Saints Of New York

by R.J. Ellory

  Even with an internal, crime scene evidence starts to deteriorate as soon as it becomes a crime scene. A homicide detective who appreciated this fact would deal with the body last. The body was going nowhere, no-one would touch it, whereas fibers, hairs, footprints, anything transient, would vanish fast. Inside, you didn't have to deal with inclement weather, the wind and rain wiping away all traces of who'd been there. With a property you could ascertain ownership: was there forced entry, and if no forced entry then the possibility that the perp was perhaps known to the vic? You might have an apartment block where people were aware of the comings and goings of their neighbors, curiosity occasioned by an unfamiliar face. The physical evidence left by a killer was far easier to isolate in an enclosed room than in a snow-covered tenement alleyway littered with broken bottles, spent needles and garbage. What was absent was often as important as what was there. And the more police that were present, the more difficult it became to control the scene; even experienced people made mistakes, and sometimes the DC - the individual whose job it was to authorize the movement of the body - often came in and made his initial examination before the detective had finished.

  The Holy Trinity - physical evidence, eyewitnesses and confessions. Without the first two it was rare to obtain the third.

  In the cases of both Rebecca Lange and Karen Pulaski, there was little physical evidence, no eyewitnesses, and thus no-one to interrogate.

  The similarities between the two cases were the approximate age and appearance of the girls, and the fact that they had been strangled. But Rebecca had been choked by hand, whereas Karen had been strangled with a rope.

  Parrish closed the file and returned it to the office from where he'd taken it.

  He left the 91st a little after eight, walked back to Jefferson, took the subway to Lorimer Street. Here he changed lines and headed south to Brooklyn - Broadway, Flushing, Myrtle-Willoughby, Bedford-Nostrand, south-west to Clinton-Washington, and then a handful of minutes walk along Lafayette until he reached Clermont.

  He stopped at the liquor store on the corner of DeKalb and bought a bottle. He was hungry again, wondered if there were any frozen pizzas left in the apartment. He took a gamble and skipped the Seven-Eleven. He could always come back if there was nothing at home. Come to that, he could always have another couple of glasses and forget about eating altogether . . .

  He waited for the elevator, aware that one of his neighbors waited too. He did not acknowledge her until the elevator door opened, and then he realized it was the woman from the floor beneath. Mrs Langham, he believed. Her daughter was with her, couldn't have been more than six or seven years old. Parrish held the elevator door, allowed them entry first, and he smiled at Mrs Langham. The woman did not smile back. She either knew he was police and disapproved, or she didn't know and disapproved anyway. The bottle in his hand perhaps didn't contribute to the atmosphere. She more than likely knew he lived alone, and in this building - perhaps not a great deal different from many other buildings across the city - people didn't feel comfortable with a police officer as a neighbor. Until they got burgled, or someone tried to mug them on the stairwell. Then you became the most important person in the world.

  Parrish was aware of the little girl staring.

  He looked down and smiled at her.

  The little girl beamed back at him - such enthusiasm, such lack of preconceptions.

  Parrish opened his mouth to speak, but was cut short by the mother, invoking maternal authority in a forced whisper.

  'Grace . . . stop staring. It's rude.'

  Parrish watched the little girl's smile vanish, and then the elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Grace Langham and her disapproving mother stepped out.

  The little girl turned as the doors came to, and she raised her hand in farewell.

  Parrish waved back, and they were gone.

  Frank Parrish was in his kitchen by eight-forty-five. He was a third of a bottle down by nine-thirty, and he made do with a can of tuna that he found at the back of the cupboard.

  EIGHTEEN

  SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

  Parrish awoke before nine. From his bathroom window the sky was five shades of gray and lent the day an air of disappointment before it had begun.

  He remembered the report he was meant to have completed, the Active Investigation Summary. Squad Sergeant Valderas would read him the riot act if it wasn't done by noon, but Parrish could not take his attention from Rebecca and, behind those thoughts, Karen.

  Last night he had reviewed all these things. The trouble with the clear-headedness of a drinker was that the brief and brilliant moments of clarity did not survive. Sometimes because there were just too many thoughts, other times there seemed to be a single idea that overwhelmed all other considerations. The explosion that caps an oil fire.

  During his deepest hours Frank Parrish would resolve his marriage, the disillusionment of his career, the conflict with Caitlin, even his own raison d'etre. All these things would appear simple and straightforward - until morning.

  Sometimes the drink turned ideas into dreams, but more often into nightmares.

  He knew he had changed, become bitter, cynical even. As if the person he used to be was trapped somewhere else, pacing back and forth across the span of some unknown room - waiting, expectant.

  He seemed possessed by some strange obligation to peer into the darkest and most hidden recesses of the world. Not only that, but to reach his hands inside and bring the darkness out. And this had fixed him where he stood, while the rest of the world had moved on. Clare, Caitlin, Robert: they had all moved forward, yet he continued flogging himself on the same treadmill.

  Frank Parrish began each case with renewed hope. A hope as big as Christmas. All homicide investigations were reactive. Nothing happened until someone died, and then everything happened. Get to twenty-four, forty-eight hours from the event and already things were growing cold and dry. Potential witnesses had second thoughts; the human instinct to tell what you saw, even what you thought you saw, was transformed into the fundamental instinct for self-preservation. Better to say nothing. Better not to get involved.

