Tricks (87th Precinct), page 11
“So,” he said. “Murchison first.”
She was still sitting on the bench, weeping softly, when Hawes approached her.
“Mrs. Sebastiani?” he said.
Marie looked up. Face tear streaked, blue eyes rimmed with red now.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said.
“No, that’s all right,” she said.
“I wanted to tell you…we found the van, but we still haven’t located the Citation. You said Brayne drove the van into the city today…”
“Yes.”
“So maybe the techs’ll be able to lift his prints from the wheel. He hasn’t got a criminal record, has he?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, we’ll run him through the computer, see what we come up with. Meanwhile, if the techs lift anything, and if we find the Citation, then maybe we’ll know if he’s the one who drove it away from the school. By comparing prints from the two wheels, do you see?”
“Yes. But…well, we all drove both cars a lot. I mean, you’ll probably find my prints and Frank’s together with Jimmy’s. If you find any prints.”
“Uh-huh, yes, that’s a possibility. But we’ll see, okay? Meanwhile, Detective Brown has already put out a bulletin on Brayne, and we’ll be watching all railroad stations, bus terminals, airports, in case he—”
“You’ll be watching?”
“Well, not Brown and me personally. I mean the police. The bulletin’s gone out already, as I said, so maybe we’ll get some results there. If he’s trying to get out of the city.”
“Yes,” Marie said, and nodded.
“Brown and I are gonna run back to the high school, see if anybody there saw what happened in that driveway.”
“Well…will anyone be there? I mean, won’t the teachers…?”
“And the kids, yes, they’ll be gone, that’ll have to wait till morning. But the custodian’ll be there, and maybe he saw something.”
“Will it be the same custodian who was there this afternoon?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to check it out, anyway.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Meanwhile, I wanted to know what you plan to do. Do you have any relatives or friends here in the city?”
“No.”
“Then will you be going back home? I know you’re short of cash…”
“Yes, but there was money in Frank’s wallet.”
“Well, the lab’ll be running tests on the wallet and everything in it, so I can’t let you have that. But if you want me to lend you train fare, or bus fare…what I’m asking is whether or not you plan on going home, Mrs. Sebastiani. Because, honestly, there’s nothing more you can do here.”
“I…I don’t know what I want to do,” she said, and began crying again, burying her face in an already sodden handkerchief.
Hawes watched her, awkward in the presence of her tears.
“I’m not sure I want to go home,” she said, her voice muffled by the handkerchief. “With Frank gone…”
The sentence trailed.
She kept sobbing into the handkerchief.
“You have to go home sometime,” Hawes said gently.
“I know, I know,” she said, and blew her nose, and sniffed, and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “There are calls I’ll have to make…Frank’s mother in Atlanta, and his sister…and I guess…I suppose I’ll have to make funeral arrangements…oh God, how are they going to…what will they…?”
Hawes was thinking the same thing. The body was in four separate pieces. The body didn’t have hands or a head.
“That’ll have to wait till autopsy, anyway,” he said. “I’ll let you know when…”
“I thought they’d already done that.”
“Well, that was a prelim. We asked for a preliminary report, you see. But the ME’ll want to do a more thorough examination.”
“Why?” she asked. “I’ve already identified him.”
“Yes, but we’re dealing with a murder here, Mrs. Sebastiani, and we need to know…well, for example, your husband may have been poisoned before the body was…well…”
He cut himself short.
He was talking too much.
This was a goddamn grieving widow here.
“There are lots of things the ME can tell us,” he concluded lamely.
Marie nodded.
“So…will you be going home?” he asked.
“I suppose.”
Hawes opened his wallet, pulled out two $20s and a $10.
“This should get you there,” he said, handing the money to her. “That’s too much,” she said.
“Well, tide you over. I’ll give you a ring later tonight, make sure you got home okay. And I’ll be in touch as we go along. Sometimes these things take a little while, but we’ll be work—”
“Yes,” she said. “Let me know.”
“I’ll have one of the cars drop you off,” he said. “Will you be going home by train or…?”
“Train, yes.”
She seemed numb.
“So…uh…whenever you’re ready, I’ll buzz the sergeant and he’ll pull one of the cars off the street. I’d drive you myself, but Brown and I want to get over to the school.”
Marie nodded.
And then she looked up and said—perhaps only to herself—“How am I going to live without him?”
Genero was annoyed.
He was the one who’d found the first piece of the body, and now all four pieces were out of his hands. So to speak. He blamed it on seniority. Both Brown and Hawes had been detectives longer than he had, and so they’d immediately taken charge of a juicy homicide. So here he was, back on the street again, cruising like a goddamn patrolman. He was more than annoyed. He was enormously pissed.
The streets at a quarter past 10:00 were still teeming with people...well, sure, who expected this kind of weather at the end of October? Guys in shirtsleeves, girls in summer dresses, everybody strolling up the avenue like it was summertime in Paris, not that he’d ever been there. Lady there on the corner with a French poodle, letting the dog poop right on the sidewalk, even though it was against the law. He wondered if he should arrest her. He considered it beneath his dignity, a detective/3rd having to arrest a lady whose dog was illegally pooping. He let the dog poop, drove on by.
