by Lee Harris
“Maybe I’ll take a walk there tonight,” Jane said.
“You tempting fate?” Defino asked.
“No one’ll be there. The guy probably lives miles away.”
“Have fun.”
“So what’s next?”
“Keep a low profile while we wait for shoe number three. These guys are for real. I hope they put Randolph away for a good long stretch.”
“Doesn’t matter. The guns and their keepers are out there.”
7
HACK CALLED WHILE she was eating a dinner of warmed-up leftovers and fresh salad.
“How’s the case?” he asked.
“Hot.” She told him about the killing at Rikers overnight and the discovery of the missing gun that morning.
“I think I’ll stay away from you.”
“Don’t even try it, Hackett.”
“Well, it sounds like this is what you wanted. You got things going.”
“I think I’ll go up to Riverside Drive this evening and walk around the area where the gun was found.”
“I’ll meet you there. I haven’t had a walk in the park with the girl of my dreams for a long time.”
“More like the black widow.”
“Suppose I meet you at a Hundred Sixteenth and Riverside. If I can’t park, I’ll think of something original.”
“Remember what you told me about original thinkers on the job. What time?”
“Can you make it by seven?”
“Just barely.”
She got off the Number One train on Broadway and One Hundred Sixteenth Street at seven sharp, mounting the stairs to the Columbia University side of the street. She was at the back of the train and exited at One Hundred Fifteenth, then crossed Broadway and walked one block sharply downhill to Riverside Drive. Hack, also in jeans, walked the short distance between them. They kissed and crossed the street to the park. It was a fine evening and still light, the river calm, high-rise apartments along the Palisades forming the New Jersey skyline. In a little while the sun would set just across the river.
“What did you want to see?”
“If someone could have been hiding in the brush nearby.”
“Looks possible. You think he was waiting for a guy to call nine-one-one?”
“I’m sure of it. If the dog walker had picked up the gun and put it in his pocket, he wouldn’t have gotten very far.”
“Sounds about right.”
They walked downhill to the highway and stood in the evening breeze, looking out over the quiet river. Several miles off to the right the George Washington Bridge glistened in the late sunlight, a tanker sliding under it.
“Did you see what you wanted to see?”
“Uh-huh. You have time to wait for the sunset?”
“Sure.”
“Good. I like sunsets.”
He drove her home afterward, although it was out of his way. “I can’t come up,” he said. “Parking is impossible. And I thought about what you said, that lovers don’t always get together for sex. Sometimes it’s for a sunset.”
“I like that.”
“So do I.”
She awoke wondering what new disaster had happened overnight. She had tried Judith Franklin twice more but with no response. Franklin would probably return this weekend.
The morning news had nothing related to the case, and no desperate messages lay on her desk as she slipped into her chair. By this morning the partners had all finished or nearly finished the three sections of the Micah Anthony file. Even after a cup of coffee, no one had any ideas gleaned from the file that hadn’t been worked over and found to yield nothing.
“Randolph was the leader,” Defino said, almost as though he was talking to himself.
“So we should start with him,” Jane said.
MacHovec had just turned on the computer and it was making musical sounds. “You want a life history.” It was a statement. “A lot of it’s in the file, but I’ll dig up the last ten years and print it out. You’re a glutton for punishment. You see he’s a Brooklyn boy? Didn’t grow up anywhere near Anthony.”
In New York, living in different boroughs could be like living in different countries. People attended distant schools, played pickup ball with their immediate neighbors, shopped in local stores, went to their own clubs, and married spouses doing all of the above. They might as well have spoken different languages.
“That’s why the gun deal worked.”
“I’ll get on it.”
The idea of canvassing streets in Bedford-Stuyvesant was more than unappealing. Two white cops walking through a poor all-black neighborhood, where trouble sprouted intermittently, was almost an invitation to trouble. And no one would say anything useful to them. They would display hard faces and pretend not to recognize the name. Unless they had been personally harmed by Randolph and bore a grudge against him, the people in Bed-Stuy would simply not be forthcoming. The only hope was that some connection might be drawn on the basis of an address or a workplace, if he had ever held a real job.
“Let’s pay a visit to Manelli’s PO,” Jane said.
MacHovec turned away from the computer and picked up the phone as his partners sat back and waited. Hanging up, he said, “He can see you this morning. He didn’t sound happy when I mentioned Manelli’s name, but who would be?”
Jane took her bag out of her drawer as Defino pushed away from the typewriter. The parole officer’s name was Alan Williams, and his office was on Thirty-first Street between Sixth and Seventh. Williams was black and had the tired look of a man who had come to realize that even the best he could give would not only not change the world, it wouldn’t change one small actor in it.
“Sit down, Detectives,” he said after shaking hands. “I take it you’ve been to the shoe store Sal has been working in.”
“Probably not working,” Jane said. “We talked to the owner.”
Williams raised his eyebrows. “He quit?” He pulled over a file and opened the folder, shaking his head. “I went over there a few weeks ago”—he looked at something in the folder—“maybe a month ago. He was still working there. And last time I saw him here he said he was still selling shoes.”
