Mitchell Smith (29 page)

. . . ” and bent to his eyepiece.

“Will you cut that shit out!” Nardone said, “—or this is going’ on our report!”

C10h . . .” Gershon said, swinging the telescope around to point more directly across the street, “-I don’t figure you guys want to spend a couple afternoons at the hearing, listening to a lot of bullshit. I figure you’re just going to file a

we-saw-the-telescope-but-subject-denied, and go on about your business.

If you don’t-if you want to be assholes about it-I’ll just deny on the machine, and say you solicited some cash. I have a philosophy—somebody screws you-you screw them, too.” He found his view, bent to the eyepiece again, and fiddled. “-Of course, this is nothing to nighttime. I just get a couple of them late afternoon like this. Evening shift. -At night, this is spectacular, I’m telling you.”

“Let me tell you,” Nardone said. “You got anything more to say threatenin’ us, sayin’ we solicited-and I will throw that fuckin’ thing right off the roof, and we’ll take your ass downtown under arrest.”

Gershon looked up, smiling. “Well,” he said, “-seeing you’re such a tough guy, I’ll get off the subject.”

“Doesn’t your wife object to this?” Ellie said. “-Does she know about it?”

Gershon bent again to his eyepiece. “This is a tough one; sometimes she doesn’t come out at all…. Has to be a nice sunny day.” He was quiet for a few moments, concentrating. ‘-My wife … let me tell you about my wife. First place, I don’t know what my wife knows. -You think I’m so stupid I’m going to ask a woman what she knows? Second place-I come down off this roof some nights, come down early, and we send the boys to their cousins … to a movie … and we have the best time two people can have together. You think that girl over there was pretty-you ought to see my Lillian, she gets excited.” He straightened up. “-That’s got it. It’s on her place-she’s not out yet. You know-I figure, things so beautiful, so really special, you know?-It seems like a waste not to pay some attention. I understand there’s a privacy problem. Believe me, I understand that very well-that a woman needs some privacy, needs to be left alone, you know. And the prettier they are, I figure they need the privacy even more-“

“Gershon-you are out of your mind!” Ellie said.

“-You’re really sick, you know? I mean it.”

“Sure, you think that, because you’re a woman. You just don’t understand-you have no understanding of the hunger, the hunger for physical beauty! The stuff women just walk around with like it was nothing at all.” He smiled at Ellie. “I guess it’s sort of a burden to you, isn’t it?-You’re a pretty woman-don’t you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

“I know what you’re talking about,” Ellie said. “-And people have rights you’re not talking about. Women have rights for you to leave them the fuck alone-and not use that thing on them when they think they’re by themselves.”

“In short,” Nardone said, ‘-you’re actin’ like a friggin’ pervert, and you’re headin’ for a shitload of trouble.”

“Could be,” Gershon said. “-I won’t be the first guy got in trouble going crazy over beauty, not being able to get enough of it-and besides, I got some astronomy books out of the library. By the time that hearing comes around, I’m going to know a hell of a lot of astronornyI’m going to snow those guys with orbits and moons of Jupiter and phases and parsecs till it’s coming out their asses. They’ll think I’m a weirdo, all right-but not a peeper.”

“Very cute,” Nardone said, ‘-and you intend keepin’ doin’ this shit up here?”

Gershon sighed. “I guess not. I guess I won’t be able to.-Couldn’t take another complaint.” He bent to check the eyepiece. “You know,” he said as he fiddled, “-that fucker Stillman that started this mess …

you should have seen that jerk with his wife over there. His wife is a beautiful girl … long light brown hair … legs up to here. A goddess could look like that and be very happy.

Incredible you think a girl like that just walks around this huge stinking city-and nobody notices. And here comes this loudmouth making a fucking mess.-You should see what he does, trying to make love to that girl. It’s just a shame. It’s such a waste. Guy has a regular dick-excuse my French, Klein-but he just doesn’t know what to do with it! He doesn’t even know how to please her-you can see it in her face, she’s puzzled. ‘-What the hell is going onT is what she’s thinking.” He was silent, attentive to the eyepiece. “Ali,” he said, “I was worried this one wouldn’t come out-but here she comes. She’s black a skinny little sweetheart. Little darling … Whoops, she went back in again!

It’s like she’s made out of licoriceyou know, so smooth and nice; she just comes out and reads-wears shorts and a little halter, that’s it. I sort of keep her company, you know; never saw a guy over there, no lady, either. -All that prettiness, just wasted.”

