Hardscrabble Road(32)

“Jackman told me.”

“Okay,” Benedetti said. “So Harrigan comes in, gets booked, calls his lawyer, and tells us all about Markey, right? We go get Markey, which isn’t hard, because he hangs out in only a couple of places and ends up at the same shelter when it gets too cold. We get Markey. We bring him in. It’s pretty obvious that whoever got Harrigan the drugs, Markey wasn’t it. So then I decided to do something, and I think it was probably a mistake.”

“What did you decide to do?”

“Charge Markey.”

“Even though you knew he couldn’t be guilty.”

“Yeah,” Benedetti said. “Look, Mr. Demarkian. This is the thing. Harrigan is behaving like a celebrity jerk. From off, his attitude has been that we can’t touch him and we won’t because he’s such an important person. He was that way to the officers in the car, he’s been that way to everybody he’s talked to since. He seems to think it’s automatic that because he’s a big celebrity we won’t bring any serious charges against him and we won’t insist on jail time. This is the guy who goes on the air four times a week and tells the world that the district attorneys of practically everywhere are complete wusses because they don’t send more white drug addicts to jail. That’s his solution to the difference in incarceration rates for drug crimes by race. Put more white drug addicts in jail, and if we don’t, we’re full of shit when we say we’re serious about the drug war. Sorry.”

“That’s all right,” Gregor said.

“Charging Markey got me two things,” Benedetti said. “The first thing it got me was an excuse not to drop charges or make a deal with Harrigan. I couldn’t do that and charge Markey at the same time because it would look like favoritism. It would look like I was going after a poor homeless man and letting the rich guy off the hook. Not that that isn’t done every day, because it is, but it gave me cover with Harrigan’s attorney. The second thing it got me was something of a lever to try to find out who was really getting Harrigan those drugs. Because you know and I know that somebody was, and that that somebody isn’t some pathetic old alkie living on the street. And I want him.”

Gregor thought about it. “I can’t see that you did anything unethical. Your reasoning makes sense. Is Drew Harrigan going to get some kind of celebrity free ride?”

“Probably.” Benedetti sighed. “In the long run. Oh, we’ll put him away for a few months, but it’ll be a token thing. He’d be at too much risk in the general prison population, and there’s no real point in jailing him anyway. If you ask me, there’s no real point in jailing most of the people we jail. Violent offenders, yes. People who defraud over and over and over again. Okay. But why is it exactly that we put away some kid for smoking dope and keep him in jail for a year, or five? Why is that sensible? Or embezzlers, or people who kite checks? I can think of a million better ways to handle those things than jail.”

“Are you going to say those things in the election?”

“Not on your life.”

“So you have your answer,” Gregor said. “You still haven’t told me, why do I have a Drew Harrigan problem?”

Rob Benedetti stared at the ceiling, then at the floor, then out the small square window that seemed to have a view of nothing but blank gray walls. Then he turned back to Gregor. “The word’s been out on the street for the last three days,” he said, “that Sherman Markey is dead, and Drew Harrigan killed him.”

“Drew Harrigan is in rehab.”

“Drew Harrigan’s accomplice killed him, then,” Rob said. “Jackman said something about this,” Gregor said. “He said people were speculating. So what?”

“It actually goes a little farther than that,” Benedetti said. “The night Sherman Markey disappeared, he was wearing a new set of clothes the people at the Justice Project bought him, including a bright red watch hat. On the morning of Tuesday, January twenty-eighth, a homeless man walked into the precinct station on Hardscrabble Road and tried to report a theft. He said a man he knew had died in a homeless shelter the night before, and some of the other men had stolen his hat. His bright red hat. He wanted to report the theft on behalf of the dead man.”

“And the police let him file a report?”

“No,” Benedetti said. “They sloughed him off, and that would have been that, because nobody would have remembered it. However, today, because you’ve been around asking questions and John Jackman is a friend of yours, we’ve had people double-checking things. And then we got lucky, and there was a coincidence.”