Gun Machine

“No,” said Tallow, plucking the printout from her fingers and grabbing his bag. “I’m going to talk to my boss about it first.”

Tallow waited until he was outside the main building before calling the lieutenant. He dialed her cell phone. It was midmorning, and her movements weren’t predictable at that time of day. Her phone rang. It rang long enough that he was expecting it to switch to voice mail. Then she answered with an uncertain “Hello?”

His brow creased. “It’s Tallow. Where are you?” He could tell from the background noise that she was outside.

“Does it matter where I am?”

Okay, he thought. “Well, I’d like to sit down with you as soon as it’s convenient. I have something on the case that I really need your input on before I take it further. Can I come by the office in a half hour or so and find you there?”

“Um. No. I won’t be there for a while.”

“I really need your help, Lieutenant. Where are you? I could meet you there, if that’s easier.”

“Oh God,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

Tallow heard her take a deep, shaky breath. “I’m at Jim’s funeral, John.”

“…What?”

Everything tilted, and Tallow’s feet swam for purchase until his back met a wall. He stiffened his legs and pressed his back hard against it.

“I’m sorry, John.”

“I don’t understand.”

“His wife…she wanted a quick funeral. And, well, I’m afraid she told me she didn’t want you to attend. I mean, she’s upset, obviously, and if she’d chosen to wait a week, I’m sure it would have been different.”

All Tallow could think of to say was “We’ve never met. I’ve never met her.”

The lieutenant’s voice sounded somewhat strained as she said, “Yes, she told me that too.”

“What did she say?”

“Don’t, John.”

Tallow let himself slide down the wall until his knees were drawn up and his backside was on the ground. “What did she say?”

“She said that she didn’t want a stranger at her husband’s funeral, and she didn’t want to see the man who should have saved her husband, and she didn’t want to see the man who should have died instead of her husband.”

He’d asked her to say it. He’d badgered her to say it. But he didn’t like her for saying it. And he didn’t like himself for doing it and hating her. He didn’t like anything. He covered his face with his free hand.

“John?”

“I wish people would stop saying that. Sometimes I wish people didn’t know my name.”

“John? What?”

“I was his partner. I was his friend. You tell her…” He caught himself. Gathered up everything in him in one fist and pushed it all down with everything else that was already down there. “No. Don’t tell her anything. Don’t mention me at all.”

“Okay, John,” the lieutenant said, uncertainly.

Yeah, he thought. Talk to me like that. Talk to me like I’m a basket case. Talk to me like I’m an idiot. Talk to me like I’m already leaving the force. He licked his lips like a lizard, his face tightening and hardening into sharp planes, relishing the anger that was starting to whip around inside him. He caught hold of that, too, but he decided to push it out.

“You need to be in your office in one hour. I have Son of Sam’s gun.”

He waited just long enough to hear the start of her reaction, and killed the phone call dead.

Tallow walked to his car, drove out of One Police Plaza, stopped at a store, and bought two lighters.

Homicide at Ericsson Place was empty when Tallow arrived. Everyone was at Jim Rosato’s funeral.

The lieutenant was not in her office. Tallow entered her office, stood there, and waited.

He didn’t move. Stared at the back wall of her office. Pictured the guns from Pearl Street there. Conjured them in his vision and continued to scan them for clues, evidence, sense.

Ten minutes later the lieutenant stalked into the room, angry and angular in a black wool Nehru-collared pantsuit with a sharply darted asymmetrical front closure. He wondered if this, too, was new. He also found that he didn’t care.

“I do not like the way you are talking to me lately, Detective,” she snapped, walking around her desk.

Tallow put down his bag, took out the printout, and tossed it on the desk.

“Did you hear me?”

“Read that.”

“Tallow, do you want to be discharged? Do you want me to take your badge and gun right now and have you marched off the premises?”

“Read. That.”

“Tallow, you—”

“Lieutenant, I have a lot of respect for you. You have a hard job, in all kinds of ways, and you handle the pressure from all sides better than pretty much any boss I’ve ever had in the job. But you hung this around my neck, and you are just counting the days until it pulls me down and both it and me disappear from sight. I can understand that. But until what you put around my neck sinks me, you will treat me like a detective in the New York Police Department and you. Will. Read. That.”