House Witness

by Mike Lawson

  Dominic DiNunzio wasn’t a bad guy. All his friends would later tell this to the media and the cops. He looked big enough to have played for the Jets, but he wasn’t a violent man. He hadn’t been in a fistfight since he was eight. The problem was, as he’d told Toby, today was the wrong day to screw with him.

  Dominic was an accountant, and he used a program that had cost him ten grand to prepare his clients’ tax returns. That morning he found out that the program had an error in it, and that the program—not Dominic—had incorrectly calculated the taxes his clients owed. Fifty of his clients now owed the government money. Three of them fired him the moment he told them about the problem, and a dozen more were thinking about firing him.

  When Dominic left his office and started walking toward the subway, the rain started coming down in buckets, the wind blowing it into his face—the perfect end to a perfect fuckin’ day. Normally, Dominic didn’t stop for a drink on his way home, but he decided as he was passing by McGill’s to have one and unwind a bit before facing the wife and kids. The last thing he was in the mood for was some little prick mouthing off to him.

  But this was the wrong day to screw with Toby, too.

  Toby was twenty-six but still got carded in bars. He had wavy dark hair, long eyelashes, and perfect features: a short straight nose, small flat ears, cupid-bow lips, dimples in both cheeks when he smiled. He was so handsome, he was almost pretty. In fact, Lauren’s girlfriends—the ones he’d thought would be the bridesmaids at their wedding—were always saying he was prettier than Lauren. It was a joke—but only sort of.

  When Lauren broke up with him three days ago, she said it was because they were “incompatible,” whatever the hell that meant—but he couldn’t get her to tell him what he had to do for them to be compatible. When she wouldn’t return his calls, he hung around her apartment, hoping to catch her alone outside so he could talk to her, and that’s when he learned that “incompatible” meant she was seeing another man.

  Toby saw this man and Lauren step out of a cab the night before last. He saw the guy put his arm around her shoulders as he walked her into her brownstone, then stay the night—while Toby sat outside in his car, snorting coke, sipping from a pint of scotch, sometimes crying. Whoever the guy was, he wasn’t all that good-looking—at least Toby didn’t think so—but he was over six feet tall and built like Superman.

  So Toby was feeling the sting of losing the woman he’d planned to marry, and he’d lost her to a man who was arguably more manly-looking—and then this fat fuck knocks him down and calls him a little shit. It was like igniting a half-inch fuse on a stick of dynamite—and from that moment forward Toby couldn’t really remember what he did. It was as if a bloody red curtain had dropped down over his mind.

  But what he did was walk out to his car, which was parked directly in front of McGill’s. That was the only luck he’d had in the last three days: finding that parking spot. He jerked open the passenger-side door, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out the gun—a Smith & Wesson .357 revolver with a walnut grip and a three-inch barrel. He slammed the car door shut and walked back into McGill’s—and immediately saw the whale at a table, sitting by himself, still wearing his trench coat and his stupid hat. Toby walked over to him and, without hesitating, shot him three times. “That’ll teach you to fuck with me,” he muttered.

  It was as if the sound of the gunshots woke him from a nightmare, and he suddenly realized what he’d done. He stood for no more than a second looking at the fat man—whose white shirt was turning crimson—then he ran. He almost hit a busboy carrying a tray of glasses before he got to the door, banged it open, jumped into his car, and took off. He was driving away less than a minute after he killed Dominic DiNunzio.

  As he was driving he kept saying, “What did you do? What did you do?” The short-barreled .357 was on the passenger seat, but it was no longer an inanimate object. To Toby it was alive, like a malignant machine in a Stephen King novel, giving off heat, possessing a dark, throbbing heart. It was as if the gun had somehow taken possession of his soul and made him do what he did. He couldn’t help thinking that if he hadn’t bought the damn gun he never would have shot that asshole.

