“Never.”
“Do all calls come through your board?”
“Yes. Only the Braxtons have direct lines.”
“Did she ever receive other personal calls?”
“Hmm. I don’t think so.”
Malone saw a shadow cross her face.
“What happened to Eisinger could happen to every woman who lives alone. It’s important that we know who she talked to. Everything that you tell me will be confidential, I promise.”
Malone folded his arms over the top of the switchboard, leaning forward, looking down at her. “Please.”
She looked up. The board buzzed. She answered the incoming call and routed it.
“You might save another woman’s life,” Malone said.
“A woman by the name of Andrea used to call her from time to time,” she said.
“What can you tell me about this Andrea?”
“Nothing. They used to talk in different languages.”
“What languages?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes they’d speak in English.”
“What did they talk about?” he asked casually.
“Lieutenant! I don’t listen in on conversations!”
“I certainly did not mean to imply that you would intentionally listen in. But everyone knows that sometimes operators accidentally press the wrong button.”
“Well, actually I did overhear part of a conversation. They were talking in English, Andrea and Sara. It was the Thursday before she left on vacation. Sara was talking very excitedly about a song. She told Andrea to look at the song.”
“Did she mention the name of the song?”
“No. She just told her to look at the song. That she would understand when she did.”
“Understand what?”
She raised her shoulders and grimaced. “I don’t know.”
4
FRIDAY, June 12
When Malone walked in he saw an old couple sitting on the bench outside the squad room. The woman had drawn her gray hair back into a bun. Her dress was plain and black and too big for her. Her head was lowered, and her thumb stroked the clasp of the plastic pocketbook on her lap. The man slumped and stared at his spotted hands. Malone glanced at them as he passed. He walked into the squad room and went directly over to the coffee urn. As he poured, Malone studied the rolls inside the torn bag next to the urn. He selected one topped with sugar crumbs, bit into it, and stepped back to avoid the shower of powdered sugar. “Who are they?” Malone asked, pointing his head toward the door.
Jake Stern looked up from the typewriter. “The Eisingers. The New Brunswick PD notified them this morning.”
“Give me a minute and bring them in,” Malone said, taking another bite and heading toward his office.
Malone looked down at the 60 sheet. On the late tour one Rose Jennings, female, black, age 32, got fed up with her married boyfriend’s broken promises and urinated into a saucepan. She then went into the kitchen and removed a can of lye from under the sink. She went back to the bathroom and poured the lye into the saucepan. Holding the pan carefully with two hands and shaking the mixture as she walked, Rose Jennings headed for the bedroom. She hovered over the bed, looking down at the sleeping man. “Lying motherfucker,” she screamed just before throwing the contents over his face. He’d never be handsome again. Rose Jennings then went to the telephone and called the police, the wife, and an ambulance. Very accommodating lady, thought Malone, sipping from the mug with the word COP stenciled on the front. Another grounder. His luck was still holding.
“Lieutenant, this is Hanna and Jacob Eisinger,” Stern said, steering them into the office and gesturing to the uneven cluster of chairs.
“I want to tell you how sorry we are,” Malone began. “I want you to know that we’re doing everything possible to apprehend the people responsible.”
The Eisingers said nothing. They were frozen in shock and grief; they stared fixedly at the cards and telephone numbers stuffed under the glass top. Gently, Malone probed. Who were their daughter’s friends? Did they know of anyone who would want to kill her? Was there anything about their daughter’s past that the police should know? Malone’s questions were met by silence. He looked over to O’Shaughnessy, Davis, and Stern who were lolling against the wall. Davis drew up his shoulders in a hapless gesture.
“Can’t you think of anything that might help us?” Malone pleaded. Cold silence. “Don’t you want us to catch the people who killed your daughter?”
Hanna Eisinger started to speak. She told a story that Malone had heard before. She had been persecuted but had survived Nazi Germany. She had emigrated to Palestine and started a new life. She told of the birth of their daughter and the joy of watching her grow into a beautiful woman. When Sara was of age she went into the army and met a boy and fell in love for the first time. When the Eisingers decided to come to the United States their Sara said that she would come with them.
