Suspects

by William Caunitz

  “I’m here on business, Gretta.”

  She pulled her hand quickly off of his and leaned back into the shadows, causing a veil of darkness to descend over her face. She picked up her cup with both hands and sipped tea the oriental way. “Oh?” she said, watching him warily over the brim.

  “I have to talk with Walter Ticornelli.”

  “Walter’s not here.”

  “His Ford is parked in your garage.”

  “I let a lot of people store their cars in my garage when they go on trips.”

  He exhaled a sigh of disappointment. “Gretta, my love, did I ever tell you about my rule?”

  “No, love, you didn’t.”

  “When I ask a question of someone who operates in the gray area of life, they have to answer me, or else I get mad at them.”

  Her face jutted out of the shadows to challenge him. “Walter ain’t here.”

  Scanlon assumed the benign expression of a disappointed teacher. “Gretta, I just can’t tell you how shocked I am to discover a house of ill repute in this most Catholic of neighborhoods. And so shockingly close to the church.”

  “The monsignor is a regular, and he don’t pay either.”

  “Be that as it may, my child, I’m afraid that it’s my duty to hand you a collar for Promoting Prostitution as a D Felony in that you did manage, supervise, control, and own a prostitution enterprise involving the activity of two or more prostitutes.”

  She slammed her cup down, and tea splattered on the table. She half rose from her seat. “You peglegged, shit-on-a-shingle fuck! Just where the fuck do you think you’re coming from? You sashay your ass in here whenever the mood strikes you, take your pick of the litter, and sashay out without it costing you a nickel. And now you got the balls to bust in here like fuckin’ J. Edgar Hoover and lean on me. Well, fuck you!”

  “Gretta?” he said in a hurt tone. “Is that any way to talk to your neighborhood good guy? Mr. Nice. I’m really surprised at you.”

  A babble of shouting came from the bar, causing her to look momentarily away, watching the crowd of longshoremen at the end of the bar. When the angry voices were replaced by slurred laughter she lowered herself back into her seat and glared at him.

  An uncertain silence separated them.

  At length he flashed a smile and blurted, “C’mon, Gretta. I only have to ask Walter a few nothing questions. Be a friend.”

  “Damn you, Scanlon,” she said, breaking into a reluctant grin. “Walter’s on the third floor.”

  He leaned up and kissed her nose. “Thanks, lover.”

  “Up yours.”

  Scanlon lit a De Nobili and blew the smoke into the surrounding darkness. “What do you know about the sexual paraphernalia business?”

  She threw him a sharp look. “You thinking of changing occupations?”

  “A friend of mine asked me to pick her up a vibrator. Seems her husband has lost interest.”

  She guffawed. “Most do. A few years ago women used to have Stanley and Tupperware parties in their homes. Today they’re into Fuckerware parties where the hostess shows off her wares and the ladies fill out order forms and then seal them so that nobody knows what their pleasure is.”

  “Is it a big business?”

  “Sex is always a big business.”

  “Are the wise guys into it?”

  “Do a hobby horse have a hickory dick? Of course they’re into it. They’re into everything.”

  “You said the third floor,” Scanlon said, standing.

  “Let me go with you. I don’t want you walking into the wrong room.”

  She led him through the lounge to the two-person elevator that she had had installed four years before to accommodate clients who had had bypass operations and did not want to trudge up stairs.

  A mincing transvestite in a long yellow robe trimmed in marabou greeted them as they stepped off the elevator. The prostitute daintily kissed Gretta on both cheeks, whispering, “Is he for me, darling?”

  “He’s not your type,” Gretta said, then asked, “What room is Walter in?”

  “The Teak Room, darling,” the transvestite said, staring at Scanlon and sucking on his bottom lip.

  Scanlon threw open the door and entered the room.

  “Can’t a guy get any privacy around here?” Walter Ticornelli shouted. He was sitting up in a king-size bed with a brass headboard, his arm draped over the shoulders of a black transvestite.

  “I need a word with you, Walter,” Scanlon said, motioning for the prostitute to leave.

