The Last Brief

The Confession

I said Look, all I want is the truth, Liz. I just want to know what the hell’s going on. I can’t walk in that squadroom tomorrow and not be able to take a stand on this. It’s been going on too long up there, the guys talking behind my back. I got to be able to tell them they’re wrong. Whatever you done or didn’t do, that’s our business. If it’s true what they’re saying, well then we’ll have to talk it over. I don’t know what we’ll do if it’s true, Liz, I just don’t know. I know I love you. So if it’s true, I guess we’ll have to talk it over, find out how we can patch things up. I hope it isn’t true, Liz. I love you so much, I... I just hope it isn’t true. What I’m hoping is I can go in there tomorrow and tell the guys Look, I know what the rumble’s been around here, I wasn’t born yesterday. And I talked to my wife last night, and I’ve got the straight goods now, and if I ever hear anybody else around here even hinting she’s playing around, I’ll personally break his arms and legs. That’s what I’m hoping I can do tomorrow, Liz. But if it’s true what they’re saying, then I got to know that, too, so I can figure some way of handling it. You understand me, Liz? We been married twelve years now, we never had any trouble talking about anything before. I want to talk about it now. I want your side of it. So you want to tell me about it, or what?

So she sat on the edge of the bed there, this was in our bedroom. I’d been home maybe ten minutes, I was still wearing the shoulder holster. I was in my shirt-sleeves and wearing the harness. So I took it off and hung it on the back of the chair, and still she didn’t say anything, just sat on the edge of the bed there and stared at me. This was maybe a little after midnight. I’d been sitting that liquor store on Twelfth with O’Neill; the guy closed at eleven and I went straight home. She sat there staring at me, not saying anything, and then she took off her shoes, and stood up and walked barefooted to where I was standing by the dresser, and turned her back to me so I could lower the zipper on her dress. Then she said, ‘All you want is a confession.’

I said, ‘No, I don’t want a confession, Liz. I just want to set things straight between us.’

She took off the dress, and carried it to the closet and hung it up. Then she went to the dresser in her bra and panties, and shook a cigarette loose from the package there, and searched around for a match, and got the cigarette going. She took an ashtray to the bed with her, and sat on the edge again, and let out a stream of smoke, and crossed her legs and said, ‘Tell me exactly what they’re saying.’

I told her I’d pieced the thing together little by little — that was another thing, Liz. A detective isn’t supposed to spend half his working day putting together facts on whether or not his wife is playing around behind his back. That liquor store, for one thing, it’s been held up four times in the past six months, and we still ain’t got a hint who’s doing it. I’m supposed to be working on crimes, and not acting like a private eye looking for proof in a divorce action. Not that I’m talking divorce, Liz, I swear to God I’m not even thinking divorce. If this is true, what they’re saying, then we’ll work it out someway, there’s nothing we haven’t yet been able to work out, we’ll work this out, too.

So she said again, ‘Tell me exactly what they’re saying.’

I told her I’d first got wind of it in the locker room one night. I was changing into my long johns because we had a stakeout later on, and I expected to be outside on a street corner. This wasn’t the liquor store, this was that numbers runner we finally busted; this must’ve been last month sometime, when I first got wind of it. There were these two guys on the squad talking behind the lockers. They were talking about Harris, who’d got a court order to put in a wire downtown, and he was getting some very juicy conversations on that phone, conversations that had nothing to do with narcotics. The reason the wire was in there, I told her, was because the guy was suspected of running a dope factory, cutting and packaging shit for sale on the street. Now you either know all this, Liz, or you don’t, I told her. Because if it’s true what they’re saying, then you’ve got to know the guy is in narcotics. He’s a cheap gangster in narcotics. I don’t know how you could’ve got involved with somebody like that, if it’s true, but that’s not the point, I don’t care about that. If it’s true, then we’ll talk about it, and work it out. The point is that the guy was getting phone calls all day long from this woman, and it didn’t take Harris long to figure out the woman’s husband is a cop. This had nothing to do with Harris’s case; he was just being entertained by all these conversations. Because here’s a guy he’s setting up for a bust if he gets anything good on the wire, and at the same time the guy is getting calls from a woman who’s married to a cop, and who he’s banging regularly when the cop’s working. That was the first I heard of it, Liz. In the locker room there. The two guys talking about it while I changed into my long johns. The only name mentioned was Harris’s, who was sitting the wire. At the time, I didn’t know the narcotics bum was a guy named Anthony Laguna, that’s not his real name, that’s what he goes by on the street, I guess you know his name, if the stories are true. I looked up his B-sheet, Liz, he’s got a record going back to when he was seventeen, including one arrest for rape, which he got off with. Just the idea of your having anything to do with somebody like him, though I can’t imagine how’d you’d ever have met a guy like him, well, just the idea... though I swear to God it never crossed my mind that first time I heard them talking in the locker room. All I knew was it was a cop’s wife involved with this Laguna bum. That’s what I told her.