“Do you know any of your daughter’s friends?” Malone asked.
Jacob Eisinger stiffened. His shoulders reared up in defiance. “Friends?” he said. “We have learned to live without the luxury of friends. Our Sara was the same way.”
Malone started to ask random questions, searching for something that might give him a lead.
“What did your daughter do when she was in the army?” Malone asked.
“She was a clerk at a supply base forty kilometers from Jerusalem,” Jacob Eisinger said. Hanna Eisinger leaned across the desk and clutched Malone’s arm. A supplicant’s grasp. “Why won’t they let us have our daughter? We have to bury her. It’s the law.”
Malone swallowed. He looked over at his detectives in time to see Stern push away from the wall and leave the office.
“I’ll see that she is released,” Malone said gently.
Jacob Eisinger asked if they might leave. “Just a few more questions,” Malone said. “How old was your daughter?”
“Thirty-four,” the mother answered.
“And how long had she lived in this country?”
“Six years,” answered the father.
“Do you have any photographs of your daughter?” Malone asked, remembering that the only one they had was taken at the morgue. Hanna Eisinger looked to her husband. The old man’s face quivered as he reluctantly nodded consent. Hanna Eisinger opened the pocketbook and removed a snapshot. It was a small black and white with a coarse grain. Sara Eisinger was standing on a long pier in front of a file of freighters that stretched along a dock, the ships secured by taut mooring lines. Mounds of crates were stacked on the pier. The girl in the photograph was laughing and waving off the unknown photographer.
“Where was this taken?” Malone asked, studying the photo.
“I don’t know,” the mother answered.
“When was it taken?” Malone asked.
“It was taken on one of Sara’s European vacations before she came to live in this country,” replied the father.
“Did Sara take many vacations when she lived in Israel?” asked Malone.
“Yes,” the mother said.
Malone laid the snapshot down in front of him, tapping it with his middle finger. “You have no idea where this was taken?”
“No,” Hanna Eisinger said. “Is it important?”
“Maybe. May I keep it for a while?” He saw their hesitation. “I promise that I’ll return it to you.”
Jacob Eisinger lowered his head. Malone took his silence for consent.
“Did your daughter ever mention any of the men in her life?” Malone asked.
“No,” Hanna Eisinger said flatly.
“What kind of work did Sara do in this country?” Malone asked, watching them closely.
“She worked for a travel agency arranging tours to Israel,” the mother said.
“Will that be all?” Jacob Eisinger said, lifting himself up out of the chair and turning to help his wife.
“Thank you for coming by,” Malone said, standing and rounding his desk. “I’ll have one of
my detectives drive you to the station.”
“We’ll take a taxi,” Jacob Eisinger said.
The department mail arrived at 1400. The blowups Malone had ordered were in a manila folder. He removed the enlargements, thumbed through them quickly, and then examined them a second time, scrutinizing each one. There was a chair next to the bed on which an army officer’s uniform was neatly folded. The blouse was draped over the back of the chair and the insignia on the lapels showed that the owner of the uniform was assigned to the Quartermaster Corps. Malone handed the photographs to Davis.
“He’s a major,” Bo Davis said, flipping through the photographs. “And I’m willing to bet that the ring he’s wearing is from the Point. He also likes to eat hair pie.”
“She’s a pretty lady,” Davis added. “Wonder what her name is?”
It was at that moment that Gus Heinemann shambled into the room and lowered his hulk into a chair. “Have I got some bad news,” Heinemann said, struggling to lift his left foot onto the edge of the desk. He had just returned from the Hall of Records. The Interlude was owned by the Agamemnon Entertainment Corporation and the building wherein the club was located was owned by the Menelaus Realty Corporation. After that it was a dead end. Finding the real owners could take weeks. “I hope you gentlemen don’t have any pressing personal plans for this evening,” Malone said firmly. “We’re going to be sitting on the Interlude tonight.”
