Presumed innocent

Chapter 10

"Whatever I can do for you, Rusty. Anything you need."

So says Lou Balistrieri, the police department's Commander of Special Services. I am sitting in his office in McGrath Hall, where the P.D.'s central operating sections are housed. I can't tell you how many Lous there are over here, fifty-five year-old guys with gray hair and guts that hang on them like saddlebags, phlegmy voices from smoking. A gifted bureaucrat, ruthless with any person in his employ and a shameless toady to anyone, like me, who has sufficient power to harm him. He is on the phone now, calling down to the crime lab, which is under his control.

"Morris, this is Balistrieri. Get me Dickerman. Yeah, now. If he's in the can, go in there and get him off. Yeah." Balistrieri winks at me. He was a street cop for twenty years, but he works now without a uniform. His rayon shirt is sweated through under the arms. "Dickerman, yeah. On this Polhemus thing. Rusty Sabich is over here with me. Yeah, Sabich. Sabich, for Chrissake. Right, Horgan's guy. Chief deputy. We got a glass or something. Yeah, I know there latents, I know, that's why I'm calling you. Whatta you think? Right, I'm a big dumb gumba. Right, and don't fuckin forget it. This big dumb gumba can send you home with your nuts in a paper bag. Right. Right. But why I'm calling is this. Can't we do a computer scan with that laser thing against our knowns? Yeah, you got three good prints there, right? So get what you need and run them through the computer and let's figure out if they're anyone we know. I hear the cop on the case has been asking for ten days now you should do this. Murphy? Yeah, which one?

Leo or Henry? Because Henry is a horse's ass. Good. Well, tell him to un-onload it. Don't give me the computer crap, I don't understand that shit anyway. No. No. Not good enough. All right. Call me back. Ten minutes. Ten. Let's figure this thing out."

The problem, as it gradually emerges, is not equipment but the fact that the computer is under another section's jurisdiction. The department owns only one machine, and the people who do things like payroll believe it should be regarded as theirs alone.

"Right. I'll ask. I'll ask," says Balistrieri when he gets the return call. He covers the receiver. "They want to know how big a field you want to run against. We can do all felons or all knowns in the county. You know, everybody who's ever been printed. County employees. Shit like that."

I pause. "Felons is probably enough. I can do the rest later if we ever need it."

Balistrieri makes a face. "Do it all. God knows if I can get back on." He takes his hand away before I get a chance to answer. "Do all of it. Yeah. How soon? What the fuck is gonna take a week? This man's runnin the biggest murder case in the city and he's got to kiss your ring? Well, fuck Murphy's statistical analysis. Yeah. Tell him I said so. Right." He puts the phone down. "A week, probably ten days. They gotta get the payroll out, then the chief needs some statistics for the LEAK'-Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. "I'll push, but I doubt you'll see it any sooner. And have your copper get the glass back out of evidence and bring it to the lab, case they need it for anything."

I thank Lou for his help and head down to the Pathology Lab. This building looks more or less like an old high school, with varnished oak trim and worn hallways. It is coppers wall to wall, men-and more than a few women these days-in deep blue shirts and black ties, bustling around and making jokes with one another. People of my generation and social stratum do not like cops. They were always beating our heads and sniffing for dope. They were unenlightened. So when I became a prosecutor I started from some distance behind which, in truth, I have never made up. I've worked with policemen for years. Some I like; more I don't. Most of them have two failings. They're hard. And they're crazy. They see too much; they live with their nose in the gutter.

Three or four weeks ago, I stayed longer than I should have on a Friday night at Gil's and began buying rounds with a street copper named Palucci. He did a beer and a shot a couple of times, and started talking about a heart he had found that morning in a Ziploc bag. That was all. Just the organ, and the major vessels, lying right next to a garbage can at the end of an alley. He picked it up; he looked at it; he drove away. But then he made himself come back. He lifted the lid of the can and stirred the rubbish. No body parts. 'That was it. I done my duty. I dropped it off downtown and told them to mark it goat.'

Crazy. They are our paid paranoids. A copper sees a conspiracy in a cloudy day; he suspects treachery when you say good morning. A grim fellowship, nurtured in our midst, thinking ill about us all.

The elevator takes me to the basement.

"Dr. Kumagai." I greet him. His office is right outside the morgue, which lies beyond, with its stainless-steel tables and the ghastly odors of open peritoneal cavities. Through the walls, I can hear a surgical saw screaming. Painless's desk is a mess, papers and journals in ramparts, overflowing wooden trays. Set at one corner, a small TV is on, the volume low, with an afternoon baseball game.

