Black Midnight Read online

  “Hey, you leaving already?” Spinrad called after her.

  “I’m done down here, Martin.” She didn’t bother to look back at him. “Thanks for your help. Time to get down to Central. Winnegar doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

  “Positive this is one of yours, DiPalma?”

  She paused now, turned around and faced him squarely. “Oh, it’s mine, all right. Anything this depraved has to be.”

  III

  Off came the raincoat, her leather gloves stuffed inside the pocket. She hung the coat neatly on the peg behind the door to her office. Calling her office an office was being kind. It was little larger than a clothes closet. Cheap paneling covered the walls, her gunmetal gray desk itself consumed nearly half the room’s space.

  She opened the Venetian blinds behind the desk and stared out of the window at the graying day. This morning’s brief sunlight was gone. The panorama was bleak; lower Manhattan skyscrapers trailing away, clouds and lowering mist covering their pinnacles. Weary, she slumped into the black leatherette swivel chair. She took off her glasses, blew warm air on the lenses and wiped them clean with a tissue. After that, she shut her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingertips. The thrumming in her head attested to her lack of sleep, bad appetite, worse diet.

  The glaze nail polish had started to chip, she noticed, sitting straight now, elbows on the edge of her desk. Her eyes drifted to the small vanity mirror placed beside the touch tone telephone, saw that her eyeliner was smudged. Complexion was pale, small bags showed beneath her eyes. Her lips were dry, throat raw and raspy. She blew her nose, realized as she went to throw away the tissue that her arms were aching. She hadn’t noticed that before.

  You’re a mess, she told herself emotionlessly. More than a little frayed around the edges. Try getting at least one decent night’s sleep for a change. A good hot meal wouldn’t do any harm, either. Settle for a can of chicken soup. She smiled to herself. A few days of warm sun might be nice.

  She was more than tired, she knew. Thoroughly drained. Personal life a shambles; Paul on the verge of ending things for good. Her mother back in the hospital for more tests — she prayed the kidney tumor wouldn’t prove malignant — her sister’s impending divorce placing a heavier burden on her than it should. But who else was Fran going to turn to if she wasn’t there? Three kids …

  Yvonne shook out of her self-pity. There’ll be time to sit down and cry tomorrow. Not now.

  Sandwiches at her desk had been supper for three days running. Black, grainy coffee to wash the tuna salad down. Sitting at the edge of her desk were three coffee containers, all unfinished. She couldn’t believe she’d forgot to throw them away before leaving last night. God, she was becoming a mess. They stood staring back at her, a gloomy reminder of long, tiring shifts, which because of this morning’s event were about to get even longer.

  She really needed a proper meal. Trouble was, to eat, you had to have an appetite. Hers had been suffering for weeks. She hadn’t weighed herself for a while, but she was sure she’d dropped a few more pounds. Dieting was fine, only she wasn’t dieting. Her drawn face assured her that no matter how many remedies she took, this head cold wasn’t about to leave. It had lingered and lingered, with far too much work to allow the luxury of calling in sick for a couple of days. Maybe in a week. After the piles of reports were complete and Captain Winnegar was satisfied. Perhaps then she might wrangle a slice of the weeks of time owed she had accumulated.

  Yvonne lighted a cigarette, coughed. She wasn’t a heavy smoker, just enough for her lungs to be additionally aggravated by her cold. The coughing spasm passed quickly and she drew deeply on the cigarette, savoring it. Her fingertips were slightly numb, slightly trembling. Paul had been the first to notice it.

  Stay loose, she chastised herself. One thing at a time. Don’t get hogged down with too much at once. Don’t push yourself to the edge.

  She flipped through her calendar. It was filled with scrawls and messages. Paul must have phoned five times in the last few days, all messages unreturned. She’d totally forgotten their theater date on Tuesday, never bothered to cancel dinner last night. He must be out of his mind to still want anything to do with her. Damn, she didn’t want to lose him; he was the best thing to enter her life since she didn’t know how long. She remembered how things had been with Kevin, especially toward the end. The anger, the fighting, the bitterness. Separation, then divorce. Pain and emptiness, followed by the loneliness. She was positive back then she was losing her mind. And why not? Just about everything else had been lost. Except her work. Oh yes, her glorious career; decoying the streets as a hooker, watching young women tear at each other’s throats over ten bucks worth of smack. Twelve-year-old male prostitutes she’d busted. Frightened children, wildness in their eyes, packed with knives and guns.

