The Confession of Joe Cullen (28 page)

“I think so.”

Timberman signaled the waiter. “Bring me a Scotch, neat, and a glass of water.” Then he turned to Freedman. “When the Feds take a witness and in return for his testimony offer him his life, there is a pretty important contract. You're asking me to break it. Suppose you tell me what you have in mind regarding Carlione?”

Suddenly, it was not the same man. Freedman, who had not rehearsed his speech and who now could hardly recall what he had said, was taken aback. He had not said what he had planned to say, and neither had he planned to say what he did. It had poured out, and trying to recapture his words was useless; but something he said had struck home and Timberman had dropped his cold and annoyed response.

“Carlione killed Sylvia Mendoza,” Freedman said.

“Yes, that's what Ginny Selby thinks. Neither of you has any proof.”

“I'm not talking about proof and evidence. I'm talking about a gang, men highly placed and connected in our government, who are bringing a river of cocaine into this country, who move their drugs without interference, and who at the same time are ripping us off for more millions, buying guns with taxpayer money, pocketing most of it, and exchanging the guns for cocaine in Honduras. We both know what I'm talking about. I'd love to bring in Carlione for killing Mendoza, but I'd get a lot more pleasure out of putting away the guy who's at the center of this, a certain Dumont Robertson, who they call Monty.”

“Hold on,” Timberman said. “I know Dumont Robertson. He wasn't mentioned by Cullen. My God, Freedman, he's a man with a reputation, known, trusted — you can't put him at the center of this. It's inconceivable.”

“Is it any more inconceivable than Cullen's confession?”

“That was a confession by a disturbed man. There is not a shred of evidence to back it up. Do you think I would have backed away from it if you had given me one small piece of evidence?”

“I spoke to Monty, to your Mr. Dumont Robertson—”

“Not mine, Lieutenant. I resent that — and, damn it, what do you mean you spoke to him? When? How?”

Freedman spelled it out, word for word, adding, “And if you doubt me, I'll send Ramos down to your office.”

“I don't doubt you,” Timberman said softly.

The lunch they had ordered now came. It remained untasted, getting cold.

“Do you think he still has a tail on you?” Timberman asked.

“He had one on me. I shook him before I came here. You know, Mr. Timberman, with the kind of money they got, it's no big thing to put tails on a dozen people if they want to.”

“That Robertson hired Carlione is only a guess. Robertson would have to have access to the relocation records.”

“Yes.”

“I hate conspiracy,” Timberman muttered, finally putting a fork into his food and tasting it. “I hate to try a conspiracy case. I hate the people who want to turn every tragedy that hits our government into a conspiracy case. Furthermore, if Robertson — unthinkable as it sounds — did put out a contract with Carlione as his man, be sure that Carlione has an unbreakable alibi.”

“That doesn't bother me, Mr. Timberman. I can handle Carlione. There's another one of the gang, a Colonel Yancy. I have a feeling he'll talk.”

“Why?”

“Because from what I read, the general staff would be so enraged at a scandal like this, at a time when they're pushing Congress for every dollar, that they'd throw Yancy to the dogs. If we could offer him something —”

“Freedman,” Timberman said, “suppose I were to sit down with the police commissioner and the federal attorney and give them what we have and blow this thing wide open. That's what Miss Selby suggested, and I respect her judgment.”

“And the day you do that, Carlione will turn up dead, and then you'll have nothing.”

“Yes? And if Dumont Robertson is as thorough as you say, why isn't Carlione dead?”

“He will be. Evidently, Monty doesn't like to muddy too many waters, but the day you open this, Carlione is finished.”

“And what do you do?” Timberman asked with annoyance. “If he killed Mendoza, that's murder one. Do you believe Carlione will walk into that?”

“Give him immunity.”

“If he killed Mendoza?”

“We don't want him! He's not the dope smuggler. I want Monty.”

“Are you sure you're not obsessing?”

“So I'm obsessing. It's worth giving Carlione immunity if it means getting Monty.”

“If it means getting Monty. Lieutenant, there are so many ifs and maybes in your plan — damn it, I'd have to go to the Feds—”

“No!”

“There's no other way.”

“You go to the Feds, and Carlione will be dead before lever get to him.”

“Do you know what you're asking me?” Timberman said unhappily.

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“If the whole thing washes out — I hate to put it this way — but if the whole thing washes out, how did you find the place?”

“That dies with me,” Freedman said flatly.

And after a moment or two, Timberman said, “I think I believe you. Let's order some hot food.”

But before Timberman touched the hot food, he said to Freedman, “This is the first time …” He couldn't finish what he had begun to say. He was still Harold Timberman. He couldn't ask for sympathy from an ordinary precinct cop, who, even in his dark blue blazer and gray flannel trousers, looked so out of place in the Harvard Club. Perhaps it was the tangled mess of red hair, which Freedman had never found a way to control.

At the precinct house, the lieutenant's costume brought forth a few whistles but mostly admiring responses. In the squad room, with only Ramos and Jones present, it was solid admiration. “You're coming around, Lieutenant — you certainly are.” Jones, who was black, was the only one on the squad who always came to work wearing a tie and a freshly ironed shirt. He was usually in a suit, and if he wore a sports jacket, it was either Armani or Perry Ellis. Jones wasn't married and he could afford such clothes. Ramos followed Freedman into his little office and asked him how it came out.

“It's a class yuppie place, and the older men look like mob bosses who get sixty-dollar haircuts. That's just sour. It's full of high-class gentleman types, and if they ever make me chief of detectives, I'll join.”

“You can't. You got to go to Harvard. They don't have exchange rates with City College. How did it go?”

