Little Brothers

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  He tried to remember himself at sixteen. He understood the prevalence of fantasy very well. What was his Portnoy? Mailer. He remembered hiding The Deer Park in his laundry bag, of all places … and Mattie shaking her black finger in his face when she found it. The laundry bag: whoever killed Grossman would have gone from that hallway a bloody mess … Why did the butchery of the cat seem so much more terrible than that of the man? And it did in a way. Its gratuitousness? Would a cat defend its master? Young Bonelli was a butcher’s apprentice—or would be when the union made room for him. A hoister of beef: he would wear a coat or a smock at his work, and at the day’s end, it would be as bloody as the carcasses he hauled.

  Marks was approaching a vast complex of buildings on his left. He realized that he was about to pass Bellevue Hospital. Bone weary, he nevertheless took the next exit from the Drive.

  Dr. Noble looked more harassed than noble, Marks thought, as what resident in a city hospital did not? While he talked, he now and then brushed his hair from his damp forehead with the back of his wrist as though to keep his hands clean. Marks asked him if Bonelli had been drunk on arrival.

  “With the concussion, it’s hard to tell. But the blood tests and urinalysis don’t show excessive alcohol.”

  “Just how severe was the blow on the head?”

  “When a man of his weight lands on his head after a fall of twelve-fifteen feet … he was lucky. He could have broken his neck.”

  “Doctor, let me get this straight: I’ve been told he was hit on the head with a bottle.”

  “I don’t know where you got your information, lieutenant. Unless we’re talking about two different men. I treated Bonelli for a nasty bump which, I was told by the ambulance nurse, came from his falling down a flight of steps. And that’s what the wound looked like. I can assure you, if I’d seen anything else in the X-rays, I’d have reported it. People sue these days at the drop of a hat—or a head. The concussion came from the fall.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Marks said. Now he understood why there had been no arrest record at the precinct. But why had young Bonelli fabricated such a story? “Can I talk to the patient?”

  “Absolutely necessary?”

  “If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be here,” Marks said. “I’ve worked round the clock myself.”

  “I was thinking of the other patients in the ward,” Noble said, “not Bonelli. He’ll go home tomorrow. There’s some of them won’t ever go home.”

  “I’ll keep my voice down.”

  Noble hung up the Bonelli chart.

  Marks asked: “Does that show the nature of a work disability he suffered a few years ago?”

  “The X-rays show it: the spinal …”

  Marks interrupted: “Give it to me simple, doctor. Tonight I won’t get it otherwise.”

  “He can’t lift any weight to speak of.”

  “Lead me to him. He’s supposed to have tried to throw a two-hundred-pound boy out the window last night.”

  “Some boy,” Noble said. They went down the passageway past several wards where only the night lights shone. The doctor checked the names on an open door, using the nail of his little finger as a guide. “Bed number six—by the window on the left.”

  “Thanks.” Marks nodded to a man with his bedlamp on. He was reading from a prayerbook, his lips continuing to move while he looked at the detective. Marks thought of the numerous paintings of St. Jerome, for the praying man’s cheeks were cavernous, his complexion gray.

  Bonelli lay on his side, his back to the door. Marks went around the bed. His head was not bandaged, but bruise marks showed on the forehead and cheekbone and beneath his eyes. His eyes were closed, his breathing even. A big man with a mustache as dark and heavy as a shoebrush. There was nothing ascetic in that face, Marks thought. He laid his hand on Bonelli’s shoulder. The man came instantly and violently awake. He tried to roll off the bed.

  Marks pinned him down. “Take it easy, Bonelli. I only want to talk to you.”

  “Who are you?”

  Marks identified himself.

  “I don’t know anything,” Bonelli said. “Let go my arm.”

  “You won’t try to get up?”

  “I was having a bad dream.”

  Marks let go of his arm. “Your son doesn’t look much like you.”

  “Ric? His brother looks like me. Ric and his sister, they look like their mother.”

  “Is she dead?”

  “With Ric. He was too big.”

  “Was it a bad quarrel last night, Mr. Bonelli?”

  “I don’t talk about last night. I forget. I hit my head and I forget everything.”

  “All right. Let’s start earlier.” Marks settled his backside on the radiator. There was no chair. “What kind of an accident was it in which you hurt your back?”

  “I was a construction worker.”

  “Who did you work for?”

  “Different people.”

  “When you got hurt?”

  “Rosetti Brothers.”

  “Ever hear of the Ambrose Corporation?”

  “Sure.”

  “Any connection with Rosetti?”

  “Mr. detective, I am a worker. Why don’t you ask a boss?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Marks said. “Has Ric been around to see you?”

  “Tomorrow he comes.”

  “What I’d like you to tell me—quietly so that we don’t disturb the other patients—is just what happened between him and you last night.”

  “You ask so many questions. Answer me one question: how come you ask all these questions? The cops from Elizabeth Street, they don’t make trouble. You I never seen before. What do you want from me?”

  “I’m a homicide detective, and I’m investigating the murder of Ben Grossman on Hester Street.”

  A single swallow. Which told nothing really. Then: “When was the murder of this Ben Grossman?”

  “Last night or early this morning. Did you know him?”

