The One-eyed Man

[maggiethecat]

The One-eyed Man

Chapter One

Daniel MacNeigh was a quiet man of 76, a gentle soul at peace with retirement and the medical condition that had forced him into it some fifteen years before. He lived quietly, with a plump, temperamental tabby named Wolfgang, in a sunny studio apartment just off Washington Square. He had quiet tastes — he listened to classical radio most of the day and read voraciously — and quiet routines: the corner grocery where he shopped twice a week, the Judson Market branch of the public library where he was known by name, and the neighborhood Citibank where once a month he cashed his pension check and Janice, the nice young teller with the sweet voice, helped him cut cashier’s checks for rent, utility bills, and enough “ready steady” to get him through another four weeks.

On the first day of October Daniel was on his way home from the bank when, without warning, his cane was wrenched from his hand and he was dragged into an alley. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around his head as his attacker tore through his jacket to find his wallet and then, futilely and weakly, he lashed out. The attacker retaliated first by pummeling his ribs and then by flinging him, hard, against the wall, his head hitting the rough bricks with a sickening crack. As Daniel slid to the ground, his last thought before losing consciousness was that if he didn’t return by nightfall, Maria, his next door neighbor, would let herself in with her key and feed Wolfie his dinner . . . .


“Dunbar, Karen, my office,” Lieutenant Gary Fisk rapped out, then turned on his heel and went back into the glass-walled enclosure.

Detective Jim Dunbar coded for Save File, then removed his earpiece and closed the cover of his laptop. He rose, and signaled his guide dog — the ever-present Hank, who had lifted his head inquisitively — into submission, and then confidently walked his customery path into Fisk’s office. He was followed by his partner of some six months, Detective Karen Bettancourt, a slender woman with gleaming brown hair who was clad, habitually, in snug trousers, a crisply tailored shirt, and a chic leather jerkin.

“Got a real bitch,” Fish said when they were seated. “A series of snatch and grabs, one of the vics beat up pretty bad.” He riffled through the papers on his desk and said, “He’s over at St. Vincent’s: Daniel MacNeigh, 76, a retired accountant, got shoved into an alley and his wallet stolen. Tried to fight back, poor old guy. Couldn’t ID the perp even though he was right in his face.”

“Why not?” Jim said, frowning. “Was he drunk or something?”

“Nothing like that. MacNeigh’s blind.”

“You said series, Boss,” Karen swiftly cut in. “There’s more?”

“Yeah,” Fisk said sourly. “Woman named Mary Johansson—” Again he referred to his notes. “Says here she’s a paraplegic. She was going into a bodega over on Charles Street a couple of nights ago when someone grabbed her wheelchair from behind, shoved down the brake, and took her purse. All done from the back so she’s no good for an ID, either. Turns out this has going on for over a month, but mostly on the night shift so Brody and Dahoud’ve been catching the flack. Probably why it slipped under the radar. Plus you two were on Jim’s stalker thing and Russo and Selway were working the floater.

“I pulled the DD5s,” he continued, “and we’ve got three more: a woman on crutches knocked down and her purse stolen; a blind teenager on his way home from a concert roughed up and his backpack taken — kid had a wad of cash — and another blind guy at an ATM, an older man, like Macneigh.”

Jim shifted in his chair. “Someone’s targeting the disabled,” he said.

“Looks that way,” Fisk agreed. “I guess this creep figures they’re easy marks— sorry, Jim.” He put his hands up. “No offense.”

“None taken,” he replied stiffly. “So we start with MacNeigh?”

“Make it quick,” Fisk said. “Man’s in rough shape. You’re also gonna need to re-interview the other vics.” He reached across his desk and handed Karen a thick file. “Everything’s in here: names, addresses, notes.”

“What’d you get?” Marty Russo said when Jim and Karen emerged from Fisk’s office.

“Bunch of robberies,” Karen answered. “Vics all blind or disabled.”

“Ooh,” said Tom Selway, grimacing. “That’s nasty.”

“Sounds like someone’s going for a sure thing,” Marty commented.

“That's right, Marty,” Jim said as he shouldered into his khaki-green Burberry and slapped his thigh for Hank. “It’s open season — now’s your chance.”

“Jesus, Dunbar,” Marty protested. “I was just thinkin’ out loud. I didn’t mean you.”

“Karen?” Jim said, ignoring him. “You ready?”

“Yeah, Jim, I’m ready. This is going to be fun,” she muttered.

“No,” he said shortly. “It’s not.”

The silence in the car thickened until finally Jim said, “Okay, Karen. Out with it.”

“I'm just wonderin' why you're so crabby all of a sudden,” she said mildly. "I mean, anything you want to tell me about?”

“Why do you think we caught this case?”

“I don’t know,” she said and shrugged. “We’re up in the rotation. Why?”

“Why,” he snorted. “It’s Brody and Dahoud’s case. This has One PP written all over it.”

“How you figure that?” she asked as she skillfully edged around a taxi and accelerated up Sixth Avenue.

“First of all, the Boss was on the phone with the Chief of Ds this morning.”

“How’d you know?”

“Every time he talks to Tunney he gets up and closes the door, then after he storms out and sneaks out back for a smoke.” Jim grinned and said, “Then he stops in the bathroom and uses about half a bottle of Listerine. You never noticed?”

