Keeler went to his wife, hands reaching for her shoulders. “I swear to God, no. Kitty, I don’t have them, God is my witness.”
She shoved George away, folded her arms across her body, threw her head back and studied the ceiling. She gave a loud, irritated sigh.
Kitty had been dealing with George for too long. I figured, the hell with this. I snapped my notebook closed, put it into a rear pocket. “Look, lady, if this whole thing is just too boring for you, that’s all right with me. They’re your kids.”
We both ignored George’s sudden gasping panic. She said, “I didn’t send for you.”
Catalano jumped up. “Kitty, hey, we’re just trying to help.” Then, impartial referee, “She’s just upset, Joe.”
He gave her the benefit of his complete attention; his voice hummed around her, soothed her, convinced her to “put up with” me. She crossed one leg over the other, nibbled on her pinky and asked, “What was the question?”
“When was the last time you saw your sons last night? And under what circumstances?”
She thought it over, then shrugged. “Terry got up later in the night for a drink of water. He dropped the plastic cup and that woke Georgie. So I took Georgie to the bathroom, then had to change him and his sheet because he was soaked with sweat. Then I took a coupla sleeping pills and a hot shower and went to bed.”
“Those things aren’t good for you, Kitty,” George told her; she ignored him.
“What time was that?”
“What time was what?”
Catalano interpreted for me. “What time was it, Kitty, that you last saw the boys last night?”
She examined her pinky carefully, then nibbled on it some more. “One o’clock. That’s when Terry got up. About that time. And it was about one-thirty when I took the sleeping pills and my shower and went to bed.”
“Did you see your sons at all after one-thirty this morning?”
She shifted some hair from her shoulders to her back. “Nope.”
“From the time you went to bed until you woke up this morning, did you hear anything, anything at all, unusual in the apartment?”
She smiled at Catalano, awarding him points. “That’s just what you asked me, Sam.” Then, blank-faced, to me, “No, nothing at all. No noise, no nothing.”
“Did you leave your sons alone in the apartment at any time last night?”
“No.”
“As far as you know, did anyone, anyone at all, come into the apartment last night?”
She closed her eyes, tapped an index finger against her temple, then snapped her eyes open and said, “Yeah. The doctor.”
Catalano said softly, “No, Kitty. Joe means anyone besides the doctor.”
“Oh. Is that what Joe means?”
The little mother was just a little too cute for me. I pulled out my notebook and didn’t look up at her again. “Let’s have a description of the boys, Mrs. Keeler. Start with the older boy, Terry.”
The descriptions were of two unextraordinary boys: three and a half and six years old. Both tall for their ages; very blond hair; blue eyes; fair skin. Both dressed in two-piece cotton knit pajamas. Terry’s pajamas had yellow smiling moon faces; Georgie’s had a big yellow duck face on the front of the top half and a big yellow duck bottom on the back, with little yellow ducks on the pants. And Georgie had a measles rash all over his face and body.
“Is any of their clothing missing, Mrs. Keeler?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look.”
“Well, look now.”
She apparently considered this another challenge, something she had to decide to do or not to do. Finally she got up. “Sure, why not?”
It took her four or five minutes. Nothing was missing. When asked, she came up with an eight-by-ten studio photograph of the boys. They appeared to be little versions of their mother, with small teeth showing through plastic smiles.
When the telephone rang, George Keeler jumped as though he’d touched a live wire. It was loud and he grabbed it in the middle of the second ring; he listened, then said, “Detective Peters, it’s for you.”
“I’ll take it in the kitchen.” There was a yellow wall phone offering a little more privacy. Keeler hung up as soon as he heard my voice.
“Joe? Can you talk?”
I had left the Keelers’ phone number on Tim Neary’s desk; he probably was going to ask what the hell I was doing in the middle of a domestic quarrel, which is what I had been asking myself.
“What’s up, Tim?”
His voice went flat and expressionless; the official kind of voice used to relay the kind of information Tim Neary had.
