Chapter 31.
"I have to make a quick pit stop," Kylie said when we left Cates"s office. "Get the car and meet me outside."
"It must be nice to have your own car and driver," I said, never missing an opportunity to do a little ballbusting. "Just like Police Commissioner Harries."
"Not really," she said. "I met the PC"s driver, and he knows how to keep his mouth shut."
She headed for the ladies" room, and I was walking down the front steps of the precinct house when it happened.
Ambush.
He came from behind a parked minivan-Damon Parker, Evelyn Parker-Steele"s brother.
If there were ever a contest for Most Hated Man in America, Damon Parker would enter, then campaign hard to win. When he was growing up, his heartless b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a father must have pounded home the message that nice guys finish last, because Damon had made a career in TV news as a guy who was anything but nice.
He was better known for his sneak-attack, in-your-face confrontations than he was for his journalistic integrity, and judging by the camera crew behind him, I was about to be his next victim.
"Detective Jordan," Parker bellowed-not so much at me as to the unseen audience who would watch him rake me over the coals later tonight. "The people want to know!"
That was his catchphrase and the t.i.tle of his syndicated TV show: The People Want to Know.
My catchphrase is I don"t give a s.h.i.t what the people want to know, but the Public Information Office frowns on cops who blurt out what they"re thinking on camera.
I kept walking toward the car, but Parker and his crew cut me off.
"The people want to know," he thundered as if he were a block away instead of thrusting a microphone in my face, "why their tax dollars are funding a police force of thirty-five thousand, and yet NYPD Red, Blue, or any other color have been unable to track down the monster who savagely tortured and murdered four innocent victims."
"No comment," I said.
"No comment is a comment, isn"t it, people?" he barked to the faithful who tuned in to hear him rant on a nightly basis. "Of course he won"t talk. He"s been muzzled by the mayor. And do you want to know why? Because there is a fifth victim. A victim that Mayor Spellman in his desperate attempt to cling to a job he has failed at refuses to share with you. Can you at least comment on victim number five, Detective?"
Victim number five? The man was a master of manipulation. I"m trained not to get sucked in, and it was all I could do not to take the bait.
"I can"t comment on an ongoing investigation," I said. Politely. Just the way I was taught.
"Then let me tell the people what the mayor doesn"t want them to know," he said. "This fiend-this Hazmat ogre has been terrorizing New Yorkers to the point that many of them have barricaded themselves behind closed doors. I"ve been to Astoria, to Bensonhurst, to Kew Gardens, and the people are so afraid to come out at night that the small businesses in those neighborhoods are suffering. The restaurants go empty. Mom-and-pop stores that count on the locals have been forced to shut down. The fifth victim is the economy of the city of New York."
It was pure bulls.h.i.t, but it was brilliant. He was campaigning for Sykes and using me as his stooge. I did my best to navigate past him without shoving. I"m sure he would have loved it if I got physical. Nice piece of police brutality footage if he could get it.
And then Kylie came through the front door of the precinct.
One of the things they teach you at the academy is this: Sometimes the press will resort to desperate measures, attacking the officer or the department with inflammatory statements in an effort to provoke an emotional response. Do not react. Maintain your composure and continue to be a.s.sertive but polite.
I"ve always done my best to steer clear of any confrontation with the media, but I"m sure that my partner, if she"d even heard the mandate, had decided that compliance was optional.
"Damon," she yelled from the top of the stairs.
Kylie and I travel in completely different circles. As the wife of a producer, she gets to meet a lot of people in the TV business, and it was clear that she knew Parker.
Parker turned, and Kylie charged down the steps. "What in G.o.d"s name are you doing, Damon?"
The matador had waved the red cape.
The bull advanced cautiously. "What am I doing?" Parker said.
All that was missing was the sound of the crowd screaming, "Ole!"
"I"m seeking the truth," he said. "The people want to know the truth, Detective MacDonald, and I"m the one they depend on to bring it to them. That"s what I"m doing. It"s what I always do. Only this time it"s personal. My sister was murdered, and I want her killer brought to justice."
He had used up his fifth victim c.r.a.p on me, and suddenly he had morphed into the grieving brother.
