Investigation (32 page)

Vincent had added that his statement was given of his own free will, in full understanding of the fact that since he had waived immunity he was vulnerable under the laws of the State of New York to prosecution as an accessory to this crime. He had insisted on adding, “I make this statement because I know that Kitty Keeler did not mean to hurt her boys. It was an accident; a terrible accident and she should not have to live with people saying she is a cold-blooded murderer and all those other things people have been saying about her.”

Which was a helluva lot of help to Kitty Keeler.

Using the collection of notes I’d taken, and relying on my memory, I typed up what Kitty had told me up at the cabin. Occasionally, I jotted notations or questions on my legal pad, things that Kitty would have to clarify for me—later, when I tried to make some kind of sense out of what three different people claimed had happened the night the boys were murdered.

KITTY KEELER’S STATEMENT RE NIGHT OF MURDERS

George finally fell asleep after throwing up and wetting himself I don’t know how many times. Then Terry started saying his throat was sore, which is just how it started with Georgie. So I gave Terry two sleeping pills; it was around ten o’clock. It’s not the kind of thing you brag about, but I was just too exhausted to give a damn; I just wanted the kids settled down for the night.

I was feeling very low; kept thinking about what was going on in Phoenix, with me stuck here in Fresh Meadows. Finally, I decided the hell with this. I called George to tell him that like it or not, he was going to stay with the kids for the next couple of days while I went out to Phoenix. I had worked damned hard getting ready for the opening out there; I was entitled.

It probably was 11:20 when I called George, if that’s what everyone says. I made a mistake the first time, when I said it was about 10:15 or 10:20 when I made the call. It was an honest mistake; not important as far as I was concerned. Then everyone kept asking me if I was sure it wasn’t more like 11:15 or 11:20 when I called. I got mad; I got my Irish up and stuck with my original statement for no other reason, just that you all got me so mad. It wasn’t a significant time as far as I was concerned.

Then George couldn’t come to the phone and I had a go-round with that bitch, Lucille. By the time I hung up, I was really fuming. So I called Vincent, out in Phoenix, and he told me what was going on: all the movie people and sports people who were there. By the time I finished talking with Vince, I was ready to climb the walls.

So I called a guy I know. Named Billy Weaver....

According to Kitty, this Billy Weaver was someone she’d met when they both worked at Mogliano’s. She hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, then she ran into him about a year ago at a party. He had come up in the world: from busboy to cocaine dealer. About fifteen minutes after she called Weaver, he sent a car around to pick her up.

When the doorbell rang, three short jabs, I just walked out of the apartment. Didn’t check on the kids; they were quiet, so why look for trouble. There was a tall, dark young guy waiting for me at the curb, leaning against a small green car. A Datsun or Toyota or something like that. We didn’t say much of anything; I just got in and he drove me to some apartment building in Jackson Heights. He took me to apartment 3-D. It was very dark inside; there were a lot of people, mostly men. Billy Weaver was waiting for me in the kitchen. He told me that most of the people in the apartment were illegal aliens: from Central America and the Caribbean islands....

Kitty said that she and Weaver snorted; that she felt good: slightly high, very aware, relaxed, animated. She said that Weaver told her he was having some trouble with some “people” who felt he was encroaching on their territory. Some of his couriers were turning up dead. He seemed really scared and asked Kitty to talk to Vincent Martucci; to see if Vince could intervene for him in some way. She was there for nearly two hours; then the driver, Benjamin the Cuban is what Billy called him, drove her back to her apartment.

As I opened the apartment door, the phone was ringing. I ran into the kitchen and grabbed it before the second ring. It was Patti. She told me about how she’d come to Fresh Meadows to return the car and how no one answered the door. I didn’t believe her, knowing Patti, but as it turns out, I guess she was telling the truth. Because she was right: I wasn’t home at 2:30; I was with Billy Weaver, getting high and listening to his troubles. Then I checked the boys’ room. The kids were gone.

