Tainted Evidence

by Robert Daley

  "So how about that drink I owe you?" Barone said.

  "I don't know. It's pretty late.” She glanced around as if she wanted someone else to decide.

  "We just got off work, so how could it be late?"

  She seemed pleased to be standing here talking to him, but perhaps hoped this wouldn't go any further.

  "Does your husband wait up for you?"

  "Of course not. He's got to get his sleep."

  "So we'll have a drink together. You'll get home twenty minutes, half an hour late. You slide into bed beside him, he'll never wake up."

  "Some nights he wakes up."

  Barone looked her up and down and liked what he saw. "If I were married to you I'd wake up every night."

  She grinned. "No you wouldn't."

  He took her arm and led her toward his car. This was the first test, the initial physical contact. How would she react?

  Although she stopped him, from his point of view she reacted very well indeed. In situations of this kind Barone was acutely attuned to whatever signals a woman might send, especially those she might not be aware of. Maureen, who might have snatched her arm back, only lifted his hand gently away, even holding it a moment before letting it drop.

  "All right, but I'll follow you in my car," she said. "So I can drive home from there. Where are we going?"

  He led her to the Bronx Plaza Hotel near Yankee Stadium and they sat down in the lounge and ordered drinks, beer for him, a bloody mary for her.

  "This is a nice place," said Maureen, glancing around.

  "I wanted to take you to a nice place."

  "I hope cops don't come in here.”

  "Right," said Barone solicitously. "We certainly don't want to start any foolish talk."

  She looked apprehensive. "Oh, I hope not."

  The Bronx courthouse was two blocks away, the precinct stationhouse not much further, so probably cops did come in here. "We have nothing to worry about," he told her. "No one comes here but ballplayers after the games.” His principal worry was that the lounge might close soon, because it was empty except for themselves and the barman. He perhaps had very little time in which to work.

  "And what we're doing was completely innocent anyway," she said, "isn't it?"

  Barone grinned at her. "Unless you have designs on my person."

  He got her to talk about her family. Once started she couldn't be stopped. She spoke of growing up in a police household, about her awe of her father and brothers, about how as a child she wished she were a boy so she could grow up to be a cop, and lo and behold by the time she did grow up it was possible for a woman to be a cop, a real cop on the street in a high crime precinct like the Three-Two, and here she was, and she loved most of it, though not everything. On weekends they still gave her a stationhouse job, usually she was the 124 man, because she knew how to type, but she thought as time went on she'd be really accepted. She named one of the most decorated cops in the precinct, and, well, her proudest day so far was the day the decorated cop agreed to ride with her, because lots of the girls in the precinct he wouldn't ride with.

  "You went right home and told your husband," commented Barone.

  "How did you know?"

  "But he wasn't impressed. He didn't understand."

  She sounded wistful. "No.”

  "He's not a cop," said Barone sympathetically, "how could he understood?” And he patted her hand. She did not, he noted, recoil from his touch. "Is he a jealous man?"

  "He has nothing to be jealous about."

  "Sometimes men are jealous anyway."

  "My father had a talk with him when I came on the job. He told him there would be nights when something happened and I would have to go to court, or work overtime and wouldn't come home. He told him there might be nights when I would want to have a drink with some of the guys after work, and might come home late. He told him he had to accept that and not to be jealous and not worry about me.”

  Barone nodded understandingly. He patted her hand again, and when she did not immediately withdraw it, he let his own hand linger on hers. Then he began to play with her fingers.

  This lasted only a moment before she frowned, excused herself, and marched off to the ladies' room.

  After waiting until she was out of sight, Barone stepped to the front desk where he showed his shield and asked for a room.

  "And I want the special rate. You got a special rate for cops, don't you?” With the courthouse so close and all, cops must have to stay overnight here all the time.

  The clerk gave him a rate.

  "You can do better than that, can't you?" said Barone. "Look how late it is. Why don't we do it on the arm, and I'll owe the hotel a favor?"

