Suspects

by William Caunitz

  He looked through the material and passed it back to her. “Nothing of importance here,” he said.

  She took the contents from him and put them back into the safe, all but the letters. She read one letter. “Oh, Rachel,” she said, putting the letter back into the envelope and clutching the packet to her chest.

  Scanlon spent the better part of the next two hours going through the files. She stood in the doorway watching him, leaving once to call her aunt to inquire about Andrea. Scanlon finally turned off the light and left the record room. Was there anything he’d missed the last time he was here, he wondered, looking around the doctor’s modern office.

  “What happened to your brother’s secretary?”

  “I let her go. The practice is on the market. I have no need for a secretary.”

  He realized that he had not looked inside the closet the last time he was there. He opened the door and jumped back as a cluster of African spears fell out of the crowded space and came crashing out onto the floor.

  She knelt down beside him and helped gather them up.

  “Stanley did work in Africa for the UN. They were always giving him these things as presents.”

  A short time later she stood inside the bedroom and watched him search her brother’s dresser. The blood-soaked bed had been removed; in its place was an unfaded square of carpet.

  “Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?” she said, leaning against the bedroom wall.

  “Not really.” When he finished his search he went and leaned against the wall next to her. “Do you know a woman named Luise Bardwell?”

  “No, I don’t believe I do.”

  “Donna Hunt?”

  “No.”

  “Rena Bedford?”

  “No.”

  “Valerie Clarkson?”

  “No.”

  “Mary Posner?”

  “No! Why are you asking me about these people?”

  “They are people I interviewed in connection with the case, and I just wondered if you knew any of them.”

  “Well, I don’t. Why all these questions?”

  “Just fishing around for some answers.” He pushed away from the wall. “What about George Harris? Do you know him?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said, losing patience.

  “Did your brother happen to own any rifles or shotguns?”

  She waved him off. “No more questions. I have to get back to my niece.”

  Scanlon drove Linda Zimmerman back to her aunt’s Sutton Place apartment and returned to the Squad.

  He entered the squad room and went directly into his office, where he took out the Fives on Linda Zimmerman and sat studying them. Why did she rush to her mother’s apartment to clean it out? he thought. What was there that she wanted so badly that she couldn’t wait? He called Lew Brodie in. “I want you to sit on Linda Zimmerman.” He wrote the aunt’s address on a slip of paper and handed it to the detective. “You know what she looks like?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Brodie said. “You want her covered day and night?”

  “We don’t have the manpower for that. Sit on her till eighteen hundred each day.”

  “We got nothing on that broad, Lou,” Brodie said, putting the slip of paper in his shirt pocket.

  “I know that. Sit on her anyway.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Scanlon went out into the squad room and called to Higgins. “Grab your pocketbook, Maggie. We’re going for a ride.”

  Donna Hunt was framed in the doorway of her Bayside, Queens, home, staring with wide-eyed dismay at the photograph Scanlon held up in front of her. It was the same one that Joe Gallagher had taken of her in his Jackson Heights splash pad. She was naked on a bed with her legs apart and a dildo in her hand.

  Her frightened eyes swiveled to Higgins, who was standing at Scanlon’s side, and then to the gray sedan that was parked at the curb. Without a word, she stepped back into her home and watched the policemen enter.

  Donna Hunt lived in an attached brick bungalow that had dormered windows and a tiny lawn. She was dressed in jeans and a blue work shirt with the tails hanging out. A feather duster was clutched in her hand.

  Higgins smiled at her as she slipped past. The witness managed a weak smile in return.

  Scanlon looked around the house. Traditional furniture swathed in plastic, a gold rug, a room divider that contained a collection of Hummels.

  “I didn’t expect to see you again,” the witness stammered. “Is there anything wrong?”

  The diminutive woman’s face was chalk-white and her lower lip was quivering. Scanlon felt sorry for her. She was a woman on the edge, in danger of losing everything. Yet she was also a murder suspect, and he had come to tighten the mental thumbscrews. He did not like that part of the job.

