Pariah cd-1

by David Jackson

  But it is like trying to swim through treacle. He can see where he needs to be, and he knows what he needs to do to get there, but he’s like a toy with a dying battery.

  A sudden realization descends on him that he will never reach his goal. Not like this. Not unless he can sprout wings and fly.

  And then his wish comes true. He is flying. Flying while the heat and the light and the pressure overwhelm his body and tear it apart.

  Sitting in the hired Ford van, behind its blacked-out windows, the man listens to the reverberations of what he has just done.

  His finger is still on the button, pressing so hard that the nail has turned white. He removes it, watches the blood rush back.

  It worked. There were moments when he had his doubts, when he worried that he was trying to be too clever, too ingenious.

  He had worried, too, about the amount of explosive to use. A bigger charge could have been stashed in the apartment somewhere, but it carried the risk that Cavell would have run away from it at the first opportunity. Turning Cavell into a human bomb like that, along with a microphone that would reveal any attempt to remove the package, was a stroke of genius. He can still picture the moment when he told Cavell. He’d put a gun to Cavell’s head, forced him against the wall, slapped the bundle onto his back. Stepping away, his gun still raised, he revealed to Cavell what he’d just done. The expression of disbelief and horror on the pimp’s face was so exaggerated it was comical.

  Even with Cavell’s big muscles and the hooded sweater there was only so much explosive that could be taped to him without it being obvious, but that didn’t matter. C-4 detonates at a velocity of 18,000 miles per hour. You don’t need much of that shit to take out a whole roomful of people.

  And if Alvarez had found it, so what? It would have simply meant pressing the button that little bit sooner.

  But Alvarez missed it in the frisk, didn’t he? A trained cop, years on the job, and he missed it. Ha! How delicious was that?

  It meant that the message could be delivered, offering Alvarez the chance to puzzle over what it was he had done wrong. And yet he suspected nothing. Even when confronted with the reason for his imminent demise, he was still too stupid to grasp its implications.

  It meant too that the note could be given to Alvarez, allowing him to contemplate the sounding of his death knell.

  But above all, it meant that everything that Alvarez said and did right up to the moment of his annihilation could be overheard.

  The man in the Ford leans back and reviews his accomplishment here tonight. He feels like he should be lighting up a cigarette, the way they do in the movies after great sex. In the distance he can hear sirens, and he knows he will have to drive away soon. But he will allow himself to revel for a moment longer. This has been so much more satisfying than the killing of Joe Parlatti.

  SEVEN

  When the phone rings, Doyle doesn’t know where he is. As he reaches out to his bed table he blinks his eyes until the hazy lights on his clock sharpen into recognizable numerals.

  It is five-thirty in the morning.

  Shit, he thinks. Telephone calls at this time of day carry only bad news. There’s a law about it somewhere.

  Next to him, Rachel groans her disapproval and pulls the duvet over her head. When Doyle’s fumbling hands finally locate the handset, he answers the call with a mouth that feels like it’s filled with cotton wool.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Cal? It’s Mo.’

  The tone is subdued.

  ‘Okay, Mo, what is it?’

  There’s a lengthy pause. ‘It’s not good, Cal. There’s no easy way to tell you this.’

  Doyle is wide awake now. ‘Spit it out, Mo.’

  ‘Something happened last night. To Tony Alvarez. He was killed.’

  And now Doyle begins to wonder whether, in fact, he is still sleeping. Whether his mind is filled with dark imaginings of his deepest subconscious. He swings his legs over the side of the bed.

  ‘Killed? How? Where?’ There are a million other questions on his lips, but these will do for now.

  ‘There was an explosion at an apartment on Seventeenth Street. Alvarez was there with another guy, still unnamed. I only found out about this an hour ago myself. I don’t have all the details yet.’

  Doyle stares into the darkness of the bedroom. His questions have all run away, as if his brain has decided it doesn’t want to know any more about this because it’s all too terrifying.

  Franklin cuts into his thoughts. ‘Cal? You’re the first one on the squad I’ve told about this. I don’t think I need to say why.’

