The Golden Girl

by Dana Perry

  The clerk at the T-shirt shop wasn’t very helpful either.

  I went back to the alley and stood there again for a while. It was just an empty alley. This was where Maura Walsh had died. She didn’t die quickly. It took her maybe as long as an hour to bleed to death. Someone left her there like that to die. Alone. Just like someone had left me to die alone a long time ago in Central Park. I’d survived. But Maura Walsh didn’t. She died a lonely death in this alley. Far away from her friends and family and everyone else who loved her. Except for her partner, of course. He was next door buying pizza. And then he came over here and found her.

  That was his story anyway.

  It didn’t make sense.

  How did Billy Renfro find Maura’s body here? He didn’t first go to the cappuccino bar or the T-shirt place or any of the other likely spots. He came here to this alley once he started looking for her. Even if it took him nearly an hour to do that.

  The conclusion was inescapable. Renfro knew all along where Maura had gone. And maybe why too. That was probably why he seemed so nervous and kept checking his watch and looking out the window while he waited for his pizza. But why? What in the world was Maura Walsh doing?

  I walked up to the front door of the building being renovated next to this spot – and read the graffiti on the front door. Some of it was sex stuff. Some political slogans. I guess I was hoping to find something in the writing that might jump out at me as a clue. But I didn’t. It was just a lot of graffiti, that’s all.

  I pushed open the door and went inside.

  The lobby had already been gutted by the construction crews. The workmen had left behind some of their debris – empty boxes, paint cans and drop cloths. There was even a ladder still leaning up against one of the walls. No reason to think that any of this had anything to do with Maura Walsh’s death outside. But I wanted to check everything.

  After a few minutes in there, I couldn’t think of anything else to do so I started to leave. I was just about out the door when I saw the label on the side of one of the boxes left behind by the people working there. It was the name of a private sanitation crew that must have been hired to clean up the mess.

  I recognized the name right away.

  Bennato Sanitation Services.

  The company owned by mob boss Dominic (Fat Nic) Bennato.

  The same man who owned two of the X-rated businesses that Maura Walsh had visited on the last night of her life.

  Forty-Four

  Tell it like you would in a bar.

  That’s an old newspaper adage they teach you as a young reporter. The idea is to simplify even a complicated story into its most basic elements. The best way to do that is to pretend you’ve just burst into a bar to tell everyone the information you have. That way you cut through all the bullshit and the extraneous information and get right to the point.

  Let’s say, for example, you see a horrible traffic accident on the street outside the bar. You don’t run inside and begin an analysis of traffic flow problems on the streets of New York. You don’t talk about rising auto insurance rates. You don’t discuss the need for more driver education classes in our schools. You tell them what happened, which is:

  1) There was a big accident outside.

  2) At least two people are dead.

  3) Several others are hurt.

  4) It happened when a taxicab ran a red light, smashed into another car and careened onto the sidewalk.

  I decided to do this with my story. Strip away all the non-essential information that was confusing me and deal with the most basic facts I knew. Just like I was telling it for the first time in a bar.

  Fact No. 1: Someone murdered Police Officer Maura Walsh.

  Fact No. 2: Someone murdered her partner, Police Officer Billy Renfro – unless you believed it was a suicide, which I didn’t – a few weeks later.

  Fact No. 3: Someone murdered Private Investigator Frank Walosin who had been spying on A) Maura Walsh and B) Billy Renfro before his own death.

  The one thing that popped out at you when you looked at it like that was the obvious link between all three deaths.

  Of course, they didn’t have to be connected. Maura Walsh might have been the victim of a random crime, like the police theorized. Billy Renfro could have taken his own life out of guilt and depression over the loss of his partner. And Frank Walosin might have been killed by an angry client or someone else who was part of another case in his files.

  When you looked at it like this, as three separate random cases, it eliminated a lot of suspects.

  Except it didn’t make sense to me that way.

  And when you linked them up – when you made the assumption that Billy Renfro and Frank Walosin both died because of something they knew about Maura Walsh’s murder – then everything started to fall into place. I’d been nibbling around that idea ever since this story started, but now it was time to embrace it wholeheartedly. Whoever killed Maura Walsh killed Billy Renfro and Frank Walosin too.

  The next question, of course, was who?

  Well, once you linked all three cases, it created a list of potential suspects. Corrupt cops who were afraid she might be working for her father. The people being forced to make payoffs to her – everyone from the bodega owner to Sam Rawlings. Maybe even her own father, who could have feared she was going to destroy the hallowed Walsh family legacy if her illegal acts were exposed. And last, but certainly not least, mob boss Dominic (Fat Nic) Bennato, the most notorious of the people she was apparently involved with in the corruption.

  I sure didn’t see Sam as a murderer. Or any of the other shakedown victims I’d met at the various locations either, for that matter. It was just a cost of doing business for them. And I found it really difficult to believe that Deputy Commissioner Walsh might have anything to do with the murder of his own daughter. That left other corrupt cops – like Shockley and Janko and whoever else they worked for – but I wasn’t certain even corrupt officers like that would murder one of their own.

