Kompromat

Eight hours after Dr. Goldman removed my left testicle and replaced it with what he called a prosthesis and I called a fakey, I was walking the halls of Hackensack Memorial in a hospital gown with my ass hanging out. Dr. Goldman had told me to rest. He told me not to climb stairs, not to lift anything, and not to make any important decisions until the anesthesia and pain medication had worked their way out of my system. I gave him my word. Then, at eleven thirty-seven that night, my phone buzzed with a message from Sergeant Dan Gelbin.

Room 222. Midnight. Come alone if you want Murphy alive.

I had been trying to speak to Gelbin for six weeks. He had dodged my calls, ignored a subpoena, missed two appointments with Internal Affairs, and somehow managed to disappear every time my investigator got close to him. Now, on the one night when any sensible person would have ignored him, he was asking for a meeting.

The new hospital tower stood fifteen stories above Hackensack, all blue glass, private rooms, and donor names engraved in marble. The old north building was connected to it by an enclosed bridge that had been barricaded since the last patients were transferred four months earlier. The city was demolishing it in the morning. That was where Gelbin wanted to meet.

I pulled sweatpants over the dressing, put my coat on over the hospital gown, and waited until the night nurse disappeared into another room. Then I slipped through a service door and crossed the bridge. The construction crew had left temporary power running to the emergency lights, but everything else was dark. Most of the equipment had been removed. Rectangles of clean paint showed where televisions, dispensers, and bulletin boards used to hang. A few patient names remained half-erased on the whiteboards, as though someone had intended to come back and finish the job.

I had spent the better part of the afternoon thinking about Arty Knuckles. Arty was the piece that did not fit anywhere else, which usually meant he was the piece that fit just right. He was tied to the missing shipment, to one of the anonymous witnesses, and now to Gelbin. If Frank Murphy had been framed for Freddie Storm’s murder, Arty was either behind it or had something on the person who was.

Kompromat was where the answers came from. When someone was compromised, they could be controlled. If you knew the worst thing someone had ever done—or had not done but could plausibly be pinned for doing—then you had the goods on them. You could make them sign something, testify to something, lose something, or kill someone. It did not even have to be true. Real or fake, it was the stock-in-trade of shady actors and the powers behind the powers that be. Arty Knuckles had spent half his life collecting it.

The elevators in the old building had been shut down, so I took the stairs. Halfway to the second floor, I felt a sharp tug beneath the dressing and stopped. I held the railing until the pain passed, wondering what the hell I was doing there. The doctor had removed the cancer. My prognosis was good. I had every reason to go back across the bridge, get into bed, and wait for breakfast like a normal person.

But Frank Murphy was sitting alone in the county jail, facing life for a murder I had started to believe he did not commit. Every report said he had been found kneeling beside Freddie Storm with blood on his hands and his own Glock on the floor. His first words were, “I tried to save the kid.” The prosecutor called it an admission. To me, it sounded like Frank was upset he was dead, not like he had killed him.

I kept climbing.

Room 222 was at the far end of the hall. Gelbin had found an old hospital bed and propped himself up with two pillows. A battery lantern sat on the windowsill. He wore gray sweatpants, a T-shirt, and a rigid brace around his lower back. There were two orange prescription bottles beside him and a handgun resting on the blanket.

“Jesus Christ, Cannon. You look like shit,” he said.

“Testicular cancer. Go figure.”

“They get it?”

“They got one of the boys. Goldman put a fakey in there for balance.”

Gelbin glanced below my waist. “Jesus. I’m sorry.” He picked up one of the bottles, shook two pills into his hand, and swallowed them with water from a plastic cup. “Still, you could be looking at a lot worse than getting one of your little boys chopped off.”

“You always this comforting?”

“I’m serious, Ernest. You have no idea what you’re walking into.”

“What are you taking?”

“Valium. Percocet. Whatever keeps the lightning from shooting down my leg.”

“What happened to your back?”

“Blew out L4 and L5. Arty’s people say I fell down a flight of stairs.”

“Did you?”

“I remember the top and the bottom.”

I pushed the door closed and pulled over the only chair in the room. “I’m here. Talk.”

Gelbin looked toward the hallway before he answered. “How much do you know about Arty’s shipment?”

“A million dollars’ worth of narcotics disappeared. Arty blamed Freddie. The narcotics unit thought Freddie was giving information to somebody outside the department. Two days later, Freddie ended up dead in a holding cell and Frank Murphy ended up charged with killing him.”

“That’s the newspaper version.”

“Then give me yours.”

“First, I want to know what happens to me.”

“That depends on what you did.”

“No. That’s not how this is going to work. I tell you what I did after I know what happens to me.”

“You called the wrong lawyer. I represent Frank, not you.”

“You know people. You worked with people. You can get this in front of someone who can make a deal.”

