by J. L. Abramo
“I don’t know. Let’s concentrate on how he got the stuff and we can fucking ask him when we find him,” says Samson.
“Where are the fingers?”
Vota didn’t realize he had said it aloud.
“Maybe the guy likes knuckle sandwiches,” Murphy says, grabbing his coat and heading toward the door.
“How can you joke about this shit?” asks Vota.
“I can joke about anything. It’s therapy. Comic relief if you will.”
“Comic relief is a lot more effective if it’s funny, Tommy,” says Samson.
“He cuts off a finger from each victim,” Vota says, more to himself, since no one else seems to be listening. “He doesn’t leave it, he doesn’t send it to anyone, so he must take it with him. Hold on to it. What the fuck for? What the fuck does he do with them?”
“Let’s focus on questions that may have a rational answer, Lou,” says Samson. “Let’s get out and try to find the fucking car.”
“He’s going to kill again, and soon,” says Vota.
Serena Huang and Andrew Chen sit in a booth drinking coffee at the Ridge Diner on 5th Avenue. They have been at it for more than an hour. Serena is way out on a limb.
She is thankful that she has made it past the fabrications concerning her acquaintance with Susan Graham, an old college buddy she decided she would surprise while she was down from Albany. Serena made Andy Chen for a cop the moment he had opened the door, and she had instantly begun creating a fictitious character.
Serena then moved on to more fiction. Her job with the state health department, which would have her in New York City for a few weeks for planning sessions.
Serena half listens to Chen talk about his rookie year on the police force, while trying to come up with a subtle way to bring the conversation back to the body on Bay Ridge Avenue.
She decides to test the limb a little further.
“What a horrifying experience for Sue. I ran into one of her neighbors before I got to Susan’s door. Is it true that the victim’s finger was cut off?”
Chen tightens slightly, like a person who thinks he has heard footsteps from behind. Something in the crafty innocence of the question, or maybe in the hypnotic smile accompanying it, puts his guard up.
“I really shouldn’t talk about it,” says Chen, though he wants to.
“I understand,” Serena says, biting the inside of her cheek.
“Off the record?” Chen says.
The use of this particular expression startles Serena initially. Then the irony has her in full theatrical mode.
“Sure, who would I talk to? After the meetings this morning, I can assure you that no one listens to a single word I say.”
“There was a homicide, Friday afternoon, an eight-year-old boy. There are similarities that may point to a common perpetrator,” he says, and then finally catches himself. “I really can’t say more.”
“I really don’t think I want to hear more,” she says convincingly. “The big city spooks me enough as it is.”
“Oh, it’s not all that bad, especially if there’s someone to show you around. Maybe I can give you a tour of Brooklyn while you’re down here. It’s a world of its own.”
“That would be nice.”
“How can I reach you?”
“I may have to switch hotels. How about I call you?” says Serena, pedaling fast.
Chen hands her one of his cards.
“You’ll call?”
“I will,” she says, and then she casually glances at her watch. “Wow. I completely lost track of time, and it’s entirely your fault. I have a 4:00 p.m. meeting in Manhattan.”
“Can I drop you at the subway station?”
“Sure, that would be great.”
Chen watches as she walks down the stairs to the 68th Street Station on 4th. Chen marvels at life’s unexpected surprises. He drives off toward the Precinct.
A few moments later, Serena Huang comes back up to the street. She walks back toward the Graham house, back to where she had parked her car. She drives to the office of the Brooklyn Eagle. She has a mundane article to complete on new movie releases. And she has to find out everything she can about the recent murder of an eight-year-old boy.
Lorraine DiMarco sits at her desk in the law office. There is work she should be doing, regardless of the fact that there is little she can do for Bobby Hoyle. Except to pray that the inmate Bobby threw against the wall stays alive long enough to talk with the police.
Instead, Lorraine is leafing through a brochure on magnetic resonance imaging. MRI.
How to prepare for the test. What to expect.
Don’t eat in the morning, leave the jewelry at home, and the IUD. Use the bathroom before the test begins, tell the technician about any allergies, ask for a sedative if you are unusually nervous, lie still for twenty to forty-five minutes. And be prepared for possible side effects, most commonly a headache.
The thought of the test giving her a headache was almost comical, but not funny enough to ease her fear of Wednesday’s appointment. Or stop her agonizing about when and how to tell her father. Or help her make up her mind about whether she could tell Lou Vota about it at all.
Sal DiMarco walks the three short blocks to Campo’s grocery.
“Need some more boxes?” Campo asks as DiMarco walks up to Joe and his wife.
“Thank you, we’re all set. Good afternoon, Roseanna,” says Sal. “Joe, I was hoping you had a minute to talk.”
“Sure, let’s step outside. I could use a smoke.”
Campo leaves Roseanna behind the counter and follows Sal out to the street.
“Do you remember Frank Sullivan?” Sal asks, as Campo lights up a Camel.
“He had the restaurant over on 86th with his brother?”
“Yes. I ran into him. He’s not in very good shape. I want to help him out. I want to have him take the small apartment in our basement.”
“He is without a home?”