“We saw the telescope-and he denied.”

“Right,” Nardone said.

The bronze Ford (radio muttering occasional calls) was rolling downtown under sunset colors glowing over Broadway, flame orange, flamingo pinks flooding down between the buildings to fill the street. Ellie thought how such colors might be mixed on a palette. -The flamingo pink was very difficult. Too difficult. She was tired, her legs aching a little behind her knees.

“Some days are long days, and some go like lightning.”

“This was a long one,” Nardone said. “-But keep that lady in mind-Margolies. We’ll give her a week, then we’ll look her up again-see if she’s rememberin’ better.”

“O.K.”

“Going’ up to Connecticut tomorrow?”

“Yes-111 go up in the morning, unless you want me to come in, enter the reports.”

“I can do that shit myself.”

It Tommy . . .”

“I know, I know. -I’ll enter it right. ‘Subject with another Subject, unidentified, possibly observing officers Klein and Nardone at location, left scene without commitment.”-And then we got, ‘Observed telescope-Subject denied. - - .”

” He blew his horn at a Toyota sedan moving slowly in front of them.

‘-Why a guy would drive in this city, and not have any frimin’ notion of what he’s doin’ - . . Yeah, we had a’big day, today. We straightened this town out……

“Maybe Leahy was ri lit about the pin board,” Ellie said. “-It would We put stuff on we keep notebo “O.K.-Couli a big one out o be a mess you can’t find Bureau held them up, by reports should be in tomorrow.“Bullshit.”

“Now you got it.“Do those guys need help?” Ellie said.

A patrol car was doubleparked on the right side of the avenue, the two officers out and standing on the sidewalk, one of them talking with a heavyset middle-aged woman wearing what looked like a baseball uniform.

A young white man with a dirty blond ponytail was sitting on the curb near them, his head in his hands.

“They don’t need help,” Nardone said. “—They already sent for a pickup car for that guy, probably. Guy looks like he was hurt.”

He pulled up anyway, and Ellie rolled her window down, dug in her purse for her shield, and held it up as one of the officers turned to look at them.

The cop, a freckled young woman with big hips made bigger by her equipment belt, came over to the Ford.

“No problem,” she said. She had a stony Irish voice …

sounded like the girls Ellie had grown up with. Gloria.

r for us on the case.

and it just gets lost unless go down, see if I can get one’s no good-it gets to ing. . . . Prints said the way. Said all fingerprint -She looked a little like Gloria Rooney, too. ‘-Got a jerk here tried to rip this lady off in the street.” The freckled girl smiled. She was a plain, wide-faced young woman, but she had beautiful, even teeth. “He took a try-an’ she hit him with a bat.-Comin’ in from playin’ softball in the park.”

“Handy,” Nardone said from behind the wheel.

“Somebody’s coming for him?” Ellie said.

“Oh, yeah. We got him for a knife, too. -She gave him a hell of a whack. She was scared she killed him.

When we got here, he was lyin’ in the gutter on some dog turds……

The young woman seemed gleeful, pleased to be what and where she was.

She had a wedding ring, and an engagement ring with a tiny stone together on her sturdy third finger-the finger as freckled as her face.

“Well-take it easy,” Ellie said. The young man sitting on the curb looked sick. There was no blood on his face, but his skin was white as vanilla ice cream.

Nardone pulled away into the traffic, and they rolled past a small group of onlookers standing staring at the young man, the two cops, and the woman in the red-and white softball uniform. She had Riverside stitched across the front of her uniform in large red letters.

“That was a good one,” Ellie said.

“One of the best … playin’ softball. Couldn’t that moron see she was carryin’ a bat? What the hell these guys think about - - .”

As they slowed for the next red light, Ellie, not realizing she’d heard their call code till she’d reached down and picked up the mike, responded. They didn’t get many car calls.

“603 Teacup tango,” the dispatcher said, “you have a report-to-scene request, 139th Street and St. Ann’s Avenue. Repeat 139th Street and St. Ann’s Avenue.”

Ellie acknowledged.

“What now?” Nardone said, and wheeled a left turn on Seventy-fourth Street, preparatory to another left uptown.

They arrived with night-only the western sky still streaked with sunset as Nardone pulled into a fierce zone of light behind a rumbling generator truck, the last in a line of Department vehicles parked at the curb along a long vacant lot, hillocked with rubble, the roasted ruin of a six-story building rising behind it. Phantoms, murmuring, calling, running through the surrounding dark, watched from across the avenue, where streetlights lead been stoned or shot out. A white T-shirt here and there was revealed in reflection from the police work lights strung along the lot, and a distant pair of light-colored socks scissoring along, their owner almost invisible above them.

