by Andy Straka
“Did you buy a new car, Mom?” he asked.
“No, I’m afraid not.” Darla laughed. “It’s a rental. I ran into a little trouble with mine.”
She turned the children toward us. “Marco, Sweetness, I’d like you to meet Mr. Pavlicek and his daughter, Nicole. They’re detectives working with me on a case.”
I stepped forward and reached out to shake the boy’s hand. He looked me squarely in the eye, facing things head on the way his mother must have taught him. Sweetness wanted me to shake her hand too.
“And on the porch over there is my friend Carl.”
The man nodded at us but made no move in our direction.
“Thanks for watching after the kids this afternoon,” Darla said to him.
Carl nodded again. He’d finished up his corn and stood with a slight grimace. Against his chair leaned an ornately carved walnut colored cane. He bent down to pick it up with one hand, and reached over and picked up the bucket of corn with the other, looping the handle over his arm.
“No trouble,” he said, limping toward the screen door to the house. He cantilevered the door with his elbow and slipped inside with the bucket tucked against his body. Not exactly the cold shoulder, but a far cry from the welcome wagon.
“Carl was a fireman. Retired on disability.”
“He know who I am?” I said.
She nodded.
“He’s uncomfortable with me then.”
“Yes,” she said. “But don’t let it bother you.”
“He live with you?”
“No. He’s got his own place up in Bayside. A motorboat he likes to take out on the water too. He and Marco would probably go to sea on the thing if they could get away with it.”
“Call of the wild,” I said.
“Right. Like we ain’t got enough wild happening around here already.”
She turned to the children. “Kids, you go on and get washed up now for dinner. Mr. Pavlicek and Nicole and I will be inside in a few minutes.”
The two kids followed after Carl and the screen door slammed behind them.
“I just remembered something. Don’t know how it slipped my mind,” Darla said when they were out of sight.
“What’s that?” I said.
She stared at me for a moment as she pulled her oversized handbag off her shoulder and started walking back toward the van. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
We followed her around to the rear of the vehicle away from the house where she lifted up the hatch. There in the back was a gray canvas bag. She unzipped the bag and lifted two jet black mini-Glocks from inside, a couple of clips of ammunition as well.
“How did you—?”
“Called a judge I know. Man owed me a really big favor. I got him to sign the paperwork for an emergency authorization.”
“On a weekend no less. All legal and everything. What did you do after that, break into the registration office?”
“Nope. Actually, I took care of the judge and the registration business yesterday before you two ever showed up. After the threat on my voice mail, I had a bad feeling this thing could turn ugly and I didn’t know whether you people would be carrying or not.”
“So you were just testing me earlier.”
She offered me a sheepish grin. “Pretty much.”
The plan called for dinner with Darla and her family, then some rest at her place before heading back into the city to spend a few midnight hours in the park. Darla said she’d decided to come with us, at least for the first go round. Carl had volunteered to baby sit a little while longer until Darla’s sister showed up. The sister would take the children back with her to Pennsylvania the following morning.
Marco took the news of the impromptu vacation stoically, but Sweetness made it tearfully clear she didn’t want to leave.
“But we’ll miss the fireworks, Mommy.”
“Oh, they have nice fireworks out at your Aunt Veronica’s house too, darling. You wait and see.”
“But you won’t be there with us.”
“Mommy’s got to go to work on an important job. But I’ll come out and get you both and bring you back as soon as I’m done. Probably just a few days, that’s all.”
An hour later, after dessert and coffee, Carl retreated to the family room where he sat alone nursing a Budweiser and watching the news. The kids hung around long enough for dessert, but beat a hasty retreat too when the grown-up talk grew too boring. Sounds from a video game echoed down the stairwell.
I raised the issue of the old Underground Railroad falconer again.
“This is really something,” Darla said. “Now we’re talking about spirit owls and spirit falconers. What would some fruitcake acting out his own version of history have to do with the doctor’s missing cats, the threat I received, and that knife in my van this morning?”
“We might need more than some ghost to figure that one out.”
“No ghosts here.” The voice belonged to Carl who had obviously been eavesdropping while he kept one eye on the TV. “Something else though.”
“What’s up, Carl?” Darla asked.
We followed her into the family room where dark yellow curtains framed the windows and the smell of furniture polish and crayons filled the room. The noise from a window air conditioner forced the TV volume to be turned up higher than usual.
Carl said nothing, simply pointed over the top of his beer can at the screen.
The reporter on the scene, who looked like she couldn’t have been out of her twenties—probably a holiday weekend fill-in for one of the usual news people—stood beside a police barricade on the edge of some woods. Shots had been reported earlier and two bodies had been discovered in Central Park. It was still light enough that we could see a crime scene unit setting up behind her in the background.
“There went somebody’s weekend,” Carl said.
“This day don’t seem to want to end.” Darla gave me a sardonic look over her shoulder. “You recognize the location?”
