Last Chance for Glory (26 page)

Kosinski could see the gears turning in Bobby Dunne’s head. His first instinct was to protect the job, but if he followed that instinct and refused Kosinski’s request, he’d lose his convert forever. Lose him to no good end.

“Grogan’s a pretty common name, Bell. You couldn’t be a little more specific?”

“Aloysius
Grogan. Maybe that’ll narrow it down some.”

“I was afraid that’s what you were going to say.”

“You know him?”

“That I do, Bell. And you were right. He’s Inspector Grogan now.”

“Who does he work for?”

“I don’t suppose it’d slow you down if I tell you that you’re over your head?”

“I been drowning for years, Bobby. I’m not afraid of the water.”

“You should be. This time, you should be.”

“Yes or no?” Kosinski almost licked his lips. He could taste the blood, the way he’d tasted it so many time in Homicide. He’d nearly forgotten how good it was. That’s how long it’d been.

“Alright, Bell. It’s not like it was a secret. Inspector Aloysius Grogan works directly under Chief Samuel Harrah.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me? I never heard of Chief Samuel Harrah.”

Dunne shrugged and grinned. “You’re not supposed to, Bell. Not unless you’re ambitious enough to study the job. Chief Harrah has commanded the Intelligence Division of the New York City Police Department for the past twenty-five years. He took the job when his father retired.”

“How old is he?”

“Sixty-five or so.”

“That’s five years past mandatory retirement.”

“I guess nobody told him, Bell.”

Kosinski took a second to put it together. When he’d first come on the job, Intelligence had been in the news quite a bit. That was in the era of the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground. Cops were being assassinated at the rate of one a month; they were being sniped at almost every day; the tension had been nearly unbearable. At the time, Kosinski had been convinced, like nearly every other cop, that it was only a matter of time until the country drifted into guerilla warfare. But then it’d all died down, just burnt itself out like a fire that’d run out of fuel. The Eighties had been relatively peaceful, at least from a cop’s point of view, and the Intelligence Division had faded into the background.

“Weren’t the spooks in trouble a couple of years ago?” Kosinski finally asked.

“Yes, they were. For routinely taping a black call-in radio station.” Dunne stood up, motioned for Bell to do the same. “And that’s all I’ve got to say on the matter. Except that you might wanna think it over, Bell. Hope may spring eternal in the human breast. But not if the heart stops beating.”

T
HE PRELIMINARIES WERE OVER—
the hug for Dora, the manly handshake for Marty, the “how are you, it’s been a long time, what have you been doing” … all the bullshit. Patrick Blake was sitting at his sister-in-law’s kitchen table, nursing a glass of Scotch and smiling at his nephew. His shirt collar was loose, his black tie pulled down, his uniform jacket draped over the back of a chair. Forty pounds overweight and nearly bald, he looked every inch the moderately successful professional drifting into retirement. Or a fatal heart attack, whichever came first. His cheeks were their usual apple-red, a tribute to his blood pressure and the rolls of fat that hung over his belt and his collar.

“So, Marty, what’s the bad news?”

Patrick Blake’s dark eyes, Marty noted, were still shrewd, still wary. They carried the lessons he’d learned thirty years ago on the streets. The lessons in survival he’d dragged up through the ranks. At first glance, Marty could find no point of vulnerability, but time would tell.

“How much has Mom told you about what I’ve been doing?”

Patrick Blake glanced at his uniform jacket, then back at his nephew. “She told me you’re tryin’ to get some mutt off the hook. Claimin’ he was framed.”

“Does that mean you think it
can’t
happen? A man
can’t
be framed?”

“They all claim they’re innocent, Marty.” He waved a pudgy hand in dismissal, chuckled softly, shook his head. “They don’t know how to tell the truth. It’s why they’re called criminals.”

“You mean like my father? Like your brother when he claimed he was innocent? Just another subhuman piece of shit trying to get off the hook?” Marty glanced at his mother, noted the clenched jaw and stubborn half-smile. He wondered, briefly, what it’d been like for her, a Jew marrying into a family of Irish cops, then turned back to his uncle.

“I tried, Marty. I did everything I could to help your father. But when the headhunters get hold of a case, there’s no controlling what they do.”

