Lights Out Summer

by Rich Zahradnik

  “I’d write it.”

  “I bet you would. You’re really going to keep away from the forty-four killer?”

  “What’s there to get near? I read the papers every day. They’ve got nothing. Speculation. Theories. No evidence but the bullets. Took the police six months to connect those. Not a decent witness. The papers are rewriting the same thing, turning it inside out and upside down and sideways.”

  “People are scared.”

  “ ’Course they are. Hearing the same drumbeat every day with nothing happening. The waiting game. That’ll scare the shit out of you.”

  She took a drink from her bottle of Schmidt’s. “I talked to a guy I know on the force—one of the few who will still speak with me.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “They’re going through every Charter Arms Bulldog revolver registered in New York. They’re chasing tips based on the police artists’ drawings. Interviewing anyone who says a neighbor or a coworker is a weirdo, then interviewing the weirdo.”

  Taylor shook his head. “That will take months. I got enough to do without rehashing the same facts every day. No one cares Martha Gibson was gunned down in her hallway. So I do.”

  “Another of Taylor’s strays.”

  “Lots of loose ends on this one. The late Martha has a druggie sister with a pusher for a boyfriend. Martha worked for this DeVries family on Park Avenue. May be big family secrets there. Maybe not. Maybe she heard something. Maybe not. There’s got to be other people I can talk to, find out why this woman’s life was taken, ten feet from her front door. Beats the hell out of interviewing the man or woman on the street about how scared he or she is of Mr. Forty-Four—the interview only frightening them more.”

  “You know your business.”

  “Nah, I’m probably making a colossal career mistake. Gotta go with the stories that got me here.”

  “You had me check out that Manning Corp where the victim worked for four months.” Samantha pulled out her notebook, the type issued to a police officer. A little habit she couldn’t—or didn’t want to—let go of. “Importer of shoes from Europe with a three-thousand-square-foot office in that famous building. Been there twenty-three years. Ricky MacDonald’s the president. He’s got one conviction for solicitation and was arrested for sexual assault. Got off on that one.”

  Taylor nodded. “Helpful, as always. Maybe there’s something in this story about sex, rather than drugs or a rich family. Or maybe I haven’t found the right connection—”

  “It’s all about connections.”

  That was his line.

  “Yes it is. I still need to talk to Martha’s parents. Get another perspective on Abigail and Jerome. See if they know of anyone else who was a threat. I’ll go door to door in her building if I have to.”

  They tumbled into the bed of their tiny bedroom in the Murray Hill apartment. It had started with more beers in the living room and making out on the couch. Mason leapt up on the bed with them, knocking Taylor’s face with manic tail wagging. Samantha fell over, giggling.

  “No, Mason!” Taylor pulled at his collar. “It’s living room time for you.” He pulled the dog into the next room and turned up the Blondie song while he was at it.

  Samantha kept laughing. “This is so sexy. We need to settle in one place—one place with more space.”

  “I don’t know if my mother’s god, the universe, your mother’s god, or fate wants that—for me at least. Thieving carpenters. Temporary use of a dry-docked houseboat in the Bronx. An apartment in Brooklyn Heights destined for the owner’s brother-in-law. All in two years.”

  “I miss Brooklyn.”

  “I miss you.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “I miss more of you.”

  He kissed her as she unbuttoned her shirt and pulled off her bra. He was still fiddling with his belt as he kissed her.

  “I’ll do that,” she said.

  The belt came off with a whisper.

  They made birthday love drunk and slow, and for the moment, happy.

  Chapter 9

  Taylor stepped out of the elevator onto the DeVries floor. Their floor, their whole floor. With so little space for most people in New York, it was a concept he still had a hard time getting his head around.

  Instead of the butler, a young Black woman greeted him. This surprised Taylor only because he figured a household like this ran on rules that dated from the last century.

  “Mr. DeVries will meet you in the library,” said the woman, who looked to be in her early to mid twenties and was dressed in a maid’s uniform. White apron over a black dress. She had a plain, flat face and hard-to-miss dark-green eyes.

