by Henry Hack
“Oh, shit,” Rube Wilson said, “here she goes.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Detective Pearson claims she knows when bad things are happening,” Rube said. “She thinks she’s a voodoo lady or something.”
“I can feel it Rube, and I’m feeling it now,” Queenie said. “Somebody’s out there shooting up a whole bunch of people. You watch, that phone’s gonna ring soon.”
We all involuntarily looked at the phone on her desk, but it just sat there quietly.
“I don’t hear any ringing, voodoo lady,” Fritzi said.
“You just wait, you’ll see. I feel it and I know it.”
Unbelievably, the phone rang. She smiled as she dramatically picked up the receiver saying to us, “I told you so.”
She listened a few seconds then said, “It’s real quiet Ray, nothing happening, but as I just told these three unbelievers, I feel it in my bones. Sure, hold on.”
She handed the phone to me saying, “It’s the boss just checking in. He wants to talk to you.”
“Hi, Danny. I just wanted to let you know I’m leaving Mulvaney’s now and heading home. If anything happens later that you feel you need help with, don’t hesitate to call me, okay?”
“Okay. I just hope Lana’s feelings, if they’re correct, happen soon while she’s still catching.”
“Aw, don’t listen to Queenie, although she has been right a few times before.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry. I wouldn’t have put you in the duty chart if I hadn’t thought you were ready for anything that can come your way.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I really wouldn’t mind if the phone didn’t ring for me for a couple of more weeks anyway.”
At midnight Lana, Fritzi and Rube said goodnight and started out of the office door.
“Well, Queenie,” I said, “I guess your feelings were wrong tonight.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I still feel ‘em though. Maybe something’s happening in another boro, not here in Nassau.”
“Let’s go, Queenie,” Rube said. “You’re getting ridiculous with this crap. Maybe you’re feeling the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago eighty years ago.”
“You’ll see. Check the papers in the morning. Something real big is going down, I know it – believe you, me.”
I finished up the supplementary reports on a couple of old routine cases and decided to head for home. It was a quarter to one and I was locking up the boss’s office when the phone rang. It was very loud in the deserted office, and I hurried over and picked it up on the third ring. “Detective Boyland,” I answered.
“You catching tonight, Boyland?” a bored voice asked.
“Yeah, who’s this?”
“Keller, over in Central Detectives. I just received a notification from the desk officer in the Nine-Three, Lieutenant Briscoe. He just heard from a couple of his guys on patrol that they got a few dead ones at Mulvaney’s. I’m sure you know where that is.”
“Oh, shit. Did you say a few dead?”
“Yeah, some sort of stickup or gang war. They don’t know, but since there are dead people on the floor your presence is requested.”
“Who’s responding?”
“So far, just you. Who do you want me to notify?”
“The deputy medical examiner on call, Crime Scene, the ADA on call – that’ll be enough for now until I get there and have a look.”
“Okay, Boyland. I’ll make the notifications.”
“Thanks, I’m on my way.”
I grabbed my suit jacket and felt for my cell phone on my belt and thought of Queenie’s prediction. Well, this sure as shit sounded like a big one all right, a real big one. Why me? On my first goddamned midnight. And who were the dead ones? Were any of our guys still there? A million things raced through my mind as I went down the stairs into the parking lot. I trotted to the response car, took a deep breath, started up and drove north on Mineola Boulevard.
Seven minutes later I pulled to the curb behind an empty marked patrol car, its flashing red lights reflecting eerily in silence off the front windows. I approached the front door of Mulvaney’s and was greeted by a uniformed cop who said, “Officer Mike Peters, sir.”
“Danny Boyland from Homicide, Mike. What’ve we got, and why is it so dark in there?”
“My partner’s inside trying to get some lights on. We think the shooting may have knocked them out. A lot of bullets were sprayed around.”
“How many shot?” I asked, wondering if I should call the boss right now.
“What we could tell with only our flashlights, it looks like nine or ten.”
“Holy shit! Let me have your flashlight and stay right here by the door. Begin a log of persons coming to the scene.”
“Sure, I’m not too keen on going back in there right now. I…er…you know…tossed my cookies, I’m ashamed to admit.”
“Don’t worry about it. What’s your partner’s name?”
“Jimmy Murrow. I see his flashlight waving around in there.”
I stepped inside and moved the beam of the flashlight around the bar area. I gasped in horror at what I saw. Three bodies were slumped over the bar, their drinks spilled. Two were black females and one was a white-haired male with a huge red stain on the back of his white shirt. I involuntarily stepped back and tripped on a body. I grabbed onto the back of a chair to steady myself and I called out to Officer Murrow. “Hey, Murrow, where are you?”
“In the back room, trying to find the circuit breakers.”
“I’m Danny Boyland, from Homicide. Keep looking, we need those lights.”
I played the flashlight around and trembled with the vision of this ghastly scene. I said out loud, “Motherfucker, what the hell do I do now”
A voice from the bar said, “Why don’t you call the Lieutenant for help, Danny Boy?” With that, the lights suddenly came on and all the corpses sprang to life shouting, “Surprise! April fool, even if it’s September! Gotcha!”
