by Jack Tunney
“When I left, Cappy was alone. The whole place was empty except for Candy, who was probably still in the locker room.”
“Would Marquez have any reason to kill O’Brien?”
“Not that I know,” I said. ”Cappy thought he could make the kid into a contender. Believe me, when you have a trainer who believes in you, you don’t kill him.”
“And you’d know that?”
“Any fighter knows it.”
“Is O’Brien trainin’ any other fighters right now?”
“No, Candy’s the only one.”
“But he’s got other guys workin’ out in the gym, right?”
“It’s been a little lean for him, lately.”
“So he’s got money troubles?”
“Don’t we all?”
“Tell me about it,” Conroy said. “Okay, Corleone. Or can I call you Frank?”
“Whatever.”
“Sure, Frank,” Conroy said. “Look you need a ride home?”
“Naw, I’m good.”
“Okay,” Conroy said, nodding. “Okay. We’ll talk again.”
“Sure.”
“Keep your nose clean.”
“Always.”
“And by that I mean, stay out of this case.”
“I knew what you meant.”
“Good,” Conroy said. “Good. You’re a smart boy.”
I looked at Miller and said, “Nice talkin’ to ya.”
Miller took a step toward me, but Conroy stopped him.
“Go on outside,” he said.
Miller gave me another hard look, then turned and stormed out through the curtain.
“You don’t wanna push him,” Conroy said. “He gets nasty.”
“Yeah?” I said. “Up to now he’s been a sweetheart.”
Conroy laughed, and left.
ROUND SEVEN
I left the hospital and got a cab home. They offered to call somebody to pick me up, but I didn’t have anybody. No family, and only a few friends, none of them in Brooklyn. Cappy was a friend, but he was gone, now. That pissed me off. When you don’t have that many friends, you hate losing one.
I didn’t usually work on murders. It was bad business, that’s what Harry used to say. Stay away from murders and you stay away from the cops. But this was different. Cappy didn’t deserve what he got. And I didn’t deserve to lose a friend . . . and a job.
I went home, had a glass of water straight from the tap with no ice, and then turned in. There wasn’t much I could do until the next morning, and I needed some sleep, so I flopped onto the couch fully dressed and it was lights out, baby . . .
***
When I woke up my throat was raw and my eyes felt scratchy. I smelled like smoke. A shower took care of the smell, a cup of coffee soothed my throat some, but my eyes were still kind of scratchy. And when I shaved I saw how red they looked. I figured it would fade with time.
I got dressed, putting on my second good (cheap) suit, because the first one was smudged and smelled like smoke. Before I left my place I got my .38 from the bottom drawer of my desk, dropped it into my jacket pocket. I didn’t have a holster for it, because I hardly ever carried it. But somebody had killed Cappy, and I wasn’t going to end up the same way.
But somebody else was.
***
I walked to Cappy’s Gym. There were still some street cops out in front of the burnt out building. The sidewalk was littered with pieces of the structure, both the outside and the inside. The firemen must have eventually gone inside with their axes. Even the heavy bag I bumped into while it was on fire was lying outside. Cappy’s Packard was still there.
I knew the nearest firehouse was on Union Street, and knew they would have been the first to respond. I needed to talk to firemen, not cops, so I walked there.
The big red door was open and a couple of guys in t-shirts and uniform trousers were washing the big engine.
“Help ya?” one of them asked, when I stepped in.
“I wanted to talk to somebody about the fire last night,” I said. “The one at the gym on—”
“Hey,” the other man said. “You’re the guy who ran in and came out with the old guy.”
“Uh, yeah, that’s right.”
“That was really somethin’, pal,” he said. “But why’d you do a fool thing like that?”
“He was a friend of mine.”
“Oh, sorry about that,” the guy said.
“Can we talk?” I asked.
“Well, sure,” he said. “Come on inside, have some coffee.”
“That’s okay,” the other man said, referring to the chore they had been sharing. “I got this.”
“Come on,” my friend said, “follow me.”
We went inside and up a flight of stairs, came out in a big room with beds in it. A few men were there and turned to see who had entered.
“Come on in here,” the guy I was following said. “We got a pot of coffee on.”
I followed him into another room with a long wooden table, and a stove. There was a man at the stove. He was built like a fire plug and wore red suspenders. He was stirring something in a pot.
“Hey, Jerry, we need two cups of coffee.”
“Comin’ up,” Jerry said.
We sat across from each other at the table and Jerry brought us two white mugs, with sugar and milk. I put three sugars in mine, and a couple of dollops of milk. My buddy drank his black.
“My name’s Dave Brickstone,” he said, sticking his hand out. “Just call me Brick.”
“Okay, Brick,” I said, shaking his hand, “I’m Frank Corleone. You can call me Frank, or Frankie.”
“What’d you wanna talk about, Frankie?”
“The fire,” I said. “It seemed to me while I was inside that the fire had started on the second floor.”
“That’s how it looked to us, too.”
“How did it start?”
“We’re not sure, but it’s being investigated as suspicion.”
