Mitchell Smith (25 page)

Kill a cop and an old lady-and waltz the fuck out with a fuckin’ TV! Big black guy with glasses, the jerk thinks. -you don’t see too good through those peeps.”

“What a damn rotten thing. He was such a sad guy.

. ‘I,’ He was always so quiet.”

Ummm . . .”

“What does that mean?”

“He was a nice guy-but, let’s face it, he was a little wacky. He was going’ to get in some kind of trouble sometime.”

“The hell he was! -What do you mean, Tommy? He’s a dead cop-he was shot in a crime!”

Nardone turned left, up Third Avenue. “Hey-will you calm down? He was a nice guy-he was a good detective. God bless the guy, the way he went.

But he was an unstable person-that’s all I’m sayin’. Someday somebody was going’ to say something’ wrong to him, and boom-there was going’ to be trouble.”

“That’s a lot of shit. -I’m surprised at you, Tommy.

He was a very sweet man!”

“Yeah, that’s for sure. He was a nice guy.”

“Yes,” Ellie said. “He was. -He didn’t suffer?”

“Samuelson said Neill said ‘through the noggin.” He didn’t suffer. -What did you bring?”

“I got some rye bread, some lox and cream cheese. I was going to take it right home.”

“Here we go.” Nardone swung into 117th, drove halfway down the block, then backed in to parallel-park in front of an empanada stand. “This is great-it’ll take everybody about ten seconds flat to make us for cops.”

“We could neck,” Ellie said. Nardone looked embarrassed.

Across the street, farther east toward the corner, a narrow magazine stand stood open to business, three doors from a corner bodega. Some papers were stacked on the sidewalk there, two racks of magazines-most Spanish-language-a revolving display of picture postcards out front as well. This small store appeared to be taking only its proper share of passing customers. “There you go,” Nardone said, nodding toward it, then fished from the pocket of his blue polyester suit jacket a small square photograph, and handed it to Ellie. Officer Johnson, as a patrolman, had been a squirrel-cheeked, earnesteyed young man. Light brown hair.

“How old is he, now?”

“A young guy,” Nardone said. “An idiot. -Leahy says take this guy in.

-I guess they figure to really nail one.”

They sat parked at the curb for almost three hours, windows down for a while-then up, the engine and air-conditioning on as the day grew hotter, listening to Go Slow Jazz ‘n Rock on the radio-against regulations and talking cases (particularly the New York State Trooper thing, from which Ellie expected continued trouble) -talking, as well, Squad politics and Department politics, Marie’s dance classes, Sally Gaither’s child, and the hoped-for reports from Fingerprints (so sadly overrated by civilians) and Records; the last bound to be minor, since the computer revealed no arrest sheet on Gaither. -Not even a complaint.

They said little more about Morris Classman’s death, that event resonating, nonetheless, beneath all other conversation, except to discuss Connors, the detective in charge of the Classman thing-a captain and an ace regarded as one of the best homicide men on the Force, now starring for Division West. `-That guy gets on a perp, he can kiss his ass goodbye,” Nardone said.

Ellie reported on her morning with Margolies.

“A cutie,” Ellie said, “—she spent a lot of time showing me her apartment, bathrooms and everything. -Damnit, I meant to ask her about that Audrey guy! Rebecca said they were buddies……

“So you’re sayin’ you got nothin’?”

“Not much.”

“It doesn’t make sense; I’ll tell you that. -Somethin’ wrong. I don’t care what that whore-that prostitute was tryin’ to keep on the QT.

Ladies are friends-they’re friends. They find out about each other.”

“Margolies talks a lot-“

“-And she doesn’t say shit. Am I right? Look-we give her a week, maybe a little more, so she feels pretty good … then we both go back an’

lean on her. -She isn’t going’ to show me her friggin’ toilet.”

All this while, they attracted to the Ford no particular adult attention in the rush of passing traffic, the ins and outs of delivery trucks, pedestrians ambling, hurrying by-Puerto Ricans, mainly, with occasional taller people, paler, the men more heavily mustached, from Colombia, Honduras, Costa Rica, Mexico.

Once, Nardone had had to move back so a man driving a frozen-chicken van could doublepark and deliver to the corner bodega. A number of young boys in the blazeorange Tshirts of some PAL team-skipping school for such a pleasant, warm, early autumn day-had stood along the empanada stand’s front, watching this maneuver, and keeping an eye on blond Ellie sitting in the Ford, as they kept an eye on all present and passing.