  Kevin had watched her change. That part was okay. Only he couldn’t understand why. Not ever. What drove and motivated her seemed all so alien to him, this sweet Ivy League Boy Scout. Mr. corporate lawyer. He’d walked out on her, not the other way round. She shouldn’t have blamed him, but she did. At least then. God, the loneliness was awful. The sleeplessness, the fear of being alone. The sad looks of her friends that said DiPalma was cracking up.

  Cops have no one. Just your partners. Warren had been hers. Father confessor, confidant, therapist, savior. The only shoulder on the face of the earth she could cry on and rely on. And how she had begun to rely on him; then at the end, the anguish it had come to cost him. His own marriage in jeopardy, life beginning to crumble.

  There was no justice. Not for cops.

  Paul entering her life last year had been a blessing. So different from Kevin. So understanding. In a different way, saving her life as much as Warren Resnick had. Most men would have hit the road long ago. That Paul was still around was nothing short of a miracle. Who could blame him if he left? Yvonne knew she couldn’t stand it had the situation been reversed. But then, Paul wasn’t a cop. His life retained a measure of normalcy. Some free evenings from the paper, a routine and schedule that was manageable.

  One day she really would lose him; of that she was positive. What hurt most now was that maybe the day was already here, only she didn’t know it. Come and gone. Loving a cop was like loving an engine that never turns off.

  Maybe, though, she wouldn’t lose him after all. Maybe she might find some way.

  You’re fooling yourself again. Your career is worse than a rival. It’s your master; you’re its slave. Accept that. You’ll never have both. Kevin taught her that lesson. Choose. Make a decision. At the least ask for a transfer from TTF. Go back to some borough precinct. Anything. Turn in your badge if you have to. But don’t lose Paul. It’s not worth it.

  The thing that scares me most, she thought, is dying alone. No kids, no husband, no family.

  The clacking of electric typewriters continued unabated outside her office. As it had been all through the night, every night, seven nights a week. From her open door she could see the night shift clericals wrapping things up. The 8:00 AM day shift was about to take over.

  The squadroom desks were worn, typewriters atop them more worn. Desks largely inhabited by somber-faced humorless veterans. The electric clocks on the wall with their sweeping second hands were old, dusty, as depressing as the drab green paint that covered the walls. On every desk paperwork was stacked high; ongoing investigations, unsolved crimes with reports on leads followed up and leads yet to be followed. Some as stale as the bread crusts in the sandwich wrappers adorning every wastepaper basket.

  The backroom of the House, as every stationhouse squadroom was dubbed, was anything but a pleasant atmosphere to start yet another grueling day. Or was today even a new day at all, Yvonne mused. Just an endless continuation from the night shift and yesterday morning. And the yesterday before that.

  Stay loose. Stay cool.

  She unbuckled her shoulder strap and holstered pistol, placed them carefully inside a drawer. After that, she unzipped her
boots and took them off, took out a pair of comfortable flats and slipped her feet into them. She smoothed the wrinkles of her beige, wrinkle-free blouse, put on a touch of makeup, and painted her fingernails quickly, readying herself for the meeting with Winnegar. She’d been at her desk until almost eleven last night, in an effort to clean up a few old files. Gone home by taxi so weary that she not only stood Paul up for their date but forgot to call with an apology.

  It was 4:30 AM when her phone rang. She sprang up from a groggy sleep, certain to hear Paul’s voice on the other end, fuming, ready to tell her off. It wasn’t. It was Downtown. HQ on Winnegar’s instruction. When a detective is told to “fly” somewhere it doesn’t mean take a plane. It means to get where you’re told to fast. Car, train, bus, bicycle, feet — anything. But fast.

