by John Misak
“No problem. I knew you’d ask for them. Six fucking bucks, too.”
“Price you gotta pay.”
“Yeah, anyway, I agree. The guy had no reason to kill himself. At least, no obvious reason. I already got on the horn with Geiger. He’s gonna let us handle this one.” Geiger was the man in charge of Homicide and, though he was a decent boss, he didn’t exactly fit the description of a nice guy when it came to work. I only wondered what Rick had told him to get a suicide case with such a high profile. I didn’t want to know, because I was involved.
“What makes you think I am interested?” I asked.
“Well, the rest of the list consists of a dead homeless guy, a 95 year old man they found rotting in his apartment, and an apparent gang shooting. I figured I was doing you a favor.”
He was. He also was putting me at risk. This case could have some serious ramifications, but I realized then that it was just what I needed.
“Okay. What have we got so far?”
“Well, it seems Mr. Mullins ran his $150,000 Mercedes into a wall off FDR Drive three hours ago.”
“I didn’t hear about it on the radio.”
“A couple of uniforms were right around the comer, the street was near dead, and they were able to keep it away from the press so far. I’d say the networks will get wind of it within the hour.”
“So, he drives into a building, and dies. Maybe it was a suicide. Maybe just a car accident.” When it was someone famous, we followed up a bit more on things, I hate to say. Rick considered Mullins’ death a suicide or homicide because he was rich and famous. If you crash your call into a wall, we cops basically just have you scraped off and move on.
“Maybe. But it is certainly worth delving into a bit, don’t you think?”
“Perhaps. They find a note or anything?”
“Nothing that I know of. His cell phone, which somehow survived the crash intact, was on.”
“Could have been thrown on by the impact,” I asked.
“Possible, but we’re already checking out who he called last.”
I took another swallow of the drink, which was now empty. Without hesitation, John made eye contact with me and nodded again, moving toward the bottle of Dewars. What a guy. I looked around the bar. The guys in the suits were still there, and Rod Stewart, of all people, was playing on the jukebox.
“Okay, so we get the phone records and see who he called. Probably won’t lead anywhere.”
“If it doesn’t, then we certainly don’t have a suicide. Obviously, if he was talking on the phone at the time he was about to kill himself, that call would be important, and the person on the other end will have some information for us.”
I lit another cigarette. This one was going to be complicated. Maybe a dead homeless guy would be a better case. But something nagged at the back of my mind, something about wanting to be stimulated.
“How long before we have anything?”
“Guy down at the station said to call him a little after ten. I say we pay a little visit to whoever Mullins called tonight, see what they talked about.” Rick was beaming now, like a little kid who gets to drive the car on his Daddy’s lap. Actually, he was bubbling so much with excitement that I felt my own stomach tense a little. That reminded me that my stomach was empty.
“Okay, I think that’s a good idea. We’ve got about an hour, so why don’t we grab a bite here while we wait.”
“It’s after nine. I never eat after nine. Anything you eat late ends up on your gut.”
I haven’t mentioned that another thing I couldn’t stand about Rick was his fanaticism about health, and staying in shape. He was a year younger than me, but he was built a lot better. He was always drinking protein shakes, eating health bars, and taking vitamins. He was a good specimen, and certainly didn’t fit the donut-eating cop stereotype. He looked like a Hollywood actor. Okay, maybe a soap opera guy. Unfortunately, if you are interested, he is married, with two kids. You could send him flowers, though. He’d probably like them.
“Well, I’m starving, and I do eat when I am hungry. I don’t care what time it is.”
Rick sighed. “Okay, get what you want.”
Chicken fingers and a burger sounded pretty good to me. I gestured to John, who sent the waitress over, a twenty-year old blonde with nice tits and the kind of tight ass that twenty-year-old girls all seem to have these days. Okay, I was horny. Hadn’t been laid in over a month. But, I had good old Rick there, and he’d probably say that having sex after nine was no good for your heart or something like that. I ordered the fingers and the burger, and Rick entered us into idle chat for a while. Nothing interesting, trust me.
Two
The free dinner was good, satisfying. Nothing like a free meal to fill your belly. Rick wasn’t exactly happy about paying the bill. He made a face as he did so, but he came through regardless. I’m not really a mooch, but if I was going to tolerate his company, I was going to get paid for it. By the looks of things, we were in for a long ride, and his wallet was going to get thinner from it. If I was going to help him make it to the top, he was going to take care of me.
“Let’s get a look at the body,” I said. I lit a cigarette, which drew a frown from Rick, and enjoyed the after dinner smoke - one of the best.
“Not a bad idea, though it ain’t gonna be pretty.”
“I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”
“I don’t know.”
“I have. Trust me.”
We got into Rick’s car, a brand new Acura CL coupe. A chick’s car, by my standards, but Rick was proud of it. I went to light up another cigarette, but he stopped me cold.
“Not in here,” he said.
“Is it leased?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t matter.”
“Come on, who cares?”
“I don’t want the car to smell of it.”
“Give me a break.”
“No, give me a break. I bought you dinner. Paid for the cigarette you want to smoke. The least you could do is not smoke it in my new car.”
