Murder in Alphabet City (27 page)

39

I
T WAS TIME
to wrap up the case. Captain Graves had his pound of paper, if not his pound of flesh. Since he was dealing with Mrs. C., he could work out what to say. Jane jogged to work Friday morning, her gun in her shoulder bag once again, and her off-duty left in the apartment. It was a hell of a lot easier to run without the damn weight on her right ankle.

She had telephoned McElroy last night after tending to the flowers, telling him the bottom line of their evening meeting with the Chinese family. By the time she arrived at Centre Street, Graves would know what happened but he would want to hear it in detail from her and Defino. It was MacHovec she was worried about. If Fletcher was unarmed, MacHovec would have to come up with a good story for the shooting. The fact that Angela Defino had nearly been raped by the guy would go a long way. And all of them had studied the sketch of Fletcher to the point where any one of them would recognize him. He was a threat. Although all of this was logical and convincing to a cop, Internal Affairs would look at it differently, and MacHovec would be given a hard time at the very least.

Annie gave her a smile and a big hello when she got to the second floor. Hurrying across the briefing area, Jane looked inside the office and was cheered to see MacHovec sitting in his usual place.

“How are you?” she said.

“On the job. How are you?”

“Can you say anything?”

“They've got my weapon and the DEA sent a lawyer over. I had a heart-to-heart with the whip and he's OK with the shooting.”

She wondered what had passed between the two men before her arrival, but that was between them. A note on her desk told her a meeting had been scheduled in the whip's office at nine-thirty. Time for coffee and a brief phone call.

She dialed Hack's number, possibly, she thought, for the last time. He would assume his new command in a short time, perhaps as soon as Monday.

“Hackett.”

“Thank you.”

“You know why I sent them?”

“Guilt.”

He laughed. “How 'bout love?”

“How 'bout it?” she said with a grin.

“Your partner's got a problem.”

“I know.”

“We can talk about it later. Meanwhile, think Paris.”

“I will.”

“That's a great passport picture.”

When she hung up, she pressed the key that dialed her father's number and hung up before it rang, a security procedure.

MacHovec was laughing again. “If I had conversations like that, I'd be in more trouble than I am right now.”

“I'm not in trouble, Sean. Can I buy you guys coffee?”

Two syllables of agreement sent her on her way. She had a thing about not getting coffee for men. She hadn't needed Flora to point out it was demeaning. But after being on the receiving end so often, she didn't mind.

They carried coffee and files into Graves's office. He was looking a lot better this morning, and so was McElroy. Annie sat apart from them, her notebook open. She glanced at MacHovec with a less than benign expression.

They started off with a recap of last night.

“Four,” MacHovec said when the number of dead babies came up. “What happened nine months before that?”

“A cold night in January,” McElroy said. “That'll do it every time.”

“Let's stick to what happened,” Graves said sternly.

When they were done, they talked about Stratton—“Anyone remember Stratton?”—and what Mrs. Constantine should be told.

“I think it's pretty clear Rinzler deserted her client, Cap,” Jane said. “It's easy to see why. Whether Mrs. C. thinks so or not, he must have been teetering on the brink of depression. He hadn't seen his shrink for almost two years. The ME said there were no drugs in his body, good or bad, so he hadn't been taking his meds. Rinzler stopped coming, Rose stopped coming, Vale”—Defino inserted an obscenity—“either stopped looking in on him or was told to stop by Rinzler. We'll never know what went through Stratton's head, but he didn't cook, he didn't order food, he stopped drinking water, and he died. He was probably too weak to pick up the phone near the end.”

“So we pin this on Rinzler,” Graves said.

“Sure.”

“Mrs. Constantine'll probably sue Social Services.” It was clear the idea didn't appeal to him.

“Maybe not. They'll give her a hard time in court. She bears some of the responsibility. Sean, you got the time line?”

He handed it across the desk, the new updated version with highlights on the third week of October.

“Look at when she left for Paris.”

“OK.”

“That was October fifteenth, four days before those babies were born. She didn't see him just before she left. She told me the last time I called that she tried to reach him several times but he didn't answer. She just assumed he was OK.”

“And you think he wasn't.”

“We'll never know. We can't tell from Rinzler's records when she last saw him because she fudged it. Maybe Rinzler was busy with real cases and didn't get to see Stratton around the time Mrs. C. was calling. Then, with four babies at once, she didn't have time. She was calling four sets of adoptive parents and setting up four times and places to present them with their babies. She got the babies from the birth mothers, took them to the laundry, set up the meetings, and got a phone call the next morning that there was trouble. No way was she ever going to set foot in Alphabet City again after she and Fletcher got rid of the bodies.”

