Pariah cd-1

by David Jackson

  Bartok pauses, allowing his message to sink in. ‘I’m offering you your life back, Detective Doyle. By tomorrow night, you could be free from your personal hell, able to return to your home, your family. I think the price I’m asking is tiny in comparison to that freedom.’

  ‘Don’t dress it up in ribbons and bows, Kurt. You’re trying to buy me. Another pocket cop to add to your collection. That’s what it comes down to.’

  ‘As I said, you have a tendency to be blunt about things. I prefer to think of it as the start of a long and mutually beneficial business arrangement.’ He puts the tip of his finger on the desk, exactly as Doyle did earlier. ‘So there you have it. It’s on the table, just as you asked. What’s your answer?’

  Doyle stares into Bartok’s questioning eyes and thinks, My answer should be go fuck yourself. Stick your offer up your ass and then wait here while I bring in a shit-load of cops to raid your club and haul your ass off to jail.

  But he doesn’t say any of this. For one thing, he knows he can’t touch Bartok. Nobody else in this room is about to confirm that this little powwow ever took place. And for another thing, he’s not sure yet that he wants to reject the offer.

  Shit! Am I really thinking that? Am I really even considering the possibility of entering into a partnership with this crazy bastard? Fuck that! It’s ridiculous. Absurd. I’d sell my own mother before cozying up with Bartok.

  And yet. .

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  Bartok blinks. ‘You’ll think about it?’

  ‘I need time to weigh it up. You’re asking a lot.’

  ‘I’m offering a lot. It should be a no-brainer.’ He sighs softly, then looks down at his finger still poised on the desk surface. ‘The deal stays here until the end of the day. Midnight. After that. .’ He takes his finger away to show Doyle that, after midnight, all bets are off. ‘In the meantime, I’ll start to make some inquiries. By the time you call, I should have the information you need.’

  ‘If I call.’

  Bartok’s smile is smug. He gestures to Rocca, who escorts Doyle to the door. Doyle turns one final time to Bartok and says, ‘By the way, you’ve got some hair out of place there.’

  As he is engulfed by the throbbing music once more, Doyle smiles inwardly at the thought of Bartok scrabbling for the mirror in his desk drawer.

  In the passenger seat of the Lexus, Doyle tries to get his fogged brain to think rationally about Bartok’s offer. Behind the wheel, Rocca seems to read his thoughts.

  ‘You gonna make the deal? You should. Mr Bartok’s a fair man. He’ll treat you square.’

  Doyle looks at Rocca. ‘Kurt Bartok is a conniving sack of shit. His brother should have been put down at birth. Tell me something, Sonny, why do you work for those savages? I saw the way they treated you back there.’

  For a while, Rocca doesn’t say anything. He keeps his eyes on the road ahead.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he says finally, ‘you don’t have a lot of choice, you know? When you’re drowning, and there’s only one guy putting his hand out to save you, you take it, right? You don’t question his motives, you don’t try to work out whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy. You just take the hand. And from that moment on, he owns you. Even if he treats you bad sometimes, he still owns you. You get what I’m saying?’

  Doyle doesn’t answer. He understands exactly what his philosopher companion has just said.

  Pretty much the same thought has already gone through his own head.

  TWENTY-ONE

  He wakes up with his clothes on. He thinks he can still hear the music from Bartok’s club, but it’s just his brain pounding against his skull.

  He looks at the bedside clock, and is surprised to see that it’s nearly ten o’clock in the morning. He remembers getting into his hotel room, lying on the bed, then trying to think through his options. At some point — he doesn’t know what time — he must have dozed off.

  He rolls off the bed, glances at himself in the mirror, sees that he looks like shit. He has that failed-businessman appearance — the guy who loses all his money and his job and his wife, then ends up drinking from a brown paper bag and sleeping on a park bench.

  He strips off and tosses his clothes into a corner. Treats himself to a fifteen-minute shower. As he selects a permutation of the few clean clothes he brought with him, he tries to work out how long it’ll be before he needs to start paying for laundry service.