He had a point.
“Whatever.”
We drove through midtown, to the morgue. Morgues aren’t as bad as most people think they are. They don’t stink, surprisingly, and, by the time the bodies got there, they were cleaned up, and looked like mannequins. We pulled up, Rick looked for the perfect spot for about three minutes, and we walked in.
Alfred, the man at the desk who looked dead himself, smiled at us. I knew it wasn’t genuine. “Here for Mullins, I suppose,” he said, in his whiny, annoying voice. It had a slight wheeze to it.
“Yep,” I said. I wanted in and out of there. Hated the place. Despite my previous comments, the place spooked the shit out of me.
“Not here.”
“Where is he?”
“Still at the hospital. Downstairs. Doctor’s giving him a real good once-over.”
“Strange,” Rick replied. “You think they’d be done by now.”
“The way things go when you’re dealing with someone as important as him,” Alfred said.
“He is dead, right?” I asked.
“Far as I know.” Alfred fumbled with some papers. He was done with us.
“Time to hit the hospital.” Rick looked at Alfred. “St. Mark’s, right?”
“That’s the place,” Alfred said, not taking his eyes off his paperwork.
Traffic was light going to St. Marks, but that didn’t stop Rick from driving like he was in bumper to bumper. I checked the speedometer, and saw the needle pinned cleanly on 30. Retard. Some people are beyond help, and Rick was a charter member of that group. Actually, as I thought about it, most people I knew were.
It was nearly 10:30 when we made it to the hospital. We entered the emergency room, a brightly lit room with white walls and a white tile floor. If you were tired, and needed a jolt, the emergency room was the place to go. Maybe that was their first technique in reviving the dead, hitting them with enough fluorescent light to illuminate your avera
ge ballpark. My eyes shot wide open from the light and, through the glare, I noticed your usual emergency room occupants. There was a teenage kid holding what looked like a cut thumb, a woman crying, probably waiting for news on her husband, and about four people who looked to be in various states of pain. All in all, it was a pretty quiet night for St. Mark’s ER.
We went through the doorway to the main hospital, flashed our badges to the security guard, and made our way to Mullin’s temporary resting place. We passed through two sets of double doors, and found the room with four metal tables, only one occupied by a body. Now, if you read the way I do, I strongly suggest you put down that bean burrito, have a glass of water to wash whatever you ate down, and try to relax. This isn’t going to be pretty.
The room, unlike the morgue, smelled of death. Between the chemicals and the rotting bodies, the smell is most reminiscent of when I leave Chinese food in the refrigerator for too long. Oh, and throw in a little spoiled milk. Not sour milk, but the kind that comes out in chunks in your morning coffee. That’s pretty much the smell of the place. Real pleasant.
The smell was only the beginning. Mullins’ body rested on the metal table, in clear view. Hovering over the body of the former Mr. Mullins was Dr. Seibling, a squat man with very little black hair and thick glasses. I’d met him a few times before, and thought he was a pretty decent guy. He had brains, that’s for sure, and I came to value his opinions in his area of expertise. That didn’t happen with me too often, as you can probably tell. I got the feeling, however, that he didn’t like cops coming to his workplace, so I always kept the questions to a minimum.
“New York’s Finest coming down to take a look at our esteemed Mr. Mullins,” he said in his low voice. I always had to strain to hear him. “I don’t think there’s much I can tell you, other than the fact that he’s dead.”
“I figured that much,” I said, moving around the table to get a look at the body. Mullins’ face was almost completely smashed in from the impact. The skull had fractures at the forehead and left temple. I knew this because along with the deep red blood coming from those spots, I saw little chunks of grey. Yup, brains. His car, though expensive, was old, and didn’t have air bags. Poor guy. He had incisions on his neck, and part of his esophagus was visible, probably from glass, I assumed. His hair was caked with blood. I thought right there that this was no way to commit suicide. He might have died instantly. That I would have to find out. But it must have been painful, regardless. I was looking at a man who had life by the balls. He had everything. Why would he want to kill himself? Did he have some sort of closet problem, like child molestation? I’d seen some pretty powerful guys off themselves for such things, but from what I knew about Mullins, he didn’t fit the profile. It may just have been an accident, but something at the scene had caused the uniforms to say otherwise.
“He died from severe head and brain damage. Actually, he probably died a minute or so after impact. Tough to tell right now, but that’s how it seems.” That meant he suffered during that time.
“You testing for drugs, alcohol?” Rick asked.
“Have to. Should have results in a few minutes actually. Coltrain wanted me to do it for him, considering that I was doing all this work.” Bryan Coltrain was the city Medical Examiner, and he usually went through such tests. I was sure he would be on the way to the morgue, eagerly awaiting the body.
“Nice of you. Got anything else?”
“Well, his palms are cut up too, which would indicate that he covered himself before impact. Not sure what that means.”
“Could mean he didn’t mean to kill himself,” Rick said.
“Or, it could mean that this was an accident.”
“There were no skid marks, John,” Rick said, turning to look at me. “Didn’t I tell you that last night?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t remember.
