The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [65]
“I understand some of it. I’m from out in the sticks originally. Lots of coal miners and farmers. Everybody out there lives on fantasies, too. Football and fast cars, mostly. Almost everybody wants to be someplace else, to be somebody else. Myself included.”
Parker nodded; then he went on. “When I found out what happened, how Marcus really died, I went crazy inside…I went to see the police commissioner. I bothered Captain Nicolo in Narcotics a lot. I wanted to clear Marcus’s name. I guess I needed to do it for myself as much as anything. People thought my brother was just another sports junkie. That hurt. It still hurts.”
Without hearing any more, Stefanovitch understood some of what Parker felt. There was something familiar about the detective’s frustration. When he had tried to investigate the ambush at Long Beach, he’d gotten the same kind of runaround inside the department.
“I was obsessed with my brother’s death. I stopped working on anything else. If I took another case, I’d only work it part-time. I couldn’t sleep. Stayed on my own a lot. I wouldn’t even talk to my partner about it.”
“Did anyone in the department try to help?”
“Nicolo did. In his own way, he did. He sent me to see one of the headshrinkers downtown. All I could think about was how Marcus had been murdered. How they kept increasing the junk load on him every day.”
“It’s a trick they used in the war. Over in Vietnam,” Stefanovitch said.
“I talked to a couple of junkies from the neighborhood. They told me how it felt; how my brother suffered before he died. The Grave Dancer liked to torture his victims. As you know, Alexandre St.-Germain was a butcher. A psycho.”
Isiah Parker tilted himself back on the spindly legs of the chair. He tapped out another cigarette, lighting up as he continued to speak to Stefanovitch.
“Back in February, I got called in by the chief of detectives. I was ready to talk about everything. I expected to be jived with. You know, a little tea and sympathy first. Then a reprimand that I shape up my act, or get out of the department. Fair enough. Chief of Detectives Schweitzer had been my rabbi once. Lieutenant—”
“I’m Stef. Or John, if you like.” Stefanovitch reached across his littered desk. He shook Parker’s hand. “What the hell, you know?”
“Well, it was nothing like what I expected, in Schweitzer’s office. I’m coming to the good part now. That is what I came to talk to you about.”
“You’ve got my attention.”
“The chief told me he’d heard I was having trouble since my brother’s death. He said not to worry about it. He said everything would work itself out. He’s smart, you know. He was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. Caught me by surprise, because I was expecting something else.”
“You expected to get your ass chewed off, which you felt you partly deserved?”
“Right. Schweitzer is hard to read sometimes. At least he knows the rules of the street. Protect your ass; protect your partner’s ass. We talked a long time in his office. He listened mostly. Schweitzer’s a real good listener.”
“And you tell pretty good stories.”
“He asked me something I thought was a little strange. Schweitzer asked if I ever heard of death squads inside the department.”
Stefanovitch could feel his face flushing. “Had you?”
“Yeah. I knew about a couple times somebody authorized certain detectives to go take somebody out. I knew about death squads.”
Stefanovitch continued to nod as he listened to Isiah Parker. This was getting heavy. Everything was tracking so far. He had a feeling that Parker was telling the truth. Stefanovitch also knew about police department death squads. They existed. Death squads in the New York Police Department were for real, although he’d only heard about them being used to go after cop killers.
“Maybe two weeks later, Schweitzer met me at a hotel bar. Trumpets in the Hyatt. He insisted it be a bar. Out of the office. He seemed like he was in a good mood that night. Loosey-goosey like. We had a couple of pops standing around the bar. Then he laid out what was on his mind.”
“This is the fun part, right?