“Are you all right, Lieutenant?” The young first-year detective asking the question, and extending his unsolicited helping hand, the one with the college ring attached to it, was named Baker.
Ellis stared at Baker’s hand until he took it away, then said, “Take a peek, Detective, tell me what he was thinking about on the way down.”
Baker poked his head out the window and looked, again, at the body sprawled below. He had seen it at ground level an hour ago when he first arrived, in response to the lady who called up the station house screaming in Spanish about what she saw when she was taking in the baby’s diapers off the clothesline.
It was Lieutenant Ellis who had put Baker on the call, assigning him the uniforms and the forensics unit. But when Baker telephoned his commander with the preliminary on-scene report, Ellis took a personal interest. “I don’t want anybody touching nothing in the guy’s apartment until I get a look,” Ellis had said over the phone, “and that includes forensics.”
“Well,” Baker said now, confused, “I don’t know that you can exactly tell what’s on somebody mind when he’s—”
“Sure you can,” Ellis cut in. “It ain’t true what you heard about dead men. They tell all kinds of tales.”
“What’s this one saying?”
“That he didn’t do the brain dive. Every leaper I ever seen looks very calm and collected once he lands. Why not? His problems are all over. The guy down there, the whole lower half of his head is one big scream.”
“So you figure it’s an accident, or…?”
“It obviously ain’t your nice half-gainer into the Lasker pool on a summer afternoon.” Ellis relit a cigar that had gone cold after he rested it on the windowsill. “You call up the inspector like I asked?”
“Yes, he told me to say he’d be around in thirty minutes.”
“No kidding, Neglio’s coming here himself? I’m impressed.” But he was not surprised.
He looked past Baker to the furnishings in the small, dreary room: a rumpled bed with stale sheets and a wool blanket that was home and board to a colony of moths, a chair with maroon Naugahyde peeling off of it, a nightstand that held a lamp and the current issue of Hustler magazine, a folding table with a portable TV and a half-eaten salami sandwich on it, and not much floorspace for anything else. There was another, even bleaker room on the other side of a wall with no door. This contained a sink and refrigerator, another viewless window to the air shaft, two cupboards full of cockroaches, a hotplate and a stall shower.
The toilet was in a closet out in the hallway next to a pay telephone, both of which the late tenant was obliged to share with others on the floor. At Lieutenant Ellis’s suggestion, Baker had posted a couple of uniforms in the hallway. “If you don’t,” Ellis advised the young detective supervising his first suspicious death crime scene, “the neighbors will make like vultures. Believe me, I know the house.” One of the uniforms was questioning the building superintendent, who was sweating heavily.
A suitcase sat open on the floor next to the bed. Some of the things in it, along with what came out of the pockets of a jacket and trousers slung over the Naugahyde chair, were what prompted Ellis to have Inspector Neglio notified. These things were now in the manila envelope that Ellis held under his arm.
“So, somebody maybe pushed him?” Baker asked Ellis.
“What—?”
“No.” Detective Baker’s face flushed. “A naked guy up on the roof, and somebody happens to come by and shove him. Too weird.”
“Kid, learn one thing: working PDU out of Hell’s Kitchen, you never know. This precinct, it’s Manhattan’s crème de la weird.”
“Yeah, well I guess …”
“This one, it’s going to have some actual logic to it. Watch and see. But for truly weird, take this call that come in last week—also a roof-top incident. Supposedly a bunch of kids was doing drugs, making a lot of noise in the middle of the night and like that. The uniforms get there and find this guy and his wife carrying on with some contraption they’d made out of a big tin can and a couple of pipes so they could inhale the fumes of heated dog doody. Welcome to the neighborhood, Baker.”
“So glad to be here.”
Lieutenant Ellis laughed and gave Detective Baker’s back a fraternal slap. Then he picked up the dead man’s jacket and trousers from the chair, tossed them on the floor under the window and sat down with his cigar. He twisted his hips, popping his spine again, and said, “All right, Detective, let’s see that super now before Neglio comes around and I suppose we got to start going by the book.”
