Pariah (7 page)

‘All right, Tremaine, give me the fucking message. And this better have something to do with the case we’re working, or I’ll run you down to the station house so fast your ass
won’t be able to keep up. So spit it out.’

Cavell licks his lips, acting like he’s about to give a damn speech. He’s looking nervous too, Alvarez thinks. Almost ready to pee himself. What the fuck is going on here?

‘The message is . . .’ Cavell begins.

Alvarez waits for the rest. He notices that beads of sweat have broken out on Cavell’s forehead. So much for the street-hard pimp.

‘Yeah?’ he prompts.

‘The message is . . . you got too close.’

For a second, Alvarez feels he is in a surrealist painting. Or reading a foreign pamphlet in which the text has been badly mistranslated. Cavell’s words just don’t fit any mental
template he knows how to process.

And now he feels he is being dicked around.

‘The fuck you talking about, Tremaine? Is that it? That’s your fucking message? That’s what you dragged my ass all the way across town to hear? Get your coat, Tremaine. We got
a trip to make, and don’t plan on seeing your woman in her skimpy shit tonight. Second thoughts, bring the frillies with you. You can wear them for the nice big cellmate I’m gonna hook
you up with.’

Cavell holds his palms up, his shoulders high. The body language of someone who is trying to plead his case.

‘Serious, man. That’s what I been told to say. You got too close. Dude said you’d understand what it means.’

There is a wavering pitch to Cavell’s voice now, Alvarez notices. Like he really needs to hear confirmation that his words have struck some big-ass bell in the mind of the detective.

‘Don’t mean shit, Tremaine. Let’s go.’

He beckons to the pimp, but Cavell doesn’t budge from his position near the wall. He waves his hand at Alvarez.

‘Hold up. I got more. Something else I got to deliver.’

Alvarez raises an eyebrow. ‘What?’

A note. Over there, on the counter.’

Alvarez looks to where Cavell is gesturing. Lying on the kitchen counter is a white envelope. Alvarez steps over to it and picks it up. It weighs little, and bears no writing on the front. He
glances at Cavell, then pushes his thumb under the sealed flap and rips it open.

Inside, there is a single sheet of paper, folded once. He opens it up and reads the typewritten text:

Alvarez feels his heart pound harder. He senses that he’s been dropped into the middle of a situation he doesn’t fully understand. He doesn’t know whether to be afraid or
angry.

He glares hard at Cavell and flaps the note at him. ‘You write this, Tremaine? This your idea of a fucking joke?’

Cavell is shifting his weight from foot to foot. ‘I don’t even know what’s in the fucking note, man. Just take it and leave, okay? I done my part. Take the note and get the
fuck out of here. That’s what’s supposed to happen.’

Alvarez shakes his head in an effort to clear his confusion. ‘What are you talking about? What do you mean: supposed to happen? I ain’t going nowhere until you start talking some
sense.’

Cavell just stares back. His eyes are bulging. His chest is heaving.

And then he does something totally bizarre.

He begins talking to himself.

Or, rather, to an imagined person behind him.

He twists his head so that it is angled over his shoulder and says, ‘We done, right? I done what you said. We straight now.’

Alvarez whips his gun out. He doesn’t know why, or what he is going to do with it, but it seems the prudent thing to do in the face of this insanity.

He levels the gun at Cavell’s face. ‘What’s going on, Tremaine? Talk to me, man.’

Cavell continues to stare and to suck hard on the air, like he’s having trouble getting enough oxygen into his system. Alvarez rushes toward him and puts the gun to his nose, squashing it
against his face.

‘Who you talking to, Tremaine?’

He puts his left hand around Cavell’s throat and forces him back against the wall. Cavell almost screams his protest: ‘My back, man! Watch my back!’

The shock of Cavell’s cries sends Alvarez reeling away from him.

He looks Cavell up and down and thinks, I frisked the guy. He’s not strapped. What did I miss?

It strikes him then how warm it is in this apartment. The heating is turned up high. And yet Cavell – the man who earlier today was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt in near-freezing conditions
– is now hiding his muscles under a zip-up sweatshirt.

Alvarez takes up a two-handed shooting stance, the gun aimed at the exact center of Cavell’s chest.

