A Walk Among the Tombstones

"What's that?"



"That's bribery in the second degree. It's the same as the other only it's a class C felony. To qualify for Bribery Two, the benefit you confer or offer or agree to confer, Jesus, don't you love the way they word these things, the benefit has to be in excess of ten thousand dollars."



"Ah," I said. "I think class D is my limit."



"I was afraid of that. Can I ask you something? Before you commit your class D felony? How many years has it been since you were on the job?"



"It's been a while."



"So how'd you remember the class of felony, let alone the article number?"



"I've got that kind of memory."



"Bullshit. They've renumbered the sections over the years, they've changed half the book at one time or another. I just want to know how you did it."



"You really want to know?"



"Yes."



"I looked it up in Andreotti's book on my way up here."



"Just to break my balls, right?"



"Just to keep you on your toes."



"Only my best interests at heart."



"Absolutely," I said. I'd set aside a bill in my jacket pocket earlier, and I palmed it now and tucked it into the pocket where he keeps his cigarettes, except during those intervals when he swears off and smokes other people's. "Buy yourself a suit," I told him.



We were all alone in the office, so he took the bill out and examined it. "We'll have to update the terminology. A hat's twenty-five dollars, a suit's a hundred. I don't know what a decent hat costs these days, I can't remember the last time I bought one. But I don't know where you'd get a suit for a hundred bucks outside a thrift shop. 'Here's a hundred bucks, take your wife to dinner.' What's this for, anyway?"



"I need a favor."



"Oh?"



"There was a case I read about," I said. "Had to be six months ago and it could have been as much as a year. Couple of guys grabbed a woman off the street, rode off with her in a truck. She turned up a few days later in the park."



"Dead, I'm assuming."



"Dead."



" 'Police suspect foul play.' Can't say it rings a bell. It wasn't one of our cases, was it?"



"It wasn't even Manhattan. I seem to remember that she turned up on a golf course in Queens, but it could as easily have been somewhere in Brooklyn. I didn't pay any attention at the time, it was just an item I read while I drank a second cup of coffee."



"And what do you want now?"



"I want my memory refreshed."



He looked at me. "You're getting pretty free with a buck, aren't you? Why make a donation to my wardrobe fund when you could go to the library, look it up in the Times Index?"



"Under what? I don't know where or when it happened or any of the names. I'd have to scan every issue for the last year, and I don't even know what paper I read it in. It may not have made the Times."



"Be easier if I made a couple of phone calls."



"That's what I was thinking."



"Why don't you take a walk? Have yourself a cup of coffee. Get yourself a table at the Greek place on Eighth Avenue. I'll probably drop in there an hour from now, have myself some coffee and a piece of Danish."



Forty minutes later he came to my table in the coffee shop at Eighth and Fifty-third. "Just over a year ago," he said. "Woman named Marie Gotteskind. What's that mean, God is kind?"



"I think it means 'child of God.' "



"That's better, because God wasn't kind to Marie. She was reported abducted in broad daylight while shopping on Jamaica Avenue in Woodhaven. Two men drove off with her in a truck, and three days later a couple of kids walking across the Forest Park Golf Course came upon her body. Sexual assault, multiple stab wounds. The One-Oh-Four caught the case and bounced it back to the One-Twelve once they ID'd her, because that was where the original abduction took place."



"They get anywhere?"



He shook his head. "Guy I talked to remembered the case well enough. It had people in the neighborhood pretty shook up for a couple of weeks there. Respectable woman walks down the street, couple of clowns grab her, it's like getting struck by lightning, you know what I mean? If it can happen to her it can happen to anybody, and you're not even safe in your own home. They were afraid there'd be more of the same, gang rape on wheels, the whole serial-killer bit. What was that case in L.A., they made a miniseries out of it?"



"I don't know."



"Two Italian guys, I think they were cousins. They were doing hookers and leaving them up in the hills. Hillside Strangler, that's what they called it. Stranglers, it should have been, but I guess the media named the case before they knew it was more than one person."



"The woman in Woodhaven," I said.



"Right. They were afraid she was the first of a series, but then there weren't any more and everybody relaxed. They still put a lot of effort into the case but nothing led anywhere. It's an open file now, and the thinking is that the only way they'll break it is if the perps get caught doing it again. He asked if we had anything tied into it. Do we?"



"No. What did the woman's husband do, did you happen to notice?"



"I don't think she was married. I think she was a schoolteacher. Why?"



"She live alone?"



"What difference does it make?"



"I'd love to see the file, Joe."



"You would, huh? Whyntcha ride out to the One-Twelve and ask them to show it to you."