  Six blocks from McGill’s, he pulled into a parking garage. The killing had shocked him almost sober, and he knew he shouldn’t be driving. He wouldn’t have been driving in the first place if it hadn’t been for Lauren. When she wouldn’t answer his calls on her cell phone, he’d called her office, but some girl told him Lauren had taken the day off. He suspected the bitch was lying—that she was screening Lauren’s calls—but maybe she was telling the truth and Lauren had gone to her mom’s place in Jersey. So he’d driven to Jersey, but when her mom said Lauren wasn’t there—and that Toby needed to let her daughter alone—he drove back to Lauren’s office, hoping to spot her leaving work, but the traffic screwed him and he got there too late, which was when he drove to McGill’s. But if he hadn’t taken the car, he wouldn’t have had the gun with him. And if he hadn’t bought the gun …

  It was as if some playful god had put everything in perfect alignment so Toby would do exactly what he did: kill Dominic DiNunzio.

  He hit the button for a ticket to enter the parking garage; it took forever for the gate to go up. He found a space on the second floor, grabbed the .357, and got out of the car. He shoved the gun into the front of his pants, pulled the tails of his shirt over the weapon to conceal it, and left the garage.

  He walked two blocks—the same mantra going through his head every step of the way: What did you do? What did you do? He stopped when he saw a garbage can overflowing with trash and a big McDonald’s bag sticking out the top of the can. He grabbed the McDonald’s bag and kept walking, and at the next trash can he came to, he looked around to see if anyone was watching, pulled the gun out of his pants, stuck it in the McDonald’s bag, and shoved the bag deep into the trash can.

  Now what? He could hear sirens—but in New York you could always hear sirens. What was he going to do?

  He did the only thing he could think of: started walking to his parents’ apartment.

  His dad would know what to do.

  2

  Two uniformed cops arrived at McGill’s two minutes after the shooting. They had been only a block away, on a break, getting a slice, when they got the call. They arrived at McGill’s so fast that the customers who’d been in the bar when the shooting occurred were still there, most of them standing, freaked out by what they’d seen. One of the cops was a bright Irish kid named Murphy—son of a cop, grandson of a cop.

  Murphy walked over to the victim and checked for a pulse, knowing before he checked that he was wasting his time.

  He called out, “What did the shooter look like? Anyone. Tell me quick.”

  A woman near the door said, “He was white, not very tall, maybe five six, dark hair, clean-shaven, dark sport jacket, probably blue.”

  Murphy said to his partner, “Get that description to dispatch. The guy might be out there walking, maybe toward the subway or looking for a cab. Tell them to get cars patrolling a three-, four-block radius around this place to see it they can spot him. And to be careful—he’s armed. Then call back to the precinct and get someone started on calling cab companies to see if they picked up a short white guy in a dark sport jacket near this bar. Go!” His partner, who was older than Murphy but used to taking orders from him, did what he was told.

  Murphy looked at the customers, who were all potential witnesses, and said, “Okay. Now I want all of you to sit down exactly where you were when the shooting happened.” Nobody moved. “Go on,” Murphy said. “Sit down. Nobody’s leaving until the detectives get here, and they’ll be here in just a few minutes to take statements from you.”

  The detectives showed up fifteen minutes later, a couple of hefty old warhorses named Coghill and Dent, both two years from retirement. The first thing they did was stand in the doorway and take in the room, which was larger than expected from the outside. They notice
d that the place was dimly lit, but bright enough for them to make out people’s faces. Along one wall was a bar with twenty or so high-backed leather stools, and to the right of the bar was a small stage containing a baby grand and an acoustic guitar on a stand. They’d seen a poster near the entrance that said a pianist would start playing at eight and that at nine some singer they’d never heard of would be performing.

  The entertainment probably explained why the place was so dark, with most of the illumination coming from small lights set into the bottom of the stage. There were maybe thirty tables in the room, but most were unoccupied. The place probably got busy after ten p.m., but at a few minutes before eight there were only about a dozen customers.

