Compounding the felony, I’d paid way too much for the posters, as a recent visit to a series of websites offering the same ones attested. But then I’d sunk more than I could afford into my furniture as well. My bedroom set had come from Stickley, the couch and bookcases from Ethan Allen, the oak dining table from a cabinet maker in Williamsburg who saw customers by appointment only. Which is not to suggest that my furnishings were top of the line by New York standards. Not even close. But they were definitely beyond the legitimate aspirations of a cop living on a single paycheck. Most cops I knew shopped at department stores on sale days.
I hung my coat in the closet, then went from room to room, turning on lights. When I got to my bedroom, I spent a few moments staring at a pair of low bookcases against the far wall. The bookcases were made of walnut and too expensive, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. There were more than a hundred books on the shelves, mixed fiction and non-fiction, all hard covers. With very few exceptions, these books were about New York.
Why did I have them? To show them off? To show myself off? Most of the women I dated were far better educated than I was and had far more prestigious jobs. Slipping an obscure fact into the conversation, or so I believed, made me appear sophisticated enough to be safe. Maybe I was a cop with a high school diploma, but I most likely wouldn’t bite.
I continued to move through the apartment. Wherever I looked, I found not just the pitiful efforts of a dull mind, but evidence of pure desperation. Everything would be alright as long as I kept pretending that everything was alright. My apartment would be the home I’d never had. The job would be the family I’d never known. Even the women in my life had a place in the facade, a burden to endure. Their job was to stick around just long enough to convince me that I had the capacity to love. If only I found the right lover.
When the apartment was fully lit, I retreated to my tiny kitchen, to the wall phone next to the refrigerator. I stared at the phone for a moment, Adele’s number a series of mad little beeps that repeated themselves as if somebody had pressed my REDIAL button. Then I dialed her number and put the phone to my ear. My reward was Adele’s answering machine, where I left a simple request that she call me back.
That done, that line crossed, I made a second call, to a Chinese restaurant on First Avenue called Mee. My dinner ordered, I began to set the table. I felt pretty good about things, comforted as I was by a battlefield maxim declaring that any decision, even a bad decision, is better than no decision. Then my phone began to ring and I walked back into the kitchen, expecting to hear Adele’s voice.
‘Hey, Harry, how’s it going?’ Bill Sarney asked.
‘It’s goin’ alright, Bill. How’s by you?’
‘Me, I got a headache.’
‘And its name is Adele Bentibi.’
‘How’d you guess?’
Sarney was using that hearty, cheerleader voice he generally deployed before asking a favor. It was a voice I’d responded to in the past, as I’d responded to the occasional dinner we shared, or being invited to his home. We were friends and allies, Bill Sarney and Harry Corbin, and I had no reason to doubt his sincerity at that moment. But sincerity was no longer a relevant concept, for either one of us. Sarney had long ago decided that his interests and the interests of the job would never be at odds. That was his line, his personal line, and I’d stepped across it when I phoned Adele. I had no choice now, except to play him. Nailing Lodge’s killers would be hard enough without telegraphing my intentions.
‘So what’s that bad girl done now?’ I asked.
‘We know she’s the one leaking to the Times.’
‘Know?’
‘Yeah, we’re sure.’
It was my turn to chuckle manfully. ‘I could ask if you maybe tapped her phones, Bill, or somehow got your hands on her phone records, but I think I’m just gonna leave that dog lie. In the meantime, I haven’t spoken to Adele in a week.’
That was at least technically true. Though I’d called her only a few minutes before, we hadn’t actually conversed.
‘Harry, look, we think it would be a good idea if you contacted her.’ Sarney’s tone dropped a half-octave as he shifted to that gossipy tone he used when he was passing on insider secrets. ‘Let me level with you here. The bosses think those stories in the Times are not gonna be a problem. They’re worried about what your partner-’
‘Former partner,’ I corrected. ‘With the emphasis on the former.’
‘Yeah, your former partner. The bosses wanna know what she’s gonna do next. Like, specifically, if she’s gonna go public. You can’t blame them, Harry. They’re scared because she doesn’t give a shit about her badge or her reputation. They got nothin’ to hold over her head.’
TWENTY-TWO
I nitially, I refused Bill Sarney outright. If I remember correctly, I was pretty indignant. He was talking about my partner, after all. Turning my back on her was one thing. Loyalty didn’t require me to go down with the ship, not when the captain had drilled a hole in the hull. But cops didn’t spy on their partners, not in the cop world I inhabited, not in any cop world I could imagine. If word got out, I explained to my boss, I’d be branded a fink. And I’d deserve it, too.
But in the end, I allowed myself to be persuaded. Sarney’s argument was succinct. He told me that what had happened to me was nothing more than bad luck. Most cops, even those who rise to the top, never have to make the kind of choice that was being shoved down my throat. Nevertheless, I was forced to decide, as he’d been forced to present the options. If I didn’t go along, not only would I not be promoted, my and Adele’s fate would be one and the same.
‘So what you’re saying,’ I finally asked, ‘is that I’ll be branded a snitch unless I actually become a snitch?’
‘Yeah, that’s pretty much the way of it. The bosses have a job that needs doing and nobody except you to do it.’
After finishing dinner, I took out a yellow pad and settled down on the living-room couch. My goal was simply to list the various assumptions Adele and I had made in the course of the Lodge investigation, to subject each to a second evaluation. But I was still unable to concentrate and I found myself parked in front of the television thirty minutes later, watching the Knicks stumble through a dreary first half.
Down by eleven, the Knicks were heading into the locker room when my phone began to ring. I muted the TV and picked up the receiver, expecting to hear Adele’s voice. I got her husband, Mel, instead.
Mel Bentibi was the most even-tempered man I’d ever known. He simply could not be drawn to any extreme emotion, a trait that drove Adele crazy. ‘He plays the Zen monk,’ she once told me, to cover up the fact that he has the inner life of an eggplant.
‘Say, Harry, I’ve got a serious problem.’ Mel cleared his throat. ‘It’s Adele. She’s been injured.’
‘Yeah, how so?’ I smiled at that moment — a crooked smile, to be sure — while my heart tightened into a fist.
‘She was mugged.’
‘Where?’
‘Coming into the apartment in Bayside.’ Another hesitation. ‘The thing about it is that I’m in Dallas. You know, on business. I’m not gonna be able to get away before Tuesday morning.’
‘Can I assume that means your wife isn’t critical or dead?’
‘Please, Harry, don’t talk like that. Adele’s in North Shore Hospital, in Manhasset. Her doctors tell me she’ll be fine. They just want to hold her overnight for observation.’
‘Does she have her cell phone with her?’
‘No, they took it, along with her gun.’
‘They?’
‘Harry, I don’t know the details. The doctors told me that she’s under sedation.’
I’d double-dated with Adele and her husband several times in the past. Though I’d found Mel to be terminally
