Pariah

EIGHT

Barely five minutes after the men in the squadroom finish trying to fathom what is happening to them, the lieutenant takes a phone call from the Chief of Detectives. The Chief of Ds tells Franklin, amongst other things, that even though the death occurred within the confines of the Eleventh Precinct, the Alvarez case now officially belongs to the Eighth, being as it seems to have a solid link to the Parlatti case, which was already theirs. In his turn, Franklin relays the word from above to the squad, and it’s all systems go.

Doyle makes it his first task to learn what he can about the events of last night. It’s a job that takes longer than he hoped, mainly because the required information seems to be distributed across about a dozen people from the Eleventh Precinct, the Manhattan South Homicide Task Force and the Bomb Squad, not all of whom are immediately contactable.

Next, Doyle calls the Medical Examiner’s office for a prelim on the Alvarez and Cavell autopsies. He manages to speak to Norman Chin, who informs him that Alvarez’s fatal injuries were sustained solely as a result of a massive explosion, the epicenter of which lay in the immediate proximity of one Tremaine Cavell. It is Chin’s conjecture that the bomb was either being held by Cavell, or was somehow attached to his upper torso, this being difficult to confirm owing to the current absence of said upper torso.

The conclusion being, Doyle thinks as he ends the call, that Cavell had somehow been turned into a human bomb. So, strike the notion that Cavell had any hot information to reveal. He was being used, just as Scarlett had been used to kill Joe.

Tired of having a phone clamped to his ear, Doyle abandons his desk and heads out to the apartment of Cavell’s girl on West Seventeenth. There he speaks with the building superintendent, whose primary concern seems to be that his warning about making holes in his walls was ignored, his building now possessing one very large hole where a third-floor window used to be, thank you very much.

There is only a handful of tenants in the building when Doyle is there. Others are out at work; some have evacuated and are refusing to return until they are 100 per cent certain they are not likely to have their asses blown off. From those remaining, Doyle extracts nothing in the way of a lead.

His next visit is a return one to the Pit Stop. He finds a few of Cavell’s buddies there; others require further legwork. To each of them he puts the same questions: Do you know where Tremaine went last night? Do you know who he met with?

These boys are incensed. They want revenge. They will do whatever they can to track down the motherfucker who smoked TC. But as far as how to carry out that mission goes, it’s clear to Doyle that they don’t have a clue where to start.

With time ticking away, hour after fruitless hour, Doyle begins to fear that there are no clues to be found. The killer is that good. So good, in fact, that if the police are to have any hope of catching him, the perp may have to lend them a hand.

He may have to continue his killing spree.

The clothes hang loosely on the man’s thin frame. The battered corduroy coat looks ready to slip off his narrow shoulders, and his wrinkled beige pants billow around his bony legs. He walks with his head tilted to one side, like he’s trying to keep ear drops in place. His left arm does not beat time to his walking pace, but instead dangles and bounces off his side as though it’s a length of rubber.

Doyle takes another bite from his beef sandwich and watches through his car windshield as the man pushes through a doorway farther up the block here on East Eleventh Street. He waits five minutes, finishing his sandwich and coffee before stepping out of his car and heading toward the building the man has just entered.

He swings open the heavy front door, forcing it back against powerful springs that slam it shut when he lets it slip from his grasp. He is in a small, musty lobby containing a noticeboard, a desk and a single unoccupied chair. He pushes through the next set of double doors and enters a dimly lit corridor. There’s a smell of sweat here. From Doyle’s right comes the hissing of a shower at full blast; from his left, the unmistakable pounding of gloved fists, the shuffling of feet, and the yells of men who live for the controlled release of aggression.

Doyle heads left, breathes deeply of the testosterone-filled atmosphere. The ever-present bounce in his step becomes more pronounced now, until his gait is more of a swagger. He remembers how it felt to be on the edge of threading a path through the supporters and the detractors, the cheers and the catcalls, his sole intent to knock the living daylights out of another man.

He enters a large hall. On the far side, a man in a sleeveless white T-shirt and sweat pants takes powerful swings at a punchbag, while another huge man studies his technique with a critical eye. The center of the gym is taken up by a boxing ring. A white man and his black opponent, both of whom would be mean-looking enough even without their headgear and gumshields, dance around the canvas looking for openings. Dotted around the ring, other men watch and throw out words of advice and encouragement.

Seated on a wooden bench near the wall, still wearing his coat, is the man Doyle has followed. A bag of potato chips is on his lap, and he brings handfuls of them to his mouth with his one good arm. His eyes do not shift from the sparring fighters as Doyle makes his way over and sits next to him on the bench.

They sit there like this for several minutes: not saying anything to each other, just watching the boxers, assessing the skill, the art, of the men corralled together in that small roped-off square.

