Lights Out Summer

by Rich Zahradnik

  Three different weeks Taylor had planned to go over to the Gibson apartment to see if drug dealing was going on and who the customers might be. He wanted to get another interview with Abigail Gibson if he could be sure boyfriend Jerome McGill was away. He’d been yanked back by all sorts of breaking news. Four-alarm fire in a posh building on the Eastside. Running gunfight after a bank robbery in the north Bronx. One rumor of big news coming on the .44-caliber murderer that was so strong, he’d had to check it out. Turned out to be nothing. Less than nothing. Plus dozens of lesser stories that were read on the radio once and disappeared into the ether.

  The Gibson story was getting old. Old was the enemy of news. He might have given up, except for the certain conviction no one else was doing anything on Martha Gibson’s homicide. McCauley and anyone else he called at the 112th Precinct all said the same thing. “Waiting for a break.”

  Waiting’s the key word. Who the hell is going to make that break?

  Most frustrating of all, he’d gone up to Carol Wheelwright’s apartment on two of the last three Tuesdays—her day off. She wasn’t there. He’d waited as long as he could. He had a bad feeling she was dodging him.

  With a few minutes to spare one day, he’d called Martha’s high school in Bed-Stuy, the name remembered from her diploma framed and hung in the apartment. Teachers there still remembered her. Good quotes about a smart young woman who had done everything right to get out of a tough neighborhood and into City College. The quotes from the college folks were the same, grades better.

  Taylor liked Martha Gibson, strange as it might sound, since he’d never met her and never would. The more he got into any victim’s life, the closer he thought he was getting. Then he’d pull himself up short. It was a mirage. The sum total of all his facts couldn’t let him in on who the person had really been. He was building his own portrait, and it was one he liked. That was okay by him. The dead were as far away as anyone could get. This was the best he could do. If he liked what he saw, he liked what he saw.

  Jersey Stein sat on a stool with a Tab in front of him. The investigator for the Manhattan DA’s office never drank. Taylor ordered a seven-ounce pony.

  “You’re the only reporter in New York not asking me about the nut job.”

  Stein’s hazel eyes over prominent cheekbones gave Taylor the up and down like he was deciding whether Taylor was a new witness worth interviewing.

  “There are homicides enough to go around,” Taylor said.

  “This Martha Gibson out in Queens. I’ve got nothing.”

  “That’s from asking?”

  “Because your weird hunts entertain me—sometimes—I got an investigator for the Queens DA to call the precinct. Took them half a day to find the file.”

  “Is a lot of that going on now? Files sitting in stacks because of the forty-four-caliber killer manhunt?”

  “C’mon, Taylor. No conspiracies. Every case has to be investigated. They’ve got nothing on Gibson so it sinks to the bottom of the stack.”

  “They’re not chasing this one. I can tell. I’m talking to people before they are. Besides, look at the numbers. Sixteen men moved onto the Omega Task Force. Five murders a day in New York. Who fills the gaps?”

  “Guys are doing overtime to cover.”

  “Everyone wants in on the manhunt. The monster hunt. Young, White girls. The victims could be the kids of detectives. Real emotional connection there. It’s a pretty powerful pull.”

  “Did you hear that one detective’s daughter came close to being a victim?”

  “Who?”

  Stein laughed. “At least you tried. That stays protected.”

  “How about case referrals to the DA?”

  Stein pushed his hand through his thinning hair. “Down a little in this borough. Not enough to say something’s going on.”

  “Hope not. Big town. Lot of bad guys. Gibson worked for this Park Avenue family, DeVries.”

  “You mentioned on the phone. I’ve heard of them. Hard not to. Gave a lot in my boss’s re-election campaign. You probably need to be more careful of them than a lot of those bad guys. They have pull little guys like us can’t do anything about.”

  “Edmond DeVries seems like a decent enough a guy. Not so sure about the son. The father says he’s a liberal Republican.”

