The defense of Donald Worden in the captain’s office was a subdued affair, but D’Addario’s quiet refusal to burn a detective was soon known to the entire shift. It was, the detectives agreed, one of LTD’s finer moments and proof positive that he was a man that other men could follow.
It had been one thing, after all, for D’Addario to cater a bit to the chain of command when the clearance rate was low; that cost nothing and allowed his detectives to do their work with only a minimum of interference from the bosses. Besides, the same clearance rate that had made D’Addario seem vulnerable earlier in the year was now his ally. Even with the summer homicide deluge on them, the rate was now hovering at 70 percent, and the lieutenant’s leadership, which had earlier been open to question, was once again of some value to the bosses. For D’Addario, the worm had turned.
But even if the rate had been low, D’Addario would have felt obligated to speak up in the captain’s office. Worden in a jackpot? Donald Worden? The Big Man? What the hell could the bosses be thinking? However seriously the idea had been considered, if it had really been considered at all, there was no further mention of it after D’Addario’s conversation with the captain. And yet the lieutenant knew that his defense of Worden could only go so far; in the end, Worden might not be abused for his part in the Larry Young fiasco, but the detective was most certainly correct in believing that he had already been badly used.
Worden had given another man-a politician, of course, but a man nonetheless-his promise. And now, for the sake of its own public image, the police department and the mayor’s office were proving just how much such a promise was worth.
Still, even a badly used detective has to eat, and on this summer morning, Worden mixes his anger with a little patience as he waits for Eddie and Dave Brown to return from their murder scene. When Dave Brown finally returns to the office, he glides gently into the coffee room, conscious of Worden’s week-long anger. Wordless, he lays the egg sandwich directly in front of the Big Man, then swings back toward his own desk.
“What do I owe you?” asks Worden.
“I covered it.”
“No. What do I owe you?”
“That’s okay, bunk. I’ll get you next time.”
Worden shrugs, then sits back to pick at his breakfast. McLarney was off last night, and as senior man, Worden had worked the midnight shift as the acting supervisor. It had been miserable and now Worden can look forward to another full shift of shepherding witnesses to and from the grand jury that is hearing the Larry Young case. The whole fiasco would probably consume the rest of the week.
“What did you have out there?” Worden asks Dave Brown.
“Stone fucking whodunit.”
“Hmmm.”
“Dead yo in a low-rise courtyard. When we rolled him, he still had his own gun in his pants. That bad boy was cocked, too, with one in the chamber.”
“Someone was quicker on the draw, huh?” offers Rick James from the other end of the room. “Where’s he shot?”
“Top of the head. Like the shooter was above him or maybe caught him when he was ducking down.”
“Ouch.”
“He’s got an exit wound in the neck and we got the bullet, but it’s all fucked up, pancaked like. No good for comparison.”
James nods.
“I need a car for the morgue,” says Brown.
“Take this one,” says James, tossing the keys. “We can walk over to the courthouse.”
“I don’t know about that, Rick,” says Worden with bitter sarcasm. “I don’t know if we can give him a car to do real police work. If he was investigating a senator or something like that, it would be one thing. But I don’t think he gets a car for a murder…”
James shakes his head. “Hey, they can do whatever they want,” he tells Worden. “I’m just happy to be making money again.”
“Oh hell yeah,” says Dave Brown. “More money than I’m gonna make on this murder, I’ll bet.”
“That’s right,” says Worden. “For purposes of the Larry Young investigation, the overtime cap has been lifted. From now on, I won’t be working murders anymore. There’s just no money in it…”
Worden lights another Backwoods and leans back against the green bulkhead, thinking that the joke is both funny and unfunny.
Three weeks ago, the officer who discovered the body of John Randolph Scott in the alley off Monroe Street went before the same grand jury and refused to answer any questions about the unexplained death of a man whom he had been pursuing. Sergeant John Wiley read a brief statement to the grand jury, complaining about having been treated like a suspect in the murder, then invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Wiley was not offered immunity by the prosecutors and he subsequently walked out of the grand jury, effectively sending the Monroe Street investigation into a long, final stall. In the absence of any other definitive evidence, Tim Doory, the lead prosecutor, did not ask the grand jury for any indictment. In fact, Doory had to do some fast talking to keep the grand jurors from issuing any indictments; after hearing Worden and James testify about the contradictory statements made by officers involved in the pursuit of John Scott, several members of the panel were more than ready to hand up a charge until Doory convinced them that the case could not be successfully prosecuted. Indict it now and we’ll lose it on the merits, he told them. And then, even if we get fresh evidence a year from now, we’ve played our hand. Double jeopardy says a man can’t be tried twice for the same crime.
Doory’s speech effectively closed the Monroe Street investigation, leaving both Worden and James with a bad taste. Doory was a good lawyer, a careful prosecutor, but both detectives were tempted to second-guess the decision not to indict: “If the suspect was Joe the Rag Man,” James declared at one point, “he’d have been charged.”
Instead, the Monroe Street investigation was consigned to a separate file drawer in the admin lieutenant’s office-a burial apart from the other open cases, an interment that befitted the only unsolved police-involved shooting in the department’s history.
After months of work, that outcome was hard enough for Worden to swallow. And on the board, meanwhile, the names of two March murder victims were still written in red next to Worden’s initial. Sylvester Merriman waited for the Big Man to find that missing witness, the teenage runaway from the group home; Dwayne Dickerson waited for Worden to shake something loose from the neighborhood around Ellamont Avenue. And for the rest of this week as well, McLarney’s squad would be working a midnight shift, virtually assuring Worden that he would catch a fresh one before Saturday. The last six months had left him with a full, heaping plate of bone and gristle. Yet the city of Baltimore was paying him unlimited OT to chew on a wounded politician’s leg.
“I’ll tell you this,” the Big Man tells Rick James in between bites of the sandwich. “This is the last time I let myself be used. I’m not here to do their dirty work.”
James says nothing.
“I don’t give a damn about Larry Young, but you give a man your word…”
Worden’s word. It was a rock in the Northwest District, and it was good as gold when he was back in the old escape and apprehension unit. Hell, if you found yourself in a room with a CID robbery detective by the name of Worden, you took anything said to you there as fact. But this was the homicide unit-land of the forgotten promise-and Worden is again being made to understand that at any given moment, the bosses own the rulebook.
“No matter what happens,” he tells James, blowing cigar smoke toward the window. “They can’t take your EOD away from you.”
James nods; the comment is anything but a non sequitur. Worden’s Entrance On Duty date is 1962. He’s got the mandatory twenty-five plus one for good measure; Worden can go out on a full pension in the time it takes to type up the forms.