SUBWAY SLASHER
STRIKES AGAIN
When he had finished reading the paper’s usual lurid prose, Corvino threw it across the desk in disgust.
“The bastards are playing this one to the hilt, aren’t they?” he said to his partner, John Provenza. “It’s so easy for them to write about what a botched job we’re making out of this case. I’d like to drag a couple of these reporters out with us—then they’d see what a blank wall we’re up against!”
Corvino was feeling frustrated. First thing that morning, his captain had called him and Provenza on the carpet. The “Slasher’s” latest victim was the eighth in two months, and the papers were having a field day. Corvino knew that it was to be expected, but it still made him angry. He knew that his captain was only following orders from the commissioner’s office to light a fire under his men—all the usual stuff: indignation, loss of patience, nasty threats—but Corvino was sick of that crap. He’d lost his temper and told the captain that if he had anybody better to put on the case, then he should goddamned well do it and stop badgering Corvino and his partner.
Michael Corvino knew that he could get away with an outburst like that because he knew that he and Provenza were two of the best detectives in the precinct, and he had the captain’s ass in a crack on that one. Corvino was still getting admiring comments from his fellow detectives for cracking the “Socialite Murders” case that had tom up the city back in the spring. And it had been Corvino who took on the Port Authority Bus Terminal sniper last winter while thousands of horrified travelers watched. No, Corvino and the captain knew that he didn’t have any replacements, but Michael also wanted him to know that he didn’t need to be bugged.
As Provenza lit a cigarette, Corvino looked over the two reports on the latest victim—one from the black-and-white that arrived on the scene, the second from the transit police. They both said basically the same thing: no witnesses, no clues, nothing. The M.O. was the same as usual: multiple knife wounds to a white, forty-ish, tall, thin male dressed in casual or work clothing. Corvino had no leads, no clues, not even a hunch to go on.
He sipped from a Styrofoam cup of coffee, staring across the bull pen where seven other desks were scattered. Other precinct detectives huddled over reports, telephones, and cups of morning coffee. Corvino wished he was working on any of their cases. Anything would be better than the Slasher.
He was sick of hearing the same old shit about the Slasher. He hadn’t felt so beaten, so frustrated, since the first few weeks of the Socialite Murder case. In that one, various Upper West Side widows—the middle-aged, art-patron, political-party-giving types—were getting themselves killed in classic mystery-novel styles. Poison, gas leaks, strangulation with a silk scarf, and even a snakebite were the MO’s, and it took Corvino almost six months of hard work to uncover the motives, psychological symbolism (the murderer was a mystery-novel fanatic), and identity of the killer. It had been at first a totally puzzling, nonsensical case, and Corvino had grown to hate it—as he now hated the Slasher case—until the collection of clues and evidence gradually started falling into place.
But nothing was falling into place right now.
“Hey, paisan, “ said Provenza from across the desk. “Don’t worry about it, huh? We’ve been through this before, right?”
Corvino looked at his olive-complected partner. Provenza spoke with a medium-thick Brooklyn accent that marked him forever as one of the lords of Flatbush. “John, I’m just sick of reading about how incompetent we are. They can’t know how many hours we’ve put into this thing, and for what? Eight guys are cut up on the subways and we don’t know shit!”
Provenza grinned. “You know, I’m glad you tore into the captain this morning. I was thinking the same things myself, only I never woulda said them. You got a way with words, man. And you know you can get away with it. The captain can’t help but respect you, even when he doesn’t agree with you.” Provenza gave him a mock punch on the shoulder.
Corvino smiled reluctantly, acknowledging the compliment. He finished his coffee and threw the cup in the wastebasket. “Did you check the other desks? Anything we can go on?”
The other desks Corvino referred to were part of a division-of-labor plan that had evolved since the old “Son of Sam” case. The NYPD had had so many detectives working on that one without coordination that valuable information easily could, and did, get lost in the shuffle. Since then, on major cases such as the Slasher, each morning there was a funneling down of all leads from all the desks, which in this case were turned over to Provenza and Corvino. It had been made clear to everybody that they were the case honchos, and everything was to be passed on to them. That meant they got a lot of bullshit, too—the crank calls, the false leads, the fake witnesses, everything.
Provenza pulled his notebook out of the pocket of his corduroy jacket. “Okay, we’ve got the conductor from the Broadway Local—guy named August Midnight—he’s got to be a melanzana, right?”
Corvino smiled in spite of himself. His partner had used the old Sicilian slang term for blacks, a word that actually meant “eggplant.” Provenza always peppered his speech with words from his Italian childhood. “Anybody else?”
“We’ve got the woman who found the body and called the black-and-white. Name of Lemke. She says she was going to work, but she didn’t say what kind. Probably a hooker. And then we can go down to Central and talk with Lefkowitz if you want. He said he’d be finished with the autopsy by lunchtime.”
“All right, let’s go see him. Maybe this time he can tell us something different. Go get the car and I’ll meet you out front. It’s your turn to drive this week.”
