Presumed innocent

Chapter 30

Tonight I say that I am bushed and leave Stern and Kemp early, but there is an appointment that I want to keep. I called after court, and good to his word, Lionel Kenneally is here, in a neighborhood tavern called Six Brothers. The cabbie gives me a peculiar look when he drops me. It is not that there are no white people around here. There are a few stoical families holding on against the Ricans and the blacks, but they do not wear chalkstriped suits and carry briefcases. Instead, their shinglesided bungalows are tucked in among the warehouses and factories which cover most of every block. There is a sausage plant across the street, and the air is heavy with the scent of spices and garlic. The tavern is like so many others out this way: just a joint with Formica tables, a vinyl floor, lights over the mirrors. Above the bar, there is a neon Hamm's sign which casts weird shadows from the reflective spangles of the continuous waterfall.

Kenneally does not even wait for me. Instead, he starts to move when I enter and I follow him back to a smaller room with four tables where he says we won't be bothered.

"So what the fuck is this about?" He is smiling but his tone is not altogether friendly. I've got the frigging watch commander out with an indictee, an enemy of the state, an accused homicidal felon. It is not place for a ranking police officer to be seen.

"I appreciate your coming, Lionel."

He waves that off. He wants me to get down to business. A woman pokes her head in. I decline to drink at first, then think better of it and order a Scotch-rocks. Lionel already has a whiskey in his hand.

"I need to ask you some questions I should have asked when I came out to see you in the district in April."

"About?"

"About what the hell was going on out in the North Branch eight or nine years ago."

"Meaning?" His look is close: he does not want to get led astray.

"Meaning, was somebody taking money?"

Kenneally bolts his drink. He's thinking.

"You know you're hot fucking stuff, don't you?" he asks.

"I see the papers."

He looks at me. "You going down on this thing?"

I tell him the truth.

"I don't think so. Stern is a magician. He's got three of the jurors thinking about inviting him for dinner, you can tell from the looks on their faces. He cut a good piece out of Horgan today."

"They say downtown that Nico doesn't have the horses. They say he went too soon, Molto forced his hand. They say if he had any brains he would've got you in a room with a tape recorder and somebody you trust instead of lettin Mac make him tell you what he had." I recognize now that what I thought might be a glaze of alcohol is anger. Lionel Kenneally is pissed. He's heard enough about this case to figure that he did something he doesn't do frequently: made an error in judgment. "Myself, I figure you might be goin down anyway. Sure as fuck, you didn't tell me you were in there handlin her glassware when you was out here before."

"You want me to tell you I didn't kill her?"

"Fuckin-A right I do."

"I didn't kill her."

Kenneally stares, a fierce, immobile look. I know my delivery was too measured to provide him with any assurance.

"You are one fuckin strange son of a bitch," he says.

The barmaid, wearing one of those old ruffled tops to show the beginning of her cleavage, comes in with my drink. She also puts another tumbler of whiskey in front of Lionel.

"You know," I tell Kenneally as I sip, "that is something I never understood about myself. I mean, my old lady was as weird as those women downtown carrying around shopping bags, and my old man had spent most of World War 11 eating dead horses and stuff such as that, which does some work on your cerebrum, believe me. Everything in my whole life was weird. And until this happened, I really thought I was Joe College. That's who I wanted to be and that's what I thought I was. Really, I thought I was fucking Beaver Cleaver, or whoever the boy next door is these days. I really did. And about the only thing I've gotten out of this experience to date is hearing you tell me I am one strange son of a bitch and listening to that little harp string that sounds in my chest when somebody, even if he's half-crocked, has said something that is really right. So I thank you." I tap his glass with mine. I am not sure that Lionel particularly enjoyed this routine. He watches me for a minute.

"What'd you come here for, Rusty?"

"I already told you. Just answer that one question."

Kenneally sighs. "Ain't you a fuckin pip. One question, all right? And what's said here stays here. It's me and you. I ain't listenin to any fuckin sob stories about your constitutional rights or that shit. Nobody's fuckin callin me to testify against the P.A. That happens, world's gonna think you confessed right here tonight."

"I have the ground rules."

