Night and Day (18 page)

I nodded. “That’s right, I was a guest here the other night. Your officers were very
hospitable. In fact, a few of them, including Detective Sergeant Holstein, smacked me around all
night long to make sure I didn’t fall asleep and miss the fun.”

He cleared his throat. “I’m sure the officers involved felt they were doing their jobs,” he
said stiffly.

“I’m sure they did,” I said. “In fact, I plan to ask Ray Holstein about his job as soon as he’s
done swearing at my colleague.”

Flannery glanced through the glass and gritted his teeth. Holstein was still shouting at
Takeda, the cords in his neck bulging as he leaned forward in the chair, his mouth working non-stop. It might have been my imagination, but I could almost hear him through the thick glass.

“How well do you know the personnel stationed here, chief” I asked, feeling in my pocket
for the piece of paper Cynthia had given me.

“I know some of them,” Flannery said, his tone cautious. “Direct command in personnel
issues is the responsibility of Captain Henry, the night shift watch commander.” He paused. “I
can have him report to you here if you like.”

I shook my head. “No, that’s okay. I’ll track him down when we’re done.”

“I’ll see that he’s expecting you.”

“Thanks, chief, I appreciate the cooperation.”

I turned back to window. There was a moment of awkward silence.

“Well,” Flannery said,, “I’ll be getting back to my office, then. If you need any more
assistance . . .”

“I’ll track you down too,” I said curtly without looking at him.

He hesitated a moment, then turned and left the room. His officers followed.

“That was fun,” Nedelmann said after the door closed.

“Yeah, I enjoyed it,” I said, flipping the speaker switch.

Holstein was shouting something about whores and I shook my head. “Have to say one
thing about old Ray, he’s sure got a lot of pent-up hostility.”

“This is probably good for him,” Nedelmann said. “You know, gives him a chance to get it
all out.”

I sighed. “Good for him, but a waste of my time.” I rapped on the glass. “Come on,
Takeda,” I muttered. “Put a cork in it.”

She looked to the one-way mirror, her face impassive. Behind her, Holstein strained
forward, squinting. “Who the fuck you have in there? More of your asshole buddies from the
Area Governor’s Office?”

Takeda turned to him. “Are you right-handed or left-handed, sergeant?” she asked.

“What?”

She studied him for a moment, then pointed at his right hand. “Eeenie.” Left hand.
“Meenie.” Right hand again. “Minee.” Left hand again. “Mo.”

Takeda was so fast and her move so unexpected that my mind couldn’t quite wrap itself
around what I was seeing. Her arms moved. I saw a flash of silver under the bright lights.
Ray Holstein’s left hand fell to the floor.

“Shit,” I said, stepping back. “What the hell is that, a sword?”

Nedelmann was studying her intently. “A wakizashi,” he said, never taking his eyes from
her. “Japanese short sword.” He paused. “Her technique is a little rough, but she’s got good
power in her cut.”

Holstein stared down at the stump at the end of his left arm, his mouth open. There was no
bleeding, from the arm or from the severed hand that lay beside his foot on the floor. A pink,
shiny film had appeared over the wound. It looked like the new skin that grows under a peeling
sunburn.

“What the fuck did you do?” he yelled.

Takeda stared at him without a word, sword in hand.

“Where the hell did the sword came from?” I muttered. “Did you see where she had it
stashed?”

“Under her right arm,” Nedelmann replied. “Scabbard must hang halfway down her thigh.”

“You chopped off my hand, you crazy bitch,” Holstein said, his teeth bared. “When I get out
of here, you’re gonna fucking regret . . .”

Takeda pivoted and pressed the blade of the sword firmly against his throat. “I have listened
to your witless insults, sergeant,” she said calmly. “Now you will hold your tongue, or your head
joins your hand on the floor.”

“You can’t do this,” Holstein said, his voice low.

“Yes, I can.”

