Murder in Greenwich Village

by Lee Harris

  “I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Anything else, Detective Bauer?”

  She suggested trying to draw the sergeant out by offering the guns for sale.

  “We could do that,” McElroy said. “Get a phone and have it monitored twenty-fours hours a day. We can trick it out with a recorder and backtrace capability.”

  “We’ll need someone to monitor it,” Graves said.

  “Gordon can do it,” Jane said. “He’s home. He’s not going anywhere. It’ll put him back in the game.”

  “Good idea.” McElroy was almost glowing.

  “Take care of this, Ellis,” Graves said.

  “You bet.”

  “I don’t think anything will come of it, but it’s worth a try. If this cop is as smart as he seems to be, he’s not going to fall for something like this.”

  “It’s got to shake him up,” Jane said.

  “Any other ideas?” Graves looked at her.

  She had told them she had discussed this with Defino, that he had contributed much of the new scenario. “One thing that came up in our conversation is how those three guys got paid.”

  “For what?” MacHovec said. “For getting collared with three stolen guns?”

  “For keeping quiet about Farrar and the sarge. For going as far as they did with Anthony.”

  “Are you suggesting,” Graves said, “that the gun deal was only one operation the sarge was involved in?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jane said.

  “Then he could have had the proceeds of other operations to pay them with.”

  “It’s possible.” She didn’t want to give Delancey away.

  “You have something to back this up?”

  “Not right now. I have to look into it.”

  “Then do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They bounced a few ideas around and then Graves said, “Lieutenant McElroy will interview Lt. John Beasely. From what you’ve told me, he’s a long shot as the sergeant we’re looking for, and I want this handled delicately. OK, get to work.”

  As they left the conference room, Graves stopped Jane. “Detective Defino looking good?”

  “Very good. The rib hurts but he’s anxious to come back. That’s an understatement.”

  “I can imagine. Thanks for going there. Sounds like his mind is in high gear. Get MacHovec working on your theory.”

  “I will.”

  In the office, she closed the door. MacHovec and Smithson had refilled their cups.

  “Looks like you’re the only one with ideas,” Smithson said.

  “It was mostly Defino’s. Sean, hold off on that stuff about heists in the TA.”

  “You got an anonymous friend working on it?”

  She nodded. “I should hear something later today or tomorrow. Work on finding the sergeant. I’m glad we’re off the hook on Beasely.”

  “You’re right,” Smithson said. “Those guys got paid for keeping quiet.”

  “And the money had to come from somewhere. They didn’t sell any of the guns, and sergeants don’t make enough to grease four palms. Not those palms. I’m told there was a major case of theft at some TA work sites that’s never been cleared. There would have been enough for the four guys with plenty left for the sarge.”

  “This case has tentacles. It keeps creeping wider.”

  “That son of a bitch could still be in business,” Jane said. “I want to put an end to him.” She pulled out notes and asked Smithson if she could use the typewriter. She wanted to keep Graves up-to-date.

  Ron Delancey called back after lunch. “I think I’ve got what you want,” he said. “It’s not the Second Avenue subway but it’s big, happened about eight years ago, half in Queens, half in the Bronx. In all instances, they were widening a tunnel, laying new track, updating stations. In Queens, two pieces of heavy equipment, cable trucks, disappeared from the site. In the Bronx, one truck disappeared from each of two sites. These are huge things, cost the TA about a quarter of a mil each, which is what they paid to replace them. Fully loaded with new cable and equipment, street value is anywhere from half a mil to whatever they could get for them. The thefts all occurred on the same night.”

  “How do you steal them?” Jane asked.

  “You move them somewhere away from the work site, store them temporarily, dismantle them, or sell them in one piece. The buyer ships them out of the country and resells them. Big bucks to be made all around. And the copper cable is a bonus, new, unused stuff for resale. The copper could also wind up as mungo, you know, scrap, to a wholesale metal dealer.”

  “If the stuff is in parts, they get trucked away.”

  “In the middle of the night.”

  “That’s not a one-man operation.”

  “Not a chance. Whoever did it had a gang, probably experienced TA workers. They didn’t leave a trace. We put out feelers everywhere to find where they went, but we never found them. I suspect they had a buyer before they removed the trucks and they changed hands right away, maybe the same night. Then the guys went home, took a shower, and turned up at work to find the trucks missing.”

  “Who did you like for it?”

  “I’ll give you some names. I can fax some stuff to you. Give me a number.”

  “Any Transit cop among the names?”

  “As a perp? No. That what you’re looking for?”

  “Could be.”

  “OK. We’ll do the looking.”

  “Talk about cost overruns,” Jane said after she had read the faxes. “Replacement value a million bucks.”

  “So they could have realized half of that,” Smithson said.

  “Nice little deal.” Jane passed the list of names to MacHovec. “I was hoping to see Farrar here, but he’s not. If the sarge was involved in this, he kept it separate.”

  MacHovec studied the names, then started working the computer.