“He hasn’t been there for a month. Right now he’s supposed to be on vacation in the Catskills with his girlfriend.”
“Franklin?”
“Yeah,” Defino said.
“Some women just don’t get it. He brought her in once to show me what a nice woman he’s hooked up with. Even that day you could see a little green and purple on her face where a bruise hadn’t finished healing. She must be a glutton for punishment. Here’s this guy never did a nice thing for anybody in his life and this good-looking woman with a good job lets him live with her. Probably gives him money when he needs it, too.”
“You know how long they’ve been together?” Jane asked.
“More than five years that I know of. I would guess longer.”
“We’re looking into the murder of Micah Anthony,” Defino said.
“The big moment in Sal’s life. And he got away with it. He’s done time for lesser crimes but nothing I know about recently. We don’t talk about the Anthony killing.”
“His apartment is a couple of blocks from where they found Anthony’s body,” Jane said.
Williams’s eyebrows went up. He rummaged through the file. “He listed his mother’s apartment as his address till a couple of years ago. He must have changed it when she died. He could even have been living there on and off. I don’t think the Franklin woman can take him as a steady diet, not that his mother could.”
“She’s not in the Anthony file at all. The only addresses for him are the place on West Fifty-second where the three of them were picked up and another address in Brooklyn.”
“That’s his mother.”
“So he could have kept Franklin a secret for ten years,” Defino said. “Maybe they were driving Anthony to her apartment and he broke out of the car on Waverly Place, and they shot him so they would
n’t lose him.”
Jane nodded. “Or they’d already talked to him in her apartment and they were on their way somewhere else. Either way, the location makes sense if Manelli was involved with Franklin at the time.”
“I’d bet on it,” Williams said. “There could have been other girlfriends, but she’s been in his life awhile. She’s the one who always takes him back. Like I said, she’s a glutton for punishment.”
They talked another few minutes and then left.
“He learned more from us than we got from him,” Defino said when they hit the street. “I bet Sal’s gonna miss his next appointment while he thinks up a good story about why he’s not working.”
“Maybe he’ll duck out on her and find another girlfriend to sponge off. Williams is right: They never learn. Think that old guy across the hall from Franklin would remember a night ten years ago when there could’ve been a lot of noise?”
“Frankly, no. He said he always heard screaming from the apartment. What would’ve been different that night?”
“Men’s voices.”
“Let’s give it a try.”
The man remembered Jane, and this time they showed their ID. “You’re the one asked me about the woman across the hall, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. Now we want to ask you about a night ten years ago when you might have heard a man shouting or a bunch of men shouting.”
He shrugged. “When her father was alive—that was a long time ago—he was always yelling at her. ‘Why don’t you find yourself a nice guy and settle down? Why don’t you get a job that pays more? You think your mother and me are gonna leave you a million bucks?’ But I don’t think he hit her.”
“We don’t mean the father,” Defino said.
“How long was that? Ten years? You think I remember a noisy night ten years ago?”
“This was men’s voices,” Jane said.
“What men? What are you talking about?”
“A crime may have been committed.”
“And you come back ten years later to ask about it? Where were you ten years ago?” He looked as annoyed as he sounded.
“Don’t lecture us,” Jane said, reflecting his annoyance with her own. “We’re reinvestigating the murder of a New York City police officer and we need your cooperation.”
“I’m cooperating the best I can. If I heard anything, I don’t remember. OK?”
Jane handed him her card. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Sklar, Phillip Sklar.”
“If you think of anything, Mr. Sklar, if you remember that night when the officer was killed, please give me a call.”
“I’ll do that.” He sounded as though he would burn the card the minute the door closed.
She said “Thank you” and turned away, glad to see the last of him.
“We’ve pushed that as far as we can,” Defino said in the street. “We should be able to talk to Franklin on Monday.”
“I’ll keep calling over the weekend. Maybe I can find Sal at home, but we need to talk to them separately. She’ll say what he wants her to say.”
They had lunch and went back to Centre Street. MacHovec had printed out two copies of a long history of Randolph’s last ten years, half of which had been spent in prison. He had served most of his sentence but not all. He knew how to make nice when it counted.
They each read a copy, Defino holding a highlighter, Jane with a red pen. She looked for Manelli’s name or even Curtis Morgan’s, but neither appeared. The three men had severed their relationship after Anthony’s death or had kept it so secret that no one uncovered it. Now Randolph was dealing pot and Manelli was living off a Macy’s handbag saleswoman.
The rap sheet was a depressing story of how a man with brains enough to switch from educated English to neighborhood lingo could apply his talents in ways that alternately made him money and gave him power, but put him away for years on end. Even after reading dozens of similar life stories, she wanted to ask the obvious questions.
“The three of them split up,” Defino said, looking up from his copy.
“I noticed. I wonder if Randolph talked to his cellmate in Attica.”
“He’s too smart.”
“You want some names?” MacHovec asked.
“Can’t hurt. Just in case Manelli and his girlfriend don’t pan out.”