“I'll handle all further communication with her,” Graves said, his intent clearly understood. “This is a case where everyone failed the victim at the same time.”

“Looks like it to me,” Defino said. “Vale was being paid to check on Stratton. At least he got a Christmas present from Constantine, he told us. I think Vale's taking a walk on this. Fletcher's gone, Rinzler's gone, the laundry folks weren't involved in his welfare. Nobody's left who can give us answers.”

“So what do we know about Rinzler's death? We reopened the case. How do we close it?”

“Jane and I have talked about it,” Defino said. “If she didn't kill herself, Fletcher killed her. He was a guy who knew what he was doing. The ME said the time of death was about six the previous evening, the day Rinzler was supposed to meet a friend for lunch. We don't think there was any lunch. We think she went to the hotel and waited for Fletcher to come and talk to her. Maybe they wanted to keep the baby business going and she had some ideas, or he did, on how to do it. Or maybe she borrowed money from him to pay back the adoptive parents and she needed to talk to him about it. Whatever it was, she was trouble for him and he decided to end it.

“He goes to the hotel late afternoon, early evening, when there's lots of activity, people going in and out for dinner, the theater, whatnot. He carries a backpack, not unusual for people in that class of hotel. It wasn't the Waldorf, remember. He's got his Colt fully loaded in the right-hand pocket of his windbreaker and he's wearing a baseball cap and keeps his head down in the elevator. Or he takes the stairs. Less chance of running into anyone. He's also got a cheap white cotton glove in the pocket with the gun.

“Rinzler's expecting him, opens the door, he goes in. If the TV isn't on, he turns it on. There's only the one bed and one chair to sit on so he takes the chair and she sits on the bed to his left while they talk. He sweet-talks her a while—this guy was good at that—and while they're talking he slips on the glove that's in his right pocket and grasps the gun. Maybe puts his left arm around her shoulders. When he's got her calmed down, he takes the gun out in his right hand where she doesn't see it, holds her right hand in his left near the gun, brings the gun up to her right temple, and pulls the trigger. One shot at close range, her body slumps off the bed to the floor. No pulse, so he's done the job. He puts the gun in her right hand, gets the prints where he wants them, job's done. Only her prints are on the gun and Lew Beech says it's a suicide and never asks why there are no prints on the bullets.” He looked at Jane. “You want to pick it up? I need a glass of water.”

“The rest of it,” she said, “is just cleaning up after himself. He's got tissues in his pocket. He rubs the power button on the TV remote, smooths out where maybe he sat on the bed, maybe checks the hall again, then goes to the bathroom where he cleans his face and hands over and over, making sure there's no blood. The used tissues go with him, zipped back in the pocket.

“Then he changes into clothes he's got in his backpack, a jogging suit maybe, a fresh windbreaker just like the first one. The clothes he was wearing get rolled up and packed away. He checks the hall, it's empty, he goes down on the elevator or the stairs, out to Fifty-fourth Street and he's home free.”

“And Lew Beech looks at the body, asks a couple of dumb questions, and says it's a suicide,” Defino said, returning with a cup of water.

“But you can't prove it,” Graves said. “So we have to close the case and say it's a suicide.”

They hadn't expected anything else, but at least they had it on the record. Graves would want them to write it up. It was Friday, a good day to clean up loose ends.

“Good work, Detectives,” Graves said, his face softening. “On another subject, Inspector Hackett has been promoted to deputy chief. He's giving a party next Wednesday night at a restaurant near One PP and he's invited the whole squad.”

“Us?” Defino said. “I don't even know him.”

“He's got a reputation as a generous person so yes, all of us. You too, Annie. Bring your best guy and have a good time. I've heard the chief of D is happy with our work. It must have filtered down.”

They shuffled out of the office. “You going?” Defino asked.

“Sure. Why not? I've never been to one for a deputy chief.”

“You're right. Why not?”

“Sean,” she said, “you come too.”

“I'll think about it. Free booze?”

“You're ten years out of date,” Defino said.

“You bringing your boyfriend?” MacHovec asked Jane.

“I'll go with my partner. It's safer.”

A formal invitation to the party was buried in her in-box. Defino called and accepted for both of them. Detectives from the other offices dropped by and asked if they were going. Everyone seemed to think the invitation meant a promotion was in the works. Fat chance.

They spent the day typing up Fives, discarding useless notes, repacking the material Judy Weissman had voluntarily surrendered and the smaller amount that they had taken from the storage place with the warrant. It was a day's work.

