Tainted Evidence

by Robert Daley

  “Where was the car taken,” Karen demanded.

  He looked at her in surprise.

  “Please,” said Karen, “please.”

  The cop began to look through his notebook. He seemed to take his time doing it. Having found the page, he read off the name of the garage and she rushed out of the hospital, realizing only as she reached the street that she had no car. No money either. She ran up in front of the hospital and waited several minutes pacing and fretting until a taxi pulled up to let people out. She jumped in and gave the address of the garage.

  The wreck was there. She made the driver wait and ran over to it. The side window had been shattered too and the floor was strewn with jagged crumbs, some of them bloody, and with junk that had fallen out of the glove box too. She pawed through all this and found no tooth, and started through it again and still found no tooth, and felt her eyes fill up with tears.

  But she wiped them away and made the driver take her to the scene of the accident where she got down on her knees and combed through the bloody grass, back and forth, parting each blade, a tooth was so small, it could be anywhere. It could be on the floor of the ambulance, it could have been stomped into the turf by any of the bystanders.

  But finally there the tooth was, standing straight up in the grass, its root bloody, flesh and bone adhering to it. She jumped up holding it triumphantly between thumb and forefinger.

  She made the taxi wait outside the emergency room, the meter running, and ran in and handed the tooth to the dentist. She watched him disinfect it, dipping it repeatedly into a solution, but she looked away when he turned back to her son. She heard rather than saw him thrust it back where it belonged, heard the noise as he pushed hard, and then heard him wire it in there.

  He took her outside the room and gave her a vial of pain pills. “He’s going to be in some discomfort when the injection wears off,” the dentist said.

  She asked the question that had tormented her for an hour. “Will he—will he lose his teeth?”

  “We’ll have to see.”

  It was only the answer she had expected, and it left her more tormented than ever.

  “How—I mean—what chance is there?”

  He had his toolbox with him and had set it down on a table. He was rearranging its contents.

  “Often they take,” he said. He was concentrated on his box, not her. She wanted to sling the box across the room.

  “Even the one I found?”

  “There’s a good chance.” He looked up and smiled at her. “Stop worrying. He’ll be fine.” He put his hand on her arm. “There’s an excellent chance, really.”

  She felt tears in her eyes and wanted to embrace him.

  Instead she walked Jackie out to the taxi and gave the driver her address. Jackie was groggy and said nothing, and she sat with her arms around him, holding him close.

  Outside her house she again asked the driver to wait. She took Jackie up to his room and put him to bed.

  “I’ll be right back, darling,” she promised him, and went down to pay the driver. Having found her purse, she went out to the street. It took every cent she had.

  When she went back to Jackie’s room he had fallen asleep. She sat beside his bed staring at the battered twelve year old face, holding his hand and weeping. She was still there when she heard Hank come home. She went out and told him, and together they entered the bedroom and stood looking down on their son.

  Jackie woke in the afternoon and she gave him a pill and a cup of broth that he drank through a straw. For supper she brought him more broth, and he fell asleep again. Hillary came home and was warned not to disturb her brother.

  “Are his teeth going to fall out, Mom?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She and Hank went to bed with both doors open. She heard the boy several times in the night and got up and went to him and gave him pills or something to drink and sat with him till he had gone back to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  There is a spaciousness about Harlem that is absent from the rest of New York. The parks laid out so long ago are still there, the boulevards are still wide, the downtown skyscrapers are so far off as to be out of sight and mind. There seems to be more air to breathe. One can see the sky in all directions.

  Most of the gracious buildings of old Harlem still stand, and walking by one can see how luxurious they must have been in their day with their decorated stoops and iron balconies and, in those places where doors remain, their once handsome doors. Many buildings have been abandoned, of course. Some have been torched, whether accidentally or on purpose one can no longer say. One peers up through scorched window frames at absent or partially absent roofs, at parts of the intervening floors inside. Such buildings have been condemned by the building department; their neighbors to either side, having been rendered unstable by the fire, usually have been condemned too.

  Theoretically, condemned buildings must remain empty until demolished. Accordingly the building department seals their doorways with cinderblocks, and over their windows nails sheets of aluminum that sometimes reflect the sun like mirrors. But in Harlem the theoretical does not hold, for the city condemns buildings quicker than it can take them down. In the meantime the cinderblocks can be staved in permitting entrance, after which the sheet aluminum can be ripped off and sold, the window moldings too, and much else. Such buildings, once they have been broken open, make excellent sales outlets for drug dealers, excellent playgrounds for children.

  Certain among them make excellent homes for the homeless as well, for electric wires can be plugged into hallway light sockets in neighboring buildings and strung across, providing current both for light and for electric heaters. This makes the condemned building habitable, more or less, and to otherwise homeless people even attractive, although at considerable risk of fire. The homeless move in, build fires on the floor and perhaps cook something. For a time they can imagine they are living in a house just like everyone else.

  When such buildings become inhabited, the police know it. But cops are not in the business of rousting squatters. They ignore them. It's not their job. It's the building department's job. To do a building inspector's work is beneath them.

