Dead Irish

Chapter Twenty-nine

DICK WILLIS of the Drug Enforcement Agency was sure it was one of those situations where the guy’s name had absolutely determined what he was going to be in life. Bargen had probably been called Plea since the first grade.

Willis, sitting across from him in his cubicle in the D.A.’s office, looked at the nameplate on his cluttered desk, the one that said “P. Bargen,” and wondered if in fact that might be his real name. He didn’t know him as anything else.

Plea leaned back, balancing his wooden chair on its hind legs. His feet were on the corner of his desk, crossed, and he appeared to be sleeping soundly, arms crossed behind his head. His tie was undone, his few hairs uncombed. Still, he wasn’t a slob. His body was trim, his pants still had a crease in them and the shirt was ironed. He was paying attention.

They were listening to Abe Glitsky talk. Willis didn’t intend to stay long. It was the end of the day, and he’d dropped by mostly as a courtesy. At the most, what they were talking about here with the Alphonse deal was about a hundred thousand dollars, and asking him, a major-league drug buster, to put out much effort on that kind of money was like asking a homicide cop to work a weekend to get a purse snatcher.

But he knew Abe and he knew Plea. They’d both delivered in the past, and they might stumble on something if they muddled around in it long enough, see if they could pull together anything that might lead to a bigger score. After all, small amounts of drugs tended to come from bigger shipments, and maybe they could work backward.

But Abe was talking all kinds of nonsense that Willis couldn’t connect to a goddamn thing, and finally he had to hold up his hand and interrupt. “Maybe I came in the middle here, but aren’t we talking about this Polk thing? Alphonse Page? We got a confession, right?”

Plea opened his eyes and came forward in one motion, very smooth. “That’s covered, yeah,” he said.

“So what’s all this parking-lot bullshit?”

“Well, there was a guy killed there a week ago,” Plea said, then added, with a look at Glitsky, “or killed himself.”

“Uh-uh,” Abe said, “nope.”

Willis held up his hand again. “Guys, guys. We go back a ways, right? Right. So look, we’re talking drugs or not? What’s the connection here?”

“The connection is maybe the drop was going to be there.”

Willis stared at Glitsky, wondering if he’d heard right. This was a veteran? He sucked at his front teeth. “Drop? Drop? Did you say drop?” He frowned at Plea. “He said drop, didn’t he?”

Plea concurred.

Willis went back to Abe. “Abe, my man, there ain’t no drop. This isn’t like a shipment of brown coming in stuffed in Aztec jewelry. We’re talking maybe a couple of bags, some condoms full. You forgetting what coke looks like, I got about fifteen tons down in evidence. For that, you need a drop. For this, you meet some guy on a streetcorner and if you’re casing it and you blink, you miss it, it’s over so fast.”

Willis scratched his head, sucking at his teeth again. These guys were in the business, even. It killed him. “Drop. Jesus.”

Plea rolled his eyes, tried to sound patient. “Dick, you dick…” Willis hated when he said that. “The dissertation was nice, but this guy Polk, it was his first buy. Maybe he was being careful, maybe he was nervous, you know.”

Glitsky put in his two cents. “Alphonse said there was gonna be a drop. That’s the word he used.”

“Alphonse is never, ever gonna win the Nobel Prize. In anything.”

“But he says Polk told him the stuff was out in the Bay. They were delivering it by boat. Polk never told Alphonse where, though now he figures they were coming up the canal and dropping it in Cruz’s lot.”

“What a wizard.” This wasn’t going anywhere, so Willis cooled himself down. “Look, spare me the lot noise. Do you guys want to plead down if he’ll talk about his buyer? That’s the extent of my interest.”

The city employees had some other agenda going, but Willis wasn’t going to get bogged down in it. “Unless you got something on Polk himself?”

Glitsky stood up, walked over to the doorsill and leaned against it looking out. Plea sighed. “Polk is a wash. Best we can tell, Polk died by accident in his hot tub.” When Willis made a face, Plea shrugged. “M.E. down the Peninsula confirms it. So there you go. Anyway, nobody knew anything about his source. His wife-we saw her today-killer, by the way…” He stopped. “I mean it, Dick. Be worth your while to interview her.”

Abe turned around, scowling. “Bargen,” he said.

“Yeah, all right. Anyway, completely oblivious. Can’t believe her husband had anything to do with drugs. He was a businessman, that’s all. Straight as they come. Never did drugs himself.”

“How old is she?” Willis asked.

“Christ!” Glitsky said. He walked a few steps out into the corridor. Plea again rolled his eyes, held his hands inverted out over his chest and blew out soundlessly. “Lungs to here, a face to die for.” He raised his voice. “She wasn’t what I call distraught, except maybe over the thought that she wouldn’t get the money Alphonse stole.”

“She won’t if it’s drug money.”

“She will if it’s stolen in this jurisdiction. It was Polk’s, and Alphonse admitted taking it from the safe.” Abe came back to the door, leaning against it. “She knew from nothing,” he said.

“And Alphonse didn’t know? About Polk’s source, I mean?”

Plea and Abe looked at one another. “No chance.”

Willis rubbed his palms against his pants and stood up. “So it’s his buy or nothing?”

“Looks like,” Plea said. “Maybe three, four hundred grand.”

These guys couldn’t see it. “Peanuts,” Willis said, but added quickly, upbeat, “but it might lead someplace.” No sense pissing them off. “Can I talk to him?”

“Sure.”

“Well, set it up for tomorrow, and we’ll see what we can do.” Willis shook hands with both of them. “Thanks for the tip, guys. You never know.” He was out the door about ten seconds when he poked his head back in. “The Polk woman? What was her first name?”

