Similarly, Boone said, when Jason T. Jason went into a bar on the Lower East Side, he shouldn’t march in, flash his potsy at the bartender, show the police artist’s sketch of the Spanish woman, and demand, “Have you seen this woman?” Even if the guy had, he was going to clam after that treatment.
The better way, the sergeant told Jason Two, was to amble into the bar, order a beer, sip it slowly, and when the bartender wasn’t busy, ask lazily, “Mary been around lately?” And if the bartender said, “Mary? I don’t know no Mary,” then Jason was to say, “Sure, man, she comes in here all the time. Here, I got this little drawing of her.” The bartender might still clam, but he might say, “Oh her. Her name ain’t Mary, it’s Lucy.” Or June, or Sue, or whatever.
“It’s all in knowing how, to manipulate people,” Abner Boone told the black cop. “A good detective’s got a thousand tricks to make people tell things they don’t want to tell, or do things they don’t want to do. You’ve got to study human nature and what makes people tick. I always figured you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar, but I know a lot of dicks don’t feel that way. Just the opposite; they come on strong. You’ve got to find the way that suits you best and gets the best results for you.”
Jason told Juanita he thought Boone’s way suited him best; it really made him uncomfortable to lean on people. So he ambled all over the Lower East Side, smiling, chatting up a storm with bartenders and shopkeepers. Some of them guessed he was a cop, but never came right out and asked. His costume and manner must have been convincing because once, on Norfolk Street at high noon, a pretty young hooker, white, sidled up to him and said she wouldn’t mind joining his stable. Jason told this story to his wife, thinking she’d be amused. She wasn’t.
He made some progress, but not much. Using Boone’s system, he had wandered into a Forsythe Street greasy spoon and casually asked the Puerto Rican waitress, “Mary been around lately?” It worked just as the sergeant said it might, and the waitress identified the drawing of the woman as “Mama Perez,” first name unknown, who came in occasionally with the young girl in the second sketch. The girl, introduced as Mama’s niece, was named Dolores, last name unknown.
Sergeant Boone ran “Mama Perez” through records, and came up with nothing. There were more than 750 Perezes listed in the Manhattan telephone directory, and they weren’t about to start on that unless absolutely necessary.
So Jason T. Jason continued his daily rounds, becoming a familiar figure around Orchard and Rivington and Delancey streets. By now he could ask casually, “Seen Mama Perez lately?” He went as far west as the Bowery and as far east as Roosevelt Drive. Sometimes he worked nights and the early-morning hours, and he went into hairy places. But perhaps because of his size, he never got mugged. There was one night, under the Williamsburg Bridge, when he thought four young punks were going to try to take him. But he sauntered slowly away whistling, and sweating, and they faded off when he came into a lighted section.
The worst experience he had during this period was not with the shtarkers of the Lower East Side, but with Sergeant Abner Boone.
Boone came down to join Jason occasionally, usually at night, to make the rounds with him for a few hours and teach him more tricks. Boone wore dirty sneakers and khaki jeans, and a stained nylon Windbreaker. He didn’t wear any socks, and some shirt buttons were missing. No one looked at him twice.
Jason noticed that when he and Boone went into a bar together, the sergeant would always order a draft beer, and then let it just sit there, getting flat, the head disappearing.
The first time this happened, Jason Two said, “Not drinking?” And Boone smiled tightly and said, “Not tonight.” It happened two or three more times; Boone never touched his beer. Finally, Jason, who had a huge thirst and a huge capacity, took to saying, “Mind if I finish that?” When Boone nodded, Jason would drain his glass, too, before they departed.
When Jason T. Jason had his worst experience, he and Boone had been covering Bowery booze joints where you could get a double shot for fifty-five cents, but most of the customers wisely stuck to bottled beer. Jason Two and the sergeant came off the Bowery at Grand Street and started meandering eastward. They turned the corner onto Eldridge Street, where Jason’s car was parked, and there was a squad car pulled into the curb at an angle, the roof lights still flashing. Both cops were out of it and working, although there wasn’t much for them to do except try to keep the gathering crowd moving.
