Mitchell Smith (9 page)

At this, the Deputy for Community Affairs abruptly snapped his fingers, said, “I’ll take that knife,” reached out, took it, tossed it behind him onto a dark green sofa, then bolstered his heavy weapon inside his jacket, deep down under his left armpit. Emergency over. Life saved.

The Voice reporter witnessing all.

The Deputy, as the Hostage Team came down the hall, held out a manicured hand to the sullen teenager so saved, and said, “It’s all over, sugar-you come over here to me. ” -And upon those words, received from her fat father a sudden, awkward, whacking punch that struck him in the mouth quite hard.

The patrolman near him, released from awe, jumped past the shocked Deputy (posed with both hands to his lips in the echo of the blow), seized the fat man, spun him, kicked his feet out from under, threw him on the floor-and, relaxed, knelt on his neck while attaching the cuffs.

This, while the Deputy Commissioner for Community Affairs turned for any sort of help—to the small columnist for The Village Voice, to the lieutenant commanding the Hostage Team, just entered-and displayed a face pale as paper, a small spatter of bright blood on his sculpted lower lip, and a neat, comic black gap where the left of his two upper front teeth had been. Tears in his fine eyes.

His tooth he held in his right hand, having spit it into that palm to look at-to see if it could be true, Having seen, he clutched it (and would continue to do so for some time, refusing to have it pried away, until-almost lur later-a young nurse, in soft Spanish, soothed it from him). This handsome creature, foolish, shocked, and helpless as an injured child, now required the services of all grownups present, and they gave it instinctively as any grownups would. The fat man, a prayer cushion on the floor, was quite ignored. His sullen daughter, also.

This tale, gaining continually in the telling, was no longer new-though Cherusco had discovered (not Chief of Intelligence for nothing) or had invented the hour-long clutching of the tooth. Still, it remained a refreshment for all real police officers in their dealings with those odd civilians occasionally appointed to be their superiors in this peripheral division or that. The tale of Molina’s Tooth had the added advantage of being continually refreshed by the appearances of the man himself, smiling bravely with his plastic prosthesis (the best that Dr.

Bimstein could do until the gum was less swollen).

This plastic tooth was of an unconvincing whiteness that put the Deputy’s other handsome teeth to shame.

Blue-white, and much bigger than it should have been, standing slightly in advance of the row of others, it was a constant reminder of foolishness and frailty signaled to all he spoke with in the past few days. Above this large plastic tooth, the handsome lip, the perfect nose, Molina’s interlocutors saw velvet eyes, swimming in shame.

The First Deputy swung a little to the side in his fine chair, cheered by the repetition of that cautionary tale, smiled, and shook his head.

In such a manner, and by all the reporters, buffs, clerical employees, the policemen and -women that staffed and swarmed through Headquarters, that manned the thousands of division and precinct posts, the Academy, the shops, garages, ranges, armories and stables, the helicopters and harbor launches-through all these, the tale of Molina’s tooth would continue to propagate, flourish, and add its slight fiber to the ancient dense-woven macramd of the Department.

“Well, this Operation Godiva thing is not to be brought up in any way, shape, or form in the meeting,” the First Deputy said. “-It’s too touchy.”

“We’ll have enough on our plate in there with the budget,” Delgado said.

A sore point, since the mayor, a good Democrat and supposed friend to the police, though black, had proposed a budget of the most stringent sort, the Ci y Council reluctantly approving.

“That jigaboo doesn’t care if the city slides right into the river,”

Cherusco said.

“John,” said the First Deputy, “—be quiet.”

“There are some priorities in that budget, Frank,” Delgado said.

“-There’s stuff that can get cut and not hurt the Department at all.”

“You will keep that opinion to yourself, won’t you, Tony?”

“Except in proper company-yes, sir,” Delgado said, the honorary sounding odd from his dark snapping-turtle’s face. He shifted in his chair, hitched up, and as he moved, revealed for an instant something under his left trouser cuff. -Where most chiefs of the&ew York City Police Department had scorned to carry any armament but their princely office, Delgado gave no weapon away.

He wore a .25-caliber Seecamp pistol, a very small, neat piece, in a patch holster of elastic at the inside of his left ankle-a slender ankle for his weight, blue-veined, blackhaired, black-socked.

