The Intruder (25 page)

“So what about you?” he asks Joan Fusco. “Do you believe this guy Cardi?”

She crosses her legs and her skirt rides up an inch or two above her knee. “I think he’s a good witness. Everything he’s said checks out and he’s pointing us in the direction of all the leads we’ll need. Besides, if I can work on him a little bit, I might eventually get him to roll over on his uncle too.”

“But what about this case? Do we have enough?”

“I think we have to go for it,” she says, punching the air.

A real fighter, Joan Fusco. No wonder the head of her bureau awarded her the picture of General Sherman for her aggressiveness. The deal makers and backpedalers had McClellan on their walls.

“I’m not sure if I’m quite that gung ho.” says Francis, putting an arm in front of Fusco as if he’s trying to keep her from getting whiplash. “But I think it’s developing into something. We need to track down this third witness, though, and get a set of Schiff’s fingerprints to see if they match the ones on the weapon.”

“So what are we going to do?” Ms. Fusco turns in her chair to look at him. “Invite him down to the station and ask him to give us a set?”

“Why not?” Norman McCarthy straightens his bow tie and stands up to go. “He’s going to find out we’re looking at him soon enough. Send a detective over and rattle his cage. Who knows what Jake will say?”

43

Mr. Schiff, Mr. Schiff. Slow down a sec. I been trying to get you on the phone.”

It’s three days since Philip stopped by the house. Jake is just leaving his office building on Fifth Avenue to meet Bob Berger for lunch when he runs into a burly detective with Velamints on his breath and Grecian Formula in his hair.

“Got a minute?” says the cop after flashing his badge and giving his name as Seifert.

“Probably not.” Jake watches the revolving glass door, making sure none of the partners are coming out.

“I was wondering if you’d mind stopping by the station, seeing as it’s lunchtime and all.”

“That’s nice. What would we talk about there?”

“Come on.” Detective Seifert smiles just enough for Jake to see his caps look brownish and crooked. You’d think the PBA would have a better dental plan. “We both know what there is to talk about.”

Jake starts to walk toward the corner. The detective follows him. It’s an oyster gray noon sky, but the midtown streets are still jammed with the mad tramping hordes. No one seems to notice Jake and the cop. They’re just two ants in an ant farm.

“I’ve got a lot of cases involving the police department,” Jake says. “I’m not sure which one you want to discuss.”

Seifert puts his hand on Jake’s right shoulder. “Hey, listen,” he says. “You know what I want to talk to you about. We know about what happened in that tunnel.”

Jake can feel the grip of the detective’s fingers go right through his shoulder and down into his heart.

They know. This is the beginning of the end.

Who could have said anything? He tries to figure it out but the wires won’t connect. Philip couldn’t say anything without incriminating himself. But who else could it be? All right, stay cool. Jake straightens his tie. Find out what’s going on.

“So what do you know?” he asks the detective.

“Hey, I live in this city, just like you. I know what goes on with these bums in the street.”

Seifert looks over at a legless man in a wheelchair on the corner, ostentatiously displaying his stumps at people walking by.

“If one of these pieces of shit got anywhere near my daughter, I’d beat his fuckin’ brains in with a baseball bat too,” says Seifert. “Seriously.”

Right. Like we’re just talking man-to-man, here. Don’t worry about it. You can trust me. We’re all regular guys here. Sure. Probably works great on sixteen-year-old chain snatchers at the precinct.

Jake draws away from him a little. “Detective, are you a fan of award shows?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, do you sit at home and watch the various award shows that are broadcast live on TV? You know. The Academy Awards, the Emmys, the Grammys, Country Music Awards, NAACP Image Awards. You watch some of those, right?”

“I guess.” Seifert’s eyes narrow, not sure where he’s going with this.

“So are you aware of any award given for the stupidest attorney in Manhattan?”

“Okay, look—”

“Well, if you’re not aware of any award like that, then I can’t think of any reason why I should talk to you. ‘Cause I’m not getting anything out of it otherwise.”

