Richard Hawke - Speak of the Devil

I leaned back in my chair. I noted again the commissioner’s labored breathing. Tommy Carroll had been a heavy smoker ever since I’d known him. He’d quit lately. I wondered if he’d quit too late. He dipped his large chin toward his chest, his eyes inviting me to speak.

“I shot him, Tommy. I hit him in the right shoulder.”

He was wagging his head even before I’d finished talking. “You didn’t shoot him, Fritz. Officer Leonard Cox shot him.”

“Who is Officer Leonard Cox?”

“He’s the cop who shot Roberto Diaz.”

“Did he shoot him in the right shoulder?”

Carroll nodded.

“Did he shoot him out by the Bethesda Fountain?”

Another nod.

“While giving chase?”

“Of course. What else?”

“Well, I don’t know what else, Tommy. Since we’re obviously stringing fantasies together here, maybe this Officer Cox shot Diaz because Diaz was running around with a flowerpot on his head, and the new rule is no flowerpots on the head on national holidays. I don’t know. What the hell is this all about?”

As Carroll was raising a hand in a gesture to quiet me down, the phone on his desk rang. He picked it up, still looking at me, and listened a few seconds. Then he said, “No. Not yet.” He listened a few more seconds, then grunted and hung up. “That was the mayor.”

“I hope he’s not wearing a flowerpot on his head.”

“You’re talking to him in five minutes.”

“Okay, Tommy, can we get everything out on the table? Why was I taken away from the scene and shoved onto the floor of a police cruiser with a bag over my head? Why was I taken to the Municipal Building? Was Diaz run through the same routine? Where is he now? And last but not least, why am I supposed to start pretending that I didn’t shoot the guy in the shoulder, or anywhere else, for that matter? I’m seeing the mayor in five minutes? Fine. I’ll give you two of those minutes to tell me exactly what the hell’s going on, or I’m walking out of here.” I indicated the television, where Kelly Cole was still yammering into her microphone out in front of City Hall. “Forget Greene. Kelly and I are old pals. You can tell the mayor to tune in to the Channel Four News for all the latest.”

Carroll looked as if he would be quite happy to see my head come off my neck and crash to the floor in pieces. He cleared the telephone to the edge of the desk with his arm, as if making room to lunge forward and grab me by the collar.

“Leavitt knew about the shooting in advance.”

The words came in loud and clear, but I had to run them through the filter several times just to be sure. “He knew Diaz was gong to shoot up the Thanksgiving parade?”

“Not exactly. He didn’t know the specific details of what was going to happen. He didn’t know the where or the who or the when.”

“But he knew?”

“He’d been warned that something might happen.”

“And he did nothing to stop it?”

“You’re not listening. I just told you. He didn’t know what or where or when. Believe me, we were working on it. The parade was an obvious target. I tried to get him to cancel the damn thing, but in this town that’s like asking someone to cancel Christmas. Leavitt wasn’t about to do something like that. Especially now, with all this other crap coming down. People like a parade. It gets their mind off stuff. The whole point was not to go public.”

“I’m not following you.”

“Diaz contacted the mayor a couple of weeks ago. Of course he didn’t give us his name. It was a note. He made… let’s just say he made some demands. I can’t go into details.”

“Can I assume they were unreasonable demands?”

“Of course they were. You know how it is, we hear from nutcases all the time. It’s almost always them just blowing off steam. Nothing comes of it. This guy, who could say? He wasn’t specific about his threats. They never are. But we weren’t sitting on our thumbs. We were working to worm him out, but obviously he acted before we could get to him.”

“What were the demands?”

“I just told you, I can’t go into details.”

“Is that what I should tell Kelly Cole?”

“You’re not telling Cole anything. Maybe I haven’t impressed on you the seriousness of this whole thing. We have seven known dead out there, including one of our own. We’ve got more who are injured. Some of them pretty badly. So we might lose a few more.”

“Half an hour ago you were calling these numbers lucky.”

“Fuck half an hour ago. Now is now. There’s nothing lucky about any of this. It’s a nightmare. But it’s not half the nightmare it’s going to be if word gets out that the mayor was warned in advance. You know how it works. It doesn’t matter that no one knew where or when or any of the details at all. The only thing that matters is the mayor was told someone was ready to do some real fucking damage in this city, and that for all our efforts to stop the guy, the damage was done. We’re not putting that word out. Simple as that.”

“So you’re manipulating the truth.”

“Fuck the truth.”

“Nice,” I said.

“That’s how it is.”

“So what about Rebecca Gilpin?”

“What about her?”

“The shooter aimed at her first. I was right there. The first bullet was a head shot on Mother Goose.”

“What of it?”

“What do you mean, ‘what of it’? Apparently the whole world knows that Leavitt is fluffing the pillows with this woman. Come on, Tommy. Diaz was trying to kill the mayor’s lady friend. Don’t tell me he wasn’t. He was making it personal.”

Carroll grumbled, “I told him to pull her from the parade just in case. Easy enough to do. Put out the word that she’s got a twenty-four-hour flu. He presented it to her. Let me tell you something, Fritz, this is a woman who doesn’t listen. If you’ve got two seconds, I can tell you how much patience I’ve got for celebrities.”

“Okay, so why are you trying to twist the truth about who shot Diaz?”

“Politics.”

“Explain, please.”

“You’re a citizen. We’re damn lucky you’re a licensed snoop, even though the gun you used wasn’t the one you’re licensed to shoot. But at least you’re not some trigger-happy Joe Everybody grabbing a gun and running around trying to be a hero. But even with you being a private dick, it’s not a good picture. Vigilante justice is something we can do without.”

I understood. “But a cop chasing the perp, winging him in the shoulder and taking him into custody, that’s a good story. That’s clean. That’s ‘Hero Cop Saves City from More Hell.’ Am I reading the headlines correctly? A good apple? Is that what you’re angling for? A little positive news for once?”

“It’s close.”

“Close. What am I missing?”

Before he could answer, the office door opened and in walked Martin Leavitt. Without a word, he strode to the television set, where he moved his hand over the controls like a wizard doing a little conjuring. He turned to the police commissioner. “Where’s the sound?”

Carroll picked up the remote and pushed the mute button. Kelly Cole’s voice was twice as loud as any of us were prepared for.

“… this horrifically tragic day. A spokesman for St. Luke’s confirmed just a few minutes ago that the still-unidentified gunman died of wounds inflicted during the shootout with police that had resulted in the gunman’s being taken into custody. Apparently, the suspect was struck-”

I was out of my chair. “ Died ? I shot him in the fucking shoulder !”

“You didn’t shoot him,” Tommy Carroll said flatly. “We just went over that.”

Mayor Leavitt slammed his hand against the television’s power button. The screen went blank. His face was pale as chalk. “We’ve got a problem.”