Night Train полностью

In this second-echelon American city, mildly famed for its Jap-financed Babel Tower, its harbors and marinas, its university, its futuristically enlight­ened corporations (computer software, aerospace, pharmaceuticals), its high unemployment, and its cat­astrophic inner-city taxpayer flight, a homicide police works maybe a dozen murders per year. Sometimes you’re a primary investigator on the case, sometimes a secondary. I worked one hundred murders. My clear­ance rate was just above average. I could read a crime scene, and, more than once, I was described as an “exceptional interrogator.” My paperwork was out­standing. When I came to CID from the Southern everybody expected my reports to be district quality. But they were downtown quality, right from the start. And I sought to improve still further and gave it a hun­dred percent. One time I did a very, very competent job, collating two rival accounts of a hot-potato homi­cide in the Seventy-Three: One witness/suspect versus another witness/suspect. “Compared to what you guys give me to read,” pronounced Detective Sergeant Hen-rik Overmars, brandishing my report at the whole squad, “this is fucking oratory. It’s goddamn Cicero versus Robespierre.” I did the work as best I could until I entered my own end-zone and couldn’t do it anymore. In my time, I have come in on the aftermath of maybe a thousand suspicious deaths, most of which turned out to be suicides or accidentals or plain unat-tendeds. So I’ve seen them all: Jumpers, stumpers, dumpers, dunkers, bleeders, floaters, poppers, bursters. I have seen the bodies of bludgeoned one-year-olds. I have seen the bodies of gang-raped nona­genarians. I have seen bodies left dead so long that your only shot at a t.o.d. is to weigh the maggots. But of all the bodies I have ever seen, none has stayed with me, in my gut, like the body of Jennifer Rockwell.

I say all this because I am part of the story I am going to tell, and I feel the need to give some idea of where I’m coming from.

As of today—April second—I consider the case “Solved.” It’s closed. It’s made. It’s down. But yet the solution only points toward further complexity. I have taken a good firm knot and reduced it to a mess of loose ends. This evening I meet with Paulie No. I will ask him two questions. He will give me two answers. And then it’s a wrap. This case is the worst case. I won­der: Is it just me? But I know I’m right. It’s all true. It’s the case. It’s the case. Paulie No, as we say, is a state cutter. He cuts for the state. He dissects people’s bod­ies and tells you how come they died.

Allow me to apologize in advance for the bad lan­guage, the diseased sarcasm, and the bigotry. All police are racist. It’s part of our job. New York police hate Puerto Ricans, Miami police hate Cubans, Houston police hate Mexicans, San Diego police hate Native Americans, and Portland police hate Eskimos. Here we hate pretty well everybody who’s non-Irish. Or nonpo-lice. Anyone can become a police—Jews, blacks, Asians, women—and once you’re there you’re a mem­ber of a race called police, which is obliged to hate every other race.

These papers and transcripts were put together piecemeal over a period of four weeks. I apologize also for any inconsistencies in the tenses (hard to avoid, when writing about the recently dead) and for the informalities in the dialogue presentation. And I guess I apologize for the outcome. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

For me the thing began on the night of March fourth and then evolved day by day and that’s how I’m going to tell this part of it.

That evening I was alone. My guy Tobe was out of town, attending some kind of computer convention. I hadn’t even started on dinner: I was sitting there with my Discuss Group biography open on the couch, next to the ashtray. It was 20:15. I remember the time because I had just been startled out of a nod by the night train, which came through early, as it always does on Sundays. The night train, which shakes the floor I walk on. And keeps my rent way down.

The phone rang. It was Johnny Mac, a.k.a. Detec­tive Sergeant John Macatitch. My colleague in Homi­cide, who has since made squad supervisor. A great guy and a hell of a detective.

“Mike?” he said. “I’m going to have to call in a big one.”

And I said, Well, let’s hear it.

“This is a bad one, Mike. I want you to ride a note for me.”