Maybe because I’d been a member of the NYPD and, in spite of its numerous shortcomings, believed it was the best police department in the world, I had pretty much dismissed the more esoteric pieces of information gathered by Spivack and Associates. Sure, I’d glanced at the surveillance reports on Moira’s professors and the interviews with her sophomore roommates. But I had assumed that Spivack’s own people had gone over all this material several hundred times trying to comb out leads. Now it was my turn. Instead of looking for overlap, I did the polar opposite. I separated out everything—name, photo, document, etc.—that was unique to either set of files. Not unexpectedly, I culled a small mountain of unique information out of Spivack’s files.
I guess it was around four in the morning when I got to the sign-in logs of the community affairs office. Everybody signed in and out of that office or the staff wouldn’t help them. I’d had to do it. I think it had something to do with getting administrative funding from the legislature. The more people you serve, the bigger next year’s allocation. The cops had had some of these logs as well, but the Spivack file had copies of the logs that went as far back as the day Moira Heaton was first interviewed for her intern position. There were thousands of entries.
For example:
SIGN-IN (Please Print) DATE TIME IN TIME OUT STAFF MEMBER
Maria Chianese 3/29/80 9:30 10:45 Sotomayor
George Matsoukis 3/29/80 9:40 9:55 Abramson
Unless I worked backward from the day she disappeared, I figured to be in that room until the new millennium. Call me selfish, but I wanted to catch at least the last couple of years of the twentieth century. By five I was nearly out of my mind, and I’d only gotten as far back as six weeks before the disappearance. Staring at the same page for a minute or more without seeing anything, my head would drop and I’d startle awake. Punchy as I might be, I sensed that there was something to see, a name maybe, but that I was just too tired to grasp it. It had to be around six when I drifted off.
I don’t think I dreamed. If I did, I didn’t remember. My neck was stiff and my drool had blurred some of the copier toner on the logbook photostats. The chirping phone cared not at all for my neck or lack of sleep or dreamlessness. I trudged into the office to answer it.
“Hello,” I rasped, “what time is it?”
“You sound like shit, Prager.” It was Detective Gloria.
I peeked at one of the promotional mirrors hanging on an office wall. “I look worse than I sound. What time is it?”
“Eight fifteen. I called your house first and your wife told me I might find you at this number.”
“Who says the guys at Missing Persons can’t find their own shoes without a road map?”
“Very funny. You left a message, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I did.”
“About the statute-of-limitations thing.”
“Right, right.” Remembering, my heart began to race.
“We knew about that,” Gloria explained, sounding slightly defensive.
“And …”
“And nothing. Dead end. As far as we can tell it was an innocent question. We got no record of her going to a lawyer or anyone else about it. Apparently, the only one she ever mentioned it to was her father. Like her old man says, she was probably just asking on behalf of someone else or maybe she was just curious.”
So much for that lead, I thought, then said: “But it’s weird.”
“What is?”
“I don’t have a record of that interview in the official files.”
“You don’t, huh?” he asked, his tone changing from collegial to adversarial. “And how the fuck did some swinging-dick private investigator get ahold of police files?”
That was careless of me, mentioning the files to him. If Larry McDonald had been privy to this conversation, he would have been on his way across the bridge to shoot me. Never mind that he’d failed to get me the complete file.
“Look, Detective Gloria, you know the people I’m working for are pretty powerful.”
“You fucking threatenin’ me now, you piece a—”
“No, no, no. Calm down, for chrissakes! All I’m saying is that there isn’t much these guys can’t get me access to if I need it. That’s all, nothing more complicated than that.”
“Okay, all right, ‘cause if you got those files through someone in the department, I’ll sic fuckin’ IA on your inside source.”
My heart rate picked up again. “What did you say?”
There was a brief, confused silence on his end of the line. “I said I’d get Internal Affairs on—”
“No, you said IA, you’d sic IA on them. Hold on, just hold on a second.”
I dropped the phone and ran into the adjoining room. I rummaged through the sign-in sheets I’d been checking over before I passed out. There it was, a name I’d come across four or five times in the weeks leading up to Moira Heaton’s disappearance.
I picked the phone back up. “Gloria, you still there?”
“What the fuck’s this all about?”
“Humor me, okay, just for a minute? Try thinking along.”
“Christ, Prager, you sound like you’re gonna have a freakin’ canary. But go ahead, I’m listening.”
“If crooks had half a brain—”
“—cops would be in trouble,” he finished without my needing to prompt. “So what? I learned that one even before I got on the job.”
“Me, too. In Missing Persons you must see a million aliases, huh?”
“That estimate’s on the low end. Again, so what?”
“You ever go to a motel?”
“Prager, you are outta your mind, you know that? What’s aliases got to do with motels?”
“You fill out a card when you go to a motel, right? You always put down some bullshit name and address, but it’s not so easy to think of that stuff off the top of your head. You’re nervous about getting caught. So if you don’t think it through beforehand and you don’t use John Smith, what name do you use?”
“I think I get you,” he said, relieved he wasn’t going to have to have me committed. “You would use a name that sounds like your name or that has the same initials. You’d think they’d learn, but these clowns do it all the time.”
