Saints Of New York

by R.J. Ellory

  DOJ also has the FBI, and they operate independently of the US Attorney network. The FBI is responsible for investigating cases, the US Attorney for prosecuting them. It's supposed to be that simple. There are three FBI offices in New York City - or were back then - Manhattan, Queens and New Rochelle. Each one worked independently until the action against organized crime stepped up in the Eighties and these boys started getting smart, working together. So you got this system going on, right? The Feds raise the cases, the Attorney's Office prosecutes. You with me?'

  'Yes, go on.'

  'Okay. Then comes RICO. That's the federal act against racketeering and corruption, and it gave the Feds the authority to investigate anything - and I mean anything - that they felt might relate to organized crime. So the Feds started getting cases together and bringing them to the relevant US Attorney's Office, and then the US Attorney would bring them to federal court in the Southern or Eastern district. You follow me so far?'

  'Sure, yes.'

  'Well, the federal courts have judges who are appointed by the President of the United States, with advice and consent from the Senate. These boys, these judges, once they're in, they're in for life. They got life tenure. Now we go back down and look at the five District Attorneys. These guys get elected to four-year terms by the citizens of their boroughs, and they operate entirely independent from the Mayor's Office and the State Attorney General. They are not obligated to co-operate with one another, and they don't take orders from higher federal or state authorities. Co-operation has only ever occurred on a case-by-case basis.'

  'The point being?'

  'I'm getting to that. So you have the NYPD, the FBI, the DA's Office, the New York State Attorney General, the Organized Crime Control Bureau, the Brooklyn Organized Crime Strike Force, and the original remnants of the New York Task Force which had its headquarters in White Plains and field offices in Buffalo and Albany.

  'Each of these groups is independent, and they all got their own snitches and CIs - confidential informants - and their own cases. And you wanna get this shit arranged in such a way as to bring about effective co-operation and the precise application of the law? Hell, we have enough trouble getting a bust for parking violations. These guys were fighting a losing battle even before they started. The degree to which organized crime had infiltrated the police and the courts was staggering. There are forty thousand officers in the NYPD alone, and they react to crime, they don't proactively investigate potential crime. That's the job of the Feds, but the Feds are limited to handling espionage, sabotage, kidnapping, bank robbery, drug trafficking, terrorism, and civil rights violations. You get a murder or two thrown in there, and unless the acting NYPD Homicide detectives can deliver probative evidence that the homicide was in some way related to one of those federal categories, they ain't got a hope in hell of getting FBI support.

  'Well, the Mafia knew all this, and the bits they didn't know they could find out easily enough. They knew that the borough DAs didn't work together, so they dumped bodies along the borough divisional lines. Bullshit paperwork on which DA was responsible for that piece of territory could keep the case running for months, and then they get a judge who's on their payroll to dismiss it, based on the fact that the NYPD and the DA's Office were hounding and harassing the defendant unnecessarily . . . Some of the things that happened way back when you wouldn't believe. Anyway, in the Nineteen-Eighties all these legal organizations got wise, they started to get their shit together. Rudy Giuliani went into the US Attorney's Office Southern District in 1970. Three years later he was chief of the Narcotics Unit, and in 1975 he became an Independent and went to work for Gerald Ford. After that he went into private practice, and when Reagan was elected in 1980 he decided he was now a Republican. Reagan made him Associate Attorney General, and from that position he supervised all of the federal law enforcement agencies of the US Attorney's Office, the Department of Corrections, the DEA and the US Marshals Service. In 1983 he came into his own with indictments and prosecution of organized crime figures and he indicted eleven people through '85 and '86. That sorry bunch of motherfuckers included the heads of the Five Families, and Rudy got convictions and hundreds of years of prison time for eight of them. He was the hero of the fucking century.