  Yvonne had dragged herself out of bed, managed to shower and dress in less than fifteen minutes, and was out the door. Her speeding car, unmarked, had been pulled over during the ride to One Hundred Thirty-Fifth Street by a lurking patrol car. The flash of her gold badge and the brief curt words, “Emergency. Police business,” had been enough to make the rookies stand back dumbly as her car burned rubber and sped on its way.

  No breakfast. Not even coffee. The scene on Broadway was how she greeted the dawn. She recalled Spinrad, his calm cynicism and coldly factual report, and how he — like her — had hidden his feelings. She had not liked Martin Spinrad very much when they’d first met, but she did come to respect him. A shrewd mind lurked behind that Brooklyn accent and Irish “one of the boys” demeanor. Warren also had worked with Martin. Known him for years.

  Her thoughts jumped back to Warren. At the time of her leaving Homicide his own marriage was close to breaking. Somehow they’d patched things up; Yvonne wondered if her own transfer to TTF had been a part of that.

  Resnick and DiPalma had been a good team, she knew. A strong one, complementing each other in so many ways. Both she and Warren were well aware of the gossip about them. That the relationship was a little bit too close to have been merely professional. It wasn’t the first time that a male and female team had found more than work in common. All the talk never really bothered Yvonne. Women cops were used to it. But it did exact a toll from Warren. Put a strain on him, his marriage, their own relationship. No one ever actually came out and accused them of being secret lovers. The innuendos, though, were always there. ‘Knowing’ glances, hidden smiles. Somehow people never did mind their own business. Funny, because nobody ever bothered to even ask if any of it were true. It was just there, beneath the surface, taken as a matter of fact.

  Yvonne had left Homicide with mixed feelings. She was glad for the transfer, the opportunity to work with a man as respected as Winnegar, and TTF; leaving Warren, however, had been difficult. Hurt. Although not necessarily for the reasons most supposed. She missed him, the rapport and understanding. A hundred times she’d been tempted to call him, stopped by her own convictions that she shouldn’t. Warren had a barrel of his own problems; she didn’t want to complicate them.

  “Hey, DiPalma. You look pretty bad.”

  Yvonne looked up. Gleaming white teeth wrapped by a grin stared back at her. A black Halloween pumpkin of a face, only cheerful and certainly not scary.

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.” Link’s lanky tall frame stood in her doorway. It hadn’t occurred to him to knock first. Never did, never would.

  “You have a way with words, Link.” She didn’t indicate for him to come in, didn’t indicate not to. Lincoln Jefferson Washington’s morning appearance at her door was a daily ritual. Life somehow wouldn’t seem right if he didn’t.

  He sat comfortably at the edge of her desk, legs crossed, placed down a paper bag and took out two cups of steaming hot coffee. “Want some, shark?”

  Yvonne smiled. Sometimes he called her shark, likening her professional attitude to that of the fearsome fish. Sharp teeth and relentless. “You know I do.” She took the container gratefully, not bothering to put in sugar, opened the lid and took a burning sip. It was good. Soothing to her inflamed throat. “I never said you didn’t know how to treat a lady,” she told him.

  He smirked, white teeth gleaming again against his dark brown skin. Lincoln Jefferson Washington — Link, to all his friends — was brash, young, and bright. Equally as energetic. Almost as tall as a basketball player, outwardly slender but with muscles as toned as an Olympic Decathlon medalist. He sported a thin moustache above his thick lips; enjoyed dressing outlandishly to irritate a few of his more conservative colleagues. Someone once referred to him as a larger than life version of Eddie Murphy, and he glowed in the comparison, often alternating his speech from educated college English into black street jargon, and then back again. Another contrived annoyance to rattle someone’s cage. Link was a recent addition to the TTF backroom, and to Yvonne a very welcome one.

  This morning he was wearing a felt fedora, its crown snappily creased lengthwise, curved brim over his forehead. Rectangular sunglasses framed his youthful face. His tie was pencil thin, held to his shirt by a ruby-colored tie clip. There was a white carnation in the lapel of his sport jacket which he fondled as he grinned. Yvonne took note of the white-buckled suede shoes he wore. She couldn’t help but break into laughter.

  “Something amuses you, lady?”

  “You. You pimp. Today you’ve managed to outdo yourself. You look ludicrous.”

