Suspects

by William Caunitz

  The afternoon department mail arrived late.

  Scanlon opened the multi-use envelope addressed to CO 93 Sqd. It contained a mimeographed letter from the Lieutenants’ Benevolent Association authorizing precinct delegates to solicit donations for the Joseph P. Gallagher Memorial Fund. There were similar mimeographed letters from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the Sergeants’ Benevolent Association, and the Detectives’ Endowment Association. They were all signed Fraternally Yours.

  Scanlon took the letters out into the squad room and pinned them on the bulletin board. “Hector, did you put in a request for the exterminator?” Scanlon asked, seeing Colon looking into a roach motel.

  “Sí, Teniente, I sent a Telephone Message to Building Maintenance. One’ll be here on Monday.” Peering into the motel, he added, “Look at all them son of a bitches squirm.” He put the motel back on the floor and resumed typing.

  Detective Christopher telephoned and told Scanlon that he and Biafra Baby had located the accountant husband of Donna Hunt. They had tailed the husband from his Pennsylvania Avenue office. Taking turns, the detectives had entered buildings with the accountant as he visited clients. The detectives had noted the names and addresses of several of the clients. Hunt was back in his office now, Christopher reported. Did the lieutenant want them to stay on the accountant?

  Scanlon checked the time. 1905 hours. “Call it a day.”

  “Biafra Baby and I swing out tonight. We’re not scheduled back till Wednesday. Do you want us to take our swing or be on deck in the ayem?”

  “Come in, I’ll owe you the time.”

  “You got it, Lieutenant,” Christopher said.

  At nine o’clock that Monday night Scanlon was at his desk with his prosthesis standing in the wastebasket. He felt tired and grubby. He had reread all the reports, looking for something, and found nothing. He had signed a stack of Fives and had made three different attempts to contact Linda Zimmerman, with negative results. He had touched base with Jack Fable twice more and on the last occasion had asked him if he knew the whereabouts of Linda Zimmerman. Fable told him that he didn’t. He went on to inform Scanlon that she had adamantly refused his offer of police protection.

  Scanlon rubbed his tired eyelids. He took the talc out of the drawer and rolled up his left trouser leg. He powdered his stump, dumped some into the socket, and took out a clean stump sock. He rolled it up over his stump, picked up the prosthesis, leaned back, and slid his stump into the socket.

  Taking the bag of dirty socks out of the bottom drawer, he got up, went out into the squad room, and signed out in the Log: “Lieutenant Scanlon left, end of tour.”

  14

  The sky was overcast. The humidity was rising.

  The approach to the Williamsburg Bridge was clogged with Tuesday-morning traffic. Scanlon slowed his car to a stop. A swarm of derelicts ran out from the curb, threading their way among the cars, cleaning windows. He waved two of them off. He had spent a lousy night and was not in a charitable mood. Last night when he arrived home he found Sally De Nesto’s message on his answering machine changing their date from Monday night to Tuesday night. At loose ends and not feeling much like being alone, he had gone to Roseland and had danced alone among the swirling shadows. Later in the night he had stopped for a drink at Du Soir, Columbus Avenue’s latest in spot. He had stood among the crush, sipping his drink, trying to summon the courage to speak to one of the many attractive women in the bar. His problem would not go away. What does he say, when does he say it, and how does he say, I’m an amputee?

  A woman in her late thirties pushed her way through the crowd and stood next to him, cuddling her glass in a napkin as her eyes slowly roamed over the crowd. She was tall, thin, and a trendy dresser. She had short two-tone hair, the bottom blond, the top brown. Her look fell on Scanlon. He smiled. She smiled back. Her name was Sid. They began to talk to each other and it was wonderful. He was relaxed, almost confident. Their conversation veered back and forth across many subjects. He searched for an opening to tell her that he was an amputee. Perhaps the terror was behind him, perhaps he had conquered the fear. At one point she reached into her bag to get her cigarettes when another woman bumped into her, causing Sid to stumble. Her keys tumbled from her pocketbook to the floor, and she made a grab for them. In so doing her hand collided with his prosthesis. “What’s that you got there?” she asked, straightening, a questioning look spreading across her face.

