Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  Marsella and Moose were going over some folders when the Whip walked in. “Better have a look-see,” Moose said to Vinda.

  Aware of his smelly armpits and sweaty body, Vinda resolved never to walk up eleven flights again. He hung his coat on the rack, went over to his desk, opened the side drawer, and took out a spray can of deodorant. Opening the buttons on his shirt and pulling his tie aside, he directed the spray under his arms. That done, he buttoned up, looked into his detectives’ worried faces, and said, “That bad?”

  “Yeah, that bad,” Marsella confirmed.

  Retired patrolman James Ellis Lucas’s folder was spread open. The duplicate Force Record Card, Personnel Data Card, and the rest of the obligatory forms mandated by the Administrative Guide were stacked on the left flap of the eleven-by-fourteen manila file.

  The other side contained letters of commendation and arrest reports. The communication on top was the Unusual Occurrence Report on the incident that had earned Patrolman James Ellis Lucas his Combat Cross. Vinda noticed another personnel file under Lucas’s. He looked at the name on the flap, and his chest muscles tightened. “Oh, no,” he moaned.

  It was all there, on a report called “The Unusual,” otherwise officially known as the Unusual Occurrence Report, the contents of which were all too often all too usual.

  The first paragraph detailed how on Monday, June 18, 1979, at about 1130 hours, Patrolman James Lucas, shield 5593, and Patrolman Willy Johnston, shield 14062, assigned to the Ninth Precinct, performing an 0800-to-1600 tour in RMP 2143, sector Adam, responded to a 10:30—Armed Robbery in Progress—at 927 First Avenue.

  Arriving at the scene, the officers confronted four armed white males fleeing a payroll robbery of the Hollaway Electronic Corporation. Alighting from their patrol car, the officers ordered the four suspects to drop their weapons, whereupon the suspects whirled on the officers and opened fire. Taking cover behind their RMP, the officers returned fire. During the course of the next six minutes, forty-two rounds were exchanged, resulting in the deaths of the four perpetrators—and one civilian bystander. Investigation revealed that the civilian, identified as Mrs. Valarie Griffin, FW, 27, was leaving Saint Rose of Lima Church at 894 First Avenue at the time of occurrence, and was caught in the crossfire.

  The Unusual went on to identify the holdup men by the B numbers of their yellow sheets, and listed their criminal records. They were alumni of the state’s finest reformatories and correctional institutions.

  The fifteen-page report contained the names and addresses of ten witnesses. Their statements were attached in Appendix B. There was a detailed map of the crime scene, and a cross-projection showing the impact points of each spent round. Photographs of the scene were attached. The ballistic protocol stated that Mrs. Valarie Griffin expired as the result of being struck by one .38 bullet discharged from Patrolman Lucas’s service revolver. The medical examiner’s protocol detailed the grisly damage done by the bullet.

  Vinda looked up at the detectives, a shadow passing across his tense face. “Our first two homicide victims were the daughters of these two cops?”

  “Afraid so, boss,” Marsella said gravely.

  “No mistake?” Vinda asked, glancing at the folders.

  Rubbing his Save the Florida Panther button, Moose said, “We checked and double-checked. Mary Lucas and Thelma Johnston were indeed their daughters.”

  Lighting a cigarette, Marsella added, “Our doer could be the dead broad’s husband.”

  You’re only good for serving summonses and destroying lives, the perp had told the AP.

  Vinda got up and walked over to the blackboard. Studying the crime-scene photos, he realized that the thrust of his investigation had been all wrong. They’d been looking for a major wackadoo who killed randomly, but it now appeared that the Lucas and Johnston homicides might have been carefully premeditated.

  But what about the other homicides? What about the victims of the bombing? There was just too much forensic evidence tying the same perp to them all. Suddenly Frank Griffin, husband of Valarie, had become a man Vinda wanted to talk to. But if Griffin was the doer, where had he been hanging out for the past twelve years? And why the vampire stuff?

  Vinda picked up the telephone and dialed the FBI. When Gus White came on the line, Vinda asked him to check out the name Frank Griffin as a possible Dinny’O. “I’ll get right on it,” White said. “But you owe me big.”

