During the brief interrogation, Nathan gives up real names, street names, physical descriptions and approximate addresses-every last little detail. When Edgerton walks back into the main office, he has everything he needs for a pair of search and seizure warrants.
And yet none of that seems to matter the following morning when the administrative lieutenant-the supervisor who serves as a direct aide to the captain-reads the 24-hour report and learns that Edgerton questioned a witness at the scene without bringing the man downtown. Inappropriate, the lieutenant complains. Irregular. Against standard procedure. Such behavior shows bad judgment, perhaps even laziness.
“What the fuck does he know about investigation?” says Edgerton angrily when Roger Nolan tells him of the complaints on the following midnight shift. “He sits in that office and does arithmetic. When did he ever get out on the street and work a case?”
“Easy, Harry. Easy.”
“I got everything I needed from that guy at the scene,” storms Edgerton. “What the fuck does it matter whether I talk to him there or here?”
“I know…”
“I’m sick of these fucking politicians.”
Nolan sighs. As Edgerton’s sergeant, he’s caught between the captain and D’Addario, for whom Edgerton has become ammunition in a shooting war. If Edgerton handles calls and solves murders, he vindicates his shift lieutenant; if he doesn’t, he serves the captain and the admin lieutenant as prima facie evidence of lax supervision on D’Addario’s shift.
But now the situation is even worse. Not only does Nolan have to contend with the external politics, but he’s also got serious problems in his squad. Edgerton has become a lightning rod; Kincaid, in particular, can’t abide the younger detective.
A veteran investigator of the old school, Kincaid puts stock in the way a man serves his unit. By that reckoning, a good detective shows up early for work to relieve the previous shift; he answers the phone, handling as many calls as come his way; he covers for his partner and his squad members, helping them with witnesses or even scenes without having to be asked. It is a gratifying portrait of the investigator as a cooperative entity, a team player, and Kincaid has spent twenty-two years fashioning himself in that image. For seven of those years, he worked murders with Eddie Brown, an interracial team made especially amusing by Kincaid’s hillbilly drawl. And for the last two years, he has partnered with anyone and everyone on D’Addario’s shift willing to share a call with him.
All of which makes Edgerton simply incomprehensible to Kincaid. It isn’t so much a personal dislike, the older detective tells others in the office. After all, not two weeks ago he spent time with Edgerton at McAllister’s squad party, a summer barbecue to which Edgerton brought his wife and young son. Harry was good company that afternoon, even a little bit charming, Kincaid had to concede. Granting the differences in youth, in race, in his New York urbanity, Edgerton might not be Kincaid’s first choice for a drinking buddy, but in the end, the feud had less to do with personalities than with Edgerton’s lack of any communal instinct, his indifference to the station house camaraderie that had always been so valuable to Kincaid.
To Edgerton, the consummate loner, homicide investigation is an isolated, individual pursuit. It is, in his mind, a singular contest between one detective and his killer, a contest in which the other detectives, the sergeants, the lieutenants and every other organism in the police department have no appropriate role beyond getting out of the primary detective’s path. This was, in essence, Edgerton’s strength and at the same time his weakness. Share and share alike would never be his credo, and consequently Edgerton would always be a source of discontent to his squad. But when he did catch a murder, he wouldn’t shirk. Unlike many detectives who learn to work a murder only until the phone rings with the next dispatcher’s call, Edgerton would bury himself in a case file until a sergeant came along to drag him kicking and screaming to the next assignment.
“It’s hell getting Harry to take a case,” explained Terry McLarney on one occasion. “You’ve got to grab him by the shoulders and yell, ‘Harry. This one’s yours.’ But once you do that, he’ll work it to death.”
No, Edgerton will not handle his share of suicides, overdose deaths, or cellblock hangings. He will not take orders for anyone else when traveling to Crazy John’s for a cheesesteak, and if asked to bring something back, he will surely forget. No, he will not be a workhorse like Garvey or Worden, a central force around whom the rest of a squad establishes its orbit. And it is true that when some rookie cop fires six-on-the-whistle at the scene of some gas station robbery, Edgerton will probably not volunteer to help sort through witness statements and collate reports. But, if left alone, he will give a squad eight or nine good clearances a year.
Having supervised Edgerton when the two were in the Eastern District, Nolan has for a long time understood the necessary tradeoff. Edgerton was one of the most talented, intelligent patrolmen in Nolan’s sector-even if the rest of the uniforms didn’t know what to make of him. He could be inconsiderate, at times even a little irresponsible, but nothing happened on that Greenmount Avenue post that he didn’t know about. The same was true up in homicide; Edgerton may drift off into the ether for a day or two, but Nolan could be assured that in the end, Harry’s cases would get worked. Hard.
“Don’t worry about it,” Nolan told Edgerton after one of Kincaid’s angry tirades. “You just keep doing what you’re doing.”
For Nolan, the trick was to keep his squad together by keeping the friction points apart. Everyone to his proper orbit: Kincaid with Bowman and Garvey, Edgerton, alone or with Nolan himself when he occasionally needed a secondary. Suddenly, however, that had become impossible.
Twice in the last week, Nolan had overheard Kincaid and Bowman ranting about Edgerton in the main office. That fact alone was unremarkable; everyone threw shit on everyone else in the squadroom. But it was notable that the administrative lieutenant-a pipeline to the captain-was present on each occasion.
A boss was a boss. For one detective to talk trash about another in front of a lieutenant was going too far. And while Nolan, alone among the sergeants, had no great love for D’Addario, he had no intention of seeing Edgerton used as ammunition in any prolonged power struggle.
At least one detective in the squad, Rich Garvey, was equally uncomfortable with that notion. As the man who handled the most calls in Nolan’s squad, Garvey was less than impressed by Edgerton’s work ethic. But he also didn’t want to see a fellow detective, a competent detective, burned over things that should never go further than the squad. Three days ago, at a quiet lunch in a Fells Point diner, he had said as much to Kincaid.
“Nolan lets him get away with too much,” Kincaid said bitterly. “Last midnight shift, that motherfucker was late every day but one.”
Garvey shook his head. “I know it. I know you’re pissed off, Donald,” he told the older detective. “But you have to remember that Nolan would do the same for you. He’d cover for you, too.”
Kincaid nodded, understanding. “I know what you’re saying,” he said finally. “But I’ll tell you, if I was his sergeant, I’d bust his ass so quick he wouldn’t know what hit him.”