“Yes. He’s been living on the streets. I’m afraid he won’t accept if he can’t afford to contribute at least a token payment for rent. I was hoping that perhaps you could use some help here at the store. Frank is a good man, and he ran his business well.”
Joe Campo takes a long drag of his cigarette and puts it out in a bucket of sand sitting at the grocery entrance.
“Your timing may be perfect, my friend,” says Campo. “My daughter-in-law Angela is expecting another child very shortly. We had talked about my wife having more time to assist with the older children when the new child comes. Let me speak with Roseanna about this and I will get back to you soon. I believe that we can work something out for Mr. Sullivan, and it could help us out as well.”
“Wonderful,” says DiMarco. “Thank you, Joe.”
“This is a very honorable thing you are trying to do, Salvatore.”
“I pray it is the right thing,” says DiMarco.
He has been sitting on a bench across from the Territo house for hours. It is getting colder, but he doesn’t seem to notice. There has been no sign of TITAN1, but he feels certain that he has been guided to the right place.
He has seen two children arrive. First, a teenage boy, perhaps fourteen. Later, a girl. Older. The thought that the oldest child may be female concerns him. He had not considered taking a girl. He will have to be certain, but he will do what he has to do.
He hasn’t eaten all day. And he has other business to consider. He needs to find a place to use, an empty place, not far from here.
He decides to leave. Maybe he will come back tonight, to look for the BMW. Or tomorrow. Or the next day.
He has developed the patience of a saint.
He tucks the Bible under his arm, rises from the bench and walks slowly back to his car.
THIRTEEN
The Brooklyn-Queens Resident Agency is a satellite branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation New York Field Office. The B-Q office is located at Kew Gardens Road near 80th Road in Queens, near the impossible int
ersection of Queens Boulevard and Union Turnpike and the southern tip of Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, home of both the old and the new Mets’ ballparks and anything else left from the 1964 World’s Fair. The office is either located in Kew Gardens or Flushing or Jamaica, depending on where you are standing when asked.
Ripley is trying to slip out of his office early on Monday afternoon. Ripley is the SAC, the Special Agent in Command, of the B-Q Field Office. He reports to the ADIC, the Assistant Director in Charge, of the New York FBI Headquarters at Federal Plaza in Manhattan.
For Ripley, the assignment is a promotion, and a return home. He is back in Queens, not far from where he grew up, after nearly ten years in suburban Virginia and an office at Quantico. Ripley has been back in New York City for nearly eight months, and he is finally beginning to feel reacquainted. For Ripley’s two young sons, however, born and raised in the woods of Wilderness, Virginia outside of Fredericksburg, it is a new universe.
Ripley missed Quantico. The pulse of the place. The excitement. The challenges. And at the same time, its seclusion, its eerie silence.
Ripley’s office in Queens offered a picturesque view of three very large parks: Corona Park, Forest Park and Maple Grove Cemetery. But it was far from tranquil. The incessant noise of automobile, bus and air traffic often made it difficult to think. Queens Boulevard, Union Turnpike, the Grand Central Parkway, Jamaica and Parkway Hospitals, LaGuardia Airport, Arthur Ashe Tennis Stadium, the ballpark, all coming together in a cacophony of horn blasts and squealed brakes, cheers and jeers, departures and arrivals, life and death.
Ripley is halfway to the door of his office, halfway to escape, when his assistant enters.
“This just came in from One Federal Plaza,” says Winona Stone, waving a sheet from the fax machine.
“Come in,” says Ripley, returning to his desk.
“Were you on your way out?” she asks.
“What do you have?”
“The Mexican government has the driver of a transport that carried seven very expensive unregistered German-type automobiles across the border and they want to know what to do with him.”
“And what does it have to do with us?”
“The driver wants to cut a deal.”
“Where’s he from?”
“New Haven.”
“Send it to Connecticut.”
“Connecticut doesn’t want it. They’re claiming that the vehicles came out of Brooklyn, so they hot-potatoed it to One Federal Plaza and Manhattan threw it to us.”
“Doesn’t New York have some kind of auto theft task force?”
“Yes, they certainly do. But there’s the rub, Chief. The driver is from Connecticut. It’s the interstate noncooperation syndrome, no one has the courage to cut a deal without the blessings of the State Department, so they all figure they might as well drop it in our laps.”
“Great,” says Ripley, “and don’t call me Chief.”
“The driver dropped a name, Titan Imports in Brooklyn. He claims he can help put the main man away, for a little immunity. What do you want to do?” asks Stone.
“Get out of here, take my kids to a hockey game.”
“Okay. What do you want me to do?”
“Look into Titan Imports, find out what you can about who operates the place. Let me know what you learn. Don’t try talking to anyone.”
“Look, but don’t touch?”
“Yes. For the time being.”
“Okay,” says Agent Stone, “you can go now.”
“Thank you.”
“Enjoy the game, although I must say that I think hockey is a bit violent for young boys.”
“Maybe so, but believe it or not it is a lot tamer than TV or video games and they hardly pay attention. They love the crowd. It’ll have to do until the baseball season begins. We can only hope that none of the players’ dads are there.”
