St. Patrick's Day Murder (8 page)

There was an attractive, youngish woman at the cash register, an older tiny woman walking around, rearranging fruit and keeping a sharp eye on the customers, and two men doing other kinds of work. One of them, a fellow probably only in his twenties, was sweeping the floor with a large broom. The other, a stern-faced man who may only have been in his thirties, was at a table in the back, writing.

I decided that the older woman wasn’t likely to know much English, so she would be a good one to ask. With luck, she wouldn’t understand me at all and would lead me to the expert who would. Before asking her, however, I filled several small bags, so she would see I was a serious customer.

When I went to ask her, I made my face pleasant but unsmiling. My observations about Koreans in New York indicated that smiling was a form of intimacy they did not indulge in with strangers, something that has probably led to a great number of misunderstandings. “Excuse me,” I said politely, “I wonder if you have any Uglifruits today.” I used
enough words so that the important one could easily get lost in the string of sounds.

She shook her head and said something that may have been English and may have been Korean. Then she walked to the back of the shop to the man sitting at the table.

They exchanged a few words. Then he said, “What are you looking for?” in flawless English.

“Uglifruits,” I said. “I think they’re in season now.”

“Yes, we have some.” He got up and walked to where they were stacked.

“Thank you,” I said, and took two. “Do you have sweet onions, too?”

“Bermudas. Over there.”

“Yes. I see them now. This is my first time here. My friend, Officer McVeigh, told me to shop here just before he died.”

“You are police,” the man said, his dark eyes fixed on me.

“Oh, no,” I said, trying to sound shocked. “I’m a teacher. I know his family. He said he came by here every day.”

“He did. He was a good man. He was good to my mother.” He turned toward the little woman, who was watching us.

“I don’t know why anyone would kill him.” I took a couple of Bermuda onions and put them in a bag.

“It was a mistake. Somebody who thought he was rich. Officer McVeigh was a good man. Ask anybody. You know his wife?”

“Yes. I know the family.”

“You tell his wife, she comes here, I give her a big bag of fruit. Free. You understand?”

“Yes.” I felt myself smile slightly, but he kept his mouth stern. “Thank you.”

“No. We thank him.”

I nodded and carried my bags to the cash register. It cost me almost twenty dollars, but I felt it was worth it.

I put the bag on the front seat next to mine and got into the car. I was about to drive away when I thought of something. I took a quick look up and down the street, didn’t see any lurking police, and made a
U
-turn. At the corner, I turned right and pulled into the used-car lot.

It didn’t look like a busy day. If there were customers, they weren’t outside. I went to the building, opened a door painted a bright red, and stepped inside.

“Help you with something?” a paunchy, graying man behind a dilapidated desk asked as he saw me.

“I’m a friend of Officer McVeigh’s,” I began.

“Ah, Scotty. My God, what a shame, what a shame. You his sister?”

“A friend. I drove in his new car before he died.”

“The BMW. I sold it to him. Nice piece of machinery, huh? Purrs like a cat. You looking for something like that yourself?”

“Not just yet. I wanted to ask you something about Scotty’s car. His wife’s going through his papers and they’re kind of a mess. She needs to know what he paid for it.”

“Nothin’.”

“What?”

“It was a trade-in. He gave me his old car, I gave him the BMW.”

“But his old car wasn’t worth anything like what that car’s worth.” I had no idea what his last car had been, but it certainly hadn’t been a luxury car.

“For Scotty McVeigh it was even-steven. I couldn’t take money from him. The man made my life livable. You know what it is to have a small business in this city? It’s like hell. You spend twelve hours a day filling out forms. Then they send it all back and say do it over again. He worked it out for me. He pulled a couple of strings, made a few calls, smoothed the road, you know? It was worth one used BMW. On a trade-in.”

“Could I see the paperwork on the car?” I asked.

“Hey, lady, what is this? You the IRS or something?”

“I’m Jean McVeigh’s friend. She was under the impression Scotty paid a couple of thousand dollars for the car.”

“So let her think it.”

“She’d like to know the truth.”