  “All New York Republicans have to say that.”

  Taylor waved at the bartender for another round. He decided to make Novak happy with a question, while satisfying his own curiosity.

  “You think the psycho is going to attack in Manhattan? Only Queens and the Bronx so far. There are direct highway connections between those boroughs.”

  “I don’t know where he’s going to hit next. Nobody does. There’s still nothing solid on this guy. One cop told me they’re going to need him to strike again to catch him.”

  “That’s a fucking frightening strategy.”

  “They’ve got guys driving around lovers’ lanes and discos, all concentrated in the Bronx and Queens. Some detectives are parked with mannequins next to them in their cars.”

  “I’d heard that.”

  “I’ve got one other thing for you on Gibson. I looked into Jerome McGill, the sister’s boyfriend. He’s a transplant from Harlem. Name rang a bell with me. His main game on this island wasn’t dealing. Specialty was contract killings.”

  “A hitman?” Taylor pictured the knife he’d used his junior judo to free from Jerome’s grip.

  “Drug trade always has a need for janitors. He sets up the hits and hires extra help from a regular pool of gunmen. That’s from two confidential sources. Never been able to pin a killing on the man.”

  “Which gang?”

  “Independent. Like I said, killing’s his main business. Theory is his drug dealing is mainly to take care of himself and the guys he hires. The benefits package. He needs to be careful, though. Contract work means he can’t be in conflict with the drug gangs that hire him.”

  “Both lines of work are so ethical.”

  “Maybe Queens is more laid-back. Or maybe he’s quit the murder game.”

  “Not clear what he’s doing,” Taylor said. “I haven’t seen him actually sell yet. Know he’s sometimes at the apartment. On the other hand, this lead is more proof that the guys at the One-One-Two aren’t even trying with Gibson.”

  “Wouldn’t say that. Movement of intelligence between the boroughs is terrible. Never been good. What they knew in Manhattan they didn’t in Queens. I passed it along. I mean look at this forty-four psycho. First killing was in July. Took until March to make the connection to the other shootings.”

  “Shouldn’t that be fixed?”

  “Oh sure. But at least we put a man on the moon.”

  —Daily News, page 1, April 18, 1977

  —New York Times, page 1, April 18, 1977

  *

  Chapter 12

  Eighteen-year-old Valentina Suriani and Alexander Esau, 20, were shot at three in morning sitting in a car parked in the Bronx near the Hutchinson River Parkway. Taylor spent that Sunday running to the press conference and chasing police sources and anyone else he could think of and rewrote everything everybody else was rewriting. The Associated Press and United Press International had more and had it earlier. The whole process depressed him. He couldn’t add anything to the story, and two more young people were gone, killed by a crazy man who hunted lovers’ lanes in a city where small apartments didn’t leave room for romance.

  Depressed, listless, and helpless.

  He knew how to get stories. He’d reported on the murders of young people in the past. With this one, the cops complained to him about the impossible task of tracking down one psychopath in a metropolitan area with a population of 15 million people. They needed the killer to make a mistake, which, so far, he hadn’t. Taylor didn’t know how he could help, except sit in a car with Samantha somewhere in the Bronx late at night like old Ted Prager had in Queens, playing target for the Three X Killer. He wasn’t putting her at risk with
a strategy that would likely produce no leads. He knew one thing. Reporters chasing reporters wouldn’t save any lives.

  The next day, he flipped through the Post, imagining the mad scramble at the paper to find the deepest fear in the story, stretched vowels stretching across the newsroom from Murdoch’s office. The coverage went almost to the sports pages. The Times finally put the murders on page one, though with only a two-column, single-deck headline buried beneath President Carter proposing amnesty to illegal aliens, Albany boosting pay to state workers (what happened to that financial crisis?) and of course, the opening of the Yale Center for British Art. Taylor most certainly didn’t believe in exploiting the story, but the Times didn’t need to make an extra effort to show how its home city wasn’t its highest priority—or even in the top three.

