It took me less than five minutes to get as ready as I was going to get for this. Nana was entertaining our visitors in the parlor.
Commissioner Clouser had come to my house twice before. This was a first for the chief of detectives. The Jefe. I assumed that Clouser had forced him to come.
ChiefPittman and Commissioner Clouser were sipping Nana's steaming coffee, smiling at a story she was spinning for them. I wondered what it was she had decided to get off her chest. This was a dangerous time -- for Pittman and Clouser.
“I was just rebuking these gentlemen for allowing Emmanuel Perez to roam our streets for so long,” she told me as I entered the parlor. “They promised not to let that sort of thing happen again. Should I believe them, Alex?”
Both Pittman and Clouser chuckled as they looked at me.
Neither of them realized this was no chuckling matter, and that my grandmother was no one to mess with or, even worse, condescend to in her house.
“No, you shouldn't believe one word they say Are you finished now?” I asked her, returning her sweet, phony smile with one of my own.
“I didn't think I could trust either of them. I wanted to get their promise in writing,” Nana said.
I nodded and smiled, as if she'd just made a joke, which I knew she hadn't. She was dead serious. The Jefe and Commissioner Clouser both laughed heartily They thought Nana Mama was a stitch. She isn't. She's the whole nine yards.
“Can the three of us talk in here?” I asked her. “Or should we go outside for our discussion?”
“I'll go in my kitchen,” Nana evil-eyed me and said. “So nice to meet you, Chief Pittman, Commissioner Clouscr. Don't forget your promise. I won't.”
Once she had left the room, the commissioner poke right up “Well, congratulations are in order, Alex. I understand that you found all kinds of kiddie porn in Manuel Pcrez's apartment.”
“Detective Sampson and I found the pornography,” I said.
Then I was silent. I had decided not to make this easy for them.
Actually, I agreed one hundred percent with the point Nana had been trying to make.
“I'm sure you're wondering what we're doing here, so let me explain,” Chief of Detectives Pittman spoke up. He and I were not close, to put it mildly. Never had been, never would be.
Pittman is a bully and also a closet racist, and those are his better points. He could never seem to see a belt without wanting to hit below it.
“I'd appreciate it,” I said to The Jefe. “I was thinking that maybe you had just been in the neighborhood and you dropped by for my grandmother's coffee. It's worth a trip.”
Pittman didn't come close to breaking a smile. 'We received a formal request from the FBI late last night. They've asked that you work on the investigation of Senator Fitzpatrick's murder.
Special Agent Kyle Craig strongly suggested that your background and recent experience might serve the investigation well.
Obviously, it's an important case, Alex.'
I let Chief Pittman finish, then I slowly shook my head no.
“I've got a half-dozen open homicides here in Southeast,” I said.
'The case I just worked on should have been solved months ago.
Then another little girl wouldn't have died for no goddamn reason. A homicide detective got reassigned off the killer's trail back then.
Now a little girl is dead. Six years old.'
“This is a major case, Alex,” the commissioner said. He had snow-white hair. His face was bright red, which happened when he was angry or disturbed. The two of us went back some. Usually, we went along, got along. Maybe not this time.
'Tell the FBI that I can't be spared for this Jack and Jill mess.
I'll call Kyle and make my peace with him. Kyle will understand.
I'm on several homicide cases in Southeast. People die here, too.
We have our own messes, and even major cases.'
“Let me ask you something, Alex,” the police commissioner said. He smiled gently as he spoke. Lots of beautifully capped white teeth. I could have played some sweet Gershwin on them, though maybe some key- slamming Little Richard would have been more satisfying.
“Do you still want to be a cop?” he asked.
That one landed, and it stung. It was a sucker punch, but a pretty good one.
“I want to be a good cop,” I said to him. “I want to do some good if I possibly can. Same as always. Nothing's changed.”
“That's the right answer,” the commissioner said as if I were a child who needed his instruction. 'You're on the Jack and Jill investigation. It's been decided in very high places. You have experience with these kinds of murders, with lunatic psychotics.
You are officially off all your other cases. Now, be a very good cop, Alex. The FBI is almost certain Jack and
