Pigtown Read online

  “There’s a empty pizza box on the backseat,” the driver said, “in case you wanna use a prop.”

  Most of the abandoned buildings they drove past were cinder-blocked shut. Junkies congregated around crack houses while lookouts searched out strangers. When the driver turned into Rutland Road, it was as if they had passed into a different country, with tree-shaded streets and large, well-tended houses set way back from the curb, surrounded by lush, manicured lawns. Women wearing designer clothes and ritual wigs pushed baby carriages and sat on porches, drinking tea. This part of the Seven One was where the Hasidim lived.

  Three blocks later they were driving through the Hispanic section, where men in undershirts played curbside checkers and Latin music blared from tenement windows. Manny spotted a burrito joint.

  “I wanna get something to eat; pull over and stop. It’ll only take me a minute.” The driver did as he was told. Manny opened the door and hurried into the restaurant. He came walking out a short time later, eating a burrito wrapped in aluminum foil and holding two more in his free hand.

  Dreamland was in the middle of a rundown block on Nostrand Avenue, shoehorned between a minisupermarket and a travel agency. The club’s facade was black marble, with one small window fringed in tiny green blinking bulbs. As they drove past, the wheelman lifted his chin toward a man sitting on a stoop across the street from Dreamland.

  “There’s our lookout.”

  Manny bit into his second burrito and glanced at the man on the stoop. He was young and, unlike Manny and the driver, black. Sporting spiked pigtails, he fit perfectly into the neighborhood scene. A Walkman was plugged into his ears, and he was holding it in his hand, swaying to the rap. Manny tried to spot the blocking cars but couldn’t. The wheelman drove around the block; he took a walkie-talkie out from under his seat and, pressing the transmit button, said, “Yo, ma man, talk to me.”

  Swaying to the rap music, the man with the spiked pigtail said into his Walkman, “They’re inside, and alone. When you hear the sirens, go. But make it quick, ’fore the rest of the brothers get there.”

  The wheelman drove around the corner to New York Avenue and parked, with the motor running.

  Manny bit into his burrito. He was always surprised when he did a job for the Hippo that he never got nervous or excited the way he did whenever he climbed into the ring. My heart don’t even beat fast, he thought, listening to the rising crescendo of police sirens. The whoosh of sirens rose from parallel streets and then slowly died away as the patrol cars sped to the radio code ten-thirteen, assist patrolman. Manny pulled the bag out from under the seat, looked at the wheelman, and said, “Drive around the corner and double-park a few doors down from the bar,” lifting the bottom of his T-shirt and tucking one .38 into the waistband of his jeans. He put on the baseball cap with the sun visor in front and reached behind to take the pizza box off the backseat. He raised the cover and put the second revolver in the empty box, taking care that the grip was facing him.

  The wheelman double-parked a few doors down from Dreamland. Manny took a final look at the police mug shot of Hollyman and Gee. He got out of the car, palming the pizza box in his left hand, holding the last burrito in his right. Stepping into the doorway, he took a fast bite and tossed away the remainder.

  Hollyman and Gee were sitting alone at the bar. The place smelled of cleaning disinfectant. The sudden rush of sunlight caused the two men at the bar to look over their shoulders at the stranger. “What the fuck you doin’ here, white boy?” Hollyman snarled.

  “Somebody called, ordered a pizza con mucho chiz,” Manny said, affecting a Spenglish accent and moving closer to his victims.

  “Hold it right there, ma man,” Gee said, sliding off his stool. “Nobody here ordered no pizza.”

  Manny slid his right hand into the box, curled his fingers around the checkered grip, and fired, hitting Gee in the chest and hurling him backward against the bar, where he crumpled to the floor. Hollyman made a desperate attempt to dive behind the bar. The shooter’s second round caught him in midair, splaying him across the top. Manny yanked the revolver from the box, ran up to them, and fired two rounds behind Hollyman’s ear, exploding his face. Gee’s eyes were open, his body thrashing on the dirty floor as his life’s blood emptied from his mouth. Leaning down, Manny held the .38 a few inches from Gee’s right eye and fired two rounds. When the head blew open, brains splattered over Manny’s legs. He scraped the gore off with the box, tucked the .38 into his waistband next to the one he had not had to use, and hurried from the bar, anxious to get back to the gym.