"Your short answer is, I don't exactly know. Maybe I heard some things, all right? But that wasn't my show. Things out this way were a little loose. You know what I'm sayin? Remember, we're talkin before Felske stepped in shit." Felske was a bail bondsman who used to take care of certain cops for referring him business. When the bail law was reformed, permitting personal-recognizance bonds and obviating the need for outside sureties, Felske and his coppers maintained their income by selling the coppers' assistance on occasion. Sometimes the cops would talk a witness into not showing up. Sometimes the cops would forget things when they testified. Felske, however, made such a proposition one day to a man with an electronic lapel pin. The copper involved, named Grubb, flipped for the FBI and took down Felske and three other officers. That was five years ago. "Back then, this was a wide-open place."

"Was Tommy Molto one of the people you heard things about?"

"I thought you said one question."

"It had subparts."

Kenneally doesn't smile. He looks down in his drink.

"In this job, you learn you better not say never." Kenneally laughs.

"Lookit you. Right?" He laughs again.

He is still angry with himself All of this is against his better judgment.

"But Molto," he says. "Never. He's from the fuckin seminary. He'd bring his rosary to court. No chance this guy would take."

"Was Carolyn involved with whatever was going on?"

He shakes his head. He is not saying no. He is refusing to answer.

"Look. I don't owe you, Rusty. Okay? I thought you done your job like a professional guy. You came out here before people in the suburbs even knew from gangs, and you worked hard. I give you credit. What else you done, you done. But you come into the projects with me in the middle of the night. You got your fuckin hands dirty. But don't push, all right. These guys I owe. You ain't one."

Cop loyalty. He won't even drop a dime on a dead lady. Kenneally drinks his drink and looks out the door.

"Did Carolyn have anything going with Molto? You know, a personal thing?"

"Jesus. What's your hang-up with Molto? Guy's strange like everybody else."

"Let's just say he's my best alternative."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

I wave the question off.

"Well, I don't see that guy even catchin a whiff of Polhemus. You seen him, Buddy Hackett, right? They were friends, that's all. Buddies. Sometimes she'd smooth shit out for him." Kenneally takes another drink. "It wasn't him she was bangin."

"Who?"

"No chance," he said. "You got enough."

"Lionel." I really don't want to beg. He will not look at me. "This isn't gossip, for Chrissake. This is my goddamned life."

"The nigger."

"What?"

"She was sleepin with the nigger."

I don't get it at first. Then I do.

"Larren?"

"You been out at the North Branch. You remember how it was. It was like everybody used to work in one room.

Three doors, and all of em let you into one office. P.O. P.A. Nick Costello was signin in the coppers who come out to testify. He had a desk there. Judge's chambers used to open up there, too. He'd get off the bench noontime, she'd go sashaying in. They weren't makin no secret of it.

"Fuck," says Kenneally, "I halfway told you last time you was out here. Don't you remember? I told you how she fucked her way to the top, I couldn't figure Horgan hiring her. That's who got her in. Your old buddy there, Judge Motherfucker. He and Horgan got some kinda tie-in."

"They were law partners," I say. "Years ago."

"Figures," said Lionel. He shakes his head in disgust.

"And you won't tell me whether Carolyn was dirty?"

He raises a finger. "I'm gonna leave," he says. He's quiet for a while. "Sometimes she'd smooth things out, like I say. Molto and the judge, they didn't get along so well. Maybe you heard them stories."

"A number."

"You know, she was everybody's pal back then. The P.O. Sometimes she'd get the judge to lay off. Sometimes she'd get Molto to take two steps back. She was kinda the referee. Maybe you're right. Maybe Molto was really carryin a big fuckin torch for her. Maybe that's why he had sand in his ointment whenever he had to go before the judge. Who knows? Go figure people," he says.

I can tell that I've had everything now that I'm going to get. This last little bit was strictly for charity.

I pick up my briefcase and leave money for the drinks.

"You're a good sod, Kenneally."

"I'm a fuckin fool, is what I am. Halfa downtown's gonna be talkin about this tomorrow. Whatta I tell em we said?"

"I don't give a shit. Say what you want. Tell them the truth. Molto knows what I'm looking for by now. Maybe that's why I'm in this soup to begin with."

"You don't believe that."

"I don't know," I tell him. "Something's not right."