Homicide - A Year On The Killing Streets Part 36

"Hey, if they're leaving you alone in here with me, you're okay," Edgerton tells her. "It's when about eight people are hovering over you that you're in trouble."

Janie smiles.

"What happened exactly?" Edgerton asks.

"It happened so fast ... Him and Durrell was inside in the kitchen. Durrell had come in 'cause he was fightin' with me."

"Go back to the beginning. What started it?"

"Like I told you, he saw me in a car with this guy and got mad. He came in and went down, and when he come back he put the gun to my head and starts yellin' and all, so Durrell comes into the kitchen ..."

"Did you see him shoot Durrell?"

"No, they went into the kitchen, and when I hear the shot I ran ..."

"Did Durrell and him talk?"

"No. It happened too fast."

"No time for any words, huh?"

"Uh-uh."

"Then he came outside after you?"

"Uh-huh. Fired the first shot and I tried to duck, but I fell down in the street. He came up and was right over me."

"How long you been going together?"

"Almost a year."

"Where's he stay?"

"In the house."

"That wasn't all his clothes in there."

"No, he got more in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He got another girl he stays with up on Pennsylvania Avenue, too. I seen her once."

"You know her?"

"I just seen her once."

"Where's he hang at? Where's he likely to go?"

"Downtown area. Park and Eutaw,' round there."

"Any special place he'd go?"

"Sportsman's Lounge."

"At Park and Mulberry?"

"Yeah. He know Randy. The bartender."

"Okay, honey," says Edgerton, closing his notebook. "You rest easy now."

Janie squeezes his hand, then looks up at him.

"Durrell?" she asks. "He dead, right?"

He hesitates.

"It doesn't look good," he says.

Later this night, when Ronnie Lawis returns to the empty Westport rowhouse for his belongings, a neighbor is out on a porch to see him and call police. A responding Southern District uniform corners the man in the bas.e.m.e.nt and, after applying the handcuffs, discovers a .32 Sat.u.r.day Night Special behind the hot water heater. An NCIC fingerprint check the following day shows that Lawis is, in fact, a man named Fred Lee Tweedy who escaped from a Virginia prison a year ago, having been incarcerated on a previous murder conviction.

"If my name was Tweedy," says Edgerton, reading the report, "I'd have an alias, too."

Another summer call, another summer clearance. The season has brought out the new and improved Harry Edgerton, at least as far as the rest of his squad is concerned. He's answering phones. He's handling calls. He's writing 24-hour reports. After one police shooting, there was Edgerton in the middle of the coffee room, offering to debrief a witness or two. If not entirely convinced of Edgerton's character transplant, Donald Kincaid has at least been mollified. And while Edgerton isn't exactly winning awards for early relief on midnight s.h.i.+ft and daywork, he has been getting to the office a little earlier and then, as usual, leaving later than the others.

Part of the change is Roger Nolan-the sergeant trapped in the middle of it all-who talked to Edgerton about avoiding acrimony and using some practical politics now and then. Part of it is Edgerton himself, who took some of Nolan's advice because he was getting d.a.m.n tired of being the focal point for everyone else's backbiting. And part of it has been the other men in the squad-Kincaid and Bowman, in particular-who are also making some effort to uphold the existing truce.

Yet everyone in the room knows that it is a temporary and fragile peace, dependent on the goodwill of too many aggravated people. Edgerton is willing to placate his critics to a point, but beyond that, he is what he is and he does what he does. Likewise, Kincaid and Bowman are willing to hold their tongues so long as the lamb doesn't stray too far from the fold. Given these realities, the friendly banter can't last, though for now, Nolan's squad seems to be holding itself together.

In fact, Nolan's boys are on something of a roll, handling five or six more cases than either of the other squads on D'Addario's s.h.i.+ft and solving a better percentage of those murders. Not only that, but Nolan's people have been saddled with nine of the seventeen police-involved shooting incidents this year. And more than the murders, it's the police shootings-with their inc.u.mbent issues of criminal and civil liability-that can bring the bosses down on the squad like a plague of locusts. This year's crop of shooting reports, however, has so far cleared the command staff without causing so much as a rustle. All in all, from Nolan's point of view, it's turning out to be a respectable year.

Rich Garvey and his eight clearances are, of course, a large share of Nolan's happiness, but Edgerton, too, is beginning a little streak of his own, one that began with that drug murder on Payson Street back in late May. After putting that case down, he found himself preoccupied with the Joe Edison trial in Judge Hammerman's court, a successful three-week legal campaign to get a nineteen-year-old sociopath life in prison for one of the four drug murders from 1986 and '87 in which he was charged. Edgerton returned to the rotation in time for nightwork and the shooting call in Westport, which would be followed by two more clearances before summer's end-one of them a whodunit street shooting from the Old York Road drug market. In the homicide unit, four clearances in a row is usually enough to mute anyone's critics, and for a brief time, the tension in Nolan's squad seems to ease.

