Fishtown: A Jack Regan/Izzy Ichowitz Novel

by Neal Goldstein

  McElroy and Ichowitz introduced themselves. The old man squinted as he read their cards.

  “Mr. Kastanski, we’re investigating a case that involves bodies found on a property you owned in Fishtown. We’re hoping that you can help us out.”

  Kastanski smiled and replied, “I own a lot of properties in Fishtown. Which one are you talking about?”

  “The slaughterhouse,” Ichowitz responded relieved by Kastanski’s lucid reaction to the question. “Did you know someone buried bodies in the yard behind the building?”

  The old man sighed, shook his head and said, “It was a long time ago.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at the mucus that had started to run from his nose.

  “Do you want to tell us what happened?”

  “I don’t really know where to begin.”

  They waited.

  He wiped a tear from his eye and began his story.

  “My brothers Peter and John were identical twins, but they couldn’t have been more different,” he paused and exhaled deeply.

  “How were they different,” McElroy prompted.

  “John was a quiet, gentle boy. Peter was wild, you know always getting into trouble. I did the best I could, but Peter…” he shook his head.

  “My mother prayed that he would grow out of what she called ‘this phase of his’ but he only got worse. They threw him out of school for getting into fights and when there was no one else to bully he beat up Paul. And then he started bothering the girls in the neighborhood,” The old man stopped again as if lost in the horrible memory of his younger brother’s acts.

  “Mr. Kastanski.”

  He turned to face the police officers, “He wasn’t normal, but my parents believed this was just another phase he would grow out of. They were wrong.

  I think he was 19 or 20 years old when Helene Cycznki, one of the girls who worked at the slaughterhouse told my parents she was pregnant. She wanted my mother to give her the money to get an abortion, but mother refused and insisted they get married even though neither of them wanted to. Helene never wanted to have the baby, but my mother would not hear of it. She believed that having a wife and a child would transform Peter and Helene would eventually love her baby.

  It didn’t work. Peter was an abusive husband and father, and Helene wasn’t what you would call a loving mother to her son. Peter knocked up one of Helene’s girlfriends, and the girl told Helene she was pregnant with his child and begged for help. Helene helped her end the pregnancy but it wasn’t because she cared about her friend. She hated her husband and his son so much that she wouldn’t allow another of Peter’s children to survive

  Then my father got sick and I had to start running our family’s business. John helped me run the butcher shop; Peter…” Kastanski shrugged his shoulders. McElroy and Ichowitz waited for him to continue.

  “One night when I went to check the shop, I found my brother John in the cellar crying. I could see that he was covered with blood. I asked him what was wrong. He pointed to the backroom. Peter’s body was lying on the floor in a pool of blood. There was a knife sticking out of his chest. He was dead.

  His son Jerry was only three years old. He was hiding under the bench. The boy had welt marks all over his body. It took me some time to calm John down. He told me he went down to the cellar when he heard Jerry screaming for help. Peter was beating him with a belt. John tried to stop him, but he couldn’t. He told me the only way he could stop Paul from killing the boy was to grab the boning knife from the work table…”

  The old man stopped his narrative and stared at Ichowitz and McElroy. His expression went completely blank and his eyes lost the light of intelligence that had previously been there.

  “Mr. Kastanski, are you alright?” McElroy asked. “Can I get you something?”

  Kastanski did not acknowledge him.

  “What the hell? Izz, get the nurse.”

  When the nurse arrived she explained that Kastanski had moments, sometimes hours, of complete lucidity, and then would retreat into a shell. He would have vivid recollections of events that had occurred many years ago, but he often did not know where he was, or the names of his children and grandchildren when they came to visit. There was no way of knowing when, or if, he would come out of it.

  “Do you believe the old man’s story?”

  Ichowitz nodded.

  “Fratricide. I didn’t see that coming,” McElroy commented as they drove back to the Cold Case unit. “There’s no way we can count on Kastanski’s testimony to get an indictment. Anyway I doubt the DA would proceed even if we had a reliable witness. I mean, the brother was trying to save his nephew and who would prosecute a homicide that happened over forty years ago with those circumstances? What do you think they did with the body?”

  Ichowitz shook his head and replied, “Paul and John were butchers what do you think?”

  “Jeez, are you sayin they cut up their brother’s body?”

  “Got any other theories?”

  “What do you think about the sister-in-law, Helene? Do you think she knew about the murder? And how about the kid? He watched his uncle kill his father for Christ’s sake. Talk about your dysfunctional families!”

  Ichowitz and McElroy discussed their remaining options for the investigation of the three other unresolved cases. They had been hoping that Paul could give them a lead on how Kathleen’s body came to be buried in the slaughterhouse yard. They also wanted to see if he could shed any light on the identity of the other body that had been buried there around the same time as the Blutarski girl. Unfortunately, Kastanski’s dementia closed that potential line of investigation for the time being.