  'Now the OCCB had been around since 1971, but it was in the

  Eighties under Giuliani that they really started to kick ass and take names. That's where you would have found the late John Parrish, forty years old and a cop since 1957. He's got a seven- year-old kid and a mortgage, and he has a network of CIs and allies in and around the Brooklyn area to support. So: he's taking money left, right and center any which way he can find it, and he's asked to join the Organized Crime Control Bureau, supposed to be the cleanest, most upright and honest crew in the city. These are the new Untouchables. These are the guys who are going to break the back of the Mafia in New York. He gets with them, and he finds out that a lot of these guys are no different from him, just regular humps trying to make a living and not get shot. They got wives and kids and mistresses, they have rent to pay, and they're as open to temptation as anyone on the street. But now the stakes are so much higher. You give information to the Mafia and the payback is huge. Where some cop would have gotten a hundred bucks for looking after some businessman who wanted to lose a truck full of TVs and claim the insurance, now he's given five or ten times that much for looking the other way. Such cops stayed there for ten years, never got so much as a caution or a written warning. They were the Saints of New York, you see, and they couldn't put a foot wrong.'

  'And they were all like this? All corrupt?'

  'God no, not at all. There were a good percentage that stayed clean, worked hard, got the job done. But my father, the big hero that everyone seems to have a hard-on for, the guy whose standards I have failed to meet on every level, he was corrupt, and as far as I can tell he was probably the worst of the lot.'

  'And you resent it when people compare you to him?'

  'Resent it? Why would I resent it. The motherfucker's dead.'

  'I don't mean resent him, I mean whether or not you resent the fact that people talk about him as a hero when he wasn't.'

  'People understand what they want, they say what they what. I haven't got the time or the inclination to change their minds. I think the fact that I know the truth is enough.'

  'Is it? Do you really think that?'

  'Well, I fucking well hope so, because I don't have anything else.'

  'So, tell me what he was like. And these people, the Saints of New York.'

  'They were all OCCB cops, and they were all crooked like fishhooks. A handful of them inside the Bureau were making life very easy for the mob at JFK Airport.'

  'The Lufthansa heist? I've seen Goodfellas.'

  'Well, you've seen the flag on the top of the mountain, sweetheart, but you ain't seen the mountain yet. I'm afraid that is gonna have to wait. I have a new partner to meet this morning.'

  'Frank . . . hell, Frank, this is why you need to be on time. We start into something like this and we need to get to a good point before we leave it.'

  'Life moves on, you know? I'm sure your day is filled with excitements just as mine is.'

  'Well. . . We'll carry on tomorrow.'

  'Sure.'

  'And you're doing okay otherwise?'

  'I'm okay, yes.'

  'You sleeping?'

  'On and off.'

  'You want something to help you sleep?'

  'Christ no. I start down that route I ain't coming back.'

  'Okay, Frank. I'll see you tomorrow. You have a good day now.

  '

  TEN

  Radick and Parrish had not seen one another for a good two or three years. Radick had come from Narcotics, had hung in there until what he saw and what he heard went more than skin- deep. You could see only so many dead junkies, could interrogate only so many dealers, watch only so many cases fold up and die, before you started taking that shit home.

  As fa
r as Parrish was concerned, Jimmy Radick looked exactly the same.

  To Radick, however, Frank Parrish appeared to have lost twenty pounds and aged a decade. He wore the spiritual bruises of the conscience drinker: a double or two to blunt the edges of the day's disappointments, another couple to soften the guilt about drinking. It went downhill from there. The worst cases came in still drunk from the night before, spent two out of five shifts with the medical officer. Whatever wagon they kept trying to get on had a slide fitted.

  'I don't need to introduce you, do I?' Haversaw said. 'You already know one another.'

  Someone was at the door. Haversaw hollered 'Come in!' and Squad Sergeant Valderas entered. Valderas was a career cop. Had never wanted for anything else, never would want for anything else. He ironed a clean shirt every night for the next day.

  'Frank,' he said matter-of-factly, and then extended his hand to Radick, who rose from his chair. They shook, shared a wordless greeting, and Radick sat down again while Valderas leaned against the wall.

  'Antony has a good team here,' Haversaw told Radick.

  Radick glanced at Parrish. The pep talk.

