Читать книгу The Silver Chariot Killer - Richard A. Lupoff - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

He wanted to talk with Berry’s wife. He knew she would be in shock. It was only thirty-six hours since the discovery of her husband’s body, give or take a few hours, and she would not even have begun to come to terms with his death. But sometimes that was a help. She wouldn’t have edited her husband’s life and death, she wouldn’t have erected any barriers or sealed off any facts or memories that might have a bearing on the case.

Lindsey found a working pay phone and looked up Cletus Berry’s home number in his pocket organizer. It was a good thing he had the number with him. Ducky Richelieu insisted on all SPUDS agents having unlisted home telephone numbers. Sometimes that was a convenience, sometimes a nuisance.

He dialed and a woman answered. She was crying. That was no surprise. Lindsey identified himself, told the woman he was a friend as well as a colleague of Berry’s, asked if he could come and see her.

She agreed, but not so early in the day, please, could he come in the afternoon.

The woman spoke with a light Italian accent.

That was no surprise. From Berry’s personnel file, Lindsey had learned that Berry’s wife was the former Ester Lazarini, an Italian citizen. Berry had married her in 1979, when he was serving as a warrant officer in the US Army, attached to a satellite NATO headquarters in Rome doing liaison work with the Italian Ministry of Defense.

Lindsey made his appointment with Mrs. Berry and hung up. He studied his wristwatch. It was a little after nine. He looked up another contact in his pocket organizer, punched Detective Sokolov’s number and introduced himself.

Marcie Sokolov had a pleasant voice but spoke with the hard-driving intensity that Lindsey thought typical of New Yorkers. “You’re with International Surety, interested in the Berry shooting.”

Lindsey acknowledged that was so.

“I already talked to your—” she must be fumbling with papers on her desk “—Morris Zissler. Have you spoken with him?”

Lindsey said that he had, that Zissler had briefed him on the case, but that he was representing the company now in the matter of Berry’s death.

“Zissler has the facts. This is a law enforcement matter.”

“Still,” Lindsey said, “if you could spare a few minutes of your time. I flew in from Denver and if I go back empty-handed.…” He let it hang there.

Sokolov took the bait. “Okay. I’m at Midtown North. Where are you coming from? You know your way around New York? You taking a cab or the subway?”

“Uh—I’m on 58th Street. Near Seventh Avenue.”

She laughed. “Never mind. Welcome to our lovely city. You can walk here. Midtown North is on West 54th between Eighth and Ninth. Enjoy your stroll.”

He walked to the corner and stopped to buy a copy of The New York Times. He tucked it under his arm and started down Seventh Avenue.

The walk was invigorating. Detective Sokolov might have meant to be ironic, but Lindsey really did enjoy it. He’d never seen such varied people jammed onto a single strip of pavement. He passed a group of teenagers in a full gang regalia, watch-caps and hooded sweatshirts. They glared at him, but they didn’t do anything more than that. Maybe God was watching over Hobart Lindsey.

He reached Midtown North in a matter of minutes. The police were housed in an utterly characterless building that Lindsey quickly labeled as Postwar Functional. He gave his name to a bored civilian receptionist and sat down with his New York Times while he waited for Detective Sokolov.

National and world news were the same as they’d been a day ago in Denver, but the local stories were enticingly different. The most intriguing was a piece on the expected announcement of a race for the US Senate by a Congressman named Randolph Amoroso. The resignation of the incumbent Senator in the face of charges of sexual malfeasance and financial hanky-panky had left a vacant seat. Even though the Christmas season was generally quiet politically—who wants to compete with the Christ Child for headlines, or with the Jolly Old Elf for campaign contributions?—would-be Senators were scurrying to qualify for a special election slated for June.

Lindsey had heard of Amoroso—barely—but apparently he was hot news in New York. A big Amoroso rally was planned for noon in Times Square. Lindsey looked at his watch. If he didn’t spend too long in Sokolov’s office—if Sokolov ever got around to talking with him—he might take a look at the event. He wasn’t sure where Times Square was, but he suspected that it was fairly nearby.

Amoroso’s Congressional district was Dutchess County, wherever that was, but he was expected in New York to accept the endorsement of a right-wing radio personality. The event would be broadcast live on national radio and TV. Lindsey tracked back through the story to make sure that he’d got it right. He had. Amoroso was not an announced Senatorial candidate—not yet—but he was issuing campaign manifestos and lining up endorsements anyway.

