CAPRIATI'S BLOOD (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 1)

by Lawrence de Maria

  “How is Savannah doing?”

  “Thank you for asking. She’s resting. A little too much excitement yesterday, I’m afraid. She wanted to see the sights. I couldn’t say no. Who knows if, well, you understand. And we have more tests tomorrow. Have you made any progress?”

  I told her what I’d found out, which didn’t take long.

  “He didn’t leave much of a trace,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I don’t think I succeeded.

  “Just a woman with some good memories,” she said with a rueful chuckle. “That was apparently his style. I should know.”

  “I’m not sure you are getting your money’s worth, Ellen.”

  “I don’t want you to stop. What is your next step?”

  “I’ll check Capriati’s old neighborhood. See if anyone remembers his family’s business. They may have moved to New Jersey. I have his college yearbook. I might be able to track down some of his friends. I have a friend in the Police Department doing some checking for me and there may be some websites and databases I can surf that are not mainstream.”

  “I appreciate everything you are doing. And Mr. Rhode. Alton. Savannah does too. You made quite an impression on her. She even tried the scones at the Plaza. I think she would like to see you again.”

  “Any time.”

  CHAPTER 13 – SNAKE HILL

  After I pulled out of the Wagner parking lot I headed down Howard Avenue toward Clove Road. I had a friend at the 122nd Precinct in New Dorp who might be able to help me with Capriati. There was a light halfway down the hill put there for the sole purpose of annoying drivers. It was yellow and I went through as it turned red. The car behind me didn’t make it but ran the light. The car was red, too. A red Volvo. There was another light at the bottom of the hill. Red apparently being the color of the day, it was. I stopped. So did the Volvo. It gave me the chance to notice that its left headlight was smashed. I remembered the Volvo that skedaddled from the fender bender the night before. Volvos weren’t exactly scarcer than hen’s teeth in the borough, but the supply of red Volvos was probably limited.

  When the light changed, I made a right and another right and headed back up Howard Avenue. The Volvo followed. I passed the Wagner campus and continued along Howard Avenue, which runs across the rim of Grymes Hill and is flanked by some of the priciest real estate in the city. I took my time. I knew where I was going but the street was easy to miss amid all the high hedges. When I finally spotted it, I made a sharp right turn and headed down Snake Hill.

  It’s not really named Snake Hill, but that’s what everyone calls it. I don’t even know the name of the street. But it spirals precipitously all the way down Grymes Hill to Van Duzer and has more twists and turns than a politician’s story after he’s been caught sending naughty photos to high school cheerleaders. Whatever the street is called, it’s barely wide enough for a single car and is crowded most of its way with houses built into, or hanging over, hillsides. It’s the kind of road that when you made a hairpin turn you looked up at the backs of houses you’d just passed. The houses were expensive, but after a big snowstorm they probably had to drop in food by parachute. Where there weren’t houses, there were trees, or, rather, the tops of trees.

  I couldn’t tell if the Volvo had also made the turn down the hill. It might be 50 yards back and shielded by the turns in the road. If it was actually following me, whoever was driving would speed up to make sure he didn’t lose me. I needed some distance, so I floored the Malibu. In a manner of speaking. I didn’t want to end up in the trees or roll down the hill. Or be obliterated by a car coming in the other direction. Despite its narrowness, the road was two-way. If it hadn’t been, anyone coming out the bottom would have to drive about six miles to get back up the top, since there were no other roads nearby that came down. But I knew Snake Hill from my misspent youth and would be surprised if my pursuers – if they were – did. So I got to the bottom as fast as I could alive, with only a couple of close calls.

  I pulled out into Van Duzer, made a right, stopped, backed up and waited. And waited. And soon felt like an idiot. I was about to pull away when the Volvo shot out onto Van Duzer in a cloud of gravel and stopped in the middle of the street. Had there been any traffic there would have been a smashup. Or, I should say, another smashup. The Volvo’s side was scraped and dented, and there was shrubbery embedded in its front bumper and what looked like a small Japanese maple was caught in the roof rack. The driver had apparently been too incautious in his haste. I hadn’t heard anything; the hills probably muffled the sound. The damage went nicely with the broken headlight.

