Last Chance for Glory (18 page)

“Brannigan, he asks me if I know what paper the reporter worked for. I told him I didn’t, but that the man was definitely wearing a press pass on his coat. Which is why the cops didn’t kick his ass, too.

“All right,’ Brannigan says, ‘we’ll check it out. Where can we find you?’ I told him I was staying down by the river, then I left. Walked right out the front door of the precinct, on my way to visit Billy in the Tombs. I didn’t get half a block before Brannigan came up behind me. He yanked me into the precinct parking lot, and hit me in my face with the butt of the pistol. Didn’t say a word, just started beatin’ on me. I covered my head as best I could, but I didn’t fight back. Figured I had to take it and that was that. Then I heard this
click
and I looked right up into the barrel of a cocked pistol. I remember that it was a revolver, like the ones the cops carry, but this piece had tape on the grip and around the trigger.

“When I started beggin’—‘Please don’t kill me, Officer, please don’t kill me’—Brannigan got this big grin on his face, a real shit-eater. ‘Nigger,’ he said, ‘I don’t wanna see your ugly black face again. Not ever again. You hear what I’m saying, nigger? I see your face again, you’re gonna breathe through your fucking forehead.’

“Now, the thing about it is that I could’ve gone to Billy’s lawyer. That’s what I thought of when the fear wore off. But then I started thinking if Brannigan would pull a piece in the precinct parking lot, if he’d pistol whip me right out there in the open, he wouldn’t stop at nothin’. So what I did was stay out of it. I let Billy go down. Like I let Nefertiti go down. Like I’m goin’ down, too. Fair is fair, right?”

I
N HIS DREAM, BLAKE
searched for Rebecca Webber. There was something he had to tell her, something important, and as the search proceeded, as it stretched out, becoming more and more hopeless, his mood shifted from determination to anxiety to near panic.

The search began in Rebecca’s town house, amid William Webber’s personal collection of art-nouveau furnishings, Postimpressionist paintings, and modern sculptures, then jumped suddenly into the basement of the Chatham Hotel. Blake called out Rebecca’s name as he groped his way along a darkened hallway, paused to listen for the sound of her voice, her quick, sardonic laughter. At times, he thought he heard an answering call, but her voice, filtered through the moaning, the snoring, the shuffle of feet somewhere in the distance, was too faint to pin down. Maybe it came from here, maybe from there, maybe it wasn’t her at all.

Along the way, he ran into Bell Kosinski, Jackson, the security guard, Kamal Collars, Billy Sowell, Max Steinberg. He knew them, despite the gloom, and asked each for help. Their apologetic refusals were filled with pity.

“You one of us, boy,” Jackson declared. “Might jus’ as well get used to it. Y’uunerstan’ what ah’m sayin’?”

Kosinski handed him a stiff drink; Sowell made an obscene proposal, added: “I’m prettier than that bitch, and a
lot
more faithful.”

Kamal Collars offered to trade Rebecca for Queen Nefertiti. “Fair deal, fair deal,” he explained.

Blake left them all behind. He proceeded into a space without sound or light, a space where consciousness was the only measure of his own existence. He knew that Rebecca couldn’t be present, because there was nothing here, but himself. Then he stumbled into a closed door, yanked it open, was blinded by the unexpected glare.

“Marty, wake up. Marty, Marty. Wake up.”

Still half asleep, Blake opened his eyes, thought he saw Rebecca silhouetted against the window, realized it was his mother. His heart sank, even as the dream fled.

“Don’t you have an appointment with the lawyer this morning? It’s nearly ten o’clock.”

Blake sat up in bed, muttered something about working late.

“Well, the coffee’s made,” Dora Blake said. “I wouldn’t have come in, but there’s something I want to tell you before you leave.”

“All right, all right. What’s the weather today?”

“Hot. You won’t need a jacket.”

Twenty minutes later, Blake, his hair still wet, slipped into a pair of gray cotton slacks, buttoned up a sky-blue silk shirt, jammed his feet into crepe-soled moccasins. He left the bedroom without looking at himself in the mirror.

“So what’s the big deal, Ma? And where’s the coffee?”

“The coffee’s on the stove. And what I have to say isn’t a big deal. It’s just something I think you need to be aware of.”

Blake poured himself a cup of coffee, knowing his mother wouldn’t be rushed; he sat down at the kitchen table and stirred a spoonful of sugar into the black liquid.

