Falsely Accused (34 page)

“I have to go by the police station.”

“That lady got killed, right?”

“Right.”

“Are you going to look at her dead body?”

“No. But they caught the man who killed her, they think, and they want me to look at him and say if it's the right man.”

“Then they have to kill him too, right?”

Marlene sighed and wiped her eyes with a tissue. “No, honey, it's too late for that. They'll just put him in jail for his whole life. Maybe.”

There were several TV vans and a crowd of reporters on the street outside the Two-Five. Marlene parked in one of the spaces reserved for unmarked cop cars and placed on the dashboard an “NYPD Official Business” sign that Harry had saved from his former life. Holding Lucy tightly by the hand, she pushed through the crowd, identified herself to the uniforms at the door, and entered the building.

In the lobby, an officer with sergeant's stripes on his arms and a rack of decorations over his breast pocket approached her and asked politely if he could help. Marlene introduced herself and said, “I'm here on the Wohl murder. They want me to ID the suspect as the man who's been stalking the victim.”

“Okay, that's Detective Mancuso, the second floor. Just go up …” He stopped, aware that the woman was staring at him strangely. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Ah, no,” said Marlene. “I just noticed your name tag. You're Joseph Clancy, aren't you?”

“Guilty,” said Clancy, smiling. He looked down at Lucy, who was staring at him wide-eyed, and wiggled his fingers. He said, “Hiya, cutie! That's a neat outfit. You gonna be a cowgirl?”

“A cowgirl detective,” offered Lucy. “My mommy is a detective too.”

Clancy looked back at Marlene, wrinkling his brow. “I'm sorry, do I know you?”

“Not really. But you know a friend of mine, Ariadne Stupenagel. The reporter? You've been a subject of conversation at our house.” Marlene thought Clancy was less than pleased to hear this.

“Oh, yeah. I heard she got hurt. How's she doing?”

“Much better. She's writing away.”

“Anything ever come of that story she was doing?”

On impulse, and in service of some more pot stirring, Marlene replied, “God, yes! She thinks it's going to be the biggest exposé since Knapp.”

But Clancy responded to this information with a noncommittal nod and a grave look. The massive Knapp Commission study of corruption in the early seventies was a familiar and painful memory to the cops. He turned his attention back to Lucy. “Hey, cowgirl—how about you and me go for some ice cream while your mom does her business?”

“Oh, that's very kind of you,” said Marlene, “but …”

“No, really, it's no trouble,” said Clancy, offering his hand to Lucy, who grasped it. “I got four of my own, and it might take some time to organize the lineup for this scumb—this suspect.”

Marlene went upstairs and met Detective Mancuso, a quiet, burly man who reminded her a little of Harry Bello. He was brushing plaster dust off his desk. He grinned sheepishly and raised his eyes. Marlene followed the gaze and saw that the ceiling was falling down in chunks.

“The place is collapsing,” said Mancuso. “It's worse by the cells and the interrogation rooms. It's the beams—dry rot.”

Marlene was not interested in ceilings. She asked, “How did he do it?”

“A cab. He got himself hired by a cab company and cruised back and forth with his top light off until he saw her waiting.”

“He confess yet?”

“Nah. He loved her and he would never hurt her.”

Marlene hung around for three quarters of an hour, observing the detective work of the Two-Five. She looked for Jackson, but saw no one who answered the description given by Ariadne. She did see one person she recognized—the crime reporter Jimmy Dalton, a squat, bald man who gestured broadly with a dead cigar while he talked to one of the detectives. Dalton looked up, saw Marlene, clearly recognized her, and then pretended he hadn't, which was odd.

She was wondering what to make of this when Mancuso came by and said that the lineup was ready. Marlene had no trouble picking the unremarkable little toad, Hubert Waley, out of the group.

When she went by Clancy's desk to collect her daughter, she found Lucy sitting on the sergeant's desk with a cop hat on in place of her Stetson, sucking on a lolly, her face liberally smeared with the remains of an Eskimo Pie.

“You've ruined her appetite for the next month,” said Marlene.

“I fingerprinted, Mommy,” said Lucy, holding up a smeary official print sheet.

