FROM TWO BLOCKS AWAY, Cardozo heard the honking chorus of automobile horns and the voice shouting in Spanish and English: “Qué queremos? Guerra! What do we want? War!”
As he turned onto Sixty-sixth he saw that the street had been blocked off by an Eyewitness News TV truck. Picketers waved signs lettered as neatly as cigarette advertisements:
NYPD IS RACIST!
NYPD MURDERERS!
MALLOY ES VERDUGO!
MALLOY IS AN EXECUTIONER!
ANGLO COPS KILL HISPANICS!
Cardozo caught the drift.
In front of the precinct hundreds of protesters had formed a roiling, jitterbugging mass, overturning police barricades, going at the windshields of parked cars with baseball bats and bottles and bricks.
Up on the roof of the TV truck three cameramen were trying to catch it all with their minicams.
One of the picketers, seeing his TV opportunity, grabbed a trash can, shouldered it, made a run toward the window of the I Scream for Ice Cream Ice Cream Shop.
The trash can went sailing through the plate glass.
A single-voiced roar of approval went up, and a wave of protesters became a wave of looters.
Cardozo stood there behind the TV truck, in the space where nothing was happening, because no camera was watching.
When the cameramen climbed back down into the truck, he sensed a slacking-off of crowd spirit. He lowered his head, shielded his eyes with his forearm, and ran forward. A bottle whizzed past his ear to crash against the precinct door.
A sergeant let him inside.
The vestibule was mobbed with cops in riot gear.
“What’s happening?” Cardozo said. “Why’s everyone in here and not out on the street?”
“Mayor’s orders.” The sergeant shrugged. “He doesn’t want anything ugly while the TV truck’s here.”
Cardozo grimaced. “And I suppose what’s out there now is pretty?”
THE BLACK-AND-WHITE GLOSSIES showed Rick Martinez’s apartment as it had been two hours after Martinez had been shot. The police photographer had used a flash and fast film, and the pictures had the stark, high-contrast look of photos in a true-crime paperback.
Cardozo reviewed them one by one. The poster of Rambo taped to the refrigerator. The filthy plates in the sink and the Shabbes candles on the drainboard. The bookcase with the little stuffed bear sitting on the tape deck. The bulletin board displaying the press record of Society Sam’s achievements.
And then the joker: the Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter on the bedroom floor next to the answering machine and the carton of magazines.
Ellie Siegel stepped into the cubicle.
“There’s no table in Martinez’s apartment,” Cardozo said.
“So?” She handed him the stakeout log.
“Where did Rick type?”
“On his knees.”
“Come on.”
“Come on yourself. It’s possible.”
“Then where did he cut and paste the letters?”
“On the floor.”
“That floor’s filthy. That whole place is filthy. The letters were clean. They were put together somewhere else. The typewriter and magazines were brought to the apartment later.”
“When?”
“Let’s see when.” Cardozo opened the log to Wednesday, June nineteenth. “Malloy staked it out till four P.M. and I was there at four, and there was no typewriter or magazines. So they had to have come in later.”
He turned the page. Ellie took a step forward to read over his shoulder.
The log showed that Detective Goldberg had run the stakeout from four P.M. to midnight. He reported plenty of human traffic in and out of the building. A lot of paper bags had gone in, a lot had come out.
But no typewriter had gone in. No cartons had gone in.
Cardozo turned to the next sheet.
Detective Ferrara had handled the stakeout from midnight to eight A.M. Thursday. Same story. No typewriter, no cartons.
Carl Malloy had taken over at eight A.M. and worked till noon. No typewriter, no cartons.
Goldberg had been scheduled to run the stakeout from noon to eight P.M. He’d ended early, when the crime scene crew arrived at four.
“Three thirty-five.” Ellie’s finger pointed to the entry in the log. “Black female took packages into building. Two separate trips. Woman wore kerchief on hair but resembled Identi-Kit of T. Dillworth.”
Cardozo took the log to Sergeant Goldberg’s desk. “Sergeant—how come you didn’t mention you’d seen Dillworth going into the Martinez building?”
Goldberg shot him an impatient glance. “I mentioned it—right there in the log, where I was supposed to.”
“How come you didn’t mention it to me?”
“Because, in the first place, I forgot and because, in the second place, I assumed you’d read the log, because you’re the lieutenant on the case and that’s what the log’s for, right?”
“Why didn’t you follow her?”
“Those weren’t my orders.”
Goldberg had a point.
“It was my goof,” Cardozo said.
He went to get himself a coffee. In the little service room off the squad room, the detectives had crowded around the TV. He could see the image on the screen: a dozen hands, in close-up, shredding an American flag.
The detectives booed.
“Hey, Greg.” Cardozo jabbed Monteleone gently. “What’s going on? Where’s that happening?”
