Эд Горман - Stranglehold

“Kapoor? Yeah. For a cop, I mean. She’s got her job to do and we’ve got ours. She’ll try and nail you and we’ll try to show her that she’s wrong. Jim Shapiro knows what he’s doing.”

“I get the feeling you do, too.”

“Well, maybe. I hope so. If this thing isn’t going our way by tomorrow afternoon, I’m sending for a private detective we work with in Chicago. He’s relentless.”

A second black-and-white swept in and headed for the rear of the building.

“I really want to open this door and just start running.”

“I know you do.”

“And you wouldn’t stop me?”

“No.”

“Poor Gwennie.”

“Think of what you running would do to her, Bobby. She doesn’t want to think of you in jail, but think of the nightmares she’d have if you were on the run. Not knowing where you were, how you were surviving. Always worried that you’d draw a bad cop some night and he’d kill you just for sport. Think of that, Bobby. Think of what it’d do to your wife and what it’d do to your baby.”

He opened the door and angled around in the seat as if he were going to get out. Then he just sat there. The wind rocked the car again. The cold chased all the heat out of the rental.

He got out then and just stood there, gaping around as if he’d awakened in a new realm. Then he ducked his head back in and said, “C’mon. We might as well get this bullshit over with.” Then: “Think you could pick me up a couple packs of smokes and drop them off? I’ve only got about five or six left in this pack. Generics’d be fine.”

“What kind do you like when you can afford them?”

“Regular Winstons, I guess.”

“I’ll get you a couple of those.”

He nodded and withdrew his head.

A quick minute later we were walking through the front doors of the police station.

It was the day of weeping women.

We passed three young black men watching us suspiciously just inside the doors as we walked up to the information counter. Behind us we heard sobbing. In the corner where I’d waited this morning a young black woman was trying to comfort a sobbing middle-aged woman I guessed was her mother. They both wore Bears jackets and jeans. Large cheap purses squatted on the floor next to them like waiting pets. Her sobs were so sharp I felt them physically. Helpless proximity to suffering is a form of suffering itself.

“May I help you?” This was a female cop in a light-blue uniform shirt. She was built like a wrestler and had a voice to match.

“I’d like to talk to a detective. Preferably Detective Kapoor.”

“What’s this about, sir?”

“I’d rather discuss that with the detective.”

“Well, Kapoor — she’s in court right now.”

“Well, then, whatever detective’s on duty, I guess.”

“And your name?”

“Dev Conrad.”

“And yours?” Her eyes met Bobby’s.

He mumbled, “Bobby Flaherty.”

The hard blue eyes bloomed with recognition. “You go sit down over there. I’ll have a detective out here right away.”

We went to the waiting area and sat down. The older woman had quit crying and had now folded her hands in her lap. Her lips told me she was making a silent prayer. She was worn beyond her years, sweat sheening her dark skin. It wasn’t hot in here. The sweat came from panic and terror. I’d caught just enough of her conversation to recognize that one of her children was in one of the interrogation rooms and that he was in the kind of trouble that would send him away for long years that only his mother would worry about.

Bobby closed his eyes and set his head against the wall. His sighs came out as daggers. His jaw muscles were busy and his shoes danced in time to music only he could hear.

The detective who appeared resembled the broker my firm used. I put his age at late thirties. He wore a good blue suit, a quiet blue-on-blue tie, his thinning hair was cut military-school short, and he proffered a smile that said he was happy to meet us, even though “us” included a young man who just might have popped two people.

“My name’s Detective Brian Courtney. Why don’t we take a walk down the hall over here and I’ll hunt up some coffee for us.”

The officer at the information desk watched Bobby with her upper lip curled up. She was probably around fifty and hadn’t yet acclimated herself to the public-relations approach cops took these days, at least when there were witnesses around.

Courtney put us in a small beige room with five folding chairs and a five-foot-long folding table. We were being videotaped — standard operating procedure. “I’ll get us that coffee.”

Courtney came back with three paper cups of vending-machine coffee. He did this while opening and closing the doors. When he set them down, he said, “It tastes like shit, but hey, it’s warm, right?” Then he did Police 101. “Bobby, let’s get the basic facts down fast, and then we can go back for the details.”

“What facts?” Bobby snapped.

“Basically, how you killed them — the Davies woman and your father.”

Bobby lurched from his chair. I was sitting next to him and grabbed his arm and forced him to sit back down.

“We didn’t come here to confess,” I said. “Bobby didn’t have anything to do with those murders. There’s a warrant out for his arrest. All we’re doing is honoring the warrant. And in a few minutes Jim Shapiro will be here, and I don’t plan to say anything else about the case until he’s here.”

“Jim Shapiro. Must be nice to have the kind of money it takes to hire him.”

“He says it’s pro bono. He believes, as do I, that Bobby didn’t have anything to do with the crimes.”

“Pro bono. Jim must have bought his allotment of classic MGs for this year. He collects them, you know.”

“Yeah, I heard they were going to pass a law against that. It must’ve gotten through, huh?”

It was at that moment that he discovered me. I’d just been some nuisance bastard dragging a double-murderer into his clutches, but now I was as much his enemy as Bobby was. Now I was real and he didn’t like me at all.

“Exactly what is your interest in this?” His fake cordiality had a nasty edge to it now.

“I’m a friend of his wife’s.”

“Oh? And how does that work?”

“It ‘works’ that I’m a friend of his wife’s.”

“Uh-huh. Are you a lawyer, Mr. Conrad?”

“No, I’m not. I’m a political consultant.”

You could see all the computing going on behind the robot eyes. “I see. And you’re working in this area?”

“My firm is. For the Cooper campaign.”

The smile was deadly. “Congresswoman Cooper. I wouldn’t advertise that in this building if I was you.”

A knock interrupted our sparring. A voice said: “I’ve got Jim Shapiro out here, Lieutenant. All right if he comes in?”

“Fine. Send him in.”

Shapiro came in like a bullet. He looked ready for court in a custom-cut gray pinstriped suit. He carried a briefcase and a cup of 7-Eleven coffee. He smelled of masculine cologne and cold air. He set the briefcase on the table and nodded to me. He didn’t look at Bobby; instead his eyes focused on Courtney. “You’re not nearly as pretty as Kapoor, Brian.”

“Kapoor is in court. I got ahold of her. She’s on her way. For now here I am and here you are and now that you’re here I don’t know exactly why our friend Mr. Conrad has to sit in.”

Shapiro’s tone was icy. “He did you and the police force a big favor, Lieutenant. This was successfully resolved without anybody being injured.” The implication being that Courtney might be disappointed about that fact.

Courtney shrugged. “Whatever. I’d be just as happy if he left.”