  Some truths had been so well-hidden they became sacrosanct. Some cases would never be solved.

  He thought often of those who survived, who somehow had navigated the awkwardness of childhood; of those who suffered falls from high places with nothing to show for the experience but bruises and vertigo. People endured the pain of broken love affairs, disastrous marriages and shattered families. Too many years he had spent breaking up the kind of domestics where violence was always the first port of call. Fight first, talk later. Or just keep on fighting and never talk at all. Crimes of passion, of opportunity, of human error. All this they survived, only to be killed stone-dead by a drunk driver or an opportunist mugger. One moment they were there, and then they were gone. The scene was processed, the tapes rolled up and stowed away, the Fire Department hosed down the sidewalk and the world was back to rights. And more often than not those deaths were without rhyme or reason. Rare was the killing dictated by malice aforethought. The psychos and serial killers were in the minority. The motive and rationale back of most murders was simple: for love, for money, for nothing. Only a few were murdered for a killer's gratification.

  Sometimes he sat on the subway and looked at people. He would watch them unaware, and wonder who might not make it to Christmas. Even as they reviewed the complications of their own lives, considering possibilities, formulating plans, those complications were pointless and redundant. They would be dead before they saw another birthday.

  Perhaps his behavior betrayed a pessimistic nature, but it served to remind him of the fragility of things. And he had yet to find so much darkness that it stopped him looking. Perhaps the more he found, the more he became inured to it, so that he stopped perceiving darkness, but simply saw shadows . . .

  As far as homicides were concerned, the first twelve hours were vital. Beyond twelve hours the dead stopped t
alking. Evidence was destroyed, conspirators collaborated on a common and plausible alibi, weapons were dispatched to the unrelenting depths of the East River or Maspeth Creek. Speed was of the essence, and yet speed sometimes sabotaged thoroughness and attention to detail. The secret was in the balance, and so many times the balance was anything but right. And later, in those moments of quiet reflection, there was always time to consider what he might have done better. What was it Jackson Browne used to sing? Something about not confronting him with his failures, that such things were never forgotten?

  When Frank Parrish was married it was a matter of pushing it all aside. Drinking. Pain pills. Starting with three or four, then another and yet another until whatever was keeping him awake was subdued.

  Face the truth, Frank. No-one ever got better from drinking.

  The echo of Clare's voice in his head.

  And then the children came along, Caitlin especially. Caitlin had been his conscience, his salvation, his redemption, and yet a mirror for his guilt. Caitlin was the darkest of all his nights, the brightest of all his days. The most brilliant light always cast the deepest shadows. And those shadows . . . ? The shadows of his own failures as a father? For him there was no darker place than that.

  That morning he did not eat breakfast. He left the apartment shortly before nine and took the elevator. Once again he coincided with Mrs Langham and Grace, and once again Grace was reprimanded for staring.

  Grace went on looking at Parrish as if he carried all the secrets of the grown-up world in the creases of his face.

  Mrs Langham, however, looked awkward, as if to say, I'm sorry for my daughter . . . she isn't embarrassed, and neither are you, but for some reason I am.

  Parrish just smiled at her, and when he stepped back to allow them exit from the elevator he said, "Bye, Grace. You have a good day, okay?'

  He walked from the apartment block and took the subway to Hoyt Street.

  In the Homicide Division squad room, he found the weekend- shift detectives - Paul Hayes, Bob Wheland, Mike Rhodes and Steve Pagliaro. Mumbled greetings, the odd jibe, and Parrish was then in back surveying the case board. Date initiated, detectives assigned, a series of boxes that were checked as the administrative requirements were fulfilled - Crime Scene, DC's Report, autopsy, rape kit, tox, a box headed Suspect/s which was only checked if someone was brought in on a realistic possibility of charge and arraignment - and over on the far side, a box that was filled with a number that increased each day the case remained active. If the case was closed that box was filled with a black "X". Black Xs were the thing that Lieutenant Myerson and Captain Haversaw required in a daily report from Squad Sergeant Valderas. The Active Investigations Summary Report was completed by each lead detective after a complete shift, whether it be three days, five days, or two and a half hours in the case of overtime. It was a laborious process, the redefining of each homicide, a paragraph or two detailing what had been done thus far - the people interviewed, whether or not the investigating officer had reason to consider them a suspect, the in-office interrogations that had been undertaken, the results of those interrogations, and on and on. Parrish still had active cases, but for him it was simple.

  Rebecca was not a hooker or a dealer or a thief. She was never meant to survive the same occupational hazards as the others. You got yourself involved in the sex-for-sale industry and you were a magnet for flakes and psychos. And if you came up from the projects with your pockets full of crack, if you fronted for someone, if you gypped someone, then it was all too understandable if you wound up with a five-inch paring knife in your throat. Such eventualities went with the territory. Danny Lange was a junkie. With junkies it was not if, but when. Not whether, but how. An overdose, an accident while stoned, a hallucination that put you wandering in the Colorado mountains when really you were jaywalking into six lanes of traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Once again, occupational hazards.