‘Take off the sweater,’ he orders.

‘What? No, man.’

‘Do it, Tremaine, or I start shooting.’

Cavell’s eyes seem to shiver in their sockets.

‘Do it!’
Alvarez barks.

Slowly, shakily, Cavell reaches for his zip and starts to slide it down. He talks over his shoulder again. ‘I have to do what the cop is asking. Don’t do nothing now, okay? Stay
cool.’

He takes off the sweater, lets it drop to the floor.

‘Now the shirt,’ Alvarez says.

Cavell consults his invisible friend again. ‘It’s okay, man. This ain’t nothing. Just ride it out.’

He pulls the T-shirt over his head and lets that drop too. His muscular torso glistens with a sheen of perspiration.

‘Turn around,’ Alvarez tells him.

Cavell swallows, his eyes saying to Alvarez,
I hope you know what you’re doing.

Slowly, he turns to face the wall, and that’s when Alvarez sees it.

The package is taped high up, nestling in the deep channel between Cavell’s shoulder blades. The hooded top had covered the bulge, and Alvarez had missed it in the pat-down.

Shit!

Alvarez raises his eyes from the sights of his gun and refocuses on the package. There are wires – for a microphone of some kind. Somebody has been listening in to everything that has been
said in this apartment.

But this isn’t just a listening device.

Alvarez recalls what was in the note. The note which Cavell hasn’t yet seen . . .

. . . and that’s when he decides it’s the moment to get out of here.

In that instant, time slows to a trickle. Alvarez turns toward the door. Run, he tells his legs. Run like fuck!

But it is like trying to swim through treacle. He can see where he needs to be, and he knows what he needs to do to get there, but he’s like a toy with a dying battery.

A sudden realization descends on him that he will never reach his goal. Not like this. Not unless he can sprout wings and fly.

And then his wish comes true. He is flying. Flying while the heat and the light and the pressure overwhelm his body and tear it apart.

Sitting in the hired Ford van, behind its blacked-out windows, the man listens to the reverberations of what he has just done.

His finger is still on the button, pressing so hard that the nail has turned white. He removes it, watches the blood rush back.

It worked. There were moments when he had his doubts, when he worried that he was trying to be too clever, too ingenious.

He had worried, too, about the amount of explosive to use. A bigger charge could have been stashed in the apartment somewhere, but it carried the risk that Cavell would have run away from it at
the first opportunity. Turning Cavell into a human bomb like that, along with a microphone that would reveal any attempt to remove the package, was a stroke of genius. He can still picture the
moment when he told Cavell. He’d put a gun to Cavell’s head, forced him against the wall, slapped the bundle onto his back. Stepping away, his gun still raised, he revealed to Cavell
what he’d just done. The expression of disbelief and horror on the pimp’s face was so exaggerated it was comical.

Even with Cavell’s big muscles and the hooded sweater there was only so much explosive that could be taped to him without it being obvious, but that didn’t matter. C-4 detonates at a
velocity of 18,000 miles per hour. You don’t need much of that shit to take out a whole roomful of people.

And if Alvarez
had
found it, so what? It would have simply meant pressing the button that little bit sooner.

But Alvarez missed it in the frisk, didn’t he? A trained cop, years on the job, and he missed it. Ha! How delicious was that?

It meant that the message could be delivered, offering Alvarez the chance to puzzle over what it was he had done wrong. And yet he suspected nothing. Even when confronted with the reason for his
imminent demise, he was still too stupid to grasp its implications.

It meant too that the note could be given to Alvarez, allowing him to contemplate the sounding of his death knell.

But above all, it meant that everything that Alvarez said and did right up to the moment of his annihilation could be overheard.

The man in the Ford leans back and reviews his accomplishment here tonight. He feels like he should be lighting up a cigarette, the way they do in the movies after great sex. In the distance he
can hear sirens, and he knows he will have to drive away soon. But he will allow himself to revel for a moment longer. This has been so much more satisfying than the killing of Joe Parlatti.

When the phone rings, Doyle doesn’t know where he is. As he reaches out to his bed table he blinks his eyes until the hazy lights on his clock sharpen into recognizable
numerals.

It is five-thirty in the morning.

