by Denis Hamill
“Everything will be in Max Roth’s column in the morning,” Bobby said, loud enough for Tuzio and Hanratty to hear him.
46
The whole operation was coming unraveled. In the last two hours Lou Barnicle had received one phone call after another.
The murder of Sandy Fraser was bungled, he thought. What a pity. Great piece of ass wasted. Bobby Emmet has an alibi. The Daily News guy, Max Roth, has a big story ready for the morning paper.
A real fucking mess. Those assholes of mine fucked it up again.
Now I have to figure out what to tell The Fixer when he calls. He’ll be pissed off that it was bungled. Again. He’ll call me an incompetent, a cretin. Wait’ll I get my hands on this cocksucker when this is all over . . . .
Meanwhile, I’ll assure this pompous prick that I did a masterful job of damage control with the homicide cops; told them that I was at work all morning, had lunch with my parish priest, who wouldn’t forget the five grand I palmed him, at the estimated time of Sandy’s murder. That because I have a funeral to arrange, the kid, Donald, is with the nanny. That the cops were apologetic, even called me Captain. Said they’d be in touch with any new developments.
But my dream’s in jeopardy, he thought. If I can hold this operation together, I’ll be running the State Division of Police, in charge of all the state troopers. With a finger in the pie of every local police force in the State of New York. A fucking army of cops and untold millions in pension funds.
At 4:09 PM the phone rang.
“The business with the woman was badly handled,” The Fixer said. “Get the child somewhere safe. This thing is coming to a head.”
“The Max Roth story scheduled for the morning paper worries me,” Barnicle said.
“Everything will turn out all right so long as we have the kid,” The Fixer said.
“I still get my appointment?” Barnicle asked. “And my share of the money?”
“Of course,” said the man, whose steady, calm voice was reassuring on the other end of the line. “Just be sure he’s somewhere safe, and you will get everything that is coming to you.”
“The kid is already safe,” Barnicle said.
“Where is he?”
“At the nanny’s house in Rockaway,” Barnicle said, and gave The Fixer the address.
“Good.”
“When do I get to finally meet you?”
“In two hours,” said the man. “Bring the last of the money to the transfer point. The other main players have been contacted and will be there.”
“I’ll be there. With the money.”
Barnicle smiled. He was certain that despite these minor setbacks caused by Bobby Emmet, everything would work out as planned. The campaign would get what money it needed, and the leftover cash would be split evenly among the fund-raisers. Then the political appointments would come after the November election. Then I’ll fix this fucking Fixer, Barnicle thought. With pennies on his eyes . . .
“One more thing,” The Fixer said. “Use your best men. Emmet must cease to be a problem ASAP.”
47
At 4:35 PM Bobby accompanied Forrest Morgan into the police medical board to see Dr. Benjamin Abrams.
On the way there, Bobby had filled Morgan in on all he knew about the doctor’s involvement in the pension scheme.
Morgan said that while he had had Bobby and Patrick under surveillance, he had witnessed the blind-doctor routine and traced Abrams’s and John Shine’s license plate numbers.
“Like I told Tuzio,” Morgan said, “I had you under surveillance the whole time. I was on the police boat that cruised past you this morning when you were spying on Shine’s house. So, what’s up?”
“I’m not really sure,” Bobby said, unwilling to give him more than he already knew, yet. He didn’t want Morgan charging into that house cowboy style for a cheap promotion and risking Dorothea’s life.
“You ain’t being straight with me, Bobby,” Morgan said.
“I really don’t know for sure,” Bobby said. “Maybe Abrams can tell us what we need to know. He’s the answer.”
They stepped off the elevator and approached the reception desk. Morgan flashed his gold IAB badge.
“Would you tell Dr. Abrams I’d like to see him?” Morgan said. “I’d also like to see all the files for all three-quarter medical pensions in the last couple of years. Just the approvals, ma’am.”
The receptionist swallowed a dry knot, got up from her desk, and walked down the corridor, then knocked and entered the office door bearing Abrams’s stenciled name.
Bobby looked at Morgan, who stood rocking on his heels.
