Investigation

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  “I think I better take better care of my ulcer.” My right hand went like a magnet to the pain. I took a closer look at Tim’s face, then said, “Look, Tim. I think we’ve got time. I think we haven’t got a very strong court case yet. And I think that you agree with me, right?”

  Tim got up from his desk and went to the window. He stared at the early Sunday-morning traffic for a while and I went and stared with him.

  “This is a bitch of a situation, Joe. That mother fucker up there is really putting the screws in. Jesus, these kids were only murdered four days ago and he’s breathing down my neck like we’ve been on the case for a month. Like we’re supposed to have it all tied up and gift-wrapped before the kids are even in their graves.”

  “We’re doing okay, Timmy. Don’t let him get to you. How about us having some breakfast?”

  Tim checked with his watch. “I gotta get going down to the Waldorf. My man Schneiderman is one of the speakers at the Columbian Society Communion breakfast.”

  “Schneiderman?”

  “Old Marvin L. himself.”

  “Old Marvin L. himself?”

  “Don’t be such a goddamn wiseass, Joe.”

  “Oh, that old Marvin L. Schneiderman.”

  Tim rubbed the back of his neck vigorously, stretched his arms like they ached at the elbows, then jabbed at my shoulder. “I’m talking, old buddy, about the next Mayor of the City of New York. Trouble with the son-of-a-bitch is that he never seems to leave any kind of impression wherever he goes. We’ve been making him available for weddings and wakes, Communions and bar mitzvahs, graduation parties and brisses. A man for all ethnics in a city of ethnics.”

  “Brisses? What the hell are brisses?”

  “A briss, my boy,” Tim explained, “is the kind of ceremony I would like to witness being performed on the gorgeous leader of us all on the top floor. Only, with Jerry, the knife should slip a crucial inch or so.”

  “Oh, that kind of ceremony.”

  Tim stopped clowning abruptly and said in a deadly serious voice, “Well, what do you think, Joe? The Keeler girl going to crack or what?”

  “I don’t know, Tim.” Which was exactly true; I didn’t know. Which wasn’t exactly what Tim wanted to hear; which meant I wasn’t being supportive, the way I’m supposed to be.

  “For Christ’s sake, Joe. She did it. We all know that, right? Even you know she did it.”

  “It’s what we’re all assuming.”

  “Assuming, hell!” Tim planted his feet apart, tilted his head to a pugnacious angle which is supposed to assure me he means business now; no more bullshitting; get into line. He narrowed his eyes shrewdly and said softly, “What’s going on, Joe? This little whore getting to you?”

  Once years ago, when we were kids, Tim had said something like that to me about a girl he liked who preferred me. With the self-righteousness of youth, I punched him in the mouth and broke the tip off one of his front teeth. Of course, he’d had the tooth fixed years ago, and he did knock me out cold once he’d recovered from my unexpected attack; but I remembered what a release it had been, belting him in the mouth. That was when we were kids; we were supposed to be big boys now. Maybe it’s always kid stuff when you’re around someone you’ve known all your life; Tim is the only guy I regularly feel like punching.

  Instead of that, I shook my head slowly and spoke slowly; it was one way of keeping myself and the situation under control. “No one’s getting to me, Tim. I just don’t think we should count on a confession. I think it’s more important to build our case on evidence. Without evidence, a confession won’t count for a damn thing.”

  “You don’t mind that I would prefer to have a confession, do you? I mean, it isn’t going to bother you too much, is it? That I would very much like to see a signed, sealed and delivered confession from that little bitch?”

  “Want me to rubber-hose her, Tim?”

  Tim banged into his desk as he whirled past it; he stopped, turned and swiped his hand at the stack of file folders containing squad reports. They fluttered all over his desk and the floor, but Tim didn’t even look back.

  We both knew that I certainly wasn’t going to pick up after him.

  I typed up a short, simple one-page ongoing report of my investigation. I always keep my interim reports very lean and sparse. Then, if I do develop something in the future, everybody thinks I’m some kind of magician. I like to deliver more than I promise instead of the other way around. Which is just one of my many trade secrets.