This weapon, from that holster (his wife and widowed sister downstairs cooking dinner in the big, stuccoed house in Forest Hills) Delgado would secretly seize in practice draws-the draws complex, involving, as he stood, a suddenly lifted left le tg crossed in the air before him, then a snatching beneath e trouser cuff with the right hand after which, more often than not, the Chief stood armed and ready, his little pistol pointed at the stomach of a squat aging man in a straining uniform, framed in Delgado’s bedroom closet mirror.

“Fact is, though,” Delgado, quietly, after only the slightest pause,

“-fact is that training is getting shorted more than a million of that budget. Closer to two. Lawrence says so, and I say so.”

“Lawrence never has enough money-“

“That’s right,” Delgado said, as if the First Deputy had just agreed with him. “They need a new floor in that gym; they need to hire at least four more permanent instructors-“

“Will you get serious?”

“Lawrence needs them, Frank.” Delgado spoke softly, but suddenly leaned forward in his chair as if in an instant he might come bounding out of it, and-despite the disparity in size-reach across Connell’s dark, polished desk to take him by his suit lapels. “-And I told him I would personally see he got that money.”

“Then you told him shit, Tony.” The First Deputy was cursing today.

Godiva had upset him. “The Commissioner is going to make those allocations. Not you-not me.”

Cherusco, pleased to be witness to this battle of elephants, stayed still and quiet as a child afraid of being noticed and sent from the room.

“Then let him consider this, Frank.” The Chiefs voice was almost too low to hear. “The Department is only as good as the quality of its personnel-and that’s only as good as their training. I will be damned if I allow future New York City police officers to be sent out onto those streets without the finest training that budget will buy.

And if that means fewer helicopters and limos, if it means fewer trips to London and Tokyo to those bullshit conferences-or if we have to keep the old green-shift patrol cars for another year-then that’s what it’ll have to mean. Because there will be no compromise on the quality of training.”

He sat back in his chair, and looked out through the plate glass once more, as if his real interest lay in that vacancy. —One of the doubleparked cars down Park Row had left.

“Why don’t you save that crap for the Times, Tony?”

The First Deputy smiled. “The Commissioner appreciates your position-hell, I appreciate it. We’re not going to gut Lawrence and the other guys down there. You know that-right?” He reached to a small redlacquered box at the front edge of his desk, lifted the lid, then lowered it again.

“A new floor for that gym,” Delgado said. “Four new permanent instructors-Breedman couldn’t teach Wyatt Earp to shoot on that range-and we need a senior legal instructor, an experienced criminal attorney, not those part-timers from John Jay.”

ou got to be kidding! -We’re going to put out for a full-time attorney, just to instruct? -No way!” The First Deputy’s cheeks showed the faintest flush.

Cherusco, a quick learner, was learning it might be unfortunate to observe too severe a disagreement between superiors. The loser would remember the witness.

Delgado turned from the transparent wall. “Frank,” he said, almost whispering, “-false arrests, arraignment discharges, cases dismissed last year cost the City and the Department just over three million dollars. -And I’m not even talking about man-hours lost because our patrolmen and detectives were not up on whatever crap the courts handed down last year. An experienced attorney, instructing full-time at the Academy, will save us about a million a year.”

“So you say, Tony. So you say. -But those are your figures. I doubt very much if they’re the Department’s.”

The First Deputy’s big hands, flushed the same faint maroon as his cheeks, lay on his desk like small dogs meeting.

Delgado turned back to his view. “O.K. Check ‘em. -Ask Busoni at the meeting.” Armenio Busoni being Deputy Commissioner for Administration.

“You bet your ass I will,” the First Deputy said-and realized, just as he said it, that he’d obligated himself to request figures from Buster Busoni, who owed to Delgado all that he’d become-and would not, now, fail to repay.

Delgado waited at his view until the First Deputy had come to that conclusion, then turned his bulky head and said, “Am I being too much a son-of-a-bitch on this, Frank?-Don’t you agree with me it’s important?”

“You are a son-of-a-bitch,” the First Deputy said, -and someday, you’re going to get a little too cute, Tony.”

Delgado smiled, and turned back to the glass wall.

Another car had come to doublepark down there. Two of them. -Two more than there had been. There was no excuse for it.