“How many years you got left before you put in your papers, Forrest?” Bobby asked.
“The duration, baby,” Morgan said. “Where the fuck am I gonna go?”
Bobby looked uneasy when he heard Abrams’s office door being frantically locked as the woman told them, “The doctor said he would be out in a min . . .”
Bobby barreled past her, Morgan right after him. Dr. Benjamin Abrams ended his life before the receptionist could end her sentence. The gunshot was low and muffed but loud enough to send Morgan and Bobby crashing through the locked door, the doctor’s stenciled name shattering with the glass.
Dr. Abrams was bent forward in his swivel chair, his forehead on the desktop, the barrel of his service revolver buried in his mouth, both thumbs looped through the trigger guard, smoke leaking out of his open mouth and trailing through the exit wound at the base of his skull. The ceiling was splotched with blood and brain matter.
Bobby moved closer and saw the hastily written note on the desktop, scrawled on NYPD stationery that was sprinkled with blood: “Dearest Rebecca, I love you. I’m sorry. Love, Dad.”
The Montblanc pen lay beside the note. There had been no time to write more. There was nothing else to say. On the TV Bobby saw a lurid videotape playing. It showed Dr. Benjamin Abrams in a blood-soaked bed with a naked woman. Her throat had been cut—just like Sandy’s, Bobby thought.
Bobby looked from the TV and stared at Abrams and felt another wave of guilt crash through him.
“Je-sus Christ, we should have gotten his gun first,” Bobby said.
“Corrupt cops always have a second one,” Morgan said, watching the videotape as a horrified Abrams got out of bed and began dressing. “For their last meal.”
“For Chrissakes, Morgan, he was a doctor, “Bobby said angrily. Bobby watched the video and noticed a convention lapel name tag pinned to the doctor’s suit jacket: DR. BENJAMIN ABRAMS, American Association of Police Physicians, Boston Sheraton.
“He was dirty, “Morgan said. “He died like he lived.”
Bobby took a step closer to the TV screen as something odd caught his eye. He now noticed that in the dead woman’s hand there were some coins. Quarters. Three of them.
“The doc here was obviously being blackmailed,” said Morgan. “ . . . Something you see there that I don’t?”
Bobby shook his head, said nothing. He turned away from the TV and the dead doctor. Standing silently in the doorway of the office was an astonished Dr. Hector Perez. Morgan saw Perez and walked to him.
“Doctor . . . Inspector, . . . at some point I’m going to need to speak to you and the other doctor on the medical board, too,” Morgan said, pulling a business card from his vest pocket and handing it to Perez. “All the records here are going to be examined. Please check your schedule for tomorrow and see what time is convenient for you, sir.”
Perez looked at the card and then at Morgan, blinked, nodded, said nothing.
Uniformed cops now arrived from the lobby of the building. Ms. Burns was hyperventilating in the outer office. Forrest Morgan told one of the uniformed cops to call the morgue and a forensic unit. Morgan picked up a phone to call his own office and turned his back to Bobby.
Bobby knew Morgan would be tied up there for hours with the Abrams suicide. Without saying goodbye, Bobby walked for the exit in the confusion. Before he left, he
made eye contact with Dr. Hector Perez. The doctor looked like a condemned man staring at the gallows.
On the Queensboro Bridge back to Manhattan, Bobby called Gleason and told him about Sandy and Abrams and what he had seen at John Shine’s house. Gleason told him to meet him at the basement office in the Empire State Building at 8:30 PM. He made Bobby promise not to make any more moves until they met. Then Bobby received a call from Max Roth, who told him to pick him up outside the main library at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. He said he had tracked down some of the information Bobby had asked him to find out. He could show him what he learned on the way to the Daily News.
Then Bobby called Patrick.
“Remember last week, the day I got out of jail, they found a dead hooker in a hotel in Manhattan?” Bobby said.
“Yeah, the Hotel St. Claire,” Patrick said.
“She had three quarters in her hand . . .”
“Christ, I never put that together with this . . . .”
“There was a convention of police physicians going on in that hotel that night,” Bobby said. “I want you to check the guest list.”
