Kindle County: Pleading Guilty Part 10

'I had a request to make to you as head of finance.'

He nodded. No words. He was steeling himself. Unconsciously he raised a hand to his head. There's a bald spot the size of an orange at the back of his head and you can tell from the way he's always fussing that it drives him nuts - the imperfection, the lack of control, the fact that he is as subject as anyone else to the whims of fate.

'Suppose I told you I want to take a trip to Pico Luan?'

Carl deliberated. Even crossed up, he was disinclined to quickly agree.

'You didn't think that was such a clever idea earlier this week.'

'It's the only lead I have left.'

Carl nodded. He'd been right from the start; he could accept that. For my own part, I felt too much vestigial loyalty to tell him there was something squirrelly about Martin's account of his phone call to the International Bank of Finance.

'There's a lawyer down there I'd like to retain. Subject to your approval.' I handed him the card I'd gotten from LaG.o.dis. 'The guy's supposed to do black magic getting stuff out of the banks.'

Pagnucci made a sound but otherwise failed to react. Off-camera, Pagnucci has quite a life, this trim little guy with a stiff little mustache cuts some figure. He's on wife number four - each of them blondes, drop-dead gorgeous, who are getting progressively taller as his marriages wear on - and he runs himself to work in one modified Formula One car or another, Shelbys and Lotuses, all kinds of hot stuff. At some point, maybe all day, his fantasy life must be running wild, John Wayne movies probably, ba.n.a.l stuff like that. But in the office, none of it shows. Not a muscle twitches. He did not seem to have any more to say now. He touched the corner of his mustache with a lacquered fingernail.

'I was going to charge the trip to the recruiting budget, frankly,' I said. 'I'll probably take someone with me to witness any interviews. But I wanted you to know so there's no squawk when the bills come through.'

'Have you talked to Martin or Wash about this?'

'I'd rather not.' I was telling Carl a good deal now and he absorbed it like all else in silence. I was taking a chance. But Carl by his nature liked keeping things to himself. And I couldn't see him vetoing his own idea.

'You're turning out to be a much more complicated fellow than I imagined,' said Pagnucci. I tipped my head slightly. I thought it might be a compliment. Before he opened my door, Carl said, 'Keep me in the loop,' then drifted off, smug and unruffled, leaving behind his usual aura: every soul for itself.

Rational self-interest is Carl's creed. He worships at the altar of the free market. The same way Freud thought everything was s.e.x, Pagnucci believes all social interaction, no matter how complex, can be adjusted by finding a way to put a price on it. Urban housing. Education. We need compet.i.tion and profit motive to make it all work. It is, I know, quite a theory. Let everybody struggle to get their bucket in the stream and then do what they like with the water they fish out. Some will make steam, some will take a drink, a few fellows or ladies will decide to take a bath. Entrepreneurship will flourish; people will be happy; we'll get all this nifty indispensable stuff like balsamic vinegar and menthol cigarettes. But what kind of ethical social system takes as its fundamental precepts the words I 'me' and 'mine'? Our two-year-olds start like that and we spend the next twenty years trying to teach them there's more than that to life.

I stayed down for the evening, cleaning up what I'd ignored while running all over town the last couple of days. Memos and letters. I returned all my calls. I hadn't eaten much. I was tired, my eyes and bones felt acid-etched from the hangover. Now and then I closed my eyes and thought I could still catch far back in my throat the fierce taste of rye, which I savored.

Eventually I picked up the Dictaphone. The city out the window at this hour has a sort of painted stillness, all black forms and random lights: a woodcut pattern - gray on indigo and jet. A lone car races up the ridges of the superhighway. I am one more life in hiding amid the occasional heaving and cranking of a big building in the darkness, talking to myself. A single coast guard icebreaker's mast light bucks along the river.

It seems increasingly obvious, even to me, that I'll never show a word of this to anyone on the Committee. Ignoring the insults, which I could cross out, I've lied to or hidden things from each of them half a dozen times. And for you, sweet Elaine, a Dictaphone or some typing won't really make our communication improve. So we all wonder: who am I talking to?

In my mind's eye, there are faces. Don't ask me whose. But I see some reasoning and sensate being who will get hold of this thing, some someone of largely indecipherable characteristics who I nonetheless find myself addressing now and then. You. The universal You. U You, in my mind. Gender, age, and disposition unknown. Experience unimagined. A somebody floating like dust in the outer reaches of the cosmos. But still - I think, bud, this is for you.

