‘What do you mean he said he was going to kill you?’ Orso asked. They were having breakfast in a diner in Times Square.
‘That’s what he said. He said he was the guy trying to push me on to the tracks yesterday.’
‘The fat guy?’
‘No. He was pushing the fat guy. Pretty smart. I never got a look at him that way.’
‘You got any idea who he might be?’
‘I’ve been going over in my mind who we’ve put away over the last few years, and who might be getting out of cement now, but no one pops up.’
‘I’ll do the same. Most of the assholes we hook think a couple of years in the joint is the price of doing business. And if they did want to clip you, they’d just do it. There wouldn’t be any warning. Chances are it’s some sicko who’s just pulling your chain and doesn’t mean it. Odds are you’ll never hear from him again, but don’t sit with your back to any doors.’
When Cassidy pushed through the door to the Bellevue morgue, he was met by the familiar damp heat, the odor of chemicals mixed with the sweet smell of corruption, an odor that got into his nose and clothing and stayed with him for hours. Supplies spilled out of boxes in the corridor, evidence of the chronic shortage of storage in the morgue. The city charter dictated that any violent or suspicious death would bring you to these rooms, including death ‘while in apparent good health,’ whatever the hell that meant. Three sheet-covered bodies waited on gurneys against the white-tiled wall outside an autopsy room. From the shapes, two of them were men, and one was a woman. If you thought death was dignified and poetic, a trip to the morgue would reorder your mind.
Al Skinner looked up when Cassidy came into the autopsy room. The assistant medical examiner was sitting on a dissecting table with his legs dangling while he smoked a cigarette and leafed through a furniture catalog. ‘Hey, Cassidy. How’re you doing?’ He was a wiry dark-haired man in his thirties, who looked at the world with ironic cheerfulness in defiance of his work.
The room smelled like a meat locker. The tools of Skinner’s trade lay on the table: an electric saw to remove the top of the skull, a tin tray of scalpels, a plastic-handled soup ladle used to scoop fluid from the body cavities, and wooden-handled brush cutters from a gardening store to chop ribs.
‘My guy?’ Today the atmosphere in the dead house was unbearably heavy. Today he felt like the odds were stacked in favor of his ending up here with his brain on his chest.
‘Come on. I’ll show you.’
Cassidy followed him down the corridor to a bank of body drawers. Skinner studied tags until he found the one he wanted, and then pulled out the drawer.
‘John Doe,’ Skinner said. ‘A not well-nourished male in his fifties, maybe late forties. The guy saw a lot of life before he got dead.’
The man lay face up in the drawer. A sheet covered him to his shoulders. His flesh was yellow and shiny like wax. It had gone slack in death, and the bones of his face stood out. His eyes were open. They were glassy and opaque with all the light gone from them.
‘Help me roll him,’ Skinner said. Cassidy got his hands under the corpse’s shoulders and on Skinner’s nod they rolled him to his stomach. He was not a big man, but death made him dense and loose. One arm flopped over the side of the drawer. Cassidy lifted it back to lie alongside the body.
‘Here,’ Skinner said. ‘Take a look.’ His finger pointed to a place at the base of the John Doe’s skull that he had shaved clean. ‘I don’t know what he got stuck with, an ice pick maybe, except the entry looks a little flatter than a pick would make.’ There were three dark-rimmed punctures in the shaved patch. ‘Some sort of really thin blade. You could stick a guy there and give him a headache, or leave him half paralyzed, leave him twitching, but to kill him you’ve got to be very lucky, or you’ve got to know anatomy. Whoever did this put it in, took it out, stuck it back in, pulled it out and did it again until he got it done. And see these?’ He touched two puckered scars on the man’s back. ‘Shot in the back twice. Years ago.’ His finger traced two old ropey scars, one near the man’s spine, and the other down the calf of one leg. ‘And these. It looks to me,’ Skinner said, ‘like someone operated on him with a machete.’
‘What kind of operations?’
‘No idea. I might know more after the cut. Oh, and two of them killed this guy last night, I’m pretty sure. Help me roll him back. I’ll show you.’
