Innocence

by David Hosp

  There had been a time in his life when he’d preferred the noise and action of the cop bars nearer the station house. Back then he’d enjoyed the camaraderie of the force and loved to trade stories over an endless stream of drinks with the others of the rank and file as they blew off steam. He’d even enjoyed watching as the younger, bigger cops—most of them chunks of angry muscle marinated in steroids—drew women to them like cripples to faith healers. It always amazed him how some women fell for cops without condition or demand, ignoring the violence visible on their faces and the wedding rings on their hands. It must be something about the power they exuded, he supposed—the invincibility of being the law rather than living under it.

  The women had never been drawn to Fornier, of course. Everyone had always joked that with his narrow shoulders and thin frame, he was barely big enough to hang a badge on. He’d always felt like an outsider, drinking to capture a hint of the confidence those around him seemed to feel.

  Those days were over. Now drinking was an end in itself. Sometimes it felt like the only end. It was all he cared about, and having people around him when he drank was nothing more than a distraction.

  He pulled out his wallet and looked inside. Two crumpled tens and a five stared out at him with sad resignation. He did a slow calculation in his head; he’d been at the bar for five Scotches—he no longer counted time in minutes, but in drinks. They’d all been well drinks, the bargain brands, and two of them had been poured during happy hour. He’d have enough to cover the tab, though the barkeep would hardly be thrilled with the tip. What the fuck, Fornier thought. The man was clearly an ex-con, and he’d never given Fornier a free pour anyway.

  Fornier counted out the money and left it on the bar, focused on getting home. It was around ten blocks for him, and he was trying to convert the distance into time to determine how long it would be before he could pour himself a glass of the discount vodka he had in his apartment. If he hurried, it wouldn’t be long.

  He took ten steps toward Washington Street, keeping his head down to pick his way around the pockets of snow and slush that quickly soaked through his shoes. His head was still down when the first punch took him in his stomach, just below the rib cage, driving the air from his lungs.

  z

  Finn and Kozlowski watched from the street as Fornier exited the bar. They had been trailing him since he’d left the station house after his shift, and they’d been trying to keep warm inside Finn’s car for over two hours.

  Kozlowski waited until Fornier was even with a narrow passageway between buildings to strike, and then approached him from the side, swinging his fist hard and low into the man’s stomach. Fornier crumpled on impact, and Kozlowski pushed him into the little alley, out of sight from the street. Finn followed.

  “Tell us about the Salazar case,” Finn said as Kozlowski held the diminutive cop against a brick wall.

  Fornier was still doubled over, but he managed to look up, and he recognized his attackers. His face showed both fear and anger. “Fuck you!” he spat out, still coughing.

  Finn looked at Kozlowski. “Looks like he still needs encouragement.”

  Kozlowski punched Fornier in the stomach again, harder this time. Fornier’s eyes bulged, and his tongue, swollen and bluish, wagged from his mouth. Kozlowski stepped back and hit him in the jaw, knocking him to the ground.

  Fornier lay in an icy puddle up against the wall, spitting blood. “I’m a cop!” he yelled, a note of panic ringing in his voice. “You can’t do this to a cop!”

  Finn squatted in front of him so they were almost at the same level. “You’re a cop who shit on his badge,” he said. “You lost the right to claim any special status. Because of you, an innocent man has been sitting on his ass in prison for fifteen years.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Fornier whined. The lie was plain in his eyes, though. Kozlowski took a quick step toward him and kicked him hard in the side, drawing a fresh yelp.

  Finn said, “Let me explain your situation to you, Fornier. Not only did you send an innocent man to jail, but you let the guilty guys go free. Now, whoever they are, they’re hurting other innocent people. One of the people they hurt is a good friend of ours, and they hurt her bad. To make things worse for you, she’s Koz’s girlfriend. I’ve never seen him this pissed off. You understand? Right now all I want to hear from you are the details of how the Salazar case went down. We know you pulled an old print from a prior arrest to make the initial ID. We know that means the second print was planted.”

  Fornier looked between Finn and Kozlowski, his eyes wide.