“Maybe. What do you want?”

Gelbin thought about it for a moment, although I suspected he had rehearsed the answer a hundred times. “Two things. First, I want to make sure that I stay above ground.”

“Meaning what?”

“You know exactly what it means. Protection for me and my family. Somewhere Arty and his friends can’t knock on the door.”

“Witness protection.”

“Call it whatever you want. Second, I want an immunity deal. Prepackaged before I make any moves.”

“Prepackaged?”

“Signed, sealed, and delivered. I’m not giving you enough to hang me and then trusting everybody to work out the details afterward.”

“That isn’t how immunity works.”

“Then make it work that way.”

“I can’t walk into the Attorney General’s Office and ask for immunity for a crooked cop without telling them what the crooked cop did.”

“Tell them I can clear Frank Murphy.”

“Can you?”

Gelbin reached beneath the blanket and pulled out a black flash drive. “I can tell you what happened to Freddie Storm.”

I held my hand out, but he closed his fist around the drive.

“Deal first,” he said.

“Let’s start with the anonymous witnesses. The complaint mentions one. A supplemental report mentions another. Neither one has a name, neither one gave a recorded statement, and neither one appears in the witness list. Were there two?”

Gelbin shook his head.

“Was there one?”

“Depends what you mean by witness.”

“Someone who saw Frank shoot Freddie would be a good start.”

“Nobody saw that.”

“Then who gave the statement?”

“I did.”

That was the first piece. “You said Frank and Freddie argued before the shooting.”

“That’s what I was told to say.”

“By Arty?”

“I want the agreement.”

“What happened to the gunshot-residue samples from Frank’s hands?”

Gelbin looked at me but said nothing.

“The nurse swabbed both hands,” I continued. “It is in the intake report. The laboratory never received the samples. How do you lose gunshot residue in a police murder case?”

“You don’t lose it.”

“And the fibers on the Glock?”

“Nitrile gloves.”

“That finding disappeared from the final report too.”

“A lot of things disappeared that night.”

The pain medication had slowed his speech, but it had not made him confused. He knew exactly how much to give me and where to stop. Gelbin had been living by that instinct for a long time.

“What did Arty have on you?” I asked.

“A recording.”

“Of what?”

“Me discussing the shipment.”

“Was it real?”

Gelbin gave a small shrug and immediately regretted it when the movement caught his back. “Parts of it.”

“Which parts?”

“My voice was real.”

“Did your wife hear it?”

His expression changed. “She heard enough.”

There it was. Arty did not need a recording that would survive a courtroom. He needed one that would survive a marriage, an Internal Affairs investigation, or a five-minute conversation with a reporter. Once Gelbin understood that, Arty owned him.

“Tell me what happened to Freddie.”

Gelbin looked down at the flash drive. “We brought him through the police garage at nine forty-three. He was alive when he came in. Arty wanted to know where the shipment was, and Freddie either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. It got out of hand.”

“Who killed him?”

“Agreement first.”

“Who moved the body?”

Gelbin looked toward the floor. He did not have to answer that one.

Frank kept a backup Glock in a locked drawer in the detective bureau. Gelbin had access to the master keys. The gun was taken, fired twice, wiped down, and put back where Frank would find it. Freddie was moved into the holding cell, and Frank was sent downstairs on the pretense that the kid wanted to speak with him. By the time Frank arrived, someone had cleaned the garage and started replacing the security footage. Frank found Freddie bleeding, dropped beside him, and tried to keep him alive.

“The drive has the original recordings?” I asked.

“It has everything. The garage, the holding-cell corridor, the access logs, all the different cuts.”

“Different cuts?”

“You think people like Arty make one version of a story and hope it works? They make options. If one version stops being useful, they use another.”

“Give me the drive.”

“Bring me the deal.”

“When?”

“Before sunrise.”

“Why before sunrise?”

The elevator chimed.

It was the ordinary, pleasant sound an elevator makes when it reaches the requested floor. In an empty hospital with the power shut off, it had a different effect entirely. Gelbin grabbed the handgun from the blanket and pointed it toward the hallway.

“I thought the elevators were dead,” I said.

“They are supposed to be.”

Only the emergency circuits remained connected. To summon one of the old elevators required an override key of the sort carried by the fire department, the demolition supervisor, and certain members of the police department.

The doors opened at the opposite end of the hall. The car was dark. For several seconds, nothing happened. Then the beam of a flashlight moved along the wall and disappeared.

Gelbin tried to get out of bed. His right leg gave way as soon as his foot touched the floor, and I caught him before he went down. His weight pulled against my incision, and I felt something warm spreading beneath the dressing.

“Son of a bitch,” I said.

“He found me.”

“Who found you?”

“The man whose name you keep asking for.”

Near the elevators, a door opened and closed. Then the next one opened. Whoever had arrived was checking the rooms one by one.