  She started walking and Taylor stayed even with her, rather than following.

  “You’re a maid? Like Martha was?”

  A sharp look. “You’re the reporter?”

  “Doing a story on her. On what happened to her.”

  Intensity came into her eyes. She checked behind them, spoke in a low tone. “Have you been told anything yet about a conversation Martha overheard here at the apartment?”

  “By her sister,” he replied. “No details. Martha got a phone call. She told the caller she didn’t want to meet. Denied hearing whatever the caller asked about or knowing who was involved. That the one?”

  “She went home really upset the night it happened. It was a week before she was …” Carol left the sentence unfinished. She didn’t want to pick any of the words for murdered.

  “What did she hear?”

  “There isn’t time now.”

  “Have you told anyone? The cops?”

  “No.” A near whisper. “They haven’t even come. They talked to Mr. DeVries once on the phone. I don’t want anything public. Like Martha, I need this job.”

  “You understand what ‘off the record’ means?”

  “You think I’m stupid because I wear this?” She tugged at the apron.

  “No, I … I’m sorry. If you know something, I need to hear it. I’ll keep you out of it. It might keep the police away if I’m the one pushing the lead.”

  “I’m not a coward. I liked Martha. She was good to me when I got here.”

  They approached the library. Taylor wrote his phone number on a sheet of notebook paper, tore it out, and handed it over. She stuffed it in a pocket like it would burst into flames if it stayed out in the light.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Carol Wheelwright.”

  “Call me.”

  Inside the library, DeVries already had a cocktail. Taylor figured a lot of hours were the cocktail hour around this place—or maybe DeVries had his own problem with the stuff. Smiling, the gray-haired man rose from his chair to stand a good head above Taylor, and offered his hand.

  “Pleasure. What can I get you?”

  “Another Rheingold is fine.”

  Maybe I have a problem.

  “You really are a committed beer drinker.” DeVries signaled to Carol, who turned on her heels and was gone somewhere else on the Eighth Floor.

  “You don’t like beer?”

  “At a picnic, down by the ocean. Sure. Of an afternoon, nothing really beats a well mixed drink.”

  “What’re you having?”

  “A Tom Collins. My favorite. Well, my favorite cocktail with gin. A one-hundred-year-old classic.”

  “Do you have a favorite for each of the spirits?”

  “Never much liked vodka. Or the damn Ruskies.” Taylor’s eyebrows lifted too quickly. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those Goldwater-Reagan types. Liberal for a Republican. A long family tradition. Rocky and Lindsay. That sort.”

  “Lindsay didn’t leave the city in very good shape.”

  “Think you’ll find the problems go back to Wagner—even further than that. Lots of budgeting magic, with a few of my dear old friends in banking skimming off a bit all along the way. Never trusted quick money. They kept telling me about the easy, easy profits in municipal finance in those year
s. How could a city with so many hard-working people, so much business, and so much money get in such deep trouble? Criminal behavior.”

  “Not the kind you go to jail for.”

  “No, and it’s a damn shame. How can I help you with your reporting on Martha? I haven’t thought of anything else related to her work here.”

  That’s okay. Goal Number One, connecting with a staffer, already accomplished. Now wander the conversation around and see if I hook something else.

  “Did Martha ever have any problems with vendors or suppliers?”

  “No. That would be cook’s area to take care of anyway.”

  “Or building staff?”

  “Hardly. They’re well vetted.”

  “Let me tell you what I’ve learned.” Taylor reported in detail what he knew about the drug connection, including that Jerome McGill had an inordinate interest in the rent-controlled apartment. “I admit, I haven’t gotten as far as I’d like. Other stories have come along. We’re a small wire service. Have to feed the beast.”

  “I imagine it’s some beast.” DeVries turned his eyes, which were the gray of a heavy mist, to the ceiling. “Journalism is going in the wrong direction.”

  “I’m not going in the right direction, I’ll say that. Back at the Messenger-Telegram, I’d have the time I needed to go after this story. The beast could stand to let me do some reporting.”

