Malone knew that the newspapers would graphically detail the battle and tell how the beleaguered police had to call for help and how a special army unit stationed at Fort Totten was airlifted to their aid. Chief Zangline and three of his bravest men were killed in the final assault. The centerfolds would have photographs of the battle scene and picture spreads of the dead and wounded. Good ole Muammar al-Qaddafi. What would the Job have done without him? He was the perfect fall guy.
He had heard enough. Let them do whatever they think that they have to do. He had a life to live and he wanted to get on with it. He turned and motioned Erica forward. He pushed the door open, and holding hands, they slipped out unnoticed.
They made their way through the army of cars parked on the sidewalk to the Associated Food Store around the corner on Vernon Boulevard. Her car was double parked. She handed him the keys. “You drive. This way your hands will be busy and off of me.” She chucked his chin and smiled.
“You don’t trust me?”
“I know you, Daniel. You think it’s always the right place and the right time.”
“A little traffic foreplay can’t hurt.” He shrugged philosophically and opened the door for her.
“That’s what you think,” she said, sliding into the car.
He started the engine and was about to slide the transmission into drive when he suddenly remembered to check the time. He looked over at her.
“We don’t have much time. There is something that I have to do this morning.”
She could feel her stomach begin to knot, and all of a sudden she was scared.
She folded her arms across her breasts, cupping her elbows with her hands. “Oh? At this moment in our lives I thought there was nothing more important than us being together.”
“Zambrano is being buried today. I want to be there. That means going to my place and showering and changing clothes. I’d like you to be there, too. He was a special man. A cop’s cop.”
She felt guilty for her anger and relieved that he had told her. She sighed. Leaning across the seat, she kissed him.
“How much time do we have?”
“A couple of hours. It’s at eleven forty-five mass.”
“We can do a lot of lovin’ in a couple of hours.” She folded her legs under her and then took his hand from the steering wheel and guided it under her dress.
“I thought you were the one who said no traffic foreplay.”
“Did I say that?” She pulled his hand out and slapped it back onto the wheel. “Let’s go home, Lou.”
26
TUESDAY, July 7 … 11:35 A.M.
The rows of policemen standing at parade rest in front of St. Anthony’s Church seemed to stretch into infinity. They had come from as far as Texas to tender the final salute to Nicholas Zambrano.
A thick-set drum major led the cortege. His baton a dead-slow gait. Behind him marched the Pipers, their black-plumed bonnets bobbing above the heads of the onlookers. And behind them crept the hearse, locked between a wedge of motorcycles whose handlebars were aflame with flashing red lights. The limousines bearing the mourning family followed.
A dirge of bagpipes and the timbre of a single drum pealed over the unremarkable Park Slope neighborhood.
As the hearse slid into the curb in front of the church an anonymous voice barked the assemblage to attention. “Present! Arms!” Thousands of white-gloved hands snapped the salute while a lone bugler, standing on the church steps, blew Taps.
The flag-draped coffin was lifted from the hearse and hefted onto the pallbearers’ shoulders.
Malone was at attention behind the mayor and other dignitaries. He swallowed hard, but the lump would not stay down. His cheek quivered, and he could feel the sting of tears as his gaze followed the coffin up the steps and into the church. He began to sum up the Eisinger caper. Starling Johnson dead. Gus Heinemann in the hospital with burns and multiple fractures. The Braxtons. Their bodies had been discovered around 8 A.M. when a neighborly wino broke into the garage searching for money to buy his morning bottle of Thunderbird. The nameless man with the ugly scar and David Ancorie both dead. And the others. Twelve policemen, not counting Zangline and his humps. There were going to be a lot of inspector’s funerals during the next week.
The Eisinger case had proven to be a deadly little grounder.
When the coffin had disappeared inside the church the voice barked, “Order! Arms!”
The family was the first to start up the steps, assisted by policemen who had been assigned to aid them. After the family came the police brass, followed close behind by the men who had worked with Zambrano.
The little church filled quickly. Most of the mourners remained outside, with no chance but to hear the mass over loudspeakers.
The cardinal and Monsignor McInerney were waiting on the altar, police chaplains at their sides, their hands clasped in prayer.
A Mass of the Resurrection began. Mourners knelt in prayer. Malone remained seated, staring at the coffin, and recalled the moments that he had shared with Zambrano. But still he dwelled on how he was going to get Carter Moorehouse.
High in the choir loft, above the organist and the tenor, an old man sat alone, leaning over the pew. His eyes bored through the coffin. Carlo Fabrizio remembered a summer night long past. He could still feel the policeman’s strong body covering his, protecting and saving him. “I don’t forget, Nicholas. Your family will be taken care of; your death avenged,” he prayed.
