Suspects (30 page)

There was a moment when he caught Stephanie's attention, and she worked her way through the throng to join him inside the kitchen, away from the trafficked doorway.

“I got to get Artie's stuff to Rosie.”

His wife was a stately figure in her black dress, which trimmed her weight to almost what it had been a decade earlier. “Bring it along when you run her home.”

“She don't have a ride?”

“She came over with the Monaghans, but I think you wanta give her a lift back to her mother's.”

“Me?”

“Who else?”

“Well, if she's gonna stay at her mother's, I can't give her Artie's stuff,” Marevitch said, wincing.

“I don't know about that,” Stephie told him. “But it's time you said something to her, Jack. You simply got to.”

A burly figure passed through the nearby doorway and stopped at Marevitch's shoulder to pat him and say to Stephanie, “Hiya, sweetheart.” To Marevitch he said, “Jack, there was a lieutenant of detectives there all the way from Nebraska!” It was Sergeant Glen Heinz from the precinct. “He was in plainclothes. Hooper told me.”

“Did you see Novak?” Marevitch asked him.

Heinz's big brushy mustache hid his long upper lip. He was proportionately no heavier than Marevitch but four or five inches taller. “The captain was called away, I believe.”

“I was hoping maybe he could present the medal to Rosie at the ceremonies,” Marevitch said. “Though I guess they do that at another time and not the funeral. But when I think she ain't got nothing to take home but that folded flag, you know…?”

Heinz capped his shoulder with a large hand. “You got to hear this sooner or later, Jack. Captain Novak got turned down. He tried, but the chief won't buy it.”

“That son of a bitch,” Marevitch said.
“He
was there, right alongside the mayor and the commissioner, for the TV cameras.”

“He says they reserve it for valor.” Heinz rolled his eyes. “He says what Artie did was a mistake.” He applied pressure to Marevitch's shoulder. “Can't blame the captain. He tried.”

“Yeah,” Marevitch said, balling his dangling fists. He turned to get Stephanie's support, but she had left. He urgently addressed Heinz. “Ain't there some way I can appeal?
I
was the one who saw the whole thing. Where's
he
getting his information from?”

The sergeant's jowly countenance showed alarm, his eyes growing smaller. “Now, you don't wanna question a decision at the top, Jack. That won't do you or Artie's memory any good at all. Pierce didn't get to be chief by changing his mind once it's made up.”

“He got to be chief by sticking his nose up the commissioner's ass,” Marevitch said. “We all know that.” He strode away from Heinz, whose stripes were suddenly offensive, though they did not usually bother him much despite his four and a half years' seniority over the sergeant. He went through the dining room, looking for Rosie McCall. From bitterness he took sufficient courage to face her at last.

He found her in the living room, sitting quietly at the far end of a sofa otherwise occupied by two other women, who held filled plates in their laps. In Rosie's was the triangle of the folded American flag, taken from Artie's casket prior to the lowering of it into the grave. Above the flag swelled her belly. People came and went to her, yet she was utterly alone in the crowd. Despite her condition she looked smaller and younger than usual. Her fair skin, which tended to burn red in the summer sun, was paler than ever by contrast with the unrelieved black of her clothing.

She saw him, cried, “Jack!” rose with an effort, and came into his arms as far as her pregnancy would allow. She was not that much older than his daughter and slighter in every dimension.

“I can't hug you tight as I want,” Marevitch said into her pink scalp. “Don't want to squeeze Artie Junior.”

She pulled back an inch or two and said contritely, “Jack. Forgive me, Jack. I shoulda come to you before. I know that. I know what you meant to Artie.”
She
was apologizing to
him
.

“Stephie told you, didn't she? I was real sick last night. I couldn't get to the wake. I was throwing up all—Listen, I got Artie's stuff. From the precinct, ya know. Extra shirt, civilian sweat outfit, sneakers and all.” The workout clothes dated from when, two years before, Art had done a plainclothes job on temporary loan-out to Narcotics because the drug dealers wouldn't recognize him: he jogged around the park where the buys were made.