“I don't know. At first he was as cold as a witch's tit. You know, class gentleman suffering a plain cop. I guess Ginny must have bullied him into it. But we talked and he softened up. He didn't say yes and he didn't say no.”

“Do you know we were bugged?”

“No, you got to be kidding.”

“I just had a crazy notion,” Ramos said, “and I sent Jones down into the basement to check the wiring. They had turned the telephone into party lines. Jones took it apart.”

“They're very thorough.”

“Too damn thorough to suit me. What is it with you, Mel?” Ramos rarely called him by his first name. “We're not going to change anything. We're a couple of street cops who don't mean a damn thing in the scheme of things. My mother worked herself to death, hoping I'd go to Fordham. She had it all worked out for me to be a doctor or a lawyer, and I end up a street cop because you make your peace with the way it is.”

“You're right.”

“So what's eating you?”

“Monty. Yeah, until he walked into the restaurant, I was ready to let it go. One more pile of garbage on the mountain of crap that we spend our lives rooting in. But when he walked in and sat down, I said to myself that somehow, some way, I am going to get that bastard and put him in a cell.”

Ramos smiled thinly.

“Pipe dream?”

“I don't know,” Ramos said. “You ever think about Father O'Healey?”

“I think about him.”

“Yeah, I think about him,” Ramos said. “I'm the worst kind of lapsed Catholic there is. I hate the damn Irish priests that looked down their noses at me at school. I hate the damn chanting and candles and telling lies to little kids that they're going to burn in hell when they been living all their lives in hell, and nobody ever gave a damn about it, and some Pope talks to God the same as Jerry Falwell and those redneck nuts in the South — talks to God! Sweet Jesus, why doesn't he come to Brooklyn or the South Bronx and tell God about what he finds there — so that gives you a notion of what kind of a Catholic I am, and then this Francis O'Healey. I try to put it together. Here's a nice guy. Put him in our squad, and you'd say, O'Healey, a good cop, run of the mill. And then what does he do — he goes down there to Honduras, commits himself to those poor people, no pay, no pension, no side benefits, just these poor, driven people that he can help a little, and he gives up his life for them — and nobody gives a damn.”

“That's right. Nobody gives a damn about much of anything.”

“I think about him. I do a lot of thinking about O'Healey.”

“I think more about Monty,” Freedman said.

Ramos grinned. “Dumont Robertson. Man — that's beautiful. Dumont Robertson.”

The rest of the day spun away. There was a bad three-car auto crash over by the river under the old abandoned West Side elevated highway — a police car in hot pursuit, the car they were after, and a civilian car that happened to get in the way. One of the cops was killed, the other severely injured, and in the car they were after, one man badly hurt and the other escaped. In the third car, two women, both of them badly injured. It was well past dark when Freedman finished his paperwork at the morgue and made his way back to the precinct house.

The night shift was on now. At some time during the day, Freedman had stuffed his tie into his pocket, and the blue blazer and gray flannels were now sufficiently rumpled to excite no comment among the men. He went into his office, looked through his telephone messages, and then tried not to think about the dead cop and the others in the accident. It happened. Normal course of events: robbery, mugging, murder, accidental killing. His telephone rang.

It was Virginia Selby. She said to him, “Will you be there for a while? I'm sending something.”

“I'll wait for it,” he said.

A half hour later, a pretty young woman was ushered into his office. “I'm an ADA,” she explained. “I work for Ginny. She asked me to give you this.” She handed him a sealed envelope.

After she had gone, Freedman wiped his glasses thoroughly, glanced around to see that the detectives were occupied, and then opened the envelope. On a slip of paper was written:

123 Custer St.

San Fernando, California

Carlione

S
EATED
in the tourist section of the big 747, bound for Los Angeles, Freedman turned down the offer of a headpiece for the film. He had too much film to run through his own head to be diverted by a movie. He had to plan his steps very carefully and slip up nowhere. After all, he had arrested Tony Carlione. If they were not old friends, they were certainly old acquaintances, and it was Freedman, noticing the twelve wounds in each of Carlione's victims, who had named him Twelve-tone Tony, giving it to the press. They made the most of it, and Freedman had had one of those brief exposures to fame that cops sometimes get. Carlione was a short, broad, fat man of great strength with an absurd angelic face, round as a baby's, and with innocent blue eyes. The fact that he was a vicious killer, a man without a shred of decency or compassion, was in no way evident in his appearance; and it was his total lack of loyalty that enabled Freedman to talk him into becoming an informer.

Now, Freedman decided, he would have to do it once again — persuade Tony Carlione that his best chance of surviving was to give evidence against Dumont Robertson. Of course, Freedman was betting that Monty himself had hired Carlione. He had a deep feeling that Monty did not relegate such jobs. Anyway, that was his bet.

Then there was Tony's wife. She was his apostle of survival, a woman who resembled him in form and appearance and apparently loved him dearly. She too would have to be convinced, but since she had always opted for Tony's survival, the chances were good that she would see the soundness of Freed-man's proposal and come in on his side.

Mrs. Carlione was also a good cook, and Freedman recalled that in the rundown on Tony's habits, there was mention of his penchant for eating at home. Not for Tony the dictum of eating breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper. The meals were solid, substantial preparations. If his habits in exile had not changed, and Freedman saw no reason why they should have, he and his wife would be sitting down to lunch at twelve-thirty. Freedman's plane arrived at Los Angeles at twelve noon, and allowing two hours to rent a car and drive to San Fernando, he should reach 123 Custer Street just as the Carliones finished lunch. They would be relaxed, feeling good, each of them containing half a bottle of red wine.