  5

  During the drive back from Jersey City through the Holland Tunnel, Kahn glanced at the whip and asked, “What’s the story with that fight poster in your office? Did you know any of those fighters?”

  “Al ‘Bummy’ Davis was a friend of my dad’s.” He did not tell her that the nickname “Bummy” stood for Bum, or that Bummy Davis had been paid to take a dive in the Graziano fight but instead got pissed off at Graziano in the third round and knocked out the contender with a straight to the jaw.

  The Sunday that Matt’s father left his family in Junior’s restaurant to go to work was the day that the wiseguys caught up with Bummy. Matt’s dad had finished his tour and was driving home when he came down with diarrhea. He shouldn’t have gorged on Junior’s pickles. He looked across the street, saw Russo’s, and decided to double-park, run in, and use the toilet. Bummy Davis was at the bar, bragging about his knockout, when a man wearing dark glasses entered and shot Bummy twice in the back of the head.

  Patrolman Stuart came running out of the toilet just in time to see the shooter running out of the bar. He got outside and looked down the street, only to see the getaway car speeding off. He ran to his car, jumped in, and tried to give chase, but his engine wouldn’t turn over, so he leaped out and ran after the getaway car on foot. He stopped after a fruitless block and returned to the bar.

  The Palace Guard was furious that Patrolman Joe Stuart had been inside a known gamblers’ hangout a week before Christmas. To the schemers and plotters of the Job, the only reason for a cop being in a joint like Russo’s at that time of the year was to pick up a holiday gift for himself.

  Russo’s Christmas money had always been picked up by the captain’s bagman and, after being lumped together with the rest of the holiday money, distributed up the chain of command. Anyone who tried to make a score on his own was considered a renegade and a troublemaker.

  The schemers and plotters did a round-robin and consulted the “F File” on Joe Stuart. The word came back loud and clear: He was an honest cop who did not eat or shop on the arm or participate in the Job’s Christmas tradition. The Palace Guard decided that even if he was honest, he shouldn’t have been inside Russo’s, so they decided to take a piece out of Joe Stuart and served him with charges and specifications charging him with cowardice.

  No other cop in the history of the NYPD had ever been so charged. Matt’s father was suspended from duty. The newspapers picked up on the story and turned it into a headline. “Stuart’s father is a coward,” Matt’s classmates taunted him, goading him into fight after fight.

  The department trial was held in the Seven Eight Precinct’s ornate trial room. The Palace Guard offered a plea bargain: cop out to failure to take proper police action and be restored to duty with the loss of fifteen days’ vacation. Joe Stuart told them to shove it.

  On the third day of the department trial the defense called a surprise witness, one Beansy Rutolo. He testified that he saw Patrolman Stuart give chase, try to start his car, then leap out and run after the speeding vehicle. Joe Stuart was acquitted. But the damage had been done. For the remainder of his time in the Job, other cops would look funny at him and walk stiff-legged around him, wondering if he really had taken police action. The scandal stuck to Matt, too, all through high school and followed him onto the Job.

  Beansy had not only saved his dad’s job, he also had prevented the family from breaking up t
he way most dismissed cops’ families did. What none of the detectives in his squad would ever know was that Stuart owed Beansy big time. Now was his chance to repay the debt in full measure.

  Kahn had just driven past the Prospect Park Zoo when Borrelli’s curt voice crackled over the radio. “Lou.”

  Stuart keyed the mike. “Yeah?”

  “Location?”

  “The zoo.”

  “Eighty-five at N and U.”

  “On the way.” Stuart cradled the receiver, wondering what they were going to find at Nostrand Avenue and Union Street.

  A radio motor patrol car, its flashing bar light painting the street with red and yellow hues, was parked in the middle of the intersection, its two-man crew on foot, detouring traffic. A stretch of yellow crime scene tape formed a restrictive cordon around Dreamland’s entrance. A black patrol sergeant and three policemen manned the police line, calming the angry crowd of Rastafarians.

