Tainted Evidence

by Robert Daley

  "Mutt pinches a woman's ass," said Muldoon. "Pats, pinches, feels--how the fuck do I know. The mutt she's with pulls a knife. The other mutt runs home to get his piece. He comes back and opens fire. Empties his gun into the bar. Blood everywhere."

  "It was crowded in there," said Barone. "Twenty or thirty people at least."

  "What was he using?” Ritter leaned intently over the seat.

  "A fucken nine. You know the moral of the story?”

  "Moral?"

  "Don't bring a knife to a gun fight," said Barone.

  "Mutt sprayed the fucken place," said Muldoon.

  The new man peered out the back window at the diminishing bar.

  Barone said: "By the time we got there, there's three on the floor, right? Shoes, clothes all over the place. The blood was so thick we were slipping in it. We were splashing it up onto our pants legs. And clothing everywhere you looked. People tried to get away so bad they ran right out of their clothes. I never saw that before."

  "There's a mutt leaning against the wall by the door," said Muldoon. "The only witness still standing. I grab him, but he said he couldn't go with me because his leg's gone to sleep. I tell him: Well, wake it up and let's go. I look down and he's been shot through the leg. He didn't even know it.”

  Ritter nodded: "And that's the guy we're looking for now, right?”

  "He recognized the shooter," Barone said, as he steered into a side street. "Said he knew him as Chocolate Bar.”

  Rows of brownstones passed by. Tonight no one sat on stoops in camp chairs. It was too cold. "How's that for a name," said Barone. "Chocolate Bar?”

  "We put it in the computer," said Muldoon. "On Chocolate Bar you get about 800 hits.”

  There were clumps of men on some of the street corners, though. They had lit fires in garbage cans or disused oil drums and they stood around warming their hands.

  "Look at those mutts," said Muldoon. "When you arrest them you find they're wearing three pairs of pants.”

  "I went back to the hospital," said Barone. As he drove by he studied the glowing faces. "The guy said he made a mistake. Not Chocolate Bar, Candy Bar. So we ran Candy Bar. Got another 800 hits. Yeah."

  "By now we had bits of description on this Candy Bar," said Muldoon, "height, weight and so forth, from other witnesses we had found--who wanted nothing to do with the case, by the way. We put together ten possibles, carry the photos over to the hospital--"

  "And the witness was gone," finished Ritter.

  "Yeah."

  "Phony address," said Muldoon. "Fucken mutt."

  At the corner came another clump of black men. They stood in threes and fours, maybe fifteen men altogether, no blazing fire here, men bundled up to the ears. Faces that stared back for a moment, then away.

  "We've been looking for that witness every night since," said Barone. "If we can find him, and if he picks out this Candy Bar, it will give us a name, maybe an address to go with it. Maybe we can pick the guy up. Then maybe we can get the other witnesses to come in, have a lineup, maybe even arrest the sonuva bitch."

  "Lotta ifs," said Ritter.

  "Yeah," conceded Barone.

  After driving in silence for a time, Barone said: "Making a case is so goddam complicated, so difficult. Finding witnesses, taking statements, making identifications, finding the perpetrator, finding the witnesses again, making your lineup--it's a wonder any cases ever get made at all."

  The other two men made no response.

  "But sometimes you do all that work, and it all comes together, the case is there, ready for the DA, and it's such an incredible high--that's why you're in this job, looking for highs like that."

  Muldoon stared at his partner's profile. Annoyed, he said: "You're one of these detectives think they're doing God's work. But all you're doing is shoveling shit. How many times I have to tell you?”

  The car turned the corner, and they passed in front of a grocery that was still open. "Stop here," said Muldoon. His annoyance had gone over into a powerful thirst. "I gotta take a piss," he explained.

  "You want anything?" he asked, getting out of the car.

  "No," said Barone.

  "Nothing, thanks," said the new guy.

  As Muldoon lumbered toward the grocery he could feel Barone's eyes boring into his back.

  "What about Fatso?" asked Ritter.