“I checked out the cop.”

“Pardon?”

“Bell Kosinski, I checked him out with your Uncle Patrick. I thought you’d want to know before you got in too deep.”

“Ma, he’s not my partner. You shouldn’t have bothered Uncle Pat.” Patrick Blake was an NYPD captain, an insider’s insider who worked out of Personnel at 1 Police Plaza.

“Then what is he?”

“A temporary inconvenience is how I try to look at him.”

“Being a wise guy isn’t gonna help you here, Marty. The reason I know is because I also asked Patrick about Sondra Tillson.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“If you’re not interested, we could always go back to the weather.”

“Uncle Patrick knew about Sondra Tillson?” It was as close as he could get to an apology.

“Not off the top of his head. I called him yesterday morning and he called me back last night. Apparently, it wasn’t that hard to find out.”

Blake drained half the cup, glanced at his watch. “I don’t have a lot of time, Ma.”

Dora Blake sat down next to her son. She held her cup between her palms, rolled the handle back and forth. “Kosinski was a good cop. Clean, sober, a definite up-and-comer. He made Detective, First, before he was thirty-five. Went along that way for another six or seven years. Then something happened, something at home, his service record doesn’t say just what it was, but he started drinking. Patrick said it didn’t interfere with his performance rating, which actually went up a little. In fact, if he hadn’t taken to boozing openly on the job, nobody would have noticed. As it was, all they asked was that he take a tour on the farm. You know, dry out a little, get it under control. He refused and they eased him out with his pension. No muss, no fuss.”

“Is that it?”

“Yeah, Marty, honest and good. That’s it.” Dora Blake was clearly pissed. “Tell me something, my only son, did you ever stop to think that Kosinski was planted on you?”

“I found
him,
Ma. It wasn’t the other way around.”

“And the next morning he showed up on your doorstep.”

Blake shook his head firmly. “It doesn’t matter what I think. The lawyer said to use him and the lawyer’s paying the bills. And by the way, if he’s a plant, he’s not a very good one. I couldn’t have gotten as far as I have without Kosinski’s help.”

“I’m glad you can see that.”

“I’m not an idiot, no matter what you believe. Why don’t you tell me about Sondra Tillson?”

Dora Blake laid the cup on the table, started to stand, thought better of it. “Patrick can’t help you there.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Both. Look, we’re talking about the job, Marty. Patrick won’t betray the job and neither will any other cop. He as much as admitted that cops were involved.”

“I already know that.” He told her about Kamal Collars, his alibi for Billy Sowell, Brannigan’s reaction.

“Why am I not shocked?” She took her son’s hand, a gesture that surprised them both. “You’ve got to be careful, Marty. These crooks carry guns and badges, not pencils. They won’t go down without a fight.”

Blake stared at his mother’s long, bony fingers. He wanted to come up with a typical wise-guy remark, felt that it was expected, like the next step in a tango, but he couldn’t do it. “It’s not going to come to that,” he said. The pat response sounded like so much wishful thinking, even to him. How many times had he used the same line? Sometimes it got to the point where even if he was right, he was wrong. “Are you telling me to drop the case? Get out while I can?”

She drew back. “You have to do the job, Marty. You took it and now you have to do it.”

“So, how do you find these guys, Max?” Bell Kosinski, comfortably seated in Max Steinberg’s office, sniffed at a water glass half filled with brandy. He let his gaze wander over the lawyer’s office, noted the southwestern motif, the kachina dolls, the eagle feathers, the pottery, the worn blankets, the antelope skull. “I mean the innocent ones. You get letters from convicts, or what?”

“Letters?” The wig hopped as Steinberg’s mouth opened into a huge grin. “I get letters by the ton. You wouldn’t believe the letters. ‘Dear Mister Steinberg: It wasn’t me on that videotape in the liquor store. I admit the robber has an uncanny resemblance to me, but I was in Hong Kong on a business trip at the time.’”

Kosinski laughed appreciatively. The bouquet of the smoky liquor was so intoxicating, he almost didn’t want to drink it. Almost. “What about Sowell? How’d you find him?”

“Spoken like a true cop.” Steinberg’s tone was admiring; the wig remained still. “Well, he didn’t write me a letter. And he still hasn’t figured out that he was framed. To him, it just happened, which is the way he looks at his whole life.”

“After talking to the kid, I can appreciate what you’re sayin’. The poor bastard never saw it coming.”

