City Of Lies

by R.J. Ellory

  Danny Fricker smokes, he thinks, he smiles nostalgically, and then he glances down to the edge of the water and sees a gunny sack come to rest against the stonework.

  Takes him twenty-five minutes and the assistance of two other guys to drag that thing out of the water. They use long wooden poles with metal hooks on the end, the things they employ to catch hold of netted cargo coming down on a crane. Slits open the sack with a boxcutter, and the sight and smell from within is enough to turn everyone’s breakfast to mystery meat and spraypaint the dockyard. Ironic in some small way, though they wouldn’t have known that at the time.

  Danny Fricker calls the deputy chargehand, brute of a man called Bill Rissick. Rissick radios the dockmaster, dockmaster comes down and immediately calls the police. Despatch sends a black and white, an ambulance and a deputy coroner. Deputy Coroner is the only one who can do on-site examinations and authorize the movement of a body. He’s the one who opens up the gunny sack and turns the body onto its back, notes the ballpoint pen protruding from the eye socket of the victim, and once his initial evaluation is complete he instructs the driver and attendant medic to take the body to the central morgue where a forensic pathologist will perform an autopsy.

  Police Detective Gary Sampson takes statements from Fricker, his two buddies, the deputy chargehand and the dockmaster. He gives them leave to resume their day, tells them not to worry about it. They will, undoubtedly, because such a thing as this is rare within a lifetime, and once experienced there is little one can do to forget it. The images, the sounds, the smells, the feelings – such things are held in perpetuity within the memory, and they can backflash unexpectedly. And it’s Christmas for God’s sake. Kind of a world is it when shit like this happens so close to Christmas?

  ‘Fucked-up world if you want my opinion,’ Fricker tells Sampson.

  Sampson nods, thinking not only of a man in a gunny sack with a biro in his eye, but also of Darryl and Jessica McCaffrey, a brother and sister murdered, related by blood but seemingly unconnected, a case that appears to be going nowhere, more than likely never will.

  ‘You’re right there,’ he tells Fricker. ‘Really very fucked up indeed.’

  ‘Not a question of luck,’ Walt Freiberg told Joe Koenig. ‘It’s never a question of luck. Relying on luck, attributing anything to luck, good or bad, is merely a way of excusing your own lack of preparation.’ Walt smiled. ‘Edward used to say that . . . he’d say, “Walt, you have to understand that luck is a stupid man’s way of telling the world he couldn’t figure the odds.”’

  Koenig laughed, and then his expression became a little more serious. He leaned forward in his chair, leaned closer to Freiberg, almost as if he believed he would be overheard. ‘He isn’t going to make it, is he?’ he asked.

  Freiberg shook his head. ‘Joe . . . hell Joe, I don’t fucking know. He’s a tough guy, as tough as they make ’em, but he’s old. People at the hospital are surprised he’s stayed alive this long.’

  ‘But everything goes forward regardless, right?’

  Freiberg nodded, put his cigar in the ashtray. ‘There’s been a lot of talk,’ he said. ‘Lot of rumors, lot of hearsay. Some of it I’ve heard, most of it I haven’t wanted to. What we got worked out goes ahead. In my mind there was never any doubt about it.’

  ‘And the kid is going to hold up?’

  ‘Sure, he’ll hold up. He doesn’t have to do anything directly . . . he just has to be here and keep everyone thinking he’s something he ain’t. This has been too long coming for us to start all over.’

  Koenig shook his head, back in the chair. ‘So whaddya reckon? You think it was just bad luck that Lenny was in the liquor store when that thing went down?’

  Freiberg smiled. ‘Bad luck? Hell no, he just didn’t figure the odds.’

  ‘What is on the film says everything. That’s the truth of it, Mr Harper. The footage from that night tells us everything we need to know.’

  Harper looked at Duchaunak, shook his head, shifted around in his chair. He seemed unable to control either his thoughts or his body. He turned towards the window, inhaled, held his breath for a few seconds, then looked back at Duchaunak, but his focus was off. He was looking right through the detective and into the corner of the room.

  ‘Mr Harper?’

