Felony Murder

by Joseph T. Klempner

  Bobby wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and smiled. “Smart boy,” he said.

  “Yeah, I guess he is,” Dean agreed.

  “Not him. You.”

  Back at his apartment, Dean went into his manic phase and began straightening up. He figured the activity might make him forget Janet and her predicament for an hour or so.

  He gathered all the dishes and glasses that had somehow worked their way into the living room over the past week. He washed them, along with friends of theirs that were already in the kitchen sink. In the living room, he turned over the cushions on the sofa and fluffed them so they didn’t look quite so slept on. He picked up the loose change, paper clips, and a scrap of paper he had left on the floor the night before.

  KELLY’S FRIENDLY MOBIL STATION 1050 Pearson Blvd.

  Jersey City, NJ

  21.7 GALS $25.00

  He looked at the scrap of paper, recognized it as a credit card slip for the purchase of gasoline, but couldn’t remember where it had come from. Certainly it wasn’t his; he didn’t own any gas credit cards. He read the writing on the slip, and wondered how it had ended up in his apartment. It was a lot of gas, he thought. His Jeep held only fifteen gallons, most cars no more than twenty. More likely a truck or a bus. And suddenly he remembered the van: It was the scrap of paper he’d found in his blind search of the back of the van. He looked at it again. Jersey City was just the other side of the Holland Tunnel. Dean remembered the tunnel he was certain they had gone through. They had paid a toll only on the return trip to Manhattan, a fact that eliminated the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and the Midtown Tunnel to Queens, but was consistent with the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, both of which had one-way tolls. The Lincoln Tunnel had a long, spiraling ramp on the Jersey side, and Dean had no recollection of being aware of such a feature on either trip. That, plus the Jersey City gas receipt, convinced him that it had to have been the Holland Tunnel they’d used.

  Dean felt his heart pumping in his chest. God damn it, Joey had been right. Dean was going to find Janet! Already he had a start, and starting was always the hardest part, wasn’t it? The rest would be easy.

  But what else did he have? An office building of seven stories, not too far from the Jersey side of the Holland Tunnel. Not much to work with. But there was the name, Dean suddenly remembered, the name on the door of one of the offices off the seventh-floor corridor. Only thing was, he couldn’t remember it.

  He resorted to a time-tested method. He began working his way slowly through the alphabet, A, B, C, D, E, F - At F, he felt a definite tug. He continued through, experiencing a similar feeling at T. He repeated the process, again getting a strong positive response at F. He added vowels to create sounds, trying FA, FE - and immediately came up with Ferguson, and knew in an instant it was right. There’d been initials with it, and they came back to him quickly as D. M., which he had associated at the time he saw them on the door with the author D. M. Thomas, an association Dean now realized probably explained the positive reaction he’d felt at the letter T.

  Having no desire to forget the name he’d retrieved, Dean wrote “D. M. Ferguson” on the back of the gasoline receipt and pocketed it. He knew it wasn’t much, but, along with a general location, it was all he had. Then he went next door and rang the bell to the apartment of Everett and Val.

  An affected “Who is it?” answered from within.

  “Dean.”

  The door swung open, and Everett greeted him with a “Dean, how are you?” and ushered him in with a theatrical sweep of his arm. Val was in the living room, talking on the phone, but took time to wave and blow Dean a kiss. Everett, a choreographer whose last name Dean didn’t know, and Val, a best boy in the film industry who used the last name Halla, were lovers, two gracefully aging hippies who’d been lucky enough, or careful enough - or perhaps both - to have escaped the decimation of the city’s gay population, spared to live out their lives in a contented, if not legally recognized, monogamy. They were also good neighbors and animated conversationalists, and Dean had spent more than a few evening hours with them, trading stories from their very different worlds. They found his work as a defender of the downtrodden noble and exciting, and were thrilled to learn that he’d come to ask for their help.

  “What sort of help?” Val asked, his phone call completed.

  “Well, I’m being followed, for one thing. And I’m pretty sure my phone is tapped. So for starters, I’d like to use your phone to make some calls, or maybe even have you make them for me. Then, I may need your help getting out of the building without being spotted.”

