A Ticket to the Boneyard

Page 26

"That's not the point. It's enough to get a warrant issued and pull the son of a bitch off the street."
"Uh-huh."
"Before he kills somebody else."
"Uh-huh. What time was it when you got in the alley with him?"
"I met her at midnight, so-"
"Candy, you mean. The transsexual."
"Right. So it was probably half an hour after that by the time the assault took place."
"Say twelve-thirty."
"Roughly."
"And then you went to a hospital?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I didn't think it was necessary. He caused a lot of pain but I knew I didn't have any broken bones and I wasn't bleeding. I figured I'd be better off going straight home."
"So there's no hospital record."
"Of course not," I said. "I didn't go to a hospital, so how the hell could there be a hospital record?"
"I guess there couldn't."
"My cabdriver wanted to take me to a hospital," I said. "I must have looked as though I belonged there."
"It's a shame you didn't listen to him. You see what I'm getting at, don't you, Matt? If there was an emergency-room record, it would tend to confirm your story."
I didn't know what to say to that.
"How about the cabdriver?" he went on. "I don't suppose you got his hack license number?"
"No."
"Or his name? Or the number of his cab?"
"It never occurred to me."
"Because he could place you in the neighborhood and give evidence of your appearance and physical condition. As it is, all we've got is your statement."
I felt anger rising, and I made an effort to keep a lid on it. Evenly I said, "Well, isn't that worth something? Here's a guy who went away for aggravated assault on a police officer. After sentencing he threatened that officer in open court. He served twelve years, during which time he committed other acts of violence. Now, a few months after his release, you've got a sworn statement charging him with assault on that same police officer, and-"
"You're not a police officer now, Matt."
"No, but-"
"You haven't been a police officer for quite some time now." He lit a cigarette, shook the match out, went on shaking it after the flame had died. Without looking at me he said, "What you are, you want to get technical about it, you're an ex-cop with no visible means of support."
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Well, what else are you? You're a sort of half-assed private detective, but you don't carry a license and you get paid off the books, so what do you think that looks like when you write it up?" He sighed, shook his head. "Late last night," he said. "Was that the first time you saw Motley yesterday?"
"It's the first time I saw him since his sentencing."
"You didn't go over to his hotel earlier?"
"What hotel?"
"Yes or no, Matt. Did you or didn't you?"
"Of course not. I don't even know where he's staying. I've been turning the city upside down looking for him. What's all this about?"
He rooted through papers on his desk, found what he was looking for. "This came through this morning," he said.
"Late yesterday afternoon a lawyer named Seymour Goodrich turned up at the Sixth Precinct on West Tenth. He was representing one James Leo Motley, and he had with him a recently obtained order of protection on behalf of his client against you, and-"
"Against me?"
"- and he wanted a complaint on the record about your actions earlier that day."
"What actions?"
"According to Motley, you turned up at his lodgings at the Hotel Harding. You menaced him, threatened him, and laid hands on his physical person in a threatening and intimidating manner, et cetera et cetera et cetera." He let go of the paper and it floated down onto the cluttered desktop. "You're saying it never happened. You never went to the Harding."
"Sure I went there. It's a flop at the corner of Barrow and West, I knew it well years ago when I was attached to the Sixth. We used to call it the Hard-on."
"So you did go there."
"Sure, but not yesterday. I went there when I was knocking on doors down there. Saturday night, it must have been. I showed his picture to the desk clerk."
"And?"
"And nothing. 'No, he don't look familiar, I never seen him before.' "
"And you never went back?"
"What for?"
He leaned forward, crushed out his cigarette. He pushed his chair back and leaned all the way back and fixed his gaze on the ceiling. "You can see how it looks," he said.
"Suppose you tell me."
"Guy comes in, swears out a complaint, he's got an order of protection, a lawyer, the whole bit. Says you shoved him around and got rough with him. Next day you came in looking like you fell down a flight of stairs and you're the one with a complaint this time, only it happened in the middle of the night somewhere in the asshole of Manhattan, Attorney Street for God's fucking sake, and there's no witnesses, no cabdriver, no hospital report, nothing."
"You could check trip sheets. You might find the cabbie that way."
"Yeah, I could check trip sheets. I could put twenty men on it, a high-priority thing like that."
I didn't say anything.
He said, "Going back twelve years, why'd he sound off in the courtroom? 'I'll get you for this,' all that crap. Why?"
"He's a psychopath. What does he need with a reason?"
"Yeah, right, but what was the reason he thought he had?"
