The Squad Room (3 page)

Offhand, one of the officers asked where the Chief of Detectives was. “I figured he’d love to come to this part of town,” he laughed.

“Not on a holiday, he wouldn’t,” Morrison said, chuckling too. “Besides, I don’t know if he’s ever solved a crime, or even seen a dead body. This is obviously not going to be an easy one, and I’m sure Arndt knows the press will have more questions for him than he’ll be able to answer.”

He caught himself before he could say more. His hatred for Arndt was off the charts, but none of that needed to be said to the rank and file. With a few more salutations, he grabbed one of the detectives, Alexander Medveded, to ride back to “the house” with him, and they went out to his car.

Boss though he was, Morrison drove. He almost always drove; it
helped him to focus and stay feeling in control. In his head, he continued the conversation that he’d just curtailed with the officers on the scene. Frederick Arndt—even the man’s name was pretentious. Nine months ago Arndt had taken over for the previous Chief of Detectives, Francis Donohue, when Donohue had finally lost his battle with cancer; and since then he’d lost no time in alienating just about everyone who worked for him. No investigator himself, he’d risen on the strength of his political connections to the highest position possible in an investigator’s career, and now wore his phoniness with aggressive pride, disdaining the police who worked under him. Morrison remembered hearing a story from his former partner about Arndt’s promotion to Sergeant, which seemed to sum the man up perfectly. He’d been proud as a peacock, strutting around the auditorium at 1PP with his new Sergeant’s stripes sewn on his dress uniform. The only problem was, they were sewn on upside-down in a V, the way the British use them. He’d already pissed off everyone else there, so they just let him walk across the stage like that; and when the PC asked him if he’d switched departments and the room erupted in laughter, he’d just glared at everyone, like
they
were the ones who had it wrong.

Detective Medveded broke the silence. “What’re you thinking about, Cap?” he asked.

Morrison smiled grimly out at the traffic ahead. “Oh, you know—just some no-good, backpack and boat shoe–wearing son of a bitch,” he said quietly.

“Ha! Right,” Medveded said. There was only one man Morrison could be referring to, and Medveded definitely had no love for him, either.

Morrison laughed again. “Hey, you remember when we were out drinking that night, and you said—?” he began.

“How could I forget?” Medveded said. “I still think we should’ve done it.”

“If not for the vodka, huh?” Morrison looked over at him. “God, you were so pissed at him.”

“How could I not be? The asshole wanted to transfer me to Staten Island!”

“I remember.”

Boy, did Morrison remember. It was hard not to look back on it with a little regret, even.

He and Medveded been drinking together, and getting pretty heated about Arndt’s treatment of the latter, who was only recently back on the job after a pretty haunting experience in the Bronx that had almost gotten him killed. Arndt had been the 44
^th
Precinct desk officer at the time of the incident, when Medveded—then an officer on the Street Crime unit—and his partner Tommy Davis had responded to a call that a woman was being held at gunpoint in her apartment. At the scene they’d heard a woman crying inside and rushed in, thinking they had the element of surprise. They were wrong. The perp, in a classic “suicide-by-cop” plan, had gotten his ex-girlfriend to call another friend over to the apartment, then tied them both to chairs, called 911 on himself and told the women to cry out when the cops showed up, and waited with his gun pointing at the door. When Medveded and Davis had burst in, he’d opened fire on them, hitting Davis in the chest and Medveded in the abdomen before Medveded was able to put him down with returning fire. Davis had died that night. But Desk Officer Arndt, as it turned out, cared less about two cops shot, than about the ton of paperwork he had to do because of it; and attempted to have Medveded transferred to Staten Island, claiming he’d violated department policy.

So Morrison and Medveded had ended up pretty well sauced at the bar by the precinct, and Medveded had made a startling suggestion:
Let’s rob him.
Morrison, naturally, had assumed he was joking; but Medveded had gone on:
Come on, Bill, it’ll be easy. We mask up, follow him when he goes to his car—that prick never parks near the house, he knows someone would slash his tires. And everyone knows he never carries his gun.