  “The Garfields really messed things up. I don’t say it because I lost a packet when your paper closed. I’ve recorded bigger losses. The city needed a newspaper that wasn’t trying to be the Times yet wasn’t engaged in this awful tabloid war. New York City news as a priority, straight and tightly edited. That’s what the MT did.”

  Taylor wanted to ask a question to keep the conversation about Martha going, but his mind wandered for a moment as memories of the paper flooded in, almost overwhelmed him. The newsroom, his desk, the cop shop, faces of colleagues, the MT for sale on newsstands, the presses running, sharp black headlines standing out from gray newsprint. His mood blackened and sunk under the weight of what he recalled. He’d kept the darkness away during the past several months by staying true to this commitment to make it work at City News. DeVries didn’t mean to cause him pain, but he had.

  Didn’t help that DeVries picked then to ask the obvious. “Do you miss it?”

  “Every single day.” The blackness swirled. He was sweating in this cool room. Stuck forever at the City News Bureau. That was something to raise a real fear. Yet it was a reaction few would understand and many would think a joke—afraid of having a job, of sitting in an office typing for decent pay when decent was hard to come by now.

  Time to quit fishing while he was ahead. He needed to hear from Carol before pushing harder. He finished the beer.

  “I’m sorry to take up your time. In murder, you look at home first, then you look at work. After that, the field gets a whole lot bigger.”

  “You sound like a cop.”

  Some police-beat reporters would take that as a compliment. Not Taylor.

  “I tell stories. I don’t arrest anyone. Cops have the power—to arrest, interrogate, search. I can only ask questions of those who will talk to me and ask more based on the answers I get.”

  From outside came an attention-getting clearing of a throat like you only heard on TV. A rotund man in a three-piece pinstripe suit stood next to Charlie DeVries.

  “Ah,” DeVries rose from his seat, “Taylor, this Nicholas Fourier, my accountant.” He stopped, paused a second, and turned to Taylor. “Martha was loved in this household. If you find out more, please come see me.”

  Taylor briefly considered and discarded the idea of asking to interview all the staff. He wanted to pursue Carol’s approach first. Asking to talk to everyone could alert the very person who was involved.

  “I’m sorry, Nicholas. The time flew by.”

  “It always does if I’m out here trying to fix things.” Fourier had a round, angry red face.

  “Let’s take this into the office.” For the first time, DeVries sounded put off, maybe embarrassed.

  “Why did you sell those munis? I told you—”

  DeVries put his hand on Fourier’s back to turn him in the direction of wherever the office was. “In the office, please, Nicholas. I have a guest.”

  Guest. There was a change. Usually, it went, not in front of the reporter. More and more, Taylor liked DeVries, no matter they came from opposite ends of the New York social solar system.

  Taylor wasn’t sure of the way out. He’d been too busy taking in the rooms and their fixtures as he’d been led through the maze on his two visits.

  Charlie DeVries remained. An office and a library. Taylor’s brother had the line for it: Nice work if you can get it. Billy didn’t get work. Or an office or a library. He got dead.

  “Can you show me where the elevator is?”

  “You think I’m the help?”

  “Never that.”

  “Follow.”

  A command, not a request. Charlie walked with a bit of a weave. Early happy hour for at least half the family?

  “You’re still working on Martha’s murder?”

  “Yes. Your father is concerned about what happened to her.”

  “Give him that. He cares about people. That’s the good side of him.” He handed Taylor a business card. “Martha was a nice lady. Not sure how what happened all the way out in Queens connects to us.” He might have been talking about Montana. “Call if I can help. That’s my service. They’ll find me anytime.”

  The card contained Charlie’s name and a phone number set in a typeface invented around the time of Gutenberg. No job, no company. The business card of the wealthy.

  On the elevator ride down, Taylor thought about Carol Wheelwright’s hint that she knew something. Whether she called him or not, he’d find a way to talk to her.