"Are you even looking for my sister"s killer?" he said, trying to drive one of his trademark verbal stilettos right through her. "Or have you been instructed to fan the flames of Evelyn"s so-called confession and brand her as a murderer in an effort to tarnish the candidate that my dear sister so deeply believed in?"
It doesn"t get much more inflammatory than that. Parker was pulling out all the stops. He had tried to p.i.s.s me off, but I didn"t bite. Kylie was another story. Kylie was a biter.
The cameraman spun around to catch her reaction, and she stared straight into the lens. Ms. MacDonald was ready for her close-up.
"You don"t want justice. The last thing you want is for us to find out who murdered Evelyn. You"re not after the killer. You"re after the cops and the mayor. All you"re doing is exploiting your sister"s murder to boost your ratings. That"s why you"re standing in our way. I have one final question for you, Damon. How the h.e.l.l can you live with yourself?" she yelled. "The people want to know."
She didn"t wait for an answer. She bolted into the front seat and slammed the door. Parker was screaming at the camera as I peeled out.
Kylie is a rule breaker. Not only does she break them, but she seems to revel in the wreckage.
"So," she said, giving me a big-a.s.s grin, "how"d I do? You think I have a future in television?"
"Beats the s.h.i.t out of me," I said, heading up 67th to Park Avenue. "But after that public p.i.s.sing contest, I"m just hoping you have a future as a cop."
Chapter 32.
The Upper East Side of Manhattan is one of the city"s most affluent neighborhoods. But unlike residents of LA"s Bel Air, our rich folks don"t have the room to build sprawling homes on magnificent grounds. New York real estate is vertical, so even a twenty-million-dollar apartment can easily go unnoticed when it"s part of a forty-story high-rise.
What does stand out is the not-so-affluent housing, like the five-story prewar brownstone on East 84th Street between First and York. It was flanked by a dry cleaner on one side and a two-hundred-unit apartment building on the other, and the fading facade was covered by one of those cla.s.sic paint-flaked fire escapes that are mounted to the city"s older low-rise, low-rent buildings.
That"s where we found Horton LaFleur, a man who was obviously bringing down the per capita income in his well-to-do zip code.
We rang the bell in the vestibule of his building, identified ourselves, and walked to apartment 1A-ground floor, front. The man who opened the front door was over six feet tall, gaunt, and pulling a portable oxygen tank cylinder behind him.
"Emphysema," LaFleur said, explaining it away in a grunt. "Come in."
The living room was compact. It had to be. Except for a tiny kitchen and bathroom, it was the only room he had. There was a daybed that doubled as a sofa, a dining table that doubled as a desk, and on the wall above it a framed Military Order of the Purple Heart award.
My eyes went right to it. "Thank you for your service," I said.
He nodded. "Nam."
That was all. Just a single syllable that let us know he was proud of the sacrifice he"d made for his country but had no interest in talking about it.
One corner of the room was cluttered with plastic bins filled with old telephones, wires, and a lineman"s leather tool belt.
"I was a pole climber for the phone company," LaFleur said. "First it was New York Tel, then Bell Atlantic, then they became Verizon. Same s.h.i.t, different patch on your shirt pocket."
I reached into one of the boxes and pulled out a pink rotary-dial Princess phone. "You don"t see many of these anymore," I said.
"That"s an early version of the 701B, very popular with teenage girls. It was so light that it would slide around when they would dial, so in the newer version we added a chunk of lead to weigh it down."
"Is it worth anything?" I said.
"Only to me. Don"t go thinking I stole any of this c.r.a.p. It"s all junk, but that"s how it goes with us phone monkeys. You have your hands on this equipment all day long, and when something gets phased out you just want to hold on to one or two. Hattie used to say all phone guys are pack rats. But it"s part of my history. I used to have more, but I gave some of it up when we moved to this dump. I hate it, but it"s all we could afford, and it was walking distance to her job."
There was a framed black-and-white photo of a bride and groom on the desk. It was Horton and Hattie, decades before the oxygen tank and the brutal murder.
Kylie picked it up. "She was beautiful. We"re sorry for your loss."