It looked like two old winos had gone at each other with broken bottles This was surprising; old winos rarely had enough strength to twist the cap from a pint of muscatel. But maybe it was a grudge or a vendetta. In any event, they had sliced up each other thoroughly—there was an eyeball lying on the sidewalk—and it was obvious one of the winos was dead and the other, a flag of slashes, was breathing in thick, wheezy gasps in a diminishing rhythm.
The young cops who had caught the squeal didn’t know what to do. They had radioed for help, but there was no way to stop the dying man’s bleeding or to bandage him, unless they could swaddle him up like a mummy. Blood ran across the sidewalk, over the curb, into the gutter. A gush, a river, a flood of blood. The smell was thick on the hot night air. Boone hadn’t caught one of these in a long time; he had almost forgotten that blood smelled.
He started walking away, fast, and Jason Two had to hurry to catch up to him. Boone wheeled into the first open bar he came to and ordered a boilermaker. He put the shot down with a flick of his wrist and a single gulp, swilled the beer, and ordered another before Jason even had time to swing his bulk aboard a bar stool.
Oh-oh, the black cop thought. I got trouble.
He did, too. Within an hour, Sergeant Abner Boone was falling-down drunk and talking stupidly. Following one of Boone’s own tips—“Never argue with a drunk, a nut, an armed guy, or a woman”—Jason agreed with everything the sergeant said, and tried to get him out of there. But Boone wouldn’t go, insisted on ordering another drink. Suddenly he stopped babbling, became silent and morose. He staggered off to the can.
While he was gone, Jason debated what he should do. He had never faced a situation like this before. He had gotten pissy-assed drunk with fellow cops, and usually helped one or more of them home, all of them boisterous and roaring. But Boone was Jason’s superior officer, and he didn’t even know where the sergeant lived. He wondered if he should call Chief Edward X. Delaney and explain the situation, but decided that wouldn’t be right. He didn’t know what to do.
Boone seemed to be staying in the can a long time, and Jason Two thought he might have passed out in there. But when Jason went in, he saw Boone hadn’t passed out; the sergeant was sitting in a pool of urine and vomit, his back against the filthy tiled wall, and he was trying to eat his gun. His forefinger stroked slowly at the trigger. Jason T. Jason almost fainted.
He got the revolver away from Boone and began slapping his face to bring him around. After awhile, the sergeant started weeping, and covered his face with his hands—whether to hide his tears or so he couldn’t be slapped anymore, Jason didn’t know. But he got Boone up on his feet, propped in a corner, and he wiped the sergeant off with wet paper towels as best he could.
Then Jason bent down from the waist and pulled Boone forward on his shoulder. He straightened up easily, holding the sergeant with one arm, and carried him out of the can, out of the bar, down Eldridge Street to Jason’s car. He had a copy of that afternoon’s Post in the car, and he had the foresight to cover the back seat with newspaper before he dumped Boone in there. The sergeant was completely out now. He was a mess, dirty and stinking.
Jason Two searched his sticky pockets with the tips of his fingers and found out where Boone lived. But he didn’t know if the sergeant was married. If he was, Jason didn’t want to deliver him to his wife in that condition. Sighing, Jason T. Jason realized the only thing he could do was to deliver Abner Boone in that condition to his wife. Juanita wasn’t going to like it, but Jason didn’t see where h
e had any choice. So he drove Sergeant Boone home to Hicksville, Long Island.
His wife wasn’t happy about receiving an unexpected, smelly, and unconscious guest at that hour. But after Jason Two told her what had happened, she nodded grimly and helped him get Boone undressed, showered off, and under a blanket on the couch in the half-basement that Jason was still hoping to finish one of these days. The only time his wife really got sore was when she was washing out Boone’s filthy clothes, and Jason said, “That’s really white of you, hon.”
Because the sergeant had tried to eat his gun, Officer Jason T. Jason decided to sit up with him till morning, fearing Boone might wake up and try to hurt himself again. But the sergeant slept right through, groaning and grinding his teeth. He awoke sick and sober, looked around, saw Jason sitting nearby.
“Thanks,” Abner Boone said huskily, holding his head.