“No,” she giggled. “I never did.”

“You probably couldn’t smell it over the Cristalle.”

“What is this, Scent of a Woman?” she joked.

“Christie wears it sometimes, that’s all.” He blew out a sigh and said, “Trust me, this is gonna be a four-star mess.”

“So the Boss pulled a case for us. What's the big deal?”

“I can see the headlines now,” he said disgustedly. “Blind Cop Helps Blind Vics. The Blind Leading the Blind. It’s a public relations dream. That’s the only reason we’re working this.”

“Then we’ll just have to keep our heads down,” she said crisply, “and close it fast.”

Daniel MacNeigh was in the ICU, hooked up to a battery of beeping monitors, drugged against the pain from three broken ribs and with his head shaved and bandaged where a team of neurosurgeons had operated to stanch the bleeding in his brain. He was, as Dr. Bannerjee, the young Pakistani resident explained, “in quite terrible shape,” and they would please keep their visit brief. Karen led Jim to MacNeigh and they stood together, near the head of his bed. Jim, she noticed, reacted to the medicinal smells, the hissing machinery, and the hushed urgency of the ICU with a set mouth and a tense hand on her arm.

“Excuse me, Mr. MacNeigh?” Karen said politely. “Detectives Bettancourt and Dunbar here. We just need to ask you a few questions — we won’t take long.”

“Ask away,” the elderly man whispered with the ghost of a smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“The man who attacked you—” Jim began.

“I didn’t see him,” MacNeigh interrupted. “Can’t, you know.”

“Yes, sir, we know,” Jim answered. “Did you get a sense of his size?”

“Yes, I did, come to think of it. He was a little shorter than I am — I’m five eleven.”

“How could you tell?”

MacNeigh thought for a moment. “When he came up behind me, I could feel his breath on the back of my neck . . . I think he was an inch shorter. An inch, maybe two.”

“Did you hear him approach you?” Jim asked.

MacNeigh started to shake his head, and winced. “No. Rubber-soled shoes,” he whispered hoarsely. “I remember . . . he was carrying something. I felt it swing into me. Something heavy. Maybe a bag.”

“Did you notice any distinctive aromas?”

“Garlic, a little. An oily smell on his breath. Like he’d been eating pizza.” He paused. "I might have smelled it on his hands."

“I understand you hit him a few times.”

“Tried to.” Again the feeble attempt at a smile.

“Could you tell if he was muscular, or soft?”

“Not fat, that much I know . . . good questions, young man.”

“Just questions I’d ask myself," said Jim. “I’m— I'm also blind.”

“Blind cop,” he whispered faintly. “Good for you.”

Karen leaned over and patted MacNeigh’s arm. “We don’t want to tire you out, sir. We’ll leave our number with your doctor. If you think of anything else, just have him call us.”

“Mm-hmm,” he murmured, his breath starting to come raggedly. Dr. Bannerjee, who had been observing from a few feet away, quickly rushed up and pushed Jim and Karen aside. “Out. Wait in the corridor,” he ordered as a monitor above MacNeigh’s head fluttered wildly, then flattened into an ominous green line.

They waited, Jim leaning against the wall with his head down and what Karen thought of as his “closed face,” and she paced, nervously, back and forth along a short stretch of hallway. After perhaps fifteen minutes the young doctor came out, walking slowly with his hands in his pockets, and Karen went to stand beside Jim.

“He’s gone,” Dr. Bannerjee said wearily. “I believe the surgery was too much of a strain for his heart. It is a shame. He was a fine old gentleman.”

“Damn,” Karen said, and swallowed hard.

“Well, we’re off robbery detail,” Jim said bitterly. “It’s a straight homicide now.”

* * *

[maggiethecat]

The One-eyed Man

Chapter Two

Mary Johansson was a Flatbush native with a rough side to her tongue, the jaded romanticism of a true cynic, and a longstanding addiction to Marlboro Lights. She knew more about New York City than the Mayor, and for some twenty-five years had been a top reporter at The New York Post, where she had taken the low profile assignment of the police beat and made it a Pulitzer-winning “must read.” When a ride-along with two detectives from the narcotics unit of the Four-four had gone tragically wrong — gunshots from a gang-related drive-by cutting though the back door of the car and Mary’s spinal cord — the halls of Bronx Jacoby Hospital had filled, within minutes, with shaken cops lined up to donate blood. Miss Mary, as the diminutive redhead was known to every one of New York’s finest from the rawest rookie up to and including the Commissioner, was one of their own.

After rehab at The Rusk Institute — where she terrorized her therapists and doctors, and bribed orderlies to smuggle in cigarettes and beer and sneak her up to the roof for midnight revels — Miss Mary slapped a sticker that said If you can read this you’re too close on the back of her purple wheelchair and returned to the Post, turning her sharp eye and even sharper pen to personality pieces for the Sunday edition and movie reviews. She was especially uncompromising when it came to films about the disabled, which she described as “smarmy sentimental crap with no more basis in reality than Hans Christian Anderson” and “fake cripples angling for Oscars.” Miss Mary, in other words, was what is commonly referred to as a piece of work.

“Stupid sonofabitch,” she said, lighting a cigarette and blowing a long plume of smoke at the yellowed ceiling of her book-cluttered living room. “Me,” she said. “Not the perp. If I’d had my piece he’d be on a slab instead of offing seniors.”