When the body lay face up again, Skinner lifted one of the arms. ‘See there? See the bruising on his wrists? I think someone stood in front of him and held him real tight while the other guy did the blade work. Before I forget.’ He lifted the dead man’s left arm and pointed to a tattoo of numbers in dark ink on the forearm. ‘Do you know what this is?’
‘Yeah. It’s a prisoner number. The guy was in a Nazi concentration camp.’
‘The poor bastard lived through that and got taken out in Central Park for a couple of bucks in his wallet. That is the shits. One other thing: his clothes smelled like horse.’
Everything found on the dead man was in a brown paper envelope in a drawer of a gray metal desk in Skinner’s office. Cassidy emptied the envelope onto a table under the window. He found a bone-handled clasp knife, four sugar cubes wrapped in a paper napkin, two carrots, a plastic change purse containing forty-two cents and three subway tokens, and a cellophane envelope that held a faded, torn piece of a photograph showing a young woman with an old-fashioned hair-do holding a baby and smiling shyly at the camera. The cellophane was meant to protect the photograph, but the paper had been rubbed by age and handling to the softness of tissue.
‘No wallet?’ Cassidy asked as he slid the dead man’s possessions back into the brown envelope.
‘Nah. Maybe it was kids did it. I’ve been reading about these juvenile delinquent gangs, they’ll stick someone for looking at them wrong.’
‘You said the guy might know anatomy.’
‘Or might have gotten lucky. A kid with some homemade blade, maybe.’
‘I don’t think so. A mugger goes into the park, he’s prepared. He’s got a knife, a gun, or if there are two of them, they’re going to strong arm someone. This feels improvised, like they suddenly decided to kill him, and they did it with what they had at hand.’
‘The knife, was it in the dead guy’s pocket?’
‘Nah. On the ground near him.’
‘Was everything else still in his pockets?’
‘Yes.’
‘So they weren’t trying to rob him. They would have checked his pockets for more cash. They took the wallet to make it look like a robbery. Was the knife open?’
‘Open. No blood on the blade.’
‘So either he was going for them, or they were going for him. Maybe he knew them or they knew him. They killed him because they knew each other.’
‘Fucking Sherlock Cassidy,’ Skinner said with a grin.
‘Fuck you. Tell me where they found the body.’
Cassidy stood on the path a hundred feet inside Central Park and studied the black-and-white crime scene photographs Al Skinner had given him. They had been taken in early morning light when the shadows were still long. The dead man lay on his stomach with his head turned to one side. His eyes stared, and his mouth was open. One leg was bent and one rigidly straight. His left arm was trapped beneath his body, and the other stretched out toward a park bench at the side of the path. The knife lay open on the ground a few feet from the outstretched hand. He put the photographs back in the envelope and quartered the area carefully, occasionally crouching down to examine something that drew his eye. There wasn’t a lot to see. Ants crawled on the few blots of blood where the dead man’s head had rested. There was a dark patch on the pavement where his bladder had let go, not much to mark a man’s passage from life to death.
Cassidy hefted the evidence envelope and felt the shape of the carrots and the sugar cubes in the bottom. He walked back out to Central Park South to where the carriages parked near Columbus Circle. Four of the drivers
listened to Backstage Wife on a transistor radio propped on the park wall as Mary Noble struggled to decide whether to tell her husband, the Broadway star Bob Noble, that she was pregnant. One of the drivers noticed him coming and stepped out before the others saw him. ‘You looking for a ride around the park, sir? I’m your man.’
Cassidy showed him his badge. ‘Do you know if any of the drivers went missing last night?’ He dumped the carrots and sugar into his palm. ‘We had a dead man in the park this morning. No ID, but he was carrying these. I figured they were treats for one of the horses.’
‘Must have been Leon,’ one of the drivers said. ‘Jerry Gross took his own cab in and came back past the Circle on his way home. He seen Leon’s was still here at two in the morning. No Leon. He took the cab in, figured Leon had gotten sick or something.’
‘Is Jerry here?’
‘Nope. He won’t be on till four. Four to midnight.’
