The Good Friday Murder

by Lee Harris

  I got in the car and drove over to Greenwillow. James was out in the garden, presumably pulling weeds and picking up litter. I went out back and stood near the building, watching him. He looked lost, as though someone hadn’t given him thorough enough instructions about what to do. He was in his shirt-sleeves, looking down at the ground, not moving. From where I stood, I couldn’t tell what he was looking at, if anything.

  I felt an immense wave of sorrow. Here was a man who, although retarded, had once possessed gifts so remarkable that he was the subject of study and the object of wonder. Now he had lost everything—his brother, his mother, his gifts, even the simple skills he had mastered as a child.

  I walked over to him. As I approached, I saw a small piece of litter in front of him, perhaps a gum wrapper.

  “Good morning, James,” I said.

  He looked up without recognition.

  “I’m Chris. We’ve met before. You’re James, aren’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Let me help you.” I bent and picked up the piece of paper. James was holding a small, green plastic bag. “It goes in here, doesn’t it?”

  He nodded again. “My name is James.”

  “Yes, I know.” I put the paper in his bag. “There’s another piece of litter. Why don’t you pick it up?”

  He looked at the ground, then bent, picked up the paper, and put it in the bag.

  “We make a good team,” I said. “There’s some more.”

  As we walked, I said, “James, do you remember Magda?”

  He said, “Magda,” and looked at me penetratingly.

  “I saw Magda a few days ago. She remembers you. She thinks of you.”

  “Magda. See Magda.”

  “I saw her, yes. I think she’ll come to visit you.”

  His face looked fearful. His eyebrows, which were thick and dense, came together as his face contracted. “Magda,” he said again. “Do you know where my brother is?”

  “Yes, I do, James. I do know where he is. He’s fine. He asks for you.”

  “My brother.”

  “Your brother, Robert.”

  He seemed to tremble. I put my hand on his shoulder. “Everything’s all right,” I said. “Come, let’s clean up some more.”

  —

  I spent some time with Gene afterward, then reported to Virginia McAlpin on my visit to New Hope. When we had finished talking, it was ten-thirty and Mrs. McAlpin offered her telephone so that I could call Kevin O’Connor. He had just come home and he thought one o’clock would be a good time for us to meet. He remembered the Talley murder pretty well, he told me, but he wasn’t sure he could add to the material in the file. I said I’d be there at one, and he gave me directions.

  I went home to kill the intervening time and have a light, early lunch. Just as I was sitting down to a salad and iced coffee, Jack Brooks called.

  “Got that apartment number for you,” he said. “The Talleys lived in 5C.”

  “Could you hold on a moment?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  I put the phone down and went into the dining room. My papers were spread out and I was able to put my hand on the interview with Selma Franklin very quickly. My insides did something strange as I picked up the open notebook.

  “Jack, are you sure?” I asked, getting back to the phone.

  “Sure I’m sure. It’s right here in front of me.”

  “The woman I interviewed, Selma Franklin, the one who was so sympathetic, who seemed to like Mrs. Talley and have such warm feelings toward the twins, she lived in the apartment underneath 5C. She’s the one Magda said Mrs. Talley didn’t get along with.”

  “Happens.”

  “But she was so good to children, so—I don’t know, maybe I’m just not very good at this.”

  “You’re damned good. You found Magda, you talked to the psychiatrist, you’re going to see O’Connor. Just remember, people lie. People lie for reasons you can’t guess. You ask a question and it opens up a part of their life you don’t know about and they have to protect it. Maybe this Franklin woman was having an affair with Mr. Talley.”

  I laughed. “Not likely.”

  “Maybe not, but stranger things have happened. Anyway, I doubt whether a woman killed Mrs. Talley.”

  “Me, too.” I glanced at my watch. “Thanks, Jack. I’ll call you after I talk to Kevin O’Connor.”

  “Not so fast. Can I see you sometime? Like socially?”

  “Sure,” I said a little weakly.

  “You say ‘sure,’ but you don’t sound it.”

  “I’d like to,” I said. I really wanted to, but I was feeling panicky at the prospect.

  “Maybe dinner. I know a nice place up that way,”

  “I’d like that very much.”

  “Saturday.”

  “Saturday.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll call you later.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  I hung up and went back to lunch.

  13

  Driving to Valley Stream, I reflected on my behavior, on the phone and off, with Jack Brooks. I sounded like two different people. On the phone I was confident as we were distant; in person I turned into a ridiculous mouse. Even at the prospect of seeing him “socially,” I heard myself change on the phone. He heard it, too.

  I wanted to see him. I found him attractive. He hadn’t flinched when he found out I was an educated woman. He seemed kind and considerate. I really found him attractive. And that was the problem. Two problems, in fact. I wanted to be out of the convent and on my own a decent length of time—months—before I began dating men. I wanted a clear separation between leaving the convent and living as an ordinary American woman. And secondly, at thirty, I was as inexperienced as a young girl. He would not expect that. It would make things difficult.

  —

  The O’Connors’ house was a short drive from the exit on the Southern State Parkway. It was small and boxy, with the lush green lawn and garden that are so common on Long Island. I pulled into their driveway, stopped in front of a one-car garage, and walked to the front door.