A heavy silence. Cherusco pretended he wasn’t there.

“O.K.,” the First Deputy said. “-Let’s have these people in. We all have other things to do.” He sat up straight behind his desk. “I don’t know why the hell Frankenthaler isn’t here. -He let those people in on it in the first place. I thought he was a shrewd guy.”

“Shrewd enough,” Delgado said from his wall. “-Shrewd enough to put in his papers damn fast after that operation shut down.”

“Well-once they blew Godiva, I don’t think he had any choice about lettin’ the Army guys in,” Cherusco said. A safe subject, and thank God for it.

“He could give us some information on them, anyway.”

“I talked to him this mornin’,” Cherusco said, “-and I was lucky he told me his name. Norm says he only talks through his lawyer about that-and he’s forgettin’ as fast as he can.”

:‘Great.”

I got a phone call from Washington on this,” Delgado said’. “-I believe the P.C. got one as well.”

The First Deputy didn’t say the Commissioner had, or hadn’t.

:‘These people belong to somebody,” Delgado said.

“My information,” Cherusco said, “-is that they were assi ned DIA”-by which he meant the Defense Intelligence Agency. “We don’t know if they’re regular with them, or not-but somebody up there likes ‘em.”

“Same people were on Godiva?”

“That’s right. -At least the Colonel was. Frankenthaler said he was an asshole. -Had a smart sergeant.”

“All right,” the First Deputy said, “-let’s have them in.” He reached to touch the third button in a row of nine at the side of his desktop—as he did, shutting his mouth to suppress to silence a burp returned from his heavy breakfast . . . so it fumed out, soundless, through his nose.

The Colonel and his lieutenant, both neatly dressed in business suits-the Colonel’s a pin-stripe gray, the Lieutenant’s a light summer blue-had been sitting side by side on a waiting-room sofa, quite content, each reading a National Geographic. -“Brazil, a Nation of Futures” . “Along the Malapang Trail .

A plain brown leatfier briefcase was leaning against the Lieutenant’s right leg.

These two, so neatly dressed, might almost have been civilians, and taken as such by the detectives and Department secretaries around them, except for their short hair, the slight creases at their jackets’ left armpits, beneath which handguns rested. The office people believed them to be Treasury men (a great grinding case of securities theft currently looming large enough to come to the attention of the highest brass).

-Those, or Bureau people, though they’d shown no ID, had only introduced themselves as Mr. Mathews (the Colonel), and Mr. Cates, and said they were expected by the First Deputy Commissioner.

Now, a good while later, on the approach and nod of one of the many bulky detectives first class strolling in shirtsleeves up and down the wide aisles of cubicled desks-their short-barreled Colts, Smith & Wessons, and Rugers riding their massive hips like tickbirds-at a nod from one of these men, the Colonel and his lieutenant rose together, the Lieutenant lifting his briefcase with him, and walked behind the Nodder down the long corridor toward the First Deputy Commissioner’s office.

At a wide doorframe, past which white walls turned to paneled, smooth carpet to plush, the Nodder stepped aside, and an even bigger man (but elderly), blue-blazered, his smooth, plump cheeks crimson satin, his hair whipped cream , introduced himself as Inspector Mahon, shook the Colonel’s hand, and addressed him as Mr. Mathews.

He did not offer to shake the Lieutenant’s hand-divining their relationship, perhaps, by his bearing of the briefcase and, murmuring easy Irish courtesies, ushered the visitors the last thirty-five feet of panel and plush to Francis Connell’s office, walking before them with a gait as generous and rhythmic as a sailor’s-an old beat cop’s walk, in fact, hardly seen anymore.

None of the men in the First Deputy’s office rose to greet the Colonel and his lieutenant-indeed, each of them outranked the Colonel in the only measures he or they respected-the number of armed men commanded, the length of time in grade in those commands.

The Colonel and his Lieutenant were content to accept their white-haired usher’s introductions standing, smiling, replying with “Gentlemen” to the nods received from the First Deputy on his leather throne, from Cherusco, from the Chief of the Department by his shaded wall of glass.

“Thank you, Terry,” the First Deputy said to the old man, and that minion strolled out of the office in his sailor’s roll, closing the heavy door behind him so softly no latch click could be heard.