  “That’s right; we know. And we’ve got an expert who’s going to testify. You’re done. We just need for you to tell us who put you up to it.”

  It looked as though Fornier might crack right at that moment. Then he looked at Finn and spat out another mouthful of blood. “Fuck you,” he said again. Finn stood up and nodded at Kozlowski.

  Kozlowski leaned down and pulled Fornier off the ground, and the man began screaming in terror. Kozlowski grabbed him by the back of the neck and threw him face-first into a hard-packed snow drift that had been plowed into a seven-foot pile along the wall. Fornier’s face sank into the snow and ice, muffling his screams as Kozlowski pushed his head deeper and deeper into the pile. As the snow cut off his air, Fornier began to thrash about, trying to slap at Kozlowski to free himself, but it was pointless. He began to lose what little strength he had.

  Kozlowski pulled him out of the snow, holding him up by his neck, facing him toward Finn. The man looked like a drowned alley cat. His nostrils were clogged with snow and ice, and he spat and coughed as he tried to catch his breath. A deep three-inch cut on his forehead—probably from the sharp ice of the snow pile—bled down into his eyes.

  “You’re a fucking mess, Fornier. You really want to keep going with this?” Finn asked.

  The man continued to cough and sputter without answering. Finn gave Kozlowski another nod. “Back in again, then,” he said as Kozlowski pushed Fornier back toward the snow drift.

  “No! Please!” Fornier screamed just before his head was plunged into the snow.

  “See,” Finn said. “I knew you could talk. Next time try not to hesitate so long, and maybe you won’t have to go back in there.” He waited nearly thirty seconds, then tapped Kozlowski on the shoulder.

  Fornier was fully beaten when he emerged this time. His face was turning blue, and a trickle of thin, watery vomit ran down his chin. “Mac!” he coughed out, collapsing to his knees with a painful thud. “It was Macintyre, okay! He told me to do it.”

  “What did he tell you to do?” Finn asked. “Exactly.”

  “He told me to pull the print from Salazar’s record. He told me to plant a new one once Salazar was in custody.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Fornier whined.

  “You wanna go back in the snow?” Kozlowski asked, yanking him up by his collar and pushing him toward the drift again.

  “No! I swear!” Fornier was yelling, fighting desperately to avoid another round of asphyxiation. “He told me Steele had ID’d the guy! He said if I didn’t do it, the guy might walk! He said they were sure, they just needed the evidence!”

  “And you don’t know why they chose Salazar? You didn’t know what was going on behind all this? C’mon,” Kozlowski said.

  Kozlowski still had hold of the man’s collar and was practically dangling him over the snow. From the terror in Fornier’s voice, Finn would have thought he was being held over a tank full of sharks. “I swear to God! I swear on my mother!”

  “Would you swear on your booze?” Kozlowski asked.

  Fornier paused, but only for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “On my booze. May I never take another drink. Mac told me the guy was right for it. He said she knew it was him. I had no reason to doubt it. I honest to God thought the guy was guilty.”

  Kozlowski looked at Finn, who nodded, and Kozlowski let Fornier go. The little man wo
bbled on unsteady legs and took two steps back from Kozlowski, still trapped in the alley. He still looked raw. The blood had mixed with the melting snow, painting a bib of bright pink on the front of his shirt. His jacket was ripped, and his hair was wet and

  tamped down in the front. “What now?” he asked nervously.

  Finn thought about it. “Where’s your apartment?”

  Fornier trembled. “A few blocks from here. Why?”

  “Because,” Finn said, “we’re all going to go there right now, and you’re going to write everything out that you just told us. Then you’re going to sign your name to it.”

  “No.” Fornier shook his head. “Mac will kill me.”