‘Were any of you working last night? Any of you see Leon?’
They shook their heads. ‘We mostly work days.’
‘Leon what? What’s his last name?’
The four men shook their heads. ‘Dombek, something like that. He kind of kept to himself. Rusty Siler might know more. He spent time with him.’
‘Where’s Rusty now?’
‘He’s got customers in the park. They’ve been out an hour. He ought to be back any time.’
‘Thank you.’ He turned away.
‘Hey, so what happened with Leon? He get mugged or something?’
‘We don’t know yet. We’re still looking at it.’
Cassidy sat on a bench next to the park’s stone wall and lit a Lucky Strike. The sun was high, and warm enough to take the edge off the September air. The traffic was heavy on Central Park South, the rush of cars, honking horns, the wheeze of bus brakes, a siren, a chattering jackhammer, the sounds of a city alive with energy and purpose, unaware and uncaring that the energy had been minutely diminished by the death of one hansom cab driver.
A carriage came out of the park. The horse clip-clopped at a fast walk and pulled into the curb at the back end of the line of carriages waiting for fares. The driver opened the carriage door and helped his passengers down. They were an elderly couple and two young girls, grandparents and granddaughters, Cassidy guessed. The man paid the driver. They all shook his hand and then walked off toward Columbus Circle.
When Cassidy approached, the driver was feeding a carrot to the horse. The driver was maybe an inch over five feet tall, but he had powerful hands that belonged to a bigger man. Some of his fingers were crooked and one of his cheekbones had been broken and repaired flatter than the other and it gave his face an unbalanced look. Life had run at him hard and fast and he hadn’t always been able to get out of its way.
‘Are you Rusty Siler?’
‘Yup.’
‘I need to talk to you about Leon, last name’s like Dombek, one of the guys down there said.’ Cassidy showed him his ID and badge.
‘Dudek, Leon Dudek. A cop? I wouldn’t have made you for the law. Come on up into the cab, Detective. We can sit comfortable.’ His voice had a cowboy twang.
Cassidy followed him into the carriage and they faced each other on the leather seats.
‘What happened to Leon?’ Siler pulled the makings from his shirt pocket and rolled a cigarette with quick, deft fingers.
‘Someone killed him last night in the park.’
‘Robbery?’
‘Could be. His wallet was missing. What else did you hear?’
‘Not much.’ Siler flicked a kitchen match with his thumbnail and lit his cigarette. ‘He bought a hotdog from the Greek sometime after midnight. That was the last any of the other drivers saw him.’
‘The Greek?’
‘Owns a hotdog cart. Usually sets up in the late afternoon. Sticks around till one in the morning. A lot of the drivers eat his dogs.’
‘His name?’
‘Don’t know. Just, the Greek.’
‘What can you tell me about Dudek? Did he have any beefs with any of the other drivers?’
‘Leon? Nah. He was a real gentle guy. Never pushed himself on anyone. Kept to himself. Worked up here maybe four years, but I don’t think anyone really got to know him. He said he liked being outside, liked the park. He didn’t know horses, I can tell you that. I mean he was willing to learn, and old Jesse, the horse Leon had most days, he knew more than Leon did about the job, so it was never really a problem.’
‘Did Dudek have any family?’
‘I don’t think so. He never said.’
‘Where did he live?’
‘The Lower East Side. Somewhere in the Alphabets, but I don’t know the address. I guess it’d be on his license.’
‘We didn’t find a license. Someone stole his wallet.’
‘His hack license. It’d be on his carriage.’ He gestured toward a leatherette folder pinned to the back of the driver’s seat that held his license and a small photo. ‘I hear Jerry Gross took it back to the stable last night. It should be there still.’
The stable was a four-story brick building far west on 38th Street. Cassidy found a round, cheerful woman sitting on an apple box out front in the sun smoking a large cigar. She wore blue jeans, rubber boots, and a ratty black sweater over a man’s yellow shirt. She looked him over carefully as he got out of the cab and walked toward her. ‘Cop?’ She asked, looking up at him.
