A Murder of Justice (11 page)

 THIRTEEN

F
rank pulled off Florida Avenue at Tenth Street. In the middle of the third block, he turned into a lot full of cars and pickups in various stages of tear-down or build-up. A cinder-block building squatted on the back half of the lot. An ancient coat of white paint had been beaten threadbare by the weather, and you could barely read “Savoy” in an orange Coca-Cola script above the entrance.

The garage had the rich, organic man-smell of automobiles: grease mixed with motor oil, laced with slivers of solvent and brake fluid. From a hidden boom box Eric Clapton competed with the pneumatic hammering of impact wrenches. Frank found José in the last bay, head under an open hood, body bent over the front fender, peering into the engine compartment of a dark green convertible and in deep discussion with a mechanic beside him.

Frank and José had found the ’65 Mustang in a Maryland barn after six months of weekend hunting. The top and upholstery had rotted, and generations of chickens had deposited layers of droppings on the paint. But the body
hadn’t rusted, and the frame had lined up true. And there were the plusses: 83,000 honest miles, no power-anything, a heavy-duty sports suspension, and a 271-horse V-8 harnessed to a Borg-Warner four-speed transmission.

“Getting rid of spare change?” Frank asked.

José backed out from under the hood.

“The Josephus Phelps foreign aid plan,” he said, putting a hand on the mechanic’s shoulder. A stocky dark-haired man straightened and showed a mouth full of white, even teeth.

“Meet Gustavo Montoya. I’m putting his kids through college.”

Montoya winked at Frank. “Just my daughter at Harvard.” He turned to José. “I have ready for you this afternoon. Six-thirty
máximo
?”

José nodded.
“Bueno.”
He stood back and surveyed the car. “And they say houses are a money pit.”

Frank let his eyes run along the Mustang’s lines. “That’s a classic. Classics are supposed to do that.”

“You want a share of a classic?” José asked.

“I’ll pass.”

They left the garage and walked toward the car.

“I missed the late news last night . . . the interview? . . . the congressman?”

It took a moment to register.

“Oh . . .” José said, “the congressman . . . Richie Rich . . . hundred-dollar haircut, designer glasses with those little lenses.”

“He say anything?”

“How he was outraged. How his subcommittee’s going to get to the truth . . .” José sniffed. “The usual political shit.”

Frank unlocked the car and opened his door. “You ready for more?” He asked across the top of the car to José.

“More what?”

“The usual political shit.”

C
hair cocked back, his feet on Frank’s desk, Leon Janowitz was drinking coffee and reading the Gentry case file.

“Make yourself at home, Leon,” Frank said.

Janowitz looked up and smiled. He swung his feet off the desk and levered forward in the chair. “I heard I’m working with you guys.”

“José and I decided to do our part, keeping kids off the street.”

Janowitz looked wounded. “I turn thirty next month.”

Frank gestured to the coffeemaker. “Making coffee’s my job.”

“Mine is . . . ?”

“You,” José said, “are our one-man task force.”

“I’m honored.”

“What do you know about the Gentry case?” Frank asked.

Janowitz tapped the file. “That Milton fucked it up and you guys got it on your plate.”

“What’s this ‘you guys’ shit?” José asked.

“
We
guys,” Frank corrected. “We guys got Gentry
and
Skeeter.” He pointed to the Gentry file. “Get into that. Deep as you can.”

“And don’t talk to Milton before you talk to us,” José added.

“Why’s that?”

José held up a finger. “One, because I said so, young man, and two”—he held up a second finger—“because like you say, Milt fucked it up. No sense you startin’ from where Milt is . . . or was. Better you start from your present state of ignorance.”

Janowitz nodded. “Okay.” He drained his coffee, got up, and tucked the Gentry file under his arm. “You guys going to the press conference?”

José frowned and looked at Frank, who shrugged.

“Yeah,” Janowitz said, “about the Gentry case. The mayor, Chief Day, and Emerson . . . front steps.”

I
n the street, TV relay masts towered over mobile control vans. Headquarters doors opened. Three men clustered around microphones, with Mayor Tompkins, neat and bowtie precise, in the middle.