  The price came down again. Not all the way, but it came down. Clutching the key, Barone made it back to the table just as Maureen reappeared. She had combed her hair, he saw, and had perhaps washed her face. But she did not sit down, the first wrong signal so far.

  "I better be going."

  He had perhaps misjudged her and would be stuck with the room. Well, he'd just give the key back and say he changed his mind. "You're sure you don't want another drink?"

  "I'm sure. I've got a long way to drive."

  "Me too. I live near you, remember? I wish we could drive it together."

  She smiled at him. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?"

  Barone put money down and they put their coats on and walked out past the desk to the street.

  "It's a pity you have to go," he said.

  "It was really nice getting to know you."

  "We could do it again."

  "Yeah, I'd like that."

  They looked at each other, and neither moved.

  Maureen laughed. "I didn't know what you'd be like."

  "I'm like most cops."

  "You have such a reputation in our precinct."

  "Undeserved, I'm sure."

  Again both were silent. "I've decided not to drive home after all," said Barone. It was best to get this out in the open now. Let it weigh on her. "I've taken a room in the hotel.”

  "Oh, I didn't know that."

  "I've got court in the morning."

  They stood looking at each other.

  "I should go," said Maureen.

  "Can I kiss you goodnight?"

  "What do you want to do that for?"

  "I feel very close to you, somehow."

  "I feel close to you too."

  "I've been wanting to kiss you for an hour.” It was better to ask permission, make her think she was the one in control of whatever might or might not happen. "So can I?”

  The question made her smile. "Sure."

  She seemed to offer her cheek, but when he turned her chin, her lips were there. They were quite fleshy lips with her teeth behind them but closed up tight, and then after a moment they opened and he felt how sharp her teeth were, and then her tongue. A man could tell a lot from a kiss, and this one told Barone he had only to press on a bit further.

  "You don't really have to go, do you?"

  "Maybe not."

  "You don't really want to go."

  "No."

  He took her hand and they went back inside. The clerk, watching them get into the elevator, shrugged.

  The bars Muldoon drank in after work were those frequented by other cops, who came from many precincts. Some nights he found men he had drunk with before, some nights not. They ordered bottomless pitchers of beer and recounted stories that became more righteous, more obscene, more heroic, sometimes funnier, certainly boozier as the pitchers emptied and the night wore on.

  One of Muldoon's bars was on the West Side, and another, tonight's bar, was in the Fordham section of the Bronx. He sat over a pitcher of beer telling a cop from the Nineteenth about the triple homicide in the International Bar. The Nineteenth was a rich man's precinct on the upper east side. Cops from outside Harlem, he had found, made a more appreciative audience than other Harlem cops. They were more likely to see the ironies involved, to unde
rstand to what extent blacks in Harlem were animals.

  "Three mutts DRT," Muldoon told him.

  "You mean DOA?”

  "You fucks from the Nineteenth," Muldoon snorted, thinking: only precinct this joker ever worked, probably. Probably never saw a fucken corpse in his life. Like Ritter tonight. Still a virgin. "In Harlem it's DRT. Dead right there."

  He squinted at the other cop through smoke.

  "Thing happened to me once," the other cop ventured.

  Muldoon ignored him. "I grab the witness. I look down and he's been shot through the leg. Mutt didn't even know it.”

  Muldoon signaled the bartender for another pitcher.

  They stood in the center of the room caressing, kissing.

  "You got quite a handful there," said Barone. "Two handfuls."

  "Would you like to see them?" said Maureen throatily. "You could see them if you want.” She pulled the sweater off over her head, disarraying her hair slightly. Her arms went behind her back. She hunched her shoulders to make the bra slide down her arms. "There," she said proudly, and shook them at him.

  Barone liked that. He liked a woman who was proud of her tits. "You're gorgeous," he said.

  She grasped him by the ears, pulling him forward. She was grinning almost as if drunk. She pulled his face up close and slapped his face with them, right cheek, left cheek.

