“You can call me about anything, anytime.” Wendy Marlow held her chin up as she left the deli. She wasn’t smiling anymore. There was sadness in her defiance somehow.
Why had McNally lied about the contract? If everybody in the office remembered the argument, McNally must. The Poborski connection looked more and more a part of the story. On the other hand, why would Poborski wait five months to exact revenge for losing the deal? Why would McNally lie when the truth would make the mobster the top suspect? Unanswered questions were always the sign of a good story. A good story took time. With a deadline of five and Voichek dead, time was the one thing he didn’t have.
Chapter 27
Taylor changed trains from the local to the express and back again to confirm no one was tailing him. He’d published the first story to flush out the killers. That didn’t mean he wanted to get jumped by thugs. He needed to stay alive to finish this. He’d check in with Laura, do one piece of writing he had to finish now, and then track down McNally. That man had answers he needed.
In the MT’s morgue, he lugged Mrs. Wiggins’ Selectric to the study carrel, rolled in a piece of copy paper and went over his notes on Voichek one last time. What had started him on this story? The dead boy, nameless, homeless, down in the morgue. He’d needed a story to escape obits. He’d needed to know he could do something about one lost boy even if he could do nothing about another, his brother Billy, abandoned in the jungle during the forever war that was finally ending. His pursuit of the story hadn’t helped the homeless one goddamn bit. One had been murdered and many more attacked. Stories had consequences. Most reporters denied that in their pose as impartial observers. Taylor was learning. Stories changed the world. And not always for the better.
He started typing his last obituary.
Mark Voichek, a hero of World War II, hobo since the Great Depression, and resident of this city for the past several years, “took the Westbound” on Sunday. He was killed by unknown assailants on the pier at 43rd Street and the Hudson River.
Voichek, who lived on the streets here in the city, was known for wearing a U.S. Army field jacket with its sleeves covered in flags of the world, which he put there to honor the peace for which he’d fought. He won two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star and fought for the U.S. Army in Africa and Italy, according to those who knew him.
Voichek still spoke the hobo language, a vast collection of terms coined by the people who rode the rails and stayed in camps by the millions beginning in the Great Depression. In that lingo, he called himself a “bridger,” which meant he bridged the era from steam trains to diesel. He worried his language, descriptive of trains, hobo camps and good food, would soon die out with the last of the hobos.
He read it over, made a couple of corrections, folded it and put it in his pocket. One way or the other, he’d written his last obit. It wouldn’t run if he didn’t keep his job. Everything tied together. The phone rang.
“Dickie Bennett called.” Laura’s voice was urgent. “He saw the Voichek story. He has something that will help. He says it’s important.”
“Dickie Bennett?” Working to place the name, he reached for his notebook.
“The yearbook photographer. You talked to him at Eli. When I tried last Friday, he got all hinky.”
“Right. He pointed me to the lacrosse players. Acted liked there was something else he knew.”
“He’s still being cryptic. I’m in a coffee shop on the Westside. He wants to meet here after school.”
“Did he give a clue what it’s about?”
“No. Hold on a sec.” A low murmur. “He’s here. I’ll call after we talk.”
Taylor was caught between the need to hope and worrying he wasn’t doing enough. He couldn’t help but think of things he should have suggested Laura ask Dickie Bennett about the drug dealing. “I’m a complete horse’s ass,” he said aloud. Suggestions would have been the worst thing. Did he trust Laura? Could he trust anyone enough to work with them? Was he ever going to change? He wasn’t sure and now he had to keep it simple. Step one, nail his part of the story. He left the morgue to track down Constable McNally. These weren’t questions for the phone. He rode the subway to Hunter College and headed east to First Avenue. By the time he reached for the doorknocker of the townhouse on East 69th, his fingers tingled from the Arctic air.
Lydia McNally wore an ankle-length black dress, something for mourning but still sleek and stylish. She looked at him for long seconds, working to make the connection, but held up her hand before he could explain.