“Right. If they had half a brain …”
“Okay, Prager, I follow your reasoning, but what’s it got to do with Moira Heaton or anything else?”
“Maybe nothing, Detective, but maybe everything. You know Forty Court Street in Brooklyn Heights?”
“I can find it.”
“Do that. I’ll meet you in the lobby in two hours.”
“Two hours.”
“And Gloria …”
“Yeah?”
“Start praying.”
I ran out to talk to Joey the Gimp at the newsstand and to get a fifty-five-gallon drum of coffee. I had a lot of ground to cover in the next two hours.
IT WAS A motley crew assembled in the lobby of 40 Court Street, and none of them was particularly happy to see the others. I almost wished I had a video camera to tape the introduction of Y.W. Fenn to Captain Larry McDonald to Detective Robert Gloria to Pete Parson. One thing I can say without qualification is that the elevator ride up to Spivack’s was the quietest, most uncomfortable elevator ride I’d ever taken.
As on my first visit, Joe Spivack hung back just long enough for the receptionist to greet us. And in keeping with everybody else’s rotten moods, he seemed particularly miserable this morning.
“This way,” he growled, his eyes burning holes in my forehead.
I understood the reason for his dissatisfaction. Not more than an hour before, I had had the unpleasant task of informing him that he was going to host a gathering of people he probably had no interest in meeting. I’d also demanded that he not inform his employer and mine, Thomas Geary, of this get-together.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he’d screamed over the phone. “I don’t work for you, you small-time little shit. I can lose this acco
unt if he finds out I didn’t—”
“As I recall,” I said calmly, “Geary promised me your full cooperation, so cooperate and maybe I can spin this so you don’t come out looking bad.”
He couldn’t have liked hearing that, and if I was correct, there were things he was likely to hear that he would like far less. What Spivack didn’t know, what he couldn’t have known, was that I had extracted individual promises from everyone else involved to keep this meeting, the things discussed during it, and the events leading up to it confidential. If things broke right, confidentiality wouldn’t be an issue. If they didn’t, confidentiality would be in everyone’s best interest.
Spivack walked us past his office to a large conference room. We all found places around a black oval table that shone like a freshly waxed car. I did a second series of introductions.
“What the fuck is this, Moe?” Larry Mac asked the inevitable.
“I think I know what happened to Moira Heaton.”
Detective Gloria gave voice to what he’d thought all along: “Brightman?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Detective, but the only thing Brightman did wrong here was hire Moira Heaton. It was wrong because it gave the real perp access to her.”
“She dead?” Pete Parson asked.
“I’m pretty sure, but I think we all assumed that all along anyway.”
Silently, they nodded their heads in agreement. Although he’d known the reality of the situation from the day he’d taken the assignment, Wit seemed distressed at the unanimity of opinion. The death of hope is never a pleasant experience.
Now it was Spivack’s turn. “So …”
I pulled out the sign-in sheets from Brightman’s office, selecting five sheets in particular. I passed them around, letting everyone get a good look.
“The name Ishmail Almonte appears on these sheets five times in the six weeks leading up to Moira Heaton’s disappearance. As far as I can tell, his is the only name that appears that frequently.”
“That’s kinda thin, ain’t it?” Pete wondered.
I didn’t answer directly. “You got the sheets in front of you. Anyone wanna tell Pete something else about Ishmail Almonte’s visits to the community affairs office?”
Wit spoke up. “He saw Moira Heaton on all five visits.”
“That’s still thin,” Larry Mac said. “Can’t build a case on that.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “Now, I know the answer to this already, but I’m going to ask anyway. Mr. Spivack, how many people on these sign-in sheets have you or your employees interviewed over the last nineteen months?”
“Every one of them,” he boasted, “with the exception of the deceased, the infirm, and people who’ve dropped off the face of the earth.”
“Holy shit!” Detective Gloria was amazed. “Your client got some deep-ass pockets.”
“And who interviewed Ishmail Almonte?” I continued.
Spivack squirmed. “I did.”
“Why you?” I asked.
“Because I’m not blind. I was a U.S. fucking marshal for twenty-two years. It didn’t escape me that his name appeared so frequently.”
“And …?” Detective Gloria prodded.
“And nothing,” Spivack said smugly. “The guy’s story checked out. He said he was an illegal and wanted to find out how to get a green card. He said Moira Heaton was helping him. I ran the guy’s sheet. He was clean.”
“Oh, please!” Larry Mac was skeptical. “He was clean ‘cause he gave you a bullshit name.”
Spivack turned an angry shade of red. “Listen, you second-guessing prick, ask your buddy over there from Missing Persons how many of these people he interviewed. Ten? Five? One? None? He had access to the same records I had. If the fucking NYPD did their job in the first place—”
Gloria jumped up. “Watch your mouth, asshole. I never met a fed worth his weight in piss.”
“Okay, okay, this shit’s gonna stop right here and now,” I bellowed, pounding my fist on the table. “Right here and right now! Not one person in this room could’ve done anything to prevent what happened to Moira Heaton. Not one. If who I think did what I think, she was long dead by the time anyone even knew she was missing. So let’s stop the name-calling and recriminations. To me, the only thing that matters now is that we find the guilty party and bring a little peace to the family so they can grieve. Agreed?”
