The Letter Writer (5 page)

Valentine came back out from behind his desk and again stalked over to Cain, pointing at his chest.

“Arrests are being made, I do know that, and the magistrates are pushing the charges forward like they're supposed to. That end has been cleaned up. But afterward?” He threw up his hands. “Things are falling off the table. Cases are disappearing. I hear of an arrest, or a raid, and then I don't hear a thing more. It started in January, the month after the Japs hit us. Ever since then, nothing. Not from the fourteenth. No results in either vice or gambling, and your job is to find out why.”

“So you want me to be your eyes and ears?”

“Hell, if that's all I needed I'd hire a stool pigeon, or a whole roomful. You're a
detective,
goddamn it! Build a case! Hard facts. Real evidence. Something that can stand up before a board of inquiry, or even a grand jury for this new DA, Hogan. Not that all of his people are necessarily on the straight and narrow. Follow any lead, wherever it takes you. But it started in January, so the first thing you should probably do is have a look at the paperwork.”

The arrest reports, he meant, plus the reams of other dockets and blotter items and disposition reports that cops had to fill out. All of those items ended up in the Record Room, which for reasons unknown to Cain was referred to as the “95 Room” by everyone at the station house. It was the domain of a handful of officers, the so-called 95 men, who kept the place under lock and key. Meaning that for Cain to “have a look at the paperwork” would be easier said than done.

“I just started,” Cain said. “I barely know a soul. And when I do get to know them, I might even like them.”

“I didn't say it would be easy. That's why I'm giving you three months.”

“Three months?”

“As for the question of who you like and don't like, I'm counting on the abilities and talents you exhibited in your previous employment to overcome those sorts of emotions.” He tapped the papers on his desk. “If your recent past shows anything, it's that your instinct for self-preservation far exceeds any regard for the health and well-being of your colleagues. While I normally see that as detestable, in this kind of case it's an absolute necessity.”

Cain flushed again, this time in anger.

“You've misread the facts of that incident.”

“Your file has already spoken for you, and was far more convincing.”

Cain stood, furious, but the words backed up in his throat. What could he do, anyway? Complain to headquarters? Valentine continued.

“Your contact here will be Lieutenant Edward Meyer, of my confidential squad. Spring seven, three-one-two-four. Memorize that number. Never try to contact me. Meyer only. If I need to see you, you'll know it.”

“You're misreading me, sir, and if you'd let me explain—”

“Just do the job. And if I've misread you, then you'd better start saving your money, because without results you'll be out on your ass three months from now. Archer!”

The door opened. The suit who'd escorted Cain upstairs reappeared. Valentine shut the file on his desk and slid it into a drawer. He didn't say good luck, didn't say goodbye, and didn't look up as Cain left the room.

Cain followed Archer to the elevators. A uniform with all sorts of stripes started to board with them, but Archer shook his head and the guy backed off. As they were reaching the ground floor, Archer pulled a handle and the car shuddered to a stop. He turned to Cain.

“Word to the wise?”

His voice was calm, but with a chilly undertone, like someone you'd hear on the radio at three in the morning and know by his tone that he sat alone in an empty, darkened studio.

“Okay.”

“And this stays here. Understood?”

Cain nodded.

“You're not the first mug to draw one of these details, and you won't be the last. But maybe you should know how
not
to do the job. Last September the commish called in a 'tec from up in the two-three. Good sleuth, clean as a whistle. But lazy, so Valentine figures he needs a kick in the ass. He sends him over to Brooklyn with the same marching orders.”

“And?”

Archer shook his head.

“Sat on his ass, mostly. Figured that if the brethren ever found out what he was up to that he'd end up facedown in the East River, or tied up in butcher paper, a piece at a time. And let me tell you, ace, if there's one thing Valentine hates more than a fuckup, it's a do-nothing.”

“He lost his job?”

“That's what the commish would tell you. It's probably even what he believes. He never gets involved in the details of the severance arrangements.”

“That's your department?”

Archer smiled. “Hey, I figured why just cut a guy loose when he's got those kinds of secrets to spill? So I slipped a word to the brethren about what he'd been up to. Last I heard, he'd retired. To three different boroughs, all at the same time. In butcher paper, you know?”