Reading the article about Amoroso, Lindsey felt a chill. An opponent was quoted as accusing the Congressman of Fascist leanings, and Amoroso’s comment was only, “I think I could make the trains run on time.” The Sons of Italy had disowned Amoroso, but a splinter group that claimed affiliation with a neo-Fascist party in Italy had proclaimed its enthusiastic support, and Amoroso had welcomed it.

“These are true Americans,” the Times quoted him, “and true Italian-Americans. These are the people who built our great land. In this age when welfare loafers, drug peddlers and deviates of every sort are wrecking our cities and our nation, it is time for real Americans to stand up and speak loud and clear, to City Hall, to the Congress and the Senate, and to the White House itself.”

Lindsey shook his head. The article went on like that, with periodical references to the greatness that once was Rome. A potential rival accused Amoroso of wanting to impose an Imperial Pax Americana on the world and on the country. Congressman Amoroso’s rival was the mayor of the upstate community of Newburgh Heights. The rival’s name was Oliver Shea. If Lindsey had barely heard of Amoroso before coming to New York, he was positive he’d never heard of Oliver Shea.

Amoroso responded to Shea’s charge by stating that a return to the age of the Pax Romana would mean the salvation of American civilization.

Lindsey laid the newspaper back on the hard composition bench. He watched a couple of uniformed cops drag a pair of women past. If these were hookers they were cut from a different cloth than Julia Roberts or the whores-with-hearts-of-gold who turned up so often on Barney Miller reruns. Lindsey opened the paper again and leafed through it searching for coverage of the dual murder of Cletus Berry and Frankie Fulton.

He found the killings mentioned in a roundup piece on crime in the city. The article quoted Marcie Sokolov to the effect that the death of Frankie Fulton was one just more gang-related execution. Sokolov didn’t say as much, but Lindsey got the feeling that she was perfectly happy to see mobsters removing one another from circulation. Berry’s death was more puzzling, but Sokolov implied that even a solid citizen such as Cletus Berry seemed to be, could get mixed up with the wrong type and find himself in big trouble.

The civilian receptionist caught Lindsey’s attention with a shrill whistle and a sharp, “Hey, you!” Lindsey dropped his newspaper. “Hey, help us keep this place tidy, willya?” the receptionist complained. “Upstairs, third floor, just ask for Sokolov. Here, don’t forget to wear this visitor’s badge.”

Lindsey folded his Times neatly and left it on the bench.

Detective Sokolov’s office wasn’t an office at all, but a desk in a noisy bullpen. Marcie Sokolov was a petite woman with glossy black hair, an olive complexion and sharp features. She was wearing a pale blue blouse and a patterned pull-over sweater. Her detective’s badge was pinned to the sweater; beside it, she wore a plastic Santa face. Instead of eyes, Santa possessed green micro-lights that flashed on and off at random.

Sokolov put down a heavy coffee cup and stood up when Lindsey approached her desk, and extended her hand. She had a hard grip, gave Lindsey’s hand a single tug up-and-down, and released his hand.

“I suppose you have ID.”

He nodded and showed Sokolov his driver’s license and I.S. credentials.

“You related to the mayor?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“What’s wrong with Zissler? How come they sent you out here from Denver? Where is that, Colorado, right? I always wanted to see the Wild West, since I was a little kid and I watched those Gunsmoke reruns and the rest of the westerns.”

Lindsey stood uncomfortably.

“Take a load off.” Sokolov pointed to a hard chair.

Lindsey cleared his throat. “Mr. Zissler comes from our Manhattan East office. He has his other duties. I’m from SPUDS—Special Projects Unit/Detached Status. Cletus Berry was part of SPUDS. He was my friend. I wanted to do what I could do.”

Sokolov held her face pointed downward, looked up at Lindsey with great dark eyes beneath jet black eyebrows. “When a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it,” she said.

Lindsey said, “That’s right.” He recognized the line but didn’t say anything else.

“I told you on the phone, Mr. Lindsey, this is a matter for law enforcement. We have something like 16,000 police officers in New York. Hundreds of detectives. Evidence technicians. Laboratory analysts. The DA’s office. Prosecutors and courts and jails. This city spends a fortune on law enforcement.”

Lindsey waited.

Sokolov frowned. “What makes you think you can do anything we can’t do?”

“When a man’s partner is killed,” Lindsey repeated Sokolov’s line. “Doesn’t Bogie say that?”

“Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett, Sam Spade speaking to Brigid O’Shaughnessy.”