  His heart sank. Trying to force a confident edge into his voice, he said, “I’m an amputee.”

  “Oh?” She smiled at him. “I really don’t think I could handle that.” She excused herself, and was quickly swallowed up in the crowd. Scanlon gulped down his drink. He shoved his way out of Du Soir and drove directly to Gretta Polchinski’s place.

  When Scanlon arrived at the Nine-three on Tuesday morning he parked in the space reserved for the squad CO and went to the corner candy store to buy his daily ration of De Nobilis. Leaving the store, he paused to look at the skyline across the river, glad to be back on his own turf.

  He went into the station house and followed his usual routine of going through the latest orders and reports. Two arrests had been made last night by the patrol force. The Gallagher/Zimmerman Unusual was the last one in the folder.

  Nearing the top of the staircase he was cheered by the smell of freshly made coffee.

  “Anything doing?” he asked, unlatching the gate.

  Lew Brodie was sitting with his legs up on a desk, sipping coffee. “Eric Crawford went sick. I put him out in the Sick Log and notified the borough.”

  Scanlon pulled the handle on the spigot back, filling his mug. He walked over to the row of clipboards hooked onto the wall and took down the weekly roll call. Studying the official form, he said, “Nagel and Lucas are scheduled to do the evening duty with Crawford. They can cover two-handed.” He returned the clipboard to its place. “Did Crawford say what was wrong with him?”

  “The flu,” Brodie answered.

  Higgins looked up from the Times crossword. “I hope Fatso keeps his tiny weenie warm.”

  Detectives smiled, remembering Crawford’s macho act with Higgins, and her dare to Crawford to break it out.

  Grinning, Scanlon went into his office. He had just settled in behind his desk and had begun to look through his messages when someone out in the squad room barked, “Attention!”

  The Patrol Guide mandates that attention be called whenever a member of the force above the rank of captain enters a room. This procedure is routinely complied with in the Patrol Force. But not in the Detective Division. There are two exceptions: the PC and the CofD.

  Scanlon had almost made it to the door when Police Commissioner Robert Gomez propelled himself into the office and slammed a newspaper down on the Whip’s desk. “We made the front page of every goddamn paper in this city. Chrissake, we’re even nationwide.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Black, no sugar,” Gomez said, picking up the newspaper, looking at the front page.

  Scanlon returned in a few minutes and closed the door. He put the PC’s cup down in front of him.

  “Did you see this?” Gomez said, stabbing a finger on a story in the paper. “See? A radio car killed a man crossing the street and the driver of the car fled the scene. In my day whenever you got your load on you went out and got laid. No more! The new breed wants to play at being Attila the Hun.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his hands hard into his temples. He inhaled deeply through his mouth and let the air out slowly.

  “They’re coming at me from all sides, Scanlon. The Job seems to be falling to pieces. I need time so that these scandals can die from natural causes. Gallagher is the only hero that the Job has at the moment. And now with what has happened in the Nineteenth it appears that even Gallagher might end up going down the tubes.” He gulped coffee. “I’ve been the PC for fifty-five months. Five more months and I’m entitled to a PC’s pension. I need time, time to get the press off my ass, off our as
s.”

  Scanlon told him about his deal with Buckman.

  “There are a dozen other reporters to take his place. What I need is an arrest in the Gallagher caper. That way the press would believe that there was no connection with the Zimmerman homicides in Manhattan.” He looked sternly at the Whip. “There is a connection, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, I believe that there is.”

  “Is Lieutenant Fable of the same opinion?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Have you come up with anything in Gallagher’s background that connects him to the Zimmermans?”

  “No. Nor have I come up with any official improprieties on Gallagher’s part that could hurt the Job.”

  “His personal life is enough to wreak havoc with the department.” He thought a moment, staring into his mug. “Lou, I don’t want to be boxed into making stupid moves by all this negative publicity.” He slammed his fist on the desk. “But I want you to buy us some time so that we can get on with the investigation without the pressures of the press and television cameras.”