  Doyle nods, not thinking that Franklin can’t see him. Mo is preparing him. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that.

  Franklin continues: ‘The killing was in the Eleventh, so it’s their case at the moment. But you know how quick these things get around. By the start of the day tour, everybody’ll have heard about this. I just thought. . Well, I just wanted you to know.’

  Doyle clears his throat. ‘Yeah. Thanks for the heads-up, Mo. Appreciate it.’

  ‘Okay, Cal. See you in a couple hours.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah.’

  He ends the call. Sitting on the edge of his bed like this, he begins to notice how cold the room is.

  Two cops dead in the space of twenty-four hours. Could it be any worse?

  Well, yes, if they were both partners of yours.

  He leaves the house before Rachel and Amy are up. He doesn’t want to tell Rachel about it just yet — doesn’t want to discuss it with anyone — and if he sits there moping over breakfast she will know that something is wrong.

  He doesn’t go directly to the station house, but instead drives the streets for a while, killing time and thinking. Eventually, he pulls up at a near-empty diner and seats himself at a booth in the corner. He orders sausage, eggs and coffee, but finds that his stomach will permit entry only to the coffee. After pushing the food around his plate for a while, he finally gives up and heads off to work. He times his arrival to be as late as he can make it, seconds before the start of his shift.

  As he walks through the doorway he hears a loud fake cough, warning of his presence. Silence descends as he moves toward his desk. He waits for the first wise-ass remark, but nothing comes his way. Not yet, anyway. It might be because Mo Franklin is standing at the front of the squadroom, like a teacher keeping order among his pupils.

  Jay Holden, a shaven-headed black cop who ran with street gangs in his youth, is the first to speak.

  ‘We’re all here now, Mo. How about you put an end to all the rumors?’

  Doyle has always liked Holden. He is his own man — never to be swayed by the unsupported opinions of others. He waits until he gets all the facts, and then he makes up his own mind.

  Franklin perches himself on the edge of an unoccupied desk. Tony Alvarez’s desk.

  ‘I wish I could say to you that all we have here are rumors, that none of it is confirmed yet, that it’s all likely to be so much bullshit. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Detective Tony Alvarez was killed in the line of duty last night.’

  They know it already, but still they groan, curse, lower their heads.

  ‘What happened, Mo?’ somebody asks.

  ‘Tony was following up on the Joe Parlatti hit. He went to an apartment on West Seventeenth to meet someone who claimed to have information.’

  Puzzled, Doyle looks up at Franklin. A lead on the Parlatti case? What lead? Why didn’t Tony bring him in on it?

  Franklin carries on: ‘It was a trap. The apartment was booby-trapped somehow. A bomb. The guy Tony was meeting was killed instantly — blown to bits. Tony was brought out alive, but only barely. He didn’t survive the journey to the hospital.’

  There is a moment of silent reflection before Schneider pipes up.

  ‘The news channels are saying the explosion on Seventeenth happened at about ten o’clock last night. How come we’re only just getting to hear about Alvarez getting caught in that
?’

  ‘The bomb went off in the Eleventh Precinct, so none of our guys were on-scene. When Tony Alvarez was carried out of the building he had no ID on him. It was hours before the Bomb Squad declared the apartment clear, and another couple hours before the fire department said the building was structurally safe to enter. Eventually, they found Tony’s shield in his jacket, which had been blown across the room.’ He pauses. ‘I got a call only hours ago myself. I had to. . I had to ID the body.’

  This seems to mollify Schneider for the moment. He nods almost imperceptibly and tosses his gum around his mouth.

  Holden asks, ‘We have an ID on the other DOA?’

  Franklin looks relieved to drag his thoughts away from the vision of Alvarez’s shattered form. ‘We think it’s a pimp named Tremaine Cavell, street handle TC. The apartment belongs to a girlfriend of his.’

  What?

  Doyle’s mind is racing now. A follow-up with Tremaine? All the more reason for not cutting him out. So why the hell would Alvarez do that?

  Holden says, ‘And Cavell fits into this how?’

  Franklin’s eyes flicker toward Doyle. The lieutenant seems reluctant to supply an answer, so Doyle does it for him.