Rosie tried to smile. “I forgot about that. He hated exercise. You know that, Jack. He said he got enough climbing in and out of the unit.”

“He always stayed in good shape,” said Marevitch, wagging his head. “He was a natural athlete. He didn't need no extra jogging. I was sure glad to have him along when we had to chase some mutt through the alleys: Artie did all that. Me, I drove the unit around the block.” He patted his gut. “I got almost as much here as you, Rosie. I took a lot of heat from your old man on that subject. ‘Come on, Jack, not
another
doughnut, for pity sake!'” McCall had of course used stronger language, but Marevitch revised it for the occasion.

“You were his idol, Jack. Most people learn to be cops, but ‘Jack,' he always said, ‘you take Jack, he was born to it. With him it's an instinct. You can't ever learn it like him,' he said.”

One of the other occupants of the couch got up and pressed past them. She told Rosie she would call her in a day or so to come over. Marevitch did not know which of his colleagues to associate with this woman and asked Rosie.

“Marsha Hagenson…Ron Hagenson, the Fourteenth,” naming the precinct in which Artie had served before joining Marevitch's Sixth.

“You want I should run you home now, sweetie?”

“I'll be staying with my mom for a while. I might sell the house after the baby comes, Jack. I don't know if I can bear to look at it anymore.” They had only had the place, a fixer-upper, for a little over a year. Artie had spent most of his off-duty time working on it. Once or twice Marevitch had helped him out, bringing in big panels of Sheetrock from the home center, in a pickup they borrowed from Charlie Haseltine, a fellow patrolman who moonlighted as a handyman. Rosie made a wry face. “There's also the mortgage payments. I don't know if the benefits will cover them.”

“Not time to worry about that,” said Marevitch. “We'll get you home now to your mom.” He left her at the couch, where she picked up the folded flag again. He went to ask Stephie for the keys to the family car: easier than searching forever for his own set.

But when he found his wife near the rented coffee urn, replenishing the supply of Styrofoam cups, he gave vent to the indignation he had hitherto suppressed for Rosie McCall's sake. “They're not giving Artie the medal.” He clenched his teeth at her. “I'm turning my shield in tomorrow morning first thing. Don't try to talk me out of it.” Someone in blue came for coffee. Marevitch turned his back on the man without identifying him, turned back when he was gone. “I'm not gonna put up with it, Steph.”

“It's your call, Jack. You do what you gotta do.”

“You agree with me, don't you? I had Novak's word.”

“Yeah, you told me.”

“I mean,” Marevitch said, moving his chin from side to side, “what else can I do? He gave me his word, Steph. What kinda man would welsh on that?”

“If he's the one doing the welshing.”

“What's that supposed to mean? You know something about this matter?”

“No more than you.”

“Heinz?”

“He knew you were mad,” Stephanie said. “He didn't want you to blame
him.”

“I never blamed him,” Marevitch said disgustedly. “Goddammit.”

“It's a lousy thing, Jack.”

Marevitch hung his head. “I'm not gonna lose my pension over it. Artie wouldn't want that. I did what I could.” Tears blurred his vision. “That's the second time I let him down.”

“Rosie don't think so,” Stephanie said. “I mean, about the liquor store. She didn't know about the medal business, and for God's sake, don't tell her!” Stephie on occasion could get fierce.

Marevitch blinked. “All right, woman,” he mock-growled. “Gimme them car keys before I whip your butt.”

“That'll be the day.” Ordinarily she would have chuckled, but they had just buried Artie, so she only pressed her hip against him before going to the sideboard for the keys.

Moody and LeBeau stopped at Lloyd Howland's former residence to pick up Denarius Glotty, who, it was their understanding, had agreed to accompany them on their search of the dump, for only he was equipped to identify the trash that he had put out for collection. But when the super finally answered their repeated knocks at his ground-floor rear door, he denied all knowledge of the deal.

“Tings to do here. Cannat go away from building, I don' care, caps or no caps.” And when further pressed, he added, “I got me some rights too, damn me.” He wore a gray shirt that might have been clean but looked dirty, a puff of dirty-gray chest hair showing at the open neck. He smelled strongly of some substance, though it was nothing Moody could readily identify.