  “Who’s after you?” Everett asked. “The Mafia? Arab terrorists? Extraterrestrials?”

  “The police, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, wow!” Val exclaimed. “Of course we’ll help you!”

  They spent the next hour taking turns making phone calls. They started calling New Jersey Information to see if there was a Jersey City listing, either business or residential, for a D. M. Ferguson or a D. Ferguson; there wasn’t. They got out a road map and expanded their search to Newark and Bayonne, but although there were several Fergusons, none of those listed had the first initial D. When they tried Hoboken, however, they struck it rich. There were several Fergusons, but one, in particular, interested them. The good news was that it was right on the money: a business listing for a D. M. Ferguson. The bad news was quick to follow.

  “I’m sorry, that number is unlisted at the subscriber’s request.”

  “How about the address?” Dean asked. “Can you at least give me that?”

  “I’m afraid we can’t give that out, either.” The next thing Dean heard was a dial tone.

  “Great,” Dean muttered. “No number, no address.”

  “What kind of business has an unlisted number?” Everett asked.

  “A police kind of business,” Dean said.

  Dean put in a call to Jimmy McDermott. Until recently, McDermott had been an agent with ATF, the federal agency that investigated violations of the alcohol/tobacco taxes and firearms laws. Too much drinking and too many women had led to an early retirement for McDermott, and now he did some private investigating between binges. Dean called him because Jimmy still had contacts in the government and with many of the agencies and utilities with which it dealt, and because when he was sober he was good.

  The phone answered on the fifth ring.

  “McDermott.” It sounded like the one word was all he could manage.

  “Are you awake?” Dean asked.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Dean Abernathy. How you doing, Jimmy?”

  “I was doing good till you woke me up. What time is it?”

  “About one o’clock,” Dean said.

  “What day?”

  “About Sunday.”

  “Wow.” He sounded truly surprised.

  “What were you hoping for?”

  “No, no,” said McDermott, “Sunday’s okay. Sunday’s good.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah. Who is this?”

  “Dean. Dean Abernathy.” It was becoming apparent that this wasn’t going to work.

  “Hey, Dean! Whatsup?”

  “I need you to check out something for me, Jimmy. But only if I can really count on you. What do you think?”

  “Gimme fifteen, Dean? I’ll call you back.”

  Dean gave him Val and Everett’s number before hanging up. Dubiously, he looked at his watch. Then he opened his address book and began looking through it for other investigators. He’d give Jimmy twenty minutes, but no more.

  The phone rang in less than ten. Val handed it to Dean.

  “Hi, Dean. Jimmy McDermott here. What can I do for you?” Cold sober, wide-awake, all business. Amazing, thought Dean.

  “Jimmy, I’ve got a name of a business - or at least the name of some guy with his name on the door of an office - in Hoboken. I need an address. In the worst way.”

  “Try the phone company?”

  �
�Yeah,” Dean said. “Unlisted number, unlisted address.”

  “Gimme what you got.”

  Dean gave him the name, D. M. Ferguson, and the city, Hoboken. Even as he did so, he was struck by how little he had to work with.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. That and the fact that he’s on the seventh floor.”

  “In Hoboken.”

  “In Hoboken.”

  “I always like a challenge,” said McDermott. “I’ll be back to you within the hour, okay?”

  “Thanks, Jimmy.”

  “No problem.”

  * * *

  “Problem.”

  It was Jimmy McDermott on the phone.

  “I got a source that can always get me these things,” he said, “and I mean always. Only not this one. It comes back no public record, refer all inquiries to 212-374-6710. So I call it. Turns to be a number at One Police Plaza, for the fuckin’ chief of operations. I hang up, figured I better check with you first. You in some kinda trouble, Dean?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Okay, so then I try PSE&G. That’s the utility company that serves Hoboken. No record. Dunn and Bradstreet, TRW: no record. Postal Service Inspector General’s Office: no record. Department of Motor Vehicles: no record. Who is this guy, the Fuckin’ Phantom of the Opera?”