MacHovec got on the phone. Jane hoped the cellmate was back on the streets of New York. She didn’t need a trip to Attica after her visit to Rikers.
She picked up her phone and dialed Judith Franklin’s number, which by now she knew by heart. On the second ring, a woman answered, “Hello?”
Jane hung up. “Franklin’s back, Gordon. She just answered her phone.”
Defino looked at his watch. “Want to go?”
“You could be late getting home.”
“They know how to eat without me. Come on. Reading about Randolph is turning my stomach.”
MacHovec hung up. “They’ll check for me. If they come up with a name today, I’ll leave it on your voice mail.”
“Thanks, Sean. Have a good weekend.” She stopped in at Annie’s and said they wouldn’t be back.
Jane knocked on Franklin’s door. They had decided on the way over that if Manelli were home too, Defino would stay in the apartment with him and Jane would take Franklin out to a coffee shop to talk.
“Who’s there?” a woman called from just inside the door.
“Jane Bauer,” Jane called back, holding her shield where it was not visible.
A bolt turned and the door opened. “Yes?”
“Ms. Franklin?” Jane held her shield up.
“Oh, Christ.”
“We’d like to talk to you and Mr. Manelli.”
“What’s he done now? He hasn’t even been in New York all week.”
Defino was already in the apartment, striding through it to find Manelli.
“Who is it?” a man called, and Defino picked up speed.
Franklin didn’t answer. A loud obscenity emanated from somewhere in the apartment, then a flood, and Defino returned, one hand firmly on Manelli’s arm, the other holding Defino’s ID.
“Why don’t you come with me, Ms. Franklin?” Jane said.
“Where are you taking me? I can’t leave my husband.”
“Husband?” Jane said.
“Well—”
“Let’s go downstairs and talk.”
Franklin looked back at Manelli, who shook an index finger at her meaningfully as she turned to leave.
8
DOWNSTAIRS, JANE STEERED her to a small restaurant that in a couple of hours would be serving dinner to Village regulars and tourists. “Just coffee,” Jane said as they entered. The maître d’ looked unhappy, but led them to a table near the kitchen.
“What do you want from me?” Franklin said. “I just got home. I haven’t even unpacked yet. The refrigerator is empty and Sal’s hungry. He’s a guy that can’t wait when he’s hungry.” She looked as though she was afraid he might eat her if she didn’t come up with a satisfactory meal.
“Ms. Franklin—may I call you Judith?”
“Judy. Just try to make it fast so I don’t come back to a fight.”
“Judy, I want to ask you about the night Det. Micah Anthony was shot.”
“That thing? It happened ten years ago. They tried to pin that on Sal and he was acquitted. You can’t get him for that. He was just in the wrong apartment at the wrong time.”
“I’m not trying to ‘get him.’ I’m trying to figure out what happened that night. The detective was shot a few blocks from here. Sal is the only one of the three men who had a connection to the Village.”
“He didn’t have a connection. He lived with his mother. He visited me sometimes but he didn’t live with me.”
“But you lived here and he had a relationship with you.”
“A relationship,” she repeated, as though she wished it were more of one. “Yes, we had a relationship.”
“Did he co
me to you that night?”
“You expect me to remember ten years later?”
“That was a big night in your life, Judy. Your boyfriend, whom you now refer to as your husband, got himself involved in the killing of a cop.”
“I told you, Sal didn’t do it, they never proved he did, and they can’t try him again for it. And I don’t remember if he came over that night. I think he didn’t. I think he called me the next day and told me he was in trouble.”
“Was he driving a car in those days?” Jane asked. None of the three men had had cars registered to them.
“I don’t think he’s ever owned a car.”
“I didn’t ask you if he owned one. I asked you if he was driving one.”
Franklin’s nervousness was increasing with each question. She was a thin woman with dark hair, wearing a light blue blouse and black pants, her traveling clothes. Silver hoop earrings pierced her ears, and her fingernails looked freshly polished. She kept herself looking good for Sal.
“If he was driving a car, I don’t know about it,” she said. “I’ve never had a car. You have to be crazy to have one if you live in the Village. You know what parking’s like down here?”
“I have a good idea. What about his mother? Did she own a car? His brothers or sisters? His friends?”
“His mother never learned to drive. Look, I can’t answer questions that I don’t know anything about. Can we finish this?”
“Soon.”
Coffee had been served, and Franklin put sweetener and milk in hers and sipped it. “Good coffee,” she said.
“I only take people to nice places,” Jane said with a smile.
Franklin smiled back. “What else can I tell you besides about the car?”
“Did you ever meet Curtis Morgan or Carl Randolph?”
“You mean the men who . . . ?”
“Yes, the men who were arrested with Sal.”
“I never laid eyes on them till the trial. Sal never mentioned their names. I only went to the courthouse one day. Sal said I should keep a low profile; he didn’t want anyone to know I existed. So I went on my day off and sat in the back, and I left at lunchtime. It was boring. The lawyers kept arguing and nothing happened. That’s the only time I saw those men. That Randolph, he was a big guy. Curtis coughed a lot. That’s all I can tell you.”