“Are you watching this?” he asks Howard Corbin, who looks up to see a sitcom.
“No, I’m not,” says Corbin.
“Is it all right if I change the channel then?” says the store owner.
“Sure,” says Corbin. “Go ’head.”
Corbin is comfortable with the man; he always was. Through the long months of working on the Latonya Wallace file, the aging detective never believed that the Fish Man had anything to do with the murder. Neither did Eddie Brown, and even Landsman had for a time shared their doubts. In the end, the Fish Man was Pellegrini’s obsession alone.
“Is it all right if I smoke my pipe?” the store owner asks.
“I don’t mind,” says Corbin, turning to Jack Barrick across the room. “Sergeant, do you mind if he smokes?”
“Naw,” says Barrick. “I don’t give a damn.”
There is no final scene for Tom Pellegrini and the Fish Man, no last words, no parting shots. In victory, a detective can be amusing and gracious, even generous; in defeat, he will try his damnedest to make believe you’re no longer there. The long day ends as separate scenes in separate rooms. In one, a man celebrates freedom by changing channels on a television set and stuffing a pipe with cheap tobacco. In another, a detective clears his desk of a bloated, dog-eared file, gathers up his gun, briefcase and overcoat, and steps heavily into a corridor that leads only to an elevator and a dark city street.
They own you.
From the moment you thought the thought, you were their property. You don’t believe it; hell, you didn’t even imagine it. You were sure they’d never catch you, sure you could draw heart’s blood twice and just walk away. But you should have saved yourself some trouble, called 911 yourself. Right from the start, you were a gift.
But hey, it looked like a good move when you made it, didn’t it now? You got Ronnie in the back bedroom, stuck him good in a dozen places with that kitchen blade before he knew what was what. Ronnie did some screaming, but his brother didn’t hear a thing with that box beat going so loud in the other bedroom. Yeah, you had Ronnie all to yourself, and when you came down the hallway toward the other bedroom, you figured Ronnie’s brother deserved more of the same. The boy was still in bed when you walked in on him, looking up at the blade like he didn’t know what it was for.
So you got them both. You got Ronnie and Ronnie’s brother and getting them meant getting the package. Yeah, you got that shit the old-fashioned way, yo, you killed for it, and right now you should be out the door and halfway across Pimlico and smoking some of that hard-won product.
But no, you’re still right here, staring at your killing hand. You fucked it up, cut the hand bad when Ronnie was oozing life and your knife got wet and slippery. You were sticking it to him when your hand just rode up over the hilt and the blade went deep into your palm. So now, when you should be across town practicing your don’t-know-nothin’ speech, you’re sitting here in a house full of dead men, waiting for your hand to stop bleeding.
You try cleaning up in the bathroom, running cold water in the wound. But that doesn’t really help, just makes you bleed a little slower is all. You try wrapping your hand in a bath towel, but the towel becomes a wet crimson mess on the bathroom floor. You walk down to the living room, your hand smearing red on the stairway wall, the banister and the downstairs light switch. Then you wrap your right hand in the sleeve of your sweatshirt, shrug on your winter coat and run.
All the way to your girlfriend’s place, the throbbing in your hand tells you that there’s no choice, that you’re just going to keep bleeding unless you take the risk. You stash the package and even change your clothes, but the blood still keeps coming. When you hit West Belvedere just before daylight, you start running toward the hospital, trying to think your story through.
But it doesn’t matter. They own you, bunk.
You don’t know it, but you were theirs when they came in early to relieve the Friday overnight shift as daylight broke on the last day of this godforsaken year. They hadn’t changed the coffeepot when the phone rang, and it was the older one, the white-haired police, who scrawled out the particulars on a used pawn shop card. A double, the dispatcher told them, so all three decided to ride up to Pimlico to look over your handiwork.
To the pale, dark-haired Italian, the younger one, you’re a blessing. He works your crime scene the way he wishes he had worked another: He follows every blood trail and pulls samples from every room; he takes his time with the bodies before having each wrapped in sheets, preserving the trace evidence. He works that scene like it’s the last one on earth, like these aren’t the Fullard brothers but two victims who matter. He’s hungry again, bunk, and he needs a clearance the same way you needed that cocaine.
You’re about to become the property of that other one, too, the bear of a police with the white hair and the blue eyes. He hires on as a secondary, helps with the crime scene before wandering off to work the crowd. He’s glad to be working murders, content to be back in the Northwest on a case. The Big Man began this year in a hole and then clawed his way out, so it’s your bad luck to be on the wrong side of the curve.
And don’t forget that sergeant, the joker in the leather jacket, who’s been riding a streak since late October. He stalks all over your murder scene, sizing up your deeds and fitting together the first pieces of your sad little puzzle. He takes it personal, declaring that there is no way in hell his squad will end the year with an open double.
Here’s the morning line, bunk: The three of them have their hooks into you deep and they haven’t even met you yet. By now, they’ve marked your blood trail out of the bathroom and down the second-floor stairs. They’re already on a Northwest patrolman’s radio, asking citywide to have area hospital admissions checked for stabbing and cutting victims. They’re working back on the Fullard brothers, learning who they hang with and who hangs with them. They got your number good.
If you understood that, if you understood anything about how they work, you might have caught a cab and gone to a hospital out in the county. At the very least, you might have come up with some story a little better than that garbage you gave the admitting nurse. Cut your hand climbing a fence, you told her. One of those chain-link jobs over by the middle school off Park Heights. Yeah, right: You slipped.
But anyone can see that the cut didn’t come from no fence. Not when it’s that deep and that straight. You think that’ll play? You think the police who has just walked up to the nurses station is going to believe such weak shit?
“Landsman, from homicide,” the cop tells the charge nurse, looking your way. “Is this the one?”
You’re not about to panic or anything. They still don’t know shit: You made sure both those bad boys were dead. You ditched the knife. You didn’t leave witnesses. You’re good to go.
“Lemme see your hand,” says the cop in the leather jacket.
“Cut it on a fence.”
He checks your palm for a good ten seconds. Then he looks at the blood on your coat sleeve.
“The fuck you did.”
“I ain’t lyin’.”
“You cut it on a fence?”
“Yeah.”
“What fence?”
You tell him what fence. Motherfucker, you think, he don’t believe I got brains enough to think of a fence.
“Yeah,” he says, looking right at you. “I know where that is. Let’s go there and see.”
See? See what?
“You’re bleeding like a stuck pig,” he tells you. “There better be some blood around the fence, right?”