77th Street Requiem

by Wendy Hornsby

  He flexed his stitched hand but shrugged off my concern, ever the tough guy. “We put a tail on him. I want to see what he does. If he’s up to something, I’d rather have him go down big-time than get warehoused for three months on a crappy assault beef,” he said. “Besides, Anthony isn’t organized enough to have done anything but a slash-and-run caper. This one isn’t on his ticket.”

  “Whatever you say.” I rested my head on his chest. “But if he touches you again, he’ll have me to deal with.”

  He pulled up my chin and kissed my face. “How is Annie Oakley today?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all so unreal. I shot a man, and it’s as if he evaporated. Bam, and he’s gone.”

  “In your car.”

  In my car. I wished I knew where he went in my car. And what his plans had been for me in the trunk of his car. I felt the shakes coming on again, starting somewhere behind my solar plexus as a little tremor, and growing stronger as they worked outward. I wrapped my leg over Mike, pressed into him to hold off the aftershocks.

  “Make love to me,” I said.

  “I just did. You have to wait awhile. I’m an old man.” He held me, started patting my back. “How about I just do this. When Michael was little and he couldn’t sleep, I’d pat his back like this until he settled down.”

  We lay there quietly for a few minutes, the soft pat-pat on my back in rhythm with my heartbeat, fast at first, gradually slower. I let out a long sigh, feeling fairly certain that I had things in check if not under control. I was still angry at the man who had invaded our house, but it was contained anger at the moment.

  “I think he was an opportunist,” I said. “How could he know I would come outside? What if he was lurking around to make sure that his fire caught properly, and then he grabbed me as an afterthought? Maybe he didn’t even know I was in the house. Or maybe he didn’t count on Bowser being such a fine fellow.”

  “I thought about that.”

  “Is that how Frady went down? Crime of opportunity?”

  “Like how?” He stopped patting.

  “Don’t stop unless you’re ready for passion.”

  His “heh-heh” rumbled through his chest under my ear. And he started patting again.

  I said, “The night the SLA came into town, Michelle introduced Frady to Nancy Ling Perry. What if, the next night, he stopped for a six-pack on his way to JoAnn’s house and ran into Nancy at the liquor store?”

  “Which liquor store?”

  “Probably the one on Manchester and Main. It wasn’t the closest store to the SLA hideout, but it was the best-stocked store in the area. The FBI told me Cinque liked to drink Aka-dama plum wine, and every little store wouldn’t carry something like that. Nancy and a couple of the others—”

  “Who?” he interrupted.

  “I don’t know. There were three or four people in the green Buick that drove away from the murder scene. The neighbors who saw the car said the occupants were black. It was late. It was dark. The SLA capered in blackface and Afro wigs all the time, like the night they killed Marcus Foster.”

  A little impatiently, Mike said, “Okay. So Nancy goes out to buy plum wine.”

  “I think she went out to do a number of errands,” I said, curling his chest hair. “She had found the house for them. They moved in late at night and lay low all day, met the neighbors, settled in. They never went out until after dark. So, that night, Friday, there were things to be done. Like the laundry. Like putting in supplies. Like buying wine for Cinque to keep him happy.

  “Frady drops by his usual store for a six-pack, maybe he’s hoping to see some of the guys because he’s a little drunk and he’s feeling emotional about being assigned back to Seventy-seventh Street patrol. Nancy happens to be there, he recognizes her as the dancer Michelle introduced to him. She has a friend with her, another good-looking woman. They all talk, they flirt, he’s high, they’re available. He gets into their car to fool around, or maybe to go get some drinks. Or maybe he even follows in his own car, I don’t know.

  “Nancy knows Frady is a cop, and she has a different idea about what makes a good time. She pulls a gun on him—or they both do—takes his two-inch, cuffs him with a pair of cheap, imported cuffs she has in her bag with her nine-millimeter—cuffs she bought in a gun shop before the Hibernia Bank robbery. She cuffs him in front, not in back, because she doesn’t know any better.

