Chapter 12
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I never expected to end up living in the East Village. Susan, Jennifer, and I had lived out in Park Slope, in Brooklyn. On Sundays we could stroll up to Prospect Park and watch the kids playing ball, Jennifer kicking at the grass with her sneakers, before heading to Raintree’s for a soda, the sound of the band in the band shell drifting in through the stained–glass windows.
On such days, life seemed as long and welcoming as the green vista of Long Meadow. We would walk Jenny between us, Susan and I, and exchange glances over her head as she burst forth with an endless stream of questions, observations, strange jokes that only a child could understand. I would hold her hand in mine, and through her, I could reach out to Susan and believe that things would work out for us, that we could somehow bridge the gap that was growing between us. If Jenny ran ahead, I would move close to Susan and take her hand and she would smile at me as I told her that I loved her. Then she would look away, or look at her feet, or call Jenny, because we both knew that telling her I loved her was not enough.
When I decided to return to New York at the start of the summer, after months of searching for some sign of their killer, I informed my lawyer and asked him to recommend a realtor. In New York, there are about three hundred million square feet of office space and not enough places to put the people who work in them. I couldn’t say why I wanted to live in Manhattan. Maybe it was just because it wasn’t Brooklyn.
Instead of a realtor, my lawyer produced a network of friends and business acquaintances that eventually led to me renting an apartment in a redbrick house in the East Village with white shutters on the windows and a stoop that led up to a fanlighted front door. It was a little closer to St. Mark’s Place than I would have preferred, but it was still a good deal. Since the days when W.H. Auden and Leon Trotsky had roomed there, St. Mark’s had become the East Village with a vengeance, full of bars, cafés, and overpriced boutiques.
The apartment was unfurnished and I pretty much left it that way, adding only a bed, a desk, some easy chairs, and a stereo and small TV. I removed books, tapes, CDs, and vinyl from storage, along with one or two personal belongings, and set up a living space to which I had only the minimum attachment.
It was dark outside as I lined the guns before me on the desk, stripped them down, and cleaned each one carefully. If the Ferreras were coming after me, I wanted to be prepared.
In all my time on the force, I had been forced to draw my weapon to protect myself on only a handful of occasions. I had never killed a man while on duty and had only once fired at another human being, when I shot a pimp in the stomach as he came at me with a long–bladed knife.
As a detective, I had spent most of my time in Robbery and Homicide. Unlike Vice, which was a world in which the threat of violence and death to a cop was a real possibility, Homicide involved a different type of police work. As Tommy Morrison, my first partner, used to say, anybody who’s going to die in a Homicide investigation is already dead by the time the cops arrive.
I had abandoned my Colt Delta Elite after the deaths of Susan and Jennifer. Now I had three guns in my possession. The .38 Colt Detective Special had belonged to my father, the only thing of his that I had retained. The prancing–pony badge on the left side of the rounded butt was worn and the frame was scratched and pitted, but it remained a useful weapon, light at about a pound in weight and easily concealed in an ankle holster or a belt. It was a simple, powerful revolver, and I kept it in a holster taped beneath the frame of my bed.
I had never used the Heckler & Koch VP70M outside a range. The 9 millimeter semiautomatic had belonged to a pusher who had died after becoming hooked on his own product. I had found him dead in his apartment after a neighbor had complained about the smell. The VP70M, a semiplastic military pistol holding eighteen rounds, lay, still unused, in its case, but I had taken the precaution of filing away the serial number.
Like the .38, it had no safety. The attraction of the gun lay in the accessory shoulder stock that the pusher had also acquired. When fitted, it made an internal adjustment to the firing mechanism that turned the weapon into a full–automatic submachine gun that could fire twenty–two hundred rounds per minute. If the Chinese ever decided to invade, I could hold them off for at least ten seconds with all the ammunition I had for it. After that, I’d have to start throwing furniture at them. I had removed the H&K from the compartment in the Mustang’s trunk where I usually stored it. I didn’t want anyone stumbling across it while the car was being serviced.
The third–generation Smith & Wesson was the only gun I carried, a 10 millimeter model specially developed for the FBI and acquired through the efforts of Woolrich. After cleaning it, I loaded it carefully and placed it in my shoulder holster. Outside, I could see the crowds making for the bars and restaurants of the East Village. I was just about to join them when the cell phone buzzed beside me, and thirty minutes later I was preparing to view the body of Stephen Barton.
? ? ?