Finally, Doyle says, ‘My money’s on the white dude.’

The man next to him brings another mound of chips to his mouth, munches on them thoughtfully.

‘I coulda taken him,’ he says in all seriousness.

Doyle’s eyes slide to his neighbor. Yeah, he thinks, you could. Back in the day.

As an eight-year-old kid fresh over from Ireland, Doyle had it tough growing up in the South Bronx. It might not have been so bad had his father migrated his family into one of the few remaining Irish communities in the borough. For some reason unknown to Doyle, he chose instead to bring them to an area inhabited predominantly by blacks and Hispanics. Of the white minority in Doyle’s neighborhood, few could lay claim to any Irish ancestry, and even then it was an Irishness distanced from them by several generations. The problem for Doyle was that he sounded like he had just walked off the bogs, and for that he was teased mercilessly. Rare was a week that went by without his getting embroiled in at least one fist fight.

Tired of trying to keep her young son out of trouble, Doyle’s mother decided that if he was going to fight anyway, then he might as well learn how to do it properly. Her solution was to sign him up in the nearest boxing gym.

Doyle learned a lot in that gym. Not just about how to defend himself, which he did with great success, but also about life itself. It was here that Doyle was coached by a black ex-cop named Herbie Chase. As a boxer, Doyle was above average in ability but never top class, and it was Chase’s fascinating stories of life on the streets that eventually convinced Doyle to apply for the Police Academy. But there were others in that gym who showed a lot more boxing promise.

Like Mickey ‘Spinner’ Spinoza, for example — the man now seated next to Doyle.

Right into his teens, Doyle looked up to Spinner as a role model. The guy was five years older and not as bulky as Doyle — he was a lightweight, in fact — but back then he had a perfectly sculpted physique. And his technique — boy, was that something to behold. That guy could move, man, and his punches would shoot out with the speed of an arrow and the force of a sledgehammer. Doyle always envisioned that Spinner was destined for great things in the boxing world.

And then life played one of its cruel jokes. As blows go, it looked nothing. A jab to the side of the head that Spinner shouldn’t have even noticed. But he dropped as though his legs had just disappeared. Just lay there, drooling and twitching.

They diagnosed a brain hemorrhage. It had probably been waiting to pop in his head for months, maybe even years. When it did, its effect was like being hit by an express train.

Spinner recovered eventually. But not fully. He pretty much lost all use of his left arm, and the left side of his face would always droop lower than the right, but at least he had his life back, right?

Wrong.

Spinner’s life was in that gym. Was in the ring. Boxing was what kept him off the streets. When he was told he would never box again, Spinner did what many other of his South Bronx compatriots had done: he slipped into the murky world of drugs and crime.

Doyle lost contact with him. As the years passed, Spinner became a fading memory of unachieved greatness. Then, six months ago, he showed up at Doyle’s precinct station house in the East Village. Desperate for money to feed his drug habit, he offered the only thing he now possessed: knowledge. From that point on, Spinner became Doyle’s confidential informant.

Doyle continues to stare at the pathetic figure next to him. Spinner is now just a husk, his muscles having wasted away as quickly as his dignity. And yet, Doyle knows that there’s a part of Spinner that still wishes he could be in that ring right now, showing that pasty-faced kid what real boxing is.

‘Took a while for me to find you today,’ Doyle says. ‘What happened to that cellphone I gave you?’

‘Threw it away. Never did like those gadgets. Damn things give you cancer. I think that’s why they call them cellphones — ’cause they rot away your brain cells. And my brain don’t need to lose no more of them.’

‘Uh-huh. I hope you wiped the numbers from it before you sold it.’

Spinner gives him a disapproving look. ‘You here to bust my balls over a phone?’

‘No. I got bigger fish to fry.’

Spinner pushes more chips into his mouth, then something in the fight grabs his attention. ‘Keep that chin in,’ he shouts, and soggy pieces of potato chip fly from his mouth. ‘Jab, Jab! Follow through, you son of a. .’ He leans toward Doyle. ‘Look at that, will ya? He coulda had him. Even a slow lunk like you wouldn’t have missed an opening that wide.’

Doyle smiles. Like Spinner, he wants to be up there so much his biceps are twitching. It’s a feeling that never leaves.

Spinner asks, ‘This fish, it’s already been fried and it’s carrying a gold shield, am I right?’

‘Actually, I got four dead fish. My partner, Joe Parlatti, was killed along with a hooker, night before last.’

‘That one I heard about.’

‘Last night, another cop got it. Detective Tony Alvarez. Blown to pieces while talking to a pimp named Tremaine Cavell.’

‘That I didn’t know. So that makes two.’

‘Two what?’

