Speak of the Devil (33 page)

“It’s your call, Pops,” I said. “I know how people’s priorities change as they get older.”

Charlie picked up the remote and killed the TV. He asked me to fetch him a beer from the refrigerator and to get one for myself if I wanted. I passed.

“Full alert, eh?”

“Something like that.”

I took a seat on the couch and laid out for him everything I knew to that point concerning Angel Ramos. I gave him all the pieces. We slipped right into our old shorthand. He asked a few questions along the way, all of them good. I had him completely up to speed by the time he’d finished his beer.

“You’re talking fast,” he noted, setting aside the empty.

“Philip Byron’s only got five fingers, two thumbs, and maybe five hours left.”

“I’d be worrying bigger than Philip Byron if I were you.”

“I am, trust me.”

Charlie wheeled himself over to the window and stared out. Less than a minute later, he wheeled back around to face me. “The question. What’s a cop from the embattled Ninety-fifth doing all the way in Manhattan working the parade and getting gunned down by a lowlife from the same Ninety-fifth?”

“Kevin McNally?”

“Uh-huh. You’re figuring Diaz was working as partner with Angel Ramos, right? So Ramos has planted him out there at the parade with a Beretta in his belt. Officer McNally gets shot. That’s a Fort Pete shoot-out on the streets of Manhattan. Coincidence?”

“You hate coincidence.”

“I surely do.”

“I had this same notion last night, right before I went to see Tommy Carroll,” I said. “I haven’t had the time to even think about it.”

“So think about it.”

“What are you saying, that McNally was actually the target of the Thanksgiving Day shooting?”

“He got hit. We know that much.”

“What about Rebecca Gilpin? I definitely saw Diaz take aim at her.”

“One thing at a time, hoss. Stick with the cop for now. Okay, so there’s a mess going on out in the Ninety-fifth. It’s the Bad Apples. Is this McNally a Bad Apple?”

“When the mayor and Carroll were holding their press conference after the shooting, a reporter I was standing next to asked Carroll the same question.”

“What did Carroll answer?”

“As I recall, he didn’t. He bitched at me later about how the press was pissing on a fallen cop.”

Charlie wheeled over to the desk where he kept his computer and fired it up. Before he was grounded in a wheelchair, Charlie’s patience with things like computers and other similar gadgets had been nil. The last of the Luddites. But losing his range the way he had put a new spin on everything. Now he was Mr. Keyboard.

“Play it out,” Charlie said as he waited for his programs to come up. “Say McNally was the target. Or one of the targets. Anybody else of interest hit?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I haven’t really focused on the other people who were shot. There was a woman with a little boy. I was standing next to them when Diaz opened up.”

“That’s the problem when the cops close the books as quick as they did on this one. All the good investigating that could be done is just stopped.”

“Once they had Diaz in a body bag, they called it a day.”

“They knew it wasn’t a damn day.”

“McNally’s partner was there, too,” I said. “Cox. He was also working the parade. That’s two men from Fort Pete, plus Diaz.”

“The hero cop. He sure didn’t get hit. He chased the perp.”

“I chased the perp.”

“He chased the both of you.”

Charlie’s screen sizzled as a mountain scene appeared. He hit a few keys, waited, then hit a few more. “Where was Cox when his partner was hit? Do we know?”

“In fact, we do. Cox was helping a blind man who had suffered a heart attack. He was down on the pavement doing CPR.”

“Okay. So if Diaz was trying to take out both cops, maybe he couldn’t get Cox because Cox had dropped out of sight.”

“If,” I said.

“Everything is if.”

Right. Doubt everything.

Charlie muttered, “Bad Apple,” as he hit the keys again. Comfortable as he was getting with computers, he was still a two-finger man on the keys. He punched them hard, as if squashing an armored bug each time.

“It’s a little screwy, don’t you think?” I said. “If you want to kill your local neighborhood cop—or cops—why would you do something so elaborate, not to mention so public, an entire borough away? For that matter, how would Diaz and Ramos know that Cox and McNally were going to be working the parade? Or exactly where they’d be? See? It begins to fall apart.”

Charlie was only half listening. He had brought up something on his screen. “Pull up a chair, Fritz. Let’s get educated.”