  He feigned hurt. “Just doin’ my job. Passing time and getting laid.” Then he said. “Just wait until tomorrow. Got something even more darling planned.” What he didn’t say — didn’t need to — was that his clothes had been his uniform for the night: Prowling the streets of the city, undercover.

  Link was the only black man assigned to TTF, and he relished the role. He’d been working out a Brooklyn Anti-Crime unit when Winnegar had accepted his application. And although he really enjoyed toying with his white colleagues by purposely patronizing them, behind that clowning was one of the quickest and best minds Yvonne had ever encountered on the force. Raised in Bronx slums, Link had developed a knack for survival about the same time he learned to walk. It was a white man’s world; he realized that fast enough. His father had been a frequently laid-off union dock worker, his mother a cook’s helper in a hospital. Poorly educated, they managed to instill real dignity into their children, and Link was their finest effort. He had brains; he could make it in this white man’s world. Achieve. City College in the day, bartender at night. He’d earned his degree, and then his knocks. Three years with the army, a year during the waning days of Vietnam.

  It hadn’t been missionary zeal that brought him to the police force. Just a chance to see if he really could put himself to good use on the streets. He played basketball with the ghetto kids, organized teams, never pushed too hard. Most of Link’s kids stayed with him. Loyal and decent. A few soured. Drugs, robberies. Cop or no, he never deserted any of them. Big brother, social worker, friend. You do what you can do. It was his motto, the credo he lived by. Link could play many roles, and frequently did. To him being tough was a kind of game, and if he had to he’d play it with conviction. Academy Award performances. Scratch a little deeper and you found a sweet and deeply sensitive man, whose real love was his camera and the photographs he took.

  “Thought you were doing night shift,” Yvonne said. She glanced at the clock.

  “Nobody going nowhere today, lady. Didn’t you hear? Winnegar’s rounded up every breathing cop in New York.”

  “And maybe a few not breathing,” she added. “What’s the latest?”

  Link shrugged. “You know better than me. I haven’t been down to One Hundred Thirty-Fifth Street.”

  “It’s awful, Link. Worse than you could ever imagine.”

  He made no effort to reply; just sipped at his coffee, listening with the indifference of a coroner at a homicide scene. There hadn’t been much hard news on the disaster, but the little filtering in was making the TTF backroom a beehive of activity. Every available me
mber of the team was on emergency call for duty; pulled from days off, vacation time, even sick leave if they were well enough to call in. Outside Yvonne’s office, Vinnie Sabbatini, lieutenant detective, Winnegar’s right hand man, was huddling with detectives Moss, Gamble, and Shroeder. Forming teams, Yvonne knew. Preparing for a canvass the likes of which TTF had never seen before.

  “Been given your assignment yet?”

  “Not exactly. Just asked to look around, file a report.” Her mouth turned down in a brief frown. Filing reports comprised too much of a cop’s day. They dreaded the “fives,” as they were known. Originally designated by the code D.D. 5, they were endless blue-form sheets, in triplicate, that summarized your daily findings: tailing, canvassing, interrogation, and the like. Despite the mundane and routine, though, Yvonne loved police-work. She threw everything she had into her job and budding career. Every cop likes to moan; she certainly did her share. But the intensity of the work — especially with a squad like TTF — couldn’t be rivaled anywhere else, she knew. Give her a case to handle and whether on the streets or on the computer she went after her target like a heat-seeking missile. Sure, potent, and deadly. It was more than dedication or ambition. It was her life, no matter what it had cost her.

  Link reached out and patted her arm. He could see she was trying hard not to look shaken. He immediately felt compassion. No matter how hard you became, no matter how much violence you saw, the sight of death was never easy to take. Normally a cop might try to relieve a colleague’s tension by making a few bad gallows-humor cracks. A time-honored way of fighting the insanity of the world you were forced to live in. He kept quiet, though, aware that this morning was different, too fresh, too vividly imprinted.

  “Be good, kid,” he said in a brotherly way. “Anything you want — you know you can count on me.”

  She knew she could. Detectives worked in pairs, and apart from Warren, she’d choose Link every time.