Break and Enter (43 page)

“Where’s the boss?” Peter asked.

“He called in and said he’d be late,” she answered.

“Do you know where, exactly, he is?”

“No, Peter.”

He wasn’t sure he believed her. “No number where he can be reached?”

“He can’t be reached,” she said firmly.

WITH THE LAST OF HIS DOLLARS,
he bought a cheesesteak, which he wolfed down, then checked on his car and his gun. Not wanting to return to the office, he stood anxiously outside City Hall, numbed with exhaustion and worry, a tall man wrapped in a thick coat, thinking in the cold. Perhaps Hoskins was huddled in the Mayor’s offices that very moment, figuring a way to finish off another errant Assistant District Attorney. He turned away from the building and looked west. The skeletal framing of another huge office tower had climbed over the older buildings; in a generation he would be an old man remembering a city that no longer existed, a city of the previous century. It seemed clear to him that he and Janice would be together, perhaps having moved out of the city, or maybe even still living in the Delancey Street house, the mortgage paid off, kids through college, his parents near the end. It was this conventional future he craved now.
Concentrate, you motherfucker,
he swore to himself,
get it all back.

And so he marched back into the office ready, again, and it was then that Cheryl slipped through his door and told him she had found Charlie Geller and that he wanted to come in and talk.

“What?” Peter exclaimed. It seemed impossible that Johnetta’s killer would walk into his office. “You sure you got the right guy?”

“Positive, Peter.”

“How in hell did you find him?”

Cheryl gave him an affectionately sarcastic look. “He was in the phone book. Most people are. I reached his wife and she gave me a number.”

“Okay,” Peter said, “okay, just let me have his number and I’ll give him a call. Wait a minute. Better yet, you make the call, see when you can get him in here.”

Then Cheryl was back.

“He says he’s got an hour free. He wants to come in now. That okay?”

With Hoskins out of the office, at least for the moment, this was an opportunity. So he told Cheryl yes, still not understanding why the sad man would willingly visit the District Attorney’s office. Only the innocent were usually so forthcoming. It might mean Geller was giving himself up, perhaps in return for protection from the Mayor. That seemed unlikely; a deal like that would be negotiated through intermediaries who translated across race and class. It was more probable that the Mayor knew what Peter was up to and had ordered Geller to march in and lie if accused, or otherwise provide false information. Maybe Geller had been told to find out what Peter was thinking.

He couldn’t accuse Geller without a prepared warrant or detectives ready to make an arrest. There was no official awareness of Geller as a suspect. Peter began to list some questions to ask Geller and then the phone rang. It was Mastrude.

“How are you?” Peter asked absentmindedly.

“Really want to know?” Mastrude wheezed in contentment. “My wife says I ramble too much, she says I just buzz. Ha! She told me I’m ‘blowing on the kazoo of senility.’ That’s a quote—very poetical, my wife. Look, Peter, I’ve been thinking about this—I think maybe you should try to see your wife. I rarely change my mind about these things, but I also don’t usually find somebody who is so determined—”

“Right,” Peter said, cutting him off. “That’s nice, thank you very much.”

“Actually—”

“I can’t discuss this now, I need your help this very minute. You’re the one who studies human behavior. I got a guy coming in very, very soon. I’m pretty sure he’s killed somebody. He’s got to know that we suspect him. He’s probably protecting some very powerful people. Why in hell would he agree to come in, when asked, just like that?”

“Was it a professional killing?” Mastrude asked.

“No. He beat a young woman to death.”

There was silence on the line. Peter looked at his hands.

“Is he a subordinate, a true subordinate?”

“Yes,” Peter said, hearing Mastrude make eating sounds.

“Is there great pressure on the people he represents?”

“Yes.”

“Then the group may be coming apart,” Mastrude suggested.

“There’s no evidence of that.”

“He may want to confess.”

“I doubt that, too.”

“He may hate the group he’s with, he may hate what they make him do. This can happen even to men who feel themselves absolutely loyal. It’s surprising what we come to hate. And remember, your man may not even be aware of this.”

