Inside Job

by Levinson, Len

  “How much money is in there?”

  “At last week’s inventory, a little over eight million dollars.”

  “Eight million dollars!”

  The sergeant smiled, proud as though the money belonged to him. “That’s right.”

  “Where did it all come from?”

  “Some of it is evidence, but most of it is unclaimed. For instance, suppose there’s a raid on a gambling joint. As soon as the door’s broke down, the gamblers start to scatter. Maybe all of them get away, maybe they don’t, but after these things there’s a lot of money lying around, and it’s all brought here. Of course, no one’s gonna claim it, so it stays here.”

  “How long?”

  “Forever.”

  “Forever?”

  “That’s right.”

  Brody blew air out the corner of his mouth.” Jesus.”

  “And then there are the cases of the little old ladies who die in their sleep, and somebody finds ten grand in a shoebox. The little old lady might not have a family, so the money winds up here. A lot of the money got here that way,” the sergeant winked, “after the first officers to arrive take their cut of course.”

  Brody nodded. “Yeah.”

  He returned upstairs with the receipt and found Shannon sitting on a bench in the back of the room where suspects were booked. At the front desk two uniformed patrolmen were booking a black kid who had blood running out of his nose and ears. Shannon was looking at some papers, wearing his reading glasses. He looked up from them as Brody approached.

  “Lemme have the receipt,” Shannon said. “I’ll put it with this other stuff.”

  Brody handed it to him and sat down. “How’d it go?”

  “Routine. You wanna grab a bite in Chinatown?”

  “Naw, I think I’ll go home.”

  “Okay, but first I wanna tell you something else. Another kind of guy might’ve put pressure on me to take the fifty grand, but you didn’t bat an eyelash. I liked that. I’m no fucking angel—I guess you probably know that by now—and a lot of temptations come my way, but there comes a point where a man has to decide whether he’ s gonna be a man or whether he’ s gonna be a scumbag. A detective makes enough money to be a man—he don’t have to be a scumbag. You get me?”

  “I got you.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow at the station house, kid.”

  “Okay, Shannon.”

  Chapter Two

  Brody took the F Train to Queens. At two in the morning he climbed the stairs of the stop at 63rd Drive in Rego Park. It was a neighborhood of old apartment buildings with small rooms and high rents, but not as high as the luxury buildings of Forest Hills, which he could see outlined against the night sky farther east on Queens Boulevard.

  He walked down Queens Boulevard to the McDonald’s and ordered a Quarter Pounder and two containers of black coffee. Then he walked down 62nd Street to the brick building where he lived. He paused under a streetlamp to light a cigarette, and as he blew the first puff away, felt the last of his remaining energy go with it. He was exhausted and should go to bed immediately, but he wanted to eat and maybe he could find something good on television. He liked to stay up until his eyes closed by themselves and he fell asleep wherever he happened to be, rather than go through the ritual of climbing into bed. He had picked up this habit in Vietnam, where there were no beds, and you slept in what you’d been wearing for days.

  His building was made of red brick and looked like three boxes joined together at the corners. It was squat and he thought it ugly, but it certainly wasn’t a slum—nice people lived here. He entered the lobby, checked the mailbox although he knew there were no deliveries at night, and took the elevator to the fourth floor.

  He opened the door to his apartment, and stepped on the thick rug. It smelled like flowers and soap. Doris kept it clean as a pin. He turned on the hall light and tiptoed across the living room to the kitchen, because he didn’t want to wake the kids up. Sitting at the Formica table, not bothering to take his jacket off or to even wash his hands, he unpacked the bag and took out the food and coffee. Unwrapping the Quarter Pounder, he raised it to his mouth and took a big bite.

  The kitchen gleamed all around him as he chewed. Doris was a good wife—she kept a clean home that was nice to return to after a day of slogging over the pavements and dealing with the dregs of society. He was the king of the house, the breadwinner, and the hero. Everything functioned for his comfort. His kids were in awe of him. And everybody always said he’d been lucky when he’d married Doris. Her mother had raised her right and even taught her how to cook. There weren’t many like her around anymore.

