Neptune Avenue

by Gabriel Cohen

  She shook her head, but he thought he noticed a slight hesitation. He could have been wrong, but he had spent a long career honing his interview skills—“Do you know why Daniel was in Coney Island that night?” Though the two neighborhoods were right next to each other, he knew that residents of Brighton Beach tended to stay close to home, among others who spoke their language.

  Eugenia shook her head.

  “The shooting happened late—did he say anything about where he was going?”

  She shrugged. “He sayed he must have meeting with business client.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  She shook her head.

  “He stayed out late?”

  She nodded. “This is not unusual. You know: men, drinking …”

  He thought for a moment. “Was there anybody at work he was having problems with?” In the hospital, Daniel had mentioned his import-export business. As it turned out, the man had not imported knickknacks at all, but something quite different: fish. The business had sounded mundane until Daniel explained that he wasn’t talking fish sticks; he dealt mostly in sushi-grade product. He boasted that his company was becoming involved in the new global markets. Black cod caught off the U.S. West Coast might end up in Tokyo, he’d said. Pollack served as fish-and-chips might come from the Bering Sea. He said a single high-quality bluefin tuna could weigh six hundred pounds and cost tens of thousands of dollars, making it the most valuable fish in the world.

  Now Jack thought about all that money. And he thought about the crude, macho world where the fish were sold: the Fulton Street market, next to Manhattan’s South Street Seaport. The place had long been notorious for Mafia involvement. A D.A. task force had supposedly driven the mob away, but he wondered how complete the eradication had been. …

  He leaned toward Eugenia. “Was Daniel having any trouble with competitors?”

  Her face remained opaque. “Dany does not tell to me his business.”

  He sighed. “We’re trying to help you, Mrs. Lelo. It would be great if you could help us too. Any little thing might be useful—a phone call or letter that might have upset your husband, somebody he might have mentioned …”

  She bowed her head; it took Jack a moment to realize that she was crying. All of a sudden she didn’t look so tough. “What you want from me? My husband is dead.” She curled up, sobbing.

  Jack considered putting an arm around her, but didn’t think she would accept any comfort from him. After a moment, he stood up. “I’m going to go now. I’m very sorry about your loss.” He pulled out his wallet and handed her his card. “If you think of anything that might be useful, please call me. At any time.” He started to leave but turned back to the young widow. “I want you to know that I’ll do everything in my power to catch whoever did this to your husband. That’s a promise.”

  OUT ON THE STREET, he called Linda Vargas.

  “The wife said that just before the murder, Lelo was having a meeting or drinks with some business client. Did you find the guy?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Witnesses saw them having what looked like a very friendly drink in a sports bar in Coney Island, and then Lelo left, alone. The client stayed in the bar for a couple of hours after he left. He said they had just met for the first time that evening.”

  Jack frowned. “Okay, thanks.”

  As he walked back to his car, he wasn’t thinking about this apparently innocuous client; he was musing about his interview with Daniel’s wife. There had definitely been a little flicker of oddness about the exchange. Something the woman was holding back … He would definitely have to pay her another visit.

  He flushed, despite himself.

  The thought of seeing her again was not displeasing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “IF YOU DON’T MIND, I’ll do the talking here,” he told Kyle Driscoll.

  The young detective shrugged as if he didn’t care much one way or another, but Jack wasn’t fooled. This was probably the worst part of the job, and even the most gung-ho cop wouldn’t wish to take the lead.

  He straightened his tie, then reached out and rang the doorbell.

  Kyle took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow. The day had warmed up again, but it wasn’t just the heat that was causing him to perspire.

  The block was a bit seedy, with scraps of trash blowing along the sidewalk and random crap—piles of trash bags, discarded furniture, broken children’s toys—littering some of the little concrete front yards, but this old brownstone was immaculate, with a well-tended little garden and a well-swept stoop.

  Jack stood there with his hands folded respectfully in front of him, waiting. He nodded to his partner. “You did good with the I.D.”