  Kahn pulled up next to the crime scene station wagon. As Stuart was getting out of the car, he spotted Jones talking to a group of Rastafarians. The detective was wearing his customary African hat and scarf, his face a mask of calm that was at odds with his tense body language.

  The bodies inside Dreamland had no faces; only jagged shards of bone and clotted gore remained. A photographer was snapping pictures. Stuart bent to examine the body next to the bar. Borrelli walked out from behind the bar and came over to the whip.

  Stuart glanced up at him. “Do we know who they are?”

  “We found no ID on them, but we think they’re Paddy Holiday’s friends, Hollyman and Gee.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  Borrelli scratched his head and replied, “We got three people who were coming out of the market, next door. They saw a white guy, maybe Hispanic, wearing a brown cap and holding a pizza box, get out of a car and walk in here. None of them can agree on his age, height, or weight. Only that he was young and had an olive complexion. I had them driven to the Squad to work on a composite with the department artist.”

  “Anything on the car or the driver?” Stuart asked, standing up and stretching, his hands pressing into the small of his back to relieve his tension.

  “An old Buick or Chevy, blue, black, New York plates. The driver was a young white male with razor-cut sideburns.”

  “There’s some dental work left on this one,” Kahn said, examining the body splayed across the bar.

  Stuart watched the crime scene detective dusting the bar for prints. “Who’s doing the canvass?”

  “The borough flew in six detectives to help out. EMS pronounced, and the ME is not going to respond,” Borrelli said.

  The same two morgue attendants who had responded to Beansy’s homicide were standing at the far end of the bar, waiting.

  Borrelli said, “Just before this thing went down, a phony thirteen was phoned in to 911.”

  “A cop in trouble at the other end of the precinct, right?” Stuart said with a cynical edge.

  “Yeah. This was no nickel-and-dime hit,” Borrelli said angrily, watching Jones walk into Dreamland to join them.

  The big detective came over to the whip, looked down at the headless corpse, and said, “According to my Rastafarian brothers, these faceless decedents were Hollyman and Gee. Whoever washed them knew their schedules, because they came here every day to talk business, and were only alone here for a short period of time.”

  “Does any of the Posse know who did it and why?” Stuart asked.

  “They be knowing, but they ain’t tellin’,” Jones said. “Some of the Rasties told me that they saw some wiseguy types parked in cars at Union and President and Nostrand. I figure they were the crash cars to protect the shooter’s getaway.”

  Stuart nodded and strolled off, examining the crime scene. As he walked outside into the small entryway, a glint of something on the ground caught his eye: a half-eaten burrito in an aluminum sleeve. He bent down beside the sandwich. It looked fresh, so he poked at it gingerly to make sure.

  He looked out at the crowd gathered behind the police line, for the most part black and poor, and thought, There ain’t nobody in this part of town throwing away a half-eaten burrito; most of ’em don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and there are no burrito joints in this part of the Seven One. I bet this belonged to the shooter; he was in a hurry because he had to do them before any of the Posse showed up, so he took a fast bite and tossed the rest before he went inside. Stuart called inside to the photographer, “Take some shots of this burrito.”

  A crime scene unit detective came over with a plastic evidence bag and tweezed the burrito into it. Borrelli entered the newly found evidence into the crime scene evidence log. Watching him do this, Stuart suddenly felt almost sure that this hit was payback for Beansy.

  Jerry Jordon walked into Dreamland, came over to the whip, and said, “The witnesses are driving the artist nuts. They can’t even agree on the shape of the shooter’s head.”

  “So much for eyewitnesses,” Stuart said in disgust.

  Jordon said in a low, confidential tone, “Lou, while I was back in the squad room Patrick Sarsfield Casey phoned. He wants you to call him back in the borough.”

