by Dorien Grey
“Then let’s get him for Tom’s murder.”
“How? We can arrest him for the assault and maybe tie him up for a few days at most, but I don’t think that will give us enough time. Once he’s free to leave the city, he’ll be gone, and even if we get enough to convict him later, his lawyers will be able to fight extradition for years. And short of getting out the rubber hose, we can’t make him confess to Tom Brady’s murder.”
“I can,” Jonathan said, which snapped both Richman’s and my eyes open.
“That’s nice of you to offer, Jonathan,” Richman said after a moment, “but I’m afraid that’s totally out of the question.”
“Why?” Jonathan demanded. I was so taken aback by the whole idea, and by Jonathan’s boldness, that I didn’t say anything.
Richman gave him a soft smile. “Well, mainly, that’s why we have a police department…to protect citizens from having to confront dangerous criminals directly. You’d be putting yourself at great risk, and we couldn’t allow that.”
I’m sure he didn’t mean it to be condescending, but that’s the way it came out, and Jonathan’s awareness of it was reflected in the tight smile he returned.
“But you’re right,” Jonathan continued calmly—again surprising the hell out of me—“the police probably can’t get a confession out of him. I can. I’m the only one who can tie all this stuff together, and he knows it.”
Who the hell is this guy? my mind asked, admiringly, and what happened to that scatterbrained kid I met at Hughie’s? And at the same time, several rows of stadium lights began to go on in my head.
“He thinks I went back home,” Jonathan continued. “If I called him up and told him I wanted money for what he did to me or I’d go to the police….”
Richman shook his head. “Sorry. Too dangerous. Way too dangerous. Now that we know what he’s capable of…”
“What he did to me was really bad. But what he did to Dick’s friend is a lot worse. And he wasn’t just Dick’s friend, he was a policeman. You shouldn’t let him get away with that!”
“He’s right, you know,” I said to Richman, then turned to Jonathan. “But Lieutenant Richman is right, too, Jonathan: it could be really dangerous.”
Jonathan shrugged. “So’s hustling.”
I looked at Richman, who looked back and forth between Jonathan and me, and then sighed.
“I suppose we could run it by Captain Offermann, but I’m pretty sure he won’t go for it.”
“We can try,” I said, and Richman reached for the phone.
*
Offermann couldn’t see us right away, so Richman cancelled his morning meeting and we spent the next twenty minutes talking, figuring possible strategy. The more we talked, the more I could sense Richman coming over to our side. When Offermann returned Richman’s call and told us to come to his office, we had fairly well firmed up a scenario that provided the best possible protection for Jonathan.
Richman was right: Offermann’s initial reaction was, in effect, “No way in hell,” but Richman convinced him to hear us out.
It boiled down to the fact that either we take a shot and hope Jonathan might get something out of Giacomino, or sit back and watch Joey G. leave town with a dead cop’s murder just hanging in midair.
Offermann heard us out, then said: “There’s no other way?”
“Not in the time frame available to us,” Richman said. “We’re still sitting on a time bomb with the gay community. If word of the murder weapon’s having come from our own property room gets out, there’s no telling what will happen. I’m afraid that with or without Jonathan’s pressing charges, Giacomino will be leaving the state very shortly. If we can nail him for Officer Brady’s murder before he has a chance to skip out, it will diffuse a lot of tension.”
Offermann was silent for what seemed like an eternity, then nodded and looked to Jonathan. “And are you absolutely sure you are willing to do this, Mr. Quinlan?”
Jonathan nodded and Offermann was silent again before saying: “While we will do everything we can to protect you, we cannot guarantee your safety 100 percent. And we will have to ask you to sign a waiver releasing the city and the department from any liability should something unforeseen happen. I want to be sure you understand.”
Jonathan nodded again.
“I understand.”
“Very well,” Offermann said with a sigh. “Let’s break for about forty-five minutes while I set things up. We’ll meet back here at…” he glanced at his watch, “…eleven o’clock.”