  The next day, Chief of Detectives John Keenan held a City Hall presser—speaking carefully like Taylor had never seen, a Chief of Ds walking on eggshells—to name Deputy Inspector Timothy Dowd to head the Omega Group. The task force would move to the 109th Precinct in Flushing and more detectives were being added to the effort.

  More crimes are going to get lost in the shuffle.

  Like he’d told Jersey Stein, it was a numbers game. The NYPD had taken huge cuts during the budget crisis. More than a hundred detectives were going to be shifted to Omega. There couldn’t be enough overtime to close the gaps left in other investigations.

  Taylor knew only one way to fight his helplessness—go after the story he could get, chase the murder of Martha Gibson, and after that, those of the others snuffed out in the daily destruction of life on the city’s streets. He had to get one of his leads—Abigail Gibson, Carol Wheelwright, a DeVries, or Ricky MacDonald—to connect him to a reason for Martha Gibson’s death. Or it would soon go in the books as one of New York’s senseless unsolved killings. Too many got that label.

  For a third time, he arrived at Carol Wheelwright’s apartment, a walk-up in a classic Harlem brownstone, a beautiful building somehow untouched by the urban decay that had attacked the buildings around it like a virus.

  The door opened fast on his second knock. It wasn’t Carol. A muscular man north of six feet grabbed Taylor’s jacket, yanked him inside, slammed him against the wall for good measure—enough measure to jar his teeth and start his head aching—spun him, and shoved him into a chair.

  “Careful of the furniture,” said Carol Wheelwright. “I worked my job to buy this set.”

  The man stepped several feet away and picked up one of those new aluminum baseball bats.

  Sunk deep in the chair, Taylor decided on not moving as the best strategy. The bat would hit him before he could get out of the seat. Anyway, this may be one of the formalities of doing an interview in this corner of New York. Taylor had gotten through worse to find out what he needed.

  “Put the bat down, Robert,” Carol said. “You’re not going to need to hit him.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yet.” Carol turned to face Taylor. “I told my brother you’d given up. You were simply digging around rich people business and got bored. Here you are.”

  “I stopped by twice, looking for you.”

  “It’s my day off. I don’t sit around all day waiting for you.”

  Robert slapped his hand with the bat he was obviously reluctant to put down despite his sister’s instructions. A rough, smudged-looking tattoo on his arm shifted as his muscle flexed. Still, Taylor knew the type.

  “You served?”

  “You got an opinion on the war like every-fucking-body else?”

  “My younger brother was killed. Called MIA in 1972.”

  Now he propped the bat against the wall. “Sorry to hear that. Who was he with?”

  “Tenth Mountain. They said he went after some NVA taking potshots. Didn’t come back.”

  “Marines. I enlisted. It’s important people remember.”

  “Yes, it is.” His stomach squeezed into a cold ball to remind him he’d been doing the opposite the past two years. “Because everyone’s trying to forget.”

  “Not trying. Succeeding.”

  Robert sat next to his sister and sunk deep into the navy-blue cushion of a squared-off modern couch, lifting her a little. Taylor could see why Carol was proud. The living room was furnished in the new Scandinavian style, a striking yet interesting contrast to the century-or-more-old moldings and trim of the interior of the brownstone. The narrow-planked floor was polished to a mirror shine. Framed prints, some produced in an intentionally distorted style, hung on the wall. Famous Blacks like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Others Taylor didn’t know.

  “A White man is doing a story on a Black woman from Queens by coming up to Harlem?”

  “You go where the story takes you. Carol said something was going on in the house. Martha might have been involved,” Taylor looked straight at Carol, “or she knew something. I’m not going to get you in trouble. Your job is safe.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You can trust him,” Robert said. “You don’t do it the way he’s doing it unless you want to do it right. Plus, he’s got the memory for what happened. That’s important.”

