Part 25 (1/2)

Worden nodded, then looked at Kincaid, who had spent the last five minutes undertaking as comprehensive a review of the surgical resident as could be accomplished under the circ.u.mstances.

”I'll say this, Mr. Jones,” drawled Kincaid. ”You're in good hands now. Real good hands.”

The resident looked up, irritated and a little embarra.s.sed. And then Worden was smiling wickedly at his own thoughts. He leaned low to the victim's ear. ”You know, Mr. Jones, you're a lucky man,” he said in a stage whisper.

”What?”

”You're a lucky man.”

Wincing with pain, the victim looked sideways at the detective. ”How the h.e.l.l you figure that?”

Worden smiled. ”Well, from the look of things, your wife was going for your Johnson,” said the detective. ”And from what I can see, she only missed by a couple inches.”

Suddenly, from beneath the oxygen mask, Cornell Jones was laughing uproariously. The resident, too, was losing it, her face contorted as she struggled against herself.

”Yeah,” said Kincaid. ”A big guy like yourself, you was pretty d.a.m.n close to singin' soprano, you know that?”

Cornell Jones rocked up and down on the gurney, laughing and wincing at the same time.

Worden held up his hand, signing off with a short wave. ”You have a good one.”

”You too, man,” said Cornell Jones, still laughing.

The s.h.i.+t you see out here, thought Worden, driving back to the office. And my G.o.d, he had to admit, there are still moments when I love this job.

SUNDAY, MAY 1.

”Something's gone wrong,” says Terry McLarney.

Eddie Brown answers without looking up, his mind fully absorbed by mathematical endeavors. Statistical charts and spread sheets arrayed in front of him, Brown will figure a way to predict tomorrow night's four-digit lotto number or he will die trying.

”What's wrong?”

”Look around,” says McLarney. ”The phone is ringing with information on every kind of case and we're getting double-dunkers left and right. Hey, even the lab is coming up with print hits.”

”So,” says Brown, ”what's wrong with that?”

”It's not like us,” says McLarney. ”I get the feeling that we're going to be punished. I have this feeling that there's a rowhouse somewhere with about a dozen skeletons in the bas.e.m.e.nt, just waiting for us.”

Brown shakes his head. ”You think too much,” he tells McLarney.

A criticism rarely leveled at a Baltimore cop, and McLarney laughs at the absurdity of the notion. He's a sergeant and an Irishman; by that reckoning alone, it's his responsibility to rip the silver linings out of every last little cloud. The board is going from red to black. Murders are being solved. Evil is being punished. Good Lord, thinks McLarney, how much is this going to cost?

The streak began a month ago up on Kirk Avenue, in the gutted remains of a torched rowhouse, where Donald Steinhice watched firefighters pull at the cracked and blackened debris until all three bodies were distinguishable. The oldest was three, the youngest, five months; their remains were discovered in an upstairs bedroom, where they stayed after every adult fled from the burning house. For Steinhice, a veteran of Stanton's s.h.i.+ft, the accelerant pour-patterns on the first floor-identifiable as darker splotches on the floors and walls-told the story: Mother dumps boyfriend, boyfriend returns with kerosene, children pay the price. In recent years, the scenario had become strangely common to the inner city. Four months back, in fact, Mark Tomlin caught a rowhouse arson that claimed two children; then, little more than a week ago and less than a month after the Kirk Avenue tragedy, another boyfriend torched another mother's home, murdering a twenty-one-month-old toddler and his seven-month-old sister.

”The adults always make it out,” explained Scott Keller, the primary on the most recent case and a veteran of the CID arson unit. ”The kids always get left behind.”

More than most homicides, the Kirk Avenue arson had an emotional cost; Steinhice, a detective with perhaps a thousand crime scenes behind him, suffered nightmares about a murder for the first time-graphic images of helplessness in which the dead children were at the top of a row-house stairway, crying, terrified. Nonetheless, when the boyfriend came downtown in handcuffs, it was Steinhice who mustered empathy enough to prompt a full confession. And it was Steinhice who intervened when the boyfriend tore apart an aluminum soda can after his confession and tried to use the rough edges against his wrists.

Kirk Avenue was hard for Steinhice to swallow, but it was nonetheless medicine for what ailed both s.h.i.+fts of the homicide unit. Three dead, one arrest, three clearances-a stat like that can start a trend all by itself.

Sure enough, the following week brought Tom Pellegrini his dunker at the Civic Center, the labor dispute that became a one-sided knife fight. Rick Requer followed that case with two more clearances: a double murder-suicide from the Southeastern in which an emotionally distraught auto mechanic shot his wife and nephew in the kitchen, then wrapped things up tidily by reloading the .44 Magnum and shoving the barrel in his mouth. In human terms, the scene at 3002 McElderry Street was a ma.s.sacre; in the statistical terms of urban homicide work, it was the stuff from which a detective fas.h.i.+ons dreams.