“That’s not the point, Uncle Patrick. Unless you think your brother was a rapist …” Marty let his voice fall off. Knowing full well that Patrick Blake, no matter what he thought, couldn’t very well call Matthew Blake a rapist. Not in front of his wife and his only child. “I mean I’m not a cop, so it’s hard for me to understand. It sounds like you’re saying the job is
never
wrong. That no cop
ever
crosses the line. I don’t see how you can hold that position without believing that your own brother was a rapist.”

“Now, look here, Marty …”

Patrick Blake was starting to heat up. Which came as no surprise to Marty. His uncle had always been volatile; he’d ruled his family the way he’d ruled the men under his command.

“But, in any event,” Marty calmly continued, “this is one convicted criminal who’s definitely not trying to wriggle off the hook. Billy Sowell is dead. He was murdered in prison.”

Blake watched a tremor flow upwards from his uncle’s belt, imagined it as a chill running up the spine. He’d pierced the armor and he knew it. Time to drive the sword home.

“You know, Uncle Patrick, I must have been ten or eleven when I first heard about police corruption. That’s when the Knapp Commission was doing its work and bent cops were all over the TV screen. Before then, I believed that cops were good and pure; I literally imagined them as angels of the Lord. Maybe I had too much imagination—Catholic school can have that effect on you—but I was upset enough to go to my father and ask him if he was on the take.”

“You said that?” Patrick Blake half-rose out of his chair. “You accused your own father?”

“Relax, Uncle Pat. I was ten years old. And I wasn’t accusing him. Believe me, the last thing I wanted to hear him say was ‘Yes.’” Blake hesitated long enough for the information to sink in, but not long enough for his uncle to work up a head of steam. “The thing about it is that he wasn’t pissed off. Not at all. He took me into my room, sat me down, then explained the reality of being a cop. Some cops never took anything; some cops took little things like free lunches; some cops took with both hands. But no cop, not unless he was lower than the criminals he arrested, turned his back on rape or murder. That’s where the line was drawn and if you crossed it, you weren’t a cop any more. It was as simple as that.” Blake leaned back, smiled at his thoroughly pissed-off uncle. “Was he bullshitting me, Uncle Patrick? Was he telling a stupid kid what the stupid kid wanted to hear?”

“You’re a smart-mouthed prick, Marty. Your father should have slapped your face instead of trying to reason with you.”

“I’ve seen the evidence, Uncle Patrick, the whole damned file. Billy Sowell didn’t kill Sondra Tillson. Which means somebody else killed her and that somebody else is walking the streets. Is that okay with you, Uncle Patrick? If it is, just tell me and I’ll go away.”

Patrick Blake looked over at his sister-in-law. Marty wasn’t certain that his uncle was asking for help, but if he was, he’d have to look elsewhere. Dora Blake was wearing her stone face, the one that wasn’t remotely interested in questions or excuses.

“Look, Marty,” Patrick Blake finally said, “you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

“I understand that, Uncle Patrick. That’s why you’re here. To tell me what I’m getting into. To tell me, for instance, about a captain named Aloysius Grogan. What he does, who he works for, like that.”

“And there’s nothing I can say to slow you down?”

“Nothing.”

Patrick Blake took a deep breath; his jowls fluttered as he blew it out. “Alright, Marty. I’ll give you what you want, but then we’re quits. Don’t look for any more help, because I won’t risk the career of my son. The one who’s named after your father, if you remember. He’s five years on the job and if he’s gonna move up, he’ll need my help.” He waited for Marty to nod agreement before continuing. “Now, I’m gonna tell you this in my own way, and I don’t want to be interrupted. When I’m finished, you’ll know what you need to know.” He paused, got a second nod, hurried on. “Last week, Aloysius Grogan—he’s an inspector, now—shows up at my office unannounced. I don’t know who he is, but when an inspector comes calling, you make yourself available. He asks me if you’re my nephew, if you’re the son of Detective Matthew Blake. When I tell him you are, he asks me if I have any influence over you.

“‘Because if you do,’ he says, ‘you better slow him down, Captain. He’s workin’ for a sleazeball lawyer, tryin’ to hurt the job. People don’t like it and they’re not gonna sit on their hands much longer.’

“Then he walks out before I can answer him. Now, understand this, even though Grogan technically outranks me, it doesn’t mean the bastard can bull his way into my office and order me around. You don’t get assigned to the big house unless you have friends in high places and the both of us know it. So, what I have to figure is that his highly placed friends somehow outrank my highly placed friends, which is why I didn’t throw him out of my office two minutes after he got there.

