by Henry Hack
“Reservations, my ass. On your crummy beat?”
“In case you don’t know, I have a variety of, dare I say, first class ethnic restaurants on my beat that opened up after they built all those apartments at the old racetrack.”
“You mean Belmont Park City?”
“Yeah, and those people have to eat somewhere. But now, for lunch, the best place is the old reliable Viceroy Diner up on Hempstead Avenue.”
“How far away are we?”
“About ten minutes.”
Pop reached for the mike and raised Nick on the radio.
“Detective Faliani here.”
Harry groaned. Pop looked at him with raised eyebrows and Harry raised his hands in mock surrender.
“Nick, meet me and Harry at the Viceroy Diner in about ten minutes, copy?”
“Right. Did you say Harry?”
“Ten-four. You, me and Officer Cassidy are going to have a nice lunch and exchange information. Then Harry’s going to go to the scene with us for a final once over before we release it. Is that all right with you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Nick said. “See you in ten.”
Chapter Four
The Viceroy Diner occupied the northeast corner of Hempstead Avenue and Covert Avenue. In Harry’s opinion, a successful diner had to have two things going for it – a terrific breakfast line-up available twenty-four hours a day, and a great hamburger selection with crispy French fries. The Viceroy had both, and to make the situation even better, the “price was right” for Harry. The owner, Teddy Stavros, liked cops in general, and Harry in particular. A little immigration problem with Teddy’s brother, Dmitri, that Harry miraculously made disappear granted him free meals forever.
Eating for free, “on the arm” in police lingo, was strictly forbidden by the Department’s rules and regulations. In its eyes, if you took a free cup of coffee, that was corruption, pure and simple, and those officers who did that would certainly be dealing drugs in no time. That statement, and others equally ridiculous, was uttered by the current two-star chief who headed up the Internal Affairs Division. Periodically at roll call, all officers were subject to the fifteen minute training tape on corruption, gratuities, emoluments, free meals and free services as interpreted by Assistant Chief William T. Kelly. His hard blue eyes and perpetual scowl belied the classic stereotype of the friendly, smiling Irish cop, and his reputation as a “scalp taker” was well-founded.
They pulled into the diner’s rear parking lot and spotted Nick’s vehicle already there, parked next to a huge snow bank. They walked around the neatly shoveled path to the front door and found him waiting in the foyer. “Hi Pop, Hi Harry,” he said. He offered his hand to Harry, and Harry shook it as if he meant it. “I asked for a booth in the far corner, so we can talk a little without the world hearing us. It’ll be a few minutes.”
“That’s fine,” Pop said.
“Hey, Nick,” Harry said.
“Yeah?”
“I just want to say I’m sorry for jumping down your throat yesterday. I had a lousy Christmas and my comments were more directed at myself than at you. Hope there’s no hard feelings.”
Nick smiled, caught off guard by Harry’s apology. He had not expected this at all, and had not been looking forward to this lunch meeting.
“That’s okay, Harry. We all get out of sorts once in awhile. No hard feelings.”
Mary Ann, the day hostess, appeared and smiled, “Hi Harry, hi guys. You know that booth in the back is in a non-smoking area?”
Neither Pop nor Nick smoked, so Harry said, “That’s all right, I can last through lunch without one.”
Pop caught Harry’s eye as they followed Mary Ann to the booth and winked at him in thanks for his words to Nick. With the hostility reduced maybe they could get some police work done and move this case along. They all ordered diet cokes with lemon and began to look at the menu.
“What’s good, Harry?” Nick asked.
“Just about everything. The omelets and fries are good and the bacon cheeseburger is outstanding. Get it with the fries and coleslaw. And the luncheon specials can’t be beat. Monday is Hungarian goulash – a huge portion plus soup, bread, coffee and dessert for $8.95. How can you beat that?”
“When was the last time you paid $8.95 for lunch?” Pop asked.
“Pop, you demean my integrity. I always watch the training tape with the smiling chief of Internal Affairs reminding me of the evils of free food.”
