Yesterday's News - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  "Charlie was delivering the porn tapes, right?"

  "I told you, I don't know nothing about that."

  "You're in the business of showing films, Duckie. Dirty pictures. Only it's a dying trade, like Bunny told me. 'The VCR's, they're wiping me out,' he said. But you still want to move into the business. Only one way that works. You don't have the resources to open a legitimate chain of video stores, and the ones already out there offer most of the kinds of movies you'd have anyway. Except the forbidden fruit, right?"

  "You're fulla shit."

  "The kiddie stuff, Duckie. Maybe snuff or fake snuff films, too. The kinds of things the suburban fathers can't quite ask the wife to pick up on the way home from school with the kids."

  He downed half the second drink.

  "Only to move that kind of stuff, you have to be careful, selective, even secretive. So Charlie Coyne is the mule, carrying the stuff around, customer to customer or maybe club to club. Is that how it works, Duckie? The guys get together in a club to sort of pool their capital and swap their favorites?"

  Teevens took a deep breath, then let it out and spoke low and quietly. "The fuck do you know about it?"

  "Only that I see you with a pretty strong motive for killing Charlie. He gets caught in the net with the wrong kind of movies, and he gets intimate with the wrong kind of reporter, a crusader who thinks she can use him to bring down businesses like yours through her newspaper, bring down the future you've put in ten years to inherit."

  "Twelve years. I been with the boss twelve years."

  I didn't say anything.

  He said, "The way you figure it, the same guy who killed Charlie killed the reporter girl, right?"

  "Right. And then ripped the hell out of Gail Fearey's place looking for something."

  "What?"

  "The night Charlie was stabbed, somebody ransacked Gail's house, took a knife to most of the furniture. Looking for something."

  "I didn't know about that."

  "You didn't."

  "Not about the searching there, no."

  "But you were here the night Charlie was killed in the alley."

  "I was here. I told you that."

  "Where were you Monday night?"

  "Monday night. That's when the reporter OD'd, right?"

  "Maybe with some help."

  Duckie said, "Then you got problems."

  "I've got problems?"

  "Yeah. If the same guy did Charlie and the girl, the guy can't be me."

  "Why not?"

  "Monday, Bunny had a bad spell. The heart shit, you know?"

  "Go ahead."

  "Well, on Monday night, Sherry and me was sitting with him for maybe four or five hours in the hospital over to Fall River there."

  "You were."

  "That's right. With maybe a dozen docs and nurses and gofers mobbing the boss and us."

  "What time was this?"

  "Time? I dunno. No, wait. The spell come over him during the second feature, so maybe seven-thirty, eight o'clock. The hospital there, it'd have when we rolled in. We was there till after midnight, Sher and me. And even after the boss was okay, they said he'd still have to stay the night. Sher was feeling sad and all, so I took her back to my place and consoled the fuckin shit out of her."

  I watched him. Sherry wasn't exactly a solid alibi, but the rest was a stupid story to trot out if it wasn't true. He finished the whiskey and rose, not bothering to leave any money on the

  table.

  "Ask Sher, you want to. She'll remember. They always remember how the Duck makes them happy. "

  15

  The elder Schonstein violated the first rule of being a cop. He listed himself in the telephone directory.

  I arrived at the address just after five. It was a modest Cape, two dormers on the second floor and a breezeway connecting a one-car garage. The breezeway had a concrete ramp sloping gently up to the side door of the house itself. In the driveway was a five-year-old predecessor of Hogueira's Olds staff car, highly polished. The stoop to the front door looked newly poured or little used. I rang the bell.

  When the door opened, I had to look down for the voice that said, "Who are you?"

  The man was in a wheelchair, a stadium blanket across his lap, legs, and right hand. His left index finger hovered over buttons on the arm of the chair. Bald, his eyes hid under a craggy brow and above a still-jutting jaw.

  "Mr. Schonstein?"

  He said, "Yeah, but Schonsy suits me better. You gonna answer my question?"