  ‘Cavell was pimping for the pross found with Joe. We tracked him down yesterday, but he didn’t give us much.’

  Schneider’s mouth is provoked into action again. ‘Wait a minute. Have I missed something here? Yesterday you and Alvarez go talk to this pimp scumbag, who gives you zip. Later that same day, Alvarez goes to see the same scumbag, only this time without backup. More specifically, without you, Doyle. You wanna explain to me how this situation came about, Alvarez going into a potentially dangerous situation without his partner?’

  The emphasis on the word ‘partner’ is like a sharp jab in Doyle’s ribs. He doesn’t feel that Alvarez was truly his partner — they just happened to come together and work jointly for less than a day. But he knows that the others won’t see it like that.

  He studies their faces. All eyes are on him, and irrespective of their feelings toward Schneider and the way he phrases things, it is clear that they think an answer is warranted.

  The problem for Doyle is that he doesn’t have one.

  He opens his mouth, unsure as to what words are about to spill out, but Franklin gets there ahead of him.

  ‘I can answer that. Cavell phoned the station house last night, looking to speak to Tony. Tony called him back on his cellphone, but he was careful. He recorded the conversation.’

  ‘And we have it?’

  ‘We do. Tony’s car was found near the apartment on Seventeenth. The digital recorder he used was in the glove compartment. I asked the Eleventh Precinct to send me a copy of the discussion between Tony and Cavell.’

  As he says this, Franklin reaches into his jacket and takes out his own voice recorder.

  ‘This will get back to you anyhow, so you may as well hear it now.’

  He switches the machine on, and the detectives listen in rapt silence as the recording plays through to its end. When it reaches the part where he is mentioned by name, Doyle feels the pressure of numerous gazes being directed his way.

  Schneider says, ‘So, Doyle, what puts you on the blacklist of a slimy mope like Cavell? Any reason you can think of why he might not want you there last night?’

  ‘You heard what I heard, Schneider. He wanted Tony there alone. He didn’t want any other cop there, not just me. He used my name explicitly because Tony brought it up that he should call me. If you’d have been working with Tony yesterday, it would have been your name on that recording.’

  ‘Oh yeah. That’s right. You and Alvarez were working together. Just like you were working with Joe Parlatti, who also happens to be dead. And if we all care to cast our minds back a little further . .’

  ‘Oh, fuck you, Schneider,’ Doyle says.

  ‘Fuck you too, Doyle. All’s I’m saying is that it don’t take no Sherlock fucking Holmes to see a pattern developing here. .’

  ‘All right!’ Franklin yells. ‘Can it, you two, for Christ’s sake. I lost two of my finest detectives yesterday. Two people I was proud to call my friends. They were your friends too. Bickering like schoolgirls is going to get us nowhere.’ He aims a finger at Schneider. ‘If you think that Detective Doyle had anything to do with the death of any police officer, in this squad or anywhere else, then you put it in writing. If you don’t want to do that, then I don’t want to hear any more insinuations.’ He takes his eyes off Schneider, addresses the whole group. ‘From any of you. Understand?’

  He gets a few nods in return.

  ‘That said,’ Franklin adds, ‘there’s a bit more I need to tell you. This may be nothing, but it may be important, so you need to hear it.’

  Doyle catches a brief, almost apologetic, glance in his direction. Shit, he thinks. What now?

  ‘When Tony was being put in the ambulance, he said a name, “Doyle.” Then he said three more words: “Got too close.” Like I said, Tony was on the edge of dying right then. He may have just been rambling. Any thoughts?’

  Schneider’s response is to expel air from the corner of his mouth in a kind of pfff sound — his way of letting the room know where his opinions lie.

  Holden’s comments are a little more lucid. ‘Maybe Cal and Tony were on to something without even knowing it. Too close. So close, Tony had to die.’

  Schneider decides he needs to be vocal again. ‘Yeah. You need to be careful, Doyle. You could be next.’

  Holden ignores him and presses on. ‘That stuff from Cavell about some heavy shit going down. If he really was about to toss something juicy to Tony, that could have been a good reason for someone to whack both of them.’