  The Accident Investigation Unit’s report on the explosion of retired patrolman James E. Lucas’s car made no mention of an explosive device. Flat police language claimed that Lucas’s car had inexplicably and suddenly exploded in flames. Identification had been made through dental records. The AIU investigator who caught the case reported that the deceased had used his credit card to purchase gasoline fifteen minutes before the accident. The vendor’s copy of a credit-card sales slip revealed the purchase and that it had been made at a gas station at Flatbush Avenue and Tillary Street in Brooklyn. The absence of skid marks attested to the suddenness of the explosion. Conclusion: deceased neglected to secure gas cap properly after purchase of gas, resulting in overspill that was accidentally ignited by a discarded cigarette.

  Vinda leaned back, thinking fast. The AIU cop who conducted the investigation had no reason to suspect an explosive device, so he didn’t bother to summon the Bomb Squad to the scene to look for a killer’s signature in the debris. It would have been a simple matter for someone to slap a device on Lucas’s car in that gas station. Closing the AIU file, Vinda asked, “What do we know about Frank Griffin?”

  “Nothing. Zilch,” Marsella replied. “The Unusual gave his name and address. I checked with Telephone Security and Con Edison. No Griffin listed at that address.”

  “I took a ride over there,” Moose said. “A new high-rise went up on the site last year. No Griffin.”

  “The wife’s family?”

  The detectives shrugged; they had hit a dead end again.

  Marsella came over and perched on the edge of the Whip’s desk. “The plot thickens, Lou. After we read the files on the two cops, we contacted Corporation Counsel. Are you ready? No—I repeat, no—lawsuits were filed on behalf of Valarie Griffin against the city, the Job, or the two cops.”

  “What?” Vinda said, unable to hide his surprise.

  Moose bellied up to the desk and added, “Agueda telephoned just before you got back. No CCRB complaints were lodged against Lucas and Johnston as the result of Valarie Griffin’s death.”

  Agueda and Hagstrom walked into the office. “You sure about Valarie Griffin and the CCRB?” Vinda asked the women.

  “Absolutely,” Hagstrom said.

  Agueda confirmed that they had checked the records three years before and three years after the date of occurrence, and had come up with negative results.

  Vinda looked at the detectives. “Any of you have anything personal to do this evening, shove off. The rest of us are going to tear apart these reports. They’re bullshit, but there might be a pony in there somewhere.”

  Nobody got up to leave.

  After a few minutes, Marsella sneaked a look at Hagstrom and walked out of the office. Going into the Major Case area, he picked up a phone and dialed home. He told his wife that he’d probably be stuck late and would, if it got too late, sack out in the office.

  “That’s okay, honey,” said his wife, flipping her address and telephone book open to her list of baby-sitters.

  When Marsella walked back into the office, Agueda asked him, “Chinese okay, Tony?”

  “Good,” Marsella answered, sneaking a wink at Hagstrom. Agueda took their orders and phoned them in to the local Szechuan restaurant.

  Fifteen minutes later, spooning noodles into his mouth, Vinda flipped through the pages of the Unusual. He found it hard to believe that in this litigious city not one of Valarie Griffin’s family had filed a lawsuit alleging her wrongful death.

  Marsella was apparently also puzzled. He slumped into a chair, shook a cigarette out o
f the pack, lit it, and said, “Ya know, Lou, Valarie Griffin’s death was a lawyer’s wet dream.” Waving his hand confidently, he added, “I mean, the city would have automatically settled out of court for some big numbers on a case like this. There’s gotta be some reason no suit was filed.”

  “Maybe the husband dropped dead or something,” Moose said.

  Vinda’s expression showed his doubt; he picked up the Supplementary Report on the original Unusual. His attention was drawn to the duty captain’s indemnification endorsement at the end of the last paragraph: “From my investigation it appears that at the time of occurrence Patrolmen Lucas and Johnston were acting in the proper discharge of department duty and were guilty of no misconduct, and no charges have been or are likely to be preferred against them by reason thereof. Request that the Corporation Counsel be assigned to defend them in any future action.”

