28. Time Has Laid a Thick Hand on Her

When we arrive, Lucy is in her sweats. She still has some makeup remaining, but just like when we came over after they found Blanco, you can see that time has laid a thick hand on her recently. My heart pinches at the sight of her across the threshold, because I suspect what’s coming now might be her worst moment yet.

As she holds open the door, she says, “God, I really thought we were done meeting like this.”

She has a nice screen porch out back. The air is heavy but there’s a cooler breeze, and we sit in the weak light as a loose ceiling fan knocks rhythmically, whooshing overhead. She brings a glass of water for each of us, then takes a chair across from Rik and me at the table, which is made of some kind of smooth plastic.

Rik starts by saying, “Pinky has a source.”

After I describe the conversation between Ritz and Cornish and Frito, she mutters, “Motherfuckers.” She’s said all along that Blanco was Ritz’s marionette, but the confirmation is still infuriating.

I look to Rik, hoping he’ll handle the harder stuff with her, but he simply circles his hand in my direction. In a tone as flat as I can make it, I tell the Chief we now have information that the picture with Blanco was on her computer, a long time before Frito showed up with it in court. And that Ritz apparently graduated from St. Viator’s in 1974, meaning he probably owns one of those rings.

Rik takes over then. He wipes his face with a hanky from his pocket, then keeps it in his hand.

“So, Lucy,” he says. “Being sort of philosophical, I’ve always accepted that a client has the right to keep secrets from her lawyer. But you know, flat-out misleading her legal team—well, to put it nicely, it’s counterproductive. Sooner or later, the client blunders into quicksand, often with no way for the lawyer to pull her out.

“Which means we’re at kind of a critical moment now,” he says. “This CI information confirms that the P&F case against you is a fraud and that you had nothing to do with whatever happened to Blanco. I’m sure Tonya is going to be working hard this week to corroborate Pinky’s source.”

Lucy interrupts, turning to me.

“What exactly does Tonya know about the picture?”

“Only Saint V’s,” I answer.

Across the table, the Chief covers her mouth with her hand, thinking.

“But,” Rik says, “that’s actually our problem. As soon as P&F dismisses, maybe even before, Moses will announce that the grand jury has closed its investigation of you. And assuming the CI bears out, the locals will state publicly that you’re no longer a person of interest in connection with Blanco’s death.”

“That’s great!” Lucy says. “Isn’t it?”

“Well,” says Rik, “sometimes good news is bad news. Because the Bureau and Tonya are going to want to interview you. And they’ll ask all about that photograph, every detail—who what and where. And lying, Lucy, that’s not an option. Your only way out is if you can take five. And since you’re no longer a subject on extortion or Blanco’s homicide, asserting your privilege requires being able to say in good faith that you’re at risk of being prosecuted for another crime, maybe one they don’t know about yet.”

“Okay,” Lucy says. She doesn’t look up at Rik, instead watching as she drags her finger around aimlessly on the table. “And if maybe I could do that, what are the chances it leaks, you know, that I invoked my constitutional rights?”

“Pretty good, I’m afraid,” says Rik. “Moses and Tonya are principled enough to keep it to themselves, but they aren’t the only investigators who will know you did that, and if an officer with some loyalty to Ritz hears about it, so will their favorite reporter. Which raises a separate problem. How will you answer the journalists, who are going to demand to know whether you engaged in sex acts in the station?”

She peeks up at us for an instant with a grim smile.

“So the mayor has to give me the boot. And the Ritz gets what he wanted all along.”

The fan above keeps chopping the air and clicking faintly, while none of us speak.

“What’s the solution?” Lucy asks.

“I don’t know,” says Rik, “because I don’t know what really happened.”

The Chief absorbs that but continues skating her finger along on the table, kind of doodling. I try to make out what she’s drawing, but there’s no telling.

“How about if you ask me questions,” she says finally, eyes still downward. “I mean, that might be easier. For me.”

“Well, let’s start with the basics. Is that photo real or has it been Photoshopped?”

She takes her time before saying, “Real enough. It’s cropped.”

“To cut out what?”

“Me holding my cell phone in my left hand for one thing.”

“You took the picture?”

“Yep.”

“And the guy is who?”

“Not Frito. I told you the truth about that.”

Rik has been allowing a full measure before asking each follow-up question. Now he is clearly weighing his options: Be open-ended or cut to the chase. He looks almost as pained as she does.

“It’s the Ritz, right?”

The Chief stops her doodling and takes a heavy breath. But she still won’t look at Rik.

She says, “Right.”

“And when was it taken?”

“About twelve years ago. Sometime in the month before I was sworn in as Chief.”

