Stone Cold Dead by James Ziskin (great novels of all time txt) 📕

“Please come quietly, miss, or I’ll arrest you for resisting an officer.”

I soon realized that no amount of pleading or tears—which I refused to let fall from my eyes in front of that louse—could have persuaded him to let me go. I knew I wasn’t drunk, so he couldn’t make that stick, but he could charge me with resisting arrest if I didn’t comply. So I did. I grabbed my purse and umbrella and popped open the driver’s door, which, thanks to the protracted warm spell, was now unfrozen and functioning as designed. I stood up in the rain, opened my umbrella, and slammed the car door shut. Sergeant Joe Philbin, as I later found out he was called, put me in the back of his squad car and drove me off to the station downtown.

I’d visited the station many times in my capacity as a reporter, but I’d never made it beyond the lobby, where a duty sergeant sat behind a high, wooden desk, scratched and worn from decades of use. The desk, not the cop. This day was different. I was going into the clubhouse.

Philbin escorted me inside and left me in a dingy questioning room. I cooled my heels there for nearly an hour, sitting on a hard wooden chair, before the door opened, and Chief Patrick Finn stepped in.

“You’re always turning up somewhere, aren’t you?” he said, his red face practically throwing off heat. His was a drinker’s red, a flush that comes from within, not from sun- or windburn, and the edges of his nose showed a spiderweb of broken blood vessels. Not the pock-marked schnoz that Gus Arnold sported, but Chief Finn tipped the bottle, that much was obvious.

I cleared my throat. “May I ask why I’m being detained?”

“Detained?” he laughed. “Oh, you’re a classy one, aren’t you? Big words and a fancy job as a girl reporter.”

“I’m not lit, and I ain’t nicked nothin’ neither,” I said for his benefit, and just as sassy as it sounds. “I know my rights. Wait till my mouthpiece gets here.”

He smirked. “Real funny, girlie. You got a wise mouth, you know that? Some folks don’t appreciate your big-city sense of humor.” He pronounced “humor” without the H.

“I want to call my lawyer,” I said.

“First you’re gonna walk a straight line,” he said. “Get up.”

I said nothing but looked away and crossed my arms over my chest.

“Up,” he said, but I wouldn’t budge and pretended to be deaf.

Finn took a step toward me, and I grabbed onto the chair with both hands.

“‘Police Chief Roughs Up Girl,’” I said.

He stopped. “What? What are you talking about?”

“That will be the headline in tomorrow’s paper if you lay one finger on me.”

Finn waved a hand at me and chuckled. “I’m not going to touch you, girlie. You got a wild imagination.”

“I believe I have the right to make a phone call,” I said.

I phoned Charlie Reese, who wasn’t too happy to hear I was in stir. I assured him he couldn’t possibly be more upset than I was. He said he’d get me out as soon as he could.

After my phone call, Finn left me alone in the questioning room, door closed, for another forty-five minutes. He had taken my purse with him, so I had no pad, no pencil, no cigarettes. This was solitary confinement. I passed the time working out possible corruption stories I could write about Chief Finn and the NHPD. There was a shady investment that had panned out extremely well for the career cop: some property he’d bought just weeks before General Electric announced plans to build a research facility in nearby Saratoga County. As luck would have it, the land earmarked for the plant had recently been acquired by Finn. The rumor was that the police had hauled a GE executive in on a charge of corruption of a minor two months before Finn bought the land. Somehow, the man was never arrested, and the whole thing went away. I’d heard the story from Pat Halvey. Not the most reliable source, but he claimed he had buddies on the New Holland police force who’d given him the skinny. It would be sweet to serve the crooked cop his comeuppance and nail a pervert at the same time. I was thinking just that when the door sprung open, and Philbin told me I could go.

“What, no blood test?” I asked.

“No. Just a citation for a broken taillight,” he said with a smile.

“I don’t have a broken taillight.”

“You do now,” he said, handing me the ticket and my purse.

Outside in the lobby, Charlie was waiting for me with Sol Meshnick, the Republic’s lead counsel. Bespectacled and befuddled, nearing seventy, Sol tilted his head back on the fulcrum of his neck and inspected me as if looking for damage. He looked me up and down, taking his time and care as his eyes ran over my bust and the curves of my hips.

“I’m fine, Sol,” I said, pushing past the old lecher. “Let’s get out of here.”

Charlie drove me to collect my car, still parked in the slush where I’d left it. We didn’t say much to each other. He knew when not to test me, and I was so angry—both at the cops who’d harassed me for their own entertainment and the lawyer who’d ogled me for his—that Charlie kept the conversation to a minimum.

The rain had stopped, but the streets were still a sloppy mess, with puddles and mud everywhere. I examined the left taillight of my Dodge, broken very recently by what looked like a sharp kick from a black shoe. I sighed, climbed in, and drove off toward the Republic’s office on Main Street.

Norma Geary met me at the City Room door. She gave me a sidelong glance, as if playing it cool in front of potential witnesses, then told me to stop by her desk in the steno pool when I had a chance. I wanted to