"Mr. Savage. Real important stuff, huh? We got chief deputy with us." Painless is every kind of weird, a five-foot, five-inch Japanese, with heavy brows and a small mustache divided over the middle of his lip. A kinetic type, always dodging and twisting, talking with his hands in the air. The mad scientist, except there is nothing benevolent about him. Whoever got the idea that Painless would be best off working with stiffs pushed him in the right direction. I can't imagine his bedside manner. He is the kind to throw things at you, cuss you out. Whatever bitter little notion is in his brain will find expression. He is one of those people of whom the globe at moments seems so full. I do not understand him. If I try very hard, in that sort of instinctive effort we all make at pseudo-telepathy, my screen comes up full of fuzz. I cannot imagine what is passing through his mind when he does his job, or watches TV, or turns after a woman. I know I could lose a bet even if I had ten chances to guess what he did last Saturday night.

"Actually, I just came in to pick up a report. You called Lipranzer."

"Oh yeah, oh yeah," says Painless. "Right here somewhere. That fuckin Lipranzer. He wants you call right away with everything." Painless works two-handed, transporting the stacks of paper across his desk as he seeks the new report. "So you won't be chief deputy too much longer, huh? Della Guardia, I think, gonna kick Raymond Horgan in the ass. Huh?" He looks to me to respond. Painless is smiling, as is his custom when dealing with something that others find unpleasant.

"We'll see," I say: then I decide to be a bit more aggressive. "Delay a pal of yours, Doctor?"

"Nico's hell of a guy, hell of a guy. Oh yeah. We work on all kinds big murder case together. He's good, too, real good. Yeah, he get up there, he really kick those defense lawyers in the ass. This is this thing." He tosses a file folder in my direction and bends toward the TV. "That fuckin Dave Parker. Now he only got dope in one nostril, really hittin the goddamn ball."

The association between Nico and Painless had eluded me before, but it's a natural, the big-time homicide prosecutor and the police pathologist. They would need each other badly from time to time. I ask Painless if I can sit down for a minute.

"Sure sit, sit." He moves a stack of files and looks back to the television.

"Lipranzer and I have been kicking over this theory lately. Well, let's say idea. Maybe this was some weird bondage thing that got out of hand. Maybe Carolyn was living dangerously, and when her beau thought she had expired, he gave her a whack in the head to make it look like something else. Does that sound possible?"

Painless in his white lab coat rests his elbows on the turrets of papers.

"No fuckin way."

"No fuckin way. Coppers dumb," says Painless the police department pathologist. "Somethin hard, they make easy. Somethin easy, they make hard. Read the fuckin report. I write a report, fuckin read it. Lipranzer wants me hurry up, hurry up. Then he don't read the fuckin report."

"This report?"

"Not that report." He swipes at the new report when I hold it up. "My report. Autopsy. You see anything with bruises on wrists? Bruises on ankles? Bruises on knees? This lady is dead from gettin hit, not strangled. Read the fuckin report."

"She was tied up pretty good. You can see the rope burn on the neck in the pictures."

"Oh sure, oh sure. She was tied up real tight, real good. Looked like a fuckin bow and arrow when they brought her in. But you got one mark on the neck. Somebody jerkin that rope tighter and tighter, rope's gonna move. Get a wide bruise. She got one skinny little mark on her neck."

"Meaning?" I ask.

Painless smiles. He loves to hold the cards. He pushes his face close enough to the TV that the gray gleam of the screen is reflected on his brow. "First and third," he says.

"What does it mean that there's a narrow mark?" I ask again.

I wait. The TV announcer declaims over a line drive.

"Do I need a subpoena?" I ask quietly. I try to smile, but my voice has some edge.

"What?" asks Painless.

"What do you make of the bruises on her neck?"

"I make that rope was tightened there first. Okay?"

I take a moment to gather this in. As Painless knows, I'm lost.

"Time out," I say. "I thought the working theory was that somebody hit her to subdue her. The blow was lethal, but our guy doesn't realize that or care. He ties her up, and rapes her, with this bizarre slip-knotting, so he's strangling her at the same time. Have I got it right or have you changed your mind?"

"Me change? Look at fuckin report. Don't say nothin like that. I'm not saying that. Looks like that, maybe. Maybe that's what coppers think. Not me."

"Well, what do you think?"

Painless smiles. Painless shrugs.

I close my eyes an instant.

"Look," I say, "we're ten days into a big-deal murder investigation and I hear right now for the fast time that you think the rope went around her neck first. I would have appreciated knowing that a while ago."

"Ask. Lipranzer call me up. 'Hurry up. Need a report.' Okay, he got a report. Nobody ask me what I think."