  Kyle’s expression barely changed, but Jack could tell that he was pleased. The M.E. had fingerprinted the homicide victim from the day before, but there’d been no match in the system, which indicated that she must have been new to her harsh lifestyle. But the young detective had kept showing the photo around this morning, and he’d found a patrol officer who recognized the victim from their high school days.

  The door opened a few inches and a middle-aged black woman peered out. She had a fleshy, placid face, sprinkled with freckles. Carefully permed hair. “May I help you?”

  As planned, Jack was the one who answered. “Mrs. Walters?”

  The woman nodded. “Yes?”

  Jack held up his badge. “We’re with the NYPD. Would you mind if we speak with you for a minute?”

  The woman’s brow furrowed. “What is this regarding?”

  Jack kept his voice steady and calm. “I think it might be best if we discuss it inside.”

  The door swung open. The woman was on the heavy side; she wore a pink pantsuit and looked as if she might have been on her way to church.

  The front hall was dark, with polished wainscoting and a big picture of Jesus hanging over an antique side table. Mrs. Walters led the detectives into a front room, an old-fashioned parlor with crocheted antimacassars, a stack of magazines fanned perfectly across a spotless glass coffee table, and lots more religious imagery. The place had a faintly bitter, lemony scent: furniture polish. The woman gestured that the detectives should sit on a wine-colored couch, and then she perched on the edge of an uncomfortable-looking high-backed armchair. She touched a hand to her face. “Is this about Celia?”

  Jack nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I’m afraid it is.”

  Mrs. Walters’s face tightened, and he sensed that this was hardly the first time she had heard bad news about her daughter.

  “Is anyone else home?” he asked. “Your husband or another relative?” The woman was going to need some support.

  “Please—just tell me what this is about.”

  Jack sighed. “I’m afraid we might have some difficult news.” He reached into his pocket for a Polaroid of the dead girl. The C.S.U. photographer had taken the photo after she’d been laid out on the floor, and he’d done his best to get the least gruesome shot.

  “We received a report about a young woman who was found yesterday morning. She was deceased. I’m very sorry, but I’d like to show you a photo and ask if it might be your daughter.”

  A small tremor ran through Mrs. Walters, but she managed to nod. She stood slowly and reached out for the Polaroid.

  Jack braced himself. He had seen all sorts of reactions from next of kin. Tears, of course, and shock, denial, anger, even bitter laughter …

  Mrs. Walters stood there for a moment staring down at the picture. A little puff of a sob escaped her mouth, then her eyes rolled up in her head and she dropped like a log, crashing right through the center of the glass coffee table.

  “Jesus!” Jack said, and turned to his partner. “Call for a bus!”

  While he checked to make sure that she was still breathing (yes) and for any injuries from the glass (nothing serious), Kyle called for the ambulance, then rushed off and returned with a damp dish towel. They helped Mrs. Walters onto the couch, where she lay, moaning feeb
ly, her whole body trembling spasmodically.

  While they waited for the ambulance to arrive, Jack looked at a framed photo on a side table. It showed a little girl, maybe eight, wearing a high-collared dress, her hair in pigtails, her face sweet and shining. Despite the obvious differences in age and circumstances, he could see the clear resemblance to the woman in the Polaroid.

  Whoever had killed Celia Walters had not just killed a crack-addicted hooker—he had robbed this woman of her little girl.

  AFTER, JACK AND HIS new partner stopped off at a local deli for some coffee, and then they sat out in the air-conditioned car to drink it.

  “Well, that went well,” Jack said.

  Kyle had just taken the first sip of his coffee; he suddenly sprayed it toward the windshield. He held a hand to his mouth, trying to block his laughter, without success.

  Under other circumstances, Jack might have laughed too—the job was grim, and sometimes a little black comedy provided the only relief—but he couldn’t help picturing the photo of the little girl.

  “I’m sorry,” Kyle finally said. He wiped his eyes. “I didn’t mean any disrespect to those people.”

