Rough Justice (26 page)

Now, though, a patrolman, a kid in his twenties, rushed torward me out of the circle. He grabbed my arm, slapped a handcuff around the wrist. I turned to him and saw a young face alight with hysteria.

“I'm cuffing him!” he shrieked, his voice cracking. “He's cuffed! He's unarmed!” He drew my arms behind my back, linked one to the other. As he did, he whispered, “Hang tough, guy. This mother's nuts.”

Watts kept glaring. Even in the half-light, I saw his face darken with the rush of anger.

Below, on the avenue, a new car had pulled up, unmarked, a flasher going behind its windshield. I heard its doors open and shut. I heard another voice coming up the hill, breathless.

“Wait! Wait! I can't run, my heart, there'll be a snap, I'll be gone.”

I cast my eyes to a benevolent heaven. “About fucking time,” I muttered.

Lieutenant Fred Gottlieb hiked his way out from under the shadows. His round, gristly face was red. There were dark sweat stains on his green paisley shirt and his brown polyester leisure jacket billowed around him.

He slowed down as he edged between the two uniforms who'd closed on Lansing.

“Leave her alone,” he said. “She's a nice person, get away from her.”

He went past them, huffing up the slope until he stood before Watts. The two lieutenants confronted each other. Watts's lip curled. His finger stroked the trigger of his gun. Gottlieb lowered his head like a bull.

“Fuck off,” said Watts. “I'm making a collar.”

“Good. You collar,” Gottlieb told him. “I'll watch.”

They locked eyes another moment. It was Watts who looked away. His mouth was twitching. His triumph and his gladness were all gone.

He managed a nod. More uniforms moved toward me. Two of them grabbed me under the arms.

I spoke up. “Fred.”

“Don't start,” said Gottlieb.

“There was a body here until this afternoon. A woman named Mikki Snow. Down in the cellar, in a dumpster.”

Gottlieb held his hand up. “Wait, wait.” The officers relaxed their grips on my arms. “Do you know where it is, this body?”

“Listen, Gottlieb, this is my case …” Watts started. Gottlieb spun around on him, without speaking. Watts clamped his shaking lips together.

“This body,” Gottlieb asked again. “You know where it is?”

“I think it's still …”

“Thinking is not good. Knowing is good.”

“I'm pretty sure it's at the morgue, Fred. A woman. They haven't had time to move her. Watts rigged an autopsy with one of the M.E.'s people. Said she was an overdose. But she died of a fall down the cellar stairs right here. At Cooper House.”

“This is my collar, Gottlieb,” Watts broke in. “If you don't …”

Again, Gottlieb faced him. The silence stretched out between them a long way. Gottlieb's back was to me, but I heard the tightness, the disgust in his voice.

“Cops make collars,” he said.

Half of Watts's mouth curled down, his eyes went ugly. Breathing hard, he pulled his overcoat open, baring the holster on his belt. He shoved his gun into the pocket and, with a last glance at Gottlieb—and another at me—he turned on his heel. Back straight, he marched down the hill, vanished into the shadows.

Gottlieb watched him go. His shoulders rose and fell. He glanced at the young cop who'd cuffed me.

“Let him go,” he said.

The cop moved around to my back. In a moment, I felt my wrists break free of each other. It felt like coming up after a long time underwater. I breathed like that, raising my face to the sky, taking in great lungfuls of the air.

When I looked down, I saw Lansing coming toward me. Pushing through the cops, stepping close to me. Looking me over as if she hadn't seen me in years. She bit her lip to stop its trembling, but it was no good. Her whole face started to quiver. She came toward me, put her arms over my shoulders, laid her head on my chest, and started to cry.

“Gottlieb,” I called, over the top of her. “Get some CSU guys downstairs. As of this afternoon …”

“Hey!” said Gottlieb. He gestured at Lansing. She sobbed into my shirt.

“There were some bloodstains in the dumpster down there,” I said.

“Pat her.”

“What?”

“On the back. With your hand. You pat her.”

I put my hand on Lansing's back. She went on crying.

Disgusted, Gottlieb turned away from me, shaking his head.

“Schmuck,” he muttered. “He's such a schmuck.”

31

“Fran!” I screamed. “Copy!”

I snatched the page from my typewriter, held it over my head. Fran snatched the sheet as she ran by, screaming, “Incoming! Incoming! Here we go!”

I rolled in a fresh sheet. I clenched my cigarette in my teeth. I squinted through the smoke and started typing again, fast.

“All right, let's do it, get it into the computer,” shouted Emma Walsh. She was leaning over Rafferty's shoulder at the city desk. “How much more, Wells?” she called to me.

“Just two graphs. This is the end of it.” I kept on typing.

“After this, you're learning the keyboards, you hear me.”

“Hold on, I'm writing, this is perky, this is good!”

“It's solid!” Lansing was shouting across the city room. “The M.E.'s making it official.”

“All right,” murmured Rafferty calmly. “Let's call 'em up and kill the qualifiers.”

“Fran!” I screamed. “Copy!”

“Start closing 'em,” shouted Emma Walsh.

