Past Imperfect (Sigrid Harald) (13 page)

It was working out quite well. Tillie was a careful and conscientious worker who thrived on detail, forms, and timetables, and he had almost restored the order that had been missing since he was wounded.

Everyone liked Tillie and they welcomed his return; not because he was genuinely likeable—which he was—but because he was also the one person who got along well with Lieutenant Harald, a boss who was never going to have to worry about making responses to teary-eyed testimonials at her retirement dinner. Every detective in the squad had felt the sharp edge of her tongue while Tillie was out. Since he was back, she seemed much less uptight and considerably more tolerant of minor lapses.

Nevertheless, if there were legitimate reasons to be out and working before she arrived . . .

By the time Jim Lowry had washed down a second raspberry doughnut and Elaine Albee had eaten all her peach yogurt, Tillie had persuaded Transit to give him the name and address of the only driver who could have passed up Lotty Fischer at the pertinent time.

“He worked a midnight-to-eight,” Tillie said.

“Good,” said Elaine Albee as she put on her coat.

Jim Lowry gave a grim smile. “We’ll check the subway station first, see if we can get a line on this Byrd bird. That should give our bus-driving bastard just enough time to get to sleep good before we land on him with both feet.”

“Have fun, children,” said Tillie, “and don’t forget your galoshes.”

Foul weather always added to the number of subway riders, but rush hour had crested by the time Jim and Elaine arrived at the fatal station. Although a steady stream of people continued to pass through the turnstiles, there were two workers inside the token booth and business had eased up enough that one put up a “Next window please” sign and came out to talk to them.

“Not that I can tell you anything that’ll help. There’s no one on duty here that late.” The T.A. clerk was a large fat woman with fair skin that was splotched by acne. “And I don’t know about Sam,” she added, nodding toward her coworker who glanced out at them occasionally through the glass of the ticket kiosk, “but I don’t walk onto that platform ’cept to catch my train home. The circus could camp in these tunnels for all I know. Tell you who might could help you though. Stevie Gr—”

An incoming train blanked the name and Jim Lowry had to roar to be heard above the shrill clangor.

“Stevie Greenapple,” she yelled back. “One of our cops.”

The train moved out of the station and her voice dropped back to normal. “I bet Stevie knows every flop hole in every tunnel from Thirty-fourth Street to South Ferry. The tunnels are a real hobby with him, ’specially the ghost stations. He’s down here sometimes even when he doesn’t have to be. It’s an education just to hear that man talk about some of the things that’ve gone on down here from the time they started with the first trains. Bet he could tell you if there’s anybody using this station regular.”

Unfortunately, neither she nor the other worker knew Greenapple’s schedule, so Elaine called Tillie and added it to his growing list of things to do. Then she and Jim caught the next downtown train, transferred to an F train and soon emerged on the Lower East Side to find that the thin snow had thickened into soft white flakes.

CHAPTER 13

[Detective Sergeant Jarvis Vaughn]

Even with overhead heaters hanging from the beams above each work station, the Chrysler dealer’s garage in Sheepshead Bay felt like a drafty barn to Davidowitz and me.

The Chrysler mechanics wore brown twill coveralls, but their arms and chests were padded-looking, like they wore two or three layers underneath. The concrete floor was splotched with motor oil and transmission fluid. Probably never warmed up before summer, especially since the two bay doors kept opening and closing as they shuttled cars in and out.

A damn noisy place, too. Screeching power tools, banging to loosen rusted muffler clamps, the clang as a steel wrench or loose hubcap clattered to the floor, and those heavy metal bay doors rumbling up and down on their tracks.

The sleet had changed to wet snow and each car came in with a mound of icy slush on hood, roof, and trunk.

I held an antacid mint on my tongue and watched a harried-looking guy of early middle age duck under a blue LeBaron convertible that was raised up on a hydraulic lift. He said something to the mechanic, who nodded and then reached up into the LeBaron’s underside again with a power wrench.

He rounded a rolling tool chest, kicked a loose lug nut back to the young black mechanic who’d just dropped it, and walked up to us. “You wanted to see me?”

He had on coveralls, too, but a dark green tie was knotted at the neck of his plaid shirt beneath. Brown hair clipped short, thinning on top though. Wrinkles around his eyes. I put his age somewhere in the early forties.

“You Frank Ambrosini?” asked Davidowitz. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the pressurized air hose directly behind them. “The service manager here?”

“Who’s asking?” Not hostile, just wary.

Davidowitz introduced us and I said, “One of your customers was shot yesterday. We’d like to—”

“You gotta speak up,” said Ambrosini, tapping his ear.

“Got somewhere quieter we can talk?” Davidowitz asked loudly.

“Yeah, sure,” said Ambrosini and took us across the noisy service area, past a large black luxury car that had its motor hanging by chains over the open hood. Clean drop cloths were draped over the fenders and front grill to protect the shiny finish from spills and scratches. It reminded me of TV medical documentaries. They draped patients like that so that only a small part of the body was left exposed for the surgeon’s knife. Judging by the facial expressions of the two mechanics at work on the motor, this was going to be an equally expensive operation.