“Joe, I’m going to read the descriptions of two D.O.A.s that just turned up over on Peck Avenue. That’s about six blocks from where you are. I haven’t been there, but I’ll relay what I just got from the precinct. Two male Caucasians. Subject number one—approximately three to four years old; death apparently by strangulation. Subject number two—approximately five to six years old; death apparently caused by an as yet undetermined caliber gunshot wound at the base of the right side of the skull. Both victims blond hair, blue eyes; both dressed in yellow-and-white cotton knit pajamas.”
“One kid’s pajamas has smiling moon faces; the other kid’s has a yellow duck face.” I tried to swallow the sour lump that had become wedged in my throat.
There was a long silence, then Neary said, “Them’s our babies.” He gave the exact location. “You got the father there, Joe? For an identification?”
“Yeah. Is there a doctor at the scene, Tim? The guy’s an asthmatic. I think he’s gonna need some help.”
“Probably someone from the M.E.’s office. Listen, get back to me with the confirmation—or whatever—as soon as you can. And, Joe? Put Catalano on for a minute; I want him to seal the premises. We’re dealing with a double homicide.” He couldn’t resist adding, in an irritated voice, “Christ, Joe, that’s just what I need right now, huh?”
I couldn’t think of anyone who really needed a double homicide, now or at any other time. I went back into the living room. “Sam, captain wants to talk to you. He’s not happy about the report you did on the Flushing bank heist.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up, but he didn’t say anything; both Keelers were watching us closely. I went over to George and said, a little too loudly, “Hey, George, tell you what. Let’s you and me take a ride over to your ginmill in Sunnyside. That way, we’ll have touched all the bases and your wife will believe that you haven’t been conning her. What do you say?”
When Catalano came back from the kitchen, his color had changed. He was still smooth and easy and he kept coming on with the blond mother, flexing his body, holding attention to himself, keeping it all under control. But his color had changed. And, for some reason, I think Kitty Keeler noticed it. I looked at her over my shoulder, just before we left the apartment and caught something: something in her eyes, some glint of terror or pain or anticipation. Something I would have to think about later.
There were a number of official vehicles in the immediate vicinity when I pulled my Chevy alongside a squad car which had been parked haphazardly on Peck Avenue. There was an ambulance with the word MORTUARY printed front, back and on both sides. The whole area had a look of urgency.
“I gotta check on something for a minute, George. Be right back.”
There were uniformed personnel to deal with the curious neighbors, who really presented no problem: they were frightened middle-aged women for the most part. The homicide people were at work, measuring, photographing, cooperating with the forensic people, who were taking invisible samples of whatever substances they deemed should be brushed or scraped into the inevitable plasticine envelopes. A CBS-TV camera crew had just arrived; a crew from the Daily News was flashing pictures.
Captain Chris Wise of the Queens Homicide was present and in charge. Chris had been my boss for nearly four years and we knew each other for longer than that. He nodded to me, then jerked a thumb to indicate
where the bodies were.
“Understand you guys took a call, Joe, about two missing kids this morning?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I don’t think they’re missing anymore.” He turned toward the street, where my car was parked. “Who ya got, the father?”
“Yeah.”
Captain Wise led the way and motioned his men aside. He reached down and pulled back the tarpaulin which had been tossed over the bodies. “This what you’re looking for, Joe?”
The lower torso, pajama clad, stuck out from beneath a small body wearing white pajamas with round, smiling yellow moon faces. Face down in earth softened by morning mist, then slightly hardened by the sun. The head of the child on top seemed peculiar; it had swelled to twice normal size as the result of the brain having been penetrated by a foreign object. A bullet in the head causes various fluids to flow; the child’s head was bloated as though air had been blown unevenly into a balloon. There wasn’t very much blood, just a thick, dark, wormlike mass at the base of the skull on the right side, site of penetration, and a few trickles down the thin neck. The pale-blond hair lifted in a breeze, then settled back into place. The huge head was slightly to one side and the face had turned the color of a bruise; the features were swollen and distorted.
