“Listen, you fucking British prick! You don't understand the New York City Police Department. All I have to do is tell them that you guys have the tape of a cop getting whacked and they get this little smile on their faces. They love taking down guys in suits. It's a class-warfare thing. The deputy commissioner of police knows about the tape. He's just one phone call .away from knowing that
you
have it. And after that, anyone could know about the story. Especially the other papers in New York.”
“Then we would have a very interesting situation, Mr. Wren,” Campbell said with the smooth violence of a man who was paid big dollars to slap problems back into the face of the people who presented them. “We would have the owner of your newspaper suing one of his
former
columnists for defamation. And he would win. He would also sue any other newspaper that hired this columnist to tell his libelous story. But then again, this is all, as they say, idle speculation, because I am confident that things will not come to such an unhappy climax. My guess is that you will exercise prudent discretion.”
“Give me the tape back, Campbell. And tell Hobbs that you fucked up.”
“We have nothing more to discuss here, so far as I can see, Mr. Wren.” And then he hung up.
I put another quarter in the phone and called Hal Fitzgerald. “I need to talk, Hal. I've got a problem.”
“Problems are a problem. You still have a tape for me?”
“No.”
“Where are you?”
I told him, then asked the waitress for a window seat. I went back outside the restaurant and casually tossed my paper bag with the video in it into a trash can on the corner. Not looking back, I returned to the restaurant, glancing at the way the sunlight worked against the window. I would be able to see out, but from across the street no one could see in. In my
seat I watched the early lunch birds arrive. One of them sat next to the guy with the ponytail, who was contemplating his cigarette smoke.
Twenty minutes later an unmarked police car pulled up at the restaurant, Hal in the back. I watched him get out; he closed the door and smoothed his tie, which was a mannerism he'd adopted on his way up. He was getting vain as the years went by; soon it would be Italian loafers and monogrammed shirts. We shook hands without enthusiasm.
“I got to be uptown in, like”âhe shot his wrist out of his sleeve, looked at a big gold watchâ“in like forty-nine minutes.”
“Get the chili.”
“Yeah. All right, listen, this tape thing. We need the tape, Porter.”
“I
need the tape.”
“What, somebody took it off you?”
I nodded. “Last night. They thought it was something else. They thought it was another tape.”
“They took it right off you?”
I glanced outside. If someone was following me, he would have to see what I'd put in the trash. “Yes.”
“What'd they do, show you a gun?”
“They showed me that and they showed me their shoes.”
“Kick you around?”
I nodded. “I'm all right.”
“What's on the other tape?”
“It wouldn't interest you. Not professionally, I mean.”
“People fucking?”
“Maybe, I'm not sure.”
“I'm always interested in people fucking.”
We ordered the chili.
“You know who they are?”
“More or less.”
“Who?”
“I can't get into that.”
“You can't.”
“No, Hal, I can't.”
“I still need the tape.”
“When I get back this other thing, this other tape, I can trade it for the Fellows tape. They'll give it back to me, they don't want it.”
“You've seen the Fellows tape.”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you could tell me exactly what's on it.”
“Big white guy hits Fellows with a bat, runs away.”
“What else?”
“He runs right at the camera.”
“What else?”
“Blond, maybe twenty-eight, thirty. Big guy. It's very fast. I've seen it only once. Your guys would have toâ”
“They'd blow it up and everything. They'd get it. Could you ID someone in a lineup?”
“No. It's too fast.”
“We need the tape.”
A man in a suit was standing next to the trash can. He might have been one of the entrepreneurs from the night before. “See how I'm doing in a week,” I said.
“Porter, you don't understand. I got to go back there with something.”
“Five days.”
“Three.”
The executive had the arm of his nice suit in the trash can. A quick dip at the knees, he had the paper bag, he was gone. “I'm doing the best I can, Hal,” I mumbled. “I'm under a lot of pressure here.”
“Hey, Porter, I don't want to start talking about pressure.” Hal leaned over his chili. He could have detectives looking up my rainspouts in fifteen minutes if he wanted to. “You fucking call us up and say you got the tape that solves the Fellows murder and you can give it to us, and then you tell me you
can't
give me the tape? It's getting very complicated. I mean, I vouched for you, said this guy, you know, he likes cops, is fair and everything, but now the story is getting complicated. It starts to make me look bad, starts to make me look compromised, which I'm
not.
All
I
did was pick up the phone
when you called and then, afterward, naturally, I went to my boss, my guy, who has got don't let me tell you how many fucking problems of his own, and I give him a little good news, cheer him up, we're going to collar the guy who killed Officer Fellows a couple of years ago, looks good for the cops, detectives still on the case, Patrolmen's Benevolent Association feels the allocation of resources was sufficient, because it's one of about fifty-eight little things that's bugging them. I mean, we had that young kid killed on the beat a week ago partly because of a radio malfunction problem, okay?”
I gave him an obligatory nod.
