by Dana Perry
“I ran to the phone and called 911. But it was too late. By the time I got back to him in the bedroom, he was gone. The ambulance people couldn’t revive him. They told me he was dead, and then they removed his body.
“The thing is,” she said, wringing her hands in anguish as she talked, “they say a heart attack like that is the best way for a person to die. There’s no lingering illness or suffering or pain that can go on for months or even years like with cancer or some other kind of terminal illness. The problem with sudden, unexpected deaths, though, is it’s so tough on the people who love them. Like I said, you don’t even get a chance to say goodbye.”
I felt badly about putting the woman through all this. I thought maybe there’d be something I could find out about Matt Wysocki’s death, but there wasn’t. People die like he did all the time. There was usually no hidden meaning or significance to any of it. Only for the people like his wife who were left behind to try to deal with the heartache and the loss.
“Had your husband been under a lot of stress?” I asked.
“You might say that.”
“Because of his job?”
“Not just the job, it was the bullshit that went with the job. There was a lot of pressure on my husband before he died. Now I have to face all those problems by myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“This house,” she said, looking around the living room, “it holds many wonderful memories. Memories of my husband. Memories of watching my children grow up here. Now it’s going to be all gone soon. I won’t be able to live here anymore.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t make the mortgage payments to the bank.”
“How about your husband’s police pension?”
“There is no pension.”
“There must be something—”
“The department says it’s been frozen, pending a final investigation by the Internal Affairs Department into his conduct.”
It wasn’t hard to figure out what had happened. Internal Affairs discovered Matt Wysocki was on the take. A corrupt cop loses everything, even his pension. This had probably all been happening at the time of his death. But now his wife was left alone to face the consequences.
“Did Internal Affairs believe your husband was taking bribes as a police officer?”
“Yes.”
“Was he?”
“I asked Matt that question only one time. He wouldn’t answer me. He never refused to tell me anything else the entire time we were married. But he wouldn’t answer this. He just walked away, went into another room and shut the door behind him. I could hear him crying in there. I never asked the question again. I guess I didn’t want to know the answer.”
She looked over at the wedding picture on the mantelpiece.
“Matt was so frustrated those last few years. He’d been a police officer for so long, but never seemed to get anywhere. He saw other people getting promoted, but it never seemed to work out for him. There were minorities, women, younger people – the department always cared about everyone but him.
“I think it got to him at the end. He was a good cop for most of his career until then. He just wanted something more for himself – he wanted something more for me and our children. I suppose that’s why he did what he did.
“That last day, a man from Internal Affairs came to see him. He was very mean and uncaring. I didn’t like him. He said he needed to talk to my husband in private. I don’t know what they said, but my husband was very upset after the man left. He was so agitated that he barely touched his supper or spoke to me for the rest of the night. Then we went to bed, and that’s when he died. Whatever that man told Matt, I think it caused the onset of his fatal heart attack.
“I’ll never forgive the department for that. They didn’t have to treat Matt that way. Matt was a good man. He was a good cop. Okay, he made a mistake. But no one is perfect, not even police officers. Why couldn’t they have given him a second chance?”
Mrs. Wysocki began to cry now.
“Do you remember the name of the officer from Internal Affairs?” I asked her quietly.
“I’ll never forget it as long as I live,” she said. “It was Garrison. A man named Russell Garrison.”
Thirty-Eight
The Internal Affairs section was located in a nondescript building several blocks away and across town from Police Headquarters.
Many people thought putting the office so far away was supposed to be a statement of sorts about its split from the official police bureaucracy. The guys in Internal Affairs always boasted that they couldn’t be bought and they couldn’t be influenced by the police brass. So what if other cops hated them? That meant they were doing their job.
Russell Garrison was in his forties, with slicked-back hair and a closely cropped mustache. He knew who I was as soon as he heard my name. He didn’t seem particularly excited by my appearance there.
“What do you want?” Garrison asked as I pulled up a chair in front of his desk.
“I understand that you went to see Matt Wysocki on the same day that he died of a heart attack.”
“So?”
“His wife says you weren’t very nice to him.”
“Maybe Matt should have thought about that before he decided to break the law.”
“Wysocki was dirty?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you prove that?”
“I don’t have to anymore, he’s dead.”
“But you’re still trying to keep his pension away from the widow.”
“That’s what happens to dirty cops. Hell, you should know that better than anyone. You’re supposed to be such a hotshot police reporter. Don’t go acting all naive with me about cop corruption.”
“What did you say to Wysocki?”
“I simply spelled out for Matt Wysocki the gravity of his legal situation and laid out for him a possible solution to his problems.”
“You wanted him to cut a deal and give up the other dirty cops that he knew about?”
“Something like that.”
