Two Jakes (51 page)

“You
sure?” Scullen said, pointing to a 10-cup spouted container from Dunkin’ Donuts
sitting on a nearby desk. Next to it was a promising box of donuts.

“Well,
why not?”

Scullen
walked over and came back with two cups, black. The coffee was hot, and good.
Scarne studied the cop. Late 40’s. Dirty blonde hair running a little long for
his age. Red veins around his nose and in his cheeks. Clothes too loose. The
fingers gripping his cup were cigarette-tinged. Slight tremor.

“When
I was younger I got pulled in here a couple of times,” Scarne said. “I see they
haven’t repainted.”

“The
city is short of money. Barely had enough to finish that $68 million ball park
across the street. Priorities, you know. This is my last stop. They ran out of
boroughs to send me. Now, enough chit chat. You got something for me on the
Pearsall homicide?”

Scarne
repeated what he had told O’Connor. Scullen saw through the lies immediately.
He had probably been a good cop once, and maybe still was. He walked over to
the donuts and brought the box back, placing it between them.

“Clichés
aside, these are fucking great donuts,” he said. “Now, are you going to tell me
what you really know? My friends in Manhattan said you probably wouldn’t be
wasting your time out here. So why waste mine?”

Scarne
picked up a plastic knife and cut a cruller in half. It was fresh. He took an
appreciative bite while debating how much to tell Scullen. The guy was close to
being a burn out. A lush whose superiors unloaded to Staten Island. But
probably not for incompetence. He was still sharp enough to have checked Scarne
out.

“What
I say has to stay between us,” Scarne said, rolling the dice. “Nothing goes up
the street, for now.” The last thing Scarne wanted was a grand jury subpoena
demanding the source of his information. Scullen picked up the other half of
the cruller, took a bite and nodded.

“Whatcha
got?”

“There
was no anonymous phone call. Guy who passed the information on to me will never
– and I mean, never – confirm it or reveal his source. But you can take it to
the bank. Elizabeth Pearsall was killed by two pros hired by someone who wanted
to hurt her father enough so that he wouldn’t have the heart to keep working on
some story. Forget about looking for some run-of-the-mill pervert, or a panicky
burglar. I can’t tell you what to do, but I’d be shaking the trees to find out
what on Staten Island is worth murdering a high school kid over, and who might
let the contract, if it’s local.”

“You
got any leads on the pros?”

Scarne
didn’t want to tell Scullen about the bakery, or mention the name Gadomski.
That angle would be easy to run down. He wanted the cops looking over their old
case files.

“Not
much. Just that one of them is of Polish extraction, has pancreatic cancer and
probably lived here 40 years ago. He may be dead by now, or is near death in
any of 50 states. I suppose he could be abroad, too.”

“Jeez.
You’ve got him cornered.”

Scullen
pulled out a file. In it were the crime scene photos. Nothing shocked Scarne
anymore, but it was obvious that Elizabeth Pearsall had died hard. Her face was
a mask of terror. Scarne picked up a photo of the girl taken before the murder.
He stared at it a long moment.

“Yeah,
I know,” the cop said.

Scarne
riffed through the other photos: open drawers, loot piled up neatly. A little
too neatly.

“We
figured they got scared and bolted,” Scullen said. “Son of a bitch.”

“Don’t
second guess yourself, Scullen. It’s what I would have figured. But now we know
what they wanted us to think.”

***

It
was after 4 P.M. by the time Scarne finished reading the police reports. He and
Scullen reached an agreement. Scarne would pursue the long-shot lead on the hit
man, while the detective would concentrate his resources on Staten Island. They
would keep in touch.

When
Scarne got to his car, he called Dudley Mack.

“I
told Scullen that you were on the side of the angels on this one. He got a kick
out of that.”

“You
know he’s a rummy, right? Been thrown out of several of my gin mills. They
probably dropped the case on him when it looked like a dead end.”

“I
think he still has some moves left.”

Scarne’s
phone beeped.

