Murder in Greenwich Village

by Lee Harris

  She followed Mrs. Appleby to the door, past a narrow galley kitchen that would have fit in her own kitchen twice. They shook hands and Mrs. Appleby thanked them for looking into Micah’s murder.

  “Well, at least I get to see real estate I can’t afford on this job,” Defino said when they hit the street. “Toni’d go nuts in a kitchen that small. For what those apartments cost, you’d think they’d make it bigger than a closet.”

  “With that much money you don’t cook. You have it catered.”

  “I’ll remember that.”

  “Gordon, let’s get a cup of coffee somewhere and talk.”

  “You’re about to make me unhappy, aren’t you?”

  “I’m about to make everyone unhappy.”

  They walked quickly to Lex and found a coffee shop. Defino called in for both of them and returned to the table.

  “I don’t want to canvass the neighborhood where they found him,” she began.

  “OK,” he said warily.

  “And I don’t want to reinterview the first cops on the scene and the detectives and the crime scene guys.”

  “Where is this going?”

  “None of that stuff has worked for ten years. I suppose it could work this time, but I’d like to try something different.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “If nobody does anything, the gun’ll turn up someday or someone’ll try to buy himself a short sentence by ratting out the killer—if anybody out there knows who it was. Or one of the two hundred twenty-seven missing guns will turn up. I want to get inside what Micah Anthony was doing.”

  “You got some brilliant idea how?”

  “Just a sketchy beginning. I want to get hold of the transcript of the trial of the three guys Anthony was doing business with.”

  “It could take six months to get through that transcript. It’s probably ten thousand pages long.”

  “MacHovec can do it. He’ll know what we’re looking for and he’ll find it. Maybe one of those guys is back in prison and we can talk to him, make him an offer.”

  “Graves won’t like it.” Defino signaled for a refill. “He goes by the book.”

  “He’ll give us some rope. He knows we get results. If we come up with one new thing, he’ll settle down.”

  Defino contemplated his coffee. “Let me say I agree with you. If this case wasn’t a dead end, someone would have broken it years ago. The best hope now, except for what you’re talking about, is a lucky break. That could happen today or not for ten more years. How do you want to proceed?”

  “Tell McElroy what we want to do. If he goes along, we avoid Graves, at least for a while.”

  “McElroy won’t OK anything without the whip.”

  Jane knew he was right. Lieutenant McElroy, the second whip, was a good guy, but when important decisions had to be made, he passed them along. He had not benefited personally from the general promotions around the office; the only way to get to captain was to take the exam. After captain, promotions came from One PP or City Hall.

  “Let’s write up a little proposal,” Jane said, “and run it by him. Nothing long. And then let’s get the transcript or have MacHovec go over to the court and sit and take notes on it. And before he gets started, he can check out those three guys, see where they are, what kind of trouble they’ve been in.”

  “OK, I’m with you. We should get back and start writing.”

  3

  THEY HUDDLED WITH MacHovec, writing brief nonsentences that would become a proposal. MacHovec bailed after half an hour, his patience worn thin. He was itching to get back to what he was good at. The computer they figuratively shared was on his desk, and no one besides him had touched it since last fall. He wanted to find out where the three guys in the West Fifty-second Street crib were.

  Jane and Defino kept at it. They wanted the names of witnesses at the trial as well as defendants, lawyers, the assistant district attorneys who had prepared the case and prosecuted it, and the names of cellmates of the one man who had served time, Carl Randolph.

  “One’s dead,” MacHovec said, staring at his screen.

  “You sure?” Jane asked.

  “As sure as a death certificate is. Curtis Morgan. Died three years ago.” He laughed. “Lung cancer. Works better than bullets. He was arrested for a B and E and they took him to a hospital. Died before he said anything.”

  “Try Carl Randolph. He’s the one who served time for possession of stolen weapons.” She went back to the proposal. “Somebody working at the armory had to be in on the theft of the guns,” she said to Defino.