I was at a total loss for words and in shock at what was going on. Then my eyes focused on the white-haired guy who was laughing hysterically and walking towards me. Recognition dawned – it was Willy Edwards! And the two black females were Queenie and Tara! The bodies getting up from the floor were laughing crazily and pounding each other on their backs. Gallagher! Pavlauskas! Denny Chin! Fritzi!
The door to the back room opened and Officer Murrow came out followed by five or six more members of our squad. Full realization then hit me. It was a joke! One big fucking joke at the expense of the new homicide dick – me!
Joe Pavlauskas sputtering, spitting, laughing uncontrollably handed me a tumbler of whiskey as Gallagher said, “Drink up Danny. It’s Jameson’s, and you look like you need it.”
I gulped it down in one swallow then threw the glass across the room and said, “You drunken, sadistic motherfuckers!”
This caused even more howls of laughter from the group, causing Joe to pull a filthy handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the tears from his eyes. Manny Perez put his arm around my shoulder and said, “Looks like we got you pretty good, hey Danny?”
The Irish whiskey had worked its way quickly through my bloodstream and I nodded my head in agreement and said, “You sure did you bastards, you sure did.”
I looked around the room and finally smiled, then laughed, along with them. “How long did you degenerates plan this? From the day I walked into the squad?”
“Naw,” Gallagher said, “it was an impromptu thing. You were so uptight and nervous about your first night on call that we figured we’d loosen you up a little.”
“Loosen me up, you big fuck? You almost gave me a heart attack!”
The laughter resumed again and I figured I’d better just shut up and stop feeding their funny bones. Lana Pearson waved her fingers in my face, laughing, and said, “Booga, booga, the big one be comin’ for sure, Danny. I tol’ you so.”
I collapsed into a chair
and Gallagher handed me another Jameson’s. “I’d better not Bernie, I’m still on call you know.”
“Shit, I caught a lot of murders when I was drunker than I am now. Drink up! No problem!”
I took a small sip of the whiskey and wondered how the hell Bernie could ever be drunker than he was right now as he staggered away back towards the bar. I said, “You all got me real good I must admit, but I know you wouldn’t have done this if you really didn’t like me, so here’s to you all.”
I drank the rest of my Jameson’s, reached into my wallet, threw a few twenties on the bar and announced, “The next round’s on me, but then I’m headed home to bed.”
“Party pooper,” Tara said.
“But Danny, the party’s just starting,” Denny Chin said.
“He’s right about that,” Sergeant Perski said, “but we’d better continue without our guy on call. The boss’d fry our balls if at least one of us wasn’t sober enough to handle a case, so let’s say our goodnights to Detective Daniel P. Boyland, now at last, a bona fide member of Nassau Homicide.”
They all raised their glasses in a toast to me and drank heartily. I wondered how the hell they consumed so much and prayed that if I got a real case later this night it would be an easy one requiring no assistance. Perski must have read my mind as he accompanied me to the door. He whispered, “If you do get a big one and need help, call me or Finn.”
“Thanks, Sarge.”
“Good. Now when the fuck are you ever goin’ to stop calling me Sarge?”
“Right now, Lenny. Good night.”
The rest of the night thankfully passed without incident, although I couldn’t sleep much waiting for the phone to ring, but it never did. I smiled to myself, happy to have landed in this wacky squad and to have been fully accepted into it. I couldn’t wait to get back to work.
“That was a hell of a story,” Spider said. “Man, I’m glad you guys didn’t do something like that to me when I first got here.”
“The times and personnel were different back then. It was before the Niki Wells affair. Before three-quarters of the squad got transferred out because of me.”
“Oh,” Spider said and we both lapsed into our own silent thoughts.
A few minutes later as I was preparing a fresh pot of coffee, Manny Perez shouted, “Line One, Danny. Sounds like you got one.”
I picked up the phone and listened to a detective from my old squad, the Nine-Eight, explain that a middle-aged woman had apparently been shot to death in her second-floor apartment in Farmingdale. He told me all the usual services – Crime Scene, Medical Examiner, District Attorney – had been notified and were responding. I felt the adrenaline beginning its surge in my bloodstream. Finally, a case! I grabbed the keys to the response car and called out to my partner, “Hey, Spider! Saddle up! We got one!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I settled into a small apartment in the distant suburbs of Los Angeles and began working part-time in an electronics store that did a good part of its business in computer sales and repairs. I had deliberately chosen a neighborhood that was not too far from a branch of Los Angeles County Community College, which had a two-year offering in Computer Science, and I enrolled for twelve credits.
Between work and school I didn’t have much of a social life – an occasional date with a classmate – but I was not interested in developing a long term romantic relationship. Most of my spare time was spent on my PC searching for my mother. The search was more of a database challenge for me, a puzzle to be solved, and much more interesting than spider solitaire or the current hot video games.
I had decided that to have a mathematically probable chance to locate her, I would have to somehow reduce the number of names in the database files to a manageable level. To do so I would have to make some logical assumptions, and hope that one false assumption wouldn’t completely ruin my efforts.
