Naked Cruelty (40 page)

Unable to do more, Buzz had left it. There was some justice in Corey's stand; only the thought of a tragedy involving children had spurred him to such effort.

His report went into the Taft High weapons cache file, but on two Thursdays, when Carmine, Abe and Corey met to discuss the cases of the week, Corey had not produced the report, or even mentioned it in passing. It sat in the back of the file, unread.

Tracking down the Fourth National Bank robbers had taken time, but Buzz Genovese was a good detective, albeit inexperienced. The crime had all the earmarks of a funding exercise rather than self-profit, but Corey's Black Brigade snitches were very young and very junior in the hierarchy, so knew nothing of Mohammed el Nesr's thinking, and swore it wasn't the Black Brigade—with complete truth. A $74,000 take would buy a lot of firearms up to and including fully automatic weapons, but if Mohammed was innocent, who else was there with the organization? A question Corey didn't ask. Buzz went to his splinter group, and, eventually, to an address: 17 Parkinson in the Argyle Avenue district.

At noon on Tuesday, November 26, Buzz, Nick Jefferson and four uniforms entered the house to find two black men watching a Lakers replay on television; neither man was armed, and a rigorous search of every cranny on all three floors revealed no firearms. 17 Parkinson was a three-family house that had been gutted and completely lined with mattresses, every window boarded up. Milo Washington and Durston Parrish clearly lived in it, but Buzz's snitch, vouched for by Nick, swore that Milo and Durston were the heads of the new splinter group. So where were the caches of weapons?

Posters had been pinned to the mattresses extolling bloodshed, black supremacy, the slaughter of whites, and, many times over, three capital letters: BPP. It was a new acronym to Buzz.

He stared at Milo Washington, a more commanding figure than Durston Parrish. Well over six feet, a good physique, a handsome face, milk coffee skin and hip threads; the eyes, large and an interesting shade of green, regarded him with contempt. He must, Buzz reflected, be feeling an utter fool—watching a Lakers replay!

“What does BPP stand for, Milo?” Buzz asked.

“Black People's Power,” Milo said proudly, defiantly.

“So that's it! Who're you, man?” Nick asked.

“I am the founder and leader.”

“And articulate when you need to be. Where are the guns?”

“Wouldn't you like to know, Uncle Tom pig?”

A frisson of fear shot down Buzz's spine; they hadn't been quiet about raiding 17 Parkinson, thus giving those in the houses nearby time to evacuate before the bullets started humming.

“Something's wrong,” Buzz said to Nick when the search proved fruitless. “Milo didn't deny the guns—he's stupidly articulate, needs time inside having talks with Wesley le Clerc.”

“We've got nothing on them,” Nick said. “Watching the Lakers win isn't a crime, and there were no stashes of any kind.”

“Don't hold your breath, Milo,” Buzz said to him on the porch, a corner of his mind wondering why the uniforms, clustered around one squad car, looked so upset.

They had all been inside the house when the fracas at Taft High occurred. Two students, two teachers and a riot cop were dead, and another thirty-three were wounded, all but two slightly. Someone on Parkinson had run to the school to alert the kid who led Black People's Power there; spoiling for action, he gathered his troops, broke out automatics and spare clips from the BPP cache, and set off to bust Milo and Durston free. If the pigs thought they were taking Milo in, they better think again! But one of the BPP kids was a spy, there to tip off the Black Brigade kids when the BPP arsenal surfaced. The BB kids tapped their own cache, and a gun battle developed within the school. Only the intervention of riot police had stopped the hostilities.

Why hadn't Corey Marshall believed his report? It all hinged on that, thought Buzz, wandering desolately across the courtyard blaming himself—and Corey. He'd
known
the guns were at the school! Trouble was, he didn't have enough evidence to lay before Captain Vasquez, who might otherwise have hit the school at the same moment as Buzz hit the BPP house on Parkinson. No, no, it was all wrong! Corey Marshall was the necessary link and—

Someone was pacing the courtyard: Carmine Delmonico. His face was grim, nor did Buzz need to ask why he was out here, pacing. Sometimes a man needed to have space and open air.

Carmine saw him and strode over.

