The Hearing

24

It was closing in on dusk, and Ridley Banks was back at the same crime scene to which he'd been summoned just after dawn.

He'd had a busy day, putting a greater concentration of investigative field work into the past ten hours than he normally would get to in a month. The results were mixed, as they almost always were in homicides anyway. But they were also, in his opinion, provocative in the extreme.

The victim had been found dead in room 412 of the Excelsior Hotel at 16th and Mission. In spite of its name, the Excelsior is not a hotel in the usual meaning of the word. Rather, its clientele rent rooms by the week or the month, and these tended to be casually bartered by its inhabitants mostly for drugs, but also for sex, booze, clothes, money.

There was no current guest registered to the room containing the body of Cullen Leon Alsop. The door had not been locked when he'd been found. Still, the homicide team upon its arrival had little trouble indentifying him – his wallet bulged in the back pocket of his jeans, which he was still wearing. He also had his jail release and OR papers on him, stuffed into the front pockets. So it was Cullen, all right, and Ridley's name was on one of the sheets, so he got looped into the call.

The inspector spent a few hours at the scene, asking questions of the crime scene investigations unit. He then decided it would be instructive to wait for John Strout's arrival. He wanted to talk to the coroner before things moved too far along. Because while people died quite often from heroin overdoses in the city – especially in this neighborhood – there was too much coincidence in this case for Ridley's liking.

The sergeant with the CSI team was of the opinion that somebody else had been with Cullen and then, not too surprisingly when he realized what was happening, fled. He was surprised, though, that he'd left the baggie with a reasonable amount of white powder still in it on the small table next to the bed. This stuff was far more valuable than gold to any addict – it was unprecedented in the CSI sergeant's experience that this much would be left behind, regardless of what had occurred in the room. Cullen also had six hundred and fifty-four dollars in cash, a couple of joints, and a matchbook from a bar called Jupiter jammed into his other front pants pocket.

When Strout came, he was his cautious, but helpful, self. After he'd examined and autopsied the body and all forensic evidence relevant to it, the coroner would eventually release his opinion on the official cause of death. Before that, Strout wasn't going to be hurried, nor was he inclined to make any official pronouncement before he had time to analyze all of his facts. But there were a few informal opinions he could share with an inspector of homicide to guide him in his investigation.

The first was that the residue left in the bag appeared to be an unusually pure form of heroin, possibly almost uncut China White. Strout told Banks that if this was a representative sample of the latest stuff to hit the street, they could expect half a dozen overdoses, maybe more, in the next couple of days. Neither Strout nor the CSI team could see any sign of struggle, and that, combined with the probable cause of death, suggested to Strout that this was most likely an overdose situation. An accidental suicide, not a homicide.

Banks couldn't shake the feeling that in this the coroner was mistaken.

Over the next two hours, he talked to everyone who'd been in the building and who hadn't managed to escape before the word got out that the police were on hand. Of the twenty-seven people he interviewed, fourteen admitted to knowing Cullen at least by sight, but none of them had seen him come into the building. None admitted to knowing he'd been there last night.

The 'manager' was a toothless mid-fifties gnome in a lime-green bathrobe and combat boots. He had no idea how that poor boy had gotten into the room. It was vacant. See? He still had the key! Far more concerned with getting reimbursed by the city for the room's rent during the time the police kept it closed off as a crime scene than he was with the death, the manager had not seen or heard anything unusual in the past couple of days. Of course, he would have said the same thing even if he had personally witnessed the Second Coming.

In the next four hours, Ridley had first called his old mentor Glitsky in the hospital. After that, cursing himself for everything he was and everything he'd done in the past ten days, he'd gone back to the beginning, and remembered the matchbook from Jupiter. Armed with a mug shot, he got to the bar at around two thirty, and five people, including the bartender, a lawyer, a private investigator, and two random daytime drinkers recognized Cullen's face. Yes, he'd been there, had a few drinks, seemed impatient, but didn't cause any trouble.

Ridley was glad to run into some cooperative witnesses. The five of them had been helpful, sitting in a circle around him at the bar trying to help him connect the dots. The lawyer and the private eye – Logan and Visser – were sure that they had left the bar before the victim had so they couldn't vouch for when he left, but the other three witnesses came to an agreement that Cullen had left at a little after dark.

Now Ridley was back where he'd begun, on the streets surrounding the Excelsior. He pulled his shirt out, untied his shoes, and adopted a slouch. In a half-hour, he'd made a friend who directed him to one of the neighborhood's salesmen – Damien was parked in an alley a block and a half from the Excelsior, selling pre-wrapped, packaged, brand-name dime bags of heroin out of a shiny Buick Skylark.

In another five minutes, whatever streetlights still worked in the city would come on. Ridley looked around to be sure nobody was watching. He reached under his jacket and pulled out his gun and badge and walked up to the car. 'Lucky for you, dirtbag,' he said, 'I'm in homicide. Get out real slow.'

Backing up to let the door open, Ridley nearly had his own heart attack. To his right, at the back bumper of the Skylark, stood another bum – his face in the dim light vaguely familiar. He, too, had a gun in one hand. In the other, he held out a badge. He was smiling dangerously.

Damien had one foot on the pavement when the other man sprang forward in one long step. Grabbing him by the collar, he dragged him the rest of the way out of the car and threw him to the ground.

