Suspects

by William Caunitz

  Many of the city’s seventy-two patrol precincts provide space for “overhead” units, units whose responsibilities encompass entire borough commands, unlike patrol precincts that must operate within set boundaries. Queens Internal Affairs, Public Morals, and Narcotics were quartered in the One-fourteen.

  When Scanlon arrived he had found the flag at half-staff and policemen standing on ladders hand-draping the mourning purple over the entrance. A group of grim cops stood bunched on the steps, talking in angry tones. Walking into the station house, Scanlon had overheard snatches of their conversation. It had been a robbery attempt, one said. Joe Gallagher had taken police action, another maintained. Cocksuckers, groused a third.

  The foul smell of old sweat permeated the cramped space of the locker. Uniforms were pinched together; a gunbelt hung from a rear hook; several nightsticks were clumped together. The blouses and jackets had gold bars on the shoulders. The sergeant complained that the overhead units should have their own locker rooms instead of being grouped in with the precinct’s. This was the fourth locker that he had had to break into during his twenty-two years on the Job. The sergeant pushed uniforms aside, looking around, searching.

  Scanlon focused his attention inside the locker. If there was anything there to be found he wanted to find it before word leaked out that Lt. Joe Gallagher might not have died a hero. Things have a mysterious way of disappearing whenever a cop is jammed up. It had happened recently in the Three-six. IAD was set to arrest the sergeant in charge of the precinct’s gambling car. The complaint alleged that the sergeant had a pad going with the numbers men along Lenox Avenue. Word was leaked to the Three-six’s PBA delegate by a cop who used to work in the Three-six. The precinct’s Residence Known Gamblers File, and the Arrest Record, and three years’ worth of roll calls vanished. Overnight. IAD called it a concerted conspiracy to obstruct justice. The cops in the Three-six called it an obvious act of God.

  The sergeant began his disagreeable task. As each article of uniform was taken out it was searched to ensure that there was nothing in the pockets that might prove embarrassing to the family. SOP. Scanlon watched everything the other cop did. A rosary was draped over the locker’s face mirror, and stuck into the frame were the photographs of three smiling women. Scanlon pushed the sergeant aside, removed the pictures, and put them into his pocket. The sergeant saw him do this but said nothing.

  Gallagher’s helmet was on the floor inside its carrying case. Scanlon bent and felt with his hand around the inside of the case. It turned out to be the repository for several flashlights and packets of used memo books that were bound together by rubber bands.

  On the top shelf there were winter and summer uniform hats stacked one inside the other, two boxes of ammunition, a slapper, three blackjacks, and an assortment of knives, razors, and ice picks. A Chuka stick was lying next to Gallagher’s shaving things.

  The sergeant thrust his hand into the inside pocket of Gallagher’s cloak raincoat. “Look at what we got here,” he said, removing a Turkish Kirikkals 7.55 pistol.

  “Is it on his Ten Card?” Scanlon asked, knowing that it wouldn’t be. The sergeant picked up Gallagher’s UF 10, Force Record Card, from the bench that ran along the aisle between the row of lockers. He turned the department pedigree form over, to the section at the bottom that listed the description and serial numbers of all the weapons that Lt. Joseph P. Gallagher, NYPD, was authorized to possess. The sergeant glanced over the card. “It’s a throwaway,” he said, tucking the unauthorized pistol into his waistband.

  They were beginning to find things.

  While the sergeant was busy searching the pockets of a winter blouse, Scanlon reached up into the locker and pushed the hats aside. A shoe box lay on top of a multi-use envelope. He took them both out and stepped away from the locker, sitting astride the narrow wooden bench. He lifted the lid of the shoe box. His eyebrows arched with surprise when he saw the double-headed dildo lying on a stack of amateurish pornographic pictures. He shuffled the contents about, searching. One of the photographs showed a woman on a bed laughing as she inserted a dildo into her body. In another, a woman’s hand was guiding a penis into her vagina. He replaced the lid on the shoe box. Picking up the multi-use envelope, he unwound the red string on the flap.

