by Jackson, Gil
But it was how it was. His real report would have to remain under wraps, couldn’t be shown – yet! – never! When? He couldn’t imagine a time or place, but one day it would have to come to light he guessed - there were other witnesses, but there, as Charlie had said, you were the one that was conscious, I had a bad dream about an angel and I couldn’t write an accurate report.
* * *
Police Commissioner Harry Rivers spoke: ‘The department’s got a bit of a problem on its hands, Frank. Nothing we can’t deal with if we all pull together, I’m sure ...’ He stopped and looked into his face looking for approval to continue, but seeing none went on without it. ‘Frank, we know each other well enough to put the reputation of the force first before what we might think of each other.’ He looked into his eyes. ‘The fact is, there’s a government inquiry into all those missing children; and fact is, they’re sending a couple of guys from the Bureau of Investigation down here....’
‘Fact is that’s going to be a bit of an embarrassment for you, Commissioner, files are missing.’
He ignored his comment of disdain and treated it as nothing more than helpful advice continued. ‘Nothing I can’t handle, Frank. But I would appreciate some assistance. Look let’s cut to the knot. We agree we should have handled the Giuseppi involvement with Fariq and his family better, I can see that, but it’s all water under the bridge, we must move on....’
‘That’s rich, Commissioner, with respect, you were doing his bidding.’
He ignored that as well and raised his voice an authoritative notch. ‘You had no authority to break into his house on the off chance that Fariq’s daughter was being held by him. And may I remind you that she wasn’t - I could’ve had you busted for that.’
Frank’s face remained expressionless. ‘I don’t think so, Commissioner.’
Rivers resumed a friendly tone: ‘Like I said before, fact of the matter is, I know we’ve never got on, but can we put that behind us, for the moment at least?’ He put Frank’s silence as a yes and carried on. ‘I shall be retired in a year, maybe less, if Mrs. Rivers has anything to do with it, and I would have no trouble finding and recommending you as my successor. Support me on this and I’ll promise you’ll make Police Commissioner in twelve months. What do you say, um?’
Frank knew that he had stepped out of line more often than not and had good results for his unorthodox methods. Usually, and to a certain extent he had this time but this was different, what could he do but agree.
‘Depends what you want from me, Commissioner.’
Rivers nodded. ‘I see no reason for you to mention Marco Giuseppi in any of this in any more of a light than incidental. That he was a bully boy trying to run a Union scam that was not to Fariq’s liking is enough. And your suspicions that he was involved with his family’s demise were no longer founded in light of new evidence that he was not capable of tearing someone’s head off. And also that he had any involvement with Governor Brent; you can take it from me that he didn’t. We are not the only precinct to have dead immigrants on our doorstep, the waters around Ellis Island are turning them up weekly and neither Giuseppi nor Brent is responsible for that.’ He nodded his head rapidly as if to cement the statement as fact.
‘What!?’
Frank’s expression had changed and Harry Rivers saw the look of a man that recognised the rights of those less fortunate - even niggers he shouldn’t wonder - but he was a Jew and it worried him. ‘Look, Frank, I’ve the same caring face as you, the point is ...’
‘The point is, Harry, you want me and Charlie to withhold vital information on a known hoodlum that’s house was stuffed full of enough evidence to leave little doubt to the most blind that he was interested in nothing more than children – and I’m not talking their welfare?’
Rivers was incensed, he could see that he was going to get nowhere with this man. ‘You’re a typical Yid Frank, if your kind can’t have any of the action you don’t want anyone else to have it; there’d be more than trouble in the docks of this country if the likes of Giuseppi didn’t exist. Strikes, sabotage, communism getting a grip ... and where would we’d have been during the war if that had happened, I’ll tell you where, right up shit creek. There’s a need for the Giuseppi’s of this world whatever they get into and you and your kind should know that better than most.’
Frank didn’t flinch a muscle.