MacHovec got several calls during the day, obviously from his lawyer and others involved in the case. In the afternoon Graves dropped by holding the faxed preliminary autopsy on Fletcher, aka Lefferts. If he had used other names in his relatively short life, they were yet to be discovered, but MacHovec was working on it and if anyone could turn up information, he could.

“No surprises,” Graves said. He dropped a copy of the report on MacHovec's desk. “This is part of the investigation. Give me my pound of paper when the whole thing comes in next week.”

“More than a pound with the pictures,” Defino said.

Not that it would matter. Mrs. C. would be unhappy that the investigation had been inconclusive and the team, while relieved, shared that feeling. Nothing compared to the satisfaction of hearing a perp confess or at least finding several upstanding citizens who could turn state's evidence.

MacHovec copied the ME's report and submitted one to the file. The file would be part of his defense, if it came to that, and surely part of his case with Internal Affairs. “Well,” he said, locking his desk, “I'll see you folks Monday. Maybe we'll have a new old case to work on. Four weeks this one took.”

“Have a good weekend,” Jane said.

Defino nodded in MacHovec's direction, his attitude softening, but not enough to elicit a syllable.

Jane stuck around after he was gone and called her father, telling him the case had been resolved if not concluded definitively. He had heard about the shooting, as all New York had by that time, and he wanted Jane's insider's account of it.

“All I know is what you read in the papers, Dad. MacHovec called in a ten-thirteen and Defino and I ran. It wasn't far from the office, but by the time we got there, the street was full of brass and the action was over.”

“The brass,” he said. “Yeah, I think I heard the commissioner interviewed later on, one of those we-can't-say-anything-at-the-moment statements.”

“Internal Affairs will give MacHovec a hard time, but I think he'll make it. I hope so.” She asked about his health, about his friend Madeleine, and wound up the conversation. It was time to go home.

40

A
S USUAL, SHE
was one of the last to leave; both the whip's and the second whip's offices were empty. Outside the weather was glorious, the sometime January thaw having moved in from the south or west or wherever good weather came from. She jogged across Manhattan, sensing that it was working, that her legs were responding, her breathing less labored.

The weekend was before her and her cupboard was bare. She stopped and shopped as night fell, picking up a package of firewood on the way out. It was heavy and she was glad she didn't have far to carry it.

Juggling her bags, she opened the mailbox, tucked the mail in one of the bags, and rode the elevator up. In front of the door she put one bag down and worked the key, vaguely aware of a shadow at the other end of the hall. As she pushed the door open and lifted the second bag, she felt something hard in the middle of her back. She froze.

“Walk inside,” a female voice said. “Put the bag down and raise your hands.”

She did as she was told, trying unsuccessfully to place the voice. Names ran through her mind: Judy Weissman, Mimi Bruegger, Ellie Raymond, Mrs. Brusca. They all came up zeros.

“Put your purse on the floor. Take your coat off and drop it on the floor.
Don't turn around.
”

She complied. The Glock was in her handbag and her off-duty was in the bedroom closet. She was at the mercy of whoever this was.

“Walk into the kitchen and sit down with your hands on the table.”

She walked to a far chair, turned to pull it out, and looked toward the doorway at the figure holding the gun. “Patricia Washington,” Jane said, her voice barely audible.

“One and the same. Sit.” Still standing, Washington pushed the hood of her black sweatshirt jacket off her head and unzipped it, never changing the direction of the gun.

From where Jane was sitting, it looked like an S&W, much like her off-duty. What kind of double life was this woman involved in that she had a gun? And then, as so often happened, a capsule of speech replayed itself. “I have a brother with a problem.” A brother, no doubt, who had access to drugs and guns, who had served time and learned a lot in Rikers and Attica, enough to assist his social worker sister in whatever moneymaking scheme she dreamed up with Erica Rinzler. And they had never looked into his background.

“Patricia,” Jane began.

“Don't call me by my first name, Jane. I'm your equal, not your subordinate, and I have the gun.” Her eyes flashed as she spoke.

“I apologize. I just wanted to say we should talk.” All the work at Rodman's Neck and the gun was in her bag on the floor of the foyer.

“There's been enough talk. Your partner killed my lover yesterday. Someone has to pay for that and you're closer than Queens. Where's your weapon?”

Lover. Fletcher had been her young, gorgeous lover. “In my bag,” she managed to say, the view of Washington's living room passing before her eyes, the pipe and the tobacco pouch on the end table. “That was his pipe.”