  “I heard of him.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “He sells religious articles. A Jew, you know? So people talk.”

  “Now tell me about you and your son last night.”

  He was in no hurry to start, and when he did, Marks suspected he had gone on the defensive about Ric. “He’s a good boy to his father. Sometimes we fight, but it don’t mean so much. His sister took care of him, both of us till she got married. My back. Now I keep house like a woman. Ric and I don’t get along, sure. It’s no good, two men alone.”

  “Last night’s fight,” Marks said evenly. “What was it about?”

  “Ask Ric. He don’t get the bump. Don’t ask Ric. He makes up things.”

  “Who broke the window?”

  “I gave him a shove. It broke.”

  “Why?”

  “I think I wanted some wine. That’s what it was about. So he went out and got the wine, and when he comes back, I don’t want it no more. So we fight again. The neighbor knocks on the wall—Niccoli, she is one goddam gossip. Ric rushes out the door and I try to stop him. I don’t want trouble. All of a sudden, I’m falling downstairs and after that I don’t know till I’m in the ambulance.”

  “Ever have any business yourself with Grossman?”

  “I got no business with that man. No business.”

  “Do you know a lawyer by the name of Gerosa?”

  “I hear the name.”

  “Where?”

  The man tried to shrug. “Maybe somebody suggests him when I get hurt on the job.”

  “Do you know anyone in Weehawken?”

  “My son, John—he lives there. He’s a lawyer. Maybe that’s where I hear of Gerosa, from Johnny.”

  “How long was Ric gone from the house when he went out for the wine?”

  “I don’t know. Five minutes. Ten.”

  “Long enough for you to forget that you wanted it,” Marks said dryly.

  “That’s right.” And Bonelli Senior showed his straight white teeth und
er the black mustache. He had picked up confidence.

  Marks got up. He was too tired himself to know whether he was being taken for a fool or talking to one. The man with the prayerbook had closed it, his finger in the place where he had been reading.

  He said, with a ringing clarity, “Bonelli, you’re full of shit. All night long you keep every man in the ward awake swearing you have a pig for a son, a no-good pig who wouldn’t come to see his father, only if he was in the coffin.”

  “You shut up down there. My Ric is all right. Last night I hurt my head. I don’t know what I say.”

  “But you know now what you feel in here.” The man tapped his chest.

  “I know, but you don’t, so shut your mouth and say your prayers.”

  Every man in the ward came awake, a babel of eight tongues. Marks beat his retreat hastily.

  He decided before he left the hospital that he would not go home, that he would catch a few hours sleep on a cot at squad headquarters. The big boss, Inspector Fitzgerald, did not like this mode of work, his obsessiveness in some cases. Except that the old man called it possessiveness and meant the word. “You act as though you own some homicides, Dave, and you don’t. They belong to all of us.” It had been said with his particular sarcasm. But this case was different, and Marks did feel that he owned it.

  The Bonelli story was going to have to be checked out minute by minute. It was the obviousness of young Ric that disturbed the detective, what looked like a weird kind of showing off, even to the kind of braggadocio with which he told of his job. He wanted attention: was that it?

  Marks was about to pull up to a shop for coffee when he remembered Alice’s restaurant—Minnie’s Place, according to Ric. Houston Street was not far.

  When Marks walked in the shop was empty except for the waitress. She was putting on nail polish. “Hi. I’ll be with you in a minute—unless you’re in a hurry.” She checked her hair, which was closer to orange than to blond or red, with the inside of her arm. It put him in mind of Dr. Noble.

  “No hurry,” Marks said. “Is it always this slow?”

  “Friday night,” she said. “You’d think it was a religious neighborhood. I figured on closing up as soon as my nails dried. Eggs or a frankfurter? The hamburger I’d skip if I was you.”

  “Just coffee,” Marks said.

  She blew on her nails to dry them and then put the bottle of polish in the cupboard under the cash register. She took his full measure in the back mirror. “A cop?” she asked when she turned around.

  Marks nodded.

  “On or off duty?”

  “Half and half.” He made a pass at his I.D. carrier. She didn’t want to see it. “What’s your name, miss?”

  “Gertrude Abramovitch.”

  Which all but destroyed one of Marks’ surmises, that she was a part-time prostitute. Who in that business would keep the name of Gertrude Abramovitch? “Somebody said it was Alice.”

  “Somebody?” Her guard went up.

  “Angie. I guess you could say Angie sent me.”

  “That’s mean of him. After what I did for him.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, miss.”

  “Did he tell you about last night?”

  “More or less.”

  “Half and half, more or less. He did or he didn’t, officer.”

  “He did, but I want to hear your version, and I do need a cup of coffee.”

  She poured him coffee that was hot, if not fresh. “He came in wearing this sports coat that didn’t fit him too good, and we got talking. I’d rather talk than almost anything.”

  “What time did Angie come in?”

  “About three, let’s say. Then about three-thirty, along comes this fat guy who turns out to be an acquaintance of Angie’s.”

  “I want everything you can give me on him.”

