Marked

THIRTEEN

LeBlanc knows something is wrong as soon as Doyle walks into the squadroom.

Actually, he suspected Doyle was up to something when he disappeared for the whole morning. Showing up now with that shiner under his eye merely confirms it.

This is not good, he thinks. This is definitely not going to be something I want to hear.

He accosts Doyle before he even has a chance to sit down. Before he has even had a chance to remove his jacket.

‘Cal, can we talk? In private?’

‘What, again?’ says Doyle. ‘This is how rumors start, ya know, Tommy?’

‘You mind?’

Doyle looks around. Only Schneider is staring back at him.

‘All right. Come on.’

They leave the squadroom and move down the hallway, where Doyle opens the door to an interview room. That is, it’s officially an interview room. Unofficially it’s a dumping ground for anything that can’t be squeezed in anywhere more appropriate. File cabinets in particular seem to end up here. There is hardly an inch of lower wall space that doesn’t have a file cabinet in front of it.

‘What is it?’ asks Doyle, and it seems to LeBlanc that there is already a hint of irritation there.

‘You mind if I ask where you been all morning?’

‘You mind if I ask why you’re asking?’

‘Because I’m your partner. I thought you were gonna talk to the Hamlyns.’

‘Then you just answered your own question.’

‘It took you all morning to do that?’

‘I’m nothing if not thorough.’

‘Go anywhere else?’

‘Hey, Tommy, cut it out, okay? I know we’re in the interview room, but that doesn’t mean you have to get in character. You wanna get some practice in on your Q and A technique, go drag in some skells.’

LeBlanc breathes out. A long slow breath. This isn’t how he wanted it to go.

‘Look, I’m sorry. I’m finding it difficult to get used to the way you do things.’

‘The way I do things?’

‘Yeah. You know, the way you just disappear. The way you don’t always tell me what you’ve been doing or what you’re about to do.’

He realizes he’s starting to sound a little like an abandoned wife. But he also knows just how close partners can get. They need to rely on each other. They need to trust each other. Each needs to understand precisely how the other one ticks. LeBlanc doesn’t know whether he will ever manage to reach that depth of familiarity with Doyle. Maybe this partnership wasn’t such a good idea. But he’s not going to be the one to give up on it.

‘You know what?’ says Doyle. ‘You’re right. I haven’t been telling you everything. Just don’t take it personal. I had some things I needed to do this morning. Stuff that doesn’t concern you, okay? From now on, I’ll try to bring you in whenever I can.’

‘Is that how you got the mouse? From these other activities you can’t talk to me about?’

Doyle touches a hand to his cheek. For a moment it seems to LeBlanc that Doyle’s expression is that of someone who has just been caught in a lie and is frantically trying to manufacture a way out of it. And when Doyle smiles, it seems to come far too late.

‘Yeah. Nothing to do with the Hamlyn case. Now can I go, please, Officer? I’m beginning to feel like I should ask for a lawyer.’

LeBlanc answers with a smile of his own. But it wilts as soon as Doyle leaves the room.

Fuck!

He wants to believe Doyle. He wants to trust him. But why does the man insist on making it so damned difficult? Why can’t he at least talk about this, for Chrissake? What’s he got to hide?

When he leaves the interview room, he doesn’t follow Doyle back into the squadroom. He heads the other way, out of the building.

Skinterest looks to be all closed up. The blinds are drawn and the lights are off. LeBlanc stands in the rain for a while, telling himself that it’s nothing. The man’s decided to close for the day, is all. Nothing to worry about.

He thumbs the buzzer anyway.

He hears nothing, so he buzzes again, then hammers on the door with his fist.

A light comes on. A shadow appears behind the blinds. LeBlanc hears a fumbling of chains, the drawing back of bolts, the turning of keys. As he pulls open the door, Proust shuffles backwards, maintaining the door as a shield between him and LeBlanc. Only a fraction of Proust’s face is visible, and even that is cast into silhouette by the light behind it.

‘Mr Proust? You mind if I come in for a moment?’

‘Is Doyle with you?’

Proust’s voice is faint, croaky and filled with fear. LeBlanc swallows. It worries him that Proust’s first question should be about Doyle. He seems terrified of the man.

‘No. No, he’s not. It’s just me. Is that okay?’

‘I. . it’s not really a good, unh, time.’

LeBlanc hears the slight grunt. Like Proust is in pain. Jesus, could he. .

‘Mr Proust, I promise this won’t take long. And I’m not here to give you any trouble. A couple of questions and I’m gone.’

Proust says nothing. Just stands there. Then the door swings open a little wider.