The service manager took us into a glass-fronted cubicle. Grimy clipboards hung beside the door. Each held a thin sheaf of grease-smudged checklists, work orders, and time sheets, all waiting to have their prices added to the final bills. Inside the cubicle, desk and shelves were piled high with more papers, parts catalogs and service manuals. A calendar on every wall. Very educational to see how each Miss February illustrated a different socket wrench or air pressure gauge.

Only one extra chair. Davidowitz waved aside Ambrosini’s offer to find another and leaned against the door frame.

It was only marginally quieter with the door closed. Engine smells fought with stale cigarette butts. Ambrosini slid into his chair behind the desk, pulled out a fresh cigarette, lit it, took a deep draw on it and looked at us curiously. “So. What can I do for you guys?”

“One of your customers was shot and killed night before last,” I said.

“Yeah, I heard about that. Too bad.”

“We heard you and he’d had some words.”

“So?”

“So we thought we’d come and ask you about it.”

“Ask me what?”

“Michael Cluett was murdered, Mr. Ambrosini.” I was trying to stay patient.

“So what’s that got to do with me?” His face held a blank, open expression.

Too blank and open? Davidowitz and I looked at each other.

“Oh, hey, wait just a minute now!” Cigarette ashes went flying as Ambrosini wagged his hands in protest.

“You did have words with him, didn’t you?”

Ambrosini shrugged. “Well, yeah. But hell! If I went out and shot every customer that jaws off about our service here—”

“You give bad service?” Davidowitz put in.

“’Course not. But a guy that thinks he can throw his weight around just because he’s a cop—”

“You don’t like cops?” I asked, deliberately badgering him.

“I don’t like cops that try to muscle me into fixing something that ain’t broke just because he’s a cop.” Ambrosini sat up stiffly in his chair. “No sir, I don’t like that one little bit. Would you?”

“How was he muscling you?”

Ambrosini gave a sour laugh. “I gotta tell a couple of detectives the hundred and one ways a cop on the beat can give grief to legitimate businesses? Give me a break.”

He gave us the not-too-subtle threats he said Cluett had made about ticketing every less-than-legally parked car on the street or sidewalk outside the garage bay doors, how Cluett had hassled them about EPA-mandated guidelines for proper oil and grease disposal and anything else he could think of, merely because he’d thought the power steering was too stiff on his new car.

“That’s just the way that car handles. All in his head, believe me. But he kept bitching till I finally told him where he could shove it. That’s
all
I did though. You don’t believe me, ask anybody here. I was steamed, sure, but I don’t go off half-cocked. Look, this guy was around here every week with something new. He wanted a personal mechanic, like a personal banker, you know?”

Knowing Cluett, I could imagine.

“If that’s true,” I said, “can you tell us where you were between ten P.M. and midnight on Tuesday night?”

As it so happened, Ambrosini could. He stood up, opened the door to his office and shouted over the din, “Hey, George!”

The wiry young brother was bent over an engine at the middle work station. He straightened and looked our way.

“C’mere a minute.”

He wiped his hands on a bright orange flannel and came over.

“These guys wanna know what I was doing between ten and midnight Tuesday.” Ambrosini grinned as he stubbed out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray shaped like a rubber tire.

The kid grinned back. “We were still celebrating at Gino’s,” he told us. “Man, you shoulda been there! I rolled a perfect game Tuesday night. Twelve goddamn strikes in a row! We
creamed
Arnie’s Awnings.”

While Davidowitz spoke to the other members of Coney Island Chrysler’s bowling team, I wrote down Gino’s address; but my heart wasn’t in it.

The Shamrock was a bar and grill that faced the bay on Emmons Avenue. Nets and dried starfish on the walls; a huge sailfish over the bar. In summer, fishermen and tourists jammed the big main dining room for fresh seafood or stood outside on the sidewalk to eat clams on the halfshell served through the open window. They closed off the big room during the week, but even on a winter day like this there was enough business to keep the bar and side grill open. Thick cigar smoke. One of the regulars had just become a grandfather for the first time and an open box lay on the bar. The pink-and-gold bands had “It’s A Girl!” printed on them.

The bar had more people than I expected to see this early in the day and certainly more than had been at Gino’s, where we confirmed Ambrosini’s alibi. Not quite two o’clock and half the stools and several of the booths were full. The windows were steamed over and just the smell of beer and hot grease frying the shrimp made Davidowitz and me remember how long it’d been since our doughnuts and coffee.

The Shamrock was a neighborhood gathering place and even though we didn’t live in this particular neighborhood, we’d both been in before. Talk flowed easily from one table to the next, with occasional banter addressed to the bartender and two waitresses loud enough for the whole room to hear.

None of them had been working Tuesday night. “But Roger’ll be here in about twenty minutes,” one of the women said.

“Roger?” asked Davidowitz.

“The night guy. He’s coming in early so I can go pick up my kids before the snow gets too deep. They’re saying six to eight inches if it stalls.”

“They are?” Davidowitz lived in Nassau and hated driving the Sunrise Highway in snow.