Tainted Evidence
Page 1
Tainted Evidence
When a heavily armed drug dealer and murder suspect, holed up in an abandoned tenement in Harlem, shoots five cops in a botched police raid, the Manhattan district attorney’s office has what appears to be a high-profile, open and shut case. Ignoring his politically ambitions chief assistant, the aging DA assigns it to Karen Henning, chief of the trials division, highest ranking woman in the office. Karen is smart, good looking, fiercely independent. She is also married and the mother of two, and she is forced now to cope with the DA’s thwarted chief assistant, with the advances of the handsome detective assigned to her, and with the all-consuming case which has turned out to be far more complicated than anyone suspected, and which now threatens both her marriage and her career.
Excerpts from Reviews
"Mr. Daley understands politics from the White House to the Station house, and he understands even more acutely the politics of everyday life--of careerism and of love." --The New York Times
"Elegant...Daley engages the reader for pages on end...TAINTED EVIDENCE is a superbly written novel of erudition as well as a window on our times." --Houston Chronicle
"Daley's eye for significant detail, his ear for dialogue, and, perhaps most of all, his insider's understanding of police and courtroom procedure make TAINTED EVIDENCE a not-guilty pleasure." --Atlanta Journal & Constitution
"Robert Daley's strength as a writer is his understanding of how cops think, feel, and act, and his observations in TAINTED EVIDENCE feel right and honest. --San Francisco Chronicle
Book of the Month Club featured alternate
Filmed as NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN starring Tony Garcia and Lena Olin, directed by Sidney Lumet
Books by Robert Daley
Novels:
The Whole Truth
Only a Game*
A Priest and a Girl
Strong Wine Red as Blood*
To Kill a Cop*
The Fast One*
Year of the Dragon*
The Dangerous Edge*
Hands of a Stranger*
Man With a Gun*
A Faint Cold Fear*
Tainted Evidence*
Wall of Brass*
Nowhere to Run*
The Innocents Within*
The Enemy of God*
Pictures*
Nonfiction:
The World Beneath the City*
Cars at Speed
The Bizarre World of European Sport
The Cruel Sport
The Swords of Spain
Target Blue*
Treasure*
A Star in the Family
Prince of the City*
An American Saga*
Portraits of France*
*available on Kindle
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, or to events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright @ 1993 by Riviera Productions Ltd.
All rights reserved
Originally published by Little, Brown & Company, New York, N.Y., 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Daley, Robert
Tainted Evidence/ Robert Daley
p. cm.
ISBN 0-316-17196-4
1. Title
PS3554-A43N5 1993
81.3’54—dc20 92-31904
Commit a crime and the earth is made of glass.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Tainted Evidence
A novel
Robert Daley
Chapter 1
The 32nd precinct in Harlem, called the Three-Two by cops, is four blocks wide, thirty long, a rectangular box that extends north from 127th to 157th Streets, bounded on the west by St. Nicholas and Bradhurst Avenues, and on the east by Fifth Avenue. Where Fifth runs out, the boundary becomes the river--it's the Harlem River here but the East River further downtown where it bathes more genteel neighborhoods, same river. There are two bridges across to the Bronx. Felons escaping from the Three-Two sometimes jump into a car and are across in no time, and gone. The Bronx is a different command, different radio frequency, unfamiliar streets.
In the Three-Two live about 100,000 people, virtually all of whom are black. The police stationhouse on West 135th Street is one of the city's old ones, built in l93l. Out of it, going and coming around the clock, work about 250 cops, virtually all of whom are white. To those who live in the Three-Two a white face on the street, or in a car going by, means only one thing: cop. There are no tourists in the 32nd precinct.
The Three-Two is divided into nine sectors, some previous commander ordered it, and it has stuck. There were and are about ten blocks to a sector, each one with a two-man car assigned to it around the clock. There are also foot posts here and there when the manpower will stretch that far, individual cops sent out alone. Most of them stand nervously under streetlights for their entire tour, not budging, gripping their radios with both hands. Cops in the sector cars tend to feel responsible for them, and to honk or wave each time they drive by.
And there are nineteen detectives commanded by a lieutenant who work out of a squad room on the second floor. All are men, sixteen whites, three blacks. These detectives work nine hour shifts, four days on, two off. There are only two shifts a day, for at one AM the squad room empties out and the door is locked tight, and night watch detectives take over responsibility for the precinct. The night watch works out of the Two-Five and covers all of Harlem, and if some egregious crime occurs during the night, the Three-Two detectives learn about it when they come to work the next morning--the paper work from the night before is waiting for them, and they follow up on it. Egregious means homicides, all of which are investigated, and major armed robberies, particularly those in which someone is shot, but not burglaries. In the Three-Two there are too many burglaries and not enough detectives. The precinct's burglars operate almost with impunity, though without, it is hoped, realizing it.
