Pariah

SEVEN

When the phone rings, Doyle doesn’t know where he is. As he reaches out to his bed table he blinks his eyes until the hazy lights on his clock sharpen into recognizable numerals.

It is five-thirty in the morning.

Shit, he thinks. Telephone calls at this time of day carry only bad news. There’s a law about it somewhere.

Next to him, Rachel groans her disapproval and pulls the duvet over her head. When Doyle’s fumbling hands finally locate the handset, he answers the call with a mouth that feels like it’s filled with cotton wool.

‘Hello?’

‘Cal? It’s Mo.’

The tone is subdued.

‘Okay, Mo, what is it?’

There’s a lengthy pause. ‘It’s not good, Cal. There’s no easy way to tell you this.’

Doyle is wide awake now. ‘Spit it out, Mo.’

‘Something happened last night. To Tony Alvarez. He was killed.’

And now Doyle begins to wonder whether, in fact, he is still sleeping. Whether his mind is filled with dark imaginings of his deepest subconscious. He swings his legs over the side of the bed.

‘Killed? How? Where?’ There are a million other questions on his lips, but these will do for now.

‘There was an explosion at an apartment on Seventeenth Street. Alvarez was there with another guy, still unnamed. I only found out about this an hour ago myself. I don’t have all the details yet.’

Doyle stares into the darkness of the bedroom. His questions have all run away, as if his brain has decided it doesn’t want to know any more about this because it’s all too terrifying.

Franklin cuts into his thoughts. ‘Cal? You’re the first one on the squad I’ve told about this. I don’t think I need to say why.’

Doyle nods, not thinking that Franklin can’t see him. Mo is preparing him. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that.

Franklin continues: ‘The killing was in the Eleventh, so it’s their case at the moment. But you know how quick these things get around. By the start of the day tour, everybody’ll have heard about this. I just thought. . Well, I just wanted you to know.’

Doyle clears his throat. ‘Yeah. Thanks for the heads-up, Mo. Appreciate it.’

‘Okay, Cal. See you in a couple hours.’

‘Yeah. Yeah.’

He ends the call. Sitting on the edge of his bed like this, he begins to notice how cold the room is.

Two cops dead in the space of twenty-four hours. Could it be any worse?

Well, yes, if they were both partners of yours.

He leaves the house before Rachel and Amy are up. He doesn’t want to tell Rachel about it just yet — doesn’t want to discuss it with anyone — and if he sits there moping over breakfast she will know that something is wrong.

He doesn’t go directly to the station house, but instead drives the streets for a while, killing time and thinking. Eventually, he pulls up at a near-empty diner and seats himself at a booth in the corner. He orders sausage, eggs and coffee, but finds that his stomach will permit entry only to the coffee. After pushing the food around his plate for a while, he finally gives up and heads off to work. He times his arrival to be as late as he can make it, seconds before the start of his shift.

As he walks through the doorway he hears a loud fake cough, warning of his presence. Silence descends as he moves toward his desk. He waits for the first wise-ass remark, but nothing comes his way. Not yet, anyway. It might be because Mo Franklin is standing at the front of the squadroom, like a teacher keeping order among his pupils.

Jay Holden, a shaven-headed black cop who ran with street gangs in his youth, is the first to speak.

‘We’re all here now, Mo. How about you put an end to all the rumors?’

Doyle has always liked Holden. He is his own man — never to be swayed by the unsupported opinions of others. He waits until he gets all the facts, and then he makes up his own mind.

Franklin perches himself on the edge of an unoccupied desk. Tony Alvarez’s desk.

‘I wish I could say to you that all we have here are rumors, that none of it is confirmed yet, that it’s all likely to be so much bullshit. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Detective Tony Alvarez was killed in the line of duty last night.’

They know it already, but still they groan, curse, lower their heads.

‘What happened, Mo?’ somebody asks.

‘Tony was following up on the Joe Parlatti hit. He went to an apartment on West Seventeenth to meet someone who claimed to have information.’