“Oh, the reporter. Come in. The maid and cook are off. My husband insists on hiring only Irish. They’re off today and every other goddamn holy day.” She led the way down the hallway. The dress whispered as she moved.
They passed the living room and the darkened dining room with dinner set for one. She kept going, all the way to a room at the back of the house with an overstuffed couch, a wingback chair, and a large RCA television in a dark maple cabinet. Lydia McNally settled onto the couch, tucking her legs under her. Newspapers were spread everywhere. On the floor, on all the tables, on the couch next to her.
“Have a seat.”
“I’m actually looking for your husband.”
“Thank God I don’t have to be at that party drinking green Budweiser. Happy fucking St. Patrick’s Day.” She lifted a glass in toast. “Please talk for a little bit.”
Taylor stepped around pages from the Post, Messenger-Telegram and Times. Another stack sat on the wingback.
“Just put those on the coffee table.”
He moved the pile and sat on the smooth, worn leather.
“You can get comfortable here. We all do. Or did. Declan made us call this the rumpus room. I used the word once when he was little and he laughed and laughed. ‘I want to rumpus,’ he said. He was such a sunny, funny little boy. It’s amazing the thousands of stupid things you turn into memories. You don’t realize how much pain you’re setting yourself up for. They’re all over this house.”
“It must be very hard.”
“We’d come here to watch TV, to talk. To sit and read. He did his homework here until Con made him move to his room. He thought Declan wasn’t being rigorous enough with his schoolwork. Whatever the hell that means.”
“Your husband argued with Declan about schoolwork Sunday night.”
“Declan was on a tear. I don’t blame Con for what happened.” She said it a bit too emphatically, as if answering an accusation. “It’s not his fault. What I really want to know is why they can’t find the fuckers who murdered my son.” She waved at the papers all over the rumpus room. “I go through these every day because I’m being told nothing by anyone. Nothing for a week. Nothing until your paper runs that story about the dead bum whose clothes were stolen. The cops have nothing. Con and my father tell me to be patient with nothing. I’m tired of fucking nothing.” She got up and went to a portable bar made of brass and glass and mixed another screwdriver, three-quarters vodka, one-quarter OJ. “You want something?”
“No thank you.”
“Suit yourself.” She took a sip and looked at him with intense dark eyes. “You found Declan. What did he say at the end?”
“I found his body at Bellevue. I have no idea what he said.”
“You talked to the ambulance drivers, didn’t you? He must have spoken to them. Did he know we loved him? What were his last words? Did he forgive us?”
“Forgive you for what?”
“Letting that happen to him.” She burst into tears, standing next to the bar, letting loose her grip on the glass so that it spilled watery orange on the newspapers with a sound like rain on a rooftop.
“I’m sorry. To my knowledge, Declan spoke to no one before he died.”
“No one? No one! What the fuck good are you? What a goddamned mess. I’m his mother, and I can’t get any answers.” She slumped onto the couch. “Con is at Murphy’s on Second Avenue. With all the other mick Democrats drinking to their saint.”
The telephone rang. Lydia McNally looked at the newspapers next to her, anger replaced by fear. She pushed the papers out of the way and found the princess phone. “I told you—” She listened. “Stop, stop, stop. I told you. I give him your messages. Leave us alone.”
She slammed the phone down.
“What’s wrong?”
“He keeps calling. I give Con the messages. Con screams at me like I’m making the call up or something. Now he’s making threats.”
Lydia McNally had buried the lead. It was a habit of bad journalists, old people, and the panic-stricken.
“Who’s making threats?”
“This Polock Poborski.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s always the same. ‘Your husband and I had an arrangement. If he doesn’t honor it, tell him I will take steps he would not like.’ I’m scared. Why doesn’t Con tell the police? We’ve been married twenty-three years. I don’t know what’s going on with him now.” She looked at the TV and paused for so long Taylor thought she’d forgotten he was there. “Gunsmoke will be on tonight. We loved watching that together. Marshall Dillon. There’s a man who hunts down killers. No bullshitting around.”
