He’d been filling out the DD-5 forms on the garment center stickup for an hour and a half. He was sick of it. He wanted to get out, get something done. He glanced at the digital watch on his thick wrist: 10:06. He had just enough time to run up to the Deuce and shake down Snake-Eye Jones, if he was quick about it.
“Jesus Christ, D’Annunzio.” Sergeant Moran was standing by the filing cabinets. He waved the air in front of his face. “They oughta run a pipeline up your ass and provide free heat to millions.”
“Eh, G.F.Y.,” D’Annunzio muttered. He pushed his chair back and stood up.
He waddled across the dingy squad room to the coffee machine. He poured the dregs from the pot into a fresh Styro. He sipped at the grainy black mess, gazing thoughtfully across the long room: the scattered gunmetal desks, the torn swivel chairs, the stripped wooden walls plastered with notices, the windows blanketed with filth. It’d been a while since he’d gone after Snake-Eye, he thought. The little nig oughta be worth a few bills by now, at least. He practically had a monopoly in the back of the Deuce’s biggest porno shop. Peddling hits of crack to the johns at the peepshow. Hell, he oughta be worth a K after all this time.
He sipped his coffee, eased out another silent fart. All that sitting with the DD-5s—it made the gas build up.
Not to mention the veal hero he’d had for an afterdinner snack. But it was the sitting down that really did it to you.
“Oh. Oh, Jesus Christ, D’Annunzio, have some mercy here,” cried Moran. He and Levine were the only others in the room. Levine was at a desk in the rear, talking on the phone.
D’Annunzio ignored Moran. He set his Styro down, started back to his desk to get his jacket. He could take care of Snake-Eye and be back to finish the fives before his shift ended. Or maybe he’d take it slow and make a little overtime too. He walked across the room slowly. He breathed loudly, hard.
His gut surrounded him as he went like an entourage; at the age of thirty-eight, he was bloated and gnarled. His brightly checkered shirt bunched and overflowed at the waist of his tent-size blue pants. His neck was a column; his collar button couldn’t close around it, and the knot in his gold tie had gone slack. His face was round, his cheeks ballooned, but his skin was still mottled and sandpaper rough. Short brown hair capped a stony brow. Marbly black eyes peered out from grainy folds of flesh.
He reached his desk. He wrestled his jacket off the back of the chair.
The phone rang.
Moran glanced up from the files. “Hey,” he said, “Suburban Propane. Quit farting a minute and get that, willya.”
D’Annunzio let out a heavy sigh but he didn’t say anything. You didn’t fuck with Moran. Not with the mick master of the flashy arrest; the precinct whip; the commander’s darling.
Shit, he thought. So much for Snake-Eye. He worked his sausagy arms into his corduroy jacket. The phone kept ringing. He gave another sigh, louder this time. He snatched up the receiver.
“Detective D’Annunzio,” he said.
“Good evening to you, Detective D’Annunzio. Leo Plotkin here. I have a job for you.”
D’Annunzio raised his eyes to the ceiling. He perched his huge ass on the edge of his desk. “How can I help you, sir?” he said.
“Well … frankly, unless you know a cure for angina, there’s not much point in discussing it. My neighbor Aggie Conrad: her, you could help.”
“Aggie Conrad,” D’Annunzio said. It only took him a second to place it. “The one whose kid was supposed to be kidnapped.”
“You know this already?”
“Yeah, yeah, I got a call about two hours ago. They thought the kid was gone, then they found her hiding in the stairwell, right?”
“This would come as a surprise to me,” said the raspy voice on the other end. “Also to the child’s mother, who’s telling me not two minutes ago through the heating duct no less: Help, help, call the police, my child is kidnapped.”
D’Annunzio shook his head wearily. Fucking Poppiluv. He hated these old ziptops. “You’re telling me she’s still reporting the child missing?”
“I’m telling you she’s weeping into my toilet, does this sound like a happy woman? She says her apartment is being watched, you shouldn’t come there, you should come to my apartment upstairs and then you can talk through the heating grate. It’s a thrill you won’t forget.”
“Wait a minute.” D’Annunzio scratched his putty nose. “I don’t get this.”