  “Worse: NYPD brass. The whole floor of the building, evidently. And all of them wrong.”

  “I’ll check with the Department of State in Trenton first thing in the morning,” McDermott said. “But we both know what they’re going to tell me.”

  “No record.”

  “Ten-four,” McDermott agreed. “You get me a phone number, Dean, even an unlisted one - I don’t care - I’ll get you an address. But until then, no can do. I’m at a dead end.”

  Which made two of them.

  Joey Spadafino finally sees the doctor at eight-thirty Sunday night, twenty hours after being kicked in the ribs and thirteen and a half hours after he’d asked to be seen. A small dark man who wears a turban and speaks little English, the doctor places a stethoscope against Joey’s back and listens for several minutes before writing “posibil pneumothorax” on a piece of paper in the blank that calls for diagnosis. In the space calling for treatment he writes “obsurve”; under cause he notes “fall”; and under Rx he prescribes “Tylenol t.i.d.” Quite aside from his spelling, his handwriting is almost impossible to read, not only because he’s a doctor and has been taught poor penmanship in medical school, but because throughout the examination, he wears three pairs of latex gloves. As a result, no one will check the inmate thereafter for a pneumothorax, and no one will “obsurve” him. But he will get some Tylenol.

  Back in his cell, Joey can do nothing more than avoid exerting himself, which is easy, and try to find a comfortable position, which he finds all but impossible. In spite of the fact that in the outside world his condition would be considered life-threatening and require emergency surgery to repair the lung puncture, and antibiotics and a drain to ward off infection, Joey’s left to himself with nothing but a couple of pills for his pain. He lies down on his bunk, hugging his arms tightly around his sides for support, trying to find a position where he can breathe. He knows he’s due in court in the morning, and he wants to get an hour or two of sleep before four-thirty, when they’ll wake him up for the bus.

  With his name on the court list and no notation on his card that he might be too sick to travel, Joey Spadafino’s awakened for the bus to Manhattan Supreme Court at four thirty-five Monday morning. And it’s okay with him. It’s been seven months since the memory of his arrest on a snowy night in late January. Winter’s ended, and so has Spring. Summer’s come and gone, and though it’s been weeks since he’s seen the light of day, Joey figures it must be September, and that means his case is finally about to begin for real. So in spite of his fatigue, in spite of his weakness, in spite of the continuing aching in his ribs, in spite of the fact that he’s facing a murder charge and the real possibility of a twenty-five-year-to-life prison sentence, he’s ready.

  The media was back in full force. Dean knew it even before he entered the courthouse. Two network vans with telescoping antennas, one from Eyewitness News and the other from Live at Five, were parked right on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse steps. Dean wondered cynically what would happen if he ever tried to park there. “Freedom of the press” had its own perks, he guessed.

  Blue wooden barricades had been set up, extra police and court officers were everywhere, and long lines of the curious waited to pass through the metal detectors on their way into the building.

  The eleventh floor was no better. Lights were turned on and cameras aimed at Dean as soon as he got off the elevator. Microphones were thrust at his face before he could make his way to the door of the courtroom.

  “Is there going to be a plea?” Ralph Penza wanted to know.

  “We hear your client’s been offered some kind of a deal,” Magee Hickey said, hoping for some word of confirmation or denial. “Is that true?”

  “Is he going to take it?”

  “Are you going to trial?”

  Dean smiled at all the attention but could think of nothing better to say than “We’ll have to see.” Not exactly the kind of stuff to get him on the six o’clock news, he knew, but at least he’d avoided the sinister “No comment.” But if the media appreciated the distinction, their disappointed faces failed to register it.

  Things were a little calmer inside the courtroom, but not much. The rows were rapidly filling up, with many of the seats occupied by uniformed police officers displaying an abundance of braids and stripes. The brass had turned out in force to make a strong show of support, ostensibly for their fallen leader. But Dean had his doubts that they were there out of some heartfelt loyalty to Commissioner Wilson; he strongly suspected that their presence had a much darker motivation to it, more like intimidation, with Joey and Dean himself as the objects. He made a mental note to object to their presence if they ever got far enough to pick a jury. He shuddered at the thought that he might actually have to go through with the trial.