  When people praised Doris and told Brody how lucky he was to have her, he wondered why he wasn’t happy with her. The problem wasn’t that he was unhappy with her, but that he wasn’t crazy about her as he’d been when he’d returned from Vietnam seven years before and got married. Nowadays he treated her sort of the way he treated his younger sister. He and Doris hardly ever screwed anymore. Well, at least the house was clean and the food was good. And she didn’t run around with other guys, although occasionally if something nice came his way, he didn’t turn it down.

  He was on his second cup of coffee when he heard a bedroom door open. It must be Doris, on her way to the bathroom. He flashed on an image of her sitting on the toilet. He’d seen her that way many times, trickling into the bowl. Women were intriguing until you started living with them, and then become ordinary human beings with smells, imperfections, and ordinary habits. The things that turned you on start to turn you off. Life was becoming such a drag, but at least he had a job that wasn’t too boring, and a clean home to come back to. Many people didn’t even have that.

  “Mike?” Doris whispered, approaching the kitchen.

  “It’s me all right,” he said.

  She entered the kitchen, a brunette of twenty-eight who sometimes looked thirty-five, overweight but not yet fat, her hair mussed and hanging in cluttered waves nearly to her shoulders. She wore a blue silky nightgown that smelled fragrant, but with a faint trace of decay. Bending behind him, she kissed his cheek, then sat in the chair beside him.

  “How’d it go today?” she asked.

  “Same as usual. You?”

  “Nothing new.”

  They sat in silence for a few seconds. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently, to make an attempt at communication.

  “Little Mike got an A in arithmetic today,” Doris said, resting her chin on her hand.

  “Good for Little Mike. I’ll have to bring him something tomorrow.”

  “You’ll forget.”

  “I probably will. How’s Denise?”

  “Still teething, but the ointment helps.”

  “Poor little kid.”

  “She’s not as bad as Little Mike was at her age. I saw Mary Staracci’s mother at the Laundromat today—do you remember Mary Staracci from high school?”

  “Sure. She was a cheerleader.”

  “Her mother said she’s got a big job down on Wall Street. She graduated from college and everything.”

  “She married?”

  “Not yet. She’s playing it smart.”

  “What’s so smart about not getting married?” Brody raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, marriage ties you down.”

  “Unmarried career women are the unhappiest people in the world—take my word for it.” Brody considered himself a man of great experience, and therefore he expected her to take his word for everything.

  “Maybe you’re right. I wouldn’t know,” Doris replied. “I married you young, Mike.”

  “If you didn’t you’d just be fucking the troops like Mary Staracci probably is. One guy after the other until you’d feel like a piece of shit. If those women are as happy as they pretend they are, how come they commit suicide all the time? I couldn’t shake a stick at all the women suicides I’ve seen stretched out on the rug with an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside them.”

  “
Maybe a lot of married women would like to do the same thing, but don’t because of the kids.”

  “Well you women are always unhappy about something. If it’s not one thing it’s the other. I’ve never seen a happy woman in my life. I really wonder what it is that you want?”

  “We really don’t want that much, Mike.”

  “Oh bullshit.”

  “We just want to be happy, that’s all.”

  “But what’s happiness? Maybe it’s time women like you realized that adults aren’t supposed to be very happy. Maybe only kids can be happy, because they don’t know what the world’s about.”

  Doris shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. I sure as hell don’t know any happy adults.”

  Brody drained his container of coffee. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Let me use the potty first.”

  She got up and left the kitchen, and he watched her go, her nightgown folded into the crack of her ass. He lit a cigarette and wondered what he’d work on tomorrow, now that the Esteban case was finished. He and Shannon had been staked out for two weeks in that fucking room, but they’d got the bastards.