Harry nodded self consciously. He had him, and spoke calmly. ‘I’m disappointed in you, Frank; I think you should take some leave while this investigation is taking place. In fact — I insist upon it.’
‘And how are you going to explain that away to the Bureau, Commissioner?’
‘What you taking some leave? Pressure: your judgement’s impaired; you’re taking unnecessary risks and causing the department embarrassment - the Bureau will not have a problem with my explanation for your absence. I would have liked to have acted in a manner - how do you say it - kosher, but I shall have to act in another. With you out of the way, there would be no need for them to see you, the case can be put over to another officer.’ He smiled in a satisfied manner.
‘Very neat, Harry.’
‘I think so. You could have played ball, instead of which, well, BARNES!’
He barked the name of the sergeant typing in the next office and who, with only a glass window between them had heard what was being said. A smartly uniformed officer entered the office. Frank knew him, encouraged him when he had first joined the department. An affable enough young man that had shown potential for the straight and narrow until falling under the influence of Harry Rivers’s brand of police work; and whom Frank had not altogether entirely given up on.
‘Yes, sir?’
Lieutenant Weinberg is taking a holiday break, and is not feeling altogether well, kindly escort him from the building and see that he doesn’t go to his office, doesn’t collect anything other than personal, and speaks to no one.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And, Frank ... I think your badge and revolver.
Frank stood up an act of defiance in his manner overcame him and he put his hand out to shove Rivers in the chest but was pulled up by the bulk of Barnes. Rivers said let him go and Barnes duly obliged.
‘That’s an order, Frank.’
Frank pulled himself rather belatedly from Barnes grip - which had been released - and thinking there would be a better way out of this situation duly complied: placed his badge and gun on Rivers’s desk leant forward towards him and Barnes stepped between them.
‘Sorry, lieutenant, this way please.’
Frank kept a stare a little longer into Rivers’s face before speaking. ‘Just one small thing, Harry....’
Rivers looked at him but didn’t reply.
‘... It was me that informed the Bureau.’
* * *
‘Police Commissioner Rivers, how do you do, I’m Agent Johnson and my colleague, Agent Sullivan, we’ve come to speak to you on a matter of missing children, may we sit down?’
Rivers released his hand from Agent Johnson’s greeting and saying nothing gestured them to the two chairs that he had put out for their visit. Agent Johnson seated himself. Agent Sullivan didn’t.
Harry Rivers smiled rather awkwardly but settled his thoughts. ‘Certainly I’ll help you all I can, but I think you’re on a wild turkey chase. Can I get you coffee?’
‘Coffee’s fine.’
‘And you Agent Sullivan?’
Agent Sullivan was preoccupied looking first at the ceiling then the walls before settling on a filing cabinet. It had a photographic portrait of Harry Rivers in full dress uniform on top. Seeing him looking at it Rivers felt slightly embarrassed at his display of vanity and wished he’d removed it before their arrival.
Agent Johnson was pulling open a leather case and without looking up said. ‘Agent Sullivan doesn’t want anything.’
Awkwardly he called for Barnes and ordered two coffees. He wasn’t used to someone walking round his office while he was i
n conversation with another, it unnerved him. Perhaps that’s what they intended. He sat and gathered himself together.
Agent Johnson pulled a sheath of paper from his brief case and started to read it. Rivers shuffled uneasily in his chair, the silence seemed to go on forever and Agent Johnson didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry.
‘Did Governor Brent pass my credentials to your director, Mr. Johnson?’ he asked trying to bring some informality to the proceedings.
Agent Johnson looked up at him. ‘It’s Agent Johnson, Police Commissioner.’
River’s face went pink with a rising anger but controlled it. ‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry. Agent Johnson.’
Agent Johnson continued reading. ‘What credentials are you speaking of, Police Commissioner?’
‘That there was no real need for any investigation of my department on the matter of missing children, they had after all been fully investigated to the best of the department’s abilities given the lack of proper records from the department of emigration.’
