Night Train полностью

Note meant n.o.d.—notification of death. In other words, he wanted me to go tell somebody that some­body close had died. That somebody they loved had died: This was already clear, from his voice. And died suddenly. And violently. I considered. I could have said, “I don’t do that anymore” (though Asset Forfei­ture, in fact, is hardly corpse-free). And then we might have had one of those bullshit TV conversations, with him saying You got to help me out and Mike, I’m beg­ging you, and me saying Forget it and No way and Dream on, pal, until everyone is bored blind and I finally come across. I mean, why say no when you have to say yes? For things to proceed. So I just said, again: Well, let’s hear it.

“Colonel Tom’s daughter killed herself tonight.”

“Jennifer?” And it just came out. I said: “You’re fucking me.”

“I wish I was fucking you, Mike. Really. This is as bad as it gets.”

“How?”

“.22 in the mouth.”

I waited.

“Mike, I want you to go notify Colonel Tom. And Miriam. This hour.”

I lit another cigarette. I don’t drink anymore but man do I smoke. I said, “I’ve known Jennifer Rockwell since she was eight years old.”

“Yeah, Mike. You see? If not you, who?”

“Okay. But you’re going to have to take me by the scene.”

In the bathroom I applied makeup. Like someone doing a chore. Wiping down a counter. With my mouth meanly clenched. I used to be something, I guess, but now I’m just another big blonde old broad.

Without thinking about it I found I had brought along my notebook, my flashlight, my rubber gloves, and my .38 snub.

In police work you soon get to be familiar with what we call the “yeah, right” suicide. Where you go in the door, see the body, look around the room, and say, “Yeah, right.” This was definitely not a yeah-right sui­cide. I have known Jennifer Rockwell since she was eight years old. She was a favorite of mine. But she was also a favorite of everybody else’s. And I watched her grow into a kind of embarrassment of perfection.

Brilliant, beautiful. Yeah, I’m thinking: To-die-for bril­liant. Drop-dead beautiful. And not intimidating—or only as intimidating as the brilliant-beautiful can’t help being, no matter how accessible they seem. She had it all and she had it all, and then she had some more. Her dad’s a cop. Her considerably older broth­ers are cops—both with Chicago PD, Area Six. Jennifer was not a cop. She was an astrophysicist, here at Mount Lee. Guys? She combed them out of her hair, and played the field at CSU. But for the last—Christ, I don’t know—seven or eight years, it must be, she was shacked up with another bigbrain and dreamboat: Trader. Professor Trader Faulkner. This was definitely not a yeah-right suicide. This was a no-wrong suicide.

Johnny Mac and myself pulled up in the unmarked. Whitman Avenue. Detached and semide­tached residences on a wide tree-lined street: An acad­emic dormitory on the edge of the Twenty-Seven. I climbed out in my stretch pants and my low pumps.

So the radio cars and the beat cops were there, and the science crew and the medical examiners were there, and Tony Silvera and Oltan O’Boye were there— inside. And some neighbors. But them you look right through. These uniformed figures were churning under the dome lights. And I knew they swayed to sud­den priorities. It was like in the Southern when you keyed the mike and said there was an officer down. Down, in some cases, meaning fucked up forever, in a cross-alley after a chase, on a warehouse floor, or reel­ing alone around a vanished drug corner with both his hands over his eyes. When somebody close to the murder police starts Grafting overtime for the murder police, then special rules apply. This is racial. This is an attack on every last one of us.

I badged my way through the tunnel of uniforms around the front door, making the landlady as my best witness or last-to-see. There was a fat full moon reflecting the sun on to my back. Not even Italian police are sentimental about full moons. You’re look­ing at a workload increase of twenty-five to thirty-five percent. A full moon on a Friday night and you’re talk­ing a two-hour backup in the emergency room and long lines trailing in and out of Trauma.

At the door to Jennifer’s apartment I was met by Silvera. Silvera. He and myself have worked many cases. We have stood together, like this, in many a stricken home. But not quite like this.

“Jesus, Mike.”

“Where is she?”

“Bedroom.”

“You through? Wait, don’t tell me. I’m going in.”