There are too many homicides too, and homicides not only take preference, they take time. It is not enough to arrest the murderer. Unlike lesser crimes, even violent ones, which most often get plea bargained away in exchange for derisory sentences, homicides have to be prepared for trial; public opinion being firm against murder, often they go all the way to trial. Only if you have an airtight case can you ever get a plea. Homicide, to detectives, translates into weeks of work finding evidence to bolster each case. Witnesses, many of whom are without fixed addresses, have to be found and persuaded to testify not only at the trial but at certain of the preliminary hearings. And if persuasion doesn't work they have to be found again and again and served with subpoenas. In Harlem most people prefer not to get involved. Some are afraid to testify, some are only afraid to lose time from work. People listen to the pleas and promises of white detectives, and are unmoved. Witnesses are always a problem.
On the night this story starts, insofar as any story starts at a specific time or even in a specific place, the oldest detective in the Three-Two squad was Dan Muldoon, 46. Muldoon, who had come to work two hours previously, sat now in a black unmarked Plymouth that moved through the streets of the precinct. His partner, Mike Barone, was driving. They were searching for specific individuals: a missing witness they had not been able to find for weeks; any one of a number of regular informants; and the suspect in a particularly vicious murder, for they had information he had been seen again in the precinct.
Muldoon was a big heavy man, divorced, no children. He had been a detective for 23 years, all of it spent in the Three-Two. He and Barone had worked together for several years and by now, in the manner of police partners, knew everything about each other.
Although not agreeing on much, both of them, without a word being said, had accepted the partnership.
On the surface they were an unlikely pair, but many police partners were. They were as different in appearance as in style. Meeting Muldoon for the first time, one would note his bulbous nose, the broken veins in his cheeks. If close enough one would smell the beer on his breath, would note the stains on his tie, the garish sports coat buttoned taut over his belly. Some cops called him a hairbag, though not to his face. Hairbag is police slang for men who don't care anymore, who are waiting out retirement. But Muldoon, who had nothing else in his life except the police department, did care, at least in the sense that he had no intention of ever retiring. The emotions that drove him were the same as they had always been except that they had hardened. There was a good deal that Muldoon hated, and he was sometimes vocal about it.
The dress code for detectives was coats and ties. Muldoon each night was barely within the code. Barone each night exceeded it. Muldoon was a slob, Barone a fashion plate. He favored three piece suits, silk ties, Italian shoes that cost money. He was 35, tall, dark, his black hair combed straight back. Tonight's suit was a dark brown worsted. The gun in his belt did not show. He could pass for a stock trader, a lawyer, a notion that pleased him. Muldoon lived alone in an apartment in the Bronx that was dark and seldom clean. Barone was married with children, and owned a house in a suburb sixty miles north of the city. It had had to be that distant so that he could afford the payments on it. Like many other New York cops, he spent hours each day commuting.
Tonight the black Plymouth circulated slowly, up one street, down another. On Lenox Avenue the shops were closing; the two detectives watched the corrugated iron shutters come down one after the other, each with its own clamor.
The night got darker, the streetlights came on. By the time Barone next steered out onto Lenox all the shutters were down. They extended for block after block on both sides, walls of iron, inhospitable, hostile. Covered with graffiti too: names, slogans, obscenities. Barone, who was sometimes a fanciful man, thought of this graffiti as instructions in a language no one understood. Muldoon's emotion was disgust: These people fouled the place where they lived.
The car windows were open. The side streets were narrow and clumps of men stood about.
"The mutts are out," muttered Muldoon to his partner.
Cruising past them, studying each face, the two detectives were as concentrated as hunters. The social life of Harlem took place out of doors. It was what made tonight's job possible. But the light was poor, and in the shadows not all the faces could be discerned.
The perfume of the streets seemed to wash through the car. It was almost tropical: spoiled food, unwashed bodies. The fetid odors of too many people crowded into too little space. The detectives inhaled this perfume as they looked for the men they wanted, and they listened for whatever else might happen: a scream, gunshots, the call of someone with information of interest.
As the hour got later more and more people came out onto the streets, blocking sidewalks in front of houses, occupying stoops, whole corners. There were many women out now too, and even children. The detectives watched as people moved from group to group, watched them talking, gesticulating, sometimes concluding transactions--people who stiffened and fell silent as the black car approached. Attention always focused on the detectives, though not directly. Women pretended to ignore them. Some men pretended nonchalance, as if the car wasn't there. All avoided eye contact with the detectives inside.
Barone drove so slowly that the car was almost hovering. To the men in each group it must have seemed like a shark hovering, wondering whether to make a meal.
"Fucken mutts," said Muldoon.
When the detectives' car was well past, conversation and movement at last resumed. Muldoon saw this by turning around. Barone saw it in the mirror, and commented on it: "They all look guilty, don't they?”
"Throw them up against the wall," responded Muldoon. "Make them turn their pockets out. See what you find."