  The driver couldn’t make a left. Van Duzer was one way against him. I saw another man in the passenger’s seat lean over and look at me. I waved. A car drove by honking madly as it swerved past the Volvo. Both drivers exchanged fingers. Then the Volvo made a right and tore off. I followed. He speeded up. So did I. Soon we passed the car that had honked, almost forcing it off the road. More fingers, this time from all three cars. I don’t usually do that sort of thing, but I was getting into the spirit of things.

  Even Van Duzer has some nasty turns, and we were weaving in and out like Formula 1 drivers in Monte Carlo. By the time we got to the Staten Island Expressway, we’d run several lights and scared a passel of pedestrians and bicyclists. The Volvo made a right on the service road and entered the expressway at Clove Road. It was a good move. Beat up as it was, the Volvo was still more than a match for my poor Malibu. I would have lost sight of it sooner except for the maple sticking up from the roof. I heard sirens. I got off at the Victory Boulevard exit before the cops could spot me. The Volvo was probably in Kansas by now. I needed a new car. Something with fewer dents and more horses.

  Had I been tailed for two days? Or longer? Who would tail me? The last people who chased me rode camels. And who tails somebody with a red station wagon? I wondered if it had anything to do with Arman Rahm’s recent interest in me. But I’d never known a Russian mobster to drive a Volvo. And I’m sure “better dead than red” also applied to the new capitalists. Even Rahm’s lowliest soldiers probably drove Mercedes. As far as I knew, there was no such thing as a Swedish mob, at least on Staten Island. So it was probably something else. The Carluccis? Because I roughed up a couple of their thugs? Surely they had better things to do. Maybe the tail was a hangover from an old case. I’d go through my files, if I could find them among the detritus and banana plants in my office. And I’d check out the Volvo’s plate number, memorized during the chase before it went to warp speed while I was still on impulse power.

  Clichés aside, it never hurts to bring donuts to a precinct, so I stopped for a dozen and two coffees on the way to the New Dorp Precinct. The 122nd fronts Hylan Boulevard, one of Staten Island’s busiest thoroughfares. Parking is at a premium. That is, there is none, at least for the public. So I pulled into the private lot behind the stationhouse and found a spot next to a squad car. There were a couple of non-cop cars nearby and all had some sort of medallion or placard on their dashboards: “Office of the Borough President,” “City Council,” “Board of Education,” and, again, “Coast Guard.” It must be global warming.

  Not to be outdone, I reached in my glove compartment and took out an official-looking medallion on which was printed, in raised gold lettering, “Chaplain. United States Marine Corps. Semper Fidelis.” Above the words was the familiar Globe and Anchor emblem. Below that, a simple cross. I put it on the dash. It was, of course, fraudulent. The Marines use Navy chaplains. But I doubted anyone would notice. I left the rosary beads I sometimes hang from the mirror in the glove compartment. Overkill.

  The 122nd Precinct covers the entire midsection of the borough and serves as the headquarters for the NYPD on Staten Island. It is home to the Borough Commander; the Homicide and Major Case Squads; Community Affairs Division; Public Relations Office, and the borough SWAT team. The 27-square-mile patrol area is the largest in New York City. Staten Island’s other two precincts, the 120 on th
e north shore in St. George and the 123 on the south in Tottenville, file their reports through the 122, which acts as a crime-statistic clearinghouse. Criminal activity has been picking up in recent years, mainly in the 120 and 122, although felony statistics in both precincts would be considered a rounding error in any other borough. Tottenville, the southernmost town in New York State, has the crime rate of a Sisters of the Poor convent; the last murder in the 123 was committed with a blunderbuss.

  A sergeant at the front desk picked up a phone and punched in an extension.

  “Guy named Rhode is here to see you.” He hung up. “Said I shoulda shot you on sight. You can go up. Second floor. Elevator is over there. Need directions?”

  I shook my head and walked to the stairs. At the end of the hallway on the second floor was a door marked “Community Affairs.” I went in. A sturdy middle-aged woman with silver hair looked up from a People Magazine.