Shit, he thinks. Telephone calls at this time of day carry only bad news. There’s a law about it somewhere.

Next to him, Rachel groans her disapproval and pulls the duvet over her head. When Doyle’s fumbling hands finally locate the handset, he answers the call with a mouth that feels like
it’s filled with cotton wool.

‘Hello?’

‘Cal? It’s Mo.’

The tone is subdued.

‘Okay, Mo, what is it?’

There’s a lengthy pause. ‘It’s not good, Cal. There’s no easy way to tell you this.’

Doyle is wide awake now. ‘Spit it out, Mo.’

‘Something happened last night. To Tony Alvarez. He was killed.’

And now Doyle begins to wonder whether, in fact, he is still sleeping. Whether his mind is filled with dark imaginings of his deepest subconscious. He swings his legs over the side of the
bed.

‘Killed? How? Where?’ There are a million other questions on his lips, but these will do for now.

‘There was an explosion at an apartment on Seventeenth Street. Alvarez was there with another guy, still unnamed. I only found out about this an hour ago myself. I don’t have all the
details yet.’

Doyle stares into the darkness of the bedroom. His questions have all run away, as if his brain has decided it doesn’t want to know any more about this because it’s all too
terrifying.

Franklin cuts into his thoughts. ‘Cal? You’re the first one on the squad I’ve told about this. I don’t think I need to say why.’

Doyle nods, not thinking that Franklin can’t see him. Mo is preparing him. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that.

Franklin continues: ‘The killing was in the Eleventh, so it’s their case at the moment. But you know how quick these things get around. By the start of the day tour,
everybody’ll have heard about this. I just thought . . . Well, I just wanted you to know.’

Doyle clears his throat. ‘Yeah. Thanks for the heads-up, Mo. Appreciate it.’

‘Okay, Cal. See you in a couple hours.’

‘Yeah. Yeah.’

He ends the call. Sitting on the edge of his bed like this, he begins to notice how cold the room is.

Two cops dead in the space of twenty-four hours. Could it be any worse?

Well, yes, if they were both partners of yours.

He leaves the house before Rachel and Amy are up. He doesn’t want to tell Rachel about it just yet – doesn’t want to discuss it with anyone – and if he
sits there moping over breakfast she will know that something is wrong.

He doesn’t go directly to the station house, but instead drives the streets for a while, killing time and thinking. Eventually, he pulls up at a near-empty diner and seats himself at a
booth in the corner. He orders sausage, eggs and coffee, but finds that his stomach will permit entry only to the coffee. After pushing the food around his plate for a while, he finally gives up
and heads off to work. He times his arrival to be as late as he can make it, seconds before the start of his shift.

As he walks through the doorway he hears a loud fake cough, warning of his presence. Silence descends as he moves toward his desk. He waits for the first wise-ass remark, but nothing comes his
way. Not yet, anyway. It might be because Mo Franklin is standing at the front of the squadroom, like a teacher keeping order among his pupils.

Jay Holden, a shaven-headed black cop who ran with street gangs in his youth, is the first to speak.

‘We’re all here now, Mo. How about you put an end to all the rumors?’

Doyle has always liked Holden. He is his own man – never to be swayed by the unsupported opinions of others. He waits until he gets all the facts, and then he makes up his own mind.

Franklin perches himself on the edge of an unoccupied desk. Tony Alvarez’s desk.

‘I wish I could say to you that all we have here are rumors, that none of it is confirmed yet, that it’s all likely to be so much bullshit. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Detective Tony Alvarez was killed in the line of duty last night.’

They know it already, but still they groan, curse, lower their heads.

‘What happened, Mo?’ somebody asks.

‘Tony was following up on the Joe Parlatti hit. He went to an apartment on West Seventeenth to meet someone who claimed to have information.’

Puzzled, Doyle looks up at Franklin. A lead on the Parlatti case? What lead? Why didn’t Tony bring him in on it?

Franklin carries on: ‘It was a trap. The apartment was booby-trapped somehow. A bomb. The guy Tony was meeting was killed instantly – blown to bits. Tony was brought out alive, but
only barely. He didn’t survive the journey to the hospital.’

There is a moment of silent reflection before Schneider pipes up.