Mitchell Smith

by Daydreams

  ?”

  “Probable Cause . . . I had two indicators for Probable Cause……

  At five, Leahy put down the Summary of Physical Evidence, and asked if Ellie wanted to go home. ‘-How’re you feelin’?”

  “I’m fine, Lieutenant.” And she did feel better-they’d ordered bacon-burgers in, and she’d finished hers. Leahy had had two, and a double fries. “-I feel fine; I’d like to finish these up.” Ellie’s feet didn’t hurt much, but her arm did. The stitches or whatever they put inside the cut, into the muscle, seemed to be what was hurting …

  something they did in there.

  “Medina’s got watch,” Leahy said. “We only got a couple more to go-maybe an hour. An’ you can fill out Witness Evaluation yourself. You want to wait till tomorrow on that one?”

  “No. I want to get it done. -Aren’t they going to arraign tomorrow?”

  “If the D.A. likes this stuff-you’re damn right. Don’t make any plans, tomorrow afternoon-but don’t come in in the mornin’. I want you to rest. Give me a call about noon.” Leahy farted, a soft, puffing sound.

  “-Excuse me. O.K., I’ll go over this one with you; you fill out Witness Evaluation. You can stay if you want-but you don’t have to. Either way, I want Medina to take you home when you’re ready.”

  Ellie smelled, faintly, the Lieutenant’s fart. Burned carrots.

  “That’s not necessary.

  “He’s going’ to do it. Period.” Leahy got up, went to his office door, opened it and called, “Hector! You got watch-right?”

  “Right.

  “When Klein’s ready to go home-you drive her up.

  OX.?”

  “O. K.

  “It’s settled,” Leahy said, came back to his desk and sat down in his suffering chair. “-You don’t look so hot.”

  At six-thirty, Medina still having some work of his own to key in, Ellie left her filled-out forms on Leahy’s desk, closed the office door-making sure it was locked-went to her desk to pick up her purse, and walked out to the elevators. Downstairs, in the lobby, she saw Serrano, looking very pleased, standing by the phones with a thin young black girl-the girl laughing at something he’d said.

  There was still plenty of traffic on Park Row. The evening was pleasant, cool and clear-cool enough so that Ellie wished she’d brought a jacket. She thought of walking to the corner, then down the block to wait for ‘14 pp the light-but it seemed to stretch the walk too long for sore feet and sheepskin slippers, so she went down the Mall, through the Municipal Building’s arches, waited for a lull, then jaywalked across Centre Street, watching for cars as she crossed-standing for a moment on the divider, waiting for a limousine, smoke-gray, to breeze by.

  She went down into the Lexington Line entrance, feeling the warmer air well up as she descended. The soles of her feet hurt a little on the stairs, and Ellie was nervous that some of the’people making faster time might jostle her sore arm in passing, so she kept close to the stair rail until she was down on the concourse. Her feet feeling better off the stairs, she took her shield wallet from her purse, showed it at the change-booth window, then walked on through the gate, and across the ramp to the tunnel.

  There was no one in the tunnel as she went through. She saw herself vaguely reflected in smudged yellow tile along the walls. . . . Heard people talking, the echoes of their voices. She realized she was used, in those circumstances, to hearing the sharp percussion of her heels; the slippers made no sound. Tommy had come this way just the evening before. Some of his breath must still be in the air….

  She left the tunnel, walked out onto the upper level, then carefully down the steep staircase, her feet hurting on the risers. At last descended to the long, long platform, the dark, vaulted space above it, she saw distant light, heard distant sound rumble into thunder as a train came surging in. Ellie closed her eyes, turned her head away, and reached up to put her forefingers in her earswhich she sometimes did anyway when she was alone, and the scream of steel on steel was too harsh to bear.

  Now, her eyes shut, her hearing muffled, she could think of something else than the train coming in. Of something else than Tommy on the tracks. -To help, she hummed to herself to obscure the noise of steel.

  Even so, she heard the sighing doors, the chuckling of motors turning over . . . the long pause . . . the sighing again as the doors slid shut. Ten the jolt, the slowly rising clearing of its throat as the tunnel rid itself of the train. The platforni trembled.