  “Good morning, I would like to have an affair. Is this the right office?”

  Betty O’Leary sighed. I was going to have to change my opening line. She was dressed in Talbot’s chic. Red skirt and pale blue blouse. A matching jacket was draped neatly on a hanger on a rack in the corner. She wore a black onyx necklace and matching earrings. The stone on her wedding ring was at least two carats. Betty was a civilian, one of hundreds hired by the city to ostensibly free up more cops for the streets and save some money. Since she was a retired schoolteacher now working on another city pension, I was pretty sure the money-saving part of the rationale was bogus. It was a plum job and not easy to get, but her cousin was a City Councilman. But she was a competent, no-nonsense type of woman and we got along.

  “Don’t let him eat them all,” she said, pointing at the box I was holding. “He’s getting big as a house.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll save you a couple,” I said as I walked past her and pushed open a door that said “C. Levine.” Underneath it said, “Lieutenant.”

  CHAPTER 14 – DONUTS AND COLD CUTS

  Cormac grunted a greeting. He was a big man, made bigger by his proclivity for pastries in any shape, size and form. He had a full head of reddish gray hair, with long sideburns and a thick moustache that served mainly as a crumb catcher. He was wearing dark brown slacks in which was tucked some sort of generic tropical shirt of the kind men wear outside their pants in Florida. It was pale green and palm trees and flamingoes predominated. His chest hair sprouted out from under his collar. I half expected a gecko to peek out. Mac and his wife spent all his vacations in Boca Raton. I figured he was between laundry loads and the precinct commander would have a conniption. I, on the other hand, was wearing my blue Brooks Brothers blazer, white button down shirt and khaki pants. No tie, but I looked spiffy. Of course, next to Cormac I could have been wearing sackcloth and ashes and looked like Beau Brummel.

  Mac’s father was Jewish and had been a beat cop in the Bronx. His mother was from Breezy Point, the Irish Riviera that sits on the western point of Rockaway in Queens. I’d known a fair number of Abie’s Irish Rose progeny, but none named Cormac Levine. I would bet real money he was the only one on planet Earth.

  He’d been a mainstay on the DA’s squad through several administrations, both Republican and Democratic. But the recently elected DA cleared house to put his own guys in. It was a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Cormac Levine was completely apolitical and one of the best detectives in the city. Now he was assigned to Community Affairs waiting to put in his papers. Every real cop in the borough knew he got the shaft and he was still plugged in, with contacts on every squad. What the Internet couldn’t provide, Cormac might. Our relationship was grounded in a lie. The one I told to the Grand Jury when a serial child molester who had graduated to baby killer fell from an eighth-floor terrace one dark and stormy night. I was the second one in the apartment after it happened, and heard the perv scream on the way down. Cormac had been the first one in. My “eyewitness” testimony probably saved Mac’s career and pension. No matter how many times I told him he didn’t owe me a thing, he never let me down when I needed help. I think he also thought he was the reason I quit the cops. Which he wasn’t.

  The only things on Mac’s desk were a phone, an empty inbox and photos of his kids, who, unfortunately, took after him. But at least they were boys.

  “I see they’re keeping you busy, Mac.”

  “I talk to school kids, and I’m a regular on the Rotary and Kiwanis circuit,” he said. “Food sucks, but the OT pads the pension. And, wiseass, I occasionally moonlight undercover with the robbery guys when they’re short. Keep my hand in. I’m running a deli in Westerleigh this afternoon. Been a bunch of grab and goes on the North Shore.”

  That explained the outfit. I think.

  “Absolutely no one will make you for a cop in that getup, Mac. I’m not sure human even comes into the picture. Try not to eat all the liverwurst.”

  I handed over his coffee and opened the box of donuts. Mac hit them like a bass hits a minnow. After drinking some coffee, inhaling some cream-filled donuts and offering a few more de rigueur insults, Mac asked me what I needed.

  “First off, can you run this plate for me?”

  I handed him a slip of paper and took another donut.

  “Why?”

  We were friends, and he’d do it anyway, but he was a cop. You ask a cop what time it is, he’ll ask why.