‘Come on, don’t pretend you’re here because of a pimp and a hooker. They’re nothing to you. You’re here because of your cop buddies. Far as you’re concerned, the others, they’re just collateral damage.’

It’s a cynical view that Doyle finds all the more irritating because he knows it to be true. ‘Whatever. The point is, I need to find who did this.’

‘Parlatti — you said he was your partner, right? That must be tough for you, coming on top of the Laura Marino thing.’

Doyle shrugs. ‘The timing could have been better, sure.’

‘And this other cop, this Alvarez guy. .?’

Doyle hesitates. ‘Yeah, he kinda started working with me when we lost Parlatti.’

Spinner stops eating. He slides himself along to the end of the bench.

‘Hoo, Cal, buddy. Is this safe, me sitting so close to you like this? It’s starting to sound like you got some kind of curse on you, man. You upset any voodoo witch doctor or something lately? I mean, the odds against three strikes in a row. .’

Doyle holds up his fingers. ‘Two. That’s two strikes. Parlatti and Alvarez. Laura Marino has nothing to do with this. Now get your skinny ass back here before I add another dead acquaintance to my list.’

Warily, Spinner shuffles back to Doyle’s side.

‘Whaddya want from me, Cal?’

‘Anything you can get me. These were calculated hits. Very clever, very professional. Whoever did these is no mutt; he knew exactly what he was doing. I need you to ask around for me. Anyone talking about offing cops. Anyone looking to put out a contract on cops. Find out if we got any big hitters come in from out of town, like that.’

Spinner nods, his eyes back on the fight. ‘Tell me what you got so far.’

Doyle gives him a summary of what the investigation has revealed since the night of the first murders, which to his mind is a big fat zero.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Spinner says. ‘But I have to tell ya, if this is just some lone sicko out there. .’

‘I know.’ Doyle stands up. ‘Take it easy, Spinner.’

‘Yeah. And you watch out for that left hook. Sometimes it just comes from nowhere.’

As soon as Doyle steps out of the gym, he knows his day has just gotten a whole lot worse.

Parked directly in front of him is a gray Chevrolet Impala. A man sits on the car’s hood, smoking a cigarette. He wears a midnight-blue suit, skinny black tie and charcoal overcoat. Lank black hair fans out across his forehead, and he stares at Doyle from eyes set deeply beneath thick eyebrows. His cheeks are hollow, and become even more concave when he draws on his cigarette. He looks like he’s on his way to a funeral. As the one in the coffin.

Doyle throws his hands up in despair. ‘Jesus H Christ, Paulson. What the fuck are you doing here?’

Sergeant Paulson takes the cigarette from his thin lips, blows a cloud of smoke in Doyle’s direction.

‘Nice to see you too, Doyle. Been a long time. I was just passing through, you know, and I thought to myself, Hey, wouldn’t it be nice to hook up with good old Callum Doyle again? We could talk about old times, swap some stories. .’

‘Passing through, huh? If you knew I was here, then you know what I’m doing here, right? I’m having a meeting with a confidential informant. Emphasis on the confidential. That means being discreet, Paulson. Look at you. You might as well put up a neon sign saying “The Cops Are Here”. Jesus, do you even remember what it was like to be on our side of the fence?’

Paulson pushes himself off his car and pretends to look hurt.

‘Aw, gee. Don’t be like that. We got history, you and me.’

‘Yeah, history. Meaning, in the past. Now get the fuck out of here, before I do something I regret.’

Doyle turns and starts to walk back to his own car, but he can hear the clicking of Paulson’s shoes as he trails after him.

‘Can’t do that, Doyle. I feel this burning need to talk to you. If not here, then it’ll have to be somewhere else.’

Doyle stops on the street, his fists bunched. Watching the fighters train back there has put him square in the mood for landing a haymaker on someone. If not Paulson, then he has a good second choice in mind.

There was a time when informants were more or less regarded as a cop’s personal and private property. Undisclosed sums of money and favors were traded in dark and dingy locations, the fact of these meetings and the identity of the CI often never being revealed to anyone else.

That time has long gone. Nowadays, CIs have to be formally registered with the Police Department, which entails a tree’s worth of paperwork and a list of signatures that seems to involve everyone up to the US President. Partly for reasons of ‘investigative transparency’, but partly also to ensure the safety of the detective involved, meetings with CIs have to be logged.

Doyle regards himself as a man not predisposed to breaking rules. Save in circumstances when those rules are stupid. And on the odd occasion when they prove inconvenient. So, naturally enough, he called in his whereabouts when he came over to the gym here on East Eleventh. He trusted his colleagues not to go blabbing his location to all and sundry, and especially to members of the Internal Affairs Bureau.

Most of his colleagues, that is.

Doyle turns around, folds his arms, and waits for Paulson to reach him.

‘So talk,’ he says.