  Kozlowski grabbed the man by the lapels and threw him into the brick wall. Fornier’s head slammed against the unforgiving, uneven surface. “Listen to me, you little shit,” Kozlowski said. “Because of your lies, the best woman I’ve ever known is lying beaten in a hospital room. Another man was hacked into dog food with a machete, and our client has been pacing an eight-by-ten cell for over a decade for a crime he didn’t commit. All of this because you didn’t do your fucking job. Make no mistake about it—I don’t give a shit about you. But if I was in your position right now, I’d be a little less worried about Mac and a lot more worried about me, you understand?” Kozlowski was holding Fornier off the ground against the wall. The little man’s feet dangled like a marionette’s as Kozlowski pushed him hard enough into the bricks to make it visibly difficult for the man to breathe.

  Fornier nodded as he struggled to stay conscious, and Kozlowski let him drop to the ground. Fornier crumpled into a ball as he hit the cement.

  Finn walked over and looked down at him. “Cheer up, Fornier,” he said. “At least I can assure you that you won’t have to worry about Mac.”

  “Why not?”

  Finn looked at Kozlowski, and the former police officer looked back at him. There was no hesitation in Koz’s eyes. “Because,” Finn said to Fornier, “we’re going to see him next.”

  z

  Finn read over the statement that Fornier had scribbled out in his apartment. It had taken three tries, and the man’s hand hadn’t stopped shaking throughout. Only with the aid of a second glass of vodka had the effort been successful, and it was barely legible, but it was all there, down on paper. Together with Steele’s statement, it was probably enough to get Salazar out of jail. Add in the expert report from Smitty and the report from the DNA testing, which was expected at any moment, and there was little question that Salazar would be opening presents with his family at his brother’s house on Christmas morning.

  But that wasn’t enough anymore. Now this had become personal.

  “It’s worthless,” Kozlowski said, interrupting Finn’s ruminations.

  Finn looked over at Kozlowski. They were sitting in Finn’s car outside of Fornier’s apartment. “What?”

  “Fornier’s statement. It wasn’t signed under oath. Plus, it’s hearsay. A court shouldn’t even consider it.”

  “It’s a statement against his own interest, which is an exception to the hearsay rule,” Finn said. “Judge Cavanaugh will look at it.”

  “He could still claim he signed it under duress. He wouldn’t even be lying; we beat him up pretty good.”

  “He could, and he’d be right. But I don’t think he will. I just wanted to get this down in writing to lock him in a little. That’s the best we could do under the circumstances. At least it will give us something to confront Macintyre with if he gives us trouble.”

  Kozlowski scratched his head. “Oh, I’m guessing he’ll give us some trouble. You sure you even want to be involved with this? It might make more sense for me to go alone.”

  Finn started the car. “Where does he live?”

  “Okay,” Kozlowski said. “Just remember, I gave you fair warning. He lives in Quincy.” Finn pulled out onto the street as Kozlowski reached

  down to his ankle, sliding a .38-caliber revolver from an ankle holster. “You should have this, at least. It’s my spare.”

  Finn looked at the gun, then reached over and grabbed it, stuffing it into his jacket pocket. “You really think this could get that ugly?” he asked.

  Kozlowski shrugged. “You never know.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Macintyre’s house was just off Wollaston Beach in a quiet, traditional area of small, neat houses on small, neat streets. The residents were generally hardworking, law-abiding folk who spanned the virtually imperceptible social gap between Catholic union Democrats and blue-collar, family-values Republicans. It was not a neighborhood that tolerated disturbance well.

  Macintyre’s house was easily identified. All of the lights appeared to be off—both inside and out—and on a street bedecked with Christmas lights and holiday cheer, it stood out like a rotten tooth.

  Finn parked the car a block and a half down the street. He and Kozlowski climbed out and walked quietly down the sidewalk, turning at the unshoveled walkway leading to Macintyre’s front steps. Finn was acutely conscious of the revolver in his pocket, weighing down the side of his coat. He wondered how anyone could get used to carrying around a weapon like this on a regular basis, and questioned whether it had been wise for him to accept the gun from Kozlowski. It had been a long time since his rough-and-tumble youth on the streets of Charlestown, and he felt little nostalgia for the violence of his past.

  They stood on the stoop in silence before Kozlowski reached out and pressed the buzzer. It sounded from deep within the house like a giant, angry fly, harsh and shrill. Kozlowski waited a few seconds and then buzzed again.