For the next half hour, we read through every account and reference to the Bad Apple scandal that Charlie could come up with online. I was familiar with the general thrust of the accusations. A number of cops in the Ninety-fifth had allegedly been turning the neighborhoods they were supposed to be protecting into little fiefdoms. It was alleged that illegal raids would be held on the homes of suspected drug dealers, sometimes preceded by false calls to 911 as a means of “justifying” the raids, and that money was stolen as well as drugs, which the cops would later either sell back to the original owners or tag as their own and return to the dealer with the stipulation that the cops be cut in on the profit when the drugs were sold on the street. One editorial cartoon showed several cops standing with their hands stuffed with cash, looking up at the clouds and whistling at the sky while, all around them, dealers and users feverishly went about their business. The accusations also reported some cops tipping off dealers to impending legit raids. Payback was in money, drugs, sex or any combination of the three. Blackmail sex was said to be a common occurrence. A cop with a baggie of dope, according to the reports, could demand sex on the spot by threatening to plant the evidence and proceeding directly to the arrest. One woman was reported in
The Village Voice
as having a regularly scheduled rendezvous with two officers from the Ninety-fifth for just this sort of shakedown. “They call it a ‘baggie blow,’ you know what I mean? They come right in my apartment and tell my son to go on outside. Then they hold up that fucking baggie and shake it like it’s a little bell or some shit.”

The most extensive report, a piece in the
Times
, broke down the alleged police abuse into two categories: bullying and partnering. The first category was less scandalous. In many ways, this one was business as usual. Shakedowns, threats, minor blackmail, sex on demand. It was the alleged abuses in the second category that were threatening to make the Bad Apple story a significant one. Partnering abuses. Collusion. Mutual back-scratching. Working things out to the benefit of both sides. Blurring even the idea that there
were
sides. That sort of abuse on the side of the police was the worst imaginable. “Criminals with Uniforms” was how one of the headings put it.

Caught up in the allegations was Brooklyn district attorney David Sack, who was reportedly aware of the validity of some of the accusations but had been willing—unnamed sources said—to turn a blind eye, especially in the cases of falsified raids and falsified evidence, so long as he could count on a healthy conviction rate. When Charlie read this, he commented, “It looks good on the résumé.” It was Sack’s relationship with Martin Leavitt that had begun to turn up the heat on City Hall in recent weeks. The two had worked together closely when Leavitt was a prosecutor in Brooklyn. Leavitt was referred to in several accounts as having been David Sack’s mentor.

“Mentor,” Charlie said. “Isn’t that someone who teaches his tricks to someone else?”

The final related accounts concerned the murder-suicide of the two policemen at the end of October. No specific motive for either act was expressly spelled out, though there were implications that it was a case of one bad cop killing another, then taking his own life. There were also rumors that the cop who was murdered was a stoolie who had been informing on his fellow officers, a bad cop working to save his tail. The two dead cops were named Jay Pearson and Thomas Cash. However, it was a second pair of names that caught my eye. Charlie’s as well. These were the names of the first officers on the scene. The alleged murder-suicide had taken place in a junkyard some hundred yards from a Home Depot parking lot on the edge of Fort Petersen. Someone had phoned 911, reporting shots fired in the area. The closest officers to the scene arrived within minutes of the 911 call. They attempted to revive both of the men, but according to an EMS spokesman, Pearson and Cash had already “expired” by the time their colleagues arrived.

Commended for their efforts in attempting to save the men were Officers Kevin McNally and Leonard Cox.

“How’s that song go?” Charlie asked, swiveling his chair away from the computer. “They’re just too good to be true?”

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“A couple of things. You asked before how it was possible for Diaz and Ramos to know that two cops from the hood were going to be working the parade and where they’d be working it?”

“Right.”

“What if they didn’t know? What if one of these wonderful cops told them?”

“Which cop?”

“I’m liking the one who didn’t end up taking a bullet.”

“You mean Cox set up his partner? But why?”

“Could be one of a hundred reasons. I told you, it’s just a thought.”

“Any other thoughts rattling around in there?”

“Sure. Try this one. Cox and McNally first on the scene at this junkyard? I buy that. But how about Cox and McNally first on the scene before there
is
a scene? And then they proceed to make one.”