  'You got Frank here, then there's Paul Hayes, Bob Wheland,

  Mike Rhodes, Stephen Pagliaro, Stan West and Tom Engel. You know these guys?'

  'Some,' Radick said.

  'Well, you are in Two Unit with Frank here. Eight in all, four pairs, split shifts reversing every two weeks. Alan here will give the lowdown on the schedule. Overtime is frequent enough, time and a half for weekends if you're off-shift, double-time for public holidays if you're not booked in already. Easy enough to understand. You're not married, right?'

  Radick shook his head. No.

  'Ever been?'

  Again a no.

  'You supporting kids?'

  'No, no kids.'

  'Parents here in New York?'

  'Both dead,' Radick said.

  'So you're all alone in the big, bad world.'

  Radick smiled. 'Sure am.'

  'Well, you'll get along fine with Frank. Frank don't have no-one to care for him neither, do you, Frank?'

  'We'll care for each other, right, Jimmy?' Parrish said.

  'Yes sir, Mister Parrish sir,' Jimmy replied, with a military snap in his tone.

  Valderas shook his head. 'Couple of firecrackers here,' he said. 'We'll see what damage they can do between them.'

  'Take 'em away,' Haversaw said. 'They're your problem now.'

  Down in the Two Unit squad room Valderas sat with Radick and Parrish, asked if Radick wanted coffee. He declined.

  'Take it,' Parrish said. 'It'll be the last time he offers.'

  'You are such a fucking wiseass,' Valderas said. 'Not so fucking clever when it comes to your stats.'

  'I have a sixty-eight as of yesterday,' Parrish replied.

  'And I have Hayes and Wheland with an eighty-two percent, Rhodes and Pagliaro with a seventy-nine.'

  'And you give them the slam dunks.'

  Valderas hesitated.

  'See?' Parrish said. 'It's what I say. Give them the slam dunks, give me the ball-breakers and the heartachers. You are such a transparent motherfucker.'

  Valderas looked at Radick. 'See what I have to contend with? Maybe a bit of your stabilizing influence might bring this guy around.'

  Radick turned his mouth down at the corners. 'I don't know, Sergeant,' he said. 'I was told that you were the one who needed help.'

  Parrish laughed.

  Valderas rolled his eyes.

  'Enough already,' Parrish said. 'We have work to do.'

  'Your alley shooting,' Valderas said. 'Wasn't he a CI sometime back? Didn't he used to work for Charlie Powers over at the 17th?'

  'No, that must've been some other Lange. This one I knew - didn't know his sister, but I knew Danny. He was just a user, a small-time thief. Seven-Elevens, liquor stores, shit like that. Did a coupla turns around the yard way back, but he wasn't someone to write a Report about.'

  'Got anything?'

  'On him or the sister?'

  'Either.'

  'Danny got a .22. I figure the slug will have pancaked, won't give us nothin'. I'm checking up on his friends, all bullshit so far. His sister I ain't gotten to yet. She got choked in Danny's apartment. Sixteen years old, real pretty.'

  'He could've done it?' Valderas asked.

  'I don't think so, no. If it'd been some rich girl in there, then maybe, just maybe Danny might've choked someone for enough cash, but his sister? Uh-uh, I don't think so.'

  'And the parents?'

  'Both dead, I heard. Car crash a few years back. Seems the girl had some woman looking after her in Williamsburg.'

  'So what are you going to make some progress on today?'

  'Well, far as I can tell, the subway guy just caught an opportunist psycho. I spoke to his wife, his kids, people at his work, everyone I could think of. He was just a regular schmuck. No gripes, no grievances, didn't drink or smoke, no hookers, no drugs. Sort of guy who'd die and his wife would forget him by the weekend.

  'The hooker we got a lead on from a friend of hers, another girl who reported a john making noises about killing one of them for kicks. A real party boy, you know? The kid at the college - the one who got stabbed - seems he ripped off a coupla dealers. He wasn't the good little boy that his folks would have us believe. He took a couple of grand off of someone who was supplying the campus. Anyway, that's gonna resolve by the end of next week I'm sure.'