Mommy was of Italian heritage. She looked Italian – dark-brown hair, brown eyes, slightly olive complexion – and very pretty as I remembered from my time with her and confirmed by the photo I had gotten from her job. My first assumption, and this was the big one, was that she had kept her same date of birth, and the next assumption I made was that she changed her name, but chose another Italian one to mirror the reality of her appearance. And I assumed she got a new driver’s license using that new name and her original date of birth. I was now ready to begin
To see what I was up against I chose California, the state where I lived and where Mommy may have fled to, and brought up the State Motor Vehicle Data Base. There were 23 million licensed drivers out of a total population of 38 million, which was about twelve percent of the country’s population. I was thus able to reduce my 4,200 nation-wide possibles to about 250 women and, since only 62 percent were licensed drivers, I was able to reduce that figure again to about 155 women born on November 17, 1967 in California and possessing a driver’s license.
I entered November 17, 1967 in the “search by” box and refined it further by choosing “female.” There were 148 licenses for females born on November 17, 1967, very close to my estimate. Then my elation at my success so far began to be eroded by doubts and variables I had not accounted for. Suppose she dyed her hair blonde? Suppose she had cosmetic surgery? Suppose she had not chosen an Italian surname? Suppose she had altered her date of birth by even one day? Suppose…?
I minimized the database and flopped on the couch disheartened and with a headache coming on. I thought I figured out what my next step should be, but it would have to wait awhile. I needed to eat, to sleep, to study and to go to work. The search for Mommy would have to wait a week or so.
When I was able to devote a few uninterrupted hours to my search I resumed the task. I once again accessed the DMV database and brought up the first license in the alphabetized list of women born on November 17, 1967. I maximized the license on the screen and stared at the photo. Barbara Aaron had long blonde hair and her listed height of 5’-8” was at least three inches taller than Mommy, and her weight was at least thirty pounds more. Not even a remote possibility.
At the rate of about one license per three minutes – I wanted to take my time and make notes – I had checked forty licenses in two hours. Three times I had seen the first name of Angela, and three times my heart had jumped. But none of the three were close. In fact only nine women made it onto my pad of paper as a “possible.” They all had Italian surnames, resembled Mommy somewhat, and had a listed height plus or minus one inch of Mommy’s five foot, five inches. I discounted weight as a reliable indicator for obvious reasons. I also discounted eye color although all three possibles had brown eyes. And I discounted hair color although two were listed as brown and one as auburn.
Just about the time my first semester ended I had completed my search of the California DMV database and ended up with a list which I put in two columns – strong possibilities and weak possibilities. There were thirty-two strong ones – Italian surname, good physical resemblance, brown hair, brown eyes, and height plus or minus an inch. And there were fifty-three weaker possibilities where one or two of the parameters were different. Now what was the real probability that Mommy was in that group of thirty-two? There was only one way to find out – search them out one by one and confront them. Of the thirty-two, nineteen lived in or within a hundred mile radius of Los Angeles, so I would begin here and work my way outward, and I would begin next Monday.
Well before Monday arrived my confidence in this undertaking began to seriously dissipate beginning with the biggest assumption of all – that Mommy had fled to California. What about the other forty-nine states? Yes, she could be anywhere, but I was here and I had to start somewhere. What if I was able to find and confront all the strong and weak possibles and still not find her? Do I move to Florida and start over? But I had to cross that bridge when I came to it, didn’t I?
Monday morning found me sitting in my ten-year old Sentra about a hundred feet from the suburban home of Gloria Arcuri in Santa Mon
ica. I was waiting for her to leave her house so I could get a good look at her. I had binoculars under my seat so I could get a real close-up of her face. If I was in doubt, I would confront her.
After two hours passed and she had not appeared, I began to get edgy. As I was debating what to do, I was startled by a firm knock on my car window. I looked up to see the stern face of a uniformed police officer. I almost peed in my pants – a basic bodily function that I then realized I had not come prepared to deal with. The cop motioned for me to roll down my window. I turned the ignition key to on and complied, my mind racing, my eyes checking around the car’s interior.
“May I see your license and registration certificate, please?” the officer said.
“Sure,” I said. “Is something wrong?”
He didn’t answer, but just waited as I fished the documents from my wallet. He looked at what I had given him then walked around the car checking my plates and windshield stickers. I knew everything was in order. He returned to my window and said, “Mind if I ask you, Frank, what you are doing here?”
Now I had taken a few criminal justice courses and, if I remembered correctly, I didn’t have to answer him. I did not even have to say a word. I decided not to take that course of action. While he was walking around the car I had concocted what I hoped was a plausible story, so I said, “I had a big fight with my girlfriend a couple of hours ago and I was just sitting here thinking things out.”
“You’re a long way from home – fifteen miles.”
“Yes, and I’m really not sure where I am. I drove around aimlessly and ended up parking here to think things over.”
“Been here long?”
“I think so, probably an hour.”
“More like two. Sit tight while I check this out.”
The cop walked back to his cruiser and got inside. I saw him pick up his radio mike and speak into it. About three minutes later he returned and handed me back my documents. He said, “You sitting here so long made a couple of people nervous. You can understand that, right?”