Homicide. David Simon

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СКАЧАТЬ two in the service of Mayor Annoyed, you can pretty much name your poison.

      Reluctantly, Pellegrini took the transfer and thereafter spent nearly two years following Hizzoner from community meetings to fund-raisers to Preakness Parades. Schaefer was a tough man to work for, a machine-bred politician who prized loyalty and a willingness to eat shit above all other human attributes. There were several days when Pellegrini left work with mayoral insults ringing in his ears, and several more when he went home suppressing an almost overwhelming desire to cuff the city’s highest elected official to a radio car bumper.

      Once, at a March of Dimes event where Schaefer was serving as master of ceremonies, Pellegrini made the mistake of intervening in the mayor’s performance. As Schaefer waxed prolific on everything from birth defects to Baltimore’s new aquarium, an event organizer pointed out that the March of Dimes poster child, a little girl confined to her wheelchair, was not being included. Sensing disaster, Pellegrini reluctantly wheeled the child closer to the mayor, speaking in a soft stage whisper.

      “Uh, Mr. Mayor.”

      Schaefer ignored him.

      “Mr. Mayor, sir.”

      Schaefer waved him away.

      “Mr. Mayor …”

      When the mayor finished his speech, he wasted no time wheeling around on the plainclothes detective.

      “Get the fuck away from me,” said Schaefer.

      Still, Pellegrini played the good soldier, knowing that in Baltimore a machine politician’s word is gold. Sure enough, when Schaefer was elected Maryland’s governor in 1986, the people in his entourage got their pick of the lot. Within days of each other, there were two appointments to CID homicide: Fred Ceruti, a black plainclothesman from the Eastern, and Tom Pellegrini. Both men went to Jay Landsman’s squad.

      Once there, Pellegrini surprised everyone, including himself, by doing the job. Handling those early calls, he could not yet rely on natural instinct or experience; the City Hall detail wasn’t exactly a noted breeding ground for competent homicide detectives. But what he lacked in savvy, he made up for in a willingness to learn. He enjoyed the work, and more important, he began to feel as though there was something in this world that suited him. Landsman and Fahlteich led him through the early calls, just as Dunnigan and Requer tried to break in Ceruti by sharing their cases.

      Orientation to CID homicide wasn’t all that sophisticated. There was no training manual; instead, a veteran detective would hold your hand for a few calls and then, suddenly, let go to see if you could walk on your own. Nothing was more terrifying than your first time as primary, with the body stretched out on the pavement and the corner boys eyefucking you and the uniforms and ME’s attendants and lab techs all wondering if you know half of what you should. For Pellegrini, the turning point was the George Green case from the projects, the one where no one else in his squad expected a suspect, much less an arrest. Ceruti and Pellegrini handled that call together, with Ceruti off for a long weekend the following day. When Ceruti returned on Monday, he asked casually if anything was new on their homicide.

      “It’s down,” Pellegrini told him.

      “What?”

      “I locked up two suspects over the weekend.”

      Ceruti couldn’t believe it. The Green case was nothing out of the ordinary, a straight drug murder with no initial witnesses or physical evidence. Given a new detective as a primary, it was precisely the kind of case that everyone expected to stay open.

      Pellegrini solved it by legwork alone, by bringing in people and talking to them for hours on end. He soon found that he had the temperament for long interrogations, a patience that even the other detectives found exasperating. With his slow, laconic manner, Pellegrini could spend three minutes recounting what he had for breakfast that morning or a full five minutes telling the joke about the priest, the minister and the rabbi. While that might drive the likes of Jay Landsman to distraction, it was perfectly suited to interviewing criminals. Slowly, methodically, Pellegrini mastered more and more of the job, and he began to close a healthy majority of his cases. His success, he realized, was important to him only. His second wife, a former trauma unit nurse, had no problem with the morbidity that surrounded homicide work, but she had little interest in the intricacies of the cases. His mother expressed only general pride in her son’s success; his father was lost to him entirely. In the end, Pellegrini had to accept that this victory was something that he would celebrate alone.

      He thought it was a victory, at least, until Latonya Wallace showed up dead in that alley. For the first time in a long while, Pellegrini began to question his own ability, deferring to Landsman and Edgerton, allowing the more experienced investigators to chart the course.

      This was understandable; after all, he had never handled a true red ball. But the blend of personalities, of individual styles, also contributed to Pellegrini’s doubt. Landsman was not only loud and aggressive but supremely confident as well, and when he worked a case he tended to become its center, drawing other detectives toward him by centripetal force. Edgerton, too, was the picture of confidence, quick to put his ideas forward or argue with Landsman about one theory or another. Edgerton had the New York attitude, the inner sense that tells a city boy to speak first in a crowded room, before someone else opens his mouth and the opportunity is gone.

      Pellegrini was different. He had his ideas about the case, to be sure, but his manner was so restrained, his speech so casual and slow, that in any debate the veteran detectives tended to run over him. At first, it was only moderately irritating, and how much did it matter, anyway? He really didn’t disagree with either Landsman or Edgerton in his choice of direction. He had been with them when they first focused on the Fish Man as a suspect and he had been with them when Landsman offered the theory that the killer had to live in that same block of Newington. He agreed with them when they had jumped on the old drunk living across the street. It all sounded reasoned, and whatever else you could say about Jay and Harry, you had to admit that they knew their business.

      It will be months before Pellegrini begins to chastise himself for being so unassertive. But eventually the same thoughts that plagued him at the crime scene—the feeling that he is not completely in control of his case—will bother him again. Latonya Wallace was a red ball, and a red ball brings the whole shift into a case for better or worse. Landsman, Edgerton, Garvey, McAllister, Eddie Brown—all of them had a hand in the pie, all of them were intent on turning over the stone that would reveal a child killer. True, they were covering a lot of ground that way, but in the end, it wouldn’t have Landsman’s or Edgerton’s or Garvey’s name on the case file.

      Landsman is definitely right about one thing: Pellegrini is tired. They all are. That night, as the fifth day of the investigation ends, every one of them leaves the office at 3:00 A.M. knowing they will be back in five hours and knowing, too, that the sixteen-and twenty-hour shifts they have been working since Thursday are not going to end soon. The obvious, unspoken question is how long can they keep it up. Dark ridges have already become fixed below Pellegrini’s eyes, and whatever sleep the detective does get is often punctuated by nocturnal declarations from his second son, now three months old. Never much on appearances as a plainclothesman, Landsman is now shaving every other day, and his attire has spiraled down from sport coats to wool sweaters to leather jackets and denims.

      “Hey, Jaybird,” McLarney tells Landsman the following morning, “you look a little beat.”

      “I’m okay.”

      “How’s it going? Anything new?”

      “This one’ll go down,” says Landsman.

      But СКАЧАТЬ