“You carry a gun?” Karen Bettancourt said curiously.

“Yes, Detective, I carry a gun,” she answered dryly. “A darling little Glock that I left at home because I was just running out for a pack of cigs. Why, you want to check my carry permit?”

Jim Dunbar, who was sitting on Miss Mary’s lumpy sofa, smothered a laugh, and she looked at him sharply. “I tried to book a sit-down with you last year,” she said, tapping her cigarette into the ashtray affixed to the armrest of her wheelchair. “You blew me off but good, Sweetheart.”

“I haven’t had much luck with the press.”

“Me neither,” she said companionably. “Made me out to be the Little Fucking Match Girl.” She blew more smoke into the room — Karen grimaced and waved a hand in front of her face — and said, “You’d have been safe with me. If there’s one thing I know it’s cops. Cops and cripples. How long?”

“I beg your pardon?” Jim said warily.

“I’m in the chair eight years this March. You haven’t been at this all that long, have you — what, a year, year and a half?”

“About a year and a half.”

“Ah, you’re a baby. Takes at least three years — two if you’re smart — to get your head back on straight.”

“I’m doin’ okay.”

“Right. Sure you are.” Again, the penetrating gaze. “Doesn’t help when you’re the talk of the town.” She laughed and said, “Where’d you get that lawyer of yours? Guy worked the ADA like he was Kuntsler.”

“Miss Mary, are you interviewing me?” Jim said with quiet amusement.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she answered cheerfully. “I know, I know, the robbery. Not much I can add to what’s in your notes. I only saw the guy’s arm for a few seconds.”

“Left or right?” Jim said quickly.

“Left, and no wedding ring.” She smiled at him. “I got there before you on that one. Blue collar hands — rough skin and I think maybe he bit his nails — and a cheap jacket.”

“Cheap, how?” Karen interjected.

“Polyester, medium blue, like a cheap uniform. Not a cop’s uniform. Maybe a security company, or a delivery service.”

“That’s a lot for one quick look,” Karen said. “I don’t know whether to be suspicious or impressed.”

“Go with impressed,” Miss Mary said, stubbing out her cigarette. “You know what they say,” she added, her voice slightly muffled as she fired up another. “God is in the details. Can’t think of anything else but you bet your ass I’ll call if I do. Give me a chance to shoot the shit with your boss. Good man, Fisk.”

“Yeah, he is. Oh, did you smell anything?” Jim asked. “Daniel MacNeigh identified a kind of oily odor, garlicky, like maybe he’d been eating pizza.”

Miss Mary snorted. “You’re gonna canvass every pizza joint in the Village for an unidentified white male who bought a slice? That oughta use up the rest of your twenty. Follow the jacket.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

As Jim and Karen were leaving, Miss Mary swiftly slewed her wheelchair around and caught Jim by the arm. “Dunbar,” she said quietly. “I was just jerking your chain about the interview.”

“I figured as much.”

“If you ever want to talk,” she said, her voice softening, “I’m here. I know where you’ve been, and I have a pretty good idea of where you’re going.” She wheeled back a few inches and grinned wickedly up at him. “Or we could just get hammered and tell war stories.”

“Thanks,” Jim said, forcing a smile. “I might just do that.”

“No you won’t,” Miss Mary muttered as the door closed behind them. “Too damned proud.”

* * *

[maggiethecat]

The One-eyed Man

Chapter Three

“I’ll be damned,” Lieutenant Fisk said wonderingly, running a hand over his bald pate. “I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection. This hairball went after Miss Mary? He’s lucky he’s not lying dead in the street.”

“That’s what she said,” Karen said and laughed.

“Still packing that Glock, I’ll bet,” he said. “Department lets her work out at the range; I run into her every once in a while. Woman’s a crack shot.” He shook his head. “Only time I ever saw Bud Delahanty cry. He was driving when she was shot, slapped on the flasher and made it to Jacoby in ten minutes flat. Carried her into the ER, bawling like a baby. I was still with the Four-four then . . . God, that was a night. So what’d she have to say?”

“She told me it was a waste of time following up on the pizza,” Jim said sarcastically.

“Well, she’s probably right about that,” Fisk said, “although it wouldn’t hurt to try for a three-block radius. Anything else?”

“He had workman’s hands and was wearing a cheap blue jacket, like from a security company or a delivery service. No wedding ring.”

“That’s Miss Mary,” Fisk said warmly. “She doesn’t miss much.”

“No,” Jim said to himself. “She doesn’t.”


Jim and Karen spent the following day re-interviewing victims of the man the tabloids had dubbed The Easy Mark Robber. The first, Dolores Connelly, a woman in her fifties who had walked with crutches since a childhood bout with polio, lived on Patchin Place and only buzzed them in after calling the squad to ascertain that Detectives Bettancourt and Dunbar were as described and not two con artists flashing badges they’d bought on the Internet. She would not let them into her apartment, but opened her door on the chain and told them, in a frightened monotone, that she could add nothing to what she’d told the other detectives, and she hadn’t left her apartment since the attack so a trusted neighbor was still bringing in groceries and her mail. She had, however, spent three weeks on the phone trying to get Social Security to replace the disability check she’d cashed just before the robbery and could they do anything about that? When Karen informed her, kindly but firmly, that it wasn’t really a police matter, Ms. Connolly closed the door in her face.

