"According to him, he was innocent of all charges. It's a funny stance to take when you're pleading guilty, but that's the way he told it."
"Uh-huh. Was it a frame?"
"What do you mean?"
"I just wondered," Durkin said.
"Of course not."
"Okay."
"It was a damn good case. The guy fired three shots at a police officer who was trying to collar him. He should have drawn a lot more than one-to-ten."
"Maybe," he said. "I'm just thinking about what it looks like now."
"And what's that?"
He avoided my eyes. "This Mardell," he said. "She was a snitch, is that right?"
"She was a source, yes."
"You make a lot of cases with the stuff she gave you?"
"She was a good source."
"Uh-huh. Cooperman a source, too?"
"I hardly knew Connie, I only met her a few times. She was a friend of Elaine's."
"And any friend of Elaine's was a friend of yours."
"What kind of—"
"Sit down, Matt. I'm not enjoying this, for Christ's sake."
"You think I am?"
"No, probably not. Did you take money from them?"
"Who?"
"Who do you think?"
"I just want to hear you say it."
"Cooperman and Mardell. Did you?"
"Sure, Joe. I wore a floppy purple hat, drove a pink Eldorado with leopard upholstery."
"Sit down."
"I don't want to sit down. I thought you were a friend of mine."
"I thought so, too. I still think so."
"Good for you."
"You were a good cop," he said. "I know that. You made detective early on and you had some damn good collars."
"What did you do, pull my file?"
"It's all in the computer, you just punch a few keys and it comes right up. I know about the letters of commendation you got. But you had a drinking problem, and maybe you got in over your head a little, and what good cop ever did everything by the book anyway, right?" He sighed. "I don't know," he said.
"So far all you can show me is a domestic homicide in another state and a woman who takes a dive out a window five blocks from here.
You say he did 'em both."
"He says so."
"Yeah, but nobody else heard him say it. Only you. Matt, maybe everything you're telling me is gospel, maybe he did those Venezuelans the other day, too. And maybe that was a hundred percent kosher bust twelve years ago; maybe you didn't sweeten it to make sure he got himself some jail time." He turned, and his eyes met mine. "But don't swear out a complaint against him and ask me to try and get a warrant.
And for Christ's sake don't go looking for him, because the next thing you know somebody'll be arresting you for violating an order of protection. You know how that works. You're not allowed to go near him."
"That's a great system."
"It's the law. You want to get into a pissing contest with him, now's the wrong time to do it. Because you'd lose."
I started for the door, not trusting myself to speak. As I reached for it he said, "You think I'm not your friend. Well, you're wrong. I'm your friend. Otherwise I wouldn't be saying all this shit to you. I'd let you find it out on your own."
"He's not at the Harding," I told Elaine. "He checked in the night before last and checked out the next day, right after I allegedly went over there and threatened him. I don't know that he ever actually occupied a room there. He registered under his own name, probably so he would have an address to use when his attorney applied for the order of protection."
"You went there looking for him?"
"After I left Durkin. I don't know that you can really say I was looking for Motley at the Harding, because I knew I wouldn't find him there." I thought for a moment. "I don't even know that I wanted to find him. I found him last night and I didn't come out of it too well."
"Poor baby," she said.
We were in her apartment, in the bedroom. I was stripped to my shorts and lying facedown on the bed.
She had been giving me a massage, not working too deep, her hands gentle but insistent, working the muscles, taking some of the knots out, soothing some of the aches. She gave a lot of attention to my neck and shoulders, where much of the tension seemed to be centered. Her hands seemed to know just what to do.
"You're really good," I said. "What did you do, take a course?"
"You mean how did a nice girl like me get into this? No, I never studied. I've been getting massages once or twice a week for years. I just paid attention to what people did to me. I'd be better at it if I had more strength in my hands."
I thought of Motley, and the strength in his hands. "You're strong enough," I said. "And you've got a knack. You could do this professionally."
She started to laugh. I asked her what was so funny.
She said, "For God's sake don't tell anybody. If word gets out all my clients'll want this, and I'll never get laid anymore."
Later we were in the living room. I stood at the window with a cup of coffee, watching traffic on the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. A couple of tugs sported on the river, maneuvering a barge around. She was on the couch, her feet tucked under her, eating a quartered orange.
I sat on a chair across from her and put my cup down on the coffee table. The flowers were gone. She had tossed them shortly after I'd left Sunday, not long after his phone call. It seemed to me, though, that I could still feel their presence in the room.
I said, "You won't leave town."
"No."
"You might be safer out of the country."
"Maybe. I don't want to go."
"If he can get into the building—"
"I told you, I spoke to them. They're keeping the service entrance bolted from inside. It's to be opened only when one of the porters or doormen is present, and it'll be refastened after each use."
That was fine, if they stuck to it. But you couldn't count on it, and there were just too many ways to get into an apartment building, even a well-staffed one like hers.
She said, "What about you, Matt?"
"What about me?"
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know," I said. "I came pretty close to throwing a fit in Durkin's office. He as much as accused me of— well, I told you all that."
"Yes."
"I went there intending to accomplish two things. I was going to swear out a complaint against Motley.
The son of a bitch worked me over pretty good last night. That's what you're supposed to do, isn't it? If you're a private citizen?
Somebody assaults you, you're supposed to go to the police and report it."
"That's what they taught us in tenth-grade civics."
"They told me the same thing. They didn't tell me how pointless it would turn out to be."
I went to the bathroom and there was blood in my urine again, and my kidney throbbed as I returned to the living room. Something must have shown in my face, because she asked what was the matter.
"I was just thinking," I said. "The other thing I wanted from Durkin was for him to help me fill out an application for a pistol permit and rush it through. After the routine he gave me I didn't even bother mentioning it." I shrugged. "It probably wouldn't have done any good. They wouldn't issue me a carry permit, and I can't keep a loaded gun in my top dresser drawer and hope the bastard comes over for tea."
"You're afraid, aren't you?"
"I suppose so. I don't feel it but it has to be there. The fear."
"Uh-huh."
"I fear for other people's safety. You, Anita, Jan. It stands to reason that I'm at least as much afraid of getting killed myself, but I'm not really aware of it. There's this book I've been trying to read, the private thoughts of a Roman emperor. One of the themes he keeps coming back to is that death is nothing to be afraid of. The point he makes is that since it's inevitable sooner or later, and since you're just as dead no matter how old you are when you die, then it doesn't really matter how long you live."
"What does matter?"
"How you live. How you face up to life— and to death, as far as that goes. That's what I'm really afraid of."