THE NEXT DAY
“And there might be a few loose cannons on his side in the DA’s office that block me from digging deeper on the Jenkins case,” I said.
“Some of the active cops that like Kenwood know him only by reputation,” the chief said. “A hard-charging detective with a long string of notches on his conviction belt catches the eye of a lot of cops. Especially the ambitious ones. That doesn’t mean they’re willing to risk their job and their pension doing some dirty work for him.”
“I’m not too worried about the ones who kneel at Kenwood’s altar,” I said. “They only know about the convictions, not how he got them. And not even reading about the overturned ones in the papers is going to sway them one way or another. The ones that have my attention are the ones off the job, who worked with Kenwood and may have helped him get those false confessions. The more Kenwood cases get overturned, the more likely their names will pop up on somebody’s radar. And that might be all the incentive they need to come after me and my crew.”
“We’ve been keeping tabs on Kenwood for a while now,” the chief said. “He plays golf and does a little sailing when the weather’s nice. He splits his time between a house in Nassau County and a small condo down in Boca. Lives within his means. If he made under-the-table money, he’s good at keeping it off our radar.”
“He’s not tied in to the mob in any way,” I said. “If he were, I would have caught wind of it from Carmine. But we both heard the talk about him shaking down mid-tier dealers and pimps, clearing about three, maybe four hundred a week. There was never any proof, but it wouldn’t be a stretch for it to prove out to be true.”
“He probably did do those things, but that’s not what drove him. Kenwood’s a hot-tempered guy whose reputation is being sullied, day in and day out, in the newspapers and the DA’s office,” the chief said. “That means more to him than anything. When he left the department, no one had a higher homicide closeout rate. He sees himself as a Hall of Famer. Messing with that just might be enough to put him over the edge.”
I turned away from the window and looked at the chief. We had known each other since I joined the force, and he was one of the most honest and honorable men I knew. He was fair but tough, demanding and dedicated both to his work and to those he considered his friends. “Well, Chief,” I said to him, “if I clear Randy Jenkins, he’ll do more than go over the edge. He’ll come gunning for me, and he’ll have his ex-cop goons by his side.”
The chief smiled. “And it doesn’t sound to me like that bothers you all that much,” he said. “But it’s not going to look good for the department overall if that were to happen.”
“How do you think it looks now, Chief?” I asked. “One case after another of Kenwood’s getting overturned. City forced to pay out millions in settlements to men who had their lives ruined by a detective who looked only at skin color to link them to a crime. And for what? To see his closed-case rate rank higher than the next guy in the bureau? To me that’s a stain that won’t wash out easy.”
“Don’t read me wrong, Tank,” the chief said. “I want to nail the piece of shit much as you do. But right now, legally at least, we can’t touch him. His pension is secure, as is his health plan. He’s still claiming all his convictions are on the square. If you want to point a finger, look to the prosecutors. They’re the ones who convicted the guys. He merely got them to admit to their guilt. I don’t buy it and neither do you. But there are quite a few who do.”
“We’ll take it one step at a time,” I said. “He’ll tumble eventually. Once those walls start closing in, he’ll put away his golf clubs and ditch the boat shoes and make his way to me. But for now I’ve got to clear Randy Jenkins.”
The chief picked up a second folder from his desk, opened it, and scanned the rap sheet of J. J. Livingstone. “He’s nobody’s idea of a role model, I’ll give you that,” he said. “And he knew both Jenkins and the victim. He’s worth a hard look. He’s had his finger in all sorts of street business, wouldn’t be a shock if it reached all the way up to murder.”
“There’s one other reason to line him up as one of our suspects,” I said. “Aside from the violent temper and him maybe having a sweet spot for Rachel.”
“You pick this up from your talk with Zeke?”
“He pointed me in the right direction,” I said. “Look for yourself. On his rap sheet. His third bust, for a breaking and entering. The collar went to a still-new-on-the-job uniform patrolman.”
The chief flipped over several pages and ran his fingers along a page of an old 61, the report a cop types up detailing how an arrest went down. The report ends with the patrolman’s signature. The chief read the name typed just above the signature and then sat back in his chair. “Eddie Kenwood got the collar,” the chief said, looking from the page to me. “That ties him to Livingstone.”
“Does more than that, Chief,” I said. “Kenwood got the case tossed three days after he filed the papers. Went to the higher-ups and told them Livingstone had agreed to be a confidential informant and that having him on the streets as a CI was better than letting him do a spin for a minor offense.”
“Which means Livingstone owed Kenwood,” the chief said.
“And that Kenwood owned Livingstone,” I said.