Of course, I try to imagine reactions. You could be a copper, or a Bureau agent, with a soul rough as sandpaper, who locks this up at night to make sure your wife does not get ruffled by the bad words, while you, when you're alone, rifle the pages looking for another pa.s.sage about my hand on my crank. Maybe you're some fifty-year-old Irishman who thinks I don't sound a bit like you do. Or a kid who says this is boring. Or a professor who concludes it is generally vile.

Whoever, I want something from You. Not admiration, G.o.d knows, I don't feel much for myself. What more can I call it but connection? Comprehend. Let that mighty magic lightning flow across the gaps of s.p.a.ce and time. From me. To you. And back. The way the bolts explode from sky to earth and then bounce again into the heavens and the universe beyond. Going on forever, to the regions where the physicists tell us matter equals time. While in one spot on this single humble planet, a tree is split, a rooftop smokes, a human being sits awake and startled by the miracle of energy and light.

TAPE 4.

Dictated January 30, 1:00 a.m.

Friday, January 27 XIV.

YOU GUYS.

A. The Murder Suspect Friday a.m. I was heading in through the revolving doors of the Needle when a young guy stopped me, pockmarked skin and a slick-backed do and a fancy jacket made from the skin of some creature with a two-chambered heart. Familiar from someplace, like an actor you've seen on TV.

'Mr Malloy?' He flipped his tin at me, and naturally I recognized him then, Pigeyes's wormy companion, Dewey.

You guys,' I said.

'Gino'd like a word with you.' I looked in all directions. I didn't believe I could get within one hundred yards of Pigeyes without picking up some sensation of him, like a missile detector homing on infrared. Dewey was indicating the curb where I saw only a rusted conversion van.

I asked what would happen if I said no.

'Hey, fella, you do what you wanna do. Me, I wouldn't f.u.c.k with him. You're in a lotta deep doo-doo.' Pigeyes was in a mood, Dewey was saying. There was a vaguely plaintive quality to his address. Life forges all kinds of fraternities and Dewey and I were in one of its strangest: partners of Pigeyes. There were only so many people on earth who could understand his plight, and dogmeat or not, I was still one of them. We looked at each other a moment as the Center City crowd scurried past, and then I followed him to the curb and the van, which looked like a weary delivery truck bearing sclerotic rust marks on its rocker panels and six of those grayed-over bubble-type portholes, two in the back and two on each side.

When Dewey opened the rear doors, Pigeyes was inside, along with a black guy, another copper. It was a surveillance van. No way to be sure how long they'd been watching me; long enough to know I wasn't upstairs. They could have followed me from home or, more likely, called Lucinda and learned that I hadn't arrived. There were video cams mounted on swivels over each of the portholes and two rows of recording equipment in small wooden consoles behind the driver's seat. The entire interior had been carpeted in a mangy gray s.h.a.g, which had matted and worn away on the floor and was marked here and there with cigarette burns. Guys spent long nights in here, begging each other not to fart, watching whoever they watched, dopers or Mafia dons or nuts who'd said they wanted to kill a senator. There were cup holders fixed to the walls and carpeted benches over the wheel wells. Pigeyes was sitting next to the electronics, wearing one of those short-billed county caps. I suppose this was his getup when he was undercover. I nodded rather than use his name and Dewey took my elbow to help me up. Inside, the van smelled of fried food.

I was impressed by Pigeyes's access to this equipment. Surveillance was a separate department unit. When I was on the Force, they would have s.h.i.tcanned a request for a.s.sistance from Financial Crimes faster than junkmail. But Pigeyes sort of had his own police department, his own affiliations and rules. His cousins were coppers and so were two of his brothers, and he had one of 'his guys' as he put it, in every nook and cranny of the Hall. He could fix up any little problem - leave or sick days, expense money to take care of a snitch. Naturally he'd return favors -outside the Force, too, for that matter. The guys he grew up with, fellas who these days were importing tunas stuffed with brown heroin or gambling for a living, were all the time giving him a holler when they got in a jam and Gino'd always help out. No questions asked. The Pigeyes National Bank of Favors Owing and Owed. The only thing I found disconcerting was that he was spending his markers to watch over me.

As soon as I took a seat on the wheel well, Pigeyes was on his feet. Make no mistake, he was unhappy.

'I know one f.u.c.king douche bag, Malloy, who isn't as f.u.c.king smart as you think you are.' He waited for me to buy the straight line but I wouldn't bite. 'You knew I was sitting on the G.o.dd.a.m.n credit card, didn't you?'

