Pariah

FIFTEEN

There’s a lot of blood. A hell of a lot of blood. But that’s not the worst of it. .

Spinner’s head is tilted back and his eyes are open, staring at a spot above the doorway like he has a crick in his neck. The gash in his throat stretches almost from ear to ear, gaping and glistening. His clothes are sopping and sticky with his own blood. The dining table has been dragged from its usual position and set directly in front of Spinner. On it there’s a tape recorder and a microphone. And a hammer.

Spinner’s hand, his good hand, rests next to the recorder. Two six-inch nails have been driven through it, holding it firmly to the table’s surface. All the fingers of the hand have been smashed with the hammer, crushing and flattening them into a single useless bloody mass. Like raw hamburger.

It must have been the ultimate torture for a man like Spinner. For a boxer of such promise to lose the use of one precious hand was devastating enough. To lose the second, there in front of his eyes, would have destroyed any spirit left in the man. Had his persecutor not finished him off, Spinner would probably have done it himself.

Doyle can almost hear the screams, see the agony and pleading in Spinner’s eyes as the hammer crashes down time and time again, destroying his fingers, destroying his hope.

Doyle wants to cry over the waste of it, to rage at the stomach-churning cruelty of it. But what rips at him most is his own culpability.

‘Jesus Christ, I’m sorry,’ Doyle whispers to his friend. ‘I’m so sorry.’

It’s some time before he can put his mind back in order. He knows what he should do now. He should back out of the room, put in a call to Central. Get the experts down here while he protects the crime scene.

What the fuck. He’s in enough trouble as it is. What’s one more transgression going to add to his load?

And so he steps across the sodden carpet. Checks that the rest of the apartment is empty before returning to the body.

He looks again at the tape recorder. Taking a pen from his pocket, he uses it to press the eject button. The player’s door springs open, but there’s no cassette inside.

He frowns, then turns his attention back to Spinner. He leans in for a closer look, and that’s when he sees it. Shiny and wet, it’s tucked deep into Spinner’s throat wound. Doyle takes his pen and pokes it gently into the fleshy chasm, pressing it against the foreign object. Whatever’s in there, it’s wrapped in some kind of plastic material.

Trying to apply the minimum of force, he teases the object out, farther and farther until it’s protruding from Spinner’s throat like some distorted second tongue. He goes off to the bathroom, and comes back with a wad of tissue. He wraps the tissue around his fingers, then uses it to grasp the edge of the object and pull it all the way out. As it comes free, a bubble of blood distends from Spinner’s trachea and pops softly.

With great care, Doyle unrolls the plastic bag. He puts it down on the table and props it open with his pen, then reaches inside with some fresh tissue between his fingers.

What he brings out is a cassette tape. The words ‘Detective Doyle’ are written in pen on its label. The handwriting is Spinner’s.

Doyle slides the tape into the recorder, snaps the lid closed, then presses the play button.

At first he’s not sure what he’s listening to. Some heavy rock music is playing really loudly, but beneath that is also the sound of faint sobbing. Doyle gradually realizes that the killer had turned on the stereo and ramped up the volume to mask what was happening here in the apartment. The crying is Spinner’s.

And then: ‘No. No. I won’t do it.’

Doyle wonders what it is he’s refusing to do, but he doesn’t have long to ponder it. The next sound he hears is a bang like a gunshot, followed by a howl of excruciating pain that causes Doyle to leap away from the table and put his hands to his ears.

‘Sweet Jesus,’ Doyle yells to drown out the screams. ‘Sweet fucking Jesus.’

When he can bring himself to listen again, the music has been turned right down and Spinner is talking to him.

‘Cal? It’s me, buddy. I have to read something to you, okay? I have to read this, so here goes.’ There’s a pause, then a slight rustle of paper, and then Spinner talking through his tears again. ‘ “Detective Doyle. You did this to me. You were warned, but you didn’t listen. You were supposed to stay away from everyone you know, but you didn’t. You came to see me. You are the reason I’m going through this right now. It’s all your fault. When will you ever learn?” ’

There is another faint crackle of paper, then the sound of footsteps retreating. Doyle waits for the tape to go dead, but suddenly Spinner pipes up again. His words come out in a rush, like he knows he has little time left.

‘Cal, I’m sorry, man. I let you down. I didn’t want to-’

It’s as far as he gets, and Doyle thinks the recorder’s stop button must have been pressed while he was in mid-sentence. But he’s wrong. There is still sound. A gurgling, choking sound. The sound of a man who’s just had his throat opened up.

Doyle stands in the chaotic, blood-soaked apartment, looking down at his old friend from the Bronx. Listening to his death throes.

He stands there until the tape reaches its end.

And he weeps.

He’s hardly flavor of the month when the crowd arrives. Holden and LeBlanc are okay: the worst they give him are pitying looks and shoulder shrugs that say, You’re under pressure, so we understand why you’re acting like such a rookie dork right now.

The Crime Scene detectives, and especially the photographer, are a different matter. They’re kind of upset that a precinct detective decided it would be okay to go tramping through the apartment, moving stuff around before they’ve had a chance to record the scene and look for clues and shit. They’re funny that way.