  “Mrs. Hunt,” he began, “something has come up that we think you might be able to help us with.” He moved to the breakfront and looked over the collection of Hummel figurines.

  “I collect them,” Donna Hunt said, glancing at Higgins for understanding, perhaps salvation.

  Scanlon carefully picked up one of the figurines: a rosy-cheeked girl dressed in the traditional dirndl, with a yellow kerchief around her blond hair. She was drawing water from a white brick well. Scanlon studied the figurine and then returned it to its place on the shelf. As he did, he took in the family photographs on top of the shoulder-high divider.

  “What do you want?” the witness pleaded.

  Scanlon looked at Higgins. She was dressed in a black cotton dress and a print oversize vest. She always dresses to the nines, he thought, no bib overalls for her. He looked at Donna Hunt. “Why didn’t you ask me to return this photograph to you when you were in my office?”

  An uneasy laugh. “I was afraid to.” Her stare fixed on the photograph in his hands. “Please put that disgusting thing away. Please!”

  He slid it into his breast pocket. “Would you like me to return it to you?”

  “God, yes. If Harold ever found out, or my children …” She began to cry softly.

  Tough cop, browbeating a frightened housewife who never as much as received a traffic summons. Sometimes the Job really sucks, he thought, saying, “You can have the photograph, but in return, I want something from you.”

  She grew wary. “What?”

  “Your husband is the accountant for the Luv-Joy Manufacturing Company. I need to know who owns that company, and I don’t want your husband to know that I know.”

  Donna Hunt clutched her chest. “My Harold isn’t involved in any of this, is he?”

  “No,” Scanlon reassured her, “he’s a bystander, nothing more.”

  Relieved, the witness said, “Harold never discusses his work with me. I have no way of knowing who owns that company. And if I asked Harold, he’d want to know how I even knew the name of the firm and I’d have to explain the sudden interest in his practice.”

  “Does your husband keep any business records at home?” Higgins asked.

  “He has an office in the basement that he uses around tax time,” Donna Hunt said, “but I don’t know what he has there.”

  The office turned out to be a green file cabinet and a painted desk that were set between a damp cinder-block wall and a flight of squeaky wooden steps. A washer and dryer were next to the file cabinet, and on the floor was a plastic basket full of clothes. Donna Hunt sat on the cellar steps looking down as the two detectives searched through her husband’s business records.

  Scanlon had taken the file cabinet, Higgins the desk. They were professional scavengers, working methodically, going quickly through each record, ever mindful of the detective maxim: Do it fast and quiet and get the hell out. The tops of the desk and the file cabinet were soon both covered with old records: accordion folders stuffed with out-of-date balance sheets and old bank statements, outdated tax returns, and long-paid bills.

  After a half hour, Scanlon complained, “Nothing here.”

  “Zilch here too,” Higgins said.
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br />   Scanlon looked up at the cellar steps. Donna Hunt had green eyes and wore a Timex watch with a pink band. “Are there any more records?” he asked the witness.

  Donna Hunt lifted her small shoulders. “Not that I know of. Everything that Harold keeps at home from his business is there. Look, please, it’s almost six. Harold’s going to be home any second.”

  The policemen took several minutes to tidy up. Leave it exactly the way you found it, another maxim born from cop lore. With the witness in the lead, they climbed the staircase into the house’s spotless kitchen. The witness moved across the tiled floor and leaned against the dishwasher, looking apprehensively at Scanlon.

  Higgins glanced at him, her brow knitted with curiosity.

  Scanlon took in both their expressions, read their questioning eyes: Would he give back the photo as he’d said he would? The photograph was evidence in a homicide case, evidence he had intentionally failed to voucher, evidence that at some point might prove crucial to the case.

  Looking into Donna Hunt’s brimming eyes, he thought, She’s no killer, and she’s paid a high enough price for her romp in the hay with Joe Gallagher. He went to her and took hold of her hand. He slid the photograph out of his breast pocket and slapped it down into the palm of her hand. “Goodbye, Mrs. Hunt.”

  The band played “Moonlight Serenade.”