  “Whaddya find?” asked the sergeant, searching a summer blouse, not bothering to look.

  “Just some papers,” Scanlon said, studying the rent receipts and utility bills for an apartment in Jackson Heights. He reached behind and picked up the Ten Card. Gallagher’s official residence was 32 Anthony Street, in Greenpoint.

  The NYPD’s Catholic Man of the Year for 1978 was fast becoming an interesting person.

  A short time later Scanlon helped carry the uniforms and equipment downstairs to the Desk, where a blotter entry would be made of the forced entry into a member of the force’s locker and the property that had been removed would be invoiced.

  The uniforms were folded into a neat pile on a desk in the clerical office to await a member of the immediate family, whose unpleasant duty it would be to select Gallagher’s burying clothes. It was then customary for the family member to donate the remaining uniforms to the precinct, where they would be stored in the “saver” locker. Whenever a cop needed to replace a torn or worn article of uniform he would go to the locker and search for a “saver” his size. Uniforms were expensive.

  No record was made of the throwaway that had been found in Gallagher’s raincoat. That too would be “saved,” awaiting the proper police emergency.

  Watching the desk officer make the entries in the blotter, Scanlon lit up a De Nobili, picked up the desk phone, and dialed temporary headquarters.

  Higgins answered.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, passing the cigar under his nose.

  “This place is a madhouse. The PC and his entourage have arrived.”

  “Are the witnesses in the house?”

  “Yes. Brodie just called. They’re being interviewed and are pretty much sticking to their stories.”

  “Anything back on the van?”

  “Jacob from the Six-two Squad called. They did a canvass and came up dry. I transmitted a fifteen-state alarm.”

  Scanlon turned his back to the desk officer and said in a low voice, “Anybody looking for me?”

  “Naw. All the brass are running around preening for the television cameras and trying to think up a synonym for ‘perpetrator.’ We have things organized and the worker ants are all out knocking on doors.”

  “Maggie,” he whispered, “get to the PC and tell him not to go out on a limb on this one. There’s a problem.”

  “What did you find?”

  “We’ll talk when I get back.”

  Eight minutes later Tony Scanlon left the station house and made his way along the side of the gray stone building to the walled-in motor pool. He wound his way around parked department vehicles to his own, which was near the gas pumps. He slid in on the driver’s side, tossing the shoe box and the multi-use envelope onto the seat. He started the car. Remembering the photographs that he had taken from the rim of the face mirror in Gallagher’s locker, he glanced down at the shoe box. He flipped off the lid and removed several of the pornographic pictures, spreading them out over the seat, separating them by actresses. He slid the pictures from the face mirror out of his pocket and began to compare faces. They matched.

  “Lt. Joe Gallagher exemplified all that was good and decent within the police department. He was a hero who died as he lived, serving the people of this great city.” Roberto Gomez’s voice cracked. He turned away from the microphones, covering his face with his hands, slowly counting to twenty. A hush fell over the reporters as they waited for the police commissioner to regain his composure, to continue his impromptu news conference.

  Bob Gomez was the first member of a minority group to become PC. He was himself a hero to the city’s Hispanic community. To them it did not matter how the press and the public at large anglicized Gomez’s
name. He was their Roberto, their Bobby.

  Gomez had started out in the police department as a real street cop, walking a beat in the Eight-one. He had worked steady six to two on a gambling post so that he might attend Brooklyn College during the day and later St. John’s Law School. He was the first member of the Hispanic community to be promoted to the rank of captain. He had retired from the police department several years ago to head the city’s Department of Social Services. When the present mayor had been accused three years ago by the city’s black community of insensitivity to the needs of minorities, the mayor squelched the rising controversy with the appointment of Bob Gomez as PC. The blacks weren’t happy about getting a Hispanic consolation prize, but they shut up. A master political stroke, the appointment was called in the press. The mayor was delighted. But there were many of the mayor’s advisers who had counseled him against the Gomez appointment. It was an open secret within the city administration and particularly within the police department that Bob Gomez had developed several bad habits over the years. Habits that could hurt an ambitious mayor.