  Of the elevated railways that once laced Harlem like stitching, only two remain. On the west side heading north the Broadway subway still comes out of the face of what was once a naked cliff and crosses what was once Harlem Plains high up on trestles. Over on the east side the Metro North tracks emerge from under the street just as they reach the edge of Harlem. The street happens to be Park Avenue, which, a few blocks to the south, is the richest street in the city: its co-ops boast the highest maintenance charges, the most arrogant doormen. But the tracks there are under the pavement. In Harlem the trestles and their stanchions turn Park Avenue into blocks of darkness, among which move frightening shadows, prison bars of a sort. The noise and vibration of the trains shakes every thing and person nearby. Nearly all of the tenements and other buildings that face the track are empty and in ruins.

  Beside the tracks between one hundred twenty seventh and twenty eighth streets, there stood just such a row of condemned brownstones. The one at the southeast corner had collapsed or been demolished, and the city had put a chain link fence around the lot where it once had stood. But at some previous time the fence had got hacked through in places. The lot therefore was strewn with old mattresses, wrecked furniture and appliances, parts of cars, broken bottles--in addition of course to the piles of building rubble and the weeds. By day neighborhood children frolicked in this lot. It was their playground. Nights their elders used it as a garbage dump.

  The other buildings on the block were supposed to be sealed and empty, but the middle one had been broken into, and a number of men, each in a separate room, were asleep inside. They were unknown to each other. One, a man who had been recently released from an asylum, had dragged a cardboard carton in from the street. He was never without his carton, and each time one disintegrated he was desperate unti
l he had found another. He whimpered constantly. On this particular night he lay within his carton in a corner of the room he had chosen, which was on the ground floor, and he whimpered even in his sleep.

  He had a name but no longer knew what it was.

  One flight up lived a wino. He shambled out each day and panhandled and when he had collected enough money he bought a bottle of cheap wine, the sweeter the better, and shambled back to his room and drank it. For a while after it was gone he sat in a corner talking to himself. Sometimes he dozed most of the day. The room reeked of the different wines, a sweetly sickening alcoholic odor, mixed with the stench of urine, and the place was crowded with empties. When the trains went by outside the vibration sometimes caused bottles to roll across the floor.

  The wino too had a name but had not heard anyone speak it in a long time.

  On the floor above him slept a third man, a youth really, 21 years old. When awake he was exceedingly nervous, pacing the bare room, constantly approaching the window to peer down on the street through a place where he had pried up a corner of the building department's aluminum--he had made it curl outwards the way the corner of a photo might curl in an album. He had been there three days without going out. At present he slept under a coat and some newspapers. His belongings in a sack served as his pillow, and he was surrounded by guns: handguns beside his head, a rifle and shotgun alongside his body. Above him part of the roof was gone, and his sleeping form was partly illuminated by moonlight. The trains blasting by his bedroom were only the width of the sidewalk away, but he did not hear them.

  Down in the street a car slowly approached, gliding silently to a stop. He did not hear this either. The driver, who was Detective Muldoon, opened his door soundlessly, and just as soundlessly stepped out of the car. He took out a cigar, and bit the tip off it, but did not light it. He was alone. Chewing on his cigar he leaned over the car door, his chin on his arms, and studied the building. But he kept glancing up the street, plainly waiting for someone. The time was well past midnight. He rolled the cigar around in his mouth.

  Presently he reached into his car for a flashlight, checked that it worked, then went over to the doorway, where he pointed the light in past the broken cinderblocks, illuminating the vestibule in which there was nothing significant to be seen. Piles of rubble. Wrecked mailboxes hanging off the wall. Cockroaches surprised by the light. Glittering black shells that skittered back into darkness.

  Again Muldoon glanced up the avenue. It was Barone he was waiting for, who still had not come.

  Turning, he walked up the sidewalk, and he studied what his flashlight showed him, mostly doorways, windows. Some were blocked, not all. Though heavy, he moved as silently as the beam of light he played over each building in turn. Finally he flicked the light off and returned to his car. Once again he was alone in the dark.

  Another car entered the street some blocks up. He watched it approach. It came slowly, silently, and glided to a stop in its turn. Muldoon went over to the driver's side.

  "He's in there," Muldoon said.

  Barone nodded. "Lionel Epps. Well--"

  "Right, Epps."

  "He's supposed to be heavily armed," Barone said. "You know goddam well he's violent."

  "He's probably asleep."

  "I tell you what you do," Barone suggested. "You call in Emergency Service. Let them do it."

  "Those guys."

  "That's their job. They got body armor. They got shotguns."

  "We could take him."

  "You take him, not me."

  Muldoon said nothing. He studied first the building, then Barone. Both men had already signed out and were off duty.

  "If you think I'm going in there, you're crazy," said Barone, but he sounded uncomfortable with the decision.

  Muldoon still said nothing.

  "I got another idea," said Barone. They were talking in whispers.

  "What?"

  "Get the prick out into the street so we can shoot the fuck.”

  "How?"

