Rizzo’s Fire

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sergeant Brian Malloy was a fifteen-year veteran assigned as a supervisor of patrol at the Sixty-second Precinct. He and Rizzo were well known to each other.

Malloy, Rizzo, Jackson, and D’Antonio stood in a tight semicircle at the rear of the apartment in the small, ransacked bedroom. The room’s two casement windows on the back wall were separated by a long, worn dresser. The four cops stood in front of the window closest to the single bed. Broken glass from a shattered pane lay at their feet.

“So, Brian,” Rizzo said. “This is where you figure the perp came in?”

Malloy nodded. “Looks like it. When my patrol guys called and told me about the smell, I came here expectin’ to find some old man dead in bed. I got the key to the front door from the landlord and let myself in. We found the body where it is now. We looked around, saw this broken window. Looks like somebody broke in, came across the victim, and wound up strangling him in the kitchen. You can see the bedroom was ransacked. Probably some fucked-up junkie lookin’ for a quick score and not thinkin’ too clear.”

Rizzo nodded absently. “Yeah, more than likely.” He looked around the room, his eyes falling on the nightstand beside the bed. A thick, gold wristwatch embossed with diamonds circling the crystal, lay there. It appeared heavy and very old, the numerals on its face in the floral, antiquated style of an earlier era.

“That’s funny,” he said, walking over to it. “This watch is right here out in the open, and the perp didn’t grab it. Looks like an antique, from back in the forties maybe. And it looks expensive.”

Priscilla, now next to him, bent to the watch and examined it under the bright sunlight streaming in from the window.

“It’s expensive, all right,” she said. “Karen’s grandfather has one very similar to this. The guy’s about ninety, he got the watch when he was a fighter pi lot. This is a Breitling, it’s Swiss made. He says it’s worth about ten, twelve grand now.”

“Well, it sure looks better’n my forty-dollar Timex,” Rizzo said, rubbing at a slight twitch in his eye. “So our junkie genius missed his big score, eh? Too busy lookin’ through the sock drawers?”

Priscilla looked at him. “Maybe.”

He stepped back from the table. “We’ll let CSU photograph the watch,” he said, moving back to the window.

He bent to the broken pane once again, peering out into the backyard. “Let me ask you something, Brian. When you came in the front door, were both locks engaged?”

Malloy shook his head. “No, just the lock in the doorknob. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but later, after we found the victim, I started thinking about it. The guy had a two-hundred-dollar Schlage deadbolt on that door, but the cheap Kwikset knob lock was the only one he locked.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said. “You’d figure he’d have the deadbolt thrown.” He scanned the backyard, then straightened up, facing Malloy once again.

“What about this door?” he asked, indicating the rear door leading from the bedroom into the outer basement.

Malloy nodded. “Deadbolted and the knob lock and safety chain engaged.”

Rizzo dropped to one knee, examining a small plastic box screwed to the wall beneath the window. He reached to the box, removing its cover. A nine-volt battery sat in place against a small circuit board. A gray wire ran from the side of the box to a pressure switch installed on the window jam. He replaced the cover and stood.

“Poor man’s alarm system,” he observed. “If this thing is turned on and the window opens and releases the pressure switch, the box sounds a warning.” He bent slightly and pointed to the box. “The switch is in the off position.”

D’Antonio moved across to the other window and bent to examine the second alarm. “This one is on, Joe,” he said.

Rizzo rubbed his chin. “So the guy is safety minded enough to buy a couple a cheap window alarms, an expensive deadbolt for the front door. And he’s got the rear door leadin’ to his landlord’s basement bolted, locked, and chained. All that, then he leaves the front deadbolt unlocked and turns off one window alarm?” He paused. “This is startin’ to give me a fuckin’ headache.”

“How about this, Joe?” Priscilla suggested. “Junkie breaks the window, climbs in. The alarm was off ’cause the victim was about to go to bed, so maybe he’s planning to open the window and get some air. Junkie comes across vic, they struggle, he strangles the guy, then lets himself out through the front door. The doorknob locks automatically, but you need the key to lock the deadbolt from the outside, so it don’t get locked.”

Rizzo smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay. Case closed.”

Priscilla shrugged. “I’m just sayin’.”