Sitting on a “plant”—what cops on TV call a stakeout—is like looking at a small section of a street under a microscope. Few people ever take the time to examine a mailbox or a street lamp. Detectives do. They spend many hours sitting in parked cars or standing in the shelter of doorways waiting for someone to arrive or leave a location; or just waiting for something to happen.
The Interlude was a four-story brownstone on East Fifty-eighth Street. The streets in this part of town were clean and litter free. Each tree had its own well-tended square of dirt. Doormen strolled along the streets holding onto leashes with expensively groomed little dogs. Joggers navigated the sidewalks. Six stone steps led up to a double door with scrolled grillwork. The windows were dark and blank.
O’Shaughnessy and Davis were in the front seat of a department taxi that was parked on the south side of Fifty-eighth Street. Det. Starling Johnson was slumped in the rear. Johnson was a recently divorced black man with a cherubic face, oversize horn-rimmed glasses, flaring sideburns, and plenty of time to kill. The other detectives were on O.T. from the day tour; Johnson was working a night duty. A green Buick Electra that had been confiscated by the Federal Narcotics Task Force in San Francisco, driven cross country by an automobile transporter with a government contract, and traded to the NYPD for a white Eldorado that had been confiscated in Harlem, was parked on Sutton Place a block from the Interlude. Malone and Stern were in the front seat. Gus Heinemann was stretched across the back seat, stuffing Milky Ways into his mouth and discarding the wrappers on the crushed velour seat. An hour passed. The Interlude was in darkness, save for a single light on the top floor. Heinemann felt the gurgling in his stomach. “I’m starving,” he bellowed, patting his large belly.
“Any of you ever work with Hy Rothman?” Jake Stern asked, pressing an exercise hand grip in his left hand.
“Suicide Rothman? I had that pleasure,” Malone said. “That son-of-a-bitch tried to turn every homicide he caught into a suicide. I was working a late tour one summer on temporary duty in Central Park. I was only out of the Academy a few months. It was around six in the morning and I’d just come out of the heave to make a ring. I was talking to the sergeant over the call box when I noticed a set of legs sticking out of the bushes. It was a stiff with a hole in his left temple and a thirty-eight clutched in his right hand. I called the sergeant, roped off the crime scene as best I could.… I did the whole bit. An hour later Rothman comes strolling up to the scene chewing on a five-cent cigar. He looked down at the body, moved the cigar to the other side of his mouth, and said, ‘It’s definitely a suicide.’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I told him he was nuts. The stiff would have had to wrap his arm around his head in order to shoot himself in the left temple. Besides, I told him, there weren’t any powder burns. Rothman gave that … ‘Let me take a look, kid’ routine and bent to examine the body. He pried the gun out of the DOA’s right hand, lets one go up in the air, rubs the barrel against the left temple and plants the gun back in the left hand. He looks up at me and said, ‘As I was saying, kid, it’s a suicide.’ Could you imagine pulling that shit today?”
“No way,” Stern said.
Malone ducked his head down and pulled the mike from the cradle of the concealed radio set under the dashboard. He checked to make sure the frequency dial was on two, the frequency which permitted car-to-car communication. He stayed low to make sure that anyone looking in would not see him using the radio. “Bo?”
“Yeah, Lou?”
“See anything?”
“Nothing.”
The detectives waited. No one entered or left the Interlude. Business hours had not yet begun. A light summer rain danced over the cars; uneven rivulets streaked the windshields. Davis and O’Shaughnessy slumped low in their seats. Starling Johnson catnapped.
“How’s Foam?” Davis asked O’Shaughnessy.
Starling Johnson flicked open his right eye. “You still seein’ that woman?”
“Yep. It’s four years and I haven’t gone for a nickel.”
As though a magic button had been pressed, the Interlude sprang to life. The lights blazed on and shortly afterward limousines and taxis began to pull up in front of the club. The beautiful people were gathering.
“On deck,” Malone said into the mike.