  I read through the growing stack of squad reports, amazed at how many otherwise savvy cops could write such dumb reports: a couple of them seemed to indicate that based on suspicious behavior of the person interviewed there was reason to believe there would be a break in the case in the immediate future. My reports never promise a goddamn thing. I like my surprises to be on the plus side.

  Back at my apartment, I spent the better part of the afternoon working up detailed reports for myself. These included my impressions, suppositions and possibilities as well as characterizations of the people I’d interviewed, along with an open question or two at the end of each report; e.g., “Check medical reports at Jamaica Hosp. re accident Ray/Cindy Mogliano.”

  By seven o’clock, I hadn’t even taken the Sunday Times apart. That had always been Jen’s weekly ritual and I always got a kick out of watching how systematically she attacked that job on Saturday nights. I’d picked the paper up late this afternoon and it just didn’t feel like a Sunday night with the Times still neatly packed. I didn’t feel like going out for something to eat, even though there wasn’t much in the refrigerator. That would be my evening: a nice hot/cold shower, a light supper and the Sunday Times.

  By midnight, it still hadn’t rained although the weather report every hour on the hour between the music and the news on WNEW forecast a storm, to be followed by clearing and cool air. I fell asleep in my chair, the magazine section opened like a tent over my face causing me to dream of suffocation and drowning. It was two o’clock in the morning when I fought my way out of the newspaper. The weatherman was repeating his cheerful prediction of a storm, then clear and cool. I looked out the window; it was so muggy and thick I couldn’t see across the street. The street lights had hazy globes around them and they seemed to be floating in the air.

  I swallowed a couple of antacid pills with some cold milk, then went to bed and dreamed about Jen.

  She was shopping in a large supermarket, only there wasn’t any food on any of the shelves, just large jars and tubes of paint and all kinds of canvas, rolled canvas, canvas board, blank canvas stretched on heavy wooden frames. Jen collected items from everywhere: from shelves, from small file cabinets that were filled with paintbrushes and sticks of charcoal and pencils and Crayola crayons. Her wagon was piled high with all the things she’d collected and she couldn’t see where she was pushing it and she kept bumping into people and into the displays of art goods. She was getting hysterical and I kept talking to her, telling her it was okay, and then she walked away from the wagon and reached up for a huge coloring book, nearly as tall as she was, and she leaned it against the wagon and turned the pages. Finally she found what she was looking for. She stretched both of her arms out, holding the book away from her, and she began to cry. I came to her side and looked at the picture of the astronauts. They were cartoon figures, all dressed in silver—their suits, their faces, their shoes; the background was all silver, too, and they were moving around on the page and that’s why Jen was crying.

  Only, it wasn’t Jen. It was Kitty Keeler and she was standing there, holding the coloring book open, and she was breathing in short, terrible gasps, asthmatic gasps, and between the gasps she kept saying over and over again, “My God, Joe. Help me. Please help me. My God, Joe. Help me.” She was upset because someone had colored everything silver and she couldn’t find the right crayon to fix things up.

  I was soaked with sweat when I woke up. I took a quick shower and was dressed before I looked out the
window and realized that Monday morning, without benefit of the promised storm, had arrived clear and cool with a blue sky. Perfect weather for a double funeral.

  I arrived at the Kelly Brothers Funeral Home an hour before Kitty and her family were to arrive. The crowd outside could have been gathered for anything from a Hollywood opening night complete with stars to a down-home lynching. There was a general air of unhealthy excitement that seemed on the verge of getting out of control. The uniformed captain in charge of mob control must have thought so, too. By the time the Keelers arrived, he’d arranged for a large number of reinforcements and the mob was forced well back from the entrance by wooden barriers.

  Vito Geraldi and I stood in the entranceway and watched as Kitty exited from the limousine. “Boy, just look at that bitch,” Vito said. “The way she got herself fixed up, you’d think she was on her way to a party.”

  His remark was an exaggeration. Kitty Keeler wasn’t dressed for a party, but then neither was she dressed for the mass and burial of her two young sons. As she walked, head tossed back, light hair blazing in the sun, I thought she’d worn the soft pink dress as an act of defiance: the hell with them. The reaction of the crowd outside Kelly’s was explosive, especially the cries of women.