“I knew you saw it. Yes, it was his pipe. Where's your second gun?”

“In a closet.”

Washington smiled. “Your partner got rid of the threat to your safety yesterday, right? Stick your legs out and pull up your pants.”

Jane pushed her chair back and did as she was told.

Washington observed, but stayed where she was. Then she sat down across the length of the table from Jane, a long enough distance that she was unreachable. The gun remained poised. “It never even occurred to you that it could be me, did it? You were looking for a man and all I was was a boring civil servant living out her mundane life at Human Resources until it was pension time.”

The table was old, thick, and heavy. Jane had moved it often enough to know its weight. She wondered if she had the strength to tip it up high enough and fast enough to shield herself from the inevitable bullets, which would almost certainly lodge in the thick wood. “We thought you were her friend.”

“I was. We dreamed the scheme up together. It was perfect. We were helping little white and Asian girls out of a pickle they'd gotten themselves into and we were making money besides. Then a group of unlucky events happened all at once and we were in deep shit.”

“I don't see why you couldn't have continued,” Jane said, speaking conversationally, alternatives racing through her mind. “The babies' bodies were disposed of outside of Alphabet City. No one could connect you to them. The Chinese family would never talk.”

Washington eyed her, picking up on what Jane knew. Before she could retort, the phone rang. Both of them froze.

“Don't move,” Washington ordered.

It rang three times and Jane's recorded voice came on with the routine message followed by the beep.

“This is Flora. You'll never guess who invited me to a party to wet down his shield. Give me a call when you come home.”

“You're not coming home tonight, Jane, and you've made your last call,” Washington said. “You wanted to know what happened eight years ago after the babies died and Erica paid off the mothers. She got a bad case of guilt is what happened. Depression. Her sister thought it was because she lost her job. It was the babies, all those lovely little white babies that died in the Chinese laundry. She didn't have the guts for it. She wanted to go to the police and tell them what happened. She wanted to blow our nice little operation wide open.”

“
You
shot her,” Jane said, her shock audible.

“Someone had to, and the man you call Fletcher was too young and inexperienced to handle it. He was
very
good at some things and almost useless at others. Like I told him to watch you people and find out what you knew. Instead, he moves in on the cop's kid and tries to tough talk her father off the case. Not a smart move. He was too impetuous, but I loved that in him.

“Where was I?” Washington squinted, trying to remember. “Yes, Erica. We were to meet at that hotel, have dinner, and talk about what she intended to do. My brother got me a gun and gave me a lesson in making it look like suicide. It wasn't hard. I needed a change of clothes, some gloves, some clean-up material, and a dose of determination. If that stupid, weak bitch had mentioned my name to the police, that was the end for me. I couldn't let her do it.”

That was the scenario Jane and Defino had worked out. Now she wondered how this one would end. If she tilted her chair and dropped to the floor, she might be able to crawl under the table before Washington got down with the gun. Whatever she decided to do, she had to make up her mind fast; Washington was coming to the end of her story and that would coincide with the end of Jane's life.

“So you made it look like suicide. You did a good job; that's how it went down. The detective on the case bought it just the way you planned it.”

“I'm not stupid and neither is my brother. There was nothing in that room that would lead to murder.”

Think and play for time. There wasn't a chance in hell that Hack would show up and no one else had the key. Saving her life was up to her. “The hotel operator said a man called.”

“A man did call.” Washington seemed both proud and amused. She had fooled the cops eight years ago and fooled them again this year. “But it wasn't a man who showed up at the hotel.”

“Nice going.” There were no other alternatives besides tipping the table and dropping to the floor. The table was empty and nothing nearby could be used as a weapon. All those lovely knives on the counter were out of reach. Even the salt and pepper mills were too far away to be of use. That's what came of being neat. Shit. To think neatness might cost her her life.

She began to feel panicky in earnest, her heartbeat increasing, her hands starting to sweat, her mouth drying. “Tell me about Maria Brusca,” she said, grabbing for the only other topic she could think of, the last unanswered question.

“I followed you there after you went to where the streetwalkers were, over on the East Side.”

“You did that too.” Fletcher had been only a lover and junior partner; sitting across from her was the brains and brawn of the operation, and the hatchet man.

“You were getting too close. I needed to shut her up. I knew if she was dead, her mother would be too scared to talk.”

“Her mother did talk.”

“Even I make mistakes.”

“Vale,” Jane said, dragging one final name out of her head. “He told Fletcher to go after my partner's daughter.”