  He undid the waist of her slacks. Her off-duty gun must have been in her pocket, for as the slacks slid downwards her gun fell to the floor. This gave him a quite a start. He picked it up. She stood in her underpants. He stood fully dressed holding her gun. They began laughing.

  "Some day in some hotel room," Barone said, "one of these things is going to hit the floor and go off, killing a guy's partner. He's going to have some tall explaining to do."

  "Or she will," said Maureen.

  She came into his arms and rubbed herself against his clothes. Reaching back he deposited the gun on the dresser behind him, then embraced her. His hands began to move all over her body.

  "You know what I feel like?" she murmured, "I feel like being really bad.” And she bit his ear.

  He loved this. Each time he was with a woman he was amazed at how smooth their bodies were. Smooth all over. He loved the way their bodies felt. He loved the way they looked and smelled. They all reacted in a different way and said different things, and he loved that too and was amazed each time. He got his hand down inside her underpants and through the thicket and into what for him was the core of the solar system. Her clit was as thick as his finger and hard and she was very wet. Her eyes closed, she was thrusting against him, and for the longest time seemed to forget to breathe.

  To undress he was obliged to step back. She watched him work, watched him drop each article of clothing. Breathing more or less normally, no longer quivering, she was smiling now, confident, a bit avid, a bit impatient. And, something unusual in his experience, she seemed as curious and as intent on watching him undress as a man would be watching a woman.

  "Do you have a rubber?" she asked. "Let me put it on you. I'm really good at putting them on."

  He handed it over, and she knelt in front of him.

  "Don't I know how to do it?" she said. "There. I'm terrific at it, right?” She gave her work a friendly pat.

  For him this first part was always the best part somehow. He pulled her to him.

  But once they were in bed in the dark it all changed. Her body, especially that special part of it, was exactly the same as other females he had had, encompassed him in exactly the same way, reacted exactly the same, no different, and although she made a good deal of noise there was no more conversation. It was like a road he had already been down, he was not amazed anymore, there were only small surprises left, and not many of those, it was almost anticlimactic, automatic, and he knew that he hadn't gained any ground, he understood the world, life, himself, no better than before, the next time it would be as if this time had never happened, he would have to start anew.

  "She's lying there in a pool of blood in front of the lockers. Fourteen years old."

  The other cop stared with glazed eyes into his glass. He was perhaps no longer listening. Muldoon was not aware of this, or perhaps did not care. The story he was telling was as real to him as life, perhaps more so. As a story it was not even particularly unusual, not for Harlem, merely recent and on his mind, but it had acquired its own momentum and would go forward.

  "Kid that shot her, he's fourteen too. They all got guns in that school."

  "Any witnesses," interrupted the other cop.

  "An accident, he tells us.” Muldoon had begun to slur his words. "Said if you don't have a piece in that school, you're nobody."

  "Gotta find the witnesses. Crucial."

  "Find the fuck sold him the gun," Muldoon said. "That's who I'm gonna to find. Kid gave us his name."

  "Who?"

  "Can't find him. Fucken mutt. The girl was pregnant, did I tell you that? Autopsy showed it. Fourteen years old. When I find that mutt I'm going to blow him away."

  "It would fuck up your case."

  "Everybody beats the case. You want to win the case, shoot the prick."

  "Alright, shoot him then.

  "It's what he deserves.”

  "What will your partner say?"

  Muldoon's head felt thick. He missed Barone. He wondered where he was and what he was doing. In bed probably. All Barone cared about was cunt. Muldoon experienced jealousy and anger at the same time. "My partner does what I tell him," he muttered drunkenly. "I'm the boss."