“And that office had a mirror on the back of the door?” I ask.

“It did,” she says. A little dragging note of shame is in her voice. She definitely intended to mislead us. We all pause for a breath, until Rik speaks again.

“And about the picture—I take it you and the Ritz had something going?”

She groans, making a sound like a frog. “Please. I’ve never been that hard up.”

“Okay,” says Rik.

Her eyes finally rise to Rik and me, shifting back and forth between us, although in the dimness I can’t see what they hold. She utters a huge sigh.

“Man, I so don’t want to tell this story,” she says, then adds that it’s time for a real drink. I go with her to the kitchen while she pours some whiskey and soda in a highball glass. She hands me a beer from the fridge. Rik asked for another glass of ice water. He still has a half-hour drive when we finish. And I’m sure he wants to be clearheaded to think all this through. In the kitchen, the Chief doesn’t say anything besides, “Miller okay?”

We take the same places at the table. The Chief folds her hands, like she’s on the witness stand. She’s looking toward us resolutely.

“You know,” she says, “how you tell yourself when you’re young, ‘If I ever get the chance…’ Meaning, if I can get even for something really wrong, I’m going to do it. Like when I was a kid, there was a bar in Kewahnee, I don’t know where the owner thought he was, but he had a sign in the window, ‘No Beaners,’ just plain like that. I can tell you, the day I became a police officer in Kindle I hotfooted it over there, but by then it was a video store. But that dude, if he was still there, he was not going to have a good day. I mean, maybe I’m a shit to carry grudges, but you know, why get sworn if it doesn’t matter to you about setting wrong things right?”

Rik nods, just to show he’s with her.

“So you know I’ve told you stories about riding with the Ritz when I was a rook. And about his little games with the hookers. I sat through that grotesque little performance several times and it always ended with one of these young women in the back of the cruiser, weeping or raging. And those girls, you know they’re tough, they were used to a lot of bad shit happening to them and they’d just laugh if you talked to them about justice, but this was still too much, it being the po-lice, emptying his pipe for free and him running them in anyway. And I thought, if I ever get the chance to treat this motherfucker the way he treated those women—” She stops and takes a good healthy slug from her drink.

“So okay, I get appointed Chief in Highland. And one reason the mayor hired me, frankly, was because I wasn’t in Vojczek’s orbit, and there was no way to get control of that department without getting rid of him. It wasn’t just that he was a criminal, stealing drugs from the dealers, or inventorying only half the money if he busted a deal going down. All the cops in Narcotics, they’d become addicts in a way, cause they were hooked on the extra money, and even the guys who cycled through that section, who’d taken just a little, they had to protect the Ritz to protect themselves. There was no bigger message I could send than to ax the jerk and say, ‘We are going to start fresh.’

“I whistled him in within a day or two after getting appointed. I’m still not Chief for two weeks, and I tell him straight up, he’s got two choices. Resign. Or I’ll go to DEA and the FBI with every rumor and story I’ve heard about him stealing drugs during busts. That’s a great US Attorney’s Office investigation. Ritz’s logic all along is, No copper will turn on me, and nobody believes a drug dealer. But the way the Feds do this, they build a case piece by piece. They’ll run down to the prisons and start interviewing dealers, and they’ll get a dozen of them telling basically the same story. A lot harder to call twelve guys liars. And several defense lawyers will say they heard the same thing at the time of the bust. A cop will roll on him next. So what I’m telling Ritz about the Feds, that’s a genuine threat.

“But what does he say? I mean, cops. ‘I can’t resign now,’ he says. ‘I’ve got fifteen months to my pension.’ The jagoff has probably stolen a quarter of a million in cash that he’s got stashed in his crawlspace, but that’s his thing, he can’t lose his pension. And that’s when I get a flash of genius. Here we are: If I ever get the chance.

“‘Well, Moritz,’ I say, ‘if you want fifteen more months before you go, then I guess you better get down on your knees and make it worth my while.’ We went through, ‘You’re kidding, you don’t mean it,’ but I told him I was stone serious. ‘Down on your knees and loosen up your tongue, I want it going a hundred rpms.’ I took off my pants. I was sure he would quit on the spot. But he thought it over, and then he sinks to the floor.

“Well, as soon as he got down there, I reached for my cell phone. Then I thought of the gun, that would be a nice touch. And before he really got started, I say, ‘Moritz, look over your shoulder,’ so he’s nose to nose with the gun barrel, and while he’s got this look of terror, I get four or five pictures. The last one, he’d faced my crotch again, ready to get down to business. That’s the one he gave Blanco, but in the rest, you can see who it is.

