'Because he could place you in the neighborhood and give evidence of your appearance and physical condition. As it is, all we've got is your statement.'
I felt anger rising, and I made an effort to keep a lid on it. Evenly I said, 'Well, isn't that worth something? Here's a guy who went away for aggravated assault on a police officer. After sentencing he threatened that officer in open court. He served twelve years, during which time he committed other acts of violence. Now, a few months after his release, you've got a sworn statement charging him with assault on that same police officer, and—'
'You're not a police officer now, Matt.'
'No, but—'
'You haven't been a police officer for quite some time now.' He lit a cigarette, shook the match out, went on shaking it after the flame had died. Without looking at me he said, 'What you are, you want to get technical about it, you're an ex-cop with no visible means of support.'
'What the hell is that supposed to mean?'
'Well, what else are you? You're a sort of half-assed private detective, but you don't carry a license and you get paid off the books, so what do you think that looks like when you write it up?' He sighed, shook his head. 'Late last night,' he said. 'Was that the first time you saw Motley yesterday?'
'It's the first time I saw him since his sentencing.'
'You didn't go over to his hotel earlier?'
'What hotel?'
'Yes or no, Matt. Did you or didn't you?'
'Of course not. I don't even know where he's staying. I've been turning the city upside down looking for him. What's all this about?'
He rooted through papers on his desk, found what he was looking for. 'This came through this morning,'
he said.
'Late yesterday afternoon a lawyer named Seymour Goodrich turned up at the Sixth Precinct on West Tenth. He was representing one James Leo Motley, and he had with him a recently obtained order of protection on behalf of his client against you, and—'
'Against me?'
'— and he wanted a complaint on the record about your actions earlier that day.'
'What actions?'
'According to Motley, you turned up at his lodgings at the Hotel Harding. You menaced him, threatened him, and laid hands on his physical person in a threatening and intimidating manner, et cetera et cetera et cetera.' He let go of the paper and it floated down onto the cluttered desktop. 'You're saying it never happened. You never went to the Harding.'
'Sure I went there. It's a flop at the corner of Barrow and West, I knew it well years ago when I was attached to the Sixth. We used to call it the Hard-on.'
'So you did go there.'
'Sure, but not yesterday. I went there when I was knocking on doors down there. Saturday night, it must have been. I showed his picture to the desk clerk.'
'And?'
'And nothing. 'No, he don't look familiar, I never seen him before.'
'
'And you never went back?'
'What for?'
He leaned forward, crushed out his cigarette. He pushed his chair back and leaned all the way back and fixed his gaze on the ceiling. 'You can see how it looks,' he said.
'Suppose you tell me.'
'Guy comes in, swears out a complaint, he's got an order of protection, a lawyer, the whole bit. Says you shoved him around and got rough with him. Next day you came in looking like you fell down a flight of stairs and you're the one with a complaint this time, only it happened in the middle of the night somewhere in the asshole of Manhattan, Attorney Street for God's fucking sake, and there's no witnesses, no cabdriver, no hospital report, nothing.'
'You could check trip sheets. You might find the cabbie that way.'
'Yeah, I could check trip sheets. I could put twenty men on it, a high-priority thing like that.'
I didn't say anything.
He said, 'Going back twelve years, why'd he sound off in the courtroom? 'I'll get you for this,' all that crap. Why?'
'He's a psychopath. What does he need with a reason?'
'Yeah, right, but what was the reason he thought he had?'
'I was putting him in jail. That's as much of a reason as he needed.'
'Putting him away for something he didn't do.'