Richman, Jonathan, and I got up and left the office as Offermann picked up the phone.
*
The three of us walked the two blocks to Sandler’s Café. Etheridge’s, where I’d frequently met Glen O’Banyon for lunch, was directly across the street from the City Building, but was closed weekends. Jonathan and Mark had coffee and pie: I was still too emotionally numb from thinking of Tom and how he had died to even consider eating anything. Jonathan was uncharacteristically quiet—whether from thinking of what he’d volunteered to get himself into or out of concern for me I couldn’t tell. Mark, who apparently had relatives living somewhere close to Jonathan’s home town, engaged Jonathan in some Wisconsin stories, but I’m afraid I missed most of it.
When we returned to the Annex, we met Captain Offermann who led us upstairs to the large conference room next to the chief’s office. At one end of the long conference table, a uniformed officer was hooking a small tape recorder to an odd-looking telephone. Another phone, a regular one, was about halfway down the table. When he’d finished doing whatever it was he was doing, the officer nodded to Offermann and left the room. Offermann motioned Mark…Lieutenant Richman, that is, since we were on official territory…and me to a seat and indicated Jonathan should sit by the regular phone.
“Do you know what you’re going to say?” Offermann asked.
Jonathan nodded. “We went over it earlier in Lieutenant Richman’s office.”
I’m sure he was nervous, but it didn’t show—maybe a hangover from his hustler days, where it doesn’t pay to be shy. I was probably nervous enough for both of us, but hoped mine didn’t show, either. Jonathan sat where Offermann had told him as Offermann stood at the end of the table in front of the phone with the recorder.
Though the police had Giacomino’s phone number in their files, of course, luckily, if a little surprisingly, he was also listed in the phone book. If he hadn’t been it would be very difficult for Jonathan to explain how he’d gotten it. There were four Joseph Giacomino’s listed, but only one J.G. Giacomino. Richman had written it down, and handed it to Jonathan, who picked up the phone to dial. There was a moment of silence, then he nodded to Offermann, who picked up the other receiver and pressed a button on the recorder.
Showtime!
“Is Joey there?” Jonathan asked. There was a pause, then: “Tell him it’s Jonathan…he’ll know.” He put his hand over the receiver and swiveled it up away from his mouth to whisper: “He’s in the yard with the kids.”
I felt a quick wave of deep empathy for the kids, imagining what it must be like to have a father like Joey Giacomino.
He quickly swiveled the phone back to his mouth, took his hand off the receiver and said: “This is Jonathan…don’t you hang up on me; you do so know who I am. Your van? Prichert Park?…I want my watch back…yes, you do…. What do you think I want? I want my watch back, and my money back, and I want you to pay me for what you did. And my rates have gone way up!… Yes, you will…because I know something nobody else besides you and me knows: You killed Tom Brady!” There was a long pause, then: “Because I like cops and he was my boyfriend… Yeah, he was married, just like you, and he liked to fuck guys, just like you. He was really mad when I saw your picture in the paper and told him it was you who beat me up. How else do you think I’d know how he beat you up when you were kids because he wouldn’t let you steal his Cracker Jack? He said you cried like a baby.” Another long pause. “I thought so…. Oh,
no!…I’m not that stupid…I’m not going to be alone with you anywhere…. You meet me by the Collins Street entrance to the garage under Warman Park at seven o’clock tonight…I don’t care where you’re supposed to be; you meet me, and you bring me twenty-five thousand dollars in cash and…I know it’s Saturday and I don’t care where you get it. Just bring it…. Oh, that’s okay, I’ll recognize you, that’s for sure. ’Bye.” And he hung up.
Everyone remained silent for a moment, and then Offermann said: “Nice job. Now let’s see if it works.”
*
Offermann played back the tape. I was surprised how much Joey G. sounded like his older brother Bart. Joey’s part of the conversation was in something of a stage whisper—obviously because he didn’t want his wife to hear. But his arrogance came across loud and clear. Giving Joey the information about the fight over the Cracker Jack should have assuaged any fear he might have about it’s being a police trap—it’s the kind of tiny life-detail only a few people could possibly have known about.
