Scarne wanted to point out that they weren’t really pals. Instead, he said, “I do understand. But this is something I have to do.”
“Well, you’re wasting your time,” O’Connor said, looking at his watch and standing up. “We have our best people on this. If you go around with a crazy theory about a vengeance murder or a contract hit, it may detract from the search for the girl’s killer. I’m telling you that as a friend. I don’t know who hired you, but did you ever stop to think that somebody is jerking your chain? Crackpots are coming out of the woodwork now. Psychics, mental cases. Couple of bozos even confessed until we provided them with ironclad alibis. Happens in all high-profile cases.”
The friend thing again. Pretty soon I’ll be on his Christmas list. Scarne knew it was time to drop a hammer. He’d already worked out the lie.
“You’re probably right, Dan. Maybe it was just a crank call. But I have to run it down.”
“Crank call? To who?”
“My friend. Anonymous. Untraceable. From a disposable cell. Guy said Elizabeth Pearsall was killed by two pros who set it up to look like a burglary. What can I do? Got to follow the string now.”
There was consternation on O’Connor’s face.
***
Scarne had one more official beehive to kick. He left O’Connor’s office and walked down to Bay Street, where a previously magnificent view of New York Harbor was partially blocked by a new minor league stadium that was home to the Staten Island Yankees, a single-A farm club of the famous dynasty. He entered the 120 precinct house just before 2 P.M. and was directed to the detectives’ squad room. There Detective Francis Scullen gave him a perfunctory handshake and waved him to a seat.
“I.D.?”
Scarne pulled his out and showed it to Scullen, who looked at it and flipped it dismissively back across the desk.
“Before you say anything, Shamus,” the cop said, “I just want to get one thing straight. I don’t need some hot-shot private dick from the city coming here screwing up my investigation. This is my town.”
Before Scarne could think up a reply to that, Scullen laughed.
“I’m fuckin’ with you. Always wanted to say that. I think I read it in a Spenser novel. I made some calls. Spoke to some guys you used to work with when you were on the job in Manhattan. Said anyone who tried to drop a city councilman off a balcony can’t be all bad.”
“That story has been exaggerated. And it was a terrible career move. He’s President of the City Council now. Probably going to be mayor some day.”
“So, that’s why you’re private,” Scullen laughed. “Want coffee?”
Scarne smiled and looked around the dilapidated and nearly empty squad room. It looked like a set from Detective Story, the gritty 1951 film noir that ended with an obsessive cop played by Kirk Douglas shot by a prisoner. He decided to skip the coffee.
“You sure?” Scullen said, pointing to a 10-cup spouted container from Dunkin’ Donuts sitting on a nearby desk. Next to it was a promising box of donuts.
“Well, why not?”
Scullen walked over and came back with two cups, black. The coffee was hot, and good. Scarne studied the cop. Late 40’s. Dirty blonde hair running a little long for his age. Red veins around his nose and in his cheeks. Clothes too loose. The fingers gripping his cup were cigarette-tinged. Slight tremor.
“When I was younger I got pulled in here a couple of times,” Scarne said. “I see they haven’t repainted.”
“The city is short of money. Barely had enough to finish that $68 million ball park across the street. Priorities, you know. This is my last stop. They ran out of boroughs to send me. Now, enough chit chat. You got something for me on the Pearsall homicide?”
Scarne repeated what he had told O’Connor. Scullen saw through the lies immediately. He had probably been a good cop once, and maybe still was. He walked over to the donuts and brought the box back, placing it between them.
“Clichés aside, these are fucking great donuts,” he said. “Now, are you going to tell me what you really know? My friends in Manhattan said you probably wouldn’t be wasting your time out here. So why waste mine?”
Scarne picked up a plastic knife and cut a cruller in half. It was fresh. He took an appreciative bite while debating how much to tell Scullen. The guy was close to being a burn out. A lush whose superiors unloaded to Staten Island. But probably not for incompetence. He was still sharp enough to have checked Scarne out.