  Scanlon sat in a chair behind the brass railing watching the dancers glide around Roseland’s dance floor. The disco program would be starting shortly. That was when he would slip out onto the floor and lose himself among the swirling people. He wanted to put some distance between himself and the case, to relax and be with civilians in a noisy place. He looked around at the women and wondered if he was destined to spend the rest of his life going with hookers. He began to run over in his mind all the things that Sally De Nesto and he had talked about concerning his dysfunction. How wonderful it would be to be a normal man again, to be close to Jane Stomer, to live his life out of the sexual underground.

  The disco beat boomed. He got up and moved toward the dance floor. A woman in her late thirties who had uneven teeth was standing a few feet in front of him. She looked in his direction. He smiled at her. She looked away. He slipped past her and edged his way out onto the dance floor.

  Jane Stomer stood naked before him, caressing her breasts. He was sitting on a strange bed, in a strange room, his manhood in full bloom. There was a soft smile on her face and a tinge in her cheeks. He went to lunge up at her, but she shot out a restraining palm. “Stay there, Scanlon. I’ll come to you.” It was so wonderful to hear her say his name again, to be with her, to see her body, to gaze with desire at her triangle of tightly knit ringlets. But wait. Where were they? When did they get back together? He couldn’t remember them getting back together. All of a sudden they were in a bedroom together. Was he dreaming? No, that was not possible. Everything was too real. She came toward him, sliding her hands around his neck, straddling his legs, lowering herself onto him.

  “Jane, I’ve missed you so. I love you. I love you.”

  “Yes, Scanlon. Yes. Now. I want it to happen together. Now.”

  He did not want the exquisite moment to end. He wanted to hold back, to relish the pleasure, but he could not. As his love burst forth he saw his father standing in the shadows laughing at him.

  Scanlon sprang up in his bed. A dream? It had been so real. He would have sworn that it was happening. He felt the discomfort and yanked off the sheet. “Son of a bitch!” he shouted across the empty loft. He rolled off the bed, balled up the sheets, and angrily threw them out into his loft, and hopped on one leg into the shower.

  18

  Scanlon paced the Nine-three squad room, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, aware of the brooding silence around him. He glanced up at the clock: 0346 hours. The new day was two hundred and twenty-six minutes old. The sounds of the night filtered in through open windows: firecrackers exploded, tires screeched off in the distance, and somewhere a woman screamed at someone. The night team was sacked out in the dormitory, catching forty winks. A telephone rang and a lazy arm reached out of a bunk and snatched up the extension. Muted words came from behind the dormitory’s frosted-glass door. Scanlon lit a De Nobili as he paced the floor of his office. He had gone back to bed after his shower and tried to sleep. But he had not been able to. A wet dream at forty-three. It sounded like a song title. He was upset and disgusted with his private life, so he got dressed and retreated into the Job.

  His brain felt leaden and dull. The list of people that Luise Bardwell had given him to prove her alibi had checked out. They had substantiated her presence in San Francisco with her husband when Gallagher had been killed. Donna Hunt was probably too small to be the pigeon feeder. He reminded himself to check out Linda Zimmerman’s place of employment. George Harris? Could he somehow be involved? Where was the damn motive? He paced. The De Nobili had gone out. It was cold and soggy and had a foul taste. He grabbed it from his mouth and plunged it into a nearby wastebasket. From the corner of his eye he caught sight of the announcement-crammed bulletin board. He stopped, took some tentative steps toward the board, his stare locked on the LBA flyer authorizing the solicitation of funds for the Joseph P. Gallagher Memorial Fund. I wonder, he thought. I just wonder.

  At 0900 hours that same morning, Tony Scanlon hurried into the ornate lobby of 250 Broadway in lower Manhattan. Stepping off the elevator on the twenty-first floor, he immediately saw the bomb damage: the scorched walls, a boarded-up elevator bank, bent fire doors hanging from hinges. He walked down the wide corridor toward the uniformed guard on duty outside the offices of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of the City of New York, Inc.

  “ID,” said the thickset guard.