Jason Maseri, the blind teenager who’d had his backpack taken, was no more useful than Dolores Connelly. As he was only seventeen his mother insisted on sitting in on the interview and led them to the dining room table, where they politely sipped weak tea from paper-thin china and she kept patting Jason’s hand until Karen wanted to smack her. Jason had left the concert — alternative music at a converted Tribeca warehouse — at 11:00 p.m., well before his friends as he had a math test the next day, and had been alone on his short walk to the cab stand on the corner. It was also clear from the extreme vagueness of his answers — although more so to Karen and Jim than his over-indulgent mother — that he’d probably been a little stoned at the time.

When Jim finally got home that night he was experiencing the first twinges of a tension headache. After a couple of beers, four Tylenol, and a large carton of dim sum the headache abated, somewhat, and he mellowed enough to tell Christie about the case he and Karen were working, and why.

“It’s all about PR. Makes the department look sensitive,” he said derisively. “Plus they probably think I got some sort of spooky empathy with the vics.”

“But you don’t have any blind friends,” she said tentatively. “Just that boy Pete, and you haven’t seen him in months.”

“He’s not really a friend; I was just returning a favor.” He bit his lip, twisting his mouth to one side. “It just seems— too much like rehab. Bunch of people I got nothing in common with, whining about how life isn’t fair. I knew that by the time I was ten. I just wanted to get on with things, not sit around talking about how many times I fell over the coffee table that week.”

“Jimmy,” she said gently. “No one knows exactly what you go through — I know that — but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to connect with these people, at least a little.”

“Christie. Come on. A woman so scared to leave her apartment she can hardly talk. A kid who’s got about as much personality as he does sight. Miss Mary—”

“Who’s Miss Mary?”

“One of the vics.” He sighed. “She covered the police beat for the Post until she got shot in a drive-by. She’s paralyzed, in a wheelchair.”

“That’s terrible. Oh, that poor woman.”

“Poor woman, my ass. She’d tear you a new one she heard you talk like that.”

Christie smiled. “Like someone else I know,” she said fondly. “What’s the problem with her?”

“I don’t know,” Jim answered hesitantly. “She goes right for the jugular. Like she could see through me.”

“Maybe she can.”

“Oh, forget it. Leave it alone.” He reached out and found her arm, and pulled her to him. “I am starving,” he murmured into her hair.

She drew back. “Jimmy! we just ate.”

“I wasn’t talking about food.”


In his dreams Jim Dunbar could see. Leaden-limbed, he would walk through doorways, into sunny streets choked with patrol cars and split by gunfire, into the final bullet that had robbed him of life as he had known it. He would wake, sweating and disoriented, his heart pounding like a trip-hammer, opening his eyes to the unredeemable darkness, wake and answer his sleepily questioning wife and then return to the crumpled pillow and the long wait for sunrise. The dream came with stress — that much he had learned — and each encounter with his old partner, whose slack-jawed terror had taken so much from both of them. But in a peculiar way he had come to almost welcome the dream, despite the cost. In the dream he was whole.

Not this time.

He could see. That much was the same. He was sitting in a room, a square gray space with high, mesh-covered windows like the interrogation rooms at Rikers, and it was filled with faceless elderly blind men tapping white canes against the cement floor. The noise was rhythmic, ceaseless, jittering his frayed nerves and filling his ears. He wanted them to stop, wanted to get up and rip the canes from their palsied hands and break them in two over his knee. He started to rise and found that he was in a wheelchair, trapped, immobile, his arms and legs held down by padded restraints that were bolted to the frame of the chair. There was a woman beside him, bolted and strapped into a wheelchair as he was, a frail woman with ginger-colored hair and dark, pain-filled eyes, who leaned over and whispered to him, “Relax, Sweetheart. You’re among friends.”

“No,” he heard himself cry out. “I’m not.” And he woke, gasping for breath and sanity, his forehead damp and his hands shaking.

This is ridiculous, Jim thought angrily. He flexed the tension from his hands and reached out to the digitally-voiced bedside clock. When it announced 12:32 a.m. he slid out of bed and padded into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and took a beer off the top shelf. He leaned back against the island and opened it, then took a long grateful pull, the icy brew sliding down his dry throat like a caress. Real bitch is right, Boss, he thought. I want this over and done with.

* * *

[maggiethecat]

The One-eyed Man

Chapter Four

“Jim,” said Dr. Alan Galloway. “Twice in one week. Should I be worried, or impressed?”

“Go with impressed,” Jim answered wryly, consciously echoing Miss Mary’s pronouncement.

Galloway settled against his file-strewn desk, shoulders hunched and hands in pockets, and Jim and Hank went to their accustomed places: Jim in the far armchair, dark glasses off and placed on the occasional table, Hank at his feet. After seating himself, Jim rolled his head and shook the tension out of his shoulders, trying to shed the uneasiness he’d felt on the subway that afternoon, a creeping sensation somehow more disturbing than any he’d experienced while learning to navigate the city without sight. He knew people stared at him — that was a given — but this was different. He had felt vulnerable . . . and if there was one thing Jim Dunbar did not like it was feeling vulnerable.