Made a cursory tour of the sector.
Who else was out here?
Kling?
Came onto Culver, began heading east.
Past the first liquor store got robbed tonight, then the second one…
What had they been talking about back there in the squadroom? Meyer and Carella. Midgets? Was it possible? Midgets holding up liquor stores? Those little Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz holding up liquor stores, for Christ’s sake? He didn’t know what kind of a world this was getting to be. He thanked God every night before he went to sleep that he had been chosen to enforce law and order in the kind of world this was getting to be. Even if sometimes he had a good ripe murder yanked out of his hands. The only way to get ahead in the Department was to crack a good homicide every now and then. Not that it had done Carella much good, all the homicides he’d cracked. Been a detective for how many years now? Still only 2nd grade. Well, sometimes people got passed over. The meek shall inherit the earth, he thought. Still, he wished he’d had an honest crack at that homicide tonight. He was the one found the first piece, wasn’t he?
Onto Mason Avenue, the hookers out in force, well, Halloween, lots of guys coming uptown to look for the Great Pumpkin. Went home with the Great Herpes and maybe the Great AIDS. He wouldn’t screw a Mason Avenue hooker if you gave him a million dollars. Well, maybe he would. For a million, maybe. That one on the corner looked very clean, in fact. But you could never tell. Anyway, she was Puerto Rican, and his mother had warned him against fooling around with any girls who weren’t Italian. He wondered if Italian girls ever got herpes. He was positive they never got AIDS.
Swinging north again, up one of the side streets, then onto the Stem, all gaudy and bright, he really loved this part of the…
“Boy One, Boy One…”
The walkie-talkie lying on the seat beside him. Dispatcher trying to raise…
“Boy One.”
Answering.
“10-21 at 1141 Oliver, near Sixth. Apartment 42, 10-21 at 1141 Oliver, near Sixth. See the lady.”
“What was that apartment again?”
“Four-two.”
“Rolling.”
A burglary past, couple of blocks down and to the south. No need for a detective on the scene. If it had been a 10-30, an armed robbery in progress, or even a 10-34, an assault in progress, he’d have responded along with the blues. He guessed. Sometimes it was better not to stick your nose into too many things. A 10-13—an assist officer—sure. Man called in for help, you got to the scene fast, wherever you were.
Ran uptown on the Stem for a couple of blocks, made a right turn at random, heading south toward the park. He’d swing onto Grover there, parallel the park for a while, then run north to the river, come back down Silvermine, take a run around the Oval, then back south on…
Up ahead.
Four teenagers.
Running into the building on the corner.
Just a glimpse of them.
Blue jeans and denim jackets.
Something in their hands.
Trouble?
Shit, he thought.
He eased the car over. No parking spaces on the street, he double-parked in front of the building and picked up the walkie-talkie.
“Eight-Seven,” he said, “DD Four.”
Calling home, identifying himself. One of the six unmarked sedans used by the Detective Division.
“Go ahead, Four.”
“Genero,” he said. “10-51, four in number, at 1217 North 11th.”
“Stay in touch, Genero.”
He’d identified the four teenagers as a roving band, a non-crime incident, and he hoped that was what it turned out to be. Getting out of the car, he pulled back the flap of his jacket and was clipping the walkie-talkie to his belt when a loud whooshing sound erupted from inside the building. He almost dropped the walkie-talkie. He looked up sharply. Flames! In the lobby there! And running out of the building, the four teenagers, one of them still carrying in his right hand what looked like a Molotov cocktail. Instinctively, Genero yelled, “Stop! Police!” and yanked his service revolver from its holster.
The kids hesitated for only a moment.
“Police!” he shouted again.
The one with the firebomb held a Zippo lighter to the wick and hurled the bottle at Genero.
The bottle crashed at his feet. Flames sprang up from the sidewalk. He threw both hands up to protect his face, and then immediately stepped back and brought his right hand down again, pistol level, firing into the wall of fire, through the wall of fire, two quick shots in succession.
Somebody screamed.
And suddenly they were on him. They jumped through the flames like circus performers, three of them hitting him almost simultaneously, knocking him to the pavement. He rolled away from the fire, tried to roll away from their kicks. He brought the gun hand up again, fired again, three shots gone now, heard someone grunt. Don’t waste any, he thought, and one of them kicked him in the head. He went blank for an instant. His finger tightened reflexively on the trigger. The gun exploded wild, close to his own ear. He blinked his eyes. He was going. He fought unconsciousness. Someone kicked him in the shoulder, and the sharp pain rocketed into his brain and brought him back. Four shots gone, he thought. Make the next ones count. He rolled away again. He blinked them into focus. Only two of them on their feet now. The third one flat on his back near the entrance to the building. Fourth one lying on the sidewalk dangerously close to the fire. He’d hammered two of them, but there were still two to go, and only two shots left in the gun.
His heart was pounding.
But he took his time.
Waited till the lead kicker was almost on him, and then shot for his chest.
Second one right behind him, almost knocked off his feet when his buddy blew back into him. Genero fired again. Took the second one in the left shoulder, sent him spinning around and staggering back toward the wall of the building.
