“It’s not Avanian,” he said without preamble when she picked up the phone.
She nevertheless felt cranky. “Is that a new greeting, Harry? I like it. Let’s not say, ‘Hello, Marlene, sorry to disturb you.’ Let’s all start saying, ‘It’s not Avanian,’ when the other person answers.”
“The brother was by Beekman,” said Harry, ignoring this.
“I don’t get it, Harry. That’s the woman went to the coast and came back. I thought you checked with United.”
“It’s the woman who went, but the woman who went wasn’t Avanian.”
“Harry, what about the credit card? Where did Avanian’s plastic come from?”
“It was the tattoos. We should have figured. I’m slowing down.”
“What tattoos, Harry?”
“On the Beekman girl-woman. Avanian didn’t have any that her brother knew of. But the woman in Beekman had tattoos. Quite a few. So do the women who hang out with Vinnie and his friends.”
Marlene hated playing the straight man. She tried to kick her brain into gear. “Okay, so if she wasn’t Avanian, she was somebody who had at least one of Avanian’s possessions, or knew someone who had, and if she was also connected with the gang, that means …” What did it mean? Then it hit her, with a cold chill.
Before she could speak, Harry said, “The Jane Doe is Gabrielle Avanian. She lived in the neighborhood. She was walking down the street that night and they grabbed her. I almost saw it happen to a woman tonight.”
“Just at random?”
“Sure. The fuck do they care? Our Beekman woman must have boosted her stuff, her credit card, and her ticket, went off and had a little vacation. Disneyland, L.A. Vinnie and them were probably not too pleased about that. She must have blown five, six grand. Then she came back, like an asshole, and they found her and did her. We could confirm it was Avanian through dental records. I’ll get on that first thing.” He paused. “Still no witness. We could roust their place.”
Marlene considered it briefly. Could she get a warrant on the basis of a witness seeing two silhouettes on a roof and a crazy theory? Maybe. Then what if they found evidence connected to the victim in apartments occupied by the gang? The mutts could play nobody-knows-nothin’ or he-did-it forever. There was probably a substantial transient population going through there anyway; without eyewitness testimony or a confession, they didn’t have a case that would stand up.
She was about to share these considerations with Bello when he said, “I saw your little friend tonight. The princess.”
“Oh, yeah? Where?”
“Building across the street from the mutts. She lives on three. Her mom’s a pross. She was giving the kid a hard time.”
It popped into Marlene’s mind all at once. Angels falling from the sky and getting smooshed. It had to be that.
“She lives across the street from where the murder took place? With a street view?”
He caught the tone in her voice. “Yeah. What’s up?”
“She saw it, Harry. She’s our witness.”
“Witness? A flaky kid?”
“And if she saw it, the odds are her mother saw it too.”
“I asked her already. Zip.”
“Yeah, but we didn’t know. Now we know! Get her, Harry. Squeeze her.”
The following day, Concepción (Chica) Perez proved to be squeezable. Most prostitutes are. After obtaining a guarantee that the police would find her another place to live, she admitted that she and her daughter had watched as Vinnie Boguluso grabbed Gabrielle Avanian off the street, picked her up like a doll, and carried her into his building, amid the laughter of Eric Ritter and Duane Womrath and several others she could not identify. An hour later, she saw the woman being thrown over the roof parapet. She also observed the three men standing on the sixth-floor fire escape attempting to urinate on the body in the street below.
Marlene read over the formal Q. amp; A. she had taken from Perez after Harry had finished with her.
“I’m going to warrant all three of them. Let’s pick them up right now. Who’re you going to take?”
“I’ll do it.”
She looked at him to see if he was joking. It would have surprised her. Harry didn’t go in much for joking. He wasn’t joking.
“Harry, these guys are dangerous.”
“To girls,” he said.
He did go by the Fifth Precinct and collect a RMP and a driver, and they drove to 525 East 5th Street. It was nine-thirty in the morning. Harry told the driver to wait in the car and went into the building alone. The gang occupied the first two floors. The apartments on the upper floors were either abandoned, their fixtures and wiring ripped out, or home to a transient population of junkies and runaways.
He knocked on the scarred door of Apartment 1-C, and knocked steadily for something like three minutes. These were not early risers. A surly voice shouted, “Who the fuck is that?”
Harry shouted, “It’s Harry Bello. Open up!”
Monkey Ritter threw open the door, dressed only in grayish Jockeys and a sagging T-shirt. He saw Harry and his eyes widened. As he drew breath to shout a warning, Harry’s fist caught him solidly in the solar plexus and he crumpled; only a strangled whine escaped his throat. Harry cuffed him and frog-marched him unresistingly down the hall, out into the street, and into the back of the RMP.
“Keep him quiet, would you?” said Harry to the amazed young cop. “And can I borrow your cuffs? I only brought one pair.”
The driver gave him a set. “You sure you don’t need any backup?” he asked.
Harry shook his head and went back into the building.
He found Vinnie in the back bedroom of 1-C, lying on a mattress with a girl. Also in the room were piles of dirty clothes, a new nineteen-inch television set, a red steel toolbox, a disassembled 1956 Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide, and, lying near the mattress, a sawed-off shotgun.
When Bello entered the room, Vinnie said, “What the fuck do you want, pig?”
Harry said, “Get up, Vinnie. Let’s go.”
“I’m not goin’ no fuckin’ where with you,” said Vinnie, his eyes moving to the shotgun.
“Look at me, Vinnie, not at the gun. You’re not going to go for the gun.” His voice was calm, as if instructing a dull child.
Vinnie looked at Bello’s face, at his eyes. It was a revelation. Vinnie had never looked at a face that held no fear, even when he looked in a mirror, and he was an expert; people were afraid of Vinnie Boguluso. This man didn’t care whether he lived or died, and certainly didn’t care whether Vinnie lived or died. Vinnie saw his own death written on this face.
He licked dry lips. “Hey, what’s this about?”
Harry said, “Get up, Vinnie. Don’t fuck me around anymore.”
“I wanna get dressed.”
“Make it quick.”
Vinnie hesitated, then rose clumsily to his feet, using the blanket to cover his crotch, and uncovering the girl, who shrieked and cursed him. Vinnie kicked out at her and told her to shut the fuck up, exposing himself in the process.
Vinnie went into the corner and put on jeans, a T-shirt, and boots, and Harry then cuffed him and led him out.
Bello put them in cells in the Fifth Precinct and read them their rights. Neither asked for a lawyer. He talked to Vinnie a while, but Vinnie had regained some of his bravado and was uncooperative. That didn’t matter. It was Eric Ritter who was going to crack. Ritter’s toughness went about as deep as his many tattoos. Harry explained to him that he was going to do time, but the kind of time-where and how long-depended on whether he cooperated or not. He pointed out the various things that might happen to a skinny white boy in Attica after hours, especially one who had a big iron cross and swastika tattooed on his chest. He asked Eric to think about fifteen years of that.
In the afternoon, Marlene came down to the precinct. “How’s it going? I see you’re still in one piece.”
Harry said, “The Monkey’s about ready to go.”