  She took her fingers from her ears, then opened her eyes to find the train pulled out and gone-the passengers, too, except for two white boys. They were watching her, and drifting her way, one talking to the other. The one talking looked tough.

  “Hey, lady! -What’re you doin’?”

  “C’mon,” the other boy said to that one. This was a bigger kid. Softer.

  `-Leave her alone.”

  “Shit,” the tough kid said, “I think she’s a gooney.”

  He walked over to Ellie. Glanced down at the sheepskin slippers. `-You O.K.? You were actin’ a little weird.

  . . . He was handsome, as so many tough boys were. He had a broad head, like a young bull’s, and hair rich, dark, and oily as an animal’s pelt. -The rest of him wasn’t as fine. A poor diet, some other factors, had left him with a strong body, awkwardly shaped. He had handsome brown eyes, but avoiding.

  “What are you-just out of the hospital . . . ? You been sick?” He glanced around the platform. There was no one but a potbellied man in a plaid suit ambling almost their way.

  Ellie didn’t feel like saying anything to these kids. She felt too tired to bother with them.

  “C’mon, Chris . . . let’s leave her alone.” The bigger, softer boy.

  The tough boy stepped closer to Ellie. “Listen,” he said, “-you O.K.?

  You want to go someplace? Want to go someplace with us?”

  “That’ll be the day,” Keneally said, strolling up beside him. “I’d be amazed she wanted to go with a faggot like you.”

  “C’mon, Kenny,” Ellie said, sounding like the soft boy.

  “Listen, fat-ass,” the tough boy said, starting well but getting no further because Keneally pushed him in the chest, the smacking percussive twohanded shove the old beat cops used to use.

  The tough boy staggered back a couple of steps, and would have recovered himself if Keneally had given him the chance, but Kenny had stepped forward as the boy went back-and shoved again, the same pounding twohanded push.

  “Beat it,” Keneally said to the tough boy, “—or I’ll bust your fuckin’

  head for you.”

  The tough boy-staggered, uncertain in the face of such surprising and confident aggression-recovered his balance and stood undecided, his face reflecting such an innocent confusion that Ellie felt sorry for him.

  “We’re police officers,” Ellie said. “-I think you boys better get out of here.” She spoke to the big, soft one.

  “-Is a creep like this the best you can do for a friend?”

  “Move,” Keneally said, his mottled face flushed rosily, and the two turned, drifted, sauntered away, their stiff backs knowing they were watched.

  “I saw you come out of the buildin’,” Keneally said.

  ‘-Figured you were comin’ down for a look.” He strolled over to the platform edge, then walked down along it.

  Looked back over his shoulder. “C’mon-don’t be scared.

  There’s nothin’ bad to see. All cleaned up . . .”

  Ellie walked after him, went to the edge and looked over. There was nothing to see she hadn’t seen hundreds of times before. Gleaming tracks reaching along their dark, timbered, cinder bed. Concrete curved back up from the tracks, up and under and out to the edge of the platform.

  The concrete, here and on the platform, was cleaner than farther down, scrubbed almost white.

  “By the way,” Keneally said, “–congratulations on that Gaither thing.

  Pissed Maxfield off.

  “Thank
you. What do you know about this, Kenny?”

  Two young couples-Puerto Rican-had come down the stairs at the far end of the platform. Their voices echoed along the tile walls.

  “I’m not on it,” Keneally said, “-so I don’t know all the shit they’re doin’. —Oh, there’s one weird thing. Those guys? They were armed.”

  “I know. They had knives.”

  “More than that. Guns. One guy had a thirty-eight; other guy had some bullshit German pistol.”

  “Guns.”

  “Right. -Try that one out. Guys are fightin’ with Tommy-who never got his gun out either, by the waythey’re fightin’ with Tommy, who is likely kickin’ the shit out of ‘em-“

  “And they didn’t use the guns. The third man, either.”

  “Right. Knives, an’ fist-fightin’.”

  “We’re talking about trained men, Kenny. -Aren’t we talking about trained men? Disciplined?”

  Keneally sighed and shook his head. “How the hell do I know? Could be some O.C. people . . . wise guys.

