The Confession of Joe Cullen (25 page)

“Father White,” Freedman said, “would you go down to Honduras or El Salvador or some such place to be a priest for the poor who lived there, even if they were in revolt against their own government?”

Ramos looked at Freedman strangely, and Father White, taken somewhat aback, stared a long moment at Freedman before he answered, “I didn't think — well, I thought you'd ask me about poor Cullen. It did happen here, outside our door. I heard the shots and I got outside as quickly as I could—”

“Quickly? You ought to have more sense than that, Father. If you had gotten outside before they took off, you'd be in the same morgue as Joe Cullen.”

“They were in a car, you know,” the priest said. “I got outside just as the car was turning the corner. There was nothing else moving on the street.”

“He rushed out there, Lieutenant,” Ramos explained, “to give the man the last rites.”

Freedman brooded over that while White spread cream cheese on another bagel and handed it to the lieutenant. “About Honduras,” Freedman said, chewing, his mouth full of food.

“Well, it's an odd question,” Father White said, preferring to turn the conversation back to the crime. “Mr. Cullen—”

“Let's drop Mr. Cullen for a moment, Father. There's nothing we can do for him. About Honduras.”

“Well, that's a difficult question. A priest can't just walk out of his duty to fulfill some romantic dream. Have I thought about it? Well, I must admit that I have. After the Maryknoll nuns were raped and murdered by the death squads of El Salvador, I was properly horrified that our government could support the men who did it, and to be truthful, I did have romantic fantasies about going there — especially after the same group murdered the archbishop — and perhaps ministering to the guerrilla movement; but that must have been the fantasy of hundreds of priests, and you see, I am here in Chelsea. But how does this possibly connect with Cullen's death?”

Ignoring the priest's question, Freedman insisted, “Why? Why? Not revenge — you wouldn't think that way as a priest?”

“Oh, no, surely not revenge. But my feeling was that these men and women had sanctified themselves in the service of Christ. Did He not say to go among the poor and lowly to preach His grace? To bring comfort to the dying? If the truth be told, I say a mass on a Sunday, and there are a dozen people in the church—”

Ramos, becoming increasingly uncomfortable at Freedman's insistence, said, “Let's go, Lieutenant.”

Outside, they got into Ramos's car, and Freedman said, “What got you, Hosea?”

“You ask for something he can't give.”

“What's that?”

“Look, Lieutenant, my father came here from Puerto Rico in 1933. He wasn't some ignorant kid. He finished high school, and he'd had two years of college in Puerto Rico. He majored in chemistry and biology, and even with the Depression, he got himself a job in a medical lab and he was making forty dollars a week, damn good money at that time. Then the Spanish Civil War broke out and he goes and joins the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight against Franco. And he wasn't a commie. I ask him why; he can't answer me. It's something deep inside, and it was deep inside that priest, and maybe it's why the good guys don't disappear. Ah, Jesus, I don't like to talk to priests. They make me nervous.”

Ramos drove them to the morgue. The first gray hint of morning was in the air. The rain had stopped and the clouds were breaking up. It would be a cold, clean November day, with blue sky overhead.

But not for Cullen, Freedman thought.

“I swear I do not know what the hell we're doing here. I hate morgues.”

“I want to see him.”

“OK, OK, you want to see him. You know, Mel, you're crazy, I'm crazy. Every cop in this city is crazy. You want to see a dead man. Say hello for me.”

“You're in a sweet mood.”

“They woke me at four. What kind of mood do you want?”

The people at the morgue were not happy either. It was the end of the night shift at a place where nobody laughed very much. “I thought he belonged to Manhattan South,” the morgue attendant said as he pulled out the locker.

“We own a little piece of him.”

“Funny,” the morgue attendant said. He uncovered the body.

“Forty-five,” Ramos said. “Not nice.”

Freedman turned away after a single look. Cullen's head was open from the heavy forty-five-caliber impact. It had been taped together for cosmetic purposes. His face, thankfully, as Freedman thought, was uninjured. His eyes were closed, his skin white as a cotton sheet.