The face of the younger child was covered by his brother’s body. There was a strong, peculiar yet familiar odor. Captain Wise said, “Dog shit, Joe. The smaller kid is laying with his face in dog shit.”
Automatically, my hand began to massage the biting pain in my stomach. “Captain, can they be turned over yet? I mean, that’s their father in my car. It’s bad enough without him having to see them like that.”
“Give it five minutes more, Joe.” He put a hand on my arm and we turned away from the bodies. He spoke while looking down at his well-polished shoes. “What’s the story with the parents?”
There wasn’t very much to tell, and when we circled back the bodies had been placed on their backs, side by side.
“Can’t they wipe the kid’s face, for Christ’s sake, before the father sees them? I mean, dog shit in the kid’s mouth.”
Chris Wise jabbed at the smaller child with the tip of his shoe. A few pieces of dried-up brownish substance slipped down along the kid’s head. Then Chris wiped his shoe along the length of the kid’s pajama leg, making sure his shine wasn’t ruined. Which is one of the things I never learned to do in four years of homicide work: to treat a dead human being as an object, an end product of someone’s rage or craziness or greed or jealousy or revenge or whatever the hell else. Which is one of the reasons why I have ulcers.
Chris finished wiping his shoe on the dead kid’s body, then watched me with that tight close smile of his. “Want me to comb their hair too, Joe? Maybe I should travel with a cosmetic kit.”
George Keeler looked up blankly when I approached my car. “What happened here, anyway? Boy, lots of cops, huh?”
“George, would you come with me for a minute? George, there’s been an accident. It’s very bad. Both of your boys.”
George Keeler stared at me for a split second, then yanked his arm free. He spun around wildly, then lunged to where they waited for him, just behind the bushes. George stood over them, stared down at them. He stretched his arms out in an empty, meaningless gesture, then dropped to his knees. He looked up at the circle of men who watched him. Who stood and watched him and weren’t doing a goddamn thing for his boys. He flung himself over the small bodies, protecting them from view, covering them, hiding them from the expressionless stares. He grabbed the smaller, Georgie, by the shoulders and tried to pull him into a sitting position; he began to shake the body; he began gasping and yelling.
“Help them. There’s something wrong with them. My God, help them, don’t just stand there staring, there’s something the matter with my boys. Georgie! Terry! Help them, help them!”
It took two other cops besides me to pull his child’s dead body from his grasp and to drag George Keeler to the ambulance.
“Heart attack, heart attack,” the white-faced young intern muttered. He jumped into the ambulance and instructed a uniformed cop to help him with the oxygen mask.
Captain Wise placed himself between the intern, who looked terrified, and George Keeler.
“You goddamn fuckin’ fool, this man’s hyperventilating. You give him a whiff of oxygen and he’s dead. Asthma, dummy, he’s having an asthma attack.”
The intern was stricken by the terrible possible consequences of his near-mistake. His face and mind seemed to go blank. Chris Wise turned him around and shoved him back toward the ambulance, and apparently the intern remembered what to do. He emerged to give George a shot of adrenalin.
Within a few minutes, the loud wet sucking sounds eased and George was breathing easier. He suddenly pushed the intern back and reached out to me. I helped him up and the pressure of his hand was numbing.
“We gotta tell Kitty,” George Keeler said. “Oh my God Almighty, we gotta tell my poor Kitty.”
We practically burst into the apartment, a flying wedge of policemen, but Kitty Keeler didn’t seem to notice. She leaped from her chair, mouth opened, eyes wider and seeing only her husband. She reached out for George, her bracelets clanging and sliding up her slender arms. She grabbed at his sleeves, then at his shirt front.
George Keeler turned away; looked over his shoulder; over her head; looked at the ceiling, the floor, the walls, anywhere, at anything but at his wife.
