Duffy was in his office, hunched over a computer, typing furiously. I entered without knocking and sat down.
He pushed away from his desk, twirled his chair toward me and, with a theatrical motion, checked his watch. “It’s almost two. Where the hell you been?”
“I just figured out something.”
“What’s that.”
“That you suspended me last year because you were trying to get me to quit.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. You didn’t contact me this past year because you didn’t want me to come back.”
“Ash,” he said, his voice softening, “when you were just a kid on patrol, I pulled you off the street and brought you into homicide as a trainee. I shepherded you through and made sure you made detective. I was there when you got your shield. I brought you to Felony Special. We go too far back for you to come up with some crazy-ass conspiracy theory about me.”
Thinking back to all those years with Duffy, how I had trusted him, looked up to him, worked so hard for him to curry his approval, I felt betrayed and began to choke up. I couldn’t get any words out, so I just swallowed hard and shook my head.
“You’re paranoid,” he said.
I leaned forward and studied his face. “I know you were banging that secretary in juvenile. I know you told her that Latisha Patton was cooperating with me. I know she put the word out on the street that Latisha was a snitch. And I know, now, that’s why Latisha was shot.”
Duffy gripped his desk, kneading the edges. “That cunt’s a liar.”
“I didn’t hear it from her. I did my own investigation.”
Duffy’s hands fell limply to his sides.
“After I was suspended last year, you didn’t want me to come back because you were afraid I might stumble onto the truth. You figured you were home free when I quit. Then you heard that I started nosing around the case, that Latisha’s daughter complained, that the I.A. lieutenant warned me off. You thought I’d keep picking at the case. So you decided the best way to derail me was to hire me back on the job, where you could keep an eye on me and load me up with cases so I’d be too busy to chase the Patton case. You were trying to figure out how to get me back when the Relovich homicide landed on your desk. You used the case to manipulate Grazzo into asking for me, making him think it was his idea.”
He stared straight ahead, frozen, not even blinking
“Don’t bother trying to weasel out of all this. I know it’s true. You know it’s true.”
He leaned over and closed the blinds in his office. Raising both palms he said, “This is the God’s honest-” He stopped in mid-sentence and abruptly dropped his palms to his lap.
“Let’s stop shoveling the shit,” I said.
His face was contorted, as if he was struggling with an emotion that was somewhere between anger and anguish.
“God, I’m a stupid motherfucker. Worst mistake of my life. Damn, Ash. You know how often I wished I’d never got involved with that whore? Every fucking day for the past year.”
“You don’t know what I’ve gone through,” I said softly.
Duffy bowed his head. “That’s what’s made it so hard,” he said, his voice cracking.
“You can fuck anyone you want. But why did you have to tell her about Latisha? I just don’t understand that.”
He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and emitted a phlegmy cough. “We were out drinking one night. Christ, I’d downed so many I can’t even remember where we were or when. I don’t even remember talking to her about the case. It was a total fucking blackout.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“That’s not an excuse, I know. But that’s the truth. The next morning she brought up Patton’s name. I realized then that I’d totally fucking blown it. I tried to piss backward. But it was too late.”
“But why?”
He shook his head, frowning. “I guess I was telling her about some of the cases we were working, trying to impress her, an old man with a hard on for a young babe. She hung on my every word, and I kept gabbing.” He slammed a palm on the blotter, the tears spraying the edges of the desk. “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”
Watching Duffy sputter out an explanation, I felt an intense hatred for him. I wanted to grab him by the throat and smash that self-pitying look off his face. “What a prick you are. You just let me take the fucking fall. You took the easy way out. And, to be perfectly safe, you sent the case back down to South Bureau. You figured those guys are so overwhelmed, so overworked, they’d never have time to get to the truth. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with me or the case. You were just praying I’d never put it all together.”
Duffy unclipped his badge from his belt and dropped it on his desk. “You want my badge, Ash, you can have it. I mean it. You can tell Grazzo right now about all this. I won’t dispute it. I got twenty-three years in. I don’t deserve a twenty-fourth.”
Reaching over, I picked up the badge and walked to the door. I knew Duffy. He always liked to make the grand gesture. At the time he made a dramatic pronouncement, he usually believed it. Later, however, he invariably recanted.
I tossed the badge on the floor and walked out of the squad room.