"I just did."

Painless sits back in his chair. "Maybe I don't think nothin," he says.

Either this guy is a bigger douche bag than I even remember or something is way out of line. I deliberate for a moment, working backward.

"Are you telling me you think she was raped and then tied up?"

"Tied up last, yeah. I think that. Raped? Now I'm thinkin no."

"Now?"

"Now," says Painless. We stare at each other. "Read the report," he says.

"The autopsy?"

"This report. This fuckin report." He hits the folder I'm holding. So I read the report. It is from the forensic chemist's office. Another substance in the vagina of Carolyn Polhemus has been identified. It is known as nonoxynol 9. From the concentrations, the chemist concludes that it derived from spermicidal jelly. That is why there were no viable spermatozoa.

Painless is smiling hugely, and without generosity, when I look up again.

"We're saying this woman used contraception?" I ask.

"Not sayin. She did. Contraceptive jelly. Two percent concentration. Cellulose gum base. Used with diaphragm."

"Diaphragm?" I am extremely slow. "You missed a diaphragm during an autopsy."

"Fuckin no!" Painless hits his desk. He laughs at me out loud. "You been in autopsy, Savage. Slice her right open. No diaphragm in that lady."

More time. Painless smiles and I watch him. I'll bite.

"Where'd it go?"

"My guess?"

"Please."

"Somebody took it."

"The cops?"

"Coppers ain't that dumb."

"Who?"

"Look, Mr. Savage. Ain't coppers. Ain't me. Gotta be the guy."

"The killer?"

"Fuckin-A right."

I pick up the report to read it again. When I do, I notice something else, and our conversation suddenly comes clear. I try to steady myself, but my temper is rising. I can feel the heat all the way to my ears. Perhaps Painless can see that, because after baiting me for ten minutes, he finally levels. He probably figures that sooner or later I would get it anyway.

"You want to know what I think? I think it's a setup. This man who kills her is her lover. He comes over. Has drinks. This lady has intercourse with man, okay? Real nice. But he's angry guy. Picks up somethin, kills her, tries to make it look like rape. Ties her up. Pulls out diaphragm. That's what I think."

"What does Tommy Molto think?" I ask him.

Painless Kumagai, the sadistic little shit, has finally been cornered. He smiles insipidly and tries to laugh. 'Laugh' is actually not the right word. He wheezes. His mouth moves but he does not speak.

I hand him the report back, which, I notice in passing, is dated five days ago. I point out his own handwritten note at the top. It says: "Molto 762-2225."

"Don't you want to copy this down, make sure you can reach Molto when you need him?"

Painless is gaining speed again. "Oh, Tommy." He does better at seeming genial. "Good guy. Good guy."

"How's he doing?"

"Oh, good, good."

"Tell him to give us a call sometime. Maybe I can find out what's happening in my own fucking investigation." I stand up. I point at Kumagai. I call him by the name I know he detests. "Painless, you tell Molto and Nico, too, that this is cheap. Cheap politics. And cheap police department bullshit. God better help them and you, that I can't make a case for tampering." I snatch the report from Painless's hand and leave without waiting for an answer. My heart is hammering and my arms are weak with rage. Raymond, of course, is not in when I get back to the County Building, but I tell Loretta to have him reach me, it is urgent. I look for Mac, but she, too, is elsewhere. I sit in my office and brood. Oh, how fucking clever. Everything we asked for. And nothing more. Give the results-but not the opinion. Call when the forensic chemist reports, but don't mention what it says. Let us run as long as possible in the wrong direction. And in the meantime, leak every goddamn thing you know to Molto. That's the part that gets me worst. God, I think politics is dirty. And the police department is dirtier. The Medici did not live in a world fuller of intrigue. Every secret allegiance in the community comes to bear there. To the alderman and your bookie and your girlfriend. To in-laws, your no-account brother, the guy from the hardware store who has always cut you a deal on screws. To the rookie you have to look out for, the junkie whose base sincerity gets to you, or the snitch you've got to watch. To the licensing inspector who helped out your uncle, or to the lieutenant who you figure has got an in with Bolcarro and is going to make captain soon and maybe more. Your lodge brother, your neighbor, the guy on the beat who's just a plain good sod. Every one of them needs a break. And you give it. In a big-city police department, at least in Kindle County, there is no such thing as playing by the book. The book got trashed many years ago. Instead, all two thousand guys in blue play it for their own team. Painless was simply playing it like everybody else. Maybe Nico told him he could make him coroner.

My phone rings. Mac. I go through the connecting door.

"Well," I tell her, "we finally know what Tommy Molto is up to."