Murder in Greenwich Village (12 page)

20

“JANE, TELL ME what's happening.” It was Toni, Defino's wife. Jane had talked to her daily since Gordon's disappearance on Friday. It was nine o'clock Wednesday morning.

“We have dozens of people working on it, Toni. New ideas pop up all the time and we're acting on all of them.”

“What you're saying is you're no closer to finding him than when he was kidnapped.”

“Not exactly.” Jane was becoming an artful hedger. She couldn't say what Toni wanted to hear, but she couldn't lie. Cops' wives were hard to deceive, and she owed Toni honesty. “We've come up with some good leads, and MacHovec is working night and day to follow up on them.”

“I know I'm bothering you.”

“You're not. I should have called you but I drove up to Sing-Sing to talk to a prisoner yesterday, and when I got back we canvassed a street in the Village.”

“You're working so hard. I feel so guilty.”

“Toni, you're number one on my list. When I know anything, you're the first one who'll hear after the inspector.”

“Thanks, Jane.” The voice was almost a whisper.

“Hang in there.”

“I will.” Now it was a whisper.

Jane hung up and took a moment to calm herself. It was always right there, the possibility that Gordon was dead, that the kidnappers had gotten nothing from him because he knew nothing, and they couldn't let him go because he could identify them.

“His wife?” MacHovec asked.

“Yeah. It gets harder every time.”

“I'm going through blue vans registered in the five boroughs, starting with ten years old.”

“Old ones first.”

“Right. There aren't as many so it goes faster. When I get bored with that, I'm looking at Transit cops' addresses for ten years ago. I actually found one, but he was a rookie and lived with his parents at the outside of the perimeter.”

“He still on the job?”

“Yeah. Lives in Queens.”

So not a suspect. “I actually made a list last night of women on Waverly Place who might have been somebody's lover ten years ago.”

“What'd you use, bra size?”

She smiled. “Partly. Also age. One woman said she had lived there alone ten years ago and when she got married, her husband moved in with her. She had the better apartment. So she's a possible.”

“Not likely she's hiding Defino there.”

“Not likely.”

“Maybe we should just get the guys in the conference room to start canvassing from that point outward. It's too much for two people.”

It was. She went to talk to McElroy.

“I'll OK it,” he said, standing up. As Jane returned to her office, he went to the conference room.

Ten years before, when the first canvass had been performed, the purpose was to find witnesses to the killing, people who might have seen or heard the shots, glimpsed the car or any of its occupants. Even a partial license plate number might have helped to locate the car. Nothing had surfaced.

Because it had been assumed at the time that the location of the shooting was accidental, as Jane thought originally, the canvassers were seeking witnesses. Under the new theory, the killers were on their way to a specific apartment in the Village, an apartment connected to the killers. If they had reached their destination when Micah Anthony flew out of the car, then the connection was on that block. If the destination was around the corner or in the next block, a wider canvass might turn up the link. And Defino. They had to find Defino. Five days would have elapsed by that afternoon.

As she contemplated her next move, MacHovec tossed some papers onto the desk. “Blue vans,” he said.

“Thanks.”

She started reading the information written in MacHovec's clear, almost schoolboy print. All three vans were registered in Manhattan, two of them to what appeared to be small businesses, one to a man in his sixties.

“Probably not the one owned by the old guy,” MacHovec said, reflecting her thoughts.

“But worth checking out. He might have a son or a nephew or a younger brother.”

“I like the one registered to the video place. Anything could be going on in the back room.”

“And probably is.” She took her bag out of her drawer.

“You got your cell phone in case I come up with something else?”

“Thanks for reminding me. I plugged it in somewhere. There it is.”

“And do me a favor, Jane. Don't go alone.”

This new, gentler MacHovec still surprised her. She smiled. “Good idea. I'll grab someone in the conference room, if anyone's left.”

Warren Smithson was left. They stopped at McElroy's office on their way out, McElroy happy that someone had something new to look at.

The video store was north of Fourteenth Street, the unofficial boundary between the Village and Chelsea. They took the subway to Twenty-third Street and walked from there. Smithson seemed happy to be out in the fresh air.

“So we're looking for the van that picked up your partner.”

“The sector cops remembered an old blue van, nothing else. They could be holding him in the back room.”

“Then you've given up on finding him in the subway.”

“For now.”

They turned a corner and found it. It was a good-size store, twice the width of most of the stores on the street. They walked in like a couple, Jane's hand through Smithson's arm. Several customers were at the counter and searching the shelves. A clerk was just coming out of the back room, carrying a couple of videotapes, perhaps porn, she thought. She nudged Smithson, who grunted, “Yeah,” under his breath. He walked to the break in the long counter where clerks could pass through. Jane followed, holding her shield high.

“Hey,” one of the young men behind the counter shouted.

“Hey, yourself,” Smithson said, turning the knob on the door to the back room.

“You can't go in there.” The voice was anxious.

“Sure I can.”

Jane followed him into a room with a number of machines making copies of tapes.

“Where's your van?” Smithson asked the man who raced in behind them.

“What van?”

“The one registered to the store. You want me to read off the plate number?”

“I don't know where it is.”

Jane turned to face him. “Take us to the guy who does know.”

“He's not here.”

She pulled out her notebook and a pen. “Looks like a Title Seventeen violation here. There's a U.S. code against copyright law violation. Big fines involved. Put your boss out of business.”

“Gimme a break. There's a First Amendment.”

“Not for reproducing and selling copyrighted material.”

Smithson was pushing open the back door. “Not here,” he said.

“The owner takes it home with him,” the clerk said. He was young, possibly into his thirties, with thick, dark hair that moved as he tossed his head.

“Give me an address.”