When their drinks arrived, Pop said, “Let’s get down to business.”
“Can we order some food first, Detective Hunter?” Harry asked. “Or do we have to solve this caper while slowly starving to death?”
“Okay, okay, I’m just anxious to move.”
Pop ordered the goulash, Harry the bacon cheeseburger deluxe and Nick the mushroom omelet with salad, dressing on the side, no fries.
“Watching your gorgeous figure, Nick?” Harry asked.
“Yeah, I put on a few pounds and the holidays aren’t over yet. Gotta go easy.”
“Tell us what you found,” Pop said to Nick.
“The Nest is still closed. I checked with the State Liquor Authority and the place is incorporated as The Bird’s Nest Lounge with an owner named Louis Malament. I knocked on a few doors of the neighboring businesses and all I could get was that the owner goes somewhere to Florida every year for the winter. I called Malament’s local number in Great Neck and left a message for him to call me. Maybe someone lives there who listens to the messages or maybe he dials up his machine from Florida. I’ll let him know the gory details whenever I make contact with him.”
“How this Malament can leave a business in the hands of that scumbag Richie Winston all winter is beyond me,” Harry said. “He’s got to be tapping the till heavy.”
“Maybe Malament doesn’t care as long as some money comes in,” Nick said. “The place doesn’t look like a money maker to me anyway.”
“You’re right about that. It caters to the shot and a beer crew and they’re mostly Richie’s gambling and petty thief buddies from Queens.”
“What about the witness you told me about on the phone before?” Pop asked.
“I’m getting to that. I knocked on a lot of doors and didn’t get anything, but I hit pay dirt with an old man named Robert Cheever. Cheever lives in a walk-up above the used furniture store on the south side of Park Street. He gets insomnia a lot, so he sits in an easy chair looking out the window trying to fall asleep. He nodded out on Christmas morning around four when he heard a car door slam. He looked out and saw a guy get out and creep toward 18th Street.”
“Can Cheever see the Nest from that window?” Pop asked.
“No, I checked it myself from the old guy’s chair. But he can see the alley that leads to the parking lot where Richie was found.”
“Go on.”
“He then saw this guy run back to the car motioning with his arms and two more guys came out and the three of them ran across the street and into the alley. Cheever was wide-awake and curious now. He thought of calling the police as the minutes went by. As he was about to reach for his phone, the three guys came running back. They jumped in the car and moved out in a big hurry. He heard the tires squeal.”
“Which way did they go?”
“Toward Hempstead Avenue. Anybody’s guess after that.”
“Description? The guys? The car?”
“Not much help. He’s old and his eyes are not good and the angle and darkness didn’t help. He doesn’t drive so he doesn’t know one car from the other. The best I could get was three males, which he assumed from the way they were dressed, and an older car, four doors, maybe green, maybe blue, maybe black.”
They finished their coffee and Pop and Nick complimented Harry on his choice of restaurant. As they awaited the check, Harry said, “Where do you go from here, Pop?”
“Let me ask you two what you would do?”
Nick looked at Harry and Harry said, “You’re the detective, Nick, y
ou go first and I’ll agree with you.”
Nick said, “First is a complete and thorough re-canvass of the neighborhood. Second, try to find more witnesses, especially the guys that were in the bar. Of course, all the time we’re out there we’re passing the composite photo around. And we get the press relations office to get the composite and the story out there on TV, radio and the papers. We gotta check with Crime Scene and the Lab on the physical evidence, the blood type, the footprints, any fingerprints and I have to get inside the bar to have it searched for any evidence that might be there.”
Harry was grudgingly impressed with Nick’s plan of action. Maybe he had something on the ball after all.
“What do you think, Hoppy?” Pop asked.
“Sounds like a pretty good plan to me. You guys sure have your work cut out for you. That’s why I never wanted to be a dick, just too much grunt work.”
“Can you add anything? Anything at all that can help us out?”