“Here it comes,” yelled Fran. She swept by me as I pulled the sheet out. She grabbed it from my hand before I could even raise it in the air.

“Is that it?”

“Did you get the confirm into the Watts sidebar?”

“You want more autopsy?”

“Next edition, Lancer.”

“Save it for the next edition, Lance, we're done.”

“Close 'em up. Let's go.”

I leaned back in my chair. I pulled on my cigarette. I sent a stream of smoke up into the city-room fluorescents. I listened to the voices. I felt the hot rhythm of the newsroom beating in me. I felt my own rhythm beating back.

Good copy
, I thought.
Good fucking copy
.

“Get the hell into my office,” said Emma Walsh.

I sighed. I swiveled around in time to catch the sight of her plaid skirt switching away from me. I tried to stand up. I groaned, sank back into my seat. I tried again and made it this time.

I limped slowly through the maze of the city room. I tried to keep my back straight. It was murder when I didn't. I tried not to bend my knees too much. I tried not to swing my arms. I tried not to let my body know that it was moving.

Emma was already in her office when I got there. When I stepped through the door, she whirled around to face me. She stood beside her desk, her arms crossed under her breasts. Her gray eyes glinted, steely.

“You learn the machines,” she said. “You start tomorrow.”

“Yeah, tomorrow's kind of a bad day for me …”

“I can make it a lot worse.” She picked a pencil off her desk, tossed it back down again. “I mean, you're holding everybody up. That deadline didn't have to be a panic like that. It's ridiculous.”

I hung my head in shame. Shuffled my feet, also in shame.

“What the hell is wrong with computers?” she said.

“They give you cancer. And they make these little booping noises. I hate that.”

A red flush came into her round cheeks. It was very pretty. I tried to decide whether to tell her that or live to be forty-seven. I waited, silent.

Emma Walsh sighed. She sat down on the edge of her desk. She brushed her long hair back with one hand. “Well,” she said. “Aside from that, I'm more or less glad they didn't kill you.”

“Thanks.”

“That was all Lansing, you know. She had the cops covered every which way. Watts was using land lines, he didn't even put out the call. But there was some backup request at Cooper House or something and she just caught it.” She glanced at me sidelong. “She kind of likes you, you know.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

She laughed. That pretty, musical sound. “I'm sort of getting used to you myself,” she said. Then she stopped laughing, a half-smile on her lips. She just gazed at me. Gazed at me for a long time. After a while, she frowned a little, turned aside. “Whatcha gonna do for my next edition?” she said.

There was an ashtray on Emma's desk. That was new. I dumped my old cigarette into it. Reached into my shirt pocket for another. “Well, I gotta figure how much of the Watts angle I can go with. We won't have Cooper's confession for a while, but we might be able to use my version as part of the story.”

“Lay it out.”

“Okay. The way I see it, either Watts caught on to the Mikki Snow angle like I did, or Cooper broke down and told him. My guess is she told him. She never really wanted a cover-up in the first place. She was desperate and confused and Reich had convinced her he could save her. When Reich was killed, I think she was ready to give it up. She told Watts the truth and Watts saw a chance to get me. He told her she wouldn't have to go down for the killing if she played along with him, concocted a story they could hang me with. He got her to think about it anyway. And maybe she started to convince herself that it would be wrong for Cooper House to fall apart because of one little mistake. That there was a higher justice at work, and all that stuff. I have a quote on that. Anyway, she stalled for a while. But the body wasn't getting any younger, and once Baumgarten called her and said I was asking around about Snow, once she had Herd confirm I was talking to him—she knew I was closing in. She called Watts and agreed to testify to whatever he said. He took care of the body for her—and put out a warrant for me.”

Emma blew out a long breath. “Man oh man. It would've been so much easier if she'd just owned up to it. If she'd just said: ‘I've killed someone.' It would've been so much easier.”

I turned away from her. “No,” I said. I walked over to the window. “No. That wouldn't have been easy at all.”

Emma didn't answer me. I stood in the silence, looked out through the glass. I looked down on Vanderbilt Avenue, Grand Central looming over its sidewalk. The handout truck had arrived with its coffee and doughnuts. It stood parked beside the curb. The line of homeless men and women—ragged, dirty, gray—stretched along the sidewalk for a full block. I watched them. I thought of Cooper House. I thought of Thad Reich.

“John …” Emma Walsh began.

But then she stopped as a cheer reached us from the city room. I turned and saw her moving to the door. There was another cheer, applause. I walked across the room and joined her.

We stepped out and looked across the long maze of cubicles. The cheer went up a final time. I saw Lansing.

She was striding toward the city desk. The reporters and editors were moving to surround her. They were clapping, smiling. Some had their fists pumping in the air.

Lansing came on and I watched her. Her long legs flashed from her skirt as she strode. Her blond hair flew out behind. Her hands went up above her head, waving the first hot copy of the bulldog edition.

Its headline read:

JUSTICE!

WELLS IS CLEARED

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1989 by Andrew Klavan

cover design by Jason Gabbert

This edition published in 2011 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media

180 Varick Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com