The Guilty - Jason Pinter [27]
it, remember? That shit last year don't make you Dick Tracy."
"You're right, but you also know I'm one of the few guys
in this town who'll give you a fair shake."
Curt sipped his coffee. "Word is Harvey Hillerman is hard
up on Wallace to raise circulation. Says the Dispatch is
growing and you're shrinking worse than my old man after
joining the polar bear club."
Harvey Hillerman was the owner of the Gazette, and perpetually at war with the tabloid tactics of the other papers in
town. But it was hard to keep the public's interest with payroll
scandals when the Dispatch could just take a shot of Athena
Paradis in a bikini, slap it on the front page and match your
circulation rate.
"It's not my job to worry about Hillerman."
"It's your job to make sure you have a job, paisan. "
"You know you're black, right?"
"What, paisan is reserved for Italians? Screw that."
We walked toward Sixth Avenue.
"So what have you got?" I asked.
"Well, the ballistics report came back. I'll tell you, the
pressure on Perez is unreal. Costas Paradis is watching every
move he makes with a magnifying glass, and he's holding that
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glass up to the sun. Man's got eyes and ears from every
lawmaker to every sewer grate in the city."
"His daughter was killed, what do you expect?"
"Carruthers has instituted mandatory overtime every day
this week," Sheffield continued. "They have undercovers
staking out every major nightclub, patrolmen inspecting every
rooftop within line of sight. They have us watching any celebrity that goes anywhere after midnight. Problem is we
don't know what we're looking for. Not to mention we're all
watching our backs after Joe got killed."
I looked at the ground.
"Don't let it get to you. Guys in the department don't hold
a grudge for the most part. And the guys that do hold grudges
are all old school, the kind the department keeps on a tight
leash because they might have had ties to Mike DiForio's
crew. Carruthers knows Fredrickson was dirty, that he was
taking money from that Tony Soprano wannabe. Until
DiForio got barbecued, that is."
"When you say guys don't hold a grudge 'for the most
part,' what's that, like fifty percent? Ninety?"
Sheffield toed the cement. Then he looked at me. "Not
gonna lie, bro, there's definitely some bad blood. Fredrickson might have been dirty, but he went back a long way. The
bad ones always have friends and there are always other
people who covered their asses. Joe Mauser, though, he was
a good cop. It's just a cumulative effect of what's happened
to that family."
"What do you think?" I asked.
"Me? Shit. I wouldn't be here right now if I held a grudge.
Fact is, city needs you on this story a whole lot more than it
needs you digging up celebrity tampons to pad Hillerman's
bottom line. Plus I like your stuff. Tired of reading news
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reports that read like they were written by fuckers who are
stuck on typewriters and Geritol."
"I appreciate that."
"Appreciate it in private. I'm happy to give you dirt so it
doesn't end up in Cole's witch cauldron. But after this, I gotta
be a ghost, man."
I waited for him to continue.
"So ballistics confirmed the same caliber shot was used to
kill Athena Paradis and Joe Mauser."
"No big shock there," I said.
"No, we figured it was the same sick son of a bitch. But they
were surprised to find out the caliber bullet our man used."
"Unusual?"
"I'd say .44-40 magnum rounds." Curt waited a moment.
He expected my jaw to drop, but I must have slept through
my NRA 101 course.
"Why's that surprise you?"
"Nobody uses .44-40 ammunition these days. Just an impractical caliber to use, on both sides of the good guy/bad guy coin."
"Why's that?"
"Magnum rounds are large, man. Heavy velocity, heavy
impact. The recoil on those things will knock you on your ass.
Forget everything Dirty Harry said, any cop who wants to be
able to get off a second round in the same zip code would be
an idiot to carry around a magnum. Only people who use it are
idiot cons who think it looks pretty,