“It’s her, all right.” A huge red-faced cop, the kind they used to call a harness bull, peered in my side window.
“Any problem, Officer?” I said in my sweetest voice. I wondered if the bull was named Doyle or Donahue, if he was employed by the IRA to handle things just in case someone tailed their delivery cab. I thought about the pipe under my seat.
“Carlotta Carlyle?”
“Who wants to know?”
“Lieutenant Mooney wants to talk to you.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nah, we’re supposed to bring you in.”
“For questioning,” a bright young patrolman added. He was sticking his head in the passenger door.
“You don’t have to tell her that,” the bull snapped.
“Okay.” The young guy backed off.
“Bring me in?” I said incredulously. “Arrest me? Mooney wants to arrest me?”
“He wants to talk to you,” the harness bull said, as if that made everything okay.
“This is harassment,” I said.
“Harassment,” the bull repeated, pawing his book of traffic tickets. “You call this harassment?”
“Look, I didn’t do anything—”
“Oh, I thought you might not have signaled back there at the last right turn. Or maybe your high beams aren’t working. Or maybe you ran a red.”
That, I call harassment.
“So, you want to talk to Lieutenant Mooney, or what?” the bull said.
“What,” I answered.
“Good. He’s over at Area D. We’ll escort you.”
Just what I always wanted, a police escort.
At the station, Mooney was tilting back in his swivel chair, big black cop shoes on the desktop, hands clasped behind his head, eyes half closed. He had a dime-sized hole in his left sole, and his right shoe could have used a new heel.
His office was like his shoes. The big walnut desk was scratched and stained. The blotter curled at the edges. Two four-drawer gray filing cabinets overflowed in a corner. No flowers, no plants, no pictures. No wonder Mooney kept his eyes closed.
I knew he wasn’t sleeping. I was too damn mad to sit down, so I stood there, arms crossed, fighting off the urge to grab both his heels and teach him to do a somersault. I was probably angrier than I should have been. I tend to get mad when I enter that police station. It’s got too many memories for me. Some of them good ones, granted, but mainly it’s the bad stuff that lingers. The “partner” who didn’t want to let the “girl” drive. The clubby “boys only” atmosphere. The carved-in-granite belief that if I achieved anything it was because I’d slept with the right cop.
I breathed.
Part of it was that when I looked at Mooney, I thought about Sam. And that made me uncomfortable. I mean, why should Mooney remind me of Sam? Why should seeing Mooney’s face make me feel guilty? I hate feeling guilty.
“Coffee?” he said.
They have rotten coffee at Area D. They serve it in nasty Styrofoam cups. Instead of milk or cream, there’s this big jar of powdered beige gunk.
“Am I under arrest?”
“Coffee?” he repeated. This time his eyes were open.
“Am I under arrest?” I repeated.
“Carlotta, you’re gonna thank me for doing this. Why the hell didn’t you call? I must have left twenty messages.”
“I called. You were out. Am I under arrest, or what? Should I call my lawyer?”
“Christ, I’m sorry I interrupted your life. I was only trying to do you a favor. Forget it. No charges. You can leave anytime.”
Now that was infuriating. Mooney knew I’d never leave without finding out what the hell was going on. He turned his attention to a file folder on his desk, and yanked a single sheet of paper, holding it in his right hand. He read a few lines with pretend concentration, shook his head sadly.
“Mooney—”
“Go on. Get lost.”
I took the two steps I needed to get close enough, reached over, and jerked the paper out of his grasp. I think he let go on purpose. As I read, I sank into the visitor’s chair, a disgusting molded-plastic job.
I hardly noticed the discomfort. What I had in my hand was a criminal record, a rap sheet, for one Thomas Charles Carlyle. And let me tell you, this Thomas Charles Carlyle was one bad boy, a one-man crime spree. Petty Larceny, Grand Larceny: three arrests, two convictions. Illegal Firearms: three violations. Statutory Rape. Rape. Armed Robbery. Et cetera.