  "You get some old newspapers," said Barone. "You pile them up in the vestibule, you take a match, you throw it in on top. As soon as it's going good you scream fire. When the dickhead comes running out--"

  "The whole block might go up," said Muldoon. "You'll have 500 fire trucks here."

  "I was joking, Danny. Christ, I really shouldn't joke around you."

  "Let's see who else we can get," said Muldoon after a pause.

  Barone nodded. "That's the best idea you've had yet.”

  Putting the car in gear, Barone drove off as quietly as he had come.

  Muldoon went back to his car, eased his bulk behind the wheel. For a moment he merely sat there, listening hard. Nothing. Distant traffic noises. A siren. Faint music from somebody's radio blocks away. Around him, except for the soft purring of his motor, the silence was as nearly total as one ever gets in a city. He put his car in gear and, holding the half-closed door in place, crept off. He was a block and a half away before he slammed the door shut and speeded up.

  An hour passed, perhaps more. Lionel Epps slept on. A train went by, shaking the building, but he did not stir. Suddenly down in the street a car door slammed, and he was instantly alert, on his feet, gun in hand. He went to the window where he nudged the aluminum sheeting to one side. It was almost like parting curtains in a house in which people lived. He peered down: police cars with men pouring out of them, some in uniform, some not.

  Epps' panic was instantaneous. He became bathed in sweat. His eyes glazed. He nearly fainted.

  In fact there were two groups of cops, one at the corner, one in front of his door. They eyed each other suspiciously, and for a moment neither group moved. But Epps did not notice this, much less consider what it might mean. That one of the men was Muldoon and another Barone did not register. Epps knew them both, but was beyond recognizing them or anyone else. Then both groups started running. Some covered the back. Some entered other buildings. Some entered his building.

  He heard all this as much as he saw it. He had been sleeping in his clothes: jeans, sneakers, a torn sweater. He rammed guns in his belt, then ran to the back of the floor. His panic had already passed. The sheet metal had been half torn off the rear window too, but as he started to climb out onto the fire escape he heard voices coming up, voices coming down. He was trapped.

  The cops combed the downstairs rooms first. They were led by Muldoon, whose cigar now was lit. He was smoking it, posing, pretending to be bulletproof, which he was not, behaving as if he was in charge, which was not the case either. As the later investigations would bring out--there would be many investigations--no one was in charge. All of the men present were detectives or police officers. Detectives hold no command rank, not Muldoon, not any of them, and there were no sergeants or above present. In addition, the men approaching Epps' sanctuary were all from the 32nd precinct whereas this building was in the 25th, so they were out of their jurisdiction as well.

  Except for Muldoon, all had their guns out. They stepped over rubbish, peered into empty rooms, shone flashlights into the eyes of the other sleeping men to whom the condemned tenement was home.

  The wretch inside the carton came awake. "What's up, man?" he whimpered. "What I done?"

  "That's not him," said Muldoon.

  They climbed. Their flashlight beams converged again: a face in a halo of light, but no saint. The dirty, unshaven, suddenly illuminated drunk.

  "Keep going," ordered Muldoon.

  They climbed another flight of stairs. In a moment they would come to Epps' room. In it he stood with his shotgun pointed at the closed door.

  Muldoon stopped at each door in turn. He posed, cigar between his teeth. His lack of fear was probably real. "These mutts don't scare me," he had said often enough.

  "This is Detective Muldoon speaking. You hear me, Epps. Come out with your hands up."

  Muldoon kicked in the door. Epps was not behind this one, and nothing happened. He went on to the next.

  "T
his is Detective Muldoon, Epps. Come out with your hands up."

  He kicked open this door, and again nothing happened. No Epps, no shotgun blast. He went on to the next.

  "You're surrounded, Epps. Come out with--"

  He kicked the door open and Epps fired the shotgun. Muldoon went down and two other cops with him. They lay on the floor covered with blood. A fourth cop jumped into the room and was shot. Epps threw away his shotgun and ran back through the floor. When he came to the rear room a cop was climbing in the window. Epps shot him, dove past him onto the fire escape and shot down at still another cop climbing up toward him. Since he could see more cops in the courtyard, he decided to climb up, not down.

  He ran out onto the roof. There were cops running toward him across the adjacent rooftops, one of them Barone. They were three roofs away, two. He shot, and kept on shooting. He had two 9 mm. automatics, thirteen bullets in each clip and one in each chamber. More than enough. The cops were hiding behind a parapet, firing at him. Then he was past them, racing across more rooftops. He came to the last in the row and was forced to descend. Jumping out onto the front fire escape, he went down the steps two at a time, feet clattering, never a step missed, even in the dark. At the bottom he heaved himself over the railing, hung for a moment, and dropped to the sidewalk.

  Of the cops Muldoon had been able to gather, five had carried hand radios. One of the five was now unconscious. The other four, some of them bleeding, were all trying to transmit at once.

  "Shots fired, Central. Shots fired at this time."

  "Officer down, Central. Officer down."

  They were cutting each other off.

  "Signal ten-thirteen, assist police officer."

  "Two cops shot. Two cops shot.” Actually the number was five. "Send ambulances, Central."

  "What location?" Central shouted. "Give me a location."