Suspects

by William Caunitz

  Colon caught the bartender’s attention and swept his hand around the group to indicate that he was ordering another round of drinks. “One gray March evening our boy Eddie Hamill is about to enter his six-story walk-up when two Italo-American types reeking of Sicilian olive oil step from the shadows and proceed to peg nine-millimeters at ol’ Eddie Boy. The story goes that Eddie, being the athletic type, does a header off the stoop and lands on top of some garbage cans and proceeds to take off like an Olympic sprinter. But he ain’t fast enough, because he wakes up in intensive care minus one kneecap, a spleen, part of a lung, and three toes off his right foot.

  “When Hamill gets out of the hospital, the first thing he does is to telephone Ticornelli and tell him that he intends to return the fucking favor in spades.”

  A fight broke out in the dice game. Two cops were rolling on the floor, trying to punch each other. Several policemen attempted to pry them apart. Scanlon was reminded of the cop who shot his best friend while they were driving home after three days of St. Patrick’s Day partying.

  The fight was broken up, the game resumed.

  Scanlon was determined to cut it short and get the hell out of there. He had no desire to be dragged before the grand jury or the Firearms Review Board as a witness to one cop shooting another. “So where the hell is the connection with Gallagher?” Scanlon asked, glancing in the direction of the dice game.

  Biafra Baby took up the story. “Stone told us that Ticornelli was in the habit of showing up at Yetta’s candy store around the same time every day to pick up the day’s action. Fourteen hundred. Gallagher and Ticornelli are the same size and have the same build. And they both drive Fords. It could have been a case of mistaken identity. Hamill, or someone he hired to waste Ticornelli, might have mistaken Gallagher for Ticornelli. And they hit the old lady because she was a witness.”

  “So were the kids in the back of the store witnesses,” Scanlon said.

  “Yeah, but they were in the back of the store. And it’s one thing to take out adults and another to take out a couple of kids,” Colon said.

  Scanlon was skeptical. “Why would Hamill wait so long to take Ticornelli out?”

  “That’s just it,” Biafra Baby said. “Hamill didn’t wait to get his revenge. The word is that there have been several botched attempts on Ticornelli’s life over the past five years. And the word is that Eddie Hamill was behind every one.”

  “Stone also told us that Ticornelli has people scouring Greenpoint for Hamill and can’t find him. Eddie Boy has become the Phantom of Greenpoint,” Colon said.

  Scanlon shook his head. “I’m conversant with every open case that the Squad is carrying. And I can’t recall any attempted murder on Walter Ticornelli.”

  “Stone said that the first attempt came shortly after Hamill was released from the hospital. Stone and his partner responded to the ten-ten—Shots Fired. Trumwell took the original Sixty-one. And this all happened before any of us were assigned to the Nine-three Squad,” Biafra Baby said. “And as for the other attempts on Ticornelli, he ain’t exactly the type to file complaint reports with the police.”

  Scanlon leaned his back against the bar, digesting what he had just been told. Like it or not, he had just been tossed another suspect.

  A heavy-set detective named Jerry Allowman from the Eight-three Squad tottered over and flopped an arm around Lew Brodie’s shoulder. “You guys got a hump of a homicide on your hands.”

  Brodie scowled up at him. “No shit, Dick Tracy.” He shoved Allowman away.

  The Eight-three detective started to complain about the gross indignity that he had just suffered at the hands of a brother detective, then saw the ferocious look in Brodie’s eyes, thought better of it, and stumbled backward into the crowd.

  “Did you go back and check the Sixty sheets and the Sixty-ones for the original complaint on Ticornelli’s life?” Scanlon asked Biafra Baby.

  “We checked back three years,” Biafra Baby said. “We couldn’t go beyond that period because those files are locked up in the old record room.”

  “So? Why didn’t you get the key from the desk officer and check them out?” Scanlon said, annoyed.

  Lew Brodie’s head shot up. “We couldn’t get the key because the desk officer didn’t have the key. The only people in the Nine-three who do have the key to the old record room are the lead clerical man and his gofer. And neither of them scumbags work weekends.” He gulped down his whiskey and slammed the glass on the zinc bar counter.