“Yeah, I know. But I’m thinkin’ if the bottom window is alarmed, you open the top window when you wanna get air. And if you break into a place from the rear, you exit from the rear. Why risk runnin’ into Joe Citizen out front on the street?” He turned to Malloy. “How do I get out to this backyard?”

Malloy beckoned to Rizzo. “Follow me.”

D’Antonio reached into his jacket and removed his cell phone. “I’ll see you later,” he said. “I wanna get some help down here, get a street search and canvass going.”

Once outside, Rizzo had a clear view of all the backyards serving the complex of one-family houses surrounding the victim’s home.

“This backyard is pretty secure,” he said. “The attached houses on the next street form a solid wall, no access points other than through the houses themselves. And this yard is fenced in pretty good. Seems an unlikely target for a burglar. Hell, you go to either end of the block, you could walk down half a dozen driveways and get behind twice as many houses. Why come all the way up here? There’s nothin’ special about this place.”

Malloy shrugged. “Stupidity, probably.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said with a nod. “We can never rule out stupidity.”

The area surrounding the ground-level broken window was covered with worn, cracked cement. After carefully examining the surrounding yard and the window itself but turning up nothing of value, the three cops returned to the apartment to search for anything that might prove useful. While they did so, the Crime Scene Unit arrived and began their slow, methodical process-photographing, measuring, and dusting the scene. After CSU completed the portion of their investigation that centered on the corpse, it was carefully placed into a black rubber body bag and removed by morgue personnel.

Later, Rizzo and Priscilla sat at the landlord’s kitchen table, the elderly man and his wife staring at them with pale, grim faces.

“So,” Rizzo asked, “Mr. Lauria was your tenant for over ten years?”

The landlord, Victor Annasia, nodded gravely. “Yes,” he said, his voice strained with tension. “Eleven, it would have been, this January coming.”

“Tell me about him,” Rizzo said.

The man shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell. He lived alone, a bachelor. Didn’t seem to have any friends, none at all. In ten years, except for a cousin of his, I don’t think he ever had a visitor. Quiet as a mouse, always paid his rent early, in cash, never a problem. The perfect tenant, really.”

Mrs. Annasia spoke up, her eyes moist. “A very nice man. Such a terrible thing to happen.”

“Try not to let it upset you too much,” Priscilla said gently.

“How could it not?” the woman said with resignation. “A murder in my own home. My God, this world is becoming more and more evil. Sometimes,” she said sadly, “I’m glad to be so old. So I won’t see things get worse than they are now.”

“Mr. Annasia, do you have this cousin’s name and address?” Rizzo asked.

The old man nodded. “Yes, it’s with the lease, in my desk. She was his emergency contact person.”

“Before we leave, I’d like that information,” Rizzo said. Then, after a pause, he continued his questioning. “Did Mr. Lauria work?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“On Eighty-sixth Street, at that big shoe store. The one near Nineteenth Avenue.”

Rizzo jotted it down, then, without looking up, asked, “Did he seem to have much money?”

“No, not much at all. But he paid his rent, bought his food. He has no car, no real expenses that I saw. I guess he got by.”

Rizzo looked up. “Do you think he could afford a really expensive wristwatch?”

“Oh, that Swiss watch, the gold one? No, Sergeant Rizzo, that was his dead father’s watch. Was Robbie wearing it when he died?”

“No,” Rizzo answered. “It was on his nightstand.”

“Well, I’m glad the thief didn’t get it,” the old man said. “Poor Robbie was very proud of that watch. It was the most important thing he owned.”

“Not that he owned very much,” Mrs. Annasia added. “Always going from job to job, out of work for months at a time, no friends or family. No woman. A very sad life, Sergeant. Very sad.”

Rizzo nodded. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully, then resumed his questioning. “As far as you know, did he have any enemies, anyone who maybe could have done this?”

Annasia frowned. “You mean on purpose? Not just a burglar, but someone he knew? Absolutely not,” he said. “I told you, Sergeant, he had no one in his life, just that cousin and her family. This was not a man with enemies, Sergeant. This was a man alone. A man killed by a thief, a random thief.” After a pause, Annasia continued with a sheepish glance at his wife. “Let’s be honest here, Sergeant. Robbie wasn’t right, he was an odd duck-almost a recluse, a very sad man living a sad, empty life. I hope he’s at peace now with God. I hope he’s with his parents, somebody to love him again.”

