A Long Line of Dead Men

"I know how it works."

"Of course you do."

"I just thought homicide was different."

"It is," he said, "and nobody plays as loose with it as with break-ins and chain snatchings. This case here, Eldoniah flat-out did five out of six of those cabbies, no question, no argument. Cloonan he probably didn't do, and if somebody else ever comes along and looks better for it, well, nobody uptown's gonna argue against reopening the file." He picked up a pencil, tapped the eraser three times on the desktop, set it down. "So if you got anything," he said casually, "I'd be happy to pass it on."

"Why would I have anything?"

"Well, you don't own a car, so I figure you probably take a lot of cabs. Maybe one of the drivers said something."

"Like what?"

"Like, 'Hey, mister, you look like you used to be a cop, an' ain't it a hell of a thing what happened to Tommy Cloonan?' "

"Nobody ever said anything like that to me."

"No, huh?"

"No," I said. "As a matter of fact, I don't take very many cabs at all. If it's too far to walk I'll take the subway."

"What about the bus?"

"Sometimes I'll take a bus," I said. "Sometimes I'll stay home. Where are we going with this conversation, do you happen to know?"

"Alan Watson should have taken a cab. He worked down at the World Trade Center and generally took the E train home to Forest Hills, but when he worked late he'd take an express bus because he didn't like the longer walk late at night, or standing around on subway platforms. So he rode on the bus in air-conditioned comfort, had a slice of pizza on Austin Street, and was a block away from his house on Beechknoll Place when somebody stuck a knife in him."

"What did he do, resist a mugger?"

"Sounds like it, doesn't it? Guy I talked to said it doesn't really add up that way. Incidentally, he had more questions than answers for me. Watson was an affluent commodities broker, two kids in college, owned a nice home in a solid neighborhood. They want to solve this one, and the case is only four months old so they're not ready to give up on it. So why was I taking an interest, and what did I know that he didn't?"

"What did you tell him?"

"I don't remember, something about we had a case with a similar MO. According to him, forensic evidence suggests Watson's killer surprised him from behind and got him in a choke hold."

"Muggers will do that."

"And then he promptly stabbed the poor bastard. Blade about four-and-a-half inches long, or anyway that's as far as he stuck it in. Stabbed him once, got the heart first shot, and death would have been instantaneous or close to it. Watson's wallet was gone, so either it was robbery or it was supposed to look like it."

"I don't suppose anybody saw it happen."

He shook his head. "He wasn't down long, though. Rent-a-cop from a private security patrol found him, called it in right away."

"Why do you stab a guy if you've already got him in a choke hold?"

"They've been asking themselves the same question in Forest Hills. That's why my guy got very interested when I talked about a similar MO, and I had to let him down easy, say our perp was a slasher, not a stabber, no choke hold, di dah di dah di dah. Incidentally, why are people surprised when occasionally a cop lies in court? We lie all day long, it's part of the fucking job description. You didn't lie, you'd never get any work done."

"I know. It's the same thing working private. In fact it's worse, you've got no power to threaten or intimidate because you've got no legal authorization. So you have to con everybody."

"All in the name of truth and justice."

"And in the service of a higher good. Don't forget that."

"Never."

"What's their thinking, Joe? Ordinary street crime?"

"That's their best guess," he said, "but they're not married to it. It's hard to find anybody with a reason to kill Watson. He was married to the same woman for twenty-five years, and if either of them had anything going on the side nobody knows anything about it. Both of them well-liked, both of them active in the community. About a year ago he got phone threats from a client who blamed Watson for a beating he took. That's a financial beating, not two mutts holding you up in an alley while their buddy works on your rib cage."

"The client checked out?"

"The client moved to fucking Denver. Anyway, what kind of a grudge killing is that, a quick knife in the heart and make it look like robbery for profit? You want to get even with somebody, either you whip out a gun and make a little noise or you tear into him with a baseball bat, break his bones, and beat his fucking brains out. Something wrong?"

"Remind me never to get you mad at me."

"Why, did I sound like I was really getting into it there?" He grinned. "I'm ten days off cigarettes."

"I noticed the ashtray was gone."

"That snitch of Bellamy's, I wanted to tell him to blow some of that smoke in my direction. Not this time, though. This time I'm not sneaking drags on other people's cigarettes, or checking ashtrays for a butt long enough to relight. This time I get it right."

"Good for you."

"But there's moments when I could kill the whole world."

"Well, I'd better stay on your good side," I said, and drew an unsealed envelope from my hip pocket and slipped it among the papers on his desk. He glanced around, lifted the flap, and counted the contents without removing the bills from the envelope.

