Richard Price - The Whites

“You’re talking about previous collars?”

“That or anything.”

“Well, my dad’s retired twenty years, so whoever had a hard-on for him is mostly likely dead or bedridden.”

The detectives stared at him, said nothing.

“As for me, I mean, I put away my share of actors, but except for a few years in the Four-nine, I’ve either been with the ID Squad or in Night Watch, so…”

“Any run-ins?”

“With other cops?” Billy shrugged. “There’s guys I didn’t get along with, but never anything heavy.”

“Can you give us some names?”

“Honestly? I’d rather not. We all shook hands in the end.”

“What’s wrong with giving them names?” Carmen asked, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“Because there’s not one of them I can’t pick up the phone and call myself,” he said. “Because there’s no need to bring up dead and buried beefs from back in the stone age.”

“Then what’s the point of them being here?” she muttered.

“How about off the Job,” Lemon asked.

“I have no idea,” Billy still arguing with Carmen in his head.

“Curtis Taft?” Amato’s turn.

“What about Curtis Taft.”

“You assaulted him in his hospital bed,” Amato said.

“I’d say assault is a little overdramatic.”

They resorted to staring at him again.

“I don’t think he’s so stupid as to come after me or my family, but by all means, do what you have to do.”

There was a pause as both cops went into their notes.

“How about that shooting back when you were in anti-crime?” Lemon asked, still looking down at his pad.

“What about it?”

“There was a lot of press, a lot of angry people.”

“It’s been over fifteen years, you’d think they’d have plenty to be angry about since.”

Carmen, still looking away, shook her head in exasperation, Billy having to restrain himself from getting into another fight with her, this one in front of their Threat Assessment Team.

“All right,” Amato said, rising. “We’ll put in a request for TARU to come out, mount a few cameras, and ask for the Yonkers PD to start running directed patrols.”

“How soon for the cameras?” Billy asked.

“Hopefully right away,” Lemon said.

“What do you mean, ‘hopefully’?”

“All we can do is put in the request.”

An hour later Billy and Carmen were sitting on the couch, each with their arms crossed tightly over their chests as they pretended to watch something or other on TV.

This was how the slow process of ending a fight always began for them, with a sullen agreement to tolerate each other’s presence while engaged in a nonverbal activity, during which, at some point, one of them would make a not-quite-spontaneous comment about something unrelated to the argument, something safe, delivered in an offhand monotone, that didn’t require a response but usually got one, also to be delivered in the same flatline tone. From there, the exchanges, always off the subject of the fight, would gradually begin to pick up speed until they were actually talking and that monotone was replaced by the natural oscilloscope of unself-conscious human speech. Formal apologies, if the situation really demanded it, usually came later in another room or, if they could get away with it, never, neither of them wanting to risk another potentially volatile encounter if it wasn’t necessary. But at the moment they were still in Stage One, the accumulation of stressed silence such that when the phone rang they both nearly levitated off the couch.

It was Billy’s sister calling to complain that Billy Senior had no change of underwear in his overnight bag. That call was followed a minute later by another, this one to announce that he had no toothpaste, then another to bitch that he had no pajama bottoms, each “had no” apparently deserving its own individual call.

“What the fuck is wrong with her all the time?” Carmen said when Billy returned to the couch.

“She thinks he didn’t like her when she was a kid.”

“Only him?”

The next time the phone rang Carmen leapt to pick it up. “I swear to Christ, Brenda, why do you always have to be such a pissed-off bitch…” Then: “Oh,” her tone downshifting. “I’m so sorry, I thought… Sure, he’s right here, right here.”

Carmen extended the phone to Billy. “It’s somebody from Immaculate, Albert Lazar?”

“Like I told you when I called, I would have been perfectly happy to come to you.”

“No problem,” Billy said.

Lazar had sounded like a wreck on the phone, like he needed to unburden himself, and Billy didn’t want him coming to the house and being subjected to the double-team tension of two freaked-out parents. He needed this guy to feel free to talk, and so he found himself in Lazar’s tiny home office in Sleepy Hollow, formerly the bedroom of his college-age daughter, the leftover floral-patterned wallpaper combining with the teacher’s visceral anxiety to shrink the already claustrophobic space to the size and feel of a sweatbox.

“So,” Billy willing himself to be cool, “now that I’m here…”

“Understand, I had no idea that you were a detective until you handed me your card yesterday.”

“No reason you should have.”

“This is kind of a long story.”

“How about we start with the punch line and work backwards?”

“Please, I need to tell it the way I need to tell it.” They were alone, Lazar’s wife and son watching TV one floor below, but he still seemed to feel the need to whisper. “Otherwise you’ll never understand.”

“Any way you want.”

Lazar stared at his hands, his kneecaps motoring.

“So,” Billy said.

“All right,” Lazar said, dropping his elbows to his knees. “All right… Last week?”

Lazar’s wife came into the room with a bowl of freshly made kale chips, her husband smiling at her with get-lost eyes. He waited for the sound of her retreating footsteps to fade before starting again.

“Last week? I had a few work meetings in Beacon, and I’m not really familiar with the town, but I was stuck there overnight and so purely out of boredom I took a walk and wound up wandering into a bar. Believe me, I hardly indulge, but I had a gin and tonic, and…”

“And…”

“Well, call me blind as a bat but I didn’t realize it was a gay bar until I ordered drink number two.”

“OK…”

“And I was so embarrassed that I just tabbed out and left.” Tabbed out, Billy thinking, not the expression of a fair-weather tippler.

“It’s just that when I was going out the door, I ran into my neighbor, one of my neighbors, Eric, from right up the block here, and when I saw him I was so flustered about coming out of that kind of place all I said was ‘Be careful in there, I think something fishy’s going on.’ And he said, ‘Thanks for the warning, I’ll stay on my toes.’”

“So this Eric…”

“Eric Salley. Understand, I’m a very tolerant individual. I have no problem with him or anyone else being gay.”

“Understood. So, this Eric Salley…”

“Is trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” When Lazar had difficulty answering, Billy added, “Is he making trouble for you?”

“No, not yet.”

“Maybe he’s tolerant, too.”

“There’s nothing for him to be tolerant about.”

“Understood.”

“Look, I teach at a Catholic school in a working-class city.”

“Right.”

“A rumor gets started… Those kids are my life.”

“You’re very popular, I know. But you’re having a hard time telling me what it is you want me to know, so let me just ask, is this Eric Salley the one I’m looking for?”