Archer seemed to get a thrill out of Cain's queasy reaction. Archer threw back the handle, and the jolting elevator resumed its descent. The doors slid open onto the marble lobby, empty as before. Cain stepped off, then turned so they were face to face across the opening.

“Your name's Archer, right?”

“Linwood Archer. You'll be hearing from me.”

“Valentine said my contact is supposed to be Lieutenant Meyer.”

“Officially, yes. I'm more on the efficiency side of things.”

“Efficiency,” Cain repeated, pondering the implications.

“You got something to report, you give it to me. Let me worry about Meyer.”

“What's your rank and title?”

Archer smiled. The doors slid shut.

When Cain got back to the station house, he opened the departmental phone directory and flipped the pages to the first letter of the alphabet.

There was no listing for Linwood Archer.

ON THE FOLLOWING MONDAY,
Cain managed to arouse the suspicion of his colleagues and get pulled off his one and only murder investigation, all before he'd poured his first cup of coffee. He set those events in motion when Captain Mulhearn caught him rummaging through a tray of arrest reports in the 95 Room, while the two duty officers obliviously compared snapshots from a recent fishing trip.

“Looking for something, Citizen Cain?”

The duty officers looked up abruptly, as if noticing Cain's presence for the first time.

“They, uh, seem to have misfiled my paperwork from the other day,” Cain said.

“We did?” one of the 95 men answered, an officer named Steele.

“Well, it won't be in the overnight basket, as you well know,” Mulhearn said. “Maybe next time one of you two nimrods will take notice when this fox enters the henhouse.”

“Sure, Cap'n.” Steele held up one of the snapshots. “Hey, did you get a load of these cods Rose hooked off Long Island? Ten pounders!”

Mulhearn shook his head.

“Sorry,” Cain mumbled. “I'm still learning where everything goes around here.”

A feeble excuse, although it would have been more convincing if he hadn't blushed a deep red. Mulhearn steered him toward the door. When they were out in the hallway he backed Cain against the wall.

“Listen, Citizen Cain.” Cain already disliked the nickname, which Mulhearn had presumably taken from the overblown movie that had come out the previous fall. “Just 'cause you're a detective sergeant with some juice don't mean that I can't assign you to switchboard duty for a month. But maybe that would be right down your alley, answering everybody's calls for them.”

Cain tried not to look away. Maybe this was how the doomed cop in Brooklyn got started toward his dismembered “retirement.”

“I don't know what you were really looking for in there, Cain, but since you already seem interested in branching out your duties, how 'bout we go make some adjustments to your schedule? Upstairs.”

When they reached the second floor, Mulhearn steered Cain by the arm across the floor of the squad room—the wide, shallow chamber where all the detectives worked. He tugged Cain to the board along one side where the duty rosters were posted. By now, every man in the room was watching.

“Here we go,” he said, talking loudly enough for all to hear. “This floater of yours, the homicide from the other night.” The room was silent as Mulhearn jabbed a finger on the blackboard just beneath Cain's name. Cain hadn't felt this belittled since mean old Miss Vernon had pulled him by his ear up to the blackboard in third grade.

“From what I've seen, you got no leads at all. Hell, you haven't even made an ID. So we're moving it to inactive. Here.” He handed Cain an eraser. “You whiffed on that one, Citizen Cain. Strike one.”

“But I—”

“If you want it back, give me an ID by the end of the day. Otherwise, I'll be shipping it over to the Borough Homicide Bureau at the close of business. So I don't want to see it showing up on any more of your goddamn DD-64s for even ten minutes' worth of your time. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” Cain sheepishly erased it from the board. Never mind how he was supposed to ID the victim in the next eight hours if he couldn't work the case.

“And remember, tomorrow night you're coming out for choir practice with the rest of us.”

“Choir practice?”

“Drinks,” someone behind him offered, setting off a few giggles.

“At Caruso's on Eighth, just above 44th,” Mulhearn continued. “Right after quitting time.” He turned to face the rest of the room. “Everyone else on board for that?”

“Yes, sir,” came the replies—some shouted, others mumbled. Mulhearn lowered his voice, as if to pretend the words were meant for him alone, even though he was still loud enough to overhear.

“If I or anyone else ever catches you lurking around the 95 Room again without a good reason, then you'll be busted down to radio patrol faster than water off a duck's ass. Now get the fuck to work, nimrod.”