She put out the cigarette then, and carried the ashtray back to the dresser, and then she unclasped her bra and put it on the chair where the gun was hanging, and then she slipped out of her panties and walked naked to the bed. She fluffed up a pair of pillows against the headboard, and then she got on the bed and leaned back against the pillows and said, ‘What else did you hear?’

I told her the next thing I heard was that the cop with the horns was working out of our precinct. I figured at the time it was a patrolman; a guy with fixed shifts, you know, his wife could easily be playing around while he was on the four-to-midnight, or the graveyard or whatever. I mean, it was a perfect setup for a patrolman’s wife, because while the poor stiff was out there walking his beat, he couldn’t be checking up on her at the same time. So I figured it was a patrolman. There was, in fact, a lot of joking in the squadroom. About the guy being a patrolman, you know. Harris is giving us detailed reports on the juicy conversations Laguna and his broad are having, and by now we all know it’s a cop in the precinct, and we figure it’s a patrolman, it has to be a patrolman. Harris is complaining about he’s not getting anything on the wire but sex talk. He’s supposed to be setting up a narcotics bust, and nobody’s talking about dope, all they’re talking about is screwing. This girl has got to be a nympho, Harris says, she calls the guy every ten minutes, describes in detail what she wants him to do to her next time she sees him. We’re all feeling pretty sorry for the patrolman, whoever he is. But at the same time, we’re making jokes about him. You know the kind of jokes that go on in a squadroom, Liz, it’s like the Army. It’s like when I was in the Army.

Well, this goes on for a week or two, I forget how long, and then I figured either Laguna and the girl broke up, or else all the jokes are going stale because all at once nobody’s talking about it anymore. Not even Jefferson, who used to be with Vice and who’s got nothing but sex on his mind all the time, not even Jefferson is mentioning Harris and that hot wire he’s sitting. Then I hear someplace, I forget where, I think it’s in the John, I’m sitting in there and I hear two guys out at the sinks and one of them is saying the broad’s name is Liz — Laguna’s broad. They’re saying whoever that patrolman is out there, he’s got a wife named Liz who’s putting the horns on him with a cheap thief. I still didn’t, I swear to God, I still didn’t make a connection, I never for a minute thought this was maybe my Liz. This was still some patrolman out there married to a Liz.

‘Yes, some patrolman’s wife,’ she said.

Yes, I told her, that’s what I thought at the time, that’s what I thought when I first heard the name Liz mentioned, but then I put that together with the fact that nobody’s talking about it in the squadroom anymore, leastways not when I’m around. So I singled out Harris one day, I found him there in the swing room, I said Hey there, Charlie, how’s that wire doing? Harris said Oh, it’s coming along, Duke, slow, but it’s coming along. And I said You still getting those hot flashes from Laguna’s broad? And Harris said Oh, you know how it is with these wires, you get all kinds of shit on them except what you’re looking for. So I told him about a wire I was sitting one time, where we had a phone booth on Third Avenue bugged because we knew it was a booth this torch used all the time — we were investigating an arson at the time. But we got all different kinds of people making calls in that booth, people besides the torch. And one time I was sitting the wire, and I heard a guy telling his wife he was calling from the office and he’d be working late that night, this is a call he’s making from a booth on Third Avenue! And his wife says That’s okay, darling, I’ll look for you later, and he hangs up and the next minute places a call to his girlfriend and sets up a date. Harris and I had a good laugh over that one, and then I asked him whether it was true Laguna’s broad was named Liz, and Harris said Yeah, he guessed that was true, and I said Liz what? Harris turned his eyes away and said he hadn’t heard the girl using her last name.