  “What kind of a mother are you? A pink dress to your own kids’ funeral?”

  “Well, wadda ya expect: Kitty the Killer. Shame, Kitty, shame.”

  “How come she’s not in mourning?”

  “She is; maybe whores wear pink when they’re in mourning.”

  “Wadda ya mean mourning? Murderers don’t mourn.”

  When I got a closer look at her face, as she walked through the hall, into the assigned room, it was obvious that she hadn’t even been aware of the crowd outside, calling at her, reaching for her. A fight had developed between her accusers and her defenders; fists and elbows had been exchanged. Kitty was totally unaware of any of it. Everything about her was rigidly under control. It seemed that George clung to her arm more for his own support than for hers.

  They settled on the small velvet bench at the front of the room. When old Mr. Kelly, the senior of the Kelly Brothers, approached the parents, leaned over them solicitously, Kitty shook her head and remained seated while George went forward to the two small white coffins. He leaned heavily, first into one, then into the other, obviously placing something, probably a religious medal, with each dead child. The air was heavy with the fragrance of hundreds of flowers which had been arranged behind the coffins and down along two sides of the room.

  When George began wheezing badly, it was Sam Catalano who rushed solicitously to his side and escorted him from the room for some air. As they walked past me, Sam Catalano winked. The way George Keeler leaned on him, it was obvious that Sam was having a lot of success in “developing” George; wherever it might lead.

  Two of Kitty’s brothers listened to her as she pointed to the flower arrangements in the front of the room; they instructed one of the Kelly Brothers to remove some of the flowers; the air was becoming overwhelming not only for George but for others as well. Then Kitty’s brothers turned their attention to their mother, Mrs. Hogan.

  They escorted her directly to the coffins, prayed briefly with her at each one. Mrs. Hogan touched each face once, then turned and allowed her sons to escort her to her daughter. Kitty rose stiffly, leaned toward her mother; the two women made brief, uninvolved, cheek-touching contact, then the grandmother was led to a seat on the other side of the room. Neither woman had shed a tear. It was a kind of control learned at her mother’s knee; not exclusive with tough-hearted Kitty Keeler.

  One of her brothers returned and sat beside Kitty as she accepted condolences from an endless number of people who came to see her; to pray at her children’s coffins. In the middle of an embrace from a woman, Kitty stood up, turned around and scanned the room with a look of suddenly rising panic. One of her brothers came to her side, took her arm, tried to reassure her, but she pushed him away from her with a brisk annoyance. Finally she saw me, off to the side of the room; as she moved toward me I reached in my pocket and took out the knotted shoelace and the wrapper that the new shoelaces had come in. She brushed past the hands that reached to comfort her; it was as if there was no one else in the room, just Kitty and me.

  Before she could ask, I opened my hand. “All taken care of, Kitty.”

  She touched the knotted shoelace, nodded, then looked up at me. “I didn’t forget anything, did I?” Her fingers closed around my hand, squeezed and pressed. “I still have that awful feeling; like I’ve forgotten something.”

  For one flashing instant, she appeared totally vulnerable; unguarded. Her eyes, intent on my face, excluded everyone else, obliterated where we were, why we were here. With an extraordinary magnetism, Kitty revealed herself to me again with an intimate and complete trust.

  “Everything is okay, Kitty.”

  It passed as suddenly as it had occurred; she dropped her hands to her side, drew back from me, turned without a word and walked back to the bench in front of the room. Tim Neary, across the room, directly opposite to me, wasn’t sure what he had seen; he raised his chin, questioning, tense and alert. I shrugged, shook my head slightly, but Tim still had that alert, wary, curious expression, more than a little worried that someone was trying to put something over on him. I could practically hear him: What the hell was that all about?

  When George came back, looking slightly tranquilized, the priest began the prayers. The room filled with the low humming sound of chanting voices and clicking beads as some of the older women fingered their rosaries. Finally there was the muffled commotion of a roomful of people trying to leave quietly.

