The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

He laughed. “No, no, not at all. Just something somebody said to me. Long story, pay no attention.”

She smiled again, and he could see it in her eyes that the facial movement had caused her some pain. “A lot of you Brooklynites think anyone from out of town sounds like they come from Boston.”

McQueen sat back in his chair and raised his eyebrows in mock indignation. “‘Brooklynite?’ You think I sound like a Brooklynite?”

“Sure do.”

“Well, Ms. Taylor, just so you know, I live in the city. Not Brooklyn.” He kept his voice light, singsong.

“Isn’t Brooklyn in the city?”

“Well, yeah, geographically. But the city is Manhattan. I was born on Long Island but I’ve lived in the city for fifteen years.”

“All right, then,” she said, with a pitched nod of her head.

McQueen tapped his pen on his notepad and looked at the ugly bruise on her temple. He dropped his gaze to the splinted, bandaged broken fingers of her right hand.

“How are you doing? I know you took a bad fall and had a real bad scare. But how are you doing?”

She seemed to tremble briefly, and he regretted having asked. But she met his gaze with her answer.

“I’ll be fine. Everything is superficial, except for the fingers, and they’ll heal. I’ll be fine.”

He nodded to show he believed her and that yes, of course, she was right, she would be fine. He wondered, though, if she really would be.

“Can you describe the man to me?”

“It happened very fast. I mean, it seemed to last for hours, but... but...”

McQueen leaned forward and spoke more softly so she would have to focus on the sound of his voice in order to hear, focus on hearing the words and not the memory at hand.

“Was he taller than you?”

“Yes.”

“How tall are you?”

“Five-eight.”

“And him?”

She thought for a moment. “Five-nine or — ten.”

“His hair?”

“Black. Long. Very dirty.” She looked down at the sheet and nervously picked at a loose thread. “It... It...”

McQueen leaned in closer, his knees against the side of the bed. He imagined what it would be like to touch her. “It what?” he asked gently.

“It smelled.” She looked up sharply with the near panic of a frightened deer in her eyes. She whispered, “His hair was so dirty, I could smell it.”

She started to sob. McQueen sat back in his chair.

He needed to find this man. Badly. “I want to keep this one.”

McQueen started the engine and glanced down at his wristwatch as he spoke to Rizzo. It was two in the morning, and his eyes stung with the grit of someone who had been too long awake.

Rizzo shifted in the seat and adjusted his jacket. He settled in and turned to the younger detective.

“You what?” he asked absently.

“I want this one. I want to keep it. We can handle this case, Joe, and I want it.”

Rizzo shook his head and frowned. “Doesn’t work that way, kid. The morning shift catches and pokes around a little, does a rah-rah for the victim, and then turns the case to the day tour. You know that, that’s the way it is. Let’s get us back to the house and do the reports and grab a few Z’s. We’ll pick up enough of our own work next day-tour we pull. We don’t need to grab something ain’t our problem. OK?”

McQueen stared out of the window into the falling rain on the dark street. He didn’t turn his head when he spoke.

“Joe, I’m telling you, I want this case. If you’re in, fine. If not, I go to the squad boss tomorrow and ask for the case and a partner to go with it.” Now he turned to face the older man and met his eyes. “Up to you, Joe. You tell me.”

Rizzo turned away and spoke into the windshield before him. He let his eyes watch McQueen’s watery reflection. “Pretty rough for a fuckin’ guy with three days under his belt.” He sighed and turned slowly before he spoke again.

“One of the cops in the ER told me this broad was a looker. So now I get extra work ‘cause you got a hard-on?”

McQueen shook his head. “Joe, it’s not like that.”

Rizzo smiled. “Mike, you’re how old? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight? It’s like that, all right, it’s always like that.”

“Not this time. And not me. It’s wrong for you to say that, Joe.”

At that, Rizzo laughed aloud. “Mike,” he said through a lingering chuckle, “there ain’t no wrong. And there ain’t no right. There just is, that’s all.”

Now it was McQueen who laughed. “Who told you that, a guru?”

Rizzo fumbled through his jacket pockets and produced a battered and bent Chesterfield. “Sort of,” he said as he lit it. “My grandfather told me that. Do you know where I was born?”

McQueen, puzzled by the question, shook his head. “How would I know? Brooklyn?”

“Omaha-fuckin’-Nebraska, that’s where. My old man was a lifer in the Air Force stationed out there. Well, when I was nine years old he dropped dead. Me and my mother and big sister came back to Brooklyn to live with my grandparents. My grandfather was a first-grade detective working Chinatown back then. The first night we was home, I broke down, crying to him about how wrong it was, my old man dying and all, how it wasn’t right and all like that. He got down on his knees and leaned right into my face. I still remember the smell of beer and garlic sauce on his breath. He leaned right in and said, ‘Kid, nothing is wrong. And nothing is right. It just is.’ I never forgot that. He was dead-on correct about that, I’ll tell you.”