  But Rebecca was different. Rebecca was the only one that reallymattered. And it wasn't simply that she reminded him of Caitlin. It wasn't that she was orphaned or had a piece-of-shit junkie brother. It wasn't that her St. Francis of Assisi friends considered her quiet and funny and sweet and pretty. It was something else. A reminder that if there was no-one there to look after you, no- one to keep an eye on things, then the world and all its wonders would devour you in a heartbeat.

  You were there, and then you were gone.

  Why had she run to her brother? Why had she left Williamsburg for Brooklyn? Why did she have her hair cut and paint her nails? Who did she have sex with? Was it consensual?

  He wondered whether the tox test had ever been done. He picked up the phone and called the Coroner's Office. He gave the case number, Rebecca's name, waited while the attending receptionist looked her up.

  'No tox,' she came back. 'Don't have one scheduled. You need one done?'

  'Please, yes,' Parrish replied. 'I was told we would get one but I never heard back.'

  'Well, someone screwed up then, didn't they? I'll book it, but it won't be until Monday now. I don't have the people here to handle backlogged tox tests.'

  'What's your name?'

  She gave it.

  'I'll call you Monday afternoon and see what the deal is.'

  'You do that, Detective, and have a good weekend.'

  Parrish hung up, made a note in his diary to call on Monday.

  He completed his report, dropped it in the basket by the door, and then retrieved the rest of the cigar-box money from the lower drawer of his desk.

  'You outta here?' one of the uniforms asked as Parrish came down the corridor.

  'Not a prayer,' Parrish replied. 'Here all day.'

  'You still off the road?'

  'Yeah, until January. I get my license back after the New Year.'

  The uniform made some comment, but Parrish didn't hear it as he went down the stairs to Marie Griffin's office.

  NINETEEN

  'You've heard of the Valachi papers?'

  'It sounds familiar.'

  'Joseph Valachi. First guy to ever really break ranks in the mob. His testimony opened up the whole thing, gave people a look inside something that had only ever been a myth. It all went back to a guy called Joseph Masseria back in the early Thirties. Masseria said that any underworld figure from a place called Castellammarese de Golfo in Sicily was to be killed. What followed was called the Castellammarese War. One faction was led by Masseria, the other by a guy called Salvatore Maranzano. Other gangs allied themselves to either one or the other. Vito Genovese, Lucky Luciano, Dutch Schultz and Al Capone supported Masseria, but in 1931 Masseria was assassinated by order of Luciano, and that was the end of the war. Maranzano called together about four hundred people from all the different families in order to establish some kind of structure for their activities and territories. Maranzano himself was also assassinated a few months later, but the structure he put in place still holds to this day. They started infiltrating legitimate businesses right from the get-go. You've heard of Arthur Miller, right?'

  'Playwright Arthur Miller, who married Marilyn Monroe?'

  'That's the guy. Well, as early as '51 the New York Daily Compass commissioned him to report on Senator Estes Kefauver's hearings on organized crime, and it was already coming to light that the Mob controlled the unions on the city's waterfront. Columbia, Union Street, the Red Hook district. . . that's where Capone and Frankie Yale and others from Murder Incorporated came from. Even then they had already instituted something called the "shape-up".'

  'Which was?'

  'Basically, it meant that a dockworker or a longshoreman didn't have a working contract. It meant that he had to show up for work at the docks every day, and he had to be hired newly each day. That kept everyone on their toes. Made people grateful to work. Made them accept lower wages. A lot of these guys remembered the end of the Depression, and if they didn't know it personally, they knew it from their fathers. Within fifty years there were twenty-four different organized c
rime families operating in the US. A city usually had one family running it, but New York was the only city that had more than one. There were five here: Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Bonnano and Colombo. Back in '83 a guy called William Webster was the Director of the FBI. He testified before the President's Commission on Organized Crime that there were approximately seventeen thousand soldiers and about seventeen hundred made men.'

  'Made men?'

  'It's a rank, a status if you like. It's awarded to a guy by the family he works for. A made man cannot be killed by another family without the express authority of the head of the made man's family. So say you have a Gambino who wants to kill a made man in the Colombo family. Well, the rules say that he can't do that unless a Colombo boss gives the go-ahead.'

  'And the families had complete control over running the unions and the docks?'

  'They ran a great deal more than that. They were into clothing, construction, furs, flower shops, the entirety of the Fulton Market. They had butchers, funeral parlors, barbershops, milk delivery companies, box manufacturers, window cleaners, and an entire network of taxicab firms that spider-webbed across the whole neighborhood. They ran everything, inside and out, so when someone came along and said they were going to turn the old Idlewild Golf Course into an airport, well what better business could they get into? Fifty thousand staff, ten thousand car-parking spaces, five thousand acres just to begin with. The payroll at Idlewild was half a billion, and that was in the mid-Nineteen- Fifties. These guys came from East New York, South Ozone Park, Howard Beach, Maspeth and the Rockaways. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, and the truth of the matter was that the pie was so fucking big they could keep on taking and keep on taking and it would never run out.'