Last Chance for Glory (25 page)

“Your father worked Queens Homicide his last couple of years on the job. You know that, right?”

“It was a long time ago, but now that you mention it, yeah, I remember.”

“You remember that he was good at his job? That he was decorated twice in the last year?”

“I don’t get the point here, Ma. Pop was good at his job, but he quit and fell apart. That’s what I’ve been
led
to believe.”

“That’s what you wanted to believe. It’s not what you were told.”

“I wasn’t told
anything.
Remember?”

“And you never asked.” She waved a hand in his face, stifling any further response. “Your father was doing a routine canvass. Burning shoe leather is what he called it. Anyway, he knocks on this particular door and a young woman opens it. Matty’s about to ask the questions when he sees—or, he claims he sees—a large bag of cocaine, a kilo as it turns out, lying in plain view on a table behind her. He thinks it’s a gift from heaven, a good clean collar that just fell out of the sky, and he puts the woman—her name is Chantel McKendrick—under arrest. Takes her down to the house, does the paperwork, ships her off to Central Booking. I remember him telling me about it when he came home that night. Laughing about it. ‘If they weren’t so stupid,’ he said, ‘I might have to work for a living.’

“I was surprised, of course. A kilo is a lot of cocaine to leave on a table, but Matty said she was so stoned she barely knew her own name. Plus, he figured it wasn’t hers, that some dealer was using her place to stash his dope and she was taking her cut off the top.

“Two days later, Chantel McKendrick’s attorney—and he wasn’t legal aid, either; McKendrick’s lawyer was your new friend, Maxwell Steinberg—told an entirely different story. According to Steinberg, Matty pushed his way into Chantel’s apartment, found the cocaine, offered to let her off hook if she had sex with him. When she refused, he forced her, then arrested her anyway.”

Blake shook his head angrily. “This is bullshit, Ma. There isn’t a detective on the job that hasn’t been accused somewhere along the line. It comes with the territory.”

“Maybe so, Marty, but when Max Steinberg does the accusing, the brass down at the big house listens. And not because they believe him. They listen because Max Steinberg has the juice to make the job look bad.

“So what happened is that somebody downtown shipped it over to Internal Affairs. And the headhunters ran with it, interviewed women your father had arrested when he worked Vice, came up with half a dozen accusations. Now, understand, Marty, I pieced the story together as best I could, because once it got rolling, Matty wouldn’t talk about it. He said there was no point, that it wouldn’t make any difference, and he was right. Every cop gets offers and more than a few take advantage.

“It was the use of force that made it so bad, of course. That made it more than an indiscretion.
If
he was guilty. Nobody knows exactly how the headhunters conducted the investigation. Maybe they pressured the other women, maybe …”

Blake pushed the chair away from the table, started to stand. He wasn’t getting ready to leave. No, what he wanted to do was pace the floor.

“I know how it works,” he said. “If they want you, they get you. That’s all there is to it.”

“Does that mean you think they were out to get your father?”

The question stopped Blake in his tracks. He leaned down on the table. Wanting to say, Of course they were after him. Pop wouldn’t do that. My father wasn’t a rapist. … The words froze in his mouth.

“There’s no way to be sure,” he finally admitted.

“That’s right, Marty. That’s the way it is with the headhunters. You never know why they’re doing anything. You never know who’s pulling the strings.” She took a deep breath, let it go slowly. “They did have some evidence, though. One of the five women who accused him had been treated for cuts and bruises two days after her arrest. At the time, she claimed that her injuries came by way of a jail-house fight. When IAD found her, she told a different story. She said that Matthew Blake had beaten, then raped her, then threatened to have her killed if she told anyone.”

“That’s not proof,” Blake insisted. “Proof is a DNA match on semen, proof is an objective eyewitness. …”

“You’re right, Marty. There was no proof. Chantel McKendrick was never examined. But proof in a court of law was never really the point. In a way, Matty would’ve been better off if the papers had picked it up. Then the job would have defended him as a matter of principle. As it was, they offered him a clear choice: retire or face departmental charges and the possible loss of his pension. Matty retired.”

“And then fell apart.”

Dora Blake nodded, gathered Blake’s empty plate, turned to the sink. “He didn’t do it without help,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning most of his cop buddies stopped coming around after word got out. Meaning they stopped inviting him to Emerald Society meetings, Holy Name Society breakfasts. Meaning his wife never truly believed in his innocence, that she couldn’t resist her own doubts.”