One week more and the trend was clear: Dave Brown and Worden caught a poker game dispute in the Eastern in which a sixty-one-year-old player, arguing over the proper ante, suddenly grabbed a shotgun and blew up a friend. Garvey and Kincaid followed suit, taking a shooting call on Fairview and getting a father murdered by his son, killed in an argument over the boy's unwillingness to share drug profits. Barlow and Gilbert again hit the jackpot for Stanton's s.h.i.+ft in the Southwest, where yet another angry young boyfriend fatally wounded both the woman he loved and the infant daughter in her arms, then trained the same weapon on himself.

Five nights later, Donald Waltemeyer and Dave Brown clocked in with yet another death-by-argument, a bar shooting from Highlandtown in which the subsequent performance of the two suspects in the homicide office resembled nothing so much as outtake from a B-grade Mafia film. They were Philly boys, short, dark Italians named DelGiornio and Forline, and they had killed a Baltimore man in a dispute that centered on the relative accomplishments of their respective fathers. The victim's father ran an industrial firm; DelGiornio's father, however, had done well in the Philadelphia Mafia until events beyond his control forced him to become a federal witness against the heads of the Philly crime family. This, of course, necessitated the relocation of family members from South Philly, which, in turn, explained the appearance of the younger DelGiornio and his friend in Southeast Baltimore. The Baltimore detectives were biting their lips when DelGiornio made his phone call to Dad.

”Yo, Dad,” mumbled DelGiornio, crying into the receiver in what appeared to the detectives to be a rank Stallone impersonation. ”I f.u.c.ked up. I really f.u.c.ked up ... Killed him, yeah. It was a fight ... No, Tony ... Tony shot him ... Dad, I'm really in some trouble here.”

By morning, a herd of well-cropped FBI agents had arrived at the Formstone rowhouse that the government had rented for the DelGiornio kid only forty-eight hours earlier. The kid's belongings were crated up, his bail was set at a ridiculously low amount and by the following evening he was living in some other city at the government's expense. For his role in the death of a twenty-four-year-old man, Robert DelGiornio will eventually receive probation; Tony Forline, the shooter in the incident, will get five years. Both plea agreements will be set only weeks before the elder DelGiornio testifies as the key government witness in the federal conspiracy trial in Philadelphia.

”Well, we taught him a lesson,” declared McLarney, after the Italian kids were given light bails by a court commissioner and herded out of Maryland. ”They're probably up in Philly now, warning all their little Mob friends not to do a murder in Baltimore. We might not lock them up for it, but hey, we'll take away their guns and refuse to give them back.”

Regardless of the outcome, the DelGiornio case was another clearance in what had suddenly become a month of clearances. For Gary D'Addario, it was a good sign, but one that could only be called belated. In a world ruled by statistics, he had been exposed for far too long and, as a result, his conflict with the captain had made its way down the sixth-floor hall to d.i.c.k Lanham, the CID commander. D'Addario wasn't surprised to find out that in conversations with Lanham, his captain had attributed the low clearance rate and other problems to D'Addario's management style. Things were getting ugly, so ugly in fact that one late April morning, the captain approached Worden, arguably D'Addario's best detective.

”I'm afraid the colonel is talking about making changes,” said the captain. ”How do you think the men would feel about working for another lieutenant?”

”I think you'd have a mutiny on your hands,” answered Worden, hoping to shoot down the trial balloon. ”Why are you asking?”

”Well, I want to know how the men feel,” explained the captain. ”Something may be in the works.”

In the works. Within an hour, D'Addario had heard about that exchange from Worden and three other detectives. He went directly to the colonel, with whom he believed he had credibility. Eight successful years as a homicide supervisor, he reasoned, had to count for a little something.

To D'Addario, the colonel confirmed that the pressure to move him was coming from the captain. Moreover, the colonel seemed noncommittal and expressed concern about the low clearance rate. D'Addario could hear the unasked question: ”If you aren't the problem, then what is?”

The lieutenant returned to his office and typed a long memo that sought to explain the statistical difference between Stanton's rate and his own. He noted that more than half of the murders taken by his s.h.i.+ft were drug-related, noting further that some of those cases had been sacrificed to staff the Latonya Wallace probe. Moreover, he argued, one critical reason for the low rate was that neither lieutenant managed to save any December clearances for the new year-something that always gives the unit a January cus.h.i.+on. The rate will rise, D'Addario predicted, it's rising now. Give it some time.

To D'Addario, the memo seemed to convince the colonel; others on his s.h.i.+ft weren't sure. The choice of a s.h.i.+ft lieutenant as a likely scapegoat might not be so much the work of the captain as the result of criticism from above, perhaps the colonel and maybe even the deputy. If that was the case, then D'Addario was being pressured by more than the clearance rate. It was Monroe Street, too. And the Northwest murders and Latonya Wallace. Especially Latonya Wallace. By itself, D'Addario knew, the absence of charging doc.u.ments in the little girl's murder could be enough to send the bra.s.s on a head-hunting sortie.