“Nika,” Plea said. “I’ll send you the report.”

“Do it,” Willis said.

At least he didn’t wink.

“DEA,” Abe said. “Don’t Expect Anything.”

Plea shrugged. “They got bigger fish to fry.”

Abe plunked himself heavily on the corner of Plea’s desk. “I don’t care what perspective you have, half a million dollars isn’t peanuts.”

“Relativity, Abe. Relativity. It’s the federal government, where a fucking hammer costs a hundred and forty dollars. You know their efficiency rate? They gotta cover for every G.S. One through Twelve lifer who wouldn’t do more than an hour’s work in a day for any reason on God’s earth. So they gotta make maybe ten mil on a bust before they justify the overhead.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bargen.”

Plea noted the scar tightening through Abe’s lips. “Come on, Abe, what’s the problem? We got a righteous bust on the Linda Polk murder. We keep getting one a day, we end the year only about two hundred behind.”

Glitsky twisted his face in what he thought was a smile. “What about Cruz? The Cochran thing?”

Plea shook his head. “That’s a suicide/equivocal, not a homicide.”

“The fuck it’s not.”

Plea held up a hand. “Hey. You prove it, I’ll charge it, but I’d never even seen the file before twenty minutes ago. I don’t make this stuff up. You guys tell me what to run with, remember?” He opened the file with a casual hand, perused it a second, closed it back up. “Nothing here gets me out of the blocks, Abe. If it’s somewhere else, get it for me, would you? Otherwise…”

“Cruz was there. He admits it.”

Plea nodded. “And because of that, because you’re a good cop and you asked nice, we looked into it, didn’t we? In spite of no official finding of homicide. Didn’t we?”

Abe didn’t answer.

Plea stared at the sergeant. Maybe he was working too hard. He felt sorry for him. “We got corroboration on the dinner from the waiter. Cruz himself passed a polygraph. His little boyfriend -I took the kid apart, Abe-and once he got over being scared, all he did was provide an even better alibi. He followed Cruz all night, for chrissakes. Thought the guy was running around on him. Couldn’t have cared less about Cochran, just didn’t want Cruz to get all mad at him because he’d been followed.” Bargen paused, scratching his scalp. “Plus, there is no shred of physical evidence. No way we charge him.”

“The perfect crime, huh?”

“Maybe, but I’d say he didn’t do it.”

“He had a motive…”

“So did Alphonse, and he didn’t do it either, unless you don’t believe at least four of your fellow officers who were playing basketball with him, all of whom I’m sure want to protect a sweet and upstanding citizen like Alphonse.” Plea sighed. “And while we’re on it, the last guy with a motive didn’t do it either.”

Glitsky looked a question and Plea said, “Polk. His wife had a party that night. Twenty, thirty people. Polk was there the whole time.”

“I hadn’t even thought about him.”

Plea nodded. “I know. You were too busy with ready-made suspects. Me, I took it fresh, and Polk popped up like a plum.”

“But no, huh?”

“No.”

Glitsky went and sat in Willis’s chair. “What’s your hard-on for this thing?” Plea asked.

“I don’t know. Once in a while my sense of justice gets offended, I guess.”

“You ought to have this job. There’s no justice, there’s just grinding ’ em through. Plea ’em down and move ’em along.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So why this one?”

He gave it a beat or two. “This one, Plea, is a murder. I’m a homicide cop.”

“That simple, huh?”

Glitsky seemed to be asking himself the same question. His lips tightened again, loosened, tightened. “Yep,” he said, standing up, “that simple.”

The kids were asleep. He lay with his shoes off on the living-room couch, his head in his wife’s lap as she massaged his temples. The television was on in the corner but was muted. It gave the only light in the room.

“I got my ass reamed. Frazelli, not so gently, suggested I just stay off it. It’s Griffin ’s case.”

“But I thought you’d-”

He shook his head. “Nope. Not anymore. That was when Frazelli thought there was new evidence.”

“But why pull back now?”

“Because now, my love, I have suggested not one, not two, but three possible suspects to the same killing within a twelve-hour period. It doesn’t do much for my credibility. Especially since two of them definitely didn’t do it, and there’s no evidence at all with the third.”

“Are you sure it was a murder?” She moved from his temples to the forehead, smoothing the crinkled brow back with the palm of her hand.

“Feels so good,” he said. He’d been awake since whatever time this morning. “I don’t know, maybe it’s Hardy.”

“Is he sure?”

“He’s dead positive now. I just got to wonder. Here’s a guy was good, you know, good. Just a beat cop, but he had a feel for it. Hell, you knew him.

“Then he goes into law and suddenly burns out. Anyway, he lays low for maybe what, six eight years, and now he swings back in action. You got to ask yourself what for? He doesn’t think he’s jerking himself off, I’ll tell you that.”

“But maybe he’s just wrong. Maybe he wants to believe it so bad, he’s making it true for himself.”

“Maybe,” Abe said. “All I know is, I’m off it. I’m still interested, but I’m off it.”

“And you told him that?”

He closed his eyes under her soothing hands. “Yeah. I told him he comes to me with a signed confession, I’ll be delighted. Then I’ll go shove it up-sorry, all worked up.”

“Just forget Griffin tonight, forget all that stuff. They’re not out to get you ’cause you’re black.”

“I’m only half black.”

“Okay, they’re still not out to get you.”

He looked up into her face. “That’s what you think. I’m not allowed the luxury of being wrong.”

She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Paranoid.”

“Don’t mean they’re not after me.”

She smiled and continued with the massage, her white hands seeming to shine in the dim room against the dark skin of her husband.