  Dominic Bennato seemed to be the most likely candidate.

  I went through the articles about Bennato I could find quickly online. There were a lot of them. Murders, bribery, bookmaking, drug dealing – you name it. He’d become a mob superstar in the media. Everyone talked about him the way they used to talk about John Gotti or even Al Capone. He seemed to like the publicity too. There were stories and pictures of him showing up at parties, movie premieres and fancy restaurants. He was a celebrity – just like a movie star or a Super Bowl quarterback or a pop music idol.

  I wasn’t sure what any of this meant, but I was sure about one thing. Bennato was the only clear-cut connection I could find in all this. His name kept coming up in a lot of places.

  Bennato was the key.

  Bennato was the link.

  Bennato was the man who might have all the answers.

  I needed to figure out a way to talk to him.

  And I could only think of one person who might be able to help me do that.

  Forty-Five

  “Do you want to get a cup of coffee with me at the Starbucks downstairs?” I asked Michelle. “I’m buying.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to buy me coffee?”

  “No reason. Just to chat.”

  “Jessie, we’ve worked together in this newsroom for quite a while now. You have never suggested we have coffee ‘just to chat’ in all of that time. You’ve always been too busy working on a story, and so have I. That’s why I figure this has to be about some story you’re working on.”

  “It is.”

  “Maura Walsh?”

  I nodded. “I need another favor from you on this story, Michelle.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that in the first place? All right, let’s go get my free coffee.”

  A few minutes later, we were sitting by a window overlooking Sixth Avenue near where the Tribune was located. The streets were packed with tourists, vendors and ordin
ary New Yorkers. I really wished I could spend more time just appreciating the sights and sounds of this city sometimes, instead of always working so hard.

  I was drinking a regular small coffee. Michelle, on the other hand, had ordered the largest size mocha and added whipped cream and fruit and other things to it.

  “I realize I promised you a free drink here if you’d help me out with a favor,” I said jokingly to her as I eyed it in all its enormity. “But that’s a helluva big cup you’ve got there, Michelle.”

  “Well, I figure it’s a big favor.”

  “All I need from you is some information.”

  “Topic?”

  “Dominic Bennato.”

  Michelle did something I’d almost never seen her do before. She went silent. Stared down at her mocha for a long time without saying a word. I’d never seen Michelle silent about anything. I thought at first maybe she was afraid to talk about Bennato at all. But I was wrong. She was just collecting her thoughts about him to answer me.

  “And this is about Maura Walsh?” she asked finally.

  “Yes. Bennato owned several of the places Maura Walsh went on her last night. I think she was taking payoffs from him.”

  “And you figure that could have had something to do with her murder?”

  “It seems like the most likely scenario for me at the moment. Unless you buy the theory that Maura Walsh’s death was just a random murder.”

  Michelle nodded.

  “Look, Michelle, you told me you met Bennato when you did that series on mob bosses a while back. I went back and read all your stuff in the clips. I want to find out more about him. And I want to try to talk to him too. But he never answers any of my calls to his office. How can I find Dominic Bennato to talk to him?”

  “You don’t find Dominic Bennato, he finds you.”

  “No, really, Michelle—”

  “I’m serious. That’s how I did it. His people hang out in a club down in Little Italy called Marcello’s. I had to go there, tell his people I wanted to contact him for my piece and wait until he got back to me. A day or so later, a car picked me up and took me to meet him. I was a little freaked out, but I did it. I mean, I’ll do almost anything to get a story, you know that, Jessie. But this one had me worried more than anything else I’ve ever done. In the end, the interview worked out fine. I thought he might be upset about me writing a story calling him one of the city’s top mob bosses. But all he really cared about what that I gave him top play over the other bosses, and made sure I said he was the most important of them. Go figure, huh?”

  She shook her head and sipped some of the mocha.

  “I’ve never told anyone about this. Certainly not anyone at the paper. But I took a favor from him when I did that article. I was desperate for an apartment. My sublet was over and I had nowhere to go. I mentioned it to Bennato that day in the interview. The next day I got a call from some real estate agency he was a partner in offering me a great apartment for an incredibly low rent. I took it. At least for a while. Until I found another place about six months later. I’m not proud of it, Jessie. But, like they say – or at least I told myself then – anything goes when you’re trying to find an apartment in Manhattan.”

  “And Bennato never caused you any problems?”

  “No, he couldn’t have been nicer. The apartment was actually in the same building as the restaurant I just told you about. He even sent food takeouts up to me from the restaurant. The food was wonderful too. And, when I moved out, he got a moving van to take all my stuff up to the new place. I guess he must have really liked the article I did. Or maybe he just liked me because I was a newspaper reporter, and he thought that might be useful to him. But I never compromised myself in any way journalistically. I like to tell myself that made it all right. Even though I knew it really wasn’t. But that’s what I mean about him being scary. He can be really nice like that, and then you hear about all the violent criminal acts he’s responsible for too.”

