Robert Tanenbaum - Falsely Accused

“What the fuck is that?” asked the cop standing at the bar next to Roland Hrcany. He was not the only one asking the question either. Hrcany looked up from his scotch and looked away. He rolled his huge shoulders as if shrugging off a burden. Although Hrcany was not a cop, he spent a good time of his spare time in cop bars. He liked cops, and cops liked him, not a usual state of affairs between members of the police force and the prosecutorial bar. The cops liked Hrcany because he treated them like the men they were, because he was a real man himself, because he was a rake of legendary reputation, not averse to sharing his collection of willing girls with favored policemen, and because he was more tolerant than most other prosecutors about the universal and necessary perjury of the police. So tolerant was Hrcany that cops would often reveal to him just where they had violated the rules of evidence and arrest, and Hrcany would go so far as to advise them on how to bring off these fairy tales on the stand. On the other hand, he drew the line at actual fabrication, and knew enough about the ways of the police so that no one but a practicing idiot would try to sell him a total load of manure. The cops respected this. He was a very successful homicide prosecutor.

Hrcany replied, “It’s a reporter. I said I would introduce her to Joe Clancy.”

His companion gave him a cop look. Hrcany caught it and explained, “It’s okay. The bosses cleared it. It’s just some kind of hero story.”

The cop grunted and stared again at the woman, who had by now spotted Hrcany and was approaching. “Christ, you’d need a fucking ladder,” the cop muttered.

“Hello, Roland,” said Ariadne. “What a charming place!” she added in a tone implying the opposite. Stupenagel had, in her colorful career, met any number of men who hated her, but almost invariably it had been for good cause. She hadn’t done anything to Hrcany, however, yet, but he had been rude and uncooperative from the first moment. It surprised her but did not particularly dismay.

“Glad you like it,” replied Hrcany in the same tone.

“Buy you a drink?” she asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Well, let’s get started. Where’s Clancy?”

Hrcany got off his bar stool and walked off without a word. Stupenagel followed him across the floor and into a large back room. Like the bar proper, this was full of off-duty cops, but cops much drunker than the ones in the front. They were sitting at a dozen or so round wooden tables or swaying happily among them. Those at the tables were pounding their glasses and bottles to the beat of an amplified Irish band set up on a small stage in the front of the room. It was a retirement party, a racket, as the cops say, for one of the cops in the Two-Five. The air was thick with noise, smoke, and beer fumes. Someone had decorated the walls and ceiling with green and white crepe paper, and shiny paper shamrocks and leprechaun hats.

“He’s over there,” said Hrcany, indicating a tall man leaning against the wall, alone, waving a brown bottle of Schlitz in time with the music.

“Introduce me.”

“You want me to introduce you? Why, you want to date him?”

“That’s the point of this, Roland,” said Stupenagel patiently. “You’re a regular guy-you introduce me to him and then he’ll know I’m a regular guy, too. If I wanted to walk in here cold, I wouldn’t have been on your ass making myself unpleasant all these weeks. It’s nothing personal.”

Hrcany opened his mouth, but stifled the remark he had in mind, which was personal in the extreme. Instead he marched up to Clancy and held out his hand.

“Hey, Joe. Nice racket.”

“Yeah,” said Clancy. “Jerry’s a popular guy.”

The two men chatted about Jerry, a detective second grade who was retiring after thirty on the job. The reporter hung behind Hrcany and pretended to be fascinated by the anecdotes about old Jerry, and studied her quarry. Clancy was a large man in good shape: his gut did not hang puffily over the belt line she could see under the tan suit jacket. The jacket itself, though plainly off the rack, hung nicely on his square shoulders, and Ariadne concluded that he was one of those fortunate men whose physiques fell precisely into the dimensions of the standard sizes, a 44R in his case, she reckoned. His hands were large and calm and covered with crisp, short red hairs, as was his skull. He wore his hair in a Marine Corps buzz cut, which revealed patches of twisted scar tissue. Not a man to shrink from honorable blemishes, thought Ariadne, an observation that recommended him to her. His face was the traditional map of Ireland edition: square jaw, softening a little underneath, snub nose, lipless, wide mouth.

After a minute or so of chatter, Hrcany became aware that the Aqua Velva-colored eyes that went with this face were resting ever more often on the large woman standing behind him, whose head, he was uncomfortably aware, was hovering an unacceptable distance above his shoulder.

He said, abruptly, “Joe, I’d like you to meet Mzzz Stupenagel. Mzzz Stupenagel, this is Joe Clancy.”

The woman extended her hand, said, “I’m glad to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you,” and received a firm, formal grasp. Clancy was not the sort of man who either gripped too hard or sent a sexual message. Another point scored.

At that moment three men drunk enough to think wearing shiny green paper leprechaun hats amusing rolled up, hailed Roland as a lost brother, and urged him away to the free beer. He left with no discernible reluctance.

“You got to the bosses,” he said.

“I did.” In the pause that followed Clancy seemed to be concentrating on the music. Stupenagel read it as demonstrating that although he was now cleared to talk to her, he had not been ordered to do so, and was doing it of his free will.

“You’re a friend of Roland’s?” Clancy asked. His voice was soft, but it seemed to cut effectively through the clamor. Stupenagel had spent considerable time among men whose work required them to make themselves clearly heard in extremely noisy and violent places, and she recognized the trick. She could do it too.

“Like a brother to me,” she lied. “He said he would introduce me to you, so you could tell me all about being a hero cop-”

Clancy uttered a derisive snort. “You believe everything you hear?”

“You ran into a burning building. You rescued those kids from that fire.”

Clancy shrugged. “Hey, I was there, I was helping them evacuate the building, I was leading some kids down a hall. The fire was in the building next door. There was an explosion. The next thing I knew I was on fire, so I picked up the kids and ran out. They played it up big, because we were in the middle of the Knapp scandal and they needed a cop who saved a bunch of P.R. kids.”

He told the story wearily, as one who wishes it would go away. Stupenagel had seen this before as well. The denigration of heroism by the hero is often a form of boasting, and she wondered whether it was that in Clancy’s case. The man was starting to interest her. Time for a pinprick.

“Speaking of Hispanic kids, they seem not to do well in your lockup. Why is that?”

Clancy remained calm. “You read my report?”

“No.”

“I’ll send you a copy.”

“Thank you. What’s the short version, for now?” Clancy looked out again at the revelry. He asked, “Do you want a drink?” Stupenagel nodded. “Sure. A beer’d be fine.” Clancy walked off through the crowd to a cloth-covered table on which a tin tub full of ice and beer bottles rested. A large, dark-haired man in a blue sports coat hailed him, and they spoke a few words. The dark man looked briefly over at her, but she was too far away and the room far too dim and smoky for her to be able to read any expression on his face. Clancy returned with a cold bottle and a paper cup. Stupenagel remarked the cup. She poured her beer into it and sipped it, like a lady should. Then she took out her notebook.