by Bari Wood
He tried to eat, but couldn’t. He took aspirin and went to bed, praying that the headache wouldn’t be there in the morning, but it was.
Chapter 5
“What are you going to say about Levy?” Ableson asked.
Hawkins wet some brown paper towel and pressed it against his eyes.
“Why should I say anything about Levy?”
“It’s going to come up, Roger. Adam was Levy’s son.”
Hawkins wet the towel again.
“You got a hangover?” Ableson asked gently.
“No.”
“So what about Levy?”
Hawkins kept his eyes covered. They were bloodshot and burning and his head still pounded. He’d never had a headache like this before.
“What do we say about Levy and the rest of them?” Ableson asked again.
Hawkins didn’t have to answer because Joe Turner pushed open the men’s room door.
He smiled when he saw Hawkins and the towel, a nasty smile that Hawkins was used to.
“They’s waitin’ on you, darlin’. All the brass of this fair city. Waitin’ on their man.” Turner was black and he hated Hawkins. White man’s nigger, he called him, and whenever Hawkins would pass him and some of the other black detectives talking in a bunch in the hall or lounge, they’d get quiet and watch him go by with smiles on their faces. Hawkins rubbed his head.
“Got DTs?” Turner asked.
“Shut the fuck up,” Ableson said.
“Dear, dear . . .” Turner said. He went out and Hawkins and Ableson followed him down the hall to the press room.
The place was hot and crowded. Stringers and steadies lined the walls and packed the back of the aisles. There was a mike set up at the front, and Pescado and the chief stood in the front. Turner led Hawkins and Ableson to two empty folding chairs in the back row.
“What’d I tell you, honey,” Turner said. “The fairhaired boy’s here, and they can start. . . .”
Suddenly Hawkins grabbed Turner’s arm and squeezed it until the other man gasped. People nearby turned around.
“One more word, Joe Motherfucker,” Hawkins whispered loudly, “and press or no press, I’ll punch your yellow eyes out.”
Turner yanked his arm free and left the room. Ableson stared at Hawkins in amazement, so did Mary Ryker who was in the row ahead. Hawkins sat down and tried to concentrate on Pescado and the commissioner on the podium.
Pescado was at the mike first. The boys had been beaten to death, he said; they’d put up a fight, but either they were outnumbered two or three to one or the killers were much bigger. The dead boys accounted for the blood types identified, which meant that either their assailants had the same blood types as the boys, or they weren’t injured enough to bleed. The press wrote, and Pescado waited for questions. One of the stringers asked about weapons; Pescado said they hadn’t found any except the boys’ knives; then a News steady said, “We saw mud all over the place.”
Fluorescents on the ceiling speared Hawkins’s eyes.
“Yes. . . . But we don’t know what it was doing there. It’s just clay. We’re checking, but I don’t think we’ll be able to pinpoint it. It’s too common.”
The chief came to the mike. “Right now, we’re operating on the assumption that the clay was used as a gesture of contempt.”
A short, very thin, dark man stood up. He had light blue eyes, like the Eagle that Hawkins had seen in the station the night they murdered Adam. “Giorgio,” the little man said, “Times.” The commissioner and Pescado waited.
“ ‘Gesture of contempt’ implies a rival gang,” Giorgio said. “Is that how you see it?”
Pescado and the commissioner nodded in unison, and Hawkins thought they looked like dummies on strings.
“Any line on which rival gang?” Giorgio asked.
The chief answered, “No, uh . . . no idea . . . at this time.”
Oliver Ames from the Journal stood up next. He was the best crime reporter in the country. Hawkins knew what he was going to ask and he wanted to get out of there, but the aisle was packed, people stood against the door, and he was trapped.
Ames said, “The Eagles were arrested for murder last week.”
The chief nodded.
“Then what about the family of the man they were arrested for killing?”
Hawkins put his hand over his eyes.
“Roger—” Ableson whispered.
The chief said, “There’s only a father and wife. The father’s over sixty and the wife’s seven months pregnant.”
The pain in Hawkins’s head turned into a sick headache, and if he didn’t get to the toilet he was going to throw up on the floor. He pushed his way through the crowd and made it to the men’s room, but wasn’t sick after all, and when Ableson found him, he was half sitting on the combination radiator and windowsill.
“That was some performance,” Ableson said.
Hawkins didn’t say anything.
“They probably think you were drunk or scared for Levy.”
Hawkins stared out at the tops of the buildings downtown; he was frowning, and Ableson noticed a deep line that ran between his eyebrows to the bridge of his nose. Hawkins wasn’t so young anymore. Neither was he.
“Why should they think that?” Hawkins asked softly.
“Because everyone knows Levy’s your friend; and Adam was his son.”
Hawkins looked at him. “So he’s capable of beating five kids to death?”
“There’s Luria, don’t forget, and Walinsky and the whole mishpochah.¶ Luria’s capable of anything. Besides, Adam was Levy’s son.”
Hawkins threw his cigarette in the toilet. “If you say that again, Mo, I’ll tear your fucking head off.”
