Chapter 50
Eddie
Harry was right.
Those two words didn’t leave my mind for a second.
I sat on a stool in the Taco Bell restaurant in Times Square. I chewed the paper straw that sat in my soda cup.
I wasn’t thirsty, and I don’t eat here. I just wanted something to chew on.
It was about the last place on earth you’d find anybody who actually lives in New York.
This place was tourist central. Thousands of people passed through these doors.
None of them would be remotely connected with the Molly Green trial or the investigation.
In the unlikely event a local did come in, they would order take-out.
Having a secret meeting in one of the busiest restaurants in the world didn’t sound like a smart plan, but it worked.
Hiding in plain sight didn’t get much better.
Larkin was five minutes late when he walked through the doors. He clocked me, stopped dead in his tracks and swore. He went up to the counter and ordered, then came to the table and set down a soda and a side of nachos in front of him.
‘Come here, Eddie,’ he said, and held his hands out to embrace me in a hug.
He wasn’t being friendly. I embraced him, let his hands pat my back, my sides, then my pants pocket, and finally the inside pockets of my overcoat. I patted his back, and his sides, to make it look like we were glad to see each other when in fact he was patting me down, looking for a wire.
‘You got a phone in your jacket pocket,’ he said, as he let me go.
I took my phone out of my pocket, placed it beside my soda cup.
‘Turn it off, please,’ he said as he sat down opposite me.
I switched off my phone. He was paranoid about being taped. I’d guessed as much.
‘You have the photo I sent you?’ I asked.
‘I should’ve known it was you,’ he said.
‘Who were you expecting?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said as he took out the photo I’d included in the box of donuts I’d sent him earlier that day with instructions on the back to meet here, at this time.
‘If you know that many people who might want to blackmail you, I would seriously consider making some lifestyle adjustments.’
He put the photo on the counter, the one of him receiving a package from Dekker. The picture that Bloch took many weeks ago when she was trailing the cops and trying to figure out their angle on the investigation.
‘Fuck you, Eddie,’ he said.
‘I’m here to help you, Larkin. You’ve had Internal Affairs crawling over your skin before. I thought you might want to take all available steps to stop that from happening again.’
He put several nacho chips into his mouth at once and began to crunch them. The dust from the chips coated his lips and fell onto his blue tie.
‘I have two options for you,’ I said, taking a cigarette lighter from my pocket and placing it on the table. ‘I can burn this photo. Pretend like it never happened. I didn’t see it. Bloch didn’t see it. It never existed. Or, I can burn you. That’s your choice.’
‘Not much of a decision, is it?’ said Larkin, and as he spoke small fragments of nachos erupted from his mouth like the waste pipe on a woodchipper.
‘Not really. But this is all your fault. You used to be a good cop, before you fucked up an investigation by cutting corners. If you hadn’t been so good, they would have canned your ass and saved the money on your pension. This could be another chance for you. But you’ve gotta do exactly as I say.’
He washed the chips down with a slurp from his soda, and asked, ‘How much?’
‘I don’t want money. I want something else.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want you to do the right thing. For a start, your employment with Julian Vanderpool is unofficially at an end. Now you work for me.’
‘What if I arrested you now for trying to blackmail an investigating officer during a murder trial in which your client is the sole defendant? You’d be disbarred, you’d serve ten, maybe fifteen years for perverting the course of justice. How about that?’
He had lowered his voice, looked me in the eye as he spoke.
I said nothing for a moment. Then smiled.
‘You almost had me going there, Larkin. How about this? If I don’t make a phone call to Harry Ford in the next thirty minutes, he serves that photograph on the court, and the DA, and I ask you on the witness stand why you were accepting a suspicious package from the employee of the father of the only other viable suspect in a murder you were investigating? ’
Larkin stared at me for a second, took another sip from his soda.
‘Good,’ I said, ‘I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. First thing I want to know is, what was in the package you got from Dekker?’
‘You don’t know?’
I had no idea what the hell was in that package.
‘Of course I know,’ I said, ‘I just need to hear it from you. You need to trust me, and I need to trust you. Or one of us might be going to jail and it’s not going to be me.’
Larkin’s head fell forward, he grunted, then sat up again and put more chips in his mouth.
As he chewed, he said something that I didn’t really catch, and then, ‘. . . and fifty Gs.’
‘Fifty grand, was that a down payment or the full amount?’
‘Half. I got another fifty when we indicted the wife.’
‘And what was the first thing you’d told me was in the package? I couldn’t make out what you’d said.’
He took another slurp from his soda, smacked his lips then said, ‘Molly Green’s journal.’
‘What’s in the journal?’ I asked.
‘She was playing a part. Molly Green was a false identity. This woman was lying to everyone to get close to Patrick Vanderpool.’
‘Why’d Dekker give you the journal? Surely that’s motive for Patrick. Why the hell would they give that to the police?’
He leaned back, took a long drink from the straw until he was slurping at nothing but air.
Then put it down and said, ‘Dekker chose me. He knew I was a good cop, at heart. Yeah, I might have lost my way, lost some evidence here and there when it suited me, but I wasn’t going to cover up the murder of an innocent girl even if it was for a hundred K.