  34

  DEFINO LIKED THE idea of monitoring the phone. He would be able to turn Toni down when she tried to drag him out to go shopping and breathe some fresh air. And maybe it would work.

  McElroy said the phone company would install the equipment the next day, and they would run the ad from Wednesday through the weekend. If nothing happened by then, they would give it up. He was scheduled to talk to John Beasely at four at another location.

  MacHovec worked on the names from Ron Delancey for the rest of the afternoon. From his mutterings, Jane could tell he was coming up with nothing useful. Still, if that operation was run like the Anthony one, only one person in the gang knew the man at the next higher level.

  “There’s nothing here that makes one guy a standout,” MacHovec said. “It could be any of them or all of them. It could even be none of them, and there aren’t any cops on this list.”

  “I know that.”

  “But I like your idea that the sarge needed to pay hush money. And there was plenty from this heist. Any way we can trace the stolen goods?”

  “The Transit detectives would have done it, Sean. The stuff was probably on a freighter to Saudi Arabia the next morning.”

  “With my tax dollars,” he grumbled. He turned back to the screen, hit some keys, shook his head, hit some more. “If I had to pick one of these ‘possible suspects,’ I’d take this one.” He hit a key and his printer started churning out paper. He tossed the first copy on Jane’s desk and the second on Smithson’s.

  The man’s name was Terence Garland. He had been working on the site since the construction began. A detective who interviewed him had noted that Garland had been warned about pilfering. Nothing he took was of great value: a few tools and some other things he could use to improve his house. It amused Jane because MacHovec did similar things. He loaded up on pencils and paper, pens, paper clips, rubber bands, and notebooks. It was more a matter of convenience, Jane thought, than of saving money, although MacHovec spent almost nothing—brown-bagging his lunch and drinking free coffee, not unusual in this squad.

  “You pick him because of th
e pilfering?”

  “Yeah. It’s a small step from taking a hammer and nails to moving on to something bigger.”

  “I think you’re wrong.” She pushed her chair back from the desk. “It’s a big step. If this sergeant was as smart as we think he was, he would pick people with clean records. Someone who’s got comments like this in his file is a likely suspect. I want to see the guys who were clean as virgin snow.”

  MacHovec gave her a look, then printed out another file. “Try this.” When he had slapped a second copy on Smithson’s desk, he got up and left the office.

  “Touchy,” Smithson said. “But I agree with you.”

  “Let’s talk to this guy.”

  “Let’s talk to all of them. It’s been years since this happened. Maybe they’ll be off guard.”

  The printout showed that the first man, Mickey Crawford, was still working. Jane called the TA and was told he would report for work the next day at eight A.M. She and Smithson agreed to meet at his station at nine and have him paged. Let their arrival be a surprise.

  MacHovec returned and began to print out the rest of the suspects’ files. When he had finished, it was time to leave. He and Smithson walked out together. Jane sat in the quiet office and read the histories and the cops’ comments about each man. Sean was right: Nothing in any file made you sit up and take notice. The detective who interviewed Crawford remarked that he was polite and straightforward, didn’t fidget or seem nervous, answered all questions, and was cooperative when asked to appear for a second interview.

  The detective had put him on the list of suspects because Crawford could not account adequately for his time on the night of the robbery. The interviewer added that Crawford seemed too good to be true.

  That, of course, was the way an innocent person might come off. As for not being able to account for his time, how many people who have slept through the night could account for theirs?

  Jane read through the files of the other suspects.

  “Why are you always the last one out?”

  She looked up. McElroy was standing at her open door. She glanced at her watch. It was six. “Just reading the files of suspects in a big TA theft eight years ago. Did you talk to Lieutenant Beasely?”

  “Just came back.” McElroy came in, pulled Sean’s chair out, and sat down. “I don’t have an answer for you,” he said, addressing the question she had not asked. “Was he the sarge? He could have been. Is there any evidence? None. If he did it, he got away with it. This is one smart guy. He’s believable. Listen to him and you know he loved Anthony like a brother. On the other hand . . .” He shrugged. “If he did it, we’ll never pin it on him unless Randolph or Manelli saw him and can ID him.”

  “Randolph won’t, and we’ll never find Manelli alive.” Jane tapped the papers in front of her. “Smithson and I’ll be talking to the suspects in the theft starting tomorrow.”

  McElroy didn’t move. From the look on his face, he might not have heard her. “I think you hit on it, Jane,” he said finally, “that somebody paid those three mutts to keep quiet. When the Anthony killing happened, everyone thought it was a closed circle, three guys who were selling stolen guns and had to kill the buyer because he found out something he shouldn’t have. But if they were the ground floor reporting to the sarge, it was the promise of money that kept them quiet. At least one of them could have ratted out Farrar and maybe the sarge.

  “Look, I don’t think it’s Beasely. Your homeless guy said they were two white men, right?”

  “Right.”

  “No way in hell could Beasely be taken for a white man, even in low light. Unless he’s a damn good actor, he wasn’t involved.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, Loot.”

