Blind Sight

by Carol O'Connell

  Gonzales the Doubter sang out, “I say the perp’s targeting the city.” This young man was the best set of muscles in the room, but his value to the squad was an ability to poke holes in every scenario for a crime. This made him Jack Coffey’s favorite whenever one of Mallory’s theories was on the table. “Hitting the city up for the ransom, that’s a good fit with killing random taxpayers.”

  “Nice,” said Coffey, “but the mayor wouldn’t have any reason to keep that quiet, and he’s been holding out on us. So what else have we got? Any luck with the tattoo artist?”

  “Yeah,” said Gonzales. “Me and Lonahan found the place where the nun got all that ink. We flashed Angie Quill’s old mug shot and the ME’s photo of the rose tattoos.”

  “The guy who did her tats is Joey something,” said Lonahan, barrel-chested and better known as Bullhorn. His normal speaking voice could be heard in the city’s outer boroughs, and now everyone in the room was awake. “Joey hasn’t worked there in years. But we know Angie didn’t get all those roses in a day. Maybe one tat a month. So . . . forty roses. The guy knew her that long.”

  “Good. A customer he’ll remember,” said Coffey. And maybe the tattoo artist moonlighted as a hit man. “Any leads on where Joey is now?”

  “Naw,” said Gonzales. “Our guy was long gone before the new owner bought the place. And no Joeys in the old employee records. We figure he worked off the books for cash.” He handed the lieutenant a police artist’s rendering of what Joey might look like, him and a million other lean young men with long hair and beards.

  In the drawing’s margin notes, Jack Coffey read a list of all the tattoos that other employees remembered seeing on the arms of this artist. “Okay, maybe we’ll catch a break at the nun’s mass tonight. Joey might turn out for her.”

  One detective slouched in his chair, facing the only unoccupied desk.

  “Riker, where’s your partner?”

  —

  THE SQUAD’S MOST ENDEARING NAME for her was Mallory the Machine. He found her in the geek room, melding with the technology, plugged into it for all Riker knew. It was hard to tell in an age of wireless computing. Her eyes were fixed on a glowing screen of text when he came up behind her with no illusions that she might be surprised. One of her electronic gadgets would surely rat him out. They were kin to her.

  “Riker, it’s time to dust off one of your old snitches. After you cut him loose, Chester Marsh got a job as a lawyer with the SEC.”

  He looked down at his shoes. Confidential informants were sacred names that carried curses. Cursed was the cop who burned his snitches by speaking their names in the wrong company.

  Fourteen years ago, he would have preferred to shoot Chester Marsh in the head instead of bleeding him for information on a criminal client. But Riker had been blindsided by an agreement between Marsh and the District Attorney’s Office. Such deals were standard currency, done all the time, but this one had been done behind Riker’s back, and the stench of it would never go away.

  After that case had been wrapped, one of Marsh’s honest clients died—a suicide. The lawyer had embezzled an old woman’s money and cost her a berth in an upscale retirement home. A backroom agreement with the DA had allowed that thief to skate on restitution, and so Nora Peety, left with nothing and no one to take her in, jumped down to the subway rails and into the path of an oncoming train.

  Before choosing the A Train to take her life away, she had mailed a letter to the nice policeman, the sympathetic one, who had held her hand for days and days, while gathering dirt to turn her thieving lawyer into a snitch. The lady’s goodbye note to Riker had no salutation or signature, only eight words written in a faltering, spidery script.

  One line.

  It had destroyed him.

  Nora had loved James Taylor. She had played his music all day long, and maybe counted on Riker to recognize the final line of a refrain, lyrics to a song of fire and rain.

  “I always thought that I’d see you again.” That was all she wrote.

  When her suicide train had come and gone, it left a stain on Riker. He called it murder. He took all the blame. And he had lost three days to binge drinking before unpacking his guilt for Lou Markowitz, a man who could be counted on to keep secrets.

