by Henry Hack
“Or a senator, or governor. Or a cop.”
At 2:20, back in my office, the phone finally rang and John Micena simply said, “We got a name, and we’re on our way back.”
“What is it?”
“Giuseppe Mastronunzio.”
“That’s a helluva name, John.”
“You can say that again, Boss. Giuseppe enlisted in the Marines three weeks after the murders, from an address in Richmond Hill. We’re going to stop there first and nose around awhile, if that’s alright with you.”
“Remember that was forty years ago.”
“You’ll wait for us?”
“I’ll be here,” I said and put the receiver down.
Giuseppe Mastronunzio, where are you now?
TWENTY-ONE
Richie and John were back in the office at 4:30 and John said, “You were right, Mike, forty years is a long time. Nobody at that house ever heard of anybody by that memorable name, and the other four doors we knocked on gave the same negative answers.”
“What are your plans now?”
“Back out there tomorrow,” Richie said. “First stop will be the A&P where Selewski worked, then the local high school to check the yearbooks.”
“If you strike out with the yearbooks, check out Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn. Mastronunzio is likely a Catholic, and that was the place we kids from Queens and Brooklyn would go to if we didn’t attend our local public high school.”
“You went there, Mike?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any other ideas or ways to go on this?” Richie asked.
“No, you’re doing fine. Keep going and follow the leads wherever they take you.”
“I’m hoping Giuseppe’s sunning himself on a beach in Hawaii,” John said.
“You wish,” I said, “but tell me something. You called me and said, ‘we got a name.’ Now how the hell did those geeks in Manhattan pick him out? I must say I’m impressed.”
“You and us, Mike,” Richie said. “Those guys put a lot of effort into this for us. The military records search came up with 127 guys from Queens who enlisted in the service during the period of one day after the murders to ninety days later.”
“And,” John said, “the other database spit out 188 names of men in the 17-24 year old age group living in Richmond Hill and within a five mile radius of it. We had to do a hand comparison, and the only name that appeared on both lists was Mastronunzio.”
“We confirmed it by his fingerprints,” Richie said. “The partial from the scene could have come from his left index finger, but as Brala reminded us, he couldn’t testify in court to a positive match with six points of comparison.”
“Did his military records have his blood type listed?”
“Yes it did,” John said smiling.
“Are you going to tell me what it was, or just sit there with that shit-eating grin on your face?”
“Yes, Boss, I will tell you. A-fucking-negative.”
“Terrific! This could be our guy. Let’s say you find out tomorrow he did work with Selewski and went to high school nearby. How do you propose to locate him?”
“We’re already working on it,” John said. “The computer guys are searching the locations of all Giuseppe Mastronunzios in his current age group throughout the country.”
“And, Mike,” Richie said, “All these guys worked through their lunch hour on this so we sprung for sandwiches and sodas for them.”
“Put the expense chit in right away. And tell them if they zero us in on the one and only Giuseppe we are interested in, I’ll take them to Peter Lugers Steakhouse.”
“Does that include us two?” John asked. “It would be an added incentive to know a thick, prime porterhouse awaited us.”
“With pleasure,” I said, as if these two needed a steak dinner to motivate them. They were on the hunt. The gleam was in their eyes. They couldn’t wait to run Giuseppe to ground. I hoped I could control them when they did, before they chewed him to pieces.
“Good,” Richie said. “I’m getting real optimistic now. I mean how many Giuseppe Mastronunzios can there be in this world? And in that age group?”
“You’d be surprised,” I said. “I once was chasing down a guy named Stanislaus Warzejewski. There were seventeen with that name in Greenpoint alone.”
“Did you ever catch him?”
“No, I got close, but he had beaten feet back to Poland, or the Ukraine.”
“No doubt joining thousands of others with the same name,” John said.
“Right, and I gave up the chase. It was only a bullshit burglary. Nobody hurt. Certainly not worth a trip overseas, which wouldn’t have been approved anyway.”
Richie reached across the desk and put his hand on my forearm. “Mike, me and John will never give up the chase on this guy. Never.”
“I know you won’t. Good luck tomorrow.”
. . .
June 16, the forty-third anniversary of the death of my parents, had come and gone and my two detectives were now at a crossroads. They had ascertained Giuseppe had worked part-time at the Richmond Hill A&P during the same time as Peter Selewski. They also determined he had graduated from Bishop Loughlin High School, my alma mater, in 1957, three weeks before his Marine Corps enlistment. A thorough canvass of the neighborhood failed to turn up anyone who remembered him from that time. The A&P knew nothing of importance about him, except for his dates of employment there. The notation under his high school yearbook picture indicated he would attend college after graduation. No doubt the murder of my parents squashed those plans.