She blew her nose and drank a third of the screwdriver.
Chapter 28
Taylor stepped off the bus on Second Avenue and walked two blocks to Murphy’s. All the bars and restaurants he passed, whether Irish or not, displayed green paper shamrocks in their windows. Green Budweiser at ten cents a glass was the night’s big special. Wasted men and a few women weaved from bar to bar looking for the better celebration. Would he find McNally loaded? Sometimes that made interviewing easier. Or made it impossible.
His press pass won him immediate entrance to the Democrats’ party. Men in off-the-rack, three-piece suits filled the pub. A good portion of them wore green paper leprechaun hats, some only the torn-off brims. Cigarette smoke swirled thick in the air, mingling with the odor of beer and cheap cologne. “Danny Boy” started on the jukebox, and loud off-key singing drowned out Bing Crosby’s tenor. Someone put a glass in Taylor’s hand. Easter-egg green swirled through the beer. He set it on the bar.
In a break between songs, he asked two men midway down the bar for Constable McNally. One slurred something and stumbled into Taylor, spilling his beer everywhere, including down Taylor’s pants. The second pointed and told him to look in the back room with Big Johnny and the other “top knots.” Before Taylor could thank him, the man started doing something between a jig and an off-center whirl. Past the spinning man, at the bar’s front door, Fedora stood with his two knit-capped goons. They were trying to talk their way in.
How the hell had they tracked him down? He’d been so careful all day. He thought of Poborski’s call to Lydia McNally. What if it wasn’t him? Maybe they were after Constable McNally. Excitement and fear together. He wasn’t just on the hunt for McNally. He was in the middle of it.
Taylor moved back through the crowd to a doorway guarded by a uniformed policeman. He went to go through, and the cop held up his arm. “Private part of the party, sir.”
“I’m looking for Constable McNally.”
“Don’t know him.”
“He’s an ex-cop.”
“Lot of those celebrating.”
Up at the front, the three men were inside the pub and standing at the corner of the bar, looking around the place. Taylor could try to convince this cop the three men were murderers. That would get all four of them hauled off for a night and day of questioning. The detectives would demand he produce Torres the Kid before doing anything. Which he couldn’t. No, he must play this out. Fast and careful all at the same time. A room guarded by a cop might keep the killers out. No matter what, he had to talk to McNally first.
“How about Big Johnny Scudetto?”
“Who are you that wants to see him?”
“Taylor with the Messenger-Telegram.”
Even beat cops knew the party chief always talked to reporters. The policeman opened the door and disappeared into the gloom and quickly returned.
“Says he’ll see the man from the Empty.” He indicated Taylor should follow.
The private area was less crowded than the front of the bar, with room for most to sit at wooden tables. The cop stopped in front of the biggest. Directly opposite sat a man with a fat smiling face and a fatter belly. Big Johnny’s large head was bald but for white frizz on the sides. Three other men at the table laughed too loudly at something Big Johnny just said.
“Thank you, Officer,” said Big Johnny.
The policeman turned and left.
“Isn’t it wonderful how our Polock friends help on this special day?”
“I didn’t realize Scudetto was Irish. What county are your people from?”
“Funny man. You work on the comic strips?”
“No, cops.”
“Not anymore. You’re the one who got nailed for making up that kiddie addict.”
Taylor’s face grew hot. A professional had called him a liar. He should know better than to underestimate Big Johnny. You didn’t get to run the Manhattan Democrats without knowing all the dirt on everyone.
A woman in a tight green polyester dress slipped into the seat next to Big Johnny. She leaned her firm curves into the soft side of his large stomach, kissed him on the cheek and giggled.
“I hope you believe in the glass-in-hand rule.” Big Johnny picked up a glass.
“Excuse me?”