The man let out a breath of exasperation. “For him she asks specifically,” he muttered. “You don’t get this. Let me make a suggestion, Mr. Sam Spade here. You’ll come by and investigate. It’ll be like a ‘case,’ your friends should know you’re a policeman. Then you’ll get this. How would that be?”
After the old man hung up, D’Annunzio sat on the desk, staring at the linoleum floor. He remembered the first caller—Billy Price—had said the child’s father was a psychiatrist. Maybe this was some kind of EDP thing: one of the shrink’s emotionally disturbed patients playing games or something. If it wasn’t, though … If the kid really had been missing all this time and he’d been drawn off the trail by a phony phone call …
“Uh, boy,” he groaned as he stood up. Christ on the cross, it was always something.
“I’m goin’ out,” he grumbled.
“Praise God,” said Sergeant Moran. “And say hello to Snake-Eye Jones.”
D’Annunzio took his own car to the East Side. He parked the five-year-old Pontiac on Thirty-sixth, just off Madison. He walked the half block to the Conrads’ building.
As he waddled along, wheezing, he glanced up and saw the Morgan Library. The Greek facade through the autumn sycamores. The frieze of Lady Truth Leading the Arts by the hand. The gentle play of the spotlight on the marble.
Oh, yeah, he thought. This is near where that old gash got slaughtered. Mrs. What’s-her-name. Sinclair. Now there was a shitcan of a case. No motive, no leads. And it was Moran’s. Boy, he came up with nothing on that one.
He smiled to himself. He turned under the building’s awning, pushed through the glass doors.
He didn’t flash his shield at the doorman. Might as well take care until he found out where all this stood. He just said he was Doug D’Annunzio for Leo Plotkin. The doorman gave Plotkin a buzz, then sent D’Annunzio up to the sixth floor.
When he got off the elevator, D’Annunzio plodded heavily to Plotkin’s door. He knocked and waited, trying to tuck in his shirt. A moment later, Plotkin opened up.
He was a typical old Yid, D’Annunzio thought. Cut from the mold. Small, thin, bent. About seventy. A round head completely bald, and only the faintest trace of gray beard stubble on the wrinkled chin. Rheumy eyes blinking out at you. Damp, red lips in slight quizzical smile. He was wearing a white shirt open at the neck to show grizzled chest hair. His gray slacks had gotten too big for him as he’d shrunk with age.
Now D’Annunzio did lift his shield and ID card. “Detective D’Annunzio, Mr. Plotkin,” he said.
The old man said nothing. He bent forward. He peered at the badge. He stayed like that for a long time, just peering. As if he were reading the shield over and over. Then he turned around and started walking away.
“Over here,” he said.
D’Annunzio shrugged and followed.
The apartment smelled of old man: that stagnant, musty smell. The upholstery on the bergères was shiny. The gold rug on the floor was practically worn through. There was dust, plenty of dust, on the mantelpiece and the shelves and the tables. And there were ancient yellow photographs: a woman in a shawl; a woods; the old country.
What do they do with all their money? D’Annunzio wondered as he tailed after Plotkin’s bent back. He thought the old Jew probably had hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away in cookie jars and mattresses and places like that.
Plotkin led him into the bathroom. The smell was worse here. Tart medicine, dull pain; decay. D’Annunzio passed his eyes briefly over the stained tub and the vaguely fu
zzy sink. Then, following Plotkin’s gesture, he looked up at the heating grate.
“Go ahead,” said Plotkin. “Don’t mind me.”
D’Annunzio glanced at Plotkin. Plotkin shrugged. D’Annunzio glanced back at the grate, then back at Plotkin, then back at the grate. Finally, he shrugged. He cleared his throat.
“Mrs. Conrad?”
He waited. No answer. He glanced at Plotkin. He felt like an idiot: talking to a fucking heating grate.
He took a breath, tried again. “Mrs. Conrad?”
“Yes?” The voice that came back was tremulous and low, but he could hear it clearly.
This time, when he looked at Plotkin, the old man made a gesture that said, Didn’t I tell you? D’Annunzio nodded. He shoved his hands in his pockets. He spoke up at the grate.