  What I do know is, Homicide’s pullin’ the town apart.

  Everybody’s after every friggin’ source in town to come up with something’. -Nobody’s doggin’ it.”

  “I didn’t say they were.”

  “You look like you had an attitude, people weren’t doin’ what they should be doin’ here.”

  “No. I know they’ll give it a good try.”

  “Don’t forget, Tommy already took care of two of em. The nigger’s the only guy left.”

  “But why … ? Don’t you wonder what this was all about, Kenny? You’re telling me three guys with guns just happened to come down here and try to kill Tommyand beat him and use knives, when they’re armed? -It doesn’t make sense!”

  ” ‘Sense,’ huh? Who you kidding’? How long you been on the cops?”

  “They had to have a reason.”

  “Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t,” Keneally said, and strolled farther down the platform, looking down at the tracks. “One guy was fried.

  “What?”

  “Fried. -Guy must have hit the third rail, before the train hit him.

  They figure Tommy beat his ass for him, threw him over.”

  “The other man … ?”

  “Couldn’t tell.. Train probably killed him.” Keneally stepped casually off the platform edge, and dropped the four feet to the tracks with a heavy grunt. He was down out of Ellie’s sight for a moment, and she was afraid he’d hurt himself.

  “Are you O.K.?” She trotted sore-footed over to see. .

  “A button,” Keneally said, still below, and held it up for her. -It was a button off a woman’s blouse, she thought. Small, rounded, false pearl.

  “It’s a woman’s.”

  “Yeah, an’ probably too far down,” Keneally said, and suddenly and nearly gracefully heaved himself back up onto the platform and his feet.

  “-Tell you this,” he said.

  “You go down there while you’re fightin’ a guy-you won’t make it back up. I bet those guys wished they had four, five guys, they started waltzin’ with Tommy.”

  “The button’s nothing?” More people were on the platform, now. -Office workers who’d stayed downtown for a drink before heading home. “Dyin’

  of paper cancer,” Tommy had said once, observing a group of Wall Street office people waiting on a corner for the light to change. Some of these people looked like that-as if they were being folded a little smaller every day.

  “No, it’s nothin’-but I’ll turn it over to the guys anyway. Never know.” He put the button in his jacket pocket, and stood, puffing slightly from his exertion, observing Ellie. “I hear you got hurt,” he said. “-I saw the slippers, I figured you hurt your feet.”

  “Nothing bad,” Ellie said. “I stepped on some glass.”

  “That was it … ? You got cut, I fieard. She cut you.”

  “A little on the arm . . .” Ellie raised her arm, moved it up and down. “It wasn’t serious.”

  “Umm-hmm . . .” Keneally stared at her for a moment, silent, rocking back and forth like a large toy plaid balloon on cardboard feet. Then he looked up over Ellie’s head, at a fluorescent fixture. “I’m a Catholic,” he said.

  “It isn’t the time, or the place-but it’s so fuckin’ embaffassin’ I want to get it over with.”

  “What is?” Ellie said. Keneally’s face was red, his nose the reddest part.

  “I’m a Catholic, an’ I got a penance, you know.” He was still staring up over her head.

  Ellie didn’t know what to say to that. She thought that maybe Keneally had been drinking. -He looked a little drunk.

  “What is it, Kenny? -You OX.?”

  “This is something’ I got no choice-an’ I’m not sayin’ it’s wrong, either.”

  “Well,” Ellie said, “-what is it?”

  “What it comes down to,” Keneally said, staring up at the fixture, keeping his voice low, “-is I got a penance from a priest. . . . I got to tell you I been committin’ adultery with you in my heart. An’

  it’s caused great sufferin’ for my wife, and she didn’t know why. -An’

  I’m sorry.” His fat face was royal scarlet. “Jesus Christ!” he said, and did a sort of dance step to turn away from her, first to the right, then the left. “-That fuckin’ priest must be out of his fuckin’ mind make me do something’ like this.” There were tears of humiliation Jn his small blue eyes. “Fuckin’ little shit . . . !”

  He’d raised his voice then, and some people were looking at them.

  “Kenny . . . come on, now. Ellie reached out to Pat his shoulder, and he shrugged her hand off.