  "What about him?" said Barone.

  "If he needs to piss," said Ritter, "why not go back to the stationhouse?"

  Barone pretended to be fiddling with the hand radio on the seat beside him. "He likes this place."

  "I know these hairbags," said Ritter.

  "Do you now?"

  "I worked with some of them on Staten Island. One old guy, he was well over forty. Hairbag had bottles stashed all over the precinct. By the end of the tour he was always half pissed. I couldn't take it no more."

  "You report him?" said Barone.

  Ritter shook his head. "No. I told them I wanted out. Said I was tired of looking for maids who had run off with the silverware. I asked for a high crime precinct. They transferred me up here."

  "You'll like it here," said Barone dryly.

  The more he thought about Ritter dropping in on them out of the sky, the less he liked it. One did not become a detective simply by asking. There were career paths. Of course sometimes a guy made a big arrest, or broke a famous case and got the gold shield for it. But there were no big arrests or famous cases on Staten Island. Or if there were, Barone had missed them.

  "Tell me something, Ritter, you got only four years on the job, right?"

  "Four years, yeah."

  "So how'd you make detective in only four years?

  After a moment, Ritter said: "I had a hook."

  "A contract," said Barone. There were supposed to be no more contracts, no more hooks, but no one believed it. A hook was possible.

  "Who was your hook?"

  "You wouldn't know him."

  "Where's he work?"

  "Headquarters."

  "What's his name?"

  Ritter gave a name and Barone, though he nodded, remembered that Ritter lived in Brighton Beach, the most distant corner of Brooklyn, a commute almost as long as his own. Wouldn't a hook who could get him the gold shield also get him into a precinct closer to his house? There were plenty of high crime precincts in Brooklyn.

  Barone resolved to find out from friends in headquarters if anyone by the name of this hook existed. No point alarming his partner just yet. There was no telling how Danny would react. He could well go off the deep end. In the meantime Barone would watch carefully and keep his suspicions to himself. He would be careful for himself and careful for Danny too.

  Inside the grocery, Muldoon had gone straight to the cooler. The grocer, who knew him, made no protest. Having lifted out a beer the detective went through into the stock room where he twisted off the cap and had a long pull. When he looked up the grocer was in the doorway watching him. Muldoon gave him a wave and again tilted the bottle.

  Leaving the empty on a shelf he came out into the store, where he stopped at the counter and picked up a box of candies. The tag said $10. A customer had come in and stood waiting his turn. After studying the customer for a moment, Muldoon decided to say to the grocer: "How much for this candy?"

  "For you, nothing," said the grocer, all smiles.

  The grocer was a foreigner, some kind of Greek or Arab. Maybe a Polack, who the hell knows. "Oh, I must pay you for these candies," said Muldoon, watching the customer. Nothing had been said about paying for the beer.

  "Please you take," said the grocer.

  The detective nodded, put his money away, slipped the box into his pocket, and went out.

  "That feels better," he said as he climbed back into the car. Breaking open the box he offered candy to the other two, who declined. Barone pulled away from the curb.

  Suddenly Muldoon, who had shoved a candy into his mouth, spit it violently out the window. "Fucken thing disintegrated on me," h
e cried. He was still spitting, trying to clear his mouth. He was outraged. "Crumbled to fucken powder. It's fucken stale.” He put on the reading light and studied the labeling. "It says here, not for resale," he announced. "This thing was put out by the girl scouts.” His tone took on an even more outraged note. "The nerve of that mutt. He was gonna make me pay for this. I should have locked the fucken mutt up for fraud."

  Barone was laughing. He thought that Ritter, who was silent, wanted to laugh too, but didn't dare.

  "I don't see what's funny," said Muldoon huffily.

  "You're right," said Barone, laughing. "It's not funny."

  Later, they went out of their precinct into the Two-Six, which included Riverside Drive and Columbia University, and in a deli on Broadway and ll5th bought hero sandwiches, tonight's dinner--most nights' dinner.