“Mrs. Conrad, this is Detective D’Annunzio, NYPD. Have you been trying to get in contact with us?”
There was a brief pause. Then the low voice said, “Is Mr. Plotkin there?”
“I’m here,” Plotkin said. “He’s here, I’m here. The whole neighborhood is in my bathroom.”
“Mr. Plotkin, could you tell me what he looks like?” the woman’s voice said. “The detective? Can you tell me … describe him for me?”
Plotkin looked at D’Annunzio, wagged his head back and forth, shrugged again. “What’s to describe? He’s a big fatso with a face like knuckles.”
“Oh, Jesus,” she said. Her voice got muddy. D’Annunzio could tell she was starting to cry. “Oh, God, there was another man … Another man who said he was you. He must’ve been … Oh, God … I’m sorry. I’m so frightened. My baby …”
D’Annunzio heard her stifled sobs very clearly. Boy, he thought, you get great reception on these things, no question.
“Mrs. Conrad,” he said. He lifted one hand in a gesture to the grate. “It would help me if you could give me a general idea of what this is all about. You think you could do that?”
“I don’t know.” She had to fight the tears to speak. “I … They just came in here. At night. They just … they took my little girl. They sent my husband off to do something. He couldn’t tell me what. He just said he would meet them at nine. But now it’s so late, I …” She was overcome.
“Okay, okay.” D’Annunzio tried to make his voice soothing. “Let’s go to the part about surveillance. Okay? You say they’re watching your house?”
He heard the woman gasp through her tears. “They say … they say they put microphones here. And cameras. They say they’re watching us, listening … I think they were lying about the microphones but I don’t … I’m not sure of anything now.”
D’Annunzio snorted. Stupid broad, he thought. “They say they put cameras in there? Ma’am, can you see any cameras? Any wires? Anything?”
“Well … no.”
A laugh riffled through D’Annunzio’s lips. “Uh … ma’am, I … I think they may be lying about the cameras too here.”
“No, but …”
“Hiding microphones is hard,” D’Annunzio said. “Cameras are, like … I mean, they’d need a whole hidden room practically. They’re not gonna plant cameras and no microphones. That just doesn’t make sense.”
“But they can see us,” the woman said rapidly. “I know they can see us. They’ve told me, they’ve seen … what we’re doing, wearing …”
“Well, isn’t there some kind of window? Could they just be looking in a window there?”
“I … I don’t … I don’t know. I suppose if they …”
D’Annunzio shook his head, smiled with one side of his mouth. Stupid, stupid broad, he thought. Tell her you’ve got “Candid Camera” running in her apartment, she buys that wholesale. Never thinks about the goddamned windows. Probably some six-foot-five nigger hanging from her ledge staring in at her right this minute.
“My God,” the woman gasped suddenly.
Oops, he thought; she must’ve found him.
“My God,” she said again. “Mrs. Sinclair.”
The half smile faded quickly from D’Annunzio’s face. “What? Mrs. Sinclair? You mean the old …”
“The old woman who was killed,” said Aggie Conrad through the grate. “You know?”
“Yeah, hell, yeah. What’s that got to do with … ?”
“Well, I just … I mean, you asked about the windows, windows that look into our apartment and … her window looks right in and … a little while ago, my husband saw someone … in her apartment … in Mrs. Sinclair’s apartment … he thought he saw someone in there. I didn’t think … But I mean, the window. The window is right across from us, directly across, and it’s been empty ever since and … Oh, God.”
Her voice trailed away. But he could still hear her making the small, wet crying noises. The fat detective looked up at the grate, his mouth crooked. He licked his lips. He thought: Mrs. Sinclair.
His heart was beating hard. But he thought, well, now, just hold on here. The woman is obviously hysterical. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Still … If the Sinclair apartment really was empty, and if it really was right across from her like she said. It was possible. It could be.
Oh, thought Det. Doug D’Annunzio. Oh, to crack the Sinclair case after Moran had shitcanned it.
“So what about this Billy Price character,” he asked the heating grate. “I mean, he calls me up, he says there’s a kidnapping, then he calls me back, says it’s all off. I mean, what’s that about?”