There were two bills, hundreds.

"Couple of suits," he said.

"If that's low-"

"No, it's fine," he said. "What did I do, use the phone on the city's time? I'm happy. But it's not enough, Matt."

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean? I want to know what it's about. You're looking for information on four homicides over a twelve-year stretch, all of them unsolved-"

"Cloonan was solved."

He gave me a look. "I stuck my neck out," he said, "and I can use the suits, but I want to know what's going on. If you've got something that can break these cases, you can't just sit on it."

"I don't have anything, Joe."

"What case are you working? Who's your client?"

"You know," I said, "one reason a person goes to somebody like me is to keep things confidential."

"What I figure," he said, watching me carefully, "is AA."

"Huh?"

"Wouldn't be the first time you got a client who knew you from your AA meetings. There's things you have to do when you get sober, right?"

"All you have to do is not drink."

"Yeah, but isn't there a whole program? Almost like going to confession, but instead of a couple of Hail Marys you make restitution, set things straight."

" 'Cleaning up the wreckage of the past,' " I said, quoting one of the immortal phrases from the literature. "Say, Joe, if you think you're interested, I'll be happy to take you to a meeting sometime."

"Fuck you, okay?"

"Well, if you just wanted to see what it was like."

"I repeat, fuck you. And quit changing the subject."

"You're the one who brought up AA. I never realized you had a problem, but-"

"Jesus, why do I tolerate you? What I was starting to say, I figure you know somebody from AA who's got guilty knowledge of some crimes, including the four homicides we've been talking about. I wouldn't want to think you're gonna sit on something that ought to be brought out and looked at. Whoever did the gay fellow, Uhl, is probably dead himself by now, and Cloonan's file's closed for the time being, but the boys in the One-oh would love to catch a break in the Shipton case, and Watson, Jesus, the body's barely cold, that's still an active investigation. If you know anything, it should get channeled to the right people."

"I don't."

"There's probably a way to keep your client out of it, at least in the early stages."

"I realize that."

He looked at me. "Your client didn't do all four guys himself, did he?"

"No."

"You answered that one awfully quickly."

"Well, I knew you were going to ask it. And the answer didn't require a whole lot of thought."

"I guess not. Matt-"

I had to give him something. Without planning to, I said, "They knew each other."

"They? Meaning your client and who? Wait a minute. The vics knew each other?"

"That's right."

"What did they all do, wipe out some Vietnamese village together and some slope's looking to get even?"

"They were part of a group."

"A group? What kind of a group?"

"Like a fraternity," I said. "They got together once in a while to have dinner and compare notes."

" 'Bet my note's bigger than your note.' Let's see, you got a commodities broker, a famous artist, a cabdriver, and a faggot. That's a hell of a fraternity. Wait a minute, was this a gay thing?"

"No."

"You sure of that? Shipton and his wife ran in a kind of a kinky crowd. Wouldn't surprise me to hear he swung from both sides of the plate."

"It wouldn't surprise me to hear it about anybody," I said, "but this wasn't about sex. I can't go into details without clearing it with my client, but there's nothing out of the ordinary about the group. The only thing unusual is that four of them have been murdered."

"How big's the group?"

"Around thirty."

"Thirty men and four of 'em murdered, Jesus, that's high even for New York." His eyes narrowed. "Same killer?"

"No reason to think that."

"Yeah, but you think it yourself, don't you? You asked if a single killer could've done the Shiptons."

"Never forget a thing, do you?"

"Not if I can help it. You got a suspect? A motive? Anything?"

"Nothing."

"I won't say level with me, Matt, but don't hold out the moon and the stars on me, will you?"

"I'm not holding out anything concrete."

"Yeah, and what the hell does that mean? What's the opposite of concrete?"

"Asphalt," I suggested. "Plaster of Paris."

"Twelve years between Uhl and Watson," he said, "you're talking about a killer who likes to take his time. The other twenty-six guys, time he gets around to them they'll be too old to care. You know what he's like, this guy? He's prostate cancer. By the time he kills you you're already dead of something else."

10

There was a message from Wally Donn at the hotel desk. "I'll be here for the next hour," he said when I called. "I've got those credit reports for you, and something else you'll like."

First I called TJ on his beeper. He must have been close to a phone; he called me back in well under five minutes. "Who wants TJ?" he demanded.

"No one with any sense," I said. "How come you have to ask? If you don't recognize my voice, you still ought to know the number by now."

" 'Course I do, Boo. 'Who wants TJ' just be a trademark. Part of my rap, like."