“George,” she called to him. Finally she pounded his chest with a clenched fist. “What’s wrong, George? What’s the matter? My God, George, Georgie, talk to me!”
He inhaled slowly and steadily to the fullest capacity of his lungs. Then, arms dangling at his sides, he looked directly at his wife and in a terrible voice he told her, “They’re dead, baby. They’re dead. Both boys. Both of them. They’re dead.”
Kitty shook her head slowly from side to side and said, “Don’t say that. Don’t say a stupid thing like that. What the hell’s the matter with you, to say a dumb stupid thing like that? Don’t say that. George!”
He stood against her onslaught of fists and words and protests, and his mouth kept moving, saying the same words, over and over again.
“They’re dead, baby. They’re dead.”
Mary Hogan was a small pear-shaped woman whose delicate features bore a striking resemblance to her daughter’s. There was some confusion as to who had directed that Mrs. Hogan be picked up from the Bronx bakery where she worked and brought to the Keeler apartment. The reason was obvious: it was felt that Kitty Keeler might be needing her mother.
Mrs. Hogan brought a Father Kerrigan from St. Simon Stock along with her. He was one of those Irish priests of indeterminate age: perpetually boyish, smooth-cheeked, tenor-voiced, a few silver speckles in his blond-red hair. He kept informing everyone that Mrs. Hogan was hard of hearing, and would we speak carefully, she was good at lip reading.
George Keeler came from the bedroom and went directly to his mother-in-law. She virtually disappeared from sight in his embrace, and the one muffled cry came from him. She carefully disengaged herself and studied his face with great intensity. Her eyes, obviously from years of serving partially as her ears as well, were sharp, somewhat glassy, but whatever tears they contained were frozen inside her sockets.
“George,” she said in a soft flat brogue, “where are they? Where are my little ones? George, what’s happened here?”
Kitty Keeler staggered into the room. Her face had gone dead white. She pushed George aside, pointed at the small stiff-backed woman and said to her husband, “What is she doing here? What the fuck is she doing here?”
While Mrs. Hogan could not see what her daughter had said, she felt the impact of her anger. As though believing that no one could hear her unless facing her, she waited until her daughter turned to her and then, softly, almost in a whisper, she said, “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty. What have you done?”
CHAPTER 2
TIM NEA
RY HAS BEEN one of my closest friends from the time we were kids playing street games in the north Bronx. After high school, while I was learning how to lay lines for the telephone company, Tim was spending three years at a seminary learning that he didn’t really want to be a priest. We came into the department together; Tim passed every promotion exam right at the top of the list. He’s a very deliberate, careful guy and we trust each other completely. With a few reservations.
Sometimes what Tim Neary doesn’t say is more important than what he does say.
“What’s this thing look like, Joe?” That’s what he said.
“How is this thing going to bounce on me?” That’s what he didn’t say.
“It’s a little early to tell, Tim.”
The Keelers were sitting on the bench in the squad room. Catalano was keeping himself between them and anyone else in the squad, as though the Keelers were his private property.
“Jesus, Joe, this couldn’t have happened at a worse time.”
“Want me to run over to Peck Avenue and tell those kids that their timing was pretty bad?”
“Don’t be a goddamn wiseass, Joe. I don’t need that right now.” Then, as though he just thought of it, as though it wasn’t of great importance to him, he said, “How about that other matter, Joe? You come up with anything?”
I reached inside my jacket without answering him; handed over my report with a shake of my head.
“Shit. Nothing? Nothing at all?”
“Give me a little time, Tim.”
What Tim had assigned me to do was to get information of an incriminating nature on the District Attorney of Queens County in order to force him off the primary ballot for the upcoming mayoralty election. Tim’s wife is a law partner of the campaign manager of the D.A.’s rival. Tim and I are both eligible to retire at half pay on November 28 of this year. Twenty years down the drain. Or whatever. Tim has a big future promised if the right man wins. He is also certain that my future, left in his hands, if the right man wins, will be nothing short of terrific.
Investigation Page 2