“I don’t …” He heard her fighting back her hysterical sobbing. “I don’t know. I don’t know, he … Maybe he’s one of them. I told him to call you and then this man showed up, this other man, and he said he was you, I don’t … I don’t …”
Uh-oh, thought D’Annunzio. This did not sound good. This sounded very much like the opposite of good.
He wheezed out a bellyful of air. He looked up at the grate as the sounds of the crying woman reached him.
“Mrs. Conrad,” he said. “I want you to hold on there a few minutes. I’ll be right back, all right?”
“Please find my little girl,” she said, sobbing. “Please. Just don’t let them hurt her. She’s only five, she’s …”
D’Annunzio tried to think of something reassuring to say. All he could come up with was another “Hold on.” He turned and nodded to Plotkin. “Wait here,” he said.
The old man nodded. Then he wrinkled his fuzzless face. “Whew,” he said softly. “Is that you?”
Nobody answered D’Annunzio’s ring at the Price apartment downstairs. The detective stood before the door a long time. He walked down the hall and stood in front of Aggie Conrad’s door. Then he walked back to Price’s door and rang again and waited while no one answered. Of course, it was Saturday night, he thought. The man could be out.
But he decided to go downstairs and get Price’s key.
The doorman didn’t give him any trouble about it. He was a big, tall, handsome Hispanic with thick black hair and a thick mustache. He said he had a cousin on the Job down in Brooklyn. D’Annunzio told him he was worried about the tenant in 5H. The doorman gave D’Annunzio the key right away.
D’Annunzio lumbered back to the elevator. He traveled up to five. Lumbered down the hall. He fit the key in the lock, turned it. Then he pushed the door in, pocketed the key, and entered the apartment.
Billy Price was not sitting in the Breuer chair anymore. He had fallen out of it. He lay on his side on the bare wood floor. His face had gone bluish gray. His eyes still stared out at nothing. The white strip of tape was still tight across his mouth. Lying as he was, his head was visible now from the foyer.
D’Annunzio stopped when he saw it. He drew his pistol out of his belt holster. He came forward slowly, carefully. But the place was empty. He could feel that.
Holding the gun up in the safe position, he stopped again. His eyes traveled over Price’s half-naked body. When he saw the mass of what had been the man’s genitals, he looked away. He whistled softly, fighting down his gorge.
> After a moment, he looked back again. He looked at Price’s face. He saw the strange shape of his neck, the way it had been crushed.
Don’t get excited, he told himself. There’s no proof. There’s still no proof of anything.
But as he looked down at the dead man, his gravelly face broke slowly into a rough grin. Something—some sixth sense—told him that he had just cracked open Moran’s Sinclair case.
He chuckled out loud in the quiet apartment. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
Tale of the Tape
Conrad’s silver-blue Corsica moved slowly up Lafayette Street. Sleek cars and yellow cabs whipped by on either side of it. Over and over came the glare of their lights in the rearview, a rush of wind, the red taillights receding fast up the wide avenue. The Corsica moved on slowly. Colonnade Row passed on the left with its long line of crumbling columns. The Public Theater passed on the right with its airy arches, its little intermission crowd milling in the mist. The Corsica continued at its slow, stuttering pace.
The car reached Astor Place. The sidewalks were crowded here. Seedy peddlers lined the sidewalks. Their old clothes and books and magazines were laid out on worn blankets on the ground. Crew-cut young men bopped east toward St. Mark’s Place, leaning back on their hips, rhythmically stretching their legs. Young women, dyed blondes, all in black, traveled at their sides.
The Corsica stopped at the red light there. On the sidewalk across the street, two policemen were rousting a peddler. The peddler, a young white man, sat propped against a building’s low wall. He was drugged or drunk. He stared up, stupid and openmouthed, at the cops. The cops talked down at him, quiet and implacable.
From behind the Corsica’s wheel, Conrad gazed at the patrolmen. He was clutching the wheel and leaning forward, bent forward. His face was pasty and gray, clammy with sweat. His mouth was hanging slack. His eyes yearned across the plaza toward the two officers.
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