LeBlanc steps inside. Takes a quick look around. Nothing amiss that he can see. Everything in order. He turns back to Proust, who is closing the door. From the back he seems strangely bent and stiff, like an old man.

And then Proust faces him.

LeBlanc gasps. ‘Jesus Christ! What happened? What the hell happened to you?’

The man is a wreck. He looks as though he has just tumbled from the top of a mountain to the bottom. How is he not on a slab in the morgue?

‘I’m okay,’ says Proust.

‘Okay? You’re not okay. Have you seen yourself? How did you get like this?’

Proust limps past LeBlanc. ‘I was, uhm, I was mugged.’

As soon as LeBlanc hears the explanation he knows it is not true. And then he starts to feel sick with the realization of what the truth might be.

‘You were mugged? When were you mugged? Where?’

‘Here. Two guys came in this morning. They wanted my money. I told them I didn’t have any. So they beat the shit out of me.’

LeBlanc says nothing for a while. He doesn’t know what to say. Proust’s story is a crock, but he’s not certain he wants to drag the real one out of him. He watches as Proust sits himself down on a stool, wincing as he does so.

‘Have you reported this to the police?’ LeBlanc asks.

LeBlanc snorts a laugh, then follows it up with a cry of pain. ‘The police? Are you kidding me, man? After the way you guys treated me yesterday? Something tells me I wouldn’t get a whole load of sympathy from you people.’

LeBlanc looks him up and down. Jesus! This was no ordinary beating. Somebody wanted to give him a message. They probably didn’t even care if he lived or died.

‘These men. What did they look like?’

‘I don’t remember. They were big and they were mean. That’s all I know.’

‘They use fists or weapons?’

Proust shrugs. Winces again.

LeBlanc chews his lip. Break through the lies, or leave it be? This is a fellow cop we’re talking about here, Tommy. Do you want to know? Do you really, really want to know?

‘Did Detective Doyle come here again this morning?’

Slowly, Proust raises his head. Turns his battered, misshapen face full into the light. Through half-closed lids, his eyes twinkle as they stare at LeBlanc.

‘Detective Doyle?’

‘Yes. Was he here this morning?’

A long pause. Then: ‘No.’

Except that it’s a no which means yes. It’s a no which says, You’re a cop too and I don’t trust you and so I’m playing it safe, because all you cop bastards stick together and anything I say against one of you is said against all of you.

All of that in one word. That’s what LeBlanc hears. That’s what shakes him to the core.

And now he’s not sure what to do. A part of him wants to pursue this. A part of him wants to put the badge away and talk to Proust as another man, another human being. He wants to tell him that he will listen, and that whatever Proust says to him will be treated in the strictest confidence. He thinks that might work. He thinks that Proust might open up to him.

And then he takes a mental step back. He thinks, I am a cop and Doyle is a cop, and Proust is still a suspect. Despite the apparent fuck-up that Doyle seems to be making of this case and his own life, our roles haven’t changed.

It is not without some shame that he opts not to side with this man against one of his own, and so he offers to do what he can: ‘Get up,’ he says.

Again there is fear and suspicion in Proust’s eyes. ‘Why?’

‘I’m taking you to the hospital.’

‘I don’t need no hospital, man. I’m okay.’

‘You might have broken bones. Internal damage. You need to be checked out. Come on, I’ll take you in my car.’

Proust stares at LeBlanc’s beckoning hand for some time before making a decision. As he gets off his chair, he grimaces. If he wasn’t in so much obvious discomfort, it could almost be mistaken for a smile.

Doyle sees the glance from the man with the backpack. He knows the guy has seen him. Can tell by the way the man speeds up his rhythmic lope that he’s trying to put as many yards as he can between him and Doyle without it seeming too obvious.

Doyle pushes himself away from the window of the bodega and takes up pursuit. The man speeds up. Doyle speeds up. The man risks a quick look behind him and increases his pace a little more. Doyle decides he’s not in the mood for burning calories.

‘Freeze!’ he calls.

Coming from a cop, that would usually mean only one thing. It would mean, I have a gun trained on you right now, motherfucker, and if you so much as blink too fast then I’m gonna blow your sad ass off of this planet.

Or words to that effect.

On this occasion, however, it doesn’t mean that. The man Doyle is chasing is called Edwin Jones, but nobody other than his mother ever calls him Edwin. They know him as Freezeframe Jones, or Freeze for short. And the reason they call him that is because one of the ways he chooses to scrape a living is by selling pirated DVDs. Doyle knows he’s built up a thriving business over the years. Freezeframe prides himself on always being able to get hold of the latest movies, sometimes even before they hit the theaters. His boast is that he had the first Harry Potter movie before J. K. Rowling had finished writing the book.

