Murder in Greenwich Village (4 page)

5

AFTER LUNCH JANE and Defino went back to the Village. The shoe store Manelli worked in was on West Eighth, once a vibrant street with jewelers, bookstores, and class. Only one customer sat in a chair trying on shoes: a lean, dark-haired man surrounded by a dozen open boxes.

“Can I help you?” The graying proprietor got off his low stool.

Defino flashed his shield so the customer could not see it.

“I'll be right with you.” He had a conversation with the customer, who either wasn't able to make up his mind or had come in for fifteen minutes of human contact. He stuck his feet into the shoes he already owned and left the store.

“You from the probation department?” the owner asked. “Looking for Sal?”

“We're looking for Sal. We're not probation.”

“I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks. One Tuesday morning he just didn't come in. I did my best, Officers. I have a brother who spent time in prison, and I try to help out if I can, but this one didn't work out.”

“You have an address for him?”

He went in the back and returned with the Minetta Street address on a slip of paper. “I hand him his checks, so I haven't used the address for mail. I can't tell you if he still lives there—or if he ever did, for that matter. But that's the address he gave me.”

“He cash his checks?” Jane asked.

“Yes. They all came back from the bank. You want to see them?”

“I'd like to see where they were cashed.”

Another trip to the back, this one a little longer. He had two checks with him when he returned. Manelli had signed both of them with a squiggle beginning with
M
and had cashed them at a bank on Sixth Avenue. Jane wrote down the name and thanked the owner.

Defino handed him his card. “You ever hear from him, please give me a call.”

“Sure thing.”

“May as well try the bank,” Jane said when they were outside. “It's only a couple of blocks.”

The bank manager balked at giving out information but finally read to them from his screen. Manelli had only a checking account. None of his paychecks going back two months had been deposited. At the moment the account had a balance of fifty-seven dollars.

“When was the last activity?” Jane asked.

“He wrote a check to a pharmacy that cleared six days ago. My screen doesn't tell me the date the check was written. Probably a day or two before that. It's local.” He wrote down the name and address.

“If he never deposited his check,” Defino said, “where'd the money in the account come from?”

The bank manager frowned, scrolled his screen, and looked at it intently. “Here's a cash deposit for a hundred dollars.” He scrolled again. “Here's another for a hundred fifty. It's possible he cashed his check and then deposited part of it. Of course, in order to cash it he would have to have at least that amount in his account.”

“Does Judith Franklin have an account here?” Jane asked.

“You know I'm not allowed—”

“OK, we'll do it officially. Thanks.”

“Just a moment.” He worked the screen. “You have an address for her?”

She gave the Minetta Street building.

“Yes. She has an account.”

“Thank you,” Jane said. They left.

Back at Centre Street, MacHovec had come up with a current address and phone number for Carl Randolph. It was in the section of Brooklyn called Bedford Stuyvesant— Bed-Stuy to most New Yorkers. Jane dialed the number but no one answered.

As she hung up, her phone rang. It was Officer Ben Clark at Rikers. “Randolph hasn't been near a phone all day. He's been sitting in his cell reading a book, playing the part of a pussycat.”

She muttered a four-letter word under her breath and asked him to stay on it. “We said the right things, Gordon,” she said to Defino after the call. “I can't believe he didn't call his lawyer. Something's screwy.”

“Give it another day.”

She got up and went to Annie's office. “Sorry to bother you,” she began.

“No problem, Detective. What can I do for you?”

“My partner and I have been in and out all day.” She knew Annie would know she meant Defino. “Did anyone leave a message for either of us today?”

Annie's face showed instant consternation. “I would have . . .” She shuffled through some papers. “I don't remember any.”

“OK. Guess we jumped the gun. Thanks, Annie.” Back in the office she said, “No messages for us from Annie. That means Randolph didn't call you and didn't call anyone else. And he's playing the part of a very good boy, according to Ben Clark.”

“So he had someone else make the call.”

“That's what I think. But we'll never find out who. Randolph probably slipped someone a phone number with a message and a pack of cigarettes.”

“You'll find out who,” MacHovec said. “Watch your back. If Randolph made a call, something's gonna happen.”

“You're right,” Jane said. “I hope this Franklin woman isn't in trouble.”

“Time to go home, boys and girls. Anything I can get you on the computer before I leave?”

“Maybe tomorrow. I hate to think that I have to stake out that apartment. I need my sleep.” It was worrisome. She had visited someone for information in the winter and a killer had been on her heels. It was hard to forget something like that. “I'll keep calling.”

MacHovec waved as he left. Jane tried the Franklin number again, with no success. Maybe Franklin had taken off with Manelli when he quit his job. Another day and Jane would ask the super to open the apartment. Meanwhile, it was time to go home.

