than an old onion, so I’m not really sure there’s much I can tell you.”
Fishbein screwed up his face as if he were working hard to think of a follow-up, but it was all an act. He was questioning me for appearance’s sake. I guess he was also trying to give me cover. Because, whether I liked it or not, whether I had intended to or not, I was now Fishbein’s boy. By going to him the way I had, he had the inside track. I’d got almost nothing out of the relationship so far except an autopsy report and yellow sheet on Malik, but with me he might knock one out of the park.
“You know, Mr. Prager,” Starr picked up, “you don’t seem awfully broken up about your friend’s suicide.”
“The ground ain’t wet from your tears either, Mr. D.A.,” I said, trying to hide the shock.
“Of course,” said Cleary.
“You sure there’s nothing else?” Starr said.
“Nothing else like what? Sometimes Larry played his cards so close to the vest, they were inside his shirt. Maybe there’s something you guys know that you’re not telling me. Is that it?”
Silence. Kind of enjoyed watching four grown men paw at the wet earth with their expensive shoes.
Now there was no mistaking it. There was full-blown admiration in Carmella Melendez’s eyes and fuck me if my heart didn’t race at the sight of it. I had done magic before her. But like all magic, it was an illusion. I had heard the tape. I had spoken to Larry. I knew probably more than any one of them about Larry’s past sins.
“Do you mind if I go over and pay my respects?” I asked.
“It ain’t pretty, son,” Deputy Mayor Brown spoke up.
“Nothing ever is, beneath the surface,” I said.
“Just stay out of the way. It’s still considered a crime scene, remember that,” Cleary warned.
“How about if Detective Melendez comes with me to make sure I keep my nose clean?”
Cleary nodded. Melendez wasn’t stupid. She didn’t jump at the chance. She sneered as if Cleary had told her to carry me over to Larry’s Chevy on her back.
“You were good back there,” she said.
“Thanks. And you were right about what you said in the car on the way over. Maybe we could sort of start over.”
She hesitated. “Where should we start over from, Mr. Prager? From your stunt driving this morning or your unexplained presence at the precinct yesterday? I’m thinking it’s kinda odd that you turned up over there outta the blue and then the chief kills himself, no? The suits and the brass back there might buy your line a shit, but I’m not a big believer in coincidences.”
“That makes two of us.”
“So where does that leave us? You gonna tell me why you were at the Six-O?”
We had reached the car. The driver’s side door was open. Larry’s head rested on the steering wheel; his lifeless eyes looked past me into an unfathomable distance. Even in death, he didn’t look quite peaceful. His ambition had left a residue on his corpse as real as gunpowder. As the chopper moved further away, I caught the stink of his death. In spite of being surrounded by several million tons of decay, the ripeness of it was unmistakable. It was like hearing one particularly sour note from a tone-deaf orchestra.
“How’d he do it?” I asked.
“Look at the tailpipe,” one of the busy bees said. Sure enough, a flexible black hose ran from the mouth of the tailpipe, beneath the car, around the passenger side, up into a slit in the rear window. Neat strips of duct tape covered the opening in the window left to accommodate the exhaust tube. “My guess is he swallowed some sleeping pills, washed ’em down with some bourbon, and went to sleep. There’s a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor.”
“Any note?”
“We haven’t found one yet.”
“Thanks,” I said.
I felt Melendez’s eyes on me, studying me.
“You don’t like it,” she said, “do you?”
“He was my friend. Nobody likes it when a friend kills himself.”
“Don’t be that way. You know what I mean. You have doubts.”
“There’s shit you never want to accept at first. I was never at a shooting scene where the dead guy’s mom thought he was a bad kid. No one wants to believe bad stuff about the people they lo-about their friends. I think they think it reflects badly on them somehow, like it’s their fault when bad things happen, like
I turned to look at her. Her expression went blank, her eyes nearly as distant as Larry’s. “I don’t think anyone knows better than me.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Melendez ignored the question. “Come on, we’ll take you back to your car.”
“Gimme a minute.”
“I’ll wait over there.”
I kept staring at Larry. It wasn’t denial, but I was having trouble with his being dead. When a parent dies, you pretty much know how you’re supposed to feel. Even if the feelings are mixed and confused, you’ve decided; or at least your heart has. With Larry, it was different. I realized that for the twenty-plus years I’d known him, I had never quite decided how to feel about him. I’d always waited for some sign, some gesture on his part that would let me know it was really okay to love him, to hold him close. I took a long last look into his vacant, unfocused eyes, hoping that in death he could give me the thing he seemed incapable of giving in life. Of course, like most wishes, it went unfulfilled. As far as my heart was concerned, I thought, the jury would always be out-the verdict never in.
D.A. Fishbein was the only one of the princes still standing inside the yellow tape when I was done with Larry. Melendez stood a few feet to his left, paying very little attention to either one of us. Fishbein shooed her away.
“Can you excuse us for a second, Detective?”
“I’ll be by the car,” she said.
The Groucho Marx smile vanished from the D.A.’s face when Melendez had strolled far enough away. “Did it end here?”
“What?”
“Don’t play stupid with me, Mr. Prager. You came to me, remember?”
“I remember.”
“Then answer the question. Is the chief’s suicide the end or the beginning?”
“Don’t look now, Mr. D.A., but your hard-on is showing.”
Fishbein actually looked down. “Asshole!”
“The truth is, I don’t know whether this is the end or the beginning. I’m not thinking too clearly right now. That’s my friend lying dead in that car over there, not the ass end of a cow.”
“You can sit
“That’s not saying much.”
“Stop fencing with me, Prager. Your Puerto Rican girlfriend’s not around to be impressed.”
Because of his clownish looks and buffoonish overstepping, Robert Hiram Fishbein was an easy man to underestimate. But what he had just said reminded me that he was neither a clown nor a buffoon. He was sharp and cunning and hungry. Very little escaped his notice, not even the subtleties of early attraction.
“No, Larry never struck me as the kinda man to kill himself.”
“That’s better. Then let’s see if we can’t find out what really happened here and if this case’s got any legs.”
“What case is that? I don’t know that there is a case. And,” I felt compelled to remind him, “if there is one, it takes place deep in the heart of Brooklyn.”
“You let me worry about that. In the meantime, you’re working for me.”
“Officially?”