B
ELL KOSINSKI COULDN’T REMEMBER
a time in his life when he was so lucky to be so stupid. He was parked on Twenty-fifth Street, just off Madison Avenue, staring out at the main entrance to the building that housed New York’s Appellate Court. It was nine-thirty in the morning and he’d fought a great deal of traffic to get to his position. That was the stupid part. Stupid to think the exalted judges who sat on the Appellate Court would be anywhere near Manhattan in the month of August. The building was locked tight; the court was not in session.

Which was just as well, because Marty Blake, for all his arrogance, was never going to bug Judge John McGuire’s chambers. It might have been possible in the chaos of the criminal court buildings downtown. Their halls teemed with lawyers, defendants, witnesses, clerks, court buffs, reporters … a constantly changing set of exotic characters (like Maxwell Steinberg) to provide the necessary cover.

The Appellate Court was entirely different—defendants rarely attended; witnesses were almost never called; court buffs soon discovered that the appeals process dulled even the juiciest murder. Blake would be challenged by the court officers within minutes.

Kosinski sipped at a pint of Smirnoff, took a minute to admire the two-story building. Despite its small size, the architect had packed it with ornamentation. Two marble statues flanked the broad steps leading to the main entrance. One, a hooded figure out of the Old Testament, read from a large book. The other, a Roman warrior in battle gear, held a sword on his lap and glared at oblivious pedestrians. The implication, Kosinski guessed, was that if the right hand doesn’t get you, the left one will.

He rolled up the window, started the tiny rented Datsun, flipped on the air conditioning. The city was heating up, absorbing heat like clay in a baker’s oven. By the time the sun reached its zenith, spit would sizzle on the hoods of parked cars. Even Central Park would be deserted.

HONK!

Kosinski jerked his head to the left, saw a uniformed brownie in a Traffic Department Plymouth wave her hand contemptuously. He watched her mouth the words “Move it, asshole,” before indulging himself in the violent fantasy most common to New Yorkers, imagining himself assaulting a Traffic Agent with the nearest blunt object. Then the brownie picked up her summons book and he drove away like a good little boy.

His next scheduled stop was in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, an upscale neighborhood rarely mentioned in the media where the Bronx had become synonymous with dark faces, drugs, and violence. Riverdale had been home to Johan Tillson since shortly after Sondra Tillson’s murder and Kosinski was supposed to sit on the importer’s residence until he had a thorough picture of who lived there. But something was bothering him, something so obvious that he should have seen it long ago.

He found a pay phone on Madison Avenue, dialed a number, got lucky.

“Dunne here.”

“Bobby?”

“Is that you, Bell Kosinski?” Robert Dunne asked. “Do I recognize your besotted tones?”

“Not too besotted at the moment, Bobby. In fact, I’m perilously close to sober. You think I might come over and talk to you for a few minutes. I need a favor.”

“A favor? Bell, please.”

Sergeant Robert Dunne, Kosinski knew, was reacting as any good veteran cop was certain to react whenever the word “favor” was mentioned. Without at least an implied
quid pro quo,
a favor was inevitably seen as an imposition, a breach of etiquette. Kosinski, with nothing tangible to trade, had decided to offer himself. Knowing that Robert Dunne maintained his own tenuous sobriety by preaching it to any alcoholic cop who’d listen.

“Look, Bobby, what I’m tryin’ to do here is start a new life. And I could use a little help.”

A brief silence, then: “Are ya really sober, Bell? You’re not puttin’ me on?”

“Not exactly sober, but not drunk, either. And I’m not jokin’ about tryin’ to start a new life. I’m working for a PI now, and if I don’t fuck things up, it could be permanent. I mean, let’s face it, Bobby, it’s hard to get straight when you wake up to nothing every morning.”

“Then it’s over between you and Ingrid? For good and forever.”

“It’s been over between us for a long time, Bobby. I told you that a couple of years ago.”

“Never give up hope, Bell. Hope springs eternal.”

Kosinski paused, considered the fact that he never wanted to see his wife again; that he didn’t know where she lived or what she did with her days; that the job took her alimony out of his pension check every month and reading the stub was as close as he got to missing her.

