Investigation

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  From the time she said that until the time she poured some Scotch in a glass, there was a growing tension coming from Kitty. I felt it as she stood next to me in the elevator, as we walked down the corridor to her apartment, as she handed me my drink and tipped her glass against mine.

  I felt a reluctant wariness. For two days, I had suspended reality. For two days, she had been the most perfect woman I had ever known, and I would have liked to kiss her good night and leave without either of us speaking another word.

  “Why don’t you just put the drink down and say what it is you have to say?”

  The line along her jaw tightened; there was nothing comfortable or easy between us now. Just an expectant silence as she seemed to prepare herself to say something to me. I didn’t make it any easier; she was spoiling something I didn’t want touched.

  “All right, Joe. I want to ask you to do something. For me. Joe ... since we talked about ... since we talked up in your cabin in the country and I told you about ... what happened that night, and we went over George’s confession and all, I haven’t asked you anything at all. About what you were ... doing. About what you were finding out.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  Finally she looked directly at me. “Joe, I want you to just drop it, now. I don’t want to know anything at all about what you’ve found out. There’s no point to it now. There isn’t going to be a trial. I don’t have to prove anything. About ... George. About myself.”

  “Don’t you want to know for sure that it was George?”

  She shook her head. “There’s no point to it. If my life depended on it, that’s different. But this way, Joe, this way, I don’t have to be sure. I don’t want to have to think about George ... hurting the boys; actually doing it. I just don’t want to know for sure.”

  I put my drink down. “You just want me to drop my investigation? Just like that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look up at me, Kitty.” Her head jerked up, her face confronted me, surprised, alarmed. “Is that what this has all been about? Is that what this weekend has been about? Damn it, don’t you turn away from me now. Answer me.”

  Her chin came up, eyes narrowed and hardened: she was Kitty Keeler, shoving it to the whole goddamn world. “Sure. Absolutely. That’s it, Joe. You got it. That’s what this whole weekend has been about. Right.”

  I don’t know if it hit her the same way it hit me: this was exactly the reverse of the situation between us last week up at the cabin. She had accused me of having used her emotionally; now I was accusing her. And her reaction was exactly what mine had been: anger.

  I softened. “All right, Kitty, relax, let’s both just relax.”

  “Do you really believe that, Joe? That that’s what this whole weekend has been leading up to?”

  “I don’t know, Kitty. I don’t know what to believe. But you tell me. Why has it been so hard for you to ask me to drop my investigation? Why the hell did you get so tense about it?”

  “Because I knew what your reaction would be. Because you don’t trust me any more than ...”

  “Any more than you trust me?”

  “Joe, I am really tired. Look, you do whatever the hell you want to do. I don’t care if you spend the rest of your life investigating me, investigating George. Go ahead. Do whatever the hell you want to do.”

  I drove back to my apartment, checked the mailbox, then sat for a long time while the weekend replayed itself: focused and refocused on certain specific moments, certain expressions, gestures, sensations, connections and touches which had all formed between us something far deeper than I was willing to admit.

  Age caught up with me, my bones ached; my head ached; my ulcer burned; and Kitty Keeler was as much a puzzle to me as she had ever been.

  CHAPTER 13

  MONDAY MORNING WAS THE start of a perfect June day. It was also the day of Vincent Martucci’s funeral. He was attended by well-dressed, well-behaved men and women and neat quiet children who all maintained a sad but restrained grief throughout the funeral mass celebrated on Vincent’s behalf.

  There were at least ten other law-enforcement men assigned to the funeral besides me. Some of them were discreetly snapping pictures; some of them were busy copying down the license numbers of private cars. Eight limousines and a long line of expensive cars accompanied Vincent to a parklike cemetery in upper Westchester County. Everything was in good taste. There were none of the excesses of the early-day gangster funerals: no huge good-luck horseshoe of flowers, no likeness of the deceased formed by hundreds of different kinds of flowers and preceding him to the grave. Nothing “Chicago” or “prohibition” about Vincent Martucci’s funeral. There was a minimum of flowers; a minimum of ceremony; a minimum of tears. Everything was low-key, doubtlessly arranged and directed and closely supervised by the queenlike widow whose eyes checked everything and everyone.

