The Confession of Joe Cullen (26 page)

Meanwhile, the simple lunatic day-to-day routine of a small, unimportant Lower West Side police precinct had been interrupted by the high forces of the nation. When a crime happened on the street, and the cops looked for witness, the almost universal response was “I don't want to get involved.” Was that the way he felt? Freedman wondered. What do I love, aside from Sheila, who regards me as an unreconstructed pain in the ass. “I love my country” is what they all say. But define it: a cop treads a turf made of feces; that would have to be extracted from what you love. Consider the South Bronx or Bedford-Stuyvesant or Hell's Kitchen, where few enough sing “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,” or consider Los Angeles, where there are at least five thousand doped-up gang members ready to do mayhem, or consider my own little island in the universe, where an old priest could be smothered to death, or a hooker stitched all over with an ice pick.

Yes, a tall, good-looking lady named Sylvia Mendoza, who made men happy for a few minutes or at least released them from the quiet misery of their daily lives.

Sylvia Mendoza. He was thinking about her, a slight smile on his lips, when Ramos looked into his office and suggested that since Jones and Leary were back at their desks, Freedman and Rainos could go to lunch.

“And no garbage. I am sick to death of the garbage we eat,” Ramos said. “They brought in that bastard who sold the crack to the kid who died. I put him in number one.”

“Number one?”

“Don't bleed for him,” Ramos said. “You bleed to much for the garbage we collect.”

“It's a hell of a world you paint. We eat garbage, we collect garbage, and the mayor sits and worries about how to get rid of the garbage of eight million people. It's the age of garbage. A ten-year-old kid buys crack and dies. When I was a cop in uniform, I was assigned to cover one of those diplomatic affairs that come out of the UN, and this Central American diplomat walks by, and believe me, I knew the face, and he's under suspicion of murder and drug trafficking and we can't touch him—”

“I think a cop goes crazy enough without trying to figure it out, so let's go to lunch, Lieutenant, and eat some decent Italian food at Marco's.”

“Diplomatic immunity — what happened to the tape?” Freedman demanded as he put on his jacket. “Here's the biggest goddamn story of the year, and it disappears into thin air, and we got three murders right on the doorstep of our lousy little house, and nobody wants them solved and nobody gives a damn.”

Ramos shrugged. “Nobody gives a damn about anything.”

“Yeah. Let's eat.”

At Marco's, on Fourteenth Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, Marco himself took them to a quiet table in a corner of the room. He liked having the detectives eat at his place. He had come from Milan, and not only did he serve northern Italian food, but he was not connected in any way, and the presence of the cops eased his nerves.

They ate without saying much, except for Freedman ticking off the cases that might as well be closed, including Cullen, since Manhattan South would be following up on that, and then they discussed, somewhat hopelessly, the air conditioner that had been promised to them every fall during the past four years. “The trouble is,” Ramos reminded Freedman, who was thinking of a petition from the entire force, “that every time they send an engineer around, he goes back with a recommendation that the whole building should be torn down and it's not worth air conditioning.”

“Another year, another engineer,” Freedman said. He was facing the front of the restaurant, and now he saw a man come into the place and speak to Marco, most likely asking a question. Marco's answer was to point to their table. The man was tall and good-looking, gray tweed coat with an English cut, no hat, but soft blond hair and a blond mustache, a little white in the hair, wide mouth, striped shirt, and dark tie. His eyes were a very pale and striking blue. He walked to their table, and said, “Forgive me for intruding. My name is Dumont Robertson, but I am better known to my friends as Monty. Perhaps Joe Cullen mentioned me to you.”

The two detectives stared at him in silence. Ramos left the initiative to Freedman, and Freedman took no initiative.

“May I sit down?”

Freedman glanced at the two empty chairs at the square table, but still said nothing. Monty moved around the table and seated himself.

Freedman turned to Ramos and said slowly, deliberately, “This sleazy son of a bitch had a tail on us.” Then he turned to Monty and continued, “I'll push it a bit and charge you with loitering, being a public nuisance, and a general disturber of the peace. I think I can get you at least thirty days. Read him his rights, Sergeant.”

“This shithead isn't worth the trouble,” Ramos said. “Do you want any dessert, Lieutenant? They got the best zabaglione in the city right here.”

“Why not? It rips the fat off you. Marco!” he called. The owner came to the table. “Two espresso, two zabaglione.”

Marco looked questioningly at Monty.

“He's not eating!” Freedman said.

Marco turned away from the table, and Monty said, “We could talk more easily without the name calling.”

Freedman said nothing. Ramos said nothing.

“I stopped in to tell you it's over,” Monty said.

The two detectives said nothing.

“There was no tape,” Monty said pleasantly. “Father O'Healey died in a plane crash in the mountains of Durango. The Mexican government was kind enough to conduct a wide search for the wreckage, but the body was not found until three weeks had passed. Understandably, the good father was buried in a sealed coffin. The burial took place only this morning. The bishop will be writing to you to tell you the details, and there will be at least a small acknowledgment of this in the back pages of the
New York Times
. A number of policemen in your precinct house may have heard Joe Cullen's confession, and I am sure that you will pass on to them the fact that the entire confession was a fabrication, a desire on the part of Mr. Cullen to get back at the small airline that had fired him. A little research on your part, no more than a few telephone calls, will convince you that West Texas Carriers had ample reason to fire him. As for the fecundity of Mr. Cullen's imagination, well, he was a cocaine user, and that should explain things. He did some small smuggling himself, but the amount was insignificant.”