Baker went to the hall. He returned with a small, thin redheaded man about thirty years old in khakis and an unbuttoned flannel shirt. Sweat poured down his face from beneath a blue-and-orange Mets cap. When he spoke, the accent would be Irish. And this, too, would not surprise Lieutenant Ellis.
“Lieutenant Ellis—Mac,” Baker said by way of introduction. “That’s all the name he’s giving us.”
“Why ever is that, Mac?”
“You don’t need me being involved in any of this.”
“Any of what?”
“Whatever, you know …” Mac stammered.
“That’s the sixty-four-dollar question, ain’t it? Whatever. I’m asking you nice to help us, Mac. You got any string I could borrow?”
“String—?”
“It ain’t something from outer space, Mac. Don’t act like you never heard of string. You got to have some around here. Where is it?”
“My workshop, in the cellar.”
“Good. Give me the key.”
“There’s some law says I got to?”
Ellis turned to Baker, and said, “Take a man down to the cellar with you, blast open Mac’s workshop any way you want.”
“No! Don’t be making a mess,” said Mac, handing the key to Baker.
“There’s some packaging string, on the shelf on the right-hand side.”
“That’s real smart, a fine building like this you want to keep up real nice for the white-glove crowd,” Ellis said to Mac. Then to Baker, “Make it quick, and while you’re down there, find me a nice big brick out in the air shaft, too.”
Baker shrugged and left the room.
The super lifted the cap off his head and brushed sweat back into his hair. He asked Ellis, “What are you needing with a brick?”
“You can just think about that for a while,” Ellis said, puffing his cigar. “Cut the crapola now, you little mick hump. What’s the last name?”
“I tell you, I ain’t saying.”
“Okay—for now. What’s the dead man’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
“He’s not the regular tenant, is he?”
“I’m not the nosy type.”
“No, I suppose not. But I bet you know the legal tenant’s name. What’s that?”
“Ask the landlord.”
“What’s his name?”
“Me, I only talk to some secretary in an office uptown.”
“And you’re paid off the books, in cash?”
“Hey, every year I file with Sam.”
“Sure you do, Mac. Step over to the window there.”
“What for?”
“So I can show you what I’m going to do with the brick, since you was nosy enough to ask.”
The super stepped to the window, and said, “I don’t have to look out, I know what’s down there.”
“You’re sweating pretty bad, Mac. How come?”
“I’ve got a cold.”
“Too bad. Have you got a green card?”
“Come on, man!”
“I didn’t think so. Too bad, Mac. A man with a green card has rights in this country. A harp like you, you’re fair game for the cops and the bad guys, especially in this neighborhood. And we all have our persuasive methods. Know what I mean?”
“What?”
“We’ll wait for Detective Baker to come back. You’ll see.”
Ellis crossed his legs, puffing contentedly. Te
n minutes passed without a word. The super sweated, and flinched whenever the strobe lights flashed through the air shaft. He would not look out the window.
Finally, Baker came back with a yellow brick in one hand and a ball of brown twine in the other. “Will this do?” Baker asked, handing them to Ellis.
“Let’s see.” Ellis took the string and unrolled enough of it to test the strength by giving three sharp yanks. “Sure, it’ll do fine.”
He stood up, and motioned for Baker to follow him to the window where Mac stood. “Tie up the end of the brick real good and tight with one end of this twine,” he told Baker.
When Baker was through, Ellis took the brick and let out about twenty feet of slack line. Then he tossed the brick out the window. The twine held fast. Ellis smiled at the super as he reeled up the brick.
“Yeah, great twine,” he said. “Now, Mac—tell us what’s down there at the bottom of the air shaft.”
“What is this—?”
“He doesn’t want to get involved by looking out the window,” Ellis said to Baker. “So you’ll have to tell Mac here, our friend who unfortunately has got no civil rights, what he’s missing.”
“The naked and the dead.”