Freezeframe stops and turns, then affects a grin of recognition. He is as tall as Doyle, but gangly with it. He has an angular face, with prominent cheekbones. His arms seem too long for his body, and he has a habit of waving them around with abandon, threatening bodily harm to those who get too close.

‘Yo, D! S’up, man?’

‘Hey, Freeze. For a minute there I thought you were avoiding me.’

‘Who, me? Nah. Just didn’t recognize you, is all. Can’t blame a cat for tryin’ to stay safe and shit, you know what I’m sayin’?’

‘Got something worth protecting?’

‘Only my life, yo. Worth sumthin’ to me, even if no other motherfucker give a damn.’

‘My heart bleeds for you. I was talking about the movie business. You made director yet? Producer? Or is sales and marketing still your thing?’

Freezeframe feigns puzzlement. ‘You lost me, D. I don’t know nothin’ about no movie business.’

‘Uh-huh. I bet the bodega owner does. What’s his thing? The new Tom Cruise? Or is he more your alien invasion kinda guy?’

‘Only thing I know is he sells gum.’ Freezeframe digs a pack of chewing gum from the pocket of his hooded top and shows it to Doyle. ‘You want a stick?’

Doyle shakes his head. ‘What’s in the backpack?’

Freezeframe looks over his shoulder as though he’s just been told there’s a bug crawling there.

‘This? I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know what’s in your own backpack? The one you think is important enough to be carrying around in the rain like this?’

‘I found it, D. Planning to hand it in to the po-lice at the next opportunity.’

‘But you didn’t bother to look what was in it?’

‘Nah, D. None of my business, you know what I’m sayin’?’

Doyle sighs and looks up at the rain clouds. It seems to him that they don’t plan on dispersing anytime soon. Seems more like they’re waiting for reinforcements.

‘Step over here,’ says Doyle, moving under the awning of a hardware store. Reluctantly, Freezeframe joins him.

‘I tole you, D. I don’t know shit about no DVDs. This ain’t-’

‘Forget the DVDs. I want some information.’

Freezeframe pulls his neck back in surprise, his head disappearing turtle-like into the shadows of his hood before it slowly emerges again. Then he suddenly breaks into raucous high-pitched laughter as he slaps his thighs with those elongated arms of his.

‘You fucking with me, right?’

Doyle keeps his face straight. ‘No, I’m serious.’

Freezeframe stops laughing. ‘I ain’t no snitch, D. And if I was a snitch, which I ain’t, I would not be your snitch, because I heard ’bout what happens to your snitches. Motherfuckers be ending up dead.’

‘This ain’t an offer of permanent employment, Freeze. It’s a one-time deal.’

‘I still ain’t interested. I got a reputation, yo. Folks get to hear I been talking to the man, they be smokin’ my ass.’

Doyle pulls out his wallet, opens it up and strips out a few bills.

‘Tell you what. I can open up your backpack there and then I can run you in and we can talk about this down at the station house, or you can make yourself a little green for one small piece of information and then walk away. What’s it to be?’

Freezeframe looks out into the rain as if for guidance, then back at Doyle.

‘Shit, that ain’t no kinda choice. That’s you putting a nine to my head, is what that is.’

‘What’s it gonna be?’

Freezeframe looks around again, this time appearing a little more nervous. Which tells Doyle that he’s on the verge of accepting his offer.

‘Suppose I ain’t got this particular piece of information?’

‘Do your best, Freeze. Ain’t nobody else I know mixes with the criminal fraternity like you do.’

As Doyle suspected he would, Freezeframe takes this as a compliment, and his face brightens.

‘I do got a lot of contacts, that’s true. Aiight, what you wanna know?’

‘I’m looking for someone. Man called Anton Ruger.’

Wide eyes now. Astonished eyes.

‘Uh-uh, D. You don’t wanna be messing with that shit. That cat is nasty. Word is he offed one of the Bartok brothers. Anyone even insults the Bartok brothers got to be either insane or havin’ balls of steel.’

‘I wanna know where he is.’

‘I don’t know where he’s at. Nobody does.’

‘Somebody does. Somebody must have mentioned his name to you, at least.’

Freezeframe pauses. ‘You didn’t hear this from me.’

‘No problem.’

‘Aiight. There’s a white boy I know. Likes to talk big. Says he did some work for Ruger.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Likes to go by Cubo. Thass all I know.’

‘Where can I find him?’

‘He cribs at his girl’s place. Skinny-ass ho called Tasha Wilmot. She live at 309 Stanton. Top floor. Apartment 5D.’

‘That’s pretty damned specific, Freeze. How’d you know all this?’

‘Boy likes to watch movies, when he’s not getting it on with his girl.’