  Ticornelli patted his lover’s leg. “I’ll catch you later.”

  The transvestite slid ladylike from the bed and snatched a thin white robe from a nearby chair. His female features, silicone breasts, and exaggerated female movements contrasted sharply with his limp penis and flouncing balls.

  He slid on the robe, bunched it at the throat, and huffed past Scanlon on his way out of the room.

  “Your friend is kinda cute,” Scanlon said, sitting on the edge of the bed, glancing up at the mirror set into the bed’s gold canopy.

  Ticornelli folded his hands across his chest. “She’s going into the hospital next week to get her plumbing altered.”

  Scanlon winced at the thought of castration. He noticed the five-carat diamond ring on Ticornelli’s right pinky. Street talk said that it had been a gift from Joey “the Nose” Napoli when Ticornelli went through his candle-and-blood initiation into the Genovese crime family.

  Ticornelli fixed his hooded eyes on Scanlon. “What’s on your mind, Anthony?”

  “I see that you still got the hots for black transvestites. Do the wife and kids that you got stashed out in Munsey Park know about your peculiar life-style?”

  “What’s a guy going to do, Anthony? We all got our hang-ups, right? Take you, for instance. You smoke them guinea stinkers of yours as a protest. You want the world to know that you’re Italian even though you got an Irish name.” He leaned forward, black ringlets falling over his forehead. He spoke in Italian. “You and me, we go way back. To the old days on Pleasant Avenue when you were a wild neighborhood kid with a drunken Irish cop for a father and an Italian mother who only talked to you in Italian. Tell me, Anthony, how many of your cop friends know that you speak Italian? How many of them know how much you hate their Irish guts? Not many, right? You’re still a little bit ashamed of being Italian, aren’t you?”

  Scanlon rammed his hand into Ticornelli’s groin, squeezing. He said, “Come ti piacerebbe diventare uno castrato?”

  Color drained from Ticornelli’s face as it furrowed with pain. “Let go,” he said in Italian.

  “What’s the magic word?” Scanlon said in English.

  “Please,” he gasped.

  Scanlon released his grip. He noticed the beads of sweat at Ticornelli’s hairline. “I don’t like to be talked to like that, Walter. It shows disrespect. You wouldn’t open a mouth like that to one of your capos, so don’t try it out on me.” He playfully slapped Ticornelli’s cheek. “Okay, paisan? Now, taking care of your padrone’s gambling and usury interests in Greenpoint, you get to meet a lot of people, see and hear a lot of things. You have your hand on the pulse of the community, so to speak.”

  “Why don’t you get to the point?”

  “I heard your voice on a tape today, Walter,” Scanlon said, smoothing down the edge of the sheet.

  “What tape?”

  “All calls coming into nine-eleven are recorded.”

  Ticornelli beamed. “So? That just goes to show what a public-spirited person I am.”

  Scanlon nodded in agreement. “This is so, Walter. What I would like you, as a public-spirited-type person, to do for me is to tell me exactly what you saw go down inside that candy store.”

  Ticornelli licked the sweat from his lips and reached for the pack of Camels on top of the night table. He shook one out, lit it, sent a stream of smoke through his nostrils, and leaned back and relaxed.

  According to Ticornelli, he had been sta
nding across the street from the candy store talking with Father Rudnicki about the problems in Poland when he heard three explosions in rapid succession. He heard squealing tires, looked in the direction of the blasts, and saw a blue van blocking his view of the candy store. Walking slowly away from the priest, he started to cross the street. He saw that the driver of the van was a white man who had on sunglasses and a brown hat pulled down over his head. He saw the driver reach across the seat as if to open the door on the passenger side. Someone rushed into the van on the passenger side, and the van sped off. He rushed across the street into the candy store, saw the bodies, and called the police. He knocked the ash of his cigarette into his palm. “That’s it. The whole story.”

  “Did you know Gallagher?”

  “From the neighborhood.”

  “Did you see him enter the candy store?”

  “Like I told you, I was bullshitting with the priest.”