Monty rose from his seat at the table, looked from one man to the other, and nodded. “The main point is that it's over. What had to be done was done, and that's the end of it. Meanwhile, thank you for your courtesy in listening to me; I wish it would extend to our breaking bread together, but since that is impossible, I bid you goodbye.” And with that, he walked out of the restaurant.

For a few seconds, Freedman and Ramos sat in silence, looking at each other. Then Freedman said, “That's not the end of it.”

“No, I don't think it is.”

“I'm going to get him,” Freedman said. “I swear to God, I am going to get him.”

The Harvard Club

“I
HAVE
some plain pound cake. Is that all right, Lieutenant?”

He said it was all right. “Ginny, you don't have to feed me,” he said.

“I don't have any liquor — except some brandy. But you don't want brandy. I don't drink.” She did not add that men who wanted to drink did not come to her apartment, and that Cullen was the first man that she had asked to this apartment; but Freedman did not know that she had seen Cullen twice, nor would he ever know. That was her thing, and it would be kept as her thing.

Freedman tried to put her in a framework and then gave it up. Nothing fitted. He had watched her in court and had seen her tear a witness to shreds. She was an unremitting prosecutor, and yet this apartment, her refuge, her secret — he guessed that — was filled with light and color. But was there actually any separation? There was nothing feminine here, the lemon-yellow rug, the Chinese designs on the chintz-covered couches, the nonobjective paintings on the walls — well, perhaps feminine enough to someone else, but he made his comparisons with Sheila, the silks and the laces and the pastel colors that she loved so much. But Ginny was not Sheila, and Freedman really had little idea what she was or who she was, except that something connected her to Cullen.

She brought him tea. He had asked for tea. “The damn coffee's worse than smoking. It took me five years to kick cigarettes.”

She sat facing him, intense. “You said a miracle would be needed to get them. What miracle? What changed?”

“Did you ever talk to Timberman about Tony Carlione?”

“Of course I did.”

“About the possibility of prosecuting him?”

“Lieutenant, there's no evidence, not a shred of evidence that he killed Sylvia Mendoza. Twelve stab wounds — means nothing. If you had him cuffed over at your precinct house, I'd still say forget it.”

“He killed her.”

“Oh, come on.”

“You ever feel something in your bones? I feel this in my bones. Tony Carlione killed her on a contract, and Dumont Robertson, our friend Monty, put out the contract. You want Cullen's killer — it's the same son of a bitch, Dumont Robertson, whether he pulled the trigger himself or whether he farmed it out.”

“I'm listening,” Ginny said.

“If you had a witness, say Carlione, to testify that Monty bought the contract, would you prosecute?”

“Oh, the whole thing's smoke. You know that, Lieutenant. Carlione was relocated. There's no way to find him, and if you found him, there's no way to get him to testify.”

“You're wrong; he can be found and he can be made to testify.”

“Yes, and pigs have wings. He's relocated. Don't you understand what that means? The Feds put their reputation on the line with their relocation program. That's how they get witnesses. There's no way into it.”

“Who runs it? Not the Justice Department, but inside the department, who runs it?”

“They have a department for it.”

“And who knows? You people used him. He was your witness, and you made the arrangements with the Feds. Someone in your outfit has to know where Carlione is.”

She was silent now, thinking about it.

“Let me tell you something about Cullen,” Freedman said. “He was a Catholic. I suppose you know that.”

“I know.”

“He wanted to confess to killing Father O'Healey.”

“He didn't kill O'Healey.”

“Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. We'll never know for sure, but I'm with you. I don't think he killed the priest, but neither do I believe his story is entirely true. What the hell, nobody tells the truth, if there is such a thing. You're a Catholic, aren't you?”

“That's right, Lieutenant,” she answered stiffly. “And what has that got to do with it?”

“Everything or maybe nothing. In El Salvador, not too many years ago, there was a demented murderer of nuns and Catholic lay workers, women raped and murdered because they ministered to the poor. Then a bishop in San Salvador was murdered, because he took the side of the poor. A priest in El Salvador was shot to death because he was giving last rites to a woman a soldier had murdered, and in Nicaragua, the contras tortured a priest to death. I get all this out of reading the
New York Times
, so when Cullen told what had happened to Father O'Healey, I wasn't particularly surprised. Puzzled, yes, but not surprised. Me, I'm Jewish, and I learned street fighting from the Catholic kids who told me I had killed their God, which made no more sense than the stuff Hitler said, and then I grew up and did a turn in Vietnam and married a Catholic lady and became a cop, and found that practically everyone around me was Catholic if he wasn't Jewish or black, and then Father O'Healey entered my life and Cullen decided to confess to a priest in a church in my precinct.”

“And what does all that add up to?” Ginny asked.

“I'm not sure it adds up to anything. Cops get sour, which is not unreasonable. You bring in a dope peddler and the next day he walks. I'm not blaming you or your crowd. I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just stating the fact. I'm forty-one years old and I don't see anything in my life that means a lot. Don't get impatient with me, Ginny. I'm trying to say something.”

“I don't know what you're trying to say.”

“Well,” Freedman said, “I'll try. I want to bring Dumont Robertson in and I want to book him and I want you to prosecute him. This is something I have to do. Now, I started to tell you before that Cullen wanted to confess. He had to confess — I mean, that from what I've been able to put together, there was a force in him that drove him to confess. So he went up to this Church of Saint Peter the Rock, as I said in our precinct—”

“I know where the church is.”

“Right. Now an old priest there, Father Immelman, hears his confession. Cullen wants absolution. The priest can only give him absolution if he states his belief in God, and Cullen, who is so desperate for this absolution, will not admit to a belief in God. That's one thing. On the other hand, Cullen has confessed to the priest, and in his covering of tracks, Monty has the priest murdered.”