“I left the Johnnie-Mop home, so I can’t clean the toilets, but besides that I’m at your disposal.”
“That’s it, keep your sense of humor.” Lerner sat down in Karp’s visitors’ chair and stretched his long legs almost to the opposite wall. “No, this is an interview with a homicide suspect over at the Tombs-the Marchione killings.”
“They got the guy for those?”
“Not exactly. A guy turned himself in, says he was driving the car, he never pulled the trigger. Says there were two other guys involved, one of them did the job.”
“Shit, what else is he going to say?”
“Sure, but it’s not that simple. You know Sonny Dunbar, works out of Midtown South? OK, it turns out this guy’s his brother-in-law, name’s Donald Walker. Kid’s never been in much trouble, but apparently he started using junk, fell in with some bad guys, and they got him to drive for the Marchione job. Anyway, apparently the kid panicked and got in touch with Dunbar and spilled his guts.”
“Spontaneous statement?”
“Ah that’s the catch. Dunbar seems to have put the fear of God into the boy, like you would if somebody in your family was screwing up. That’s before he knew what Walker had done. So that whole part of it is tainted rotten. Then he told Walker to turn himself in and tell his story for the record. The problem is, by the time he got to the cops-Dunbar sent him to Fred Slocum-he was frozen up, looked to be half out of his skull with coming down off of the junk. I talked to Slocum. He thinks the kid made the other two guys up.”
Karp was scribbling rapidly on a yellow legal pad. “What do you think? Any other evidence linking this Walker to the crime?”
“Some. We have an eyewitness, on the car, at least. Woman named Kolka was sitting in a car on Forty-eighth Street the night of the murders, waiting for her husband to come down from their apartment. He’s a retired cop. She sees a white car come around from Madison and park a couple of cars down and across the street. She sees a light-skinned Negro male leave the car from the passenger door, carrying some kind of briefcase. About ten minutes later she hears what she described as ‘firecracker noises’ coming from Madison. Couple of minutes after that, the same guy comes back, gets in the passenger door and drives off.”
“Did she do an ID on Walker?”
“Yeah, she says close but no cigars. She’s pretty sure this guy was clean shaven. Walker’s got a beard.”
“She spot anybody else in the car?”
“She thought she saw a head in the backseat, but she couldn’t swear to it. The angle was wrong to see the driver’s seat. But, when the car pulled out, she got a good look at the plates, and that nice old lady wrote down the tag number.”
“Which was Walker’s number?”
“Which was not Walker’s number. But from what we can figure, it was indeed Walker’s Nineteen-sixty-four Chevy Impala. The plates on it that night were reported stolen in East Harlem the week before.”
“Pretty clever.”
“Yeah, real pros we got here. But there’s something else. The morning after the murders, an anonymous caller rings up the cops and tells them that he saw the whole thing, describes the car, and gives the tag number.”
“Confirming Mrs. Kolka?”
“Not confirming Mrs. Kolka. This guy gives Walker’s real plate number, the plates that were on the car when the cops picked it up.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Uh-oh is right. It looks like somebody is trying to stick Walker with the whole bag. That tends to confirm Walker’s story about other guys being involved. Oh, they also checked the hotel room where he went after the crime. In the trash can there, they found an empty J amp;B bottle with three good sets of prints: Walker’s, the room clerk’s, and Angelo Marchione’s, and nobody else’s. That tends to put Walker in the store, unless one, he was a regular patron of A amp;A Liquors, or two, he had been there earlier, maybe checking the place out, or three, somebody else, who was careful not to leave any prints, took the bottle and gave it to Walker. Which, of course, is Walker’s story. In any case, we booked him for the double murders. He’s been in the Tombs since last Friday.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Our basic problem is that Walker clammed up with Slocum. He hasn’t wanted to talk at all. I think Slocum came down too hard on him, and he thinks he’s being railroaded to take the whole rap for the murders. I figured to let him cook in the Tombs for a while. If he is telling the truth, I got to have that gunman. Yesterday evening, Walker called his brother-in-law and said he was ready to spill, if he could make a deal. Dunbar called me. He’s scared too, for his brother-in-law, and also because he doesn’t want to be blamed for fucking up a big case.”