  Scanlon got up off the bed and went over to the chair that was next to the window. Ticornelli had carefully laid out his clothes on the chair. Scanlon picked them up and threw them on the bed. “Putcha clothes on, Walter. We’re going into the station for a little chat.”

  Ticornelli began to gather up his clothes, a look of bewilderment plastered across his face. “Why are you doing this to me, Anthony? You got no call to lean on me this way.”

  “Gallagher’s own mother would not have recognized him. His face was gone. But you knew who he was. Howdya do that, paisan? You clairvoyant?”

  The gambler sat with his clothes bunched between his legs, pondering his situation.

  Scanlon continued to press him. “Because you’re a big money maker your puritanical friends on Mulberry Street overlook your sexual idiosyncrasy, as long as you’re discreet. I wonder what they’re going to say when I drag you in in cuffs? How are they going to react when they read the headlines in the Post? ‘Genovese soldier discovered in homosexual tryst.’” He snapped his fingers miming error. “I’m sorry—‘alleged Genovese soldier.’”

  Ticornelli flushed with anger. “You’re a first-class Irish scumbag, Scanlon.”

  “This is true, Walter.” He leaned over the bed, bracing his palms on the mattress. “Walter, my old friend from Pleasant Avenue. Why don’t you make it easy on the both of us? Tell me what I want to know, now, here.”

  Ticornelli punched the mattress in frustration. “Gallagher was into me for five large,” he blurted. “He was supposed to meet me at Yetta’s to make a payment.”

  A tremor of disbelief shook Scanlon’s head. “You lent a police lieutenant five thousand dollars?”

  “Whatsamatta, their money ain’t the same color as everyone else’s?”

  “What was the vig?”

  “Three points. And that was only because he was a cop. It shoulda been five points. But you know that I’m a soft touch when it comes to you guys.”

  “A hundred and fifty dollars a week interest on a lieutenant’s salary? Ain’t no way, Walter.”

  “Gallagher’d been into me before and he always anted up.”

  “Was he behind in his payments?”

  “A little. The bread that he was supposed to give me today woulda brung him up to date.”

  “How much, paisan?”

  “A week’s vig and two large off the principal. He telephoned me last night at the club and asked me to meet him at Yetta’s.”

  Scanlon tried to recall what was listed on the property voucher that recorded the personal property that had been removed from Gallagher’s body. If he remembered correctly, item one had been sixteen dollars and something in U.S. currency. If Ticornelli had just told him the truth, where was the money? Trumwell and Stone were the first cops on the scene. If a score was to be made, that was when it would have had to be done. He dismissed the idea. Cops don’t score other cops, particularly dead ones. “What was Yetta Zimmerman into?”

  “The old broad wasn’t into nothin’ except her lousy candy store and bookin’ a little action on the side. She didn’t have an enemy in the world, and for that matter, neither did your Irish friend Joe Gallagher.”

  Scanlon wanted to say that one of them sure as hell did. But he said nothing. Smart cops know when to keep their mouths shut.

  4

  Tony Scanlon walked into the squad room a little before 0800 the next morning and found it in disarray from the night’s activities. A half-eaten pastrami sandwich had attracted flies; three slices of curled-up pizza lay in a white box; empty beer cans threatened to overflow the waste barrel. The television blared: on the screen a woman with oversize glasses was recapping the morning news: the President had warned a Miami audience of the dangers inherent in the Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan axis. Here we go again, Scanlon thought, snapping off the set. It was much cooler inside the station house than outside, where the morning air was already promising a really hot day.

  Settled in behind his desk, he reached for the first folder. As he did he glanced at the early-bird edition of the Daily News that had been left on his desk. The headlines told of Joe Gallagher’s death. A hero, killed in the line of duty. There was another story inside the paper that told of a man who had murdered six people because he liked the way it felt. One of the victims had been shot dead because the killer had been full of the Christmas spirit. Scanlon read the stories, rolled up the newspaper, and threw it into the basket at the side of his desk. He wondered if the criminal justice system in this country was workable. How can Anglo-Saxon law be applied to savages? Might not Islamic law be the answer, an eye for an eye? There were entrepreneurs in the city who had already recognized that as a profitable truth. Grieving relatives now flocked to the gangs of Chinatown and Ninth Avenue seeking retribution against those who had murdered, raped, and maimed their loved ones, knowing that justice would not be forthcoming from the courts of this state. And who the hell can blame them? he thought, flipping open the folder.