“I think they think I’m a prostitute,” she said. “-Hit me, and they’ll be sure.” She was half joking, but Nardone-always open to professional suggestions during police work-nodded, leaned over to her, drew back his hand, and hit her, as if hard, across her face. “-You owe me money, bitch!” he said pretty loud, his face unpleasant. The boys were pleased with that, though likely puzzled by the Ford-so improbable a pimp’s vehicle-and watched Ellie through her side window as she pretended to protest the blow, to cry. Later, when she left the car to get Cokes at the empanada stand, the boys regarded her with fresh attention—one, very small and dark, gripping a meager oin and making a kissing gr 9

sound as she walked by with the drinks. “How much you suck my cock?” he said.

“Find it, first,” said Ellie, and got in the car to merriment from his treacherous friends.

These boys, after another while growing bored by their location, suddenly-at some cue unknown-turned together like a school of tropic fish, flashed their bright colors, and were gone.

Almost an hour after that, while Ellie and Nardone were listening to police calls (the radio turned up), judging trouble and response in this busy precinct, hoping for some overriding call to action, a big man—or one who looked big sitting behind his steering wheel—had pulled up alongside them in a new Plymouth Fury, honked his horn, and gestured to them to move out-apparently of his accustomed space. Nardone had gazed placidly out the driver’s side window at this person, pleased by the comedy—even happier when the big man (who was very big, with a large belly neatly draped in a frilled-front white Cuban shirt) got out of the Plymouth, leaving it to block traffic, came around the front of his car to the Ford, and said some harsh things in Spanish. -Nardone, like most policemen, spoke a few phrases of street Spanish, but now pretended not to. -Only put his window down to hear better, and sat behind the wheel gazing up at the angry man, listening, amused.

There quickly came a time-having run out of personal things to say-when the big man had to decide what to do. Nardone’s silence, his continued calm, his mildly interested and pleased detachment apparently rang some alarm then, for the big man said only one thing more, and that remark directed to the air. -Delivered that, turned, went back to his car (now a cork in a bottle of roaring horns), climbed in, and drove away.

“Let’s have lunch,” Nardone said, and swayed to the right to lift his heavy left buttock slightly off his back pocket, where he kept a Boy Scout knife for all sorts of minor chores. “We havin’ the rye?”

“You can have the rye. Or pumpernickel.”

“Which one you want to save?”

“I don’t care, Tommy-we’ll have what you want.”

“Well, we’ll have the rye. You can save the pumpernickel.”

Silence, but for the rattle of heavy paper, as Nardone, with short, thick, powerful fingers, pleased as a birthday child, unwrapped the packages from Zabar’s. “You’re sure the rye’s O.K.? -You want to save it, we’ll save it.”

“Tommy, will you please just have some of that bread.

I got it to eat. -Have some.”

“What’s this … herring?”

“Creamed herring.”

Nardone observed the herring, but didn’t molest it.

“This is cream cheese with chives. The other one’s lox.”

“There you go! O.K.” More unwrapping. Nardone then opened the larger blade of his small knife, carved a deep, richly white-and-green half-moon of cheese up out of the carton, and placed it, only slightly spread, on a thick slice of seeded rye. A strip of salmon—4elicate, pink, translucent—selected, separated from the small damp stack, was very carefully draped across. Then another one, as precisely, rested right alongside. The covering slice of rye laid gently over . . . and all then lightly pressed together, as if he were closing a thick and favorite book.

Ellie had thought of being funny—of pretending she believed this labor of love had been made for her-then was glad she hadn’t, as her partner, already rummaging amid the cartons for more, handed his construction over to her as swiftly and naturally as a mother bird thrusts a beetle into its baby’s beak.

As if, from courtesy, he’d waited just the additional half hour for them to finish their lunch, Detective Johnson (“There’s the schmuck!”) at that time exited the passenger side of a freshly doubleparked brown Chevrolet across the street and two spaces down from the magazine stand.

He hadn’t changed much from his photograph, though now wearing tailored summer-weight gray wool, a light striped tie.