A visit to the Marine Corps facility in Garden City, Nassau County, resulted in some good information. The officer who accessed their historical personnel database informed my guys Corporal Joey “Nunzio” was a good marine and was made an offer to continue service in the Corps, which he refused. His MOS was in aviation mechanics, and he performed his repair and maintenance duties excellently. Unfortunately, there was no information on where he went when he left the Corps in 1960.
John and Richie figured that with his training, Nunzio, as we now called him for brevity’s sake, could have hooked up as a mechanic at one of the airlines at JFK or LaGuardia. A record search of all the airlines maintaining a facility there at that time failed to turn up an employee with that name. They threw the search back to the computer section to expand it to airports nationwide. In a few days that search also came back negative.
A few days after that, the computer section came back again, this time with three Giuseppe Mastronunzio’s between the ages of 60 and 65 living in the United States. In The Bronx, Phoenix, and San Francisco. With database research and a few phone calls it was readily determined none of the three could be our man. The one from the Bronx spoke broken English and had emigrated from Italy ten years ago. The one in Phoenix had been born in Chicago and school records confirmed his attendance there. He had been in college in Michigan at the time of the murders. And the one in San Francisco, now deceased, had been a fisherman all his life out there ,working in his father’s business since he was thirteen years old, eventually owning it.
We sat around my office that afternoon evaluating our results, disappointment hanging heavy in the air. We needed the proverbial lucky break, or an inspiration, or a new direction. Halfway through our second cup of coffee, as we were browsing through our latest reports, Richie Paul pointed to a page and said, “Wait a minute!”
He grabbed for my phone, dialed a number, and hit the speaker phone button. When the phone was answered, Richie said, “Captain Ahearn, this is Detective Paul. I was out there at the base with my partner a couple weeks ago?
”
“Yes, I remember. What can I help you with?”
“Once or twice you referred to Mastronunzio as ‘Nunzio.’ Did he change his name?”
“Not likely, but I bet his drill instructor may have. Let me explain…”
After Richie disconnected he said, “That’s it. The bastard changed his name. He had to or we would have found him by now.”
“To Nunzio?” John asked.
“Maybe. Maybe to Mastro. Maybe to something else.”
“How the hell are we going to find that out?”
“Start with the civil court in Queens where he lived,” I said.
“That’s why he’s the boss,” Richie said. “We’ll be there first thing in the morning.”
And at 10:08 the next morning, John Micena called me and said, “Bingo, Mike, we got the son-of-a-bitch. We’ll come right back after we copy some paperwork.”
“Listen, while you’re out there check at the two airports again under his new name. Who knows? He could still be working there. Maybe he’s the chief mechanic at one of the airlines.”
“You’re some optimist, Boss. As you said, forty years is a long time. He could be retired by now, but we’ll check it out. See you later.”
“Oh, John,” I said, “tell me, what new name did our suspect adopt?”
“Completely different. I guess to throw us off the scent. But he used some of the letters from his last name to make a shortened version of his new one.”
“Nunzio?”
“No. Manzo. Our guy is now Francis Andrew Manzo.”
I sucked in a deep breath and put a death grip on the telephone receiver. I felt the blood drain from my brain. My knees shook. Thankfully I was sitting down, for surely I would have fallen to the floor. And, fortunately, John and Richie were not in the room when John spoke that name, because one of them would have said, “Mike, what’s the matter? You look like you saw a fucking ghost.”
“Mike?” John said. “Are you there? Is something the matter?”
I regained my composure a bit and said, “No, no, I’m fine. We’ll talk when you get back and plan our next moves.”
Francis Andrew Manzo.
Father Manzo from St. Anthony’s.
Frank, my longtime friend and NYPD Rabbi.
His Excellency, the Most Reverend Francis Andrew Manzo, Bishop of Brooklyn.
Impossible! It couldn’t be him. I poured a cup of coffee, sat back, and thought about this startling revelation. And the more I thought, the more it made sense. He murdered my parents, and to somehow make amends, devoted his life to God, and became my life-long benefactor to mitigate his guilt. This was something right out of a Charles Dickens novel. My twenty year search was over. The second man had now been positively identified, and I knew exactly where he was. Now what the hell would I do about it?
PART FIVE
THE BISHOP OF BROOKLYN
(SUMMER 2000)
TWENTY-TWO
I shut my office door, reached into my bottom desk drawer, and retrieved a bottle of twelve-year-old scotch which I kept for special occasions. I was not much of a drinker, but I needed one now. I couldn’t remember where the lo-ball glasses were, so I poured a double shot into my coffee mug, and slugged it down. I waited for its warmth to work its way through my system and, as if by magic, I calmed down and regained my senses.
I began to question myself. Suppose it wasn’t him? Suppose there is another Francis Andrew Manzo out there? Or several? Certainly a heck of a lot more than his previous name. But deep down, I knew it was him. Father Francis Manzo of St. Anthony’s parish had first taken an interest in me when I was about fourteen years old, for a reason I was to discover four years later when the truth was told to me.
