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“Not me. They just called me up and said that you were a dead man.”
“Why call you?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.
“Nowadays I’m kind of a clearinghouse under the new mayor and chief. They wanna clean up the past and start the future with a blank slate. But back then there was a kind of a club that shared all that money swirling around. My nephew was in law school, and I bought my wife a house in Miami. I had told my friends back then what you were up to and they decided to make you die.”
“But you gave them a better choice,” I said.
“I knew you and the ladies, Joe. I knew we could put a frame around you with a cute young white girl. Worked beautiful. But Convert is a pervert. He made it so Jocelyn Bryor got the case and turned Monica against you. I had it so you’d make bail and then I’d talk you into accepting what had happened. But after you got slashed I just put you in a hole and let the powers that be do what they did.”
“So you destroyed my life,” I said. “Just like that.”
“I saved your life, Joe. Don’t you ever believe anything else.”
“But now you’re gonna come in here and kill me.”
“When I saw you come in this building, I knew you had taken Mr. Thurman’s hideaway,” he said. “We’ve known about this place for a while. How’d you know about it, anyway?”
“Are you gonna kill me, Glad?”
“Do I have to?”
“I’m a cop, man. I saw something bad and I took steps. Your people wrecked everything.”
“You’re an ex-cop, Joe. And who knows? Maybe if you stayed on the job you’d’a gotten shot down in a firefight or somethin’. It could be I saved your life twice.”
“It was wrong what you did.”
“Maybe,” Gladstone Palmer admitted. “Maybe. But you have to understand, Joe, the brass now is all new. The people I worked with are off the force.”
“Paul Convert’s still around.”
“He’s not gonna be a problem long. After he messed up in Queens he’s in more hot water than you.”
“You knew about Queens?”
“After the fact.” Glad’s smile was friendly if sad. “The force can’t afford a scandal, Joe. The people dealing on the docks are either retired, dead, or reformed. Not even the mayor would stand in the way of your demise.”
Gladstone had a way of revealing the truth. I could see that I’d never be exonerated, much less reinstated.
“And there’s another thing,” my friend said.
“What’s that?” I asked. A wave of exhaustion passed through me.
“This thing with Free Man, Leonard Compton.”
“How you know about him?”
“I’m lookin’ for you, and in a whole other precinct you’re kickin’ up dust over a cop killer. You know the left hand speaks to the right even on the dark side of the force.”
“Valence and Pratt killed over a dozen people, Glad.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Everybody knew about Valence and Pratt. But nobody kills a cop unless it’s the last resort. And you know those boys made a lotta money. They could grease the wheels of machines half the way to Albany.”
“That’s wrong, man.”
