Murder in Alphabet City (16 page)

“Excuse me,” she said sternly, pulling back.

“I'll help you in,” he said cordially, pushing the door open.

“Out of my way,” she ordered.

He gave her a warm smile. “Sorry. Have a good evening.”

She stood and watched him walk down the street. He didn't look back. When he was gone, she went inside.

20

W
HEN SHE TURNED
off the alarm, it kept on ringing. Confused, she looked at the clock. It wasn't seven yet and it was the phone making the noise. She picked it up.

“Jane, Gordon. My daughter's not home.”

“Jesus, what happened?”

“She snuck out after we went to bed. I checked her before I went to sleep. She must have waited awhile. We have carpeting. You can't hear a damn thing.”

“You call the precinct?”

“Just now.”

“Want me to call McElroy?”

“Yeah, thanks. I better stay here. My wife's about to collapse.”

And probably Gordon too, Jane thought. “I'll come out.”

“What for?”

“We'll figure something out. Let me know if you hear. Gordon, I feel terrible.”

“Thanks.”

She called McElroy, who was all sympathy. “Sure. Go out. Give him some support. I'll tell Annie.”

“Thanks, Lieutenant.”

She hung up and sat on the edge of the bed, her insides doing terrible things. A teenaged girl and an older man. God, let her be alive, she thought. Gordon and his wife must be going through holy hell. She started moving, bathroom, clothes, bed, breakfast, although she wasn't hungry. The cop's rule was always eat first. You never know when you'll get your next meal when you're on a case. Let her be alive, please let her be alive.

Defino lived in Bellerose, a section of Queens on the edge of the Nassau County line. His resident precinct was the One-oh-five.

Jane took the F train to the end of the line in Queens and got off at Hillside Avenue. “End of the line” was the right description; you could be in Boston faster. From there she took the bus to 262nd Street. Then she walked. Boston, she thought. She could be in France by now.

Two police cars were parked at the Defino home, one in the driveway, one in front of the house. She took out her shield and pinned it to the lapel of her coat before she rang the doorbell. A uniform opened the door.

“Detective Bauer?”

“Yes. What's up?”

“She just came home.”

“Thank God.” Her throat choked up and she swallowed. “She OK?”

“We don't know yet.”

That meant they suspected rape. From a nearby room, she heard a girl scream “It's your fault. It's all your fault,” and Defino's familiar voice telling her to calm down. Jane moved toward the fracas. They were in the living room, the family and two uniformed cops who looked very unhappy. The girl looked awful. Her hair needed washing, her face was streaked with tears. Her clothes were a caricature of the cool teenager.

“Gordon,” Jane said, and silence fell like a blanket as everyone turned toward her.

“Jane. She's back. Toni, this is Jane Bauer.”

Defino's wife's face was as streaked with tears as her daughter's. She came over and said hello. “Thank you for coming. I nearly died of worry.”

“What happened?”

“We don't know yet. She went out with some man. He kept her overnight and just dropped her off a couple of blocks from here. At least that's what she said. Gordon says she has to be tested for rape.” She spoke softly so no one would hear.

“Did she say she'd been raped?”

“She said she was and then she said she wasn't.”

The conversation had begun again, but at a lower volume. The daughter was still accusing her father of being at fault. Defino looked ready to take on the world. If he could find the man his daughter had been with, he'd be dead.

One of the uniforms came over to Jane and drew her into the kitchen. “We've got to take her to the hospital for an examination.”

“I know.”

“She's pretty adamant.”

“I'll take her if I can convince her to go. Why don't you guys back off a little. This is hard enough without all the blues around.”

“Sure thing.”

“But I'll need you to drive us.” She went back to the living room.

“I just want to take a shower and go to bed,” the daughter wailed.

“You're not taking a shower,” Defino thundered.

The girl burst into tears.

Jane took Defino by the arm and walked him to the kitchen. “Listen to me. I know what's worrying her. Let me talk to her. I can take her for the exam. You stay home.”