  Kathy Mallory, a child in those days and an eavesdropping brat, had listened in and made off with the name of his snitch. The kid had later invoked Chester Marsh, just testing the value of her goods, when she tried to extort Riker for coins to feed the lunchroom’s snack machine—literally blackmail for peanuts.

  The little girl had picked her moment well—his first day out of rehab for cops who saw the spiders of delirium tremens. Riker had never been more vulnerable—and yet he had held the advantage in that short negotiation. He had a store of holy kid words like rat. “Okay,” he had said to her then, “do it now. Tell everybody what you got on me. Tell ’em all how Nora Peety died. You know why they don’t already know that story? It’s ’cause I’ll never rat out a snitch, not even that sack-a-shit lawyer. There—are—rules.” Then he had spread his arms wide, saying, “Take your best shot, kid.”

  Kathy had quietly slipped away from the lunchroom. On toward the close of that bad day, Riker had found a bag of peanuts lying on his desk.

  A peace offering.

  An understanding.

  And she had never again mentioned Chester Marsh, not till today. So, all those years ago, he had taught her nothing lasting. Kathy the child had only saved away the snitch’s name in her little toolkit of useful things. This sad thought was writ on his face when he raised his eyes from the floor to see his partner smiling at him. But it was not a gotcha smile, and that threw him for a moment.

  “Riker, is there anyone you hate more than that cockroach lawyer? . . . You want payback for the old lady?” Mallory turned to her computer and scrolled back the text to show him the logo of the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Marsh got a severance package when he left the SEC. He can’t practice law anymore. That was part of their deal to get rid of him. But they gave him a government pension.”

  Oh, this was so wrong. “You gotta do twenty years to qualify for a—”

  “Right,” said Mallory, “Unless the feds were worried about blowback on a dodgy case—like Polk’s. So let’s call it payment to keep Marsh’s mouth shut. But if he talks, his deal gets rescinded. He was only there for ten years, so the pension isn’t much, but it’s all he’s got. You can take it away from him—rob him just like he robbed the old lady.” She swiveled her chair around to face Riker. “And you won’t be burning a snitch. Nothing to do with that old business. This is a new game. He’s just a material witness—no deals, no protection.”

  Mallory was offering him another present, something bigger than a bag of peanuts.

  —

  “WHAT’S IT FEEL LIKE TO KILL PEOPLE?” Iggy stabbed one of the grilled hotdogs with a fork. It was like that. But, to answer the boy, he said, “You get used to it. Just a job.” He slid the cooked meat from his fork to a bun and laid it on a plate. “There you go. Dig in, kid.”

  The boy wanted all the details of doing murder. He was soaking up every word—just like school.

  “I keep it simple. No noise, no witnesses, nothin’ the cops can track back to me.”

  Iggy saw no need to mention that he had been caught his first time out. An insurance-company investigator had found the neighborhood bar where that first deal was done, where the money had changed hands. Then he had followed the breadcrumb trail out of that place and down the street to the apartment Iggy had shared with his mother. Gail Rawly had pushed his business card under Ma’s door and, later that same day, over a few rounds of beer, Iggy had learned a lot from that insurance man.

  “Every job’s got rules, I guess. I never hire out to nobody I know.” Digging up business was Gail’s job. But the big rule? Never kill anybody he knew. Well, that on
e was shot to hell. And so was another one: Don’t talk to the meat.

  Iggy rarely talked to anybody. For these past five years since the girl went away, his longest conversation had been with the old man who owned the garden shop down the road, but they only talked roses. He sure as hell never thought of socializing with Gail, that smug asshole, who never got his hands dirty, who fancied himself a damn businessman.

  After sitting down to his hotdog and beer, and with his mouth full of meat, he gave the little boy more pointers on contract killing. “Oh, yeah, there’s the surprise blitz attack.” That one was a staple of the trade. On the subject of the murder kit, he said, “You don’t wanna get too fancy. For most of it, you buy cheap, untraceable stuff.” Iggy was a Walmart shopper.

  When the boy was one bite into his second helping of hotdogs, he asked, “So everybody has the same rules?”