  Jack shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Kyle loosened his necktie. He glanced out the window, then turned to Jack. “Hey, listen, I just want to say … about the other day … I hope you didn’t think I was saying that you were some kind of racist or something.”

  Jack waved a hand. “No problem. Let’s just catch the creep who did this.” He was peeling the little plastic tab off his own coffee lid when his cell phone trilled. He fished it out of the cup holder and glanced at the little screen. Anselmo Alvarez, head of the Crime Scene Unit.

  “What’s up?” Jack said.

  “I’ve been going over some interesting results on your Crown Heights strangulation.”

  “Like what?”

  “We found some animal fur.”

  Jack didn’t bother asking how the C.S.U. man knew that it was animal in origin. Animal hairs were usually finer than human hairs. Not only that: under a microscope, the fur of each species looked markedly different. (Cat hair, for example, had distinctive overlapping scales.) “What was it?” he said. “Cat? Dog?”

  “Guess again. You’re gonna love this.”

  The morning had left Jack with less patience than usual. “I don’t know, for chrissakes. Lion? Muskrat? Give me a break here.”

  Alvarez chuckled. “You were close with that last guess. I had to show the samples to a guy in the Manhattan lab. We’re talking beaver.”

  Jack sighed. “Are you yanking my chain?”

  “No joke. Really. Listen, I don’t suppose there are any big ponds in Crown Heights, no beaver dams. …” Alvarez chuckled again.

  Jack squinted; bright sunlight flashed into his eyes off the hood of a passing car. “Can you think of any reason we’d be seeing something like that here?”

  “Well,” Alvarez said. “Considering who lives in the neighborhood, I can think of one.”

  Jack frowned, stared out at the street, and then suddenly he got it. “No,” he said. “Please. This is the very last friggin’ thing I need to deal with today.”

  His new partner watched as he clicked the phone shut. “What was all that about?”

  “C.S.U. They, ah, they found something kinda weird.” Jack passed on what Alvarez had told him.

  Kyle worked here in Crown Heights, and he seemed like a sharp guy. It took him only a few seconds to put it together. “Beaver fur, huh? Like those hats the Hasids wear.”

  “I suppose.” Jack’s collar was feeling tight all of a sudden. Despite their insular ways, the Hasidim were very active in their neighborhoods, organizing safety patrols, keeping close tabs on their local politicos. They were vocal citizens, quite ready to express their feelings to the NYPD and City Hall, and then to organize aggressive protest marches if they were not happy with the results. What’s more, they often lived side by side with African-American communities in the city—like oil and water. Just what he needed: to set off a big neighborhood commotion at the peak of the summer heat. Still, someone had killed that girl, and whoever did it had to pay. … He sighed. “This is a pretty tenuous connection. I mean, beaver fur—that could come from all sorts of things.”

  “Oh yeah? Like what?”

  Jack frowned. “A coat.”

  “In August?”

  “How about …?” His mind went blank. What the hell else would beaver fur be used for?

  Kyle sat up straight. “Well, I guess we should start questioning some of these Hasids.”

  “What—at random?”

  Kyle’s face tightened. “Hey, if we’d found something like a piece of street jewelry, like … I don’t know, a grill”—slang for a gold tooth cap—“we’d be bringing some Brothers in off the street, right? Why should this be any different?”

  Jack sighed. Here it was again: the race thing. And here he was: a Jewish cop talking to a black cop about whether a Jewish perp might have killed a black woman. “Look,” he said, doing his best to sound impartial. “I’m certainly not saying that one of these guys couldn’t have done it.”

  He couldn’t help thinking about a time when he’d been a rookie detective himself, working a robbery detail in the Nine-oh. Sometimes, late at night, cruising along one of the dark, lonely streets near the base of the Williamsburg Bridge, he’d see a streetwalker stepping out of a parked car and notice a black-hatted man in the driver’s seat. Take a very strict moral code, throw in some powerful sexual urges, and the result could be a life split in two: the public saint, the private sinner. It happened with people of all religious stripes, from Catholic priests to Pentecostal televangelists.

