"What can I do for you?" the squat, blunt detective asked.
"I want to talk about Mendoza."
"Aren't you a little late?" Stoney couldn't conceal his disgust.
He really didn't put in much time at charm school.
"I was on another case. Now that's cleared. Today I start full-time on Mendoza. Are you willing to work with me or not?" "What've you got in mind?" Stoney asked.
"Clury: Who bombed him and why?"
"You ask interesting questions, Janek. Buy a new car yet?"
"Huh?
"I, m just curious. What kind of car does a guy buy when his old one's blown away? Or maybe he decides not to replace it. If they hit you once, they can always hit you again." "Okay," Janek said, sitting down, "we got off on the wrong foot. I'm no longer in the Detective Division. My squad is working directly for the commissioner. We've got one case.
Clury could be the key. You've already put in legwork. I want to collaborate. I'm serious."
"I notice you don't ask me to join your squad." "If I thought you'd consider it, I would." Stoney smiled. "Tell me about Clury. What do you know about him?" Janek told him everything he knew, and that he'd been given two new pieces of information. The first, from a reliable confidential source, was that someone might have had a reason to kill Clury that had never been explored. The second, from a source in Cuba who had deliberately tried to mislead him, was that Clury had been investigating Jake Mendoza on Edith Mendoza's behalf.
"Well, to me that's all garbage," Stoney said. "I deal in bombs, explosives-who makes ', who sets ' off."
"What did you find in Nassau County?"
"Couple of things. Clury's car was parked in his drive way all night, but none of the neighbors saw anyone tampering with it."
"Is that important?"
"It was ignition-wired, so the bomber had to open the hood. That's taking a chance, with the car right next to the house and the guy you want to kill inside."
"Bomber must have figured Clury was asleep."
"He could have woken up. He's a cop. He's got a gun. He could have shot the bomber. It doesn't smell right." Janek thought about it; he wasn't sure yet how. it smelled.
"What about the bomb signature)"
"That's not exactly like a fingerprint. But I checked it out. From the records it's only shown up twice, once on Clury's car, once on yours."
"What does that tell you?"
"That the bomber isn't a professional. Oh, he makes a good bomb, but he doesn't do it for a living. He only does it when it concerns Mendoza."
Interesting. "Anything else?"
"He wasn't self-taught. Whoever taught him taught him to do it right.
There're not too many places you can learn to make a bomb. Most likely he learned in the military."
"So, that's it?"
Stoney nodded. "Why're you so pleasant today?"
"Was I unpleasant before?"
"You didn't cooperate. I couldn't figure you, Frank. You'd lost your car but you didn't seem all that interested."
"I guess I wasn't focusing on it."
"But you are now. Got any ideas?"
"I'm wondering about something.. "What?"
"Not sure yet." Stoney smiled. "Well, let me know when you are sure.
I'll be here."
He stuck out his stubby hand.
It chewed at Janek the rest of the day-the notion that something about the Clury story was wrong. It continued to bother him after he went back to Detective Division files and read everything he could find on Clury in the Mendoza folders. There wasn't much. Clury, although a cop, had been viewed as the secondary victim. Most of the investigators' time had been spent on Edith; hers seemed a simpler homicide to solve.
When Janek finished reading, he realized he hadn't a clear sense of who Clury was. He called for Clury's personnel file, waited two hours for the clerks to find it. A dead cop meant a dead file; a cop nine years dead wasn't even in the computer. When, finally, they brought him the material, it was after six P.m. Hungry and tired, he decided to give it a quick look, then return in the morning to tackle it fresh.
Two minutes into it he was wide awake. According to Howard Clury's military records, the deceased detective had graduated from the Naval Demolition School at Coronado, California, then served as a demolition specialist in South Vietnam, 1971-1972.
He went out, ostensibly to get coffee, but he was so excited he didn't bother to stop. Instead he walked rapidly down to the Battery, and then just as rapidly back to Police Plaza. It was after seven when he signed back into the file room. Clury's personnel folder was just where he'd left it, on the long wooden table beneath the fluorescent lamp.