Morrison had realized then that Medveded was only half-joking. It was exactly the sort of idea the Crazy Russian—as some of his fellow officers had since taken to calling him—would take seriously. Yet as
crazy as the idea was, he’d been distinctly intrigued by it. He’d thought about how gratifying it would be to pull out that fucking Nantucket belt with the whales (a piece of Arndt’s wardrobe he was never without) and wrap it around the guy’s neck. He’d smiled to imagine seeing Arndt on the ground, his pants around his ankles, weeping—as he was known to do whenever he was under stress. It all sounded good—but he also knew it wasn’t worth losing his pension over. There were too many cameras around nowadays; and besides, he had to believe that guys like Arndt always got their just deserts. Thankfully, the vodka had taken its toll on both of them, and they’d fallen asleep in their car outside the precinct.

Morrison and Medveded arrived at the precinct, having made the decision to pass on the bar tonight as they parked the car. It’d be an early morning tomorrow, and both of them lived far away—Medveded in Brighton Beach, in the same apartment he’d grown up in—so they’d also both decided to sleep at the precinct. Medveded headed off to the dorms, while Morrison walked up the back staircase towards the squad room. He knew that trying to sleep would be futile for the time being; again the bagpipes were playing loudly in his head.

Sergeant Rivera was already back at his desk, the door to his office open. Looking up as Morrison passed and recognizing the look in the Captain’s eyes, Rivera got up and headed casually over to his office.

“Hey, Cap. You got a minute to talk?” he asked. This was a common enough routine with them; he didn’t have anything in particular to talk about, but he knew the Captain did, and knew that asking him like this was the best way to get him to relax.

“Sure,” said Morrison, and sat. The two men sat quietly for a while, Rivera taking slow sips at his coffee, before Morrison spoke up.

“Let me ask you a question,” Morrison said. “You were in Vietnam, right?”

Rivera had described his experience in the military to Bill Morrison more than once, but was always ready to tell him again when the Captain was in this frame of mind. “Yeah,” he said. “I was drafted when I was nineteen and a half. I had to report to Whitehall Street for
the usual induction procedure before they sent me to Fort Gordon, in Georgia. I was assigned to the 25
^th
Infantry. They sent me to advanced infantry training at one of the ugliest places in America—Fort Polk Louisiana. Tigerland. When I finished my training with a bunch of other guys, we were shipped out.”

Morrison listened, and sat thoughtfully again for a moment. “All right, well, let me ask you this,” he said finally. “Have you ever talked to Arndt about your time there?”

Rivera smiled cryptically. “Why do you ask?” he said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Morrison said; “just a hunch of mine, I guess. I was at a dinner a while back, where he accepted an award from the Mayor for his service in Vietnam. He cried like a baby the whole time, talking about how returning vets were treated, and what an honor it was. It just—it seemed a little too over-the-top for me to buy.”

“Well, he’s right about how we were treated then,” Rivera said slowly, “but him being in Vietnam?” He laughed. “If you ask me, your hunch is right. I’m
sure
he wasn’t there.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, I haven’t been around the guy much. But the few times I
have
been around him—in fact, the last time we spoke, a couple of years ago, he’d been talking to a few guys in the precinct about being in the military. None of these guys had served, mind you. When I walked in on the conversation, I heard him say he was at the battle of Khe Sahn. Thing is, it was the
Marines
who were at Khe Sahn—Con Thien, Hill 881, I remember—and he was saying he was in the
army.
I was in the army, and we weren’t there during the offensive. I asked him if he had a CIB—a Combat Infantry Badge—and he gave me a funny look, and found a way out of the conversation.” Rivera shook his head. “Man, if you’re going to lie about being in ’Nam, at least do your research.”

“I knew it,” Morrison said quietly, leaning back with a sardonic smile. He wasn’t quite sure if he was satisfied or not. “You know, Chief Donohue, God rest his soul—he couldn’t
stand
Arndt. Now
there
was a guy born to be Chief of Detectives. He must be rolling in his grave,
to have had this guy take over for him.”

“So was it just the politics that got him in?” Rivera asked.