  “Nancy has the laundry in her car—boxer shorts in three sizes—fresh from the Laundromat. She grabs a pair, pulls them down over his head so he can’t see where she’s taking him, ties his own shirt over that to hold them in place.

  “My best guess is, she takes him to the house on Eighty-fourth Street to show him off. The SLA often said that next to Patty Hearst the best hostage would be a cop. Now they have one. But the group isn’t happy with this gift she brings them. They’re so hot that they can’t keep him. Besides, the house is too small and Frady would be much more difficult to control than a one-hundred-ten-pound teenager had been.

  “They want to throw Frady back, but it’s too late. Frady wasn’t so drunk he hadn’t recognized them by that point. The group was tired and didn’t want to run again for a while. Besides, they were planning to go deep into hiding, and they didn’t have all their gear together yet.

  “Frady was a mistake. They tossed him into a borrowed or stolen car, drove him to a bumed-out house around the corner from the liquor store. Quickly, cleanly, Frady was executed, and they drove away. Laughing. If the SLA had lived longer, if they had gotten out of the area, maybe they would have taken credit for killing a cop.”

  “But they died,” Mike said. “On May seventeen, 1974, a SWAT sharpshooter severed Nancy Ling Perry’s spine with a bullet when she came running out of the burning house up on Fifty-sixth Street. She was trying to bug out while her buddies burned up inside.”

  “Right.”

  “They’re all dead.”

  “Not all of them,” I said. “Three of the nine weren’t in the house when it burned. They went back to Berkeley and holed up with the SLA second string—they must have bragged about shooting a cop. Kellenberger told me about the fringies yesterday, a trigger-happy little band. They killed a woman in a Sacramento bank heist. It’s a terrible story. The dying woman’s husband was the emergency room doctor she was taken to. And do you know what Emily Harris said afterward? ‘Fuck her, she was a bourgeois doctor’s wife.’ Nice kids, huh?”

  “Hold on a minute.” Mike was not patting anymore. “You tell a good story. But it doesn’t explain what’s been happening this week. You have an alternate scenario?”

  “Sure.” I stroked his long back. “Roy was always plugged into the neighborhood: gangs, drugs, prostitutes. Maybe he simply plugged into the wrong information highway and got run over.”

  “And maybe you did, too.”

  “Hector was on that road ahead of me. It feels like déjá vu, Mike. I think we should go down to Ascot Raceway and see if my car’s there.”

  “Yeah, sure.” His tone was the least bit patronizing. “Look, sweetie, it’s nice to have a big case to solve. But most cases don’t amount to much more than piddly little crap. What do JoAnn and Michelle have in common besides impending middle age?”

  “Roy Frady’s dick.”

  “Bingo.” He sat up, threw off the top sheet. “Wars have been fought over less.”

  I wasn’t ready for him to leave my side. I reached for him, but he slipped away from me. I pleaded pathetically, “Don’t go,” but he was already halfway across the room.

  “We need to stop by the house,” was the last thing he said before his peachlike butt disappeared behind the bathroom door.

  The street in front of our house was filled with a dismaying variety of media trucks. We skirted around them, talked our way through the police barrier tape, and approached the house from the alley.

  Guido must have arrived right after dawn. He had the entire film crew camped out in the backyard and was directing Monica where to s
et up lights to show off the worst of the damage to the best of its advantage. Ever the pro, he finished his instructions before he bothered to say so much as hello.

  Mike, looking glum, waved at Guido and then went over to talk to one of the investigators, who was drinking coffee with the crew.

  I wended my way through the mass of light and camera cables to see what Guido had in his viewfinder.

  “Can’t let you out of my sight,” he said, giving me a hug. “I turn my back and, kaboom. What a mess, Mag. Have you inventoried your loss?”

  I shook my head as I surveyed the blackened mess. Gray water ran in snaky runnels into the shrubbery. I kept thinking that I should be more upset. The repairs would be a gross inconvenience, but what else? It was, after all, just a house.