“The line is in the movie, too.”

“I know that. And it’s true. My partner is out on a bust. If anything happened—” she paused “—I’d do something about it, you can bet on that. But then it would be bye-bye, Roscoe, and I’d have to get myself another partner. Life is hard, cowboy.” She picked up a folder and laid it down again. Lindsey was surprised to see that she had sharply pointed, scarlet-painted fingernails. Somehow he’d expected her to trim them short and avoid nail polish. Come to think of it, she was wearing lipstick, too, the same color as her nails.

“Okay,” she said, “talk to me. What do you need to know? What can you give me that I don’t have already?”

Lindsey heard a slight scuffle and looked up. A young man in an immaculate three-piece suit and what looked like a hundred-dollar haircut was approaching with a scruffy-looking older man in a torn sweatshirt and faded jeans. The scruffy man had a badge pinned to his sweatshirt. The younger man was handcuffed.

As they passed Detective Sokolov’s desk, Sokolov grinned at them. The scruffy man said, “Yowza, Mama,” and Sokolov said, “Cat’s pajamas. Congratulations, Roscoe.” To Lindsey she said, “Speak of the devil.”

Lindsey said, “Moe Zissler put me up at Cletus Berry’s place.”

“His apartment? With his family?”

“No. His office. On 58th Street. His little place. There’s a futon there and a microwave.”

“Yeah. In the old days it would have been an army cot and a hotplate. What else is different?”

“Well, don’t you think there might be evidence there? I mean, the man is killed. You’re supposed to be detectives down here. There wasn’t even crime scene tape on the place.”

“It wasn’t a crime scene, now was it?” Sokolov spread her hands as if she couldn’t understand Lindsey’s needing to have this explained. “Berry was killed in Hell’s Kitchen. Look, Mr. Colorado, I’ll make a deal with you. I won’t sell life insurance and you don’t try and solve homicides.”

“You don’t get it.” Lindsey said. “Somebody murdered Cletus Berry and—”

“For the last time, what do you think he was doing in an alleyway with Frankie Fulton, sneaking a little kiss?”

Lindsey made a small shrug.

“I don’t know either,” Sokolov furnished. “But you can bet it was nothing he’d want to tell his scoutmaster about. People who are clean don’t get mixed up with the likes of Frankie Fulton. I’d like to know what it was all about, and I expect to find out. All in good time.”

“Then how come you didn’t—”

“—seal off Berry’s little pad?” Sokolov grinned. Lindsey thought, she has pretty teeth, dear. She said, “We were in there by noon yesterday. I was there myself. We turned up nothing. Nada. Nicht.”

Lindsey said, “Oh.”

“That’s why there was no tape. We rifled his file cabinet. Nothing. We peeked in his computer. Looks like routine insurance matters to me. In fact, you might want to take a gander yourself and see if there’s anything strikes you funny. Give me a call if there is.”

She stood up.

“Wait a minute,” Lindsey stopped her. “Did you have a search warrant? How did you get in there?”

Sokolov looked annoyed. “We didn’t have a warrant and we didn’t need a warrant. Your Mr. Zissler kindly informed us that your company pays the rent on Berry’s little nest. Zissler has a key and he let us in. Is that okay with you?”

Lindsey felt the anger he’d been building for Sokolov, drain from him. Reluctantly, he nodded.

“Now, if you don’t mind,” Sokolov said, “I have to go powder my nose.”

When she stood up, Lindsey saw that she was wearing fresh new jeans to go with her blouse and sweater. She had a holster strapped to her belt and the grip of what looked like a revolver sticking out of it.

It was still too early to visit Cletus Berry’s widow. Lindsey stood outside Midtown North watching the traffic, then asked a stranger for directions and learned how to get to Times Square. It wasn’t far.

He started walking.

He heard the noise well before he got there. Band music was playing through a loudspeaker and he could hear voices but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

When he got closer he found himself on the edge of a mob. Brawny individuals in neat suits were striding around, eyeing people who approached. They might have been Secret Service men but Lindsey doubted that they were. There was something about them that made him uncomfortable.

They were wearing lapel pins. Lindsey had trouble making out the shape of the pins, but he passed a vendor selling buttons that seemed to have the same design. Each button was attached to a campaign pamphlet. He bought one and studied the design. It looked like a Roman chariot pulled by a team of horses. He slipped the button and pamphlet into his overcoat pocket.