‘Before we go any further, Police Commissioner Rivers, I should remind you that this is a government matter. We are looking into not only child abduction, but your abilities as Police Commissioner to carry out proper investigations. As to Governor Brent, I cannot say too much at this juncture, but you should be aware that any relationship you may have or are having with the governor will be the subject of closer scrutiny at some later date. As to the recording of information from the people involved with records at Ellis Island, we’ve found those immigration records to be of a most immaculate order as we would have expected and befits a government department of the United States of America.’
Rivers was dumbfounded. He felt that he was showing signs of nervousness at this extraordinary exhibition of interview tactics that were firmly closing his opening doors before moving on. His original preconception of these people being failed police officers pushed to one side was to say the least, awry. These were professionals through and through. If he were to come out of this with anything like his career in one piece he was going to have to keep his guard up and not become rattled by these men. ‘Of course I was not suggesting—’
Agent Johnson looked up from the report in front of him and interrupted him. ‘I shall need in the course of these inquiries to speak to officers Weinberg and O’Hare. Would you make them available to me?’
Rivers looked nervous again and felt it showing; wished he had not been so hasty over Weinberg. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Agent Johnson, Lieutenant Weinberg is on leave.’
Agent Johnson looked down, carried on reading. Looked up and said, ‘Nevertheless.’
Rivers had had enough of this and felt the need to put his own stamp on proceedings: the ringing in his ears of Weinberg calling these people to investigate him in the first place seethed within him as it was, he felt unable to put up with this anymore. ‘I’ve been conducting my own inquiries, Agent Johnson, and it’s my considered opinion that Lieutenant Weinberg was one of those officers that I would not cite as an example of “fully investigated” that you seem to cling so firmly from a government department whether it’s law enforcement or keeping records of emigrants, they are one and the same as far as I’m concerned and the record will show that I uphold those same principles as yourself.’ He hoped that this would be enough to satisfy this man but doubted it.
‘Your comments have been noted, Police Commissioner.’
Agent Sullivan in a well rehearsed double act interrupted from deep inside one of Rivers’s filing cabinets. ‘Nevertheless Weinberg and his Sergeant will be made available to us, so get used to it and see to it.’
The words echoed from within the filing cabinet and before he could gather himself together Agent Johnson’s part in the act came around with devastating effect.
‘Who have you got for the abduction and murder of Fariq Mihalyvich daughter and the murder of his wife, Oonna?’
Rivers was dumbfounded, and had never heard of Fariq’s wife by name before and had to ask who before replying. ‘Oh, yes, of course. Why, I’ve nobody, not since - inquiries are to begin afresh after Tony Di Sotto was taken out of the frame. We believe it was Mr. Sledge Driver.’ Rivers mumbled the words.
Again Agent Johnson had his face in the report, this time making for the first time some reference to it. ‘It says ... that over the years there have been numerous cases of missing children, it mentions nine. Can you explain that to me, Police Commissioner?’
He shrugged. ‘Immigrants in the main. Look, there’s been 200-odd thousand people through Ellis this year alone, children do get separated from parents, or run off; abandoned, nine missing children is no great surprise to me, records by the immigration authority’s cannot account for numbers as small as that.’
‘Well, again I will argue the case for government records being immaculate, but I’ll leave that for another time, give you the benefit of the doubt, say, ordinarily and up to a point I would agree with you, Police Commissioner, but it does go on to say that parents’ in five of these cases did in fact report their children missing and without any satisfactory conclusion, how do you answer that, Police Commissioner?’
‘Well I wouldn’t have known that, my predecessor was here, Commissioner Dore — the case must have been closed for some reason, I guess.’
‘We’ll come back to that, Commissioner. Were you aware that Lieutenant Weinberg and Sergeant O’Hare visited the premises belonging to ... Marco Giuseppi, part of their inquiries into the abduction of the Fariq girl? Were you aware of their intent to do that?’
