The Man Who Never Returned

by Peter Quinn

  “When it came to the sheriff’s conclusion about my visitor, I retained my doubts. It seemed to me that the carefully wrought scenario he laid out was beyond the abilities or interests of some ghoulish thrill-seeker. I detected a more skilled and accomplished practitioner of deceptions, one who might have been delegated by a powerful political player to induce me to bring a stop to the whole investigation and the machinations it might uncover. The sheriff’s prediction did turn out to be true, however: Joe’s case proved an irresistible attraction to a seemingly endless number of cranks, thrill seekers and mental cases, who have never ceased arriving to this present day.”

  Drawn in by Mrs. Crater’s transparent honesty, by the way she clung to the myth of her husband’s blameless life while sparing no detail of the manipulation and humiliation heaped on her, Dunne read through to the end of the narrative, which was mostly a record of her attempts to bring some finality to the case by having Joe declared officially dead and getting the insurance money that would allow her to start rebuilding her life. He was surprised to discover it was two o’clock in the morning by the time he finished. He wasn’t the slightest bit sleepy.

  Instead of going to bed, he stripped naked and went to the pool. As part of the renovation, Roberta had installed overhead as well as side and bottom lights. She switched them off when she went to bed. He put them back on and lowered himself into the illuminated water. First several laps, he resisted the usual urge to push hard, overreaching, arms punching the surface. Pace yourself, match strokes to breath, synchronize turn of head. He lost count of how many laps he’d completed, but felt strong and continued to swim.

  Mrs. Crater’s reconstruction of events was pieced together ten years after they’d occurred. The word-by-word recounting of conversations and exchanges was, at best, an approximation she and her ghost writer had put together. Yet her story stuck with him. And he wasn’t as ready as Sheriff Scott to dismiss Mrs. Crater’s visitor as “mental” or, as the story suggested, a seducer sent at the behest of Governor Roosevelt to provide a convenient solution that served the ends of New York’s crooked pols. Presuming she was still available, he’d see if there was anything more he could drag out of her.

  In some instances, the press clips refreshed his memory; in others, such as the various musings and allegations about the judge’s financial dealings and sexual escapades, it all seemed new—although like a lot of details from twenty-five years ago, it might have faded from memory. On the morning of August 6th, Crater sent his court officer to cash two checks in the amount of five grand and change. The money never turned up. Neither did the two briefcases filled with files that Crater took with him when he left his chamber. But if Dunne imagined there was a chance that the outsized luck Mulholland attributed to him might result in a happy stumble across an overlooked clue sticking out of the mound of newspaper copy, the key everybody else missed or ignored, that possibility remained unrealized.

  Given the delay in reporting the case, the pursuers began a hundred yards behind the starting line, and now—a quarter of a century later with the odds of ever catching up having gone from highly improbable to probably impossible—the final uncertainty expressed by the Grand Jury seemed beyond amendment or reversal: “The evidence is insufficient to warrant any expression of opinion as to whether Joe Crater is alive or dead, or as to whether he has absented himself voluntarily, or is a sufferer from a disease in the nature of amnesia, or the victim of a crime.”

  Though he didn’t feel spent, he stopped, pulled himself up and perched on the pool rim, calves and feet dangling in the water. The slim hope of figuring out Crater’s fate hinged on talking with whichever of the principals and original investigators were still alive. Even then, it wasn’t going to be much more than a crap shoot, where he’d bust without a hard six. Unless they were loaded and the outcome already set. But by who? To what end? He peered below, swirling his sunken feet in two parallel circles. An aquarium for people instead of fish. Same back and forth. He wondered: If it were just Wilkes who wanted him on the Crater case, would he have taken it?

  Enthroned in his oversized bed, Wilkes couldn’t hide his confidence that everything, everybody is for sale or lease, the solution to every problem ultimately a matter of price, even eventually death itself, once enough doctors and scientists were rented for the job of “extending the human lifespan indefinitely.” Why should the Crater case be any different? Don’t haggle over what it costs, just be sure to hire the one who can get it done, another in his private army of editors, maids, accountants and tailors.