The cardinal walked down off the altar and circled the bier, sprinkling it with holy water. He intoned, “Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord.” To which the mourners chanted, “And may perpetual light shine upon him.”
Malone was leaning forward, his arms folded over the top of the next pew, his forehead resting on top of his arms. But he was not in prayer or mournful contemplation. He had finally thought of a way to get Moorehouse and was thinking out the best way to set his plan in motion.
Mass over, the ranks reassembled.
The pallbearers halted at the top of the church steps and the honor guard presented arms, while the bugler played the final Taps.
Malone was at attention, tendering a breast salute. His eyes fell on the faces of the onlookers—most of them strangers who happened to be passing by, the curious who always come to police funerals. They were neighborhood people who had never seen such a spectacle and most of them had tears in their eyes. It was a sight that they would never forget.
When Taps finished, the coffin was carried down and slid into the hearse. The cortege pulled away from the curb. When it had driven a block away from the church, the anonymous voice barked its last command. “Company! Dismissed!”
The ranks broke.
Policemen looked around at each other and renewed acquaintances. Many of them headed for the local gin mills where they would spend the rest of the day and most of the night drinking and talking about the Job and broads.
Malone moved among the thinning crowd looking for Erica. He had caught a glimpse of her in church, but then was unable to locate her when he was filing out into the street. He saw many faces that he recognized; nameless men who had crossed his path somewhere in the Job; some of them required a nod, some a meaningless How’r’ya, and some were to be ignored. He saw her standing in front of the church talking with Bo Davis and Janet Fox. The detective and his girlfriend were holding hands. He wondered if they were coming out of the closet. Sometimes 85s have a way of becoming more. He started to make his way over to them when he spied the man he was looking for. The man who was going to be his agent for revenge.
Carlo Fabrizio was being ushered toward his limousine by a phalanx of bodyguards. Up until that moment Malone was not sure how he was going to handle things when he saw Fabrizio, but as he watched his people make a path through the crowd, he knew exactly what he was going to do and say. He made his way over to the bodyguards and intercepted them in front of the open door of the limousine. Tony Rao nodded to him. He made a move to enter into the phala
nx but was blocked by four mean-looking men, one of whom he recognized as the bouncer from the Nestor Social Club. Fabrizio grunted to let him pass.
“I want to talk.”
“About what?”
“Our dead friend.”
Fabrizio made a guttural sound which Malone took to mean assent. They walked away from his men and strolled along the curb, Tony Rao and three of the bodyguards close behind. Fabrizio clasped his hands behind him and looked downward at the street. “What’s on your mind?”
“Carter Moorehouse had Zambrano killed and he is going to walk.”
“You telling me the truth?”
“I wouldn’t bullshit you about something like that.”
“Why is he going to walk?”
Malone raised his shoulders and arms in a gesture of helpless frustration. “Because he is rich and because the people who might have testified against him are dead.”
“Why you telling me your problem?”
“Because the grapevine has it that you owed Zambrano.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Some debts can never be canceled.”
Fabrizio made a jeering hiss through the nose. “You’re beginning to sound Sicilian.”
“Moorehouse entered our world uninvited. Your world and mine, a world where we got our own set of rules. Rules that civilians could never understand; but rules that you and I understand. They keep us from becoming complete animals. He came and killed our friends, yours and mine, and now he thinks he is going to prance back into the good life unharmed. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”
Fabrizio regarded him slowly. “You asking me to have Moorehouse whacked?”
“Don Carlo? I’m a cop! I would never ask anyone to take a human life. You should know that. It would be a violation of the Patrol Guide.”
“Of course you wouldn’t.”
Malone started to walk back toward the church.
“Seeya ’round, Don Carlo.”
Carlo Fabrizio’s lips came together in a thin line. “Ciao, Malone.”
Malone and Erica stood in front of the church watching the last mourners leave. He felt an obligation to be the last. Bo Davis and Janet Fox had left some fifteen minutes earlier. They had gone back to her apartment to spend some time together before he left to catch the 5:18 to East Meadow.
“Who was that man I saw you talking to?”
“Just an old friend of Zambrano’s. I hadn’t seen him in a long time and wanted to say hello.”
The crowd was gone, and the Brooklyn street had retreated back into its normal state of oblivion. A sanitation sweeper was roaming the gutters for litter. He saw an ice-cream parlor on the other side of the street, a block away. “May I buy you an ice-cream soda?”
Her eyes were wide. “Oh yes! A black-and-white with loads of whipped cream and sprinkles and a cherry. And then I want to take you home and work off all those wonderful calories.”
They wrapped their arms around each other’s waist and started to cross the street, leaning into each other, laughing and kissing. A radio car cruised past them. The recorder recognized Malone and tossed him a two-fingered salute. “Howyadoin’ Lou?”