Kosinski’s attention drifted to a painting on the surface of a small wooden table set beneath a window. He wondered why the artist had chosen to work on a piece of furniture, then realized the design had been executed with grains of brightly colored sand. “Jeez,” he said, “whatever you do, Max, don’t open that window.”

“Why? I could always do another one.”

“Yeah, you did this yourself?” Kosinski got up to take a closer look, pausing, as he rose, to drain his glass. The liquor smelled good, tasted better, hit his empty stomach with the intensity of a Szechuan chili pepper in an infant’s mouth. He dutifully fetched the roll of Tums, swallowed two, continued over to the table. “This is really great. How’d you keep the colors apart?”

“The trick, Kosinski, is not to breathe hard while you’re working.”

“Yeah, I
knew
that. So, tell me, how’d you latch onto Billy Sowell?”

“Joanna Bardo, you know who she is?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Blake’s former employer. She founded Manhattan Executive Security. A fantastic woman, brilliant, ambitious, cultured … very New York, if you take my meaning. Joanna cornered me at a party, a benefit for the Guggenheim Museum. Ran the whole thing down. I had Legal Aid send the original case material over, read it through, and that was that. The kid was framed; I was between causes; all systems were go.”

Kosinski nodded as the lawyer told his story. The wig, he noted, was absolutely still, a good sign as far as he was concerned. Steinberg was probably telling the truth.

“Where did Joanna … what’s her name? Bardo? Where did
she
get it from?”

“Let me think a minute, while I pour you a refill. Wonderful stuff, by the way. Hennessy VO. During the week, I never drink until after the courts close. Saturdays and Sundays … well, that’s another story.”

Kosinski handed the glass over, sat down again. “You know you’re in deep here, right? But do you know
how
deep?”

Steinberg’s jaw tightened, his lower lip slid up until it touched his nostrils. The transformation was startling. “I don’t care if the fucking
mayor’s
part of it,” he shouted. “I wouldn’t give a shit if it was the goddamned
president.
Steinberg doesn’t back down.”

“But you do understand? You know?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“The kid, Max. Blake hasn’t figured it out yet. What’s the word they use these days? Denial. The kid’s in denial.”

Steinberg’s expression softened. He shrugged, took a drink. “I might have made a mistake there. Joanna led me to believe Blake was a lot more experienced. See, the thing of it was I didn’t wanna hire an ex-cop, because cops were involved in the frame. I had no way of knowing who could be reached and who couldn’t.”

“You still don’t.”

“True.”

“So where does that leave me?”

“Kosinski, that leaves you giving me a sworn deposition that’ll prove fabricated evidence was employed against my client. Now, as I fully intend to use this evidence to nail the NYPD in general and your ex-partner, Tommy Brannigan, in particular, the way I see it is that once you put your John Hancock on the dotted line, you’re committed. Whether you know it or not.”

When Marty Blake showed up fifteen minutes later, Kosinski moved off to one side of the room. He let his hands fumble through a book of photographs while Blake made his report, figuring why steal the kid’s thunder? Why not let the kid shine? That was why he hadn’t mentioned Kamal Collars in his conversation with Steinberg. That was why he’d steered away from any discussion of the case.

It was Blake’s evident professionalism that surprised him, the bound interim report, the concise verbal presentation, the demand for payment before the report was turned over. Kosinski couldn’t have been more pleased. He celebrated by draining his glass.

“Normally,” Blake was saying, “I’d have asked for a retainer, in advance. I didn’t because you were recommended by Joanna, but now I’m getting close to the end of the puzzle. In fact, from what I’m giving you today, you could close it off without me. So …”

Steinberg was working his way through the statement, peering at it, running the tip of one manicured fingernail down the column of figures. As he worked, the wig crept forward. The movement, oddly formal, was slow, but steady. When the wig covered his upper forehead like a street demon’s bandanna, he looked up.

“Two thousand dollars?
Boychick,
you gotta be kidding me.”

Blake shook his head slowly. “Joanna taught me never to joke about money. I think the statement is clear. I billed you for my time, my expenses, and my associate’s time.”

“Your associate? This Kosinski is now an associate?”

“I couldn’t have gotten this far without him. Why shouldn’t he get paid? I mean, look at it this way, Max, I think we can wrap this up in a couple of days. Without Kosinski it might have dragged on for weeks. At three hundred dollars a day, plus expenses. The way I see it, you’re getting off easy.”