I was momentarily concerned that Giacomino might send someone rather than showing up himself, but then I realized that he would be very unlikely to risk anyone else, even the hired goons and bodyguards he had at his disposal, finding out about his taste for young men. And I wouldn’t have been surprised if he couldn’t even remember what Jonathan looked like.
Jonathan and I left the Annex shortly after 1 p.m., having made arrangements for a police technician to come over to my apartment at 6:00 to have Jonathan fitted for the wire he was to wear—the fewer people who saw Jonathan around police headquarters, the better. Richman had chosen the spot for the meeting for several reasons: There was a concert at the Warman Park band shell that night, so there would be a lot of people around as extra protection for Jonathan. And meeting close to the street would be in easy range of the listening van. I’d had some slight experience with how electronic eavesdropping other than telephone wiretapping worked from an earlier case, though it hadn’t involved personal wiring. The police department had just acquired a new electronics van with state of the art equipment and, unlike the van it was replacing, this one carried the markings of the local power company so its presence anywhere would not be suspect.
Although I still wasn’t very hungry, I was sure Jonathan must have been, so we stopped for lunch at my favorite deli where I tried to introduce Jonathan to the joys of bagels and lox (“Raw fish?! Do I have to?”). I had the bagel and lox, Jonathan had a Reuben. Apparently there weren’t any delis in or around Cranston, Wisconsin, so even a Reuben sandwich was new to him, though he liked it (“Sauerkraut on a sandwich! Wow!”).
We got to my apartment around 2:15 and spent the afternoon mostly talking. Jonathan was understandably somewhat subdued, but I used the opportunity to find out a little more about him. He came from a large family, of which he was the youngest child: In addition to his brother Samuel, who was four years older and to whom he felt the closest, he had three sisters, ten, twelve, and fourteen years older than him, with whom he had little in common. Money was tight and, as he’d told me when we first met, he’d been working since he was twelve: Paper route, grocery store stock boy, busboy at a restaurant and, when he got out of high school, at the local nursery, which is where he got his love of plants. His dad was a truck driver with, I gathered, something of a drinking problem. He was gone most of the time, and Jonathan’s mother had died of lung cancer the year before, which had devastated him.
As far as being gay, Samuel had brought him out when Jonathan was twelve and maintained a sexual relationship with him until he, Samuel, got married. Jonathan obviously worshiped Samuel, and I got the impression that he felt somehow betrayed when Samuel got married and stopped having sex with him. He adored his dad, too, but the older man had little time to spend with his kids. Jonathan’s face lit up when he described having gone with his dad on some of his shorter cross-country hauls.
He’d graduated from high school but didn’t have the money to go on to college. He worked at the nursery until, after his mother died and he was basically at home alone, he decided to step out into the world. Everything seemed to fascinate him; so much so that he apparently never had taken the time to concentrate on any one thing before something else got his attention. I got the distinct impression that Jonathan was something of a diamond in the rough: A lot of untapped potential if he could just focus.
Ah, my mind voice whispered, Dick Hardesty, savior of lost souls and molder of futures.
Well, I did have to admit that I really did like to try to influence other people’s lives—that’s probably one of the reasons I became a P.I. But if I could help Jonathan become aware of his potential for…whatever…I’d be more than willing to do it.
Yeah, and you don’t have to paper train him, another voice said.
What a fucking cynic!
Jonathan asked me as many questions as I asked him, though as always I was mildly uncomfortable talking about myself. He seemed particularly interested in hearing about my five year relationship with Chris, what it was like to have a lover, and why we had broken up. He seemed fascinated with the idea of being with someone: Until he had left home, Samuel had pretty much been his life, and his only sexual contact. I was curious as to how he ever even thought of hustling, and he said that the guy who had given him a ride on the last leg of his trip here had made a pass at him and, when Jonathan readily agreed, had given him $20 and dropped him off near Hughie’s, apparently assuming Jonathan was already a hustler.