Red lights flashed, bathing everything in the parking lot with the warm glow of law and order. A patch of darkness marked the nearby McCarren Park, and to the southwest, traffic passed over the Williamsburg Bridge heading for the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway. Patrolmen lounged by cars, keeping the curious and the ghoulish behind barriers. One reached out to block my way — “Hey, gotta keep back” — when we recognized each other. Tyler, who remembered my father and would never make it beyond sergeant, withdrew his hand.
“It’s official, Jimmy. I’m with Cole.” He looked over his shoulder and Walter, who was talking with a patrolman, glanced over and nodded. The arm went up like a traffic barrier and I passed through.
Even yards from the sewer I could smell the stench. A frame had been erected around the area and a lab technician in boots was climbing out of the manhole.
“Can I go down?” I asked. Two men in neatly cut suits and London Fog raincoats had joined Cole, who barely nodded. The FBI letters weren’t visible on the backs of their coats so I assumed they were keeping a low profile. “Uncanny,” I said as I passed. “They could almost be regular people.” Walter scowled. They joined in.
I slipped on a pair of gloves and climbed down the ladder into the sewer. I gagged with my first breath, the river of filth that ran beneath the tree–lined avenues of the city forcing a taste of bile into the back of my throat. “It’s easier if you take shallow breaths,” said a sewer worker who stood at the base of the ladder. He was lying.
I didn’t step from the ladder. Instead, I pulled my Maglite from my pocket and pointed it to where a small group of maintenance workers and cops stood around an arc–lit area, their feet sloshing through stuff about which I didn’t even want to think. The cops gave me a brief glance, then returned with bored looks to watching the med guys go about their business. Stephen Barton lay about five yards from the base of the ladder in a tide of shit and waste, his blond hair moving wildly with the current. It was obvious that he had simply been dumped through the manhole at street level, his body rolling slightly when it hit the bottom.
The ME stood up and pulled the rubber gloves from his hands. A plainclothes Homicide detective, one I didn’t recognize, directed a quizzical look at him. He returned one of frustration and annoyance. “We’ll need to look at him in the lab. I can’t tell shit from shit down here.”
“Come on, give us a fucking break,” the detective whined lamely.
The ME hissed through his teeth in irritation. “Strangled,” he said as he elbowed his way through the small group. “Knocked unconscious first with a blow to the back of the head, then strangled. Don’t even ask for a time of death. He could have been down here for a day or so, probably no longer. The body’s pretty flaccid.” Then the sound of his feet echoed through the sewer as he began to clack up the ladder.
The detective shrugged. “Ashes to ashes, shit to shit,” he said, then turned back toward the body.
I climbed up to street level, the ME behind me. I didn’t need to look at Barton’s body. The blow to the head was unusual, but not extraordinary. It can take as long as ten minutes to kill a man by strangulation, assuming he doesn’t manage to break free in the process. I had heard of would–be assassins losing handfuls of hair, patches of skin, and in one case, an ear to a struggling victim. Far better, where possible, to tap him on the head first. Tap him hard enough and strangling him might not be necessary at all.
Walter was still talking to the feds, so I moved as far away from the sewer as I could get while still remaining within the police cordon and drew deep breaths of night air. The smell of human waste underpinned everything, clinging to my clothes with the grim resolution of death itself. Eventually the feds returned to their car and Walter walked slowly toward me, hands stuck in his trouser pockets.
“They’re going to bring Sonny Ferrera in,” he said.
I snorted. “For what? His lawyer will have him out before he even has time to take a leak. That’s assuming he was even involved, or that they can find him. This bunch couldn’t find the ground if they fell over.”
Walter wasn’t in the mood. “What do you know? The kid was running shit for Ferrera; he fucks him over and ends up dead, strangled what’s more.” Strangulation had become the mob’s preferred method of dispatch in recent years: quiet and no mess. “That’s the feds’ line, and anyway, they’d bring Sonny Ferrera in on suspicion of ignoring a no–smoking sign if they thought it would stick.”
“C’mon, Walter, this isn’t a Ferrera job. Dumping a guy in a sewer isn’t …” But he was already walking away, a raised right hand indicating that he didn’t want to hear any more. I followed him. “What about the girl, Walter? Maybe she fits in somewhere?”
He turned back to me and put a hand on my shoulder. “When I called you, I didn’t think you were going to come running in like Dick Tracy.” He glanced back at the feds. “Any sign of her?”
“I think she blew town. That’s all I’m saying for the present.”
“The ME thinks Barton could have been killed early Tuesday. If the girl left town after that, it could tie her in.”
“Are you going to mention her to the feds?”
Walter shook his head. “Let them go chasing after Sonny Ferrera. You stay on the girl.”
“Yassuh,” I said. “I’ma keep lookin’.” I hailed a cab, conscious that the feds were looking at me even as I got in and we drove away into the night.