Paulson looks from side to side. ‘Here?’

‘I ain’t going for coffee and donuts with you, Paulson. Talk.’

Paulson takes another puff on his cigarette. ‘You’re an interesting man to know, Doyle. Things seem to happen around you, like you’re a source of cosmic disturbance in the universe.’

‘It’s my animal magnetism. All the chicks love it.’

‘I think you’re underestimating your power. What I’m talking about is a destructive force. Enough to start people dropping like flies all around you.’

‘Ah, you’re referring to my deodorant.’ Doyle raises his arm. ‘You wanna take a sniff?’

Paulson taps his finger on his cigarette, watches the slug of ash drift to the sidewalk and roll away.

‘The wisecracks are all very funny, Doyle. But they don’t make this any less serious. This situation, cops dying, it’s making a lot of pen-pushers sit up and take notice. 1PP is buzzing with this right now. They’re getting nervous. They’re looking at the connections. And you know what? There’s one obvious connection staring them right in the face.’

Doyle can picture the brass in NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza, running around like soon-to-be-headless chickens and wondering who’s wielding the hatchet.

‘And you see it as your job to try to prove them right, is that it?’

Paulson looks shocked.

‘Not at all. Me, I think there’s nothing there to find. Just like there was nothing to find a year ago.’ He pauses. ‘Jeez, was it really a whole year ago? Seems like yesterday.’

It’s a vivid memory to Doyle too. He recalls only too well being cooped up in that interview room, just him and Paulson. He remembers the quick-fire salvos of questions, the devious attempts to trip him up, the insults and veiled threats. He remembers how much he hated Paulson’s guts, how close he came to leaping out of his chair and closing his meaty hands around Paulson’s throat. It was a point in Doyle’s life at which his career, perhaps even his freedom, were nearly brought to an end, and he resented with ferocity the fact that this shadow of a cop could have so much power over him.

And now, like a bad smell, the wraith-like figure is back with his poison.

‘So it’s just coincidence that you end up on this gig? All the dirt-diggers in IAB, and you’re the lucky guy gets the spade.’

‘Let’s just say I already had a vested interest in your precinct.’

The object of interest being me, Doyle thinks.

‘Like I said, Paulson, what do you want?’

Paulson takes a last long inhalation of nicotine. He drops the stub to the sidewalk and grinds it out with a polished shoe before finally blowing the fumes out through his nostrils.

‘The best way for you to think of me is as someone who can be a lot of help to you. Regard me as your benefactor, a force for good in your life.’

‘There being every reason for me to think of you in that way.’

Paulson shrugs. ‘The alternative is to feel embittered and victimized. No, in a situation like this you need to promote some positive energy. Look at it this way: anytime any criticism comes your way, anybody even hints that you might be wrong, you can point me out and say, “See, kindly Sergeant Paulson here has been dogging my every step, turning over every stone in my path, and he’s found nothing, not a crumb of incriminating evidence.” You see how that would work, Doyle? I could be the best defense a cop could possibly have.’

‘And that’s what you intend to do — stay on my case like that?’

Paulson leans forward and lowers his voice. ‘Don’t worry. It’s our secret. Nobody else needs to know I’m helping you out like this. Otherwise where would we be? Everyone would want such personal service.’

Doyle can feel his blood approaching boiling point. He has to look away from Paulson as he tells himself to calm down. Then he faces the man again.

‘Listen to me very carefully, Paulson. You want to get your kicks from watching me, that’s fine. But do it from a distance, okay? A very large distance. We got a cop killer on the streets, and I’m gonna do everything I can to get him. I don’t care whether you believe that or not — I think it’s in your nature to regard anything a real cop tells you as a lie — but just don’t get in my way. Understand?’

Paulson says nothing at first. He digs into his pocket, pulls out a cigarette pack and opens it.

‘Will you look at that. I’m out. Don’t suppose you got any smokes on you?’

Doyle turns and walks away. ‘So long, Paulson. I hope you feel proud.’

As he nears his car, he notices a white envelope that’s been pushed under his windshield wiper. He reaches over and takes it out. The words ‘Detective Doyle’ are typewritten on the front of it.

He looks back at the retreating figure of Paulson.

‘Hey! Hey, Paulson!’

Paulson stops and turns around. Doyle waves the envelope in the air. ‘You been near my car?’

Paulson doesn’t answer. He smiles and gets into his Chevy.

Doyle stands there for a while, staring at the envelope. He takes a good look around him for anyone that might be watching, then opens his car door and climbs behind the wheel. He examines both sides of the envelope, flexes it, sniffs it. Using his car key, he slits it open as carefully as he can. He slips out the single sheet of paper and unfolds it, holding it gingerly by the corners.

As he reads the typewritten note, he knows that his life will never be the same again.