Murder in Greenwich Village

by Lee Harris

  She arrived at Astor Place ten minutes before two, a chill in the air. Graves, who was running the operation, was already there, along with a group of more than ten people plus a dog. When introductions were made, she learned that the group consisted of the dog handler, a young woman with startling red hair; and NYPD Emergency Service cops, including several bosses of various ranks up to a Patrol Borough Manhattan South one-star, a deputy chief. The ESD were specialists in tough situations like rescuing hostages, taking out barricaded bad guys, and talking down bridge jumpers. Their motto was, “When you are in trouble, you call a cop. When a cop is in trouble, he calls ESD.”

  Also in the search party were civilian workers from the Transit System Signal Department, Maintenance of Way, Electrical Department, and the local tower master.

  On the street an NYPD Temporary Headquarters van was coordinating all communications and department personnel. Also at the curb were two ambulances, “buses” to cops, with a full staff of EMTs in case of injury, and a fire department unit. A missing cop was a big deal.

  A young captain from DCPI, the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, was on hand to control press releases and information to media outlets and reporters, who were getting nothing but stock statements. No one in the search party would go near them. This was a life-and-death situation involving a missing MOS, a member of the service. “Fuck you very much” was the attitude toward the news media.

  Rousted from their beds in the last two hours, the assembled cops and transit workers moved around, talking, getting to know one another. Jane introduced herself to all of them, barely remembering names, but it didn’t matter; everyone wore ID. A can of bug spray was passed around with the instructions to spray shoes, pants, and jackets.

  “Just to keep the bugs away,” one of the bosses said lightly. “You don’t want to take any of the wildlife home with you.”

  On the tiled wall of the station Jane saw the image of a beaver, a relic of John Jacob Astor, who had made his fortune selling their skins. The group went down to the platform and walked to one end, where stairs led down to the tracks.

  A Transit man went down and tested the third rail. “It’s OK,” he called up. “It’s been deenergized. We’re safe to go.”

  The group descended to the track level and formed a skirmish line, spreading across the tracks and walking north. Even though the third rail was deenergized, it was always safest to stay away from it. It was near the outer track of each pair and the group was instructed to walk between the tracks to avoid contact.

  The dog, a beautiful black Lab named J. J., after John Jay College of Criminal Justice, led the way north. Jane had been allowed to walk near the dog because of her almost sacred status as partner of the missing detective, and after a little while, she felt herself in danger of falling in love with it. But she knew she would have to fight his handler, Detective Specialist Jennifer Quinn, to the death for him, and she liked Quinn.

  Walking the tracks anywhere in the system bordered on the disgusting. Although homeless people found places to live in safe alcoves, rats lived wherever even a small pool of water collected, and they were covered with fleas. The water also bred roaches and water bugs, some of the latter as big as tarantulas.

  Jane had walked the tracks earlier in her career when she had to chase a perp down into the subway system. She had hated it then and she knew she would hate it now. That said, she fell in line as they moved uptown.

  Spaced periodically along the walls of the tunnels were indentations called manholes, where one subway worker could flatten himself to avoid oncoming trains. Besides the deenergizing of the tracks, the track signals had been programmed to alert train crews to the emergency, slowing them down or stopping them as required. Few trains ran at this time of night even in normal circumstances, and tonight the number had been cut to prevent accidents.

  Besides the collected water, garbage was dropped along the floor, meals and snacks discarded by riders. Filthy slobs, Jane thought, not for the first time. As they walked, she called Defino’s name, hearing the echo, hearing Graves’s words at 137: “I hope this isn’t a wild-goose chase.” She was so tired, it was a struggle to keep going. She gave up counting rats after the fifth one. The temptation was to shoot them, for which she might lose her shield.

  They pressed northward, inspecting alcoves, climbing up to station platforms and waiting for trains to pass before returning to the track level. Jane’s voice became hoarse, and fatigue threatened to take her down. Their goal was the Fifty-ninth Street station. That would take them through huge stations like Fourteenth Street and Forty-second Street, where several lines converged and tracks branched, leaving spaces where someone might be stashed. But exhaustive searches turned up nothing.

  By the time they left Forty-second Street, Jane was starting to feel that nothing would come of the search. Graves would be furious and Defino would still be missing. She stumbled and caught herself before she fell.

  “You OK?” Jennifer Quinn asked.

  “I’ll make it. Thanks.”

  “How much sleep did you get?”

  “None.”

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “He’s my partner.”

  They kept going. At the Fifty-first Street station they agreed to stop for a rest. Jane sat against a pillar and fell asleep. The cop who roused her was gentle and concerned.

  “You should go home. You look beat.”

  “We’ll be done soon. Then I’ll sleep.”

  He pulled her up and they went down to the tracks and picked up the search.

  She wasn’t sure what was worse: the smells of the subway or the stink of the bug spray. They combined to keep her from feeling hungry. She couldn’t remember when she had last eaten or what it was. She just knew she had to keep going. Gordon was in this fucking tunnel, and she had to find him before Manelli’s gang decided to get rid of him. He would have dropped something to guide them if he were able, but she was sure they had used his handcuffs to keep him disabled.