  A large company then followed Mrs. Martucci and her two young daughters back to their home in Forest Hills Gardens, where a light luncheon had been prepared for relatives and friends.

  Mrs. Martucci sent word, via a maid, that the police officers outside her home would be welcome to partake of some refreshments that had been especially set up for us in the kitchen. Most of us declined politely.

  Before I could leave the area, Sam Catalano came from nowhere and hung on to my arm. “Hey, Joe. I’ve been trying to catch up to you all morning. Didn’t you see me at the church? At the cemetery?”

  I’d seen him all right; I’d been successfully avoiding him.

  “Joe, did you hear about me? About my being assigned to Paul Sutro’s squad?”

  “Hey, that’s terrific, Sam. Congratulations. Paul’s a great guy to work for and the Organized Crime Unit is a very dedicated group.”

  “Joe, you gotta be kidding. It’s a dead end. It’s not even officially a part of the department. We’re just on loan to the state committee. Nobody ever leaves that squad unless they die of old age. It’s all research and paperwork and charts and stuff, Joe. The department doesn’t even take that squad into account in figuring quotas for promotion, Joe. I’ll never get past third grade. It’s like being buried alive.”

  “Could be worse, Sam. Like being buried dead. The way George Keeler was. The way Vincent Martucci was this morning.”

  “No kidding, Joe, have you heard anything? Like, is this temporary, or what? Am I on loan-out to Sutro? You’re close with Captain Neary, Joe. He say anything about me?”

  “Not a word, Sam. Not a single word.”

  Sam Catalano glanced around, settled his shoulders, tapped at the knot in his tie. “Hey, Joe. I think I’m just gonna go inside and have a little of that ‘lunch’ Mrs. Martucci set out for us. You know something, Joe? That woman got a ‘look’ to her, know what I mean? I’ve been getting signals from her, right out there at the cemetery.”

  “Sam, you are probably just the man the widow Martucci would most like to tell her troubles to.”

  Sam cheered up, anticipating great triumphs. “Well, you never know, Joe. It might lead to something, one way or the other, right?”

  I stopped by the squad office long enough to type up a one-paragraph report on Vincent Martucci’s funeral. My time was pretty much my own. Tim Neary was attending a three-day law-enforcement seminar in Boston; Sergeant Gelber was in charge and not looking for trouble. I told him I’d keep in touch; he said that would be fine.

  I drove over to the Jamaica branch of the New York Public Library, exactly as I had planned to do before my weekend with Kitty, and went through a couple of books about dogs.

  Just as Benjamin the Cuban had claimed, there was indeed a dog that looked like a sheep: a Bedlington terrier. From the pictures, the damn dog looked like a walking lamb chop on a leash. I stared at the book for a very long time wondering what I was going to do. More importantly, wondering why I was going to do whatever it was.

  Kitty was right, actually: the case was all over. Under Quibro’s frantic directions, Tim had reassigned a couple of m
en to the Keeler case, but neither Tim nor Kelleher really gave a damn one way or the other. It was all over for them; they had gotten the necessary indictment; they had done their part of the job and there was absolutely no pressure on them, from any direction, to follow through.

  It would have been very easy, at this point, to just close the book and say the hell with it. The hell with Benjamin the Cuban and the sheeplike dog; the hell with Mrs. Deluca and her unsigned statement; the hell with George’s gun rusting in the Police Lab. It would have been very easy to get in my car and drive over to Kitty’s apartment and say, “Yeah, you’re right; now; no past, no future, just now.”

  But I couldn’t and that was what was worrying me. I couldn’t because Kitty had become something more to me than I had ever intended or could have imagined.