“So that was all I wanted from the jump—the picture. I mean, I know the Ritz too well. People seeing this image, that would be beyond humiliating, on his knees in front of a woman, with a gun to his head and giving her what she wants. But I wasn’t really going to let the creep touch me. Especially since even with thirty seconds, the twisted fuck was completely getting off on this. Yes, it’s total humiliation for him—and he’s panting. The other reason he cropped the photo on that side and enlarged it a little is because he’d already stuck his right hand down his trousers.

“‘No,’ I say. ‘I can see on second thought, Ritz, you’re never going to be any good at this. I’m just gonna let the Feds get you out of my hair.’ Well, it’s a good thing I was holding a pistol. Cause he’s enraged. Degraded, and now he’s got blue balls too.

“‘What happens to the pictures?’ he says. ‘You gotta get rid of them.’”

“‘Neh, I don’t think so,’ I say. ‘I’m just gonna hold on to them. And if you ever mess with me or this department, I’ll make sure everybody you’d hate to see them does.’”

“Wouldn’t that have embarrassed the shit out of you, too?” I ask.

“Well, first, it was a threat—I doubted he’d ever want to find out if I meant it. But I can promise you, if I ever arranged for somebody to see those photos, my face would be blotted or cut out entirely. No one would be able to say it was me.

“And it worked. Until now. With DeGrassi and Cornish and Blanco, I knew it had to be Ritz getting even, because he’d figured out a way to make sure I wouldn’t dare drag out that picture, not when these guys are saying they got forced. The Ritz, he’s smart, I always knew that. But I never saw him as a techie. I had the pictures in a password-protected file. I was pretty shocked when Blanco was passing around that photocopy in the hearing. Any idea how he did it?” the Chief asks me.

“Ritz paid someone to take a stroll through your computer,” I answer.

“How long ago? Recent?”

“Recent.”

She reaches out then to touch my hand.

“You know, when I saw Blanco with the photo, I hate to say it, Pinky, but my first thought was you.”

“Me?” I’m angry at once and in a primal way. It’s always me, it’s always my fault, especially when it’s not.

“You were back in my study for a week, right next to the computer. But it was just for the first second I had that notion. Then I couldn’t make sense of it.”

“I hope not.”

“I was thinking scared, Pinky.”

“Okay.” Some of the poison is still circulating through me. The Chief looks back to Rik. “So what do I tell the Feds or Tonya in our little sit-down? This story, it wouldn’t have sounded so good twelve years ago, but these days? They’ll fire me in a heartbeat, right?”

Rik doesn’t take long to think. “They kind of have to. And you have no real criminal exposure. It was extortion, maybe sexual assault, but it’s way past the statute of limitations. So no Fifth Amendment. And yeah, there’s no way in today’s world anybody’s going to give you a gold star for this one, Lucy.”

She nods with a sad weight. “Well, okay, at least I’d be getting fired for something I actually did. And I gotta tell you: Stupid or not, it felt good. It was like the story with the lion when he got that thorn out of his paw. Almost worth anything. But I guess I’ll be finding out now whether that’s true.”

After a moment in which all of us are taking in the scope of her current dilemma, I ask a question.

“What if we could show what a complete piece of dirt Ritz is, why the Chief had to get rid of him? Does that help?”

Rik floats his hand like a drifting leaf—mezza mezza.

“And how would I even do that, Pinky?” the Chief asks. “I’ve had an eye on the guy for a dozen years.”

“My CI had this hunch that the Ritz is up to something over in the Tech Park. Does that make sense to you, Chief?”

“Vojczek was one of the initial developers. And everybody says he bought a lot of land waiting for Phase Two. But it would all be through offshore trusts and middlemen.”

“But does it make sense, that he’s got something dirty going on there?” I ask.

“Anywhere and everywhere.”

“Any guesses what he’d be doing?”

“With Ritz I always think drugs first, but in the Tech Park?”

Rik has heard enough.

“It’s late,” he says. He’s got that hearing tomorrow and we could all do with time to think.

The Chief walks us to the door. She gives me a hug.

“Sorry,” she says. We both know she’s talking about doubting me. “It was just a stupid thought I had for one second. There was no point in saying it now,” she says, “but I wanted you guys to understand. It’s why I felt at first that I couldn’t play straight with you. Then, you know, once I was on that road…” She moves a shoulder.

“It was a logical thought,” I say. “But I’m all for you, Chief.”

“I know that. That was what I told myself.”

Rik and I walk back to our cars, both parked in the Chief’s driveway.

“Clients?” I ask as we’re parting.

“Clients,” he says.