  Judge Rothwax entered from a side door, and the room fell silent. Dean hadn’t been aware of the noise level until that moment. Elizabeth, the clerk, caught Dean’s eye and seemed to be asking if he was ready to have the case called. He was about to signal her to wait for Walter Bingham to arrive when he felt Walter come up alongside him. He nodded to Elizabeth.

  “What’s it going to be, Dean?” Walter asked him in a whisper.

  “I don’t really know,” Dean said. “I gave it my best shot. He seems to have the feeling somebody’s been fucking with him. Though I can’t imagine where he could be getting that idea from.”

  “You can tell him if he thinks he’s being fucked with now, he doesn’t know what fucking is.”

  There was a collective murmur from the audience as Joey Spadafino was led in. He walked slightly bent over and seemed to Dean to settle into his chair with difficulty. One of the six burly court officers surrounding him pushed Joey’s chair all the way up forward, until its arms met the edge of the table, forming a wooden box of sorts that enclosed him, as though otherwise he might be tempted to make a break for it.

  Judge Rothwax banged his gavel and Elizabeth called the case into the record. “Calendar number one, for trial, People versus Joseph Spadafino.” The lawyers stepped forward and gave their appearances to the court reporter.

  “Come up on this, please,” said Judge Rothwax. Dean and Bingham approached. As always, Dean was struck by Bingham’s height; he could easily have fit into the NBA. The room grew quieter still, as spectators strained to catch some bit of the conversation at the bench.

  “This case is on for trial,” Rothwax said, keeping his voice low. “I understand there have been some plea discussions. Where do we stand?”

  It was Bingham who responded. “Where we stand is, we’ve come to believe we may have some difficulty with certain technical aspects of our medic
al proof. There could be an issue as to the proximate cause of Commissioner Wilson’s death. After a lot of soul-searching, we’re offering the defendant a plea to petit larceny, with a sentence of time served. We’re waiting to hear from him.”

  Rothwax turned to Dean. “Mr. Abernathy?”

  “My client tells me he’d like a trial.”

  This seemed to shock even the usually unflappable Harold Rothwax. “Let me get this straight. Mr. Bingham recites some incomprehensible mumbo jumbo dealing with civil law issues that’s supposed to appease me. But for whatever reason, he ends up offering Mr. Spadafino time served. No doubt he got the approval of supervisors in his office before he did that. What their thinking is, I can’t begin to fathom. But so be it. And now, if I understand correctly, Mr. Spadafino, not to be outdone, exercises his own brilliant judgment and tops Mr. Bingham by saying, ‘No, thank you, I’d prefer to do twenty-five to life.’“

  “He didn’t put it quite that way,” Dean said, smiling. “But yes, essentially it goes something like that.”

  Rothwax shook his head and rolled his eyes in exaggerated disbelief. “All right,” he said, “step back and we’ll go on the record before all these reporters sue me for violating their constitutional right to make a living.”

  The lawyers walked back to their respective tables.

  “Let the record reflect,” Rothwax said in his stage voice, “that we’ve had a discussion at the bench, and during the course of that discussion, the People have conveyed a plea offer to the defendant, a very generous plea offer, I might add. The defendant is considering that offer. He shall have exactly twenty-four hours to do so. This case is adjourned to tomorrow morning. At that time, the defendant will either accept the offer, or it will be withdrawn and we will begin the hearing and the trial in this case. Mr. Spadafino, you may go in now.”

  Back at his office, Dean forced himself to face the possibility, however ludicrous, that there was going to be a trial after all. He organized his file for the umpteenth time, checking, in particular, to see that the physical evidence he’d be needing was in order. It was all there: the blow-ups of Joey’s signatures and the handwriting expert’s report confirming the forgery, the toxicology and serology reports, the literature on dibenzepin, even the copies he’d kept of the original S. letters from Officer Santana. He removed these items from the file and inserted them in a separate manila envelope, which he sealed shut. On the outside of it he wrote the word ammunition.