I laughed with no joy. “He wouldn’t. It might hurt his ascendency. I used to joke with Larry that he thought ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was his theme song.”
“You musta known him pretty well, huh?”
“I used to think so. We came up together.” I sipped my tea. “So, Captain, he comes to you and says he’s heard some things. It’s a leap from that to planting a wire in an interview room.”
Martello squirmed in his chair so much that it made me uncomfortable watching him. The beer seemed to turn to vinegar in his mouth and he spit it out onto the grass.
“The chief said he wanted to handle things quietly, that if he could get some proof on these detectives that they were using trumped-up arrests or threats to shake people down. . You know, he could pull them aside and warn them to put in their papers before it got ugly for them, their families, and the department. This way the whole thing goes away and nobody gets hurt. It worked for me.”
“That’s an interesting view of justice,” I said.
“Look, Prager, no C.O. wants to get caught in the middle of a corruption scandal. My head would’ve rolled along with those guilty motherfuckers.”
“But even so, what’s this got to do with Malik Jabbar and a seventeen-year-old murder case?”
“I don’t know. McDonald said I was to call him any time a drug suspect came in wanting to make a deal. After my detectives-”
“Murphy and Melendez?”
“Yeah. After Murphy and Melendez came to me, I phoned Chief McDonald. He sounded weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Just weird. I don’t know. Different. Strange. Unnerved, maybe. Anyway, he told me that he’d handle everything. He came down, talked to this Jabbar guy and had me release him. He took that cassette from my office and told me to just keep my mouth shut and that he’d protect me.”
“And you believed him?”
“What choice did I have?” Martello asked, crushing his beer can. “I was fucked no matter what I did. I had knowingly let a wire be planted in my house without a court order and by someone who had no authority to do it. I have the fucking receiver in my office, for chrissakes! Even if I could convince somebody it wasn’t my idea in the first place, I’d failed to alert anyone about what the chief was doing. And besides, McDonald had juice. Everybody with a brass button owed him favors. If anybody could protect my ass, it was him.”
“I guess I see your point. What did you do with the paperwork on Jabbar?”
“C’mon, Prager, you were on the job. Shit gets misplaced all the time. It’s a fucking miracle more shit doesn’t disappear.”
“But with the new computers. .”
“Never got entered into the system.”
“And you didn’t called the Brooklyn D.A.?”
“Nope. So. .” He strummed his fingers on the arm of his deck chair. “What are you gonna do about the tape?”
“This?” I twirled the cassette on the table. “I got no beef with you and I’m not looking to jam anybody up. All I want are some answers about why a small-time shithead like Malik Jabbar scared Larry so much. Nothing really scared Larry. Like you were saying, he had juice and he had balls. What could this Jabbar guy have known that got him and his girl killed?”
“Sorry, Prager, can’t help you there.”
“Okay, Captain, thanks for your time. I won’t say anything to anyone about your part in this mess.”
“Thanks. One thing I gotta say.”
“What’s that?”
“I wasn’t tight with Chief McDonald, and maybe I’m talking outta my ass, but I think you’re being a lot more loyal to him than he woulda been to you.”
“You’re probably right, but in the end, I don’t suppose it’s really about who Larry Mac was. It’s about who I am.”
I stood and offered my hand to Martello. He took it, looking mostly relieved. Mostly.
“About the tape. .” he said, clearing his throat.
“Keep it. The answers I’m looking for aren’t on there.”
On the ride back into the city, it occurred to me that I probably should’ve kept the tape as a bargaining chip for Fishbein, but I wasn’t out to hurt people. There was already too much hurt to go around. In the end, I’d find Fishbein some raw meat to chew on. There was bound to be a lot of that around too.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The first time Yancy Whittle Fenn and I met, we had drinks at the Yale Club across the way from Grand Central Station. It didn’t start out well for the two of us. I like drinking, but I don’t like drunks. An odd position to take, I realize, for a man who owns three wine shops, but there it is. Wit had been an especially nasty drunk, because he was a cruel drunk. As a cop, you kind of get used to belligerent drunks, fist-swinging assholes who start throwing punches at the first whiff of alcohol. Sad, stupid, angry, even hateful drunks were one thing, but I could never abide cruelty. Maybe that’s why I hated my father-in-law so.
Near seventy, Wit had begun to show his age. He was thinner these days, almost too thin without the Wild Turkey course of each meal. His perpetually tan skin now hung loosely off his jaws and there was a rounding of his shoulders that wasn’t there six years ago. But his gray-blue eyes still burned as brightly as ever behind the lenses of his trademark tortoiseshell glasses. And the man could dress. No matter how much my clothing cost, when I stood between Wit and Larry McDonald, I looked like a vagabond.
Wit and I had been back to the Yale Club several times since we’d met, but I don’t think I’d ever fully taken the place in. It was of a completely different time. A time when a certain class of white, Christian gentleman ruled the world, and proximity to Grand Central Station mattered in the scheme of things. It was of an era when black waiters wore white gloves and swallowed their anger like table scraps. Katy loved the place. Not me. I would always be more comfortable in steerage with the fish.
“A good day to you and your guest, Mr. Wit,” Willie said. He was an overly polite black man equal to Wit in age, if not older, who had waited on us that first time back in ’83 and every time since. Willie didn’t do white gloves, at least not anymore.
“And to you, Willie,” said Wit. “You’re getting a little old for waiting tables, aren’t you?”
“That well may be, Mr. Wit, but I’m not too old to stop eating, if you catch my meaning, sir.” We both caught it, but these two always went on like this. “Would either of you fine gentleman like a beverage this afternoon?”
“Dewar’s rocks,” I said.
“Club soda with a wedge of lime, please, Willie.”
“And for lunch?”
“A Cobb salad.”
“The same,” said Wit.
“Very good, gentlemen.”
Wit took a minute to look me over before saying another word. He did have a way of making me feel like a specimen under a microscope. For most of the rest of the world, he masked his electron beam beneath oodles of charm and tales of the rich and debauched. I guess I should have felt honored that he didn’t try to camouflage his inspecting me.
“Are you gonna wait till I squirm before you say something?”
“You’ve crossed the line, haven’t you?”
“You’re the second person to accuse me of that today. At least I knew what he was talking about, but what are you referring to?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“The dark-haired beauty.”
“No, Wit. I stepped up to the line, yeah, but I didn’t cross it.”
“There’s only trouble there, Moses.”
