Robert Tanenbaum - Falsely Accused

“It was a real bad thing,” said Clancy. “The first one, Ortiz, we thought it was a fluke. Bring a gypsy cabbie in for a hack violation and he kills himself? Unbelievable. What, he had remorse because he picked up a fare on the street? Okay, there’s an investigation, like there always is, we lose somebody in custody, and they cleared us. Guy hung himself on his shirt, the M.E. confirms it. Suicide. The next one’s a couple of weeks later, same thing. Jorge Valenzuela, his name was. Now we’re going crazy. We got bosses up the ying-yang, running around trying to find, did we follow procedure. And we did, to the letter. These guys, they weren’t considered suicide risks, like a guy gets drunk and wastes his wife and kids, he sobers up, you figure he might try for a hat trick, do himself too. But these were bullshit charges, maybe a fine at most. So we-I mean, the detectives-investigate. Okay, it turns out these guys are not your regular Hispanics, they’re more like Indians, from down in Central America somewhere, Guatemala, I think. Salvador. And they’re wetbacks. So they, like, have a psychological problem with jail.”

“The detectives told you this?” asked Stupenagel.

“Yeah, they interviewed some professor up at Columbia. They get into a situation they can’t handle, they just check out-I mean, more than regular people.”

“I’ve heard the theory. What do you think?”

Clancy chewed his lip and then shrugged heavily. “Look, lady, I’m just a cop, right? What do I know? — you get all kinds in the City. The fact is, we can’t watch everybody in the cells, every minute. We don’t have the troops. And we can’t strip the prisoners buck naked, the civil liberties people would go nuts. We frisk them and take belts and laces and move them out to Central Booking as soon as we can. And the third one of these guys, he didn’t hang himself at all.”

“What happened to him?”

“Roberto Fuentes. He just died. He went in there at eleven-ten at night. At six-thirty in the morning, when they went to wake them up for the trip down to Central, he was cold. Not a mark on him-just curled up and died. Sad. The kid was-what? — twenty-two. But …” He shrugged again and sighed. “That’s it. There’s some more detail in the report. Meanwhile …”

He put his beer down on the table and picked up a raincoat from a chair.

“I got to go,” he said and hoisted on the raincoat.

She eyed the beer bottle, which lacked but a few swallows. “Not much of a party animal?”

“Not much.”

“My, my, a non-drinking Irishman! This is a better story than I expected. Hold the front page.”

He smiled a tight smile. “Nice meeting you. I’ll send you that thing if you give me an address.”

She fished a card out of her bag and handed it to him. She did not want him to leave, and not because she thought there was specific information she needed from him. There was something wrong about the vibrations she was getting from him, some blankness in the picture. Stupenagel did not expect every man in the world to come on to her. Hrcany, for example, hated her. But she expected there to be something, some response to the electrical probes she was constantly emitting via voice and look and body language. Either Clancy had some dead circuits or she was losing her touch.

“Where are you off to?” she asked casually.

“Work. Around the corner. I usually take the swing shift if I can get it.” He started to walk away, and she set off after him.

“Four to twelve? Must be hard on your wife.”

He looked at her, into her eyes, and she thought she saw something unexpected flicker behind the un-revealing blue-duplicity? Or pain.

“As a matter of fact, it works out for us,” he said. “With the kids and all.”

“Oh? How many do you have?”

“Four. Joe Junior is ten, then there’s Bridie, she’s eight, Terry is six, and Patrick is two and a half.” He paused. “Patrick is a Down’s kid.”

“Oh,” she said, “that must be rough.”

He asked, “Want to see a picture?”

She nodded and smiled encouragingly, and he pulled a color snapshot from his wallet. She studied it: three little snub-nosed, grinning extroverts, and a worn-looking but still pretty blond woman smiling uncertainly, holding the dough-faced baby that would never grow up. She handed it back to him, and as she did she caught on his face an odd look, almost an expression of triumph, as if he had played a card that couldn’t be trumped.

A well-honed instinct led her to pounce. “Oh, one more thing: the detectives who arrested the boys who died-what were their names?”

He didn’t stumble, which almost disappointed her. “Paul Jackson.”

She wrote it down. “And …?”

“And his partner, John Seaver.” He started to move away again.

“Are they here?”

“No. I mean, I haven’t seen them. You could ask around. Look, I got to-”

“Anything to these rumors about your guys shaking down gypsy cabbies?” she asked abruptly, her voice with a bright edge.

Was that a thin smile as he turned away? She couldn’t tell. She experienced briefly an urge to run after Clancy, like Lois Lane on TV, grab his arm and become a pest. She quickly suppressed it; that was not her style. On the other hand, her style was not generating the usual results, In Stupenagel’s experience, men in the various macho trades were not famous for marital fidelity, and she was surprised that she had not been able to raise even a flirt from the cop. An unusual specimen, she thought, or maybe it was guilt about wifey at home with the bent kid. Or fidelity? Did that still exist? Or maybe she was losing her touch. She drained her beer and headed for the bar to eliminate that dread possibility.

Between the two of them, Marlene and Harry Bello kept Rob Pruitt pretty well stalked. Marlene took the shift between suppertime and the small hours of the morning, so that Harry could obtain the unnaturally tiny amount of rest that he needed. Harry objected to this-there was no telling when Pruitt might turn on his tormentor-but relented when Marlene agreed to take her dog along in her car. Karp knew better than to object.

They were not tailing Pruitt, precisely, only making sure that he understood that he was under observation. Carrie Lanin had been supplied with a new, unlisted phone, and she reported happily that she had not been bothered by the man either over its wires or by any additional personal invasions.

Pruitt had a new car, a dingy green Toyota Corolla. When Marlene took up her station outside his building, she could see him watching it from his window or from just inside the street door of the tenement. He was waiting for another sabotage attempt, which Marlene had no intention of providing. On several occasions, she followed him on long, seemingly aimless car rides through lower Manhattan, making only desultory attempts to keep him in sight. She was not interested in where he went. When she lost him, she would just drive to Duane Street and park in front of Carrie Lanin’s loft. Often on these occasions Pruitt would come by, and then she would wave gaily, and have the pleasure of seeing him roar off with squealing tires.

This went on for a week. Two weeks. Then Harry Bello called one evening and reported that Pruitt had started to drink heavily in a local saloon.

“You think?” asked Marlene.

“Your call,” said Bello.

“Let’s do it. Say, ten.”

Marlene fed her family and then tried to watch television with Karp, unsuccessfully. Nothing held her interest. She kept getting up and pacing, doing little meaningless errands and chores. Karp finally asked her what was wrong.

“I have to go out,” said Marlene.

“All right,” said Karp.