  "My name's Cuddy, John Cuddy. I'm—"

  "I know who you are. With everybody talking about you, I wondered how long it'd be before you got around to me."

  "I was surprised to find you in the phone book. "

  "Wouldn't do much good not to be. Everybody knows where I live."

  "I'd like to ask you some things."

  "I expect you do. Well, come on in before I get a crick in my neck looking up at you."

  Schonstein pressed a button on the armrest, the chair emitting a low whine and turning him into the house. I entered and closed the door behind me. Following him into the living room, I saw an old-fashioned plush sofa with pine coffee and end tables. A big oxblood Barcalounger was centered six feet from a large-screen television. Next to the lounger, newspapers were heaped, with the folds zigzagged, like bricks in a tower built to go as high as possible without tumbling over.

  "'Scuse the mess, but being in the chair and all, it's just easier to leave the damn papers like that. My son comes by once a week or so and cleans 'em out for the scouts."

  "The scouts?"

  "Boy scouts. Used to be a troop leader myself. The scouts collect the papers, and somebody helps out with hauling them to a recycling plant somewhere." He tipped his head toward the couch. "Sofa's probably the best seat in the house for you. Don't use it much myself, so watch you don't choke on the dust."

  I sat down, the cushions enveloping me. I could imagine why he didn't use it. Once in, he'd have a hell of a time levering himself up and out again.

  "Comfy?"

  "I would be if you let go of what you've got under the blanket."

  Schonstein grinned, teeth a mile too perfect for the rest of the face. Bringing his hand into view, he looked down, rolling the Browning automatic first left, then right, as though it were being featured in an advertising video. With thirteen in the magazine and one in the chamber, it would be a while before he'd have to reload.

  "Mark said you were a pretty sharp fella."

  "Doesn't take a genius to figure an ex-cop's gonna answer the door with some backup."

  "'Specially some old fuck in a wheelchair, huh?"

  "Especially. "

  "You might just be alright, boy. I can see how you could of knocked Mark off his stride a bit."

  "The chair. From the disability?"

  "Uh-huh. Damnedest thing. Come through Korea without a scratch, not even frostbite. Re-upped once, then twenty-eight years on the force here, not much more bumps and bruises than a bad sleigh ride. Until four years ago. I'm heading home after a midnight tour when I see smoke pouring out of this four-family, edge of a Porto neighborhood. They're good people, mostly, but they get stiff as fish from that red piss they drink. I figure I better see what's going down.

  "Then I see this kid at the third-floor window. He's big enough to know he's in the shit, but small enough, he doesn't know what to do about it 'cept scream his lungs out. So I kick in the front door, taking the steps two at a time and banging every door I pass. People run utta there like ants from a hill. You couldn't count 'em all. One of the women, girl actually but they start young, you know what I mean, one of them had the balls to follow me up the steps, yelling something I couldn't catch. Funny how you can live among 'em for so long, never get the hang of their talking.

  "So her and me hit the top floor, there's serious fire 'round us now, can't barely breathe much less see for shit, and I had to damn near knock the door off the hinges anyway to get us in. Smoke's
worse somehow, but she gets hold of a little baby, and I grab the kid at the window, and we start down. She was hell-bent seared, but she knew the stairs and I didn't. Damned landing, they never nail the runners down right, suppose I shoulda been surprised there was any there at all. I catch my heel in it, going full tilt down, and tear the shit out of one knee while I'm breaking my fall with the other leg, all the time trying to keep the kid's head from cracking open on the steps. I got all the way down, but it felt like somebody'd taken a bat to my legs, and the boys in one of our units had to carry me out like a dime-a-dozen halfback."

  "Hell of a story."

  "Damned right."

  "You have surgery on the knee?"

  "Knees. Both of them. Wanna see?"

  You can retire them, but you can't keep the good ones from sensing where you're going. "So I can check for recent knife wounds?"

  Schonstein grinned again, but reached down to his cuffs, inching up the pants legs like a demented stripper until I could see the old stitch tracks. The calves looked toned instead of withered, but there were no new marks or scars.