  Scanlon produced his credentials. The guard compared the official photograph on the laminated card with the face of the man standing in front of him. Handing the leather shield case back, the guard said, “Sign into the Visitors Log, Lou.”

  The reception area was small and sparsely furnished with a few leatherette chairs and two drooping plants. A gum-chewing receptionist with oversize pink-tinged eyeglasses slid open one side of the alcove’s glass partition and said in Brooklynese, “Can I be of some help to you, sir?”

  “I’m Lieutenant Scanlon. Louie Pots and Pans is expecting me.”

  The receptionist typist buzzed open the door leading into the PBA’s executive offices.

  Patrolman Louie Mastri, the PBA trustee for Patrol Borough Brooklyn South, had been a tough street cop, and a vociferous defender of the Police Officer’s Bill of Rights. But Louie Mastri’s reputation in the Job had no relationship to his union activities or his arrest record. His reputation had been built upon his lifelong avocation, cooking. Wherever he had been assigned in the Job his reputation as a cook soon caught up with him, causing him to spend most of his patrol time in the basement of station houses cooking for the platoon.

  Louie Mastri had been out of the Academy for about two years when an old salt of an Irish desk officer in the Six-two Precinct turned to the cop on the switchboard during a four-to-twelve tour and said, “Call that kid, what’s his name, Louie Pots and Pans, in off post. I’m in the mood for that spaghetti he cooks.” Henceforth, in the eternal lore of the Job, Louie Mastri would forever be known as Louie Pots and Pans.

  “Lou, how the hell are you?” barked Louie Pots and Pans, from across his large corner office. The trustee was standing over three gas barbecue grills that had been set up in front of the window air conditioner. He was wearing a blue apron with the word “Chef” emblazoned across the front.

  “I’m fine, Louie. How’s the family?” Scanlon asked, taking in the police memorabilia scattered around the office.

  “Everything is great. Louie Junior is a sophomore at Albany State, and Maria is a freshman at St. John’s. And the little lady is as beautiful as ever.”

  “Time marches on,” Scanlon said, moving over to the grills.

  “I’m preparing the sauces fo
r lunch. You gonna stay and eat with us. I’m making Scampi alla Romana.”

  “I’d love to, but I can’t. I’ve got a lot of things on the agenda today.” He moved across the room to the display of police hats on the windowsill and picked up one from London. He put the helmet on his head. “How do I look?”

  Louie Pots and Pans glanced over his shoulder. “You look fuckin’ adorable.” He returned his attention to his sauces. “Can you imagine us wearing a hat like that on patrol in this city? The fucking mutts would use it for target practice.”

  “You’re right,” Scanlon agreed, taking off the hat and replacing it. He picked up another, examined the white embossed emblem on the front. “Where’s this one from?” he asked, holding it up.

  Louie Pots and Pans turned to look. “That’s from the Tokyo PD.” He adjusted the flame on the grills and went over to his desk and sat.

  Scanlon returned the hat to the windowsill, walked up to a chair in front of the trustee’s desk, and looked sternly at the trustee. “I love the ambience of your hallway.”

  “That’s known as Ghetto Blight. Some mutt sashayed into the ladies’ room and planted a bomb inside one of the commodes. We were lucky no one was inside when it blew.”

  Scanlon studied the face in front of him, the gray eyes, the dark hair with a silver tinge. “I’m here to pick your brains, Louie.”

  “Go ahead, pick.” Louie Pots and Pans snapped his fingers and scuttled out from behind his desk over to the barbecue grills. He picked up a jar and shook something into the simmering sauces. “I almost forgot to add the oregano,” he said, going back to his desk.

  “I want our conversation to remain between us, Louie.”

  Louie Pots and Pans turned wary. “I haven’t seen you at the last couple of Columbian meetings.”

  Scanlon answered in Italian: “Ho avuto un cacco di problemi personali.”

  “We all got personal problems,” Louie said, his stern eyes holding the lieutenant’s. “This thing that you want to remain just between us, could it be used in any way to hurt cops?”