Cain turned toward his desk. His colleagues had their heads down, trying to look busy. There were a few muffled laughs, but this was no time for challenges. The damage was done. And tomorrow night he'd be drinking with all of them. He could hardly wait.

Even on a good day, the squad room could be oppressive. Ten detectives shared floor space in two long rows of battered gray desks, with a row of windows along the back. Hovering above the room was a fog bank of cigarette smoke that rolled and tumbled like it might eventually produce rain. Mulhearn presided from a glass cubicle up front. Six of the detectives formed the squad for the 14th precinct, with their own lieutenant. The four desks closest to Mulhearn's office were posted to district level—Cain, Wat Foley, Bert Simmons, and Yuri Zharkov, which meant technically they were supposed to handle the bigger cases for an area covering four precincts—the 14th, plus the 10th, 18th, and 20th.

Zharkov, a bulky hawk-nosed Russian in his late forties who spoke six languages, was the only one who'd yet made an effort to make Cain feel at home. The previous Friday they'd shared lunch on a park bench, swapping stories and eating from a greasy brown bag of piroshki—fried Slavic treats that Zharkov had picked up from a street vendor. Sort of like hushpuppies, except filled with ground meat and cabbage. Zharkov had come to New York as a boy in 1919 after his family migrated halfway across Russia, fleeing first the tsar and then the Bolsheviks. In his uniform days he had walked a beat in the rough-and-tumble 7th on the Lower East Side, strolling the waterfront from Clinton to Delancey with a Cossack's zeal for the well-thumped cranium.

With their four adjacent precincts, the gumshoes of the third district covered about a sixth of Manhattan, from 14th Street up to 86th, bordered to the west by the Hudson, and to the east by Central Park and, below 59th, by Fifth Avenue. Plenty of interesting territory lay within—the meatpacking and garment districts of Chelsea; the glitz joints of Times Square; the workaday Midtown glories of Herald Square and the Empire State Building; the huge new complex of Rockefeller Center, with its sleek art deco towers that now dominated the Midtown skyline; and, above Columbus Circle, the high rent district along Central Park West over toward the lower end of Riverside Park. Almost as a throw-in you had the fleshpot holdovers of the Tenderloin, which Valentine had griped about even though it was a shadow of its old self, with a few vestiges scattered near Times Square, kept alive by mob money and the remnants of Tammany influence.

Mulhearn began most mornings by standing in his office doorway, browsing a stack of newspapers that were so fresh you could smell the ink. He offered dramatic readings of stories that struck his fancy. Like having their very own Walter Winchell, although the detectives often rolled their eyes when he wasn't looking.

“Hey, here's one for you guys,” Mulhearn announced, as Cain settled in. “Says here that some mug got thirty days for mouthing off about the war. Told a sailor he was fighting for a bunch of rich capitalists, and that FDR's no better than Hitler.”

“Thirty days for that?” Zharkov sounded shocked.

“Some bum turned him in, and the judge threw the book at him. Said, ‘The right of free speech is limited by considerations of public welfare.' ”

“Whose public welfare was he endangering?” Wat Foley asked.

“His own, I guess. Judge said if he'd ticked off the sailor enough, ‘Violence might easily have ensued.' ”

“So this clown got thirty days to save him from getting his ass kicked? Jiminy fucking Christmas.”

“Judges, huh?”

Mulhearn put down his
Herald-Tribune
and picked up the
Times.
Cain looked around at his colleagues, wondering who was clean, who was dirty. It was a no-win assignment. At best, he'd end up as the house stool pigeon. At worst, well, why even think about it?

“Hey, Simmons, here's one for you,” Mulhearn announced. “Some air ace in the Pacific who bagged six Japs on his last mission? The guys who built his plane out at the Grumman plant on Long Island got together a collection and bought him, get this,
one thousand, one hundred and fifty
cartons of smokes. Shit, that would keep you going at least a month.”

“Maybe two,” Simmons said. “I been cuttin' back.”

Cain, meanwhile, was still so frazzled that he'd forgotten to check his own messages, which he'd scooped up just before Mulhearn had caught him poking around.

The switchboard had taken one call for him, from Harris Euston. That made four calls in the past three days from his father-in-law, none of which Cain had returned. After the meeting with Valentine he felt less inclined than ever, although he supposed he owed Euston big-time. He stared at his phone, glanced at the number, then tossed it in the trash. Less than a week on the job, and he already felt obligated to way too many people.