“How’s it going?” Galloway asked. “Close the stalker case yet?”

“Yeah. It was Annie, Terry’s wife, all unhinged because— I don’t know. Somehow I wound up as the villain. I forced Terry off the job, I ruined his life. I almost don’t blame her since it turns out he never told her anything. All she knew was that Terry got shot, and then everything went to Hell. Never saw that one comin’.” He rasped out a quick laugh. “Not that I would have. Come on, Doc, these are the jokes.”

“Really,” Galloway said. “I’d laugh — believe me, there’s nothing I like better than a good laugh — if I thought for one minute you were being funny. How did Terry take it?”

“Better than I thought he would,” Jim admitted grudgingly. “At least now he knows he’s gotta fix his own messes. Anyway, it’s over.”

“You and Terry.”

Jim made a flat, dismissive gesture. “Absolutely,” he said firmly. “We walk away from each other. No loose ends.”

“And?”

“We went sailing last weekend,” he said with a slight grin.

“Again with the sailing. Jim. Please.”

“All right,” he sighed. “I got handed a ‘red ball,’ a real media circus. The Easy Mark Robber. Two detectives on the night shift have been working it for a month, and this week my lieutenant pulls it from them and dumps it in my lap.”

“Is that unusual?” Galloway said curiously.

“Fisk doesn’t play games — this is One P. P. For a solid year they act like I’m something on the bottom of their shoe, and now all of a sudden they’re all over me. It doesn’t have a damned thing to do with how I close cases; it’s because the vics are all blind or disabled. It’s a public relations dream,” he said acridly. “And if that weren’t enough, the case is stalled. Nothing from the vics. We only got one slim lead from this real pisser in a wheelchair called Miss Mary.”

“I heard she’d been robbed. I didn’t know she was in your precinct.”

“You know her?”

“Anyone who’s been even remotely connected to the department for the past twenty years knows Miss Mary. You never crossed paths?”

Jim shook his head. “Not that I remember.”

“You’d remember,” Galloway chuckled. “Probably a little before your time. So, do you think they were wrong to assign this to you?”

“It’s a case,” Jim said and shrugged. “I’ll work it like any other.”

“That’s not what I’m hearing,” Galloway said, leaning forward.

“Let me guess. You want to know how I feel about it.”

“I assume that’s why we’re here.”

“How do you think I feel?” Jim said harshly. “I don’t like it. The guy’s a sick bastard, and there’s one man dead already. And I don’t like that everyone expects me to bond with the vics. Like I’d bring something extra to the case, because . . . “

Silence. The desk clock ticked quietly, a taxi horn sounded distantly in the street, Hank grunted softly and settled onto his paws.

“We’re not on the department’s nickel any more,” Galloway said, drawing his thick brows together. “You don’t talk you’re just wasting your money and my time.”

“. . . because I’m one of them,” Jim said bleakly. “Any asshole with two eyes — Hell, one eye — could just come up behind me and— shit,” he said, striking his thigh with a balled fist. “I work my ass off, I’m closing cases left and right, and all anyone sees is that I can’t. That’s all I am to the brass — good copy. I wish they’d at least be straight about it.”

He turned his unfocused gaze in the doctor’s direction. “You won’t even do it. All the hours we spent in this room, you never said it. You danced around it with talk about my ‘new life,’ how it was some sort of opportunity. Like I’d gained something. I lost a helluva lot more than I gained,” he said heatedly. “And I’ve had it with people either using the word like a weapon, or avoiding it, like it was something to be embarrassed about.”

“Okay,” Galloway said equably. “You’re blind. Feel better?”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “A little.”

“This isn’t going to go away, you know. Until someone else like you comes along — which isn’t likely given the circumstances and what you had to go through to get reinstated — you’re stuck with the label.”

“Blind cop. Blind Cop Helps Blind Vics,” Jim said morosely. “I just want this over so me and Karen can get back to normal.”

“You mean cases with normal victims.”

“Jesus.” He paused. “I guess I do.”

“You’re somehow removed from all this?” Galloway said sharply. “Or is it like the old Groucho Marx line, ‘I wouldn’t want to join any club that would have me as a member.’”

Jim Dunbar leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t know,” he said, frowning. “I don’t know what this is. Maybe I just need to think in another direction.”

“Or maybe come to terms with the fact that, while you are a minority of one within the department, you are also part of a larger minority, a group of entirely disparate individuals with one thing in common: that they perceived by society as different.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he said bitterly.

“You might try cutting people some slack,” Galloway said mildly. “You can’t expect anyone else to accept you, unquestioningly, for who and what you are—”

“Until I can,” Jim finished.

“Exactly.”

“Miss Mary said it takes a couple of years to get your head back on straight.”

“Well, she would know.”

* * *

[maggiethecat]

The One-eyed Man

Chapter Five

“Hello? Anyone here? Lieutenant?”

“Dunbar?” Detective Fred Brody arose from the desk where he worked the 4:00 p.m. to midnight shift at the Eighth Precinct. “Don’t you got a home to go to?”

“Fred,” Jim Dunbar said with relief. “Thank God.” Fred Brody had come up through the ranks with his old friend and mentor, Walter Clarke, and, although they had only encountered each other a few times when their shifts had overlapped, Fred had been both blunt and pleasant, to the extent that Jim was fairly certain that Walter had put in a good word. “Look, before you say anything, you need to bag and tag me. Guy just tried to rob me going into the subway.”