“I don't have it.”

“Well,
find
it,” Smithson ordered.

They followed him back to the store, where he had a frantic conversation with an older man. Thick Hair came back with an address on a slip of paper.

“I don't know if he's there, but that's where he lives.”

“Thanks,” Smithson said in a surly tone, and Thick Hair backed away from him.

The address was in the West Village, which was good news, Jane thought.

“That's in the perimeter,” Smithson said. “I can't believe we could've gotten the right one the first time out. It'd be a first for me.”

“Let's go.”

On the sidewalk, Smithson put up his hand to hail a cab that was driving south. They hustled inside and he gave the address, pulling out bills a few minutes later as the cab slowed.

The building was on Bank Street, a structure ripe for gentrification. A cursory look around the block turned up no blue van. The name of the owner of the video store was Peter Montana, and next to one of the bells in the entry were the initials PM, an apartment on the second floor.

They pressed bells till someone buzzed them in. Then they ran up the stairs, found the door, and listened. A voice inside might have been someone talking on the phone or an afternoon TV show. Smithson pushed the bell.

“Yeah?” A man's voice.

“Mr. Montana, please open the door,” Smithson said in a polite, calm voice.

The door opened. “Who're you?”

“Police detectives,” Smithson said. Both of them had their shields visible.

“What the fuck?”

“Watch your language. Let's go inside and talk.”

“What for? What do you want?” Montana, a husky man in his fifties, backed into the living room, a good-size room furnished with leather and fabric, pictures on the walls, and what might have been an Oriental carpet on the floor.

“You own a blue van?” Smithson read off the plate number.

“My business owns it. What about it?”

“We're looking for it. Where is it?”

“I parked it a coupla blocks from here. You can't get a spot nearby.”

“Come with us and show us.”

“What's this about?”

“Get your keys,” Jane said. “We're in a hurry.” Montana looked from one to the other. Then he said, “I forgot. I don't have it today. I lent it to a friend.”

“You forgot you lent it to a friend?”

“I'm sorry. You pushed in here and shook me up.”

“Who's the friend?” Smithson asked.

“Just a guy. He needed to haul some stuff; he asked me for the van.”

“When did you give it to him?”

“Uh, let's see. What day is today? Wednesday?”

“Wednesday,” Jane said, wondering if he were playing for time.

“Could've been last Friday he took it. He came in the store for the keys and that's the last I saw of him. Or the van.”

“What's his name?” Jane said, her notebook in her hand.

“Jack Spiegel.”

“Address?”

“Gee, I'm not sure.”

“You'd better get sure, Mr. Montana. What's his phone number?”

“I gotta look for it.” He started for a back room, and Smithson and Jane followed.

The room was a home office, a cluttered counterpart to the neat living room. A computer with all its accompaniments sat on a table. Stacks of videos, boxes, papers, and files lay on the floor. A file cabinet was open, one folder standing vertically to mark a place.

Montana sat in front of the computer and pulled over a Rolodex, flipped through it, and removed a card. He passed it to Jane.

She copied the information and gave the card back. “Come with us, Mr. Montana.”

“What for? I'm cooperating. What do you need me for?”

“To make sure you don't tell your friend Jack we're on our way.” She called the Six and asked for a car to pick up Montana on Bank Street and hold him at the house for a couple of hours.

He was fuming when the car arrived.

“No calls till we get there,” Jane said. “Check him for a cell phone.” Then she and Smithson took a cab to the garage where his car was parked. They ran up the steps and slid into their respective seats in seconds. Her heartbeat was up and her spirits along with it. They drove south to an area of old buildings being converted into new, expensive lofts in the typical cycle of the city: When it gets too delapidated to be of use, renovate it and charge a fortune.

As they drove, Jane said, “We need backup, Warren.”

“Call for it.” When they got there, he parked in a no-parking zone and stuck his plate in the front window.

Two sector cars arrived seconds after they did. They briefed the uniforms, one of whom went around the back of the building.

“There's an easy way out back there, also fire escapes. I'll watch the rear,” he said when he came back.

Inside, real elevators had replaced the old ones that had been used to haul whatever product had been made in the building's former life. They grabbed the super, who came upstairs with them with a key to the Spiegel loft.

“I'm not supposed to do this,” he said.

“But we're cops,” Jane said, “and we'll cover your ass.”

They moved quietly from the elevator to the door of Spiegel's loft. The uniform rang the bell and a tune played in chimes. No response came from inside. A second ring elicited nothing.

The super looked at Smithson, who nodded. Two keys were needed to open the door. Inside they stepped onto a beautiful hardwood floor into a huge living room with contemporary furniture, murals painted on the walls, and a complex set of switches that probably dimmed and raised the lights besides turning them on and off.

Smithson and the uniform disappeared down a hall to check out the entire apartment while Jane surveyed the living room for signs of life. A TV monitor as big as her fireplace hung on the wall, and a couple of pornographic magazines lay on a sofa. Otherwise, the room was empty. She moved into a huge kitchen filled with stainless-steel appliances, an island in the center. This is what a hundred-thousand-dollar kitchen looks like, she thought, opening drawers and cabinets, not sure what she was looking for— anything to tie Spiegel or his loft to Defino's disappearance.

She knew if she found something not in plain sight it could be challenged in court, but locating Defino was life-and-death, so she decided to chance it. From the other end of the loft she could hear Smithson and the uniform talking intermittently, nothing they said intelligible. Then, as she was opening a drawer, she heard a sound at the front door. Shit. Spiegel was coming back.

She took out her Glock and walked back to the foyer, watching the doorknob turn. Holding the gun at approximately the height of a man's chest, she waited.

The door opened and a woman screamed.