Small Vices Part 35

"Not a sound," I said.

Two more cops came hot-footing it in from the Fifth Avenue end and I could hear sirens in the distance.The black cop was silent for a moment. Then as the other two cops arrived he spoke to them.

"Got a hostage deal here. Guy with the gun wants to talk to Corsetti at Manhattan Homicide. Call it in."

The three cops stayed in a circle around me, pointing their guns at me while one of them talked into the radio mike clipped to his lapel. As he talked some of the sirens stopped outside while others called in the distance. Cops, mostly uniformed, came pouring into the building wearing bullet-proof vests. The circle of pointing weapons enlarged. I kept a firm hold on Rugar's hair and a continuing pressure on his underjaw with the barrel of my gun. It was probably uncomfortable for him. I didn't care. And he didn't flinch. And that's how we stayed while more cops arrived and the crowd milled apprehensively trying to see, trying to stay safe in case there was shooting. Some of the cops started working at the crowd.

The crowd got bigger and harder to control. Here and there people yelled, "Shoot him." I didn't know if they were talking to me or the cops. There were more sirens. More cops. More flack jackets. Fewer uniforms. More plainclothes. More crowd. The media arrived. Cameras. Tape recorders. Note pads. Somebody popped a flash bulb and a uniformed cop slapped the camera down and jawed at the camera man. A woman with a television camera was on the shoulders of a big sound guy trying to get a clear shot of the scene. The young black cop had relaxed into his shooter's stance, his gun still steady, his eyes still steady on Rugar and on me. There were five other cops ringing us, in the same stance. A rangy white-haired police captain with a bright red Irish face arrived. He told me to stay calm, and we'd all wait for Corsetti. Then he turned his attention to making sure there was no way for us to run. He ordered some guy in civvies to check the lines of fire so that if the cops had to shoot they wouldn't hit a civilian. He instructed other subordinates to get the crowd the h.e.l.l out of the way. The subordinates weren't having much luck. The crowd got bigger. There was a lot of horn beeping outside and more sirens and then through the mob walking the way cops walk, a little arrogant, a little careful, a lot of I'm-on top-of-this, came Detective Second Grade Eugene Corsetti. I had met him ten or eleven years ago when I was looking for a kid named April Kyle, and since then when I had time on my hands in New York, I'd go have a beer with him. Corsetti was a short guy, maybe five feet seven or eight, with a body like a bowling ball and an eighteen-inch neck. He had on a dark blue Yankees warm-up jacket and a white dress shirt open at the neck. As far as I knew, all his shirts were worn, of necessity, open at the neck. His natural cop swagger was enhanced by his build so that he almost rolled from side to side as he pushed through the crowd and slid with surprising delicacy through the perimeter of shooting-stance cops. He put his own hand gun into Rugar's ribs and grinned at me.

"Film at eleven, buddy."

"Gun on his belt," I said. "Left side."

Corsetti nodded. I stepped away and handed my gun to the young black cop. Corsetti flipped Rugar's coat open and took out a 9mm Berretta and dropped it in his coat pocket. With his eyes on Rugar he spoke over his shoulder.

"This guy's legit, captain."

He reached with his left hand to the small of his back and got a pair of handcuffs off his belt and handcuffed Rugar.

"We can take them over my place," Corsetti said, "and get statements."

The captain nodded.

"Sergeant, clear us a path," he said.

Then he pointed a finger at the young black cop.

"You come too," he said.

Corsetti and I took Rugar through a corridor of onlookers and press toward the Fifth Avenue end of the building. We were behind a phalanx of cops the captain had designated to clear an egress. Behind me came the young black cop and four guys in plainclothes that had arrived with Corsetti. Behind us a uniformed employee of Rockefeller Center was already cleaning Rugar's blood off the wall with some Windex and a roll of paper towel.

Outside Thirty Rock on the little side street behind the statue of Atlas, where the limos normally let people off for television interviews, there was a mosh of police vehicles and behind them the mobile units of television stations, spilling out onto Forty-ninth and Fiftieth streets, blocking crosstown traffic back beyond the Delaware Water Gap. There was a bank of cameras set up along the far side of the street and Corsetti turned toward them and smiled as we moved toward his car.

"Eugene Corsetti," he yelled, "Detective second grade, NYPD."

Chapter 49.

I WAS WITH Rugar in a holding cell. There was no furniture so we both stood. There was still force in Rugar. But before it had been a force field that radiated from him. Now it was contained, as if the genie had gone back into the bottle for the moment. He stood motionless near the far wall of the cell, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, his face expressionless, looking straight at me without blinking. There was a big bruise on his chin and another on his cheekbone. His gray hair was matted and dark with dried blood. I was leaning on the wall near the door with my arms folded looking back at him.

"You know who I am?" I said.

"Of course."

His voice was still a reverberative purr.

"Then you know we got you."

"For the moment."

"Forever," I said. "No better witness to attempted homicide than the survivor."