“Yeah, I guess that’s so. And what I hope is that you’ll give me a few minutes of your time. So I can ask my favor.”

“C’mon up, boyo. It never hurts to listen. Isn’t that what I’ve been tellin’ ya for years?”

Half an hour later, the Datsun safely tucked away in a parking lot, Kosinski was seated in Bobby Dunne’s Washington Heights living room. Trying to explain himself.

“So, ya see, Bobby, I haven’t actually
decided
to quit drinkin’. It’s something I’m workin’ up to. In the meanwhile, I’m tryin’ to run down this captain and what I figure, being as you’re Treasurer of the Emerald Society, is you could look up his command. Point me in the right direction, so to speak.”

Kosinski, looking directly into Robert Dunne’s sad, compassionate eyes, tried to forget the fact that he hated compassion, especially when it flowed in his direction. Dunne’s broad, square, heavy-boned face reeked of inner conviction. Its small, inoffensive features were widely spaced, as if they had nothing to do with each other. As if his personality was perfectly expressed by the shape of his skull and the individual features had been added in a kind of biological retro-fit.

“Would ya pray with me, Bell?”

“It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Maybe we should save it for when I actually
decide
to quit.” Kosinski, though he had no real hope of diverting Bobby Dunne, didn’t want the man turning up at his door with a bible tucked beneath his arm. “You know, like when I make a
final
decision.”

Dunne dropped to his knees, and Kosinski reluctantly followed. Hoping against hope that Dunne wouldn’t pull out a rosary, put him through a half hour of punishment.

“Oh, Lord,” Dunne began, his eyes raised to the ceiling, his hands steepled beneath his chin, “we pray here for the heart and soul of Bell Kosinski. I’ve known him for a long time, Lord, since before he became a drunk, and I can vouch for him. Bell Kosinski is a good man who’s seen his share of trouble and now humbly begs for Your divine aid. Let us pray.”

Five Hail Marys and an Our Father later, Kosinski and Dunne faced each other across a low coffee table. Dunne seemed relaxed, almost fulfilled, but Kosinski’s hands had begun to tremble. A sharp pain jabbed at his right eye, demanding immediate medication. He thought about going into the bathroom, realized that Dunne had seen every alcoholic dodge in the book.

“Take it out, Bell. Before you fall apart.”

“Huh?” The words caught Kosinski off guard.

“When you decide to cut out the booze, let me know. I’ll send you upstate. The job has a place near Albany where they dry you out without killing you. In the meantime … well, let’s just say I’d be happier if you didn’t try to con me.”

Kosinski nodded, took out the bottle, sipped at it judiciously. “I wasn’t kidding about finding work, Bobby,” he said after a moment. “This is a big chance for me.”

“I know all about it,” Dunne said without smiling. “Believe me, I’ve been there and back. Often enough to know that you can’t control it. If you’re not entirely sober, you’ll soon be entirely drunk. Now, what is it you wanted?”

“I hate you when you’re right, Bobby.” Kosinski paused for a response, but Dunne maintained the same cement-block expression. “Okay, the first thing is that what I tell you, and it won’t be much, has to be kept confidential. Even if you turn me down.”

“Understood.”

“I’m serious. It’s gotta stop here.”

Dunne finally smiled. “I swear it on my faith, Bell. Just do me a favor and
don’t
confess to murder.”

“If somebody gets killed, it’s gonna be me.” Kosinski was all business, now; figuring that he’d paid for his favor, that he had an absolute right to ask. “I’m trying to run down a cop named Grogan. Two years ago, he was a captain. He might have been promoted since then, might be a deputy inspector. Grogan is about as Irish a name as you can get, which means he has to belong to the Emerald Society. Being as you’re the Treasurer, I was hoping you could pinpoint his command.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. I want to know who Grogan works for.”

“Damn, Bell, I thought this was gonna be juicy.”

“Life is filled with disappointments.”

“And you can’t give me any more information?”

“Not a word.”

Dunne shook his head. “What you’re askin’ me to do is go against the job. You know that, right?”

The question came as no surprise to Bell Kosinski. “I’m not sayin’ you should testify against him. I just wanna know what—or, who—I’m up against. If you tell me to drop dead, I’ll understand. I’ll understand, but I’ll find out some other way.”