“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” José whispered.

He and Frank slipped through the crowd to get closer. Tompkins drew an index card from his pocket. Cameras clicked.

“I have a short statement. I’ll be followed by Chief Day and then by Captain Emerson of Homicide.” Tompkins paused and took a deep breath. “Yesterday, I learned that mistakes were made in the closing of a particularly tragic homicide case—”

“ ‘Mistakes were made,’ ” José echoed. “They just
happen
. Nobody
does
anything.”

“Bureaucratic immaculate conception,” Frank whispered back.

“Accordingly,” Tompkins was winding up, “we are reopening the investigation of Mr. Kevin Walker Gentry’s homicide.” The mayor stowed the index card in his pocket and turned to his right. “Chief Day?”

Noah Day, a big, hulking man, scowled as though, somewhere in front of him, the killer hid among the reporters and cameramen.

“Ladies and gentlemen”—his voice sounded like granite boulders grinding together. “I have some background information for you. . . .”

He cranked up what department insiders dubbed “Noah’s Numerical Fog Machine”—an avalanche, a flood, a veritable tsunami of statistics and data. A rapid-fire chatter of numbers on everything that could be counted that had anything to do with crime and punishment.

José let the numbers flow through part of his consciousness while he thought about Skeeter Hodges, then found himself thinking about Edward Teasdale. Then he worked on making the connection back. Something, perhaps the inflection in Day’s recitation, made him break off.

“. . . but numbers don’t tell the whole story,” Day was
saying as José surfaced and the meeting with Teasdale faded.

Day powered into his standard closing. “And performance isn’t in the talking, it’s in the
doing
.” Like a bull eyeing a matador, he swung his big head back and forth, wanting to make certain the small brains in front of him had absorbed his wisdom.

Apparently satisfied, he stepped back, and Emerson came front and center.

“As Chief Day said”—Emerson smiled—“the performance isn’t in the talking, it’s in the doing.” He shot a suck-up glance toward Day, then looked out over the reporters. “Open for questions,” he announced.

The gabbling and hand thrusting reminded Frank of third-graders trying to get the teacher’s attention.

Emerson pointed into the crowd. “Ms. Lewis?”

Lewis went straight for the throat. “Two years ago, you held a press conference. You told us Zelmer Austin had killed Mr. Gentry. Are you telling us today that he didn’t?”

Emerson pursed his lips and worked his jaw muscles. “That’s not being said,” he replied, erecting the passive-voice fortress of a seasoned bureaucratic warrior. “What’s being said is that there is insufficient evidence to identify Austin as the killer.” Emerson’s eyes darted, searching for an escape route.

Like an intercepting hockey goalie, Lewis angled herself back into Emerson’s line of sight.

“So you had evidence once . . . now you don’t? Is
that
what you’re saying?”

Emerson looked around desperately. No raised hands. Dozens of pairs of eyes watched him squirm.

“Is
that
what you’re saying?” Lewis persisted.

Emerson coughed, started to bring his hand up to his tightly knotted necktie, then, apparently thinking better of it, dropped the hand. “There,” he began slowly, “have been changes in . . . ah . . . the . . . um . . . evidentiary base.”

“The evidentiary
base
?” Lewis repeated scornfully before she sprang the trap. “Isn’t it a fact that you solved the
Gentry case by a bureaucratic dodge? That you relied primarily on the testimony of an informant, and that then, on the basis of that testimony, you declared Austin the killer and the case closed?” She paused just long enough to gather momentum and not long enough to let Emerson reclaim the floor. She delivered high and hard. “And haven’t you found that the weapon that was used to kill Skeeter Hodges was also used to kill Gentry?”

Emerson searched the chief’s face, then the mayor’s. Their blank expressions offered no refuge.

He knows she has the goods, Frank thought. He tries to dodge now, and the shit will get even deeper.

Emerson took a deep breath. “That has been found to be the case.”

“And so Zelmer Austin didn’t kill Kevin Gentry.”