“Great. Just great.”
EPILOGUE
An August sun beat down on the boats leaving their slips in Sheepshead Bay. Charter boats crowded with fishermen anxious to test their skills and pleasure boats manned by weekend sailors rushed headlong to meet the open sea.
Burly men cast off the lines on the Anthony Joy. The thirty-foot cruiser inched her way out of her slip. Once free, she followed in the wake of the miniature armada, careful to stay far behind. In the Lower Bay she changed her course and headed out into the Atlantic, her bow slicing the blue green water.
Men were stationed fore and aft, searching the horizon for signs of another ship as the shoreline sank to nothing.
Tony Rao was at the helm. He called to one of the deckhands to take over and then made his way below deck, followed close behind by four sullen men.
Carter Moorehouse lay on the floor of the cabin. Heavy chains curled his body and his mouth was filled with a mound of gauze. His panic-stricken eyes begged for mercy and his desperate grunts went unanswered.
“Bring ’im topside,” Rao ordered.
Kicking and struggling against his bonds, Carter Moorehouse was carried topside and unceremoniously dumped on the deck.
Tony Rao stood by and watched as weights were attached to the chains.
Moorehouse continued to struggle.
“Make sure those things don’t come off. He’s gotta disappear without any trace.”
“This guy ain’t never comin’ up,” said a deckhand.
Rao bent to examine each weight, checking that it was secure to the chains. Satisfied, he stood up. “Toss him in.”
Carter Moorehouse’s fight continued unabated as he was lifted up off the deck. His twisting body crashed into the water and sank into the cold darkness.
Rao stood watching as the relentless sea covered all traces of his turbulent entry. He walked over to the deck freezer and took out a can of beer. He popped the tab and tossed the sliver of aluminum over the side. From far below, the last batch of air bubbles rushed upward to meet the boat’s wake. Only the cries of sea gulls filled the heavy summer air.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank the following people for their editorial help and patience. Without them One Police Plaza would have remained an unfulfilled dream. Knox Burger and Kitty Sprague, Marion Wheeler, Martin Cruz Smith, Martin Sanders, Zena Intze-Kostos, Carol Kushner, Bridgette Faul, James O’Shea Wade, Laura Knight, Dr. Patricia Simpson, William E. Farrell.
I acknowledge a special debt to Tony Godwin, who pointed me in the right direction, and to the men and women of New York’s finest, who gave these pages life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William J. Caunitz was a thirty-year veteran of the New York City Police Department. During his career, he achieved the rank of lieutenant and was assigned commander of a detective squad. At the age of fifty-one, Caunitz began publishing crime novels, which were noted for their realistic depictions of the daily workings of a police precinct, as well as for their sensational plots. He wrote seven novels, and the first, One Police Plaza, was made into a television movie. Caunitz died from pulmonary fibrosis in 1996. His last work, Chains of Command, which was halfway completed at the time, was finished by Christopher Newman, author of the Joe Dante series.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1984 by William J. Caunitz
Cover design by Andy Ross
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2834-9
This edition published in 2016 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.mysteriouspress.com
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY WILLIAM J. CAUNITZ
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
Otto Penzler, owner of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan, founded the Mysterious Press in 1975. Penzler quickly became known for his outstanding selection of mystery, crime, and suspense books, both from his imprint and in his store. The imprint was devoted to printing the best books in these genres, using fine paper and top dust-jacket artists, as well as offering many limited, signed editions.
Now the Mysterious Press has gone digital, publishing ebooks
through MysteriousPress.com.
MysteriousPress.com. offers readers essential noir and suspense fiction, hard-boiled crime novels, and the latest thrillers from both debut authors and mystery masters. Discover classics and new voices, all from one legendary source.
FIND OUT MORE AT
WWW.MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM
FOLLOW US:
@emysteries and Facebook.com/MysteriousPressCom
MysteriousPress.com is one of a select group of publishing partners of Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
The Mysterious Bookshop, founded in 1979, is located in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood. It is the oldest and largest mystery-specialty bookstore in America.
The shop stocks the finest selection of new mystery hardcovers, paperbacks, and periodicals. It also features a superb collection of signed modern first editions, rare and collectable works, and Sherlock Holmes titles. The bookshop issues a free monthly newsletter highlighting its book clubs, new releases, events, and recently acquired books.
58 Warren Street
[email protected]
(212) 587-1011
Monday through Saturday
11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
FIND OUT MORE AT:
www.mysteriousbookshop.com
FOLLOW US:
@TheMysterious and Facebook.com/MysteriousBookshop
Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
One Police Plaza Page 35