“I want to know.”

“I'll tell you what you need to know.”

He looked angry enough to hit her. “What does that mean?”

“If she was raped, you'll know.”

He went to the sink and took a glass of water. He drank it thirstily, then put the glass down on the counter. “What the fuck does she mean that this was my fault?” he said, leaning over the sink.

“We'll find out. Let's just make sure she doesn't take a shower.”

“Come on. I'll introduce you.”

They went back to the living room. Toni was sitting, holding her child's head against her breast. Toni was a handsome woman, a little plump but not fat. The girl was like Defino, a spindle. Her hair was brown, like her father's, and streaked with blond.

“Angela, I want you to meet Detective Bauer, my partner.”

The girl looked up and nodded.

“Hi, Angela. Would you come and talk to me for a minute?”

Angela seemed anxious to get out of her parents' presence. She got up off the sofa and followed Jane to the kitchen where they both sat at the table.

“You need to have a rape test done,” Jane said quietly.

“I wasn't raped. We didn't do that. We just—”

“Maybe there's DNA. We need evidence. We have to find this man.”

“Please leave me alone. Please tell them to leave me alone. This isn't my fault.” She seemed ready to cry again.

“If you were raped, your parents will be told. They won't be told anything else.” She kept her eyes on Angela.

“Do they have to do it now?”

“They have to do it before you clean yourself off.”

Tears rolled down her soiled cheeks. “Let's just go, OK? I want to get it over with. And they don't come.”

“They won't.”

They went in the radio car. Jane had instructed the cops in the front seat not to banter and they sat without saying a word. Defino, under protest, stayed home with his wife. As they drove, Jane asked Angela quietly what had happened.

She had met the man, Bill Fletcher, after school a couple of days ago. Yesterday, he walked her almost to her house and asked her out for the evening. He was cute and said he could get them in to a TV show in Manhattan. But her parents wouldn't let her go. He called her—she had told him she couldn't call him because her father was a cop and he could trace calls from the house—and she said she would meet him at the corner at midnight. That was too late for the TV show, but he would think of something else that was fun.

“Where did he take you?” Jane asked.

“To his house, or somebody's house. It was dark and I don't know where we were. We just hung out. He made scrambled eggs and gave me some Scotch. And then—”

Jane waited.

“I was tired and he was tired and we just kinda laid on the bed.”

“That's all you did?”

“No.”

The car turned into the emergency area and they all got out. One of the cops had phoned ahead and a young nurse was waiting for them. She put her arm around Angela and talked to her softly. It took time. There were papers to fill out, a counselor to talk to. Jane stayed in the examining room, sitting by Angela's side, feeling the pressure of her hand when she felt pain. When it was over, the nurse motioned her outside.

“She wasn't raped. There's some bruising, also on her arms, I noticed, and a little fluid. I don't know if we'll get anything from it.”

“Thanks.”

“And by the way, your girl's a virgin.”

“Double thanks.”

The cops drove them back, silent once again.

“Angela,” Jane said, “why did you say it was your father's fault?”

“Because this morning, when Bill dropped me off at McDonald's, he said—” She took a breath that was almost a sob. “He said my father should mind his own business. He said Daddy was . . . how did he put it? He was sticking his nose into places it didn't belong.”

“Was he talking about your father's police work?”

“I think so. He said something else. I can't remember.” She shook her head. “Oh yeah. It was about me. He said, ‘If your old man doesn't lay off, you won't get off so easy next time.' ”

“There won't be a next time, Angela.”

“What is my father working on?”

“An old case. It's from years ago. It has nothing to do with what's going on now.”

“He almost raped me,” Angela said, sniffing. “I fought him off.”

Jane put her arm around her.

“I just remembered. He said something else. He drove me to McDonald's this morning and he pushed me out of the car and he said, ‘Remember what I told you.' And then he said, ‘A B C D.' ”

A chill passed through Jane's shoulders. A, B, C, D. Alphabet City.