“Arson?”
“Maybe.”
“Arson and murder,” I said.
“Your friend?”
“Yeah, somebody killed him, either during or before the fire.”
“That’s too bad.”
I sipped the coffee, then asked, “Who’s investigating the fire?”
“Somebody’s bein’ assigned by the court,” Brick said. “You’ll have to go down to Gold Street to find out who.”
“From the Court?”
“Yeah,” Brick said, “I think these kinds of investigations should be handled by us, but for now it’s the courts that handle ‘em.”
“Makes sense to me that somebody from the fire department would do it.”
“Well, it may be like that some day. Who knows?”
“Isn’t there anythin’ you can tell me about the fire?”
“Not much,” he said. “From the way the ceiling fell in on the first floor it sure looks like it started on the second.”
“Why would somebody set a fire on the second floor?’ I asked. “Wouldn’t it make more sense to set it on the first?”
“Maybe,” Brick said, “they had somethin’ to do on the first floor and didn’t want to deal with the fire.”
“You mean like . . . kill Cappy?”
“Could be.”
“Yeah.”
“More coffee?” Brick asked.
“No, thanks,” I said. “I better get going.”
“Where to?”
“Like you said,” I answered. “Gold Street. I want to talk to whoever’s doin’ the investigation.”
“My guess is, whoever’s been assigned hasn’t had time to go to the scene, yet.”
“Well, maybe I can give him my observations, then.”
“Should be helpful.” We both got up. “Come on, I’ll walk you down.”
“I can find my way.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “I gotta go down and help Mike finish washing the engine.”
I let him lead the
way back down, thanked him for the coffee and the talk, and headed for the nearest subway station.
ROUND EIGHT
When I got to Gold Street, I went into the courthouse and started looking for a fire investigator. I had to go through a couple of county clerks and one Assistant District Attorney before I found out a man named Victor Strayhan had been assigned to look into the fire. I was given a chair in a room where lawyers consult with their clients and waited for Strayhan to join me.
I was sitting at a long conference table when the door opened and a guy stuck his head. He was wearing a Brooklyn Dodger ball cap.
“You Corleone?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Vic Strayhan,” he said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Where—” I started, but he withdrew his head and was gone. I got up and trotted to the door. When I got outside, he was already down the hall. I took off after him. He ignored the elevator and took the stairs at a good pace for a guy in his late forties. He wore a Brooklyn Dodger baseball jacket that matched his hat, and sneakers, and had a file folder stuck under his arm.
“Where we goin’?” I asked, as I caught up to him halfway down.
“Outta here,” Strayhan said. “I can’t breathe in this building. Wanna get somethin’ to drink?”
“Sure.”
Outside he headed right for a hotdog stand. He got a dog with everything and a root beer.
“You?” he asked.
“I’ll take a cola,” I said. ”This wasn’t what I thought you had in mind when you asked if I wanted a drink.”
“Whatja think I meant? A beer? Naw, I don’t drink.” He took a bite of his hotdog. “Rots the brain cells.”
I took my cola from the vendor and we started walking.
“You’re interested in the gym fire, right? Last night?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
“I’ve only had time to glance at the file,” he said, indicating the file under his arm. “Why don’t you tell me about it? What’s your connection?”
We walked along Court Street while I told him who I was, why I was at the gym, how I brought Cappy’s body out, and where I thought the fire had started.
“And your friend was dead when you brought him out?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“And you said the downstairs was filled with smoke, but no flames until the ceiling fell in on the ring?”
“That’s right.”
“Sure sounds like it started on the second floor, which is kind of odd.”
“I thought so, too.”
“Of course,” Strayhan said around a bite of hotdog, “I’ll have to go in make my own determination.” A ’54 Mercury Monarch went by, eye-catching and bright red, and as Strayhan stared a dollop of mustard fell onto the front of his jacket, right in one of the “O’s” in Brooklyn.
“I figured that,” I said. “Look, I’d like to get inside the gym, too.”
“What for?” He looked at me, took his last bite.
“I want to take a look in Cappy’s office, see if I can find anythin’ that would give me an idea who killed him.”
He stopped walking, gave me a long look
“The cops know you’re investigating the murder?”
“No.”
“You know your butt will be in a sling if they catch you.”
“Yep.”
Strayhan shrugged then and said, “No skin off my nose. Maybe you’ll see somethin’ that’ll help me. You got a car?”
“No.”
“Might as well ride with me, then. I’m parked behind City Hall. Crap,” he said, just noticing the mustard on his jacket, “where’d that come from?”
He was trying to wipe off it with spit and a napkin as he walked to his car.
***
His ‘52 Desoto reflected his lifestyle. The back seat was filled with food wrappers—some of them mustard stained—and drink cups—mostly blue coffee containers—and I had to move a stack of newspapers off the front seat to sit down.
“Just toss them in the back,” he said, as he stared the car. The radio came on, Big Joe Turner was in the middle of “Shake, Rattle and Roll.”
As we pulled away from the curb, he handed me the file he’d been carrying.