  When the door opened, Finn’s first instinct was to pull out the gun. Macintyre’s appearance was so transformed that Finn didn’t recognize him initially. He stood before them with his bathrobe hanging loosely from his shoulders and nothing underneath it but a stained pair of khakis and a thin T-shirt, yellowed under the armpits. A thick, patchy shadow of beard covered the man’s neck and face.

  Macintyre stared at them, a flicker of recognition sparking his face. Then he withdrew without a word, leaving the door open for them as he drifted back into the house.

  Finn and Kozlowski followed him, both of them turning the corner into the living room with caution, fearing an ambush. Once they’d rounded the corner, though, the fear abated somewhat, for it appeared that the man was in no condition to mount any sort of offensive.

  It was clear that the living room was where Macintyre was spending most of his time. There were pizza boxes stacked unevenly in several makeshift towers, and an assortment of beer cans and bottles of booze spread out on the coffee table.

  Macintyre sat on the sofa behind the coffee table, sinking into the upholstery. Kozlowski pulled a small chair over to sit facing him across the table. Finn remained standing. The only light in the room came from the television in the corner; the Celtics were playing the Lakers, and Finn noted that Boston was down by ten at the half.

  “You bring your gun?” Macintyre asked Kozlowski.

  Kozlowski reached into his jacket and brought his pistol out from its holster. He put it down on the table in front of him. “Where’s yours?”

  Macintyre produced his service revolver from the pocket of his bathrobe. He held it up, examining it. “This was my first,” he said. “Got this when I went on the job. Twenty-seven years ago, you believe that? Still the most reliable piece I ever had. That’s the way everything

  was back then, you know? Solid. Reliable. You remember?”

  Kozlowski nodded. “I remember.”

  “Back then you knew who was who and what was what. The department was run by cops, not fucking bureaucrats, and we were the fucking kings. The cops . . . we knew how to do the job, you know? Keep people safe and beat the piss out of the bad guys. It was simple, and it worked. If it meant you had to bend a few rules, that was part of the job. Now you touch some perp the wrong way, and you’re the one who ends up in jail. You believe that shit?” He was rambling.

&nbs
p; Kozlowski pulled out a Dictaphone, clicked it onto record, and put it on the table between them. “I gotta record this,” he said. “You understand, right?”

  “You too, now?”

  “We’re here to talk about Vincente Salazar.”

  Macintyre waved his hand dismissively. “What a fucking cluster fuck that’s turned into, huh? For all of us.” Finn noticed that Macintyre was still holding his gun, punctuating his speech with it.

  “It has,” Kozlowski said. “You wanna tell me about it? What the fuck happened? How did it get this far?”

  Macintyre reached up to his head with the hand that still held the gun, scratching his scalp with his trigger finger. Finn wondered whether he had forgotten that he still held the gun.

  “Who have you talked to?” Macintyre asked.

  “Steele and Fornier,” Kozlowski replied.

  Macintyre nodded in resignation. “Then you probably already know just about all there is to know.” He looked long and hard at Kozlowski, but without anger, only sadness. “I always thought they were wrong to throw you off the force, Koz. Thought that was a bad move. Shit, we need more men like you out there, not less.” He was pointing to Kozlowski with the barrel of the gun as he spoke. Finn reached into his jacket pocket and gripped the revolver Kozlowski had given him.

  “Guys like us worked the job,” Macintyre continued. “Shit, guys like us were the fucking job.”

  “I still need to know the rest,” Kozlowski said. “And I need to hear it from you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. All business to the end, right? Before that, though, let’s have a drink.” Macintyre reached over and felt his way through the bottles on the table until he found a half-empty bottle of bourbon. Then he located two dirty glasses and pulled them over, pouring them to the rims. “I’d pour one for your friend, there,” he said, nodding toward Finn without looking up, “but he looks like a pussy.”

  “Thanks, I’m good,” Finn said.

  Mac picked up one of the glasses and handed it to Kozlowski. “What should we drink to?” He was smiling like a jackal.