  But Nan Renard was wrong that morning at the Savoy Plaza when she confidently repeated Wilkes’s assertion that all she had to do was go “work out the details” because “if Dunne was going to decline, he’d have done so by now.” Awaking with a start in the middle of the night, he had decided he’d call after breakfast to let Bud Mulholland know his boss should find somebody else for the job. She changed his mind. Not that palaver about “pollenization,” but his sense of the spooked, uncertain kid behind those fine cheekbones and the Fifth Avenue façade. He wanted to help. That’s all.

  “Are you sure?” A voice from behind. Startled, he turned. Barefoot, in the scarlet silk robe from Bergdorf’s he’d given her on their last Valentine’s Day in New York, Roberta approached. She looked fresh and awake, as though she’d just taken a shower. She’d been standoffish, going about her own business as he spent almost all his time poring through the newspaper files. Now she leaned down and rubbed his shoulders. “Are you sure you want to stop? Maybe you better come to bed and try a less taxing exercise.”

  The next morning he rewrote his notes, culling the essentials he’d follow up on when he got back to New York. In the afternoon, he packed and got ready to leave. Roberta questioned why he didn’t go by plane. “Why schlep on the train when a plane will have you there in a few hours?” She showed him a full-page ad in the newspaper. Lovely blonde stewardess waving from the door of a gleaming Super-C Constellation. Just 3 hours and 45 minutes to LaGuardia Airport. Forget the train. For comfort, speed and convenience, take the plane!

  He didn’t change his mind. Planes always brought back the war, the rush, anxiety, need to get everywhere in a hurry. The thrill of looking down on the world from several thousand feet wore off quickly. Preferred earth-bound view, subtle changes of landscape, as the train moves up the coast. Arrive rested and ready for whatever is ahead. “Do what you want,” Roberta said. “But really, Fin, sometimes you’re so old fashioned.” He was going to ask what was so wrong with that, but she’d already left the room.

  As they were leaving to go out for dinner, Louie Pohl called. The background check on Adrienne Renard, he said, had turned up “a bit of news.” Seems she wasn’t who she said she was, except, as it turned out, she was, because what Pully uncovered was what Nan had already revealed. Real name was Anna Resnick. Raised by her aunt. Promoted over the heads of most other executives at Wilkes Communications. Rumor was her relationship with Wilkes went beyond business. No way to prove it. Though he acted as if the name change came as news, Dunne was glad to hear she’d been straight with him.

  “I hope you know what you’re getting into,” Pully said. “I don’t know about Miss Renard. But Mulholland and Wilkes play for keeps.”

  “That’s what I play for, too.”

  “Just make sure you’re playing the same game.”

  He was ready for bed when the phone rang. Roberta answered, scribbled on the pad next to the phone and held it up for him to see. Eddie Moran calling from Havana! Good-hearted Eddie. But with a well-deserved reputation as an endless gabber. Probably still miffed about being stood up. He grabbed the pad and scribbled I’m asleep.

  “Just a minute, Eddie,” Roberta said. “I’ll see if he’s out of the shower.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said in an emphatic whisper, “This is the third time he’s called.” She thrust the receiver at him and went into the bathroom.

  Before Eddie could get a word out, Dunn
e apologized for saying he was going to come by the Starlight Room and then not showing up and leaving Havana without even a goodbye. Eddie brushed it off. “Woulda been great to see you. Always is. But stuff comes up. I understand that. Honest, I didn’t even give it a thought until a few days later when your name got mentioned.”

  “A good context, I hope.”

  “That’s the thing. Got a minute? This takes some explaining.”

  “I’m catching an early train to New York, Eddie. But go ahead.” Eddie had the same youthful tone as thirty years before and sounded every bit as talkative.

  “Well, musta been the day after you called. Maybe it was two. What day you call? Was it a Sunday?”

  “Does it matter?” Once this was over, he was going to have to resist the urge to bark at Roberta for insisting he take Eddie’s call.