'Hey, man,' Damien whined. 'My clothes, you know.'

Both men kept their guns trained on him. 'Damien, Damien, Damien,' the bum with the badge clucked sympathetically. 'Some people are just never going to learn. Do you not have brains, is that the problem? Are they defective? Can't you tell a cop yet after all this time? Haven't you and I done this enough?' He shook his head dishearteningly. 'I swear, it's depressing.'

He looked over at Ridley, still holding his badge up to avoid any misunderstanding. Then he went back to Damien, still on the ground. 'This man here,' he said, indicating Ridley, 'is Inspector Banks from homicide.' He flashed a smile, speaking over his own shoulder. 'Jan Falk. Narcotics. I tried to get you coming out of Jupiter, but you were too fast. Sorry if I spooked you just now.'

Ridley was coming back to earth, finally recognized Falk as one of the daytime drinkers from Jupiter. Undercover, and fooled him clean. 'I'll get over it.'

'You guys going to kiss now or what?' Damien asked.

Falk smiled at him again, put on a mincing voice. 'If we want to, Damien. In fact, we're going to do anything we want to, and I get the feeling Inspector Banks wants to ask you some questions. Is that right, Inspector?'

'That's right.'

'Well, you can ask my lawyer. I didn't do no homicide.'

Banks gave Damien a heartless little grin of his own. 'I didn't say you did now, did I?'

'I'll tell you what,' Falk said. 'I'm going to make a phone call now to some friends of mine and meanwhile let you fellows get to know each other a little better. How's that sound, Inspector?'

A half-hour later, Damien was leaving the alley on his way downtown in the back seat of a squad car. Inspectors Banks and Falk waved goodbye, then went to lean against the bumper of the Skylark to wait for the police tow truck to come and impound the vehicle. By now, they were laughing about it.

'You were damn lucky I didn't pop you where you stood,' Banks said.

'I know. I realized that about a second too late. It just seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. I hate that little pecker. Haven't seen him in a couple of years.'

'How'd you know where I was going?'

'You said Excelsior. Drug overdose. I guessed. I'm made here, so I don't hang much about, but I saw you and thought it would be fun to stroll through the old neighborhood. And what do you know, we both run into Damien.'

Ridley phrased it carefully, not wanting to step on a fellow officer's toes. 'He wasn't very hard for me to find, you know.'

'No, we figure it takes maybe a half-hour for a new guy, one of us, to make one of them. Then we leave 'em alone.'

'But you just busted him.'

'That was purely for fun, Inspector. We got twenty Damiens in this square mile. If you hadn't connected with him, I wouldn't have done a thing. They're just literally holding the bags, not worth the trouble. Their only value is maybe leading us to their source, and even at that next level…' He shrugged. It was terrible, but it was reality. Every policeman knew that arresting the intermediaries in the drug trade was at best a stopgap measure, a nuisance for all concerned. Between Damien and his ultimate supplier (whom Damien would never meet, or know, or possibly even hear of), there were probably six to ten layers of intermediaries, each taking their money, most cutting the product. 'Anyway, you wanted something from him. I thought I might put him more in the mood to be cooperative. You find what you wanted?'

It was Ridley's turn to shrug. 'I have trouble believing insurance salesmen are telling me the truth. And Damien scores a little lower than they do.'

'What did you want to know?'

'If there was something new, super-pure, on the street. That's what my guy died of.'

'What did he say, Damien?'

'He said no. Same stuff all the time lately. Guaranteed. You know, I've got to say, I can't believe they put brand names on this stuff. Those bags Damien had on him. Heavenly Daze. Jesus.'

'Sure. There's all kinds of great shit – Nirvana. China Sleep. Tar Babies. But your guy had something else?'

'The coroner said – unofficially of course – that he thought it was nearly pure. And it wasn't in any container, just a plain baggie.'

Falk took his heel off the bumper and walked off a few steps. He stood there a couple of moments, nodding his head as though reaching some conclusion. Then he turned back around. 'This is why I came out looking for you after you left.'

'Why?'

'Cause I'm on a thing out of the Jupiter. There's a lot of cocaine in and out of there, and since it's mostly a law crowd, people want to see it cleaned up before it gets busted. Am I making it clear?'

'Yeah.'

'OK, so yesterday, I'm passing a slow afternoon and your man Cullen comes in, just like we all said today. But he's not like a little impatient – he's climbing the walls. So he's halfway through a beer, and he gets up and goes to the bathroom. Couple of minutes later, one of the guys today – the p.i., Visser? – he gets up and goes to the bathroom. Now I been in there, the bathroom, and it's one stall, one pisser, and those two guys are in there, swear to God, ten minutes, before Visser comes out first and sits back down in his booth. Of course, it's Jupiter, late afternoon, nobody's paying any attention. Except me.'

'So what?'

'Not what you're probably thinking. Another minute and out comes your guy, Cullen Leon Alsop. Now he's Mr Mellow. Sits and finishes his beer, has another one while Visser and his lawyer friend leave.'

Ridley shook his head. 'I must be missing something. This wasn't cocaine. This was heroin.'

But Falk had a scent. 'Either way,' he said, 'Visser was in there and gave him something. Then this morning the guy's dead? I never thought of it until you came in today asking questions, but as soon as I saw that kid's face, I'm going click click click, you know?'

'I know the feeling,' Ridley said. 'I'm getting it now.'