Jason didn’t say anything. A week later Sergeant Boone sent Mrs. Juanita Jason about fifty bucks’ worth of roses with a timid note of apology and thanks. And he sent Jason’s two boys authentic-looking plastic Colt .44 revolvers that shot soap bubbles.
“That’s what he should have,” Juanita said.
Sergeant Boone never came down to the Lower East Side again to make the rounds with Jason T. Jason. But he spoke to Jason every day on the phone, listened to his reports, offered advice and encouragement. Neither of them ever mentioned that night again.
So Jason Two continued his rounds alone, paying particular attention to the places on the list Boone had given him: the known hangouts of Victor Maitland. During his prowling, the black cop broke up one knife fight, collared one purse-snatcher, and reassured one old lady who was convinced her neighbor was beaming cancer rays at her through their adjoining wall. Other than that, his assignment was uneventful—just the way he wanted it. He was confident that, given time, he would find Mama Perez and Dolores. But he feared Chief Delaney would get impatient with his lack of progress and ship him back to uniformed patrol.
He tried to change his routes and hours every day, and on the Friday night of his third week of searching, he planned to cover the section between Canal and Delancey, from the Bowery to Essex. Around midnight, he was ambling north on Ludlow Street, past a dark brick building that looked like a garage or warehouse. There was a gloomy alley alongside it, shadowed where the street light failed to penetrate.
Movement in the alley caught his eye. He slowed, stopped, then moved a few steps closer. He glimpsed a swirl of light-colored fabric, a woman’s dress, and his heart stopped its frantic pounding.
“Hey there, baby!” he called cheerily.
She came out a little farther into the light.
“’Allo, beeg boy,” she said. “Wanna have fon?”
Then she smiled, and he saw the gleam of a gold tooth.
17
THEY SPENT A LOT of time planning it, and even more debating its necessity. On the same Friday night Jason T. Jason was jiving Mama Perez in a Ludlow Street alley, Chief Edward X. Delaney and Sergeant Abner Boone were driving up to Nyack, still discussing the advisability of what they were about to do.
“We could have slipped Martha Beasely a finiff,” Boone said. “To tip us off when Dora and Emily are out.”
“Look,” Delaney said, “if Dora and Emily are involved in icing Maitland, and it comes out that we pulled an illegal search, then they take a walk and we’re left with bubkes. It’s risky enough as it is, but we’d be stupidos to bring the Beasely woman into it.”
“I’m still not sure it’s worth it, Chief,” Boone fretted.
“It’s worth it if we find something that ties in with the kill. Right now, I admit, all we got is presumption of tax fraud. I couldn’t care less. It’s a matter for the Feds, and we’ll tip them when the time is right. But a homicide takes precedence, and I don’t think this tax scam exists in a vacuum. I think it’s got something to do with why Maitland got the shiv. Also, to tell you the truth, it’s just curiosity; I want to make sure we’re guessing right. Besides, look at it this way, if Dora and Emily catch us breaking and entering, they’re not going to squeal; it would just point the IRS to the treasure trove that much sooner.”
“But what if the local blues show up?” Boone said mournfully. “Or the State cops?”
“We’ll handle that when we have to,” Delaney said. He glanced at Boone, puzzled by the sergeant’s uncertainty. Boone had shown up for work a week previously with a spoiled complexion, shadowed eyes, and a breath smelling so strongly of mint that it had to be a coverup. The Chief was convinced Boone had fallen off the wagon again. He seemed sober enough now, but twitchy. “Want to drop me off at the Maitland place?” the Chief asked him. “I’ll go in alone, and you stand lookout.”
“Nah,” the sergeant said. “I’ll come along. If only to see how well I learned my lessons.”
Boone was referring to a three-hour crash course he had taken under the tutelage of Detective first-grade Sammy (“The Pick”) Delgado. Sammy, who worked mostly safe and loft heists, was reputed to be the best cracksman in the New York Police Department. He had initiated Sergeant Boone into the arcane skill of the two-handed pick, a delicate operation in which two needle-thin picks are operated simultaneously to spring a good tumbler lock. Sammy just loved watching TV shows in which the dick or private eye opened a solid lock with a plastic credit card.