  It was opened almost immediately.

  “Hi,” a casually dressed woman with short gray hair said with a smile. “Christine Bennett?”

  “That’s me.” I offered my hand.

  “Delores O’Connor. Call me Del.”

  We shook hands. “I’m Chris.”

  “Kev’s in the living room.”

  Former detective Kevin O’Connor sat in a reclining chair from which he extricated himself as I approached. We shook hands, made pleasantries, and he asked his wife for a couple of beers. I declined the offer. He got back in his chair, worked the mechanism, and got into position. His wife turned off the TV as she left the room.

  “This guy Jack Brooks who called yesterday, he said you were interested in the Talley murder. So how come?”

  “I’m doing some research on old murders,” I said, having decided this was the best approach. “This one is fascinating because of the twins.”

  “So where does Brooks fit in?”

  “He got the file and found you.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He still had the bright blue eyes, but his body had gone to fat, in spite of his morning golfing. He had a classic beer belly over which was pulled a green golfing shirt that coordinated with his pants. His hair was gray and thinning. Somewhere in the face was the handsome one that Magda had admired forty years ago, but I had to struggle to find it.

  “Can I ask you some questions?” I asked.

  “Shoot.”

  “Did the twins ever say anything to you to indicate they were guilty?”

  O’Connor’s face screwed into a pained expression. “The twins never said nothin’.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Didn’t gimme the time o’ day.”

  “So you arrested them on the basis of evidence you found in the apartment.”

  “Yeah. When did that happen again?”


  “Nineteen fifty.”

  “Nineteen fifty, nineteen fifty,” he murmured. “Hey, Del?” he called. “When did Mike and me start to be partners?”

  “After Carol was born,” his wife’s voice called from the kitchen. She appeared in the living room with a can of beer and a glass of iced tea.

  “Was that that Easter one?” he asked me.

  “The body was discovered on Easter Sunday. The file says the murder probably happened on Good Friday.”

  “Yeah, right. There was a girl there, like a baby-sitter.”

  “Magda.”

  “Yeah, some Polack name. Kinda cute.”

  “Do you remember what it was that convinced you the twins did it?”

  He moved one shoulder in a shrug. “They’d been at ’er. You could see it. There was blood all over. It was a knifing, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hell, everything said it was them. They were retards, they got their fingerprints over everything, they were alone with her.” His voice ended slightly up, as though there were many other indications of the twins’ guilt that he was just too exhausted to enumerate.

  “But you were sure they were the ones.”

  He looked at me quizzically. “You think they weren’t?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just looking into it.”

  “Oh, hell, sure they did it.” He paused to drink some beer and I sipped the iced tea, which was quite tasty. “I had another one, maybe ten years after that, a guy got cut up by a neighbor after a fight over garbage. The neighbor turned out—”

  “Kev,” his wife interrupted, “I don’t think the lady’s interested in the other case.”

  “Oh. Yeah.” He started to say something further, but checked himself.

  “Did anybody check for blood that wasn’t Mrs. Talley’s type?”

  “I s’pose. That’s forensics. The lab guys. Not my job.”

  “Was there anyone else’s blood found there?”

  He smiled. “That’s a long time ago. Look in the file.”

  I had, and there hadn’t been any other blood at the scene.

  “If there wasn’t any other blood except the victim’s, couldn’t that mean that someone else did it and cleaned up after himself? That’s something the twins wouldn’t have done.”

  “Christ, I don’t know what they found there. The guys did it, that’s all. Del, you got another beer?”

  “Later, Kev.”

  “Del.”

  Del got up and left the living room.

  “Who was your partner that day, Mr. O’Connor?”

  “Call me Kev. You know, I’m tryin’ to remember. Geez, that was a long time ago.”

  I had asked just to test his memory. Magda had recalled every detail of that day; Kevin O’Connor seemed to be coasting on broad recollections. Del returned with a can of beer.

  “Was that the Easter I missed dinner at your folks’ and your father was so pissed?”

  Del grinned. “That was it, hon.”

  “Geez, he was sore—1950, huh?”

  “Did you question the twins yourself?” I asked.

  “Sure. It was my case.”

  “Did you know when you were questioning them that they had very special gifts of memory?”

  He looked dazed, as if I’d asked him to solve some difficult mathematical problem. “The girl told me somethin’,” he said finally. “I got nothin’ outa them. Ab-so-lutely nothin’.”

  “Did you interview the father?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He didn’t sound very sure.

  “He lived in New Jersey,” I prompted.

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Did it occur to you the father might have had a good motive to kill his wife?”

  O’Connor looked puzzled again.

  “The family cost him money,” I said simply.

  “Look, honey,” O’Connor said, “those twins did it. That’s all. A judge said so. The evidence said so. There’s no story here.”

  “Did a psychiatrist ever examine the twins?” I asked.

  “We had a guy come over from Kings County. They wouldn’t talk.”

  “Not even to a psychiatrist,” I said, more to myself than to him. “Did anyone call in the psychiatrist who had been studying them?”