  “I bet they kept that quiet as long as they could. The Feds never want city cops nosing around.”

  “But Bowman knew the number, so it became a matter of record.”

  “It became a matter of record when they raided the crib and found the three weapons. When the guns took a walk, those jokers conducted an internal investigation and came up with nothing, so they kept quiet. Trust me.” He was right on that. “And if they ever locate the guns, they’ll make a big public splash as if they’d been working on the case every day for ten years.”

  “They won’t locate them. They’re waiting for a miracle. Let’s see if we can make it happen.”

  “Randolph,” MacHovec said, “Carl J. You know what, girls and boys? He just got himself arrested a couple of weeks ago.”

  “What for?” Defino asked.

  MacHovec pressed keys. “Possession of pot. They still smoke that stuff? I thought it went out of style.”

  Jane smiled. “Where is he?”

  “He couldn’t make bail.” MacHovec whistled. “I guess they’ve got his number. Judge set half a million. He’s in Rikers. Looks like he’s in the Bing. Strong stuff for possession.”

  “My favorite place on earth,” Jane said under her breath. “We can do that, huh, Gordon?”

  “I’ll drive in tomorrow, pick you up.”

  “I’ll be downstairs at eight. I like this.”

  Defino picked up his phone and called his wife. From the sound of the conversation, she could do without the car.

  Jane went back to the list of half sentences, pulled over another piece of paper, and started to shape them into readable English. Then she thought of something. “Sean? There was a third guy. What happened to him?”

  “You’re not gonna believe this.” He was looking at his screen, shaking his head and grinning.

  “What?”

  “Sal ‘Lucky Dog’ Manelli, forty-seven, nice little rap sheet. Looks like he’s settled down in a love nest on Minetta Street. I make it about two blocks from Waverly Place.”

  Defino was out of his chair as fast as if he’d gotten word of a 10-13, the code for an officer in trouble. “Let’s go,” he said. “Anything’s better than paperwork.”

  Jane stopped at Annie’s office and told her where they were going. They they dashed down the stairs. A couple of subways got them to West Fourth Street, Jane’s usual station. From there they walked to Minetta Street, a short, narrow, tree-lined street of residential buildings that angled northeast from Sixth Avenue and Bleecker. Hidden from the traffic and chaos of those streets, it was a secret oasis. They found the brownstone Manelli used as his address halfway down the block. Upstairs they rang several times and listened at the door; no sound was audible.

  “Go down a flight,” Jane said softly to Defino. “I want to ring a bell.”

  Defino went down and she rang the bell across the hall from Manelli.

  An eye peered through the peephole; then the door opened. An old man on a single crutch stared at her.

  “Hi,” she said cordially, not showing her shield. “I’m looking for Mr. Manelli. Sal?”

  “Over there? I haven’t seen him for weeks.”

  “He move out?”

  “Couldn’t tell you. She’s there, though. She’s been there since World War Two, or her mother has. Maybe her grand-mother. They all look the same.”

  “You know her name?” The name at the bell
downstairs had been JF/SM.

  “Franklin. Judith, I think. I run into her sometimes. Dark-haired woman, kind of nice-looking. What she wants with a leech like him, I’ve never been able to figure out.”

  “Isn’t Sal working?”

  “Who knows? He moves in, he moves out. He shouts at her, she cries. What kind of a life is that? She should find herself a nice man and get married. It’s not so bad. I did it for forty-three years.”

  “Well, thanks for your time.” She nodded and went to the stairs, hearing the door close and lock before she was down one step.

  “I heard it,” Defino said when she joined him on the lower floor. “We better see if he has a parole officer, find out where he spends his time when he’s not here.”

  “I’ll come back tonight and talk to Judith. MacHovec can get me a phone number.”

  “I’d like to know how long this mutt’s been living here. It’s far enough away from where Anthony was found that they wouldn’t have canvassed this block.”

  They went back to Centre Street, and Defino typed up the proposal, a twenty-minute job. They made copies and went over to McElroy’s office.

