Cleary stood motionless for five seconds, the hum of the fluorescent tubes filling the heavy silence.
Then, slowly, with fingers that trembled with suppressed fury, he reached up to his chest, unpinned the gold-plated five-point star from his coat, and laid it face-down on the mahogany rail.
"You're going to regret this, Miller," Cleary said quietly, his voice like dry leaves scraping over stone.
"The union doesn't have the muscle to protect you when this trial is over."
"The union didn't put you in that dock, Cleary," I said, turning my back on him and leaning on my cane as I faced the exit doors.
"Your own ledger did."
CHAPTER 4: What The Morning Spared
The brass lock on my front door turned hard, the way it always did when the damp river air settled into the brownstone lintel.
I hung my overcoat on the iron peg behind the door, set my service bag on the bench, and stood by the small front window watching the street lamps click off along Sixth Avenue.
It was a quarter past nine.
The sleet had thinned into an oily mist that clung to the parked sedans and blackened the curbs.
Milk crates were already stacked on the sidewalk outside the bodega on the corner, and an early delivery van was idling by the curb, its exhaust puffing white against the wet red brick.
In the small galley kitchen, the pilot light on the gas stove sputtered twice before taking the flame.
I filled the heavy tin kettle, put it over the burner, and waited for the water to heat.
The radiator beneath the window groaned as the steam valve began to hiss, filling the narrow front room with the familiar smell of scalded iron and old wool.
My left hip was numb from six hours on the platform tiles and the hard wooden benches of the magistrate’s annex, but the sharp, stabbing ache in my right knee had settled into a dull throb.
For the first time in two years, I didn't reach into the cupboard for the prescription bottle the clinic had given me after the boiler plate fell.
I took down a single white mug, measured two spoonfuls of instant chicory into the bottom, and watched the dark powder dissolve beneath the boiling water.
On the drop-leaf table beside the hall mirror, where Martha used to keep the church envelopes and the telephone bill, lay the pale blue carbon voucher Magistrate Gans had returned to me before Diaz escorted Cleary through the holding sally port.
The blue ink stamp across the top was crisp: Brotherhood of Marine and Yard Mechanics, Local 47, Relief Trust Account No. 4.
Beneath it, the three living signatures and Tom O’Bannon’s purple thumbprint were dry and flat against the linen fiber.
Next to the scrip sat the yellow receipt from the county registrar’s evidence clerk, signed by the assistant district attorney on duty, acknowledging thirty-eight hundred dollars in seized currency and seven years of unlogged field notebooks removed from Booth 14.
The radio on the icebox was playing softly, tuned to the early city news bulletin between the weather and the morning traffic reports.
The voice came through the small speaker without drama, reading from the wire copy with the flat detachment of a man working through a stack of teleprinter rolls: "The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced early this morning the immediate suspension of Inspector Vincent Cleary and Patrolman Miller Vance of the Brooklyn transit detachment, pending the presentation of felony indictments to a special grand jury in Kings County. The charges follow an overnight multi-precinct inquiry into systematic shakedowns of late-shift maintenance staff and municipal pension holders at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn terminal. MTA officials stated the investigation was initiated after union shop stewards presented documented serial ledgers corroborated by internal platform audio."
I turned the dial and shut the radio off.
The house went quiet again, save for the ticking of the brass clock on the mantle and the steady, distant rumble of the subway running three levels beneath the street.
A car door closed outside.
I pulled back the edge of the muslin curtain and looked through the glass.
Captain Rourke was standing on the wet pavement, his black department overcoat unbuttoned, his collar turned up against the drizzle.
He didn't have his service rig on; his civilian suit was wrinkled across the shoulders, and he carried a flat manila folder under his arm.
He climbed the four sandstone steps to the vestibule, his boots scraping the salt residue from the stoop, and knocked twice with the flat of his knuckle.