“Holy shit,” said Lawrence Dahoud, the young Arab-American who had partnered the battle-scarred Brody since being promoted to detective some three months previous. “You mean the Easy Mark Robber?”

“Shut it, Larry,” Fred snapped. “He look easy to you? Have a seat, kid — I’ll get my gear.”

Jim released his grip on Hank’s harness and the German Shepherd went directly to his water bowl by the radiator. He then wended his way to the back of the room, groping awkwardly for the desk edges instead of confidently trailing the back of his hand along them, sank wearily into his chair, and slung his laptop bag to the floor.

Fred was back in seconds with the necessary equipment. “Okay, Jimbo, what’d you get?”

Jim withdrew his left hand from the pocket of his Burberry and held it out. “Try under the nails. I tore a strip down the guy’s face. He came from behind so there might be something on my coat.”

“Turn around, your back to me,” Fred said, and shifted the gooseneck desk lamp so it cast a white circle of light on Jim’s back. “Bingo,” he announced. “Got a hair, short brown, coarse. Definitely not yours.” He delicately lifted it off with the tweezers and deposited it in an evidence bag. “Hope it’s not the wife’s.”

“No, Christie’s got long hair. Black, silky.”

“Lucky man. We better bag your coat, just to be on the safe side. Larry, go get me one of them big bags, and a cup of coffee for Detective Dunbar here. How you take it?”

“Black,” said Jim. “Whatever.”

“Green as the day as long,” Fred commented when Dahoud was safely out of earshot. “I don’t know where they find these kids. Nursery school, maybe.”

Jim stood, slid out of his Burberry, and handed it to Fred. “Wait,” he said quickly. “My cane’s in the inside pocket.”

Fred retrieved the folded white cane and gently laid it on the desk; he stared at it for a moment and shook his head compassionately. “Got it,” he said brightly. “Give me your hand.”

Jim sat down again and held his hand out, almost meekly. Fred scraped under his fingernails with the tweezers, then shook the detritus and loose skin cells into a test tube, which he stoppered and labeled. “We ever catch this bastard we can add assaulting a police officer to the counts,” he said. He put the evidence on his desk, sat down, and opened a new file on his laptop. “Taking the statement of Detective James— what’s your middle name?”

“A.”

“Not the initial, the name.”

“Aloysius,” Jim muttered.

“James Aloysius Dunbar,” Fred said as he typed it in. “Nice Jewish boy, just like me. Okay, talk.”

“I was going into the Eighth Street station, about a half an hour ago,” Jim began. “The entrance on the downtown side. There’s a landing about twelve steps down, then the stairs to the platform. I’m just at the landing, left hand on the center rail, dog in my right hand, when someone grabs my bag and yanks it. So I turn and go for him—”

He stopped, flashing on the moment when, instinctively, he’d turned to face his attacker and felt Hank’s harness slip from his grasp, felt rough hands on him and hot breath sour in his face, then a dizzyingly fast sequence of blows exchanged and he was flying, backward, landing hard, and he was down on the ground, scrabbling frantically on the filthy stairs and calling for Hank until he felt his thick fur under his hand and could breathe again . . . .

“Jesus wept,” Fred said. “You look like five miles of bad road. You want to finish this later?”

“No,” Jim said hoarsely, and cleared his throat. “I’m good. Anyway, I couldn’t get situated right away but I know I clawed his face, and I hooked an uppercut with my elbow as he’s coming in low. I’m pretty sure he’ll have a black eye — I felt my elbow connect with something that could have been an eye socket,” he said with satisfaction. “I also got him a few times in the ribs. Then he says ‘Fuck this,’ and he pushes me. I land on my ass, and I hear him run up the stairs to the street. By the time I get up there he’s long gone. I asked around but no one saw anything.”

“Why didn’t you just stay put and call in a 10-13?” Dahoud said as he walked across the squad room and placed a steaming cup of coffee in Jim’s hand.

“Because I wasn’t ‘down,’ Larry,” Jim said, taking a cautious sip. “Thanks. And no witnesses. Stairs were empty. The platform’s too far away for anyone to have seen anything. So I came back here to see if I’d picked up any trace evidence we could use.”

“That’s what I would have done,” Brody said briskly. “Perp’s in the wind, work the case.”

“About that,” Jim said uncomfortably. “I hope you know it wasn’t my idea to pull this from you guys.”

“Ah, no biggie,” Fred said. “It’s not like we’re sitting here filing our nails for lack of work. More’s the pity. Besides, the department’ll get some good ink out of this.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Jim said sharply.

“Listen, kid, after the Louima thing the public needs to read about cops who aren’t bent. You’re solid. You got brass ones.”

“I’ve been downgraded,” Jim said with a rueful smile. “Marty Russo says steel.”

“More like titanium. I’m gonna call downstairs and get you a ride home. You might want to take cabs until this all shakes out.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“You want to walk around with a bulls-eye painted on your back that’s your business. Personally, I think One P. P.’d have a cow you wound up dead.”

“Thanks, Fred. I, uh, appreciate it. Your help, I mean.”

“Think nothing of it, Jimbo — I’d do the same for anyone walked in off the street.”