"I don't think that would work."



"You don't, huh? You mean there are cops in this town won't go out of their way to do a favor for a private license? Jesus, I'm shocked."



"I'd appreciate it."



"A phone call or two's one thing," he said. "I didn't have to commit a flagrant breach of departmental regulations and neither did the guy on the job in Queens. But you're asking for disclosure of confidential materials. That file's not supposed to leave the office."



"It doesn't have to. All he has to do is take five minutes to fax it."



"You want the whole file? Full-scale homicide investigation, there's got to be twenty, thirty pages in that file."



"The department can afford the fax charges."



"I don't know," he said. "The mayor keeps telling us the city's going broke. What's your interest in it, anyway?"



"I can't say."



"Well, Jesus Christ, Matt. You want it all flowing in one direction, don't you?"



"It's a confidential matter."



"No shit. It's confidential, but departmental files are an open book, is that it?" He lit a cigarette and coughed. He said, "This wouldn't have anything to do with a friend of yours, would it?"



"I don't follow you."



"Your buddy Ballou. This got anything to do with him?"



"Of course not."



"You sure of that?"



"He's out of the country," I said. "He's been gone for over a month and I don't know when he's coming back. And he's never been big on raping women and leaving them in the middle of the fairway."



"I know, he's a gentleman, he replaces all divots. They're looking to put together a RICO case against him, but I suppose you already knew that."



"I heard something about it."



"I hope they make it stick, tuck him away in a federal joint for the next twenty years. But I suppose you feel differently."



"He's a friend of mine."



"Yeah, so I've been told."



"Anyway, he's got nothing to do with this matter." He just looked at me, and I said, "I have a client whose wife disappeared. The MO looks similar to the Woodhaven incident."



"She was abducted?"



"It looks that way."



"He report it?"



"No."



"Why not?"



"I guess he had his reasons."



"That's not good enough, Matt."



"Suppose he's in the country illegally."



"Half the city's in the country illegally. You think we catch a kidnap case, the first thing we do is turn the victim over to the INS? And who is this guy, he can't swing a green card but he's got the money for a private investigator? Sounds to me like he's got to be dirty."



"Whatever you say."



"Whatever I say, huh?" He put out the cigarette and frowned at me. "The woman dead?"



"It's beginning to look that way. If it's the same people-"



"Yeah, but why would it be the same people? What's the connection, the MO of the abduction?" When I didn't say anything he picked up the check, glanced at it, and tossed it across the table to me. "Here," he said. "Your treat. You still at the same number? I'll call you this afternoon."



"Thanks Joe."



"No, don't thank me. I have to figure out if there's any way this is going to come back and haunt me. If not I'll make the call. Otherwise forget it."



I WENT to the noon meeting at Fireside, then back to my room. There was nothing from Durkin, but a message slip indicated that I'd had a call from TJ. Just that- no number, no further message. I crumpled the slip and tossed it.



TJ is a black teenager I met about a year and a half ago on Times Square. That's his street name, and if he has another name he's kept it to himself. I'd found him breezy and saucy and irreverent, a breath of fresh air in the fetid swamp of Forty-second Street, and the two of us had hit it off together. I let him do some minor legwork on a case a little later on with a Times Square handle on it, and since then he'd kept in infrequent contact. Every couple of weeks there would be a call or a series of calls from him. He never left a number and I had no way of getting in touch with him, so his messages were just a way of letting me know he was thinking of me. If he really wanted to contact me he'd keep calling until he caught me at home.



When he did, we sometimes talked until his quarter ran out, or sometimes we would meet in his neighborhood or mine and I would buy him a meal. Twice I'd given him little jobs to do in connection with cases I was working, and he seemed to get a kick out of the work that couldn't be explained by the small sums I paid him.



I went to my room and called Elaine. "Danny Boy says hello," I said. "And Joe Durkin says you're a good influence on me."



"Of course I am," she said. "But how does he know?"



"He says I'm better dressed since we started keeping company."



"I told you that new suit is special."



"That's not what I was wearing."



"Oh."



"I was wearing my blazer. I've had the damn thing forever."



"Well, it still looks nice. Gray slacks with it? Which shirt and tie?" I told her, and she said, "Well, that's a nice outfit."



"Pretty ordinary, though. I saw a zoot suit last night."



"Honestly?"



"With a drape shape and a reet pleat, according to Danny Boy."



"Danny Boy wasn't wearing a zoot suit."



"No, it was an associate of his named- well, it doesn't matter what his name was. He was also wearing a straw hat with a shocking-pink band. Now if I'd worn something like that to Durkin's office-"