  Scanlon sighed frustration. “First thing Monday, dig out those files.”

  9

  Sally De Nesto raised her head off the pillow and kissed the cleft in his chin, then sank comfortably into the crook of his arm. She liked Tony Scanlon; she liked him a lot. With the regular ones it was just business, but not with the sad ones. It was different with them. Her passion was real. She counted among her sad ones a paraplegic, two blind ones, and a cute nineteen-year-old who had been born without arms. Sally De Nesto considered herself to be a sort of social worker. A Sister Theresa of the hookers. And why not? Didn’t she help emotional and physical cripples? Without women like her, where would those poor souls go? Most people never think about things like that. What does a man without arms and legs do for sex? She had a feeling of drowsy contentment. She moved in close to him and closed her eyes.

  Scanlon half-turned his head and planted a light kiss on her cheek, content to let himself drift into a peaceful sleep. He had that warm exhausted feeling of a man who has just gotten laid, and he was damned if he was going to permit himself to wallow in self-pity by spending half the night staring into the darkness wondering why he could only get it up with hookers, and realizing how very much he missed Jane Stomer. Not tonight. Tonight he felt whole, and whole men sleep after they make love.

  Not too far from Sally De Nesto’s one-bedroom Yorkville apartment, Stanley Zimmerman lounged on a comfortable couch in his fifth-floor sitting room, his outstretched legs supported on an ottoman, a brandy snifter held loosely in his hand. He glanced at his wife, Rachel, sitting next to him with her knees tucked under her supple body, her head at rest on his shoulder.

  It had been a long three days since Thursday. First the appearance of those two somber policemen in his office to tell him that there had been an accident. Then the shock of being told the truth, and the horrible experience of having to identify his mother’s body at Kings County Morgue. And then notifying the relatives, the insincere platitudes, the cremation. What was he going to do with all those baskets of fruit that people had sent? He’d more than likely end up donating them to the hospital. He was going to miss his mother. There’d be no one to make him kasha varnishkas or give him chocolate-covered matzoh every Passover, as his mother had done. A practice which he automatically continued with his daughter. Funny, his mother was very Jewish, yet she wasn’t a bit religious. He’d been surprised when the rabbi asked him to say the Kaddish. There are just some things that you never forget. They’re in your subconscious, ready, waiting for recall.

  He felt his wife’s body pressing close to him. He kissed the top of her head. “Bed?”

  She smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

  Holding hands, they walked down the corridor until they reached their daughter’s bedroom. They tiptoed inside. A large room decorated with pink ruffles and frills. Rachel walked over to the bed and kissed the sleeping child. Tucking the soft summer blanket into the mattress, she beamed at her husband. “She’s so precious.”

  He nodded his smiling assent.

  He lay in bed patiently awaiting his wife, who was in the bathroom. No matter how difficult the loss, he and the rest of the family had to get on with their lives. He’d been impressed with the policeman. There was something strong about him that he liked.

  Rachel came out of the bathroom in a black nightgown. As was her habit, she went over to the window and opened it a few inches from the bottom. She turned back in time to see her husband struggling out of his underpants. Wa
lking to the bed, she felt a familiar tingling come to her stomach.

  She stood next to the bed and slipped the lace straps of her gown off her shoulder. She pulled it off and dropped it at her feet. She remained motionless, permitting her husband’s gaze to take in her body.

  He tossed the covers back and she slid into bed next to him.

  The Kingsley Arms, a six-story building with an Art Deco facade, had gone co-op three years ago. It was directly across the street from the Zimmerman town house.

  It was after midnight, and a few scattered lights were on in the Kingsley Arms. The door leading onto the roof was ajar, the hasp hanging precariously by one screw. More screws lay on the stairwell along with long slivers of wood and chips of green paint.