"I was putting him in jail. That's as much of a reason as he needed."
"Putting him away for something he didn't do."
"Well, sure," I said. "They're all innocent, you know that."
"Yeah, nobody guilty ever goes away. He said you framed him, right? He never fired a gun, he never owned a gun. A frame-up all the way."
"According to him, he was innocent of all charges. It's a funny stance to take when you're pleading guilty, but that's the way he told it."
"Uh-huh. Was it a frame?"
"What do you mean?"
"I just wondered," Durkin said.
"Of course not."
"Okay."
"It was a damn good case. The guy fired three shots at a police officer who was trying to collar him. He should have drawn a lot more than one-to-ten."
"Maybe," he said. "I'm just thinking about what it looks like now."
"And what's that?"
He avoided my eyes. "This Mardell," he said. "She was a snitch, is that right?"
"She was a source, yes."
"You make a lot of cases with the stuff she gave you?"
"She was a good source."
"Uh-huh. Cooperman a source, too?"
"I hardly knew Connie, I only met her a few times. She was a friend of Elaine's."
"And any friend of Elaine's was a friend of yours."
"What kind of-"
"Sit down, Matt. I'm not enjoying this, for Christ's sake."
"You think I am?"
"No, probably not. Did you take money from them?"
"Who?"
"Who do you think?"
"I just want to hear you say it."
"Cooperman and Mardell. Did you?"
"Sure, Joe. I wore a floppy purple hat, drove a pink Eldorado with leopard upholstery."
"Sit down."
"I don't want to sit down. I thought you were a friend of mine."
"I thought so, too. I still think so."
"Good for you."
"You were a good cop," he said. "I know that. You made detective early on and you had some damn good collars."
"What did you do, pull my file?"
"It's all in the computer, you just punch a few keys and it comes right up. I know about the letters of commendation you got. But you had a drinking problem, and maybe you got in over your head a little, and what good cop ever did everything by the book anyway, right?" He sighed. "I don't know," he said. "So far all you can show me is a domestic homicide in another state and a woman who takes a dive out a window five blocks from here. You say he did 'em both."
"He says so."
"Yeah, but nobody else heard him say it. Only you. Matt, maybe everything you're telling me is gospel, maybe he did those Venezuelans the other day, too. And maybe that was a hundred percent kosher bust twelve years ago; maybe you didn't sweeten it to make sure he got himself some jail time." He turned, and his eyes met mine. "But don't swear out a complaint against him and ask me to try and get a warrant. And for Christ's sake don't go looking for him, because the next thing you know somebody'll be arresting you for violating an order of protection. You know how that works. You're not allowed to go near him."
"That's a great system."
"It's the law. You want to get into a pissing contest with him, now's the wrong time to do it. Because you'd lose."
I started for the door, not trusting myself to speak. As I reached for it he said, "You think I'm not your friend. Well, you're wrong. I'm your friend. Otherwise I wouldn't be saying all this shit to you. I'd let you find it out on your own."
"He's not at the Harding," I told Elaine. "He checked in the night before last and checked out the next day, right after I allegedly went over there and threatened him. I don't know that he ever actually occupied a room there. He registered under his own name, probably so he would have an address to use when his attorney applied for the order of protection."
"You went there looking for him?"
"After I left Durkin. I don't know that you can really say I was looking for Motley at the Harding, because I knew I wouldn't find him there." I thought for a moment. "I don't even know that I wanted to find him. I found him last night and I didn't come out of it too well."
"Poor baby," she said.
We were in her apartment, in the bedroom. I was stripped to my shorts and lying facedown on the bed. She had been giving me a massage, not working too deep, her hands gentle but insistent, working the muscles, taking some of the knots out, soothing some of the aches. She gave a lot of attention to my neck and shoulders, where much of the tension seemed to be centered. Her hands seemed to know just what to do.
"You're really good," I said. "What did you do, take a course?"
"You mean how did a nice girl like me get into this? No, I never studied. I've been getting massages once or twice a week for years. I just paid attention to what people did to me. I'd be better at it if I had more strength in my hands."
I thought of Motley, and the strength in his hands. "You're strong enough," I said. "And you've got a knack. You could do this professionally."
She started to laugh. I asked her what was so funny.
She said, "For God's sake don't tell anybody. If word gets out all my clients'll want this, and I'll never get laid anymore."
Later we were in the living room. I stood at the window with a cup of coffee, watching traffic on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. A couple of tugs sported on the river, maneuvering a barge around. She was on the couch, her feet tucked under her, eating a quartered orange.