look at her tits, see if they match the set in the movie?' Because the tits are all you really get a good look at.'
'You get to see her mouth.'
'Yeah, and there's generally something in it. Look, here's the point. Odds are you could never get the tape seen by a jury. Any defense attorney's gonna try and get it disallowed, and they most likely could, because it's inflammatory. I'll fucking well say it's inflammatory. It inflamed the shit out of me, it made me want to jail those two fuckers and weld the cell door shut.'
'But a jury can't see it.'
'Probably not, but before it gets that far they tell me you can't even get an indictment, because what have you got to present to a grand jury? First off, who was murdered?'
'A kid.'
'A kid we don't know zip about. Maybe his name is Happy and maybe he comes from Texas or South Carolina or some state where they play a lot of high school football. Where's the body? Nobody knows. When did the alleged homicide take place? Nobody knows. Did he really get killed? Nobody knows.'
'You saw it, Joe.'
'I see stuff on TV and in the movies all the time. Special effects, they call it. They got these hero killers, Jason, Freddie, they're in one movie after another, wasting people left and right. I'll tell you, they make it look as good as Bergen and Olga.'
'There were no special effects in what we saw. That was home video.'
'I know that. I also know that the tape doesn't amount to evidentiary proof that a murder was committed, and that without the where and the when and some proof that somebody actually got killed, you got next to nothing to walk into a courtroom with.'
'What about Leveque?'
'What about him?'
'His murder's a matter of record.'
'So? There is nothing anywhere to link Arnold Leveque to either of the Stettners. The only tie is the unsupported testimony of Richard Thurman, who's conveniently dead himself and who told you this in a private conversation with no witnesses present, and it's all hearsay and almost certainly not allowable. And not even Thurman could connect the Stettners to the film. He said Leveque was trying to blackmail Stettner with a film, but he also said Stettner got that film and that was the end of it. You can be positive in your own mind that we're talking about the same film here, and you can work it out that Leveque was the cameraman and was there when the kid's blood went down the drain, but that's not proof. You couldn't even say it in court without some lawyer jumping straight down your throat.'
'What about the other boy? Bobby, the younger one.'
'Jesus,' he said. 'What have you got? You've got a sketch based on a look you got at him sitting next to Stettner at a boxing match. You got some kid somebody hunted up who says he recognizes the kid and his name's Bobby, but he doesn't know his last name or where he's from or what happened to him. You got somebody else who says Bobby used to be with a pimp who used to threaten kids that he'd send them out and they wouldn't come back.'
'His name's Juke,' I said. 'He shouldn't be too hard to trace.'
'He was a cinch, as a matter of fact. People complain a lot about the computer system but it makes some things easy. Juke is a guy named Walter Nicholson. A/k/a Juke, a/k/a Juke Box. First bit he did was for breaking into coin-operated vending machines, which is where the nickname came from. Arrested for statutory rape, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and immoral solicitation. In other words a lot of pimping arrests, a whole profile of pimping kids. A class act.'
'Can't you pick him up? He could tie Bobby to Stettner.'
'You got to get him to talk, which would be hard without having something to hold over his head, which I don't see here. And then you'd have to get somebody to believe anything a scumbag like Juke might say. But you can't do any of that because the prick happens to be dead.'
'Stettner got him.'
'No, Stettner didn't get him. He-'
'The same as he got Thurman, to get rid of a witness before anybody could get to him. Dammit, if I'd come in right away, if I hadn't waited over the weekend-'
'Matt, Juke got killed a week ago. And Stettner didn't have anything to do with it and probably doesn't even know it happened. Juke and another of Nature's noblemen shot each other in a social club on Lenox Avenue. They were fighting over a ten-year-old girl. Must be some hot broad, got two grown men shooting each other over her, don't you think?'
I didn't say anything.
'Look,' he said, 'I fucking hate this. I got the word last night and I went in this morning and carried on, and they're right. They're wrong but they're right. And I waited until tonight to call you because I wasn't looking forward to this conversation, believe it or not. Much as I like your company under other circumstances.' He poured more whiskey into his glass. I got a whiff of it, but it didn't make me want it. Nor was it the worst smell in Pete's All-American.
I said, 'I think I understand, Joe. I knew it was thin with Thurman dead.'
'With Thurman alive I think we probably would have had them. But once he's dead there's no case.'
'But if you mount a full-scale investigation-'
'Jesus,' he said, 'don't you get it? There's no grounds for an investigation. There's no complaint to act on, there's no probable cause for a warrant, there's a whole lot of nothing is what there is. The man's not a criminal, for openers. Never been arrested. You say mob connections, but his name's not in any files, never came up in any RICO investigations. Man's clean as a whistle. Lives on Central Park South, makes a good living trading in foreign currencies-'
'That's money laundering.'
'So you say, but can you prove it? He pays his taxes, he gives to charities, he's made substantial political contributions-'
'Oh?'
'Don't give me that. It's not any clout that makes it impossible to take him down. Nobody ordered us off it because the prick's untouchable, he's got a hook with somebody important. No such thing. But he's not some street kid you can push around and never hear about it. You gotta have something'll stand up in court, and you want to know what stands up in court? Let me just say two words. You wanna hear two words? Warren Madison.'
'Oh.'
'Yeah, 'Oh.' Warren Madison, terror of the Bronx. Deals dope, kills four other dealers we know for sure and is listed as probable for five others, and when they finally corner this wanted fugitive in his mother's apartment he shoots six cops before they get the cuffs on him. He shoots six cops!'
'I remember.'
'And that cocksucker Gruliow defends him, and what does he do, what he always does, he puts the cops on trial. Spins out all this shit about how the Bronx cops were using Madison as a snitch, and they were giving him confiscated cocaine to sell, and then they tried to murder him to keep him from talking. Do you fucking believe it? Six police officers with bullets in 'em, not a single bullet in Warren fucking Madison, and that means it was all a police department plot to kill the fuck.'
'The jury bought it.'
'Fucking Bronx jury, they would have cut Hitler loose, sent him home in a cab. And that's with a piece of shit of a dope dealer that everybody knew was guilty. You imagine what you'd get bringing a shaky case against a solid citizen like Stettner? Look, Matt, do you see what I mean? Do you want me to go over it again?'
I saw, but we went over it anyway. Somewhere in the course of it the Ten High began to get the upper hand. His eyes lost their sharp focus and he started slurring his words. Pretty soon he began repeating himself, losing track of his own arguments.
'Let's get out of this dive,' I said. 'Are you hungry? Let's get something to eat, maybe some coffee.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Just that I wouldn't mind some food.'
'Horseshit. Don't patronize me, you son of a bitch.'