  Bob Gomez dropped his hands and sighed deeply. He faced the reporters, ready to continue his performance. He immediately lapsed into his favorite homily on the need for more police, on the need for a judicial system that did not mollycoddle criminals, on the right of every citizen to be secure in his person and property, on the need for the abolition of concurrent sentencing.

  With his arms stretched out at his side, Bob Gomez once again proclaimed that Lt. Joe Gallagher had died a hero.

  When Scanlon arrived back at the crime scene he saw the PC answering reporters’ questions. Gathered around the commissioner was the top echelon of the Job, grim men all in their late fifties. Conspicuously absent from the group was Chief of Detectives Alfred Goldberg. Scanlon spotted the CofD standing about twenty feet away from the PC surrounded by a loyal coterie of subordinates from within the Detective Division. Goldberg was glaring at the PC. It was no secret inside the Job that the two men hated each other. Goldberg had expected to be named PC, and when the job went to Gomez, Goldberg flew into one of his famous temper tantrums and proceeded to wreck his tenth-floor office, sending subordinates fleeing from his wrath.

  Gomez had inherited Goldberg and would have replaced him with his own man if he could have. But he couldn’t. The CofD was the darling of the Jewish real estate interests, the garment district, and the city’s shadowy diamond industry. Neither the mayor nor the PC had the political clout to dump Goldberg. The CofD was entrenched and he damn well knew it.

  As Scanlon paused on the rectory steps to take in the gathering of police brass, he noticed detectives scurrying through the crowd of onlookers canvassing for witnesses. What a way to run a job, he thought, entering the temporary headquarters. Scanlon moved directly up to the Log. A fifteen-block area around the crime scene had been divided into quadrants. A sergeant and ten detectives had been assigned to each quadrant. The occupants of every house and of every business would be questioned. People on the street would be stopped and questioned. Mailmen and bus drivers would be questioned. Emergency service units had been dispatched to search sewers and refuse cans for discarded physical evidence. Every assignment was listed in the Log; every assignment required a detailed report on a Five—a DD 5 Supplementary Complaint Report.

  Scanlon found Higgins leaning over the rectory’s ornate desk collating Fives and stuffing them into the Gallagher/Zimmerman case folder. “I just saw the PC making with a press conference,” he said, coming up to her. “Didn’t you give him the word?”

  She looked up at him. “I most certainly did. But in his infinite wisdom Bobby Boy chose to ignore your advice. So up his.” She went back to her task.

  “Did you tell him yourself?”

  “Detectives do not personally tell the PC anything. I relayed your message through the first deputy commissioner and he passed it on to Bobby.”

  Scanlon looked around at the crowd of policemen gathered inside the temporary headquarters. He turned back and asked her what she was doing. “I’m fastening Fives inside the homicide folder so that they coincide with each quadrant.”

  “Leave that for now,” he said. “I want you to bang out the Unusual.”

  Howard Christopher was a tall, lean man who was always impeccably dressed in the latest Sears, Roebuck fashions for men. He had a pasty white face with an overlarge forehead. He was a gentle man with a warm smile and an addiction to soap operas and health food. As a major in the National Guard and a staunch believer in military courtesy, Christopher would never have thought of debasing the rank of lieutenant with the diminutive. He came up to Scanlon with his steno pad held out in front of him and began his report. “Lieutenant, it looks as though we’re beginning to develop an outline of how this caper went down.” Christopher went on to report that the killer’s movements prior to the murders had been backtracked. There was a butcher in the Danzig meat market on Driggs Avenue who stated that he had seen a man who answered to the killer’s description walk past the store a few minutes before the time of occurrence. And there was this A&P stock clerk on a coffee break. He had been leaning against one of the loading bays having a smoke when he noticed an old man with a shriveled face walk out of McGoldrick Park clutching a shopping bag. And there was a mother who had been sitting on a bench in the park playing with her baby. A creepy old man with an unfriendly glare had sat down on the next bench, she had told detectives.

