[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

had been built in its place. Don wasn't there. If he's still in the city, he's
probably in a nursing home. He was in his late forties back then."
"Did Mr. Lukert ever talk to you about Miss Babra?"
"Oh, a couple of times, perhaps. We had some laughs over how ridiculous and
grotesque she was."
Garreth decided he did not care much for Claudia Bologna Darling Drum
Thouvenelle.
"She tried to make him think she was a Balkan princess. She carried the
blood of ancient nobility in her veins, is how she put it. She gave him some
fantastic story about having escaped from eastern Europe just ahead of
Hitler's storm troopers. But she wasn't European. That Bela Lugosi accent she
used disappeared the moment she started shrieking at me and before that, a
client of mine I met at the club heard her speaking what she claimed was her
language and he said it was nothing but a preposterous hodgepodge of German
and Russian."
Garreth blinked. German matched Lane's choice of names, but where did the
Russian fit in? Possible German and Russian community? he wrote. They would
have to be groups insular enough to be speaking their own languages in
addition to English.
After asking questions for another ten minutes without learning anything
more that seemed useful, he closed the notebook and stood. "I think that's all
I need. Thank you for your time."
She escorted him to the door, speaking in a voice pitched to carry. "I'm so
glad to hear about Kate. I'd lost track of her and thought I'd never hear of
her again. Give your mother a big hug for me, will you?"
Garreth sighed in relief as the door closed behind him. What luck. She had
never come close to asking for his ID. Lucky cop. Thank you, Lady Luck. Keep
smiling, Lady.
7
The final, formal steps of resignation took less time and hurt more than
Garreth anticipated. Checking in all equipment issued to him by the department
felt like the division of property in a divorce. Gun, theirs; holster, his.
Badge and ID card, theirs; badge case, his. Call box and other assorted keys,
theirs; receipt for items currently being kept as evidence, his. So it went,
down to his signature on all the necessary papers and the receipt of his final
check.
He put that away carefully in his billfold. How long would it last? Until
he found Lane?
"Good luck, Mr. Mikaelian," the clerk said impersonally.
Mister. Civilian. Garreth turned away, biting his lip.
Cleaning out his desk felt like divorce, too . . . packing up what he felt
like taking, giving or throwing away the rest. Some of it amazed him; had he
really kept so much candy squirreled away in his desk? No wonder he had not
been able to lose weight. And where had the Valium come from? For the most
part, however, he worked numbly, feeling a chill like an arctic wind blowing
through him . . . that despite the heat he had taken the past twelve hours.
See the heat getting the heat.
First it had been Harry last night-someone Harry refused to identify had
told him about the finality of Garreth's resignation-and then the shooting
board this morning.
The officer going in the front with Harry had sighed in relief as the board
ruled his shooting of Wink righteous, but no one else found any comfort. The
board gave Harry and Garreth what amounted to the Starsky and Hutch Award for
Hot Dog of the Month, but also named the four uniformed officers as
accessories. Failure to clear the operation with Serruto headed the list of
sins, followed by criticisms of the execution that left no doubt that the
board felt only divine intervention prevented any loss of life.
They had reserved an entire section of their opinion just for Garreth.
"Under the best of circumstances, even if all other procedure had been
correctly observed, this operation would have been handicapped, if not
compromised, by the presence of Inspector Mikaelian. From the evidence of his
own statements and those made by Sergeant Takananda, it is clear that this
officer should not have been on duty. The board questions the judgment of Dr.
Charles in certifying him fit. We question the judgment of Lieutenant Serruto
in accepting that certification. And in light of the particularly savage
attack on Inspector Mikaelian such a short time before, its bizarre aftermath
in the morgue, and the inspector's forcible departure from the hospital and
refusal to return for proper medical observation and treatment, this board
wonders why a psychological evaluation of this officer was not required before
returning him to duty."
Behind his glasses, Garreth had glanced over to where Serruto sat with his
handsome face grimly deadpan. Garreth burned in an agony of guilt. The
lieutenant would be bearing the brunt of that last criticism. Under
questioning, Serruto had stated that he planned to send Garreth to the
department shrink, but could not explain why he had failed to do so. Of course
he would not remember that the thought had disappeared the moment Garreth
looked him in the eyes and declared himself fit.
In Homicide afterward, checking to be sure Garreth had all the necessary
reports turned in, Serruto had said, "We can't make you see the shrink now,
but you should go. Whatever brought on that attack in the restaurant and made
you freeze at O'Hare's place is a time bomb ticking away inside you. You ought
to have it defused."
"I'm fine," Garreth had said, declining, keenly aware that the advice and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]