MARKS WAS NOT LIKELY ever to forget the ride back to Houston Street with Fitzgerald. The targets of the Inspector’s abuse were as wide as the range of police officialdom, from the Commissioner and his bright young men to the bright young men themselves. “I’ll take a cop with his nose to the ground over one with it in the air any day. Wasn’t it crime prevention you were interested in, Lieutenant? And look at the bloody slaughter back there. If corpses were blessings, we’d be lined up now for all eternity.”
Marks, his eyes straight ahead as he took the lashing, saw young Detective Pierce’s ears turn from pink to a dark glowing red. Marks knew he had failed badly on Eric Mather, trying to think his way through the man. There had been a point, he remembered, where he had himself thought of the virtues of so-called dumb cops. That Fitzgerald was right made the situation that much more uncomfortable. But that one reason for his failure lay in the fact, he was sure, that Eric Mather had wanted to die was something he could not tell Fitzgerald, certainly not in the old man’s present mood.
They reached the station house and pushed through the reporters and photographers, and over the wires and cables servicing the sound media.
“I’ll be up in a few minutes, Inspector,” Marks shouted.
Whether or not Fitzgerald heard him, or whether he cared if Marks ever came up, he did not know. The old man, his stone face moving like a wedge before him, was saying over and over again: “Not now, boys. Nothing for now.”
Marks picked up Herring in the squadroom and went back to the car where he had asked Pierce to wait. “Tenth Street. Go up Third Avenue.”
In the car he asked Herring how Corrales’s story had checked out.
“Lousy by me, Lieutenant, but we can’t prove it, not till we go over it with a fine tooth comb. By me you could drive a Mack truck through it.”
“Or a Chevy sedan? Anything in the car?”
“Negative,” Herring said.
“We got to it several days late,” Marks said. “Still …”
“Look, man, that doc wouldn’t have been in the hall after the light bulb was broken, not according to my way of seeing it. He was gone by the time they busted it.”
“You’re probably right,” Marks said.
“You know, don’t you, Lieutenant, the feds are in this up to here?” Herring indicated eye level.
“Yes,” Marks said, “we may not see them, but they’re in it.”
Herring told him of Redmond’s orders to track down the casket destined for Mexican burial. “You know how far I got? The Baltimore and Ohio freightyard. No information. Then the Captain calls me up and says we’re to make no further inquiries into it. How do you like that, man?”
“They must have their reasons,” Marks said, “but what I don’t understand is their failure to act in the case themselves.”
“It’s like they wanted to get things botched up.”
“If that’s what they wanted,” Marks said, “they got it.”
Herring said: “We just got to tie the doc in now, and we got to do it ourselves.”
“Is the stake-out still on him?”
“Yes, sir. Captain Redmond don’t like him any more than I do.”
They had reached Tenth Street and turned east. As they passed Anne Russo’s apartment, Marks said: “Are you a praying man, Wally?”
“Like most of us, on occasion, Lieutenant.”
“We aren’t going to have a better one.” Then to Pierce, Marks said: “Pull up at the lumberyard there where the gate’s open.”
Two men were working in the yard with a power saw as Marks and Herring got out of the car. Marks took out the key he had removed from the suicide Jerome Freeman’s pocket and gave it to Herring. “Try this on the padlock while I speak to the men in back.”
Marks walked through the yard, and when one of the men turned off the saw, Marks said: “It’s all right. I just wanted to check the electrical outlet.” It was at the side of the wall, available to anyone with access to the yard itself.
As he turned back, Herring came to meet him, the padlock and key in his hand, a wide grin on his face. “They fit, man. They were made for each other.”
Marks put his arm around Herring. “Like you and me, Wally. Get yourself a warrant and bring in Corrales.”
When Marks walked into Redmond’s office a few minutes later it was to an unexpected silence. Men were moving in and out, and the noise from downstairs could not be shut out, but Fitzgerald and Redmond were sitting side by side at Redmond’s desk, reading the same material.
Fitzgerald glanced up. “We’re reading your mail, Lieutenant.” He indicated the envelope on the desk. “It wasn’t marked personal.”
Marks picked it up, the envelope Mather had addressed to him from the public library.