  For forty-nine years, I have lived a pretty regular, routine kind of life with no real options: school; Army; couple of jobs, then the department. My responsibilities had always been right out front: my wife, my kids, my job. There had never been any room for any real options. There had been a few, passing nights with a few unimportant women: Jen had been right about that, but it hadn’t meant anything to me. Not anything at all. There had never been anyone like Kitty Keeler in my life.

  What had at first been just an assignment had turned into a real concern and then into a sense of responsibility and by now had gone past something I could just walk away from; it couldn’t be something casual, random, a stop-time-out for a quick weekend at the beach. And I knew that unless I finished my investigation, unless I tied up the loose ends, there would always be a lack of total trust and honesty between us.

  If ever there was to be anything more between us.

  The manager of the Fresh Meadows development was sure there was a list somewhere of all the tenants who owned dogs. About two years ago there had been a very emotional confrontation re the rights of dogs to relieve themselves as against the rights of humans to walk without regard to such end products. The list, however, would not be very accurate, since, things being what they are, a lot of the anti-dog forces had, for their own safety, become pro-dog.

  “It’s funny,” the manager mused, “the most outspoken person in the anti-dog forces was mugged on the subway one night. The next day, she went out and bought a Great Dane. The dog stands more than six feet high when it rears up. And it’s been trained for combat. A lotta good that damn dog will do her, pacing around her apartment while she’s being mugged on the subway!”

  After a few more funny stories, he realized that he didn’t know where the “dog material” was. His assistant had handled most of it and she was home sick, but if I didn’t mind waiting he’d call her and see if she could tell him where it was.

  I didn’t mind. I told him I had a few things to keep myself busy with while he located the list of dog owners. I slit the envelope from Tommy Dawson; it contained a very neatly typed statement relative to his locating a certain revolver in a certain location on a certain date at a certain time in the presence of a certain detective, et cetera, et cetera. Tommy’s statement was exactly the same as the statement I had jotted in my notebook and asked him to sign.

  I had forgotten to tell Harry Sullivan to give me his findings in clear, concise English. The letter from him was two and a half pages of single-spaced typed data relative to certain chemical tests he had run on subject revolver. What I had told Harry was that the revolver in question had been, to the best of my knowledge, concealed in a certain location under certain conditions. From the tests he was to run, Harry was to tell me what he could about the location and conditions of its concealment.

  I scanned his report quickly and picked out the pertinent information: “and it is therefore ascertainable that subject revolver had rested in a salt water solution; further ascertainable from non-visible particles embedded in handle of subject revolver that subject revolver had rested or come to rest in a substance as discussed in paragraph three (see below) rather than having been suspended in said salt water solution.”

  The gun had been in salt water with a combination sand and mud soil bottom.

  I also caught, at the end of a detailed explanation, the statement verifying that the Keeler murder bullet and the test bullet I had given him had come from one and the same subject revolver.

  “Okay, here’s what we have, Mr. Peters. I got Audrey at home. God, she sounded terrible. I hope strep throat isn’t contagious.” The manager clutched at his own throat and extended a well-worn file folder containing ragged-edged pages of reports and lists and mimeographed flyers. There were petitions for dogs; petitions against dogs; announcements of meetings called by both sides of the issue; and, finally, an outdated list of dog-owning tenants.

  “As I said, that list is more than two years old. And the issue has been academic for some time, but it’s a starting place for you, isn’t it?” He massaged his throat, then began to list his symptoms, in detail.

  I don’t know why it is, but there is a certain segment of the population that feels comfortable confiding anything and everything in a policeman: the most personal, private moments of their marital life; their most warped, dark-of-the-night impulses; their politics and religious beliefs; and their physical symptoms. This is done in the utmost confidence that such unburdening saves them the trouble and expense of a marriage counselor, a psychiatrist, a priest or a doctor.

  I listened closely to the symptoms described, looked very thoughtful and concerned and advised two aspirin, bed rest and a close, continuing check on temperature; lots of fluids; gargle with warm salt water and call again in twenty-four hours. What the hell. The poor guy looked relieved.

