Salley watched with horror as Hagedorn put the coffee cups down beside the computer.
'So help him out, Sergeant.' Iriarte spun on the heel of his woven leather slip-on and left the room. He headed down the hall to brief the commander on the break in the Liberty case.
When Iriarte lingered in the door, Captain Johnson waved him into the office, then kept him waiting for twenty-eight minutes as the commander tried to negotiate with someone at headquarters for a postponement of his first Comstat appearance.
Comstats were computer compilations of the number of crimes and arrests in every precinct every week. They were programmed and analyzed by the precinct commander's aides. Every precinct commander periodically had to go downtown to explain and defend his numbers. The way it looked the new commander would have to take his turn in the hot seat, defending the police work in his precinct for the last month with less than a week on the job. Iriarte tapped his fingers impatiently, but could not get up and leave. When Captain Johnson finally hung up, he immediately reached for his hat. His second-in-command jumped up to help him with his coat.
'I have to go to a meeting downtown, Lieutenant—'
'Iriarte, sir.' The lieutenant saluted.
'I'll have to catch you later.' He nodded imperiously as he left.
Iriarte went back into the computer room and hung over Hagedorn's neck. 'How's it going?'
Sergeant Salley spoke first. 'We're lucky. He uses one of the easy services.'
'So—1' Iriarte prodded.
'Liberty hasn't generated any E-mail activity today,' Hagedorn said. 'We can't trace yesterday's numbers. We can only locate the phone he's using if we're in the system at the same time he's in.'
Iriarte sucked in his lips pensively. 'He was in the area of the Thirtieth last night. We know that. Shot someone. Ballistics tells me we may be able to tie some other homicides to that gun. Maybe Liberty's been a busier boy than we thought.'
'There's a BOLO out on him. Everybody's looking for him,' Hagedorn said.
'Yeah, but I want to be the one to get him. I want him nailed out of here, out of this precinct, understand?' Iriarte stuck a finger in Hagedorn's back. 'We didn't get that raper last summer. If it turns out the same guy hit that woman up in the Two-O, we're going to look like fucking idiots. We've got to get Liberty.'
Sergeant Salley smiled. 'Don't worry, they always reach out to their mothers, or somebody they rely on, sometime. If he has the habit of E-mailing, he'll do it now.'
Iriarte checked his watch. 'He'd better do it soon. I go off duty at six.'
At a few minutes past five, Liberty E-mailed Jason Frank from a phone in the one hundred block of 110th Street. The E-mail intercepted by the police at Mid-town North read, 'Jason, everything is going to be fine. I'm going on TV with my story tonight at seven. Watch me on WCRN.'
Iriarte flipped. 'Oh, man. Oh, shit. We got him.' He clapped his hands with excitement. 'I'm telling you that is good work. I'll remember you in my will.'
'Thank you, sir,' Hagedorn chirped.
'Any word from Sanchez and Woo?'
'Not for an hour, you want to leave them a message?' Hagedorn didn't bother to swipe his empty containers into the wastebasket at his feet.
'Nah, get me four bodies, two units, and that address.'
'Yessir.' Hagedorn was on his feet.
Iriarte grabbed Hagedorn's sleeve and continued talking. 'We go up there. No sound and light show. We're talking real quiet and real fast. We have an advantage. Liberty's not expecting us. We have a disadvantage. We don't know where the interview is taking place. If there's a camera crew arriving, we've got to move fast. Go!' Iriarte nodded at Sergeant Salley and left him to deal with Hagedorn's garbage.
45
The kitchen cabinets and table dated back nearly a hundred. years to the turn of the century, but the dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator were brand new. The rest of the brownstone Belle called home had been carefully restored in a style Rick Liberty recognized from historic photographs of the lives of wealthy people of color at the turn of the century. The dim light of the January afternoon did not diminish the warmth and glamour of the rooms. Entering such a place in his ripped parka and bloody sweatshirt, Rick had felt like the felon that half the world thought he was.
Belle took him into the kitchen, gave him a cup of coffee, brought him into the living room to drink it, then went upstairs to shower and change her clothes. When she returned fifteen minutes later, she was a different person again. Now her long hair was in a ponytail, and she wore a maroon turtleneck, gray tailored trousers, and a navy blazer. Black alligator belt. This Belle was no child of the slums. The change was unnerving.
'We have to get you some clothes,' she said briskly. 'Is there anybody you know who can get in and out of your apartment?' 'Sure, but it's probably being watched.' 'Fine, I have a friend about your size. I'll get you some clothes. How about a lawyer?' she said casually. 'I know a few of the best. But I'm sure you do, too. By the way, what do your friends call you?'
'Rick,' Rick said, sitting forward on a rich burgundy velvet chair with a complex braid trim.
'Rick, you're bleeding on my chair,' she remarked.
'Thanks.'
'What for?'
'You stopped calling me nigger. Do you have any gauze pads?'
'I'll get some. You need stitches?'
Rick shook his head. 'Just a messy scratch. I'm sorry about the chair. I'll have it recovered. Who are you?'
'Nobody important. My name is Isabella Wentforth Lindsay.' Belle grimaced as if the three words gave her a bad taste. 'This is my grandma's house. Granny isn't very well, but doesn't want to leave. So I stay here and watch her home-care nurses, make sure she's all right.' Belle looked toward the bow window overlooking the north end of Central Park.
'This house belonged to her father. My father grew up here.' She stroked the patterned cut velvet on the antique sofa. 'Daddy left here after law school. I grew up in White Plains. My parents live in Westchester now. But I still love the house. Granny let me do the restorations. Do you like it?'
'Very much.' The shooting of Jefferson, the cuts on Rick's chest, and the long sleepless night of worry over Belle's head wound and her barrage of insults were all catching up with him. He was having trouble taking everything in. Now he knew who her father was, a prominent conservative black New York State Supreme Court judge. Her mother was a documentary film producer. A white documentary film producer.
Grief swept over him, tightening his chest until he could hardly breathe. He closed his eyes against the onslaught of nausea that severe pain often brought him. Belle's mother was white. Until that moment Rick had never considered the possibility that the children of white mothers might feel anger, even despair, at having to go through life bearing the color their fathers had not wanted to—would not have—married themselves. Belle's skin was honey-colored, as if the sun had warmed her from within. Her famous mother was white. The charge always leveled at him was that when black folk came up in the world and married white, they forgot that their children would be black no matter how light their skin. Perhaps if he and Merrill had had children, they would have fell the same.
'You okay?' She studied him.
'I'm sorry to get you into this,' was all Rick could say.
'I do this with adolescents all the time. I do it with battered wives. It's my calling—anyway, I've always thought you were—' Belle broke off. 'Why don't I go get you those clothes and stuff?'
An hour and a half later, dressed in borrowed clothes, Rick was waiting for Marvin's van to pick him up when a shriek of sirens brought him to the bow window where he parted the lace curtain. He saw a forest green Chrysler with a light flashing on top and two blue-and-white police cars speed up the wrong side of the street and cluster in front of the brown-stone, blocking Marvin's van that was pulling up at the same moment.
Rick watched four uniformed cops and the WCRN news team scramble out of their vehicles. Four cops unholstered their weapons. A man in a gray overcoat and a man in a suit jumped out of the Chrysler and started