  “Belongs to a Volvo that’s been tailing me.”

  “You lose him?”

  “In a manner of speaking. I got behind him and he left me in the dust.”

  “How the hell did you get behind him?”

  “An Immelmann turn.”

  He looked at me. I sighed.

  “It’s tough taking with someone who’s not up on World War I German fighter tactics. Max Immelmann was a famous ace who looped back over his pursuers before they could react. One minute they were on his tail, the next he had them in his sights.”

  “And I, a member of the chosen race, should give a fuck about a Kraut pilot, why?”

  “No reason you should. Actually, I let the guy chase me down Snake Hill, backed up, and was behind him on Van Duzer when he came out. But I lost him on the Expressway.”

  A smile of remembered pleasure crossed his face.

  “Fucking Snake Hill! Back when I was on patrol we answered a call there. Guy came home early from a business trip and surprised his wife. Her boyfriend tried to escape out a rear window, forgot where he was. It was pitch black. Three-story fall nearly killed the poor bastard. A hedge saved him.” He shook with laughter. “Any chance the guy tailing you was a jealous husband?”

  “Unfortunately, that would be a stretch.”

  “What are you working on?”

  “Just a missing person case that’s so cold I feel like I’m stealing the money. Guy doesn’t even live here. Only got it Friday.”

  Levine picked up his phone and hit a speed dial.. He spoke to someone and gave them the plate.

  “They’ll call me right back. You said ‘first,’ which implies you want something else.”

  “Yeah. You ever hear of a guy named William Capriati? Billy Capriati? Billy Cap? Went to Wagner 20 years ago, wrestler, maybe lived in Port Richmond or Mariners Harbor?”

  “No, but I never heard of Immelman either. Who’s Capriati? A Dago fighter pilot?”

  “The missing person.”

  I told him the story.

  “A bitch about the kid.” He wrote something down. “I’ll pull the files, see if he’s got a record up here. You might check the Feds. Bank robbery, or embezzlement, or whatever it was, is probably theirs. It’s old, though.”

  “Yeah. I don’t hold out much hope. I’m going to try to pull strings from this end. She’s got other people looking at it from the other.”

  “Good looking broad, you say?”

  “An eleven.”

  His phone buzzed. He picked it up.

  “Yeah. Whatcha got? You sure?” He listened while someone yelled at him. �
��No, no, of course not. I didn’t mean anything by it. I know you know your job. Just surprised, that’s all. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Got an address?”

  Cormac wrote it down. I got his attention and mouthed the word “photo.”

  “One more thing,” he said, rolling his eyes, “can you pull the guy’s license for me and FAX it over. And his sheet, too. What? Shit, I didn’t know that.” Cormac reeled off his office email address. “OK!” He listened some more. “Well, I don’t need a fucking lecture about it.”

  He slammed the phone down.

  “Bitch. Jesus, they can get testy. I didn’t know I could get the damn stuff emailed to me. Anyway, the car is registered to Porgie Carmichael.”

  “Look, forget the Immelman thing,” I said. “What’s his real name.”

  “I kid you not. I know Porgie. His real name is Paulie. He likes to fish the head boats out of Great Kills, hence the nickname. You ever eat porgies? Delicious, but you got to watch the bones. He hires on as a mate. Small-time hood, freelances for the Carluccis.”

  Them again.

  “Hard core?”

  “Nah. He’s small potatoes. Wheel-man, B&E’s, car theft, numbers, nothing violent. Been inside a couple of times, but no long stretches.” He was opening up his email. “Hey, whadya know, here it is.”

  I walked around his desk to look at his screen, on which was Paul M. Carmichael’s driver’s license photo. Nobody looks good on a license and Porgie was no exception. Map-of-Ireland face, reddish hair, minor overbite. Mac scrolled down and their was a police report and some other photos. They weren’t an improvement.

  “Can you print them out? Or is that beyond your technological expertise?”

  Mac gave me the finger and then used it to hit another key. A printer in the corner started whirring. I went over and pulled out the copies.

  “I guess I’ll have to talk to him,” I said. “I seem to be on the Carlucci radar screen.”