  They helped the short fat man onto a table. His name was Jerry something, the managing editor of the Long Island Press. His paper had died today, Friday, March 25. This was the paper’s wake, held in a bar and grill called the Lamplighter Inn in Jamaica, Queens, where the paper had been headquartered on 168th Street. Taylor was here out of respect, as were reporters and editors from the other New York papers and newswires. Despite its name, the Press was a bona fide New York paper, based in one of the outer boroughs, and in recent years, particularly strong with its coverage of local government corruption. Jimmy Breslin, the top Daily News columnist, got his start at the Press.

  Once every borough but the Bronx had its own daily. The Brooklyn Eagle had finally given up the ghost in 1963. The Staten Island Advance still published, owned by the same company that just killed off the Press, which had fought the big New York papers and Long Island’s Newsday for stories and readers until it had been crushed between.

  Jerry Something wobbled, and hands reached to steady him.

  He raised his glass. “The paper started as the Long Island Farmer back in 1821. One hundred fifty-six years later, we’re burying it as the Long Island Press. We keep burying newspapers in this town. This keeps up and we’re not … we’re not ….” A wobble and a misstep and Jerry Something fell over into the arms of his unemployed staff.

  Taylor couldn’t blame Jerry. He’d seen people drunker back in 1975, on Nov. 6, at the wake for the Messenger-Telegram. He would have liked to hear what Jerry was going to predict would happen if New York kept losing its papers. For everyone here, it was personal. Jobs. In 1975, it’d been a job for Taylor, too. There was something more, yet like everything else New York was losing, no one talked about it.

  “Saw a lot of papers go under during my career.” The skinny old man offered his hand. “Ted Prager. Worked for one that died, The Morning Sun, among others.”

  “I know your name. You were an assistant city editor at the News. Taylor with City News Bureau.”

  “At the end, yeah, in the fifties. I was a police reporter for decades before I sat down at that desk.”

  “Same b
eat.”

  “You working on the serial killer?”

  “Leaving that for others.”

  “Surprises me no one’s brought up the Three X murders.”

  Taylor’s look must have told Prager there was good reason no one had brought it up—or at least Taylor hadn’t. He’d never heard of a Three-X anything.

  “Time heals, I guess. People forget. We don’t learn from these stories. In the early summer of 1930, Joseph Mozynski was enjoying an extramarital tryst with Catherine May on a quiet street in Whitestone, Queens. The car door flew open and a deafening roar followed. Mozynski slumped dead in May’s arms. The killer calmed down May and assured her he meant her no harm. After helping her clean herself up, he rode with her on a bus and then a trolley to near where she lived, at which point he handed her a slip of paper with the victim’s name stamped with the killer’s signature, a circled Three X.”

  Taylor took out his notebook. He wasn’t much for historical stories. He wanted the new in news. However, he hadn’t seen a sidebar on the 3X killer published anywhere. Be easy enough to write up Prager’s interview. Would keep Novak happy and Cramly off his back for a good ten minutes.

  “Five days later, one Noel Sowley was shot to death at another Queens lovers’ lane. Now the cops and the press knew a maniac was on the loose. People were scared to death to use any of the dark byways of this borough. Believe me, they were much darker and quieter back then. Cops sat in cars in pairs with one wearing a wig so they’d look like a couple.”

  Taylor looked up from writing. He’d heard cops were setting up as decoys now.

  “That’s right,” said Prager with a satisfied smile. “Same sort of thing the detectives are doing with the forty-four killer. My city desk assigned me to do the same with a colleague, Rosaleen. It was no fun being a sitting duck for a murderer, let me tell you. I didn’t let my wife know, not because anything was going on, but so she wouldn’t worry. We spent the tense nights smoking and coming up with theories about when, where, and how Three X would attack again. Instead of a murder, letters started coming in to one of the evening papers. Almost daily. Three X said his work was nowhere near done. He was going to kill fourteen more men—members of a secret Polish-White Russian society who had not lived up to their commitments. He named the society the Red Diamond—a group that only existed in this nut’s mind, as it turned out. Made damn good copy, though.