Darkfall

obvious disgust.
    The old man’s reptilian hands remained perfectly still on top of the attaché case. He turned his cobra eyes on Jack.
    “Lieutenant Dawson, perhaps I should deal with you in this matter. You don’t seem to share Lieutenant Chandler’s… prejudices.”
    Jack shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. I agree with everything she said. I just wouldn’t have said it.”
    He looked at Rebecca.
    She smiled at him, pleased by his support.
    Looking at her but speaking to Carramazza, Jack said, “Sometimes, my partner’s zeal and aggressiveness are excessive and counterproductive, a lesson she seems unable or unwilling to learn.”
    Her smile faded fast.
    With evident sarcasm, Carramazza said, “What do I have here- a couple of self-righteous, holier-than-thou types? I suppose you’ve never accepted a bribe, not even back when you were a uniformed cop walking a beat and earning barely enough to pay the rent.”
    Jack met the old man’s hard, watchful eyes and said “Yeah. That’s right. I never have.”
    “Not even one gratuity-”
    “No.”
    “-like a free tumble in the hay with a hooker who was trying to stay out of jail or-”
    “No.”
    “-a little cocaine, maybe some grass, from a pusher who wanted you to look the other way.”
    “No.”
    “A bottle of liquor or a twenty-dollar bill at Christmas.”
    “No.”
    Carramazza regarded them in silence for a moment, while a cloud of snow swirled around the car and obscured the city. At last he said, “So I’ve got to deal with a couple of freaks.” He spat out the word “freaks” with such contempt that it was clear he was disgusted by the mere thought of an honest public official.
    “No, you’re wrong,” Jack said. “There’s nothing special about us. We’re not freaks. Not all cops are corrupt. In fact, not even most of them are.”
    “Most of them,” Carramazza disagreed.
    “No,” Jack insisted. “There’re bad apples, sure, and weak sisters. But for the most part, I can be proud of the people I work with.”
    “Most are on the take, one way or another,” Carramazza said.
    “That’s just not true.”
    Rebecca said, “No use arguing, Jack. He has to believe everyone else is corrupt. That’s how he justifies the things he does.”
    The old man sighed. He opened the attaché case on his lap, withdrew a manila envelope, handed it to Jack. “This might help you.”
    Jack took it with more than a little apprehension. “What is it?”
    “Relax,” Carramazza said. “It isn’t a bribe. It’s information. Everything we’ve been able to learn about this man who calls himself Baba Lavelle. His last-known address. Restaurants he frequented before he started this war and went into hiding. The names and addresses of all the pushers who’ve distributed his merchandise over the past couple of months-though you won’t be able to question some of them, any more.”
    “Because you’ve had them killed?” Rebecca asked.
    “Maybe they just left town.”
    “Sure.”
    “Anyway, it’s all there,” Carramazza said. “Maybe you already have all that information; maybe you don’t; I think you don’t.”
    “Why’re you giving it to us?” Jack asked.
    “Isn’t that obvious?” the old man asked, opening his hooded eyes a bit wider. “I want Lavelle found. I want him stopped.”
    Holding the nine-by-twelve envelope in one hand, tapping it against his knee, Jack said, “I’d have thought you’d have a much better chance of finding him than we would. He’s a drug dealer, after all. He’s part of your world. You have all the sources, all the contacts-”
    “The usual sources and contacts are of little or no use in this case,” the old man said. “This Lavelle… he’s a loner. Worse than that. It’s as if… as if he’s made of… smoke.”
    “Are you sure he actually exists?” Rebecca asked. “Maybe he’s only a straw man. Maybe your real enemies created him in order to hide behind him.”
    “He’s real,” Carramazza said emphatically. “He entered this country illegally last spring. Came here from Jamaica by way of Puerto Rico. There’s a photograph of him in the envelope there.”
    Jack hastily opened it, rummaged through the contents, and extracted an eight-by-ten glossy.
    Carramazza said, “It’s an enlargement of a snapshot taken in a restaurant shortly after Lavelle began operating in what has been traditionally our territory.”
    Traditionally our territory . Good God, Jack thought, he