  The ballistics report detailed the gauge of the shells and the size and weight of the shot. Numerous latent prints had been found at the scene. They would be useless unless a suspect was found to match them up against. The place of occurrence was a public place; all that the fingerprints could do was connect a suspect to a scene, not tell when he was there. Fingerprints had been discovered in the tombs of the pharaohs. There is no way to tell when a fingerprint was left.

  The crime-scene sketch had been done by the polar coordinate method. Triangulation had shown that the perp was between five feet five and five feet seven and that he had fired from a distance of sixty-two inches. The autopsy protocols were done on gray onionskins. They stated, in the impersonal language of the forensics pathologist, the causes of death. Cross projections of the human body were printed in the margins. Dotted lines traced each entry wound; narratives detailed the destruction each intrusion made. Shotgun wadding had been found in the wounds. Both victims had suffered cadaveric spasms at the times of their death. Scanlon recalled from one of his police promotion courses that cadaveric spasm was the immediate stiffening of a body after death. It was caused by great fear at the time of death or by severe damage to the central nervous system.

  When he finished the forensic reports he turned to the investigative reports. The narratives typed under the details of the case were done in familiar police prose: At T/P/O, the time and place of occurrence, the undersigned personally interviewed Mary Hollinder F/W/22 of 1746a Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, who stated that she is employed as a waitress at the Warsaw Restaurant located at 411 Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn. Witness stated that at T/O she observed a male, white, who answered to the description of the perp walk east on Driggs Avenue moments before the crime occurred. Hollinder further stated that when the perp passed her he had a shopping bag clutched in his left hand. Hollinder stated that she was engaged in conversation with a friend whose identity is known to this department (statement 60# 897-86). Hollinder stated that she heard three loud reports and turned to see the above-mentioned perp running from the place of occurrence carrying what app
eared to be a rifle. She stated that she saw the perp get into a blue van. Witness told the undersigned that she would recognize the perp if she saw him again and that she would make herself available to view a lineup.

  He read the statements of storekeepers and pedestrians, reports of the emergency service crews who searched for physical evidence, reports of the detectives who had conducted the canvasses. All of them ended with the same capitalized letters, NR—negative results.

  When he came to the Five on the three boys who had been present in the candy store at the time of occurrence he noticed that they had been identified only by their pedigrees. That was because department regulations forbid the identification of children who have been the victims of or the witnesses to crime. The report reiterated what Lew Brodie had told him at the crime scene. It was the last sentence that caused his lips to pull together into a thin, frustrated line: Witnesses state that they would not be able to identify perp if they saw him again. The parents of the foregoing witnesses state that they refuse to allow them to view photos or to attend lineup. Scanlon knew he had just lost his only eyewitnesses to the killings.

  A noise in the squad room caused him to look up from the reports. He saw Christopher putting the filter into the top of the Dial-a-Brew machine. After he poured in the water, Christopher reached down and measured in the coffee. He ripped open the bag of bagels and bialys he had brought in with him. Since he was catching the first three hours of the tour, it was his responsibility to make the morning coffee and pick up the bag of goodies that was waiting at Wysniewski’s Bakery. Tradition.

  Soon the air was filled with the aroma of freshly made coffee. The day team began to arrive. To a man they shambled over to the coffee pot. Eric Crawford, an overweight detective with sagging shoulders, shuffled out of the four-double-decker-bed dormitory in his underwear, yawning and scratching his behind. He glanced at Maggie Higgins, who was standing in front of the urn buttering a bagel. “Hey, Maggie,” he called out, hefting the front of his underpants into the palm of his hand. “Take a look at what I got for you.”