Toni took charge of her daughter when they got back. After she slept, she would have to go down to the 105th Precinct and make a statement. Defino would go with her. He walked outside the house with Jane and lit a cigarette. His hand wasn't steady.

“All right, tell me.”

“She wasn't raped. But he threatened her. He said next time—”

“Fuck him, there's no next time.”

“Calm down. He sent you a message. That's what this was all about. He wants you off the case you're working on.”

“He said that?”

“Words to that effect. And when he dropped her off this morning, he reminded her to tell you what he'd said. And he finished with A, B, C, D.”

“Who the fuck is this guy?”

“I don't know. But just maybe they got some DNA from him.”

Defino looked at her starkly. “But she wasn't raped.”

“She wasn't raped.” Jane put an arm around his shoulders. “Relax, Gordon. Your daughter's a virgin.” Without warning, tears started down her cheeks. “Shit, what the fuck is wrong with me?” She reached in her pocket for a tissue and blotted her face, feeling more embarrassed than she had for years. Crying in front of another cop, in front of her partner, for Christ's sake. “Sorry.”

“It's OK. We're all OK. Thanks for telling me.”

She gave him a squeeze. “I'm going back to Centre Street.”

“I'll drive you to the station.”

“Go sit with your wife. She needs you a lot more than I do.”

“You look like hell,” Captain Graves said. Jane, MacHovec, and McElroy were in the whip's office for debriefing.

“I thought she was dead, Cap. I know Gordon did too. Here's the way it played.” She went through the whole thing, landing hard on the end: A, B, C, D.

“Alphabet City,” the whip said.

“Eight fuckin' years and these guys are making threats?” McElroy seemed astounded.

“They must be back in business, or they never went out, just closed down the operation and opened it up again somewhere else. Or there was a death and they're still liable. Sean, you have kids?”

“Yeah, but not at home.”

“Your wife?”

“I'll take care of it.” He flipped some pages. “I'm getting the names and addresses of the phone numbers Vale and Rinzler called. I called a lot of them this morning and they've all been reassigned. Maybe Monday if we're lucky.”

“Monday is two weeks,” Graves said. “Decision time on the Stratton case. We've got something going here. I'm going to reopen the Rinzler suicide case and have it reclassified as a possible homicide. We have enough to support that position.”

“I can work with that,” Jane said.

“I'll call Mrs. Constantine on Monday. Meanwhile”—he looked at his watch—“have a nice weekend.”

Defino called at night. He sounded as though he hadn't slept in days. He had taken Angela to the precinct and filed a complaint. She had been interviewed by two female detectives, one from the precinct squad, the other a specialist from the Borough Sex Crimes Unit. On Monday, she would sit with an artist and try to get a good likeness of Bill Fletcher. Defino was itching to get his hands on Vale.

“Vale was supposed to take care of you by sweet-talking you, and this mutt Fletcher was supposed to take care of me.”

“Vale and Fletcher have to be connected.”

“Vale put him on my tail. Captain Graves called. He wants me off the case.”

“Shit,” she said softly.

“I told him to forget about it. I'm on and I'm staying on.”

“What about your family?”

“I've worked it out.”

That meant he had enlisted the aid of friends and colleagues to see to it that the Defino children got to and from school safely. In addition, a uniform or a detective would be inside and outside the house for some time to come.

“Gordon, we have to go for Rinzler's case files and personnel files.”

“Personnel files won't give us anything. Miss Margaret O'Neill just wrote down what looked good at the moment.”

“Then we have to try to find her.”

“It'll take more than sweet-talk to get anything out of her, if she's what Washington described.”

“Let's make the effort.”

“I'll see you Monday. You're a stand-up gal, you know that?”