When the phone rang at nine in the morning, Jane suspected trouble. The squad worked eight forty-five to four forty-five in a 9×5 tour, unusual for NYPD, but this was an unusual squad. The voice on the other end was Officer Ben Clark.

“An inmate was murdered overnight,” he said.

“Randolph?”

“No.”

“Is that the trouble you were expecting?”

“I don't think so. Some other stuff was brewing, and this may have been timed to coincide with that. The victim was stabbed with a shank made from a plastic toothbrush that wouldn't show up in the metal detectors they walk through. It was as pointy as an ice pick and sharp as a steel knife.”

“Did you find it?”

“The killer dropped it. He knew there'd be a close inspection and a cell shakeout after the body was found. I'm telling you this because it happened, not because I think Randolph was behind it, but he could have been. He and the victim had cells near each other. They may have mixed in the food line.”

“Thanks for the call. If you learn anything else—”

“You'll hear about it.”

“What trouble?” Defino asked when she hung up.

She told him, MacHovec turning away from his screen to listen. “A little early, but we may have stirred things up,” she said at the end. “This guy could've made a call or calls for Randolph, and Randolph got rid of him before he could use it for his own good.”

“Didn't take long to rattle the cage,” Defino said. “Here come the bulletproof vests just as it's getting warm out.”

“He couldn't have called Randolph's lawyer. A call to a lawyer isn't suspicious. Everyone makes that call. He called someone else.”

“Those guys are on the phone all the time,” MacHovec said. “They call their lawyers, their families, their girlfriends. Even if we got a record of all the calls the inmates made from ten o'clock on yesterday, it would be hell to figure out which call connected with Randolph.”

“Morning.” It was McElroy, passing their doorway.

They called him in and briefed him.

“That didn't take long. You know if Randolph had any visitors yesterday besides you?”

MacHovec picked up his phone.

“It's possible this isn't what it looks like.” McElroy waited while a short conversation ensued.

MacHovec hung up. “Randolph had two visitors, Detectives Defino and Bauer. I can give you the times they arrived and left. That was it.”

“So he didn't pass any messages out that way. You know the identity of the victim?”

“Clark didn't say,” Jane said.

“I'll let the inspector know.”

“What happened with the Franklin woman?” Defino asked when McElroy had left.

“I called till midnight. No answer. Her whereabouts have nothing to do with this investigation. We just got on this case on Monday and we looked for her on Tuesday. Let's see if her landlord knows where she works.” She wrote down the building address and handed it to MacHovec, who started working the phone.

It took him half an hour to get the name of the building owner and then another fifteen before he could speak to him. Two minutes more and he hung up. “She works at Macy's; how do you like that?”

“I love it,” Defino said, ripping a Five out of his typewriter. Defino was master of the typewriter as MacHovec was master of the computer. “Let's visit Macy's. They tell you what department she works in?”

“Handbags. Maybe they're having a sale.”

“I can't afford sales.” He looked at Jane. “You ready?”

6

MACY'S WAS AT Herald Square: Thirty-fourth Street, which ran east–west, and both Broadway and Sixth Avenue, which were north–south streets. Broadway meandered from south-east Manhattan toward the northwest, crossing major avenues, continuing into New York State when it left the city. The triangle formed by the intersection of the two north–south avenues at Thirty-fourth formed the “square.” Crossing the street at the point where they met was not for the faint of heart, although thousands of people did it daily. Macy's covered the square block from Sixth to Seventh and from Thirty-fourth to Thirty-fifth.

Inside, they located the business office. Displaying their shields put them up front in the line, sparing them a wait.

A thin, tight-lipped woman with hair dyed as black as coal checked their IDs and then went to her computer. “Judith Franklin has been working here for seventeen years. She's on her annual vacation now. She'll be back on Monday.”

“How far in advance did she book her vacation?” Defino asked.

The woman looked as though the question had come from another planet. “I have no idea. I'm sure it was well in advance. We can't have several people in one department going away at the same time.”

“How's her work record?” Jane asked. “She have many absences, latenesses?”

“Her work record is excellent,” the stony-faced woman replied. “She's rarely out and almost never late.”

They went downstairs and found an unoccupied saleswoman at the handbag counter.

“Judy's on vacation,” she said in answer to their first question. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing,” Jane said. “We just wanted to talk to her.”

“Is her boyfriend in trouble again?”

“What do you know about him?”

“Just that he can't seem to hold a job. Judy doesn't talk about him unless things are terrible, and then I'm one of the people who gets an earful. She's a really nice person. I don't know what she sees in that guy. But it's been going on for years, on and off. Sometimes . . .”

“Yes?”

“I've seen her come in with a bruise here and there. She's never said he did it to her, but she never has a good explanation for what happened. If my husband hit me, there'd be no second time, I can tell you.”

“Have you ever seen the boyfriend?” Defino asked.