Autumn hadn’t reached this section yet. Here, the Bronx still baked in summer, smelling of acres of dry weeds, spilled garbage, burned wood.

Ellie and Nardone got out of the Ford, and were locking it, when a man walked up behind Ellie in silhouette out of a softly sizzling halation of arc light.

“It’s the homicide aces,” Keneally said.

::What’s going’ on, Kenny?” Nardone said.

I asked Ben to put in a call to you guys—figured you might want to see one of the people put Classman away.”

He strolled out of silhouette into the glare of light. le was wearing another summer suit with a big checked pattern. This one was lighter brown, closer to burnt orange. “-Come on, I’m -going’ to give you the tour, but keep it in mind you , re only in on a pass. -Me, too. This is Upper East Division’s shit, strictly Bronx South.”

He turned to lead the way across a tangle of electric cable, then off the cracked, weed-grown sidewalk and out into the arc-lit lot, climbing carefully across the first rise of collapsed masonry, splintered wood, mounded broken bricks. A line of police officers, some in uniform, some plainclothes, was combing slowly across an area almost the size of a football field, each man casting several shifting shadows, variously dark, under the confluent beams of area lights, searchlights, and spots.

“Looks like they’re puttin’ out for this one,” Nardone said.

“Those assholes shouldn’t have killed a cop,” Keneally said.

“Hey-Nardone! Nardone!” A tall bald man (late fifties, early sixties, scalp reflective under the lights), his gold shield pinned to his jacket lapel. “-What in the world is a Headquarter’s troglodyte doing out so lateand uptown?” The detective trudged over the rubble as Nardone turned to meet him.

“Fancy company,” Keneally said, walking on. “-I could drop dead before Connors would come over, talk to me.”

“They arrested the perp here? —Or is he dead?” Ellie said, and stumbled slightly over a concrete shelf among the rubble-a ledge of foundation … perhaps the sill of some entrance way.

Keneally dropped back beside her, and took hold of her right arm above the elbow in a supporting grip, as if he were her husband, or a lover.

Ellie didn’t like the touch of his hand on her-though Keneally’s grip, in contradiction to his bulky, redfaced, heated look, was relaxed and gentle-but didn’t want to hurt his feelings by pulling away.

“He’s dead, all right,” Keneally said. ‘-Gotta be the guy Classman put a slug in; he’s got a hole in him through an’ through, looks like a thirty-eight.” Keneally, with his free hand, patted his beer befly low on the right side. ‘-Looks like his buddies didn’t want him going’ to no hospital. Brought him up here this mornin7—and threw him off the roof. Guy’s been cookin’ in the sun all day.”

After a few more steps, Ellie said, “I’m O.K.,” and was relieved when Keneally let go of her arm. She heard Nardone’s heavy, hasty stride behind them, trampling loose bricks aside, catching up.

“You heard what this is?”

“Yes,” Ellie said, and to Keneally, “Anybody know this gu)—the dead guy?”

“Yeah,” Keneally said. “Brabauer knew him-knew his brother, anyway.” He paused to shove a roll of rusted wire aside with his foot. “Will you look at all this shit? -Guy’s brother is a bad guy. Bobby Chavez. He’s away right now-going’ to stay away maybe another ten years up in Ossining.”

“What’s this one? What’s his name?” Nardone said.

They’d come to the side of the ruined building, and Keneally, staggering like a drunk, picked his way over the uneven rubble along the windowless, fire-stained brick wall-the surface sprayed, here and there, with huge, IL

cursive, incomprehensible phrases-in white paint, high-in yellow paint, low. He was heading toward a group of men standing in a white-ribboned enclosure farther along.

“Jesus Chavez, Brabauer says,” Keneally said, `-a junkie, Brabauer says.

-They got the TV set, too. The assholes left it inside the building, in the back.” He forged on toward the ribboned fold.

The glaring lights, their electric buzz, the swift haze of insects circling in their radiance, the wide field so illuminated-and this particular play occurring before her in a cluster of intent males-reminded Ellie powerfully of football nights in high school, when she and her friends, in short white pleated skirts, white boots, and Schuyler High’s cardinal-red tops, strutted, leaped, and cheered, playing princesses of the night.