“Do you
believe
this?” he demanded. “Two rival black power factions, two thousand hapless kids of every color God makes a human skin—shit, shit,
shit
! How did one faction think it could bust Milo Washington loose, and why did the other faction decide to stop them inside the school? My wife is right, it's guns! And drugs! Why can't they use a classroom as a place to learn instead of as a place to come down off of smack?”

The two men turned and began to walk together.

“I knew I was right,” Buzz said at last, clenching his fists. “I kept telling Corey there was a splinter group, but he wouldn't believe me. I didn't have any facts, just my cop instincts. I was conned too, Carmine, by Corey's Black Brigade snitches. They talked me into thinking that the Black Brigade wasn't worried by the formation of Black People's Power. Whereas the truth is that Milo was making significant inroads into Mohammed's army, and war was in the wind. The trouble is Mohammed's ordinary soldiers are not in the picture—I should have seen it, but I didn't. Jesus!”

Another silence fell, again broken by Buzz Genovese.

“I put in four hours writing that report, busted my ass, but I didn't have facts to back up my cop instincts. Just little signs—stray remarks, sidelong looks, interrupted whispers—not facts, facts, facts! The Valley bank holdup went down to finance BPP weapons purchases, but tell me why—just tell me why they had to hide the weapons in a school?
A school!
” He stopped, recollecting himself. “Well, too late now. Five lives! I am haunted, Carmine.”

“What report, Buzz?”

“The supplementary one I submitted about the Taft High arms cache. Corey closed the case for lack of evidence a month ago—well, I guess you know that. But I knew it wasn't over. So I watched and listened for another nearly two weeks, then I wrote this second report.” He looked embarrassed. “Sorry, Captain, I didn't mean to snitch, and Corey was right. There wasn't a shred of evidence.”

***

“What do we do about it?” Carmine asked, holding up the second report. He was staring at Commissioner Silvestri and Captain Vasquez, whose faces were carefully neutral.

“If so much as a whisper of this gets out, the media will have a field day. The death of kids in a school is
world
news,” Carmine went on. “Holloman is full of journalists. The Black Brigade and its splinter, Black People's Power, are local black power groups with no national impact. To the journalists in this year of riots and terrible violence, the BB and the BPP are peanuts. Martin Luther King Junior dead, then Robert Kennedy—it's an awful year! But what if it leaks that the Holloman PD had warning of a second weapons cache at Taft High, and didn't so much as look for it? It's known now that both groups had a cache at the school, but nothing indicates that the Holloman PD didn't do its job. Except this.” He put the seven sheets down on Silvestri's coffee table.

All three men had read Buzz's report, pulled from the back of the Taft High file by a terrified Corey Marshall. What Carmine didn't know was whether Corey had intended to bring him the report, or burn it. His cop instincts said Corey intended to burn it, but just as he pulled the sheets, Carmine had walked in.

“You said one of my cases would come back and bite me,” said Corey, handing him the report.

“I'm sorry that it's so terrible, Lieutenant.”

“What's going to happen to me?” He sounded petrified.

“I don't know. But if you have any brain at all, don't so much as mention it to Maureen. That's your only hope.”

“I told Corey not to confide in Maureen,” Carmine said now. “He might even obey that order, because I don't think he could face the tongue-lashing she'd give him.”

“You're very smart, Carmine,” Fernando Vasquez said.

“If I were, this wouldn't have happened. I knew that Corey Marshall was weak, but so was I for not acting.”

“That's aftersight speaking.” Fernando's beautiful hand indicated the report. “You kept this unduplicated, and you guys in Detectives haven't caught up enough with modern policing to keep copies of everything. For instance, did Sergeant Genovese keep a copy for himself?”

“No. Why would he? It's in the file.”

“In future, he should. The world increasingly belongs to the lawyers, Carmine, and some of them are more ruthless than any journalist. I don't increase paperwork for no reason. I do it to protect my men. With the Dodo on your back, I haven't gotten around to Detectives yet, but it's coming.”

“I gather that the existence of one copy of this is a good thing?” Carmine asked.

“A very good thing. What happens if Buzz goes poor Morty Jones's route, huh? Guilt, depression, a steel meal? Without a copy of his report, he'll be seen as confabulating,” Fernando said, black eyes like two glistening stones.