Holstein didn’t say anything. She let the sword drop back to her side, turned to face the
glass, and nodded, once.

“I guess that’s our cue,” I said.

“She’s a hell of a warm-up act,” Nedelmann said. “Holstein should be hanging on your
every word.”

“How about a little one-two action,” I said. “I ask the questions, you apply the convincing if
he doesn’t answer.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” Nedelmann pulled a pair of black leather gloves from his
back pocket and slipped them on. They were patrol gloves, standard department issue pre-war,
designed to keep officers from getting pricked or cut with needles and knives when emptying a
suspect’s pockets.

Some officers liked to customize them with powdered lead in the knuckles. It put a little
something extra in their punches if a suspect decided to get physical. Word around the 83
^rd
Street station had been that Nedelmann was one of those officers.

“Let’s begin,” I said, walking past him.

Chapter Sixteen

Holstein looked up when I came into the room. In those few seconds, I was able to read
everything running through his mind. A frown. What the hell was I doing there? The frown
dropping, becoming a sort of slack-jawed surprise. I was still alive, and was clearly working
with the Area Governor’s Office. The eyes, squinting. Was this some kind of a trick that Takeda
had cooked up? His eyes moved from me to Nedelmann, coming through the door behind me.
He gritted his teeth and curled his lip. Not a trick. Trouble.

“Well, if it isn’t my old pal, Charlie,” he said harshly. “And what do you know, he’s got
Needle Dick with him. This is great. It’s like an 83
^rd
Street station reunion.”

Takeda stepped back against the wall beside the door as Nedelmann brushed past me, leaned
in close, and buried his fist in Holstein’s stomach.

Holstein grunted as Nedelmann took a couple of steps back. “You know, Ray, I didn’t like
that nickname five years ago, and I don’t like it now.”

“So, Ray,” I said as I gave his severed hand a kick with the side of my foot. It slid across the
floor and hit the back wall of the interview room, next to one of the blue-uniformed guards. The
guy never took his eyes off Holstein. “Is your hand going to grow back, like a salamander’s tail,
or do you need to go shopping for a hook?”

Nedelmann laughed.

Holstein grinned and leaned back in the chair. “Funny. But then, you always knew how to
make ‘em laugh, didn’t you, Charlie.” He paused. “Strange, you didn’t have anything amusing
to say the other night.”

He was trying to bait me. I didn’t know why. Maybe it was all he had left.

“Sorry, I really should have tried to be more entertaining for you and the boys.”

“Oh, I was plenty entertained,” Holstein said. “We all were.” He smiled.

“That’s good,” I said. “Unfortunately, I don’t think that tonight is going to be quite as much
fun.”

“Don’t count on it,” Nedelmann said.

“Here’s the way it works,” I said. “I ask you a question. You answer, I ask another one.
You don’t answer, or give me an answer I don’t like, Dick smacks you around some.” I paused.
“And the best part is, it’ll hurt, and then it’ll heal up pretty damn fast, and Dick can do it again.
And again. All . . . night . . . long.”

Holstein sighed. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Welles.”

“Let’s start with Joshua’s murder,” I said. “You were lead detective on it, right?”

“What’s the matter, your new masters didn’t trust you with the report?”

I glanced at Nedelmann. He stepped forward and hit Holstein with an open-handed slap that
rocked his head back.

“You shouldn’t answer a question with a question,” Nedelmann said.

“Yeah, I was lead,” Holstein said angrily. “Me and Phipps caught the call. I’m a sergeant, I
took lead.”

I nodded. “I’d like to get the times straight.” I pulled a pad from my pocket and skimmed
my notes. “Carpenter calls it in at 7:33. Beat cops get there fifteen minutes later, at 7:48. They
look around, realize what they’ve got, and call for the murder squad. You and Phipps show up at
7:54, two minutes after the call goes out.” I paused. “Fast response. You could call it
amazingly fast.”