  Leaving the room, he drapes the ‘Do not disturb’ sign over the door handle. He takes the elevator down to the restaurant, has a bowl of Cheerios, some toast and coffee, then returns to his room and pulls a chair over to the window.

  And then he thinks again.

  He spends over two hours sitting, thinking, pacing, worrying. And at the end of it all, he knows that there’s really nothing to analyze. The choices are stark and simple. You sign your life over to the devil, with all that that entails, or you suffer in silence, waiting for the relief that may never come. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

  He stands up, opens the window and sticks his head out to get a look at the street below. He wants to be out there, feeling that he’s doing something — anything — to accelerate this to a conclusion. But he knows how far the word has spread. Nobody will talk to him. Nobody will go near him. And even if they would, how could he bring himself to take the chance of endangering yet another life?

  Shit!

  He closes the window and picks up the phone receiver. He presses for an outside line and then dials a number at the Eighth Precinct.

  ‘Lieutenant Franklin.’

  ‘Mo, it’s me. Cal.’

  ‘Cal! How you doing?’

  ‘So-so. Getting itchy feet — that’s for sure. It’s kinda hard being on the outside like this.’

  ‘Yeah, I understand that. Bear with it, Cal. It won’t be long now.’

  ‘Yeah? You got some hot leads?’

  Franklin hesitates, which says to Doyle, No, we got nothing.

  ‘We’re working all the angles, Cal. Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you. The whole team is still on this.’

  ‘Uh-huh. You track down Rodriguez?’

  ‘Yeah. He’s dead. Died of a drug overdose last month.’

  ‘What about Lewis Stanton? He made a lot of noise about me when they carted him off to Rikers.’

  ‘He was out, now he’s back in again. Has been for a while now.’

  ‘Maybe he reached out from his cell.’

  ‘Nah, we don’t think so. Apparently he’s found God this time. He’s looking to wash away all his sins.’

  ‘Okay. So then there’s Wilson Jones. He’s definitely on the outside.’

  ‘Yes, he is. But all his alibis check out, including a meeting with his parole officer at the time your CI was being butchered. When we spoke to him, he couldn’t even remember your name.’

  ‘Fuck, Mo!’

  ‘I know, Cal, I know. When you start to go through names like that, it sounds as if-’

  ‘So who’s left, Mo? You got any suspects at all? Anyone who had the slightest motive? I mean, Jesus, even the neighbor whose window I broke when I was eleven will do. How big is the fucking list, Mo?’

  Again, seconds pass. Translation: It’s a list that’s shorter than Lucas Bartok’s temper.

  ‘We’re doing all we can, Cal. Talking to everyone even mentioned in your fives. We’re even looking at relatives of those people. The perp could be someone you never met — maybe you collared his son or his father or his second cousin’s girlfriend. People snap for the weirdest reasons, Cal. Maybe this is one of those, in which case it makes it all the harder to pin him down.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Mo. You read the notes he sent. He’s not talking about me like I’m someone who accidentally brushed against him on the sidewalk. This guy is painting me like someone who wiped out his whole family. He hates my guts. Something major must have gone down for him to be talking that way.’

  ‘In w
hich case it must be something you know about. And every possibility you put our way, we’re chasing up as hard as we can. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I know it.’

  ‘Look, there isn’t. .? I mean, you don’t. .?’

  ‘What, Mo? Spit it out.’

  ‘There isn’t something you don’t want to talk about? Something that happened, maybe a long time ago, and you don’t want the job to know about it?’

  Doyle gets a sick feeling in his stomach. He gets the impression this isn’t something that Franklin has just invented. He can imagine some of the talk at the station house. About him and Laura Marino. About him possibly keeping the truth hidden. About the odds that there may be other skeletons hidden in his closet. Without Doyle being there to deny those rumors, maybe Franklin’s mind has become as poisoned as the rest of them.

  ‘Like what?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Anything. I’m clutching at straws here. But if there is anything. .’

  ‘There’s nothing, Mo. Nothing. I told you before, I got nothing to hide.’