“One hundred percent,” Morrison said. “The Commissioner didn’t want to appoint him—you know Harrington hated him almost as much as I do.”

“Yeah, I figured that,” Rivera said. He knew the answer to his next question, but asked it anyway. “Didn’t you and the PC work together as cops?”

“Yeah, sure, back in the day. He was quite a cop; he took his job very seriously.” Morrison’s face broke out in a wide grin. “You know, before we were partners he worked Narcotics as an undercover—he had the whole long-haired biker look. One day he went into one of those old Blarney Stone Bar & Grills—you know, they have them all over the city; used to keep corned beef in the window, and all the old-time shot-and-beer guys with the spider veins in their noses hung out there. Pretty conservative places. Well, Officer Harrington walks in, looking like he just got off his low-rider, and they refuse to serve him. So he flips out, jumps over the bar, throws a bunch of hot corned beef at the bartender.”

Rivera laughed. “What’d they do?”

“One of the Sergeants responded and saved his ass. They wanted him arrested—they didn’t know he was a cop—but they had a problem with their liquor license, so one hand washed the other, and the whole thing blew over. They put him back in uniform after that, but he never forgot how they refused to serve him. He used to talk about how that experience showed him how it was for people to be judged by their appearance, how the blacks must suffer from that kind of prejudice, and all that. He couldn’t stand to see that kind of injustice. I remember when I was real young to the job, riding in a radio car with him in the wintertime, real freezing outside. We were patrolling, and all of a sudden he tells me to stop the car. I’m thinking,
What do we got? Man with a gun? Drug deal?
—but there’s no one on the street. Then I see we’re outside the Blarney Stone, and he gets out, picks up one of those metal trash cans from the corner, and throws it right through their front window. Then
he gets back in the car and asks me if I’m okay with it.”

“That’s perfect, man,” laughed Rivera. “That’s really perfect. So what’d you say to that?”

“I just shrugged and said,
Okay with what?
and we finished our tour. Next thing I know, he’s asking the roll call guy to make us steady partners.”

“Sounds like a good guy.”

“Yeah, I always liked working with him. But you know, even before he moved up in politics, we lost touch. You know how it goes—you just start moving in different circles, not running into each other as much.” A familiar, faraway look came over Morrison. “When Billy died—well, Harrington always had a thing about funerals, and he still went. He doesn’t go to them, ever; it’s not his style. I always respected him for that, for some reason. But he still went to Billy’s.”

Rivera nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say: it seemed there was nothing to say. The silence rang between them.

“Hey Cap, it’s late,” Rivera said finally, looking at his watch. “You and me both ought to get some sleep.” He rose to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to head in.”

“All right,” Morrison said, a weary smile returning to him. There wouldn’t be much room at the inn tonight. “I’m just going to try to catch a few here, I think. Shut that door after you, will you?”

“All right, you got it.”

“Goodnight, Sergeant.”

“Goodnight, Cap,” said Rivera; and a moment later, Morrison heard his footfalls sounding quietly down the hallway towards the dorm.

4

Early the next day, Detectives and Sergeants began to roll out of the dorm for day two, hoping nothing else had come in overnight. Thankfully there was no sign of the Night Watch Squad as yet, so they knew they could take their time getting themselves together. Several detectives from the other specialty squads were already sticking their heads in to ask what the story was on Sutton Place, and though no one was talking at this point, the atmosphere was tense. Everyone knew a stubbed toe on Sutton Place could turn into a storm quickly, given a slow enough news day.

The usual parade of useless bosses, which started practically with business hours, certainly didn’t help things. Whenever a case was high-profile enough to guarantee phone calls and visits from the headquarter’s brass, there were sure to be a gaggle of these promotion-seekers hanging around the squad room—mid-level officials who usually spent their time in their offices reading the Wall Street Journal or watching ESPN, who were invariably drawn out by the prospect of being perceived, by the right people, to be hard at work. They were a nuisance, but not much more than that: they tended to set up shop quickly in the squad commander’s office, there to remain until media attention had subsided, and were almost always gone soon after 1700 hours, when their bosses
at headquarters wrapped up for the day.

But then, some of them were worse than others.