Lights Out Summer

by Rich Zahradnik

  In the end, he moved back to the knife, and said, “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Whatever you want. I don’t want to get stabbed with it.”

  “Uh-huh. The guy’s already got another by now.”

  “No doubt. Now we’ll all know who stuck one in me if something unkind happens at a future date. I also thought you might be interested in the angle. Murder and drugs go together nicely.”

  “Did you look around this room when you came in?”

  He had. The squad bustled like Union Square subway station at rush hour. Since Taylor had been here a week ago, bulletin boards had been put up. Pictures and documents were tacked everywhere, all certainly related to the murders committed with a single Charter Arms Bulldog .44. More detectives had arrived.

  “Yes, I’m impressed. This many cops still in the precinct, and it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Probably a record. You must be serious about this guy.”

  McCauley had to smile at that. “There are some guys here. This is their first March Seventeenth on the job since they’ve been on the job, even counting years they were scheduled to work.”

  “Okay, got it. Lots going on in the big case. What about the narcotics angle?”

  “Narcotics isn’t murder.”

  “If Martha Gibson had the temerity to get ambushed in her apartment building with the wrong gun, she’s shit out of luck?”

  “You’re like the other newspaper shooflies. No respect for the guys on the job. We’re working on the Gibson case. Doesn’t mean I have to like your theories.”

  “I respect the cops who respect the facts. Can’t seem to find enough of them. I’ll talk to the narcs. Maybe they know something.”

  “They can’t do anything about the murder.”

  “Yeah, riiiight. There’s five a day in this town. Somebody better start working on the rest of them.”

  “Asswipe.”

  “I’ll stop by if I get more on this.”

  The narcotics detectives would normally be in some corner of the same squad room, but most everyone had been moved out to accommodate the Omega Group Task Force, as the detail of detectives looking for the .44-caliber murderer were called. Taylor shook his head at the police department’s grasp of language—or lack of it. Omega was the last letter in the Greek alphabet. Did they expect this was the last time they’d be going after some nut with a big gun? New York’s last terrible killer? Or were they that pessimistic about how long it would take? Either way or any other way he thought of it, it didn’t make sense. He’d ask his grandfather, an immigrant from Greece who owned a coffee shop on Madison, if there was some other meaning he wasn’t getting. He didn’t hold out much hope.

  Taylor found narcotics in the basement. He chose the least junkie-looking of the junkies in the room and guessed right. Detective Caputo was a Serpico knockoff. Same beard, same shaggy hair. The Serpico look would be good news if it meant the guy was straight as Serpico—six years after Frank Serpico’s revelations, narcs were still the most corrupt cops on the force. Too much cash in the drug game. Too many drugs in the drug game.

  The detective greeted Taylor with actual interest, not something he was used to.

  “You sure you’re not lost?” Caputo said. “The Omega guys are upstairs.”

  “I’m working on an alpha.”

  Caputo leaned his head forward like he was being told something important, but couldn’t work it out.

  “Just a bad joke. I’m doing a story on another woman killed last week. Martha Gibson. Richmond Hill area. Apartment at 155-99 on Eighty-Ninth Avenue. Her sister’s an addict, and I’m thinking the sister’s boyfriend may deal. Trying to confirm it.”

  “What’s this joker’s name?”

  “Jerome. Didn’t get a last.”

  “Hispanic?”

  “No, Black.”

  “That’s interesting in itself. The neighborhood’s pretty Hispanic, and the Hispanics have a tight lock on the business.”

  “Much violence between dealers?”

  “What do you think? There’s enough competition, there’s enough killing.” He opened a gray-metal index card box and flipped through it. “I cross-reference by name and address the guys we see moving around. A Jerome McGill, a seller, seen going to that address several times in the last week. We’re not sure if he deals from there.”

  “He may have just showed up. The sister, Abigail, claims Martha wouldn’t let him come over when she was alive. You get a lot of this—sales from apartments, rather than street dealing?”