“Hey, let me give you a little insight into your situation, Mr. Schiff.” Seifert puffs out his chest and hitches up his belt as he gives Jake a crooked smile. “We have sworn statements from witnesses putting you at the scene of this crime. We have sworn statements from people indicating your predisposition for violence against homeless people. And we have physical evidence from the crime scene.”

“Bullshit,” says Jake.

“Well, if it’s bullshit then you can accompany me to the precinct so we can get a set of prints off you and clear this up right away.”

“All right,” says Jake, not believing half of what he’s just heard. “Let’s not have any more of this ex parte communication. If you got something you want to ask me, you call my lawyer.”

He takes out a small notebook, jots down Andy Botwin’s number, and then tears out the page. Goddamn
Andy.
Why didn’t he take care of this?

Seifert takes the number and looks at it almost sorrowfully, like a man handling his own bill of divorce. “You’re making a big mistake.”

“Am I under arrest, detective?”

“No, not yet.”

“Then I don’t think we have anything else to talk about.”

Jake turns and walks away, losing himself in the battalions of fresh-faced young bankers and lawyers marching down Fifth Avenue, foot soldiers trying to take over a beleaguered city.

44

The next day, Francis O’Connell walks into the DA’s office with a slightly yellowed newspaper clipping. He puts it on the desk before Norman McCarthy and stands back.

“What is this?” says the DA. “It’s that goddamn article about Jake Schiff from three years ago. Do I have to read about him calling me a martinet again?”

“Look at the twelfth paragraph.”

Norman McCarthy puts on a pair of half glasses and starts counting. He’s been up since four this morning with the baby. God, he’s too old for this.

“It’s just a bunch of nonsense about how he worked for the Queens DA one summer and didn’t like it.” He frowns.

“There’s our fingerprints,” says Francis.

“What?”

“Everyone who works for the DA gets fingerprinted. So we already have Schiff’s fingerprints on file. This case is coming together. All we have to find is that last witness.”

45

A Detective Marinelli called the house this morning, wanting to talk to you,” Dana says on Saturday afternoon, two days later. “Any idea what he wants?”

Jake shrugs, but his eyes look tired. “Probably some old case I haven’t thought about in a year.”

They’re jogging around the reservoir in Central Park. It’s the kind of brilliant autumn day that makes children and real estate people think they can possess all of New York. The grand old buildings look like a mountain range along the edge of the park. The Dakota. The Beresford. Ten-forty Fifth Avenue, where Jackie Onassis lived. Even Trump Tower looks pretty in the distance.

She feels the spring in her legs as she comes along the northern curve and catches sight of Belvedere Castle through the trees and foliage. This is the mythic city she dreamed about when she was a little girl. She still remembers her parents bringing her and her brothers in from Connecticut for the occasional Broadway musical when they were kids. She can still see the white tablecloths and smell the men at the next table smoking cigars at the fancy steak houses where they’d eat before the shows. Her father in an expansive mood, not even scolding her when she ordered the surf and turf and didn’t take a bite of it. Her mother having a drink or two and feeling giddy, singing “The Impossible Dream”
as the station wagon sped past the bright gaudy marquee lights and the mysterious silhouettes of street people.

The black gravel grinds under her sneakers as she thinks about how she found the city a cold and frightening place when she moved here a dozen years later to go to college. Every week, it seemed, there were stories in the newspapers about the horrible fate befalling some hopeful young girl like herself. There was the Harvard girl raped and stabbed to death on the rooftop by the super’s son. The shopgirl gunned down inside a Columbus Avenue boutique by a junkie stickup man. The investment banker they’d found hacked up in a trunk.

She’d taken to staying home at night, studying and watching old movies on television, while her roommates partied the night away with obnoxious premeds at the uptown bars. She was already thinking about moving to some anonymous half city in the Midwest after graduation, where she could lead a secure if slightly dull life full of children and car pools and unacknowledged yearnings.

But then she met Jake. She’d let a friend talk her into going to a party at a broken-down prewar building on West 106th Street, and before she knew it some drunken jock named Larson had her cornered in the kitchen. She’d made the mistake of sleeping with him once before and he was after her again, not taking no for an answer and calling her a cunt when she tried to walk away. At one point he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her a little. And then there was Jake, getting in the guy’s face, telling him to back off, defending her honor without even knowing her.