  ‘Then. . it’s all good. The perp’s name must be in our files somewhere. We’ll get him. It’s just a matter of time.’

  Doyle sighs. Just a matter of time. Like the duration is of no consequence as long as the outcome is good. Never mind there’s an innocent cop who’s in solitary confinement all the while this remains unsolved.

  ‘Okay, Mo. Do me a favor, will you? Keep me posted.’

  ‘Of course, Cal.’

  ‘I mean, you have my number at the hotel, don’t you? And my cellphone?’

  ‘Yeah, we got them.’

  ‘So call me.’

  ‘No problem. Speak to you soon.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The line goes dead. Doyle looks at the receiver in his hand. You’re not gonna call, he thinks. Either you’ve given up, or else you’re too embarrassed by the fact that you’re not getting anywhere. You’re not gonna call. I’ll have to call you, and my bet is you’ll still have nothing.

  Bartok was right. The NYPD isn’t going to solve this case. Leastways, not anytime soon.

  Slowly, Doyle lowers the telephone handset onto its cradle.

  He’s on a stool in the hotel bar, nursing a Bushmills and wondering whether the meaning of Christmas can be expressed any more profoundly than in the string of paper Santas hanging above his head. As it’s only late afternoon the place is deserted, and George the Greek is his usual uncommunicative self. But then Doyle isn’t here for the atmosphere.

  He hears footsteps behind him. The tapping of high heels. A woman, his honed sleuthing powers tell him.

  He glances across as she slides onto the stool next to his. He catches a glimpse of toned calf muscles, a plunging neckline and a smile that could make any man forget his woes.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ she asks.

  Doyle shrugs. ‘If you mean do I mind if you sit there, go ahead, it’s a free country.’

  Yeah, look how free I am. The way I can go anywhere, talk to anyone.

  All of a sudden, George is the most animated that Doyle has ever seen him. He bustles over, all smiles and arched eyebrows and hot-blooded charm. He looks ready to start serenading.

  Go ahead, Doyle thinks, whip out your bouzouki and impress the girl.

  She orders a Bacardi and Coke, and while George demonstrates his lemon-chopping skills, she tries once again with Doyle.

  ‘Nothing sadder than the sight of someone drinking alone, don’t you think?’

  Doyle picks up his glass, gets down from his stool.

  ‘Something I said?’ the girl asks.

  ‘Let’s just say you’re too young to die,’ he answers. He catches the incomprehension and then the unease on her face before he walks away.

  He weaves his way over to a table in an alcove at the far wall. Settles down and makes himself comfortable again.

  Well, that was some line, he thinks. Bet she’s never heard that one before.

  He looks over at the girl. She has her back to him, sucking on a straw as she listens to George trying to work his magic.

  Good luck to ’em, he thinks. She doesn’t seem like a hooker. Just a lonely young woman looking for a good time. Since when did that become a crime?

  He regrets the way he spoke to her. And then he’s angry at the fact that he felt the need to react so strongly — that he couldn’t even be civil to the girl. He has a wife, yes, and so he’d never have let things go too far, but that’s not the point. There are ways of saying no that don’t require a slap in the face. Is this the way it’s going to be from now on? Acting like a rabid dog, snapping at people as soon as they come near?

  Jesus, what a mess.

  He thinks about what got him into this situation, about what caused things to get so bad. What hurts the most is that if it were anyone else on the squad in a jam like this — Schneider, even — the nature of the investigation would be wholly different. The guys would all be pulling together, all trying to steer the boat in the same direction. There wouldn’t be this nagging feeling that nobody really cares if the whole thing capsizes.

  But then Doyle has always been the outsider.

  Ever since the events of the previous year.

  TWENTY-TWO

  He was driving. Heading uptown on Madison Avenue. She was riding shotgun. Hanging between them was an atmosphere you could almost bang your head against.

  Doyle gripped the steering wheel so hard he felt it was about to disintegrate in his fingers. His teeth ached from all the jaw-clenching he’d been doing.