Well, what I did then, I went into Clerical and checked out the records for all the uniformed cops in the precinct, where it lists their home addresses, you know, and the names of spouses and kids and so on. And I found out there are three guys whose wives’ names are Elizabeth. Patrolmen, these guys. None of the detectives on the squad got a wife named Elizabeth. And then I checked the patrolmen’s duty chart, this was last week, I checked the chart and found out which shifts these three patrolmen were working, and I began staking out their houses while they were working, and following around their wives wherever they went. I made excuses to O’Neill, I told him I was clearing up some deadwood in the files, following up on some burglaries, talking to witnesses again, stuff like that. He bought it because we’re so backlogged now, he figured anything I could do to put a case in the open file, anything like that would give us a chance to catch up. So what I did was follow these women around and, well, I guess you know I’m an experienced cop, I told her, and by the end of the week if any of those women were fooling around with a cheap hood, why then they were doing it at the laundromat or the supermarket because that’s the kind of places they went to while their husbands were on the job. Or a movie with a girlfriend, if the guy was working nights. Or one of them went to a Bingo game at the church. They were clean, I told her. So it wasn’t a patrolman’s wife, Liz, it just wasn’t. So it had to be somebody else.

Then tonight, O’Neill and I were heading out to the liquor store, we’re riding in his old Chevy, and I said to him straight out, I said Johnny, you got to tell me what they’re saying. Is it Liz they’re talking about? Is it my wife who’s playing around with this Laguna? And first O’Neill said it was all a bunch of bullshit, Harris was probably making the whole thing up to keep the squadroom clowns amused. I told him I didn’t think Harris was making it up, and he said Well, even if it’s true, there must be ten thousand women named Liz in this city, and I said Yeah, Johnny, but not all of them are married to a cop in our precinct. So he told me it was probably some poor fucking patrolman, and I said Johnny, it’s not a patrolman, I checked. And he looked at me, he was driving the car, he just turned his head slightly to the side and looked at me, and I said Johnny, I think it’s me. He turned his head back to the road then, and he said Well, Duke, I guess that’s what they’re saying.

She was still sitting there on the bed, propped up against the pillows, but there was a smile on her face now, as if I’d said something very comical, something she was going to deny in the next minute, set the whole thing straight by simply saying Well, this is ridiculous, Duke, you know I love you and would never in a million years get involved with another man. That’s what I wanted to hear from her, and I guess I began feeling a little better the minute I saw that smile. So I said Liz, all I’m asking for now is the truth. If it’s as terrible as maybe it looks to be, we’ll work it out. And if it’s true, I don’t know what, maybe I’ll ask for a transfer, I just don’t know what. But if it’s a lie, then I’ve got to be able to go in there and face those guys down. That’s all I’m asking, Liz. I’m asking you to help me with this thing, one way or another. I love you, Liz, and whatever the truth is, it’s better we get it out in the open and deal with it. Now that’s it Liz, and I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me now.

‘You want a confession, right?’ she said. She was still smiling.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t want a confession, I want to be able to talk about this, I want to be able to set things straight.’

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘you’ll get a confession, if that’s what you want. Okay?’

‘I’m listening,’ I said.

‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘All of it is true.’

She was still smiling, I thought for a minute she was putting me on, I thought she couldn’t be saying this was true, while smiling at the same time — it had to be a put — on. ‘I met him downtown six months ago,’ she said. ‘It was raining. He offered me a lift in his car, and I got in. It was as simple as that.’

‘Liz,’ I said.

‘I’ve been seeing him ever since.’

‘Liz,’ I said, ‘the man is a bum.’

‘I love him,’ she said.

I think that was what did it, her saying she loved him. I think I really would have been willing to talk it over, the way I’d promised her, if only she’d hadn’t said she loved him. Because, you see, the man was a bum, the man was everything I’d learned to despise, the man was a bum. So I went to the chair where I’d hung the shoulder holster, and I rook the .38 from it without even thinking what I was doing. I just took the gun out of the clamshell, and I turned to where she was sitting there on the bed, still smiling, and I fired four shots into her chest and then I went to the bed and feed another shot into her head.

I make this confession freely and voluntarily in the presence of Detective-Lieutenant Alfred Laber and Detective 2nd/Grade John O’Neill and Detective 1st/Grade Charles Harris, having been duly warned of my rights, and having waived my privilege to remain silent.