Emerson held up his hands in a “Halt there” gesture. “It may be that renewed efforts as described by Mayor Tompkins and Chief Day will produce proof that Austin was indeed the killer,” he said. Then, quickly moving his head up as if to see farther back into the ring of reporters, he found a raised hand. “Next question? Yes? Hugh Worsham?”

“Oh, shit,” José breathed.

Worsham, who made a living out of anarchy, confusion, and the failures of others, stood almost within arm’s length of the two detectives.

“What”
—Worsham chopped out a histrionic pause—“what are
you
, Captain Emerson, going to do about this imbroglio?”

Emerson winced. “Ah . . . Hugh . . . would you care to rephrase that?”

Worsham rolled his eyes and heaved a suffering sigh—
I have to put up with such fools
. “What, Captain Emerson, are you doing to make certain something like this doesn’t happen again?”

Emerson decided to play. “
Cer
tain, Hugh? We can’t be
certain
of achieving perfection, as much as we try.” Emerson shot a sly smile at the mayor and Chief Day. “But we can reduce the probability of such errors.”

“How?” Worsham followed up.

“One step we’ve already taken. I’ve ordered a thorough internal review of our evidence-handling process. And to ensure this is an unprejudiced review, I am suspending the person who has been responsible for that process.”

“This person have a name, Captain?”

Emerson paused. Frank thought he saw Emerson’s eyes graze those of Chief Day. Emerson returned to Worsham.

“Yes, Hugh. He is the head of our forensic analysis. Dr. Renfro Calkins.”

 FOURTEEN

F
rank! . . . Goddamnit! . . .
Stop!
”

Grabbing his right arm and left shoulder, José spun his partner around, backing him against a parked patrol car.

“That son of a bitch.” Frank heard the words come up from the murderous roaring inside his head and chest.

José clamped him into a bear hug and brought his mouth close to Frank’s ear. “Let . . . it . . . go, brother.”

The words came slow and deep, and Frank tensed as though to break José’s grip.

“Let’s get out of here,” José said.

“I want to talk to that bastard.”

“Not now.” José tightened his grip on Frank. “You go in there now, all you’re gonna do is get a ration of his shuck-and-jive bullshit. Then you’ll get more pissed an’ do something dumb.”

A moment like a year finally passed and the roaring inside faded into the distance and he could breathe again and he felt José’s arms loosen.

José squeezed the back of Frank’s neck. “Let’s go find R.C.”

R
enfro Calkins lived on T Street, NW, in the 1700 block, not far from Dupont Circle. The house was on the end of a group of four red-brick row houses in a diverse neighborhood at an intersection of Washington’s black, white, gay, and Hispanic communities. A block west, the semiluxurious Washington Hilton, where Ronald Reagan had been shot. A block north, the beginnings of Adams-Morgan. A small brass plaque by the doorbell announced that the row houses, built in 1887, had been registered with the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Frank rang the bell.

The door swung open.

“Yes?” The smile of surprise began before the question died away. “José! Frank!” Elsa Calkins pulled the two men through the doorway and into the living room. Petite and fine-boned, Elsa stood on tiptoe to kiss each of them on the cheek. She smelled of vanilla and nutmeg, and her dark curly hair glistened in the light.

“How’s he doing, Elsa?” José asked.

Tears welled in her eyes. “He’s better than I am. Come on.” She led them down a hallway lined with framed displays of exotic seashells. “Almost twenty years,” she said, her voice bitter. “Now this. They throw him out. Shut the gate.”

“It’s only a suspension, Elsa.”

She stopped at a closed door and turned to face Frank and José. “It’s a travesty.” She glared at them, then turned, knocked once, and opened the door.

Shelves and bookcases covered the walls. An antique walnut desk in the center of the room faced French doors leading to a small walled-in garden.

Renfro Calkins, seated at the desk, swiveled around. Surprise flickered across his face, followed by a look of withdrawing caution, as though he’d pulled himself back into a protective shell. He stood, one hand on the back of his chair, the other resting on a large ledger open on the
desk. Several smaller notebooks also lay open. He followed Frank’s and Jose’s gazes.