  “No idea what the rest of ’em do.” He had never even met another one of his kind. Ah, kids and their cop shows. “It’s not like we all get together and exchange secret handshakes. No exposure. That’s the key thing.”

  But had he somehow given everything away to Angie? Did she know how he made his living? The girl had never asked. That was the upside of hookers—no nosy questions. Even so, after coming home to find that the few belongings she kept here were gone, he had spent many a night camped in the woods, watching for cops, wondering if his house was safe—and what had she known?

  Why had the girl gone away?

  Tonight, he would get answers from Mrs. Quill. He was owed an explanation to jibe with what Angie had done on the street that day, the last day of her life.

  The kid raised his hand—just like school. He had another question about murder.

  12

  The detective pulled out a chair at the heavy oak table, and he sat down with his back to the wall of a saloon that he called home, though his apartment was upstairs. Riker would not call himself an alcoholic, nothing that grand. He owned up to the lesser title of Garden Variety Drunk, and he had this in common with his former snitch, Chester Marsh. Short on cash these days, Marsh would shop a baby for body parts just to buy more booze. Most drunks would stop short of that, but Riker held a lower opinion of lawyers.

  The bartender, a retired cop, stood behind the long plank of mahogany that spanned one side of the room. Off-duty police drank here, and civilians were made to feel unwelcome—with one exception tonight. A former government attorney sat at Riker’s table.

  Marsh’s silk suit was showing its age, and it no longer fit him, nor did his cleanest dirty shirt. “So what’s it been? Fourteen years?”

  “Give or take,” said Riker. “I hear you landed a job with the SEC.”

  “Yeah, but I quit a while back.”

  You weasel, they fired your ass . . . but let’s pretend.

  Riker set a paper bag on the table, and he lowered the brown wrapping an inch at a time, a striptease for a bottle of single-malt whiskey beyond the purse of a pensioner who lived in one-room squalor. Marsh smelled like he had gone days without a bath, though he had shaved for this sit-down, and there was evidence of the shakes in every nick of the razor. The disbarred lawyer stared at the bottle just beyond his reach, and his eyes had the shine of true love.

  The detective pulled the brown bag back up around the capped whiskey and held it hostage in both hands. If called upon in court to swear to a snitch’s sobriety, the bartender could easily testify that this cockroach had not been served liquor in the presence of police, nor had he been intoxicated when he entered the bar. Though Marsh had tremors in his hands, there had been no weave to his walk.

  “I had nothing to do with Andrew Polk’s case. No idea why that guy’s not in jail,” said the thief who had all but pushed the elderly Nora Peety in front of a subway train. “I never saw any paperwork for a settlement.”

  “Fine. . . . You got nothin’ for me.” Riker rose from his chair, cradling the bagged bottle in one arm.

  “Hang on,” said Marsh. “I do remember the buzz around the office . . . gossip, mostly.”

  Riker settled down in his chair and set the bottle on the table. “Yeah?”

  “Maybe I handled some paperwork—busywork, stuff like that. But it never went to court. No corroboration. Polk’s victims never had a bad word to say about him.”

  “But the feds had something on him,” said Riker. “What was it?”

  “Hey.” Marsh, spread his hands to say, How should I know? “I’m only guessing here, okay? Let’s say Polk copped to a breach of ethics. A pansy charge, but at least they get to pull his license and knock him off Wall Street. From Polk’s point of view—that beats a trial, even one the SEC can’t win. He’d figure that was too messy, too public. It was election time. But I’d bet my pension Polk strung them along—wouldn’t sign till after he took office. Then maybe our new mayor gets amnesia. Settlement? What settlement? He might need that broker’s license if he can’t cut it in politics. But now? Polk’s going after a second term. He has to sign. So I guess he surrendered his license.”

  Mallory was right. This man had read some early form of that settlement. And the recent signature date explained why the SEC document was walked out of the mansion in the pocket of the mayor’s aide—one hour before the Crime Scene Unit came knocking on the door. Dicey timing, but all high rollers loved high risk. They lived for it.