The man paused, reaching out a veined, liver-spotted hand and placing it gently upon his wife’s hand.

“Otherwise, Sergeant, there’s no point.” He looked at his wife once more, then met Rizzo’s eyes.

“Without someone to love, somebody to love you… there is no point.”

Rizzo drove the Chevy slowly toward the precinct house. He turned slightly in the seat, speaking to Priscilla’s profile as she scanned her notes.

“The guy is dead for at least a week, probably longer, and there’s not one message on his answerin’ machine,” he said. “Not even a call from his job. Didn’t they wonder where the fuck he was?”

Priscilla shrugged. “Why don’t we stop off and ask ’em?” she asked. “It’s not far from here, and it’s only three o’clock.”

Rizzo turned back in the seat. “Yeah, okay. What avenue was it?”

“Nineteenth.”

They identified themselves to the young store manager, explaining the reason for their visit. She gasped, raising a hand to her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she said, her eyes tearing suddenly. “How awful! That poor man, he never hurt a fly, never had a bad word to say. Oh my God,” she repeated.

Priscilla spoke. “We were wondering, Ms. Gallo. Lauria was killed some days ago, yet there were no messages on his answering machine. Didn’t you wonder what happened to him? When he didn’t show up for work, I mean.”

The young woman looked puzzled. “Work?” she asked. “No… We’ve been slow the last few months and I… I had to let him go. Unfortunately, Robbie was my newest hire. You know, ‘Last hired, first fired.’ ” She looked from Rizzo to Jackson, taking in their somber expressions. “I… I intended to rehire him, of course. As soon as the holidays kicked in and business, presumably, picked up. I definitely planned to hire him back. He was a great worker, always on time, polite to everyone, really no trouble at all. You didn’t even know he was here, he was so quiet.” She scanned their faces. “He kept to himself, you know.”

“So we’re findin’out,” Rizzo said. “When exactly did you let him go?”

She thought for a moment. “Exactly?”

“Yes,” Priscilla interjected. “Exactly.”

She had to check her records before she could answer them.

“October twenty-eighth. It was a Tuesday, that’s our end pay-week day. I gave him a week’s salary plus commission and eight severance days.”

Rizzo thanked her. After a few more routine questions, the two detectives left.

As they reached the Impala, parked beneath the elevated train tracks on Eighty-sixth Street, Rizzo spoke. “Guy gets fired, takes his severance pay and squares his rent the same day.”

Priscilla nodded. “Yeah. Then he’s hanging around his apartment every day and he’s so quiet, so unobtrusive, the landlord doesn’t even know he’s no longer working.”

As Rizzo dropped into the driver’s seat, starting the engine, he wondered aloud, “But for how long? We don’t know when he got whacked.”

“What now?” Priscilla asked, as she hooked her shoulder harness.

“Back to the house,” Rizzo said with a shrug. “The Swede has Bobby Dee and his partner doin’ a street canvass and the uniforms gathering plate numbers and lookin’ around the area for the murder weapon. We need to get Lauria’s phone records and contact the cousin, maybe first get her local precinct to do the death notification so we won’t have to. And Vince told me the fax came in from Rosen. I wanna go over all his notes. Tomorrow, after that stink airs out some, we’ll go back to the scene. I want to look around again carefully, see what’s what. We need to go through the guy’s stuff, then talk to the cousin. Maybe she can point us at someone.”

“You goin’ premeditated on this, Joe?” Priscilla asked. “What happened to our junkie burglar?”

He shrugged. “If it was a junkie burglar so strung out he missed that watch, chances are he dropped his prints all over the joint. CSU will make the prints and that’ll be the end of it.”

“And if there are no prints?” she asked.

“Well, in that case, we’re up against it. An untargeted, random break-in homicide like this one is the toughest. No motive, nothing, just a random series of bullshit that ends up with some poor schmuck like Lauria gettin’ his throat crushed. Cases like this usually get solved when some street stoolie gets jammed up on an unrelated case and uses his info to cut himself a deal. You know how it works: the perp brags to his lowlife buddies what a hard-ass he is, how he whacked Joe Citizen for givin’ him some grief, struttin’ around like he’s John fuckin’ Dillinger. And then when he gets ratted out, he’s perplexed, don’t know what happened.” Rizzo shook his head. “I’m gettin’ real sick of these dumb fucks, Cil. Real sick.”

