by Stuart Woods
The bookshelves stood empty and bare of finish, ready for varnish, the first of ten coats he planned. Tomorrow, the helpers would come back to sand again. He opened a gallon can of varnish, selected a brush, climbed the ladder, and started at the very top, spreading the sealer with long, straight strokes. It was simple, mindless work, the sort that he needed for thinking. He let his mind wander at will over the events of the past days.
Stone knew he was not the first honest policeman to find himself in this position. When a police department had a major crime on its hands, especially one where the victim was a celebrity, what it needed was an arrest – preferably, but not necessarily, of the actual perpetrator. As time passed without a resolution of the crime, pressure increased on the department to produce results, and after a while the pressure could become too much for certain of its members. Assignments were at stake – promotions, careers, pensions – and policemen, just like everybody else, would finally act to protect themselves. Stone reckoned that most of the innocent people in prison had been sent there by police officers and prosecutors who reasoned that these victims were, after all, probably guilty of something, and better a conviction of an innocent person than no conviction at all.
He had seen it happen, but always from a distance. Now he was involved, whether he liked it or not, and he had a decision to make: he could keep his mouth shut and let Dino, Leary, and their superiors try to railroad Hank Morgan; or he could speak up – go directly to the mayor or the newspapers and create a stink. The first course would protect his job, his career, and his pension; the second would subject him to the contempt that came to any policeman who went against his partner and his department. He would be transferred to some hellish backwater, shunned, ridiculed, perhaps even set up to be killed – sent first through some door with death waiting on the other side. It had happened before. Most of all, he would be separating himself from the work to which he had devoted his whole adult life. He would be a man alone, with enemies, and with no friends or support. It was the law of the cop jungle, and no man could last long on the force when he was subjected to it. It was time for him to decide if he was, after all these years, a cop.
The doorbell rang, causing him nearly to topple from the high ladder. He climbed down, moving carefully, cautious of the bourbon inside him. He went to the front door.
Dino stood there. He was dressed to kill in a new suit, obviously on his way to some girl. “We got to talk,” he said.
“Come on in.” Stone led him to the study. “The booze is in the kitchen. I’ve got wet varnish going here; I can’t stop.” He climbed back up the ladder and started to paint again.
Dino came back with something in a glass with ice. “What are you going to do?” he asked. He didn’t have to explain; he knew Stone understood the situation.
“I don’t know,” Stone replied, brushing on the varnish.
“You know what’s going to happen, you go against the grain on this one.”
“I know.”
Dino still hadn’t drunk from his glass. “Stone, you got a lot of time in. A little more than five years, you can walk away with half pay and go practice law, you know?”
“I know.”
“You and I got four years in together. You’re my partner. I respect you.” Dino shook his head. “Jesus Christ, Stone, I love you like you was my brother.”
Stone kept brushing. “Thanks, Dino, I knew that, but I’m glad you told me.”
“I don’t want nothing to happen to you, Stone. I’ll feel responsible.”
“Dino, whatever I decide to do, it’s on my head, not yours. I know the score; I know what can happen. It wouldn’t be your doing.”
“Well, thanks for that, anyway.”
“You’re welcome.”
Dino stood looking up at him. “Stone, I gotta know what you’re going to do.”
Stone stopped painting and looked down at his partner. “Dino, I swear to you, I just don’t know.”
Dino looked down at the floor and shook his head. He set the untouched drink on the floor and left without another word.
Stone heard the front door close. He kept painting, smooth and even strokes. He kept sipping the bourbon.
Chapter 27
Stone woke at seven and turned on The Morning Show. Nothing on the national news. He waited impatiently for twenty-five minutes past the hour and the New York affiliate’s news. Nothing. Surprised, he got out of bed and dressed.
His decision had been made while he slept. Over an English muffin, he reflected that he had always wondered what would happen if he had to choose between the right thing and the department. His choice surprised him.
He picked up a Daily News at the corner newsstand, expecting another headline about the arrest of Hank Morgan. Nothing. Suddenly, for some reason, the leaks in the precinct had dried up.
The squad room was filling up with the morning shift of detectives, and Dino was already at his desk.
“Hi,” he said. “Leary wants to see you.”
“I figured,” Stone said.
“You decide?” Dino asked.
“Yeah.” He turned away and started for the lieutenant’s cubicle; he’d let Dino stew for a while before he told him. He knocked on the glass door, and Leary waved him in.
Stone sat down and waited. He’d make Leary ask him.
Leary looked at him for a long time before he spoke. He reached into a large, yellow envelope and extracted a letter. “Stone,” he said finally, “the results of your physical came in.”
Stone was surprised. “The doctor said it’d be next week.”
“It’s today.”
“Great. The sooner I’m officially back on full duty, the better.”
“You’re officially retired, for medical reasons.”
Stone stopped breathing, stared at Leary, unable to speak.
Leary handed him the letter.
Stone read it.