Siebling looked down at the body and shook his head. “Forty-seven years old, and he had everything going for him. Amazing someone with so much would end it all, compared to someone who was down on his luck.”
“Maybe he was down on his luck, and we just don’t know it yet.”
“True.”
“Or, it could have just been an accident, or a heart attack. Seen that many times.”
“I see no evidence of coronary problems, but I’m sure Coltrain will investigate that.”
“How soon before you ship him off to the morgue.”
“They’re on their way now.”
We waited for a few minutes, with nothing else to say. Siebling went about preparing the body for the morgue, which basically consisted of putting it in a body bag. I guess a lot of people standing there looking at the dead body of a successful man would think of how fragile life was, and how Death can come knocking on your door at any moment. All I could think about was what I had just eaten, and how I didn’t want to taste it again.
An unattractive woman in a white lab coat walked in. She was about my age, with dirty blonde hair and had an awful complexion, the type you have to try not to stare at. Her body was more like a man’s than a woman’s - rail thin, with no breasts to speak of. Man, did I have to concentrate on keeping hold of that cheeseburger.
“Allison,” Siebling said, “meet the friendly members of the NYPD. Detectives Keegan, and…” Siebling looked awkward, not remembering Rick’s name. I wanted to laugh.
“Calhill,” Rick said, cordially extending his hand. She didn’t take it. I didn’t bother.
“I have the blood work.”
Siebling grabbed the folder from her hands. She just stood there, as if not knowing what to do. Certainly not someone who was comfortable around people - living ones at least. Siebling scanned the report, then looked up at us.
“Nothing. No alcohol, no drugs. Not even an antibiotic. His blood is clean.”
“Was clean,” I corrected him.
“Right. However you call it, his mind was clear of any chemical influence that we can tell. He was sober.”
“Then he knew what he was doing.”
“Or wasn’t trying to kill himself,” Rick said, “I’d have to get pretty wasted to go through with something like this.”
“Or he got cut off, and was driven into the embankment that way.”
“Uniforms said eyewitnesses didn’t see anyone but him on the road. Looked like he drove right into it.”
“Well, I think maybe we should take a look at that again.” Rick’s cell phone rang.
“Calhill,” he said, “Okay, you’ve got it? Got an address? Great. Thanks.”
Rick turned to me, and gestured toward the door. We walked over, and he whispered, “He called his mother. Talked for about a minute and a half. Long enough for her to know something, if anything.”
He looked excited again. I looked at my watch. “It’s almost eleven. Where does she live?”
“Long Island. Just past the Queens border. We could get there in about half an hour, tops, if we get moving.”
“Don’t you think maybe she’s here?” I asked.
Rick shook his head. “All attempts at getting her have been met with nothing but an answer machine.”
“Then she’s not home.”
“Or maybe she went out, and is on her way home. We might be able to catch her.”
“Did you ever think that maybe he got the machine too?”
“I’m almost hoping for it. And, if that’s the case, I want to hear what’s on the tape.”
“Could be nothing more than an audio suicide note.”
“Which would rule out the possibility of this being a random car accident, and put the case under Homicide. We can investigate from there.”
“I know the procedure, I just don’t want you getting all disappointed when you find out that your ‘big’ case is nothing more than a run of the mill suicide.”
“I doubt that, John. Really doubt it.”
I sighed. This was going to be a pain in the ass, dealing with Rick on this case. On top of that, I’d have
the entire police department, the mayor, hell, possibly even the President, watching how we handled the case. Mullins had been a popular and well-liked guy. I’d seen him do an interview for one of those biography shows a few years back, and he’d seemed like a down to earth man, the kind I could respect. He wasn’t full of himself, like most corporate guys who made a windfall. But now, he was dead, and it was quickly becoming apparent to me that his death was going to make my life more difficult. I didn’t care for that one bit, and I really didn’t care for working with a butt sniffer like Rick Calhill, but these were the cards fate dealt me that evening, and I’d have to play them out to the end. Looked like I’d have to bluff my way with a busted straight.
“Let’s go,” I said, “No sense in keeping a soon-to-be mourning mother up any later than she has to be.”
“Yeah, let’s go,” Rick said.
We said our goodbyes to Siebling and the socially challenged Allison, who barely nodded when we did so. I tried to think that maybe there was a real woman trapped underneath that white coat somewhere, but I came up empty. That’s the way such things go, I suspect.
The drive to Valley Stream, where Mrs. Mullins lived, took 35 minutes. Rick actually leaned on his new car a bit, doing about 65 the whole way there, which is a lot for him. I sat in the passenger seat, watching the white lines go by, and thinking about the fact that I hadn’t had a cigarette in over an hour. Whether Mrs. Mullins liked it or not, I was smoking in her house. Unless she wanted to deal with a pissed off cop, she would comply.
Valley Stream was a pretty big town, for Long Island. I couldn’t stand the Island, or most of the people who lived there. The place was too quiet, and the people talked too much, probably to compensate. I grew up in Queens, which geographically wasn’t much different, but we city people feel real strong about the subtle differences between suburbanites and us.