He had taken me under his wing, and I know he contributed to my college fund set up by my step-parents, and he supported my decision to enter the army and postpone college. He had said, “Go in, Mike, and leave us behind for a while. You need to get your head together before you decide how to move forward,” or something to that effect. I now know he himself had done the same years ago, and it seemed to have done well for him. “And when you come out, you can decide if you want to be a Catholic or explore your Jewish heritage,” he had said.
When I came out I did explore my Jewishness with Rabbi Berman and with Mort Stern. I came to the conclusion Mort was correct. There was no God, and both the Old and New Testaments were compilations of fairy tales.
All these memories and thoughts boiled through my brain, chasing around in there, searching for the truth. But facts are facts. The Bishop of Brooklyn. It had to be him.
. . .
Richie and John were back before lunchtime. I said, “Tell me what you found out there, my two top detectives.”
“You’re not going to believe this, Boss,” Richie said. “We found Manzo worked at TWA in LaGuardia Airport for two years as an aviation mechanic, and resigned on good terms to pursue another career.”
“He joined the seminary,” John said. “Manzo may be a Priest, of all things.”
“Are you guys Catholic?” I asked.
“I am,” John said. “Richie here is some kinda German Prot.”
“Died in the wool Lutheran,” Richie said.
“As is my wife,” I said.
“Hey, Mike,” John said, “You have all the bases covered – A Jew brought up Catholic, married to a Protestant.”
I chuckled and said, “The comedian Bob Hope once commented he made sure he entertained groups of every known religion on earth, because he didn’t want to get shut out of heaven on a technicality.”
After the laughter subsided I said, “John, does Manzo’s name sound familiar to you?”
“Vaguely, but I can’t seem to place it.”
“You’re not an observant Catholic, are you?”
“Nah, Christmas and Easter. That’s about it.”
“Francis Andrew Manzo is not a Priest anymore, guys. He is the Bishop of Brooklyn, the head of the Diocese.”
My two detectives looked at each other for a moment and both said simultaneously, “It can’t be him.”
“It’s him,” I said. “Without a doubt. It all fits. His middle name is my father’s first name. We have known each other for thirty years. He has looked over my life and career for a long time.”
“The Bishop of Brooklyn has been your hook all these years?” John asked.
“That he has.”
“Holy shit,” Richie said. “This is unbelievable.”
“What do you want us to do now?” John asked.
“What I want you to do now is nothing. I’ll take it from here.”
“Uh, Boss, nothing crazy, right?” Richie said.
“No, I don’t think it will come to that. I owe him a call for our regular lunch meeting. I’ll wing it from there.”
“That will be some lunch,” John said. “I’d love to be a fly on the wall at that discussion.”
“Mike, see if you can grab his water glass when you leave. We’ll get his DNA and prints and know for certain if he’s the guy.”
“He’s the guy, Richie, and I doubt those forensic exams will be necessary. I think he’ll tell me everything I want to know.”
“Why should he, Mike? He’s had over forty years to come clean, and he hasn’t done so.”
“Good question, but I think he wanted to be discovered. By me. He was the one who put me in charge here. Maybe he had a good reason not to come forward. I’ll be sure to ask him.”
“Do you want all what we found out yesterday and today
to be put on paper officially?” John asked.
“No, type it up and hand it to me when you’re done. I’ll tell Sergeants Seich and Megara you’re both back in the duty chart effective tomorrow. If they ask, tell them the case has reached a dead end for now.”
“But in case the Bishop is not the one –?”
“He’s the one, John. Now hit the typewriters. Oh, by the way, thank you for a great job, a first-rate investigation. I’d put you in for a promotion, but you’re already first graders.”
“Peter Luger’s would be a well-deserved treat,” Richie said.
“Indeed it would,” echoed John.
“You’re on,” I said, “and we’ll take our wives. Right after I wrap up my visit with Francis Andrew Manzo, the good, or not so good, Bishop of Brooklyn.”
. . .
I reached for the telephone, and then withdrew my hand. I had to think about this a bit. I went back in memory trying to remember the first time I met Frank. It had to be in Mort’s store when I was about thirteen. I also remember attending a couple of masses he presided over before being introduced to him by Mort. He seemed to like me, and when I was accepted to Bishop Loughlin High School, he told me of his attendance there, and we swapped stories about the staff and teachers, some of whom were still there from his time.
And, thinking of him, brought to mind Rabbi Berman who also popped into Stern’s. And when the three of them got going arguing over religion, God, and philosophy, I soaked it all in and kept my mouth shut mainly because I had nothing to offer. One day, near closing time, both the Rabbi and the Priest were berating Mort over his denial of the existence of God. He went to the front door and locked it and said, “Let me tell you why.”
I said, “Mr. Stern, should I leave?”
“Unless you got something important to do, Mikey, I vant you to hear vat I got to say. You should hear both sides, not just vat these two preach about.”