Ableson drove up the ramp into the City Hall section, then up the Bowery to Third and through the tunnel to the LIE. He felt dirtied, like the kid who sees his daddy making love to the maid, and he knew it was because Hawkins—his best friend, his idol almost—had acted like a stranger.
Hawkins wasn’t like Turner. He didn’t hate anybody, and Ableson had never seen him lose his temper. He was so big, only men who were too drunk to know what they were doing called him nigger. But even when that happened, he wouldn’t fight.
Like the night, years ago, when this big red-faced rummy wanted to take Hawkins on with everyone watching. He was as tall as Hawkins, and bigger. He had a bright red face, a belly that hung over his belt, and arms like a bear. He sat next to Hawkins and Ableson at the bar and he kept calling Hawkins nigger, as if it were his name. Nigger, who do you like in the NFL playoffs? . . . Nigger, lemme buy you a beer, shit like that. But Hawkins wouldn’t break, and the drunk got so frustrated he pushed Hawkins hard in the chest, and Hawkins had to hang on to the bar to keep from falling on the floor. Hawkins and the white man slid off their barstools and faced each other. Everyone stopped drinking to watch. The place was dead silent, and Ableson saw a look of triumph in the white man’s eyes as he squared off. But Hawkins raised his big hands fast, grabbed the man’s shoulders, and held him stiff-armed so the drunk couldn’t get any closer. Sweat ran down Hawkins’s face, and the drunk strained against the hands that held him, but he couldn’t move. Then Hawkins started talking.
“Let me tell you about this book I’m reading,” he said wildly. “It’s called Oblomov and it’s about this guy who can’t get out of bed. No, I mean it. All he does is lay in bed, day and night, and then he meets this woman and she falls for him. Shit, I can’t remember her name . . . I’ll look it up and tell you later. Anyway, he falls for her, too.”
The drunk stopped struggling and stared at Hawkins. Hawkins went on.
“And he’s got this one chance to live, see. To be alive. All he has to do is get out of bed. . . .”
The drunk started to weep and Hawkins let him go. He stumbled blindly out of the place,
still crying, with Vinnie and everyone else watching, and Hawkins got back on the barstool next to Ableson. He was sweating with rage and it took him a minute to talk. Then he said to Ableson, “If it weren’t for Levy and the books, I’d’ve killed that asshole.”
“You should’ve,” Ableson said.
Hawkins turned to look at him. “Should I, Mo? Then what?”
He didn’t turn violent the night they arrested Calladay either. It was way out in Bay Ridge, the coldest night of the year. The bay looked frozen green, and the bridge was covered with ice. They’d gotten a tip that Calladay was there, in this little house at the end of a crummy block, with his girl friend, and they’d come in the middle of the night, closed off the street, and surrounded the place. Nothing happened for hours, and they were all cold and miserable, hating the man who was keeping them there, and Ableson thought they’d start shooting as soon as the door opened. But Hawkins had the horn, and when the lights came on in the front, he got out of the car and stood next to it. Ableson took his gun out, and he knew the others were ready to kill like he was. But when the door opened, Hawkins said through the horn, in a voice so gentle and clear Ableson could still hear it if he tried:
“Don’t, Mike. It’s so fucking cold.”
It was that simple, Ableson thought in amazement. No one wanted to die in that cold, to fall dead in the stiff filthy snow. And after a second, Calladay raised one hand high over his head, and then the other, and they arrested him without firing a shot.
That was the man Ableson knew. Not the nasty son of a bitch who threatened to punch Joe Turner’s eyes out and tear Ableson’s head off.
Ableson pulled into the Adventurer’s Inn off the Expressway and ordered a brisket sandwich on a roll. He ate and tried to understand how this could happen to his best friend, the best man he’d ever known, in only one night. He decided it was Levy’s fault. Hawkins loved Levy, and he had to know, like Ableson knew, that somehow Levy had killed those kids. So maybe he was afraid they’d catch Levy and Hawkins couldn’t help him. Or maybe he was afraid that if Levy could do such a thing, even to avenge his son, then everything Hawkins thought about Levy . . . all the love and trust and gentleness . . . was a lie.
Ableson finished the sandwich and stuffed the paper plate and napkin into a litter can. Then he got back on the Expressway and headed home, cutting easily in and out of the early afternoon traffic. He was past Lefrack City—the ugliest place in the world, he thought:—when Lerner called him.
“Get Roger,” Lerner said, “and get in here. We got some guy in the pen who says he saw who killed the Eagles. . . .”
¶ Clan.
Chapter 6
Lerner conducted the interrogation in a small dingy room on the third floor of the precinct. Hawkins and Ableson sat to the side, Hawkins close to the wall, a little in the shadows of the room. Ableson watched his friend. He could see the tension in his back, and Ableson knew what he was thinking. This man—Juan Comera was his name—had seen the men who killed the boys in the basement. What if he said he saw some old men with black skullcaps and beards? What if he described Levy? Ableson watched Hawkins shift in his chair, trying to relax. He’d known Hawkins so well, and for so many years, he could almost hear the other man’s thoughts.