  He said, "Satisfied?"

  "Some."

  Schonstein dropped his trousers back to normal. "Good. Good to be a bit skeptical, I mean. Lotsa cops forget that these days."

  "The motorized chair help?"

  "Godsend. I figured I'd only be in this thing for two, three weeks, then braces, cane, and back to normal. But it didn't work out that way. Barely ever got to use the braces. Docs said it was the arthritis. Always had some twinges going back to my thirties, never paid it much mind till the surgery and all sort of speeded things up. But I get by, I get by."

  "You're still able to drive?"

  "The car you mean? Hell, yes. The department—actually the city council technically, I guess. The boys let me bid on it when they were selling the fleet to buy new ones. Damned fine car, big engine, best suspension, which makes a difference when you feel the potholes a little more now. Had a guy alter it for me, makes it easier to drive with just the hands. Probably be my last car, too, but that's alright. Saved the best for last."

  "Mind me asking about an earlier ear?"

  "Figured that's why you're here. Gotta give you credit for patience, though. Patience, that's the most important thing for an interrogation, you know. Skepticism and patience, they're in short supply on the force now."

  "That night with Hagan and the boy who was killed. Can you tell me your version?"

  "No, but I'll tell you what happened, you don't get too puffed up with all my compliments there."

  "I'll try not to."

  Schonstein slid the Browning under the blanket, rotating his shoulders on the back of the chair. "Neil and me were in the cruiser, regular patrol. He was on the job maybe eight, ten months. No, eight, eight sticks in my mind. It was summertime, we were doing the four to twelve, nice and easy. Not too hot, not too much humidity, no real reason for anything to happen. We turn a corner two blocks off The Strip, Neil's at the wheel, and we go by an alley. I see this skinny kid in blue jeans and a tee shirt playing with the back door of a store. Well, you don't have to be no fortune-teller to know what he's getting ready to do, so I tell Neil to turn right, and I reach for the passenger side spot. I flip it on, the kid's off and running like a deer. Neil had this bad knee from football, lucky he passed the physical with it, so after he takes the cruiser as far as it can go, I get out and sprint after the little fuck. He's maybe five-ten, one-forty dripping wet if he ever took a bath, which I doubt. But he ain't no Olympic threat, and I catch up to him just as he stumbles and goes down near this abandoned building. I didn't see any weapon, so I don't pull mine. I just reach down for him, but when I lift him up by the left arm, he's got this brick in his right, and he bashes in my nose. How many times your nose been broke?"

  "Twice."

  "Yeah, it looks it. Well, I had mine busted maybe three times before this, but they didn't hurt like this one. I just plain wasn't ready for the pain. It was like a killer wave crashing onto a beach in a storm. It put me down and near out. Then the kid comes down with it again, and almost tears my cheek off, over here."

  Schonsy tapped under his right eye. "I was about out of it when Neil tackled him. I mean, those days, no question he coulda just shot the kid. But no, he tries to be the good cop, take the kid without deadly force, and the kid falls funny and breaks his fuckin neck. Neil realizes the kid's dead and breaks down. He was like that, too sensitive for the damned job, I thought then. But he don't know what all to do, so I tell him, pick up the kid and bring him to the cruiser, we gotta radio, alert the hospital. So Neil picks the kid up like he was somebody's new baby, me shagging my ass out of the alley. Lucky I had the sense to bring the brick he used. We called it in, then headed to the emergency room."

  "Justifiable."

  "No question. For God's sake, the kid was braining me with a brick. Neil could've put six into him, and even today, with the damned shooting teams and paperwork and plaintiffs' lawyers like bucks around a bitch, it woulda been a good shoot. What got the guy in trouble was he tried to take the kid without a gun, like I said."

  "What kind of trouble?"

  "Oh, just the usual newspaper shit. The department, the city, everybody backed him on it. Lucky we had a camera of ours at the hospital, they got some shots of me with more blood coming out than a butchered cow. But the papers still played it up, and the kid's mother tried to start some shit, but nobody paid her much mind, and that was that."

