Glass Houses(62)
“It wasn’t Marty who picked up Henry Tyder,” Rob said. “It was two patrolmen in uniform. He was just standing there on the street with the dead body in the alley, and he had blood on him, so they arrested him. But here’s the thing. It was Marty who picked up Henry Tyder the first time.”
“All right.”
“He picked up the other men we’ve questioned, too. By himself. Without Cord.”
“You know,” Gregor said, “the thing that surprises me is that Cord Leehan has agreed to go along with this. This can’t be helping his own career.”
“Yeah, I know,” Rob said. “There was a fight. A big one. A physical fight. One thing I’ve learned from this whole mess, gay men can pack a punch that would make Muhammed Ali proud. Not that Marty is a slouch. Neither one of them is looking very good to the people in Community Affairs at the moment. Okay. Why don’t I introduce you to Cord and then get on the phone to John, who is going to really love being woken up in the middle of the night for the second time in as many hours.”
3
It took a little while to figure out why Cord Leehan looked as bad to Community Affairs as Marty Gayle did, but only a very little while. Cord Leehan had not been born to play the part of patient and reasonable victim to Marty Gayle’s muscular homophobe. He hadn’t been born to play the part of patient and reasonable anything. He had a twang that belonged on the old Dukes ofHazzard television show, and a chip on his shoulder the size of Nebraska.
Gregor caught up to him while he was berating a uniformed patrolman who looked ready to blow up himself, although Cord wasn’t paying attention.
“How could you let him get away with this?” Cord was saying. “What the hell is going on here? Everybody in the city knows the agreement in that deal. One of you ought to have been on the phone to me before you even got here. You ought to be damned glad I don’t name every last one of you in a lawsuit.”
Gregor came up beside him and coughed. “Excuse me,” he said. “I think—”
Cord Leehan wheeled around on his heels and stopped. “I was going to say you aren’t paid to think, but you are, aren’t you? You’re Gregor Demarkian.”
“That’s right.”
“I don’t suppose it occurred to you to call me. Or any of your friends. Benedetti. Jackman. It’s like living in a fun house around here.”
“I did call John Jackman,” Gregor pointed out. “That’s why you’re here.”
“You didn’t call him about me.”
“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact, call him about you. At least in part.”
“One of these days, I ought to take him out,” Cord said. “I’m going to get him in an alley with nobody looking and just let him have it. I’m going to cut out his dick and shove it down his throat.”
Gregor coughed again. Over at the front door to “the murder house”—he could already hear the all-day cable news stations calling it “the murder house”—the tech crews were winding things up. Rob Benedetti was talking to one of the ambulance men. Gregor suddenly wandered why they always sent an ambulance to pick up remains, even when they knew that there was nothing of a life left to save. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a special vehicle to transport bodies from the scene to the morgue?
His mind was wandering. If it didn’t wander, it had to think about Cord Leehan and Marty Gayle and various bits of the male anatomy shoved down other various bits of the male anatomy. Cord Leehan was standing absolutely still, watching the cleanup.
“It’s incredible,” he said finally. “It’s been years, two years, since this started. And it never goes away. Never. And they all back him up.”
“Who backs him up?” Gregor said.
“The uniformed patrolmen,” Cord said. “The detectives. There are, maybe, two other gay men besides myself in the department. And then I’m guessing. We keep it quiet around here because of things like this. But we had a hearing, and we brokered a deal, and that should have been the goddamned end to it.”
“Have you been Marty Gayle’s partner all the time he’s been on the Plate Glass Killer investigation?”
“I was on the Plate Glass Killer investigation before he was,” Cord said. “Hell, I wras the first person to call him the Plate Glass Killer. I found Sarajean Petrazik. And Marlee Craine. There was no Plate Glass Killer investigation before me.”
“But there might have been a Plate Glass Killer,” Gregor said. “That’s what all this is about, right?”