“The truth I told you the first time around. From now on it’s fairy tales. What do you want I should say? Two thousand? Fine. Officer McVeigh paid two grand for the car. Plus the trade-in.”

“What did he trade?” I asked, giving up on the cash.

“A little Buick, good condition. I sold it already. It’s not on the lot.”

“Thank you,” I said. I opened the door. “How much did you say he paid you?”

He gave me a big smile. “Two thousand, dollars cash. You wanna try for three?”

I didn’t.

My map of Brooklyn was in the car, and when I sat down I looked up the street where Gavin Moore had lived. It was some distance away, but since I was already in Brooklyn and it was still early, I drove over. The house was a one-family, on a street that had an old apartment house in the middle and one- and two-family houses on either side. In New York, the older, prewar buildings are often distinguished by their lack of style and anything approaching beauty. The front of an apartment house is contiguous with the sidewalk, every square inch of property used for the building. There is no shrubbery along the front, often no setback for the entrance. On many streets, buildings line up like a fortress, the side of one touching the side of another. While it was certainly an economical usé of space, I have often wondered whether the designers and builders cared about anything else like the value of greenery, of space not covered with concrete.

The Moore house was several down from the large, red six-story building. It had a big
M
on the door and a small station wagon in the narrow driveway. I pulled in behind the car and went to the front door.

The door was opened by a nice-looking woman who was not much older than I. She was on the tall side and was wearing a running suit in a pretty shade of rose. I introduced myself and told her I was a friend of Scotty’s. She invited me in.

“Everybody’s looking for a connection,” she said when we’d sat down in the living room. “This is the fourth unsolved killing in less than four years.”

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I think there’s nothing there. They knew each other, you know.”

“I know.”

“Not well, but they were in the same precinct for about a year. Then Gavin got transferred into this team and they probably never saw each other again. The work they did, it was completely different. You don’t think this Hansen guy killed McVeigh?”

“No.”

“They’ve been pretty quiet about a motive,” Mrs. Moore said, “Something about borrowed money.”

“They were friends. Jean McVeigh doesn’t think Ray did it. I didn’t really think I’d talk to you and come up with something the police missed, it just seemed to be something I ought to do.”

“I know what you mean. In Gavin’s case—”

The front door opened as she was speaking, and a man called, “Sharon?”

“Hi, honey. I’m in here.”

A strapping, good-looking man came into the living room. He was in jeans and a sweatshirt, but the gun on his belt told me he was a police officer.

“This is Joe Farina,” Sharon Moore said. “This is Chris …”

“Bennett,” I said, shaking his hand.

“Chris is a friend of Scotty McVeigh’s. She wanted to know if there was a connection with Gavin.”

“Nice to meet you,” Farina said. “You’re not the only one looking for a connection. Wish I could help you.” He turned to Sharon. “I need a nap.” He leaned over and kissed her. “Good luck,” he said to me, and went upstairs.

“We’re friends,” Sharon said. “We live together. It’s been almost three years since Gavin died.”

“He seems very nice,” I said.

“He is.” She shook off her embarrassment. “What I was saying about Gavin. I think he got careless. They had a plan every time they went out. There was a back-up team, they knew where they were going, they had a timetable. You want to know what I think happened? I think he had to take a leak. He got shot in a little park that was sort of on the way to where he was going. He probably stopped because he had to pee. I never knew anyone who had to go as much as
Gavin did. They think it was a bunch of kids who killed him. They don’t have enough to charge anyone, and everybody’s keeping quiet. One of these days one of those guys’ll make a mistake and he’ll give them a name and plead down his case. I really miss Gavin. He was a funny, sweet guy. You do that kind of work, you have to have a sense of humor or you go crazy. We had a lot of fun together. If he’d had a better set of kidneys, he’d probably be alive today.”

I caught Jack before he left for law school and told him about my interviews. He seemed cheered that the grocery had offered something to Jean and assured me you couldn’t believe anything a used-car dealer told you. He also thought that the story about Gavin Moore rang true, and he agreed with Sharon Moore’s assessment of how the killer would eventually be found. The name Joe Farina rang a bell when I mentioned it. They had known each other at some point, but Jack wasn’t sure where.

