THE WOMAN’S NAME was Rebecca Bright, and she told Kling immediately that her younger brother had been a little odd even when he was a kid, and she wasn’t surprised that he’d been doing graffiti or that he’d got himself killed for it.
The detectives at Midtown South—where Henry Bright’s body had been found on the sidewalk outside the bookshop, the shards of the shattered plate-glass window all around him—had called Kling early this morning with an FMU request. Operations Division had informed them that detectives Parker and Kling were currently investigating the uptown murders of the three previous graffiti writers, and since this seemed obviously related, it was a clear case of First Man Up, and should be turned over to the Eight-Seven, not that Midtown South was trying to shirk its responsibilities.
Kling wanted to know why they considered this a clear case of FMU, not that he was trying to shirk his responsibilities, but copycatting was not an unknown phenomenon in this city. For example, had they recovered any bullets at the scene? This was a trick question. There’d been no bullets or cartridge cases recovered at the scenes of any of the three previous murders. But to Kling’s great surprise, the detective calling from M.S. said, “Yeah, we did, matter of fact, but that’s not why we’re turning this over to you. We know you didn’t find nothing previous.”
“What’d you find?”
“Three bullets inside the front window. Guy must’ve missed the victim first few times he fired. Anyway, the slugs went through the plate glass, and we recovered them.”
“That still doesn’t add up to…”
“We also got a note.”
“a what ?”
“Thistime he pinned a note to the body.”
“a note ?”
“Got it right here in my hand. Nice handwritten note. What it says is, ‘I killed the three uptown.’ Now does that sound like FMU, or does it?”
Kling was thinking the guy wanted to get caught, leaving a handwritten note. Only the ones who wanted to get caught left notes. Except the Deaf Man.He left notes because he didn’t want to get caught.
Rebecca Bright was a singularly plain woman, some thirty years old, Kling guessed, sitting in a small office at the travel agency for which she worked. Posters of Italy and Spain covered the walls behind her. Kling wondered what it was like in Italy or Spain.
“Did you know your brother was writing graffiti?”
“No,” she said. “But, as I told you, I’m not surprised.”
“Scratchinggraffiti, actually,” Kling said. “A section of the broken window had his initials on it. Scratched into the glass. An H , anyway, and part of a B . He was killed before he could finish the tag.”
“The what?”
“The tag. The marker. That’s what these writers call them. The graffiti writers.”
“I see.”
“Did you know any of your brother’s friends?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t know if any of them were writers then?”
“No. You mean graffiti writers, I take it.”
“Yes.”
“Far as I knew, Henry worked in the produce department of a supermarket. I had no idea what he was doing at night. Scratching his name on windows, you now tell me. Or his friends, either.”
“Never met any of them, is that right?”
“Never. Henry and I didn’t see much of each other. Henry was a pain in the ass, if you’ll pardon my French. I didn’t like him when he was a kid, and I liked him less when he grew up.If you can call a twenty-two-year-old who scratches his name on windows a grown-up. ”
“But you didn’t know he was doing that.”
“That’s right. I would have liked him even less if I’d known.”
“Would you recognize the handwriting on this note?” Kling asked, and showed her a photocopy of the note M.S. had turned over to him.
Rebecca studied it.
“No,” she said. “Is that who killed my brother? The one I’ve been reading about in the papers?”
“It’s a possibility,” Kling said.
“He’s got to be crazy, don’t you think? Though, I’ll tell you the truth…”
Kling waited.
“Sometimes I feel like killing them myself.”
NO ONE KNEW why brawling, boisterous Calm’s Point was called that. Perhaps at one time, when the British were still there, it had indeed been a peaceful pastoral place. Nowadays, the name carried with it a touch of irony bordering on sarcasm: Calm’s Point was the noisiest section of the sprawling city, and the spin its residents put on the English language was the cause of derision, amusement, and gross imitation everywhere else in the United States. Ask a native of Calm’s Point where he came from, and be would proudly and unerringly tell you “Carm’s Pernt.”
The officers who answered the radio call had been told only to investigate a complaint of “loud music” coming from apartment 42 at 2116 Nightingale Avenue in a largely Colombian section of Calm’s Point. They could hear the music blasting the moment they entered the building. They were experienced cops; it was with a sense of foreboding that they climbed the steps to the fourth floor. They knocked. They knocked again, using their batons this time. They yelled “Police!” over the blare of the Spanish music coming from inside the apartment. They banged on the door again. Then they kicked it in.
A man later identified as Escamilio Riomonte was lying on the floor with a bullet hole in the back of his head.
A woman later identified as Anita Riomonte, his wife, was found lying beside him, a bullet hole in the back of her head.
A four-month-old baby later identified as their daughter, Jewel, was found alive in her crib.
Neighbors told the responding officers that the couple sold heroin from the apartment and that the motive was probably robbery. It was later established that each of the victims had been shot once in the back of the head with a .25 caliber semiautomatic handgun. Sergeant Charles Culligan of the Six-Three Precinct remarked, “Whoever did it, looks like they done it before.”
The child was removed to the Riverhead Municipal Hospital Center where it was concluded that she’d spent at least twenty-four hours in that crib before the officers discovered her. Her temperature upon admission to the hospital was recorded as a hundred and five degrees. The moment she began hyperventilating, she was moved to an intensive-care unit. Although the shooting had taken place the day before, Jewel died at 12:34P .M. that April Fools’ Day.
THE NEWSPAPER ADS last weekend had listed the name of the promoter as Windows Entertainment. It had also listed the names of the groups that would be performing in Grover Park this coming weekend. The Deaf Man chose one of the lesser-known groups—he guessed it was lesser known because its name was in smaller type than some of the others—and then placed his call to Windows.
“Hello,” he said to the woman who answered the phone, “this is Sonny Sanson, I’m handling the arrangements for Spit Shine? For the gig this weekend?”
“Yes, Mr. Samson, how…?”
“Sanson,” he said. “S-A-N-S.”