  “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we look up local Hasids who might have been collared for sex crimes?”

  And so they did. They searched databases, found several possible suspects, and began to check them out. Every one of them had a rock-solid alibi.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  BY THE END OF a long, frustrating, and unproductive shift, Jack was ready for a cold beer and an hour of mindless TV. He drove almost home, but at the last minute he started picturing Daniel Lelo’s face, there in the morgue, and so he didn’t turn off Coney Island Avenue toward his apartment. Instead, he continued on toward Brooklyn’s south shore and a certain McDonald’s restaurant.

  The outdoor seating area was well maintained, with colored pennants overhead snapping in a stiff shore breeze. Above them, though, Jack saw an ancient plastic bag trapped in a tree, like a shredded ghost marking the spot where Daniel Lelo had been “innocently” caught in cross fire two years before.

  Inside, business was slow—the quiet before the dinner shift. “WelcomeToMcDonald’s MayITakeYourOrder,” mumbled the girl behind the counter. Her eyelids looked as if they might roll down at any second, and stick.

  “Hi there,” Jack said. “I’ll have a hamburger and some fries.”

  When the food was ready, Jack paid, then flashed his badge. “I’m with the NYPD. Were you here when that shooting happened a couple of years back?”

  The girl shook her head, a little more awake now. “I just started last month.”

  “Is anybody working today who might have been here then?”

  She nodded, went in the back, and returned with a short black teenager, name of Tyrese Vincent.

  On top of his head the kid wore dreadlocks tied together and standing straight back like a bunch of asparagus. Jack asked to speak to him outside, on the site of the shooting.

  “Tell Andy I’ll be back in a minute,” Tyrese said to the girl. Thankfully he seemed much more bright-eyed than his colleague, who just snapped her gum in response.

  It was hot outside, but the kid looked glad to be free for a couple minutes. They sat next to a McDonaldland playground, presided over by a big grinning plastic Ronald. Jack found the character sinister; it reminded him of that famous serial killer who liked to dress as a clown.

  He le
aned toward the McDonald’s employee. “Can you give me a rundown of what happened the day of the shooting? Where were you when it started?”

  Tyrese squinted at him, and not just because of the late afternoon sun. “Why you aks about this now? The police already checked this shit out.”

  Jack dipped some of his fries in ketchup. “I know. It’s just that … some of our paperwork is not quite wrapped up.”

  The kid shrugged. Why argue? He nodded toward the side of the restaurant. “I was on break over there, havin’ a cigarette.”

  “How many people were outside?”

  “It was lunchtime—we was full up.”

  Jack looked around. There was seating for perhaps twenty-five customers. “Was there an argument or anything? A fight?”

  “Naw, man, it was quiet. Everybody was eatin’.” Tyrese turned toward the sidewalk and shaded his eyes, remembering. “Then this white motherf—this white dude came walkin’ down the sidewalk over there. He had a backpack and he pulled out a Mac-nine or some such shit.”

  Jack set his hamburger down in midbite. “How did you know it was a Mac-nine?”

  Tyrese rolled his eyes. “I seen movies. If I was some kind of criminal, I wouldn’t be workin’ at no goddamn McD’s.”

  Jack raised his hands, palms out, and smiled. “So what happened next?”

  Tyrese shook his head. “There was a black dude sittin’ over there.” He pointed to a picnic table in the corner. “He was all dressed in blue; looked like he might’a been a Crip. He saw the white dude and then he pulled out his own gun. Then the white dude pulled off a coupl’a shots.”

  “Do you think he was going after the gangbanger?”

  Tyrese shrugged. “Can’t say for sure, but I don’t think so. White dude looked all surprised when he saw the other dude’s gun.”

  “Who was he aiming for, then?”

  “I ’on’t know, man. I kept my head down, you know what I’m sayin’? It went all wack.”

  “What happened?”