Approaching, he was seized by a throbbing anticipation, which reminded him of the excitement he'd felt perhaps a half dozen times in his career when he knew he was about to turn a case around. He thought: Thank you, Netti, for steering me to this.
There were no autopsy photos of Clury. The explosion had blown him into pieces. So, how had his body been IDed? By fragments of clothing, Janek learned-wallet, watch and ring, and, most decisively, a segment of bridge- work authenticated by his dentist. No fingerprints had been taken; evidently no fingers had survived. Janek found that curious. He also found it curious that Clury's wife, Janet, from whom he'd been separated but not divorced, had come up from Florida to attend his funeral, then signed papers authorizing cremation of his remains.
Janet Clury, as survivor of an officer killed on active duty, had been the beneficiary of a substantial lump-sum widow's payment plus pension.
Janek sat back. He wanted to think the implications through:
Certainly someone had been blown up inside Clury's car. But was it Clury?
If it wasn't-as the twice-used bomb signature suggested-then what was the connection between Clury's faked-up death and the Mendozas?
Timmy Sheehan's investigators had theorized that Clury had been blackmailing both Mendozas. Tania had told Janek that Clury had been working for Edith Mendoza, collecting information on Jake's infidelities to strengthen her hand in a planned divorce suit.
But suppose neither of these stories was right. Suppose Clury (who had worked for Jake Mendoza a year before) had played a part in Edith's death. Suppose he'd been paid to kill her. Suppose afterward he set up Metaxas, then arranged his own disappearance.
If that's what happened, Janek analyzed, Mendoza couldn't finger Clury.
If he did he'd also implicate himself. But now that Mendoza was stirring things up in Cuba, Clury might have reason to fear that his nine-year-old charade was about to be exposed.
Clury never met me. Maybe he thought he could scare me by bombing my car.
It was a wild theory, he had to admit, but perhaps it would stand the test. For instance, suppose Clury had had some other reason to want to disappear. If, Janek decided he could discover that, then maybe he could clear up a couple of other little dangles that had baffled anyone who had ever attempted to clear Mendoza-such as whether Phyllis Komfeld's claim that she had forged the Metaxas note was fact or fantasy, and, if fact, whether Komfeld had been killed to keep her from talking or because some drugcrazed burglar got carried away.
It took him hours to get to sleep, and, even then, he didn't sleep well.
He kept waking up with new combinations to be examined.
The great problem of Mendoza, he understood, was that no one who had looked into it had ever been able to figure out the sequence and the "whys."
What had been the motives of the principal players?
What, in the huge body of investigative material, was coincidental or extraneous?
Where was the entrance to the overgrown trail, which, if followed, would lead from a reasonable beginning to a plausible end?
If he could locate that path and clear it out, he might be able to trace a coherent story.
He fell asleep around two, but then was awakened at four by the harsh grinding of garbage trucks collecting refuse in front of bars and resta
urants on Amsterdam Avenue. The sound reminded him of the relentless grinding of Mendoza through the years. The mills of the gods, he thought. Then, quite suddenly, he was seized by an idea.
He checked his bedside clock. It was four-thirty. If he got up he'd have sufficient time to shave, shower, tape on a microphone pack, then dress and taxi over to Cort City Plaza with perhaps a half-hour cushion before meeting The Dark One as he emerged for his morning constitutional.
At Cort City, waiting for the dawn, he asked himself again why Dakin had chosen to live in such a place. Either he's shallow and empty as the development, or he's so lonely he needs it as a refuge from his demons.
At exactly six Dakin stepped out the front door of his building, face grim and taut, body angled forward. He took a half-dozen aggressive strides before he noticed Janek. Then, acting not at all surprised, he gestured awkwardly with his hand.
"You again." Dakin's yellow eyes sliced Janek up and down.
Janek, falling into step beside him, asked: "Clury was dirty, wasn't he?"