“Yeah, on the seven guys in the bar? I’m pretty sure most of them are not locals from the neighborhood, as I said before. The only way to get them is to wait and see if they show up tonight or the next night. Let’s hope they didn’t see the story in the papers and get scared off.”
“Good thinking,” Pop said. “I’ll get a couple of stakeout teams to sit on the place for a few nights.”
Pop grabbed the check over Harry’s protests saying, “I’m the senior man here and I always pay for my food. This check is mine.”
“Sure, and I bet you won’t put an expense chit into the Homicide Squad for ‘lunch for the investigator and two confidential informants.’”
“I always play by the rules, and if the rules allow expenses…”
It was well after two when they left the Viceroy and headed back west toward the Nest. Harry gave Pop and Nick a description of the events of Christmas Eve that now seemed so long ago, but was, in reality, only thirty-nine hours in the past. The shards of glass were still in the dirty snow outside the Nest. Richie’s car had been towed into the Lab for an evidence search, and the drops of blood around where the car had been parked were also gone, scooped up into test tubes for typing and DNA analysis. Pop seemed satisfied with what he had seen and said, “Nick, see if you can bring Cheever into the stationhouse now. Harry and I will meet you there. I’ll take Harry’s statement, and then me and you will work on Cheever’s memory. When we take him back we’ll re-canvass and have the stakeout teams join us out here at darkness.”
●
Back in the detective squad, Harry wrote out a statement of the events on his post on Christmas Eve. He referred to his memo book version for consistency and amplified the cryptic entries only marginally. The precinct clerk typed the statement into the computer for him and printed three hard copies. Harry signed all three and gave two to Pop for the case file and kept the third for himself. He then asked Pop if he needed him anymore.
“No, you can go home. Nick came in with Cheever while you wrote your statement. I’m going to spend some time with them now, then hit the bricks on your beat according to plan.”
“Good hunting, Hunter.”
“I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the next few days. Me and Nick will be all over your beat looking in various places. And, Hoppy?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for the way you handled Nick at lunch. I’m proud of you.”
Harry smiled. “Hey maybe the little grease ball does have some investigative abilities after all.”
He went downstairs to the desk to sign off duty. He wanted to go home. He needed a drink and time to sort out this day’s events. He shook the last cigarette out of the pack and lit up. A cigarette stop would be necessary on the way home, but he wasn’t hungry. He was still full from the big lunch at the Viceroy. What he wanted was a big glass of scotch and time alone with his thoughts.
●
Harry arrived back in his apartment at six after stopping at the 7-Eleven for two packs of smokes and a copy of Newsday. He poured himself a glass of scotch then plopped in a few ice cubes and opened the paper. The case was worthy of only one paragraph and that was on page fourteen –
Richard Winston, a bartender at the Bird’s Nest Lounge in Elmont, was found brutally stabbed in his car early Christmas morning. Detectives said the sector patrol car found Winston in the parking lot behind the bar and rushed him to the Nassau County Medical Center in East Meadow where he remains in critical, but stable, condition. Police are looking for three young males in connection with the attack and anyone with information is asked to call….”
He lounged back on the sofa, lit a cigarette and reflected on his situation. It didn’t seem too bad, so far. Richie was still alive, but that fact did not mitigate the enormity of his betrayal to any great degree. It did, however, reduce his potential criminal liability from a homicide charge to some misdemeanors associated with the non-performance of sworn duties. The discovery of the witness Cheever put the case squarely on the track of the kids who did the deed. And even if the investigation turned up the guys in the bar, they would confirm the fact of the kid getting thrown out the door, thus adding to the revenge motive that was developing. Yeah, he was pretty much off the hook.
His initial upbeat mood gradually began to sink with each successive scotch he consumed. He could not drown out the nagging little voice inside his head reminding him of the betrayal he had committed. Maybe you’ll get away with this, my friend. You may not go to jail, you may not lose your job in disgrace, but you’re going to have to live with me forever. And I will never let you forget what you did until the day you die – never.