  "This is how far you have to come on meal period," said Barone to Ritter.

  "No one who works the Three-Two would eat anything that comes from there," said Muldoon.

  In the deli Muldoon grabbed a beer out of the cooler and drank it down while waiting for his sandwich to be prepared. He drank a second beer--concealed inside a paper bag--in the car on the way back to the stationhouse. When Barone stopped at a red light he opened the car door and disposed of the empty by standing it up on the pavement. When the light changed they drove away from it.

  The detective squad room on the second floor was a suite of offices that extended across the front of the stationhouse, seven small rooms, plus a holding cell that at this hour on this particular night was empty. The office at one end of the floor belonged to the lieutenant commanding the squad, who was no doubt in there now because his door was closed.

  The office at the opposite corner had been made over into a kind of lounge. This was where the detectives went to eat their dinners. The two other detectives on duty tonight were already in there watching a basketball game on television. The lounge contained a table, some chairs, a terminally old fridge, and the inevitable filing cabinets along one wall. The TV was fixed to the wall above the fridge.

  There was a coffee maker on top of the filing cabinets. Barone poured out coffee for himself and Muldoon, but not for Ritter who was in talking to the lieutenant, and they sat down and began munching their sandwiches. When they had finished they crumpled the bags and wrappings and tossed them into the bin.

  They went out and sat at their desks where Muldoon began typing up a DD-5 on a case he had worked on two nights ago, while Barone got on the phone.

  Muldoon was a two-fingered typist and the typewriter, an IBM Selectric, was in poor condition. "When I came on this job," he complained to Ritter, who sat now at the adjacent desk, "we had these upright Underwoods with half the keys missing.” He wanted to make it clear to the new guy how long he had been a detective. "Now we have these modern fucken electrics with half the keys missing."

  Barone, on the phone, was talking to a woman. Muldoon attempted to eavesdrop, but his partner was talking in too low a voice.

  The lieutenant came out of his office. His name was Whitfield. He was six feet four inches tall, and when Barone had hung up, which he did somewhat hurriedly, the lieutenant handed over the message he had received earlier. The two detectives were to report to Assistant District Attorney Karen Henning tomorrow morning at nine A.M.

  "Bring the Lionel Epps folder with you," he ordered.

  "Who's Karen Henning?" asked Muldoon.

  "She has the Epps case, apparently."

  "Norm Harbison has the Epps case," said Barone. He and Muldoon had both been interviewed several times by Harbison.

  "Not anymore."

  "What happened?"

  "Just be there," said Whitfield, adding over his shoulder as he went back into his office: "and be on time."

  "Fucken mutt," muttered Muldoon in a low voice.

  Lt. Whitfield had taken command of the squad shortly after the shootout, and had been putting in new controls and procedures ever since, wasting everybody's time.

  His departure was followed by a heavy silence.

  Whitfield was thirty five, Barone's age. Muldoon resented taking orders from a younger man, and from a black. Barone, Muldoon knew, resented Whitfield for a different reason. He and Whitfield had gone through the police academy together, and two years ago even took the sergeant's test together. According to rumor the test results were altered in some way to favor minorities. Whitfield with his altered score passed the test high, Barone in the middle. Whitfield was made a sergeant, and almost immediately took and passed the lieutenant's test for which Barone, still waiting to make sergeant, was not eligible.

  That was the rumor. The police department ran on rumors, and Muldoon believed all of them. He had contempt for the men who ran the department, down to and including Lt. Whitfield, for they were gutless one and all in front of higher rank, and in front of politicians. The brass's sole function as he saw it was to exalt themselves by screwing cops.

  Muldoon was studying the telephone message. "Karen Henning," he said to Barone. "You know this broad?"

  "I think I had a case with her when I was in narcotics. Good looking woman, if it's the one I think it is."

  "Did you boff her?"

  Barone grinned. "I don't remember."

  Muldoon was envious not so much of Barone's supposed conquests, but of the ease with which he could joke about them and be believed. He himself, when he occasionally got wound up so tight he couldn't stand it anymore, went down to the Times Square area where he would find and go upstairs with a hooker.