He wanted me to know Molly wasn’t innocent.
He told me to read the journal, that I’d see she was deranged, cunning and dangerous too.
She was gearing up to kill somebody, so I figured it did no harm to make sure I was protecting the right people. The real victims.’
‘Patrick Vanderpool is a victim?’
‘He could’ve been, if this crazy chick had gotten her way.
He told me to focus on the wife, Vanessa.
That she’d taken matters into her own hands with Molly.
That she was the real killer. And that in the investigation we should keep quiet about who Molly really was, that exposing her would only make things complicated for Patrick and his run for governor.
He told me to read the journal, and then burn it after. ’
‘And did you?’ I asked.
‘It’s in the glovebox of my car. I figured it was an insurance policy. That if I ever needed a favor from the new governor I could use it.’
‘The journal is in your pocket,’ I said.
He stared at me.
‘I patted you down too. Give it to me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘I want to make sure you’re not lying to me. I can hurt you with that photo, remember?’
He reached into his coat pocket, hesitated.
His eyes roamed the room while his mind wandered.
I didn’t know what he was thinking, but, whatever it was, he was struggling with it.
Either he was wondering how much damage I could cause him with that photo, or maybe something else.
The photo alone would just be the starting point for Internal Affairs.
It wouldn’t take them long to look into his investigation and his finances.
Cops are shit at hiding dirty money. But right then I wasn’t a hundred per cent sure that self-preservation was the only thing on his mind.
Cops don’t start out dirty. Some join up because it’s in their blood – long family lines of blue-blood cops.
Some join up for the pay and the pension and the job security.
It’s rare for cops to get laid off in this city.
For a few, a section of recruits, they join for one of two reasons.
Either they just want the power from the uniform, or they want to do some good – they want to help people and put away bad guys.
I wondered, just for a second, why Larkin joined the force. His early career was stellar, and he could have been one of those golden cops. He took out the journal and placed it on the table in front of me beside my soda.
As he put it down, he breathed out. A long sigh. Like he was laying down a burden, and lightening the load he carried around on his shoulders. No matter how far a person falls, there’s always a part of them that wants to climb back up.
I put the journal in my coat.
‘What else did you do for Dekker?’
‘I handled some cash payments. Dekker wanted to make sure witnesses would play ball.’
‘The neighbor, Alison Karim. Who else?’
‘That’s all I’m saying for now.’
‘The judge?’ I asked.
‘You’re a real piece of work, Eddie. Yeah, her too. But, look, that’s it. That’s all I got. I’ll never testify to any of this. I’m not going to jail for doing the right thing.’
‘The right thing?’
‘Yeah, look, I made sure that the right person went down for this. That’s all.
It don’t matter one heap of shit what I’ve done.
I believe your client killed that girl. I didn’t fuck around with forensics, Eddie.
It’s her DNA on that jewelry box, and the vic’s blood too.
She beat that girl to death with that box then took her head.
She killed Molly and tried to frame her husband.
And I made sure she didn’t get away with it.
You ask me about any of this shit on the stand, I’ll deny it all.
I’ll say Dekker gave me the journal and I gave it to you.
That we didn’t use it because it painted the victim in a bad light for the jury.
That the NYPD is not in the business of trashing murder victims. You can’t prove any of the other shit I told you, so we’re done here. ’
‘You mean, you’re done. You’re finished. Do the right thing and I can get you FBI protection. You’re being manipulated. Patrick and Dekker, they’re trying to frame the wife and you’re helping them.’
‘Listen to yourself. You believe your client? She’s a liar. She said she’d never been to Molly’s building. She didn’t know about the security camera in the back of the building, though. Like I said, we’re done here.’
He got up, left his soda and nachos, took the photo, and then left.
That hadn’t gone the way I’d expected.
I picked up my soda, pulled the straw out, then opened the lid and tipped the cup. The mini microphone fell into my hand. Reaching under the table, I pulled the duct tape loose and retrieved a phone. Swiped the screen to open it and then stopped the recording.
It was an illegal clandestine recording.
It may not even be admissible in court. If I let Judge Tanner hear this, my best guess was she would be worried about Larkin exposing her.
And she wouldn’t want Larkin to be in any kind of trouble in case he made a deal with law enforcement.
Taking out a corrupt judge is a way bigger prize than a corrupt cop.
Tanner would bury this recording, and then try to bury me and Vanessa.
Still, the recording was ammunition.
I just needed to figure out the best way to use it.
As I got up from my seat, I thought about Larkin.
He was corrupt and he deserved to go down for this.
I could understand his reasoning. Most cops who go bad do it for what they believe to be the right reasons – stretching the evidence, hiding inconsistencies in their case, all with the aim of putting bad people away.
They manipulated the system for their cause.
In some ways, Larkin wasn’t so different from me.
I just hoped I was on the right side of this case.
Weaving my way through the crowds at Times Square, I reached the subway station, got on a downtown train and found a seat in the carriage.
I took out Molly Green’s journal, and read.