Thursday, December 17, 2003
Not that the case wasn't important, although, maybe it wasn't the most urgent one they'd ever worked on; in fact, more pressure was pressed upon them given that the person missing was one of their own -- a cop. She would have, in the past, considered it equally as important as any other case if it weren't for the fact that...Vincent Marro wasn't someone she could care about finding.
Samantha bunched her hands together in her pockets, thought of the cases they wouldn't even get until this one was solved. She thought of what Jack had said about it being their job and how they needed to do it and it wasn't their place to say who would be saved.
Who would be saved, though?
In the end, didn't we all need it?
And here she was, staring at the picture of a fifty-ish man whose hair was only slightly greasier than it had been five years ago. It had receded moderately, grown gray at the tips and around his ears. He still had the same pockmarks and craters from his boyish acne, still wore that same smile, the one that enticed strangers and made you think you could trust him, and you wanted to.
She didn't like his smile.
"Temperature's dropping."
She turned around and caught Martin, his gaze already diverted from her back to the notes he'd taken in Queens yesterday.
"They forecasting snow?" She asked, inclining her head playfully as she sauntered up beside him, read over his shoulder.
He nodded.
"Around six tonight. By tomorrow, we'll be covered."
"I'll take both of you on in a snowball fight. Whoever beats me, you've got a free trip to Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas Symphony, " Danny said, coming in beside them.
Samantha raised her eyebrows, lifted her hands up slightly in her pockets, and nudged Martin with her elbow.
"Come on Martin, Danny's buying. You beat me, you got a date."
Samantha leaned back minutely against Danny, felt his chest rumble with quiet laughter. Martin didn't look amused, but Danny continued the joke, wrapping a playful arm around Martin.
"Come on honey, I'll even put in for some hot chocolate, we can get extra marshmallows..."
He waved off Danny's arm.
"All right, you keep this up, I won't even play. When are we going to find the time to do this anyway?"
"We're getting a foot tonight, ten inches tomorrow night, and a good blanket this weekend. This case? We'll close it by Sunday. And Sunday? Game day, Martin. Bring your mittens."
Martin smiled, pushed his notes hastily into the folder as he saw Jack come in.
"I'll be there. And I'll wipe the cement with both of you, " he teased, pointing the tip of his folder purposefully in their faces as he followed Jack into his office.
*
"We talked to the landlord, he wasn't much help. Although, we did manage to gather that he was a good tenant, devoted to his work, and allegedly was one of the cleaner renters."
"Allegedly?" Jack asked over his crossed hands.
"Put it to you this way, the dirtiest Reggie's room has ever gotten is still cleaner than Vincent's apartment, " Vivian spoke as she entered behind Martin.
Jack chuckled.
"All right, you get anything else about this guy?"
"No one really knew him, except for his neighbor, and the guy was out when we were there. We'll head back today, see if we can catch him."
"All right, Danny's going to be questioning Vincent's partner, Jeffrey Pesna, so, let's see where we are after that."
"What about you and Sam?" Martin inquired.
Jack looked up sharply, felt a tug at Martin's usage of Samantha's nickname, the one he'd hoped was reserved for...anyone that wasn't Martin. God. He twisted his hands. He was acting like a jealous, hormonal teenager. He had to stop this.
"We're looking at his old cases, see if there's anything they can tell us about him or who might be holding a grudge against him."
Martin nodded, Vivian hung back for a moment, leaning closer to Jack.
"Everything all right?"
He held his face for a moment, then smiled quickly.
"Fine. Good luck."
They were done.
*
Maybe it was hypocritical to think it, but Danny wondered if there was an unwritten rule somewhere that detectives and Federal Agents had to wear black trenchcoats. True to form, Jeffrey Pesna, Homicide detective for the 60th Precinct, stood before him in a rumpled, black trenchcoat.
He was muscular, built like a wrestler, or biker, if he was going to stereotype. At first glance, you might think he was just one of those cops who'd eaten too many doughnuts when he'd been pulling grunt work on the street and never lost the pounds when he moved up to Homicide. Standing closer, watching him move, you could tell he worked out, held it like a piece of art.