  “Jack Fable has come up with a witness who might have seen the perp enter and leave the Kingsley Arms.”

  “Eyewitnesses are about as useful as tits on a bull,” Gomez said, swirling the contents of his cup. He put the mug down, got up, and moved to the grated window, where, looking into the dirty glass, he straightened his tie.

  Always the fashion plate, Scanlon thought.

  “If I didn’t know better I’d think that that psychopathic midget I inherited as my CofD killed the doctor and his wife just to get my job.” He turned. “Let’s you and me go over the whole thing from the top.”

  For the next thirty minutes Scanlon walked the PC through the details of the Gallagher/Zimmerman homicide. Gomez listened without comment. When Scanlon finished, the PC’s expression was grave. “Tell me about this Eddie Hamill again.”

  Scanlon did.

  “You’ve found out where Hamill lives?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think we should pick Mr. Hamill up, go through the motions of an arrest. It would relieve some pressure, give us breathing time. An arrest is the best way to make the press lose interest in a case.”

  Scanlon sighed. “Commissioner, Eddie Hamill is not the type of guy to come the easy way.” He rubbed the side of his face. “Anyway, if we should pick him up, what do we charge him with, barratry?”

  “Mopery, impersonating a human being, whatever you want. As long as you buy me some breathing room.”

  “Commissioner, you just got done telling me that you didn’t want to be forced into making a dumb move. Going after Hamill, in my judgment, would be a dumb move.”

  “Maybe. But it’s straw-grabbing time, Lieutenant.” He pointed a finger at the Whip’s prosthesis. “You owe the Job. It did the right thing for you, now it expects you to do the right thing for it. And besides, you could be wrong about Hamill. Haven’t you ever made a wrong move on an investigation? Your friend Walter Ticornelli could be lying to you. There could be a hundred answers. Hamill just might be your hit man.”

  “I still think it’s a bad move.”

  “Make the PC happy, Lieutenant. Bring Hamill in for questioning. Who knows, you might hit the jackpot.”

  Scanlon was about to utter another mild protest when the door burst open and a sweating MacAdoo McKenzie plunged into the room. “Commissioner,” he said, nodding.

  The PC looked at Scanlon and smiled. The Job’s unofficial communication system had acted with its usual efficiency. As soon as the PC had climbed the staircase out of sight, the Nine-three desk officer had telephoned upstairs to warn the Squad. Hector Colon had dashed out into the hallway, seen the PC trudging the steps, and run back into the squad room and called attention. Meanwhile, the desk officer had gotten on the horn to Brooklyn North. The sergeant manning the operations desk received the notification, and he immediately got on the horn to Brooklyn North Uniform Command and Brooklyn North Detective Command. Within ten minutes every patrol precinct and detective command within the city of New York knew that Bobby Gomez was out of the big building and in the Nine-three Squad.

  “Chief,” Gomez said, his smile lighting up his handsome Latin face. The PC had Scanlon fill McKenzie in on the Hamill matter. When Scanlon had finished, Gomez asked McKenzie what he thought of Hamill as a suspect in the Gallagher/Zimmerman caper. “I’m inclined to go along with the lieutenant. I don’t think that Hamill is involved.”

  Scanlon was surprised at McKenzie’s support.

  Gomez pulled his lips together. “You two might be right. Then again, you might be wrong. I let the chief of operations talk me into letting the cops wear those stupid-looking baseball caps. That was a bad mistake on my part. They look like goddamn truck drivers instead of police officers. Anyway, my gut reaction tells me to pick up Hamill.”

  Twelve minutes later MacAdoo McKenzie accompanied the PC down the staircase into the muster room of the station house. The PC’s female chauffeur was standing at the side of the desk talking to the cop on the switchboard. When she heard the PC coming down the steps she ended the conversation and rushed over to open the door for the PC.

  Gomez went behind the desk and signed himself out in the blotter. As he walked out from behind the Desk, his chauffeur called out, “Where to, Commissioner?”

  “Let’s take a drive over to the Two-four. I’m in the mood to visit a few houses. I don’t get out in the field enough,” he said in an equally loud voice.