  This is not good, he thought. This is precisely why the NYPD has rules about working with spouses, partners and anyone else with whom you’re having any kind of intimate personal relationship. Takes your mind off the job. You lose your edge, the ability to think objectively. And ultimately, that can mean losing your life.

  Not that Laura Marino was his wife or his girlfriend or even the object of his affections. Sure, she was good-looking. A real beauty, some would say. Certainly a few steps up from most of the female cops he’d ever met, despite what the TV cop shows would have people believe. But the point was he was married, she was married, and they were working partners — and she was acting like none of that was true.

  ‘You’re quiet,’ she said. ‘Everything okay, Callie?’

  He hated the way she called him Callie. Nobody had ever called him that before. It was her own invention — something she seemed to find cute.

  He should have just said, Yes, everything’s fine, and got on with the job at hand, but this time he couldn’t keep it in. This time she’d gone too far.

  ‘You want the truth? No, everything is not okay. Everything is fucked up.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You wanna talk about it?’

  ‘Yeah, I could do that. Lemme see, where do I start? How about with all the looks and the winks I got from everyone in the squad this morning? Or the way Kaplinsky kept calling me “Stud”? Or how about the way people kept asking me why I only like eating Italian now?’

  Marino did the wrong thing then. She laughed. Put a hand to her mouth and made a farting noise with her mouth like this was some big joke. If she had been mortified instead — if she had exhibited the merest hint of shame — he might have been able to prevent what was coming next.

  ‘You think this is funny? This is funny to you?’

  She tried to put on a straight face, but to Doyle she wasn’t trying hard enough.

  ‘Well, the Italian thing, that is kinda-’

  ‘What have you been saying?’ Doyle demanded. ‘What the fuck have you been saying?’

  ‘Nothing. Take it easy, Callie. I just had a little girlie chat with Kaplinsky. Locker-room talk. You know how it is.’

  ‘No. Tell me. Tell me how it is.’

  ‘She’s been asking for a long time now. About you and me. About how we are together. About whether we’ve, like, done the dirty yet.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And of course you put her straight, rig
ht? Told her how we’re just partners, like any two cops on the job. All strictly professional and platonic, right?’

  ‘Come on, Callie. If I said that, Kaplinsky really would start wondering. Anybody can see there’s a thing between us. A what-you-call-it — a chemistry.’

  ‘No, Laura. No chemistry. Not unless it’s like you’re sulfuric acid and I’m getting burned real bad. Because that’s how I’m feeling right now. Real burned. So what else did you say to Kaplinsky?’

  ‘Nothing. She asked whether me and you had got it on yet, and I just smiled and walked away.’

  ‘You smiled and walked away? That’s it?’ As if that wasn’t bad enough.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it. Except, well, I might have made a little gesture.’

  ‘A gesture? What kind of gesture?’

  Laura hesitated for a second. When Doyle looked in her direction, she raised an eyebrow mischievously, then put her hands out in front of her, palms facing each other, about a foot apart.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ Doyle said. ‘Please tell me you didn’t actually do that.’

  Laura was laughing again. Doyle wasn’t.

  ‘I was paying you a compliment,’ she said. ‘Most guys, I’d just wave my pinky in the air. You should be grateful for me telling it like it is.’

  ‘Like it is? What the fuck are you talking about? You’ve never even seen. .’ He let his words trail off.

  ‘You oughtta try taking a walk through my head sometime,’ she said. And then she was laughing again. Huskily, but to Doyle not at all seductively. In fact, this was starting to feel dark and disturbing. Inside Laura Marino’s head did not seem the most inviting of places right now.

  Doyle pulled a sudden left turn across honking traffic and into the only free space he could see. Which happened to be the entrance to the parking garage of the swish hotel next door.

  ‘Hey,’ Laura said. ‘What are you doing?’

  Doyle put the brakes on, left the engine idling. ‘We need to talk, Laura.’

  ‘And you can’t talk while you drive?’

  ‘No. Not when every brick wall I see makes me want to head straight for it.’