Lord, the ladies must go nuts for him. Strikingly handsome, he had a boyish face, surprisingly unmarked yet by age or stress and his dirty blonde hair was stunningly messy. Geez, the guy could sleep for three days straight, roll out of bed, and probably still bring women to their knees.
Cynically humorous, you wondered just how much pleasure he allowed himself behind those intense hazel eyes.
"How long have you been working Homicide?"
He seemed relaxed enough, made the decision to remain standing as though he knew already he wouldn't have much to offer about his partner.
"Two years. Just transferred to the 60th about...I'd say six months ago, " he rolled an eye up in thought as he responded.
"You been busy?"
He shrugged.
"Writing my memoirs."
There it was. The Homicide detective humor; the kind that outsiders never quite found funny; the kind that only fellow detectives could really get...or fake they got.
"Shit, " he spoke again, "it's New York, G-man, what the hell do you think?"
Danny smiled for good measure. Okay, we'll play. Funny.
"Tell me about some of your cases, " he said, pencil poised over his notepad.
Jeffrey leaned against his desk, crossed one hand over the other and spread his shoulders against the wall behind him.
"Off the top of my head, we had messy rapes, gang-bangings, fuckin' kids killin' kids. Jesus. You ever listen to Pink Floyd?"
Danny shrugged. "Sure. Wrote some of my memoirs to it."
Jeffrey chuckled, scratched at his side.
"Yeah, man. Great stuff. Anyway, that one album of theirs? Shit. You spend a day with me, see what I see? This, " he moved his arms apart around the perimeter of the station house, "this is the dark side of the moon. This place, this city, this whole god-damned world."
"Yeah."
Cynically humorous? The guy was damned hilarious. God. He was a freakin' poster child for detectives taking their cases too seriously, taking them home, hell, living and breathing them. And he did. Jeffrey Pesna lived his cases. Danny hadn't seen it at first, but there it was: the shattered glass in his eyes.
"Any...unusual cases? Something that bothered you more than the rest? Something that might account for why your partner's gone missing?"
"They all bother me, but we didn't work anything we've never worked before. Vinny seemed a little different the last week or so, like something was going on. He wouldn't tell me."
"You have any idea what it might have been?"
He rubbed a finger down his cheek in thought.
"Tell you the truth, I think he was havin' money troubles. Not like I own a yacht workin' this job, none of us do, but uh...he was behind on some of his bills the last few months, his clothes were looking pretty bad, he was losing weight. Like I said, I asked him about it, he wouldn't tell me."
"Were you guys friends or --"
"I like Vinny, but we didn't get drinks after work or nothin' you know? We did our job, we went home. His brother can be pretty fuckin' psycho sometimes, I'll tell you that. And he's not my boss, thank God, so I can say it."
"Psycho?"
"Yeah, called Vinny for weird things sometimes, like, wantin' to know if he'd bought lightbulbs, wanted him to buy eggs for him once, always reminding him about dinner together, so on, so on. He borrowed money a lot too, I don't know what for. Which is weird, you know? I mean, fuck, he's a Lieutenant, what's he need to bum money off his shit-eating brother for? We're the poor ones here. Probably contributed to his money troubles."
Jack's theory about Joseph's involvement in his brother's disappearance may not have been far off the mark.
"All right. Anything else you can tell me, Detective Pesna?"
He rolled his shoulders again, looked like he was itching for a cigarette or beer.
"Not at the moment."
"Okay, thank you. We'll be in touch."
They shook hands and Danny folded his notepad up, scanned his notes quickly, making sure he had recorded all the important things. This was getting weirder by the minute.
*
"I think this job's hard sometimes, I can't imagine working Homicide. The people are already dead. Where's the happy ending?"
Samantha inquired as she turned the pages of Vincent Marro's casefiles, cringed at some of the crime scene photos.
Happy ending.
There was that word again.
After she'd been shot, there had been an estrangement between them, no doubt, but he still felt close to her, this connection he'd felt since she first came to work with him. But now it seemed, even with the passage of time, they had somehow grown even further apart. At least, that's how it felt to him.