He blurted out, ‘No, I was not! That’s another one of Lieutenant Weinberg’s procedural problems. Going his own way. Insubordination. He and O’Hare are good at that.’ The room echoed the silence after his words and felt his true feelings were being hung out to dry in front of these two men.
Agent Johnson, with the hint of a smile: that the light was appearing in the cracks of Rivers’s armour, continued: ‘Though he might have good reason to believe that Fariq’s daughter was being held, strange to me that he never mentioned that. Can you think of a reason why that should be so – was it perhaps you would not have sanctioned such an inquiry because of your involvement with Marco Giuseppi? Your involvement with a man that Weinberg had his suspicions and you had been protecting-’
‘That’s a preposterous accusation, Agent Johnson; it’s like I said, Weinberg always went his own way when it came to police work, him and his Sergeant they were both as bad as each other. His reasons must be his own; you’ll have to ask him.’ To his annoyance Agent Johnson again looked down at that damning report. He had answered the questions that had been put to him; it was that, at the back of his head had been the continual nagging. Did they know of his dealings with governor Brent and ultimately Giuseppi or were they bluffing?
But it wasn’t the next question that came from Agent Sullivan that would decide that for him. ‘What are your personal views on the sexual interference of children, Police Commissioner?’ he asked.
His emotion drained his face of the blood that had uncontrollably rushed there to be replaced with another as quickly. ‘What kind of a damned fool question is that - I don’t understand - you’ve as well to ask me my views on crime?’ He stammered the answer. The annoyance in his voice was plain.
‘There are views on that question and there’s specifics, Police Commissioner, Agent Sullivan’s question is straight forward enough, have you a view on the sexual abuse of immigrant children?’ Agent Johnson followed.
‘What! ... Apart from being against the law ... look, I fail to see what these fool questions have to do with
me ... child interference: I’ve no experience of immigrant or otherwise and I find your line of questioning abhorrent-’
‘Even though the evidence points in the direction that you are not above condoning it...?’
‘What evidence?’
‘Marco Giuseppi?’ Agent Sullivan said. ‘You’ve profited from your relationship with
the man’.
Rivers said nothing. Got up and went to a filing cabinet and opened it. Rifling through the contents he produced a typed foolscap, slammed the drawer shut went to the other side of his desk, sat down and dropped it on the desk in front of Agent Johnson with an attitude of self satisfaction.
‘Read it. There’s the report on the Fariq enquiry carried out by Weinberg tell me anything in there that refers to my profiting from the sexual interference of children or any other report that does.’
Agent Johnson took it up and pulled the typescript from the brown folder. It was Lieutenant Weinberg and Sergeant O’Hare’s account of their investigation of Marco Giuseppi. Reading through it quickly until he came to the signatures of Weinberg’s and O’Hare’s. Rivers was right it hadn’t made any mention of any sexual interference of children.
‘Who typed this?’ Agent Johnson said.
‘Lieutenant Weinberg.’
‘Himself?’
‘As far as I know - yes.’
‘Is that usual?’
‘Yes. Why the interest?’
Agent Sullivan leant over and picked up the top sheet. Agent Johnson passed a carbon copy of a sheet he had been reading earlier. Placing one sheet over the other Agent Sullivan held the two sheets to the light from the window.
Rivers spoke nervously: ‘What’s he doing?’
‘Top two paragraphs match!’ Agent Sullivan said.
‘Well, Commissioner. It appears that the copy you have differs from the copy we have.’ Agent Johnson said.
‘That’s not possible.’
Lieutenant Weinberg’s report on the activities of Marco Giuseppi and Weinberg’s certain belief that Giuseppi and Governor Brent were involved in the abduction and selling of immigrant children for sex as well as the slaying of Fariq’s wife, the abduction and murder of his daughter are not on your copy.’
‘If it’s the same report why doesn’t mine mention that; and why Fariq and his family? What had they to do with any of this?’