“Very good, Detective—and literary, too. That’s really getting into the spirit.” Ellis turned to the sweating super. “Now, Mac, I’d like you to drop your pants.”
“I ain’t a nancy-boy.”
“What’s the number at Immigration, Lieutenant?” Baker asked. “I’ll go out and call them now.”
Ellis beamed at Baker, as if proud mentor to protégé.
Mac understood, and undid his belt and fly. The khakis dropped to his ankles. “The skivvies, too,” Ellis told him. When the briefs fell, Ellis used a penknife to cut twenty feet of twine off the ball and handed the free end to the super. “Tie this end up around your hairy Irish nuts—good and tight,” he said, hefting the brick in his hand.
“Oh, come on, man!” the super complained, tossing the twine to the floor. “Are you guys crazy?”
“Yes, very,” Baker said, stooping to pick up the twine. Ellis beamed again.
“Look, man—whatever this is, I’m only the little guy,” the super whined at Ellis. “Have a heart.”
“I’m not hearing you,” Ellis said, cupping an ear. “Was that a name you were saying?”
“Okay. It’s McGoldrick—Tom McGoldrick. They call me Mac.”
“Actually, I don’t care about that name anymore. Try again.”
“I told you, I only talk to the secretary.”
“Okay, Detective Baker—if you please. Lace him up.”
McGoldrick gasped, “What—?”
“I give you the opportunity to do it for yourself, Mac. But you want Detective Baker to handle the jewels, it’s okay by me. You get hooked up to the brick here, and well toss it out the window all the same. Then well see if the thrill makes you any more cooperative.”
“Jaysus, no—!”
“Ain’t it a stone pity you don’t have a green card, McGoldrick? You could file brutality charges against us. Go on, Detective—string him.”
“I’ll tell you!” McGoldrick shouted, flailing his arms at Baker. He bent over to pick up his trousers, but Baker grabbed the back of his shirt and stood him up straight.
“Tell me what?” Ellis asked.
“Honest, I don’t know the guy down there,” McGoldrick said. “I only saw him once or twice in the last week, coming in or going out. This dump here has different people always coming and going. You know?”
“All of them harps?”
McGoldrick hesitated.
“Don’t worry, son,” Ellis told him. “I realize you’re only the small fish, I’ll work it so whatever I get it doesn’t trace back to you. Just answer the question.”
“There was one guy regular who paid for the place,” McGoldrick said, wiping his forehead. “But the other day, he … well, he found himself in the obituary column, see?”
“Did I read that under the name of Arty Finn?”
McGoldrick said nothing. Which to Ellis was as good as yes.
There was noise in the hallway, the elevator doors clanking open, cops talking. Then one of the uniformed officers opened the door to the apartment for Inspector Neglio.
“What’s this?” Neglio said, pointing to McGoldrick with his khakis and undershorts around his feet. He looked at Ellis, sighed, and said, “Forget I ever asked, Ray.”
Ellis waved his cigar at McGoldrick, and said, “Pull them up now and leave us alone, son. And don’t worry, you did the right thing.”
Neglio looked out the window as the super hurried out. When he was gone, the inspector asked Ellis, “What’s the story? No, don’t tell me. You find a guy with no papers, so you forget about Miranda and let him know about cop hell instead?”
“Once you ride the bike, you never forget how to pedal, hey Inspector?”
Neglio nodded at Baker, and asked Ellis, “Who’s this?”
“Detective Baker,” Baker said, extending his hand to the inspector.
“He looks like a chucklehead on the TV news,” Ellis said. “But don’t mind that, he picks up very fast.”
Neglio shook Baker’s hand, then said to Ellis, “All right, what’s the play here?”
“Maybe you want to ask Neil Hockaday if you can find him. Or his pal Mogaill—if anybody ever finds him.”
“Cute doesn’t cut it with me, Ray. Not when I have to break an appointment with the mayor. What are you getting at?”