21

B
EFORE RETURNING TO
work at the beginning of the month, Jane and her former partner, Marty Hoagland, had arranged to make one of their two annual required visits to Rodman's Neck, the NYPD shooting range, the following Saturday. Three hours would be spent in classes on new laws, regulations, and tactics, another three on live fire exercises with her Glock and her off-duty S&W.

Rodman's Neck was up in the Bronx, an almost impossible location to reach without a car. Marty would pick her up. Sitting back on her sofa across from the fire, she keyed his number to confirm their appointment.

His wife answered and they chatted a while before she called Marty to the phone.

“Hey, Jane, how's things? We got a date next Saturday.”

“Right. When should I be ready?”

“Six-thirty. We can talk on the way. Shouldn't be too much traffic on Saturday morning.”

On the following morning, Jane started calling Erica Rinzler's friends. She had luck with the first number, Mimi Bruegger.

“Ms. Bruegger, this is Det. Jane Bauer of the New York Police Department.”

“Oh God. Is it my mother?”

“It's all right, ma'am. Nothing's wrong. I'm part of a team that's investigating the death of Erica Rinzler.”

“Erica.” She sounded incredulous. “Erica died years ago.”

“I'm aware of that. We have reason to believe that her death may not have been a suicide.” There was a silence. “Ms. Bruegger?”

“Yes, I heard you.” She had a childlike voice and could have been mistaken for a teenager. “I guess I'm confused. I couldn't believe she'd killed herself when I heard it, but as time went on, I got used to the idea. Are you telling me she was murdered?”

“It's possible. Could we get together and talk, ma'am?”

“Sure. Let me look at my calendar.” She put the phone down and Jane heard her talking some distance away. “I'm pretty busy this coming week but I could get away this afternoon.”

“Tell me where and when.”

“Uh. My husband's a member of the Harvard Club and I can use their facilities. It's on West Forty-fourth between Fifth and Sixth. It's comfortable and we can talk privately.”

“That sounds good.”

“I'll meet you inside the front door at two.”

“I'll be there.”

It was one of the places in Manhattan she had never been in, although she knew where the building was. It was a large, old brick building with a somewhat forbidding edifice, near the New York Yacht Club and down the block from the old Algonquin Hotel. She had been to a couple of meetings at the hotel but had not set foot in the clubs. She wondered how long women had been allowed to enter. Probably Flora knew. It was the kind of thing she kept up with.

She picked up the F train at West Fourth Street, rode it to Forty-second Street, and walked north two blocks and then east to the Harvard Club. It was as imposing as she recalled but no one stopped her as she entered. As she looked around, a small round woman in a long mink coat walked over to her.

“Detective Bauer?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Jane showed her the shield and photo ID. “Ms. Bruegger?”

Mimi Bruegger smiled and held out her hand. “Come on. We can keep our coats.”

They walked past a coat check and ended up in a large, old-fashioned room with comfortable furniture, a man's kind of room. They took possession of a sofa and a chair for their coats. Mimi Bruegger was wearing a black skirt and a frilly blouse. Her blond curls bobbed when she talked.

“Want some coffee?”

“I'm fine.”

“OK. I told my husband what we were going to talk about. Dave knew Erica and he was really stunned when we heard she'd committed suicide. No one ever asked us anything. Why did it take so long for the police to get involved?”

“We've been looking into another death and Ms. Rinzler's name came up through her job at Social Services.”

“You mean like through a client?”

“That's right.”

“She was such a doll, my Bee-Bee. You know she was called Bee-Bee.”

“I've heard. It was a childhood nickname.”

“You've learned a lot. Who've you been talking to?”

“Some people who knew her at work. Ms. Bruegger, how long did you know Erica Rinzler?”

“Oh gosh, years. We went to high school together, then Brooklyn College. I left after two years and went to the University of Michigan. It was my first time out of New York, can you believe it?”

Jane could. She had lived a similarly insulated life. “What about Erica? What did she do after college?”

“She went to social work school and got her M.S.W. I think she took a little time off after college and went to Europe, not too long. She had wanderlust. She just wanted to get away.”