  Harper snapped to. ‘I’m with you,’ he said, seemingly alert, but his voice told of exhaustion and a depth of battered emotions.

  ‘So you understand what I’m saying to you?’

  Harper nodded. ‘That the robbery started before my father went into the liquor store.’

  ‘Seven minutes before.’

  ‘Seven minutes,’ Harper echoed. ‘Must’ve felt like a lot longer than seven minutes to the people in the store.’

  Duchaunak nodded. ‘In fact, Mr Harper, it appears that the car that your father was in must have been several blocks away, and already the robbery was in progress. Your father was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was bad luck, just simple bad luck . . . a coincidence of the worst kind. He walked into a liquor store, went right to the back, apparently to buy some wine, and failed to notice that on the other side of the central aisle a man was holding the owner of the store at gunpoint. When your father came around the top of the aisle and started towards the till he obviously saw what was happening, and for whatever reason he decided he was going to do something about it.’

  ‘And he got himself shot?’

  Duchaunak nodded. ‘He got himself shot.’

  ‘And you’re sure the robbery was occurring before my father arrived there?’

  ‘Like I said, it started before your father even stopped the car. According to the CCTV tape the perp walked into the store a good seven minutes before your father arrived. There was a hiatus of about three minutes while the perp waited for another customer to leave, and then he took the gun from his jacket and threatened the store owner and his wife.’

  ‘So Ben Marcus couldn’t have ordered the shooting?’

  ‘Seems to make sense, eh?’

  ‘Seems to make sense.’

  There was silence for a few moments, and then Harper looked at Duchaunak directly, unflinching, his eyes cold and hard. ‘So what do you want?’ he asked. ‘What is it that you want me to do, Detective?’

  FIFTY-ONE

  Twelve after eleven a.m. Detective Gary Sampson files a brief summary of the morning’s events, attaches a photocopy of his initial interview notes for the case file. Calls the central morgue from his desk, waits on hold for seven minutes, and is then told that the John Doe from Pier 42 is still in a line.

  ‘We had a busy night,’ the attendant tells him.

  ‘Didn’t we all?’ Sampson replies, and leaves his cellphone number so they can call him when the results are out.

  Hangs up the phone, thinks to call his wife regarding arrangements for collecting his mother. She’s coming over for Christmas, coming over from Atlantic City. Brother’s coming too, and it’ll be the first time the family’s been together for the better part of five years. Last time was his father’s funeral, but the less said about that the better.

  Sampson tugs his jacket from the back of the chair and starts out of the office. Places to go, people to see, he thinks, in this very, very fucked-up world.

  Three-dollar ballpoint pen.

  Trace evidence: chips of glass, paint, metal, plastic, particles of dirt and soil; natural fibers, hair – human and otherwise; manmade fabrics – acetate, rayon, nylon, polyester, orlon; everything falling within the comfortable parameters of ‘matching’, ‘consistent with’ and ‘within the limits of the examination’.

  The word ‘forensics’ meant ‘related to debate or argument’.

  There was no argument here.

  Deputy Chief Forensic Pathologist Anthony Damilano was comfortably familiar with the four types of death – accident, suicide, natural and murder; this was undoubtedly the last. Angle of the three-dollar ballpoint conclusively proved that the victim had not held it against the
upper part of his eye and then forced himself against it, perhaps using a wall, even the surface of a table, as a support to stabilize the object. This ballpoint had entered the socket from a point slightly above eye-level and to the victim’s left. Someone had stuck the thing into him with sufficient force to break the clip off against the upper rim of the eye socket. The victim had been tied into a gunny sack and thrown into the river. Helluva way to spend Christmas, Damilano thought, and started work on the prints.

  Duchaunak cleared his throat. ‘As far as we know there are three dead, perhaps four,’ he started. ‘Two of them from Marcus’s camp, one named Micky Levin, another name of Johnnie Hoy. Johnnie Hoy was found in an alleyway off of West Fifteenth and Seventh. Little kid found him, eight years old I think. Johnnie had been left out there all night. Someone stabbed him in the eye, dragged him out there and left him all night. Frozen fucking solid he was, and this little kid goes walking his dog and finds this guy.’ Duchaunak smiled resignedly. ‘Not the sort of thing you want playing on a kid’s mind at Christmas, eh?’