I squinted at the screen, but my recollection of park geography was a little rusty. I shook my head. “No.”
“It’s just a couple of blocks down from Grayland Tower.”
“Then I guess we better go see if we can find out what’s going on,” I said.
11
The dopey-eyed parking garage attendant on 88th Street was still happy to take our money, though if he remembered us from earlier in the afternoon, he didn’t show any sign.
Since we’d planned to stop by Grayland Tower to pick up our surveillance gear anyway, Darla decided she’d better leave hers locked up in the van until we got a better feel for the situation. On a normal summer Saturday night at this hour, many spots in the park would be buzzing with people. It would be unlikely that our mysterious falconer would make a sudden appearance. Add to that the heightened police presence, and we might be in for a long night with nothing to show for it.
At the police barrier several yards into the park from Central Park West, we gave our names and asked to speak with Lt. Marbush. We had to wait about ten minutes before we saw her walking toward us from a grove of shaded oaks where an impromptu command post had been set up, klieg lamps backlighting the scene.
She looked a year or two older and tireder than she had in the bright light of day.
“I can only spare a minute or two,” she said.
“We were planning to work the park tonight,” Darla said. “But we wanted to check out the situation here first.”
“I appreciate it. But no way can I have you people working in here tonight. We’ve got the whole area sealed from the reservoir up to Central Park North.”
“Channel twelve’s reporting there were shots fired and a couple of bodies had been found.”
“That’s right. And whoever took them out was using heavy artillery. Place looks like a war zone.”
“Gang related?”
“What else? One African American male, one Latino. Major Case Bureau says they both belonged to a particularly n
asty crew out of Spanish Harlem known as Los Miembros.”
“The members,” I said, remembering my high school Spanish.
“Yes.”
“Any clue who turned the double play?” Darla asked.
“Not much to go on at this point. Apparently, these guys tend to spread the trade around. Drugs, prostitution, sex-trafficking. So it could have been any number of players. We’ve closed everything down around here as a precaution. Fortunately, the evening concert up at the Meer had just ended. So it hasn’t been too much trouble getting everybody out.”
Darla nodded. “How old were the vics?”
“Damon Hicks, nineteen, and Louis Mansuela, eighteen,” Marbush said, shaking her head.
“Kids.”
“Yes. But not kids anymore on the street. Best information we have is that neither one was a major actor. Part timers, peripheral to the gang.”
Darla said: “Doesn’t stop them from being dead.”
“No, it doesn’t. You people certainly seem to be attracted to trouble today.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You’re going to have to let your cat thing go for at least one night. Sorry.” She turned to go.
“Maybe not,” I said.
“What?” The lieutenant faced us again.
I pointed toward the grove of trees where another police detective was approaching. “Lieutenant Marbush,” he said as he neared. “We made photos and have got the area marked, but I thought you’d want to see this.”
He was holding something in his gloved hands. Of all things, it was a medium sized stuffed animal, a squirrel with a bushy tail. A patch of dried blood covered one portion of the cloth animal’s back. A ten or twelve foot length of thin rope was fastened to the faux squirrel’s head and fixed to its side was a very visible chunk of raw meat.
“What’s this,” Darla said, “some gang banger’s idea of a sick joke?”
“Could be, but I doubt it,” Nicole said, our eyes meeting as I nodded.
Marbush looked at her then back at me. “What are you talking about?”
“What she means,” I said, “is that what you’ve got there looks exactly like a makeshift lure for an owl. I have the same kind of thing packed in my bag up in the apartment. Mine’s a little more sophisticated, but the same general idea. Fur made to look like a small animal. If I attach some meat to it, throw it out from behind cover, and tug on the rope to get it moving, you get the same result.”
The lieutenant glared at me for a moment then looked again at the stuffed animal the man was holding. “This is too much,” she said.
“Any witnesses to the shooting?” I asked.
“None we’ve been able to identify. Except for reporting the shots, no one’s come forward, and the bodies are in a pretty thick stand of trees and bushes.”
“No one saw anything unusual? Somebody carrying a bird or maybe just wearing a big thick glove on one hand? Or even the owl itself?”
Marbush looked at the other detective, who shook his head.
“Why don’t you let us come in and take a look at the crime scene?” Nicole suggested, looking beyond the man to the van and the taped off area in the distance.
“You people finally have my attention,” Marbush said. “But we’re talking about two homicides now. In broad daylight, in my park. And, no offense intended, I won’t have a couple of PIs poking around in this investigation to muck it up.”
“Why not, when we might be able to help?” Nicole asked.
I held up my hand to signal her to back off.
Darla stepped in. “No problem, Lieutenant. Thanks very much for the information. Anything we can do, you just let us know.”
“I’ll be sure and do that,” Marbush said. “Thanks for the tip about the owl thing.” She proffered a small wave as she and the other detective strode off into the darkness toward the lights. For a moment I thought I saw a picture of myself years before: the determined but slumping shoulders, the weariness and the ugliness of it all. In her shoes, I knew I would have done and said pretty much the same thing.