“Weren’t you scared?” she asked later.

“He’s an Ivy League nose tackle,” Jake said, brushing it off. “That’s an oxymoron. It’s like a compassionate dentist.”

She wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but she liked it. She liked him too. She liked his hardness, his brash attitude, his pugnacity, his lack of pretension about his working-class roots—neither hiding them nor making too much of them.

What she didn’t expect was to fall in love with him. But in a strange way, she’d come to think about Jake the same way she thought about Central Park. As a sanctuary and oasis in the middle
of a harsh, unforgiving city. As in the park, there were unexplored places of serenity and even beauty inside of him. He was a great father and a selfless, mature lover. He’d go around the corner to get a carton of milk and bring her back flowers. Lying next to him in bed sometimes was like lying in the middle of the Great Lawn on a quiet starry night, feeling the enormity of the city around them and the strength of his heartbeat within it.

She puts on a burst of speed and pulls alongside him as the Guggenheim Museum appears above the tree line to her right.

“So why’d he call the house instead of calling you at the office?” she asks Jake.

“Who?”

“The detective.”

“I don’t know,” he says a little irritably, clutching two five-pound weights as he runs. “Maybe his shift is today.” She pauses, deciding to let it go at that.

“So I was thinking of going to the antiques show at the pier tomorrow morning,” she says, breathing hard and feeling a little tightness in her chest. “Pick out an armoire for the bedroom. We can give Alex the one we have. Any interest?”

He keeps his head down, maintaining a steady determined stride. “Can’t do it, babe.” Bap, bap, bap. One foot after the other, like stakes driven into the dirt.

“Why not?”

Pausing to catch his breath. “Got a business meeting.”

“Who wants to meet with you on a Sunday?”

Bap, bap, bap. The stakes going into the gravel a little harder and a little faster. Not quite running away from her, but no longer matching her stride.

“Ah, it’s just some pain-in-the-ass thing. You don’t wanna know.” He turns his head slightly and the last syllables drift away in the passing breeze.

She’s been noticing more and more moments like this lately. Tense silences, brooding looks, unexplained absences. It’s impossible to ignore it anymore. Something is going on. Spaces are opening up between them.

Again, she gets ready to confront him and ask what’s going on.
But when she looks up, Jake surges ahead of her on the track and disappears around the bend twenty yards away.

For some reason, she’s reminded of the afternoon a dozen years ago when she made a wrong turn walking home through the park after dropping Alex off at nursery school. Somewhere beyond the Loeb Boathouse, she’d lost her way and found herself in an unfamiliar setting: a wild untended field surrounded by a grove of thick trees and hedges. There was a rustling of bushes and then a man stepped into the clearing. At least she thought it was a man, at first. He was like a Cro-Magnon. Naked except for a long mangy red beard and a mass of curly body hair. Another naked hairy man followed him out and she’d felt her heart stop. Obviously she’d interrupted some act of sexual congress, and they stared at her with animal loathing. For a moment, she was unable to move. Then one of the creatures grunted and she bolted, not allowing herself even a small scream until she’d run all the way home and poured herself a tall stiff vodka.

Now, as she puts her head down and races after her husband of twenty years, she wonders if parts of him, like parts of the park, are off-limits to her.

46

I wanted to see you,” says Jake on Sunday afternoon, “because a couple of detectives from Midtown North have been trying to talk to me.”

His eyes focus on a run in Susan Hoffman’s stocking. Actually just a small hole right above the knee, revealing a quarter inch of pale flesh amidst the dark hose. It’s visible just over the top of her cherry-wood desk when she crosses her legs. It bothers him that she doesn’t seem to notice that hole. He hopes she isn’t that sloppy when it comes to her clients.

On the other hand, Andy Botwin never forgets a child’s birthday and he hasn’t picked up the phone once since Jake came to see him.

“So why do you think they’ve been doing that?”

“Huh?” He catches himself wondering why she’s wearing hose and a skirt on a Sunday anyway.