  The dead guy was sitting at a table at the back of the room, near a hallway that led to the restrooms. Coghill and Dent walked slowly over to the corpse. The victim was a heavyset man with a five o’clock shadow, sitting upright behind a small round table, his chair against the wall. Dent thought he looked Italian and wondered if this could have been a mob hit.

  The victim, whoever he was, was wearing a trench coat over a blue suit, a white shirt, and a blue and red striped tie loose at the collar. On his head was a flat hat, the type cabbies and newsboys used to wear. The guy’s trench coat was still damp from the rain and his white shirt had turned dark red from three apparent shots to the chest.

  “No shell casings,” Coghill said.

  “I noticed,” Dent said, which meant the shooter had most likely used a revolver.

  Dent figured the man had come into the bar to get out of the rain and have an after-work belt and, without bothering to remove his coat or hat, had sat down at the table. The drink he’d ordered—a martini with two olives—was sitting in front of him, but it didn’t look as if the guy had taken more than a sip or two.

  Dent took two photos of the victim with his cell phone. He and Coghill would now have to wait for the ME to declare the obviously dead man dead and remove the body, and for the crime scene weenies to gather whatever evidence there was to gather, and while all that was going on he and Coghill would question the witnesses while the killing was still fresh in their minds. Not knowing how long it was going to take to remove the corpse, Dent pulled a tablecloth off a nearby table and draped it over the victim’s face and upper torso so the civilians wouldn’t have to look at the man’s half-open dead eyes.

  “That’s going to piss off the CSIs,” Coghill said.

  “Fuck ’em,” Dent said. The CSIs, thanks to television, all thought they were rock stars these days.

  They took a seat at a table near the bar and started with the bartender. They wanted to get his statement out of the way so he could bring them coffee. Coghill took out a small digital tape recorder and placed it on the table. He would also make notes during the interview, his impressions of the interviewee or something to follow up on later. Dent would ask the questions. They were like an old married couple: They had a routine and didn’t deviate from it.

  They began each interview exactly the same way: Tell us your full name, your date of birth, your address, and your phone number. Now show us some ID (so we know you didn’t lie when you told us your name). Now tell us what you saw.

  The first thing Jack Morris did was lie to the cops.

  He’d been a bartender for twenty-five years, the last ten at McGill’s. No way in hell was he going to say that the shooter was drunk when he arrived at the bar—and that then he served him two more drinks before he killed the fat guy. He knew if he admitted that he’d served a drunk, some slimeball lawyer would find a way to sue the bar, saying it was his fault the guy was killed. So Morris said: “I served him a drink. An eighteen-year-old Glenfiddich that goes for twenty bucks a pop. He finished it, ordered another one, then went back to the restroom before I could serve him the second drink. But I didn’t see him come back from the restroom because I was making a margarita for those two old ladies over there—one of them had spilled her drink. I’d just put the margarita on the end of the bar for Kathy to pick up, when he walks back in through the main door and shoots the guy.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dent said. “He walked back into the bar from the street? I thought you said he went to the can.”

  “He did. I saw him go toward the restrooms, but the next time I saw him he was coming through the door, like he went outside for a minute and then came back in. Then he shot the guy.”

  “That’s weird,” Dent said. “Did he say anything to him before he shot him?”

  “Not that I saw. Just walked up, blam, blam, blam, then ran out.”

  “Had he spoken to the victim before he went to the restroom?”

  “No. He was sitting at the bar the whole time he was here, until he got up to go to the can.”

  “When did the shooter get here?” Dent asked.

  “It must have been close to seven-thirty, because Jerry had just finished setting up.”

  “Jerry?”

  “The piano guy. He gets here about an hour before he starts playing, makes sure all the equipment is working, then goes back into the kitchen and has something to eat before he plays. Anyway, the killer must have got here around seven-thirty.”

  “When did the victim arrive? Was he in the bar already, or did he come in after the shooter?” Dent was wondering if the shooter had followed the victim into the bar, then had a couple of drinks to screw up his courage before he shot him.