Each license plate number was recorded. A description of each guest was taken down. Johnson kept a record of the times of arrival of each vehicle. It stopped raining; the night turned quiet, the stillness occasionally broken by muted bursts of noise from the Interlude. Just after one, a limousine slid around the corner of Sutton Place and pulled into the curb in front of the Interlude. The windows of the car were oversized and tinted a smoky black. Aldridge Braxton and two men got out and went up the steps of the club, disappearing into the vestibule.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” Malone said.
The detectives slumped lower. Then a darkened panel truck stopped half a block behind Braxton’s limousine. Someone inside the truck lit a cigarette.
“Braxton has a shadow,” O’Shaughnessy said over radio.
“Stay low,” Malone warned. “We don’t want to be made.”
More time passed. A stray taxi would occasionally stop in front of the Interlude and discharge its passengers. Davis and Johnson dozed; O’Shaughnessy stood vigil, while Malone kept watching the club and the truck. A cigarette flew out of the truck’s window and hit the pavement. Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed. The detectives could tell that it was a radio car on a run; the pitch was right.
Ninety minutes later the door of the Interlude opened and Aldridge Braxton came reeling out followed close behind by his two playmates. There was a woman with them. She was wearing a flowing black-and-white scarf dress and had heavily made-up eyes. Everyone was laughing. One of the men was pulling her by the arm as though playfully forcing her to leave with them. Braxton ran ahead, opening the limousine’s door.
“It’s now post time,” Malone said into the mike.
“Who’s the girl?” Heinemann asked Malone.
“Dunno, but she looks vaguely familiar,” Malone said.
They piled into the rear and the limousine slid away from the curb. Malone waited. The truck moved off after the limousine with the clouded windows.
“How do you want this to go down,” O’Shaughnessy asked Malone over the radio.
“We’ll leapfrog them. I’ll start,” Malone said.
The dead hours of the night were over. Delivery trucks cut their way through the new daylight. Taxis cruised the empty streets. A lone jogger made her
way unencumbered by traffic, and the detectives swiveled their heads to watch her bouncing breasts as she passed. The Buick took up position behind the truck for a dozen blocks. A taxi took its place. The limousine sped north on York Avenue. At Eighty-second Street the sleek vehicle cut diagonally across the avenue and came to a stop in front of an expensive co-op. Aldridge Braxton pulled open the door and got out. He stood with his arm draped over the open door, leaning into the car, talking and laughing. After several minutes the woman and two men got out and hurried into the building. Braxton got back inside and the limo sped off. The panel truck parked three blocks away on the east side of York Avenue.
Stern turned to the lieutenant. “What now?”
Malone checked his watch: 4:48. He assumed that Braxton was going home. Anyway, he knew where to find Braxton if he wanted him. Right now he wanted the pedigree on the three people who ran into that building and on whoever was inside that truck. He decided not to follow Braxton. He might need all his cars later. “We sit tight,” Malone said, snatching up the mike. Staying low, Malone switched the frequency dial to the number that carried the regular police transmissions. He requested Central to dispatch a marked RMP to 10:85 them at their location and identify the panel truck and its occupants. Within a few minutes, a blue and white rolled to a stop behind the truck. Two hatless old-timers with sagging guts and drooping gun belts struggled out of the radio car. They meandered over, each separating and walking along the opposite side of the truck. “Lemme see ya license and registration, pal. Wadaya doin’ parked here this time of the morning?” It wasn’t necessary for the detectives to hear the monologue, every cop knows it by heart.
As the policemen waited for the driver to pass out the documents they scrutinized the two occupants. The driver was in his middle twenties. He had black curly hair that danced over a low forehead. A small knitted yarmulka was fastened to his pate. The passenger was shorter; a simian-looking fellow who also wore a yarmulka. Both of them wore rumpled khaki shirts.
The documents were passed out to the policeman. The other officer strolled to the rear of the truck. When he rounded the back, he rested his right foot on the bumper, bending as if to tie a shoelace. He tried the rear door and found it unlocked. He put his foot down and opened the door. When he did this the passenger leaped from the truck and ran to the back. He stood toe-to-toe with the cop, his angry face jutting at the policeman.
One Police Plaza Page 6