  The Supplementary was dated the day after the shooting. Bending over and pulling out the bottom drawer, Vinda leaned back in his chair, planted his feet on the top edge of the drawer, and looked thoughtfully out at the glass towers in the distance. That duty captain must have been damn sure there’d be no kickback, or else he would never have inserted the indemnification paragraph so soon after the incident. Normally, captains who investigate cop shootouts wait until the dust has cleared before sending in the indemnification endorsement. They want to make very sure that there is no relationship between any of the dead civilian types and the members of the force involved. Many a duty captain’s career came to an abrupt end because of a premature hold-harmless endorsement. A bird must have sung a little song into the duty captain’s ear.

  Captain Cormick McGovern had conducted both the preliminary and supplementary investigations. Vinda dialed the centrex number of the Locator Wheel, and asked the police administrative aide who answered for the current assignment of Captain Cormick McGovern. He was told that the captain died while in service in August of ’81.

  He put the receiver down just as the door slammed open and David Pollack stormed in, waving a handful of clippings. “Here are the morgue files on the shooting.”

  Vinda had telephoned Pollack a short time ago, giving him the date of occurrence and asking him to look up the shooting in his paper’s files.

  The newspaper had carried the story on the front page. Photographs of the scene showed the four perps splayed over the roadway and sidewalk. Valarie Griffin’s body lay on the church steps, covered by a gray blanket. There were more photographs and a diagram showing the unfolding of the battle. The article alongside the pictures told how Valarie’s husband, Frank Griffin, had collapsed and been hospitalized upon being notified of her death.

  Vinda handed the clippings to Marsella.

  Pollack, his Stetson pushed back on his head, waited until the detectives had read the article before asking, “Any of you super-sleuths notice anything strange about the story?”

  “There’s no follow-up,” Vinda said firmly.

  “Give the lieutenant a cigar,” Pollack said, sweeping off his hat and bringing it across his chest in a ceremonial bow. “A story like this should have run for at least three tear-jerking days.”

  “So what happened?” Hagstrom asked.

  “Someone outside the paper told someone inside the paper to forget about Valarie Griffin,” Vinda said.

  “I think the Whip’s on the money again,” Pollack said.

  Moose asked, “Can you maybe nose around, find out who, what, when, where, how, and why?”

  “If I stuck my nose somewhere it didn’t belong, someone upstairs would cut it off,” Pollack responded.

  Vinda picked up the Unusual and the Supplementary, holding them side by side, comparing the headings on both reports, aware of something odd, and feeling a growing excitement.

  Seeing the Whip’s new intensity, Marsella asked, “What is it, Lou?”

  “Something’s wrong here,” Vinda said, scrutinizing the two reports.

  They gathered around the Whip. Vinda became conscious of Agueda’s scent, and of her presence behind him. “Lou, look at the list of overhead commands that received copies,” Agueda said, leaning over him, her breasts touching his shoulder. Feeling his face flush, he leaned forward to separate himself from the disturbing softness of her touch.

  Unusual Occurrence Reports are forwarded by subordinate commands up the chain to overhead units with a need to know. Department regulations on Records and Correspondence require that the abbreviated designations of commands receiving copies be typed in the upper right-hand corner of the first page of the Unusual. The last set of initials in the right-hand column glared up from the page at Vinda: BOSS—Bureau of Special Services, the NYPD’s defunct intelligence units that had been used to do black-bag jobs for the FBI and CIA, the grandfather of the Job’s current Intelligence Division.

  “Why the hell would BOSS have received a copy?” Moose asked the crew.

  No one could answer him.

  Vinda was about to say something when Gus White telephoned to tell him that a few fast phone calls to some of his friends in the world of mirrors revealed no Frank Griffin aka Dinny’O in ’Nam during that time frame. Vinda thanked him and hung up.

  “Holman conned us,” Agueda said contemptuously, after the Whip told her what the FBI man had said.

  “Probably,” Vinda agreed. “But Holman is a pro, and I’m sure he mixed up a bit of the truth in with the lie.” Looking at Marsella, he asked, “Where is Holman now?”