Kitty thought of George: he’d done this to her before. He must have come over to the apartment, found the kids alone and taken them back to his pub apartment. She started to call him, then stopped. What the hell could she tell him: that she’d left her sick kids alone while she was out getting high with her pusher?

So I called Vince again. I guess the call was between 3:10 and 3:25, like the phone company records show. I told him how I’d gone out to see Billy, that the kids were gone when I got back, that I was ashamed to call George. Vince said not to call George; to just go to bed; wait until daylight. Let George cool off. So I waited. I just read magazines the rest of the night. I was wide awake. I never did get into bed, which was why it was made up when you police arrived. So, I called George at 7:30. And then he came over and then he called the police. And you know the rest.

I thought about Kitty, the way she looked and sounded and moved when telling me her version of that night. It was the first time she had sounded out in the open, not trying to alibi or excuse herself for what she’d done, but also not blaming herself for what had happened to her sons. I put her statement into a file folder and got to work on George Keeler’s “confession.”

It was a long, tightly written statement covering page after page of neatly printed writing, and a great deal of George Keeler came through.

GEORGE KEELER’S CONFESSION RE MURDER OF HIS SONS

... I went upstairs to my apartment and tried to get Kitty back on the phone, but her line was busy. I had the operator check it out. I knew Kitty’d keep it tied up all night, just to get even with me for not coming to the phone. And also for the way things worked out. I really didn’t want her to go to Phoenix in the first place; I was afraid she wouldn’t come back. I was glad the baby, Georgie, got sick; that way, she had to stay home....

But George felt sorry for Kitty and guilty for the way things had turned out for her. He was very aware of the differences between them: not just the age difference, but their outlook. He wanted to talk to her, to tell her they’d work it out. He checked out the pub: everyone was all wrapped up in the singing group; all the customers were fine. He slipped out the back way, avoiding Danny and Lucille and anyone else; he didn’t want them to know he was going over to see Kitty. They would feel sorry for him.

It took him about ten minutes to get over to Fresh Meadows; he parked in front of his building and let himself in with his key.

I could hear Kitty talking on the phone in the bedroom. I tiptoed to the doorway and figured out it was Vince Martucci she was talking to. I figured she was just tying up the line on spite, so I couldn’t get through to her. She didn’t know I was there, so I went into the boys’ room.

I just wanted to see them. Little Georgie woke up and saw me and he started crying. 1 don’t know why, but I didn’t want Kitty to know 1 was there, in the apartment. So I picked Georgie up and tried to quiet him but he started to cry more, so I put my hand over his mouth. Just to quiet him. So Kitty wouldn’t come into the room.

I don’t know how it happened. I never meant to hurt the baby. I just didn’t want him to cry anymore. I guess I put my hand on his throat. I guess I choked him. He got very quiet. I put him back into his bed. Terry was asleep. I went back into the hallway and listened. Kitty was still talking to Vince. She was laughing about something. 1 think that’s what made me feel sort of crazy—Kitty, laughing and talking just to keep the phone all tied up, just to get even with me. So I wanted to get even with her. To get back at her, I guess....

And so, to “get even with Kitty,” George Keeler stated, he picked up both of his sleeping sons and quietly carried them out of the apartment; put them on the back seat of his station wagon and drove back to the parking lot behind his pub. In his statement, he said that he knew there was something wrong with both of them, but he would think about that later. He slipped back inside; the singers were just about winding up their performance; the action among the customers started up again, and George just pitched right in with Lucille and Danny and the extra part-time help. No one seemed to have missed him; everyone assumed he had been there all along.

A couple of times, George stepped outside and checked on the boys; both of them were quiet. He kept expecting Kitty to call him, once she discovered the boys were missing, but she didn’t call. Finally, when the pub closed down, at around two-fifteen or so, he dialed Kitty’s number. The phone rang several times; no one answered.

Then I went out back and sat in the station wagon trying to think what to do.

