Free Mean Streak by Carolyn Wheat Page A

cops themselves.”
    I thought about it. “So if I put TJ on the stand as a registered informant,” I said, “the only way Singer can tear him down is to show he’s a dealer—and if she does that, she admits that Eddie’s own partner, this Krieger, is a bent cop.”
    â€œA nice double bind,” Deke approved.
    â€œSo where can I find TJ?” I asked.
    â€œI had a client who might be able to help,” Deke replied. “I’ll bring him down from upstate on a writ, and you can talk to him.”
    I paid for the drinks and walked home down Clinton Street—named for DeWitt, not Bill—with visions of destroying Eddie Fitz on the witness stand dancing in my head.
    I’d met Jesse Winthrop once before; he’d looked just like the picture that headed his column: a fanatic’s eyes, a mane of hair down to his shoulders, a handsome-craggy face. A New York face, full of dashed hopes and wry humor.
    He looked old. Not just older, but old. The hair was still a good deal longer than most men wore in the nineties, but it was all white now, and hung limp and lank. The face was craggier than ever, but the fire in his eyes had banked. He looked tired; it was hard to put this old man together with the exposés that had electrified the city.
    â€œMr. Winthrop,” I began, taking the chair nearest his and tossing my bag onto the floor. I wasn’t sure exactly why I’d felt compelled to call him, to make an appointment to meet him and talk about Eddie Fitz. I just knew I somehow owed it to this man to let him know his Hero Cop might take a big fall from the pedestal he’d placed him on. After two weeks of digging, I was beginning to see that Eddie Fitz had feet of very muddy clay indeed.
    â€œJesse,” he amended. “And you are, as I recall, Cass instead of Cassie.”
    I nodded. “Good memory.”
    â€œPart of the job.” He shifted his gaze to the window. We were seated at a window table at The Peacock, one of the Village’s best coffeehouses. The tables were tiny wooden affairs that just barely managed to support coffee cups; the chairs were eclectic leftovers from Grandmother’s attic, the atmosphere was dark and quiet, and they played good classical music. And the window seats looked directly out onto Greenwich Avenue, so you could sit for hours people-watching and sipping cappuccino.
    It was a good place for a rendezvous, a place where you could tell secrets and the people at the next table wouldn’t even give you a glance; they were busy arguing about the Czech movie they’d just seen at the Quad or doing their homework for NYU, scribbling on notepaper with a huge book open on the spindly table. Or they were in love; two twentysomething girls dressed in black held hands and gazed into one another’s eyes at a table near the huge brass and copper coffee urn the owners had brought from the Old Country.
    I’d once broken up with a boyfriend in here, and nobody noticed or cared that I stormed out in a flood of noisy tears.
    â€œIf a beached whale washes up on Coney Island,” Jesse pronounced in his gravelly New York voice, “it’s news. If a shark does the same thing, it’s not. Nobody cares what happens to the shark, and nobody cares what happens to Matt Riordan.”
    â€œThis is not the Jesse Winthrop I used to read,” I said, letting my tone carry all the very real disappointment I was feeling. I’d hoped he’d be at the least a neutral observer of the trial, rather than a shill for Lazarus. “In the old days,” I went on, “you would have lambasted Lazarus for bending the rules to nail Riordan. You would have reminded your readers that even a guy like Riordan deserves the Constitution, that the authorities can’t convict him just because of his reputation. Hell,” I said with a rueful smile, warming to my theme, “I can just see the article now. You’d