At the State Police barracks, the Fish Man proceeded to blow the box, sending the polygraph needle soaring on every key question about the murder. The polygraph result was not, of course, admissible as evidence, nor did every homicide detective believe in lie detection as an exact science. Still, the result added to Pellegrini’s suspicions.
So, too, did the arrival of an unexpected, if not entirely credible, witness. The man was a smokehound all right, as unbelievable a character as a detective might find. Arrested for assault in the Western District six days ago, he tried to make friends by assuring the booking officer that he knew who killed Latonya Wallace.
“And how do you know that?”
“He told me he did it.”
When Pellegrini got to the Western District that day, he heard a story about two old acquaintances drinking at a west side bar, about one acquaintance saying that he had recently been picked up and questioned for the murder of a little girl, about the other acquaintance asking whether he had committed the crime.
“No,” the first man said.
But later in the conversation the liquor got good to that man, who turned to his companion and said he would tell the truth. He did kill the child.
In the course of several interviews, the new witness related the same story to the detectives. He had known the man with whom he had been drinking for years. The man ran a store up on Whitelock Street, a fish store.
And so a second polygraph was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Leaning back in his chair, Pellegrini reads the reports of the new witness’s interrogation with a mind balanced between serene hope and committed pessimism. In two days, he is sure, the man will also blow his box, failing the polygraph just as miserably as the Fish Man did. He will do this because his story is so perfect, so valuable, that it can’t possibly be true. A barroom confession, Pellegrini tells himself, is almost too easy for this case.
Pellegrini knows, too, that soon he will have a separate suspect file on the new witness as well. Not only because the willingness to implicate someone in a child killing is unusual behavior, but also because the new man himself knows the Reservoir Hill area and has a police record. For rape. With a knife. Nothing, Pellegrini tells himself again, is ever easy.
Closing the file with the office reports, Pellegrini reads through a draft report of his own, a four-page missive to the captain outlining the status of the case and arguing for a complete, prolonged review of the existing evidence. Without any primary crime scene or physical evidence, the report argued, there wasn’t much point in looking at any particular suspect and then attempting to connect him to the murder.
“This tactic might be successful in certain circumstances,” Pellegrini had written, “but not in a case where physical evidence is lacking.”
Instead, the memo urged a careful review of the entire file:
Since the collection of that data was accomplished by no less than twenty detail officers and detectives, it is reasonable to believe that a significant piece of information may exist, but has not yet been developed. It is the intent of your investigator to limit the number of investigators to the primary and secondary detectives.
In simple terms, Pellegrini wants more time to work the case and he wants to work it alone. His report to the captain is clear, yet bureaucratic; generally succinct, yet written in the departmental prose that makes anyone with a rank higher than lieutenant feel warm and fuzzy all over. Still, it could be better, and if he is going to get the time to review the case properly, the captain will have to be on board.
Pellegrini pulls the staple from the top page and spreads the draft on his desk, prepared to spend another hour or so at the typewriter. But Rick Requer has other ideas. On his way out of the annex office, he catches Pellegrini’s attention and cups his hand to his mouth in a repetitive, arclike motion-the international hand signal for uninhibited alcohol consumption.
“C’mon, bunk, let’s go have a couple.”
“You leaving?” asks Pellegrini, looking up from the file.
“Yeah, I’m out of here. Barrick’s squad is already in on four-to-twelve.”
Pellegrini shakes his head, then waves at the sea of paper on his desk. “I got some stuff here I wanted to go through.”
“You working over on that case?” asks Requer. “It’ll wait ’til tomorrow, won’t it?”
Pellegrini shrugs.
“C’mon, Tom, give it a night off.”
“I don’t know. Where you going to be?”
“At the Market. Eddie Brown and Dunnigan are already down there.”
Pellegrini nods, mulling it over. “If I get a few things done,” he says finally, “I might see you down there.”
No way, thinks Requer, walking toward the elevators. No way are we going to see Tom Pellegrini at the Market Bar when he could just as easily spend four hours beating himself up over Latonya Wallace. So when Pellegrini sidles up to the bar a half hour later, Requer is momentarily startled. Suddenly, without warning, Pellegrini has let go of the Case Without Pity and come up for a little air. By any reckoning, a drinking session at the Market Bar is a fine time and place for some back slapping and confidence building; Requer, already half-smoked on good Scotch, is just the man for the job.
“My man Tom,” Requer says. “What are you drinking, bunk?”
“A beer.”
“Hey, Nick, gave this gentleman what he wants on me, man.”
“What’re you drinking there?” asks Pellegrini.
“Glenlivet. Good shit. You want one?”
“No. Beer’s fine.”
And so they settle down, one round after another, until other detectives arrive and the scene photos and witness statements and office reports seem a little less real, and Latonya Wallace becomes more cosmic joke than tragedy. Sisyphus and his rock. De Leon and his fountain. Pellegrini and his little dead girl.
“I’ll tell you this,” says Requer, holding court and bringing the liquor to his lips. “When Tom first got up there, I thought he wasn’t any good at all. I mean that…”
“And now that you seen me work,” says Pellegrini, half serious, “you know you were right.”
“No, bunk,” says Requer, shaking his head, “I knew you were all right when you put down that case in the projects. What was that boy’s name?”
“Which case?”
“The one from high-rise. East side.”
“George Green,” says Pellegrini.
“Yeah, right, Green,” agrees Requer, waving the empty shot glass in a brief semaphore at Nicky the bartender. “Everyone told him that the case was a loser. I even told him that. I told him to…” Requer pauses as Nicky pours, downs half the shot and tries to continue. “What was I sayin’?”
Pellegrini shrugs, smiling.
“Oh yeah, this case was no fuckin’ good, no fuckin’ good at all. Drug murder up in the high-rises, right. Black kid over on Aisquith Street, so nobody’s gonna give a damn anyway. No witnesses, no nothing. I told him to forget the motherfucker and go on to something else. He doesn’t listen to me or anyone else. Stubborn motherfucker didn’t listen to Jay neither. He just goes out on his own and works the case for two days. Didn’t listen to none of us and guess what happened?”