“And then she went for her M.S.W. Do you remember where?”

“Columbia.”

The spiral notebook was from Columbia. “Did she get a job right away with Social Services after she got her degree?”

The little woman nodded. “Pretty soon after, I think.”

“Did she ever marry?”

“No. She wanted to. There was a guy when she was in her early twenties, a real nice guy, but it didn't work out. They dated, but it just never amounted to anything.” She spoke with sadness.

“Did she complain about not having enough money to live on?”

Mimi's laugh was almost a giggle. “Who doesn't? Although I don't complain much anymore.” Her diamond engagement ring flashed as she spoke.

“What I mean is, was she thinking of getting a job that paid better or maybe something part-time to give her a little extra money?”

“She may have said something like that but nothing specific. She loved her job even though sometimes it was hell.”

“In what way?”

“The battle-ax she worked for was impossible. Some of her clients were difficult to deal with. You know, mothers who desert their families, kids who get into terrible trouble. You're with the police; I'm sure you could tell me a thing or two.”

“But she never said she was doing additional work.”

“No.”

“Did she talk to you about her clients?”

“In a general way. She never mentioned names. She was very circumspect.”

“Did she call you after she left the job?”

“She called me that night or the next day. She said she had quit, it had just gotten to her, she couldn't stand it anymore, Miss What's-her-name would see to it her job was a dead end, that sort of thing. She sounded awful, angry, upset. I told her to calm down. I said let's get together and talk this out. Come and stay overnight. You know, the things you say to a friend.”

“And?”

“And the next thing I knew, she was living with her sister upstate. I don't mean it was a permanent thing; she said it was temporary. But she'd left her apartment, she'd cut off her phone, and she didn't even have a forwarding number. Can you believe that? I said, ‘Bee-Bee, what are you doing? You can't cut yourself off from the whole world just because you lost your job.' And you know what she said? She said, ‘I didn't lose it. I shoved it up their ass.' ”

“Mrs. Bruegger, did you see Ms. Rinzler after she quit?”

“Yes, I think I did. I think she came in one day for an interview—she was looking for a job—and we had lunch.”

“How long before her death was that?”

“A couple of weeks. I talked to her after that. And then her sister called.” Her cheery face had become almost tearful. “I couldn't believe it.”

“Did Erica ever tell you she owned a gun?”

“Erica didn't own a gun.” Mimi waved a dismissing hand in the air. “That's a crock, you know that? I don't know how she came to kill herself, and I suppose no one will ever know, but she didn't go out and buy a gun. You can't get a gun in New York State if you're not a cop, can you?”

“It's difficult. Did Erica smoke a little grass now and then?”

“Probably. Everybody did, at least when they were young and single. But she'd never do anything stronger than that.”

“She ever supply any for anyone you know?”

“Bee-Bee? Forget it. It was purely recreational.”

Jane took out her card and handed it to Mimi. “If you think of anyone who was friendly with her near the end of her life, man or woman, I'd like to know.”

“She had a friend in California, Ellie Raymond.”

“Yes.”

“There may have been a man for a while, but nothing with promise. What Erica wanted was to have a baby. She thought about it. She talked about it. But like so many things in her life, it was just talk. It never amounted to anything.”

“You didn't happen to talk to her the day she died, did you?”

“I talked to her a few days before, but I can't remember how many. I called her at Judy's.”

“Was she depressed?”

“You know what? She wasn't. She was confident she'd find something.”

“We've heard that she went into New York on the last day of her life to have lunch with a friend. Do you know anything about that?”

“It wasn't with me. I don't know who it could have been. But she had other friends.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Bruegger.”

“Sure you don't want any coffee?”

“I'm sure, thanks.”

“Well, I think I'll just stop in and have some myself. If you find anything out, I hope you'll let me know.”

Jane said she would. She walked through the building to the front door, looking at the men who had gone to Harvard.

