Investigation

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  I glanced at a slip of paper, then dropped it back into my notebook. “Who’s Elena Garcia Gonzalez? Your mother?”

  Benjamin’s curly head shook with surprise. “Hey, listen, man, that’s my grandmother, ya know? Why you askin’ me about my grandmother? Hell, she’s a little old lady, ya know?”

  “And she runs a little old cutting factory in her apartment in Jackson Heights where you delivered Kitty Keeler to meet with Billy Weaver, right?”

  “A factory? A factory, what factory? My grandmother and my mother and my little sisters, they all live together in the apartment and I get my messages there sometimes, like, it’s a convenient place for a meet, ya know. But factory? Man, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You know goddamn well what I mean. A ‘factory’ where a bunch of people sit around a long table and they wear white muslin masks so they don’t inhale any of the cocaine they’re busy cutting with powdered sugar or whatever the hell.”

  “Jesus,” Benjamin told me, “that’s a terrible thing to say. Like my grandmother, man, she’s an old lady. Like she’s about fifty-five, fifty-six years old, ya know?”

  “That old? And she’s still alive? That’s terrific, Benjamin. That’s something for you to aim for.” I decided to drop the factory line; it had been a lucky guess; from his reaction, it had been an accurate one. It was not a far-out guess as to the occupation of the women members of a family involved in the coke traffic. It was more or less considered a cottage industry; kept the women off the streets and under each other’s scrutiny.

  Instead, I concentrated on the first obvious lie Benjamin had handed me; this way, he would think I already knew the answers to anything else I asked him.

  “Take it over again, about how Billy called you. I think you skipped the first part, about who called who.”

  He thought about it for a minute or so; realized I knew that Kitty obviously had his grandmother’s phone number; that she had called there asking for Billy Weaver.

  “Well, yeah, sure. Like, Billy moves around a lot, ya know, and so he used my grandmother’s phone number, like an answering service. See, we kept in close touch, me and Billy, so okay, the chick calls him at my grandmother’s. And he just happens to be there that night. So I take the call, then hang up; then Billy calls the chick back, then he tells me to go out to Fresh. Meadows and pick her up. That’s it. Swear to God.” He raised his right hand, taking a solemn oath.

  We went over his story for a second and then a third time; a few more details were added, but nothing of value: as far as he knew, no one had seen him in Fresh Meadows that night, alone in his car or with Kitty Keeler in his car.

  “Jeez, I didn’t even want to go to Fresh Meadows in the first place. Like I tole Billy, I don’t even know the neighborhood, ya know? I get out there, and it’s like a housing project, only not skyscrapers, just a whole bunch of two- and three-story brick buildings. So they got trees and grass all around, big deal. To me, it still looked like an institution, ya know?”

  “You have much trouble finding the right building?”

  “Hey, listen, they don’t have the house number lit up or nothin’. And everything is like in a circle, ya know? I’m drivin’ around and around this damn place, I’m goin’ in circles. I actually passed her building twice before I asked some guy—”

  He stopped speaking. We stared at each other.

  “Go ahead, Benjamin, you asked some guy ...”

  He showed me his beautiful white teeth. “That’s funny, ya know. I just remembered that now. There was some guy out walkin’ his dog and—”

  “What kind of dog?”

  “What kind of dog? Man, how the hell do I know what kind of dog? I don’t know from dogs. I don’t like dogs. Once I got bit by a dog when I was a kid and—”

  “Benjamin, don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to hear about it. Tell me about the man with the dog that night in Fresh Meadows.”

  “Hey, man, there’s nothin’ to tell. I ask him where the number is, ya know, the chick’s apartment house, and he tells me to go back around the way I just came, that I passed right by. So I circle around and he was right; so I hit her bell, bam-bam-bam, like I tole you, and she comes out and gets in and we drive away. And the guy with the dog says, ‘Hey you found it okay.’ ” Benjamin snapped his fingers. “Hey, that’s right, the guy with the dog seen me, that I found the building okay.”