  Harper stared blankly at a point somewhere between himself and Duchaunak. It appeared he hadn’t blinked for several minutes.

  ‘There’s another guy,’ Duchaunak went on. ‘Kid called Lester McKee. He’s a regular character in this business. Anything goes on in the Marcus territories and you’ll find Lester.’ Duchaunak paused, as if for effect. ‘Thing is, Mr Harper, we haven’t been able to find him. We’ve looked, kept our eyes and ears open, but there’s been no word about Lester McKee for quite some time. And I’ll tell you, he isn’t the sort of kid who just takes off to see his ma in Poughkeepsie.’

  Harper closed his eyes.

  ‘Micky Levin we found down on Pier 49 with the side of his head staved in. When I got home I had to scrape bits of him out of the welts of my shoes.’

  Duchaunak paused to see if Harper would react. He did not. Duchaunak went on talking.

  ‘And then, on your father’s side, we have a guy who goes by the name of Mouse Jackson. Friend of mine called me and told me that he was found dead beneath a bench in Washington Square Park. There was trace evidence of adhesive on his wrists and ankles, on the lower half of his face; indications that he’d been gagged and taped to something, that he’d had nails driven through his hands.’ Duchaunak shook his head resignedly. ‘Fuck knows what that was all about, maybe some kind of seasonal motif, eh?’ He shook his head. ‘One of his feet had been beaten to a pulp, but the thing that killed him was the screwdriver through his temple—’

  ‘Enough.’

  Duchaunak frowned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Enough,’ Harper repeated. ‘Enough already.’

  ‘I have plenty more where that came from, Mr Harper.’

  Harper shook his head. He rose from his chair and turned his back on Duchaunak. He walked to the window and stood there looking out and over New York. ‘This is the war, right? The war you were talking about.’

  ‘This is nothing, Mr Harper. This is a little warm-up before the main act.’

  ‘And the main act? What will the main act be, Detective?’ Harper turned slowly and looked at Duchaunak.

  ‘I don’t know, Mr Harper . . . and that’s precisely why I need you.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Early.’

  ‘How early?’

  ‘A few minutes after nine as far as we can tell.’

  Walt Freiberg is silent for a few seconds.

  Cathy Hollander stands in the callbox, her palms sweating, her heart audible as it beats nervously in her chest.

  ‘And the cop is still in there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fuck!’

  ‘What d’you want me to do?’

  ‘Want you to do? Jesus Cathy, I don’t know what I want you to do! What the fuck do you think you should do?’

  ‘Walt—’

  ‘I’m sorry, that was uncalled for,’ Freiberg interjects. He falls silent. She can hear him breathing. This is perhaps the first time she’s heard him rattled, like everything isn’t running smooth and simple how it’s supposed to.

  ‘There isn’t anything we can do,’ he finally says. ‘No-one’s going in there to tell Harper he shouldn’t talk to the cop, right? So the cop talks to him. What the fuck, eh? We go talk to Harper when Duchaunak has left and we turn everything back the right way round again.’

  ‘You think we can?’ Cathy asks.

  ‘Hey,’ Freiberg says, and he starts laughing. ‘Who the fuck are we dealing with here? There isn’t anything we can’t do. We have time, not one helluva lot of time, but we have time.’

  ‘So I stay here?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Callbox about three blocks from my apartment.’

  ‘Christ no, get inside. Hell, Cathy, you’re going to freeze your ass off. Get Beck to stay by the Regent and call you when the cop leaves. I’ll come get you and we’ll go over, see Harper, sort this thing out once and for all, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Cathy says, doubt evident in her voice.

  ‘Hey, what is this? Once more with feeling . . . we go over there later and sort this thing out, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Cathy says, and tries to sound as sincere as she can.

  ‘Good enough,’ Freiberg says. ‘Call me when the cop leaves and we’ll go to work.’ He hangs up before Cathy has a chance to acknowledge him.