  This caught Taylor off guard, but he’d take it—the benefit of the brotherhood of ’Nam by extension.

  “It’s not a lot, but it sounded serious. Martha was taking flowers for the tables outside the sitting room. The family uses that room when it’s just them. She heard a man talking clearly.”

  “Who?”

  “No one she knew. Voice was deep, sort of. She said it definitely wasn’t Charlie or Mr. DeVries. He never yells anyway. The man was saying—”

  “Is this word for word?”

  “Best as I can remember it. He said, ‘We can’t wait any longer. The money’s going to be completely gone. All of it.’ ”

  “Who else was in the room?”

  “She couldn’t tell.”

  “Mother, Audrey, Charlie, guest?”

  “Martha had no idea. Charlie’s girlfriend of the moment was over for lunch that day. I didn’t see her leave. If people are talking, Charlie’s going to be heard. So I guess that would rule him out. The second person was speaking low, Martha said, maybe sitting on the other side of the room by the windows. She couldn’t tell if they were male or female. Couldn’t tell anything. This other person said something, and the male voice got angrier, louder. ‘I don’t care. He might as well be throwing the money out the window. The crazy things he’s investing in. Still writing the same checks to charities when you’re going to be the charity. He has to be stopped.’ The other voice went on for a while. ‘Fine,’ said the loud one. ‘As long as we take care of him by then. Final and done with. No frittering away what’s left.’ Martha heard steps come toward the double door. She left the flowers half arranged and hurried back down the hall. The doors opened.”

  “Was she seen?”

  “She didn’t turn to check. She kept going until she was in the kitchen. She never knew.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “A week before she died.”

  “Who else did she repeat the story to?”

  “Just me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “She was scared.”

  “What about Mr. DeVries?”

  “She liked him. We all do. He’s a kind man.”

  “Would she tell him because she liked him?”

  A pause that meant Martha might have.

  “What would he do if she did?”

  Taylor could guess, but he wanted to hear it.

  “He’d ask the family about who was in the room. He’s always trying to solve problems. He thinks he can every time. He’s too nice to some of them.”

  “If he did do that, whoever it was would know Martha overheard the conversation. Except for the highly unlikely situation that those in the sitting room weren’t family or staff.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “Then someone would know she overheard a
conversation that could be the planning of a murder. Or, they’d know because she’d been seen retreating down the hallway. ‘Handle it by then’ might mean something else. ‘Final and done with’ doesn’t mean many other things.”

  Carol sighed.

  “How do Mr. and Mrs. DeVries get along?”

  “Oh, she’s prickly, but she’s always been prickly. It’s the way of the ladies down there.” She smoothed her dress across her thighs. “Those two always make up when they fight.”

  Taylor rose from the chair.

  “I still haven’t spoken to Martha’s parents. Do you know the address in Bed-Stuy?”

  “I’ll write it down.”

  She handed him the address and walked down to the stoop with him. The afternoon offered that comfortable warmth of spring that made it easy to not notice the temperature at all. Above, between the brownstones on both sides of the street, ran a stripe of light-blue sky with two thin clouds crossing the stripe, possibly the two slowest moving objects in the city that day.

  “I guess I have to trust you,” Carol said.

  “You can trust me.”

  “You know something else was going on with Martha. She had a job before the DeVrieses.”

  “Yeah, Manning. Her boss was coming on to her. She quit. He’s been out of town. I want to talk to him when he gets back.”

  “Quitting wasn’t enough to get rid of that guy. He followed her around. Sent dirty notes. He attacked her.”

  “What did he do?”

  She stared over his shoulder, avoiding his eyes. “He caught her in the courtyard behind the Park Avenue apartment building. Was probably waiting there. He pushed her up into the corner of the fence and was tearing at her clothes. Luckily for her, one of the building’s janitors—Freddie Maxwell—came out and chased him off. He’d hit her a couple of times before, but this was the worst.”