  “We’re all right.” I looked in at the ruined shelves and cupboards and tried to re-create in my mind’s eye everything they had held. “All of my footage of Casey growing up is in storage in San Francisco, or my parents have it. You told me you gave copies of all the Hector tapes to Mike, so they’re safe. Everything related to the Frady project was duplicated somewhere. The equipment is insured. My calendar and Rolodex are duplicated at the studio. I have my purse.

  “Other than that, I had a lot of outtake footage from other film projects, but it has no real value. I could never use it, I just hated to throw it away. A few personal mementos are gone, but right now I can’t even think what they were. We haven’t lived here long enough to have much squirreled away.” I looked at Guido. “You spent as much time in there as I did, Guido. What’s gone?”

  He smiled at me like a fond old uncle, reached over and squeezed my hand. “We lost at least three fingers left in the bottom of a pretty good bottle of scotch.”

  “There you go.” I squeezed his hand in return. “Everything is replaceable or expendable.”

  “Keep saying it, maybe you’ll believe it.” He gave me a thumbs-up and a quick hug, and went back to work. Guido asked the county arson investigators to walk around amid the rubble for the camera. Very happily, they complied.

  Lana came through the back gate with a potted palm in her arms.

  I crossed the yard to her. “What’s this? Reforestation?”

  “I wanted to bring you something. But it’s Sunday.” She set the palm at my feet. “This is all I could find.”

  “Thanks, Lana.”

  She laughed self-consciously. “It seemed like a good idea an hour ago. But I think I should have brought a load of dry-wall instead.”

  “And a construction crew to install it.”

  “We could justify that,” she said. “We’ll get Thea to find a place in the budget.”

  We walked around to the side of the house so that she could see the extent of the damage. Lana, always so calm, teared up as she looked at it. “What a mess, Maggie. I don’t come out of news, so I’m not used to this sort of thing.”

  “Who is?”

  Her riposte had a sly edge. “According to the Times, you are.”

  “That report has as much fact as a movie of the week.”

  “Movie of the week? Not a bad idea.” With a scary light in her eyes, she watched an investigator bend over to pick up something to display for Guido’s camera. “Mind if I stay around?”

  “Be my guest. And go have some coffee. You’re paying for the caterer.”

  Lana frowned for just a fleeting moment. “On what budget line will we put the caterer?”

  “Ask Thea.”

  Lana gave me a very phony sorority-rush smile. “That Thea is so efficient. She is absolutely overqualified for the job she has. I completely understand why you requested her.”

  “But I didn’t,” I said. “Remember? You did.”

  “Did I?” Lana looked askance at me. “Maybe so. I need to talk to Guido about getting footage on the satellite uplink for four o’clock. Let’s do lunch.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. “Tell Fergie to remind me.”

  I went across the yard to the caterer’s canopy and found the coffeepot and poured myself a cup before I joined Mike on the grass. We sat with our knees touching, because every time I lost physical contact with him, I felt the panic begin to rise.

  “They’re having a ball,” Mike said, watching the investigators pose and posture like actors. “Their kids’ll love seeing them on TV.”

  “What have they found?” I asked.

  “It looks like the fire was started by a small incendiary time bomb. Simple but elegant, they say. The uniformity of the burning says something inflammable was spread around the room, probably gasoline. Electronic timer set off a spark, ignited the gas, and poof.”

  “How long was this person inside the house?”

  “After he drilled the dead bolt, he only needed as long as it takes to place the device, pour out the gas, and shut the door. A minute, maybe less. From the time Bowser started barking, how long did it take you to get downstairs?”

  “Probably five minutes. I had to load the gun. Trust me, I was in no hurry to get down there.”

  “Five minutes is more than enough time. In five minutes, he could have been a long way into somewhere else. I don’t like it that he stuck around.”

  “An artist needs to see his work,” I said.

  Mike looked away, watched the investigators laughing with Guido, blew out the little puff of air that precedes something that’s difficult to say. He put his hand on my knee. “They’re bringing in Brady for questioning.”