If he’d seen Central Park in a hundred movies, he’d seen Times Square in a thousand. It must have taken amazing political clout to have this piece of New York shut down, even for a few minutes. Amazing clout to shut it down any time, but this was the middle of the day, on a business day, counting down to Christmas.

A few blobs of sleet were falling. Lindsey felt one on his cheek, then another. They felt like icy tears.

He moved into the mass of people. He didn’t see any opening in the crowd, but somehow a limousine managed to move down Broadway, rolling through a narrow lane, and a number of people climbed out. One was the broadcaster who’d been mentioned in the morning newspaper. Lindsey recognized another, Congressman Randolph Amoroso, from his photo in the Times. A well-dressed woman was holding onto Amoroso’s arm; even from this distance Lindsey could tell that she was gazing at the Congressman adoringly. The perfect political wife. Fourth was a distinguished middle-aged fellow with silvery temples and silver-rimmed glasses, a dark blue suit and a wine-red tie.

TV lights glared.

Some functionaries ushered the party to a microphone on the steps of a monument. Behind the microphone, the Doughboys who fought in the Great War were memorialized forever. They had caught three-quarters of a century of pigeon droppings for their trouble. A couple of other flunkies were setting up a covered display behind the Congressman.

The radio personality took the microphone, gestured for the music to cut off, and started warming up the crowd with a series of jabs at the President, the President’s political party, and Mr. Oliver Shea.

Finally he introduced Congressman Randolph Amoroso from the great city of Poughkeepsie in the great county of Dutchess.

Amoroso stepped to the microphone. Someone on his staff must have coordinated the event with the Weather Bureau because the sun popped through and brightened Amoroso like a spotlight. It reflected off his bulbous, bald skull like a halo. It glinted off a silvery pin in the Congressman’s lapel.

“Just an hour ago,” Amoroso said, “on the steps of my home in the beautiful Hudson Valley, I formally announced a great crusade for the heart and soul of America. I announced my candidacy for the Senate of the United States. I’ve been informed that I will be opposed in my bid by a very decent man.…”

He grinned as the crowd rustled. There were a few boo’s.

“…an intelligent man.…”

There were a few more boo’s. Amoroso’s grin widened.

“..and a well-intentioned man.”

Some shrill whistles. Amoroso positively beamed.

“But my opponent is thoroughly out of touch with the times. He offers us the same old solutions that were tried and failed ten, twenty, thirty years ago. They failed back then. He wants us to try them again.” Amoroso paused.

“And maybe he’s right.”

More shrill whistles.

“But I don’t think so.” There was a round of applause. “I say—” he paused and looked around at the crowd “—that anybody who sells dope to a kid should be shot.”

There were cheers.

“Anybody who sells porn to a kid—or who sells kiddie porn to anybody—should be shot.” More cheers. “And anybody who tries to foist a filthy, degraded lifestyle on a decent, God-fearing America—”

He held up his arms and grinned at the audience.

They responded in unison: “Should be shot!”

Amoroso chuckled. His voice boomed through the loudspeakers. “Right you are. Right you are, my friends. Right you are.” He waited for another round of applause and cheers. Then: “My opponent—my decent, intelligent, well-intentioned opponent—and his tweed-jacketed cronies at the universities and on the talking-head shows, accuse me of wanting to make America into a new Roman Empire.”

He tilted his head. He grinned and the sunlight actually sparkled off his oversized teeth. The lapels of his suit jacket—no topcoat for Congressman Amoroso—were just a trifle too wide. The pattern on his necktie was a trifle too loud. He was the perfect populist.

“Well, an honest citizen could walk down the main street of Julius Caesar’s Rome and not get mugged, my friends. Nobody tried to sell him a syringe full of poisonous dope. And nobody offered to sell him a magazine full of kiddie-porn, either.”

He shook his head ruefully.

“The new Roman Empire?” He paused for a beat. Another beat. “The new Roman Empire?” he repeated. “I think it’s a great idea.”

Behind him, a tarpaulin was pulled from a giant poster. The poster showed a Roman chariot pulled by a team of rearing horses.

The Congressman beamed.

The Congressman’s wife gazed at him adoringly.

The broadcast personality clapped him on the shoulder and grabbed the microphone and started working the audience again.

The television lights in front of the doughboy monument winked off, one by one.

Randolph Amoroso, Mrs. Amoroso, and the rest of his entourage climbed into their limousine, made a U-turn, and sped away, going the wrong way up closed-off, one-way Broadway.

The crowd dispersed.

Lindsey checked the time, then headed for a subway entrance.