LITMIR.BIZ

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as your true and only begotten lieutenant?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “And thou shalt have no other lieutenants before me?”

      “No, sir.”

      “And thou shalt forever keep this covenant and worship no false lieutenants?”

      “Yes.”

      “Very good, sergeant,” says D’Addario, extending his right hand. “You may now kiss the ring.”

      McLarney leans toward the large University of Baltimore band on the lieutenant’s right hand, feigning a gesture of exaggerated subservience. Both men laugh and D’Addario, satisfied, takes a cup of coffee back to his own office.

      Alone in the coffee room, Terry McLarney stares at the long white rectangle, understanding that D’Addario has already forgotten and forgiven the wayward memo. But the red ink on D’Addario’s side of the board—that’s cause for some real concern.

      Like most supervisors in the homicide unit, McLarney is a sergeant with a detective’s heart, and like D’Addario, he sees his role as largely protectionist. In the districts, the lieutenants can order their sergeants and the sergeants can order their men, and it all works as the general orders manual says it should—chain of command is suited to patrol. But in homicide, where the detectives are paced as much by their own instinct and talent as by the caseload, a good supervisor rarely makes unequivocal demands. He suggests, he encourages, he prods and pleads ever so gently with men who know exactly what needs to be done on a case without having to be told. In many ways, a detective sergeant best serves his men by completing the administrative paperwork, keeping the brass at bay and letting the detectives do the job. It is a reasoned philosophy, and McLarney holds firm to it nine out of ten days. But every tenth day, something suddenly compels him to attempt a pattern of behavior consistent with the sort of sergeants they warn you about in the academy.

      A heavyset Irishman with cherubic features, McLarney drapes one stubby leg over a desk corner and looks up at the white rectangle and the three red entries below his nameplate. Thomas Ward. Kenny Vines. Michael Jones. Three dead men; three open cases. Definitely not the best way for a squad to start a new year.

      McLarney is still staring at the board when one of his detectives walks into the coffee room. Carrying an old case folder, Donald Waltemeyer grunts a monosyllabic greeting and walks past the sergeant to an empty desk. McLarney watches him for a few minutes, thinking of a way to begin a conversation he doesn’t really want to have.

      “Hey, Donald.”

      “Hey.”

      “What are you looking at?”

      “Old case from Mount Vernon.”

      “Homosexual murder?”

      “Yeah, William Leyh, from eighty-seven. The one where the guy was tied up and beat,” says Waltemeyer, shuffling through the file to the five-by-seven color photos of a half-nude, blood-soaked wreck, hog-tied on an apartment floor.

      “What’s up with that?”

      “Got a call from a state trooper in New Jersey. There’s a guy in a mental institution up there who says he tied up and beat a guy in Baltimore.”

      “This case?”

      “Dunno. Me or Dave or Donald is going to have to go up there and talk to this guy. It could all be bullshit.”

      McLarney shifts gears. “I always said you were the hardest-working man in my squad, Donald. I tell everybody that.”

      Waltemeyer looks up at his sergeant with immediate suspicion.

      “No, really …”

      “What do you want, sergeant?”

      “Why do I have to want anything?”

      “Hey,” says Waltemeyer, leaning back in his chair, “how long have I been a policeman?”

      “Can’t a sergeant compliment one of his men?”

      Waltemeyer rolls his eyes. “What do you want from me?”

      McLarney laughs, almost embarrassed at having been so easily caught playing the role of supervisor.

      “Well,” he says, treading carefully, “what’s up with the Vines case?”

      “Not much. Ed wants to bring Eddie Carey back in and talk to him, but there isn’t much else.”

      “Well, what about Thomas Ward?”

      “Talk to Dave Brown. He’s the primary.”

      Pedaling with his feet, McLarney rolls his chair around to the side of Waltemeyer’s desk. His voice drops to a conspiratorial tone.

      “Donald, we’ve got to make something happen with some of these fresh cases. Dee was in here looking at the board just a few minutes ago.”

      “What are you telling me for?”

      “I’m just asking you, is there anything that we’re not doing?”

      “Is there anything I’m not doing?” says Waltemeyer, standing up and grabbing the Leyh file off the desk. “You tell me. I’m doing everything I can, but either the case is there or it isn’t. What should I be doing? You tell me.”

      Donald Waltemeyer is losing it. McLarney can tell because Waltemeyer’s eyes have begun to roll up into his forehead the way they always do when he gets steamed. McLarney worked with a guy in the Central who used to do that. Nicest guy in the world. Pretty long fuse. But let some yo with an attitude ride him too far, those eyeballs would roll up like an Atlantic City slot. It was a sure sign to every other cop that negotiations had ended and nightsticks were in order. McLarney tries to shrug off the memory; he continues to press the point with Waltemeyer.

      “Donald, I’m just saying it doesn’t look good to start out the year with so many cases in the red.”

      “So what you’re saying to me, sergeant, is that the lieutenant came in here and looked at the board and gave you a little kick, so now you’re gonna kick me.”

      The whole truth and nothing but. McLarney has to laugh. “Well, Donald, you can always go kick Dave Brown.”

      “Shit rolls downhill, doesn’t it, sergeant?”

      Fecal gravity. The chain of command defined.

      “I don’t know,” says McLarney, backing away from the conversation as gracefully as possible. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen shit on a hill.”

      “I understand, sergeant, I understand,” says Waltemeyer, walking out of the coffee room. “I been a policeman a long time now.”

      McLarney leans back in his chair, resting his head against the office blackboard. He absently pulls a copy of the police department newsletter off the top of the desk and scans the front page. Grip-and-grin photographs of commissioners and deputy commissioners shaking hands with whichever cop managed to survive the last police shooting. Thank you, son, for taking a bullet for Baltimore.

      The sergeant tosses the newsletter back on the desk, then gets up, giving one last glance at the board on his way out of the coffee room.

      Vines, Ward and Jones. Red, red and red.

      So, McLarney tells himself, it’s gonna be that kind of year.

      TUESDAY, JANUARY 26

      Harry Edgerton begins the day right, his freshly shined loafer narrowly avoiding a piece of the dead man’s ear as he pushes through the screen door of a Northeast Baltimore townhouse.

      “You just missed his ear.”

      Edgerton looks up quizzically at a ruddy-faced patrolman leaning against a living room wall.

      “What was that?”

      “His ear,” the uniform says, pointing down

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