“Make one what?”

“A scene. They shoot both the other cops, Pearson and Cash, then set it up to look like a murder-suicide. They leave the scene, phone in a fake 911, turn around and go right back.”

“That’s quite a set of thoughts,” I said. “Do they come with any motives?”

Charlie rubbed at the back of his neck. “Motives for taking out the cops at the junkyard? Could be anything. You saw what we just read. You’ve got a damn orgy of corruption going on out there. Rotten cops tripping over each other. Hell, it could have been a crooked cop turf war for all we know. Or maybe Pearson and Cash were both Boy Scouts and the other two decided to take them out.”

“And Cox setting up McNally at the parade?”

“Bad guys always turn on each other. Don’t you know your Shakespeare? Look, I’m just gassing here, Fritz. Maybe Cox did the cop shooting at the junkyard and he was getting nervous about his partner knowing it. There are a thousand things it could be. We’re not gonna answer it all sitting here on our asses.”

Charlie wheeled himself to the refrigerator and got another beer. He cracked it open and took a long pull. He slipped the can into the cup holder on his chair and wheeled back over to the computer and shut it down. He took a second sip of beer, then gazed thoughtfully at the zip-top ring as he plucked at it lightly with his finger, making a small
twang
. His chest expanded and he let out a largely silent sigh, still twanging on the zip-top ring.

“Some days I just want to burn this goddamn chair.”

I WAS SIXTY FEET UNDERWATER WHEN I REMEMBERED THAT I WAS ABLE to get in touch with Angel Ramos. Or at least I had a shot. A tractor-trailer was stopped in front of me. A yellow sign posted low on the rear door read: HOW AM I DRIVING?

“You’re not,” I muttered. “You’re stopped.”

The line of cars in the lane next to me was stopped as well. But at least they could see up ahead, even if all they could see was nothing more than lines of gleaming brake lights. All I had was the truck. J. B. HUNT was printed in mustard and black letters across the rear door. The letters blurred. It was sweat, rolling down from my forehead into my eyes. I took a breath, let it out. And again. Took in, let it out. I wanted to focus on Angel Ramos but didn’t dare; I had to make sure I continued breathing. The traffic didn’t move, but the tunnel seemed to. I cracked open a window. The exhaust fumes didn’t help much. Not at all, in fact. Someone was honking his horn. It was me.

The tunnel moved again. The traffic began moving with it. Slowly. I switched lanes abruptly, taking the heat of angry horns. Three minutes later—or was it three hours?—the light appeared at the end of the tunnel and grew steadily larger. That’s my mouth, I thought. When I get there, I can breathe.

I CAME OUT OF THE TUNNEL ONTO THIRTY-FOURTH STREET. TRAFFIC was a tangled mess. Horns were honking from all directions. I rolled down the windows and the volume tripled.

I called Margo.

“Where are you?” she asked. “It sounds horrible.”

“I’m stuck in traffic. Listen, I want you to do me a favor. What are your plans for the afternoon?”

“Well, I was planning to sit here and eat bonbons all day, but I’ve got to get down to
New York
magazine and pitch a story idea. Why?”

“I want you to get Donna Bia’s phone out of there. I’d come get it, but right now I’m heading the opposite direction. I want you to take it out to your father’s.”

“Okay. But why?”

“Go fetch it,” I said.

She replied, “Woof,” then set down her phone. A scooter came buzzing along in between me and the car next to me. Its engine sounded like a loud bee. Margo came back on the line. “Got it.”

“Take a look at her phone numbers. Check out A and R.”

“You’re looking for Angel Ramos?”

“I should have done this last night,” I said. “I blame you. You and your damn sexy poems.”

“I didn’t hear no complaining.”

“I’m thinking this is what Cox was after last night,” I said. “The phone.”

“Yep. It’s here. Just says ‘Angel.’ Do you want me to call him up?”

“No. Just give me the number.”

She did. As I was writing it down, Margo said, “Whoa. Hang on.”

“What?”

“Here’s another one, Paco. You might find this one even more interesting.”

“What have you got?”

“It’s what Donna Bia’s got. Or what she had. L. Cox.”