by Frank Zafiro
Gwen bit her lip. “I don’t have any physical evidence to answer that question.”
“The shooter coulda moved him,” Crawford offered.
“Why?” Finch asked. “If he’s shot and dead, why move him before burying him?”
“Maybe he wasn’t dead,” Elias said. “Maybe he stood up on his own, tried to fight and then keeled over.” He looked over at Gwen.
She shrugged. “It’s possible. There’s nothing forensically to preclude it.”
Crawford looked around the assembled group. “Well, whatever the hell happened,” he said, “get to work on it. The chief is going to want an update by the end of the day, so you best give me one by fourteen hundred.”
Finch gave him a bare nod and Crawford left the office.
Elias muttered a curse after Crawford and turned his attention back to Gwen. “The gun?”
“The serial number was filed off, but we were able to raise it with acid,” she told him. “I sent it to Renee in Crime Analysis when I shipped over their identification.”
“What was the white hair caught up in the cylinder?”
Gwen bit her lip. “Not sure yet. It’s synthetic, though, not natural hair. I’m running some different analyses on it now.”
“Did you get any prints off the gun?” Finch asked.
Gwen shook her head. “Nowhere from the gun itself, but we found prints on two of the shell casings loaded in the cylinder.”
Finch brightened. “And?”
She pointed at the picture of Kenneth Moran. “Both sets of prints were his.”
Finch and Elias exchanged a glance.
“Wait a minute,” Elias said. “You’re telling me that Moran loaded the bullets into the gun that someone else shot him with?”
“Looks that way.”
“The gun was reported stolen six months ago,” Renee told them. “It was taken in a residential burglary.”
“The victim?” Elias asked.
“Earl Sikes. Here’s his address.” She handed him a slip of paper. “I don’t know that he’ll be any help, though. The report lists no suspects. He told the investigating officer that he came home and found his door kicked in and his stuff missing.”
“Great lead,” Elias muttered sarcastically.
“I don’t make ’em,” Renee said, “just find ’em.”
“How about our vics?” Finch asked.
“Coupla sweethearts,” she said, handing him two folders. “Both have several convictions for felonies, mostly property crimes. Nalick has one misdemeanor assault conviction, too.”
“List of associates?”
“On page three.”
“Are they connected with anyone?”
“What do you mean?”
Finch shrugged. “Anything organized. You know, mobbed up?”
“Oh. No, not that I could see.”
“Who would you go to if you wanted to buy a gun?” Elias asked her.
“Outdoor Sportsman.”
“Very funny.”
Renee chuckled at her own joke. “You walked into that one.”
Elias held his hands palm-up in surrender. “Where?”
Renee pursed her lips, thinking. Finally, she shook her head. “It’s hard to say. This is a .38. Pretty common. And there are a lot of gun owners in River City.”
“But this gun was stolen. And unless the guy that stole it is the one that used it, he bought it on the black market.”
“It’s a big market,” Renee said.
“Humor me. Who are the wholesalers?”
“There’s a Russian named Valeriy Romanov. He’s been pretty quiet lately, but I don’t think he’s slowed down. He’s just gotten smarter.”
“Who else?”
Renee shrugged. “Maybe Dominic Bracco, a New Jersey transplant.”
“Any others?”
She shook her head. “Everyone else is small time. But these guys won’t talk to you.”
“Not if we don’t go see them, they won’t,” Elias said.
Before leaving the station, the two detectives compared lists of the dead men’s known associates. There were two crossovers, Charmaine Ross and Bill Croop.
“How do you want to go at this?” Elias asked.
Finch read through the list again and thought. They had two lines of attack. Follow the victimology or follow the gun. The gun seemed to be the more direct of the two, but Finch believed in knowing the victims.
“Let’s try these two for starters,” he said. “Renee’s probably right about the Russian and the guy from New Jersey, anyway. We’ll save them for later.”
They found Charmaine Ross’s apartment near Corbin Park and had to access the door from the alley side. An old, beige Dodge sat in the back yard.
“A classic,” Elias mused.
Charmaine Ross was a large white woman. After letting them in, she sat in a small folding chair next to the card table that served as a kitchen table in her tiny apartment. Her pudgy fingers rubbed together compulsively.
“What’s this about?” she asked. Her voice wavered, but was full of resentment.
Finch asked her, “Do you know Jacob Nalick?”
Her eyes widened slightly. “Jake? What’d he do?”
Finch took that for a yes. “When was the last time you saw him?”
Charmaine squinted. “’Fore Christmas, I guess.”
“What’s your relationship to him, Miss Ross?”
“We used to hit it,” she answered.
“Excuse me?”
Charmaine sighed. “He was my man for a little while, you know?”
“How long ago?”
“We broke up last summer.”
“Why?”
Charmaine’s eyes narrowed. “Man-woman stuff. Why you want to know? What’s he mixed up in, anyway? Whatever it is, I’m not—”
“How about Kenneth Moran?”
Brief emotion flickered in Charmaine’s eyes. “What about Kenny?”
“You know him, too?”
“Yeah. He’s my man now.”