  I shifted from stunned surprise to acceptance in the time it took for me to turn around and watch Monica intercept the come-on from the younger of the investigators. “Maybe that’s a good idea,” I said.

  Detective Rascon came in the back gate, smiled at the circus in the yard, and looked around until he spotted us. For an unflappable detective, I thought he seemed excited. Mike and I walked over to meet him.

  Rascon didn’t take time for, Gee, I’m sorry about the house or, Ain’t it swell you’re in one piece. He went straight to, “We found the car, right where you said to look, Mike.”

  I nudged Mike, and he blushed, wouldn’t meet my eyes. I said, “Where?” almost sure I knew the answer.

  Mike took Rascon’s elbow and started to lead him away from me, saying, “Police business.”

  “Nice try.” I took Rascon’s other arm and walked with them. “So, Larry, where did you find my car?”

  He looked from me to Mike, confused.

  “Was it down in the South Bay where Ascot Raceway used to be?” I asked him.

  “Yes.” Rascon seemed only more confused.

  “Only a genius would think to look there.” I leaned past Rascon so I could needle Mike. I said, “Most cases don’t amount to much more than piddly little crap. But now and then you hit a big one. When did you call Larry with this brainstorm?”

  “When you were in the shower.”

  “Guess we better go take a look, don’t you think, boys?”

  CHAPTER

  23

  “That was me,” Mike said, meaning the young uniformed officer guarding my car. “And that was Frady’s car.”

  “Doug told me the three of you stayed up all night out here,” I said. “Watching Frady’s car and waiting for SID to come and check it out. He said he never felt closer to anyone than he did to you and Hector that night.”

  Mike’s eyes were all misty, so he had to turn away to shrug off the tide of emotion that obviously came over him remembering. He sighed as he said, “Yeah. Me and Doug and Hector.”

  “Where was Ridgeway?” I asked. “Wasn’t he riding with Hector that rotation?”

  Mike thought for a moment. “He was here, drunk off his ass. First and only thing he did was vomit in the gutter. Then he climbed into the backseat to sleep it off again. We had to cover for him when the sergeant came by.”

  I pulled out my camera. “Walk over and stand with the uniform beside my car.”

  The request didn’t seem to appeal to him. But instead of arguing with me he said, �
�Say please.”

  “Please. And don’t fool around; just walk normally, do what you would do at a crime scene.”

  He was self-conscious, walked as if he had a stiff back instead of his usual easy, athletic stroll. He had been treating me like a delicate flower all morning and it occurred to me that the reason he was being so cooperative was some fear that I would come apart on him. To get things on the track back to normal, I was tempted to run out and tackle him, start some roughhousing. Instead, I raised the Nikon.

  I shot about a frame a second, finishing the roll in the time it took Mike to cross to the car, look in the window, step back, and engage the uniformed officer in conversation. Laid in sequence, the pictures would give a semblance of movement. A good noir, real quality.

  I reloaded the camera and crossed 186th Street to get a better look at what had happened to my car.

  Doug told me that Frady’s car had been wiped down with an oily rag to obliterate prints. My car had been wiped down, too. But not with oil. There was a fine brown film all over the inside of the windows.

  The two days my car had spent in a public lot while I was in San Francisco gave it a layer of gray city grime that was still largely undisturbed. When I picked up the car the night before, I had not bothered to look it over for new dings, so I could not say for certain that the front left headlight hadn’t already been cracked at the time the car was stolen. But I think I would have noticed the fourteen-inch scrape along the driver’s-side door. Considering the possibilities, the exterior damage was minimal. The interior was beyond redemption.

  Blood, enough of it to be wet and dark red after eight hours, soaked the back of the lamb’s wool seat cover on the driver’s side and pooled in the middle of the seat. There was a trail of blood, distinct right-shoe prints alongside long slashes, as if the thief had dragged his left foot. The slashes, dotted with spatters, led from the car, around the front in a wide arc, and up onto the curb, and then disappeared in the patchy lawn planted along the easement.

  Rascon had been talking with the sergeant sent out from Seventy-seventh Street. He walked over next to Mike.