Lieutenant Ellis tossed his cigar on the floor and stamped it. Then he took his manila folder from under his arm and put it in his lap. Before opening it, he looked at Baker, then back to Neglio, and said, “First I got to tell you, Inspector, I don’t like this. It ain’t going to wind up righteous—when or if we make a collar. And nothing but nothing stinks worse to me than bad cops, including that air shaft.”
“Let’s not get ahead of things, Lieutenant. First, tell me how you figure Nature Boy came to a bad end.”
“Professional bump. The bumper was pretty good, too. Looks to me like he used a set of picks to get through the doors, probably before dawn. He rousts the guy here out of his sleep, takes him up to the roof—naked—and forces him to step off … I now repeat what I said about bad cops.”
“I’m not sure what you’re insinuating here—or why. And since when did you become a whistle-blower, Lieutenant? If you’ve got anything you want to tell the IAD, my advice is call for an appointment.”
“No—you’ll do, Inspector. I really think you ought to hear me out. Otherwise, I wouldn’t dream of taking up your valuable time.”
“Don’t press it with me, Ray.” Neglio turned up a monogrammed cuff and checked his watch.
Lieutenant Ellis smiled, running a hand over the smooth manila folder. “Your boy Hockaday, he lives right here in Hell’s Kitchen, don’t he?”
“Everybody’s got his briar patch.”
“Sure, but it’s Hockaday’s that interests me. Half the tenements around here that nobody cares about—including the health department, as you can see from this one we’re in now—they go way back to the Irish gangs of New York, even before the Westies. Follow?”
“I know what a mattress house is, Ray,” said Neglio. “Are you giving me the history lesson, or your boy Baker here?”
“Just want to be clear,” Ellis said. “This mattress we’re in here, it was none other than the late Arty Finn who was keeping it.”
“That’s what you got out of—?”
“McGoldrick. He’s the super, and scared out of his gourd. My guess is because of Finn and his IRA goons.”
“So who’s the guy down below?”
“Now it gets real interesting.” Lieutenant Ellis opened the manila folder. He pulled out a green booklet, and held it out for Neglio to take. “I found a few interesting items that belonged to the stiff. Take a look at this first.”
“It’s an Irish passport,” Neglio said. He read the name of
the dead man: “Dennis Farrelly.”
“Ain’t it interesting how a guy with a nice respectable passport from the Emerald Isle winds up staying in a New York mattress specializing these days in Irishmen you wouldn’t want to cross?”
“This Farrelly, he’s what—IRA or something?”
“Or something,” Ellis said. He reached into the folder again, pulled out a medallion and handed it over to Neglio. “This has got me stumped. Found it in the suitcase. What do you make of it?”
Neglio read off italicized script engraved on one side of the brass medallion:
“When nations are empty up there at the top … When order has weakened or faction is strong … Time for us all to pick out a good tune … Take to the roads and go marching along.’”
He turned it over, saw the letters H.O.S. and the design of an axe tied in a bundle of rods. “It’s political,” Neglio said. “I don’t know what these initials are, but I’ve seen the axe logo before. Mussolini and his Fascists used it.”
“No kidding?”
“Fascists I don’t kid about.”
“Honest, I really hate to give you this next thing, Inspector.”
Ellis removed one further item from the manila folder. It was a small leather case, the size of a wallet. Neglio took it, half knowing what it was.
“Open it,” Ellis said.
Neglio did. There was a police shield inside.
He read the words:
“Dennis Farrelly, Dublin Garda.”
Chapter 21
“Wrap yourself in these bloody damn fantasies of Irish glory, lads, and this here’ll be the useless end of yourselves—as surely as our poor precious friends here …”
Saying this, Davy Mogaill nevertheless tipped his glass, spilling whiskey from one body to the other as a gesture of his respect. It fell on the white linen sheets draped over the two dead men, as if they were saints laid out there on the wooden doors taken down for the occasion of the wake.
The doors rested horizontal atop four chairs each, and all circled around were the heavily drinking mourners. To a man, they held vigorous opinions on the life and times of the dearly departed, and none were shy about arguing the smallest point of a differing view.
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