How much did he really trust Levy, Hawkins would ask himself. Totally would be the answer. Then why was he nervous? Could Levy really kill five young men without a trial or any chance to speak for themselves? Not just kill them, but beat them to death and cover their bodies with mud? Could Levy plan that and then do it? Never, Hawkins would answer. But his body still wouldn’t relax.
Lerner started the interrogation.
“What kind of car did you see?” Lerner asked Comera.
“It was a van, not a car. A green Dodge van,” Comera answered. He was twenty-four. He was wearing clean chinos and a blue sport shirt that had been washed, ironed, and mended too many times.
“What about the plates?”
“I couldn’t get the number,” Comera said, “but I think they were New York. They were orange and black like ours.”
Lerner nodded. Hawkins shifted in his chair.
“Can you tell us any more about the van?”
Comera shook his head. “Only that it had curtains; a lot of them do. I don’t know what color.”
Good, Ableson thought. The man was a clear, to-the-point witness.
“Fine,” Lerner said encouragingly. “Now just tell us what happened. Everything you can remember. And try not to leave anything out, no matter how silly or insignificant it seems.”
Comera nodded. “Where do you want me to start?”
“What made you look out of the window in the first place?”
“Noise,” Comera said.
“What time was it when you first heard it?”
Comera said, “About five-thirty. I work in the Bond Factory in Long Island City. I get out at four-thirty, it takes about forty minutes to get home. My sisters and father weren’t home yet. My mother was in the kitchen, and I’d opened a beer and turned on the TV. The local news. They were talking about the weather, which was lousy, and the traffic, and I fell asleep—at least I think I fell asleep—and when I first heard the noise I thought I was dreaming about home. I’m from Ponce,” he said, “in Puerto Rico. Outside the town. And a lot of the people there keep their own animals. Pigs, chickens, a cow or two. And in the fall they’d slaughter them and you could hear the noise they’d make. And I hear this noise like animals screaming . . .”
Ableson looked at Hawkins. He was leaning forward in his chair.
“. . . and I think I’m dreaming that I’m back in Ponce and someone’s killing pigs outside. But I open my eyes, see the TV, and I know I’m in Brooklyn, not Ponce. Only I still hear that noise.”
“You went to the window then?”
“No,” Comera said.
“Why not?”
“I was scared.” Hawkins didn’t move, the tape slid through the recorder.
Lerner prompted, “But finally . . .”
“Yeah, finally I did,” Comera said. “But I kept down, right at the sill.”
“Why?” Lerner asked.
“You wouldn’t ask that if you’d heard the noise; I didn’t know what was going on or who was doing it, and I didn’t want anyone out there to know I was watching.”
“What did you see?”
“The van, and three guys standing on the sidewalk.”
“Describe them, please.”
Hawkins looked out of the window and Comera said, “Two were short, one was tall. Very tall. They were wearing plastic raincoats, the kind that fit in a bag, and rain hats, like sailors or fishermen wear.”
“Slicker hats?” Lerner asked.
“Yeah.”
“Did you see their faces?”
Ableson forced himself not to watch Hawkins.
“No,” Comera said and Ableson heard Hawkins shift in his chair.
“Not at all?” Lerner asked.
Comera shook his head. “But I think they were white.”
“Had the noise stopped?”
“No, man, it went on and on. Not just yelling . . . wood split, glass broke, stuff crashed. I thought that house would fall down.”
“So the rest were still in the basement.”
“What rest?” Comera said. “There was one more guy.”
Ableson and Hawkins looked at each other.
“One man caused all that racket?” Lerner asked.
“That’s all I saw.”
Lerner thought, then said, “Maybe the rest didn’t leave until you stopped watching.”
“No. I saw them drive away and no one else came out.”
No one knew what to ask next. Then Lerner said, “Go back to when the noise stopped.”
“It just stopped. Like
a stuck horn stops. Then the three on the sidewalk go down the stairs and I couldn’t see them. Then they come up in a minute, and there’s four of them.”
“Could you see the fourth man’s face?”
“No. He was wearing a big plastic poncho with a hood pulled down.”
“Then what?”
“They opened the van panel, helped the fourth guy in, then they got in and drove away.”
“Why did they help the fourth man? Was he hurt?”
“I don’t think so. I think he was just big and clumsy.”
“How big?” The question came from Hawkins. It was the first time he’d said anything.
“Real big,” Comera said, “the tallest of the four.”
“You said one of the three outside was very tall,” Hawkins said.
“The fourth one was even taller.”
“How tall was the third man?” Lerner asked.
Comera considered and looked at Hawkins.
“Maybe as tall as him.”
Lerner said, “Stand up, Roger.”
Hawkins got to his feet. He looked enormous in the low-ceilinged room.
“Try to see him in relation to the van,” Lerner said. “Was the third man that tall?”
“Yes,” Comera said softly, staring at Hawkins. He looked scared.
“And the fourth man was even bigger?”
Comera didn’t answer; he was still staring at Hawkins.
“How tall are you, man?” he asked.
“Six three,” Hawkins said.
“Oh God,” Comera moaned. “Oh my God, the fourth one was bigger . . .” He held his arms wide to show them how much, then he looked at the spread and widened it even further. “Two feet . . . oh my God . . . three feet.”