“Yeah, I hear you. I don’t find ’em quite as amusin’ as I did in my rookie days, either.”

“Yeah, but to answer your original question, I am going premed on this. At least for now. We got a week or ten-day cold trail already, we can’t afford to jerk around. We look at it like there’s a reason, a motive, we check that out right away. Then if we dead end and it is just a break-in, we hope for a print or DNA hit or some rat bastard to give the perp up. That’s about all we can do, Cil.”

She nodded. “So we go through the motions.”

“Yeah, for the time bein’, anyway. Besides, this guy Lauria didn’t leave much of a footprint behind. I’m thinkin’ we can cover his whole history in one or two days. If we don’t get pointed at somebody, we go with the junkie burglar theory. Or the local teenage asshole route, or the transient b and e man.” After a moment, he added, “Just don’t get your hopes up. This is probably just gonna waste our time and fuck up our other cases.”

“We might get lucky, Joe. You never know.”

“Yeah,” he said without conviction. “But I tell ya, that watch-that fuckin’ watch-still bothers me. I can’t stop comin’ back to it. I don’t know squat about watches or any kinda jewelry, but one look at that Breitling and even I knew it was big bucks. Hell, a blind man could smell the heavy gold, see those friggin’ diamonds. There ain’t a junkie or b and e man in the city woulda missed it. He’d have pocketed it no matter what. That watch more than paid for his night’s work.”

She nodded. “Well,” she said, “let’s just see where it goes.”

Once back at the Six-Two, Rizzo placed a call to the community policing officer at Canarsie’s Sixty-ninth Precinct. A car would be dispatched to the home of Robert Lauria’s cousin, they would make the official notification of his death. The cousin would be asked to identify the body at the Kings County Hospital morgue. Contact information for Rizzo and Jackson was to be left with the woman.

The balance of the afternoon was spent reviewing Detective Sergeant Art Rosen’s notes and speaking via phone to the CSU detective who conducted the crime scene investigation. A report on preliminary findings was promised within twenty-four hours.

By five-thirty, the two detectives were ready to leave for the day. Rizzo waved good night to Priscilla as she gathered her things and left the squad room. He was just about to call Jennifer and tell her he was on his way home when his direct line began to ring.

“Rizzo, Six-Two squad,” he said into the black mouthpiece.

“It’s me, Rizzo,” a voice said in terse, flat tones. “Zee-Boy.”

Rizzo frowned, glancing up at the wall clock. “What can I do for you, kid?”

“You can stay the fuck away from me for a while,” Zee-Boy said bitterly. “After this call, stay away from me.”

“Tell me,” Rizzo said.

“Just sos we’re clear here,” Zee-Boy said, “I give you the name of the kid you’re lookin’ for, you keep me out of it, right?”

“Yeah, kid, just between us.”

“Us and that mullinyom partner you got,” Zee-Boy replied.

“What ever,” Rizzo said.

“And when the collar does go down, there’s no mention at all this kid was hangin’ with The Rebels, right?”

“Right.”

“But if it ever does come up, if Louie Chink gets word of it, you’ll square it, right? Convince the old prick I did the righteous thing here, right?”

Rizzo grew impatient. “Give me the fuckin’ name, kid. I told you, you’re off the hook. Just give me the fuckin’ name.”

After a pause, Zee-Boy said, “Jamesy Doyle. Lives with his donkey mother in the building on the corner of Sixteenth Avenue and Sixty-fifth Street, apartment two-B. He’s new to the neighborhood, Joe. He don’t know how it is. Just got here about six months ago from some shantytown in Ireland. He’s a fuckin’ immigrant and one crazy motherfucker.”

“Yeah, well, thanks, Zee-Boy. Anything else I should know?”

“Yeah,” Zee-Boy responded. “One more thing. The kid’s only thirteen.”

“Are you kiddin’ me?”

“No, Joe, no shit. Thirteen. A fuckin’ juvenile offender.” Zee-Boy paused. “Get ready to nursemaid this shit-head through Family Court. Maybe get that black Mammy of yours to wet-nurse him. Good fuckin’ luck.” The phone went dead in Rizzo’s ear.

Rizzo dropped a finger on the telephone’s cradle, then lifted it, the dial tone coming through. He began to punch in his home number.

A fucking thirteen-year-old, he thought. Just what he needed. A fucking babysitting job.