  “What did he look like, the guy with the dog? Was he tall? Short? Fat, skinny, what?”

  “Ah hey, man, how should I know? Just a guy with a dog. The dog looked like a sheep dog, ya know? Wait a minute. Yeah, like a sheep dog.”

  “A sheep dog? The kind that rounds up sheep? Like a collie? Like Lassie? That kind of dog?”

  Benjamin shook his head. “Nah, nah. A sheep dog, man, a sheep dog. Like the dog, it looked like a sheep. Curly, like it was a sheep. They got that kinda make of dog?”

  “If you saw it, I guess they do.”

  He couldn’t remember seeing anyone else out in Fresh Meadows; we moved on to Jackson Heights and then Benjamin became evasive.

  “Naw, nobody seen us; we just got out of the car and up into the building is all.”

  I waited for a minute or so, then asked him, “What about the Italian lady?”

  “Italian lady? What Italian lady?”

  His eyes were just missing mine and he was digging another cigarette out of his pack.

  “What the hell did you do to the Italian lady’s daughter?”

  Benjamin broke the cigarette between his fingers, but he didn’t seem to notice. “What I’d do to her daughter? Hey, man. I mean, just look at me, huh?” He offered himself for my inspection and very rationally asked, “I mean, do I look like the kinda dude gotta do somethin’ to some chick don’t want it?”

  I had to admit that he didn’t.

  “Look, man, I don’t wanna sound like I’m, ya know, conceited or anything, but look, it’s all out there just waitin’ for me. All I gotta say is yeah, okay, to some chick.” He snapped his fingers; it was that easy. “I mean, look at me. I got it made out there. My problem is selection, if you read me. I don’t gotta go forcin’ myself on some girl don’t wanna make it with me.” He shook his head, really distressed. “I’ll tell ya, I learned somethin’, ya know. That it don’t pay to go around with any little Italian chick. Like they’re not really ready for the sexual revolution, ya know? They want it, and then they get scared. Like that their old lady or old man is gonna find out; and they let something slip, and right away they want to make a big deal outa something that don’t mean a thing, know what I mean? She was just a cute chick didn’t know how to handle the whole thing. I mean, I’m asking you right out, do I look like the kind of guy is gonna bother some unwilling chick?”

  He certainly didn’t. I agreed with him that he was in a very difficult situation; a dude who looked like Benjamin really had to fight the chicks off.

  “Hey, how did you know about her, the old woman, the Italian chick’s mother?”

  I let him sit and worry for a few minutes about how much I knew about him and where I got my information, then just shrugged and said, “You know how it is,” which covers a lot of territory.

  “Jeez,” Benjamin said slowly, “yeah, I guess the old woman come at me that night. Not that I really remember, but for a while there, everywhere I went in the neighborhood, ya know, there was this chick’s mother. Like, she sees me with another chick, right away she starts yellin’ about how I go around ruinin’ girls and all like that. I guess she come at me that night, when I brought this Keeler girl up to see Billy Weaver.”

  Very reluctantly, Benjamin gave the name of the woman—the irate Italian mother.

  “How do you stand, with Billy Weaver being blown out of the picture, Benjamin? You stand to gain or are you looking over your shoulder or what?”

  “Me? Stand to gain? Listen, I don’t know nothing about nothing about nothing, ya know? I used to do some running for Billy is all; man, I don’t want
to touch any part of that trade. Too rough for my blood.”

  I reached over and fingered the material of his suit. Butter soft. “Nice threads. You don’t pay for clothes like these running errands, Benjamin.”

  He shrugged. “Ah, you know how it is. A little a this, a little of that. Hey, you like this suit? I mean, tell me honestly, you think this is a nice suit? Like, some guy says to me the other day, like, this is the kind of suit a pimp wears. You think this looks like a pimp suit?”

  It was obviously very important to him; he looked very sincerely concerned. I studied him carefully and shook my head. “No way; it’s a very handsome suit, Benjamin. Pimps go for flash much more; this is a very nice suit.”