“Right out in front of the precinct. Live.”
“I didn’t see any flag-trashing out there.”
“You’re seeing it now.”
On the screen the camera pulled back to a longer view. A man with a shaved head was dousing the torn flag with a jet of clear liquid from a gallon can. When he tossed a match, the flag seemed to explode. So did a half-dozen hands. Rioters ran from the flames, streaming into a blur on the sidewalk.
A cheer went up from the detectives. Hearing his own men applaud like that, Cardozo had a nightmare vision that the whole city was coming unglued.
On the TV screen, behind the mob, you could see the precinct steps and the grilles on the precinct windows. Cops were looking out from behind the grilles. A solitary man stood on the edge of the crowd, motionless in a world of movement. His half-zipped Mets warmup jacket outlined a gut pushing out over an unbuckled belt.
Cardozo didn’t know why he was noticing that motionless figure in the background, except that he had a feeling the guy didn’t belong in this scene: the guy was trouble—he was going to toss a grenade or drop his pants and exhibit himself right there on live TV. He had that kind of face—crazed, spaced-out.
“Christ,” Cardozo said.
It was Carl Malloy’s face and it needed a shave.
BY THE TIME CARDOZO REACHED the vestibule two sergeants had pulled Malloy inside. He was rocking on his heels, stinking of vodka.
Cardozo steered him upstairs and into the squad room.
As they passed Laurie Bonasera’s desk Malloy stopped. “Aren’t you even going to say hi?” His speech was all drunken stresses and slurred plosives.
Laurie Bonasera turned in her chair, startled. “Good morning, Officer Malloy.”
Malloy stared across the squad room, frowning. “Where is everyone?”
Cardozo steered him toward his desk. “Watching you on TV.”
Malloy pulled the chair out and slumped down into it.
“Could I give you some advice, Carl? Pull yourself together and then go home.”
“Fuck you, Vince. I work here.”
“Not today you don’t. Take a sick day.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Stay home and read the New York Tribune in my sunny bay window?”
Malloy tried to get up, lost his balance, fell back into the chair. “I feel a little twisted, Vince.”
“Right now you’re looking at the absolute worst life has to offer. This is it. It’s not going to get any worse. And you’re doing fine, you’re getting through it.”
Malloy laid his head down on the desktop.
“Carl, this is just a suggestion, but maybe you’d be more comfortable resting in the men’s room.”
Malloy raised his head, interested in the idea. A smile shone thinly over his uncertainty. He tried to stand up again and this time he managed.
Cardozo watched him walk an almost straight line to the door.
A blare of newszak spilled in from the TV room. Cardozo headed toward his cubicle. Behind him he heard Laurie Bonasera’s voice, in a high, almost startled key. “Officer Malloy, I’m working.”
Cardozo turned.
Malloy was standing accusingly beside Laurie’s desk. “Don’t ‘Officer Malloy’ me.”
Laurie rose, protecting her space with one outstretched arm.
Cardozo approached. “Carl, what’s going on?”
Malloy glared over at him. “What am I, tried and convicted already? Don’t I have rights? I can’t even talk to somebody?”
“You’re off duty, Laurie’s on duty.”
“This is a private conversation,” Malloy said.
“Private conversations can be held after work hours.” Cardozo put a guiding hand on Malloy’s elbow. “Carl, come here.”
Back in his cubicle Cardozo shut the door.
“What the hell is going on between you and her?”
Malloy’s face clenched and Cardozo could feel him seething with rage and hurt.
“Carl, you’re in deep shit enough. Don’t complicate it. If Laurie Bonasera doesn’t want to see you, don’t try to see her. And don’t drink in public. Not like this. You’re out of control.”
“I have rights, Vince.”
“Yes, you have rights and if you have any sense, you want to keep those rights. Right now you have IAD gunning for your shield and your pension and you have two hundred people out there in that street gunning for your life. Why the hell do you have to make it easy for them?”
“Vince … I can’t help it. I love her.”
How does this happen? Cardozo wondered. How do cops get this twisted around, why do they divorce their own common sense? “Fine. Why don’t you just love yourself a little. Because not everyone on the other side of that door is your pal. Chances are, somebody out there is IAD. And they’re hearing you.”
“Why won’t she talk to me? Why can’t she just talk to me?”
“Maybe because she’s a married woman. Maybe because you’re a married man. Maybe because you’re going on paid suspension and you’re coming up on a hearing. Maybe because she’s a friend and she doesn’t want to complicate things for you. Maybe she cares what happens to you. The same as Ellie and Greg and Sam and I do.”
Malloy started sobbing.
CARDOZO RETURNED to the squad room. “Laurie,” he said.