“Not for the last time, the way you're going,” said Marlene sourly. Turning to Clancy, she was about to offer conventional thanks, but, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself lowering her voice and saying, “Look, Sergeant, I may be out of line here, but we need to talk.”

“About what?” said Clancy, frowning.

“You know about what. John Seaver. Paul Jackson. The D.A. covering for them. They looked at the autopsies again. The dead cabbies were murdered, right here, on your watch. The shit is about to hit the fan on this whole thing, and my friend Stupe says you're a nice guy, and while I know about the famous blue wall, this might be a good time to get yourself some cover on the side, just between you and me.”

Clancy's face was stiff. Marlene indicated with a movement of her head the large framed picture of a blond woman and four children on Clancy's desk. “You need to think about them, Sergeant, not a pair of bent cops.”

An odd look came over Clancy's face, one Marlene could not readily interpret. Resignation? Relief? In any case, he said, “Not here.” He scribbled something on a piece of paper and slipped it to her low. She looked at it: an address in Woodhaven, in Queens.

Karp was home when they arrived. Marlene heated some leftover pizza for Lucy, who begged and was allowed the rare treat of eating in front of the TV, and whipped up a brace of Spanish omelettes, which they had with big chunks of Tuscan garlic bread. They exchanged the day's news.

“They brought out their old crock doctor today, Feinblatt,” said Karp.

“The one who heard Murray say the Great Man died in the saddle with his boots on?”

“That's the one. I killed him on cross. It turns out that what he remembered was not what Murray actually said at the conference, but the newspaper speculation surrounding the death—the Veep was found alone in his town house with an attractive woman, he had his shirt off, stuff like that. We had three witnesses who were there testify that Murray never said anything like that. Besides, if the chief medical examiner had said publicly that the vice-president had died during sex, it would have made headlines around the world, and it didn't.”

“How's Murray holding up?”

“I think he's recovered. It's hard to shake up somebody who likes to dissect rotten corpses. He screwed up by not telling me all the jobs he's taken since he got canned, but on the other hand, I had those big-time lawyers up there saying they wouldn't touch him as an expert witness because of the firing. Plus, he didn't get the Suffolk County job, which we brought out on cross. It may hurt us on damages, but not much. He's still got badge of infamy with respect to getting any major C.M.E. appointment. Face it, they have no case on the facts, they have no case on the law; the only thing they can do at this point is smear.”

“That's why Keegan,” she said.

“Yeah, Keegan,” said Karp glumly. He fell silent and pushed the food around on his plate.

“You're going to have to tear him up?”

“Oh, hell, no! Keegan? What'm I going to do, impeach him? On what grounds? No, besides …”

“What?”

“I feel terrible for the guy. A man like that, sucking after Bloom.” He paused, thinking both of Keegan and of himself. “Ambition.” The word came out like a blasphemous oath.

“So what will you do?”

“I don't know,” said Karp, suddenly blithe. “Appeal to his better nature, I guess.” He looked at his wife benignly, and seemed to absorb for the first time that she had not changed out of her downtown outfit, that and the hurried meal.

“You're going out?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I'm going to Queens to talk to Joe Clancy.”

“Uh-oh. That sounds serious.”

“We'll see how serious. I think mainly he's thinking about jumping ship and he wants to know how long is my rope.”

Sergeant Clancy lived in a post-war brick bungalow in Woodhaven that was barely distinguishable from the post-war brick bungalow in Ozone Park, a mile or so to the southeast, that was still home to Marlene's parents. And although Clancy was about her own age, or a little older, she found his home more like that of her parents than her own. There was a living room, in which she was now seated, with the good set of furniture, the blocky sofa, the two graceless armchairs, all covered in a chicken-blood satin, the mahogany coffee table, the china cabinet, and side tables. The Clancys had gone for the fake Duncan Phyffe instead of the fake French Provincial her folks had. Marlene had a glass of Pepsi in her hand, with a cocktail napkin around the base and a coaster for the coffee table. Mrs. Clancy, a worn, pale, blond lady, with a tendency to speed, had supplied this, together with five minutes of small talk. Kids, schools, and churches. The Clancys were Holy Family people; the Ciampis were St. Joseph's. Oh, you must know …

The two girls and the older boy were trotted past for admiration; the retarded child was not, nor was he mentioned, although there he was in the large color photo portrait of the whole family (the sergeant in uniform, with decorations, the rest of the family dressed for Easter at church) that hung over where the mantel would be if the house had been grand enough to have a fireplace.