  A figure moved cautiously among the shadows. It was the outline of a man, bending low, taking his time, making sure of his footing. He made his way over to the ledge and knelt, carefully placing the case down beside him. Crouching, he snapped open the case slowly so that the clicking of the clamps was not carried in the quiet night.

  He removed the rifle stock from its padded recess inside the case and unscrewed the indented screws in the butt of the stock. Removing the covering plate, he shook out an eighteen-inch barrel. He raised himself up and peered out over the ledge, his gaze going to the open bedroom window. Ducking down, he inserted the barrel into the opening at the front of the stock and turned clockwise until the barrel locked in place. Next he removed the trigger housing and slid it into place, sliding the side latch, securing the mechanism. He removed a piece of black felt and unwrapped a magazine containing six hollow-tip 5.56 caliber bullets. He slid the magazine into the housing. The night scope was removed from its protective cover and its flanges inserted into the grooves atop the barrel. He tightened the screws with a small screwdriver, fixing the scope in place.

  A long bulbous sound suppressor was removed from the case and screwed onto the end of the barrel. With his right hand he slid back the bolt and guided it forward, sliding the first round into the chamber.

  Kneeling with the heel of his right foot secured under his buttocks and his shoulder leaning firmly into the stock, he firmed the weapon on the roof’s ledge and aimed downward. Peering through the scope, adjusting the magnification knob, he saw Stanley Zimmerman’s head come into the gray-white light of the cross hairs. A head full of sweet dreams and good deeds.

  He took a breath, held it, and began his squeeze.

  When the bullet plowed into Stanley Zimmerman’s head his body stiffened, jerked up, and sank back onto the bed.

  Rachel Zimmerman awoke with a start, conscious that something was wrong. The hand that was between her legs was unnaturally limp. “Stanley?” She could feel something oozing over her shoulders and into her hair. There was the strange smell of oxidized iron in the air. She reached her hand behind her, into a pool of blood, and sprang up, causing the bullet that was meant for her head to plow into the headboard.

  In horror, she gaped at her dripping hand. She screamed. Paralyzed with fear, she gnawed on the knuckle of her hand.

  The third bullet exploded into her face just below her left eye, tearing a passage through the head and leaving in its wake a bloody path of torn muscles and ruptured tissues.

  “Mommy, Mommy,” cried the little girl, expecting her mother to come rushing into her room to comfort her. In the past her mother had always come. Andrea would be reassured that everything was all right and kissed affectionately, and then tucked back into bed with a loving hug. The hug was the best part. She had been dreaming of wearing her new sneakers to her best friend’s birthday party when a shriek scared her out of her dream. Her head shot up from the pillow; her eyes darted around the darkened room. She began to cry.

  Where was Mommy? She cried louder. Her throat was getting hoarse. Gradually her sobs subsided. Her feet slid off the bed and she padded her way out of the bedroom. A nightlight was on in the hallway. Strange black shapes dived out of the shadows at her, trying to capture her, to eat her. She panicked and ran for the safety of her parents’ room. She rushed inside and froze.

  At 0115 that night the team of a cruising radio car spotted a dazed little girl wandering down Lexington Avenue in a pink nightshirt with a giant lollipop on the front.

  10

  The bloodstained bodies lay cold and waxen. Several hours had passed since they ceased to live. It was early Sunday morning, the city’s after-hours joints were closing. Throughout the city priests were preparing to offer mass. On East Seventy-ninth Street grim detectives stalked over a new crime scene with the impersonal demeanor of men used to working in the disquieting presence of death.

  Detectives from the Nineteenth’s night watch had made the connection with the Nine-three’s double homicide. A police lieutenant and a candy store lady named Zimmerman had been murdered.

  A telephone message had been transmitted to the Nine-three Squad. When Scanlon did not answer his phone at home, the Vulva File was consulted and Sally De Nesto’s number dialed.

  Scanlon leaped up in the bed, listening to the terse notification: Nineteenth Squad detectives report that Dr. Stanley Zimmerman and his wife, Rachel, were the subjects of a homicide at their residence on or about 0100 hours this date.