“How big is it?”
“Biggish, for a retail store rip-off and killing. The old man was a pillar-of-the-community type, the kid was popular and good-looking. But mostly it’s the brother, Alfredo Marchione. He’s a macher on the West Side; big in the Knights, active in the Party. The kind of guy elected officials like to be nice to. He’s jerking chains all over town.”
“I think you’re going to tell me I’m not handling this case all by myself.”
Lerner smiled broadly. “Smart boy! No, you’re going to second-seat Jack on this. I’d love the case myself, but I’m starting a trial on Monday. Anyway, I told the cops somebody would meet them over at the Tombs at one o’clock.”
It was 12:40. Karp got up and said, “I’ll be there. It still sounds great.”
Lerner said, “Enthusiasm, that’s what we like. Oh, to be fifty again! Good luck.” He patted Karp on the shoulder and left.
Karp took his yellow pad and his suit jacket, left his office, and picked up the case folder from the smiling secretary. He went down the hall and, on his way out, told Walter Leonard to meet him at the Tombs at one. Leonard was in his late fifties, a gray, quiet civil servant, who as a stenographer for the Homicide Bureau during the last twenty-five years had recorded more tales of illicit slaughter than Agatha Christie.
The Tombs was in the building next door. Karp picked up a couple of hot dogs and a root beer from a Sabrett cart and sat down on a bench across the street to read the case folder. It was thin and told him little he did not already know from Joe Lerner’s briefing.
After lunch he went into the Tombs, a noble institution serving New Yorkers badly since 1838, met Leonard, went through a series of clanging doors, smelt the smell, heard the noise, felt the feelings that most visitors feel in jail (how horrible to cage men like beasts, how marvelous that they’re in here and not out on the street), and arrived at the interview room at just one o’clock.
The room was about ten by twelve, city green, furnished with a battered long table and hard chairs, like the boardroom of a long-bankrupt corporation. Slocum and Dunbar were already there. Fred Slocum was a beefy, florid man in a plaid blazer and sky-blue polyester pants. He had one of the last crew cuts in New York, a reddish fuzz like an unusually hairy peach. He was smoking a Tampa Nugget.
Karp shook hands all around and in a few moments a guard brought Donald Walker into the room. Walker looked shrunken in his yellow prisoners’ jumpsuit; he’d lost the touch of baby fat in his face and his tan complexion was grayish. He nodded at Dunbar and sat down. When everyone was seated, Karp began.
“Mister Walker, my name is Roger Karp, and I’m an assistant district attorney here in New York County. I am about to ask you some questions about the shooting deaths of Angelo Marchione and Randolph Marchione, which occurred between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock on the night of March Twenty-sixth, Nineteen-seventy, at A amp;A Liquors, located at Madison Avenue and Forty-ninth Street.” Karp then introduced everyone in the room-for the record-and told Walker that Leonard would be taking down on the stenotype machine everything that was said.
Then he advised Walker of his right to remain silent, of his right to have a lawyer present. Walker had had these rights read to him at the precinct, but Karp was establishing for the record that Walker was
confessing voluntarily, in full knowledge of these rights, and without coercion. It was not enough to find out the truth. If Walker had killed fifty people on a live broadcast of the “Johnny Carson Show” it would still be necessary to go through this ritual before he could be brought to justice.
Karp went on. “Now, Mister Walker, having been advised of your rights, are you willing to tell us what you know about the shooting deaths of Angelo and Randolph Marchione, without a lawyer being present?”
Walker raised his head and tugged at his sparse beard. “I din see no shooting.”
At this Slocum gave a disbelieving snort. Karp shot him a sharp look. The detective rolled his eyes and looked away.
“Could we have your full name and address, please,” asked Karp. Walker gave it. Speaking his address made him think about the missed mortgage payments, about his family losing their home, about his failure. He started to weep. “Take it easy, Donny …” Dunbar began, but Karp cut him off with a gesture of his hand, and said, “Mister Walker, just tell us what you do know; that’s all we want.”
Then the story emerged, Walker speaking in a monotone, broken by sniffling and long silences. Karp let him tell his tale at his own pace, scrupulously avoiding any leading questions. After a while, Walker began to enjoy the confession; here, after all, were four serious, grown men listening attentively to what he had to say. It was a unique experience in his life.