In the back of Boone’s car was the equipment they thought they’d need: a big battery lantern, two penlights, a Polaroid camera with flash, several squares of black cloth about napkin-size, two jimmies, a few other tools, and a first-aid kit they hoped wouldn’t be needed. Both cops were armed; both carried their kits of lock picks, plus a small can of oil and a nozzled tube of liquid graphite.
“All we need are ski masks,” Boone observed.
They had timed their arrival for 1:00 A.M. Drove slowly past the Maitland home and saw no lights in the house itself, though low-wattage bulbs burned in converted carriage lamps on both sides of the outside door. They U-turned on the road, drove past again, and pulled up so far off the verge that branches scraped the car roof and windows. Boone switched off the engine and lights. They sat silently for almost ten minutes, until their eyes became accustomed to the darkness. During that period only one car passed on the river road.
Finally, Delaney said quietly, “You wait here. I want to check the Mercedes. Fifteen minutes.”
He slid out of the car cautiously. Boone was surprised at how lightly and quietly the big man moved. There was a three-quarter moon, but clouds were heavy enough to dim the light. Delaney disappeared into black shadows. Boone sat stolidly, aching for a cigarette.
The Chief was back in ten minutes, appearing with startling suddenness at Boone’s window.
“It’s parked,” he whispered. “They’re in. Let’s go.”
Both men were wearing dark slacks, shirts, sweaters, shoes. They carried tools and equipment in two burlap bags, swaddled in the squares of black cloth to prevent clinking. Boone went first, one of the penlights switched on and held low; a small circle of dim light jerked along at his feet.
They were city cops, not woodsmen; they could not avoid snapping dried twigs on the ground and blundering into branches. But they moved slowly, stopping frequently to snap off the light, stand and listen. They made a wide circle to keep the barn between themselves and the house. It was a humid night, but a cool river breeze helped. The smells were unfamiliar: rank earth, a brief stench of some live animal, the odor of sappy things, an occasional thick, sweet smell of flowers. Once they heard the rush and scamper of a small beast running. It spooked them.
They came up alongside the barn. Boone turned the penlight aside briefly to show Delaney the rock-lined drain pit and the air-conditioner vent. Neither man spoke. They waited for clouds to obscure the moon completely before they slipped around the corner. The sergeant led the way into the shed, the Chief following close behind, one hand on Boone’s shoulder.
They closed the outside door softly behind
them, made a quick sweep of the shed with the watery penlight beam, then set to work. They took the canvas tarp from the wall and hung it across the ill-fitting outside door so light would not escape through the chinks. Then they moved close to the hidden door and went into the drill they had planned.
Chief Delaney held a square of black cloth between the lock and the house, to provide additional masking. He held the penlight in his mouth, gripping it lightly in his teeth, more firmly with his lips. Boone found the tube of liquid graphite, gave the key opening a little squirt, and selected two picks from the kit in his hip pocket. They were long needles, one pointed, one with a tiny paddle head.
He inserted the pointed lock pick into the keyhole, began to probe gently, staring up into the darkness. (“No use staring at the lock,” Sammy Delgado had said. “Your eyesight will fuzz. It’s all in the touch and feel.”) But Boone touched nothing, felt nothing. He swabbed around gently, trying to catch a tumbler. But the pick kept slipping in his sweaty hands. He left it there, sticking from the lock, stooped and rubbed fingers and palms on the dusty floorboards. Then he went back to his probing, blinking nervously. Finally, he shook his head in the gloom. Delaney dropped one corner of the masking cloth, took the penlight from his mouth, switched it off. He moved his head closer to Boone’s.
“Want me to try?” he whispered.
“Not yet. Let me rest a minute and get rid of the shakes. Then I’ll try a hook.”
They stood there in the blackness, both trying to breathe deeply. The shed held the day’s heat and the must of years. It stuffed their nostrils, clotted their eyes. They smelled themselves, and each other.
“All right,” Boone said in a low voice. “I need the light down here for a second.”
Delaney held the penlight to illuminate the sergeant’s dusty hands fumbling at his pick kit. He replaced the pointed pick, withdrew one with a tiny hook at the end. They went back to their original positions, Boone probing now with the hooked pick, frowning thoughtfully up into the darkness. He felt the pick catch.
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