“Don’t look around, asshole,” Nardone said. “-Just go in and get your fuckin’ money! -Will you look at that guy? He don’t give a shit if the Commissioner is standin’ there with a camera. -Just does not give a shit.” Ellie saw Nardone’s glowering reflection faintly on the inside of the windshield. —There he goes.” Detective Johnson had hopped up the store’s single step off the sidewalk, and disappeared into the narrow dark. “Will you tell me what’s with these guys? -They’re getting’

greedy as fuckin’ doctors! “

Nardone opened the car door on his side, held it ajar.

Ellie pulled her purse strap up over her right shoulder, unsnapped the purse, and opened her door, too.

“I want to get that asshole,” Nardone said. 11O.K. with you to hold the partner?”

“That’s all right,” Ellie said, feeling a little breathless as usual in these circumstances. She’d mentioned it to Nardone once, just after they’d started to work together saying she supposed she was afraid.

“Shit, no,” he’d said.

It’s upsettin’, that’s all. -This stuff is going’ to upset any ia’dy.”

“Come on. . . !” Nardone said to the store’s doorway.

“What the fuck you doin’? —Countin’ it?” He was hunched forward in his seat, as intent on that entrance as Mayo on an opening can of cat food.

-She’d forgotten to get the Siamese something. It had been a long time since she’d brought any surprise “Go!” And-as the young detective appeared, stepping from the store’s doorway-Nardone was out of the car, letting the car door swing half shut behind him, charging across into the traffic, his cheap suit jacket flapping back as he ran into the street, heavy shoulders rolling like a running bull’s.

“Look out!” Ellie shouted-meaning for the passing cars-jumped out her side, ran around the back of the Ford and out across the street toward the doubleparked Chevy. She got her hand in her bag as she ran, fumbled past her compact, the revolver, and found her shield case.

The man at the wheel of the Chevrolet was staring across the front seat at her as she ran toward him. A square, handsome older face, gray-white hair.

“Don’t you fuckin’ move!” Nardone shouting down the street. Ellie didn’t look that way-she saw the driver reaching down to put the car in drive-and she was at the passengerside window, her buzzer case out and open, and as the car lurched and began to roll, grabbed the door handle and hit the window glass with the case as hard as she could, cracking the brass against it so the white-haired man glanced over to see her trotting faster and faster alongside, her shield against the glass, glaring in at him, shaking her head no in as grim a fashion as she could.

He pulled the car up then-no more than twenty feet traveled, and sat there hitting the steering wheel with his fist.

. Ellie pulled the passengerside door open and jumped in. “You motherfucker!” she said. “-You were trying to kill me!”

“No-I wasn’t!” the cop (very handsome, in his fifties) was defensive, frightened as any civilian. “-It was an accident! I swear I didn’t know you were a cop!”

“You’re a fucking liar,” Ellie said, “-and your ass is under arrest.

Give me your fucking gun-give me your shield. -Come on! Come on!” She snapped her fingers at him, hustling him, hurrying him while he was scared, and the white-haired detective reached under his coat lapel and took out his shield case and gave it to her. “Come on!” Ellie said, and tucked the case under her leg on the seat. The detective reached around under his jacket to his belt, took out his revolver, and handed it over.

Ellie dropped the .38 on the floor at her feet, and dug into her purse for her cuffs. When the detective saw the cuffs, he said, “Oh, Jesus .

. . don’t do that!” and drew his hands away and up against the door on his side like a child fearing they’d be slapped.

“What the hell is this?” he said. “What are the charges, for Christ’s sake?”

“You have the right to remain silent-“

“Don’t say that! -What the hell are the charges?”

“We have felony bribery-four, five misdemeanor counts of accepting Ellie looked through the windshield, and saw Nardone and the other detective standing beside a display shelf of oranges at the bodega near the corner.

Nardone had the young detective by the arm, and the man was trying to pull away … starting to struggle. He threw a punch.

“Shit.” Ellie reached over and took the keys out of the ignition, and gave the white-haired man the hardest look she could. “-I’m going out of here for a minute.” She opened the passengerside door. “I’m telling you-if you move one fucking inch! If you get one fucking inch out of this car-“

“I won’t,” the detective said. “-Just let me talk to you!”

Ellie bent, picked up the man’s revolver, got out of the car, and ran down toward the corner as fast as she could, stuffing the revolver into her purse-was almost hit when a Yellow Cab came speeding down the street just past her.