  “Not really. Just that I was trying to recall the exact night when Jimmy Malacoda showed up at the Starlight Room. ‘Snake’ is what a lot of people down here call him. It’s a double whammy, ’cause he’s got a tattoo of a snake and the qualities to match. Nobody ever calls him that to his face of course. Name he goes by is ‘Jimmy Bad Tail,’ which I’m told is what Malacoda means in Italian. Don’t look like a wop though. You seen him, you’d swear he was a Polack, which maybe his mother was, but either way he’s a full-fledged, full-time gorilla with the Salavante mob outta Cleveland.”

  The time on the alarm clock was 11:15. Train left at 8:30 A.M. Plenty of details he still wanted to see to in the morning before he left. Now, thanks to Roberta’s overdeveloped sense of etiquette, he was stuck on this call.

  “Still there, Fin?”

  “Yeah, Eddie, but this is an international call. Don’t want you to rack up a big bill on my account.”

  “No matter. I’m on an office phone. Where was I?”

  “Jimmy Bad Tail from Cleveland just showed up.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, most of the Cleveland boys are quiet and respectful. Wouldn’t take ’em for anything but normal tourists, except that most of them are built like beer trucks. But Jimmy Bad Tail, him you know is trouble right away. Got a smell like spoiled meat. Anyways, this one night when he arrives with a girl on his arm, he’s obviously drunk and she’s obviously a hooker. Why he had to pick the Starlight Room of the Old Madrid, you gotta ask him. God knows, there’s no shortage of places in Havana where hoods and hookers are welcomed with hugs and kisses. Thought about keeping him out, but he’s been here before and behaved—and why risk trouble with the Cleveland boys?—so I wave him through, but, to be sure, I tell one of my assistants to tag behind and make sure he stays in line.”

  Eddie Moran’s story was on the usual track traveled by ex-cops and bouncers in recounting confrontations with tough guys that end in a moment of triumph or an anecdote that makes the whole tale funny or memorable. The older the storytellers, it seemed to Dunne, the longer and less funny the stories. Out of friendship, he didn’t rush him off the line. Another five minutes, that might change.

  Eddie wandered through the details of Jimmy Bad Tail’s increasingly obnoxious behavior, how he abandoned the hooker he’d brought with him and almost started a fight with the croupier at the roulette table. The end came when he tried to pick up the wife of a big-time surgeon from Miami. She brushed him off. He grabbed her ass. She hurled a drink in his face, and the casino’s flying squad swarmed over him, as Eddie put it, “like flies on dog shit.”

  “Some people never learn.” Dunne was relieved Eddie’s story seemed approaching a conclusion. Not exactly either funny or significant, his story was a reminder of the general decline in the way people—hoods included—behaved in public, which was the point he’d wanted to raise earlier with Roberta, about how “old fashioned” wasn’t always the wrong way to go. He covered the receiver and yawned.

  “Bum like Jimmy Bad Tail never knew in the first place. He’s the type put the scum in scumbag. Like you’d expect, he goes for his gun, but we get that away from him pronto and haul him to the basement where I have Tito, my head guy who tips the Toledo at about 280, sit on him till he’s calm and promises to be nice.”

  “Bet that caught his attention.” In another minute, he’d make an excuse to end the call.

  “You’d think. But here’s where the trolley jumps the tracks. When Jimmy Bad Tail gets up, he ain’t calm but raging, and I’m thinking how lucky we are he don’t have that gun. Tito gets him in an Antonino Rocca-style arm lock from behind, but that don’t shut him up. ‘You piece of shit, Moran,’ he says to me, ‘you and all your flat-foot friends ain’t worth a rat’s ass and I could take you all out if I had a mind to, same as that broken-down dick friend of yours was here last week holed up in some second-rate dump.’

  “I didn’t know what he’s talking about. ‘What friend?’ I says.

  “‘Wise-ass, no-class type like the rest of you, Fintan Dunne. The deal was signed and sealed. Woulda been a pleasure if it wasn’t nixed at the last minute.’

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘Fintan Dunne?’ I says.

  “‘Yeah,’ Jimmy Bad Tail crows. ‘Too bad I didn’t get the chance ’cause as far as I’m concerned every cocksucker the likes of you deserves to get it in the head.’ Then, since Tito’s got him squeezed so he can’t punch, he lets go and spits in my face, which is when I pull him loose from Tito and belt him so hard he lifts off his feet and cracks his skull on the concrete like an egg on the side of a frying pan.”