  Back at my apartment, I typed up a statement for Mrs. Deluca’s signature, with a confirming paragraph for her sister, Mrs. Romero. Then I sat with the list of dog owners and a map of the Fresh Meadows development, trying to decide approximately where the man with the sheep dog might live. When Benjamin first saw him, he might have just come from his apartment and proceeded to walk his dog toward the Keeler apartment building. Or, he might have come from the area of the Keeler apartment, walked his dog over to where Benjamin saw him the first time, and been returning home when Benjamin saw him the second time.

  Or, of course, he might have come from a mile away and just been walking his dog in circles.

  I planned my next day’s work around what I regarded as the four prime dog-walking times: between six and eight in the morning; between three and four in the afternoon, when school kids walk the dog; 5:30 to 6:30 P.M., when business people without kids walk the dog; between 10:30 P.M. and 1 A.M., when most people give Rover a last time out for the night.

  By the time I called Sergeant Gelber on Tuesday morning, I had already been working for more than three hours, but I didn’t tell him that. I didn’t tell him anything; just that I would be in touch, which was fine with him. One way or the other.

  I started ringing doorbells in the area where Benjamin said he had first seen the man with the sheep dog, hoping that had been his starting point. It seemed that every dog owner on the list who I checked with had the names of two or three other tenants who had gotten dogs in the period of time since the dog protests. The reasons were always the same: fear. Of muggers, housebreakers, rapists, lunatics, kidnappers, murderers. Instead of shortening my list, for each name I crossed off I had to add several more.

  At about one o’clock, I headed over to Jackson Heights with Mrs. Deluca’s and Mrs. Romero’s statements to be signed. It was impossible to find a parking space. The alternate-side-of-the-street-parking regulations didn’t end until 2 P.M., but long before then, neighborhood cars had been jockeyed from temporary locations to choice spots in front of apartment buildings. I drove around for nearly twenty minutes before I found some guy pulling out.

  The neighborhood looked different in daylight. It was a very active “people” kind of scene. Young mothers stood around, talking, rocking baby carriages with one hand and hanging on to a squirming kid with the other. Older w
omen walked among the younger people; stood gossiping, giving advice, showing what bargains they had found at the local stores.

  Mrs. Deluca and her sister had just returned from shopping. They had unpacked their bags on Mrs. Deluca’s kitchen table and were sorting and dividing the various items when I arrived. It was easier to accept the coffee and pastry that was offered than to refuse. It was also smarter. It set a more congenial, hospitable mood of cooperation. Mrs. Deluca read over the statement, then her sister read it. They conferred with each other, then with me. Yes, that was exactly the way it happened, just as it said on the paper. But why should they have to sign anything? Wouldn’t that mean they would be “involved”?

  I accepted some more heavy pastry and assured both women that it was merely routine; just to complete my records. Mrs. Deluca signed her statement; Mrs. Romero signed her added paragraph.

  Mrs. Deluca asked me if I didn’t think that Benjamin the Cuban was going to end up badly. I agreed; very badly; her sister agreed.

  I walked along the warm sunny street toward my car absorbing the scene that was so different in the dark—almost as though it was two entirely different locations. It took a minute or two for me to realize that one of the differences was that along the edge of the sidewalks, where the collection of apartment house garbage cans had been set, there was a collection of women, sitting on folding chairs, enjoying the spring afternoon. Ignoring the bits and pieces of debris that the not overly zealous Department of Sanitation men had left behind. One young guy, maybe eighteen, nineteen years old, leaned against the alternate-side-of-the-street-parking sign and seemed to be arguing with one of the young mothers, who kept shaking a baby carriage. Finally a heavy old woman, clicking and shaking her head, dug into her large black pocketbook and came up with a folded bill which she extended to the boy. He grabbed the bill with one hand, turned and, in a kid’s exuberant excitement at having gotten what he wanted, swiveled around, leaped up and hit the parking-regulations sign, right smack in the middle of the words “Tuesday and Friday.” Then, he kissed the older woman on the forehead and said to the younger woman, “You’ll see, Angie. I’m gonna hit me a winner.”