There were mug shots attached. No mug shot is great, but these were dreadful, because Thomas Charles Carlyle looked like he’d had a fight with King Kong about an hour before the photographer arrived. His nose was mashed over on one side of his face, his lips were cut and swollen, one eye was puffed shut. He sported a handlebar mustache. If he’d shaved it off, no one could possibly identify him from the photo, what with all the damage to his face. I glanced back at his rap sheet and found a token Resisting Arrest among the offenses.
“Carlotta,” Mooney said as soon as I looked up, “there is no condo company at Cedar Wash.”
I opened my mouth and shut it again.
“Thomas C. Carlyle,” he continued, “this Thomas C. Carlyle, the guy with the sheet, is wanted by the FBI. They got a hot tip. They think he’s tied to some right-wing radical group in the state, the New Survivalist League, or something.”
I’d heard of them. They’d tried to rob an armory someplace in New Hampshire. Shot their guns, made a rumpus, got away with a couple of handguns and a box of grenades. I swallowed and nodded.
“They’re using this contest thing to smoke him out,” Mooney continued. “They did it in Florida a few years back, tried it out on a few bastards with outstanding arrest warrants. Lots of the creeps showed up for their condo tour, and got slapped in jail instead.”
The fluorescent lights in Mooney’s office made me blink. “I don’t believe this. My cat gets Mother Jones. How could they link him to a bunch of right-wingers?”
Mooney’s shoes hit the floor with a thud and he stood up. His height was menacing in the small room, and his voice let me know I wasn’t the only angry soul around. He spoke softly, aware of the cops on the other side of the glass door pretending to work while they listened. “The Feds are supposed to inform us, not run their own stinking circus. Doing it this way tells me they think the department sucks.”
“No twenty thousand,” I said. T.C. wasn’t going to dine on FancyFeast and Catviar.
“Not a nickel.”
“T.C. was looking forward to it.”
“You didn’t believe this shit, did you?”
“Of course not,” I said. Hell, no. I’d just finished asking Roz if she could fake me a Mass. driver’s license. I’d not only called every damn Carlyle in the phone directory, I’d proposed fraud to a cop.
I could tell Mooney was trying to keep a self-satisfied smirk off his face. He shook his head. “Carlotta,” he said, “you know why you didn’t last as a cop? Your imagination runs away with you.”
“Wrong, Mooney. I didn’t make it because I didn’t brownnose.” There’s enough truth in that statement to make it sound good. In spite of the sleaze, and the hostility from the “boys,” I might have stayed if I hadn’t had to deal with Administration.
“So, you want me to tell the FBI they screwed up?” Mooney asked eagerly.
“No,” I said slowly. “Don’t say anything. Not yet.”
He adjusted to the disappointment. “Yeah, well, okay. Fine. I mean, those FBI bastards, I wouldn’t tell ’em if their ass was on fire.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, keep me informed, will you? If they pull anything really dumb, I want a chance to call the newspapers, and give some reporter a ringside seat, okay?”
Considering how Mooney feels about reporters, he must really despise the FBI. He rocked back on his heels, and looked uncomfortable, and for a moment I thought he was going to ask me out again. But all he said was, “How’s that old lady of yours doing? The one who got beat up?”
“Not too bad.”
“The case going okay?”
His tone was extra sympathetic. I guess he felt bad about breaking my Cedar Wash bubble. I decided to take advantage of his solicitude.
“Mooney,” I said, “You remember the Valhalla, that ship that—”
“The IRA gunrunner. You’re not hooked up to that, are you?”
“Have you heard any gunrunning tales lately, anybody talking IRA revival?”
“Not a thing, Carlotta. Far as I can tell, the only people talking IRA gun deals are FBI, or Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, trying to entrap. Why?”
I tried my leprechaun story out on him. He didn’t like it any better than Jay Schultz had.