Finch resisted the urge to glance at Elias. He felt his skin prickle. She dated both dead men? “When did you see Moran last?”
She paused. “When did I see him last, you said?”
Finch nodded.
She thought about it, averting her eyes. When she looked back, she said, “A couple of days after Christmas we had an argument. He left. I ain’t seen him since.”
“What was it about?”
“Man-woman stuff,” she said.
Finch shook his head. “No, that’s not going to cut it. What was the fight about?”
“I didn’t say it was no fight,” Charmaine said. “I said it was a argument. What’s this about anyways?”
Finch paused. Then he said, “Miss Ross, Jacob Nalick and Kenneth Moran are dead. We found their bodies this weekend.”
Charmaine’s eyes fluttered. Her breath came in short, shuddering bursts. Tears sprang to her eyes and rolled down her fat cheeks. “No! That can’t be!”
“It is,” Finch said. “I’m sorry.”
“My Kenny? Oh my God!” Her chest heaved. She wrapped her thick arms around her own chest and wailed. “He was so sweet!”
Finch and Elias waited silently while Charmaine sobbed. Finch looked around for a tissue and found none. He settled on a dish towel and handed it to Charmaine.
She buried her face in the green and white patterned towel and howled.
After a respectful period of time had passed, Finch touched her on the shoulder. “Miss Ross?”
She paused, then sobbed loudly again.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Finch said.
Charmaine wiped her face and looked up at him. “I can’t believe he’s gone. What happened?”
Finch cleared his throat. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out. Were he and Nalick partners?”
“Partners?”
“Did they work together?”
“Kenny didn’t have no job.”
&nb
sp; “I know,” Finch said. “But did they work together?”
Charmaine gave him a level stare. “You mean like criminal stuff?”
Finch nodded.
She shrugged. “Sorta, I suppose. I think Jake was into some stolen property and sometimes Kenny helped him.”
“Who’d they work with?”
Charmaine held her palms up and half-shrugged while shaking her head. “I…I don’t know.”
“Do you know the name Dominic Bracco?”
“No.”
“Ever hear it from Jake or Kenny?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Did Jake know any Russians?”
“He mighta. I never met none of his friends, except for Kenny.”
“How about Kenny? He know any Russians?”
She shook her head. “No. But he wouldn’t have had no kind of problem with it. Kenny wasn’t no racist.” Tears sprang to her eyes again. “How could he be, loving a black woman?”
Finch raised his eyebrows and glanced at Elias. “Uh…”
Charmaine blew her nose into the dish towel. Then she noticed the confused look on both detectives’ faces.
“I’m descended from Harriet Tubman on my mother’s side,” she explained.
Bill Croop was less broken up over the deaths.
“Serves ’em both right,” he told the detectives, his bottom lip packed full of Copenhagen. “I wish I coulda pissed on their graves before you found them.”
“Why’s that?” Finch asked.
Bill snorted. “I can’t count how many times Jake ripped me off. And that Kenny, he followed Jake around like some kind of puppy dog.”
“When did you see Jake last?”
Bill thought about it, turning the beer bottle in his hand. “Somewhere around Christmas, best as I remember. Jake sometimes stayed with Kenny and Char, but that fat bitch ran him out one night, so he came over here asking to crash on my couch.”
“Did you let him?”
“Yeah. And in the morning, he was gone and so was my kid’s Xbox.”
“He stole it?”
“Right out from under our Christmas tree. Still wrapped and everything.”
Elias whistled. “Stealing from kids. That’s low.”
Bill nodded vigorously. “Yer goddamn right it is. So like I said, I wasn’t never gonna let him back into my house again.”
“Do you know who he ran with?”
“Yeah. Kenny.”
“Anyone else?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What was he into?”
Bill shrugged. “Burglary, car prowling, stuff like that. But he was always bragging about moving up to the ‘A’ league.”
“‘A’ league?”
“Class A felonies. Like robbery. He said he was gonna get into big scores and that big scores took guns.”
“Did he have a gun?”
“Not that I ever saw.” Bill held the beer bottle to his lips and spit tobacco into it. “He was a big talker.”
Finch asked him about Bracco and Romanov.
Bill shook his head. “Ain’t never heard of them guys.”
“How about Rick Anderson?” Finch asked on a hunch.
“Him, neither.”
Finch gave him his card and they left.
They found Valeriy Romanov at a Russian coffee shop in the northeast part of town. He sat at a corner table reading the paper and smoking. The smoke from the cigarette curled up in the still air above his head, forming an acrid little cloud. A silver lighter with gold-trimmed red lettering displaying “CCCP” lay next to his coffee cup.
Finch and Elias sat down without being asked and without a word.
Romanov looked up calmly and made them instantly. “Officers?”
“Detectives,” Elias said, flashing his badge.
Romanov smiled wanly. “My mistake. What can I do for you? You want coffee? Is quite good here.” He raised his hand and snapped his fingers at the barista. “Katya!”
“We’re not here for coffee, Yuriy,” Elias said.
“My name is Valeriy,” Romanov said. His accent was thick but easily understood. “You have me maybe mixed up with someone else?”