It was late afternoon, after she had done her Saturday chores, that the phone rang.

“Detective Bauer, this is Judy Weissman. From Chappaqua?”

“Yes, Mrs. Weissman.” She tensed, wondering if Weissman had heard about the storage company.

“I told you something when you were here last week. I apologize, but I seem to have made a mistake.”

“About what?”

“Those beads you showed me, the ones I said were my daughter's.”

“Yes.”

“I said something to Sandy yesterday about the little beads she gave to Aunt Erica. She said my sister gave them back; they were too delicate and she was afraid they would break. Sandy has them. The beads you showed me couldn't have been hers.”

“I see. Thank you, Mrs. Weissman. I appreciate your call.”

“Is it meaningful? I mean, you seemed pleased when I identified them as belonging to Erica.”

“If it's meaningful, we'll find out. At the moment, it just leaves us not knowing where they came from. If you think of anything else—”

“Sure. Bye-bye.”

Jane hung up and got the little plastic envelope out of her bag. They were too small for a grown woman to wear, especially not with the larger, colorful beads everyone remembered seeing on Rinzler. Rose was sure they hadn't been hers. Shit, maybe they had nothing to do with anything.

MacHovec had completed the time line on Friday while Jane was out in Queens. He had Xeroxed it in eight-and-a-half-inch widths and left a copy on each desk. She took hers out and spread it on the sofa, kneeling in front of it to see the whole thing at once. At the left end was the date when Stratton moved into the apartment in Alphabet City. Little notes indicated when he saw the psychiatrist at the beginning of his stay. A pencil notation showed when Rinzler probably began to visit him. That reminded Jane that they had to get the Social Services files that would tell them exactly when she made her first visit. A lot of data had to be filled in, she thought. Lew Beech had done none of this. He had been working with an apparent suicide. Erica's clients were unimportant to him.

Actually, between the visits to the psychiatrist and the finding of Stratton's body, little was certain. Stratton's body had been found on November 17. The medical examiner had estimated the time of death to be two weeks earlier, approximately November 3, but that was a rough estimate. Mrs. Constantine had left for France on October 15 but had not spoken to her brother for several days although she had called his number. That was a nearly five-week gap and it wasn't clear when her last telephone contact with him had been or when she had actually seen him last, which could have been some time earlier. It was possible he hadn't been eating well for some time, but if Mrs. C. hadn't been there to notice that he was losing weight, they couldn't put a date on when the deprivation had begun. And if she hadn't spoken to him, she might not know that the Social Service worker he got along with so well had stopped coming.

That was the question, wasn't it? When did Erica Rinzler stop coming? If they knew that, they could begin to find out what had happened before that date to keep her away from Stratton. Was it the breakup with Vale? Jane wasn't convinced there had even been an “affair,” as Vale chose to call it, with Rinzler. It was a cinch the Chinese laundry didn't have a record of the last time Stratton's shirts were brought in or delivered. So much was murky and no way to verify when important events occurred. Even when they got the records from Social Services, nothing Rinzler wrote down could be relied on to be any more accurate than Vale's truths.

So, she thought, if we assume Stratton died around November 3, then he stopped eating around the time his sister left the country, October 15, give or take. And maybe that was why he didn't answer the phone when she called. He was too weak. Or he didn't care. Perhaps he wanted Rinzler for himself and when he learned of her affair with Vale, he became depressed and stopped eating.

That would work. What it didn't explain was why Rinzler didn't show up to check on him or send someone else in her place. Mrs. C. hadn't mentioned any change after Rinzler took over Stratton's case.

Jane went back to the time line. To the right of Stratton's body being found on November 17 was a notation that Rinzler parted company with Social Services on the eighteenth. That meant someone at the Nine had notified Social Services and they had wasted no time giving her the ax. Maybe Vale had told the cop that Stratton was under the Social Services umbrella. It wouldn't take long for Miss Margaret O'Neill to get word.