“Shut up. Leave me alone,” Harry said aloud.
Sure, I’ll leave you alone – when you’re dead. Why don’t you get your gun and end it right now? Suck on that barrel, you coward.
My God, how had it ever come to this? What in hell had he become?
●
The little voice nagged at Harry until the early morning hours. He had not fallen asleep until well past four, and arose late Tuesday morning with only a slight headache from the previous evening’s scotch. After showering and shaving, he headed out to the local diner for a late breakfast. The sky was cobalt blue as he stepped out onto the street. Although the temperature hovered at 19̊, the wind was calm and the two-block walk cleared his head of the remaining hangover.
When he returned to his apartment he again went over his notes and memo book entries, and mentally prepared for his return to his beat the next morning. He was satisfied he had covered his tracks as best he could, but the nagging vision of Richie Winston sprawled in his car, dying in agony, would not leave his thoughts. He turned on the television and stretched out on the sofa. He watched CNN for awhile and then read the newspaper he had picked up at the diner. His eyes grew heavy and he nodded off.
He awoke feeling refreshed and realized he had slept for over five hours. He splashed some cold water on his face, put on his jacket and headed out to Tony’s Pizza Palace across the street where he had dinner. He lit up a cigarette as he left Tony’s and walked a couple of blocks before returning to his apartment. He felt totally relaxed and ready to face the world tomorrow and to catch whatever it threw his way.
When he returned to his apartment he switched on the living room lights, hung up his coat and walked into the bedroom. Before he was able to switch on the bedroom light, he saw the persistent red flash of the answering machine, and his heart momentarily stopped beating. His few hours of relief were over. He hit the button and the machine coldly announced, “You have one new message, December 27, 7:33 p.m.” Harry checked the bedroom clock. The red digits read “7:48.” The call had come in only fifteen minutes ago. Pop’s voice suddenly came on.
“Officer Cassidy. This is Detective Hunter from the Homicide Squad. I would like to speak with you some more concerning the Winston case. A little problem has come up. I cannot be reached tonight, so I’ll meet you at the callbox where you sign on duty, promptly at seven-thi
rty. Good-bye.”
Harry replayed the message from Pop again and again with increasing dread each time. A message was buried in the message all right, but he would have to sweat out a sleepless night before he found out what it was. And it couldn’t be good. Had Richie died? Had they found the guy who saw Harry come back to the Nest?
Obviously, Pop had not wanted to tell him about the little problem on the phone, and, more obviously, the formal “Officer/Detective” crap was presented for someone’s ears other than his own. Internal Affairs? The District Attorney’s office? And, most obviously, Pop certainly did not want Harry to call him back from this phone to his home, which was perfectly clear from the “I cannot be reached tonight” comment.
Harry’s stomach tossed and churned and he ran to the bathroom. When the diarrhea ran its course he splashed cold water on his face, toweled off, went into the kitchen and grabbed the bottle of scotch. Only a couple of inches remained. Had he drunk that much over the last few days? Fortunately, he had another full bottle in the closet, but the way his life had gone in the last few days that one, too, was probably destined for a short existence.
●
Harry pulled his Dodge into a parking spot behind a row of stores diagonally across from the callbox that was the designated relieving point for his patrol post. As he walked over to the box, he noticed Pop Hunter was already there, parked in his unmarked sedan, exhaust smoke curling out of the tail pipe. Pop motioned him to sit down, but Harry pointed to the callbox and Pop realized Harry had to first sign on duty.
Harry picked up the phone and a chill went down his spine as he remembered the last time he had this instrument in his hand, debating whether to summon help for a dying Richie Winston. Was it only three days ago, a matter of seventy-five hours? A voice snapped him to attention. “Sergeant Adamo here, Nine- Five Precinct.”
“Cassidy here, Sarge, signing on duty.”
“Hi, Harry. Listen up. Detective Hunter from Homicide called a little while ago. Said he needs to talk to you about the Winston case. He’ll meet you there.”