I looked at the black copper, tall, wearing a tweed jacket and a wool vest but no tie. He was lurking around near the equipment. The van, I would bet, was a.s.signed to him.

'He's having those visions again,' I said.

'Don't smart around.' Pigeyes pointed. 'That's some story he's tellin, this kid. How much did you pay him?'

'I don't know what you're talking about,' but of course I did now. Pigeyes had been tracking Kam Roberts the same way I had - with the Kam Roberts credit card. Being a police officer, and one in Financial Crimes, he had clear advantages. The bank card people needed pals in Financial, guys who'd maybe visit some deadbeat who was twenty grand over his limit to suggest that a payment was due soon, otherwise this could go down as a criminal fraud. Now it was payback. Every time a transaction was posted to Kam Roberts's account, the computer center down in Alabama would call Pigeyes. He could track Kam all over the planet, and when Kam showed up in the tri-counties, Gino could skedaddle over to wherever, collar Kam if he was lucky, or at least ask where Kam had been and what he looked like and tell the store owner, the hotel manager, if this guy or anyone asking for him popped up again, to p.r.o.nto give Pigeyes a jingle. That, I now realized, was how he'd set up on me at U Inn.

All well and good, but apparently Gino and Dewey had spent the last day chasing all over the North End, exploring a rash of purchases of CD players, high-top sneakers, Starter jackets and video games, receiving consistent descriptions of a thirteen-year-old Latino who was not a twenty-seven-year-old black man with receding hair.

Dewey was using a fingernail to pick at his teeth as the three of them watched me.

'I didn't pay him,' I said.

'Sure you didn't,' said Dewey. 'He says he took your wallet off you while you're pa.s.sed out in some Chevy near the projects.'

'Sounds right to me.'

'Not to me,' piped in Pigeyes. 'What I hear, you're on the Life Plan down there at AA. They take attendance?'

I looked pretty clever from Pigeyes's perspective. On the street, everyone knows you use a juvenile to do dirty business, because practically speaking, there's no such thing as jail for a kid that age. The g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers employ twelve-year-olds to make dope runs, even as triggermen. Pigeyes figured I gave the kid the Kam Roberts card and told him it was Shop-Till-You-Drop or the coppers come round, in which case here's your story.

'You're buying him time to run, Malloy.' I wasn't sure if Gino meant Bert or Kam Roberts, or if they were actually one. 'What's this guy to you?'

'Who?' I asked.

'Who am I looking for, f.u.c.kface?'

'Kam Roberts?' I really was guessing.

He mimicked me, a long face, a bit of Brando. ' "Kam Roberts?"' He repeated the name half a dozen times, his voice capering up the scale. Then he turned vicious. There was a rheumy turn to his eyes and something inflamed near the bridge of his nose; I could see why people were talking about Pigeyes and dope. On the other hand, he'd always been fast to anger.

'You f.u.c.kin tell me right now where he is. Now.'

'You holding paper on him?' I still wanted to know what it was for, what Kam, whoever he was, was supposed to have done.

'Uh-uh, no way, Malloy. You give, you get. No one-way streets.'

'You have the wrong address, Pigeyes. I don't know a thing about this guy beyond what I told you last time.' I raised two fingers. 'Scout's honor.'

'You know what I think, Malloy. I'm thinkin, you're dirty here.' Pigeyes's instincts were highly reliable and his inclination to view me with suspicion did not need to be explained. I think it's adding up. We been looking for your friend Mr Kamin.' Pigeyes placed his hands on his knees. He put his face right in mine. His breath was heavy; his flesh was laden with a dense, cruel light. 'You wouldn't happen to have been in his apartment in the last couple days?'

I'd known for seventy-two hours this was coming, but the papers were already writing about Archie, and the homicide d.i.c.ks have all got deals with the reporters -dinner and drinks and spell the name right before the sixth graph - and I thought for sure we'd be hearing an item on News Radio 98, with one of the secretaries scooting down the hall going, Oh my G.o.d, did you hear about Bert's place? So this one caught me by surprise.