  “I did what I was supposed to do-an’ that’s it,” he said, and turned to walk away.

  “Kenny-it’s no big deal. -Everybody has thoughts like that!” Ellie had a terrible feeling she wouldn’t be able to keep from laughing. It was like the urge to lean out over the edge of a roof-a disastrous temptation.

  “Right . . He was on his way, and Ellie had to hurry to catch up.

  “Kenny-this is hurting my feet. She thought as much as she could about her sore feet, to keep from thinking of laughing.

  He slowed to a walk as they got to the stairs. “Great. -Don’t you have any feelin’s? What are you followin’ me for? I said what I had to say”-and started climbing.

  “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”

  “Look, I’m not going’ to talk about it.” He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “-I said what I had to say, and I’m not going’ to talk about it, period.”

  “O.K.” She was having trouble keeping up with him.

  “O.K. Just forget I said anything’. -I don’t even know you, for Christ’s sake. It’s a completely private matterit’s a religious thing.”

  “O.K.,” Ellie said. “-Slow down, you’re going too fast.”

  “Where’re you going’?”

  “Back up in Headquarters.”

  “O.K. I’ll walk you over. You shouldn’t be workin’ in this kind of condition. -You should be home.”

  “I think you’re right,” Ellie said, “-but I’ve got one more thing to do.”

  They walked up out of the subway stop, across Centre Street, and over to Headquarters, Kenny silent all the way. On the steps at Headquarters, he stopped and said, “Look out you don’t get an infection with those cuts.”

  “They gave me a couple of shots,” Ellie said. “—Tetanus, and something else.”

  “O.K.,” Keneally said, nodded, turned and walked back down the steps. No goodbye.

  Ellie was alone in the elevator going up, and laughed the first three floors-then said, out loud, “Tommy . . .

  you went a night too soon. You missed Kenny’s confession. . . .”

  Then supposed she couldn’t have told Tommy about it, anyway.

  “Yes?”

  Ellie held her badge up to the peep. “I’m a police officer, Mrs.

  Donaher.” Gloria Mur
illo had given Washington Square Village as the sergeant’s address, and Ellie hoped it was current, hoped the sergeant was home. She didn’t feel like driving out to Suffolk. Didn’t feel like driving anywhere.”

  She’d pretended to search for her keys downstairs, until another tenant-a thin young black man carrying an armload of books-had opened the security door. Then she’d walked in with him, and ridden up in the elevator with him to the fourth floor, where he’d gotten off-then on up to the sixth, alone.

  A second lock clicked and cracked, and a pretty grayhaired woman in her fifties opened the door. Her hair was cut short, with low bangs, and brushed back clear of her ears. She would have been pretty, if she’d been thinner.

  Ellie showed her shield and ID. “Mrs. Donaher? -I’m Detective Klein.

  I’m sorry to disturb you-“

  “Oh, don’t worry about that-come on in. We’re used to being disturbed in this house.” Grace Donaher stepped back and stood aside. “Paul!

  -There’s a detective here to see you . . . ! You want some coffee?

  Would you like something to eat?”

  “No, thank you.”

  ù The apartment reminded Ellie of her own-but bigger, two-bedroom. The same flat white paint on the walls ù . . same low ceilings. The entrance hall was narrow . . .

  large family photographs on the walls. A young girl in some school uniform. Other photographs of her in graduation robes. College graduation, it looked like. The apartment smelled of pot roast.

  Grace Donaher finished relocking the door, and Paul Donaher, in shirtsleeves, came into the hall, looked at Ellie, then looked at her again. He put his head back, just a little.

  “Go on in,” Mrs. Donaher said. Ellie noticed her noticing the Bloomingdale’s slippers.

  “I know they look weird,” Ellie said. “-I stepped on some glass.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Grace Donaher said, “-you shouldn’t even be on your feet, should you? Go on in.

  … She herdedher husband and Ellie down the hall and into alar e living room, one side all sliding glass doors looking down into the Village. It was a nice living room, with the dining area a part of it, just this side of the kitchen counter. The room had been done in blues and grays. There was a cut cake on the dining-area table.