“Updating my journal. If I don’t capture my thoughts right away, they just fly off.”

José nodded. “What happened, R.C.?” he asked in a voice heavy with concern.

Calkins gestured toward a couple of chairs. He and Elsa exchanged a wordless message, and she left, shutting the door behind her. The sound of the door had a finality to it, and the three men sat as though time had stopped.

José broke the silence, asking again, softly, “What happened, R.C.?”

Calkins thought about how he might describe it, then lifted a piece of paper out of the clutter on his desk.

“Two gentlemen from IAD walked in, served me with this.”

He handed the paper to José.

José studied it, then handed it to Frank. It bore the Internal Affairs Division letterhead.

“It says IAD’s investigating procedural compliance,” José said.

“It also says,” Calkins added, “I’m suspended.”

“With pay.”

“Nice of them.”

“Internal Affairs,” Frank asked, “they say anything?”

“I asked. They just pointed to that.” Calkins gestured to the letter.

“Then what?” José asked.

“Then they sealed my files, my computer, my office door. Then they escorted me out of the building.” Calkins’s eyes moved to middle distance, reliving the scene. “In front of all my people . . . they escorted me out of the building,” he said in wonderment, as though he couldn’t believe it had happened. He brought his eyes back to focus on Frank and José, then smiled ruefully. “At least they didn’t cuff me.”

Frank felt a vicarious flush of embarrassment and stole a glance into the garden. A sparrow fluttered in a
lichen-covered birdbath, and Frank searched for something to say. José got there first.

“How you doin’, R.C.?”

Calkins frowned at José like a man who’d been asked an impertinent question. “Doing? Why, I’m updating my journal.” He motioned to his desktop. “Later, I’ll be cataloguing additions to my stamp collection. . . .”

“That’s not what we mean, R.C.,” Frank put in. “Inside . . . you okay?”

That brought Calkins to a halt. He pondered that for a moment, then ventured out. “Am I disturbed?” Another second’s thinking. “Yes. Certainly, I’m disturbed.”

A pause.

“Am I angry? Yes . . . I suppose so . . . somewhat.”

Another pause, then, “But am I despondent?” Calkins shook his head emphatically. “No. Definitely not. Evidence will out, Frank, evidence will out. We run a responsible and professional shop. And
that’s
what’s going to be found out when the evidence is in.”

Frank found part of himself cheered at Calkins’s certainty, another part worried about the same certainty. He tried to shut out the worry side.

“I’m sure it will, R.C.”

I
talian sausage, Muhammad.”

“José?”

“Steak supreme.”

Muhammad scratched out the orders and handed Frank and José their numbered call slips.

Mon Cheri Cafe was open six a.m. to three a.m. Sunday through Thursday, and twenty-four hours a day Friday and Saturday. Gleaming white ceiling with bright fluorescents, scrubbed floors of large black-and-white square tiles. Muhammad or one of his brothers was always there. So was a steady stream of police, laborers, taxi drivers, and old-time Georgetown residents.

Frank and José took a table at the back along the wall.
At a table toward the front, an old man sat by himself, drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.

“This is a clean and pleasant café,” Frank said. “It is well lighted.”

José squinted at Frank. “You been reading Hemingway again?”

Frank smiled. “Can’t help myself.” He watched the old man get up and take his cup to the front for a refill. “You know, don’t you, how IAD’s going to go after R.C.?”

José nodded. “But R.C.’s a man with faith in the system.”

“Let’s hope he’s not disappointed.”

Muhammad called their numbers. Frank added a Diet Coke to his tray, José picked out a cranberry juice. For several minutes they ate in silence, concentrating on keeping their overstuffed sandwiches together.

“I’m full.” José put down the last of his sandwich and wrung out a paper napkin. He wadded the napkin and dropped it on the table. “R.C.,” he began experimentally, “you don’t think there’s a chance IAD can tag him with something? Anything? I mean, Emerson needs a scapegoat bad.”

