Manhattan Noir - Lawrence Block [40]
TAKE THE MAN’S PAY
BY ROBERT KNIGHTLY
Garment District
Sergeant Thomas Cippolo, desk sergeant at Midtown South, peers over his half-moon reading glasses at Detective Morrie Goldstein and his handcuffed prisoner as they enter the precinct.
“What’s up wit’ Charlie Chang?” he asks.
“Chang?”
“Yeah.” Cippolo starts his various chins in motion with a vigorous shake of his head. “Charlie Chang. The dude made all those movies with Number One Son.”
“That’s Chan, ya moron,” Goldstein replies without relaxing his grip on the arm of his prisoner. “Charlie Chan.” Goldstein is a massive man, well over six feet tall with broad sloping shoulders that challenge the seams of an off-the-rack suit from the Big & Tall shop at Macy’s. “Anyway, he’s not Chinese. He’s a Nip. Hoshi Taiku.”
“A Nip?”
“Yeah, like Nipponese. From Japan.” Goldstein notes Cippolo’s blank stare, and sighs in disgust. “The Japanese people don’t call their country Japan. They call it Nippon. Ain’t that right, Hoshi?”
Taiku does not speak. Though he’s been in the United States for three days and has only the vaguest notion of the American criminal justice system, he’s heard about Abner Louima and wouldn’t be surprised if the giant policeman strung him up by his toes.
Goldstein steers Taiku around Cippolo’s desk and up a flight of stairs to a large room jammed with desks set back-to-back. A few of the desks are occupied by detectives who look up from their paperwork to watch Goldstein direct his prisoner to a small interview room. They do not speak. The windowless interview room contains a table and two metal chairs, one of which is bolted to the floor. The table and chairs are gray, the floor tiles brown, the walls a dull institutional yellow. All are glazed with decades of accumulated grime, even the small one-way mirror in the wall opposite the hump seat.
“That feel better?” Goldstein removes Taiku’s handcuffs, then flips them onto the table where they settle with an echoing clang. “Okay, that’s your chair.” He points to the bolted-down chair. “Take a seat.”
Hoshi Taiku is a short middle-aged man with a round face that complements his soft belly. From his seated position, looking up, Goldstein appears gigantic and menacing. Curiously, this effect remains undiminished when Goldstein draws his own chair close, then settles down with an appreciative sigh.
“My back,” he explains. “When I gotta stand around, it goes into spasm. I don’t know, maybe I should get myself one of those supports. I mean, standing around is all I ever fuckin’ do.” He removes a cheap ballpoint pen, a notebook, and a small tape recorder from his jacket pocket and sets them on the table.
“First thing I gotta do is explain your rights. Understand?”
Taiku does not reply. Instead, his gaze shifts to the wall on the other side of the room, a small act of defiance which elicits a triumphant smile from Goldstein. Goldstein has bet Sergeant Alex Mowrey $25 that Taiku will crack before 1 o’clock in the afternoon. It is now 10:30 in the morning.
Goldstein lays his hand on Hoshi’s shoulder, and notes a barely detectable shudder run along the man’s spine. “Hoshi, listen to me. You chatted up the desk clerk, the bartender in the Tiger Lounge, and a barmaid named Clara. I know you know how to speak English, so please don’t start me off with bullshit. It’s inconsiderate.”
After a moment, Hoshi bows, a short nod that Goldstein returns.
“Okay, like I already said, you got certain rights which I will now carefully enumerate. You don’t have to speak to me at all if you don’t want to, plus you can call a lawyer whenever you like. In fact, if you’re broke, which I doubt very much, the court will appoint a lawyer to represent you. But the main thing, which you should take into your heart, is that whatever you say here is on the record. Even though you haven’t been arrested and