  “Out on half a mil bail,” Marsella said. “He’s probably holding court in the dive in Queens.”

  “Want us to scoop ’im up, Lou?” Marsella asked.

  “We can’t go near that guy,” Vinda said, stretching and yawning. “My brain’s on overload. Let’s call it a day.”

  Looking into the mirror in the eleventh-floor ladies’ room, Hagstrom puckered her lips and applied lipstick. “Do you think this Holman guy really knows a Dinny’O, and who he is?”

  “Yes,” Agueda called from inside a stall.

  “What kind of guy is Holman?”

  “A grade-A scumbag who thinks he’s Rambo.”

  After pressing her lips together, Hagstrom said bitterly, “I’ve known a few of them in my time. How far away is Holman’s hangout?”

  “No traffic, twenty minutes.”

  The toilet flushed. Agueda walked out of the stall, straightening her skirt. Going over to the sink, she washed her hands.

  Hagstrom dumped her lipstick into her pocketbook, took out her hairbrush, and began brushing her hair. “Do you think a couple of frail female members of the force could induce ol’ Otto to tell them all about his friend Dinny’O?”

  “Some people just might call that a harebrained scheme, Detective Hagstrom.”

  “I wouldn’t,” she said, staring at herself in the mirror. “Female detectives have certain unmentionable advantages that our male counterparts do not have.”

  “Getting Holman to be cooperative could be really gross.”

  “You do what you gotta do. Besides, I like the Lou.”

  “Me too.”

  “I know.”

  The jack of diamonds hit the bottle of Delamain and fell faceup on the table. The dealer, a burly man with aging muscles, thinning gray hair, and thick-soled shoes, picked up the card and buried it on the bottom of the deck. He tossed out another card.

  Soothsayer picked it up and stuck it into his gin rummy hand. The players were sitting at a secluded table in a niche far back in the empty dining room.

  Vinda walked in and put his overcoat over the back of a nearby chair, waiting for his presence to be acknowledged. From somewhere deep within Corregidor’s bowels, the din of a retirement party penetrated the silence.

  The other player with Soothsayer had a familiar and distinctive shape to his head. Soothsayer tossed in his hand, leaned across the table, and said something to his friend. The other man turned his head to give Vinda a long, careful stare. He was Captain Matt Hanratty, the CO of the Intelligenc
e Division’s Public Security Section. Watching him push back from the table, get up, and walk past him without so much as a glimmer of recognition, Vinda thought how the names changed but the players lingered on.

  Soothsayer waved him over. “What can I do for you, Lou?” he asked, cradling his glass of cognac with both hands.

  Vinda slid copies of the Unusual and Supplementary across the table. Soothsayer looked down at them. “’Seventy-nine. A long time ago.”

  “Look at the overhead commands that received copies.”

  “So?”

  “Why would an Unusual involving two uniformed cops be flagged to BOSS? And, more important, why would a contract go out killing the story in the press?”

  Soothsayer raised the snifter to his nose, slowly savoring the fumes, his eyes watching Vinda over the rim. He put the glass down, picked up the deck of cards, and began dealing himself a game of solitaire.

  Vinda watched, his patience ebbing. “You were assigned to BOSS at the time. Do you remember the case?”

  Soothsayer placed the queen of spades on the first file, the seven of clubs went on the second. Soothsayer ignored his question. “Why this sudden interest in ancient history?”

  Tapping the Unusual with his forefinger, Vinda announced, “This piece of ancient history popped up during the course of my homicide investigation.” A note of anger came into his voice. “Do you remember the case?”

  “I remember it. I had just deposited Nelson in one of his pieds-à-terre and went into the office to catch up on what was happening in the Job. I was in the boss’s office when the contract came in. The call came from City Hall.” He picked up the snifter, breathed deeply of the fumes. “Fuckin’ doctor told me I can’t drink anymore, but he didn’t say anything about smellin’ it.” He looked across the table at Vinda and said, “Valarie Griffin had been a nun. She hadn’t taken her final vows, so when she petitioned for release from her vows to marry, it was granted. Only months after hanging up her habit she married this guy Griffin. And then two weeks later she gets herself blown away leaving church.”