“It won't come to that,” Carmine said. “This time, I'll make absolutely sure.” He felt sick, pressed his midriff. “John, you haven't said a thing. Fernando has left me in no doubt of his solution to our troubles—burn the report. What do you say?”

“That God moves in mysterious ways,” the Commissioner said, “and that you've acted for the greater good of the Holloman PD. It's not even a question of blame—attitudes vary. Is Corey's hard-nosed attitude more reprehensible because five people have died? He had every chance of being right.”

“If you'd read Buzz's report, John, would you have pulled your men out of Taft High?” Carmine demanded.

“No,” Silvestri said flatly.

“And you, Fernando?”

“I would have blitzed the place, no matter what the parents and teachers said in objection. That was the only way to do it, Carmine. Empty the entire school, then search the cockroaches and fleas to see if they were packing.”

“Lessons for the future,” Silvestri said, sighing. “I am going to maintain that the school was scrupulously searched and all the weapons it contained were confiscated. Luckily the kids involved all went to the juvenile courts, so it's not our fault if they're already back at Taft High. As for the BB cache and the second BPP one, the guns had been placed in the school so recently that we'd had no word of it. Like so many other places, we've had a bad year with race riots in Holloman.”

“You intend to burn it,” Carmine said, voice flat.

They look like father and son, he thought as Vasquez and Silvestri went to a glass-fronted ornamental cupboard. John took out a big silver tray while Fernando hovered at his side. Trim, in silver-encrusted navy uniforms, very dark of hair and eye, flawless features and a certain catlike grace of movement. Thank God! John has finally found his heir. Not that he intends to retire for some time to come. He has to groom Fernando.

Buzz Genovese's report burned while Carmine watched the two uniformed men make sure no flake remained unblackened.

“I'll see Buzz tomorrow morning,” the Commissioner said when Fernando took the tray off to the private bathroom. “It's sad but simple—when Lieutenant Marshall looked for the report, it had gone. Too suggestive, you think, Carmine? Well, I think Corey deserves to wear the odium, especially in Buzz's eyes.”

“I appreciate your having me here, John.”

Fernando returned.

The three men sat down again.

“We still have one problem,” said Carmine.

“Corey, you mean?” Silvestri asked.

“I mean.”

“It's a hard one.”

Fernando leaned back, satisfied that he had done his part; Carmine continued to speak to Silvestri, as if he too thought it.

“I have a solution, John.”

The Commissioner sat up. “You do? Hit me!”

“First of all, Corey's not suited for his present position. He's too anti-routine in a job he thinks should have no routine, not to mention that he paints himself into a corner. A more secure man would simply admit that he was wrong, but Corey's not secure. He's also dominated by his wife. What he needs is a job having equal status but none of the responsibility—no human beings as individual human beings, just as ciphers.”

Fernando was bolt upright, wary and annoyed. “No!”

“Oh, come on, Fernando, he's perfect, and you know it. By Christmas you will have completed your reforms—three lieutenants, remember? After pushing Mike Cerutti through one department after another, you intend to put him in as lieutenant in charge of anything with wheels—well, it's logical, and you're a logical man. Of course you need a lieutenant in charge of personnel, but a guy very much under your thumb. For that reason it won't be Joey Tasco, it will be Virgil Simms. Mike and Virgil are good men who can't afford to forget that you promoted them over a lot of heads, that their income has zoomed, and that they get to wear silver braid. However, you need a senior lieutenant, and whom can you trust in the Uniform Division, tell me that? Ideally you need someone from outside, but you haven't been here long enough to survive the palace revolution that would provoke. Whereas Corey Marshall has been in the Holloman PD for seventeen years, eleven of them in uniform. Everybody with seniority knows him, and he's well liked. His being awarded the top job will be seen as shrewd and inarguable. On the other hand, what you know about him chains him to you. He'll have to work from a list of do's and don't's that you write in letters of stone—he'll have absolutely no room to maneuver. Nor will his wife have the smallest share in his power. Corey is the perfect senior lieutenant. C'mon, Fernando, admit it!”