‘Michael Cassidy, detective with the 18th.’ He showed her his badge.
‘Louisa Espinosa.’ She stood up to shake hands. ‘Leon, huh?’
‘Yes.’
‘A shame, a nice guy like him. What happened, heart attack?’
‘No. It looks like someone stabbed him.’
‘Madre de Dios. What’s wrong with people?’
She led him inside and up a wide concrete ramp to an office in the rear of the building. The walls were covered with black-and-white photographs of horses and carriages dating back a century, and out-of-date calendars from feed stores and brewers. Wooden pegs held harnesses and bridles, and there was a pile of horse blankets in one corner. Louisa’s desk was strewn with papers held down by thick china coffee mugs. ‘Pull up a pew,’ she said and waved at one of the two wooden armchairs as she went around the desk. The desk chair groaned and tilted as she settled into it. ‘Now what can I do you for? Anything I can to help. Leon was a sweet man.’
‘What can you tell me about him?’
‘Not much.’ She shook her head. ‘The man’s been working here four years just about. You think you know him, but push comes to shove, you don’t know much. “Hello, Leon, how are you doing?” A little talk about the horse or the carriage, the weather, the business. That’s about it. Of course his English wasn’t so hot. I think that embarrassed him.’
‘Do you know where he was from?’
‘Poland, I think. Yeah, Poland. He said that once.’
‘Do you know anyone who might have had a beef with him?’
‘With Leon? No, no. He was a sweetheart. Nobody had an unkind word for him. Why? You think he knew the guy who did it?’
‘People usually do. Do you have an address for him?’
‘Absolutely.’
She got up and found a copy of Leon Dudek’s license application in a tall wooden file cabinet. A black-and-white ID photograph was stapled to one corner. Dudek’s address was off Avenue B on the Lower East Side.
Cassidy did not get down to the Lower East Side that day. Dudek was dead, and the living required his attention. Two men robbed a grocery store on Eighth Avenue. One of them hit the clerk with a milk bottle and fractured his skull. A Puerto Rican teenage gang, the Zombies, and an Irish one, the Vikings, rumbled in a vacant lot off Tenth Avenue. The weapons of choice were switch blades, chains, and clubs, but one inventive lad brought a zip gun made from a section of radio antenna broken off a Chevy Bel Air and cut to length for the barrel, a crudely carved wooden handle, a tack, a powerful rubber band, tape to hold the thing
together, and a .22 long rifle cartridge. The result was a fifteen-year-old Zombie with a bullet in his spine and no feeling in his legs. By the time the day was done it was too late to go down to where Leon Dudek lived.
Cassidy was due for a rotation to the night watch after the weekend, so he handed Dudek’s address off to a detective named Foley, who listened to what Cassidy had learned about the dead man and then dropped the piece of paper into the top drawer of his desk, said, ‘I’ll get to it when I’ve got a minute,’ and went back to the hunting magazine he’d been reading.
FIVE
Costigan’s Irish pub offered a dim, religious light for the comfort of serious drinkers, and it did not distract them by serving any food except for pretzels, nuts, and popcorn in wooden bowls – salty snacks that encouraged another round.
The three men in the high-backed wooden booth along the wall might have been out-of-town businessmen closing an evening on the town, but they weren’t.
‘One more round?’ Spencer Shaw suggested. ‘My turn.’ Shaw was thirty-six years old, a lean six-footer, with hair the color of straw and the tan of a man who had spent his summer on boats. Bushy russet eyebrows shaded his blue eyes, and if he let his beard grow it came in the same darker color. A thin white scar ran from the corner of his right eye down over his cheekbone, and one of his front teeth was slightly skewed. He had a habit of fiddling with the gold signet ring on the little finger of his left hand. He had the genial air of a golden retriever until you looked at him closely and realized the dog might bite. ‘John, you’ll have another, won’t you?’
John Hoffman was a dark-haired, bulky six-footer about the same age as Spencer Shaw. He had a broad, flat face and dark eyes, and a slow, calm way of contemplating even the simplest question. ‘Sure. Why not? Company money.’
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