“Vale was nothing more than a watchdog and for a while he was Erica's lover. We didn't really need him but Erica brought him in. He was useful for running errands. He had my number and he kept me posted. Vale didn't tell anyone what to do. I made the decisions.”

Decisions. Make a choice, Jane, she said to herself as Patricia Washington continued talking and then leveled her weapon at Jane. She pushed the chair to her right and dropped to the floor, then scrambled under the table as a shot was fired. Somebody call 911, she pleaded silently to her unknown neighbors, knowing the chances of that were minimal.

She thrust herself forward the length of the table as Washington pushed back her chair and stood, her knees straightening. She fired a second shot at the table, then sank to the floor as Jane charged toward her ankles, pushing them as hard as she could to destabilize Washington, listening as she did so for the sound of the gun dropping, but Washington must have held on to it.

The effect of the charge was to lift Washington's feet off the ground and tip her body face forward onto the table. Washington landed with a shout of pain and kicked as hard as she could to disengage her feet from Jane's grasp. It was a catfight and Washington still had the gun. Jane pushed the ankles forward, sliding Washington off the table and onto the floor.

They were about the same height, Jane a bit younger and several pounds lighter. But the gun was still in Washington's right hand and she was twisting and kicking to regain her advantage. Jane threw herself on top of Washington and tenaciously attacked the hand holding the weapon. On her back, Washington screamed and writhed as Jane pounded the wrist on the floor with her fist until the fingers released the gun; then she grabbed it.

Washington came after her, her eyes bright with fury, her hands reaching to kill.

“Get back, Washington,” Jane shouted, but the assault never wavered. On her back on the floor, Jane tried to kick Washington's torso with both feet, rolling into the woman's body from a fetal position.

Washington dodged, deflecting some of the strength of the attack, and came at her again.

“I'll shoot you,” Jane shouted. “Back off.”

But backing off was not an option for Washington, her rage carrying her forward. Jane raised her knees again to ward off the onslaught, cocked the gun, pointed it dead in front of her, and squeezed the trigger.

The explosion was followed by silence. Jane slid backward, away from Washington, and breathed deeply twice. Shaking, she moved over to Washington's body, still aiming the gun at her. Quickly running her hand over the woman, she searched carefully for any bulges that might be more weapons. Satisfied that none were there, Jane checked for a pulse and found it weak. Holding her eyes on Washington, she moved to the phone and dialed 911.

“This is Detective Jane Bauer,” she heard an unsteady voice say. She added her shield number. “There's been a shooting in my apartment. Send a bus and notify Central that I need a patrol supervisor ASAP.” She gave the address and put the phone down, but did not hang it up. She might need an open line again. Then she went back to see if Patricia Washington was still alive.

Before the first sector car and the ambulance arrived, she called McElroy and told him what had happened. She was on the phone with Defino when the first two cops knocked and came through the open door. Seconds later, a sergeant and his driver arrived. “I'll get back to you,” she said and hung up.

It was the first time her home had become a crime scene. She had her shield visible and the uniforms were very solicitous, one of them checking Washington and the other asking if there was anything he could do for Jane.

“I'm fine,” she said weakly and went to the refrigerator for some ice. “Is she alive?”

“Just barely,” the second cop said.

The ambulance took a little longer, the paramedics arriving with a gurney. They got down on the floor and tended to Washington while one of the cops called the Six for a detective.

Jane was glad Washington was alive. It meant they would get her out of the apartment as soon as they stabilized her. If she were already dead, the body would remain for hours on the kitchen floor while the detectives conducted their investigation. She didn't want to leave her home, didn't want to find another place to sleep tonight. She remembered when Maria Brusca's roommate, Darlene, had called, the day after Washington shot Maria, Darlene screaming that her home had become a fucking crime scene. Now it was happening to Jane.

McElroy showed up and Defino drove in from Queens. The lieutenant on duty at the Six arrived with the two detectives who had caught the case. As each succeeding group flowed in, Jane felt increasingly worse. It began to sink in that this woman had come here to kill her and in saving herself, she may have done to Patricia Washington what Washington wanted to do to her.

The phone rang and it was the Detectives Endowment Association trustee saying he was on his way over.

Marty Hoagland called and all she could say was “How did you find out?”

“Got a call. Look, I'm coming to get you. You should stay with us this weekend.”

“Thanks, Marty, but I want to stay here.”

“You sure?”

It was almost the only thing she was sure of. “Yes. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”

Finally, the detective with the notebook sat down with her in the living room. A few feet away, the DEA trustee and the union lawyer took notes. They would interfere only if the investigating detectives or an overzealous boss tried to pressure Jane or make the case something it wasn't.