  “So,” said Chester Marsh, “you can bet Polk’s settlement was loaded with a nondisclosure clause. No formal court filing, nothing to mess up the next election.”

  The ex-lawyer reached for the bottle.

  Riker held it back. “We need a list of Polk’s victims. Pare it down to the ones with open wounds. Who hates the mayor most?”

  The lawyer pulled back his hand, as if Riker had burned him—and he had.

  “Oh, right. Tell me you don’t have Polk’s client list in your pocket. I’m not buying it, Riker. I know what you’re doing. You need details on that scam. The big losers on the list, they still won’t rat him out, right? And the SEC won’t give you squat.”

  Close enough, though all Riker needed was confirmation of a suspect list that his partner already had. And to pass the smell test with a judge, only a federal witness would do. The list of scammed investors had to come from a source who was not a cop—and sure as hell not Mallory.

  Marsh folded his arms against the detective. “So you have to milk dirt from an insider. Like me. Like I’m gonna break my severance agreement, lose my pension ’cause I love you so much? How stupid do you—”

  “So Polk only burned his own clients—not all of ’em, just the big losers on one stock swindle. That’s my victim list?” Oh, damn right. He had nailed this little bastard on that score. He could see it in that sudden oh-shit expression on the ex-lawyer’s face.

  And—bonus—Chester Marsh felt obliged to reiterate this aloud, saying, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” accompanied by table pounding. He was so loud that heads were turning all around the room.

  “So that’s a yes,” said Riker. The mayor’s former clients were on the public record, and now their likely implication in murder was also on record. He pushed the bottle toward Marsh. “Enjoy.”

  Payment for a snitch.

  No need to further wreck the cockroach’s night by disclosing the fact that the detective was wired for sound. Riker had what he came for, a documented, pared-down list of suspects with cause to be insanely get-even angry with Andrew Polk. He also had a witness on a sound track that would back up any warrants they might need for one of those angry people. And with the first warrant served, Chester Marsh’s government pension was good as gone.

  Payback for an old lady who took the A Train.

  —

  “THE FIRST STAR.” Iggy Conroy leaned back in his patio chair. “And it ain’t even half dark yet.”

  “First mosquito.” The boy smacked his arm, but not quick enough. He must b
e tired. He was flat out of questions to keep a conversation going. The kid’s fingers tapped the arms of the chair, and he rocked himself like a cradled baby, not liking the quiet.

  “Some things about the city I don’t miss,” said Iggy. And the boy stopped rocking. “More stars out here in the sticks. They look like weird little matches floatin’ up there. Flame but no heat. Too bad you can’t see ’em.” He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke drift until the rocking started up again on the other side of the table. The kid needed noise, and so Iggy said, “Nothin’s gotta look like somethin’. I know it’s no good askin.’ If you can’t tell dark from light, then maybe you’re walkin’ around in white soup. But somebody should’ve figured this out by now.”

  “Someone did,” said the boy, “someone who could see. Try this on. When you close your eyes—”

  “Yeah, yeah. I see black.”

  “No, I told you. You don’t see anything—not with your eyes. They only take in what the brain needs to make up a picture inside your head. With your eyes shut, the brain’s got nothing to work with. It has no idea what’s going on out there. So when you close your eyes? When you think you see black? That’s the brain lying to you. It’s telling you the story about what life looks like when the lights go out. It’s a trick. But your brain knows what black looks like. Mine doesn’t. It can’t fool me that way.”

  “So how the hell would you—”

  “Just close your left eye. . . . You don’t see black with that one, do you? No, your brain doesn’t need to make up a story for that eye. A stream of real data’s coming from the one that’s still wide open. . . . It’s the closed eye that shows you what nothingness looks like.”

  With one eye open, Iggy saw everything, even a shadow on the bridge of his nose, but no lights-out blackness in the eye that was shut. He saw nothing from that one. The closed eye might as well not be there. “I get it.”

  Now he knew what death looked like, too. Nothing. And so he knew where Angie was and where the boy was going.