“Do you have any idea of the pressure that put on the guy? Rat out his friends and fellow officers or take the rap by himself? We’re not talking about a murderer here, Garrison. This was a guy who screwed up for the first time in his goddamned career. Maybe he deserved a second chance.”
Garrison shrugged. “Why are you here asking me questions about Wysocki?”
“I’m working on a story about Maura Walsh.”
“What does that have to do with Wysocki? They never worked together.”
“No, but they shared the same partner. Billy Renfro.”
Garrison didn’t say anything.
“Were you investigating Renfro for corruption too?”
“No comment.”
“Which means you would have been investigating Maura Walsh before she died. She was Renfro’s partner now. The new Matt Wysocki. What exactly did you find out about Maura Walsh? Was she as clean and wholesome and heroic as everyone thought she was? The golden girl of the force? The police commissioner’s daughter who died a hero?”
“I’m not talking to you about any of that. I don’t give a goddamn about how many important people you know in the department from what happened to you in Central Park or how you used to hang out with the mayor. You want to write a story about Maura Walsh for your paper, then go write it. Why are you here busting my balls?”
“I only want to tell the truth about Maura Walsh,” I said quietly.
“Sorry, but I can’t help you,” he muttered, looking down at some paperwork in front of him.
“I know Maura was dirty,” I said.
That got his attention.
“I know she was taking payoffs from restaurants and other businesses in her precinct,” I said. “I’m not sure how widespread this was. But I assume it was not something she started or something she was doing on her own. I think Maura got caught up in something after she transferred to the 22nd and she used some bad
judgement and did some things that were wrong. Just like Matt Wysocki did when he was at the 22nd. I’m still hoping you can tell me more.”
“Everything I know will be in my report,” Garrison said.
“Where does that go?”
“To my superiors.”
“In other words, it probably winds up on the desk of Deputy Commissioner Walsh.”
“Give us a little credit here, huh? If we did have evidence against Maura Walsh, and I’m not saying we do, we’re certainly not going to send a report on a corrupt cop to her own father. Even if he is the deputy commissioner. It’s called a conflict of interest.”
“In other words, you’re going around her father on this one?”
“Once again, I have no comment.”
“Does anyone else know about this yet?”
“About what?”
“About Maura Walsh being crooked.”
“Are we finished here?” Garrison asked.
I decided it was time to go. I was getting nowhere. I stood up and glared at Garrison, who was still doing his best to ignore me.
“Maura Walsh was a good person,” I said.
“Whatever you say.”
“She’s dead now, Garrison. Why not just leave her alone?”
He looked up from his paperwork.
“Can we go off the record here?”
“If you want to.”
“I have your word on that?”
“Yes, you have my word whatever you tell me will be off the record. And I take my word as a journalist very seriously.”
“Okay, you wanted to know about Maura Walsh? I’ll tell you about Maura Walsh,” Garrison said. “If she wasn’t dead now, she’d probably be indicted.”
Thirty-Nine
I was still driving the rental car I’d used to go to New Jersey to see Billy Renfro’s wife.
After I left IAD headquarters, I made my way across town toward the East River Drive, which would take me north. The traffic wasn’t bad, but I noticed one car behind me in my rearview mirror – a blue police car. I couldn’t be sure it was the same police car I’d seen a few times before. They all look pretty much alike. But I sure had a sinking feeling that it was.
I made a turn onto the entrance of the East River Drive, and the police car stayed behind me as I got in the northbound lane. It continued to follow me there until we were almost at Houston Street. Then it turned on the siren and flashing red light, pulled up alongside me and motioned for me to pull over at the Houston Street exit. I did.
Two cops got out of the squad car. I recognized them right away. Shockley and Janko, the two who’d given me the warning about not digging too deeply into the Maura Walsh story when I’d been at the 22nd Precinct. I’d checked them out afterwards. Luther Shockley and Vic Janko. Shockley was a thirty-year veteran. He had a half-day’s growth of beard and a good-size pot belly spilling out over his pants as he walked toward me. Janko had been on the force five years. He was in better shape than Shockley, but there was something creepy about his eyes when he looked at you. Crazy eyes, I thought to myself.
They both came over to my car with hard stares on their faces and their hands on their gun belts.
“Step out of the car,” Shockley said. “And let us see your driver’s license.”
I opened the door and got out.
“Is there a problem?” I asked as I passed him the license.
“Yeah, there’s a problem, Ms. Tucker,” he said, glancing down at it and then back at me. “The problem is its only fifty mph back there on the East River Drive. You were breaking the speed limit.”
“I wasn’t speeding,” I said quietly. “I just got on the highway a few minutes ago. I wouldn’t have had much time to start speeding, even if I wanted to. Which I didn’t. I was barely doing forty mph when you pulled me over.”