“Who we looking for?” Patrick asked.
“A doctor named Hector Perez,” Bobby said. “Deputy inspector, NYPD.”
Dr. Hector Perez had received a phone call at the office just a half hour after Dr. Abrams took his own life. Bad news traveled that fast. The report was obviously picked up on the police radio band. Perez was still damp with fear when he’d answered the phone. The blackmailer on the other end told him that he needed him that night to do a final piece of business for him. It would be the last thing he would ever ask of him.
Perez had refused. He had told the blackmailer that he could no longer do what he asked, that IAB was still there, that they were wise to the three-quarters scheme, and hung up on him.
When he left the building to drive home to Brooklyn, a shaken Dr. Perez climbed into his Lexus. On the passenger’s seat was the pillowcase from the Hotel St. Claire, filled with bloody sheets. Perez screamed when he looked into the pillowcase. Also on the seat was a pair of blindfold glasses, identical to the ones Dr. Abrams had worn. The car phone rang. Dr. Perez was afraid to answer. After three rings he snapped it up.
“I still have the razor,” the blackmailer said. “And the videotape. Don’t force me to give them to the police. Don’t do that to your wife and your beautiful unborn baby.”
“What the hell more do you want from me?” Perez screamed into the phone as he sat on the street in his car.
“I need you to wait on a bus stop on Flatbush Avenue and Avenue U tonight at midnight,” the calm voice said. “Wear the glasses and bring your doctor’s bag to give someone a checkup. She’s running a fever, and I want to be sure she’s ready for travel.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“Then we’re finished?”
“I’ll give you the razor and the original videotape,” the blackmailer said. “We’ll be finished.”
“I’ll be there,” Perez said.
48
At 7:05 PM Moira Farrell popped the cork from a chilled bottle of Roederer Cristal and filled five gleaming fluted glasses. She had gathered together the main players involved in the three-quarters cash operation of the Stone for Governor Campaign in her plush Court Street office.
She handed a glass each to Cis Tuzio and Hanratty, who sat on one green suede couch opposite Barnicle on an identical couch. Moira Farrell handed a third glass to Barnicle and picked one up for herself.
She placed the fifth glass on the end of the large coffee table. Also on the table sat two very large unzippered duffel bags with dangling shoulder straps. Each bag was stuffed with five million dollars in neat bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills. The result of two hundred fraudulent three-quarters medical pensions, at fifty thousand dollars per. The money was to be used as a slush fund in the general election for the Stone for Governor Campaign.
“So who is he?” Barnicle asked Moira Farrell as he pointed at the fifth glass of champagne.
“He’s on his way up on the service elevator,” Moira Farrell said.
“I want him to look me in the eye and tell me that I will be the new state chairman of police,” Barnicle said.
“I’m looking forward to meeting him, too,” said Tuzio. “I want an assurance that this meatball charge of suppression of evidence in the Emmet trial won’t stand in the way of my state supreme court judgeship. And Hanratty here goes where I go, of course. And Sol Diamond can get his seat on the court of appeals.”
“Of course,” said Moira Farrell as she heard sounds coming from an inner office behind her. “Well, then, I think it’s time you all finally met the man who made all this happen.”
Moira walked across the opulent office and opened a large teak door, and John Shine stepped into the room, wearing faded dungarees, a pair of Top-Siders, a Yankees hat, and a plain zippered jacket.
“This some kind of fucking bad joke?” Lou Barnicle snapped, staring at Moira Farrell. “I used to boss this asshole around for cheap laughs. If he’s Mr. Big, I’m the goddamn pope.”
“Who is he?” asked Cis Tuzio, totally baffled, looking from Barnicle to Moira Farrell to Hanratty.
“He came to me as a client and presented this ingenious scenario,” Moira Farrell said.
“His name is John Shine,” said Barnicle. “A weirdo lone wolf who quotes dead poets and runs a saloon in Bay Ridge. He’s a busted-down cop, retired.”
“Sandbagged is the word, Lou,” John Shine said. “Not retired.”