She turned in her chair to look at him, but her fingers kept dancing over the keyboard of her computer.
“I’m not going to mention anything about Carl,” he said, “and I hope you won’t either.”
Her eyes flicked back to the screen. The silence rising from her had the smell of acute embarrassment. The computer suddenly let out a single, chicken-pitched squawk, and she jumped.
A message flashed at the top of the screen: Name your file immediately and press Save or you will lose your data. Below the message the word file appeared, followed by a colon and a blank space.
For Cardozo it was as though the light in the squad room had changed, as though the surrounding area had dimmed out and a white spot had focused on that screen.
Laurie sat silent, unreacting, staring at the message. It was a moment before she tapped a message into the keys. On the screen, in the space beside the word file, the word file appeared a second time. Laurie pressed the Save button and the screen cleared.
“What did you just do?” Cardozo said.
“I forgot to name the file. The computer won’t store unnamed files longer than three thousand bytes, and I was about to lose it, so I named it file.”
At that instant a doorway swung open in Cardozo’s mind and he reached back through it with his memory. “You said Dick Braidy’s computer automatically named his files.”
She nodded. “The backups are named with the date and time he created them.”
“Then if we could locate the backup of one of his articles, the name would tell us when he wrote the article.”
She was staring at him with a puzzled look. It took an instant before she found a smile for him. “That’s right.”
A knot of excitement was forming inside Cardozo’s stomach. “Could you come with me right now?”
Her voice took on an edge of wariness. “Where to?”
“Dick Braidy’s apartment.”
CARDOZO CROSSED TO THE WINDOW of Dick Braidy’s workroom and flicked a switch. A soft purr rose from the air conditioner.
Laurie Bonasera was hanging back at the door.
“It’s okay.” Cardozo lifted the dust cover from Dick Braidy’s PC. “We’re not breaking any law.”
She dropped her purse on a chair. “What are we looking for?”
“The backup of an article called ‘Pavane pour une Infante Défunte.’”
She came around the desk and switched the computer on. Her hands hardly seemed to touch the keyboard. Page after page of data scrolled past. Frowning, squinting, she watched the shifting, glittering maze of eye-killingly tiny print.
Cardozo waited with a sort of willed calm. Forty-five minutes passed.
Laurie suddenly sat forward in the chair. “I’ve got something called ‘Pavane for Nita Kohler,’ dated June ninth, eight forty-two A.M.”
“That’s it.”
“Want me to print it?”
“Please.”
IT WAS ALMOST TWO in the afternoon when Cardozo and Laurie Bonasera returned to the no-parking stretch on East Seventy-sixth Street where he’d left his car. The sun pressed down like the lid on a baking pan, and the air had the choking thickness of a fire in a pizza shop.
Cardozo unlocked the passenger door. He was broadsided by a stench of cooked leatherette riding a wave of stale heat. “Better let it cool a minute before you get in,” he told Laurie.
He went around and unlocked the driver’s door. As he swung it open the side-view mirror caught a reflection of Carl Malloy sauntering across the street.
“Hi, Vince,” Malloy said. His cheekbones were ridged in sweat and the hollows of his eyes were tunnels. He walked around the front of the car. “Hi, Laurie.”
Laurie Bonasera folded her arms in front of her. For just an instant she closed her eyes and Cardozo could sense there was a squall in the space behind them.
“Sick and tired of me popping up all over the place?” Malloy grinned.
Laurie stood there, constructing a weary half smile. “Carl, this isn’t a good time.”
“You’re always saying it’s not a good time.”
“I really can’t talk now. I’m working.”
They stared at each other. The space between them vibrated with a skittering energy.
Cardozo had a feeling that in four weeks these two had developed a lifetime’s history of not getting along.
Carl Malloy turned. “How is she, Vince—as good the second time around as the first?”
“Laurie knows her way around a computer.” Cardozo slid into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “Can we give you a lift anywhere, Carl?”
For a moment Carl Malloy didn’t move or say anything. And then he looked at Laurie, and he very slowly arched one eyebrow. His breath came out in a long sigh. His hand dropped toward his right hip.
The bullet hit her like a fist, whipping her head around to the left, taking the eye. She spun and staggered backward into the hood of the Toyota. Her body lost its balance and crumpled down onto the sidewalk.
Malloy strolled over to where she lay, taking his time, as though nothing from the outside world was going to hurry him or bother him ever again.
Cardozo leapt out of the car. He drew his revolver. “Drop your gun, Carl. Drop it.”
It was as though Carl Malloy hadn’t heard, as though Cardozo hadn’t even spoken.
Carl Malloy seemed to be looking away, listening to the traffic-and-boom-box music of New York that was floating down the street.
Then he raised his revolver a second time and fired a bullet into his mouth.