  O’Connor shrugged. “We’re in Brooklyn. We’d call Kings County when we needed a shrink.”

  My iced tea was nearly gone and I was developing a distinct dislike for Kevin O’Connor. I had expected interest and a memory for details. Instead I had encountered a nearly blank wall.

  “A man’s coat was missing from the coat closet,” I said. “What did you think when you were told that?”

  “What do ya mean?” Something seemed to change in him—or maybe it was just my hopeful imagination.

  “When you heard that an overcoat was missing, did you look for it? Did you think that maybe someone had put it on to cover up a bloody shirt and walked out with it?”

  “Hey, wait a minute.” Something in his face became alert. “There something in the file on this coat?”

  It was a question I couldn’t answer, because I hadn’t read every document in the file, but the fact that he asked the question made me feel he knew the answer.

  “No,” I told him. “Magda told me about it.”

  “The little Polack? C’mon.” He smiled in what he must have thought was a winning way.

  “She says she told you.”

  “Hey, I’m a cop, not a nursemaid. A retard goes out and loses his coat, it’s not my business. I’m lookin’ into a homicide, Chris. Your name Chris?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m lookin’ into a homicide, not a missing coat.”

  “Magda says she called the station a day or two after Easter Sunday to remind you about it.”

  “I didn’t get no call.” He drained his can.

  “She says she left a message for you.” I was tempted to say, with a man named Applebaum, but I couldn’t bring myself to.

  “She’s dreaming.” He leaned over toward Del, handing her the empty can. Del took it but didn’t move. “I hope you’re not suggesting anything, Chris. I was an honest cop, right, Del? I did my job. I put in my time. Sure, I took a cup o’ coffee here, a Danish there. But I always had a buck in my hand. They wanted me to have it. I never had a complaint made about me. I knew them and they knew me. They were glad when I stopped around to say hello.”

  “Kev,” Del said, “no one’s accusing you.”

  “No, I want her to know. I want her to know the truth. There wasn’t any fuckin’ missing coat. That’s it. That’s the truth. Coupla retards kill their mom, I’m not gonna worry about no fuckin’ coat.”

  I stood and picked up my bag from the floor. “Thank you,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Sure.” O’Connor was in a snit.

  I walked to the door with Del.

  “If Kevin says he never heard about a missing coat, he never heard. He’s an honest man and he was a good cop,” she said.

  “Thank you. It was very nice of you to have me over.”

  I drove into the center of Valley Stream and found a pay phone.

  14

  I don’t own a credit card. Maybe next year, when I’ve got a brief history of working for a lay institution, I’ll apply for one. But in the meantime, I pay for my purchases in cash and I pay for my calls with coins.

  I gathered together everything in my change purse and called Jack Brooks. When he got on the phone, I gave him the number I was calling from so he could call me back if I ran out of time.

  “Hang up. I’ll call you now,” he said.

  A few seconds later the phone rang.

  “I’ve seen him,” I said.

  “O’Connor?”

  “Yes. I can’t say I liked him. He didn’t remember half of what Magda remembered. And I think he lied.”

  “About what?”

  “About the missing coat. He changed when I asked about it. He was so convinced the twins w
ere guilty, I don’t think he wanted to hear anything that might point in another direction.”

  “Cops are human,” he said. “He wanted to close the case.”

  “Have you found Applebaum?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When Magda called about the coat, who was she likely to have talked to? Someone at a nearby desk?”

  “The call could have been forwarded to the Brooklyn Communications Bureau, the precinct squad, or the borough office.”

  “I see.” I shuddered at the complexity, the number of people involved, the impossibility of finding them at this late date. “Do you know who O’Connor’s partner was? He said he couldn’t remember.”

  “It’s in the file. I saw the name somewhere. What happens is, the partners take turns. One time O’Connor’s catching the cases, the next time his partner catches. Some teams split the tour four hours of catching apiece. It was just chance that O’Connor got it that day.”

  “Maybe we can find the partner,” I said. “Since it wasn’t his case, maybe he’d be more open.”

  “Possibly, but remember, this is a big fraternity. The brothers protect each other.”

  “Somewhere there’s got to be a crack, and I’ve got to put a wedge in it. Someone took a coat out of that closet and walked out with it.”

  “Let me see if I can find O’Connor’s partner. What are you planning to do next?”

  “I want to find out all I can about Patrick Talley. It’s too late today, but first thing tomorrow I’m going to New Jersey and walk into churches. I’ll bet he got married as soon as his wife died.”

  “Good luck. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  —

  The phone rang after I’d finished dinner.

  “Hello, Miss Bennett. This is Edwin Hazlett.”

  The way he said it, I had the feeling I was supposed to recognize his name. “I’m sorry,” I said, “do I know you?”

  He laughed. “I’m the mayor of Oakwood. I guess I’m not the household word I thought I was.”

  “Mr. Mayor. Forgive me, it just didn’t ring a bell.”

  “How’re you doing on your project?”

  “I’m making progress. I’m afraid I can’t say much more, but I’m encouraged and I’m continuing.”

  “Well, that’s good news. You will keep me posted, won’t you?”