by Davis Bunn
“Gazelle!” The cop looming over him pointed and shouted, “We got us a gazelle; he’s over the rear fence behind Exeter!”
Two cops took off as Connie came limping over. She said to the cops gripping Matt, “Let him go; he’s one of ours. Sort of.” She stepped in closer and demanded, “What on earth were you thinking?”
“That you’d taken a hit.”
“Didn’t I tell you I was okay?”
“You sounded hurt.” He spotted the stain on her arm. “How are you?”
“It’s a scratch, Skippy. Ricochet. Stone.” She was holding her forearm with her hand, so she pointed with her chin at his leg. “He get you?”
“No. The old wound opened up again.”
“Hang here a second; let me make the preliminary report. Then we’ll go get patched up.” She grinned at him then, her dark eyes sparking. “Having fun?”
“Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. Catching the bad guys, saving the good ones; this is my idea of a very good day.”
Matt and Connie Morales shared a ride to Mercy Hospital. It was, according to Connie, the closest ambo delivery slot to Little Italy. Connie continued to astonish him. She sat up in the stretcher across from his own, rocking easily with the overweight truck as it wailed its siren through the afternoon traffic. She watched everything with happy interest, as though having a rock slice her arm was reason enough to dance.
The ER doctor was totally unfazed by Matt’s reopened wound. “The new tear is minor. Your wound is healing clean,” he announced. “I’m going to forget about repacking and stapling. Think you can avoid another bout of search and destroy for a few days?”
“Sure.” Matt could hear Connie complaining beyond the curtain that she didn’t want anything that was going to draw focus from the day’s events, and the doctor insisting that he needed to probe the wound. Matt said, “I was expecting punishment detail for bringing this in.”
The doctor applied goo and gauze. “This close to the Fells Point projects, we see a lot of cops. This wound is almost closed. You’re working the muscles; you’re keeping it uncontaminated. Not to mention the fact that you’re keeping the streets clean.”
“Trying.” Matt flushed with unexpected pleasure at being classed as just another cop.
“Then we can’t complain, can we. Okay. You’re good to go. You need anything for the pain?”
“I’m okay, thanks.”
The doctor gave him a brisk emergency-room nod. “Hold off the exercises for a day or so; that should be long enough. You got anything to wear?”
“Just the trousers I came in with.”
“They’ve been tossed. Hang on, I’ll get you some scrubs.”
A nurse with a top-sergeant’s air brought him a pair of light cotton pants and informed him that the other police officer had gone upstairs for a scan. Matt took a seat along the waiting room’s back wall. He observed the frenetic flow and let the exhaustion and the adrenaline aftershock ease back a notch. He shut his eyes and saw the gun swivel toward his face. Only this time it came all the way around.
He jerked back to ER reality. He turned on his phone to discover he had seven messages from Judy Leigh at the Times, all repeating the same message in steadily rising panic: Call me. He did and gave her a blow-by-blow, handing all the credit to Connie.
The nurse returned to tell Matt the lady cop was asking for him and directed him back to a long, half-empty ward. Connie lay on the covers, her bloodstained shirt cut off at the shoulder. Her forearm was strapped with a bandage so white it looked starched. She grinned at the sight of him. Which was understandable. Matt wore a filthy dress shirt, dark polished loafers, and pale blue drawstring surgeon’s pants.
Connie said, “Send in the clowns.”
“They dumped my trousers.”
“Yeah, they wanted to do the same with my blouse. I told them, a genuine Donna Karan from Filene’s Basement? No way. How you doing, Skippy?”
“All right.” He settled into the chair by her bed. “Why do you call me that?”
The doctor had obviously given her something for the pain, for her grin was a little loopy. “I don’t know. Since when were nicknames supposed to make sense?”
“You had to have a reason.”
“You look like such a white-bread wonder boy. The fed who’s been raised in some totally safe world. Not a trace of street to his name. Got peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with milk after school. Like that. Skippy.”
“I know street.”
Her laugh was a full-throat affair, deep and genuine. “Sure you do.”
An orderly appeared, pushing a wheelchair. Connie obviously knew the routine well enough not to argue. “You handled yourself well out there; I got to give you that.” She offered Matt her arm and let him help her settle. “Push me out of here, will you?”
“Sure.” Matt found himself wanting to tell her about Vic and the full-contact dojo. Which was amazing. He had never mentioned his martial arts training to a soul. His mother had found out only because she had followed him one afternoon. His father still did not have a clue. He admitted, “I’ve never had a nickname.”
“That’s totally bogus.”
“We moved all the time. I had four eighth grades in three different states. I guess I was never in any place long enough to get tagged.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got a couple you’re welcome to.” She pointed to the nurses’ station. “Hold up here. I’ve got to sign before they open the gates.”
When they pushed through the doors into the ER waiting room, Connie’s good mood vanished. “There goes the neighborhood.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Everything.” Connie braked with one foot on the floor. She was unsteady but determined as she pushed herself out of the chair. “Been nice while it lasted.”
Matt spotted the homicide detective he had last seen in the lieutenant’s office. D’Amico was talking to another man Matt did not recognize. “They’re probably here to see me.”