Shorn of political allies, D'Addario had two options: He could accept a transfer to another unit and learn to live with the taste that such a transfer would leave. Or he could tough it out, hoping the clearance rate would continue to climb and a red ball or two would get solved in the process. If he stayed on, his superiors could try to force a transfer, but that, he knew, was a messy process. They would have to show cause, and that would result in a nasty little paper war. He would lose, of course, but it would not be pretty-and the colonel and captain both had to know that.

D'Addario also understood that there would be another cost if he remained in homicide. Because as long as that rate stayed low, he would no longer be able to protect his men from the whims of the command staff, at least not to the extent he had protected them in the past. Appearances would count: Every detective would have to toe closer to the line, and D'Addario would have to make it appear that he was the one compelling them to do so. The overtime would no longer flow as freely; the detectives handling fewer calls would have to pick up their pace. Most important, the detectives would have to cover themselves, writing follow-ups and updates to every case file so that no supervisor could come behind them, arguing that leads had not been pursued. This, D'Addario knew, was pure departmental horses.h.i.+t. The make-work required for a half-dozen cover-your-a.s.s office reports would waste valuable time. Still, that was the game, and now the game would have to be played.

The most complicated part of that game would be the crack-down on the unit's overtime pay, a ritual that often marked the end of a budget year in the Baltimore department. The homicide unit consistently came in almost $150,000 over budget on straight overtime and courtside pay for its detectives. Just as consistently, the department tried to crack the whip in April and May, exerting a minimal effect on the unit that disappeared entirely in June, when the new budget year began and the money once again flowed freely. For two or three months each spring, captains told lieutenants who told sergeants to authorize as little OT as possible so that the numbers would look a little better to the bra.s.s upstairs. This was possible in a district where, on any given night, one or two fewer radio cars might be handling calls during an overtime crunch. In the homicide unit, however, the practice created surreal working conditions.

The overtime cap was premised on a single rule: Any detective who reached 50 percent of his base pay in acc.u.mulated OT and court time was taken out of the rotation. The logic made perfect sense to fiscal services: If Worden hits his limit and is put on permanent daywork, he can't handle calls. And if he can't handle calls, he can't earn overtime. But in the opinion of the detectives and their sergeants, the rule had no logic. After all, if Worden is out of the rotation, then the other four detectives in his squad are catching more calls on the nights.h.i.+ft. And if, G.o.d forbid, Waltemeyer is also near his OT limit, then this squad is down to three men. In CID homicide, a squad that goes into a midnight s.h.i.+ft with no more than three detectives is asking to be punished.

More important, the overtime cap was a frontal a.s.sault on quality. The best detectives were inevitably those who worked their cases longest, and their cases were inevitably those that were strong enough to go to court. Granted, an experienced detective could milk any case for extra hours, but it usually cost a great deal more money to solve a murder than to keep it open, and even more money to actually win that case in court. A cleared homicide is a money tree, a truth recognized by Rule Seven in the pantheon of homicide wisdom.

In reference to the color of money, and the colors by which open and solved murders are chronicled on the board, the rule states: First, they're red. Then they're green. Then they're black. But now, because of D'Addario's vulnerability, there would be less green in the equation. This spring, the 50 percent overtime rule threatened to do some real damage.

Gary Dunnigan hit the 50 percent mark first and suddenly found himself on a permanent days.h.i.+ft, working follow-ups to old cases and nothing else. Then Worden hit the wall, then Waltemeyer, then Rick James began edging up over 48 percent. Suddenly, McLarney was looking at three weeks of nightwork with two detectives to call on.

”There's no limit to how many they can kill,” said Worden cynically. ”There's only a limit to how long we can work them.”

D'Addario played the game as it had to be played, sending warning letters-copied to the colonel and captain-to the detectives approaching the 50 percent cap, then benching those who exceeded the limit. Remarkably, his sergeants and detectives were willing to cooperate in this nonsense. Any one of them could have thwarted the restrictions by calling in more detectives to help with a bad midnight s.h.i.+ft and then claiming that events overran policy. Murder, after all, is one of the least predictable things in this world.

Instead, the sergeants sidelined detectives and juggled the schedules because they understood the risk to D'Addario and, beyond that, to themselves. There were a lot of lieutenants in the department and in the estimate of McLarney and Jay Landsman, at least, a good 80 percent of them had the ability, the will and the ambition to do a superior job of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the CID homicide unit if ever given any chance.

But if McLarney and Landsman played the game out of genuine loyalty to D'Addario, Roger Nolan's reasons were altogether different.