“Seen enough?” Ramos asked.

“I bet there's no claim on the body,” Freedman said once they were back on the street. “Did he have any relatives? Did he say? Jesus, what a fucked-up society we are! No families anymore, just bits of flesh floating around.”

“Lovely. You're a prince of good cheer. Do you know something? Next week is Thanksgiving.”

“Yeah. Let's have some coffee. I'm cold. I rushed out without a coat. I don't know. Did I leave it at Sheila's?”

They went into a lunchroom for coffee and Danish, and Freedman called Sheila. It was seven forty-five now, and Freedman thought surely Sheila would be dressing to go to work. “What time is it?” she asked sleepily.

“Honey, did I wake you? It's almost eight.”

“Drop dead,” she said tiredly, and cut the connection.

“I'm no good,” Freedman said to Ramos. “I'm so tired I can't think straight. Drive me home and I'll get an hour of sleep before I hit the house. How about you?”

“I'm all right.”

In his furnished room, Freedman set the alarm for an hour, kicked off his shoes, and fell face down on the bed, fully clothed. He was asleep in a moment, and it felt like an instant later when the alarm went off. He showered and shaved, put on a fresh pair of gray flannels, shook out his brown tweed jacket in which he had just fallen asleep, and donned a fresh blue Oxford shirt and knitted tie. He was neither original nor creative in his choice of wardrobe. It was nine-thirty when he arrived at the precinct house, and he was properly chilled.

Virginia Selby was waiting in his office, and he nodded and said, “Morning, Ginny.” He was not crazy about the district attorney's end of law and order, nor about the personnel who ran it.

“Joe Cullen's dead,” she said.

“That's right.”

“Last night?” trying to keep her voice even.

“Like four o'clock in the morning.”

“Were you there?”

“After it happened. All we can make out of it is that they had the church staked out, and when he turned up, they killed him. Four shots, three in the body, one in the head. The priest in the rectory was awakened by the shots and he ran to the front of the church in time to see the car driving away. To make the time fit, it meant they got out of the car to leave one in his head. That's professional. Also to clinch the ID, and that's also very professional. I don't know what pros are in town because I just got to my office. With things like this, they usually bring in someone from outside.” Freedman studied her narrowly. “What's your interest? Did Timberman send you up to talk to me?”

“I saw the tape, Lieutenant. Timberman played it for me and Morty Cohen.”

Freedman nodded and waited. He had long ago discovered that when someone is uncertain whether or not to speak, silence is most effective.

Finally, Ginny said, “He went to the church because he had no other place to go. He couldn't go home after he killed Kovach. Do you believe his story about Kovach?”

Shrugging: “What difference does it make now?”

It made a difference to Virginia Selby. She closed her eyes for a moment, searching in her mind, trying to make a connection with the Church of Saint Peter the Rock. “But why did he go to the church? I mean that church.”

Freedman spelled it out, the confession and Father White's theory that Immelman had been murdered. Virginia listened, and when he had finished, she sat in silence.

And Freedman waited. He had work to do, cases that were overdue, assignments to give out, and still he waited.

Softly, Ginny asked him, “Can they hear us?” nodding at the detectives in the squad room.

“If we talk loud enough.”

Even more softly, “Mr. Timberman didn't send me. I came here on my own.”

“Yes?”

“Aren't you going to ask me why?”

“You're an important DA, Ginny. Someday you'll have Timberman's job.”

“You think so?”

“A lot of people think so.” Their eyes met. “So you'd better consider carefully whatever you were going to tell me.”

“All right.” She closed her eyes tightly and remained that way, with her eyes closed, for a few seconds. Then she said bluntly, “I felt something for Joe Cullen. Do you understand?”

Freedman waited.

“Nothing that he knew or returned. I just felt something for him, and when I heard this morning that he had been killed, I wept.”

Freedman wondered whether in all the world anyone else wept for Joe Cullen.