  The second whip was on the phone, but waved them in. He said, “Yeah,” a lot of times, then hung up. “I see you’re on the Micah Anthony case.”

  Jane led off. “Lieutenant, we’ve got some ideas. Got time to listen?”

  “Sure.”

  She gave him a copy of their miniproposal and started her spiel.

  Built like a rectangular chunk of stone, McElroy listened, barely nodding. Then he glanced down at the sheet of paper. He didn’t look happy, but didn’t look ready to explode either. “Randolph’s in Rikers?” he said finally.

  “Yeah,” Defino said. “Just got collared a week or two ago. They’re holding him in the Bing, so they know who he is.”

  “Sure, go see him. I’ll run this by Inspector Graves. I don’t know what he’ll say but it’s worth a try.”

  “There’s something else,” Jane said. She told him about Manelli and Minetta Street.

  “Minetta. Wasn’t Anthony found on Waverly?” It was the kind of information anyone who’d been on the job for ten years would know automatically.

  “Yeah,” they both said.

  “Ten years of investigators couldn’t have slipped up on something like that.”

  “He may not have been there ten years ago, or even five,” Jane said. “The man across the hall said the woman had been there forever, not Manelli. MacHovec’s getting her number. I’ll call and go over tonight.”

  “OK, do that. We better talk about this in the morning.”

  “We’re going to Rikers in the morning, Loot,” Defino said.

  “OK, go see Randolph. We’ll talk when you get back.”

  Jane called the number for Judith Franklin six times that night and got nothing, not even an answering machine. From the tone of her conversation with the neighbor, she was pretty sure he hadn’t waylaid Franklin when she came home and told her a woman had been looking for Sal. Jane hadn’t shown her shield, so he had no way of knowing who she was.

  4

  RIKERS WAS AN island. Special buses ran to and from the jail, some carrying visitors and some prisoners who had just been freed, dropping them in Queens, where they could buy a doughnut and pick up a city bus. Visitors were cautioned when they arrived at Rikers to leave narcotics and weapons on their seats before exiting. A large number of them did so.

  Defino arrived at just about eight and they drove to the parking lot at the bridge to Rikers. No unauthorized vehicles were allowed on the island, and no one was allowed to walk from building to building. Anyone seen walking was presumed to be an escaped inmate. They hopped on a bus for the short trip across the bridge.

  Rikers Island consisted of ten separate prisons, most of them for men. They ranged from the military-style boot camp for young men of high school age to buildings housing men who had committed crimes less serious than homicide and other felonies using weapons. The toughest prison was nicknamed the Bing, presumably for the sound the gate made when it closed behind you, although no such sound could be heard. The officers who worked in these separate prisons were unarmed. The joke was that the only weapons at Rikers were in the possession of the prisoners. Jane and Defino checked their guns before they passed through the gate and had their hands stamped to show they had entered legally. MacHovec had set up the meeting with Carl Randolph the day before, and they followed Officer Ben Clark down a long hall.

  About a minute into their walk an alarm sounded, and they flattened against the wall. Seconds later, a group of helmeted officers in protective black clothing, armed with clubs and shields, dashed down the hall to the scene of the trouble.

  “Second one this morning,” Clark said. “Something’s on for tonight; we don’t know what. They want to tire us out before they spring the big one.”

  The alarm over, they resumed their walk, and the special team returned at a slower pace from whence they had come. There were worse jobs than directing traffic at Forty-second Street.

  The long walk continued. Jane recognized the ever-present competing smells of disinfectant and sweat, and the low-level din that emanated from areas off the main corridor. Finally, Officer Clark opened a door and led them inside a room with a table bolted to the floor and four chairs. Clark took one of them. A black inmate about forty years old sat on the far side of the table and watched them enter, a scowl on his face.

  “Mr. Randolph,” Defino said, “I’m Detective Defino; this is Detective Bauer. We’d like to talk to you.”

  “ ’Bout what?”

  “What did you do to get yourself in the Bing again?”