Provenza mock-saluted and left the room. Corvino stood up slowly and stretched, then headed for the front doors. A few of the other guys gave him the thumbs-up sign as he passed their desks and he waved offhandedly. They had probably already heard about the go-round he’d had with the captain, and were showing their support. Hell, thought Corvino, they’re all just glad they’re not on this case!
As he walked to the front of the building, Corvino wondered why he’d ever gotten into police work. He’d done well in college and could’ve gotten a job with any number of companies, but he would have been bored silly. He had always had a logical mind, been good in math, and he had grown up loving detective fiction. There was a while right after college when he had been planning to enter law school, but there was something about police work that intrigued him, something that appealed to his keen sense of justice.
There was another reason that ran deeper in his heart of hearts. His father had been a beat cop for thirty years, and Corvino had always loved and respected the old man. Most of his childhood he had dreamed of growing up and being a cop just like his dad. So many of his childhood friends’ fathers had been laborers and blue-collar workers, but his father had been Officer Corvino, and little Michael had always thrilled with pride to see his father come walking up Avenue R toward their house on the corner with that blue uniform on.
The air was cool but the sun was hot as Corvino stepped outside, an Indian summer day as autumn was slipping reluctantly into the city. He stood there replaying his conversation with the captain, adding even more verbal barbs and feeling pleased, until Provenza pulled up in their chocolate-brown unmarked sedan. It was a big, boxy thing that practically screamed that they were plainclothes cops.
“Where to, Mac?” asked Provenza as Corvino climbed in the shotgun side.
“Let’s go down to Centre Street first; then we’ll check on our ‘witnesses,’ if you can call them that.”
Provenza shrugged and slipped the car into gear, pulling quickly away from the curb. Corvino liked his partner a lot. Provenza had been on the force twelve years and had made detective by coming up through the ranks. Not many made it the hard way anymore—you either had to be a college man or a damned good cop. Provenza was no college man: he was a down-to-earth guy, lots of wisecracking, ethnic humor, and street sense. They had done a lot of t
alking during the two years they’d been driving together, and Corvino felt he knew his partner—but only up to a point. Provenza seemed reluctant to talk much about his personal fife, preferring to keep things on a more superficial, buddy-buddy level.
Well, that was all right with Corvino. Lots of guys were like that. Corvino realized that there were not many guys in the precinct who knew very much about Michael Corvino either. Nobody knew, for instance, that he spent a lot of his free time working at becoming a professional writer. He had sold nine short stories to various men’s and mystery magazines, and was now working on his first novel. At first he had contemplated using a pseudonym, but rejected the idea for two reasons—not many of the guys at the precinct were big on leisure reading, and more important, Corvino had too much of an ego to be able to resist seeing his real name in print—the dream of all would-be writers.
And nobody knew, either, that he was growing tired of running with a lot of different women, never really opening up enough to let a relationship get started. Nobody knew that he was tired of living in the small two-room apartment on East 26th Street, that he really wanted to live in a house—a home. A home with a family. But when Corvino thought about marriage, he always remembered what being a cop’s wife had done to his mother. He didn’t want to be responsible for making any woman feel that lonely, or that scared.
Provenza’s driving yanked him from his thoughts as they careened through the cab-infested streets. Provenza seemed to delight in the sound of squealing tires and the irritated shouts of the cabbies. But they reached 240 Centre Street without mishap, parked in the back lot, and went down into the bowels of the old building, down to the morgue.
Lefkowitz, the chief medical examiner, was waiting for them in the lab. It was a drab room filled with rows of porcelain slabs, little drainage troughs running down the sides. The walls were lined with shelves containing jars with various human organs floating in formaldehyde. In the far corner, Dr. Lefkowitz sat on a stool chewing on a sandwich. In front of him was the recently dissected body of Ronald Kirksey, the Slasher’s eighth victim.
“Good morning, boys,” said Lefkowitz. He was a large man with horn-rimmed glasses and a bushy beard. Corvino always thought he looked like an immense owl. “Just finished up on the poor bastard.”
“Anything new this time?” asked Provenza.
“You’ll be getting my report this afternoon, but no, nothing I could find. This guy had two abdominal stab wounds—both inflicted by the same large kitchen knife we are so familiar with. The first just below the rib cage, severing the inferior aorta and puncturing the left lung. Lots of internal hemorrhaging. The second diced up the stomach and the duodenum. Laceration to the cheek inconsequential, but the neck wound caught both the carotid and the jugular. This guy didn’t have a chance.”
“They checking his clothing in the forensic lab?” asked Corvino.
“The report won’t be ready till this afternoon. I don’t know if they found anything,” said Lefkowitz.
“All right,” said Corvino. “We don’t want to keep you. Just wanted to check in case there was anything new.”
“Maybe it’s too early to tell. When the secondary results come back, we’ll see. I’ll get that report over to you ASAP.” Lefkowitz lifted one hand in farewell.
When they were back in the car, Provenza lit a cigarette, then started the engine. “What a waste of time,” he said.
Corvino sighed. “Gotta do it, just the same. Let’s go talk to that subway conductor.” He was tired, and the day was only half over. If only they could get a foot in the door on this thing, just something to work on.
Provenza drove in silence for a while, staring straight ahead, no swooping and cutting in and out of traffic. He appeared to be in deep thought. This was so out of character that Corvino asked him if there was anything wrong.