  Franklin nods thoughtfully. ‘That’s assuming Cavell really did have something to deliver. If this went down the way the hit on Joe did, Cavell was probably just being used as bait. Any other theories?’

  ‘A cop killer.’

  This from LeBlanc, an ambitious young cop who only recently traded in his white shield for a gold one. Always sporting the most fashionable spectacles, although Doyle suspects that he wears them only to appear brainier than he is. Older, wiser heads might not have dared to voice LeBlanc’s idea, but Doyle is sure that it has entered the minds of all of them.

  ‘For some reason,’ LeBlanc says, ‘the killer just doesn’t like cops, period. He’s working his way through them, one by one.’ He looks across at Schneider. ‘In which case, maybe it doesn’t have to be Cal who’s next. Maybe it’s any one of us.’

  ‘Nice thought, kid,’ Schneider answers. ‘Cheer us all up, why don’t you?’

  ‘Even so,’ Franklin says, ‘we have to take it into consideration. Could just be we have a psycho cop killer on our hands.’ He raises a warning finger and wags it at each man in the room. ‘I don’t want to lose any other members of my squad. From now on, you have to be on your guard at all times, you hear me?’

  He gets nods again, but more vigorous this time. Now and again, it’s nice to hear how much your boss loves you.

  And then there is another period of silence, while every detective here weighs up the implications of having to be aware of everything around them, at all times of the day. The killer has shown himself to be a person of astounding ingenuity and resource. From now on, even taking a crap could be fraught with danger.

  Who says a cop’s life is dull?

  ‘There’s another possibility,’ Doyle says. He has been thinking about this ever since the wake-up call from Franklin. What the lieutenant said about the last words of Alvarez lends it even more currency.

  ‘Maybe I really am the link in this. Maybe this is some warped way of trying to hurt me. Those words of Tony’s, using my name and then “got too close”. Maybe what he was saying was that he got too close to me.’

  Franklin is staring at him, his expression grave. ‘You know anyone might want to get at you like that?’

  Doyle looks round at Schneider. ‘Outside this room, no.’<
br />
  This raises a couple of snickers, which tells Doyle that there are at least one or two people on his side.

  Franklin says, ‘That’d be one crazy way to hurt somebody, Cal. I hope to God you’re wrong about that.’

  Not as much as I do, Doyle thinks.

  EIGHT

  Barely five minutes after the men in the squadroom finish trying to fathom what is happening to them, the lieutenant takes a phone call from the Chief of Detectives. The Chief of Ds tells Franklin, amongst other things, that even though the death occurred within the confines of the Eleventh Precinct, the Alvarez case now officially belongs to the Eighth, being as it seems to have a solid link to the Parlatti case, which was already theirs. In his turn, Franklin relays the word from above to the squad, and it’s all systems go.

  Doyle makes it his first task to learn what he can about the events of last night. It’s a job that takes longer than he hoped, mainly because the required information seems to be distributed across about a dozen people from the Eleventh Precinct, the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force and the Bomb Squad, not all of whom are immediately contactable.

  Next, Doyle calls the Medical Examiner’s office for a prelim on the Alvarez and Cavell autopsies. He manages to speak to Norman Chin, who informs him that Alvarez’s fatal injuries were sustained solely as a result of a massive explosion, the epicenter of which lay in the immediate proximity of one Tremaine Cavell. It is Chin’s conjecture that the bomb was either being held by Cavell, or was somehow attached to his upper torso, this being difficult to confirm owing to the current absence of said upper torso.

  The conclusion being, Doyle thinks as he ends the call, that Cavell had somehow been turned into a human bomb. So, strike the notion that Cavell had any hot information to reveal. He was being used, just as Scarlett had been used to kill Joe.

  Tired of having a phone clamped to his ear, Doyle abandons his desk and heads out to the apartment of Cavell’s girl on West Seventeenth. There he speaks with the building superintendent, whose primary concern seems to be that his warning about making holes in his walls was ignored, his building now possessing one very large hole where a third-floor window used to be, thank you very much.