Genero could hardly breathe.
He got to his feet, fanned the empty gun at them.
Nobody seemed to be going anywhere.
He backed off a pace, pulled cartridges from his belt, loaded them into the cylinder, counting…four, five, six, and ready again.
“Move and you’re dead,” he whispered, and yanked the walkie-talkie from his belt.
Detective/3rd Grade Richard Genero had come of age on the eve of All Hallows’ Day.
The school custodian who answered the night bell was the same one who’d locked Sebastian the Great’s tricks in a storeroom earlier this afternoon. Peering through the grilled upper glass panel of the door at the back of the building, he recognized Hawes at once, unlocked the door, and let him in.
“’Evening, Mr. Buono,” Hawes said.
“Hey, how you doing?” Buono said.
He was a man in his late sixties, thinning gray hair, thin gray mustache over his upper lip. Pale blue eyes, somewhat bulbous nose. He was wearing coveralls. A flashlight was in one of the pockets. He clipped his ring of keys to a loop on the pocket.
“This is my partner, Detective Brown,” Hawes said.
“Nice to meetcha,” Buono said. “You come back for the stuff?”
“Well, no,” Hawes said. “Few questions we’d like to ask you.”
Buono immediately figured they knew he was stealing supplies from the classroom closets.
“Hey, sure,” he said, and tried to look innocent. He locked the door behind them, and said, “Come on over the office, we can talk there. My friend and me were playing checkers.”
They walked down a yellow-tiled, locker-lined corridor. They passed a wall clock that read twenty minutes past 10:00. They made a left turn. More students’ lockers on either wall. A bulletin board. A poster reading:
COME CHEER THE TIGERS!
Saturday, Nov. 1, 2:00 P.M.
RAUCHER FIELD
To the right of that, another poster announcing:
SEBASTIAN THE GREAT!
HALLOWEEN MAGIC!
Auditorium. 4:00 P.M.
Beneath the lettering was a black-and-white photograph of a good-looking young man wearing a top hat and bow tie, grinning into the camera.
“Okay to take that poster?” Brown asked.
“Which one?” Buono said.
“The magician.”
“Sure,” Buono said, and shrugged.
Brown began pulling out the tacks.
“Come in handy, we find the head,” he said to Hawes, and then folded the poster and put it in his inside jacket pocket.
Buono led them further down the hall, opened a door at the end of it. A sparsely furnished room. An upright locker, green in contrast to the reds, yellows, and oranges of the lockers in the halls. Long oak table, probably requisitioned from one of the administration offices. Four straight-backed chairs around it, checkerboard on one end of it. Coffeepot on a hot plate on one wall of the room, clock over it. Framed picture of Ronald Reagan on the wall opposite.
“This here’s my friend, Sal Pasquali,” Buono said.
Pasquali was in his late sixties, early seventies, wearing brown trousers, brown shoes and socks, a pale yellow sports shirt, and a brown sweater buttoned up the front. He looked like a candy store owner.
“These people here are detectives,” Buono said, and looked at Pasquali, hoping he would understand what the look meant: Watch your onions about the chalk, and the paste, and the pencils, and the erasers, and the reams of paper.
Pasquali nodded sagely, like a Mafia don.
“Pleased to meetcha,” he said.
“So,” Buono said, “sit down. You want some coffee?”
“Thanks, no,” Hawes said.
The detectives pulled out chairs and sat.
Buono could see Brown’s gun in a shoulder holster under his jacket.
“We were just playing checkers here,” Pasquali said.
“Who’s winning?” Brown asked.
“Well, we don’t play for money or nothing,” Pasquali said.
Which meant that they did.
Brown suddenly wondered what these two old farts were hiding.
“I wanted to ask whether you saw anything that happened outside there this afternoon,” Hawes said.
“Why?” Buono said at once. “Is something missing?”
“No, no. Missing? What do you mean?”
“Well, what do you mean?” Buono said, and glanced at Pasquali.
“I meant when the cars were being loaded.”
“Oh.”
“When Mr. Sebastiani was out there loading his tricks in the Citation.”
“I didn’t see him doing that,” Buono said.
“You weren’t out there after he finished the act, huh?”
“No. I didn’t come on till four o’clock.”
“Well, he’d have been out there around five-thirty.”
“No, I didn’t see him.”
“Then you have no idea who might’ve dumped that stuff out of his car…”
“No idea at all.”
“And driven off with it.”
“No. Five-thirty, I was prolly down the north end of the building, starting with the classrooms there. I usually start cleaning the classrooms down the north end, it’s like a routine, you know. Tradition.”
“That’s near the driveway, isn’t it? The north end?”
“Yeah, the back of the building. But I didn’t see anything out there. I mean, I mighta seen something if I was looking—there’s windows in the classrooms, you know. But I wasn’t looking for nothing. I was busy cleaning up the classrooms.”
“You say you came on at four…”
“That’s right. Four to midnight.”
“Like us,” Brown said, and smiled.
“Yeah?” Buono said. “Is that your shift? Whattya know? You hear this, Sal? They got shifts like us.”
“What a coincidence,” Pasquali said.
Brown still wondered what they were hiding.
