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“I’m asking for your opinion. Thirty-five years on the job, solid record—and a single rip. Under Oberman. I have reasons for coming to your home, reasons for asking you about Lieutenant Oberman.”
“What are they?”
“I’m not free to give you that information at this time, but can tell you we’re on an active investigation.”
“What, do you think she killed somebody?” When Eve said nothing, he blew out a long breath. With his hands on his hips he looked away, just looked away for a space of time. “It’s a hell of a thing,” he murmured. “A hell of a thing. Have a seat on the porch. My wife’s off with some girlfriends. I’ll see what we’ve got cold to drink.”
He had iced tea, cold and sweet. They sat in the shade of the little covered porch and drank.
“I keep in touch,” Allo began. “Talk to or hook up with some of the guys I worked with. And I keep up with what’s going on. I know your rep, Lieutenant. Yours, too, Detective.”
He paused, drank again. “Let’s be clear. I never had a problem working with a female officer, or taking orders from one who outranked me. I served my last three years with a damn good detective, who happened to be female. I’m still pissed about that rip,” he admitted. “All this time, and it still eats at me. Insubordinate, my ass.”
He shifted, angled more directly toward Eve. “I argued with her, sure. But I never disrespected her. She says we all have to wear suits and ties, even on the desk, I put on a suit and ti
e. She wants us to clear off our personal items, even family photos. I clear them off. It’s her squad. I don’t like it—and I’m not the only one—but it’s her squad.”
He brooded a moment. “Her squad, that’s the thing. When you have a new boss, you expect changes. In how things are done, in the tone. Every boss has a style, and that’s the way it is.”
“You didn’t like hers,” Eve prompted.
“Cold, nitpicky. Not picking nits over an investigation, but your fricking shoe shine, your haircut. She played favorites. If you were down on her list you got the shit assignments. Every time. All-night stakeouts in the middle of the winter because somebody got a tip maybe something was going to go down. But the somebody who’d be one of the favored was too busy with something else to sit and freeze his ass off all night.”
He puffed out his cheeks, released the air. “Maybe all that sounds like picking nits, too.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Every boss has a style,” he commented, and looked at Peabody. “We pick up the style, learn to work with it so everybody gets the job done.”
“That’s how I see it,” Peabody agreed. “The job’s the thing.”
“The job’s the thing.” He nodded. “But she’d question the direction of an investigation, pull you off one and stick you on another. Dump somebody else’s petty case on you. That happened to me twice. I’m this close to making a bust, and she pulls me in, reassigns. When I argue it, she sits there behind her fancy desk and tells me she’s not satisfied with the quality of my work, or with my attitude.”
“That’s not style,” Peabody put in. “That’s not making the job the thing.”
“Sure as hell not.”
“Did you complain up the chain?” Eve asked him, though she had the answer in the file.
“No. I don’t work that way. The boss is the boss, and hell, the squad was closing cases. Plus this is Saint Oberman’s daughter, and when she came on as boss she was the golden girl.”
“And she hung a life-sized portrait of her father in the office, in case any of you forgot.”
Allo smiled at Eve. “You sure as hell couldn’t miss it. Anybody paying attention could see she was weeding out the old, sowing in the new. Handpicking when she could.”
He shrugged. “Boss’s privilege. But it got so I hated going in to work, hated knowing I’d be sitting in that squad room. It wears at you, makes you hard to live with. Hard enough to live with a cop, right?”
“No argument.”
“It wore me down. She wore me down. I knew she wanted me out, and I knew—after the rip—she was going to find a way. I wasn’t going to go out that way. I wasn’t going to have her put another mark on my record. The boss is the boss,” he said again, “but I’ll be damned. I might as well add my wife put her foot down, and I can’t blame her. So I put in for the transfer. I had another three years with a good squad, a good boss. And when I put in my papers, Lieutenant, it was my choice.”
“I’m going to ask you something, Detective-Sergeant.”
“Allo,” he said. “Just Allo.”
“Was she on the take?”
He sat back, shook his head from side-to-side. “I knew this was coming. Goddamn it.” He rubbed a hand over his face, shook his head again. “Did you see the name of my boat?”