“I’ve gotta run,” he said finally, “but I picked up some scuttlebutt today. Someone I know knows someone in IAD and the word is, there’s a lot more to the D.A.’s case than the loan and the fight.”

“Is that it?”

“That’s all I heard. I’ll keep trying.”

I had half of my first Uglifruit at dinner and it was truly a treat. Greenish-yellow and misshapen on the outside, the inside was glorious, juicy and a pale orange color. Without much difficulty I could become a gourmet. If I could afford it.

On Wednesday morning I drove to Queens to see what I could find out about Harry Donner. His house was not far from the Nassau County border, the start of Long Island, so it wasn’t surprising that he did his shopping there. Long Island has shopping centers with convenient parking and a lower sales tax than the city. His house was small and unassuming, with the usual tidy lawn, nice shrubs, and a still-dormant dogwood tree spreading its branches delicately. It didn’t seem likely that the people who had bought the house from Donner’s estate would have known anything about him, so I tried the house next door on the right. No one was home. Two doors down I found a young mother who had moved in two years ago and knew nothing about Donner. I walked back to the house to the left of his and tried again.

A plump older woman opened the door and asked what I wanted.

I told her my name and gave her a little summary of why I was there.

“Harry Donner?” she said. “Sure I knew Harry. We were friends with him and Dottie for years. It was a shame how he died. I don’t think they ever found out who did it.”

“They didn’t. I’m trying to find people who knew him, relatives.”

She hesitated, then invited me in. “There weren’t any relatives that I knew of. Dottie died a long time ago, a couple of years before Harry did. Cancer. She was a lovely person. He spent every free minute with her when she was sick. They were really devoted. They never had children.”

“Brothers? Sisters?”

She shrugged. “They never talked about them. She could
have had a sister, now you mention it. I don’t know what her name would be. Or if she’s alive.”

“Where did they spend their holidays?” I asked.

“Well, sometimes with us. Or they’d get in their car and go somewhere. They’d visit his aunt sometimes.”

“He had an aunt?”

“Well, yes, now that I think about it. He used to talk about her. She had a funny name. Like a man’s name. What was it?” she asked herself.

I sat waiting and hoping. “Aunt Jo?” I suggested.

“No, nothing like that.”

I tried to think of other names. Lou seemed too much like Jo to suggest. Danny for Danielle? Gabe for Gabrielle? I watched the furrowed face, the set lips. She was trying hard.

“Who’s that comedian who died a long time ago?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said helplessly. If it was a long time ago, how could I know?

“He was on radio. You know.”

“Fred Allen?” I ventured. Aunt Margaret used to talk about Fred Allen sometimes.

“The other one. Jack Benny!” she said triumphantly. “Aunt Benny. That was her name. Harry always used to talk about his aunt Benny. I don’t think she could be alive anymore, do you? Harry would be about sixty now, I think. How many people have aunts when they’re sixty?”

It was a long shot and I didn’t know how to find someone whose last name I didn’t know. “Did she live around here?”

“No. They always took the car to see her. And Harry would bring her things, you know? She was probably old and poor and needed Harry to take care of her.”

Then he would have left her at least part of his money. I thanked the woman and went back to my car. It was time to get Arnold Gold to help.

“I remember that shooting,” Arnold said over the phone. He had called me back at the pay phone I had found and he was taking notes. “The case is still open.”

“I’m looking for a link between that one and the McVeigh
shooting. Jack doesn’t think Ray Hansen did it and I agree there’s a good chance he didn’t.”

“I think I’ll nominate you for the saint of lost causes,” Arnold said.

“I learned from you. And anyway, the post is filled, Arnold. St. Jude has it.”

“The Catholic church thinks of everything.”

“Someone has to.”

Arnold promised to have one of his paralegals track down the Donner will. I hoped it wouldn’t be too much work. Arnold never lets me pay for work that his office does for me, although I’ve offered to pay by putting in hours. He told me the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits indentured servants, but to me it just sounded like a simple case of bartering.