  “Nothin’. Just had a little pot to sell so I’d have some money for food. Wha’ kinda crazy judge puts you in the Bing for that?”

  “Maybe you’ve got a reputation.”

  “Yeah. I’m a husband and father. That the reputation you mean?”

  “I was thinking of the other one.”

  Randolph looked at them blankly.

  “Something to do with guns, Mr. Randolph,” Jane said.

  “That’s a long time ago.”

  “We’re still looking for them.”

  “Yeah.” The stern face broke into a smile. “You keep lookin’.”

  “I hear your friend Curtis Morgan died,” Defino said.

  “Yeah. Curtis smoked too much. Getcha every time.”

  “So there’s just you and Sal Manelli left. Sal smoke?”

  “I don’t remember.” He frowned.

  “You got an address for Sal?”

  “Where he live? I ain’t seen Sal for years. He used to have a girlfriend in the Village, street with an Eye-talian name. But he could have a new one now. Sal always have a girlfriend.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “Yeah.” Randolph pushed his chair away from the table a few inches, and Officer Clark took notice. Even sitting down, Randolph looked big. “You come all this way to ask me ’bout Sal’s girlfriend?”

  “We’re looking for him,” Jane said. “And we’re looking for the guns. We think you know where they are.”

  “I tell you, miss, I didn’t know ten years ago and I don’t know now.”

  “Somebody knew.”

  “Wasn’t me.”

  “Who was it?” Defino asked.

  Randolph shrugged. “Maybe Sal, maybe Curtis. Oh, Curtis don’t know nothin’ no more, do he? He dead. Well, they call Sal ‘Lucky Dog.’ Maybe Lucky Dog can tell you. I’m just a guy does what he’s told.”

  “Really?” Jane said. “They put you away for doing what you were told?”

  “Sometime justice don’t work.”

  “Sometimes people know more than they let on.”

  “Not me, Detective.” He smiled.

  “We need to find those guns,” Defino said. “I would guess you’d like to make this marijuana charge go away.”

  “Yeah, I would. Like to get back to my family. I’m a real f
amily man. I don’t need Attica no more.”

  Defino stood. “We’ll get back to you, Mr. Randolph. Think about what we said.”

  “You wanna gimme your names?” For the first time, he seemed worried.

  Defino threw his card on the table and turned to leave. Jane and Officer Clark followed him.

  “I know this prisoner,” Clark said as they walked. “He’s got two personalities. The one he showed you is the dumb guy who doesn’t know where he’s at. That’s a put-on. If he has a mind to, he can talk to you like a guy fresh out of Harvard. When that happens, you know you’re getting somewhere.”

  “I want a record of every phone call he makes for the next week,” Jane said.

  Clark took out a notebook and wrote something. When they got to the gate, Clark had it opened for them. As it closed behind them, Jane listened for the bing.

  Before meeting with Inspector Graves, they huddled. MacHovec had reached Manelli’s parole officer that morning. His address for Manelli was Minetta Street, and he was unhappy to hear that Manelli hadn’t been seen there for a while. Manelli had checked in on schedule and had claimed to have a part-time job selling shoes. He was due to check in again a week from Thursday.

  “So maybe he’ll check in,” Defino said, “and we can pick him up. But that’s more than a week away.”

  “Randolph’s got your number,” Jane said. “After he calls Sal or his lawyer or someone else, maybe he’ll get back to you. Meanwhile, I’ll try this Judith Franklin again. Unless she’s off with Manelli, she should come home eventually. She’s the paycheck in that relationship.”

  “Inspector Graves will see you now,” Annie said, standing in their doorway.

  “I see you spent some time at Riker’s this morning,” the whip said when they had sat down in his office. Ellis McElroy was there too, but Annie was absent, so no notes would be taken.

  “Carl Randolph is in the Bing,” MacHovec said. “Waiting to be tried for possession of pot. The car he was in was stopped for a traffic violation and they found the stuff.”

  “Seems like small potatoes for him. He say anything useful?”