“What I say has to stay between us,” Scarne said, rolling the dice. “Nothing goes up the street, for now.” The last thing Scarne wanted was a grand jury subpoena demanding the source of his information. Scullen picked up the other half of the cruller, took a bite and nodded.
“Whatcha got?”
“There was no anonymous phone call. Guy who passed the information on to me will never – and I mean, never – confirm it or reveal his source. But you can take it to the bank. Elizabeth Pearsall was killed by two pros hired by someone who wanted to hurt her father enough so that he wouldn’t have the heart to keep working on some story. Forget about looking for some run-of-the-mill pervert, or a panicky burglar. I can’t tell you what to do, but I’d be shaking the trees to find out what on Staten Island is worth murdering a high school kid over, and who might let the contract, if it’s local.”
“You got any leads on the pros?”
Scarne didn’t want to tell Scullen about the bakery, or mention the name Gadomski. That angle would be easy to run down. He wanted the cops looking over their old case files.
“Not much. Just that one of them is of Polish extraction, has pancreatic cancer and probably lived here 40 years ago. He may be dead by now, or is near death in any of 50 states. I suppose he could be abroad, too.”
“Jeez. You’ve got him cornered.”
Scullen pulled out a file. In it were the crime scene photos. Nothing shocked Scarne anymore, but it was obvious that Elizabeth Pearsall had died hard. Her face was a mask of terror. Scarne picked up a photo of the girl taken before the murder. He stared at it a long moment.
“Yeah, I know,” the cop said.
Scarne riffed through the other photos: open drawers, loot piled up neatly. A little too neatly.
“We figured they got scared and bolted,” Scullen said. “Son of a bitch.”
“Don’t second guess yourself, Scullen. It’s what I would have figured. But now we know what they wanted us to think.”
***
It was after 4 P.M. by the time Scarne finished reading the police reports. He and Scullen reached an agreement. Scarne would pursue the long-shot lead on the hit man, while the detective would concentrate his resources on Staten Island. They would keep in touch.
When Scarne got to his car, he called Dudley Mack.
“I told Scullen that you were on the side of the angels on this one. He got a kick out of that.”
“You know he’s a rummy, right? Been thrown out of several of my gin mills. They probably dropped the case on him when it looked like a dead end.”
“I think he still has some moves left.”
Scarne’s phone beeped.
“Deadly, I’ve got another call. It’s Harvey, the Register’s police reporter. I’ll get back to you.”
CHAPTER 13 – IT’S THE OVENS
There is an ongoing debate among Staten Islanders over which restaurant serves the best pizza in the borough – and thus in the city, there being no debate about that among locals. Denino’s in Port Richmond usually gets the nod (and actually does have New York magazine’s imprimatur as having the best pie in all of New York City!). Second place usually goes to Joe & Pat’s in Castleton Corners. But there are those – and Scarne was among them – who believe that there are no finer slices to be had in the New World than in Lee’s Tavern in Dongan Hills. It had something to do with the ovens, he’d been told many times. That didn’t matter to Scarne. He was just delighted that Harvey had suggested an early dinner at the tavern for their meeting. With only a half
Danish and half cruller in his stomach since breakfast, he was starving.
Lee’s is on Hancock Street and faces the Dongan Hills station of the Staten Island Rapid Transit system. The venerable SIRT, as it is known to all Islanders, is a 14-mile-long, 21-stop commuter rail line that runs from Tottenville, the southernmost town in New York State, to St. George. It is noted for its clean cars and on-time performance and wends its way through many communities established in the 17th and 18th centuries, including Prince’s Bay, Huguenot, Annadale, Eltingville, New Dorp and Stapleton.