Twenty minutes later Ripley pulls into the driveway of his sister’s home in nearby Rego Park to pick up his two boys. They play with their cousins in the back yard while he quietly sips the cup of coffee that Connie had quietly placed before him. They sit facing each other across the kitchen table. She knows better than to ask him anything about how he feels or about what he is working on. If he wants to talk he will talk. If he has nothing to say, he is not going to say a thing.
“I’d better get going,” he says. “I’m taking the boys to see the Islanders tonight.”
“That’ll be nice,” she says. The best she can do.
“Thanks for the coffee.”
“Anytime.”
And thanks for being like a mother to my children, he thinks to say but doesn’t.
Collecting the boys, collecting their things, heading for the car, and eight-year-old Kyle is already asking the question as he climbs into the front seat.
“Daddy, is Mom mad at me?”
“Dad, Mommy me?” parrots four-year-old Mickey.
“No, son. Your mother loves you.”
“Then why did she leave?”
Why did she leave?
She left because she happened to get caught between a lead-footed drunken teenager and his pathetic destiny.
She left because it wasn’t enough to be a beautiful, intelligent and loving wife and mother; you had to be able to dodge speeding out-of-control Chevrolets as well.
She left because a God who was so busy creating the sick maniacs that Ripley was paid to track down couldn’t possibly find time to worry or care about her. Or about the one man and two young boys who lost the best friend they ever had.
“She left because God missed her and wanted her with him in heaven and she is with him now watching over us and loving us very, very much,” Ripley says.
“Oh, yeah,” says Kyle, “that’s right.”
“So, who’s going to win the game tonight, kiddo?” says Ripley, trying to change the subject before one of the boys asks if he can visit Mom in heaven.
“The Orioles, silly,” says Kyle, to which Ripley shakes his head and smiles.
“I wanna Oreo,” says Mickey, squirming in his car seat.
“Would you settle for a hot dog and a beer?” says Ripley, which earns a smile from the older boy.
“I’m a’scared of bears,” says Mickey, which has both his father and his big brother laughing out loud.
“Tell you what,” says Ripley. “You have the Oreos and milk, Mickey, and Kyle and I can handle the hot dogs and the bears.”
“I’m not a’scared of hot dogs, Daddy.”
Neither am I, except when they’re in out-of-control Chevrolets, thought Ripley.
Serena finds it lost in the Saturday Daily News. An eight-year-old boy found dead on the roof of an apartment building at the Gravesend-Bensonhurst border. Cause of death attributed to a fatal head trauma. Very few details otherwise. The boy’s name. The name of the owner of a grocery at Avenue S, said to have discovered the body.
The police were investigating.
Serena jots down the name Joseph Campo, and the location of the crime scene. Then she begins phoning the local funeral parlors until she learns that the viewing is scheduled to continue at the Graziano Funeral Home on 86th Street and 24th Avenue from seven until ten that evening.
Serena Huang leaves the Brooklyn Eagle office and drives home to her apartment on South Portland Place in Fort Greene. To wash off the dust of the day and find something appropriate to wear to a wake.
Murphy has been flapping his lips at Lutheran Medical Center for hours. His tongue feels like a bar of Bonomo Turkish Taffy about to snap. He finally finds a lead.
Victor Sanders, a night maintenance worker, let go by the hospital three weeks earlier. Sanders was suspected of taking drugs from an emergency room cabinet. The hospital authorities had no solid proof, but could not afford the risk of keeping Sanders on. The decision was made to fire Sanders and wait to see if he would sue the hospital for wrongful termination. Sanders never had.
Personnel gave Murphy an address in Sunset Park.
/> Eddie Conroy has almost completed his work. At least for this Monday. Eddie is exhausted and anxious to be home with his family.
It has taken all morning to prepare the large basement room for a fresh painting. Father Donovan wanted the room ready for a Valentine’s Day event on Friday night, open to unmarried members of the congregation. For hours, Eddie had folded the tables and chairs, stacking them in the center of the floor, and covering all of it with a canvas drop.
The cloth exhibited a splattering of multicolored smears of paint, remnants of previous projects around the church. The underside displayed a mural of the manger at Bethlehem, used in a Christmas play performed by the grade-school children at Our Lady of Angels. Conroy fondly remembers how proud he was of his daughter, who bravely played one of the Three Wise Men.
After moving everything he could move away from the walls and carrying six gallons of white paint from the storage area into the room, Eddie shut down the lights and moved to his work above. He would begin with the ceiling in the morning.
After lunch, Eddie cleaned the stained glass windows, from the inside. The weather prediction for later in the week called for temperatures in the fifties, unusually mild for February. If the meteorologists were correct for a change, Eddie would tackle the outside of the windows on Wednesday or Thursday, once the downstairs painting was done.
Conroy spends the remainder of his day running a broom through the church, up and down the rows of pews and the center and side aisles. With a little time left before his shift ends, Eddie takes a soft cloth and a bottle of wood cleaner to dust and polish the confessionals.
Conroy notices the large manila envelope on the floor of one of the confessionals and lifts it up. He feels its weight. It is simply addressed to Father Donovan. Eddie is mildly curious about the contents of the envelope, and why it was left there and not delivered. But not intrigued enough to interrupt his work.