“How did he know you were here?” I asked.

“The same way I knew where to find you.”

“You could have mentioned that before I walked over here with my ass hanging out.”

“Would you have come?”

“Probably. But I would have complained sooner.”

Gelbin pushed the flash drive into my hand. “Room 220 connects through the bathroom. There’s a linen closet inside.”

“You’re coming with me.”

“I can’t make it across the hall.”

“Then what are you going to do?”

“Keep him looking at me instead of you.”

“That is a terrible plan.”

“I didn’t have time to put together a good one.”

The footsteps moved closer. Gelbin shoved me toward the connecting bathroom, and this time I went. The linen closet in Room 220 was empty except for wire shelves and a stack of old pillowcases. I pulled the door almost closed and stood in the darkness with one hand pressed against my dressing.

The man who passed the doorway wore hospital scrubs. He might have looked like a doctor or orderly if he had not paired them with polished black police shoes. He went into Room 222.

“Dan,” he said.

“I figured it would be you.”

“Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“Don’t do that. Not now.”

There was the sound of glass rattling on the floor, followed by the bedframe scraping against the wall.

“Who else is here?” the man asked.

“Nobody.”

“The chain downstairs was cut.”

“I had to get in somehow.”

“There’s fresh blood on the stair rail.”

The silence that followed seemed to fill the entire floor. I looked down at my hand. Even in the darkness, I could see it was wet to the wrist.

“Cannon?” the man called.

Gelbin laughed. “He had surgery today. What the hell would he be doing here?”

“Maybe he’s stupid.”

“That he is.”

The gunshot echoed down the empty corridor.

I remained in the closet for several seconds, holding the drive and listening. The sensible thing was to stay where I was and let the man leave. I had no gun, an open incision, and no professional obligation to get myself killed beside a corrupt policeman who had helped frame my client. Then I thought about Frank sitting on the concrete bench in the county jail, and about what would happen to the drive if the man outside started searching the adjoining rooms.

I pushed open the closet and moved toward the nurses’ station. A fire-alarm lever remained on the wall with a small green light above it. The demolition crew had disconnected nearly everything in the building, but fire protection remained active until the wreckers took possession. I pulled the lever.

The bells were deafening. White strobes flashed along the corridor, and a calm recorded voice ordered patients who were no longer there to proceed to the nearest exit. The heavy fire doors released from their magnetic catches and slammed shut between Room 222 and the nurses’ station just as the man in scrubs stepped into the hallway.

For a second, I saw him through the wired glass. I did not recognize his face, but I recognized the gold shield clipped to his belt.

He raised his pistol. I dropped behind the desk before he fired. The first round shattered the glass but did not break through the wire. The second struck the plaster above me. Outside, in the distance, I heard sirens.

He was separated from the elevator and had no reason to stay. I heard him running toward the rear stairs. A metal door opened somewhere below and slammed behind him. After that, there was only the alarm and the woman in the ceiling repeating instructions to a building with no one left to save.

I went back to Room 222. Gelbin was lying partly on the bed with one arm hanging toward the floor. The bullet had entered beneath his collarbone, and the front of his shirt was soaked. I pressed one of the old pillowcases against the wound.

“Did he get it?” Gelbin asked.

“No.”

He nodded. “Good.”

“Who was he?”

“The deal.”

“You have it.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

“My family,” he said.

“I’ll take care of them.”

“Another thing you can’t promise.”

“Dan, which file is the original?”

He looked at my closed hand. “Arty never kept originals. He kept options.”

His eyes moved toward the open doorway and stayed there.

The first fire engine had reached the ambulance entrance. I should have gone downstairs and found the paramedics, but Gelbin’s laptop was beneath the bed. I opened it and inserted the drive. There was one folder marked STORM, and inside it were six videos of the same eleven seconds in the holding-cell corridor. Each carried the same date, the same timestamp, and the same departmental watermark. In three versions, Frank entered before the shots. In two, he arrived afterward. In the sixth, he never entered the cell at all.

Every one of them looked authentic.

Maybe one was the original. Maybe none of them was. Gelbin had not given me the truth; he had given me proof that someone had manufactured it. Six different stories had been dressed up to look like the official record, and somewhere in that mess was enough reasonable doubt to keep Frank Murphy alive.

The firefighters carried Gelbin through the ambulance entrance. I followed on a stretcher with blood soaking through my sweatpants and the flash drive closed inside my fist. By dawn, I was back across the avenue in the new hospital, stitched together for the second time in twenty-four hours. The drive rested beneath my pillow while I watched the demolition crew gather around the old building.

At 7:04 a.m., the excavator struck the north wall. I had lost a testicle, reopened my incision, watched a policeman die, and acquired six versions of a murder. I would have preferred the truth. But in my line of work, six lies were more than enough to get started.