  Stuart motioned his detectives into a huddle. “I want you to stay here and do another canvass. Try and find some people who can ID the guy who got out of that car and came in here. I got a feeling on this one. If we work fast, we just might get lucky. I’m going to take the burrito to the Latent Squad and see if they can lift any prints off that aluminum.” He looked at Kahn. “Helen, I want you to bang out the ‘Unusual,’ and when you fax it up the chain, include Beansy’s ‘Unusual.’”

  “You want we should drag Paddy Holiday in for a heart-to-heart?” Jordon asked.

  “That would be a waste of time,” Stuart said. “He’s only going to talk when we have his balls in a vise.”

  Stuart went over to the crime scene log and signed out the burrito: name, rank, time, description of property, destination, reason for taking evidence. He took a manila property clerk envelope out of the portable clerical case and put the burrito inside.

  A sudden rain shower drummed on the windshield as Stuart inched his unmarked car through the traffic crawling over the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan. He unhooked the cellular telephone from the car’s console and scrolled through the speed-dial memory bank until he came to Detective Borough Command Brooklyn South. He pressed the send button. A gruff voice answered, “Brooklyn South Detectives.”

  “Patrick Sarsfield Casey, please.” He smiled to himself, thinking, The Job won’t be the same without Casey in it.

  The inspector’s booming voice came onto the line.

  “Matt Stuart, Inspector.”

  “Those homicides you’re catching are tossing my clearances into the toilet. You gonna break any of them?”

  “I got a feeling we’re going to hit a home run on both homicides. It figures that Hollyman and Gee were payback for Beansy. There’s a possibility we might have come up with the perp’s prints on some aluminum we found at the scene. If we grab the shooter fast, we have a good shot at getting the paymaster.”

  “Good, that’s the kind of shit I like to hear from my squad bosses.” Casey’s voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “The c of d wants a favor.”

  “What?”

  “He’d like you to pick up a detective from Pickpocket and Confidence. The guy’s name is Paul Whitehouser.”

  Stuart clamped his jaw. The chief of detectives was dumping a detective from one of the Detective Division’s most sought-after plums into a shithouse. “What’s the problem?”

  “He can’t keep his dick in his pants.”

  “Boss, I run a busy shop, I don’t need any more headaches,” Stuart said.

  “Hey, Matt, get with the program. This is a command performance. The c of d is only going through the motions of asking.”

  “Where’s Whitehouser’s weight?”

  “He’s the c of d’s nephew.”

>   “That’s just great,” Matt said, and pressed the off button, wondering what the real story was on Whitehouser. He was glad the Latent Squad was in One Police Plaza. He’d pay a visit to the Ice Maiden and get the real lowdown on the newest member of his squad. He reached across the seat for the property clerk envelope.

  Lieutenant Bill Manning, a tweedy guy with an affection for bow ties and briar pipes, was the whip of the Latent Squad, the unit responsible for matching up fingerprints developed at crime scenes with the prints of the mutts who left them. He was standing inside his corner cubicle, puffing furiously on his pipe, when Stuart walked in. “Matt, how are you?” he asked, extending his hand. “What brings you to the Big Building?”

  “I hear you fingerprint wizards have developed a way of lifting latents off aluminum foil.”

  “Yeah,” Manning said proudly. “We got something real new. Why?”

  Stuart showed him the evidence bag containing the burrito. “This is from a warm homicide.”

  “How come you’re playing errand boy and not one of your detectives?” he asked, watching Stuart through the swirl of pipe smoke.

  “Because every one of my people is in the field working cases.”

  Manning bit down on his stem, nodded, and said, “Let’s go.”

  He led Stuart outside and down a wide aisle lined on both sides with computer terminals manned by technicians conducting split-screen fingerprint comparisons. He opened a steel fire door halfway down the aisle and motioned Stuart inside. It was a large room, with counters bracketed to the walls. The space in the center of the room was empty. The walls and ceiling were blanketed in buff-colored firebricks, and a metallurgical oven was embedded in the wall to the right of the entrance. Four large black dials ran down the oven’s right side, and a thick glass window allowed technicians to look inside the oven. Atomizers and Bunsen burners were on the counters. Five gray metal supply lockers stood against the wall opposite the oven. A window air conditioner hummed softly.