Free Red on Red by Edward Conlon Page B

more troubling deficits, and he was struck by the economy’s lack of impact on him, on anyone he knew very well, even on the city as he knew it. No epidemic of boarded-up storefronts, and the men who loitered on corners were the ones who always had. Allison had prospered. She’d convinced her firm to make a big bet on a bad future,and Nick wondered whether he flattered himself to think he may have played a part in her inspiration. When Nick arrived at the precinct, he cast these thoughts from his mind like evil spirits.
    The precinct building was of recent construction, a box of cinder block three stories tall. It was built of the cheapest material by the lowest bidder, at the cost of a palace. On sconces beside the front door were two green lights, the centuries-old marker of a New York City police station; one cop in ten might have known what they meant, or noticed that they were green. Inside, a lieutenant stood before a desk that extended from one end of the room to the other, like a bar, and two cops and a prisoner stood before him, awaiting service. Nick slipped up a stairway beside them, half-nodding to two more cops, and walked into the squad.
    The room was long and rectangular, with a central island of desks doubled up, face-to-face. It would have taken great effort to make an impression of order here, and little effort was made. Each desk had both a computer terminal and a typewriter, and a few had electric fans; all were littered with reports. Wanted posters lined the walls of the waiting area, some yellowing with age, others covered with more recent posters of more local priority, so that the posters formed sedimentary layers of newer and nearer crimes. Inside the squad, the posters were for their own consumption, warning against corruption and sexual harassment, although money and women were both in short supply. Fluorescent lights flickered over scuffed tile floors, and the air was filled with broken phrases of cop talk, as they hustled the phones.
    “Like I said, I don’t know if it’s true. She said you hit her. I’m not here to judge, but come on in and tell me your side….”
    “This is the police.
Sí, la policía
. Is Reuben Alvarez at home?”
    “I need to know if the kid goes to school there, if he’s there today…. Yeah, I can get a subpoena, but that’ll just waste everybody’s time….”
    “No, this is the detective squad, not the hospital. You got the wrong Number…. No, I don’t know why he’s not getting better, lady. Ask the doctor.”
    “No, but you gotta come in to talk to me. That’s how it’s done….”
    “Does anybody there speak English? No, you don’t speak English, believe me. Stop kidding yourself, you don’t. Get me somebody who does.”
    “Tell you what, let me talk to your supervisor…. No, I don’t need a subpoena to talk to your supervisor. Just put him on the phone….”
    “Like I said, lady, you got the wrong number….”
    Napolitano, Garelick, Perez, Smith, Valentini, Crimmins. There were no strangers. Good. The phones kept ringing, and almost half the time, they were answered this way:
    “Detective squad. Detective McCann. Can I help you?”
    “Detective McCann. How can I help you?”
    “McCann …”
    There was no Detective McCann. He was a figment used to dodge wives or girlfriends, pesty complainants, or demands for administrative arcana from headquarters. Several angry letters had been sent to the squad accusing McCann of incompetence; one, which was framed and hung up on a wall, thanked him for talking a runaway son into coming home. Nick was never McCann, and neither was Esposito. Nick disliked lying altogether—almost altogether—and Esposito never felt the need for that kind of evasion. Garelick was McCann most often; he may have invented him. Garelick also minted any number of Jewish holidays when he wanted to take off, and though the boss was suspicious, he rarely denied him.
    Nick signed in and went to his desk. There was a mild