“Take a look, see what you think.”
I opened it, looked at some of the photos, and read the reports from fire and police personnel who were at the scene. There was nothing there I didn’t already know.
I closed the file and rolled down my window to let some of the stuffy smell out.
“You’re not married, are you?” I asked.
“No, how’d you guess?” he asked, then said, “Oh, you mean the car? Ah, I’m kind of a slob. A wife would never put up with me.”
I put the file down on the seat between us, flinching as he ran a red light.
“You see anythin’ interesting in that file?” He lowered the radio.
“No, nothin’.”
“You got any theories about your friend’s death?”
“Nothin’,” I said. “Cappy didn’t have anythin’ but that gym and one fighter. I can’t see why anybody would wanna kill ‘im.”
“Was the gym a success?”
“No.”
“What about the fighter.”
“Up and comer.” I said, “Not ready for anythin’ big, yet.”
“You fight?”
“When I was younger,” I said. “Golden gloves, a few years as a pro.”
“Any good?”
“Took my division two years running in the gloves, but when I got the pros I broke my left hand. End of story.”
“Fighters come back from broken hands.”
“Mine was shattered,” I said. “Wouldn’t heal well enough.”
“Too bad. How’d you get into this game . . .”
We talked a bit, exchanging stories during the rest of the drive. He had been a beat cop for twelve years before he got a gold shield, and then he specialized in fires, which was why he was investigating suspicious blazes for the court system.
He parked his car right in front of the burnt out buildings, stuck an NYPD parking permit on the dashboard so he wouldn’t get a ticket.
We got out and approached the building. One of the uniformed cops held out his hand and said, “Can’t go in there, gents.”
Strayhan took out his shield and ID and showed them to the cop.
“Oh, sorry about that,” the cop said. “What about him?”
“He’s with me,” Strayhan said.
“He got a shield?”
“No, he’s a consultant,” Strayhan said. “Look, they want this fire investigated fast. You wanna hold me up while you check him out, be my guest. I’ll let you explain to the brass why I got held up —”
“Naw,” the cop said. “Go ahead. To hell with the brass.”
“Yeah,” Strayhan said. “Thanks.”
They went up the concrete steps to the front doors, which were intact.
“Looks like they didn’t have to chop their way in,” Strayhan commented.
“No, the doors were open when I got here.”
“Were they usually locked?”
“Yeah, but Cappy was inside, so he must’ve unlocked them.”
“Was his car here when you got here?”
“Yeah.”
“Still here?”
“Yeah.” I turned and pointed down the block. “That Packard, right there.”
“Okay,” Strayhan said. “We can look at it on the way out. Let’s go inside.”
As soon as we entered there were two ways to go, into the gym, or upstairs to the second floor. I knew there was also another stairway in the back.
“I’m gonna start upstairs,” he said.
“I’ll check the office.”
“Don’t touch anythin’ you don’t have to, okay?” he asked. “Don’t make me sorry I brought you along.”
“Yeah, you got it.”
He went up
the stairs, which were scorched and water damaged, the wood warped beneath his feet.
I went down the hall, careful not to touch the scorched walls, and entered the gym.
ROUND NINE
I went into Cappy’s office, which was a shambles. The walls were black with soot, the desk charred but intact. I went to the desk and went through the drawers. The papers inside were partially burned, but the pieces I could read didn’t tell me anything. There was a metal file cabinet against the wall. I tried the drawers, but they were locked. There was one lock, at the top, which when pushed in, locked all the drawers. All I had to do was get it to pop out. I took out my penknife and tried, without success. I punched it in the side with my right, which wasn’t a good idea.
“That wasn’t smart,” Strayhan said from the doorway.
I turned and said, “Just what I was thinkin’. That was fast.”
“Wasn’t very hard to find the point of origin,” he said. “I still don’t understand why they’d start it upstairs, though.”
“What’d they use?”
“An accelerant,” Strayhan said. “Might’ve been gasoline. There was no attempt to hide it. It’s an obvious arson.”
“And murder.”
“Unless he was dead before the fire,” Strayhan pointed out.
“Even if he was, it could’ve been the same person who killed him.”
“Could’ve been,” Strayhan said. “Then again . . .”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Want me to get that open?” he asked.
“Can you?”
“I’m good with locks.”
He walked to the cabinet, took out a set of lock picks and popped the lock on the cabinet easily.
“There ya go,” he said. “I’m gonna have a look around down here.”
“Yeah, okay.”
He went back out to the main gym as I approached the cabinet and opened the drawers. Two of the three drawers were empty. The top one was the only one containing anything, and they were papers having to do with Cappy’s business.
I looked out the window at Strayhan, who was walking around, looking down at the floor. I wanted to take the papers with me, but they were an armful. I didn’t want him to see me. I left the office with my arms full and made my way to the locker room. It appeared as if the fire hadn’t damaged the room much, and all the lockers were intact — including mine. I opened it and took out the canvas bag I kept in there. The papers from the cabinet fit almost perfectly.