“With glass in hand, everything is off the record.” The woman kissed him again. He returned it this time, though not as long as the woman wanted. “Easy, Celebration, easy. Taylor, this is my friend, Celebration Jones. The glass?” He poured a second and offered it.
Celebration looked at Taylor with the hungry eyes of a woman kept from what she wanted.
“Right, glass in hand.” Taylor took the beer, toasted and took a small sip. “I’m following up on the investigation of your grandson’s murder. I was told your son-in-law is back here.”
“You figured out the ME had my grandson’s body in Bellevue and didn’t know it.” Glittering brown eyes too small for the big head looked at him over the glass. “You did well on that one at least.”
“I’m not done yet.”
“I’m rolling some fucking heads over it. Why do you need Constable?”
“I’ve got some questions about city contracts.”
Big Johnny frowned. “Contracts? I don’t understand.”
“I’m looking into a road salt contract.”
“In connection with the murder? You’re not serious? No one would be stupid enough to kill my grandson over a city contract. There’s some murdering lunatic out there. The cops know they’d better find the psycho and put him down. And fast. Constable is over in the corner with the other city attorneys and the boys from the DA’s office. You’ll know them. All frowns and furrowed brows.”
Taylor left as Celebration Jones wriggled onto Big Johnny’s lap. The three men watched Big Johnny and his mistress as if the two were putting on a show for them.
The door to the back room remained closed. Yet Taylor didn’t really feel safe, not even in a room with New York’s top Democrat and a police guard outside. His only hope was to close in on the story before it closed in on him.
Six men sat at two round tables pushed together. Pitchers, half-empty cups, and overflowing ashtrays littered the tabletops. All of the men had turned their chairs so they could watch what was going on in the rest of the private room. A speaker above the table blared a song about whisky.
Taylor leaned down and spoke loudly to the nearest man. “Mr. Scudetto said Constable McNally is over here.”
“Was. You missed him, sport. Just left.” The man was short, angry and drunk.
“Any idea where he went?”
“Not a fucking clue.” He turned away and started arguing with another lawyer about whether to throw money in the hat for the Irish Republican Army.
On the other side of the table, T
aylor recognized a man named Lowenstein, a slump-shouldered lawyer who no-commented him that morning at McNally’s office. He pulled up the chair opposite.
“We met this morning. Taylor from—”
“I know who you are. You’re with the Empty. You’re sniffing around our good friend McNally.”
It was a nudge-and-a-wink line that wouldn’t have fooled another drunk.
“Actually, I’m investigating the murder of his son.”
“Journalis’ as crusader.” Lowenstein slurred and knocked back a shot. “Casey Crime Photographer.”
“Haven’t heard of him.”
“A show on the radio when I was a kid. Only place reporters ever solve crimes is on radio and TV.”
A gray-haired man on the right hiccupped. “The Sha-ah-dow was better.”
“McNally left.” Lowenstein pointed at the door.
“Do you know where he went? Mr. Scudetto said you guys could help me out.”
“No idea. He’s the last guy I want to talk about today. Any day for that matter. I don’t care what the fat man says.”
“How long ago did he leave?”
“Man, if it will get you to quit pooping our party … the cop at the door came over a half hour ago and told him his wife was on the phone. McNally, he’s the usual peach. Says he told the bitch to leave him alone this afternoon. Goes out. Comes back even angrier, grabs his coat and splits. I tried to tell him the party after is always better than this. He ignored me like he always does. Like he doesn’t have to listen to anyone. Typical. He’s an asshole.”
Bad things were going to happen tonight because everyone was crocked on their ass. Didn’t help that the cop lied to him about knowing whether McNally was there. No surprise. Cops hated answering questions more than they liked asking them. He’d lost precious time in the hunt. He needed to know what McNally learned from his wife. He peered out the door into the main bar. The three killers were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they learned McNally left, which would confirm they were after McNally and not Taylor.
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