  “I don’t know,” Morris said. “Kathy takes care of the tables. Maybe she knows.”

  “Do you know the shooter’s name?” Dent asked, realizing he should have asked that earlier.

  “No, and I can’t remember ever seeing him before. He’s not a regular. I don’t know the dead guy, either.”

  “How did the shooter pay for his drink? Did he use a credit card?”

  “No, he gave me cash. It’s in the register.”

  “How ‘bout the glass he used?” Dent asked. “Did you pour the second drink into the same glass as the first one?”

  “Yeah, it’s sitting there on the bar.”

  “Don’t touch it; the CSIs will get it. Anything else you can remember?”

  “No, nothing. He just had a drink, went to the can, and plugged the guy.”

  “But you got a good look at him, sitting at the bar, and when he shot him?”

  Morris hesitated. He didn’t want to get caught up in this whole thing. But then he said, “Yeah, well, I guess I got a good look at him.”

  Esther Behrman was eighty-six years old, but sharp as a tack as far as Dent could tell. She was wearing a floral-print dress with a pearl necklace and clunky black grandma shoes. She had one of those wrinkly old turkey necks as though she’d once weighed more than she did now, and glasses with bifocal lenses.

  “Leah and I were just sitting there having a drink,” Esther said. “We come here sometimes to see Jerry.”

  “The piano player?” Dent said.

  “Yes. He’s Leah’s cousin’s grandson. We come early because we don’t like to sit too close to the stage because they play the music too loud. Anyway, we were just sitting there and we didn’t notice the … the killer until he went to the restroom. He bumped into the table where we were sitting, spilled half of Leah’s drink, so she had to order another one. He said he was sorry, but you could tell he didn’t mean it. And I think he was drunk, the way he walked.”

  “Okay,” Dent said. “What happened next?”

  Esther looked over at the tablecloth covering the corpse. She may have been shocked by what had happened but Dent could tell she was thrilled, talking to a detective like the ones on TV.

  “Esther, what happened next?” Dent asked again.

  “Oh, well, the one who got shot, he came out of the hall where the restrooms are and sat down. Then a couple minutes later the killer, he came back and—”

  “Hold it,” Dent said. “Are you saying the victim and the shooter were both together down the hall at the same time, maybe in the restroom together?”

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p; “I don’t know. I told you what I saw. I never saw the man who got shot go down the hall to the restrooms but I saw him come back and sit down, then, like I said, a couple minutes later the killer came back from the restroom, I guess.”

  “Okay, what happened next?”

  “The killer walked out of the bar—I was keeping my eye on him since he’d spilled Leah’s drink—and—”

  “Wait a minute. The killer came back from the restroom and just walked out of the bar? He didn’t say anything to the victim?”

  “No, he just walked outside. Then a minute later—maybe not even a minute—he walks back in and shoots him.”

  “Did he say anything to the victim before he shot him?”

  “I didn’t hear him say anything. He just shot him and ran.”

  “But you got a good look at him when he shot the man.”

  “Oh, yes. I’ll be able to pick him out of a lineup. You’re going to have a lineup, aren’t you, after you catch him?”

  Dent almost laughed. “Yes, ma’am, we most likely will. Now could you send your friend Leah over so we can talk to her?”

  “Oh, Leah didn’t see anything. Her back was to the table where the, the victim was sitting.” Dent saw a little shiver pass through Esther when she said “victim.”

  “Send her over anyway,” Dent said.

  While waiting for the other old woman, Coghill said, “We find this guy, it’s gonna be a slam dunk.”

  Dent thought that Rachel Quinn was an attractive young woman: trim build, short auburn hair, smart brown eyes. She was thirty-five, and based on her address and the suit she was wearing, he figured she had money. She wasn’t beautiful but she was certainly pretty, especially when she smiled. She also struck Dent as being very bright. She was the one who’d immediately given Murphy the description of the shooter when he’d asked for it.