"But somehow I doubt that"s why you"re here," LaFleur said, his voice devoid of emotion.
"We"re investigating the murder of Sebastian Catt," she said.
"Why?" he asked.
"We"re homicide cops. It"s what we do."
"I know what you do, missy," he said. "But why are you doing it here? Some vigilante kilt him and made a video so the whole world would know that Catt deserved it. End of story."
"Not for us," Kylie said. "Catt was last seen at his photo studio on Eighty-Seventh Street. His a.s.sistant says he went home at around six. His mailbox was empty, so we"re pretty sure he came home that evening. There was evidence in his apartment that he made himself some dinner, but then he disappeared. You live next door. We thought you might be able to corroborate that you saw or heard him come home, or maybe you heard him when he left."
LaFleur shook his head. "I didn"t."
"Are you sure you didn"t hear anything?" Kylie said.
"My answer is I didn"t," he said. "But even if I did, I wouldn"t tell you. That pervert b.a.s.t.a.r.d murdered my wife. It was just nine days before our fiftieth wedding anniversary. Nine days. I told her not to agree to testify."
His breathing became labored, and he sucked deeply on his oxygen.
"We understand how you feel about Catt," Kylie said. "But withholding evidence is a felony."
He laughed. "You got no clue how I feel. As for your felony threat, that"s the laugh. There"s this Hazmat Killer on the loose, and you cops are supposed to find him. It"s gonna look real good on your report cards if the only guy you arrest is a Vietnam vet whose wife was murdered, and who does the perp walk dragging this iron lung behind him."
He held out his hands. "Go ahead, missy," he challenged. "Cuff me."
Kylie pulled back. "Horton," she said. "May I call you Horton?"
He looked at her, his eyes blazing with rage. "No. You and I are not on a first-name basis."
"Fair enough," Kylie said. "Mr. LaFleur, we"re not here to arrest you, but there is a vigilante killer out there, and-"
"How old are you?" LaFleur said.
"Thirty-four."
"You"re not old enough to remember Bernie Goetz, are you," he said. "It was back in the eighties. He got beat up something fierce at a subway station by three punk kids. An off-duty cop jumped in and managed to grab one of them, but the other two got away. The kid that got arrested spent half as much time in the police station as Goetz. Half the time-and then, all they charged this little s.h.i.t bucket with was criminal mischief for ripping Goetz"s jacket. After that, Goetz applied to the city for a handgun permit. Went through proper channels, and guess what happened."
"His application was turned down," Kylie said.
"Right," LaFleur said. "A couple of years later, Goetz is on another subway, and four young hoods try to mug him again. Only this time, he"s ready. f.u.c.k the permit. Goetz has got himself a thirty-eight. Bang, bang, bang, bang-he shoots all four of them."
"It"s a famous case, Mr. LaFleur," Kylie said. "I"m well aware of it."
"Then you know the ending," he said. "One kid winds up in a wheelchair. The other three all recover from their wounds and go back to a life of crime-robbery, rape, you name it. But Goetz-that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d was convicted of criminal possession of a weapon and did time in jail. Now you tell me, Detectives-who"s the bad guy, and who"s the victim?"
We didn"t answer. He really wasn"t looking for one.
"Bernie Goetz was called the Subway Vigilante," LaFleur said, "and a lot of people vilified him. Not me. Me-I thought he was a hero. Same goes for the guy who killed Sebastian Catt. Believe me, if I was twenty years younger, and if I could breathe without this d.a.m.n anchor I carry around, I"d have killed the b.a.s.t.a.r.d myself."
He picked up his wedding photo and stared at his wife of fifty years minus nine days.
"That"s all I got to say," he said, jerking his head up and gesturing toward the door. "You can go."
Out of habit, I dropped my card on the spot where the picture had been.
It would probably be in the garbage before Kylie and I made it to the car.
Chapter 33.
"He knows something," Kylie said as soon as we were out of earshot.
"One thing he knows is how to get you to back off...missy," I said.
"I cut the crusty old codger some slack because he"s a veteran and his wife was murdered," she said. "If he were forty years younger, I wouldn"t have been so nice."