“We know all about you,” Elias said. “We know what you’re into. We know every move you make.”
“Oh. You must be KGB.”
“Joke if you want,” Elias said. “But we’re only having this conversation here instead of down at the station because you’re a somebody in your community.”
Romanov’s eyes remained flat. “What conversation?”
“We have a .38 that was used in a crime, Yuriy. Someone filed the serial number off and sold it to the criminal we’re looking for. Problem is, we raised the serial number using acid. So we know where the gun came from.”
“Then you are good police work.”
“We’re looking for a killer,” Elias said. “So we’re here unofficially. We want to know who had that gun. We don’t care who sold it.”
Romanov broke into a grin. “You must think I am virgin, da?”
Elias didn’t answer.
Romanov shook his head. “In my country, the police beat you for hour before they even ask your name. But you think I fall for this…”—he cast around for the right word—“…this baby trick?”
Elias leaned forward. “It’s no trick. I want to solve a murder. I don’t care about a few Hondas getting chopped or a gun getting sold.”
Romanov crushed out his cigarette and drank the last of his coffee. “I think you should care about those things,” he said. “You be maybe better police.”
The Russian stood, grabbed his cigarettes, and left.
Angelo’s was one of the best Italian restaurants in River City. Finch didn’t care for Italian food, but Elias shook his head ruefully.
“If I’d known this place was connected, I’d never have eaten here,” he said.
“You didn’t know.”
“I know that. I’m saying, if I did.”
They asked for Dominic Bracco at the hostess station and the tall blond hostess gave them a practiced look of innocence. “I’m sorry, I don’t know anyone by that—”
Elias badged her. “Just get him. He’s not going to jail. We just want to talk.”
The hostess shifted uncomfortably, then turned and walked toward the back of the restaurant.
Finch said, “Maybe you better let me talk to this one.”
“Why?”
“You didn’t exactly hit a home run with the Russian.”
Elias made a dismissive gesture. “That was a wild goose chase, anyway. So is this.”
“That’s our job,” Finch said. “Professional wild goose chasers.”
“Oh, you’re funny. Why do you only bring that humor out when it’s just me? Why not share it with the world?”
“It’s tailor-made.”
Before Elias could respond, the hostess returned, followed by a large man with jet-black hair.
“Detectives?” he asked in a deep baritone.
Jesus, he’s Luca Brasi, Finch thought. “Can we talk somewhere privately, Mr. Bracco?”
“Of course.” He led them toward the back of the restaurant. Finch thought he was going to take them to an office, but Bracco ducked into an empty banquet room instead. “What is it?”
“I’ll cut right to the chase, Mr. Bracco,” Finch said. “Do you know Jake Nalick?”
Bracco paused, then shrugged. “I think so. Maybe. The name sounds familiar. What does he do? Nothing criminal, I hope.”
“Why would you guess that?” Elias asked.
Bracco gestured to both of them. “You’re the cops. I don’t figure you guys’d come here asking me about the guy if he was into selling restaurant supplies, right?”
“What was your relationship to Mr. Nalick?” Finch asked.
Bracco scratched his cheek. “I don’t recall. Maybe he was just a customer.”
“What kind of customer?”
“The kind that eats. What other kin
d is there?”
Elias sighed. “Just once, I’d like to have a straight conversation,” he told Finch.
Bracco didn’t answer. He stared at Finch calmly and waited.
“Here’s the thing, Mr. Bracco,” Finch said. “We’re pretty early in our investigation into this case, so we’re not sure if the people we’re talking to are involved or if maybe they’re just witnesses.”
“What kind of witnesses?”
“The kind that saw something,” Elias said. “What other kind is there?”
Finch ignored him and pressed on. “We’re thinking about people that might have heard a rumor. Something that helps us out without that person becoming directly involved.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“If Jake Nalick had a gun, where would he get it?”
“A gun? I have no idea.”
“How about a guess?” Finch asked. “A wild guess that might help us out, without that person guessing having to get directly involved. Without us having to look into them any closer.”
Bracco appraised them both. Then he said, “Does your chief know how you treat businessmen in this community?”
On the drive back to the station, Elias wouldn’t let it lie.
“You’d think,” he said, “that if a guy were going to cast stones at another guy’s interview tactics, he wouldn’t turn around and use the same tactics himself.”
“It wasn’t the same tactic.”
“It was exactly the same tactic. With the same result.” Elias made a circle with his fingers and his thumb. “Zippo.”
“Probably a dead end, anyway,” Finch muttered.
Tower and Browning’s report on Anderson sat on Finch’s desk when they returned to the Major Crimes office. He thumbed through it and found exactly what he expected. Nothing. He noticed his message light flashing and checked his voicemail. The first message was a pleasant female voice.
“Detective Finch, this is Gwen Jackson. We’ve identified the material that was caught up in the cylinder of the murder weapon. It was a form of white filament used primarily as a decorative substance at Christmas and Easter. Among other things, they make Santa Claus beards and wigs out of it. Anyway, I hope that helps. I sent the information to Crime Analysis. Call me if you have any questions.”