We left the park and started walking back downtown toward Dominick Watisi’s Grayland Tower. My mind was jumping ahead to a hundred different possibilities. I tried to slow myself down and think.
“There’s our best evidence yet that our owl man is no fantasy,” Darla said.
“Yeah,” I said. “But a couple of things are bothering me. I’m having a hard time picturing someone with an owl on the wing shooting it out in a gunfight.”
“Which is why he must have dropped the lure,” Nicole said. “The owl could still be in there too.”
“Maybe. But the lure’s only used if you need to call your bird down in a hurry or in an emergency.”
“If bullets and murder don’t constitute an emergency, I don’t know what does.”
“Sure. But if he gave up the lure, he must have retrieved the bird before bugging out. Otherwise, he would have hung on to the lure as insurance.”
“You mean to make sure the bird would come back to him,” Darla said.
“Exactly. But there’s one other problem. He’s only been sighted before in the middle of the night. Now he’s out here while it’s still light.”
“Hunting you think?” Nicole asked.
“Maybe. Although he can still do that at night too if he’s good and have a much easier time avoiding detection.” I turned to Darla. “What do you know about this gang she was talking about?”
“Los Miembros.” Darla shook her head slowly. “I’ve heard nothing good about them. We start tangling with them, you two are going to be doubly glad I gave you those guns.”
“You’ve got one Hispanic vic, the other black. They working together you think?”
“Could be. Whoever killed them might have thought so.”
“Where do these Los Miembros hang out? They have any cribs around here?”
She shrugged. “Uptown a ways, I think.”
“Anywhere near where our friend Watisi keeps his office?”
“Not too far, I suppose.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask, where’s he live, by the way?”
“Watisi? He’s got a mansion up in Westchester, but you’ll never get near the place.”
“High security?”
“Like Fort Knox. I checked it out before I went looking for him at his office.”
“What do you think these two dead gangsters were doing way down here in the park?” Nicole asked.
“Drug deal of some sort would be my guess,” Darla said. “What else?”
“Marbush going to give it priority?” I asked.
“Sounds like it. But you know how it goes, Frank. What are the numbers now? Something like ninety percent of all murders in the city are drug or gang related, mostly black on black.”
“Most unsolved.”
She nodded sadly.
“That lure might throw a different wrinkle into the picture though,” I said.
“Maybe.”
“It’s got to have something to do with our case,” Nicole said. “They can’t cover the whole park, can they? We could get in there and take a look around, see if we can help find out what’s going on. Maybe our guy with the owl is still around.”
I looked at Darla who looked back at me with a mixture of frustration and resignation. “Going to have to leave it for tonight, Nicky. If he’s still in there, they’ll find him.”
Darla put her arm around my daughter’s shoulder. “There’s a time and a place for everything, honey. The last thing we need right now is to be pissing off a police lieutenant. You people just got here. We need the cops now a lot more than they need us.”
“You want us to talk to Lonigan about what’s happening?” I said.
“No. I’ll call her from the car and bring her up to speed.”
“I’d still like to have another look at that lure,” she said. “In a few hours it’ll be the Fourth of July.”
“Happy Independence Day,” Darla said.
We walked on for another half a block without speaking. The noise from the city seemed to swell from the dark and the heat. Somewhere a few buildings away an illegal firecracker went off, its streamer whistling into the night.
12
Marcia called me later that night. In addition to its other accoutrements, our apartment was outfitted with its own mini-gym, a room equipped with a treadmill and weight bench, TV and a big picture window that looked out on the park. I was winding down on the treadmill when my cell phone rang.
“You sound out of breath.”
I told her what I was doing.
“Sounds more like a vacation than work.”
“I wish.”
“How was your day?”
“You first,” I said, slowing to a walk. She told me about a volunteer picnic she’d attended on the grounds at the university and a movie she’d gone to see with a couple of her girlfriends.
“Your turn,” she said.
I stepped off the treadmill, wiped my forehead with a towel, and sat down on the weight bench and gave her most of the blow by blow details.
“Wow,” she said when I finished. “You think your wealthy developer might be in bed with a street gang?”
“I don’t know, but stranger things have happened. Which reminds me, you have your local telephone directory handy?”
“Sure, right here in the drawer.”
“Can you look up Jackson Miller’s home number for me?”
“Jackson Miller? The bookstore owner?”
“Yeah. I’ve bought a few books from him in the past. A big portion of his business is dealing with collectibles. He might know someone up here in New York he can put me in touch with about this long lost Book of the Mews.”
“Okay.”
I waited while she looked up the number and gave it to me.
“I wouldn’t mind finding out more information about that book myself,” she said. “Sounds fascinating, and it could be related to my own work.”
Marcia’s specialty was the role of women in the civil war.