  “Call everyone in,” Scanlon had said, slamming down the phone and throwing off the sheet, wondering what it was that he had overlooked.

  Detectives clustered in small groups inside the bedroom, comparing notes. A photographer took pictures.

  The ME had come and gone; he had issued a preliminary finding of death by gunshot.

  Scanlon stood at the foot of the bed staring down at the bodies; his face was a mask of unbearable sadness. An awful sense of guilt welled up inside him, his head ached, his stump throbbed. Were they dead because of some failure on his part, some omission? Had his personal problems made him neglect his duty as a cop?

  Higgins and Colon came up behind him. Glancing at the bodies, Higgins read from her steno pad: the who, what, when, how, and why of death.

  Scanlon listened, unable to take his eyes away from the bodies. Higgins finished her report, said softly, “That’s it, Lou. It’s not very much.”

  “Where’s the daughter?” Scanlon asked in a whisper.

  “In Doctors Hospital being treated for shock. Her aunt is with her,” Colon said.

  Scanlon nodded. He would have to face Linda Zimmerman. What could he say to her? “I’m sorry”? That just didn’t seem to cut it, not now. He turned from the bed and saw Frank Abruzzi, the ballistics detective, looking through a surveyor’s transit. “There seems to be a big black cloud over your head when you work, Frank.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, Lou.”

  “What can you tell me?” Scanlon asked the ballistics man.

  Abruzzi led Scanlon over to the window. “Let’s start with the glass fractures,” Abruzzi said, pointing to the three holes in the window. “You’ll notice that the radial lines are longer on the bottom of the cones. That means that there was downward pressure, which means that the perp fired from some point above this window.” He took a pencil from his breast pocket and pointed to the center bullet hole. “This one was the first shot. See how the radial lines go all the way to the bottom of the glass, and see this small fracture that comes out of the other two’s concentric fractures and connects to this hole’s concentric fractures. That shows us that this one was the first shot.” A thin stick had been stuck through one of the holes and pulled up against the outside of the window. A string was wound around the stick and ran through the hole and across the bedroom, and was fastened to the bullet hole in the headboard. Abruzzi pointed along the line of the string. “Your perp missed one, and it lodged in the headboard. With two impact points we can fix the trajectory of the bullets. Using the surveyor’s transit we set one end on one impact point and the other end on the other and we have the trajectory.”

  Scanlon peered into the surveyor’s transit. One end was aligned with the roof of the Kingsley Arms. He saw me
n huddled on the roof, pointing to the bedroom. He looked at the detective. “Thanks, Frank.”

  “Anytime, Lou.”

  Scanlon’s eyes wandered the room. Most of the detectives were from the Nineteenth of Manhattan South Detective Area. The Nine-three Squad had been brought in as a courtesy, to compare notes. This one was a Manhattan caper.

  Scanlon turned abruptly and left the bedroom.

  Higgins and Colon followed close behind.

  Hurrying down the staircase, Scanlon reached the second level, where he heard a burst of raucous laughter that had come from one of the rooms off the hall. He followed the sounds into a large room that had a bizarre display of scythes and antique pistols on the wall and, next to the French window, a maple bar with four wicker stools. Three unfamiliar detectives with their shields pinned to their jackets were at the bar. One, a big black man with thick glasses, was acting as the bartender. Another, a younger man with brown forelocks, was slouched in a chair with his right leg draped over the arm, talking into the telephone. His silly expression told Scanlon that the call wasn’t official business. The third detective was older, heavyset. He was perched atop a stool. Rémy Martin and Chivas Regal bottles were on the bar. Scanlon glared at the three glasses in the three hands and couldn’t keep the image of the two gory bodies in a single upstairs bed from overwhelming his mind. Police texts talk of unity of command: one man in command of each situation and only one man in direct command of each officer. Outside supervisors aren’t supposed to order around cops who are not under their personal supervision unless there is an emergency situation that demands it. According to the books, Scanlon was supposed to report these three beauties to their own boss. “What the hell is going on here?” Scanlon demanded.

  Higgins and Colon hurried down the staircase to the first level.