Cain got so lost in that thought that he didn't notice anyone approaching until Desk Sergeant Romo was practically on top of him. Romo was out of breath, like he'd run upstairs.

“Was going to collar you on your way upstairs,” Romo said. “But with Mulhearn right on your ass it didn't look like a good time.”

“You got that right. What's up?”

“There's this guy.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Been bugging the shit out of everybody at the front desk. Claims he has to see you.”

“Me?”

“And nobody else. Been here for three hours.”

“Three hours?”

“Showed up before sunrise, while the night squad was still on. Won't say what it's about, and won't take no for an answer. Looks too old to hit over the head, so I figured I'd bring him on up, let you sort it out.”

“Send him over.”

“He's the guy over by Mulhearn. Guess I better grab him before he gets dragged into the show.”

Cain took a look, and his spirits sank. Pale thin face, the color of oatmeal, with uncombed white hair sprouting from beneath the sides of a ratty wool cap. Unshaven, with white stubble. The man had supposedly been waiting indoors for hours, yet he was still bundled up against the elements in a scarf and a long mud-spattered overcoat that might have seen duty in the trenches of the First World War. Cain felt a chill just looking at him, as if the old guy had managed to keep winter alive an extra month and carried the remnants around with him. His blinking eyes emanated an air of frailty. Only the stitching of his clothing seemed to be holding him together. Unbutton the coat and he might collapse into a pile of bones.

“Good God. Is he even alive?”

“Like I said. We didn't exactly want to shove him out the door. If he's a crackpot, call downstairs and I'll send Maloney up.”

Maloney. Now there was a fate Cain wouldn't wish on anyone. A big, bluff patrolman with scabbed knuckles and a face the color of corned beef.

“I'll handle it.”

Romo gently pointed the man toward Cain's desk. The fellow sprang into motion with surprising agility, and with each successive step seemed to shed another year, so that by the time he reached the desk Cain was almost wondering if he was an actor, practicing for a role.

“Have a seat.” Cain motioned toward a chair.

The man pulled off his cap, unleashing a gust of boiled cabbage and wet wool. Up close his eyes were cloudless and blue, not frail at all. If his clothing said December, his irises spoke of mid-June, one of those mornings in early summer with bees buzzing and the sense that the day might last forever. He looked alert, intelligent, and, best of all, lucid. Whatever had brought him, he probably wasn't a crank.

“My thanks to you, Detective Cain, for agreeing to see me. I am here to do my duty as a citizen. In fact, I believe that I can assist you in one of your current inquiries.”

Cain, just beginning to decipher local accents, couldn't place this one. The man's sentences had started somewhere in Russia, doubled back toward Germany, and had even seemed to detour briefly through Rome before coming to rest in what sounded like Brooklyn, a shout from a clerk in a deli.

“First, tell me your name.”

“Ah, yes.”

He withdrew a white business card from his overcoat. It was curiously uninformative—raised black lettering on a blank background, with the name DANZIGER on top, all in caps, and the word “Information” underneath. That was all. No address. No phone number.

Cain turned it over. Blank. He took out his notebook.

“I need a
full
name. And your place of residence.”

The man frowned, as if this was more than he'd bargained for.

“Maximilian Danziger.”

“Do people call you Max?”

“They call me Danziger.”

“Of course. And your address?”

“Rivington Street. Number one seventy-four.”

The Lower East Side. He'd come a long way, especially for such an early arrival.

“You live in the seventh precinct. What business brings you up here?”

Danziger leaned forward, blue eyes glittering as he turned his cap in his hands.

“I am here to offer my assistance in the case of the corpse found on the sixth of April, at the docks along the Hudson. It was your first day on duty, if I am not mistaken?”

There was no hint of smugness, humor, or triumph in the man's eyes. Just the same solid resolve as before. Cain glanced again at the business card.

“What's your line of work, Mr. Danziger? Are you some kind of private dick?”

“Dick?” Furrowed brow, followed by dawning comprehension. “I see. You mean like in the pictures. A private eye. As with W. C. Fields,
The Bank Dick.
” He smiled appreciatively. “No. Not a dick. But I have a name for you, the name of the man you found in the river. I believe I may also have a few ideas as to why he was killed. Leads, as a dick might say.”