"Hub? What's that?" Dakin cupped his hand over his ear. "Better walk on my other side."
Janek didn't change position. "Last time you told me your hearing was better on your right. Now you're telling me to walk on your left. Cut the bullshit, Chief, and answer the question. Clury was dirty and you were on to him. You'd have taken him down, too, if he hadn't gotten himself blown up."
Dakin showed a tight, sparse smile. "Practically had my hands on his balls." He puffed his cheeks. "Another inch, I'd have had him in a nutcracker."
Bastard! But Janek knew he would have to apply some flattery. He desperately needed Dakin's knowledge.
"Was Clury dealing?"
"Naw! Too smart for that! He was tipping them off, a double agent.
Most all of them are, you know-our brave undercover narcs!" Dakin's sarcasm was palpable; he was not a subtle man. "You know that. They're all slime snakes. Otherwise they wouldn't be so happy in the slime."
"How'd you get on to him, Chief?"
Dakin smirked. "I had my own agent in place. He'd penetrated the same group. But my guy was after something else." Dakin ma dea little squirting sound. "Oh, old Howie was raking it in, though we never found any of the loot. I figure his widow got hold of it, stashed it away. You know how it is in IA? When the suspect dies it's ' closed." That's policy," he added, in case Janek didn't know.
"What'd you have against Timmy Sheehan?" Dakin snorted. "Another slime snake."
"But you could never make the case, could you, Chief'?
So you thought you'd make up a case. Isn't that what you did?"
Dakin broke his stride. "What're you talkin' about?"
"I'm talking about Phyllis Komfeld."
"Ancient history. You already beat me on that. Why bring it up again?"
"I'm bringing it up because there's a lot more to it."
"Such as?"
"You tell me."
Dakin strode two steps before he spoke. "You've been in my old files, haven't you?"
"I've seen a few things," Janek bluffed.
"What're you trying to prove, Frank? I'm out of the Department. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
"I want to hear the story from your own lips."
"One of those, are you?"
"We're both one of those, Chief. We like a good confession. Today I'm here to hear yours."
"What the hell! Woman comes to me with a good story. No point wasting it. So I put it to use."
"She IDed Clury, didn't she? But Clury was dead. So -you convinced her to finger Timmy. What I don't get is how you did it. They didn't look alike at all." Dakin smiled. "Komfeld was nuts. I could've gotten her to swear to anything. Told her there might be some reward money in it if she could make the story stick."
"So you suborned perjury?"
"Wouldn't put it that way." Dakin shrugged. "Like I said, it's ancient history. Sheehan got off. I got tossed. Kinda backfired on me, wouldn't you say?"
"I think there's some backfiring yet to come."
"Hub? What do you mean?"
"Obstruction of justice. It's still a crime, Chief, even if it didn't work."
The razor eyes sliced him back and forth.
"You're wired, aren't you?" Janek nodded. Dakin stopped, then his yellow eyes flickered. "Wasn't enough to run me out. Now you want to nail me to the cross." Jesus! He sees himself as a little cop Christ! "There's more," Janek said.
"Is there now?" A droplet of saliva flew out of Dakin's mouth.
"A little surprise."
"I could use a good surprise."
"Maybe not this one. See, Chief, Clury wasn't killed in that explosion.
He's still walking around."
"What the-?"
But Janek was walking away, toward the Baychester Avenue station.
"Alive! Can't be!"
Dakin was still shrieking when the train thundered in. Janek turned to give him a final look. Dakin's mouth was working, but no sound came out, just an expression of incredulity and rage.
Janek thought: He may die of a heart attack before he gets to prison.
It was nine o'clock when he got to Timmy's rentcontrolled walk-up, a block from O'Malley's, on First and Ninety-fourth. The building looked pretty much like Janek's except that the graffiti was more heavily encrusted, and there was a faint odor of wet dog fur in the foyer.
Janek rang the bell. When he didn't get an answer, he went back out to the street and phoned Timmy from a booth on the corner.
"Yeah?" Timmy didn't sound too good.