Walker finished his confession by describing how he had dropped the two other men off at the 50th Street subway station. The sound of the stenotype machine echoed his last words, and after a brief silence, Karp said, “Mister Walker, I want you to know that I appreciate you coming forward like this and giving us this information. I also want you to know that while I can’t promise that it will have any effect on your own case, I would very much like your help in finding the two men you say were with you on the night of the crime. Are you willing to help us do that?”
“Yeah, sure, but I done already tol you everythin’ I know.”
“OK, but let’s go over some of the details once more. This man you call Stack-you met him at a pool hall near where you live?”
“Yeah, Torry’s, on Queens Boulevard.”
“More than once, right?”
“Yeah, a couple times.”
“And he supplied you with heroin?”
“Yeah, just one hit.”
“And he gave you the phony plates for your car?”
“Yeah, the last time I saw him, it was a couple days before the, you know, the robbery.”
“And where did he give you these plates?”
“In the parkin’ lot outside of Torry’s. I open my trunk an he toss ’em in.”
“So he had the opportunity to see your real plate numbers?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Mister Walker, are you aware that on the morning after the robbery, an unidentified man called the police and said that he had witnessed the crime at A amp;A Liquors, described your car in some detail, and gave your plate numbers?”
“No, I din. But so what? I already tol you I was there in my car.”
Karp paused for effect. “Not the phony plate numbers. The real ones.”
It took Walker a long minute to catch on. He jumped to his feet, and for the first time an animated emotion appeared on his face. “That muthafucka! He never … he never was gonna … that fuckin’ lyin’ bastard!”
Karp put a hand on Walker’s shoulder and eased him back into his chair. Karp believed Walker’s story, and thought him to be what he seemed-a patsy with his ass in a sling. He asked, “Mister Walker, do you have any idea who could have made that call?”
“Who! You know damn well who. It hadda be him, that Stack, him or his damn buddy, Willy Lee. Who the fuck else knew my damn plate numbers?”
“You did,” said Fred Slocum.
“What! You think I call the cops to turn my own self in?”
“Take it easy, Mister Walker,” said Karp, “nobody’s implying anything of the kind.” He gave Slocum another look.
“But here’s our problem, Mister Walker. You say there were two other men involved in the robbery, but all you’ve given us are two names, without any indication of where we could find these men. Somebody who knew your real plate numbers called the police. But if you were frightened about what you had done, and you wanted to paint yourself as a relatively innocent wheelman and not as the cold-blooded killer of two people, it is at least possible that you could have invented a couple of partners and made that call to make it seem like somebody else was involved in the crime.”
Walker looked at Karp as if he were speaking Ukrainian. He turned from one man to another and settled on Sonny Dunbar. Waving his hands, he cried, “I tol you! They don believe me. I bein’ set up for this. Damn, Sonny, you gotta tell them. How could I make up some story like that?”
“Donny, it’s OK, I believe you. But you gotta give us something. Are you sure neither of these guys ever mentioned where they lived or worked, nothing we could use to find them?”
“Shit, Sonny, I tol you that. I don know nothin’ about who he is, where he live. I jus call him at this number he give me an …”
“Number? You have a phone number?” shot back Karp.
“Shit, Donny,” said Dunbar, smacking the table, “why in the hell didn’t you tell me you had the dude’s number?”
Karp leaned closer to the bewildered Walker. “Look, this is very important. Can you remember the phone number?”
“Remember? Hell, I jus call it a coupla times. It was … eight, five, three or two, or eight one five, somepin like that.”
Dunbar rubbed his face and gritted his teeth. Slocum smiled an innocent smile. Karp tapped a pencil on the table. Walker looked like a man trying to remember something. “Shit, I can’ recall it. I was readin’ it offa this piece of paper he give me on the night …”
“What paper? What did you do with it?” snapped Karp.
“I din do nothin’ with it. Jus put it in my pocket.”
Karp said to Slocum, “Fred, was there a piece of paper with a phone number found on him when you arrested him?”
“Not that I recall. But it’s no big thing to check with prisoners’ property.”
“Could you?”