* * *

[maggiethecat]

Chapter Six

Lieutenant Gary Fisk liked to get to work early, at least a full hour before his detectives, so he could peruse the DD5s from the night shift in the quiet of an empty squad room and enjoy two large containers of Arabica Roast from the Starbucks on the corner; it was his one luxury, he had decided, and infinitely kinder to his beleaguered digestive system than the brackish mud produced by the coffee machine in the corridor.

And so he was surprised that morning — accustomed, as he was, to having the place to himself — to find Detective Jim Dunbar waiting for him at the door to his office, in a plain black gabardine overcoat instead of his usual khaki-green Burberry. So surprised, in fact, that he blurted the first thing that fell into his head:

“Where’s your coat?”

“In the evidence locker,” Jim replied sourly. “You got a minute?”

“Sure,” Fisk said, and held open the door to his office. “Have some decent coffee,” he said, pulling a container out of the paper bag and handing it to Jim.

“Thanks,” Jim said as he found the chair opposite Fisk’s desk with the back of his knees and sat down. He pried off the plastic lid and gratefully inhaled the aromatic steam. “Perfect.”

Fisk eyed him. “So, what’s up?”

“What’s up is last night our guy took a run at me.” He nodded in the direction of Fisk’s desk. “Brody’s report should be there. He tried to mug me going into the subway.”

“Son of a bitch,” Fisk said heatedly; then, in a more even tone, “Doesn’t look like he got very far.”

Jim allowed himself the satisfaction of what his former partner had once referred to as “Jimmy’s shit-eatin’ grin.” “He didn’t. He should have one hell of a shiner, and I clawed his face. Came back here and Brody pulled the trace. We got skin cells and bagged a hair from my coat. With the follicle.”

“So we’re good on the DNA.”

“Looks that way,” Jim confirmed. “Uh, Boss? I got a few ideas about how to play this.” And he leaned in, all cockiness vanished and his expression suddenly concentrated. “Here’s what I’m thinkin’ . . . .”


“Holy crap,” Marty Russo said some twenty minutes later. “The Easy Mark guy went after you?”

“Jim!” Karen gasped. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said testily. “Don’t I look fine?”

“Man, you always look fine,” said Tom. “That jacket is fly.”

Jim smiled, briefly. “Listen, the Boss and I agreed that we hold this back. No press, no one talks. We don’t want this hairball to know he rousted a cop until the time is right. And we definitely don’t want him to know that he left his little footprints all over me.”

“Footprints?” said Tom.

Jim smiled again, this time broadly. “Banged his eye, clawed his face. He should have a few sore ribs, too. I came back here and Brody got the stuff under my nails and a hair off my coat. We ever catch this guy we can add assaulting a police officer to the counts.”

“Shame you weren’t on duty,” Tom commented. “Carries more time.”

Karen shook her head. “We have got to get this guy. Who knows how many vics he could rack up before he’s done?”

“Tell me about it,” Jim said grimly.

Marty kicked his deck and scowled. “Yeah, well let’s just hope he don’t get a gun and go postal—” He froze, and a slow grin spread over his saturnine features. “Postal.”

“Postal,” Karen echoed, her eyes dancing. “What was it Miss Mary said? Cheap blue uniform jacket—”

“MacNeigh said he felt something heavy swing into him,” Jim said quickly. “Like a bag. Maybe a mail bag?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Marty said, snapping his fingers excitedly. “And a mail carrier’d be out during the day. Plus he’d know who was getting checks, and when.”

“Get back, Loretta,” Tom Selway said disgustedly. “The mailman? That’s as bad as the butler did it.”

By late that afternoon they were ready for the appearance of one Andrew Gianetti, a thirty-four-year-old unmarried mail carrier who worked out of the Astor Place branch, whose route encompassed much of the Eighth Precinct, and who, as his supervisor had confirmed on the phone, had indeed come to work that morning with a scratched face and a black eye. The element of surprise would be the squad’s best weapon, they had all agreed, and so Hank was out of sight on the floor behind Fisk’s desk, placated with a new rawhide chewie, and Jim was in the viewing room behind Interrogation Room One with the lieutenant and Tom Selway.

She called it, Karen thought when the uniformed officer who had picked him up led Gianetti into the squad room. A white male with badly bitten fingernails. He kept worrying them, bringing them up to his mouth to nibble and tear at his cuticles the whole time she was ushering him to the interrogation room. And a cheap medium-blue polyester uniform, she thought, smiling inwardly as she opened the door. You rock, Miss Mary.

“Have a seat, Mr. Gianetti,” she said, gesturing to the grey metal table and chairs. “Can I get you a cup of coffee? Or maybe some ice for your eye?” she added with feigned solicitousness.

“Nah,” the man muttered. “I’m fine.”

“That’s quite a shiner you got there,” Marty said as entered the room. “You walk into a door?”

“Yeah,” Gianetti said sullenly.

“Oldest line in the book,” Marty said cheerfully. “So, Andy, you got any idea why you’re here?”

“No, I don’t,” the man replied, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. “This better be quick — I have to get back to work.”

“Of course you do,” Karen said smoothly. “All those letters to deliver, right? And checks, too. Lots of checks. Pension checks, disability checks. When do the Social Security disability checks go out, Mr. Gianetti?”