  Cathy Hollander sets the receiver back and opens the callbox door. The wind cuts at her face, tightens the skin around her eyes. She stands for a moment, and then starts walking. She is several blocks from home and it is bitterly cold. She thinks to ask herself what kind of life she has created, but does not dare.

  ‘Jimmy Nestor.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘James Nestor. Jimmy Nestor,’ Damilano says. ‘That’s what flags up on the prints. He has a sheet. Seems he was a booster.’

  ‘Age?’

  ‘You’ve got access,’ Damilano says. ‘Pull up the file.’ He waits while Detective Gary Sampson accesses the database and retrieves Nestor’s file.

  ‘I know this guy!’ Sampson says. ‘I didn’t recognize him. He had that biro sticking out of his eye an’ everything. I’ve pulled this guy in three, four times. He and his cousin run a chop-shop on Mulberry . . . er, no . . . I think it’s Mott, one of those streets just over into Little Italy. He does the chassis numbers, paint jobs, the whole thing. His cousin takes ’em, he fixes them up. I think Jimmy’s done a turn in Green Haven . . . yep, here we are, did a year and a half for grand theft auto back in ’99.’

  ‘So I got the body and you got the name,’ Damilano says.

  ‘Good job. We’ll take it from here. Thanks for getting back so soon.’

  ‘Not a problem.’ Damilano hangs up the phone and turns back to the naked, battered body of James Roosevelt Nestor a.k.a. ‘Bird’ a.k.a. ‘Chester’.

  Sampson hangs up as well, then lifts the receiver to call Despatch.

  ‘I got a place over in Little Italy I want to check out. You got another squad you can send with me?’

  ‘Sure we got another squad,’ Despatch duty sergeant snarls at him. ‘We got four or five . . . in fact I got one comin’ outta my ass even as we speak. Hell, let’s make it a party, let’s send the whole fucking precinct down to Little Italy. We can have pizza—’

  ‘Hey!’ Sampson yells. ‘Cut that fucking crap out will ya? I just called to see if you guys have another squad.’

  ‘No, we don’t have another squad Detective, and if today is anything like yesterday you aren’t going to get a back-up squad until after the New Year, so you have a real good Christmas, okay?’

  ‘Asshole,’ Sampson says, and hangs up the phone. He calls across the room to his partner. ‘Hey Sonnenburg, we got a day trip.’

  Yale Sonnenburg looks up from the document he’s reading. He nods, reaches around back of the chair for his jacket and rises, still reading the pages.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Sampson asks.

  Sonnenburg s
miles. ‘It’s my wedding vows,’ he says. ‘I have to learn my wedding vows in Hebrew.’

  Sampson shrugs. ‘Whatever floats your boat man, whatever floats your boat.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  ‘And that’s all you’ve got?’ Harper asks.

  Duchaunak nods his head. ‘That’s all I’ve got, Mr Harper.’

  Harper shakes his head. ‘That there might be a robbery—’

  ‘Oh, you can take it from me, Mr Harper, there will be a robbery. I have no doubt about that.’

  ‘Okay, okay . . . so you’re telling me that this thing will happen. You don’t know exactly when, but you think it’s going to be Christmas Eve. You think that people who work for my father and people who work for Ben Marcus are going to be involved, that they’re going to do this heist together, right?’

  Duchaunak nods in the affirmative.

  ‘And that’s what you’ve got,’ Harper repeats; a rhetorical question.

  ‘That’s what I’ve got.’

  ‘So, even though they are opposing criminal fraternities they are going to do something together?’ Harper pauses. He scratches his head. ‘That’s . . . no, I’m sorry, there’s something I just don’t get here . . .’

  ‘It’s been done before,’ Duchaunak says. ‘It happened in Chicago a few times. You get these guys from opposing families, and then someone comes up with something that’s too big for one organization alone, and so they work it out together. It’s the strangest goddamned thing. They shoot the hell out of each other, they walk on each others’ territories, all this shit for years, and then suddenly they find something they can’t do with the resources they each individually have and so they pull a robbery together, they cut up the proceeds, and once the dust has settled they’re shooting the hell out of one another all over again.’