During one four-to-twelve s.h.i.+ft in midsummer, Edgerton is sitting at his desk in the main office, a phone receiver braced against a shoulder and a cigarette wedged into the corner of his mouth.

Worden walks by and Edgerton begins an exaggerated pantomime, causing the older detective to pull a Bic lighter from his pants and produce a flame; Edgerton leans across the desk to ignite the tobacco.

"Aw Christ," says Worden, holding the lighter steady. "I hope n.o.body sees me doing this."

Twenty minutes later and still a prisoner of the same phone conversation, Edgerton flags down Garvey for another light and Worden, watching from the coffee room, picks up on it again.

"Hey, Harry, you're getting awfully used to havin' white guys light your cigarette for you."

"What can I say?" says Edgerton, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand.

"You tryin' to make a point, Harry?"

"What can I say?" repeats Edgerton, hanging up the phone. "I like how it looks."

"Hey," says Kincaid, cutting in. "As long as Harry keeps handling calls, we can light his cigarettes, right, Harry? You keep answering that phone and I'll start carrying a book of matches."

"Fair enough," says Edgerton, almost amused.

"We're bringing Harry along, ain't we?" says Kincaid. "We're breakin' him back into homicide. As long as we can keep him away from Ed Burns, he'll be all right."

"That's right," says Edgerton, smiling. "It was that nasty Ed Burns that messed me up, talking me into all these long investigations, telling me not to listen to you guys ... It was all Burns. You should blame him."

"And where is he now?" adds Kincaid. "He's still over with the FBI and you're back here with us."

"He used you, Harry," says Eddie Brown.

"Yeah," says Harry, dragging on his cigarette. "I guess ol' Eduardo did a number on me."

"Used and abused and tossed away like a dirty condom," says Garvey, from the back of the room.

"You talkin' 'bout Special Agent Burns," says Ed Brown. "Hey, Harry, I hear Burns already has his own desk over at the FBI office. I hear he's all moved in."

"His own desk, his own car," adds Kincaid.

"Hey, Harry," says Ed Brown. "You ever hear from your partner? Does he callyou up and tell you how things are going over there in Woodlawn?"

"Yeah, he sent me a postcard once," says Edgerton. "It said, 'Wish you were here' on the back."

"You stick with us, Harry," says Kincaid dryly. "We'll take good care of you."

"Yeah," says Edgerton. "I know you will."

Considering it's Edgerton, the banter is easy and almost affectionate. After all, this is the same homicide unit in which the diagnosis of Gene Constantine's diabetes was greeted by a coffee room chalkboard divided by two headings: "Those who give a s.h.i.+t if Constantine dies" and "Those who don't." Sergeant Childs, Lieutenant Stanton, Mother Teresa and Barbara Constantine topped the latter list. The shorter column featured Gene himself, followed by the city employees' credit union. By that standard of camaraderie, Edgerton isn't putting up with anything out of the ordinary on this slow four-to-twelve s.h.i.+ft. In fact, the scene being played out in the main office is a rare performance of Harry Edgerton as Just One of the Guys, a homicide man among homicide men. Never mind that Edgerton still thinks the world of Ed Burns and the ongoing Board-ley investigation. And never mind that Kincaid and Eddie Brown don't really believe that Edgerton wants to be working straight murders when his bunky is over at the FBI field office fles.h.i.+ng out a two-year conspiracy probe. Never mind all that b.i.t.c.hing earlier in the year, because right now Edgerton is handling murders.

It's the new Harry who laughs when his colleagues a.s.sure him that they're going to make something out of him, the changed man who makes a point of announcing to the office that he's getting ready to answer a ringing phone.

"Go for it, Harry."

"Don't hurt yourself there, Harry."

"He got it on three rings. Someone call a f.u.c.kin' press conference."

Edgerton chuckles, the picture of tolerance. He cups one hand over the receiver, then turns in his chair, feigning confusion.

"What do I do?" he asks in mock earnest. "Just talk into this part?"

"Yeah, put the top to your ear and talk into the bottom."

"Homicide unit. Edgerton."

"Way to go, Harry, babe."

SAt.u.r.dAY, JULY 9.

Hotter than h.e.l.l up here.

It's three in the morning and the coffee room is 90 degrees or better. Apparently, some bean counter in fiscal services decided that the midnight s.h.i.+ft doesn't need any heat before February or air conditioning before August, and now Donald Kincaid is out in the main office, stalking back and forth in his s.h.i.+rttails, Jockey shorts and socks, threatening total nudity if the temperature doesn't fall before morning. And Kincaid without clothes on an overnight s.h.i.+ft is a dangerous thing.