  “A pleasure, only I wish I knew something. He’s a big sour pickle, a natural-born bully. Angie didn’t tell me this, but I’d bet you the doorkey this Fat Ric beat up on Angie his whole life. You know the way a dog gets hand-shy? That was Angie when this fatso got anywheres near him. Which is why I let Angie take me home. I mean we made out like we already had a date, Angie and me, because I knew he was scared to death of this big klutz.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “No, he couldn’t, I don’t think. It’s kind of psychological, I figure. Why is anybody scared of a bully? If they knew, they wouldn’t be scared anymore. Right?”

  “Right,” Marks said.

  “I figured at first there was some connection about the coat. What’d he tell you about that?” She darted the question at him, and blew on her nails, waiting for his answer.

  Marks laughed at her attempt to take him by surprise. “He told me he had stolen it, and that he cashed in the airlines ticket so that he could take you to the Palisades Amusement Park today.”

  “No kidding. He told you that? Did you arrest him or anything?”

  Suddenly Marks had it the way it had actually gone: Alice had been the one with the savvy to convert the ticket into cash. She could carry it off; he doubted that Angie could. “No. In fact, I’ve helped him to return the coat to its owner.”

  “The funny thing is, officer, the Palisades Amusement Park isn’t there anymore. We couldn’t have gone to it anyway. Somebody told me that in the bus station, and I was going to say to Angie, we could go to Radio City Music Hall, or Coney Island, which was where he wanted to go in the first place.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “So he didn’t tell you he run out on me?”

  “Not in so many words. I think he was afraid he might involve you in whatever trouble he’s in.”

  “You make him sound like a real Don Quixote. If that’s who I mean.”

  “I thought him a Sancho Panza type,” Marks said.

  Miss Abramovitch looked at him blankly. It was not who she had meant. “Anyway,” she said. “I came out of the booth in the ladies room and some dame was screaming like she was being raped, you know? All Angie’d done was open the door wide enough to throw the shopping bag in where I’d find it. He’d put some money in it for me. Did he tell you that?”

  Marks shook his head.

  “He’s a funny little guy. I’m kind of falling for him again just talking, but a girl don’t like to be stood up by somebody younger than her.”

  “Why do you think he did it?”

  “What I figured out—he’d been saying maybe he ought to call his mother. That’s what I think he did while I was in the john. There’s something not exactly kosher there. I mean Oedipus or something like that.”

  Marks grinned. He had been sitting, chin in hand, his eyes half closed while she talked. Thus he was able to see her breasts through his lashes without seeming to stare at them. “What time of day was it?” he asked almost dreamily.

  Miss Abramovitch thought about it. “Eleven this morning, say.”

  By then the newspapers were on the street, Marks thought. He pulled himself out of his reverie. “Tell me every single thing you can remember about the fat boy.”

  “Ric something—belly. Bonelli.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, for one thing, this big black sweater he was wearing, like it was winter, and the way he waddled down the street when I was setting the night lock on the door. He looked like a Santa Claus, you know what I mean?”

  Marks caught the image at once. “Too fat in the middle?”

  “That’s what it was like. Like he was stuffed with a pillow or something. He could hardly get his hands in his pockets.”

  If Ric Bonelli was the killer, Marks thought, he could indeed have worn a butcher’s smock. That had already occurred to him. And he could have used a professional’s knife. “Do you have a phone, miss?”

  “I got one at home and I might as well close up and save on the light bill.”

  Marks looked at her wryly, his brows arched. “All right. I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “That’ll be nice, and c
all me Alice. I kind of like it. Angie made it up.”

  16

  MARKS ARRIVED AT DIVISION Headquarters shortly after seven. He had had five hours of solid sleep and a good breakfast. Since normally it would have been his Saturday off duty, he made short shrift of matters that did not pertain to the Grossman case.

  The file had built overnight.

  He swore aloud as he read the top report: the men assigned to track down Ricardo Bonelli’s work clothes had taken a short-cut: they had gone directly to young Bonelli to find out where he worked. In that way, they were able to complete their exercise in futility before knocking off their tour of duty on time. From the office manager of the provision company, they learned that the regular laundry pick-up was at noon on Friday. By five in the afternoon the batch of smocks which would have included Bonelli’s had gone into a detergent vat in the Bronx Industrial Laundry.

  Since neither Marks nor anyone else on the case had heard of Bonelli in time to have done anything about that, there was no blame to be placed for it. What irritated Marks was that Bonelli now knew the extent of Homicide’s interest in him while potential evidence had gone down the drain, so to speak.

  The interim report from the Medical Examiner showed that the tiny shreds of wool beneath the cat’s claws came from the chest area of Grossman’s sweater. A marked photograph accompanied the report. Marks tried to imagine that final scene in the man’s life. Had he been trying to protect the cat, holding it in his arms? The knife wounds had been in Grossman’s back; he had fallen forward, but he had rolled over or been rolled over. The only certain thing was that the cat had participated in some way that brought on its own slaughter.

  Marks was glad to turn to the reports of the first and second details on the stakeout: no action except the brief appearance of a woman near the window at a quarter to six that morning.

  From Center Street: the FBI had no record on Ruggio. Which was not what Marks had asked: he had merely wanted them to facilitate his queries with other government agencies.