“Wish you were right. The guy to your right is Lieutenant Calfo, head of my division. His primary role in life is to make my life miserable.”
“That’s crazy. You just saved a cop’s life.”
Connie walked over and said tonelessly, “Lieutenant.”
“Who gave you permission to respond to a call?” Calfo was narrow in every aspect of his being—jaw, hair, eyes, and voice. He shook his head in pure disgust. “Of course, given your past record, I should have figured you for such a stupid act. You just handed me your career on a plate. But I guess you know that.”
Matt felt an unexpected stirring in the normally empty space between his gut and his rib cage. The space that didn’t appear on any medical chart. The one that hummed and vibrated to atmospheric shifts, the way people spoke or looked at him, the subtle changes that nobody else seemed to notice. Matt had a lifetime’s experience of suppressing his emotions. Even in an unfamiliar environment where he was both new and too good-looking, or at home with his Jekyll-and-Hyde father. Now he felt himself coming to an uncontrollable boil.
The lieutenant had a cop’s experience of fronting down dangerous people. Yet the change in Matt’s expression caused him to blink. “You got a problem here?”
“Officer Morales just saved a policeman’s life. Get out of her face.”
Everybody looked at him. Connie, a passing doctor, the homicide detective, the lieutenant. D’Amico was the first to respond. “Ease up there, Kelly.”
“Kelly,” the lieutenant repeated. “You’re the unauthorized ride-along?”
“You say one more word to Connie,” Matt said, “and I’ll break your jaw.”
For some reason, D’Amico found that reason enough to disguise a laugh with a cough. The lieutenant gave the detective a sour look before asking Matt, “You looking to get arrested?”
“Go right ahead,” Matt offered. “I’ve got an interview lined up with the Baltimore Times. I’ll be happy to describe how the Baltimore poli
ce reward their best officers with reprimands, and let the scum rise to the top.”
Connie said, “The lieutenant is just here for my resignation. Same as every day. Isn’t that right, sir?”
The sad cast to her features only fanned Matt’s rage. He said to the cop, “Crawl back in your hole while you still can. This is your last warning.”
The lieutenant looked from one face to another. “Feel free to stop by my office any time, Officer Morales. Long as it’s before tomorrow’s roll call.” He stormed away.
Detective D’Amico watched the other man depart with mild amusement. He said to Connie, “I take it you’ve told our visiting fed about your little incident.”
“Not word one, sir.”
D’Amico liked that enough to smile at Matt. “Want to tell me what happened out there?”
Connie replied for him. “We gave our report at the scene, sir.”
“I’m sort of responsible for the kid here. Give it to me from how Kelly happened to be in an unmarked police vehicle.”
Matt and Connie related the events in turn. D’Amico listened and said nothing. When they were done, he asked, “How were you getting home?”
“Cab, I guess.”
“Hang on a second; let me go get my car.”
“We can make it fine, sir.”
“Take it easy, Officer.” D’Amico patted Connie’s good arm. “Let me do a little something for one of our own.”
For some reason the detective’s words creased her face with very real pain. D’Amico pretended not to see. “I’ll be right back.”
When they were alone, Matt asked, “What incident?”
Connie took a long breath. “You never said you knew the Rabbi.”
“He’s one of the detectives handling my mother’s case. What did you call him?”
“Rabbi. He’s extremely religious.”
“He’s Jewish?”
She looked at him. “With a name like D’Amico? Get real.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Cop nicknames are supposed to be prickly.” She gave a professional’s pause, then added softly, “Skippy.”
“I asked—”
“I know what you asked. I’m trying to decide whether I want to tell you or not.”
“Whatever.”
“Don’t go huffy on me.” She sighed. “Lieutenant Calfo’s nickname among the female officers is Hands. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“No.”
“When I arrived at Division One, he took me for my first ride-along. Just showing me the Fells Point projects, or so he said. Making me drive so both his hands were free to roam. When I refused to get back in the car with him, he started searching for me in out-of-the-way spots. He’d block my way and make lewd suggestions.”
“Why didn’t you report him?”
“He’s a cop.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you were around for a while, you’d know. Number one, he doesn’t do anything where there’s a witness. Number two, he’s part of the cop world, which is very male and very tight. You bring a fellow officer before IA, EEOC, the union, especially a green recruit like me, you’re done.”
The agony in her face was such Matt couldn’t bring himself to ask what had happened.
She told him anyway. “I had a bad day. My boyfriend and I broke up. Hands caught me coming out of the locker room before roll call. Made his standard offer. I just couldn’t take it. So at roll call I stood up. In front of the entire watch, I asked him how he’d feel if somebody harassed his wife like he did me. Or his daughter. Or how he’d like his wife to hear what he’d been saying to me. Because that was exactly what would happen if he ever spoke like that again. One word and I was driving to his house. I had his number.”
“I’m really sorry—”
“Yeah, well, I don’t need your sympathy, Kelly. I’m doing just fine.”
“No you’re not.”