  It was six in the morning when they left Fifty-first Street. They had spent an hour at the Forty-second Street station. It was Saturday morning, a low traffic day, but more trains were scheduled from six on than during the night.

  At Fifty-ninth Street the deputy chief stopped them, went out in front of the line, and addressed them. “This is as far as we go. I’m sorry. I wish we’d found him. Let’s get up on the platform.” He got a signal on his walkie-talkie and said they were on their way. When everyone was accounted for on the platform, he gave the order to reenergize the third rail. The operation was over.

  Jane thanked each of the participants. If she looked anything like the way they did, she would need a scouring brush to get clean. The sympathy of the party cheered her, but it didn’t make up for their failure to find Defino. She started thinking of walking the tracks south of Astor Place. Graves would flop her back to the bag—her uniform.

  The deputy chief thanked them all and they scattered, some of them going back down into the subway to ride back to Astor Place for their cars. Jane took a taxi home.

  She slept for two hours, having set her alarm, and woke up feeling worse than when she lay down. She wanted to speak to Mrs. Morgan again, to find out where else besides the Lex her husband had worked. She showered first, and then put some bread in the toaster and coffee and water in the coffeemaker. Her mouth was parched. A large glass of orange juice helped a little.

  While she ate, she called McElroy’s number at 137. She left a message on his voice mail and hung up. Then she found Mrs. Morgan’s number. It was Saturday and probably not a workday, so Jane called the home number.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Morgan, this is Detective Bauer.”

  “Who?”

  “I talked to you last night about where your late husband worked.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Mrs. Morgan—”

  “I don’t know who you are. Good-bye.” A c
lick ended the conversation.

  Jane put the phone down, a chill passing through her. Someone had gotten to her. Someone had called and told her to keep quiet about her husband.

  Jane checked the address for Morgan. It was in the Eight-four precinct on Gold Street in Brooklyn, not far from where the wife worked. She called their number and identified herself. “I need to have a witness picked up ASAP and brought down to the house. I’ll be there as soon as I can to question her.”

  “OK, Detective. You got a cell phone we can call you at if we need to?”

  She gave the number, stuffed the rest of her toast in her mouth, finished the coffee in a gulp, and left everything where it was. Fuck the roaches. Then she went downstairs and hailed a cab.

  Mrs. Morgan, a smartly dressed graying woman, sat in an interview room looking frightened. She turned as Jane opened the door and entered.

  “I’m Detective Bauer, Mrs. Morgan.”

  “Am I being arrested?”

  “You’re here so I can talk to you.”

  “You had to send cops so my neighbors would see?”

  “I had to be sure we reached you before you left your apartment. I have some questions to ask you.”

  “I told you, I don’t know anything.”

  “Who called you, Mrs. Morgan? Who told you not to talk to the police?”

  “Nobody called.” She fidgeted, pressed her lips together, and looked worried.

  “That’s not going to cut it. You talked to me last night, and this morning you don’t know who I am.”

  “Well, maybe I remember now. You called late last night.”

  “Right. And I need to know more about where your husband worked.”

  “I told you, the Lexington line.”

  “Before that.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Who told you not to talk to me?”

  “Nobody. I just don’t remember.”

  “Well, start remembering. A man’s life is at stake.”

  “Please. I just don’t know. Leave me alone.”

  “I don’t want to threaten you. I just want to find my partner alive.” She waited.

  The woman sat looking at her hands. She took a tissue out of her handbag and blew her nose. “I don’t know who called,” she said in a low voice. “But he scared me. He said bad things would happen if I talked about Curtis, if I said anything at all to the police.”

  “Did you tell him you’d spoken to me?”

  “You think I’m crazy?”

  “Where did your husband work before he was a track man on the Lex?”

  “What if they come and kill me?”

  “We’ll see to it that they don’t.” Her cell phone rang. Jane took it out and said a curt, “Bauer.”

  “Jane.” It was Hack. He had probably been trying to reach her since the night before.

  “I’m all right. I can’t talk now. I’m at the Eight-four.”

  “I’ll call in an hour.”

  She turned back to Mrs. Morgan. “Answer my question.”

  “When I first knew him—it was a long time ago—he was working on the Second Avenue subway.”

  “What did he tell you about it?”

  “He talked about the men he worked with, how much progress they were making on the section they were working on.”

  “What section is that?”

  “He started at Sixty-third Street. They were going to connect up the Lex and the Second Avenue with lines that went east and west. They worked on that tunnel for years and then the money ran out, and that was it.”

  “And after that?”

  “After that he worked on the Lex.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Morgan. I appreciate your honesty.”

  She arranged with the detective squad to have Mrs. Morgan taken home to pack, and then to be delivered to her sister. That accomplished, Jane went home by subway. She had a lot of hard work to do on her two hours’ sleep.