"The families get closure. It may not bring them back, but...it means something to the ones they left behind, Sam. It means a hell of a lot."
Speaking from experience, she supposed. Not that he'd known anyone who had been murdered, but he'd told enough families enough times that the greatest effort had been put forth to save their loved one, but...it wasn't enough. Enough. Enough. Nothing ever seemed enough.
"You were in the NYPD before you came here, Sam...what department did you work?"
It startled him for a minute that he'd never asked, never known this part of her life.
"I was just a street cop, Jack...well...yeah --"
"What?"
She wasn't sure if she wanted to go here with him.
"I was a street cop for about two years, then transferred to Narcotics."
"You worked Narc?"
He seemed impressed for a moment, like a friend gawking at the other's high score on what could conceivably be the hardest test of the year. She liked the awe, relished it for a moment, and smiled.
"Yeah, worked that for a couple of years, joined the Bureau, and here I am."
He was quiet for a moment before his curiosity spiked again.
"Who was your partner in Narcotics?"
She swallowed hard, moved a strand of hair around her face so he didn't suspect she wasn't at all comfortable with this part of her past.
"Oh, you know, I think -- no, I'm getting him confused with someone else. You know, I can see his face, I just can't remember the name."
He didn't betray his suspicions that she was lying to him, he had more practice than her. He'd lied enough for both of them over the course of two years and he could hide it from her but see her own falseness. It bothered him. Why couldn't she tell him?
"I take it you weren't chums then?"
"Chums? No. We did sleep together a few times, though."
She meant it as a joke, but it bothered him. Here he was, regretting the distance he'd allowed to come between them, hurt at her relationship with Martin, and now she was joking about something like this. Casual sex. Just casual. Is that how she viewed them?
"That wasn't funny, Samantha."
She unconsciously ran her finger over Vincent's hastily scrawled name on the fifth casefile she'd flipped through. Now, she was a little hurt. So she did the only thing she could think of: she hurt him back.
"At least he wasn't my boss."
Jack drew in a deep breath, drew the fingers of his left hand closer into a fist and blew the breath out slowly.
Samantha regretted it the moment she said it, but didn't want to agonize over saying it in the first place just now. For no reason in particular, she looked up at the whiteboard, caught Vincent Marro's eyes.
She didn't like that smile.
*
"Chinese takeout?"
Danny tossed his keys onto Samantha's counter. She shrugged.
"Didn't feel like cooking."
He took off his coat, brushed away the few remaining snowflakes, and draped it over one of her chairs. Leaning heavily against the back of her couch, he sighed in frustration.
"This case is going nowhere, Mona Lisa."
She came towards him, crossed her left leg underneath her, leaned her right elbow against her couch and rested her head against her hand.
"Mona Lisa?"
"You've got that smile. Plus, I needed a new nickname for you."
"Ah. Was Mona Lisa even smiling in that painting, Da Vinci?"
He shrugged.
"Was she? I don't know. I just like it."
She was wearing an old NYPD sweatshirt, old, gray sweatpants, looked sad and tragic and beautifully muted in loneliness. Which meant, of course, something had happened with Jack. If he knew his best friend at all, he knew this: she was, and always would be, Jack's. And God, did that silent smile, the one that never came, break his heart. Just smile, Sam. Just smile.
"You okay?"
She turned her face into her hand for a moment and he waited. Would've waited days if she'd just tell him what was bothering her. When she turned back to him, there were tear tracks on her cheeks and he sighed again for the second time in less than five minutes.
"Michaelangelo."
"What?"
"He painted some beautiful things, Danny. Spent years painting the Sistine Chapel and it...it was just so amazing. He was so dedicated. I wish -- I wish he could...paint something beautiful for me."
He smiled, smiled for her, and reached forward to pull her against him.
"Michaelangelo, " he said, "well...he'd paint you a love."
"And what would it look like?" She asked, her question muffled against his shirt.
Jack, he wanted to say. It would look like Jack.
"Home."
And then Michaelangelo, the magic artist with mysticism, enchantment, and beauty in his fingers -- he'd paint something real.
He'd paint her a smile.