  They decided they would question John and Helene before interviewing Jerry. Perhaps the two older members of the family could fill in the gaps on the Blutarski and Jane Doe cases, and if they were lucky also help tie in how Lee and Sukarto came to be buried at the same location where the bodies of the two other girls had been buried twenty years before.

  They had ruled out any possibility that Jerry had anything to do with the two earlier homicides. Neither Ichowitz nor McElroy could come up with any viable theory that connected Jerry to any of this. He was too young to have had anything to do with the 1960 homicides. As far as they were aware his relationship with Heilman, even if it was more than as his uncle’s rent collector, had no tie-in to the earlier case.

  When they got back to the unit, there were still no developments in Liam’s kidnapping. It was now 18 hours and there was no sign of the boy.

  Chapter 42

  September 1960

  “Uncle Paul, mom needs to see you. She says it’s important,” Jerry Kastanski gasped for breath having ridden his bike at top speed the six blocks from his house to the Kastanski Brothers butcher shop.

  Kastanski smiled at his nephew. “Why didn’t your mother call?”

  “She was upstairs with someone and she said she needed me to tell you personally,” the boy replied.

  Kastanski’s smile disappeared and he nodded in apparent understanding of the boy’s message. He sighed, “Alright, here,” he handed the boy a $5 bill. “I want you to go to the bank for me and get a roll of quarters we need change for the store. Leave it with Matt,” he nodded to the butcher who was wrapping up another customer’s purchase. “I’ll go see if I can help out your mother. And here’s a dollar for you,” he said as he removed the blood stained apron he was wearing.

  He drove the small panel truck with ‘Kastanski Brothers’ Fresh Meats’ stenciled on both sides that he used for deliveries the six blocks to the house he owned where Jerry and his mother lived. He climbed the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door.

  “It’s Paul,” he said and waited for the door to open.

  His sister-in-law Helene unlocked the door. Her gown was soaked in blood. She stepped aside and Kastanski saw a young
woman on the gurney with a bloody sheet draped across her body.

  He walked over felt the young woman’s neck for a pulse and pulled the sheet over her face. She had been a beautiful young woman, probably no more than 16 years old.

  “Kathleen Blutarski?” he asked.

  Helene nodded.

  “Was she alone?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. The local gossips said her father threw her out of the house when he found out,” she said.

  “How did she come to you?”

  “She told me one of her friends told her I could help.”

  “Alright, I’ll take care of everything, but this has to be the last one.”

  An hour later, Kastanski carried what looked like a sack over his shoulder out of the back door of his sister-in-law’s house and placed it in the back of the panel truck. Kastanski didn’t notice his nephew Jerry watching him from the back porch of the St. Laurentius’ Rectory next door. When he drove away Jerry got on his bike and followed the truck.

  Jerry followed his uncle to the stockyard adjacent to the Kastanski Brothers slaughterhouse. About half of the yard was under cover of a tin roof that extended twenty feet from the side of the building. Kastanski drove the panel truck into the yard and parked. Jerry climbed over the fence and hid behind one of the pillars that held up the roof. From his vantage point he could see his uncle remove several stacks of hay and lift some plywood boards from the corner of the yard. He then removed the sack from his truck and gently laid whatever was inside of it in a ditch that he had uncovered. His uncle emerged from the ditch with the empty sack, replaced the boards and stacks of hay and drove away.

  When Jerry was sure his uncle had left, he walked over to the back of the yard. He carefully removed the hay and the plywood boards. In the waning light of dusk he looked into the ditch and almost screamed in terror at what he had uncovered. He saw the bodies of two young girls, the fingers of their hands were interlocked. He was so shocked with the sight of the two bodies that he failed to hear the truck that had pulled up to the gate or the sound of the footsteps that approached from behind him.

  “What are you doing?” his uncle grabbed him and lifted him off his feet.

  “Did you follow me?”

  The boy nodded.

  “That was very bad.”

  The boy looked up at him, tears ran down his face and mucus dripped from his nose. “You’re not going to kill me are you Uncle Paul?”

  Kastanski put the boy down. He took out his handkerchief gently patted his nephew’s face, looked directly in his eyes and said, “I would never hurt you. I’m sorry you had to see this,” he pointed at the two dead girls. “I know this is hard for you to understand, but it’s very important that we keep this a secret. You must promise me that you will never tell anyone what you saw. If you do your mother and I will be in very big trouble. Do you understand?”

  The boy looked up at his uncle and nodded his head.

  “But Uncle Paul, what happened to them?”

  Kastanski shook his head, “A terrible, terrible accident. We have to keep this a secret. I know you’ll keep your word,” Kastanski said.

  “Now come with me, I’ll take you home; and try to forget what you saw, OK? And never come back here again.”

  Jerry nodded but he never forgot what he saw and he returned to the yard many times fascinated by the sight of the two dead girls holding hands.

  Chapter 43

  The Present

  “What are ya doing here?” O’Malley asked Kate when she entered the tavern from the stairway that led from the apartment above the bar.

  “I spent the night here. I needed some time alone ta think things through.” She took a mug from behind the bar and poured herself some tea from the pot O’Malley had made for himself.

