“No. Why?” Freeland seemed genuinely puzzled at the question.
“Just curious,” said Karp, and left.
He went back to his office, spent the rest of the morning on routine paperwork, and was about to break for lunch when he got a call from the Tombs. It was Tony Chelham, the captain of the day shift. Karp listened to what the man had to say with growing disbelief.
“Hold on a minute, Tony, Russell wants what?”
“He wants his blue shirt. We had him signing for his stuff, you know? And he says, ‘Where’s my blue shirt? I ain’t signing without my blue shirt.’”
“Holy shit! Um, did he want the knife he killed her with too?”
A booming laugh. “No, but I thought it could be something, the shirt. He said the cops had it down by the Six. So I called.”
“You did great, Tony. Okay, here’s what I want you to do. Get with Charlie Cimella at the Six. Have him bring the shirt. Get Russell in a cell by himself. Show him the shirt and say, ‘Is this the blue shirt you asked for, Russell?’ Let him handle it, sniff it, whatever. If he says, yeah, it’s mine, just say something like, okay, but we have to hold it for a while-you’ll get it back, we’ll put a note saying that in the effects bag. Then leave. Don’t say anything else at all, no questions, nothing. Make sure Charlie understands that too. Then both of you get over here and we’ll make out a statement.”
“Okay, check. I’ll get right on it.”
An hour later, Karp watched as the two officers signed statements to the effect that Hosie Russell had positively identified the shirt as his, amid much rolling of eyes all around.
“You know, guys,” Karp said, “this is what makes this job such a challenge-matching wits with Professor Moriarty.”
9
Harry Bello walked the night streets of Alphabet City, that part of the upper lower East Side of Manhattan where the avenues are named not for great men or events but for letters of the alphabet, as if it might have been inappropriate to name them after anything admirable. There are many slums in New York that have fallen from better times-Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant were once proud middle-class districts-but Alphabet City was built as a slum and had not risen in the world. It contains block after block of New Law tenements, five-story walk-ups with fire escapes and air shafts. Down the bleak avenues parade the storefronts of bodegas, liquor stores, cheap furniture and clothing marts, record and hairdressing rooms, pentecostal churches, and the rest of the economy of poverty, all heavily grilled and shuttered at night.
In the sixties, tens of thousands of young people seeking bohemia flooded into New York, and naturally gravitated to the famous art enclave of Greenwich Village. They were thirty years too late; the rents there were designed for art patrons rather than actual artists and their friends. So they moved east, displacing elderly Ukranians, and the East Village was born. There, middle-class kids on the bum could live in agreeable squalor, take drugs, catch sexual diseases, and (a few of them) make music and art.
Where the East Village ends and Alphabet City begins is a question only real estate brokers care much about. To a homicide cop like Bello the presence of a borderland like this one, between the faux poor and the hard cases, meant mainly that it was a place where taxpayers’ children in search of excitement were particularly likely to get themselves killed.
Every night for the past week Bello had walked the streets around midnight. This was after a full day’s work acting as Marlene Ciampi’s private detective on a variety of other cases. Bello didn’t need much sleep, and he had no hobbies except Lucy Karp, who was not available in the wee hours.
He was looking for a middle-aged black man, the man who had called 911 at 1:58 one evening a month or so ago and said, “There’s a dead woman on Fifth Street off Avenue A.” When the operator had asked for his name and number, he had shouted, “You heard me. Fifth and A,” and hung up. Bello had listened to the tape many times. The pronunciation was diagnostic: “there’s” was “deh’s”; “Fifth” was “Fi’t”; “dead” was “daid”; and, most interesting, “heard” was “hoid.” You didn’t get that much among the recent generations. The guy would be over fifty.
Bello had canvassed all the houses on both sides of 5th between avenues A and B and come up blank. A lot of “no comprende” on 5th Street. Bello understood enough Spanish to understand that something was being hidden, but not enough to squeeze for it. So he continued to walk the night streets. He bought cigarettes and coffee in the bodegas. He stared down the guapos swaggering on the streets. He was polite, almost courtly, to the women.
After a while the people got used to him, and when they found he was not interested in their minor grifts, they almost forgot about him, except that, to the majority of the people, it was nice having their own private lajara on the street at night. He became invisible. He was good at it; he felt invisible.
On this night Harry Bello crosses Avenue A to a little comidas y criollas, where he buys a cup of excellent coffee and a greasy sugar bun. He reads the News, the other three men in the place, Puerto Ricans and a Dominican, chat, smoke, read El Diario. Two whores come in for beer, indulge in light raillery, leave with a scream of tires. An elderly black man in dark green work clothes comes in, buys a pack of Camels and a newspaper. When the man gives his order, Bello puts down his paper. There is a brief, inexplicable hiatus in the Spanish conversation.
The black man leaves. Bello, without a word, rises and drifts out behind him. The black man is mid-sixties; he walks stiffly, but his shoulders are square and his back is erect. He enters a building on A off 7th Street. Bello follows him into the building. The man hears a step sounding behind him, whirls in fear. Bello holds up his gold shield. He says, “Tell me about the girl. How she died.”
Marlene said, “He said they were laughing?”
“Yeah,” said Bello. “Laughing their heads off. Shouting stuff. Have a nice trip. Like that. Two of them, that he saw over the parapet.”
They were in her office, and Bello was telling her what he had learned from William Braintree, sixty-four, a Con Ed maintenance worker who, walking home from his swing-shift job at a local substation, had nearly been struck by the falling body of a young woman.
“No, he couldn’t ID them,” Bello continued, anticipating as usual. “Just saw silhouettes.” Pause. “The problem is proof.”
Marlene struggled to keep up with the detective. “Um, Harry, you know who did it?”
“Oh, yeah. There’ll be somebody saw it. Let you know.” He got up and left.
Weeks now pass. The season moves into full summer, the City heats ups, and geographically literate New Yorkers recall that they live at the steamy latitudes of Madrid and Naples. Having no corrida to distract them, the poor cannot pass the unbearable summer like the dignified Madrileños and so take up the habits of the Neapolitans, shooting and stabbing one another in increasing numbers.
Lennie Bergman’s case against the despicable Emilio Morales collapses amid scandal. Bergman receives a scathing lecture from the judge. Karp is subjected to a public tongue-lashing by the district attorney, who is able to use some tough-guy lines that he has been saving up for years. (“What kind of whorehouse are you running down there, Karp? You can’t keep your people in line, maybe I better find someone who can!”) Karp takes it calmly, as he does most things these days. He is convinced that he will never recover from his impending operation. Nevertheless, he prepares the case against Hosie Russell for the grand jury and gets his indictment.
Lucy Karp grows two tiny fangs. She is not amused. Sleep is banished. In desperation, and secretly, Marlene dips a rag in marsala wine and sugar and sticks it in Lucy’s little gob. It works like a charm. Marlene decides not to think about her daughter’s brain cells perishing in squadrons, or what Karp will have to say if he finds out.