It was practical, however, to assume the man was drunk. “You got the right to help the police,” Moody said menacingly. “That's how it works in this country.”

“So now I'm a gottdam foreigner?” Glotty showed a grimace that could have been either serious or farcical.

“What we're doing, Mr. Glotty,” LeBeau told him, in a genial tone, “is asking for a favor from you as a law-abiding citizen. Like you promised the other day, remember?”

Glotty snorted with force, sending another wave of the odor their way. It smelled somewhat like turpentine, but if he had drunk that he would have been dying. “I don' got to answer to youze, you know. My bozz is duh laniard.”

This speech made Moody want to lean on him with more spirit than had yet been exerted, but LeBeau said, “We got your boss's okay. You call him if you want.”

Glotty's ridged forehead became smooth for an instant. “Hang on, I get my hot.”

“You didn't talk to the landlord, right?” Moody asked his partner when the super had gone.

“Right,” confirmed LeBeau just as Glotty returned, wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat that looked old-fashioned but was in almost new condition.

No help awaited them at Sanitation's No. 3 dump. The detectives assumed that this state of affairs was probably due to the delay caused by the funeral, and they sat in the car, smelling Glotty's stench even with all windows open and listening to his grumbling, for a good hour, until it was reasonable to suppose nobody was coming.

They were parked on the shoulder of the road, just outside a chain-link fence that was already rusty, though this was supposed to be a relatively new facility. A squat shed of stained corrugated iron sat just beyond the gate. No moving object had yet been seen on the vast undulating trashscape beyond except the quivering seagulls, but suddenly the roar of a poorly muffled engine could be heard, and from a depression invisible at Moody's perspective, a dirty yellow bulldozer hauled itself into view. When the vehicle came close enough, the noise was too loud to bear except with fingers in the ears—at least for the detectives. Glotty seemed to have gone placidly to sleep.

A man wearing an orange safety helmet emerged from the shed to hail the dozer, which stopped. At the idle, its noise was reduced to the almost bearable.

Moody brought his hands down. “I'm gonna use their phone. We can't sit here all day.” He climbed out, heading for the gate, and had just reached it when the man in the helmet and stained coverall saw him and advanced.

“Hey you,” shouted this guy, pointing to the sign that hung on one panel of the swung-back gate. “Off limits to the public. Can't you read?”

Moody identified himself and the business at hand.

But the helmeted personage became no friendlier. “Nobody told me nothing about that.”

Moody pointed at the shack. “Can I use your phone?”

“Out of order.” When Moody gave him a dubious look, he thrust out his jaw. “So try it and see.”

Moody returned to the car. Decades of experiences with other city agencies, and even sometimes with other divisions of the Police Department, had made him stoical.

“Let's find a phone.”

LeBeau was staring at the reaches of the dump. “Look at those gulls. What are they, a hundred miles from salt water?”

Moody would no longer engage in small talk with his partner, else he would have noted that there were probably even more rats.

They stopped at a phone booth outside a gas station, and LeBeau got out and made the call. “Captain can't spare the men,” he said when he returned to the car. “Due to the time lost for the funeral, and there's a new homicide.”

“He knew about that when he told us,” Moody said.

“He claims he never promised.”

“Well, it's too much for two men only.” Moody turned to address Glotty, now awake and scowling. “You're in luck, Mr. Glotty. We can't do it today. Run you home now.”

The super's expression changed to the positive, and his accent was lighter. “I gonna get paid, though?”

Moody did not want to discourage him with the truth and therefore answered by murmuring the word “tomorrow.” He was pleased to see that it worked, Glotty moueing amiably. Moody directed LeBeau to take a right on Markham, up ahead. “It intersects with Mulberry in about a mile. That's right around the corner from Laurel. Let me off there while you run the citizen home.”

“But didn't you want—”

“No,” said Moody. “Let me off there.”

His partner took the hint and said nothing more till they reached the appropriate place, a street away from the eleven hundred block of Laurel, and Moody pistoled a finger at where he wanted to de-board. “What're you gonna do?”