"Oh G.o.d," says Rich Garvey, his face a sickly blue from the television glow. "Donald's got his pants off. G.o.d help anyone who sleeps on his stomach tonight."

It's an old routine for Nolan's squad, this running joke about Kincaid looking for love on the overnight s.h.i.+ft, forcing his attentions on the younger detectives. Last night, McAllister fell asleep on the green vinyl sofa only to wake in mortal terror an hour later: Kincaid was on top of him, cooing softly.

"Naw, not tonight," Kincaid says, pulling the tie from his collar and stretching himself across the sofa. "Too d.a.m.n hot for that."

Every man in the room sends up the same prayer: Lord, let the telephone ring. Let that 2100 extension light up with death and mayhem before we all drown in our own sweat and stink. Every man in the room would take a drug murder right now. A double even, with two bleached skeletons in a bas.e.m.e.nt somewhere and not a witness or suspect to be found. They don't care what the call is as long as they can get out on the street where, incredibly, it's ten degrees cooler.

Out in the main office, Roger Nolan has the video recorder wired up so that half the squad can watch some G.o.dawful movie in which everyone is chasing one another in automobiles. The first movie in Nolan's midnight s.h.i.+ft triple feature is generally excellent, and the second is usually tolerable. But by three o'clock, Nolan always manages to come up with something guaranteed to induce sleep, and at that point, sleep begins to acquire a certain appeal.

The VCR is Nolan's concession to the h.e.l.l of midnight s.h.i.+ft, to the absurdity of six grown men spending a week of overnights together in a downtown office building. In Baltimore, a homicide detective works three weeks of eight-to-four, then two weeks of four-to-twelve, then one week of midnight. Which leads to a strange inversion: at any given moment, an entire s.h.i.+ft of three squads is working daywork, two squads are working four-to-twelve, and the squad working midnight is on its own in those hours when nearly half of all homicides occur. On a jumping midnight tour, no one has time for movies or anything else. On a s.h.i.+ft with two murders and a police shooting, for example, no one even presumes to think about sleep. But on the slow nights, on a night like this, the detectives learn what rigor mortis is all about.

"My back is killing me," says Garvey.

Of course it is. After all, he's trying to sleep sitting in a metal desk chair, his head horizontal to the top of the chair back. The sixth floor is hotter than the inside of a Weber grill on a Fourth of July weekend and Garvey still has his tie on. The man is not real.

Kincaid is now snoring on the green couch. Bowman is around the corner, out of sight, but when last seen he was also nodding, his chair propped against the wall, his short legs barely touching the floor. Edgerton is who the h.e.l.l knows where, probably down on Baltimore Street blasting s.p.a.ce critters on a video game.

"Hey, Rich," says Nolan, a foot and a half from the TV screen, "check this part out. This almost makes the movie."

Garvey lifts his head in time to see one tough guy blow another apart with something that appears to be a rocket launcher.

"That was great, Rog."

Nolan senses the ennui and slowly glides over to the television, using his legs to propel the wheeled chair. He scans the side of another videotape box. "How about a John Wayne movie?"

Garvey yawns, then shrugs. "Whatever," he says finally.

"I've got two on this tape where the Duke actually dies," says Nolan, still wide awake. "Trivia question: In how many movies did John Wayne's character actually die?"

Garvey looks at Nolan and sees, not his squad sergeant, but a large black man with a pitchfork and horns on his head. The innermost circle of h.e.l.l, Garvey now knows, is a steaming munic.i.p.al building with no beds, bile green walls and trivia questions from a superior at three in the morning.

"Thirteen," says Nolan, answering his own question. "Or is it fourteen? We figured it out last night ... I think it's fourteen. The one everyone always forgets is Wake of the Red Witch Wake of the Red Witch."

Nolan knows. He knows everything. Ask him about the 1939 Academy Awards and he'll tell you about the catfight for Best Supporting Actress. Ask him about the Peloponnesian War and he'll explain the essentials of hoplite infantry tactics. Mention the western coast of Borneo and ... well, Terry McLarney once made that mistake.

"You know," he blurted during one four-to-twelve s.h.i.+ft. "I understand that the beaches in Borneo are made of black sand."

At the time, the statement might have seemed like a lonely non sequitur, but McLarney had recently read a five-hundred-page tome on the island of Borneo, his first conquest of a Howard County library book in perhaps three years. A fact is a fact, and McLarney had been trying to work this one into conversation for maybe a month.

"That's right," said Nolan. "They're black from the volcanic ash. Krakatoa did a number on all the islands around there ..."

McLarney looked as though his dog had just died.

"... but only on the western part of the island is it completely black. We practiced amphibious landings there when I was in the Corps."

"You were there?"

"In sixty-three or so."