"It's Frank."
"That you ringing downstairs?"
"I need to see you."
"Come back later." "Now!" Janek said. The battery pack he'd taped to his stomach was starting to itch.
"Tough today, aren't we, partner?"
"I got news for you."
"What kinda news?"
"Your friend Dakin may be going to jail."
"That's good news. Come on up!"
Timmy's khaki pants were dirty, his shirt was stained, he hadn't shaved in a couple of days, his thick hair was out of control and his eyes glowed like a thirsty drunk's.
He cleared a chair, sweeping off a mound of clothing, then sat down on his unmade bed. Janek sat and looked around. There were stacks of newspapers on the floor, a heap of laundry in the corner. When he followed Timmy into the kitchenette, he noticed a pile of discarded orange rinds in the sink.
"How can you live like this?"
Timmy shrugged. "Free country, isn't it?"
Janek thought: A man who lives like this doesn't like himself much.
Mugs of coffee in hand, they resumed their seats. Then Tiimmy asked what he had on Dakin.
"Conspiracy to obstruct justice," Janek said. "When Komfeld came in, her story was different from what we were told. She said another detective had paid her to forge the Metaxas note. Dakin persuaded her to finger you."
"You're kidding!"
Janek peered at him. "So, what'd you do, Timmy, that made Dakin hate you so much?"
"I was an honest cop doing an honest job. Dakin's a psycho. You know that."
Sure, but Janek also knew that when Dakin went after someone he had a reason. And why doesn't Timmy ask who the other detective was?
"Last time we got together-"
"A most unpleasant occasion," Timmy reminded him, raising, his brows.
"-you said something I haven't been able to shake."
"What?" "You said: ' by some fluke you happen to stumble into the real heart of the thing, something bad might befall you.
Timmy grinned. "Still think I bombed your car?"
"I'm not talking about the threat. It's that real heart of the thing."
What is the real heart of the thing, Timmy? What do you know that you haven't told anyone all these years?"
"What do you know, Frank?"
"Maybe more than you think."
"You were always a good bluffer."
"Not this time." "That's wh
at a bluffer always says."
They stared at each other. Then Janek spoke: "Maybe you bought into Metaxas a little too quick, Timmy. Maybe you knew he'd been set up, but didn't care. Maybe you wanted Mendoza so much you were willing to overlook certain problems with your evidence."
Timmy began to pace. "That afternoon, when I walked into his hotel room-it seems like… just yesterday. I can still remember the way the furniture was arranged, how the light broke in through the gauzy curtains. The smell from the bathroom, too-steam and blood. Soon as I walked in there, saw Gus lying in the pink bathwater, I thought of you, Frank. A phrase of yours started going through my brain."
"What phrase?"
"I remember just how you used to say it: ' slick, I'm not buying in, partner." it was those words that hit me when I walked into that bathroom. Gus in the tub, wrists cut neat, knife in the soap dish, suicide note on the dresser. It was just… too goddamn perfect. As was the money order, and the real sincere look in Pefia's eyes when he confirmed Gus's story. Too slick, too good to be true. But then I thought: ', someone's left me a nice package here. If the writing on that note checks out, I could wrap this thing up, put Mendoza away for offing Clury, come out a cop hero from this thing." " Timmy paused. "You know how r it is, Frank. You always want to catch a great case. That's how you build a legend. That's what makes the young guys look up to you, whisper about you when you pass them in the hall. '! There goes Sheehan.
He's the one broke Mendoza. Great case, great detective.
You can learn a lot from him." You were already a legend, Frank. This was my chance to be one. So I bought the scene, just the way it was laid out, even though I knew it was phony. And once you do a thing like that … there's no turning back."
Timmy let his arms hang loose. The gesture seemed to be an expression of regret, but Janek wasn't satisfied.
"All right," he said, "you made a deal with yourself. The scene felt wrong, but you bought it anyway. Still, you must have asked yourself:
Who laid it out so neat?" Timmy shook his head. "I didn't care."
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