Detective Barrington has suffered severe, perhaps irreparable damage to his left knee as a result of a gunshot wound received in the line of duty. In spite of extensive surgery and physiotherapy, the knee has not responded to treatment sufficiently to permit a return to active police duty. The prognosis is unfavorable. It is therefore recommended that Detective Barrington be retired from the force with immediate effect and with full line-of-duty disability benefits.
Stone dropped the letter and stared at Leary’s desktop, his eyes unfocused.
“You can ask for a reexamination after a year,” Leary said, “and, if the results are favorable, apply for reinstatement. Of course, if you were reinstated, that would mean a transfer to other duty and probably a loss of seniority.”
That was clear enough to Stone. Don’t come back. In a flash, he saw himself floundering through a series of unsuccessful appeals.
“There’s no point in appealing this,” Leary said, reading his mind. “You’re out, and that’s it.”
“I see,” Stone said, for lack of anything else to say.
“Let me have your ID card,” Leary said.
Mechanically, Stone removed it from his wallet and handed it over.
Leary took some sort of stamp from a desk drawer, imprinted the card, and handed it back. The word retired had been punched into the card. “You can keep your badge, and you’re entitled to carry your gun, like you were off duty.” He handed Stone a thick envelope. “Here are your papers. Fill out the insurance forms and send them in; you’ll still be covered under the department medical plan for life. Your pension will be three-quarters of your highest grade pay, tax free. That’s a good deal. There’s a check in the envelope for the first month.”
Stone couldn’t think of anything to say, and he couldn’t seem to move.
Leary leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk. “Look, Stone,” he said, not without sympathy, “you’re a good investigator, but you’re a lousy cop. What you have never understood is that the NYPD is a fraternal lodge, and you never joined. You always bothered people. Being whit
ebread didn’t make it any better; I mean, just about everybody on the force is micks, guineas, yids, spics, or niggers. They got that in common. But you’re fuckin’ J. Stone Barrington, for Christ’s sake. That sounds like a brokerage house, not a cop, and you never even let anybody call you Stoney. A lot of the men respect you – I do; but nobody trusts you, and nobody’s ever going to. You were never really a cop; you were always a college boy with a law degree and a badge.”
Stone took a deep breath and struggled from the chair.
Leary started shuffling papers. “Good luck,” he said.
“Thanks,” Stone managed to say as he turned for the door.
“And Stone,” Leary said.
Stone turned and looked at him.
“Stay out of the Nijinsky thing, you hear me? I don’t want to read any of your theories in the papers.”
Stone left, closing the door behind him. Numbly, he walked back to his desk. Dino was gone. On top of Stone’s desk was a cardboard box containing his personal effects. He looked around the place; everybody was busy doing something.
Stone picked up the cardboard box and walked out of the squad room. Nobody looked at him.
Chapter 28
The phone was ringing as Stone walked into the house. He picked it up. “Hello?”
“Detective Barrington?”
“Yes?”
“This is Jack Marcus at the Post. We’re doing a follow-up on the Nijinsky story; does your leaving the force have anything to do with your dissatisfaction with the way the investigation is being conducted?”
Stone was taken aback for a moment. The precinct was leaking again. “I’m leaving the force for medical reasons,” he said.
“Weren’t your superiors happy about the arrest of Henrietta Morgan?”
“You’ll have to ask them about that.”
“Do you think Hank Morgan pushed Sasha off that terrace?”
“I don’t have an opinion about that. I’m a civilian.” He hung up the phone. It rang again immediately.
“It’s Cary. It just came over the AP wire.”
“That’s pretty fast reporting. I only heard myself an hour ago.” He had walked home from the precinct.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m okay. Let’s have dinner tonight.”
“I wish I could. Barron’s doing a prime-time special on murder in New York for Friday night. He’s shooting every day, and we’re editing every night.”
“Come over here when you finish tonight.”
“I wish I could, Stone; God knows, I’d rather be with you, but you have to understand about my job. I’ll be working fifteen-hour days all this week.”
“I’m sorry I pressed you; I know the job’s important.”
“It is, but I’ll see you Saturday night for dinner at Barker’s.”
“Sure.”
“Why don’t you relax for the rest of the week? Do some work on the house.”
“I don’t have anything else to do.”
“We’ll talk about that Saturday. I’ve got to run now.”
“See you.”
“Take care.”
Stone put down the phone. He could hear the noise of sanding coming from the study. The shelves would be ready to varnish again by late afternoon.
He went upstairs to his bedroom and stood looking at himself in the mirror over the chest of drawers. Nothing seemed different. He unstrapped the gun from his ankle, took the badge wallet from his pocket, and put them both in the top drawer, at the back, under his socks and underwear. As always, he felt naked when he wasn’t carrying them. He would have to get used to feeling naked.
He was suddenly overcome with fatigue. He stretched out on the bed, still wearing his trench coat, and closed his eyes for a minute.
When he woke, it was dark outside, and the noise of sanding had stopped. He still felt exhausted, but he struggled out of his trench coat and suit and into work clothes. Downstairs, he repeated his actions of the evening before – ate lasagna, made a drink, varnished. By the time he went to bed, he was drunk.