  Barone reclined against the headboard. Maureen lay heavy in the crook of his arm. Because of the heaviness he assumed she was asleep. He had begun to worry about her father and her brothers. The police society had its own commandments. One didn't fool around with another cop's wife or girlfriend. Or with another cop's daughter or sister, perhaps. Cops were armed, they got angry, and they tended to have old fashioned ideas as far as daughters and sisters were concerned. He didn't want to be accused of ruining Maureen, or Maureen's marriage. If she got caught, who knew what she might say. It wouldn't be the father who came after him. One of the brothers, more likely. Or both brothers. Tonight was perhaps a mistake. He wished Maureen would wake up and go home. He wanted her to be in her own bed asleep for her husband to find when he got up in the morning.

  He moved his arm jerkily, but Maureen only purred and nestled closer. Perhaps he was exaggerating the degree of risk. Whether he was or not, he wanted her to go. He hankered to be alone now. He wanted to feel she was no longer his responsibility. He needed to get some sleep as well. It must be four AM by now, and in a few hours he had to be downtown at the district attorney's office.

  He jostled her again. "Wake up, Maureen. Shouldn't you be getting home? Wake up."

  More purring.

  He would never actually tell her to leave, but if the idea did not occur to her he was considering leaving himself, even though this room was both comfortable and, now, would have to be paid for. He could tell her he must get back to the precinct. There was a bunkroom off the squad room. If he had a late date, or a day tour or court appearance in the morning, he sometimes slept there. Two double decker bunks and hardly enough room otherwise to turn around. No blankets or sheets of course, but he kept a sleeping bag in his car. However, he hoped that in a few minutes Maureen would get up and leave. The dormitory room was really small, tended to be airless, and if there was anybody else in there it was almost impossible to sleep.

  Chapter 10

  In her kitchen Karen and her husband talked it out. She was dressed, ready to leave for work. Hank was in pajamas and still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Until she got a handle on this case, she told him, it would have to be his job to feed the children, get them off to school, give them dinner at night as well. Hank agreed. It was still dark out. The lights were on in the kitchen. Since she didn't know what time she'd be home, she'd take the car to the station. Hank could catch a ride to the college with someone else.
He agreed to this too, and she kissed him and left the house.

  As she crossed the back lawn to the garage, the sun was just coming up. It caught the tops of the bare trees and the air smelled clean. At the station she stood on the platform in the low cold light amid men in dark overcoats and white shirts. They all seemed tall to her, tall men reading tall newspapers. Executives who wanted to get to work early.

  The train came in. It was crowded. She could get only a middle seat. Her arms felt pinned to her sides. The air in the car smelled stale. She was surrounded by newspapers that kept rustling. On her lap she had the personnel folders on Detectives Muldoon and Barone whom she would interview that morning, and she studied them, not looking up again until the train was crossing the bridge over the river into Manhattan. The water below was brown and she looked down at it and tried to work out how the interviews should go.

  At Grand Central Station she went down into the subway. The rush hour had not started yet and she got a seat. She sat with her briefcase on her lap, enjoying what was probably the last quiet moment of the day. Centre Street, when she came up into the air again, was empty too, only a few people, lawyers probably, hurrying toward their offices. The principal business in this neighborhood was trials. In addition to the courtrooms in her own building, there were others across the street, and still more in the imitation Greek temple next door, the original courthouse, built early in this century. The Federal courthouse was nearby too. But the courts would not convene for two hours or so. The sidewalks were bare of all the courtroom guards, bondsmen, jurors who would clog them later.

  She went into her building past the cop on security duty whom she greeted by name. He was drinking coffee from a cardboard cup, and looked tired, ready to go home and to sleep. She rode upstairs in an empty elevator and unlocked her door off an empty corridor. Her secretary's desk was unoccupied. She left both doors open but from the corridor could hear no sound.

  Now in her office she got out other folders and paged slowly through each of them, trying to memorize the details of a case that was extremely complicated--a winable case certainly but bulky and unwieldy because it involved so many people. Plus an opponent, McCarthy, who would throw in extraneous arguments, outrageous arguments, all of which would have to be defused instantly by her. Never mind the facts. McCarthy would try to fog up their minds. It would be her job to see this did not happen.