VC04 - Jury Double Read Free

pitched like a child’s. The words were toneless, the affect flat.
    “Are you aware that there are two dead people on the premises?”
    Williams nodded. “Yes, sir, I’m aware of that. Johnny and Amalia.”
    “Friends of yours?”
    “Good friends. He was.”
    “How many hours have you known of their deaths?”
    “Since they died. I killed them.”
    Cardozo angled his green Honda Civic into the alley. Britta Bailey held open the passenger door.
    Mickey Williams, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun, stumbled into a stack of A-frame crowd-control barriers. His face colored. “Sorry about that.” He crouched and began restacking.
    Funny guy , Cardozo thought. Doesn’t blink an eye at murdering two defenseless old people but goes to pieces when he makes a mess in an alley. “Don’t worry about it now.” He steered Williams up the steps of the century-old East 63rd Street precinct building. One of the green glass globes was busted and the ironwork was rusting and the painted bricks were peeling.
    Sergeant Bailey followed, a hand on her holstered service revolver.
    The inside of the precinct was every bit as dingy as the exterior. Cardozo waved to the lieutenant working the complaint desk. Cops prided themselves on their cool, but not even ten-year men were immune to celebrity worship, and the lieutenant did a double take at the sight of the Houston Oilers’ former star.
    “Come on.” Cardozo hurried Williams up the steel-banistered staircase. “Before they start asking for your autograph.”
    “You kidding?” Williams had a wistful, “if only” look. “Nobody remembers me.”
    “They’re going to remember you now.”
    The marble steps leading to the third floor smelled of their weekly ammonia bath, but the cracks were grit-caked and filthy. On a bench in the hall a detective was taking a statement from a bag lady with Park Avenue diction.
    “What’s this city coming to?” she wailed. “Twelve-year-old children carrying automatics on the Lexington Avenue local !”
    Cardozo nodded. “You’re absolutely right, darling.” He opened a door and gestured Williams into the detective unit squad room. Mickey Williams’s legs and butt so stretched his seersucker trousers that the pocket linings showed as white half-moons.
    Cardozo pointed. “You can make yourself comfortable in that little room over there. How do you like your coffee?”
    “I dunno. Sugar and cream.”
    “Optimist.” Cardozo threaded his way between old metal desks. An antique coffeemaker sat gurgling on the padlocked cabinet where detectives stored their revolvers. He poured two plastic cups of tarlike liquid, then added to each a plastic spoonful of nondairy creamer and an envelope of sweetener.
    It was late in the shift and the squad room was deserted except for Detective Greg Monteleone.
    “What’s happening?” Cardozo asked.
    Monteleone shrugged. “A ten-thirty came in five minutes ago.” Ten-thirty was cop-code for reported stickup, and they’d been on the rise throughout the Upper East Side. “A male Caucasian with a box cutter held up a Mr. Softee ice-cream truck on Madison.”
    “What kind of moron is this town breeding?” Cardozo shook his head. “Criminals used to have brains.”
    “Hey.” Monteleone lowered his voice. “Is that Mickey Williams in your office?”
    “Yeah, but keep it under your hat.”
    “What kind of trouble is he in?”
    “The worst.” Cardozo crossed to his cubicle and nudged the door shut behind him.
    Mickey Williams stood by the window, watching a pigeon pinwheel in the amber light of the alley. “Pigeons are funny creatures. I could watch them all day.”
    “Parrots are better comedians.” Cardozo set the two cups down on the desk. He opened the middle drawer of his file cabinet, found the camcorder, and checked to make sure it was loaded and working. “You’re not camera-shy, are you, Mickey?”
    “Hell no, nothing bothers me.”
    “Unless you’ve got guts of steel, that