  “You kill him?”

  “No such luck. Took him to the Nuns’ Hospital. It was a bad concussion.”

  “Sure he was talking about me?”

  “How many Fintan Dunnes do you think there are in Havana? But just to be sure, I go back the next morning to find out. Head nun says two friends came in a big sedan and, despite her objections that he shouldn’t be moved, took him away. Figure he’d be back for his gun, but nope. I let the Salavante people know what happened, but don’t mention ’bout him and you. They tell me they’re sorry about Bad Tail’s misbehavior and say he’d been ordered back to Cleveland. Been no sign of him since.”

  The story’s sudden twist left Dunne puzzled. He peppered Eddie with questions. Was Jimmy Bad Tail doing rub-outs for the mob on a regular basis? Did he indicate who wanted him for this job or why it was cancelled? Eddie had no answers. “All I know is what I told you,” he said. “Didn’t make no sense to me, which is why I wanted you to know about it, ’cause I figured you’d have some idea why Jimmy Bad Tail was gunning for you, or who’d go and hire him.”

  “No idea who or why.” Dunne’s mind went back to that brief time in Havana. Barely left the hotel or talked to anyone, except the morning he checked out. Momentary encounter at the front desk. That Cleveland smile. Gave you a chill just looking at it. Name began with J. It came to him. He blurted it out: “Johnny Morello.”

  “Who?”

  “J.M., same initials as Jimmy Malacoda.”

  “You’re losing me, Fin.”

  “That snake tattoo, Eddie, is it on his hand?”

  “Back of the right. You met Jimmy Bad Tail when you were down here?”

  “Bumped into. In a hotel lobby. You’re sure he used my name?”

  “‘Fintan Dunne’ is what he said. Don’t know whether he was talking for real or mouthing off—that’s the way with hoods, you never know.”

  Eddie promised to keep poking around and to call if anything turned up. Finished getting ready for bed, Roberta came out of the bathroom. “You two had quite a chat,” she said. “What about?”

  “Old times. Eddie loves to chew over the past.”

  “Aren’t you glad you took the call? Now you’ll have one less thing on your mind.” She got into bed.

  Dunne turned off the light. “Exactly.”

  Part IV

  Crow the Cop: Excerpt from interview C-1487, NYPD Oral History Project: Captain John F. Cronin (ret.), NYPD 1929–1963, Missing Persons Bureau, Bureau Chief 1940–1963; conducted by Prof. Verlee Prybyloski, J.D.,
Fordham University School of Criminal Justice at Lincoln Center, September 5, 1966.

  Q. Please identify yourself by name and present occupation.

  A. John F. Cronin. If retired is an occupation, I’m a retired cop.

  Q. Why did you choose a career in the NYPD?

  A. I’m the oldest of eight. When my father died, I was at Regis and thinking about joining the Society—the Jesuits—but had to drop out to help my mother. Got a job as a runner on Wall Street. One day my pal and co-worker, Joey Natone, says he’s signed up for the police test, and why don’t I do the same? I went along on a lark.

  Q. What was your first assignment?

  A. The Panhandle. That’s what we called the northeast Bronx. There was a small farm on my beat. Started me thinking I should’ve joined the Texas Rangers.

  Q. What brought you to Missing Persons?

  A. A fluke.

  Q. Your transfer to Missing Persons was by accident?

  A. You see, back in ’13, Big Tim Sullivan, the Bowery leader, developed mental problems. Rumor said it was from the syph. His brother took him up to his house in the Bronx to rest, and Tim pulls a brodie and disappears. City gets itself in an uproar, wondering how somebody so well known could vanish. Word was he’s been murdered by his gambling buddies or by Tammany to shut him up. About then, the patrolman on duty at the morgue takes the required last look at the bodies about to ship to potter’s field, and right away recognizes Big Tim. Been hit by a train, cut in half, and mistaken for a hobo. Some say it’s suicide, but there’s no proof.