When Muldoon talked like this worried his partner. "Now, now, Detective, we're not allowed to do that anymore," Barone said. Muldoon was sometimes rough with these people. Barone felt responsible for him, worried that he would do something to get himself in trouble--perhaps get both of them in trouble.
After so many years Muldoon knew every stoop, every storefront, every battered garbage can, almost every face. But so did Barone after a much shorter time. Night after night they moved through their long narrow precinct like predators pacing a cage. And they were predators of a sort. At any moment they might recognize someone and jump out and grab him, throw him in the back of the car, take him back to their lair.
But so far tonight they had found no one.
"Pretty quiet," commented Barone.
Suddenly Muldoon cried: "Stop, stop!"
He had spied one of the informants he was looking for who, as it happened, was a midget. Spied him in a doorway. Saw him duck back into the building after spotting the black car. The little fuck was so small Muldoon almost missed him.
He was out of the car by now, quite swift for a man of his girth, lumbering across the sidewalk and up the stoop and into the vestibule.
"You little prick," Muldoon cried, smacking the cowering midget across the head.
"Don't hit me, don't hit me," whined the midget. And then, without drawing breath: "The dude is back. I seen him."
Muldoon, knowing who he meant, lowered his already raised fist and instead got money out of his billfold. It was his own money, not the department's. There was a department fund for paying informants, but to get at it required filling out forms, getting them approved by supervisors, then waiting months. Using his own money, to Muldoon, was a way of showing his contempt for the department and its procedures.
"Here's five bucks," he told the midget. "Tell me about it."
"Right," the midget said. The money had already disappeared. "I know where he is at." And he gave an address, a fifth floor apartment off Lenox at 148th Street. "In the apartment, or on the roof."
"You're coming with us," Muldoon told him, wanting to exert maximum pressure on the little fuck, but the midget refused. He was only a midget, he whined, too small to defend himself. If anyone saw him with detectives he would be beaten up or killed as an informant.
"That's what you are," said Muldoon. "How much money have I given you so far, and what have you given me?"
In the vestibule the midget was clinging to the radiator. Lifting him, tearing the little fingers loose, Muldoon carried him out under his arm, and threw him into the back seat.
When they reached the address, he ordered the midget to stay there until they got back, and he and Barone went into the building.
The case was this. Two months previously an old lady had surprised a burglar ransacking her apartment. She was found the next day bound to a chair, a towel stuffed down her throat, dead of suffocation. This turned a two-bit burglary that never would have been investigated at all into one of New York's 2,000 homicides per year, all of which had to be investigated exhaustively. Muldoon and Barone worked hard on the case, and then Muldoon found the midget, who gave them the suspect's name, one of his names, said he knew him as Jonas. It was a start, and they began to winnow out the many Jonas's on file, showing photos to witnesses, asking questions, winnowing it down, down, down until they were sure they had the right Jonas. They were also able to separate out this Jonas's left thumbprint from among the many prints Forensic had lifted. However, they were not able to find the suspect himself, and when they went back looking for the midget they couldn't find him either.
The building they now entered had been gracious in its day, but tonight was rank with strong odors, mostly urine and feces, and as they crossed its once proud lobby they were trying not to breathe at all.
Names and obscenities had been scribbled on every wall.
Muldoon, who did not like the look of the elevator, announced he was not getting on it.
"Five flights," teased Barone. "You'll have a heart attack."
"If it stalls out," said Muldoon, "you can stay in there a week, for all I care."
By the time Muldoon got upstairs he was panting. Barone had waited for him. Muldoon rang the bell, then banged his fist on the door.
"Police, open up.”
"Who's there?"
"The white guys in suits," said Muldoon.
The door opened: a middle aged lady with glazed eyes.
"We wondered if you'd seen Jonas," said Barone politely.
"I ain't seen him."
"Mind if we come in," said Muldoon, wading forward. He did not wait for a response. The detectives had no warrant, no right to enter, but the woman either didn't know this, or feared incurring their anger, probably both. In court, if it ever came to court, they would swear that the woman invited them in. Barone took the main room. Muldoon peered into the kitchen, which was empty. He saw that the stove was stained with grease and slime, the sink with sludge, and cockroaches were climbing the walls. It almost made him puke. Sections of the floor linoleum were curled or missing. The middle of the kitchen ceiling had been broken open to expose pipes, one of which was leaking. Someone had tied a dirty rag around the leak. Water dripped through the rag into a blackened cooking pot on the floor.
Muldoon rejoined Barone in the living room. It was the size of a jail cell but was crammed with people. They were sprawled on two decrepit sofas, and on the floor. Most of them looked stoned. The room had two windows that were not only closed but covered over with pieces of blankets, pieces of rugs, overcoats. These materials served as curtains or drapes. They kept out unwanted light and noise. Also air. They kept in odor that was close, like cheese that had gone bad.
Barone opened the door to the bedroom. Muldoon heard him check the closet, under the bed. Muldoon checked the other bedroom himself.