You probably know it already, U You, but I really am crazy. Saying that, I mean what people usually do, not that I act without reason, but that my reasons, lined up with each other, don't make too much sense. Contradictory, you'd say. In conflict. I'm such a smart-guy who has all the answers, then I whistle in the dark with all these fears racing inside me and, worse yet, pull stunts like breaking into hotel rooms and apartments that would give the heebie-jeebies to the daring young man on the flying trapeze. But now and then even a knucklehead like me gets a wake-up call from reality and without warning I felt, in the radiance of Pigeyes's usual aura of menace, that I was in danger. Somehow with all my preoccupations, my good-time visions about what I'd do when I caught Bert, I hadn't recognized the opportunity I'd handed Gino. I'd known he'd vet me, give me a proctoscope, the third degree. But I had touched a lot of things in Bert's apartment. Doork.n.o.bs inside and out. The mail. Homicide was there now, taking lifts off every surface. My sworn enemy, Detective Gino Dimonte, finds a dead body, my prints, and evidence of a lot of peculiar behavior on my part. Guess what comes next? The panic arrived with the same sudden welling power as tears.

'I told you, the guy's my partner. I go to his place all the time.' Gino knew just what I was up to. If I admitted I was in the apartment recently, I'd give him the break-and-enter cold, a forcible felony, and a leg up on the murder, since I put myself close to the body. If I denied it, I'd have no way to explain my prints.

'Bull,' Pigeyes said. 'You're such a pal of his, you know his friends? You know a bookie named Vernon Koech.e.l.l?'

'No.'

'Never heard of him?'

'Don't know him.'

'That's not what I asked, Malloy.'

I'd been down at the Russian Bath talking about Archie, and it would not take too much bullying to turn somebody's memory around about who'd brought up the name. Pigeyes could monkey with a lot of things, in fact, the evidence techs and the path reports. The people who owed him and played his way were all over the department, and I'd broken their code. A lift off the doork.n.o.b could be identified as coming from the refrigerator or the vegetable crisper. My hairs found in the kitchen might eventually appear on Mr Koech.e.l.l's lapel. I suddenly knew why there'd been no news flash about Archie's body. It would be easy to mum this in the papers, for a few hours anyway, if the coppers needed time to lay hands on the killer. In the folds beneath my chin, I could feel a slick of telltale dampness beginning to gather.

'This bird Koech.e.l.l - I been looking for him. Did you know that?'

'No.' I was relieved to give one honest answer.

'Some questions I need to ask him about his buddy Kam Roberts.'

In the midst of all this sensation, mixed up and intense, I suddenly knew what Pigeyes was investigating - at least what it had been to start. It came into clear view like a birdie flapping through a cold sky as I recalled my conversation with Toots. Fixing games. Kam Roberts and Archie. That's why it was being looked at out of Financial Crimes instead of Vice. 'Kam's Special - U five.' Bert maybe had been in on this too.

'I got lucky, sort of. One of those good news, bad news things. Run into some rummy a.s.shole I used to know, sort of sweat him a second, and bingo, this guy gives me the name of Robert Kamin, tells me go look for this dude, seems he knows Kam Roberts. And I do. I even take a look round Robert Kamin's place.'

'With a warrant?' I asked. It was a question, an obstacle. The fear was still all over me now, like a brick on my heart.

Pigeyes sneered. 'Listen, jagbag, a warrant for his apartment don't make any difference for you.' We both knew he was right. 'Here. Show him the warrant.'

Dewey reached for a briefcase next to the pa.s.senger's seat. I closed my eyes briefly, in spite of myself.

'Now I'm asking you again, Malloy, you didn't happen to be in that apartment, did you?'

I was a copper during those years when it was starting that the police had to give somebody arrested Miranda. I never saw the point. It was a nice idea, I recognized that, put everybody on the same footing, rich guy and poor, they'd all know the same rules. But the problem was human nature, not social cla.s.s. Because a man in a corner is never going to shut up. If he shuts up, if he says what I knew I should say, call my lawyer, then he's going to the station, he's going to get booked, he's going to court. For a guy in a jam, there's only one way out, to keep explaining, hoping that somehow bulls.h.i.t buys liberty.

'Pigeyes, what do you think I did?'

'I asked if you were in that apartment.' He pointed at Dewey to make a note. 'That's twice he's not answering.'

'Gino, I'm the guy who gave you Bert's name and told you to go s.h.a.g him. Write that down,' I said. Dewey, of course, didn't move. 'What kind of sense does that make, if I'm hiding something?' He knew where I was going - if I killed Archie, why would I suggest they go looking for Bert? But I knew the cop answer: If everybody didn't do dumb things, n.o.body'd get caught.

