copies was of, right off, but he wanted to make the guy ask.