Barnicle squirmed in his seat. “Something’s wrong here, Moira.”
“Sit down, Moira,” John said. “Let’s get the finishing touches over with as quickly as possible.”
Moira took a seat on the suede couch next to a perplexed Barnicle.
“Is everything on track?” Cis Tuzio asked. “With the campaign? The appointments? This Bobby Emmet is trouble.”
“There’s supposed to be a big story in tomorrow’s Daily News, “Barnicle said.
“Well,” Shine said, “there is a problem with this Bobby Emmet . . . .”
“He was your fuckin’ buddy boy on the job,” Barnicle said. “I’ve seen you with him, still pallin’ around with him. Just the other day down Windy—”
“Yes,” Shine said. “That’s why I put you in charge of disposing of him. On a personal level, I simply like him too much to do it myself. But you blew it, Lou, repeatedly. And you, Miss Tuzio, you left a trail that only Bobby Emmet could trace. But he did. Right to me! Which makes sense, since I really can’t rely on anyone but myself. It always comes down to self-reliance, doesn’t it? Even you, Moira, as sweet and brilliant and beautiful as you are, you were exceedingly sloppy with one very tenacious cop.”
“I was told to make sure he was convicted,” Moira said. “He was. It’s not my fault this Gleason freak came along . . .”
“Now, wait a minute,” Tuzio said. “What does all this rambling mean? Tomorrow is the primary. Is everything going to work out? Are we on track, on schedule? What’s it all mean?”
“It means I presented a foolproof schematic for success, and you fools have consistently blown it,” Shine said. “As Mr. Emerson once said, ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.’ I’m a great soul. You’re all lost souls. I have something I must do.”
Shine smiled, grimaced, raised his flute of champagne.
“Fuck is he talking about?” Barnicle demanded of Moira Farrell. She just shook her head, baffled, concerned.
“But it will all turn out fine in the end,” Shine said with a smile. “To the new governor.”
He raised his glass in a toast.
The others, too confused to do otherwise, awkwardly raised their glasses to sip. As they did, Shine placed his glass on the coffee table and quickly removed two silver pistols, one from each j
acket pocket, each equipped with a silencer. He shot Barnicle first, through the right eye, with the gun in his left hand. The second bullet pierced Moira Farrell in the center of her chest. He turned his head quickly, wincing with back pain, aimed the right-handed pistol and shot Cis Tuzio in her open mouth as she attempted to scream. Shine caught an astonished Hanratty in the heart.
With gunsmoke wafting in the air, the four corpses sagged in bewildered final poses on the expensive couches, champagne glasses softly trickling bubbly over their lifeless bodies. Shine took out a hankie and wiped his prints from both guns and pulled on a pair of soft leather driving gloves. He walked to Barnicle and placed the left-hand pistol in his right hand. He placed the second pistol in Hanratty’s hand.
He took five stacks of cash from the many bundles in the bags and cracked one of them open, scattering scores of hundred-dollar bills between the dead bodies to make it look as though these four had quarreled over money. He dropped the other four bundles on the coffee table. The only object he had touched in the room was the champagne glass. He lifted the glass and washed down a painkiller with the last of the champagne. He put the glass in his jacket pocket, zippered both big bags, and placed a shoulder strap over each shoulder. Shine knew from experience that a million dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills weighed exactly twenty-two pounds. That would mean that each five-million-dollar bag would weigh one hundred and ten pounds. The unwieldy weight of the two hundred and twenty pounds of money was murder on his bad back.
He took one last look and then was quickly gone.
49
After Bobby picked him up outside the library, Max Roth said, “The architect, the one who built the house where the wacko stashed Kate Clementine, was a woman name of Barbara Lacy. It was in the old clips.”
“Is she the missing architect poor Larkin was talking about?” Bobby asked, quickly changing to the center fire lane to avoid the buses in the right lane. The dashboard clock said it was 7:25 PM.
“Yes, I think she’s the same one,” Roth said, pulling some newspaper clips and copies of microfilmed documents from a big Daily News manila envelope. “Her family finally called me back. This woman went missing about nineteen months ago . . . .”