I knew Georgie was dead. I knew he was dead and I didn’t believe it, all at the same time. I was in a commando unit in Korea. One of my jobs, my unit’s job, was to take care of sentries when we were on a behind-lines mission. It hardly takes any pressure at all as long as you know the exact spot on the neck and throat. It’s fast and quiet. I knew that I did that to Georgie so that he wouldn’t cry out. I didn’t want to hurt him; I never in my life hurt my kids. I just didn’t want him to cry out....

George couldn’t figure out what had happened to Terry. He didn’t remember doing anything to him, but the boy didn’t seem to be breathing, so he reasoned he must have choked Terry as well. He sat in the wagon for a while, then drove back to Fresh Meadows and kept driving around the complex. Then he pulled into his parking slot and sat there for a while, just looking at the windows of his apartment. Then he drove around some more.

Then I drove over to Peck Avenue and parked there and just sat. I checked the boys again. They were dead. I thought about Kitty. I thought about how I would lose her forever if she knew what I had done. I had a gun in the glove compartment. It was unregistered. I took it from a guy who tried to hold up my place in the Bronx. I never reported it to the police. I broke the guy’s arm and kept his gun. I thought I could make it look like someone, some nut, took the boys and killed them. So I took them into the park and I put them on the ground. I fired at Terry. So that Kitty would think someone had taken them and killed them, there in the park.

Then I drove over to Flushing Meadow Park and got out of the station wagon and walked around for a while. I tossed the gun into the Flushing Meadow bay, then went back to my apartment at the pub and lay down and fell asleep. I kept dreaming and dreaming, then waking up and wondering if it had really happened, or if it had all been a terrible nightmare....

Then Kitty called him and said, “George, where are the kids?” and George Keeler knew it hadn’t been a nightmare; it had all been real.

When everyone said that Kitty did it, I couldn’t speak out. I knew she was innocent and that nobody could prove anything against her, because she hadn’t done it. But I couldn’t tell her that I had killed the boys. And also because for that time, Kitty turned to me, the way she used to when she was a kid and I was always there to help her out. I was important to her. We were never closer. And then she was indicted. I never thought that could happen. And then the lawyer was talking about making a deal, about her copping out to a plea-bargain deal.

So I wrote all this out, just the way it happened. I have to do it this way because of what I done to the boys and because I can’t ever face Kitty again, once she knows.

Everything I wrote here is true. God can never forgive me for what I done, but I pray that somehow Kitty can.

And that was George Keeler’s version of what happened on the night his two young sons were taken from their beds and their murdered bodies dropped in a park just off Peck Avenue in Queens. It was also the document that everyone was writing off as totally without value or validity.

I didn’t get much sleep that night. My mind kept roaming over the various statements; I kept hearing the various voices, each telling a different story of how the Keeler boys were murdered. Somewhere, in all of these words, was the truth.

Tim Neary was in a good mood Monday morning, until he saw me.

“I’ve been reading over George Keeler’s confession, Tim. Wadda ya say that I check it out before it goes into the case file?”

Tim’s mouth got tight and he looked up from the collection of papers which covered the top of his desk. He did one of those careful, blank stares and he said softly, “I thought we had that all straightened out, Joe.”

I dropped into a chair casually. “What the hell, why not let me give it a day or two?”

“You’re not listening to me, Joe.” He shifted to patient teacher explaining to stupid student. “You’re not getting my message. The Keeler case is closed as far as this office is concerned. We got the collar; we got the indictment. Kelleher and Quibro are both happy. Everyone feels certain that Keeler will cop out and make a deal, for the name of her accomplice. Everyone’s happy but you, Joe. What’s your particular problem?”

I went into my act. “Jeez, I don’t know, Tim. It’s probably just me, not the case. What the hell, we’ve known each other a long time, Tim. It’s, well, it’s talking long distance to Jen. We seem to be getting more and more screwed up.”

Tim pulled off his reading glasses and stopped tapping his ballpoint on his blotter. He leaned forward and was very sympathetic. “Hey, Joe, this has been going on too damn long. Look, why don’t you take some time off? Hop a plane down to Florida, what the hell will it take you, two, three hours?”