“What I do is head for the computer—remember, I work in personnel—and punch in Grogan’s name. When his command turns out to be Intelligence, I know what I’m up against. I’m sure you’re old enough to remember the story about J. Edgar Hoover, that he stayed FBI Director as long as he did because he had something on everybody. Well, that same rumor applies to Chief Samuel Harrah, Grogan’s boss. He’s commanded Intelligence under five different commissioners, and what they say is that you don’t
get
to be commissioner without his approval.

“To tell the truth, Marty, though I’d been hearing the rumor for years, I never thought much about it. Most of the time, Intelligence doesn’t have anything to do with the rest of the job. They collect information on subversive groups or organized crime, but they don’t make any arrests. If Samuel Harrah and his spooks happen onto something important, they take it directly to the Commissioner and he parcels it out to the appropriate division. I guess that’s the biggest difference between Samuel Harrah and J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover couldn’t stay out of the spotlight. Harrah operates in total darkness.

“Just after your mother phoned this morning, I was called up to my boss’s office. My
rabbi’s
office, a man who’s helped me along in my career for more than twenty years. He throws your father’s file on my desk, tells me the headhunters are thinkin’ about reopening the case.

“‘For chrissake, Solly,’ I tell him. ‘The man’s
dead.’

“‘They don’t care,’ he says. ‘His widow’s collecting a pension and they wanna take it away.’”

Patrick Blake pushed the chair back and shoved himself to his feet. “Dora,” he said, “I’m sorry to have to tell it to you like this, but I also wanna say that your son should have better manners. He’s a little nothing, a cockroach going up against a lion. Maybe you can talk some sense into him. Before he gets stepped on.”

It should have been an exit line. At least, from where Marty Blake sat. But his mother was much too quick. She’d been standing quietly by the sink and now she moved forward until she was a couple of feet from her brother-in-law.

“What you oughta be, Patrick,” she said, “is pissed off at Aloysius Grogan. He’s the man who came into your office and spit in your face. Instead, you’re taking it out on Marty who hasn’t done a damn thing to you. I tell ya, Patrick, if I didn’t know better, I’d think what you’re doing is hating the man who scares you the least.”

“Now, wait a second …”

“That’s a good idea,” Marty Blake said, “let’s all take a second to think it over. First, they’re
not
gonna go after Pop’s pension. No charges were ever filed at the time and a dead man can’t confront his accusers which is a basic constitutional right. It’s a bluff and a bad bluff, at that, which I have to admit makes me very happy. These people are scared, because they know they can get hurt here. It doesn’t make them less dangerous, but it might make them stupid. Uncle Patrick, I have another favor to ask. I want you to look up Inspector Grogan. I want you to tell him you talked to me and I told you that Steinberg pulled out. Being as Billy Sowell’s dead and buried, it’s gotta make sense.”

Patrick Blake hadn’t taken his eyes off his sister-in-law. Nevertheless, he replied without hesitation.

“Tell me why I should do you a favor.”

“Actually, there’s two reasons. First, because it doesn’t make any difference. My father’s pension isn’t on the line. No, it’s your career—and your son’s career—that’s up for grabs. If I keep going, you’re gonna take the blame. Nobody’s gonna give a shit whose side you’re on. You’re supposed to stop me and if you don’t, they’re gonna punish you. It’s as simple as that.”

When Patrick Blake turned to face his nephew, the truth was written all over his scarlet face. When he spoke, his voice was dead flat. “You said there were two reasons. What’s the second?”

“If you cut the head off, the body dies.”

“S
O YA SEE HOW
it is, Bell? I’m the kinda dude could admit he done somethin’ fucked up when he done somethin’ fucked up. I mean ya friend should’na sat on my car, right? Like I just
waxed
it and shit. But that don’t give me no right to jump on his fuckin’ back like I done.”

Tony Loest shook his head, lowered his eyes, flicked his lashes.

“These things happen, Tony. Everybody’s got a temper, right?”

Kosinski tried to put some feeling into it. After all, resolution was resolution; an apology was an apology. Even if Tony Loest was so coked up he was spitting the words between clenched teeth, he’d most likely remember the next time they met. Most likely.