“That's all,” Ginny said, deciding that it was enough and that there was no need to speak of their two meetings. He was dead; it simply did not matter. There was no way in the world that she could explain to Freedman or anyone else that her heart went out to him as it had not gone out to any other man. She could not explain it to herself. Love is something not easily explained on any level, and if Virginia Selby had tried to define the bit of unrequited light that had entered into the world of horrors where she made her life and living, she would have made a total fool out of herself — which, she told herself, she truly was.

“You're wondering why I came here?”

“Sort of — yes.”

“I have a lot of respect for you, Lieutenant. I think you're smart and decent and sensitive.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Freedman said, smiling.

He had a nice smile, Ginny decided, not like Cullen's, but then she had never met a man whose smile danced all over his face, as Cullen's smile did.

“I'll tell you why I came here. Very simple, Lieutenant. I want you to get the man who killed Cullen. I want you to bring him in, and you and I will make one of those unbreakable cases, and I swear on my mother's grave that I'll put him away.”

The swivel chair Freedman sat in was one of his precious possessions. He swiveled around now to look directly into the squad room, and then he swiveled back to face Virginia Selby. He had once had a fantasy that if he and Sheila ever had a kid — a little girl, preferably — he would bring her here and spin her in his desk chair. He was sure she would love it.

“That's what you want,” he said.

“You can do it.”

“Ginny, no one man killed Cullen. You're not only asking for the impossible, you're asking me to go where angels fear to tread.”

“You're not an angel, Mel.”

“You'd better believe it. I'm a New York City cop, and if I even look the wrong way or even push one of the scumbags we get in here, I got the zone commander up here beating my ear off.”

“My heart doesn't bleed for you.”

Freedman grinned. “If I could make miracles and find this gang of high-class thugs who are bringing in the cocaine with Washington's blessing, what on earth makes you think you could prosecute them?”

“Find them and bring me some evidence, and if I can't get a conviction I'll throw in the towel.”

“That's dumb. Look, I felt something about Cullen. I've been trying to figure out that whole act — Cullen and Father O'Healey and the peons and the dope and whatever lot of bastards in our government are running the act, the CIA, the White House, the Justice Department, the army, or some bunch of demented mavericks — but whoever it is, it's not one man.”

“Then get them all, Mel.”

“Bless your heart,” Freedman said. “Who knows!”

She left, and Ramos came in and asked him, “What did she want?”

“Miracles. She wants me to bring in Cullen's killers. She's determined.”

“Why?”

“God only knows. I will tell you something, Hosea: this is not only a world I never knew, but one that I have little desire to know. It is not good for a cop, who is told to wear his uniform so that he can show up at one of those fancy funerals they give a cop who is shot by some crazed drug dealer, to know that his own sweet government blesses the drugs and the dealers.”

“Right on. But what makes it personal with her?”

“I'm not sure I understand that end of it. She had something for Cullen.”

“She never knew Cullen — or did she?”

“God knows.” He glanced into the squad room. It was empty now.

“They're all out,” Ramos said.

“Did you write up last night?”

“I'll do it now.”

“Good. Meanwhile, I'll think.”

At noon, Freedman was still thinking, and Ramos had finished his report, interviewed a hysterical woman who claimed her cat had been stolen, and restrained himself from killing a dealer who had sold crack to a ten-year-old black kid, who had gone into convulsions and died. “Put this scum into the number one cell, and take off his shoes and socks and belt and strip him to the waist, and write him down as suicidal,” Ramos told the cops who had brought him in. The number one cell in the basement had not been used in years. It was icy cold, rat-infested, with at least an inch of filthy water on the sunken floor. Since it was never used, it had no cot.

Freedman, meanwhile, was thinking about how this country, his country, used to be. His father would tell him stories about New York in those days, in the 1920s, when the population of the United States was about seventy million, when a drug was medicine, and when kids could walk the streets at three o'clock in the morning without fear. New York, in his father's memories, was as close to paradise as a city could be. Freedman didn't trust memories. He had heard too many witnesses remember things that never were. Yet like his father, he remembered a New York of his childhood, when he was a kid in the 'fifties. Was it as bad as now? And what of the next ten years — the 'nineties?