  'So the only one you got right now that hasn't moved any place is the brother and sister?'

  Parrish nodded.

  'Get on that for today then,' Valderas said. 'Spend a couple of hours with Jimmy here. Take him round the place, show him where the john is, where he's gonna sit. The usual. Then get your lazy asses out on the street and find out who wanted Danny Lange and his kid sister dead.'

  Parrish got up.

  'And you,' Valderas said to Radick, as he rose to leave the squad room, 'it's good to have you here. You come with an honest reputation. Let's keep it that way, okay?'

  ELEVEN

  'Lange was just your regular mope/ Parrish said.

  He and his new partner sat at facing desks. Radick was emptying a box of things into the desk drawers - stapler, pens, notebooks, pencils. The usual.

  'He was bound to get himself put down sooner or later,' Parrish went on. 'He'll have crossed someone, short-changed someone, sold someone some crap, you know? The twist is the sister. That's what doesn't make sense. She gets herself strangled, he gets himself shot a few hours later? This is a coincidence I cannot ignore.'

  'You got pictures?' Radick asked.

  'Not yet.'

  'Autopsy report?'

  'We pick it up today.'

  'You say he was shot under the chin up into the head?'

  'Yeah.'

  'More like an execution.'

  'Sure, but these characters watch TV. They get creative. You know - theatrical.'

  'Can we go see her?'

  'No problem.'

  Duggan, the DC from the call-out wasn't in. Parrish got someone else. He asked to see the Lange girl.

  'You can wait ten? I got someone else doing something down the hall, and I'm gonna need to be with you.'

  They waited twenty, paced up and down the corridor, hands in pockets, nothing much of anything to say.

  The guy came back, showed them into Theater 4, walked through to the iceboxes and opened the drawer.

  'She is pretty/ was Radick's first comment. He leaned close, his face inches from hers, almost as if he hoped to absorb the truth of her death from her skin.

  Then he commented on her fingernails.

  'Toenails are the same,' Parrish said. 'Professional job.'

  'She was raped?'

  'Nope. Had sex, no rape.'

  'She wasn't turning tricks?'

  'Can't see it. Not the way she looks, not unless she was a real newcomer. No hooker I ever saw looked that good.'

  'But she looks younger t
han she is,' Radick said.

  'You think?'

  'My brother has three girls. Eleven, thirteen, fifteen. They spend all their time trying to look twenty-five. This hairstyle is young for sixteen, makes her look twelve or thirteen. Doesn't fit with the nail varnish. Her clothes?'

  'Found her in her underwear,' Parrish said.

  'She had clothes in the brother's place?'

  'Dunno, haven't been back there. Got confirmation of COD yesterday, rape kit, stomach contents . . . there was nothing out of the ordinary there.'

  Parrish zipped up the body bag, pushed Rebecca back in her slot and asked for the Danny Lange autopsy report before they left.

  'Nothing that will help us here,' he said, after skimming through it. 'Slug was as flat as a shadow.' He folded it up and tucked it into his jacket pocket. 'Let's go see the apartment.'

  Radick wouldn't do the stairs. 'Nine floors?' he said. 'No fucking way.'

  They took the elevator, shuddered and stuttered all the way up.

  Parrish still had the apartment key, though the word 'apartment' suggested something altogether more functional and appealing than the sight that greeted them.

  'I still cannot understand how the fuck people can live like this,' Radick said. He snapped on latex gloves, started turning over greasy fried chicken boxes, empty cans . . . found a coffee cup with half an inch of coffee under an inch of mold.

  'Girl wouldn't have been here long,' Parrish said. 'Very few girls would tolerate a place like this. She'd have cleaned it up some, I'll bet.'

  'You think maybe someone killed her, then went after him because he could put her and the strangler together?'

  Parrish didn't reply. He was on his hands and knees looking along the line of the carpet.

  Radick shrugged. He walked on through to the bedroom where the murdered girl had lain. He produced a small digital camera from his jacket pocket and started taking pictures.

  'You always take your own?' Parrish asked as he came through the doorway.