Colleen McCullough - Naked Cruelty

Unfortunately, he thought, entering Corey’s office, Corey Marshall had nothing like Helen’s intelligence. Life for him was a crueler arena, and at this moment his most formidable opponent in it was his boss. A no-win situation.

Sure enough, Corey was on his feet in a second, knuckles on his desk, head snaked forward. He was going to get in first.

“I have my own methods, my own style, my own goals!” he said with lips peeled back from his teeth. “If you’re here to preach me another sermon, don’t bother. I get the work done, I even fill in all Vasquez’s forms! What’s with all his paperwork, tell me that? The guy’s not a cop, he’s a paper-shuffler!”

He left the desk and began to pace up and down; Carmine, face expressionless, took a chair and watched him.

“You look down on me,” Corey said, “but I can’t figure out why. Except that you’re an obsessive who can’t bear the tiniest loose end, even if it’s an end that doesn’t matter a fuck. The whole world has to be squared up! No wonder you love Abe-you’re so like him! A pair of obsessive-compulsive freaks!”

Maureen’s vocabulary, phrases, thinking.

And here I am, Carmine thought, still wondering how I missed this side to Corey. Yes, I was aware that he and Abe were two very different kinds of men-detectives too-but I didn’t see Corey’s incipient paranoia, his lack of tactical planning, the underlying weakness, and the sheer enormity of Maureen’s hold over him. I guess they didn’t exist, at least to their present extent. While ever he took orders he could keep his chin above the rising flood, and the rivalry with Abe was there only as an equal’s chance at a sole lieutenancy. His independence was finite, and the responsibility was mine. He could function at the peak of his talents. Now that he has the responsibility, one part of Corey has filled with overweening pride, while most of him is wandering, lost. And he’s shut me out.

“I wish you’d let me help,” Carmine said suddenly.

“ Help ? With what?”

“Your difficulty coping with the job.”

Corey closed his eyes. “I seem to remember our having this conversation, or one like it. I don’t know where you get your ideas from, Carmine, but they’re mistaken. What do you want?”

“The Hollow is about to go ballistic, and I need to know that the Taft High weapons case is properly closed.”

“I’ve submitted the paperwork saying it is.”

“Buzz still doesn’t seem so sure.”

“Buzz is an old woman. When am I getting my second-stringer, and who is it?”

“Donny Costello. He’s on his way up.”

The discontented face didn’t lighten. “Costello? He’s as big a nit-picker as Buzz.”

“You need all the nit-pickers you can get, Corey, because you’re not one,” Carmine said. “Watch out for your men.”

“Oh, fuck off, Carmine! Your trouble is that you keep trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs!”

“It’s clear that you never knew my grandmother Cerutti.”

“Fuck off!”

“Corey doesn’t appreciate the value of routines,” Carmine said to John Silvestri at five that evening. “While Maureen is in the driver’s seat, he won’t improve one iota either. I hadn’t incorporated her into the equation, more’s the pity. She’s gotten delusions of grandeur, as the psychiatrists say.”

“Funny how we tend to overlook a man’s domestic situation. Can you imagine two women farther apart than Maureen Marshall and Ava Jones?” Silvestri asked. “They’ve both worn their knees down, but for different reasons.”

“I can’t get rid of Corey, can I?”

“No. We can see the express train roaring down the tracks at us, but until it hits, we have to assume it won’t.”

“Gossip says Buzz Genovese is still insisting the Taft High business isn’t closed, and that worries me.”

“Has he gone over Corey’s head to you, Carmine?”

“Who, Buzz? Not in a thousand years. Too honorable.”

“Who does Corey get as second-string?”

“Donny Costello.”

“Better him, than the kind of recruit a Helen MacIntosh trainee system would give him. Costello doesn’t mind paperwork.”

“How about putting a brake on Fernando’s paperwork, John?”

“Funny, he’s not that much younger than you, but his attitude to the job says every police department he’s ever worked in must be a yard deep in paper. How can you be so relaxed, with the Dodo due to strike tomorrow?”

Carmine rose to his feet. “Want to stroll down to Malvolio’s for a drink?” he asked. “Then I can tell you about Thanksgiving Day. Incidentally, how are you and Luigi related?”

“First cousin, but no Cerutti.”

“I’m improving. It’s taken me a mere eighteen years to find that out. Some detective.”

What Carmine couldn’t know was the ferocity involved in the difference of opinion between Corey and Buzz about Taft High.

Two weeks ago Buzz had confronted Corey yet again.

“Let me continue,” he had begged Corey. “Everything at Taft indicates that there’s a splinter of the Black Brigade operating-and that the Black Brigade is about to go to war against it. You know as well as I do how much black militancy gets wasted on in-fighting, especially places like Holloman, where there are two ghettoes separated by a university campus and a business center. It works to our advantage, but the Black Brigade is entrenched in the Hollow, while something new is going on in Argyle Avenue. And Taft seems to be the ham in the sandwich.”

“It sounds great, but where are your facts, Buzz?”

“Thin on the ground,” Buzz had admitted. “That doesn’t mean I’m imagining things, Cor. There are still weapons at Taft High.”

Corey had flicked the report in his hand. “Your argument is as flimsy as the paper it’s written on, Buzz. I have very reliable snitches in the Black Brigade, and they say that the Taft High business was a genuine mistake, never a part of a plan.”

“But this is not the Black Brigade itself!” Buzz persisted. “It’s a splinter group with a more violent agenda, and its aim is to spread revolution in the style of Lenin-terror first and foremost. One of its cornerstones is high school violence. The Black Brigade soldiers don’t know the splinter group exists, it isn’t something Mohammed el Nesr wants spread about.”

“This report is pure supposition, Buzz. If I were to be guided by it, I’d be laughed at,” said Corey.

“And being laughed at is more important than the chance that there’s violence brewing at Taft?” Buzz demanded.

Flushing, Corey had put the sheets down as if they burned. “That is uncalled for! Give me facts and I’ll be happy to believe you, but I won’t act on hunches. Can’t you see it now?” His voice had taken on tones of hysterical drama. “Taft High School parents sue the city of Holloman for discrimination and defamation! Go away, Buzz! Do the job I’ve just given you-nail whoever held up the Fourth National Bank out in the Valley. It’s both tangible and important.”

Unable to do more, Buzz had left it. There was some justice in Corey’s stand; only the thought of a tragedy involving children had spurred him to such effort.

His report went into the Taft High weapons cache file, but on two Thursdays, when Carmine, Abe and Corey met to discuss the cases of the week, Corey had not produced the report, or even mentioned it in passing. It sat in the back of the file, unread.

Tracking down the Fourth National Bank robbers had taken time, but Buzz Genovese was a good detective, albeit inexperienced. The crime had all the earmarks of a funding exercise rather than self-profit, but Corey’s Black Brigade snitches were very young and very junior in the hierarchy, so knew nothing of Mohammed el Nesr’s thinking, and swore it wasn’t the Black Brigade-with complete truth. A $74,000 take would buy a lot of firearms up to and including fully automatic weapons, but if Mohammed was innocent, who else was there with the organization? A question Corey didn’t ask. Buzz went to his splinter group, and, eventually, to an address: 17 Parkinson in the Argyle Avenue district.