  Benjamin looked very pleased; obviously, the worst thing anyone could accuse him of was looking like a pimp. I took out the tickets for the box seats and offered them to Benjamin.

  “No way, I don’t go for this game at all. Not like soccer, ya know? I go for the action. Baseball, ya got a bunch of guys all standin’ around like a bunch of old ladies, all they do is wait, wait for some action, and somebody hits a ball, bam-bam-bam, one-two-three, a coupla guys toss it around a few times and then everybody settles in again. Me, I like the action. Hey, look, you ever want to see Pele play, man, you give me a call. I get you the best seats and you can even meet the Man if you wanna; I got a few connections, like.”

  I told him that would be fine; I gave him my phone number and told him he could feel free to call any time of the day or night when he thought of something that might be helpful.

  Just before he got out of my car, he said, “Hey, man, like you were puttin’ me on when you said that chick said I drove around with her kids’ bodies, right? I mean, that was just, like, your technique, right?”

  I assured him that it was just my technique and he looked very relieved and didn’t even glance over his shoulder as he walked to his bright-green Datsun and drove away.

  CHAPTER 9

  THAT EVENING, WHEN I told Kitty about the recent demise of Billy Weaver, I anticipated her reaction.

  “Oh my God, it’s my fault that he was killed!”

  Before she offered herself to a grand jury for indictment, I tried to convince her that whether or not she had relayed his request for protection to Vincent Martucci, the odds were all against Billy Weaver surviving for very long in the cocaine traffic. It was an industry with a very high, constantly escalating mortality rate.

  “When was the last time you saw Billy, Kitty?”

  “That night. That night, in Jackson Heights.”

  “You never talked to him after that? He ever call you? You ever call him?”

  She shook her head.

  “Another one of your ‘good friends,’ right, Kitty?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Billy Weaver never got in touch with you after the boys were found? Seems to me that unless he was deaf, dumb, blind and living alone he must have heard about it. And he must have known that he was your alibi, that you’d spent crucial time with him the night of the murder.”

  “Billy was on the run, Joe. There were people out looking for him. Don’t judge him; you didn’t even know him. When we both worked at Mogliano’s, we used to talk sometimes. God, he was from the South; the things that happened to him when he was a kid, just because he was black.”

  “Oh, then you do realize that Billy Weaver was black?”

  It didn’t come out the way I meant it; or maybe it did. She just kept staring at me, so I added, “It might have helped me if I had a more accurate description of him, Kitty. That’s all I meant.”

  “Billy Weaver wasn’t one of my lovers, Joe.”

  She could still slip me a surprise now and then. “I didn’t ask you that, did I? That’s none of my business, Kitty. I don’t give a damn about who is or isn’t or was or wasn’t one of your lovers.”

  In that steady, positive voice, she said, “Yes, you do, Joe. It’s almost the first thing you try to find out about anybody I know.”

  “It’s nothing to me, Kitty. It doesn’t concern me.”

  But, of course, it was something to me, it did concern me. The problem was that there was no valid, legitimate reason why it should.

  Kitty put a platter of chicken sandwiches on the coffee table, then brought in mugs of hot coffee. We began to eat in that intense kind of concentrated silence that does wonders for the digestion.

  Between bites I asked her, “You remember seeing a guy with a dog that looks like a sheep?”

  She pulled back, instantly suspicious. I could see her turning the question over carefully, examining it for hidden meanings.

  “Look, Benjamin the Cuban told me that the night he picked you up, he couldn’t find your apartment building. Some guy with a dog that looked like a sheep directed him. Then, when you got into the car, the guy with the dog walked by and said something, like ‘Oh, you found the right building’—something like that. Do you remember anything about it?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you know anybody over in Fresh Meadows who has a dog that looks like a sheep?”

  “I never heard of a dog that looks like a sheep.”

  “That’s not what I asked you, damn it.”

  We were doing beautifully. However the hell it started, it was still on. She was fighting me every inch of the way, collecting points. I don’t know what the hell she thought the prize was going to be.