Holstein stared at me. “I didn’t hear a question there, Charlie. Since you never got that gold
badge, I guess nobody told you that you have to ask questions.”

“How the hell did you get there so quickly?”

“Lucky break. We were in the neighborhood, I heard the call on the radio.
Closest car, we responded.”

I nodded to Nedelmann. He went to work on Holstein’s left collarbone. It cracked with his
first punch. Holstein started to scream.

My stomach was churning as I watched Nedelmann work him over. I won’t say I was an
angel when I was a cop, but I never hit a prisoner during an interrogation. Sometimes you have
to get physical during an arrest, or when you’re getting the prisoner back to the station. That’s
part of the job. But once they were in the interview room, handcuffed, I never laid a hand on
them. The only thing that made it bearable was that none of the damage was permanent. He’d
heal up in a minute or less.

Holstein was still screaming. Nedelmann was timing his blows to let the collarbone knit
together before he broke it again.

I held up my hand, and Nedelmann backed away. Holstein’s eyes were closed and he
moaned through gritted teeth.

“Sorry, Ray, I’m just not buying it,” I said. “Remember who you’re talking to. Your old pal
Charlie. I know what kind of cop you are. You’re lazy. You come on duty, you stay in the
station until you have to go out on a job. And the jobs you like best are the ones you can wrap up
quickly with an arrest. You don’t go cruising, and you sure as shit don’t grab jobs because
you’re the closest car.”

I could almost see the gears turning in Holstein’s head, and waited for his explanation.

“I didn’t say we were cruising,” he said after a moment. “I had to see a guy on Trinity about
another case, catch him before he went to work. Cheese Gorgonio. One of my snitches.”

“Cheese Gorgonio,” I said. “Colorful. So how did you get the call?”

“Heard it on the radio,” he said. “When the beat guy called it in.”

“What channel?”

He wasn’t expecting the question and he didn’t have a quick answer.

“Come on, Ray, what radio channel. Patrol One? Maybe Patrol Two. Or even Three. Pick
one.”

“I don’t remember,” he said.

“That’s kind of strange,” I said. “I mean, you’re with the murder squad. You have your own
channel, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So if you were listening to a patrol channel instead of your own channel, there must have
been a reason. And if there was a reason, you would know what channel you were monitoring,
right?”

“No reason. Radio was quiet so I was flipping around the channels. Happened to catch the
beat guy calling in the job.”

“Sure,” I said. “Just a couple of lucky coincidences. You flipped to that channel at just the
right time to hear the call. And you just happened to be in the neighborhood.”

“That’s right.”

“How does that collarbone feel, Ray?” I asked. “Probably a lot better than it’s going to feel
in about thirty seconds, if you don’t stop the bullshit.”

He watched me silently until I started to turn to Nedelmann, then said, “Okay, fine. Doesn’t
matter anyway. I got a call.”

“A call,” I repeated. “Want to expand on that?”

“A phone call,” Holstein said. “At home, before I came on duty Wednesday night.”

“And the caller said . . .”

“He said I should be up around Desoto Street around seven, seven-thirty. That I’d catch a
good job.”

“That’s all he said?”

Holstein looked away. “He said to keep an ear on Patrol Two.”

“And?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, then muttered, “He said it had something to do with
you.”

“Me? He mentioned me by name?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Who made the call?”

“I don’t know,” he said quickly. As I started to look in Nedelmann’s direction, he said, “I
swear. I never heard the voice before. I don’t know who he was or how he got my number.
That’s the truth.”

“You always listen to what anonymous callers have to say?”

“Why not take a ride. If it didn’t pan out, no loss.”

I believed him. But he wasn’t being completely honest.

“You have a real hard-on for me, don’t you, Ray?” I said. “Had one for years, since before
the war. You didn’t take a ride hoping to grab a good job. You went up there hoping to get the
chance to fuck me real good.” And whoever had called him knew exactly how to push that
button.