  "Want to go out into the street again?" asked Muldoon.

  "On your feet, Ritter," said Barone, "time to go back to work."

  The detectives signed out, went downstairs and got back in the car, and no sooner were they underway than another call came over the radio: a child teetering on a window ledge.

  Barone grasped the radio: "Two-squad. We'll take that job."

  "What are you, a social worker?" asked Muldoon. "You're a detective, for crissake. Let the patrol guys handle it."

  "Well," said Barone, "we're right there."

  He pulled up at the address and they got out. There were two men in the doorway shivering and stamping their feet, but for Harlem the building seemed well cared for. A child, maybe four years old, was standing in an open second floor window.

  Barone tried the outer door, but it was locked. "You got your key," he said to one of the idlers, "open the door.” When he flashed his shield, the man complied.

  They went up the two flights, found what must be the door to the apartment, and Barone pounded on it, but no one answered. They went back down to the street, but when they again peered up at the window the child was no longer there. Perhaps he was watching television, or rooting in the refrigerator for food. If there was a refrigerator. If there was food. Obviously his mother had left him alone in there, which strictly speaking was not against the law. She might be in a crack den, or out getting impregnated by a new boyfriend. Or she might be at work--working hard to support her little boy.

  They stood on the sidewalk peering up. There was a window guard in the window. Probably the kid was old enough to know better than to climb over it and splatter himself on the sidewalk.

  But he might. One could envision still another of the ghetto tragedies of this nature.

  It must be cold in there too, Barone thought.

  They could call in the fire department. Firemen could go in the window and get the kid out. And do what with him? Besides which, the firemen as they worked would lord it over them--firemen lording it over cops. Then the mother comes home and her kid is gone and she goes berserk. Then what? How does she find him? She'd be sick with worry. She might even harm herself. Or harm the kid when she found him. What was the correct thing to do here?

  Muldoon, who could see all these thoughts go through his partner's head, had already made his own decision.

  Barone on the stoop addressed the same idler as before. "Do you know who that kid belongs to? Wh
ere's his mother? Do you know his mother? Is there a super? Does the super have a key?"

  The idler answered the first two questions with "I don't know," after which he confined his responses to shrugs.

  Muldoon took the radio out of Barone's hands. The kid did not become police business until such time as he was lying dead on the sidewalk. It was not the cops' job to make these mutts take care of their children.

  Muldoon raised Central. "That job was ten-ninety, Central, unfounded."

  He handed the radio back to Barone and returned to the car. Ritter followed. After hesitating briefly, Barone followed too. He did not know what else to do. Muldoon's solution seemed to him as good as any other.

  At one AM the detectives signed out, and the squad room closed down for the night.

  Muldoon, Barone, Ritter and the two other detectives went outside to their cars which were part of a row of cars backed into the curb opposite the stationhouse. All the buildings on this side of the street were burned out, condemned and empty. So were most of the buildings to either side of the stationhouse. The stationhouse was almost the only functioning building on the entire block. It was convenient in a way. The street had become a parking lot for the private cars of Three-Two cops. The signs on the lampposts so proclaimed it: POLICE VEHICLES ONLY.

  Muldoon said to Barone, "Want to go get a couple beers?"

  "No, I can't tonight."

  A number of patrol officers, all now in civilian clothes, were also moving toward their cars. As Muldoon grasped his door handle he saw Police Officer Maureen Whatever-Her-Name-Was. He saw that she changed into pants and a sweater. All the cops were calling goodnight to each other, getting into their cars and driving away, but not Barone and not Maureen. His partner had gone over to her, Muldoon saw. Now she was leaning her ass against her fender and Barone was talking to her. Now she grinned. Now she looked serious.

  Now the two of them were looking toward Barone's car.

  Muldoon let out his clutch. With a squeal of tires he was out of his slot and half way down the street. The light on the corner was red but he went angrily through it, heading toward the bridge across to the Bronx.