  “This doesn’t make much sense, does it, Kitty? I’m beginning to wonder what I’m doing here.”

  She dropped her sandwich, leaned back on the couch, folded her arms across her body and said, “There’s the door. Good-bye.”

  I nodded; went toward the door, then stopped and just stood there, my back to her. Then I turned around, went to the couch, pulled her to her feet and started to shake her. This time, she was the one who was surprised.

  “Damn it, Kitty, not with me. Don’t pull this act with me. I thought you knew better by now. I thought we’d cleared that up.”

  I held her for a long time; it took a long time before she could stop crying for Billy Weaver. Grief tore through her body as she tensed against it, until she stopped fighting and just let it happen. Finally, when she pulled back, I saw a drop of blood on her lower lip; she’d bitten down that hard, trying to hold it all inside her, the way she had always handled her emotions.

  I put the sandwiches in the refrigerator and made a cup of tea for Kitty. She ran a fingertip around the rim of the cup.

  “Joe,” she said softly, “I did what you asked me to do today. I sat with George’s confession and I read it over and over, line by line.”

  I felt a little crackling at the back of my neck, like when a chill passes through you and the little hairs stand up. “Yeah, and what?”

  She looked up from the tea. “I think I might know where George threw the gun. There was a special place in Flushing Meadow Park, where he used to take the boys fishing.”

  Flushing Meadow Park had twice been the site of a World’s Fair: one in 1939, the second in 1968. Between these events, it had fallen into oblivion until it was activated as the temporary site of the U.N. General Assembly. When they relocated, the old 1939 New York City Building was converted into a roller-skating rink. After the second World’s Fair, the city maintained the vast park area to accommodate a growing number of New Yorkers who were willing to travel to Queens to find some touch of nature.

  There wasn’t much action in the park: just a couple of early joggers, a couple of bicyclists. The baby carriages and ballplayers and mothers and grandmothers would come later in the day, when the hot spring sun had dried up the morning damp grass. There weren’t any rowboats being rowed across the bare, open, uninviting lake, although some of them were in the water. Others, upended, were being repaired and painted by Park Department crews.

  Kitty led me away from the boating area, across a field where model-airplane enthusiasts gathered on weekends, to the edge of a stagnant portion of the bay, inaccessi
ble to the rowboats.

  “George used to bring the boys here to fish, Joe. Not that they ever caught anything. A couple of times, George brought containers of those little fish, you know, minnows? And he’d set them free into the lake. Terry thought they’d grow up into big fish that he’d catch someday.” She turned back toward the field we’d just come through. “He used to bring the kids here to watch them fly those model airplanes. Then, when they got restless, George would set them up over here to fish. He sort of told them that it was their own privately stocked lake.”

  They had gone, the four of them, on family outings a couple of times: watched the planes awhile, fished awhile, picnic-lunched. We walked around slowly while Kitty remembered. It was the first time I had ever heard her talk about her family life. She was very controlled, very subdued. We came to a spot concealed by shrubs and bushes, an expanse of rock which jutted like a ledge into the water. When she turned to me, I saw that she had gone chalk white.

  “George used to tell the boys that this was their private country spot. He used to tell them that one day he’d build a little cabin right here, and that all the fish would be grown big by then and they’d catch them and ...”

  She turned away abruptly and walked back to the clearing.

  I picked up a few stones and skipped them over the water. Then I picked up heavier stones. I hefted them for weight, then threw them, one at a time, into the water.

  I don’t know if Kitty realized what I was doing. She didn’t ask and I didn’t tell her.

  I drove her back to her apartment and told her I would be in touch.

  I found an old telephone notebook in a box of junk my son had left at the apartment on one of his overnight visits, en route between Ann Arbor and upstate friends. His left-handed, slanty handwriting had never been easy to decipher. I seemed to remember that some kid he’d gone to high school with had been a skin-diving enthusiast, but I had no idea who it was. I grabbed the phone on the second ring. “Hello.” There was a slight hesitation, then, “Joe?”