Puzzled, Doyle looks up at Franklin. A lead on the Parlatti case? What lead? Why didn’t Tony bring him in on it?

Franklin carries on: ‘It was a trap. The apartment was booby-trapped somehow. A bomb. The guy Tony was meeting was killed instantly — blown to bits. Tony was brought out alive, but only barely. He didn’t survive the journey to the hospital.’

There is a moment of silent reflection before Schneider pipes up.

‘The news channels are saying the explosion on Seventeenth happened at about ten o’clock last night. How come we’re only just getting to hear about Alvarez getting caught in that?’

‘The bomb went off in the Eleventh Precinct, so none of our guys were on-scene. When Tony Alvarez was carried out of the building he had no ID on him. It was hours before the Bomb Squad declared the apartment clear, and another couple hours before the fire department said the building was structurally safe to enter. Eventually, they found Tony’s shield in his jacket, which had been blown across the room.’ He pauses. ‘I got a call only hours ago myself. I had to. . I had to ID the body.’

This seems to mollify Schneider for the moment. He nods almost imperceptibly and tosses his gum around his mouth.

Holden asks, ‘We have an ID on the other DOA?’

Franklin looks relieved to drag his thoughts away from the vision of Alvarez’s shattered form. ‘We think it’s a pimp named Tremaine Cavell, street handle TC. The apartment belongs to a girlfriend of his.’

What?

Doyle’s mind is racing now. A follow-up with Tremaine? All the more reason for not cutting him out. So why the hell would Alvarez do that?

Holden says, ‘And Cavell fits into this how?’

Franklin’s eyes flicker toward Doyle. The lieutenant seems reluctant to supply an answer, so Doyle does it for him.

‘Cavell was pimping for the pross found with Joe. We tracked him down yesterday, but he didn’t give us much.’

Schneider’s mouth is provoked into action again. ‘Wait a minute. Have I missed something here? Yesterday you and Alvarez go talk to this pimp scumbag, who gives you zip. Later that same day, Alvarez goes to see the same scumbag, only this time without backup. More specifically, without you, Doyle. You wanna explain to me how this situation came about, Alvarez going into a potentially dangerous situation without his partner?’

The emphasis on the word ‘partner’ is like a sharp jab in Doyle’s ribs. He doesn’t feel that Alvarez was truly his partner — they just happened to come together and work jointly for less than a day. But he knows that the others won’t see it like that.

He studies their faces. All eyes are on him, and irrespective of their feelings toward Schneider and the way he phrases things, it is clear that they think an answer is warranted.

The problem for Doyle is that he doesn’t have one.

He opens his mouth, unsure as to what words are about to spill out, but Franklin gets there ahead of him.

‘I can answer that. Cavell phoned the station house last night, looking to speak to Tony. Tony called him back on his cellphone, but he was careful. He recorded the conversation.’

‘And we have it?’

‘We do. Tony’s car was found near the apartment on Seventeenth. The digital recorder he used was in the glove compartment. I asked the Eleventh Precinct to send me a copy of the discussion between Tony and Cavell.’

As he says this, Franklin reaches into his jacket and takes out his own voice recorder.

‘This will get back to you anyhow, so you may as well hear it now.’

He switches the machine on, and the detectives listen in rapt silence as the recording plays through to its end. When it reaches the part where he is mentioned by name, Doyle feels the pressure of numerous gazes being directed his way.

Schneider says, ‘So, Doyle, what puts you on the blacklist of a slimy mope like Cavell? Any reason you can think of why he might not want you there last night?’

‘You heard what I heard, Schneider. He wanted Tony there alone. He didn’t want any other cop there, not just me. He used my name explicitly because Tony brought it up that he should call me. If you’d have been working with Tony yesterday, it would have been your name on that recording.’

‘Oh yeah. That’s right. You and Alvarez were working together. Just like you were working with Joe Parlatti, who also happens to be dead. And if we all care to cast our minds back a little further . .’