  Doris left the bathroom and returned to bed. Brody stripped in the bathroom, took a leak, and then stepped into the bathtub for a nice hot shower. The sizzling jets of water scalded his back and shoulders, and he stood there dumbly, thinking about the Spanish woman who offered him fifty thousand dollars to forget a million dollars worth of cocaine.

  He turned off the shower, dried himself, wrapped the towel around his waist, and went to the bedroom, where Doris was propped up on a pillow, smoking a cigarette in the king-sized bed that they used to fuck upon like rabbits in the old days, the good old days. He took a pair of white jockey shorts out of a drawer and put them on, then moved toward the bed. Doris watched him under sleepy eyelids and puffed her cigarette as he crawled into bed, pecked her cheek, moved a few feet away, turned onto his stomach, and closed his eyes, facing away from her.

  “Why don’t you divorce me, Mike?” she asked.

  “Huh?”

  “I said why don’t you divorce me?”

  “Why should I divorce you?” he mumbled sleepily.

  “Because you don’t love me.”

  “Doris, I’m tired. Let me go to sleep, will you?”

  “Go to sleep, run away, it’s all right.”

  “Grow up, Doris. Life isn’t a movie.”

  “It’s a horror movie.”

  “I’m too tired to talk to you about it right now. Good night.” His words were slurred; he really was at the point of total exhaustion.

  She turned off the light and readjusted her pillows. He was already snoring. It irritated her to think that he was still lean and hard as the day they were married, while she was getting fatter every day. He was the same and she was becoming an old woman who hung out in the goddam Laundromat with all the other biddies. He was still a young man and she was on her way to biddy ville. No wonder he didn’t make love to her anymore. Who’d want to make love to an old biddy?

  And they wouldn’t talk about it tomorrow, either. He’d run off to the Nineteenth Precinct and she’d go to the Laundromat. He’d get home after she was in bed and they’d attempt to have a discussion but they’d both be too tired. On Sunday if she was lucky he’d take her and the kids for a walk. Big deal.

  What’d happened to those nights when they’d strolled together on the bed and tasted paradise in each other’s bodies. They’d had about three years like that, and then her life ended. She wondered if he had another girl. He probably did. That’s why he always came home late. Probably one of those airline stewardesses or go-go dancers who liked cops and didn’t mind breaking up a marriage. Oh what the hell—let the marriage break up. It couldn’t break up any more than it was already.

  And as she closed her eyes she knew that she lacked the will to do anything about it, that it’d keep on getting worse, and that maybe someday he’d really get fed up and move away. Then she’d become one of those pathetic women whom everyone pointed to and said her husband left her, and somebody else would say who could blame him because she didn’t take care of herself. They didn’t tell us about things like this in school, she thought as she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Three

  Brody awoke around noon. As he opened his eyes, the recollection of his squabble with Doris came to mind. The door to the bedroom was closed, so he didn’t know if she was in or out. He hoped she was out. Getting out of bed, he put on a fresh pair of jeans, a checkered flannel shirt, and his customary leather jacket. He combed his longish hair with his fingers in front of the mirror. Then he opened the bedroom door and headed for the front door.

  Denise was playing in her pen in the living room; Doris was cleaning the kids’ room. Brody realized he couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to her. That would make the problem worse than it was already. He walked into the kids’ room and saw Doris putting a doll into the toy box.

  “I’ve got to get into the office,” he said to her. “See you tonight.” He reached forward to kiss her cheek, but she pushed him away.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said.

  “Come off it, Doris. Let’s not turn our lives into a fucking soap opera.”

  “Go to work and leave me alone.”

  On his way to the subway, he wondered how long it’d take for Doris to calm down. It was time that she grew up and realized that life wasn’t a fairy tale. Maybe he’d better make himself scarce around the house for a few days. That’d give her time to come to her senses.

  At the newsstand beside the subway station, he bought the Daily News. The headline read:

  GUV TO MAYOR: CUT CITY SERVICES

  Brody tucked the paper under his arm and hopped down the subway stairs. He flashed his shield to the attendant in the tollbooth. New York cops ride the subways for nothing.