  I wasn’t there to make a judgement about the ethics of what Michelle had done. I just wanted her help.

  “My next question is—” I started to say.

  “Would I go to Marcello’s with you to try to set up a meeting for you with Bennato?”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s a big favor to ask me.”

  “I know.”

  “A much bigger favor than just buying a mocha for a person normally gets you, Jessie.”

  I smiled.

  “If you’re uncomfortable about it, I understand. This could be very dangerous if he is Maura Walsh’s killer.”

  “Aw, what the hell.” Michelle shrugged. “I never planned on living forever anywhere. So let’s go to Marcello’s tonight.”

  Forty-Six

  If Michelle and I had any hopes of blending in undetected at Marcello’s, that evaporated the minute we stepped into the restaurant. We realized we were the only women in there. Well, except for a few here and there in bouffant hairdos and heavy makeup who were either girlfriends/wives or on their way to a casting call for Mob Wives of New York.

  Everyone else in the place were men. Many of them big, tough-looking guys who might as well have been wearing signs that said, “I’m in the mob.” That was unsettling enough. But what was even worse, everyone only seemed to have one thing on their minds right now. They were staring at us.

  “Are we going to get out of here alive?” I whispered to Michelle.

  “It’ll be fine, Jessie.”

  She walked over to the bar as if nothing was wrong. My God, this woman was fearless. I followed her. What in the hell else was I going to do?

  Michelle ordered wine for both of us from the guy behind the bar, who didn’t seem happy to see us. But he didn’t say anything. Just got our drinks and plopped them down in front of us without a word.

  I looked around the restaurant again. Some of the men there had gone back to their food or drinks, but a few were still staring at us. Like they were waiting to see what happened next.

  So was I.

  “Shouldn’t we tell someone that we want to talk to Bennato?” I asked Michelle.

  “We don’t have to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll come to us.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Just drink your wine. Trust me on this.”

  I didn’t really have a viable alternative plan, so I decided to trust that Michelle knew what she was talking about.

  Sure enough, a few minutes later, a man walked toward us at the bar. He didn’t look like most of the other mob guys in the restaurant, though. He was dressed in a plain brown suit and was short and frail-looking with a balding head. Not very intimidating at all.

  It took me a few seconds but I finally recognized him from seeing him on TV news. It was Manny Edelman. Manny the Mouthpiece was the moniker the press used for him. He’d defended Bennato in a number of legal matters, usually managing to get him acquitted or the charges against him dropped even before a trial.

  “Hello, Michelle,” he said, smiling at her and then giving her a big hug. “Wonderful to see you. I hope the apartment was satisfactory and you’re in an even better location now. We haven’t seen you here in a while. You’re missed.”

  “That apartment was just great,” Michelle said. “I have a place uptown now, but I still miss being here. Especially those takeout meals I got from here while I lived upstairs. You don’t get that uptown.”

  Edelman turned to me.

  “And you brought a friend with you, Michelle?”

  I stuck out my hand.

  “Hello, I’m Jessie Tucker.”

  “I’m Manny.”

  “I know who you are, Mr. Edelman,” I said. “I’ve seen you on TV acting as Dominic Bennato’s” – I almost started to say “Dominic Bennato’s mouthpiece”, but I stopped myself – “I recognized you as the person who represented Mr. Bennato in a number of legal cases.”

  “You’re a good observer, Ms. Tucker.
”

  “I’m a reporter at the Tribune with Michelle.”

  “A reporter,” he repeated.

  “Yes,” Michelle said quickly, “she sits next to me at the Tribune. And she told me today how desperate she is for an apartment. There is some kind of construction at the place where she is now and she has to move in a hurry. I told her how Mr. Bennato had helped me when that happened, and we were hoping she could talk to him too.”

  “About an apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a lot of places to look for an apartment,” Edelman said to me.

  “But Michelle kept going on about how wonderful Mr. Bennato was at finding a great place for her. I’m hoping he could maybe do the same for me.”

  I was pretty sure that he knew I didn’t want to talk to Bennato about an apartment. And I was pretty sure he knew that I knew he didn’t believe me either. What I wasn’t sure of was how he would react to all that.

  But I also knew he was probably concerned about what it was I really wanted.

  And the only way to find out what that was would be to set up a meeting for me to talk to Bennato.

  In the end, he agreed to try and set up an appointment for me. I gave him my contact information. Then he picked up the tab for our drinks and offered to buy us dinner too.

  “We’ve really got to be going…” I started to say.

  “That sounds great, Mr. Edelman,” Michelle jumped in. “I can’t wait to have the chicken marsala and spaghetti again. And Jessie, wait until you taste the pasta primavera!”