Scarne was sitting in a booth near the tavern’s door, as far from the kitchen and its delicious smells as he could get, salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs. It had started to rain heavily and he was glad to have found a parking spot just outside the front door. A waitress brought over a pitcher of Budweiser. In the past, Scarne knew, ordering any other brew in Lee’s branded you as un-American. He wondered if that would change now that Bud was foreign-owned. In any event, the beer was ice cold and delicious. Drinking in a quiet, classy tavern during a rain storm was one of life’s great pleasures, and Scarne forgot his hunger. Lee’s was fairly empty, but he knew that in an hour the commuters would be stopping in for a drink before going home. Then the regular dinner crowd would build, augmented by the lawyers and politicians who had made the bar area a place to be seen and be seen.
He had just topped off his second glass when a large man in a loud sports jacket ran in the door and slapped a newspaper against his thigh to shake off rainwater. He looked like a police reporter from a Hollywood B movie and immediately spotted Scarne, who looked like a man who was expecting a police reporter. He walked over to the table and nodded when Scarne picked up the pitcher and tilted it towards an empty glass. He drained it appreciatively while still standing and then sat down. They shook hands, introduced themselves, and Scarne refilled the glass.
The waitress reappeared.
“How’s it hanging, Ev? Large pie, crispy, and another pitcher?”
“You got it, Flo.” He looked over at Scarne. “You up for splitting a cold antipasto to start, with a little garlic bread?”
“Sure,” Scarne said, hoping the greens in the antipasto would mitigate his recent artery-clogging diet.
The two men spent the next 20 minutes drinking beer and talking about the people they knew in common on Staten Island. Harvey was at least 15 years older than Scarne, but both were from generations that still viewed the borough as small-townish. And both realized that in a very few years such nostalgic conversations would be rare. Finally, Harvey wiped up some olive oil with a piece of Italian bread, took a swig of beer and belched loudly.
“Pardon moi,” he said. “Had to bring that one up for a vote. Now, you said on the phone you wanted to talk about the murder of Bob Pearsall’s daughter.”
There being no real reason to hold back from a police reporter who would soon get wind of everything he was doing, Scarne filled Harvey in.
“Shit,” Harvey said. “You’re sure about your source?”
“Absolutely.”
“Cops know?”
“Told them a few hours ago.”
“They want to know the source.”
“Absolutely.”
“And you stonewalled?”
“I lied. They know I lied. But there’s nothing they can do about it. Told Popp, too.”
“You’re trying to stir up a shit storm and see what washes up on the beach.”
“It’s been a productive use of my time in the past. Now, Popp said Pearsall wasn’t working on anything important enough to result in murder. That true?”
Harvey hesitated. Then their pizza came and he hesitated some more while they started eating. Finally he said, “As far as it goes.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Listen, I’m just an ex-flatfoot. I don’t pretend to be a journalist. Probably why this job appealed to me. I go around and check the precincts for burglaries, car crashes and D.U.I.’s. Occasionally someone gets popped, especially in the projects, or a ginzoni gets dumped in one of our vacant lots. Biggest story I had recently was when the D.A.’s office raided bookies all over the Island. Somehow they missed the ones working out of our pressroom. I call the stuff in, and the night staff churns out a bunch of 200-word stories than make it sound like we’re on top of everything. I get to see old friends on the force, people buy me a lot of lunch and dinners – thanks for this by the way – and I tack on another pension. Can’t have too many of those with all these idiots running around Washington.”
The pizza was as good as ever. Scarne signaled for another pitcher of beer. Harvey held up a hand.
“Could I talk you into a bottle of wine? They have a great Ruffino here. Practically at cost.”
Scarne ordered the bottle.
“Where was I? Oh, yeah. The job meant nothing to me, until I met Bobby Pearsall. He was a real newsman. Before I knew it, he had me looking for good stories. Like why there were so many burglaries in a certain area? Which gangs were getting stronger? How crime affects the poor and the like. I have to tell you, at first I resisted it. It was work. And that’s not what I signed on for. But he was a really nice guy and we hit it off. And pretty soon I got into it. Then he won the Pulitzer – I did some legwork on that one – and he started to get even more feisty. I was worried something might happen, but nothing like this. I can’t believe someone would do that.”