'Malloy, nothing with you makes sense. You're not a sensible guy. You tell me why you send some punk with pimples on his a.s.s to run all over the city with that f.u.c.king credit card? You tell me why the guy I'm looking for and the guy you're looking for got the same names inside out? You tell me why you're looking for this Robert Kamin in the first place? Or how come you don't know nothing about his a.s.shole pal Vernon Koech.e.l.l? You tell me why you're fronting for this f.u.c.king h.o.m.o?'

h.o.m.o. I wasn't making the reference. I didn't know if he meant Archie or Kam or Bert.

'Now maybe,' said Pigeyes, 'third time's the charm. We'll try it again, and listen up. Yes or no. Last few days, were you in that apartment?'

I felt like he'd shoved his whole fist into my throat.

'Pigeyes, do I need a lawyer?'

'Hey, I thought you were a lawyer.' All three of them laughed. The black guy covered his face with his hand. My, my, my. He was wearing a square diamond ring that was bright on his fingers. 'See, here's why I ask. Cause I looked all over that place, Kamin's. Checked the dust on the window ledges, postmarks on the mail. I opened the fridge to see any food spoiled, pull date on the milk carton and orange juice. Know what I found?'

'No,' I said. Without looking away from me he pointed at Dewey to make another note. I tried to be resolute but he was drilling holes in my peepers, reading every thought in my head. He knew he had me. He'd seen me frightened before. He knew the look and he savored it. And I knew him too. I'd watched him drag these poor kids into the station for questioning and go put on a stained butcher's ap.r.o.n he kept in his locker, knowing there was nothing these young bloods wouldn't believe about the Kindle police. He had the same expression. He was going to deliver the rabbit punch now, the body, and how the path report, the hair samples, the digestive track enzymes, somehow spelled Malloy. He bent close, he put his harsh face right back in mine. Mr Stranger Danger in person.

'Not a f.u.c.kin thing,' he said. 'That's what I found: not a G.o.dd.a.m.n f.u.c.kin thing. This guy's gone two weeks at least. And if you ain't been in that apartment, you tell me how you come up with a credit card that the bank says they only mailed twelve days ago?' He took a real bite on the words and smiled a little bit as he did it. And so did I.

B. He Looks Like Kam Roberts I felt mostly cold in the wake of my panic. I might have belched or sung a song. I felt a little like I could fly. Gino had said, distinctly, that there was nothing in the refrigerator, and so far as I could see, he was having too much fun intimidating me to bother to lie. Who had moved the body and why were questions for later.

Satisfied he had nailed me, Pigeyes stumbled back through the divide between the front seats and sat to have a chuckle; he laughed so hard he held on to his hat. He'd had a great time. His buddies here, Dewey and the black guy, they were smiling right along. n.o.body was feeling sorry for Malloy.

Pigeyes finally wiped his eyes. 'Let's be straight guys, okay? I don't give a flying foreign f.u.c.k what you're up to, Malloy. Robert Kamin? I don't care if he diddled the senior partner's wife - or the senior partner, for that matter. All I want is this guy Kam Roberts, whoever he is. You gimme that, he gimmes that - Go have your f.u.c.king little life. Sincerely.' Gino touched his chest. I thought he was wearing the same shirt he had on the other day.

'You gonna tell me why you need him?'

'You gonna tell where I find him?'

'Gino, I don't know.' He weighed that, the doubt hinged in his eyes. 'I never met the guy in my life. The card gets billed at Kamin's place. Don't ask me why. That's all I know.' That, and Infomode, one or two little things. But they were my business. Besides, who knew better than Pigeyes that sometimes I lie? 'That's it. Okay? You did a great job breaking my b.a.l.l.s.'

Pigeyes motioned to Dewey. 'Show him.'

Dewey went for the briefcase. They had a sketch. It was on mat board, done with pencil and stored in a little plastic sleeve. Surveillance van. Police artist. Pigeyes had a lot of support. Dewey handed the drawing to me.

A black guy, late twenties, nice-looking, receding hair.

'Ever see him?' Dewey asked.

And this was the strangest G.o.dd.a.m.n part. I had.

'I'm not sure,' I said.

'Maybe?'

Where? I would never remember. Not now anyway. If it was coming, it would hit me when I was half asleep, or scratching my f.a.n.n.y, or trying to recollect some clever gambit I had meant to include in a losing brief. Maybe he was the guy at the cleaner or a fella on my bus. But I had seen him.

I kept shaking my head. 'This is him? Kam?' Pigeyes rolled his tongue over his teeth. 'Who is he?' he asked.