Two hours later, at half past dinnertime, the night shift was parking at their desks in the squad room. Ralph “Rascal” Valdeen was in holding, and Conklin and I were set to interrogate Donald Francis Wolfe in Interview 1.
CHAPTER 45
I HADN’T EATEN anything but a burger and a stack of pickle chips since Brady’s surprise visit at six that morning. I was irritable and frustrated, and now Conklin and I were in the box with Donald Wolfe, who didn’t act like a man who was going down for a felony.
“Do you understand you’re on the hook for a felony?” Conklin asked him.
“I didn’t do nothing. You tackled me. That’s assault, yo. With a deadly weapon on your person. I got witnesses. I didn’t know you were a cop and that’s why I ran.”
Conklin yawned. Then he said, “For the record, Sergeant Boxer announced that she was a police officer and showed you her badge. I’m a witness. Sergeant, I’ll be back.”
Conklin got out of his chair and left the interview room. Generally, Conklin took the role of “good” cop, but right now, he was keeping his powder dry for Valdeen. So I took over the interview with Wolfe.
“Donald,” I said. “OK for me to call you Donnie?”
“Donnie is OK,” he said. He was twenty-five. He had a sixth-grade education. He had done small time and had had a lot of experience in rooms just like this one.
“Look, Donnie. We’ve got you on boosting the Honda. Got you cold. I’m going to say you didn’t find that big bag of money under a bench at a streetcar stop.”
“Funny you say that, Sergeant. That’s right. Bench outside the ferry terminal. You got a report of that money being stolen? No, right? It’s all mine.”
I acted like he hadn’t said anything.
“Grand theft auto is going to get you twelve to fifteen.”
“For that beater? It’s an oh-seven, and I didn’t steal it anyway.”
“Found it at the ferry terminal?”
“Yes, ma’am. Man said to me, ‘Take this car from me, please. I can’t afford to have it fixed.’ I gave one large in cash and he said, ‘Thanks.’”
I picked up the rather thick file of Donald Wolfe’s record of juvenile and petty crimes and slammed it down hard on the table. It made a nice loud crack.
I said, “Cut the shit. You want a break on that stolen car, you’ve got exactly one minute to help me out. After that, my partner is getting what we need from Valdeen. He looks soft, Donnie. I’m betting he’s gonna step up to the line.”
Wolfe looked down at the table and started shaking his head while muttering, “Nuh-uh-uh. No-no-no.”
“No what, Donnie?”
“What is it you want to know, exactly?”
“What do you know about the armed robbery at Wicker House this morning?”
“N.O. Nothing. When I left work, everything was cool. Do you understand? Rascal and me. We’re stockroom boys. We unpack the boxes. We ship boxes out. We make labels and check inventory and sometimes we bring coffee to some decorator lady. I don’t know shit about shit.”
“Did you know there was going to be a raid on Wicker House?”
“How would I know anything about that?”
“Seven people were shot to death. You knew those men, Donnie. You worked with them. You want whoever killed them to get away with it?”
“I hope you get whoever did that. I do.”
He looked at me like I was supposed to believe him.
I said, “Do you know anything about men wearing police Windbreakers knocking over mercados? Hitting up drug dealers?”
“What? Cops taking drugs and money offa dealers and keeping it for theirselves? I never heard of anything like that.”
He laughed. Then he got serious. He leaned across the table and said, “Listen up, Sergeant. Other people will take care of this problem that happened at Wicker House, OK? They’re a whole lot better at it than you.”
That stopped me. “Meaning what? Who’s going to take care of this? How?”
Wolfe shrugged. His flip, phony wise-ass personality was back. “Follow the money, Sergeant.”
“Explain what you mean by that,” I said.
He said, “I get my phone call now? My girlfriend is worried about why I’m not home. Did I say? We’re having a baby.”
“Who will get to kiss his daddy in twelve to fifteen?”
I left the room and walked next door. I looked through the glass into Interview 2 and watched Conklin get absolutely nowhere with Ralph Valdeen. Another stockroom boy. Didn’t know nothing.
Seven men had died, and if that massacre was over wicker furniture, it was a first. More likely, big money and a lot of drugs had been boosted from that drug factory.
I thought about what Wolfe had said in that one honest-sounding statement: Someone would take care of the men responsible. Someone better at it than us. “Follow the money.”
I had a shivery feeling as I thought about what kind of payback there might be for the massacre at Wicker House. A feeling the Irish might express by saying “Someone just walked over my grave.”
CHAPTER 46
CINDY WAS BEING treated like a celebrity in a bookstore called Book Revue on Long Island, New York.
This part—the book signings, the people applauding her—she hadn’t thought about this at all during the years she’d spent thinking about writing a book.
She had staked out psycho killers in sketchy areas, had spent nights in rough motels or in her car, had worked nights and weekends and pestered cops, even ones she loved, for information that would become a great story, possibly an exclusive one. She had worked the crime desk for the challenge of finding an angle that the police didn’t have, for the rush of turning her hand-mined facts into dramatic prose.
It had been a nonstop thrill, and now there was this.
In a time when bookstores were going virtual, this one was what a real bookstore still looked like in her dreams. There were a blue-and-white-checked floor, thousands of linear feet of bookshelves, comfortable nooks for people to sit and read in, and an inviting performance space where writers could give readings and sign books.
The owner of Book Revue, Bob Klein, was coming over to talk to her now. Bob was a good-looking man in his fifties wearing glasses, a starched shirt, and a smart tan suit.
“Cindy, I’ve got open cartons under your table. I’ll test the microphone for you when you’re ready.”
There was a rope line leading to a table with a blowup of her picture on an easel behind it, and another easel holding a poster of her book jacket. A stack of books rested on the table with a line of pens. And people were coming into the store in response to the ad and were filling up the chairs, easily twenty women, who lit up when they recognized her from her picture.
She was talking to Bob when her phone rang.
Cindy answered the call and said, “Richie, I’m at Book Revue.”
“Hey, sweetie, hang on.”
She heard him say, “I’ll be back in a second, Mr. Valdeen. Sit tight.”
A door closed; then Richie was back.
“Sorry. Got a couple of mutts could have some information on this bloodbath in a drug lab.”
“You want to speak later?” Cindy said.
“No, I’m good. So how did it go? Your speech.”
“I’m going on in a couple of minutes.”
Richie said, “You’ll do great. I know that for a fact.”
Cindy sent love and kisses out to San Francisco. And then Bob said to her, “Your fans await.”
Cindy took the lectern to a nice little round of applause. There were twenty-two people there, her world record. She spoke into the microphone.
“Hello, everyone. So nice to see you all here. I’m Cindy Thomas, and I want to tell you about my book, Fish’s Girl. Whatever you think about the love between a man and a woman, you probably never thought that serial murder could bond two people.
“But I’m here to tell you about Randy Fish and Mackie Morales, two savage killers, and their marriage—with child—which was as tight as a marriage can be.”