“No, paisan, not really … well, I’ve got an idea I’ve been thinkin’ about, but you’re going to think it’s crazy …” Provenza dodged a cab that suddenly appeared on the right and cut it off.
“Try me,” said Corvino. “This is a crazy case, so what else is new?”
“All right. Listen, the way I figure it, the only things we know for sure are that our man likes to kill on the subways and that his victims are always men who’re tall and skinny and wear work clothes, right?” Provenza glanced over at Corvino and grinned. “So I’m kinda tall, I’m skinny, and if I don’t shave and I wear some old clothes, I look like just the kind of guy our knife-nut likes.”
Corvino was startled at what he was hearing, but he didn’t show it. “You want to be a decoy? Christ, you and him could ride these trains for twenty years and never run into each other.”
“Nah, you don’t dig the whole thing. Not just me. Listen: there must be a couple of hundred guys in the department who fit the description we need. If we could get sixty or seventy volunteers on special duty assignments, get them out every night, spread them around throughout the city so that all the major routes are covered, it might work. Sooner or later the nut might run into one of our guys. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” said Corvino. “That’s a lot of manpower tied up on one case. I doubt if the captain would go for it.”
“Captain? Shit, I was figuring I’d have to get this cleared with the chief, or even the commissioner’s office. And what’re you talking about—manpower? Son of Sam had more than two hundred cops on his ass. I’m not asking for half that many! And besides, this case is getting hot press, Michael. The chiefs under pressure to do something, and this might be the way to go. What do you think, huh?”
Corvino looked at his partner for a moment. Provenza was right, they had to try something new. The usual methods had come up dry. “All right, I’ll back you on it all the way. I’ll help you write an official memo to the captain, with copies to the chief and the commissioner’s office. What the hell, it’s worth a try.”
Provenza nodded as he turned the car onto Park Avenue and headed toward Grand Central. “Yeah, we gotta do something to catch this creep. Christ, I mean the subways are fucked up enough without the Slasher down there.”
CHAPTER 5
MARSDEN
Lya was still thinking about Detective Michael Corvino, but she was also thinking about her job. She had not gotten as far as she had in television by mooning over guys, she reminded herself. She definitely hoped that he would call her soon, but for the moment it was time to work. Sunday she had worked out a plan for researching her story on the underground; she would start by checking at the Transit Authority offices on Jay Street in Brooklyn.
Reaching the Columbus Circle station, she descended into the crowd by the token booth and edged past them to the turnstiles. She always carried extra tokens in her bag, and she already knew she must catch the A Train south.
Take the A Train, she thought, and hummed the old Duke Ellington tune. The people on the platform started their ritual jockeying for position as the train entered the station, everyone intent on being in the right place so the double doors would open right where they were standing. Lya saw an opening, darted through, and was carried into the car by the press of bodies.
She knew that non-New Yorkers were usually intimidated by the forced closeness of the subways. They were not accustomed to being pressed into others’ faces and arms, chests and rears. But that was only during rush hours, really. The few times she had ridden the trains during the late hours, the subway was anything but crowded—not many people on the trains after a certain hour, and not only because of crime, either.
No, thought Lya, there was something about going down into those gloomy passageways, knowing that there would be no sunshine to greet you when you came up, that touched off an alarm in the human psyche. There was something essentially, but perhaps subconsciously, forbidding about it. She knew of few people who ever got over their anxieties enough to feel comfortable about riding the night trains.
And, of course, there were always the usual dangers. Lya could not h
elp but notice the glaring headlines of other passengers’ copies of the New York Post and Daily News: “Subway Slasher Strikes Again,” “Slasher Still At It!”
The knife murderer was the latest in the seemingly never-ending parade of New York “celebrity” criminals. Whenever one was caught, another one seemed to ooze out of the asphalt, as if to insure that the newspapers had another good front-page teaser to help sell editions. Lya realized at that moment that she would have to take great pains to reassure the Transit Authority people that she was not in their office to do a story on the “Slasher” case. She was certain that they had had quite enough publicity about what was quickly becoming an embarrassment to the transit people as well as the NYPD.
There was a lurch as the train left the station. Lya stood holding the vertical pole near the door until the next stop, where three people departed, and then slipped into the closest vacant seat. Automatically she scanned the row of ad banners above the windows. She hated advertisements, but she always read them, not knowing why. The people who created the ads over on Madison Avenue did know why, however; that’s why Lya was in television and not marketing. She smiled to herself, and glanced about at the crowd. If they were concerned about riding the subways while the “Slasher” was lurking somewhere in its passageways, they did not show it.
As the train slowed for the 42nd Street station, Lya reflected on the people of the city. They were a hardy, independent bunch, that was for sure. No inconvenience ever defeated them; they always managed to “muddle through.” Let a garbage workers’ strike pile up the Hefty bags until the sidewalks looked like barricades, and New Yorkers would just step out into the street. Let the transit workers go on strike, and everybody took to bikes and roller skates. No matter what threat descended upon the island city, the people of New York always contrived to pretend it simply wasn’t there.
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