Frank shrugged. “I think there’s always a
chance.
But do I think there’s any
probability
?” He shook his head, answering his own question. “Slim and none. R.C.’s too meticulous.”

“Yeah.” José nodded.

“So?”

“So maybe we ought to talk to Milt some more.” After a second thought, José finished off his sandwich.

The two men locked eyes.

“IAD investigation’s under way,” Frank cautioned. “Milt’s a material witness.”

“Unh-hunh.”

“We go talking to Milt, that could bring down a load of shit.”

“Unh-hunh,” José agreed. “Sure could.”

F
irst the sleek sound of precision-milled metal turning. Then light breaking the darkness, framing a man in a doorway. The figure flicked a wall switch. Nothing. A muttered curse. The man closed the door behind him and made his way through the dark. A table lamp suddenly snapped on. The light caught Milton in the middle of the living room, keys still in his right hand.

“Evening, Milt,” Frank said.

“Hi, Milt,” José chimed in.

“What the fuck?”

Frank motioned to the sofa. “Why don’t you sit down, Milt? We’d like to talk.”

Surprise kept Milton rooted in the middle of the room.

“Renfro Calkins,” José rumbled. “Frank and I think a good man’s being railroaded to save Emerson’s ass.”

“So? So why the fuck does that give you the right to bust in here?”

“Sit down, Milt,” Frank said pleasantly.

Milton paused, as though weighing what to do.

“Sit down, Milt,” Frank repeated, this time not so pleasantly.

Milton took a seat on the sofa, both feet on the floor, hands guarding his crotch, fingers interlaced.

“We’d like to understand better how you came to close the Gentry case. You had to rely on this snitch.”

“Yeah.”

“The snitch told you that Zelmer Austin’s woman said that Austin did Gentry.”

“Right.”

“The snitch have a name, Milt?”

Milton mumbled something.

“I didn’t hear you,” Frank said.

“Cookie.”

“He have a last name?”

“Yeah, but he wouldn’t give it to me. Real hard on that. Like he was scared. And look, Frank, José, the guy knew the hold-out details. He knew stuff he couldn’t a read in the
papers or see on the tube . . . how many times Gentry was shot, what time it was, no money taken.”

“You find him, Milt?” José asked. “Or did he find you?”

Milton took a deep breath of resignation. “He called me. We met.”

He looked at Frank and José, pleading with his eyes. “Emerson and the chief put the squeeze on me. I didn’t want to close the case on the snitch alone. But before I could say anything, they were out with a press release saying we’d found the killer.”

“You didn’t say anything to Emerson?” José asked. “Like hold up on the release?”

Milton’s face clouded. “I . . .” He began, then stopped.

His chin dropped a fraction, his shoulders sagged. “Emerson called me in,” Milton whispered hoarsely. “Asked me how I was doing. I told him we had good poop from the snitch . . . about how the guy knew the hold-out details. Emerson damn near danced around that desk of his. I told him I wanted more before signing off on the Three-oh-four-point-one. But he waved me off. Said he’d already told the chief, the chief had already called the mayor.”

“Essentially, Emerson told you to shut it down.” Frank said.

Milton looked at Frank, then at the ground. “Not exactly . . . not so many words . . . but I knew what it was he wanted.”

Frank looked at José, who was staring at his shoes with the embarrassed expression of a man who’d stumbled on another man’s private weakness.

We’ve all been there
, Frank wanted to tell Milton.
Maybe we didn’t make your mistake. But we know what it was like . . . how close we came.

The three men sat silently, all aware of what had happened, none wanting to say any more about it.

J
osé started the car and checked the rearview. “You’ve had a hot day,” he told Frank. “Gave your blood pressure a workout.”

Frank slumped in the passenger seat. His anger gone, in its place a debilitating fatigue.

“Emerson really got to him,” José said, pulling out into the evening traffic.

“One thing about Cookie what’s-his-name . . .”

José nodded. “About getting the story from Austin’s woman?”

“Funny that Austin would tell her the hold-out details.”

“Ha-ha?”

“No,” Frank said, gazing at the headlights of the oncoming cars. “Not ha-ha funny.”