“You got to understand after you tell me all this stuff I naturally go in there to my boss and give him the good news, and then I gotta go back in there now and give him the bad news? That's complicated. He looks at me like he wants to scramble my fucking eyeballs and maybe eat them, all right? You don't understand the budget pressures. Giuliani doesn't have any fucking money; Dinkins gave it away to the teachers' union. So then I go tell him, Sorry, there's been a delay, my guy has some kinda little problem, there's some
other
tape with a bunch of people fucking on it, and the tapes got mixed up, and so maybe we don't have the Fellows thing after all? You think that goes over good? It doesn't. You know what my boss's favorite expression is? It's this, he says this all the time, he says, âSorry doesn't feed the cat.' That's it. âSorry doesn't feed the cat.' I go in there with nothing, he's gonna say that to me.”
“Halâ”
“No, no. You listen to me. Don't think of me as a friend, Porter.” He waved his hands in front of me, like someone ordering a plane not to land. “That's where the problem starts. Think of me as an asshole. That will help you. I'm on the other side of the line. I mean, you know what happens when a ten-thirteen is called? When a cop is shot? The radio goes quiet, the chatter stops. Becomes fucking
solemn.
Then cops start to check inâdo they got anything, did they get the guy?”
“I know all this, Hal.”
“You know it but you don't feel it. You're not a cop, Porter. You don't know the life.” He had to say all this, I knew; it was part of the negotiation process. “You don't understand the loyalty thing, Porter.”
I swabbed around in my bowl with a piece of bread. “Tell me more about what I don't understand.”
“You know that a cop can retire, put his badge in a special vault, and then have his kid or grandkid wear that badge? There are actually a few guys walking around with three-digit badges, badges maybe a hundred years old. That's something, okay? That's in the life. Cop signs on, he knows stuff like that. Cops hate each other, the whites hate the blacks, the blacks hate the whites, the men hate the women, guys hate the gays. There's all this fucking hatred in the system. Desk guys hate guys on the beat and vice versa. We got hierarchy stress, we got corruption all over the place, we got tension between the union and the command structure, we got every fucking kind of pressure and hatred, but goddammit, Porter, there's this fucking loyalty. Every cop out there knows that something like eight hundred cops have been murdered on the job over the years and every one gets solved! We only got two outstanding now, the Fellows one included. And we'll solve those. Every one, sooner or later. Never missed. That's like gravity, Porter. It's pulling on me, it's pulling on you. There's only so much I can actually do in a situation. The game already started, you know? Now you want to slow it down, reset the clock? You can't. You have to play the tough ball. You have a forty-foot shot with three seconds to go. It's not my fault if it is almost impossible. Get that? Some of these captains have been around, they don't give a shit about a guy like you. For them it's a war and it always will be. I can't control them necessarily, these guys. I mean, you tell me you don't have the tape, and then tomorrow cops find you got drugs in your briefcase, I can't do anything about that. And God help you if my guy tells Giuliani. Let's hope that doesn't happen. If you want to pray, pray for that.” Hal ate a bite of chili. “This is too big, Porter, it moves too fast. I mean, I got this theory that society is really about velocity.”
“Is it?”
“If you can't control your velocity, you're in trouble.”
“That sounds very clever.”
“Think about it.”
“I will.”
He got up, threw his napkin on the table brusquely, and checked the time. “Velocity management.”
“Five days.”
“Three.”
“I need five, four at least.”
“Three.”
He was staring at me. “Okay,” I said. “Three.”
Â
Â
An executive's wife stood in the lobby of the law firm. Pumps, pearls, wool suit. Caroline. The makeup had been taken down a few notches. The look was cool, hyperrational. I think she had even changed her watch. Here, no doubt, was the apparition that Charlie wanted to marry, not a woman who had passed out while being screwed by Magic Johnson.
We were taken into an office not big enough to be a partner's and met Jane Chung, the lawyer overseeing the management of Simon Crowley's estate.
Caroline introduced me and I watched the wariness pass into Jane Chung's face.
“He's here in what capacity? As a reporter?”
“Just as a friend,” Caroline said.
“And he has no financial interest in the estate?”
“None.”
“None whatsoever,” I repeated.
Jane Chung sat down at her desk, and I could see that she had already recaptured her composure. She dealt with all sorts of strange family arrangements in estate matters, and no doubt the wisebeards of the law firm had chosen her for her tact and judgment.
“As I mentioned on the phone,” Caroline began, “we're here because I would like to see the accounting of the estate's expenses, each of the little costs and so on.”
“I have a printout.” Jane Chung handed each of us a half-inch-thick document. “As you can see, there are a substantial number of payments.”
And indeed there were. I glanced at the first few:
Sally Giroux Inc., New York [public relations]
| $15,000.00
|
Sally Giroux, Lim., London [public relations]
| $15,000.00
|
Greenpark Nursing Care facility, Queens, N.Y. [personal]
| $6,698.19
|
Bloomingdale's, New York [personal]
| $3,227.03
|
Rego Park Hearing Aids, Inc., Queens, N.Y. [personal]
| $1,267.08
|
Photoduplicators, New York [business expense]
| $174.23
|
New York City Unincorporated Business Tax [taxes]
| $23,917.00
|
FK Laundry Services [personal]
| $892.02
|
FederalExpress, New York [business expense]
| $189.45
|
Citibank Mortgage Services [personal]
| $17,650.90
|
Harvey's Meats, New York [personal]
| $217.87
|
The entries went on throughout the entire document.