Doyle nods. He scans the street himself, then palms off the wad of bills to Freezeframe.

‘You made the right decision.’

Freezeframe slips the money into his pocket. ‘Yeah, and you be making the wrong one. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

LeBlanc tries every which way he can to justify it to himself.

I’m young, he thinks. Relatively inexperienced. Still got a helluva lot to learn. Older, wiser cops are still capable of surprising me. Sometimes I need to hold back before I interfere. Give them a chance to-

Scratch that. It’s bullshit.

This is Wrong, with a capital W.

LeBlanc has seen many things that have made him feel uncomfortable. Cops who have accepted one too many ‘freebies’. Cops who have been a little bit too free and easy with their fists during their interrogation of suspects. Cops who have suggested that LeBlanc look the other way while they have a ‘private conversation’ with a perp. He has witnessed all these things. He is not naive. He knows how the world turns.

But this. .

He can’t let this go.

When he enters the squadroom he is ready for a fight. Not a physical fight — he knows that Doyle would put him on his ass in a second — but a squaring off while some serious truth-seeking takes place. He doesn’t care if anyone else is there to listen. He needs to hear what Doyle has to say for himself. Doyle owes him that much, and he will demand that Doyle gives it up.

Except that there is no sign of Doyle in the squadroom. His desk is unoccupied. His jacket isn’t on his chair or the rack. LeBlanc came in here with adrenalin pumping through his system, and now he has no way of putting it to use.

‘What’s the matter, kid?’

This from Schneider, who has watched LeBlanc thunder into the squadroom like he’s about to tear it apart.

LeBlanc rounds on him. ‘I’m looking for Doyle. You seen him?’

‘Me? No. But then he’s not a guy I make it my business to find very often. Ain’t he supposed to be your partner?’

LeBlanc knows what Schneider’s doing. He’s saying: Doyle is your partner. He should be keeping you up to speed. You shouldn’t have to ask where he’s gone. And he’s doing this to turn LeBlanc against Doyle, because every day that Schneider can create another enemy of Doyle’s is a successful day in Schneider’s book. LeBlanc knows this; he’s not stupid. But right at this moment he’s willing to overlook the obviousness of this ruse. Right now he’s pretty amenable to being asked to play for the opposing team.

‘That’s what I thought too,’ he snarls. ‘But hey, what do I know?’

Schneider raises his eyebrows in obvious surprise at the vehemence of LeBlanc’s reply.

‘I told you. Doyle doesn’t do partners. You get put with him, you still have to watch your own back. Remember that. Look after number one, kid, because you can be sure that’s what Doyle’s doing.’

LeBlanc doesn’t know what to do. This is unfamiliar territory. The last thing he wants is to jam up a fellow cop, especially his own partner. But Schneider is right. In his own blunt, opinionated way he is uttering wise words. LeBlanc needs to make sure he doesn’t end up getting accused of covering up for Doyle through his failure to speak out. He needs guidance. An older, wiser head to whom he can turn for help.

‘You wanna talk about it?’ says Schneider.

And there it is. The offer of assistance. Right here, right now.

‘You got a few minutes?’ LeBlanc asks.

The marks are already darkening into savage bruises. Purples, blues and greens stain almost his entire body, making it look as though it bears one huge abstract tattoo.

Proust is impressed by the workmanship.

One missing tooth, another broken in half, and a hairline fracture of one rib.

That’s pretty damned good. To be carrying all those marks and to have only those underlying injuries — well, that’s the sign of a true craftsman. Gowerson performed exactly as advertised. Proust has always admired those who not only have great skill, but who also go to great pains to make things just so.

Speaking of pains. .

The rib hurts like crazy. A red-hot dagger into the chest every time he breathes or moves, both of which he tends to do frequently. Who would have guessed that such a tiny crack could make its presence felt so emphatically?

The hospital staff told him there was nothing more they could do for the rib. Rest and strong painkillers is what they prescribed. They told him he was lucky to come through an assault like that with nothing more serious. Said he was, in fact, fortunate to be alive.

He wanted to laugh when they told him that. He does it now instead. Naked in front of the mirror, he lets out a long, loud burst of laughter, stopping only when the tears running down his cheeks are those not of amusement but of indescribable agony.

He hasn’t taken the painkillers. He wants to experience this pain. He is so used to others enduring pain at his hands in the tattoo shop, and yet he has suffered very little in his lifetime. He has never broken a bone before or had toothache or even a severe headache. Pain has always been something to avoid, to fear. He feels that he is somehow conquering that fear. He is becoming stronger. He can cope much more easily with what life may throw at him.

Bring it on, Doyle, you miserable, puny fuck. Bring it on.