“Deadly,
I’ve got another call. It’s Harvey, the Register’s police reporter. I’ll get
back to you.”

CHAPTER
13 – IT’S THE OVENS

There
is an ongoing debate among Staten Islanders over which restaurant serves the
best pizza in the borough – and thus in the city, there being no debate about
that among locals. Denino’s in Port Richmond usually gets the nod (and actually
does have
New York
magazine’s imprimatur as having the best pie in all
of New York City!). Second place usually goes to Joe & Pat’s in Castleton
Corners. But there are those – and Scarne was among them – who believe that
there are no finer slices to be had in the New World than in Lee’s Tavern in
Dongan Hills. It had something to do with the ovens, he’d been told many times.
That didn’t matter to Scarne. He was just delighted that Harvey had suggested
an early dinner at the tavern for their meeting. With only a half Danish and
half cruller in his stomach since breakfast, he was starving.

Lee’s
is on Hancock Street and faces the Dongan Hills station of the Staten Island
Rapid Transit system. The venerable SIRT, as it is known to all Islanders, is a
14-mile-long, 21-stop commuter rail line that runs from Tottenville, the
southernmost town in New York State, to St. George. It is noted for its clean
cars and on-time performance and wends its way through many communities
established in the 17
^th
and 18
^th
centuries, including
Prince’s Bay, Huguenot, Annadale, Eltingville, New Dorp and Stapleton.

Scarne
was sitting in a booth near the tavern’s door, as far from the kitchen and its
delicious smells as he could get, salivating like one of Pavlov’s dogs. It had
started to rain heavily and he was glad to have found a parking spot just
outside the front door. A waitress brought over a pitcher of Budweiser. In the
past, Scarne knew, ordering any other brew in Lee’s branded you as un-American.
He wondered if that would change now that Bud was foreign-owned. In any event,
the beer was ice cold and delicious. Drinking in a quiet, classy tavern during
a rain storm was one of life’s great pleasures, and Scarne forgot his hunger.
Lee’s was fairly empty, but he knew that in an hour the commuters would be
stopping in for a drink before going home. Then the regular dinner crowd would
build, augmented by the lawyers and politicians who had made the bar area a
place to be seen and be seen.

He
had just topped off his second glass when a large man in a loud sports jacket
ran in the door and slapped a newspaper against his thigh to shake off
rainwater. He looked like a police reporter from a Hollywood B movie and
immediately spotted Scarne, who looked like a man who was expecting a police
reporter. He walked over to the table and nodded when Scarne picked up the
pitcher and tilted it towards an empty glass. He drained it appreciatively
while still standing and then sat down. They shook hands, introduced
themselves, and Scarne refilled the glass.

The
waitress reappeared.

“How’s
it hanging, Ev? Large pie, crispy, and another pitcher?”

“You
got it, Flo.” He looked over at Scarne. “You up for splitting a cold antipasto
to start, with a little garlic bread?”

“Sure,”
Scarne said, hoping the greens in the antipasto would mitigate his recent
artery-clogging diet.

The
two men spent the next 20 minutes drinking beer and talking about the people
they knew in common on Staten Island. Harvey was at least 15 years older than
Scarne, but both were from generations that still viewed the borough as
small-townish. And both realized that in a very few years such nostalgic
conversations would be rare. Finally, Harvey wiped up some olive oil with a piece
of Italian bread, took a swig of beer and belched loudly.

“Pardon
moi,” he said. “Had to bring that one up for a vote. Now, you said on the phone
you wanted to talk about the murder of Bob Pearsall’s daughter.”

There
being no real reason to hold back from a police reporter who would soon get
wind of everything he was doing, Scarne filled Harvey in.

“Shit,”
Harvey said. “You’re sure about your source?”

“Absolutely.”

“Cops
know?”

“Told
them a few hours ago.”

“They
want to know the source.”

“Absolutely.”

“And
you stonewalled?”

“I
lied. They know I lied. But there’s nothing they can do about it. Told Popp,
too.”

“You’re
trying to stir up a shit storm and see what washes up on the beach.”

