Up on his wall were three large, important-looking pushpin maps. The first showed two consecutive months of rapes, homicides, and assaults in Washington. The second map did the same for residential and commercial burglaries. The third map showed auto thefts. The maps and the Post said that crime was down in D.C., but not where I live.
“Do you know why you’re here, why I wanted to see you?” Pittman asked point-blank. No socializing or small talk from The Jefe, no niceties. “Of course you do, Dr. Cross. You’re a psychologist. You’re supposed to know how the human mind works. I keep forgetting that.”
Be cool, be careful, I told myself. I did the thing Chief Pittman least expected: I smiled, then said softly, “No, I really don’t know. I got a call from your assistant. So I’m here.”
Pittman smiled back, as if I’d made a pretty good joke. Then he suddenly raised his voice, and his face and neck turned bright red; his nostrils flared, exposing the bristly hairs in his nose.
One of his hands was clenched into a tight fist, while the other was stretched open. His fingers were as rigid as the pencils sticking up from the leather cup on his desk.
“You’re not fooling anybody, Cross, least of all me. I’m fully fucking aware that you’re investigating homicides in Southeast that you aren’t assigned to—the so-called Jane Does. You’re doing this against my explicit orders. Some of those cases have been closed for over a year. I won’t have it—I won’t tolerate your insubordination, your condescending attitude. I know what you’re trying to pull. Embarrass the department, specifically embarrass me, curry fucking favor with the mayor, making yourself some kind of folk hero in Southeast in the process.”
I hated Pittman’s tone and what he was saying, but I learned one trick a long time ago, and it is probably the most important thing to know about politics inside any organization. It’s so simple, but it’s the key to every petty kingdom, every fiefdom. Knowledge truly is power, it’s everything; if you don’t have any, pretend you do.
So I told Chief Pittman nothing. I didn’t contradict him; I didn’t admit to a thing. I did nothing. Me and Mahatma Gandhi.
I let him think that maybe I was investigating old cases in Southeast—but I didn’t admit to it. I also let him think that maybe I had some powerful connections with Mayor Monroe and God only knows who else in the City on the Hill. I let him think that maybe I was after his job, or that I might have—God forbid—even loftier aspirations.
“I’m working the homicides assigned to me. Check with the captain. I’m doing my best to close as many cases as I can.”
Pittman nodded curtly—one nod. His face was still heart-attack red. “All right, I want you to close this case, and I want you to close it fast. A tourist was robbed and gunned down on M Street last night,” he said. “A well-respected German doctor from Munich. It’s front fucking page in today’s Post. Not to mention the International Herald Tribune, and every newspaper in Germany, of course. I want you on that murder case, and I want it solved pronto.”
“This doctor, he’s a white man?” I asked, keeping my expression neutral.
“I told you, he’s German.”
“I already have a number of open cases in Southeast,” I said to Pittman. “A nurse was murdered over the weekend.”
He didn’t want to hear it. He shook his head—one shake. “And now you have an important case in Georgetown. Solve it, Cross. You’re to work on nothing else. That’s a direct order… from The Jefe.”
Chapter 15
AS SOON AS CROSS WALKED out of Chief Pittman’s inner office, a senior homicide detective named Patsy Hampton slipped in through a side door that led to the attached conference room. Detective Hampton had been instructed by Pittman to listen in on everything, to evaluate the situation from a street cop’s perspective, to advise and to counsel.
Hampton didn’t like the job, but those were her orders from Pittman. She didn’t like Pittman, either. He was wound so tight that if you stuck coal up his ass, in a couple of weeks you’d have a diamond. He was mean and petty and vengeful.
“You see what I’m dealing with here? Cross knows how to push all my buttons. In the beginning he would lose his temper. Now he just ignores what I say.”
“I heard everything,” Hampton said. “He’s slick, all right.” She was going to agree with Chief Pittman, no matter what he said.
Patsy Hampton was an attractive woman, with sandy blond hair cut short, and the most piercing blue eyes this side of Stockholm. She was thirty-one years old, and on a very fast track in the department. At twenty-six, she’d been the youngest homicide detective in Washington. Now she had much loftier goals in mind.
“You’re selling yourself short, though. You got to him. I know you did.” She told Pittman what he wanted to hear. “He just internalizes it pretty well.”
“You’re sure he’s meeting with those other detectives?” Pittman asked her.
“They’ve met three times that I know of, always at Cross’s house on Fifth Street. I suspect there have been
other times. I heard about it through a friend of Detective Thurman.”
“But they don’t meet while any of them is on duty?”
“No, not to my knowledge. They’re careful. They meet on their own time.”
Pittman scowled and shook his head. “That’s too goddamn bad. It makes it harder to prove anything really damaging.”
“From what I’ve heard, they believe the department is holding back resources that could clear a number of unsolved homicides in Southeast and parts of Northeast. Most of the murders involve black and Hispanic women.”
Pittman tensed his jaw and looked away from Hampton. “The numbers that Cross uses are complete bullshit,” he said angrily. “They’re dogshit. It’s all political with him. How much financial resource can we put against the murders of drug addicts and prostitutes in Southeast? It’s criminals murdering other criminals. You know how it goes in those black neighborhoods.”