  Christopher reached into the pocket of his brass-buttoned light brown sport jacket and removed a glassine evidence bag containing peanut shells. He dangled it before Scanlon. “Lieutenant, I’m sending these to the lab. You never know, we just might get lucky.”

  Deputy Chief MacAdoo McKenzie, the CO of Brooklyn North Detectives, was an oversize fireplug of a man, a nervous type who wore ill-fitting clothes that never matched. Every time Scanlon saw him he was reminded of a bin full of used parts.

  McKenzie pushed his way through the crowd inside temporary headquarters and came up to Scanlon. In his customary caustic tone, he said, “Whaddaya got on this one, Scanlon?”

  Scanlon led the chief away from the others and calmly confided the results of the preliminary investigation. “A hit!” growled MacAdoo McKenzie. He began to sweat. He yanked a dirty, snot-encrusted handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his hands. “Joe Gallagher murdered? I can’t believe that. Not him. It just don’t seem possible. I can’t believe that he’s gone.”

  “That’s the trouble with death, Chief. Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.”

  McKenzie gave him a dirty look. “Gallagher must have been into something he shouldn’t’ve been into. Nobody ups and whacks a police lieutenant for nothing. Maybe Joe went into the junk business for himself?” He wiped the back of his neck. “If the press gets hold of this they’ll have a field day with it.”

  “It doesn’t always have to be the cop who’s the bad one, Chief. Zimmerman might have been the mark.”

  McKenzie’s face flushed. “That’s bullshit and you know it. It’s always the fucking cops, sergeants, and lieutenants who are forever getting jammed up. I’ll tell you this much—this Job can’t afford too many more scandals. Six cops and a sergeant were just arrested in the Tenth for riding shotgun for coke dealers. And another five in the One-ten went down the tubes for wheelin’ and dealin’ with Colombian juice joints. If we’re not careful, we’re going to get ourselves another Knapp Commission. And this time when the politicians are through with us we’ll find ourselves with total civilian control over the Job.” McKenzie looked uncomfortable. He was shuffling his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Chief, I’m a team player. You know that. But you tell me how we’re gonna play it didn’t happen.”

  “Dunno. But I do know that you’re going to sit on this one until we do know what happened inside that candy store. And as far as the rest of the world is concerned Joe Gallagher died a hero interrupting a holdup.”

  Watching MacAdoo
McKenzie lumber away, Scanlon thought, How quick they are to always brand the cop the bad guy. Typical Palace Guard mentality. It’s always the guys below them that screw up.

  Scanlon moved around temporary headquarters making sure that everything was being done correctly. He noticed Howard Christopher pondering the bag of peanut shells and went up to him and asked him if there was a problem. Christopher looked at him with questioning eyes and said that he wasn’t sure if a Letter of Transmittal was needed with the Request for Laboratory Analysis. Scanlon told him that it was and went on to remind him that the Letter of Transmittal preserved the chain of evidence. He patted Christopher on the shoulder and moved off. Higgins was busy folding copies of the Unusual into white department envelopes. Scanlon went up to her and read a copy of it. When he finished reading the report he folded it in the prescribed manner, in three equal folds parallel with the writing with the top fold folded toward the back of the letter, so that the entire heading could be seen without unfolding the communication, and handed it to her.

  After she had addressed the last of the envelopes he told her to grab her pocketbook. They were going to take a little trip over to Jackson Heights. A cop’s splash pad was a most secret place, and Scanlon was sure that he would find things there.

  Scanlon pocketed the keys that Higgins had removed from Gallagher’s body and pulled the door closed behind them. They were in a dark, musty place, apartment 3C. A narrow hall connected the front room and a kitchen. Higgins turned on her small pocket flashlight, found the wall switch, and flipped it on: A cheap redwood veneer covered the walls; five spotlights shone down from recessed fixtures. As they stepped into the apartment they saw a bathroom directly in front of them. Higgins went into it and switched on the three-bulb fixture over the sink. Cockroaches scattered into cracks.