The next morning, he forced himself, in spite of the hangover, to work out on the exercise equipment; then he took a cab to Central Park and ran twice around the reservoir. It was a clear autumn day, the sort of day he loved in New York, and it lifted his spirits somewhat. He got a sandwich at the zoo and watched the seals cavort in their pool. What would he do tomorrow, he asked himself, and the week and the month after that? He knew how easy it would be to let himself descend into depression.
He finished his sandwich and found a pay phone, which, miraculously, had an intact yellow pages. He found the number and learned that the next bar exam was in three weeks, and the next cram course began the following Monday. He signed up on the spot, giving them a credit card number to hold his place. The thought of sitting in a classroom repelled him, but the thought of doing nothing was worse.
He bought the Daily News and the Times and looked for news. Hank Morgan had been arraigned the previous afternoon on the weapons charge and had been released on bail, which her father had covered. The Times report went no further than that, but a News columnist tied her to the Nijinsky case:
There is little doubt that Henrietta “Hank” Morgan is the chief suspect in the fall of Sasha Nijinsky from the terrace of her East Side penthouse. While everyone connected with the case has declined comment, police sources say that it is only a matter of time before enough evidence will be marshaled for the D.A. to seek an indictment. But an indictment for what? At the moment, there seems to be no proof that Sasha Nijinsky is dead, and even the police have not tried to link Morgan to her disappearance. It looks to this observer that the best the cops can hope for is an indictment for attempted murder, and one wonders how they could get a conviction on even that charge without producing either Nijinsky or her dead body.
It was starting now. The groundwork was being laid for a failure to convict Hank Morgan of anything, the implication being that, even though the police couldn’t get enough evidence against her, they knew she was the guilty party. They had solved the crime, and that would get the department off the hook; never mind that Morgan, supposedly innocent until proven guilty, would be branded as a murderer and would live the rest of her life under a cloud.
For the first time, he felt glad to be out of the department. He looked at the photograph of Hank Morgan leaving the court with her attorney, mobbed by photographers and reporters, their lips curled back, screaming their questions. The woman looked terrified, even worse than she had looked in the interrogation room. There was the real victim in all this; Sasha herself had become a secondary figure to the newspapers and television news programs.
Stone forced himself to jog home, and he arrived thoroughly winded.
The answering machine was blinking; he pushed the button.
“Hello, there Det… uh, Mr. Barrington. This is Herbert Van Fleet. I was very sorry to read in the newspapers about your retirement from the police force. I hope my mother’s letters to the mayor didn’t have anything to do with this. She has been a big contributor to his campaigns, you know, and she’s known him for years. I don’t guess I’ll be seeing you in the line of duty anymore – the FBI seems to have taken over, anyway. Can I buy you lunch sometime? You can always get me at the funeral parlor.” He chuckled. “I guess you have the number.”
Stone gave a little shudder at the thought of having lunch with Herbert Van Fleet.
There was a message from Cary, too. “Sorry I couldn’t get over. We worked past midnight, and I was exhausted. I wouldn’t have been any good to you. It’s all over on Friday, though, and I promise to be fresh and ready for anything on Saturday night. I’ll have a car; pick you up at eight?”
There was one more message. “Stone, it’s Bill Eggers, your old law school buddy, of Woodman amp; Weld? I heard about your departure from the cop shop. I’m in LA right now on a case, but I’ll be back in the office on Monday. Let me buy you dinner next week? I want to talk about somethi
ng that might interest you. I’ll call you Monday.”
Stone spent the rest of the week working furiously on the house, making remarkable progress, now that he had the time. There were five coats of varnish on the bookshelves by the weekend, and they were looking good. He got all the floors sanded with rented equipment and got the tile floor laid in the kitchen. A few weeks more, and the place would start to look like home. A bill came from the upholsterer that put a serious dent in his bank account, and he remembered the letter from his banker and the note, which would be due soon. He tried to put money out of his mind. It didn’t work.
Dino didn’t call.
Chapter 29
On Saturday night, Cary turned up not in just a black car but in a limousine. Stone was waiting at the curb, and he slid into the backseat laughing.
He gave the driver the address and turned to Cary. “Are you sure the network can afford this?”
She raised the black window that separated them from the driver and slid close to him. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve been putting in so much overtime, they owe me.” She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.
“There goes the lipstick,” he said.
“Fuck the lipstick.” She kissed him again and ran her hand up his thigh to the crotch. “Fuck me, too.”
“In a limousine?”
“Why not? The driver can’t see anything.”
“We’ll be at Barker’s building in three minutes.”
“That’s just time enough,” she said, unzipping his fly.
Before Stone could move he was in her mouth.
She was very good, and he was very fast; by the time the chauffeur opened the door, Stone had already adjusted his clothing, and Cary had reapplied her lipstick.
“You’re amazing,” Stone whispered as they entered the building. He was trying to bring his breathing back to normal.
