Chapter Thirty-seven

THOUGH HE generally preferred to stand in his doorway and bellow, this time Lieutenant Joe Frazelli elected to use his intercom. He pushed the button, got an answer, and said, “Frank, come in here you get a sec.”

Maybe a minute later there was a knock on his door and he was looking up at the tall frame of Frank Batiste.

“Close the door,” he said. Then, “What kind a cake you like, Frank?”

Batiste stayed standing. He was a quiet, thorough officer who was especially good when paired with less experienced men. Of everyone in homicide, he had perhaps the least pugnacious character. Not that he couldn’t mix it up when he had to, but he preferred to leave alone the office posing and pecking. Well, Frazelli thought, somebody’s got to be that way. It sets him off a little, and that’s to the good.

“Cake?” Batiste asked. “I don’t know. I guess they’re pretty much the same. I’m not much of a cake eater, Joe.”

Perfect. Frazelli loved it. “Goddammit, Frank, I don’t give a shit about what you like. I got Marylouise out there humping her telephone to make a call down to the bakery and get a cake, and if she don’t hear from me in about another minute then the whole goddamn office is gonna know before I want ’em to.”

Batiste, not born yesterday, nodded and broke a smile. “Plain chocolate, sir. Chocolate icing. Chocolate on the inside. Boy, makes my mouth water.”

Frazelli punched the intercom again and whispered to Marylouise that Frank liked chocolate cake. He asked her how long it would take, and she said usually about twenty-five minutes.

“Sit down, Frank, you make me nervous hovering like that. But before you do…” Frazelli stood up behind his desk and extended a hand. “Congratulations, Lieutenant,” he said.

“You mind if I call my wife?” Batiste asked.

Frazelli shook his head. “Wait ’til after the cake, would you? The whole timing of this office is centered around Marylouise and her fucking cakes. We can’t get new cops, but we got petty cash for cakes up the wazoo. Well,” he said, grinning, “it ain’t my problem anymore. You’ll get used to it.”

Batiste scanned the office. “How long you been here, sir, as lieutenant?”

Frazelli twisted his wedding ring. “Fourteen years,” he said with a little laugh. “My stepping stone to Chief.” He sighed. “You want a little peace-of-mind advice? This isn’t a step to anything. Just treat it like its own job. God knows it’ll keep you busy. On the other hand, Rigby”-the current Chief-“had the job before I did.”

“I’ll do what I do,” Frank said. “See where I wind up.” But a cloud crossed his face. “You don’t mind my asking, who’s going down? The new guys, I mean.”

“Giometti’s staying, let’s put it positive. I decided not to make him pay for getting in the middle of a pissing contest. Being around it he probably learned more than a year here would teach him in the normal course of events anyway.”

“Abe and Carl?”

Frazelli nodded. “That’s the trouble with pissing contests. You wind up all covered with piss.”

They both laughed.

“I really thought one of them had it, the promotion.”

“No, you three were up all along. You, though, had the good sense to not let a murder suspect kill himself in your armed and august presence.” Frazelli got a little worked up. “And thank God it was only himself and not everybody else in the whole fucking parking lot.”

“I can’t believe… I couldn’t believe it when I heard that happened.”

“I still can’t believe it.”

“What were they thinking about?”

“Probably what kind of cake they were gonna order when I called them in here.” Frazelli sat back. “Fuck it, though, they’re both good cops. They just timed this one bad. So they’ll get a nod next time-they’re both due.”

“I wouldn’t want ’em off the squad.”

FrazeUi said, “Nah, you won’t lose ’em, Frank. They’re here ’cause it’s what they do.” He punched his intercom again. “Marylouise, how many people we got out there?”

“Everybody,” she said. “I haven’t let anybody out.”

“All right, don’t.” He stabbed the button again. “She hasn’t let anybody out. Jesus! You know who runs this department? Fucking Marylouise Bezdikian!” He stopped spewing. “You think we ought to get Abe and Carl in, let ’em know before the others?”

Batiste shrugged. “Tough call, Joe. Up to you.”

Frazelli worried it a minute, twisting his ring. “Fuck it,” he said. “Who needs it? It’s their problem.”

In Frazelli’s office, in the outer office, everything went suddenly silent, then picked up again.

“Angels passing,” Batiste said.

“What’s that?”

“Like that, when it’s all of a sudden quiet. My wife says it’s angels passing.”

“Passing gas, more likely,” said Frazelli, poetic as a cement truck. He went back to twisting his ring.

“You know,” Batiste said, “I got one other question you don’t mind?”

“Shoot.”

“Well, you know, you hear things…”

Frazelli listened, knowing what was coming.

“Well, point is, I don’t want to come in some morning and find a Triple-A bumper sticker on the door, you know?”

Frazelli knew. Triple-A was department slang for Affirmative Action Asshole. The wedding ring suddenly was getting a real workout. Realizing what he was doing, the lieutenant stopped himself, put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, feet on his desk.

Frank had plenty of time to find out how things worked. Why ruin the moment for him now? “You know, Frank,” Frazelli said, “you hear that shit all the time. But you got the gig ’cause you earned it, pure and simple. Anybody thinks otherwise, you send ’em to me, even after I’m retired and out on the Bay fishin’.”

The intercom buzzed. Marylouise said, “The cake’s here.”

Frazelli stood up. “You ready?” he asked. “Let’s go have some cake.”

Jane was with him, her hand resting easily on the inside of his thigh. She sat close up next to him at the end of the bar by the large windows, drinking a negroni. She’d throw her head back and laugh her deep laugh. She glowed in the Friday dusk.

Hardy had opened up a little after one, working a short shift. McGuire preferred to work Friday night because of the good tips, where Hardy liked to come in and set up, then have Friday night to himself. Jane and he used to call it date night. Maybe it would be again.

He’d gone back to work on Wednesday, using his time behind the bar, he realized-the way he always had-to keep the pretense of being a social animal without really having to interact. It suited him now, the disengagement, so long as he knew why he was doing it. He had felt dazed, somehow, wanting to be alone.

Yesterday, he’d gone downtown and worked out his statement. Glitsky hadn’t been around. The new lieutenant told him that with Glitsky, Griffin and the two priests corroborating their story, they’d declared Eddie’s death a homicide.

Moses’s reaction had been mixed. At first he was all hyped up, happy to have Frannie covered. But then a distance, a sullen melancholy politeness crept in that Hardy had only now just figured out.

He understood it, but it didn’t seem right to him. Moses, after all, had hired him to do a job and offered him something as payment. It had been a contract, as binding as anything written up, signed and notarized.

And Hardy wasn’t worried about Moses reneging on their deal -he wouldn’t do that. What bothered him was Moses’s reaction to it. How could they work as partners, after being friends for so long, with that friction between them? And it was obvious that Moses, having thought about the reality of it and not the grand romance of the gesture, was resenting it-losing a quarter of the bar he’d owned for most of a decade.

When he’d come in tonight, with a scowl and a manila folder, Hardy guessed he’d brought some papers to sign. Even Jane, who hadn’t laid eyes on the man in some years, had said, “This isn’t the McGuire I knew.”