table.
All three men had read Buzz’s report, pulled from the back of the Taft High file by a terrified Corey Marshall. What Carmine didn’t know was whether Corey had intended to bring him the report, or burn it. His cop instincts said Corey intended to burn it, but just as he pulled the sheets, Carmine had walked in.
“You said one of my cases would come back and bite me,” said Corey, handing him the report.
“I’m sorry that it’s so terrible, Lieutenant.”
“What’s going to happen to me?” He sounded petrified.
“I don’t know. But if you have any brain at all, don’t so much as mention it to Maureen. That’s your only hope.”
“I told Corey not to confide in Maureen,” Carmine said now. “He might even obey that order, because I don’t think he could face the tongue-lashing she’d give him.”
“You’re very smart, Carmine,” Fernando Vasquez said.
“If I were, this wouldn’t have happened. I knew that Corey Marshall was weak, but so was I for not acting.”
“That’s aftersight speaking.” Fernando’s beautiful hand indicated the report. “You kept this unduplicated, and you guys in Detectives haven’t caught up enough with modern policing to keep copies of everything. For instance, did Sergeant Genovese keep a copy for himself?”
“No. Why would he? It’s in the file.”
“In future, he should. The world increasingly belongs to the lawyers, Carmine, and some of them are more ruthless than any journalist. I don’t increase paperwork for no reason. I do it to protect my men. With the Dodo on your back, I haven’t gotten around to Detectives yet, but it’s coming.”
“I gather that the existence of one copy of this is a good thing?” Carmine asked.
“A very good thing. What happens if Buzz goes poor Morty Jones’s route, huh? Guilt, depression, a steel meal? Without a copy of his report, he’ll be seen as confabulating,” Fernando said, black eyes like two glistening stones.
“It won’t come to that,” Carmine said. “This time, I’ll make absolutely sure.” He felt sick, pressed his midriff. “John, you haven’t said a thing. Fernando has left me in no doubt of his solution to our troubles-burn the report. What do you say?”
“That God moves in mysterious ways,” the Commissioner said, “and that you’ve acted for the greater good of the Holloman PD. It’s not even a question of blame-attitudes vary. Is Corey’s hard-nosed attitude more reprehensible because five people have died? He had every chance of being right.”
“If you’d read Buzz’s report, John, would you have pulled your men out of Taft High?” Carmine demanded.
“No,” Silvestri said flatly.
“And you, Fernando?”
“I would have blitzed the place, no matter what the parents and teachers said in objection. That was the only way to do it, Carmine. Empty the entire school, then search the cockroaches and fleas to see if they were packing.”
“Lessons for the future,” Silvestri said, sighing. “I am going to maintain that the school was scrupulously searched and all the weapons it contained were confiscated. Luckily the kids involved all went to the juvenile courts, so it’s not our fault if they’re already back at Taft High. As for the BB cache and the second BPP one, the guns had been placed in the school so recently that we’d had no word of it. Like so many other places, we’ve had a bad year with race riots in Holloman.”
“You intend to burn it,” Carmine said, voice flat.
They look like father and son, he thought as Vasquez and Silvestri went to a glass-fronted ornamental cupboard. John took out a big silver tray while Fernando hovered at his side. Trim, in silver-encrusted navy uniforms, very dark of hair and eye, flawless features and a certain catlike grace of movement. Thank God! John has finally found his heir. Not that he intends to retire for some time to come. He has to groom Fernando.
Buzz Genovese’s report burned while Carmine watched the two uniformed men make sure no flake remained unblackened.
“I’ll see Buzz tomorrow morning,” the Commissioner said when Fernando took the tray off to the private bathroom. “It’s sad but simple-when Lieutenant Marshall looked for the report, it had gone. Too suggestive, you think, Carmine? Well, I think Corey deserves to wear the odium, especially in Buzz’s eyes.”
“I appreciate your having me here, John.”
Fernando returned.
The three men sat down again.
“We still have one problem,” said Carmine.
“Corey, you mean?” Silvestri asked.
“I mean.”
“It’s a hard one.”
Fernando leaned back, satisfied that he had done his part; Carmine continued to speak to Silvestri, as if he too thought it.
“I have a solution, John.”
The Commissioner sat up. “You do? Hit me!”
“First of all, Corey’s not suited for his present position. He’s too anti-routine in a job he thinks should have no routine, not to mention that he paints himself into a corner. A more secure man would simply admit that he was wrong, but Corey’s not secure. He’s also dominated by his wife. What he needs is a job having equal status but none of the responsibility-no human beings as individual human beings, just as ciphers.”
Fernando was bolt upright, wary and annoyed. “No!”
“Oh, come on, Fernando, he’s perfect, and you know it. By Christmas you will have completed your reforms- three lieutenants, remember? After pushing Mike Cerutti through one department after another, you intend to put him in as lieutenant in charge of anything with wheels-well, it’s logical, and you’re a logical man. Of course you need a lieutenant in charge of personnel, but a guy very much under your thumb. For that reason it won’t be Joey Tasco, it will be Virgil Simms. Mike and Virgil are good men who can’t afford to forget that you promoted them over a lot of heads, that their income has zoomed, and that they get to wear silver braid. However, you need a senior lieutenant, and whom can you trust in the Uniform Division, tell me that? Ideally you need someone from outside, but you haven’t been here long enough to survive the palace revolution that would provoke. Whereas Corey Marshall has been in the Holloman PD for seventeen years, eleven of them in uniform. Everybody with seniority knows him, and he’s well liked. His being awarded the top job will be seen as shrewd and inarguable. On the other hand, what you know about him chains him to you. He’ll have to work from a list of do’s and don’t’s that you write in letters of stone-he’ll have absolutely no room to maneuver. Nor will his wife have the smallest share in his power. Corey is the perfect senior lieutenant. C’mon, Fernando, admit it!”
“I agree it’s my best answer,” Fernando said. “Damn you!”
“So do I agree, and mine’s the deciding vote,” said Silvestri.
“You told me I had too many lieutenants, and you were right,” Carmine said, grinning. “In future, Detectives will have one lieutenant-Abe Goldberg, and one captain, me. One fewer loot, a lot fewer headaches.”
But, thought Carmine later, driving home, today has been an awful day. Not every death at Taft High was an innocent one, but even a flesh wound is too high a price to pay for a troubled peace. And I have colluded at the destruction of a document that indicts one of my own men and should be published to vindicate another. What might have happened if I had refused to collude? If I had insisted on publication? John Silvestri wears the pale blue ribbon, and he colluded. It’s Vasquez, of course. The new breed, the modern cop.
What good would publication have done? It could only have worked did it happen beforehand, and for that, I blame Corey Marshall. He knew the report existed, but no one else did except its author. It’s a terrible dilemma, and both of its horns are cruel. To have published his findings, Buzz Genovese would have had to go over his boss’s head, and he had seen that as lacking honor. Well, so would I. Honor is preserved, but at the cost of five lives and a bunch of wounded. I can see why John Silvestri has chosen to make Corey Marshall the villain of the piece, but are the three of us-himself, Fernando, and I-innocent?
“One of my worst days,” he said to Desdemona, telling her everything save the collusion.
“Oh, Carmine, a horror! And I do understand why guns are such a large part of it,” she said. “Male creatures are genuinely combative, it’s a part of the sex. Now that we’re busy making war so unpalatable, a different sort of