“I clocked you at sixty-one mph. My partner here can verify that. Vic, can you verify that for Ms. Tucker?” Vic Janko nodded. He still had that crazy look in his eyes, which scared the hell out of me. “See, that makes it two to one that you were speeding. You against both of us. So you lose. Get the picture?”
“I think I’m starting to.”
“Also,” he went on, “you’ve got a defective right taillight back there. Very unsafe. I’m going to have to give you a ticket for that too. You need to take better care of your vehicle, Ms. Tucker.”
“It’s a rental car,” I said. “Not mine.”
“You’re still responsible for making sure it’s in a safe and legal operating condition when you’re driving it on a highway.”
I walked around to the back of the car and looked at the right side where the taillight was. It looked fine. I walked back to the open window of the car, reached in and clicked on the turn signal. Then I checked the taillight again. It was flashing just like it should. Worked like a charm.
“My taillight’s not broken,” I said.
Shockley turned toward his partner Janko, who kicked it hard with his booted foot. The taillight shattered.
“Now it’s broken,” Janko said.
I sighed.
Then Shockley looked over at my purse, which was still on the front seat of the car.
“Show us what’s inside that bag,” he said.
“Why?”
“You also seemed to be driving erratically from what we could ascertain. Possibly due to the influence of some sort of drugs. That’s why we need to examine the contents of your handbag. Will you show it to us?”
“What if I refuse?”
“You have the right to contact a lawyer, if you want.”
“Maybe I will.”
“But then we’d have to detain you, bring you back to the precinct and put you in a holding cell until the lawyer arrives.”
I didn’t have a lot of choices here. I just wanted to get through this with as little hassle from these two as possible. I gave them the handbag.
Shockley rummaged through it for a minute or so – and then took out a marijuana cigarette. He held it up in front of me.
“Tsk, tsk, Tucker. Look what’s in here. An illegal substance.”
“That’s not mine,” I told him. “You planted it.”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law.” He smiled.
“You’re not going to get away with that.”
Shockley shrugged, then conferred briefly with Janko.
“Okay, we’re going to let you slide on the illegal drug charge this time. But we will have to ticket you for speeding and your broken taillight. We hope we don’t have to talk to you again. Next time we might not be so lenient as to let you off with just a few tickets.”
He took out a pen and ticket book and began writing me up from the information on my driver’s license. While he was doing that, I looked down at his badge number and his partner’s. With their last names above the badges.
“Luther Shockley and Vic Janko. Those are your names, right?”
“Why?” Shockley smirked. “Do you want to file a complaint against us?”
I bit down nervously on my lower lip.
“You two are a real credit to the police force,” I said.
Shockley handed me the tickets.
“Before you do anything else stupid, Ms. Tucker, remember that we’re always out there watching for people like you. Think about that. Me and Janko here and a lot of our friends. You don’t want to get on our bad side any more than you already are. Think about that if you ever consider impugning the integrity of the police.”
“Why do I have the feeling this has something to do with Maura Walsh?” I asked.
“Maura is dead,” Shockley said. “Let her rest in peace.”
Forty
The name of the genealogy investigator that Ellen had hooked me up with was Wendy Carruthers. She was a few years older than me, and she said she’d been doing this type of work for ten years.
Carruthers had a law degree, and she’d practiced law for a big New York City firm for several years. But then she said she’d
done some genealogy checks on her own background, and she became intrigued by the field.
One of the things that made genealogy even more fascinating for her, she told me, was that she determined she was a foundling (an abandoned baby) when she started searching her family tree – or at least the ancestor of a foundling. A great-grandfather had been left on the doorstep of a church in Austria around the turn of the century, and so he never knew who his birth parents were.
Because of that, she had become obsessed with finding out answers – about herself as well as him. The law degree was important, although not essential, for a genealogy investigator, she said, because it helped open a lot of doors to the past. And, she told me proudly, she had even been able to track her great-grandfather’s family history back to the birth mother who’d left him on that church doorstep.
Wendy Carruthers told me all this in one big burst of words that first day when I went to see her, barely pausing as she rattled off all this information about her and her background and the study of genealogy.
Normally, I would have found it extremely interesting – maybe even fascinating like she did – because of all her energy and passion and commitment to what she did.
I might have even thought about doing a story about her – and the whole idea of being a genealogy investigator – for the Tribune as maybe a big Sunday feature article.
But now I just wanted to deal with my own damn genealogy problem.
So I listened patiently until she was done, then gave her all the pertinent information I could about me, my mother and the man named James Tucker who had been my father.
That night, when I got back to my apartment and was trying to settle down after my stressful encounter with the police on the East River Drive, I found a message from her waiting for me on my home phone. It said she had some information about James Tucker. She did not say what that information was. In fact, she made a point of telling me that it was something she preferred to share with me in person.
Which mean it must have been pretty significant information.