  “Ya belong home with yer husband. What?” he asked, in response to her reaction.

  “Why, so he can hold my hand and tell me more lies?”

  His face softened and he said, “Katey, Jack never lied to you.”

  She turned away and said, “But he didn’t tell me he knew about Flynn bein here.”

  “Yes I know, I asked him ta keep it between the two of us.”

  “And why would you ask him ta do that?” her voice had an edge so sharp he felt the words cut him.

  “It was before they took the boy. I thought Flynn comin back would upset you…Look, I was wrong not ta have told you myself.”

  She shook her head, “What the fook is wrong with you bloody fools! Do ya think I’m some fragile piece of china? Yer damned right I’d be upset havin Flynn back; I can take care of myself! Jack’s my husband. If we’re ta spend our lives together we need ta be honest with one another.”

  He reached out and gently touched her arm. “He’s a good man Katey. He loves you, and you love him. He’ll never wander from your side. I know how deeply he cares about the ones he loves. I watched how he suffered when his Susan got the cancer and died. I see his love for you and the boy every time he looks at you.”

  She fought back the tears, “O’Malley stop.”

  “Katey go home and be with your man.”

  He was sitting on the sofa in their living room staring at the picture of Liam playing soccer that sat on the fireplace mantel. He had taken the photo a few weeks ago. She noticed the worry lines around his eyes when she walked in. He looked like he had a restless night. Well join the club she thought as she stood by the door.

  He stood up and moved towards her, took her in his arms and held her close. “Kate I’m so sorry…”

  She welcomed his embrace. Her uncle’s lecture, although heartfelt and accurate, had been unnecessary. Sometime during the sleepless night she had already reached the conclusion that punishing Jack for his failing to tell her about Flynn’s return, although justified, was counterproductive. Although she was disappointed in his failure to appreciate that she had the inner strength to deal with her former lover’s return, she understood that his motivation was well intended. She would not allow her disappointment to interfere in any manner with assuring Liam’s safe return.

  She looked up at him, “We’ll let that be for now. Tell me, what steps are you taking to bring our son home?”

  They had arranged to meet on the Belmont Plateau in Fairmount Park. Just as Levy had told them, the location was wide open, and afforded neither side any opportunity to set up a trap. The meeting had been set for 3:30 in the afternoon. Flynn and Quinn waited in their car for the CIA to arrive.

  “Do ya think they’ll try something funny?” Quinn asked.

  Flynn kept his eyes on the parking lot entrance and replied, “Nah they want the tape Ben-Ali made of their conversations. If they move against us, they know we’ll put it out and if we do, they’ll be deader than Kelsey’s nuts.”

  At precisely 3:30, a black Suburban pulled into the lot, flashed its headlights, and parked fifty feet away. Howard Kasdan stepped out of the passenger side of the vehicle and walked towards Flynn.

  They stood two paces apart, neither man saying anything to the other.

  “Mr. Flynn I think if we work together we can each benefit from the arrangement,” Kasdan said breaking the silent standoff.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Flynn replied.

  “You can call me, Mr. K.”

  Flynn found the agent’s use of a code name absurd, “Alright then, Mr. K. From what I’ve seen people who work with you often end up dead. So if ya don’t mind I’d like ya to tell me how exactly I can benefit from any relationship with you?”

  Kasdan’s eyes betrayed his irritation. “I can help you find your son.”

  Flynn had not expected this. “Do you know where he is?”

  The CIA operative shook his head, “No, but I know someone who does.”

  Flynn snorted, “And so do
I, but he refuses ta tell me. What are ya proposing? Are you gonna torture it out of Ben-Ali?”

  “You underestimate me Mr. Flynn,” he paused as if deciding how to proceed. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll share something with you to prove we can work together. Something that gives you leverage in your dealings with me.”

  Flynn waited.

  “One of Ben-Ali’s men works for me. I’m reasonably certain he knows where your son is.”

  “So tell me who he is.”

  Now it was Kasdan’s opportunity to mock Flynn, “No it doesn’t work that way.”

  Flynn realized that if what the agent had said was true, by telling him Ben-Ali’s crew had been compromised, Kasdan had given him information he could use that he hadn’t possessed before. It didn’t matter if he knew the identity of the informant. All he had to tell Ben-Ali is that one of his men was a traitor.

  “So what are you suggesting?”

  “Having been made a fool before, Ben-Ali will need assurance that he can get free passage to Yemen.”

  “Doesn’t the recording of your conversations assure that?”

  Kasdan smirked, “The recording is meaningless. The truth is I want Ben-Ali and his men in Yemen. The Intel I can get having someone on the inside there is invaluable.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “I want you to convince him that I’m furious that he taped our conversations. That I’m desperate to get my hands on the tape. Tell him, you don’t trust me. That I threatened to kill you if I don’t get the original and all the copies.”

  “Then what?”

  “He’ll get greedy. He’ll want more. Tell him you’ve already put your neck on the line. Now it’s time for him to release your son.”