He—very carefully, I sensed—avoided any talk of the two of us together, but I’m pretty good at reading between lines, and have enough of an ego to be flattered knowing he was interested.
At about 5:30, Jonathan began to look at the clock on the mantle, and I could sense him tensing up.
“Now look, Jonathan. You don’t really have to go through with this. We can just have the police arrest him on the complaint you made out this morning. This thing with Tom isn’t your affair.”
Jonathan shook his head. “No, I want to do it. I want to help you like you helped me.”
“Well, I really appreciate it,” I said. And I did.
I found myself glancing at the clock, too. “Are you hungry? We can grab something before we leave if you’d like, or…”
“I’m not hungry right now. Are you?”
I shook my head. “Not really. We can get something after…afterwards, then.”
Jonathan smiled. “Great! But no raw fish.”
At five minutes to six, the buzzer rang. On my way to answer it, I took a quick trip to the window and looked out to see a familiar CityPower van at the curb.
I opened the door to both Richman and what as I remember now was a really hot looking guy in a CityPower uniform, carrying a tool box—the fact that his being hot didn’t strike me at the time says a lot about my frame of mind. Richman introduced him as Detective Carey.
They had Jonathan remove his shirt and Carey opened his toolbox and went to work. He had Jonathan put his shirt back on, then frowned. “Do you have a slightly heavier shirt?” he asked. “I can see through the fabric on this one.”
Jonathan went to his backpack, which he’d put down near the doorway to the hall, and rummaged around in it, picking out a sleeveless sweatshirt, which he held up for the officer’s approval. After receiving a nod, he removed his shirt and put the sweatshirt on.
Carey looked it over carefully, walked over to Jonathan and patted him lightly around the chest, then gave another nod. “Yeah, this’ll do.”
The officer’s two-way radio, which was attached to his belt, buzzed, and he unhooked it and brought it to his ear in one smooth motion. He listened for a moment, then pressed a button and returned it to his belt. “They want us to come outside so they can test it for distance: They’re having some bad static problems from here.”
We all—I probably didn’t have to go, but of course did anyway—left the apartment and walked down the hall to the stairs.
“Now remember,
Jonathan,” Richman said, “to always keep the van in your line of sight. People walking past won’t present much of a problem, but anything solid and stationary will block the signal.”
Jonathan nodded.
When we got outside, Detective Carey told Jonathan and me to walk slowly down the sidewalk toward the corner and to keep talking. Richman got in the van and the officer stood outside, watching us.
There’s nothing harder than to find something to talk about when you’re supposed to keep talking, but we managed somehow, though I haven’t a clue now what we talked about. When we reached the corner, we turned around and Carey waved us back, signaling for us to stop from time to time and giving us a rolling-index-finger “keep talking” gesture.
When we got back to the van, Richman and another man dressed in plain clothes, whom we hadn’t seen before, got out.
“This is Officer Clark,” Richman said by way of introduction, and Jonathan and I shook hands with him. “Officer Clark will stay as close to Jonathan as he can. Giacomino is a pretty street-smart character and he can probably spot a cop at twenty paces. So he’ll mainly just be sure Jonathan gets into position without problem.” He looked at Jonathan. “You and Officer Clark will take the bus downtown. We’ll leave now and get set up, so we’ll be there when you arrive.”
Jonathan looked at me. “Where will Dick be?” he asked Richman.
The question apparently caught Richman by surprise. “Well, he…” he looked at me and obviously read my face “…he’ll be in the van with us.”
“Good,” Jonathan said.
“And remember what we talked about this morning…what you’re supposed to say. We need to provoke him into admitting he killed Officer Brady. But be very careful. Don’t agree to go anywhere with him, not even behind a tree; not for the money, not for anything. There will be a lot of people around, heading for the concert, so I don’t think he’d try anything physical. Understood?”
Jonathan nodded again.
“Okay. We’d better get going. We’ll see you downtown.”