  McElroy stood and walked to the door. “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t. Go home. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  She walked home, turning it over. In her apartment, she called Defino. They had hooked up a phone with all the accompanying paraphernalia in his living room. Annie had managed to get an ad in the next day’s News and Post. He was looking forward to hearing the phone ring.

  “It may not happen,” Jane warned.

  “Anything’s better than being pampered.”

  She followed her intuition and checked out the least likely suspects, and got nowhere. She found some pleasing music on the radio and turned it on to play softly, sipping some Stoli on the rocks. In Paris they had drunk wine, Hack swirling it in his glass before inhaling it and tasting it. He made good choices. In the few days they were there, Jane developed an appreciation for red wine.

  “You’re making my life more expensive,” she teased.

  “Keep you working hard.”

  The vacation was more than she had hoped for, more than she had expected, and her expectations had been high. She had never spent that many days with a man, that many hours of concentrated togetherness. They laughed and talked, walked miles, visited museums. One afternoon they rode the funicular up to Montmartre, where she sat for a portrait in pastels done by a long-haired, dark-eyed fellow in his thirties who leaned over his easel intently, one foot bare and one stuffed into a ratty sneaker.

  Hack thought the portrait was a perfect rendering of her face; she wasn’t so sure. She remembered seeing drawings of people she knew and finding in them images of their parents and siblings, records of relationships she had not noticed in real life. Looking at the picture of her face, she wondered if it harked back to a natural mother or father she would never know.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  “I’m not sure it’s me.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He wanted to keep it, but knew he couldn’t. “That’s your birthday present,” he said. “I’ll have it framed and give it back to you.”

  Then they visited Sacré-Coeur, Hack carrying the rolled portrait as they strolled into the church, neither of them dipping into the font or genuflecting.

  The next day was their last, and Hack had saved the best restaurant for that night. They dressed and took the Metro to the Right Bank, then walked a short distance from the Arc de Triomphe to the restaurant, where only cheese and dishes made with cheese were served. They were seated against the wall at a table for two. Hack ordered a fine wine and they both enjoyed a choice of the more than one hundred cheeses offered on one round thick wooden board after another.

  They began to talk. Before her first sip of the wine, Jane felt high, excited. She had turned forty-one and they had completed ten years of loving each other. Then Hack touched her hand and said something, and everything they were celebrating began to disintegrate.

  35

  SMITHSON WAS ALREADY at the station when Jane arrived at nine on Tuesday. Mickey Crawford’s supervisor listened to their request without comment and called Crawford to the station.

  “Take a while,” the supervisor said, “maybe fifteen minutes.”

  It was an accurate estimate. At twenty after nine, Crawford appeared at the supervisor’s door. Smithson and Jane took him to an empty office and Jane closed the door. Crawford was a good-looking man in his late thirties. He was unperturbed and asked no questions, sat where Smithson directed him, and waited quietly.

  “There was a major theft of equipment about eight years ago,” Jane began. “You remember being questioned about it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You were unable to account for your time that night.”

  Crawford said nothing.

  “You remember what you were doing?” Smithson asked.

  “It’s a long time ago. Whatever I told the detectives then is what happened.”

  “Were you married at the time?”

  “Married but separated.”

  “You sleep alone that night?”

  Crawford shrugged. “Probably. I don’t remember.”

  “You married now?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I would think you would remember,” Jane said, “whether you were sleeping alone that night. You don’t get questio
ned by the police very often.”

  “No, ma’am. I think that was the problem back then, whether anyone could vouch for me that night.”

  “Problem?” Smithson asked.

  “When you sleep alone, no one knows if you’re gone. If I’d had a girlfriend over, she could have told the police I was there all night.”

  “You have any friends in the Transit Police at that time?” Jane asked.

  “I run into them sometimes, but I can’t say I’ve ever had a friend.”

  “Did you know a Sergeant Beasely back then?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Maybe someone who joined a few guys for a beer after work?” Jane said.

  “Not that I remember.”

  “You know anyone named Charley Farrar?” she asked.

  “I don’t know any Farrars.”

  “You ever hear the name mentioned?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Smithson picked up the questioning. “What about Curtis Morgan?”

  “I don’t think so.” He hadn’t blinked at either name.

  “A track man. You could have worked with him once.”

  “I’ve worked with a lot of men and I don’t remember all their names. I don’t think I ever knew him.”

  “You have kids?” Jane asked.

  The question startled him. “Yeah, a son and daughter. Why?”

  “Who had custody when you separated?”

  “During the separation, my wife did. We worked out something else for the divorce. I get them alternate weekends and some holidays.”

  “Where were your kids the night of the theft?”

  “I was separated,” Crawford said. “They would have been with my wife.”

  “You have a girlfriend at that time?” Smithson asked.

  “Yeah, maybe. I’m not sure. But no one was in the apartment with me that night.”

  “You’re pretty sure of that.”

  “Yes, sir.” He was as calm as he had been when they sat down. The questions rolled off him, leaving him dry as a bone.

  They went at him for another ten minutes and he answered as he already had, remaining unconcerned, never displaying anger or even discomfort. Finally, they let him go.