"I was told you would be difficult," Rugar said.

"By whom?"

"By people I asked, people who know of you."

"If it's any consolation," I said, "you almost succeeded."

"It is no consolation," Rugar said.

The cell was a cage of heavy wire mesh backed against a yellow-tiled wall in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the precinct house. The cells on either side were empty. The area was lit by a ceiling fixture in the hallway, where a low wattage bulb was overmatched by the s.p.a.ce it had to light. Outside in the corridor, under the ineffective ceiling light, a uniformed cop with a thick moustache rested his back against the far wall out of earshot and watched us. The moustache was partly gray though his hair was dark.

"They don't know who you are," I said.

Rugar was quiet.

"They can't match your prints anywhere. You seem to have no arrest record."

Rugar was still quiet.

"You want to bargain?" I said.

"What have I to bargain?"

"The name of the guy who hired you."

"And what have you?"

"My testimony."

"Without your testimony, there is no case against me."

It was my turn to be quiet.

"On the other hand," Rugar said, "even with your testimony there is simply your word against mine."

I waited.

"You can prove that you were shot last year."

Rugar seemed to be thinking out loud. I nodded and let him keep thinking.

"I have been so successful, for so long, I had begun to think I was impregnable," he said.

I waited some more. I didn't say anything. Rugar looked at me as steadily as he had.

"The longer they hold me," he said, "the more chance they have to look into my ident.i.ty."

"Good point," I said.

"And giving up the man who hired me would cost me nothing."

"Another good point," I said.

He paid no attention. As far as I could tell he was talking to himself.

"I promised him nothing. I never expected to fail, so there was nothing to promise. Had I succeeded, I could not implicate him without implicating myself, and he could not implicate me without implicating himself. Each had to keep the other's secret."

"But that's not how it is now," I said.

"No," Rugar said. "It isn't, and that is my fault. I have failed in my a.s.signment. I am forced to compromise myself."

"There's another way to look at it," I said.

"Yes?"

"You didn't fail," I said. "I succeeded."

"My present situation remains the same," Rugar said.

"It can be changed," I said. "You give me the guy who hired you, and you testify against him, and you walk away from this."

"You are willing to let me go free after I came so close to fulfilling my a.s.signment?"

"Yep."

"Do you fear I will try again?"

"No."

"Really," Rugar said. "Why not?"

He seemed genuinely interested.

"You are a professional. You do this for money. You don't allow ego or fear or compa.s.sion to motivate you. If you give me your client, you have no further reason to chase me."

Rugar looked past me for a moment at the cop leaning on the wall outside the cage. Then he shifted his eyes back to me.

"And how do you know this about me?" he said.

I shrugged. He kept looking at me for a moment and then, oddly, he smiled.

"It is because that is also how you are," he said.

"Gimme a name," I said.

"Donald Stapleton," Rugar said.

"That's the right name," I said.

"You knew it."

"Yes."

"But you couldn't prove it."

"Correct."

"Now you can," Rugar said.

Chapter 50.

WHEN I CAME back from New York I went straight to the Inn Style Barbershop and had Patty cut my hair the way it's always been cut. Then I went home and shaved off my beard. Which, if you've never shaved off a beard, is not as easy as you might think. I rinsed out the sink, took a shower, and patted on some Club Man aftershave, which Susan laughed at but I liked. I put on beige slacks, sand-colored suede loafers, a white oxford shirt with a b.u.t.ton-down collar, and a blue blazer to hide my gun. I put a white silk handkerchief in the display pocket of the blazer, checked myself in the mirror, and noticed that I looked entirely dashing, and went to Susan's house. I got there just as her last patient was coming out the front door. I went in, making no eye contact, and was standing in her front hall when she came out of her office in her tailored blue suit with the white blouse and her dark hair perfectly in place. She froze in mid-step when she saw me. I opened my arms and she stared at me for a moment as if she didn't understand, then the angularity went away and she stepped in against me and pressed her face against my chest.

"He didn't kill you," she said after a long time.

"Not hardly."

"Did you kill him?"

"He's in jail," I said.

"Will he get out?"

"Maybe, but he's no threat to us anymore."

She stayed with her face against my chest and her arms around my waist under the handsome bra.s.s hanging lamp that ornamented her front entry hall. I could feel her body trembling slightly. I didn't say anything. Neither did she. Finally she pulled away and looked at me. Her eyes were red. There were tears on her face.

"You appear to be crying," I said.

"Yes, and it's beating h.e.l.l out of my eye makeup."

"Doesn't make you look less beautiful," I said.

"Yes, it does," she said. "I had talked myself into it, that maybe this time you wouldn't come back. That this time you met somebody too good for you and you'd been hurt, and I knew you had to do this. I knew I wouldn't even want to be with the man you'd be if you didn't do this and you allowed me to talk you out of it, and I told myself that loving you meant letting you be you, and I was ready when Quirk, or Belson, or Hawk came and told me."