“No problem, but we’re getting our cranks yanked.” The red-haired detective got up and left.
Dunbar said, “Donny, if we have a number we can trace where the phone is installed. That means we have a chance to pick up the guy Stack, or the other guy. OK, let’s say we find out where he is. You know the guy. Is he gonna give us trouble?”
“Shit, trouble? That dude nothin’ but trouble. Guy look like a fuckin’ schoolteacher, I know he kill somebody like you squash a fly. That other dude, that Willy Lee? A big, strong-lookin’ guy, look like he could bust Stack in two? He scared shit of him.”
How do you know?”
“I jus know. I done smell it, man. You go after Stack, you better take a fuckin’ tank.”
They waited in the little room, tense, for fifteen minutes. Karp sent Leonard out to get the confession typed for Walker’s signature. Slocum returned first, with a bemused expression arranged around his cigar.
“So? What did you find?” asked Dunbar.
“Sonuvabitch if it don’t check out. There was a phone number on a scrap of paper in his pants pocket. I ran it through the phone company. Its registered to a guy named M. Louis, Apartment Five-fifteen, Thirty-six-oh-two Amsterdam.”
Dunbar jumped up and headed for the door. “Let’s get him.”
“Sonny, calm down,” said his partner. “Let’s think this through.”
Dunbar looked narrowly at the other detective. “Don’t tell me. You still think it’s a scam. Shit, Freddy …”
“You’re wrong there, kiddo. I’m converted. But look here. One, this is a big collar. We don’t want to screw it up. Two, we got a mutt with a handgun and a shotgun, maybe two mutts, come to that, who killed two people in cold blood and then calm
ly pinned the rap on this kid here. I’m thinking, these guys are smart, not just some street jitterbugs, you know. I mean, let’s give it some thought before we go stepping on our jocks.”
Dunbar let out his breath in a rush and relaxed against the table. “OK, Freddy, I’m listening. You got a plan?”
When Slocum didn’t say anything Karp spoke up. “I do.”
The two cops looked at him, surprise showing on both their faces. Karp was surprised himself.
The object of their discussion was at that moment reclining on his couch, dressed in a bathrobe of blue silk with Chinese figures, reading Forbes. He liked to read about big deals and the kind of people that the business press in the sixties called “corporate gunslingers.” He considered these people kindred spirits. Louis was a calculator rather than a fantasist, but occasionally he let himself imagine what it would be like to move through the Lear-jet world of high finance. He felt ready for a change; he was almost forty, and he did not look forward to cleaning out tills and knocking off payrolls at fifty.
In fact, Louis was quite well-off at this point. For nearly a decade he had been taking in thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year, tax-free, naturally, and without thinking about it very much had stashed it in gold collectors’ coins. A quantity of these now sat in the safe deposit vault of a downtown bank. He would have liked to play the go-go market along with everybody else, but wisely decided that his source of income could not bear the scrutiny that a complicated tax return would entail.
But like most men of action, Louis was short on self-knowledge. He increasingly saw himself as an executive, although he utterly lacked the premiere quality of a good executive, which is the ability to choose and inspire good subordinates. Nobody really existed for Mandeville Louis except Mandeville Louis. The rest of humanity was a sort of animated Kleenex, to be used when needed and then thrown away. This was no problem as long as he remained a lone-wolf robber, but it was inevitable that, when he decided to obtain a true accomplice, his choice would fall on someone like Preston Elvis, who was a jackass.
Louis put down his magazine, yawned, arose, stretched, and consulted his gold Rolex, the kind all the corporate gunslingers wore. It was 2:30. DeVonne was due back from the beauty parlor at 4:00. He had time for some work. Louis had a legitimate job, which he felt he needed as a cover for the straight aspects of his life-his car, his apartment, and so on. He worked as a freelance proofreader for the Claremont Press, a Harlem weekly newspaper and book publisher in the black liberationist vanguard. Louis rather enjoyed mingling with the sincere young people on the paper, although he was, of course, quite indifferent to black political aspirations, radical or otherwise. He enjoyed it because he liked pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes; it was another version of pissing on the altar. When the talk ran to revolutionary action and trashing the system, Louis always cautioned against violence, for which reason he was considered something of a Tom.
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