The waitress brought over the wine. She filled two glasses. Lee’s Tavern wasn’t the kind of place where one twirled the wine, sipped it and nodded approval. The waitress was two tables over taking an order by the time the two men picked up their glasses.
“I heard it might have something to do with the proposed NASCAR track.”
Harvey shook his head in dismissal.
“Can’t be. I mean there’s a lot of dough involved, but nobody thinks it’s gonna happen. Bob couldn’t be a target over that.” Harvey suddenly hesitated. “Unless….”
“Unless, what?”
“Well, it’s probably nothing, but one day I spotted two of Bob’s favorite reporters down at the County Clerk’s office going through real estate records related to the area where the track is supposed to go, out in Bloomfield. I asked them what was up but they said it was just routine stuff. You have to understand that the young kid reporters don’t really trust me, because I’m an ex-cop, and still too close to my ex-pals. I don’t really blame them. Besides, good reporters don’t like to blab about stories they are working on. And these kids were good. But I can play that game, too. So I asked one of my clerk friends what they were looking for. It seems they were also pulling all the recent land deals around the Stapleton Home Port. You know, the old Navy base.”
“Did you find out why?”
“I didn’t want to ask them, so I went to Bob. Asked him if there was something I should know. I mean, I cover the police and courts so I spend a lot of time in Borough Hall and the County Clerk. Sometimes I hear things. I told him I might be useful in whatever bee he had in his bonnet. He knew I walked a thin line. I wasn’t going to blow the whistle on everything I knew about the cops. Hell, I’d never get anything. But he knew I wouldn’t roll over for something really bad. Besides, if there was a big scandal and I was blindsided, my credibility would be shot to hell and that was bad for the paper.”
“What did Pearsall say?”
“That his gut told him the two land deals were connected, mainly because he was suspicious of anything Bimm was involved in.”
“Dr. Bimm? Fat guy. White suit. White Lexus SUV? Looks like his neck is blowing a bubble?”
“Yeah. Nathan Bimm. Big real estate investor. Plastic surgeon who made a mint with his clinics. Bob had a real hard-on for him. Said he was ruining Staten Island. You know him?”
“He almost ran me over in front of Borough Hall.”
“He wouldn’t need a car to hurt you if he ran into you. He’s a fuckin’ hippo, but not as good looking.”
So Bimm was invo
lved in buying land in both Bloomfield and Stapleton.
“How much money are we talking about?”
“Millions.”
“He has that kind of money?”
“He’s got plenty, but Bob assumed he was acting on behalf of other people. Some of the plots had his name on them, others were in the name of various corporations, trusts, partnerships and the like.”
“Any of them stand out?”
Harvey pointed to the last slice of pizza.
“You gonna eat that?”
Even though it was rightly his, Scarne shook his head.
“I don’t think Bob or his reporters got far enough to dig into the documents,” Harvey said as he put grated Romano cheese on the slice. “His daughter was killed and he left the paper. The kids did, too. They came from top journalism schools, lured by the Pulitzer. Bob was their mentor. When he left, Staten Island lost its appeal to them.”
“Did Bimm know they were looking into his deals?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”
“I intend to.”
“Need their phone numbers? I have them on my cell.”
“I got them from Human Resources.”
“Try Sandy Doyle first. She’s still around. New Jersey. Chris, the other one, is in New Zealand, I hear.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“Took a year off to see the world. Madeline got a card from him. He comes from money. Main Line Philadelphia.”
The pizza was gone. They sipped wine in silence for a moment. The bar began filling up. A few people stopped by their table to say hello to Harvey. Scarne shook hands with a City Councilman, a Criminal Court judge and several political aides. Introductions and conversations were perfunctory. The first cocktails of the day awaited.
“I hear Bimm is tight with the Borough President,” Scarne said when they were again alone.
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