  I went down front and stood near the bench where Kitty and George sat; I wanted her to know I was nearby.

  One of the Kelly Brothers came over to the parents. “Mrs. Keeler, wouldn’t you like to see the boys now?” He bent forward slightly, like a headwaiter offering the specialty of the house. His voice was soft and tempting. “They look like sleeping angels, Mrs. Keeler. It will be a good last memory for you to have of them.”

  George slumped forward and began to sob. Departing guests politely refrained from turning back to look at him. Kitty sat motionless, waiting; one of her brothers and Sam Catalano helped George to his feet.

  “Go ahead,” Kitty told them. “I’m fine; I’ll be along in a minute.” When the Kelly Brother offered his arm she shook her head, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “That’s all right, Mr. Kelly,” I told him. “I’m with Mrs. Keeler.”

  Kelly looked a bit put off, like I was depriving him of something; maybe he was waiting for her compliment on his work. He backed away and disappeared; the last glimpse I had of him, he looked disappointed and hurt.

  Finally Kitty stood up, her hands loose at her sides. She walked forward and seemed to be staring over the coffins, as though just noticing the lavish array of flowers. Her face in the soft, stagy light seemed dazed; she moved her eyes from the flowers to the floor. Then, slowly, by degrees, she lifted her gaze until she focused on the face of her older son, Terry. Her mouth dropped open in surprise; she glanced up at me with a puzzled expression and shook her head slightly. Then she turned toward the body of her younger son, George; she moved closer for a better look. Again, she turned to me with that same expression of confusion and growing horror.

  She spread her arms out, then let them drop to her sides. “Something’s wrong,” Kitty said. “This is crazy! These aren’t my sons. These are not my sons.” There was a terrible, desperate urgency in her voice and in her words. She pulled at my arm and urged me to examine the unknown manikins in the white coffins. Her fingers dug into me with a surprising strength. Her eyes darted back and forth from one coffin to the other, and her voice went low into a chilling whisper. “They don’t look like that, Joe. My children don’t look like that!”

  I tried to turn her away, but she began to struggle; her teeth were clenched tightly, barely holding back a deep
shuddering moan. When Kelly approached, took her arm, Kitty wrenched away, flung herself against me and whispered, “My God, Joe. What’s happening? What’s happening? Help me, Joe. Get me out of this nightmare.”

  CHAPTER 14

  VITO WAS LEAVING THE squad office as I arrived. He grabbed my arm and warned me, “Watch out for Captain Tim, Joe. He’s right up the wall.”

  The first thing Tim Neary said to me was, “Well, where the hell have you been?”

  He damn well knew where I’d been: to the cemetery with the Keelers. I thought of about four wisecracks and decided this wasn’t the time. “What’s happening, Captain?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s happening.” He interrupted himself to glare at Walker, who had just tapped and stuck his head in the door. “What the fuck do you want?”

  Walker looked like he wanted to be at least seven miles away from Neary’s office. “You told me to let you know when I got Miller and Duffy on the phone, Captain.”

  “Yeah, and—”

  “Well, I got them on the phone, Captain. On extension 122.”

  Tim snatched up the receiver; Walker rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and closed the door quietly behind him. Tim began to speak quickly and with short choppy sentences, which is one of his ways of telling you not to ask any questions about his instructions; just do it, whatever it is. From what I could make out, he was sending Miller and Duffy, who were what we call our “technical men,” to meet Vito Geraldi at a very expensive hotel on Madison Avenue in the upper Sixties; they were to bring all of their equipment and they were to get set up fast.

  “Vito will meet you in Room 406; you don’t say anything to anyone, not the desk clerk, not the bellhops; no one. Be as discreet as you can. Absolutely no one is to make any of you guys. And for Christ’s sake, get things set up fast. Vito will brief you.” Apparently, Miller or Duffy, whichever one was on the other end of the conversation, tried to tell Tim something. “Listen, I don’t wanna hear any of your goddamn bullshit. Just do what I told ya.” He slammed the receiver down and pulled his lips back tightly, then looked up at me, ready to take me on; all he needed was a reason.