“It’s
been a productive use of my time in the past. Now, Popp said Pearsall wasn’t
working on anything important enough to result in murder. That true?”

Harvey
hesitated. Then their pizza came and he hesitated some more while they started
eating. Finally he said, “As far as it goes.”

“What’s
that mean?”

“Listen,
I’m just an ex-flatfoot. I don’t pretend to be a journalist. Probably why this
job appealed to me. I go around and check the precincts for burglaries, car
crashes and D.U.I.’s. Occasionally someone gets popped, especially in the
projects, or a ginzoni gets dumped in one of our vacant lots. Biggest story I
had recently was when the D.A.’s office raided bookies all over the Island.
Somehow they missed the ones working out of our pressroom. I call the stuff in,
and the night staff churns out a bunch of 200-word stories than make it sound
like we’re on top of everything. I get to see old friends on the force, people
buy me a lot of lunch and dinners – thanks for this by the way – and I tack on
another pension. Can’t have too many of those with all these idiots running
around Washington.”

The
pizza was as good as ever. Scarne signaled for another pitcher of beer. Harvey
held up a hand.

“Could
I talk you into a bottle of wine? They have a great Ruffino here. Practically
at cost.”

Scarne
ordered the bottle.

“Where
was I? Oh, yeah. The job meant nothing to me, until I met Bobby Pearsall. He
was a real newsman. Before I knew it, he had me looking for good stories. Like
why there were so many burglaries in a certain area? Which gangs were getting
stronger? How crime affects the poor and the like. I have to tell you, at first
I resisted it. It was work. And that’s not what I signed on for. But he was a
really nice guy and we hit it off. And pretty soon I got into it. Then he won
the
Pulitzer
– I did some legwork on that one – and he started to get
even more feisty. I was worried something might happen, but nothing like this.
I can’t believe someone would do that.”

The
waitress brought over the wine. She filled two glasses. Lee’s Tavern wasn’t the
kind of place where one twirled the wine, sipped it and nodded approval. The
waitress was two tables over taking an order by the time the two men picked up
their glasses.

“I
heard it might have something to do with the proposed NASCAR track.”

Harvey
shook his head in dismissal.

“Can’t
be. I mean there’s a lot of dough involved, but nobody thinks it’s gonna
happen. Bob couldn’t be a target over that.” Harvey suddenly hesitated.
“Unless….”

“Unless,
what?”

“Well,
it’s probably nothing, but one day I spotted two of Bob’s favorite reporters
down at the County Clerk’s office going through real estate records related to
the area where the track is supposed to go, out in Bloomfield. I asked them
what was up but they said it was just routine stuff. You have to understand
that the young kid reporters don’t really trust me, because I’m an ex-cop, and
still too close to my ex-pals. I don’t really blame them. Besides, good
reporters don’t like to blab about stories they are working on. And these kids
were good. But I can play that game, too. So I asked one of my clerk friends
what they were looking for. It seems they were also pulling all the recent land
deals around the Stapleton Home Port. You know, the old Navy base.”

“Did
you find out why?”

“I
didn’t want to ask them, so I went to Bob. Asked him if there was something I
should know. I mean, I cover the police and courts so I spend a lot of time in
Borough Hall and the County Clerk. Sometimes I hear things. I told him I might
be useful in whatever bee he had in his bonnet. He knew I walked a thin line. I
wasn’t going to blow the whistle on everything I knew about the cops. Hell, I’d
never get anything. But he knew I wouldn’t roll over for something really bad.
Besides, if there was a big scandal and I was blindsided, my credibility would
be shot to hell and that was bad for the paper.”

“What
did Pearsall say?”

“That
his gut told him the two land deals were connected, mainly because he was
suspicious of anything Bimm was involved in.”

“Dr.
Bimm? Fat guy. White suit. White Lexus SUV? Looks like his neck is blowing a
bubble?”

“Yeah.
Nathan Bimm. Big real estate investor. Plastic surgeon who made a mint with his
clinics. Bob had a real hard-on for him. Said he was ruining Staten Island. You
know him?”