Norman Chin takes it to another level again. Anything to do with a dead body, and especially within a dead body, he regards as his domain. He doesn’t like the idea of detectives who don’t know their ass from their olecranon process poking their grubby little retractable biros into the innards of his corpses. And in his own inimitable style, he’s happy to tell anyone who would cross such a boundary what he thinks of them.

And so when Lieutenant Franklin arrives on the scene, the furrows on his face already spelling out the word ‘grim’, and finds that everyone and his brother are united in a ‘we-hate-Doyle’ campaign, it comes as no surprise to Doyle that his boss feels the need to join in.

‘Go outside,’ Franklin orders, his eyes glowering at Doyle.

‘Mo, can we talk about this?’

‘Outside, Detective. Now.’

The use of his job title is a sure signal to Doyle that to protest further would not be the most prudent course of action. With feet-dragging reluctance, he turns his back on the scene and heads out of the apartment.

On the stoop outside, two uniformed cops stare at him as he walks by. He steps down to the sidewalk, huddling into his leather jacket as he stares at the flashing roof lights of the radio cars. Five minutes later, Franklin joins him.

‘Not one of your better days,’ Franklin says.

Doyle glances at his boss. ‘You could say that. You pissed at me?’

‘You want the truth, yes, I am. It’s bad enough I have to spend most of my Saturday afternoon stuck in dreary meetings on the upper floors of 1PP. But when I finally get out in time to meet my wife for some Christmas shopping, my cellphone never stops ringing. First of all from a very irate captain who’s been briefed by a very irate duty sergeant that two of his men have had the crap beaten out of them by one of my detectives.’

‘That’s not the whole-’

‘Then I get a call telling me that despite nobody knowing anything about your location or your actions today, you’ve suddenly phoned in to say that you’re at the scene of a homicide. Of your own CI, no less.’

‘I was trying to be-’

‘And then, when I get down here, I discover that you took it upon yourself to walk all over a crime scene with the finesse of a bulldozer. So, to repeat my answer to your question, yes, I am a tad irritated that a member of my squad has decided to start World War Three without the knowledge or permission of his superior.’

Doyle waits for a moment. ‘Can I talk now?’

Franklin sails an open palm out from his waist. ‘Be my guest.’

‘I admit I didn’t follow procedure up there, but this is no ordinary homicide. This was done to hurt me. It was aimed at me. Spinner’s a buddy of mine. We go. . we went back a long way. His death’s on me. Seeing him like that, what he went through, it hit me kinda hard.’

He gets no show of sympathy from Franklin. ‘And this morning? What was that all about? First you have an unlogged meeting with a CI, and then you go out and beat up two cops.’

‘They started it,’ Doyle says, then realizes how childish it sounds.

‘The way I heard it, not only did you kick the crap out of them, but then you even went so far as to draw your weapon on them. In full view of members of the public, no less.’

‘Mo, it wasn’t as simple as that. Christ, they’re making me out to be some kind of cop-hating vigilante. I went to see Marino to ask him a simple question-’

Franklin stops him with raised hands. ‘I don’t care why you went there, although I can guess. What I care about is how it made you look, and by implication how it makes me look. Jesus, man, I turned a blind eye for you this morning. Against my better judgment I allowed you to stay on the job. At no point did I even hint that you could stop acting like a police officer and become some kind of maverick who thinks he can do whatever the hell he wants.’

‘Mo, I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know what else I can say. It’s not like I got up this morning and thought I’d give myself a shitty day or anything. I’ve kinda had my fill of shitty days recently.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe you should do something about it. Take some time to chill out a little.’

‘I don’t need. .’ Doyle begins, then realizes that Franklin isn’t simply offering some friendly advice. He searches the lieutenant’s face for a sign that he’s wrong.

‘You’re taking me off the case.’

Franklin shakes his head, but his expression tells Doyle that it’s not to convey better news. ‘You’re off all your cases, Cal. You’re off the squad. Temporary R amp;R.’

‘Mo, that’s-’

‘The call came through, Cal. I already spoke to the Chief of Ds. The word’s come down from on high. You’re out.’

‘Well, fuck them. If they think I’m going to-’

‘I’m not giving you choices here. For Chrissake, there are people dying all around you. Can’t you see that? How many more do you want on your conscience before you decide to leave it alone? You’re out, Cal. It’s a done deal. And if you want my honest opinion, you’re lucky you’ve still got your gun and shield after the cock-ups you made today.’

Franklin turns then, heads back up the steps of the apartment building.

Doyle calls after him, ‘This case is all about me, Mo. I’m the best chance you have of catching this guy.’

‘Go home, Detective,’ Franklin says. ‘That’s an order.’

He disappears into the dark lobby. The two uniformed cops stationed at the door send semaphore signals to each other with their eyebrows.

Doyle takes a step toward the building, but no farther. He knows he can’t fight this.

‘I can’t fucking go home!’ he yells. ‘Tell me where the fuck I’m supposed to go now!’

But there’s no answer. Just the noises of the city going by like a river around a stone.