  He leaned against a steel pillar and opened the paper to the headline story. It said that the city’s budget deficit was growing worse, and that the governor had ordered the mayor to cut city services further. The reporter speculated that policemen, firemen, sanitation workers, teachers, and social workers could expect layoffs; and schools, libraries, and hospitals would have to be closed. There would be cutbacks in subway schedules. Tuition would be raised at the city universities.

  The train thundered into the station, and Brody got on. Since it was afternoon, he was able to get a seat. He sat on the long green fiberglass bench and wondered why the city was always in so much financial trouble. Why couldn’t the goddamn mayor and city council get their shit together? Those asshole politicians wouldn’t know a bull’s ass from a banjo. Brody felt confident that he’d never get laid off. He’d been a cop for five years, and before that had been a war hero. Besides, they wouldn’t dare lay off any more cops. Crime was nearly out of control in the city as it was. Asshole politicians.

  Brody was correct in holding politicians culpable for the city’s fiscal crisis, but like many New Yorkers, he didn’t take the trouble to analyze the situation and see that the tentacles of disaster extended far beyond city hall to the banking combines, whose finagling of municipal bonds for their own profit had actually precipitated the crisis, and to the national economy, which caused many poor people to come to New York and thus place additional demands on an already overburdened welfare system. Brody only saw the top of the iceberg, because he was too lazy to look further.

  He got off the subway at the Bloomingdales’ stop in Manhattan, and took a cab to the Nineteenth Precinct, on East 75th Street. It was an old building made of gray stone blocks and looked vaguely medieval. It was also one of the most desirable commands in the city, because it was in the middle of the fashionable East Side where there were never any race riots or violent street crimes, and where there were lots of rich beautiful women who had a taste for cops.

  He strolled into the lobby of the station, waved to the sergeant behind the desk, and exchanged greetings with a few of the cops hanging around. He climbed
the stairs to the second floor, where the Detective Section was located. The Section consisted of eight desks in a large room, and an enclosed office at one end where Inspector LeVinson ran the show.

  Detective Shannon and Detective Rusitsky were the only ones at their desks. Both were doing paperwork. Shannon looked up as Brody approached. “Finally made it in, eh?” He said it in a good-natured way, for this kind of joking and ribbing went on all the time at all levels of the N.Y.P.D.

  “What did you do, sleep on your desk?”

  “Naw, I went home and got a good night’s sleep. Six hours is all a man like me needs. I realize that kids like you need more. When are you going to get a haircut, by the way?”

  “Don’t look now, Shannon, but men haven’t worn their hair like you do since 1942.”

  “Rusitsky’s got a haircut just like mine.”

  “I said men—not apes.”

  Rusitsky looked up from his paperwork. “Fuck you, Brody.”

  “Up your ass, Rusitsky.”

  “Listen,” Shannon said, “I’ve got to finish up the paperwork from last night. Why don’t you sit at your desk over there and try to look like somebody.”

  Brody took off his jacket and sat at his desk. On it was the mimeographed report of all crimes in the precinct during the past twenty-four hours. One mugging, two stolen cars, one family altercation, three black kids from Harlem caught shoplifting in the five and dime on Third Avenue, one old lady found dead in her apartment, apparently of natural causes, a cocaine ring smashed by Detectives Shannon and Brody.

  Brody pushed the list to one side. He lit a cigarette and opened his file of unsolved cases. He wondered which one Shannon would take him out on after the paperwork was done. Maybe tonight he’d get a motel room someplace.

  “Can I help you, miss?” asked Shannon.

  Brody looked to the doorway and saw an attractive young brunette, around twenty-five years old. Her hair reached her shoulders, her skin was olive complected, and she wore a blue knee-length coat, jeans, and cowboy boots. “The policeman at the desk told me to come upstairs and talk to a detective.”