“I'll go get Joe,” said Nora Clancy when the conversation flagged. Marlene was studying the portrait when Clancy walked in.

“That was a couple of years ago,” he said from behind her. “James, that's the baby, is in the Southampton Institute, out on the island.”

“For Down's syndrome?”

“He had hydrocoele too,” said Clancy too quickly. “Water on the brain. He needs a lot of care. Everyone else is just fine, though, like you saw. Can I get you another drink? Or something stronger?”

“I'd love one, Sergeant …”

“Hey, I'm home—call me Joe.”

“Okay, I'm Marlene. I'd love one,
Joe,
but I can't drink right now—I'm six months gone.”

A peculiar look came over Clancy's face when she said this, and Marlene briefly wondered whether he found something accusatory in her remark, as if the Clancys' prenatal regime had been short of perfection and there was the result, the gnomelike creature up on the wall. But the look faded in an instant, and Clancy plopped himself down in an armchair, waving Marlene at the sofa.

“So, why are we here?” he asked.

“Because the shit is about to hit the fan, Joe. D.A. or no D.A., those guys are going down. And we got two dead kids in jail. On your watch.”

Clancy rubbed his face and looked at her bleakly. “Jesus God, what a mess! Okay, how much do you know already?”

Marlene told him about the autopsy photos and what they revealed, about Stupenagel being shaken down by Jackson and Seaver, about her interview with Seaver, about the reasons for believing in the complicity of Bloom in protecting the two men, about Bloom having had Selig fired to ensure that the medical examiner would be incapable of uncovering the true fate of the cabbies. All she left out was that it was Selig himself who had examined the autopsy photographs. Clancy listened in silence, nodding, his face grave and pale.

When she was done, he said, “Okay, let's say I'm disgusted but not surprised. Jackson I know pretty well; we were in uniform together at the Two-Seven before I made sergeant and he got his gold potsy, but I just know Seaver by rep. Paul's got a little problem with his hands. He likes to tune up the skells; you know, perps and the lowlifes.”

“And others as well?”

“Yeah, that too. Generally not an equal-opportunity kind of cop. He got some reprimands, but it never went further than that. The guy had something like seventy-five good felony collars. So they balanced it off.”

“You never wanted to be a detective yourself?”

Clancy rolled his eyes. “Get real! I like regular hours. I have a
life.
You got any idea what the divorce rate is in plainclothes? Besides, the promotion's faster in uniform, and there's more slots open for you at the top. I'd like to be chief of patrol.”

He said this calmly and without arrogance. And why not? thought Marlene. A hero, a good Irish family man; it was entirely possible, provided he had an effective rabbi up at Police Plaza. Somehow, Marlene figured Clancy had taken care of that too.

She said, “Okay, Jackson was rough. Was he always bent?”

“Yeah, Paulie took. Not like guys in narco, not big-time, but he took. The problem with Paulie, though, is in the brain department. He's not too swift there, you know?”

“So Seaver came up with the plan, you think?”

“No question. Paulie just liked to pound meat, but Seaver needed money bad.” Marlene looked a question and he added, “He likes sports action. Compulsive. The guy bets on soccer games, for cryin' out loud! His wife ditched him, so he's got child support to pay. By the way, this is all hearsay. Neither of them exactly unburdened themselves. But it's known around the house. I even heard they got themselves a string of girls on the stroll over by 'Tenth, near the park.”

“Okay, they were bent,” said Marlene. “They shook down gypsy cabbies and some of the poor bastards started to make waves. So they yanked some of these guys off the street to put a little fear into them, and ended up killing Ortiz and Valenzuela. So, the question is, how did they get the D.A. to cover them? What did they have on the D.A.?”