  13

  THE GREAT UNDERGROUND fiasco in New York, the Second Avenue line was the subway the city couldn’t live without and never managed to complete, the subway they threw billions of dollars into over many years and then abandoned. It was a New York legend, a project of several beginnings and an equal number of endings. On and off for many years— off during the Second World War—it was finally back on again with a projected opening date in the early fifties.

  In the mid fifties, however, the ancient Third Avenue El began to be dismantled, leaving the city with no north– south subway east of Lexington Avenue, and the idea of the Second Avenue subway began to be tossed around again. Jane’s father remembered the El, the dark street below it that eventually saw sunlight with the removal of the structure, and then the amazing transfiguration. Old tenements were replaced with luxury high-rises, and dinky antique shops with expensive stores, later called boutiques. John Bauer often shook his head as he thought of the transformation he had never believed would take place. But once again the Second Avenue subway didn’t get off the ground. Money appropriated for it was spent on other projects, not unusual in a city with many needs.

  Finally, in October 1972, on the anniversary of the opening of the old IRT line, and with adequate funds and plenty of optimism, ground was broken at East One Hundred Third Street and Second Avenue. This was the subway Curtis Morgan worked on until it was once again abandoned several years later.

  What Jane’s father recalled was the years of barricaded streets in Midtown, endless traffic detours, and the difficulty walking in the area. Recently, new rumblings had surfaced about building the subway. The cost had gone from millions to hundreds of millions to more than sixteen billion, but if it had been necessary in the twenties, the forties, and the seventies, it was crucial now. Surface traffic was a nightmare; underground was the fast way to go.

  So, Jane reflected as she rode home underground, Curtis Morgan had intimate knowledge of the Second Avenue subway tunnel in the East Sixties. The tunnel was still there. If plans to complete the line were reactivated, the existing tunnel would be used, completed sections linked, tracks would be laid, and lighting provided. What she had to do was get over to the portion of the tunnel Morgan knew and make a search—and to do that, she needed assistance.

  In the elevator in her building, her cell phone rang. It was Hack.

  “You take part in that Lexington search party?”

  “I got Graves to authorize it. I got a lead and thought Defino might be hidden there. We didn’t find anything. But I’ve got another lead, the Second Avenue subway.” She explained as she walked down the hall, put the key in her door, and went inside.

  “Graves’ll be apoplectic.”

  “I have to do this, Hack. They’re holding Gordon somewhere, and I’ve got to find him before they kill him.”

  “It may be too late.”

  “I know that, but I have to try. My God, what if they didn’t do it for me?”

  “I would take care of that.”

  “I know you would, and I have to do it for him. I’m exhausted. I wish we were back in Paris.”

  “So do I. We’ll do it again, baby. I’m just concerned about you right now. Have you slept?”

  “A couple of hours this morning.” She sat on the sofa. Her body ached and she was parched again.

  “Watch yourself. Keep in touch. You have plenty of phone cards?”

  “Yes.” They used phone cards whenever they could to disguise the origin of the calls.

  “Call me anytime. If you luck out on the search, I can come over tomorrow.”

  She drank some ice water and carried a fresh glass with her to her desk. She needed a phone number and had little hope of reaching the contact on Saturday, but it was worth a try.

  In a career with NYPD, a cop made many friends and even a few enemies. The friends could be called on for favors, and right now she needed one badly. Back when she was still in the bag, and then later when she got her gold shield, Jane had needed assistance in the subway and had met an older transit p
olice detective named Ron Delancey. He was one of those knowledgeable men who remembered everything, and whose hobby was the history of the subway system. He collected old maps and had picked up souvenirs of the system: old lights, bits of track, an occasional sign that was being replaced. Jane had never seen the collection, but Ron had told her of his wife’s threats to move out if he didn’t stop adding to it.

  In an irreplaceable file in her desk, she found a work number for Ron and dialed it.

  A man answered. “Peterson.”

  “This is Det. Jane Bauer. I’m looking for Ron Delancey.”

  “You’re a few years too late, Detective. Ron retired.”

  “Do you have a home phone for him? It’s very important.”

  “Sorry. Try the DEA hotline.”

  The DEA was the Detectives Endowment Association, the best detectives on earth. Since the Transit Police and the NYPD had merged in 1995, the DEA represented both branches. The union offices were closed Saturday, but the hotline would respond. Cops got in trouble on weekends as well as weekdays, and might need advice or a lawyer.

  She left a message on the machine and waited. A few minutes later the phone rang.

  “This is Detective Gorman at the DEA.”

  “Thanks. This is an emergency. I need to find a retired TA detective.”

  He checked her shield number, then left the phone. How old could Ron be? she wondered. Fifties or sixties, not more. She had been—

  “I got a Yonkers number for him, Detective.”

  “Great.” She wrote it down, thanked Gorman, and dialed the number.

  A woman answered and called Ron to the phone.

  “It’s Det. Jane Bauer, Ron. I hope you remem—”

  “Of course I remember you. We did a terrific chase on the Number One line back when my knees were better. How’s things?”