  “Yeah. Too easy to get busted on the street. With an apartment, you get a peek at the customer. Lot of them make you call on a payphone nearby. Then there’s usually some kind of code at the door. Being in an apartment, you’re a lot safer from cops. And robbers.”

  “Didn’t help Martha Gibson.”

  “What’s your theory?”

  “Maybe someone took her out thinking it was Abigail to get at Jerome. Some sort of retribution. They could have followed Abigail from Jerome’s place. She stayed there several nights a week.”

  “Hitman thinks he’s getting Jerome’s girl. It’s happened before. You should share it with homicide.”

  “Tried to get McCauley to listen. Apparently, they’re too busy planning the capture of the last murderer in all New York. What’s the best way to figure out if McGill is shifting his business to the apartment? He was pretty concerned that Abigail hold onto it. Probably rent-controlled. Seems small beans in a heroin business.”

  “Smart businessman keeps his costs down.” Caputo laughed at his own joke. “Does the building have an intercom?”

  “Yes.”

  “If it were me, I’d look for traffic from a payphone into the building. You know already—junkies have that look. Then again, some don’t. Look like you and me. New York’s one big party, and everybody’s in on it as the city spins down the toilet.”

  Upstairs, Taylor used the phone booth—three sides covered with stickers from bail bondsmen—to call the City News Bureau. On his way back through the squad room, he had grabbed a couple of quotes from the captain in charge of Omega—yes, lots of calls from the public, yes, lots of leads, no, no breakthroughs—and gave them to Cramly with a description of the busy squad room and its bulletin boards and ringing phones. You’d have thought Taylor had phoned in the next Pulitzer winner, so he felt compelled to add, “That’s what they’re going to tell me every time I ask, so I’m going to leave it alone for a while. Clear?”

  “What, wait until someone else is shot?”

  “The read I’m getting here is they don’t have anything. That may be what happens next.”

  Cramly sputtered, “But, but—”

  “You got your forty-four-caliber-killer story. One I wasn’t even planning on doing. Now let me get back to work on news. You know, something that’s new. Any messages?”

  “An Edmond DeVries asked that you call at your earliest convenience. Said it like that. Real uptown.”

  The DeVries phone rang as Taylor scanned the slogans from the bail bondsmen. “Let us help when the rest have given up.” Uplifting. “You’re innocent until proven guilty. And we don’t even care.” Nicely blasé. “Ever shower at Rikers?” Direct.

  The butler, or maybe someone exclusively assigned to phone duties, answered and offered to see if Mr. DeVries was available. He was.

  “Thank you for getting back to me. I was wondering if the police have gotten anywhere on Martha’s case?”

  “No, not anywhere, really. I’m not sure they plan to. Right now, it’s little old me.”

  “Because of the serial killer?”

  “Probably some of that. Right now, all I have is possible drug dealing. Angela Gibson’s boyfriend is likely a pusher. I’d like to talk with you again about Martha. I’m trying to get a fuller picture of her life.”

  “I don’t know that I have anything more to add, but I’m happy to talk.”

  “May I stop by tomorrow?”

  May I? My brain is
moving uptown.

  “We’re heading out for the weekend.” Which begins on Thursday. Nice. “How would three twenty on Monday be?”

  “See you then.”

  Chapter 8

  Grandpop brought over two pieces of baklava, each with a candle it. In a booming voice, he started singing “Happy Birthday.” Everyone in the place sang along—the cabbies, office workers, deliverymen, rich old ladies who could afford better but preferred the Oddity. The booths with red vinyl seats, the stools, the counter, all of this was the Odysseus Coffee Shop on Madison Avenue at 75th Street, his grandfather’s place, known as the Oddity to everyone but those stumbling in for the first time.

  Grandpop set the plates down at the front booth, one before each of them. He’d insisted they not use the family table at the back. “Thank you for starting your joint birthday celebration at Odysseus. Happy birthday, Samantha, who makes my grandson so happy.”

  “Thank you, Stamitos.”

  “Happy thirty-seventh birthday—”

  “Hey,” Taylor said, “how come you have to mention my age?”