“Depends,” he answered warily. “Why?”

“Well, it’s like this,” she said cozily, and perched on the edge of the table. “Seems a few disability checks have gone missing on your route. Not so much missing as, well, let’s just say taken.”

“Checks, hell,” Marty chimed in. “More like the disabled have gone missing. Poor old blind guy knocked down and killed, nice little lady on crutches hiding in her apartment ‘cause someone grabbed her money. Blind kid’s backpack snatched.”

“I read about that, in the papers,” Gianetti said nervously. “It’s got nothing to do with me. I just walk my route and go home.”

“When you’re not hanging around bodegas mugging woman in wheelchairs,” said Karen.

“Lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gianetti countered. “I told you, this has got nothing to do with me. I don’t know any of those people.”

“Sounds like a cue to me, Jim,” Fisk said.

“Yeah,” he said, “it does.” And he walked swiftly out of the little room, around the corner, and opened the door of the interrogation room. He stood there, one hand on the doorknob, a tight smile playing about his lips: tall, impeccably groomed and expensively dressed, the sun streaming through the dusty windows glinting reflections off his sunglasses, confident that he was making the desired impression of a man in control of the situation, and of his life. Not a victim — never a victim.

“Jim,” Karen said brightly. “Mr. Gianetti, this is Detective Dunbar. I believe you’ve met.”

The man took one look at Jim Dunbar, shrank back in his chair, and whispered, “You’re a—”

“Cop.”

“But you’re blind.”

“Damn,” Jim said blandly. “You noticed.”

Gianetti stared at him, his face slack with fright as a sheen of sweat started to form on his upper lip. “Fuck,” he breathed.

“Got that right,” Marty said happily. “You are so fucked.”

“You know, Jim,” said Karen, “I am really sorry you can’t see the expression on Mr. Gianetti’s face. He’s gone all white and twitchy, just like a rabbit.”

“I’m not saying another word,” Gianetti said.

“Too bad,” said Jim. “You were startin’ to sound real familiar.”

“You got nothing,” the man whispered hoarsely.

“Wrong again,” said Marty. “We got a voice ID from one of New York’s finest and we got a shitload of DNA.”

“And that’s probable cause for a warrant,” Karen said, leaning into Gianetti’s face. “To get your DNA, and to turn over whatever disgusting dump you call home.”

“Bet you a dollar he kept that kid’s iPod,” Marty commented.

“I want a lawyer,” Andrew Gianetti mumbled, nibbling on a ragged thumbnail. “Now.”

“Oh, crap,” said Tom behind the glass. “He lawyered up.”

“Not unexpected,” Fisk said briskly as he rapped his knuckles on the glass, which was the standard signal that the interrogation was ended. “No matter. They’ll photograph him at Central Booking—”

“And we’ll see what Jim did to his ribs,” Tom said, grinning wickedly.

Fisk snorted a laugh, and then rearranged his features into his habitually somber expression. “You know, I almost feel sorry for the guy," he said. "The department’s gonna land on him, the press, every disabled rights group in the city—”

“He sure picked on the wrong blind guy.” Tom peeled himself off the wall. “You want me and Marty should take him to booking?”

“Yeah,” said Fisk. “Oh, and Tom? Let Dunbar cuff him. He’s earned it.”

After Tom and Marty had taken Gainetti away, Karen and Jim went back to their desks. The twilight slanting through the Venetian blinds lined bars across Jim’s face, casting his eyes into shadow and rendering his expression unreadable.

“Jim?” Karen said, a little hesitantly. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just tired. Been a long day.”

“You want to go get a beer or something? Maybe bowl a few frames?" It was an old joke between the two of them, originating with one of Marty's more tactless remarks at the end of a memorable day, a day that had cemented not only their growing trust as partners but their friendship. It always raised a smile with Jim . . . but not today. Not when he could still feel the effluvia of Gianetti's rank breath on his face, not when, despite his bravura performance that afternoon, the shattering panic of feeling helpless and -- damn it -- sightless in a way that had taken him by surprise still made his hands, clenched in his pockets, tremble a little.

“Thanks, Karen,” he said, shaking his head. “Not tonight. There’s something I have to do. A debt I have to pay.”


Mary Johansson opened her front door and wheeled to one side. “Hot damn. Just what I was in the mood for,” she said delightedly. “A good-lookin’ cop— ooh, and a doggie. Tell me you brought beer and you’re in the Will.”

Jim jerked his head toward the bag over his shoulder. “Two six packs,” he said with a lopsided smile. “Imported.”

“That ought to get us started. About six steps in, then hook a left to the sofa.” She rolled expertly to the center of her living room, stopped with a flourish, and took a small remote from her lap and aimed it at a Bose CD player on a bookshelf. The coolly ironic sound of a muted trumpet wafted out. “Miles at Newport,” she said. “Hope you like jazz.”

“You read my mind.”

“So, Dunbar, why you bothering a sweet old crippled lady on a Friday night?”

“Thought we’d talk.” He heard her lighter click, and a long rasping hiss as she exhaled smoke.

“Shall we go for the glorious crap-fest otherwise known as life,” she said, “or just tell war stories?”

“There’s a difference?”

“Not for the likes of us, Sweetheart,” Miss Mary said, and smiled. “Not for the likes of us.”

The End