  "The mother still around?"

  Schonstein flapped his lips. "Wouldn't know."

  "Would you remember her name?"

  "Probably not."

  I said, "The mess doesn't seem to have held Hagan back much."

  "Why the hell should it? That's what really burns me, you know? That's what woulda driven me off the force, the knees hadn't done it first. You're a cop, you spend half your time locking up guys you know are gonna be on the street before the end of the shift, you gotta be so careful to say 'alleged' and 'supposed' so you don't violate their rights to a fair trial, and then when they get a trial it's about as fair as the Celtics playing a school-ground team, the way the system's rigged for the guilty. So they get off entirely. Or, if they do get convicted, the judge hands them three to five, which means maybe eighteen months if they don't try to fuck the chaplain, and then we're not supposed to single them out once they're released. We're supposed to treat them like they paid their debt and all. Well, how about us, huh? When a cop like Neil saves his partner's life, and I'm telling you that's what happened here, he saved my fuckin life for me. When a cop does that, and he hurts the perp by accident, by accident now, and it comes down as justifiable, how come that has to drag him down for the rest of his life, huh? Why the fuck is there one standard for them and a different one for us? Tell me that."

  "How about you tell me about your son, instead."

  "He's a good cop."

  "I've seen how he is as a cop."

  Schonstein pretended I meant what he meant. "Then what else you want to know?"

  "Strike you as just a little odd that your son and his partner Cronan both have corroborated alibis for the night Charlie Coyne was killed?"

  "No, it don't. I spent twenty-eight years scraping the Charlie Coynes of this city outta car wrecks and gutters. Pieces of shit like Coyne die as regular as old folks in a nursing home. You know you're gonna lose a couple this week, you just don't know which one's gonna go any particular night, that's all. "

  "Without Coyne, your son couldn't be indicted."

  "With Coyne, I don't see how they're gonna prosecute him, either. Look, I understand you talked with the Rust girl about this before she took the pills, right?"

  "Right."

  "Well, I didn't know the woman myself, except to see her across the room once in a while, but I hear she wasn't too tightly wrapped, you know?"

  "I know what you mean."

  "Sure you do. Well, what she believed, what Coyne maybe told her she oughta bel
ieve so he could get his dick wet, that don't necessarily add up to what happened, get me?"

  "You mean your son didn't have his hand out."

  Schonstein's face clouded, and I got a sense of what a terror he must have been on the street. "That's what I mean, boy. When I come on the force here, how many Jews you figure they have in uniform?"

  "No idea."

  "None. I got back from the service, I was a veteran, they didn't like it but they didn't have a choice. The law was clear as a bell on that one. If it's alright with you, we can skip over the things they wrote on my locker and car in those days, and the jack-offs they partnered me with. Took maybe five years for me to whale the shit out of every guy wanted to know how tough I was. I got through that, things were okay. Better than okay. There was a time when the cops ruled this city, boy, the way it's supposed to be done. And I was part of it. But then with the Supreme Court and the lawyers and all, somehow it all just slid into the shit. The laws never did protect the citizens, but now not even the cops can."

  "You got a point in here somewhere?"

  The face got darker, then he burst out laughing. "You don't swallow the bull too quick, do you."

  "Not if I can help it."

  "Well, see if this goes down a little easier. Coyne said Mark was on the pad from Bunny Gotbaum, right?"

  "That's how I heard it."

  "Alright, you're Schonsy's son on the force here, you figure Mark's gonna take money from another Jew? When his father I had to whip half the force to get any respect as one himself?"

  I said, "You know Gotbaum?"

  "I know him. Uniforms don't cover vice here, but I know him."

  "I mean from growing up around here."

  "Why?"

  "Seems to me you're about the same age, same religion, reasonable you knew each other as kids."

  "Yeah, we knew each other. No temple or nothing for either of us, but we were only a grade apart in school."

  "You ever introduce Mark to Gotbaum, maybe?"

  "Working vice, Mark would have met him on his own. Believe me."