  “Because we are polite. As I was saying, happy birthday, also, to my grandson, whose first name I’m forbidden from speaking.”

  “What’d I say about the singing part?” Taylor said.

  “Always I will sing.”

  “I know.” Taylor smiled as he sunk his fork into the honey-soaked flaky pastry of the baklava. “I need to say something to make sure next year you don’t have a brass band.”

  Grandpop stroked his chin. “A band, you say? Now that would be the good way to honor a woman as wonderful as our Samantha. Even you too, perhaps.”

  “Did you get all the charm in this family?” Samantha said, smiling at Taylor at the same time.

  “My charm,” Taylor said, “is you don’t have to worry about being BS’d by my charm.”

  “No, your charm is you’re all about the facts. You can’t move far from the truth with facts as your obsession—”

  “It’s not an obsession.”

  “Okay, let’s say ‘focus’ then. I’m a big fan of hearing the truth from those I keep close to me.”

  “Thank you, I believe I should say.”

  Grandpop turned to get the coffees and the ouzo. The diner didn’t have a liquor license, but it always had ouzo. With a full head of white hair and a barrel chest, he wore a white apron over a gray t-shirt and dungaree overalls.

  “I’m glad we decided to do it this way.” She slid a bite of the dessert off her fork and into her mouth, smiling even bigger as it hit her tongue.

  Samantha’s birthday had really been two days earlier, on March 15, while Taylor’s was April 1. Last year, their first birthdays together, they went all out on each other with the restaurants, presents, and surprises. The whole new couple thing. After that exhausting exercise, the proximity and odd calendar dates of their birthdays—the Ides of March and April Fool’s—gave them an idea. Well, gave Taylor the idea, since he’d never much liked celebrating his birthday on the holiday for practical jokes. He’d suggested they honor both on hers. She’d said no; it should be on a date in between—but never March 17. They both loathed being out on St. Patrick’s Day, amateur night for drinking in NYC. That led to this little joint party on Friday, March 18, at the Oddity.

  Grandpop poured the ouzo.

  “Sit down with us, Stamitos,” Samantha said.

  “He never sits in his own place.”

  At which, Grandpop promptly sat next to Samantha, who slid in laughing.

  “Good God,” Taylor lifted his glass, “you’re Ilsa in Casablanca. You got Rick to join a guest.” Taylor tipped the glass and swallowed fast. Ouzo might be a part of his heritage, but he didn’t love it. The taste was a clove, coriander, and cleaning-fluid shock every time.

  “Ingrid Bergman is a wonderful actress.” Grandpop emptied his. “She’s no Samantha. That is why I sit down. Samantha is here with us.” The old man’s eyes, brown irises green-ringed at the edges, focused on Taylor. “We want her to stay with us.”

  “Charm, charm, charm.” More laughter. “I’m not going anywhere. How could I, now that you’ve actually sat down to have a drink?”

  Grandpop started pouring again, and Taylor said, “No, not a second.”

  Taylor’s Third Rule of Drinking required avoiding the hard stuff whenever possible—tough for a man who often found himself in cop bars. And bad-guy bars. Rule two was no booze for breakfast. That was the one he found easiest not to break. He’d evolved the rules over a period of years, yet never talked about them, not even with Samantha.

  “Two birthdays.” Grandpop pushed Taylor’s hand away from over the glass. “Two toasts.” He filled the glasses to the brim.

  “All right, fine. Question for you. For a story I’m working on. Omega means the last, right?”

  “It is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. People use it to refer to a last thing. Or the first and last. Like the Alpha and the Omega in religion.”

  “Any other meanings?”

  “None that I know of.” Grandpop’s face grew serious. “We also can drink one to your father, if you wish.”

  “I don’t wish.”

  “Don’t worry about how this old man feels. I reconciled myself to him years ago. I won’t speak ill of the dead. So I won’t speak.”

  “None of us will. None of us needs to. We’re not drinking to him.”

  “I want to speak,” Samantha said. “We didn’t have to do any of this birthday stuff so soon. We don’t have to go out to Chumley’s tonight. We can go home.” She turned to his grandfather. “I told Taylor we could wait.”