“Okay. But what if they put him up to it?”

“Then you have to figure out how strong he is and see if he’ll reveal himself anyway. You have to find your way into the man’s beliefs. I have to do that when I cross-examine my clients’ spouses sometimes. It can be nasty.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, thinking of what Mastrude could do to Janice.

“I was thinking about our conversation about the causes of tragedy,” Mastrude continued. “I was thinking that the very causes that make it occur also bring judgment. People crave the release of judgment, the end of their private guilt.”

“But this guy may be a totally amoral psycho,” responded Peter. “I have no indication that he has any desire for this kind of judgment. I think it’s something else.”

“Well, I can’t say, then,” Mastrude concluded. “I haven’t met the man and I need to do that in order to understand his motivations.”

“You understand my motivations?” Peter challenged.

“I was wrong about you,” Mastrude answered, “though not in the way you think. But I’ve got the answer, my friend. I believe very firmly that you need to see your wife again soon. I think that is the way this is going to be resolved. I think you need to see her and I think you need to see your own self—”

Peter had another call. “Wait a minute,” he said, switching lines. It was from the Mayor’s office.

“I’ve got an important call,” he told Mastrude.

“Remember what I said?” Mastrude asked.

Peter wondered if Geller was in the Mayor’s office that very minute.

“Remember?” Mastrude repeated.

“Go see Janice, get her back.”

“No,” Mastrude answered in discontent, “that wasn’t exactly it….”

There was no time for this chatter, and so Peter simply cut off Mastrude, switching to the Mayor.

“Yes, sir?”

The Mayor came on quickly: “Peter, I’m calling to get a new sense of how things are progressing in respect to the murder of my nephew. I’ve seen the papers.”

This was an outright command for information, lubricated by power into the smoothest of requests, and in it Peter understood that the Mayor’s early insistence that Peter only talk to the Mayor and not to other members of the deceased’s family meant that Peter had received no chance to probe them for the cause of the killing and perhaps trigger an emotional outburst of information. “Don’t forget Johnetta Henry,” he finally answered.

“Of course not. Bill Hoskins and I were talking just yesterday, and I was remarking to him that beyond what I read in the papers I haven’t much idea of what’s happening in the case. We’ve been quite busy, as you can imagine, trying to get some of our new job programs implemented, and I haven’t had an opportunity to call.”

“Yes—” Peter began.

“And Bill assured me you were running the investigation quite comprehensively at this point in time and that the case against this fellow, Wayman Carothers, was developing nicely,” the Mayor continued, as if he were describing a tropical plant grown in unnatural conditions. “Indeed, I might say Bill added that he expected your investigation was nearly
complete
.” Anger leaked into the Mayor’s tone. Maybe the man was standing there in his expensive wool suit, twisting the watch about his wrist and looking at Charlie Geller. “I understood there to be no other suspects, no other scenarios, Mr. Scattergood. I thought my information was good, do you understand? So this morning, when the paper—”

“There are still a number of things I’m—”

“Excuse me, I was talking. Now then, I’m assuming that little article is just journalistic speculation. Indeed, I must say that when I expressed to my sister this morning that we might have some kind of resolution to all of this, she seemed—”

“Mr. Mayor, what exactly do you wish to know?”

The line was silent at this direct inquiry.

“I was hoping”—now the voice had returned to its measured, for-public-consumption tone—“to get your estimation of the nature of the evidence against Carothers for these two vicious murders.”

“The murder of your nephew seems pretty straightforward, sir.” He wouldn’t mention the unusable confession in the private meeting with Carothers.

“And for Miss Henry?”

The Mayor had put the question to him, inside of two minutes, and Peter could feel the man’s power reaching at him through the telephone, cornering him with his hidden conclusions and off-the-record investigations, daring him to thwart the city’s highest official. How much did the Mayor know?

“Well,” Peter stalled, “our evidence is very limited in that respect, sir. There’s some question as to whether Carothers even killed Johnetta Henry.”