“He
almost ran me over in front of Borough Hall.”

“He
wouldn’t need a car to hurt you if he ran into you. He’s a fuckin’ hippo, but
not as good looking.”

So
Bimm was involved in buying land in both Bloomfield and Stapleton.

“How
much money are we talking about?”

“Millions.”

“He
has that kind of money?”

“He’s
got plenty, but Bob assumed he was acting on behalf of other people. Some of
the plots had his name on them, others were in the name of various
corporations, trusts, partnerships and the like.”

“Any
of them stand out?”

Harvey
pointed to the last slice of pizza.

“You
gonna eat that?”

Even
though it was rightly his, Scarne shook his head.

“I
don’t think Bob or his reporters got far enough to dig into the documents,”
Harvey said as he put grated Romano cheese on the slice. “His daughter was
killed and he left the paper. The kids did, too. They came from top journalism
schools, lured by the Pulitzer
.
Bob was their mentor. When he left,
Staten Island lost its appeal to them.”

“Did
Bimm know they were looking into his deals?”

“I
don’t know. You’d have to ask them.”

“I
intend to.”

“Need
their phone numbers? I have them on my cell.”

“I
got them from Human Resources.”

“Try
Sandy Doyle first. She’s still around. New Jersey. Chris, the other one, is in
New Zealand, I hear.”

“What’s
he doing there?”

“Took
a year off to see the world. Madeline got a card from him. He comes from money.
Main Line Philadelphia.”

The
pizza was gone. They sipped wine in silence for a moment. The bar began filling
up. A few people stopped by their table to say hello to Harvey. Scarne shook
hands with a City Councilman, a Criminal Court judge and several political
aides. Introductions and conversations were perfunctory. The first cocktails of
the day awaited.

“I
hear Bimm is tight with the Borough President,” Scarne said when they were
again alone.

“Blovardi?
Bimm is so far up his ass only his shoes stick out.”

“What’s
Blovardi’s position on the race track? And, for that matter, Bimm’s?”

“I’m
not sure, anymore. Initially Blovardi said he would keep an open mind. He
always says that but everyone knows he’d do whatever Bimm wants, since Bimm
runs both the Chamber of Commerce and the Borough Economic Development
Corporation. And the NASCAR people aren’t dumb. They knew there would be
resistance. So they hired a local law firm to run interference for them. Just
happens to be Paul Salamiro’s firm. He’s getting a $20,000-a-month retainer to
lobby for the track.”

Scarne
knew that Salamiro was the former borough president, who handpicked Mario
Blovardi to succeed him.

“It
sounds like they have all their ducks in order. What’s the problem?”

“I
just get this feeling, from talking to people in Borough Hall, that they’re
just giving lip service to NASCAR now. The Chamber and the B.E.D.C. recently
both came out in favor of commissioning more studies about the plan. That’s
usually the kiss of death.”

“Sounds
like Salamiro isn’t earning his money.”

“Makes
you wonder, don’t it?”

Scarne
paid the check while Harvey used the men’s room. A few moments later the two
men stood outside on the sidewalk talking in what was now barely a drizzle. A
front had gone through and it was noticeably colder.

“Thanks
for the gourmet dinner,” Harvey said. “I hope you’re wrong about Elizabeth
Pearsall. But if you’re not, I’d like something done about it.” He hesitated.
“Are you going to tell Bob?”

“Not
until I’m sure. And even then, I don’t know how to handle it. I’d have to find
him first.”

“I
can help you with that.” Harvey took his business card from his wallet and
scribbled on its back. “That’s his number. A few of us have been in contact. I think
he’d want to know.”

He
handed Scarne the card. A stream of commuters was walking from the SIRT
station. Some peeled off to their cars in the lot or started walking home down
nearby streets. A fair number, all men, headed toward Lee’s. A few of them exchanged
greetings with Harvey as they entered. One said “nice jacket.” Harvey shrugged
to Scarne and said, “It hides the sauce stains.”