“Sure I am. The lieutenant just said it. All I got to do is stop by his office and I’m on my way. One step from a bright new future.” She looked at him then, her dark eyes brimming. “Who needs this grief anyway, right?”
The detective drove his Crown Victoria in what Matt considered typical cop fashion. Eyes scanning everything, foot heavy and impatient. D’Amico gunned through potholes like a kid meeting a puddle. He dropped Connie at a town house in Locust Point, an area that could not decide if it was up and coming or sliding into oblivion. He helped her up to the front door, smiled her inside, returned to the car, slipped back behind the wheel, and said to Matt, “So tell me what happened back there in Little Italy.”
His leg was hurting him now. Enough that he wished he had accepted the doctor’s offer of a painkiller. “We already did.”
D’Amico’s tone did not change. Even so, he slipped from amiable cop to detective in the space of one sentence. “Pretend I’m somebody who might actually be able to do something for you. If I wanted. Which I’m not at present sure I do.”
Matt forced himself straighter in the seat. “What do you want to know?”
“What neither of you said before.”
“We told you pretty much everything.”
“There’s never everything.” He scooted around traffic like it wasn’t there. Beeped his horn at someone too slow off the light. Took a corner far too fast. If he’d been a civilian, he could have been arrested for careless and reckless. “You’ll wake up in the middle of the night and think of something that’ll jar you hard as a hammer. I’m asking you to think about it now.”
It was there before the detective had finished speaking. “She was so cool.”
“Who, Officer Morales?”
“Connie was shouting into the radio. Before. When we heard the shots. She yelled something, I don’t remember what. And floored it.”
“Did she have the siren on?”
“Just the light. I guess we were too close already for her to bother with the siren.”
“I’m not asking to get her into trouble. I just want the full picture. So she didn’t have on the siren, and she drove hard down the street.”
“We’d already turned off the main thoroughfare. I don’t know the name.”
“President.”
“We heard the shots, she radioed it in, and she jammed down on the accelerator. We did a wheelie around the corner, and bam. We got hit.”
“They blew out your windscreen.”
“Right, like she said. We were running blind.”
“And they’d taken out your tire.”
“Yeah, we skewed pretty hard after that. That car of hers was terrible.”
“That ride definitely won’t be missed around the division. So that was when you did the ski jump over the curb.”
“Right through the shop window.”
“What happened then?”
“She ordered me out of the car. We rolled under and jammed up close to the wall out of firing range. She made sure I was okay, then moved forward for a look-see. Radioed in the shooters’ positions and the officer down. Then we planned out the attack.” One part of Matt’s brain told him why the detective was talking him through it, showing he was right there. The other part, the main part, was reliving the moment again enough for his heart rate to surge. He could feel the glass in his face as he rolled from the car. Smelled the bizarre combination of gunfire and perfume. “She was so totally in control. Absolutely calm. She knew what had to be done and she was ready. She didn’t want me to get involved either.”
“But you did.”
“The officer was trapped across the street and she needed cover fire. We were huddled between the tires and the side wall, taking fire from the guy in the bank door. The other guy we couldn’t see.” Matt wiped his hands up and down the surgical trousers. The flimsy cotton went a shade darker with his sweat. “It was so fast.”
“And loud. A thousand things going off at once, and all that popping.”
“She wanted to save the ot
her cop. I knew that was her first concern. But she had to cross the street. And the other police cars were taking forever.”
“They always do.”
“So I offered to lay down cover. She made me cool enough to think. I don’t know how I’d have been if . . .”
D’Amico pulled up in front of the brownstone on Eutaw Place. He just sat there and waited. “What I’m hearing is, Officer Morales is a good cop.”
“A great cop.” Matt swallowed hard. “Better than me.”
D’Amico gave a quiet little huff Matt thought might have been a laugh. Or just quiet approval. “I doubt that.”
“Can I ask you something?”
D’Amico shifted in his seat. His eyes were heavy lidded now, revealing a cop’s readiness to deny Matt access. But all he said was, “Sure.”
“Did you make the right-wing fanatics for culprits in the bombing?”
D’Amico blinked twice, measuring him. “Who is asking?”
“Just me. It’s not going anywhere further.”
“Then the answer is no. I followed up with every known suspect. Statewide there is only a handful who could handle an explosive device like the one that took out your mother. They and their bat-wing followers. Everything checked out.” He gave it a second’s pause, then, “Mind telling me why you don’t make them for this?”
“They’ve never been foes. Oh, they made noises. Mom talked about them sometimes. But there was never a sense of real threat. Never a warning of any kind, you know, ‘Don’t come to our hills or you’ll go home in a box.’ Nothing.”
“You did homegrown terrorist training in your ops school?”
“A lot.”
“So you know what you’re talking about.” D’Amico gripped the steering wheel, twisting his hands back and forth. “First time I heard the reporters spouting off, the whole thing sounded pat. Like what happened with the race issue down south thirty years ago. Any crime goes unanswered, we dump it on that side of town.”
Matt knew that was all he would get that day. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” D’Amico waited until Matt climbed from the car to ask, “Aren’t you going to ask me about a transfer from your cubicle in Records?”