“That
is
interesting,” came the calm voice. “I was under the assumption from Bill that the evidence gathered thus far included both victims and excluded other participants. So you’re suggesting the newspaper
article might be right and that perhaps Carothers and someone else
together—”

“I’m not suggesting that last idea, no.”

With just the slightest irritation—a fist imperceptibly tighter—the voice of a man riding the edge of control: “Then what are you suggesting, Mr. Scattergood? Why are we playing guessing games? I have always disdained such psychological tactics. It appalls me to think that this is what we have come to. What is it, precisely, that you see here?”

But before Peter could say anything, a voice in the background apparently drew the Mayor away from the receiver. “Excuse me,” the political voice said, perhaps with masterful timing, perhaps having knowingly
not
forced Peter to answer, perhaps creating a last opportunity for Peter to change his mind, “but I have another pressing matter. You and I will discuss this later today or early tomorrow. I have several calls that have come through. In the meantime, I trust your investigation continues satisfactorily. I am interested in this new information. Please keep me up-to-date about this second-assailant theory of yours. I will be eager to know what new information has yielded this development.”

The phone clicked. Before Peter could evaluate whether he’d made a mistake—he had contradicted the Mayor and officially represented the office with Hoskins’s approval—there was a tentative knock on the door.

“Yeah, what?” he called.

Cheryl came in, followed by a short, strongly built man in his thirties with pomaded hair. He wore overalls and a thick jacket and moved with the rigid pride of one who has once been very badly injured, perhaps beaten to a whisper of his life. He did not limp or show any particular weakness, Peter noticed, but as Cheryl silently directed him to the chair facing Peter, he held his body with ready stiffness; it was a body that knew punishment and had been forced to conform to its damage. He did not take off his jacket.

“Thank you, miss,” Geller said in a hoarse voice. He wore no gold rings or a watch or any mark of status that would indicate one who might receive favors from the Mayor. He raised his face to look at Peter, silent and seemingly watchful from a great depth within himself. His eyes, which did not blink, lived in his face not as bright, moving windows to the soul but as an expressionless surface, like that of stone.
Beneath the pressed, quiet lips arced the rough smile of a scar. This was the sad man, and Peter—despite his anxious exhaustion—sensed that the man was wholly unperturbed by Peter’s presence.

“Thank you for coming in on such short notice, Mr. Geller.”

“No problem.” Geller shrugged in a deep whisper.

Geller didn’t seem to recognize him, but of course the man would not communicate this, for it implicated him in the snatching of Tyler. Peter forced himself to breathe slowly and concentrate, a trick he’d learned at the foul line when the crowd was screaming for blood.

“I guess Cheryl called you.”

“She say you wanted to ask me somethin’.” Geller knitted his hands together and waited.

“About Johnetta Henry and Darryl Whitlock, yes.”

“Right,” Geller mumbled. “She said that.”

“Just a couple of routine questions. Frankly, we think we have a pretty good case against the suspect, Wayman Carothers,” Peter said, leaning forward and smiling in a manner suggestive of the notion that his own lust for Carothers’s conviction might be just the kind of blindness that would allow him to miss Geller’s guilt. “We have a pretty good case against him and so we’re just trying to ask some of the people who knew Johnetta a few questions, just more or less get the whole background picture. We have to get everything on the man, you understand?”

“Right,” Geller said.

“We appreciate your cooperation.”

“Right,” Geller agreed in a calm voice, neither sarcastic nor aggressive.

Peter looked at Geller, expecting him now to say something about how he knew that if he hadn’t come into the office, then he might be suspected for that very reason. Very often a suspect would insist with the obsessive energy of the guilty that he was coming in to get his name cleared.

“You’ve been associated with the Mayor a long time?”

“Almost ten years.”

“Now, I also understand that you do a little work for the Mayor, during his campaign and whatnot, drive him around. And Johnetta Henry did, too, right?”

“That’s right,” Geller said without expression.

“Since you were in contact with her, maybe you could tell me what her duties were and so on.”

Geller stared at him.

“What she did in the office, that kind of thing.”

“She talked to everybody on the phone,” Geller said, eyes moving little, the information coming from a mouth unlinked to the muscles of his face.