  As the PC was walking out of the station house, the desk officer’s hand slid over the Desk toward the red department telephone.

  The detectives cautiously climbed the tenement’s staircase. Music blared from some apartments; canned TV laughter came from behind multilocked doors.

  Scanlon had made the proper notifications: Communications had been notified that Nine-three Squad detectives were going into the Seventh to hit a flat; the Seventh’s desk officer and the Seventh Squad had also been apprised. The Seventh’s desk officer had assigned a marked RMP with two uniform cops to assist the Nine-three detectives—and avert the tragedy of uniform cops shooting at unfamiliar detectives.

  The tenement had a weathered brick facade with white trim and black fire escapes winding down the front of the building. Many windows showed chartreuse, electric-blue, and bright orange shades and curtains. Where do they get them? Scanlon thought, studying the tenement’s front.

  Hamill’s fifth-floor apartment was the first one off the staircase, to the right. When the detectives reached the second landing, Scanlon motioned to Brodie to turn off the radio so that Hamill wouldn’t be tipped off by the police transmissions. The detectives stopped at the top of the fifth landing. Scanlon and Brodie dashed to the other side of Hamill’s door, flattening themselves against the wall.

  Higgins and Colon lay back on the staircase. A baby wailed. The detectives drew revolvers.

  Scanlon had a nagging feeling in his gut that told him to get the hell out of there. Against his better judgment, he nodded to Higgins.

  She stretched out her gun hand and rapped the barrel lightly against the door. The music inside the apartment suddenly ceased. Higgins rapped again. Muffled footfalls came up to the door.

  “Yeah?” The voice was gruff, mean.

  “Maggie Suckieluski,” she said softly. “Oscar Mela sent me. He thought you might be in the mood for a little relaxation.”

  “Good ol’ Oscar.”

  The detectives heard the loud clicking of tumblers and the rattle of safety chains. Colon nudged Higgins to get behind him. She stuck her tongue out at him. The door jerked open. Displaying her shield, Higgins stepped in front of the door. “Hi, Eddie,” she said. Scanlon and Colon stepped into view, their shields held high. Hamill’s eyes widened with anger. His left hand was concealed behind the door, gripping the steel bar of a Fox lock.

  “We want to talk to you, Eddie,” Higgins said, pushing her way into the apartment.

  “What do you have in your hand, Eddie
?” Scanlon said, noticing the floor plate that the bar wedged into.

  “Nothing,” Hamill said, pivoting and smashing the bar across Higgins’s chest.

  She doubled over and crumpled to the floor. Scanlon and Colon jumped over her body and went after him. Hamill made a springing leap toward a room on the left side of the apartment. As he did this, he thrust his hand under his polo shirt and came out with a .38 Colt.

  “He’s got a piece!” Scanlon warned.

  Scanlon and Colon dove for cover behind the furniture. Lew Brodie wheeled and threw himself over Higgins’s prostrate body. Hamill ran with a slight limp into the other room and slammed the door.

  Lew Brodie dragged Higgins out of the apartment. Colon knelt behind a chair with his revolver trained on the door.

  Scanlon rushed outside to see how Higgins was. She was clutching her chest, gagging for breath. Brodie unbuttoned her jacket and the top of her blouse. He and Scanlon propped her up against the wall. Inside the apartment Hector Colon called to Hamill to come out of the room with his hands over his head. Two shots rang out. The bullets smashed through the door and impacted into the wall behind Colon.

  Hector Colon did not return the fire.

  Scanlon ran back into the room and knelt beside Colon. “You all right?” Scanlon asked.

  “Yeah,” Colon said.

  “Eddie, don’t get stupid,” Scanlon called out. “Toss out your gun and come out.”

  Another shot smashed through the door.

  Scanlon dashed back out into the hallway and took the radio from Brodie and switched it on. Before he could say anything, the transmission he heard caused him to curse: “All units in the Seventh. We have a confirmed report of detectives engaged in a gun fight. A ten-thirteen at 132 Chrystie Street. Use caution. Units responding acknowledge, K.” A spate of hurried acknowledgments flooded the airwaves.