  “I don’t want to wait. I want our celebration. The one we talked about. He’s not taking that away from either of us.”

  The old man stood up. “You two work it out. With what that man did to my grandson here and Billy and my daughter … well, enough. Not speaking ill of the dead, if only so my own dear late wife won’t haunt me. It’s a thing she wouldn’t allow.”

  Samantha took Taylor’s hand, and he squeezed it to affirm this was what he wanted. Some great wave of guilt should have ruined his dessert with her because he wanted the man to be so gone and his life to go on. It didn’t. Instead, as he continued to do, he found Billy again, a fifth grader, smiling, swinging a stickball bat, calling for Taylor to come pitch. Then a teenage Billy, winking, like he agreed with Taylor. He was able to let go of the Professor, but it was bringing back memories of Billy—which would be good, except it was like tearing off four-year-old scar tissue. Maybe he hadn’t healed at all; he’d buried the pain under constant work.

  Taylor and Samantha left the Oddity and took the subway, ending up at Chumley’s in Greenwich Village half an hour later. The bar was empty as a tomb for a Friday night. St. Pat’s hangovers were being nursed all over New York. Or had already been put to bed.

  As luck would have it, the booth where Samantha and Taylor had had their first ever drinks was open. Then she’d been a police officer under investigation for abandoning her partner during a chase that ended in the officer’s death. At first, she’d been deeply suspicious as to whether Taylor could help her in any way. He did, and she’d helped him. They’d identified the killer in a double murder and a ring of corrupt cops. That was the good news, if you could call it that. The bad news was Samantha’s father, an NYPD sergeant, had been one of the cops running the gang. He’d been killed by his partner before Taylor or Samantha could stop it. Afterwards, Samantha had decided she couldn’t go back to work in the NYPD. She was seen as corrupt by some, a source for Internal Affairs by others.

  For Taylor, there had been another hard lesson in that catastrophe. Once he set things rolling, a story didn’t always end with those 20 column inches in the paper. Events could get way out of control. Lives changed. Destroyed. Tough as it had been, he wouldn’t change things. He’d met Samantha. He’d fallen in love with her.

  Taylor sipped his Rolling Rock. “How goes the divorce case?”


  Samantha handled mainly divorce work and shoplifting investigations for Raymond & Associates, Investigators. Taylor knew she could do much more. He was sure she’d have gotten a gold shield if she could have stayed and the NYPD ever started treating women fairly.

  “A mountain of paperwork. I’m trying to figure out where this guy hid her money.”

  “You’re working for the wife.”

  “The husband took off with a Braniff stewardess.”

  “Literally took off?”

  “Living in Jersey City.”

  “I thought it was a joke. Or a joke on a stereotype. The guy running off with a stewardess.”

  “This guy did it. He’s more an asshole than a joke.”

  “Because he skipped out on his wife?”

  Samantha’s eyes narrowed. “He’d be an asshole if he stayed with her or fell in love with a sanitation worker. She had assets—cash, securities, and jewelry—inherited from her parents. They were supposed to be tied up by a trust. Gone. Missing. The paperwork’s not helping, which is pretty much what he intended. Only thing I’ve found so far is he purchased a small parcel in the Adirondacks. No house or buildings on it.”

  Taylor flagged for two more beers.

  “Keep your pants on, buddy,” said the waiter, which was how the staff sounded when they were being polite at Chumley’s, a former speakeasy that still acted like one, up to and including a front door you wouldn’t know was the door to a bar unless you already did.

  He finished his first beer. “Maybe he hid everything up there?”

  “Like buried treasure.”

  “Make it hard to find. The land only in his name?”

  “Definitely.”

  “Why don’t you go to the cops? It’s larceny.”

  “They hear divorce, they run the other way unless I have something really solid. You think I’m going to have to dig up two acres of upstate land?”

  “Unless there’s a treasure map.” He picked up the second beer and smiled.

  “That would be a story.” Her eyes, the blue of gunmetal, which belied the warmth inside her, smiled back.