“Never. Judy leaves here when she's done and goes home by herself. He doesn't stop by. But neither does my husband.”

“We're told she's coming home this weekend.”

“I would think so. She's scheduled to work Monday morning.”

“Do you know if they went away together?”

“She said they were. They may be renting a cabin or something in the Catskills. Like a little togetherness could help the relationship. If I were her, I'd try a little apartness for a change.”

With that homey philosophy echoing, they left Macy's.

At 137 Centre Street a message from Officer Ben Clark lay on Jane's desk.

“We don't have a clue who did the killing,” he told her when she returned the call. “But if proximity means anything, the victim, Tommy Swift, occupied a cell two down from Randolph and was scheduled for a shower right after Randolph, so that could have been a point of contact. They ate meals at the same time, but I don't think they sat at the same table.”

“I assume you've questioned the other inmates on the block.”

“And got nothing. That's what we usually get. And the shank was so clean it was shining like a diamond.”

“I appreciate the call, Ben.” She hung up. “Nothing new on the Rikers killing, but he thinks Randolph could be a suspect. I'm expecting another shoe to fall.”

“Me too,” Defino said, his phone ringing.

The subsequent conversation made no sense to Jane, but Defino took notes as he spoke, saying little. Finally, he hung up. “I think we've got our second shoe,” he said, turning to his partners. “That was Captain Bowman. He just got a call from one of the original detectives on the Anthony case. This is really nuts. A dog walker in Riverside Park early this morning found a shiny new gun lying on the grass where it couldn't be missed. He had a cell phone on him and called nine-one-one. The guy in ballistics who got the gun recognized it as the kind of Beretta he used when he was in the army, and instead of putting it aside for a couple of weeks, he researched it right away. It's been identified as one of the two hundred twenty-seven.”

“Shit,” MacHovec said.

“They're taunting us,” Jane said. “Randolph got the word out that we're on the case. That cocky son of a bitch. Whoever's hiding those guns took a walk in the park last night and dropped it, just to let us know. It didn't take much, did it?”

Defino tapped a pencil on his desk. “One visit to Randolph. This better go straight to the whip. MacHovec, what can you find out about this guy Randolph killed?”

“Tommy Swift,” Jane said, “last known address Rikers Island.” She and Defino left the office to find Inspector Graves.

“Riverside Park?” Graves's usual reserve had evaporated. He was stunned.

Defino went over it. “I wonder what would have happened if the dog walker hadn't made the call, or if he'd taken the gun home with him.”

“He wouldn't have gotten that far,” Jane said. “Randolph's contact was probably hiding in the trees, maybe walking a dog of his own.”

“You have Captain Bowman's number?” Graves asked.

Jane wrote it down for him.

“Looks like that visit to Rikers was more than productive. Give me what else you have.”

They told him about Judith Franklin and their trip to Macy's.

“If you look for her over the weekend, don't forget to put in for overtime.” Graves looked at his watch. “I hope they can keep that gun out of the news.”

“If the guy was watching, he saw the police come. He knows that gun'll be traced. That was damned fast. So it looks like Manelli had no part in this.”

“Looks that way,” Jane said. “He's up in the mountains beating up his girlfriend. It's called a vacation. And they've been away—or at least she has—since Tuesday at the latest.”

“Watch yourselves,” Graves said.

The warning sounded familiar and carried no comfort with it.

Tommy Swift, who had half a page of aliases and a much longer rap sheet, had been arrested one day after Randolph and was awaiting trial on robbery and several related charges. He had earned the title of career criminal, having done little else in his thirty-two years. His record went back to adolescence, and part of that was sealed, as though it might provide further damning insight into his character. On the surface, nothing linked him to Randolph before their current stay at Rikers Island. Swift was white, born in the Bronx, and lived at too many addresses to count, but never anywhere near Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Randolph lived.

At Jane's request, MacHovec called the Two-Six Precinct and asked for the exact location where the gun was found.

“About a hundred feet uphill, that's east, of the Henry Hudson Parkway between a Hundred Sixteenth and a Hundred Fifteenth. Plenty of early-morning joggers and dog walkers. It was spotted about seven, before the park got crowded.”

Riverside Park was a sloped strip of green that ran from Riverside Drive down to the highway starting at Seventy-second Street and going north to Grant's Tomb in the One-twenties. During the day people walked there with slight caution. In summer sunbathers indulged themselves on blankets on the grass, visible to passing cars. At night the park was little used, for obvious reasons.

“Maybe I'll take a walk there tonight,” Jane said.

“You tempting fate?” Defino asked.

“No one'll be there. The guy probably lives miles away.”

“Have fun.”

“So what's next?”

“Keep a low profile while we wait for shoe number three. These guys are for real. I hope they put Randolph away for a good long stretch.”

“Doesn't matter. The guns and their keepers are out there.”