‘Oh, fuck you, Schneider,’ Doyle says.

‘Fuck you too, Doyle. All’s I’m saying is that it don’t take no Sherlock fucking Holmes to see a pattern developing here. .’

‘All right!’ Franklin yells. ‘Can it, you two, for Christ’s sake. I lost two of my finest detectives yesterday. Two people I was proud to call my friends. They were your friends too. Bickering like schoolgirls is going to get us nowhere.’ He aims a finger at Schneider. ‘If you think that Detective Doyle had anything to do with the death of any police officer, in this squad or anywhere else, then you put it in writing. If you don’t want to do that, then I don’t want to hear any more insinuations.’ He takes his eyes off Schneider, addresses the whole group. ‘From any of you. Understand?’

He gets a few nods in return.

‘That said,’ Franklin adds, ‘there’s a bit more I need to tell you. This may be nothing, but it may be important, so you need to hear it.’

Doyle catches a brief, almost apologetic, glance in his direction. Shit, he thinks. What now?

‘When Tony was being put in the ambulance, he said a name, “Doyle.” Then he said three more words: “Got too close.” Like I said, Tony was on the edge of dying right then. He may have just been rambling. Any thoughts?’

Schneider’s response is to expel air from the corner of his mouth in a kind of pfff sound — his way of letting the room know where his opinions lie.

Holden’s comments are a little more lucid. ‘Maybe Cal and Tony were on to something without even knowing it. Too close. So close, Tony had to die.’

Schneider decides he needs to be vocal again. ‘Yeah. You need to be careful, Doyle. You could be next.’

Holden ignores him and presses on. ‘That stuff from Cavell about some heavy shit going down. If he really was about to toss something juicy to Tony, that could have been a good reason for someone to whack both of them.’

Franklin nods thoughtfully. ‘That’s assuming Cavell really did have something to deliver. If this went down the way the hit on Joe did, Cavell was probably just being used as bait. Any other theories?’

‘A cop killer.’

This from LeBlanc, an ambitious young cop who only recently traded in his white shield for a gold one. Always sporting the most fashionable spectacles, although Doyle suspects that he wears them only to appear brainier than he is. Older, wiser heads might not have dared to voice LeBlanc’s idea, but Doyle is sure that it has entered the minds of all of them.

‘For some reason,’ LeBlanc says, ‘the killer just doesn’t like cops, period. He’s working his way through them, one by one.’ He looks across at Schneider. ‘In which case, maybe it doesn’t have to be Cal who’s next. Maybe it’s any one of us.’

‘Nice thought, kid,’ Schneider answers. ‘Cheer us all up, why don’t you?’

‘Even so,’ Franklin says, ‘we have to take it into consideration. Could just be we have a psycho cop killer on our hands.’ He raises a warning finger and wags it at each man in the room. ‘I don’t want to lose any other members of my squad. From now on, you have to be on your guard at all times, you hear me?’

He gets nods again, but more vigorous this time. Now and again, it’s nice to hear how much your boss loves you.

And then there is another period of silence, while every detective here weighs up the implications of having to be aware of everything around them, at all times of the day. The killer has shown himself to be a person of astounding ingenuity and resource. From now on, even taking a crap could be fraught with danger.

Who says a cop’s life is dull?

‘There’s another possibility,’ Doyle says. He has been thinking about this ever since the wake-up call from Franklin. What the lieutenant said about the last words of Alvarez lends it even more currency.

‘Maybe I really am the link in this. Maybe this is some warped way of trying to hurt me. Those words of Tony’s, using my name and then “got too close”. Maybe what he was saying was that he got too close to me.’

Franklin is staring at him, his expression grave. ‘You know anyone might want to get at you like that?’

Doyle looks round at Schneider. ‘Outside this room, no.’

This raises a couple of snickers, which tells Doyle that there are at least one or two people on his side.

Franklin says, ‘That’d be one crazy way to hurt somebody, Cal. I hope to God you’re wrong about that.’

Not as much as I do, Doyle thinks.