They all nodded sullenly.
“Agreed, Mr. Prager,” Wit repeated. “But evidently, you think this Ishmail Almonte is responsible.”
“Sort of,” I said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pete was curious.
I turned to Spivack. “I think we all realize you interviewed a ton of people in the course of the investigation, so no one’s gonna get bent outta shape if you don’t remember what Ishmail Almonte looked like.”
“Twenty-five to thirty years of age. Light skinned, Spanish speaker with a Cubano accent. Some English. Five foot six or seven inches tall, one hundred forty pounds, muscular build. Shoulder-length black hair, full beard and thick mustache. Dark eyebrows, dark brown eyes, broken nose. No visible tattoos or scars, as I can recall. But you know all this. There’s a copy of my interview notes in the file, Prager.”
Wit was fascinated by a single detail. “How did you know it was a Cuban accent?”
“Seven years working in Miami-Dade’ll make you an expert,” Spivack said. “I can also smell a phony Cohiba from a mile away, for what it’s worth.”
Strangely, the tension in the room seemed to evaporate. Spivack finally relaxed. Wit lit a cigarette. Larry Mac loosened his tie. Pete Parson took off his jacket.
I pushed ahead. “What Spivack said before about my having a copy of his interview notes on Almonte is true. It’s also the case that I looked them over before we came here. That’s beside the point. It’s not whether I looked the notes over that’s important, but whether Spivack looked them over.”
“I didn’t.”
“Come on, Joe.” I was incredulous. “Out of all the people you interviewed over the last nineteen months, you remember some little Cuban guy you spoke to a year ago for no more than fifteen minutes.”
“I remember a lot of them. You get good at remembering. I was a U.S.—”
“—fucking marshal for twenty-two years,” Pete and Larry Mac recited in unison.
“Yeah,” Pete chided, “we heard that one.”
Everyone laughed, even Spivack.
“Fair enough,” I said. “I still remember the faces of people I wrote up for spitting on the boardwalk, of all things. But why do you remember Almonte? Was there something about—”
“His eyes,” Spivack mumbled almost to himself. “He had those chilly black eyes. You know, the kind that make it difficult to distinguish the pupils from the irises, wet and opaque like the ocean at night.”
I reached into my pocket and unfolded the front page of yesterday’s Post.
“Dead eyes. Eyes like these?”
“Fuck!”
Looking at Spivack’s face, I knew. He knew. We all of us knew.
God slammed on the brakes and the world slowed down. My hearing changed too. I wasn’t deaf, exactly. At first, it was quite the opposite. I became acutely aware of isolated sounds: the shuffling of paper, the chittering of office machines, individual rings of the phone, my own breathing. Then it blended together. It was like dipping your head beneath the surface of a pool at a party. All the music, the laughter, the chatter, melds into a muted, indistinct drone.
“Moe! Moe!” Larry McDonald screamed. “Are you all right? You look pale as a ghost.”
I picked my head out of the pool. Now God hit the gas, the world spinning so fast I held on to the table for fear of falling off.
I heard Wit say: “Get him a drink.” He would say that.
“I’m okay. I’m okay.” I let go of the table. “It’s one thing for me to have a theory, another thing for Spivack to recognize Ivan Alfonseca as Ishmail Almonte, but it’s li
ght-years from proving he abducted and murdered Moira Heaton. Until we do that, we got nothing, not even smoke and mirrors.”
WE TOOK AN hour-long coffee break, Spivack having assorted sandwiches and pastries sent up from a local luncheonette. No one talked about the case itself. Although he was the only one of us without a law enforcement background, Wit spent enough time around cops to know this was not the moment to ask questions. Instead, we used the hour to bullshit, to trade war stories, to let off some steam. There was a small sense of relief, but not so the walls themselves sighed. The real hurdles were still ahead of us.
Just prior to starting up again, Spivack pulled me over to one corner.
“I feel like shit, Prager. I should have seen this months ago, but I’ve been preoccupied with the business. Maybe if I’d been paying more attention, I would have recognized him and—”
“Woulda, coulda, shoulda … Come on, Spivack, you know better. Your man had a full beard and long hair. If I didn’t listen to the radio two days ago or see that front page on the subway yesterday, I’d still be tripping over my own dick. Anyway, like I said before, it wouldn’t have mattered if you put two and two together sooner. To Moira Heaton, it would’ve had no meaning. Her fate had already been decided.”
“I’ll see if that helps me sleep tonight. One more thing. I know it’s your case now, but what’s the reporter doing here? He could walk out of this room and blow any chance we got to nail that psycho motherfucker.”
“First off, it’s our case, all of ours. That includes Wit. Geary wanted him around, and wisely so. If and when we do get Alfonseca to cop to this, Wit’s word will go a long way in giving credence to the process and reestablishing Brightman’s good name and reputation. Besides, he has his own reasons for keeping quiet. He has no love for Ivan the Terrible, believe me.”
The James Deans Page 11