The Sniper's Wife

Chapter 16

Joe Gunther and Sammie Martens paused on the sidewalk before a newly renovated brownstone on a quiet, leafy residential street on the edge of Brooklyn Heights. The block was essentially empty of people aside from one woman walking a pair of greyhounds in the distance. They could just see the water down one of the side streets behind them, and a bit of Manhattan Island's southernmost tip, now oddly antique-looking with the absence of the World Trade Center twin towers. The air was still and quiet, the perpetual background hum of the city's vitality almost lost to the slight rustling of the branches overhead.

"Fancy neighborhood," Sammie commented.

"Very," Joe agreed, climbing the stoop to better read the discreet brass plaque mounted to the wall beside the heavy, glass-fronted entrance. It read, "Liptak Associates, Ltd."

He glanced back at Sammie. "Shall we?"

"You think he'll be there?"

"I'd be, if I had an office here. Besides, even if he's not, I wouldn't mind finding out something about him. That's why I didn't call ahead."

They stepped into an expensively appointed, neutrally colored reception room, staffed by an attractive young woman sitting behind a round maple table.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"Hi." Gunther smiled broadly, glancing around for signs of Liptak Associates' function in life, and finding only nondescript artwork on the walls. "Is Mr. Liptak in?"

She punched a couple of keys on the laptop computer situated slightly to one side of her, placed as if to indicate that she didn't actually type into the thing on any regular basis. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No, we don't. We're here on personal business."

"Is Mr. Liptak expecting you?" she asked, her expression blatantly skeptical.

"No, but I think he'd be sorry to miss us. Tell him we're friends of Willy Kunkle's."

A furrow had appeared between her carefully plucked eyebrows. This was not an approach she approved of. "And you are?"

"Do you have an envelope?" Gunther asked her.

"What?"

"An envelope. I'd like for you to take something in to Mr. Liptak. It'll make things clearer to him."

Irritation replaced by confusion, she opened a drawer at her lap and extracted a single envelope, handing it over without comment.

Gunther took it, placed one of his business cards inside, sealed it, and returned it. "Joe Gunther and Sammie Martens are our names."

Rising slowly, watching them as if they might try to steal the paintings during her absence, she moved over to a closed door on the wall behind her. "I'll be right back."

Sammie waited until the door had closed behind her before asking, "Why didn't you just tell her we're cops?"

"Discretion, for both Liptak and us. It might make him chattier if he knows we didn't fly the flag in front of her highness, plus, I don't doubt she would've given us flak for having the wrong badges."

Sammie accepted that without judgment and made a small tour of the reception area instead. "What do you think they do here?"

"I think if you have to ask, they don't want you on the premises. That would be my guess."

The door behind the desk opened, and the regal young woman reappeared, accompanied by a man who looked downright plain by comparison, although with careful, watchful eyes.

He circled the desk and approached them with hand held out. "Hi. Mr. Gunther, Ms. Martens. I'm Andy Liptak. Why don't you come back to the conference room with me? Much more comfortable there."

Sammie smiled at the neutral phrasing of his greeting. Joe had read the character of the place correctly. As they fell into line behind their host, she also noted with satisfaction the pissed-off expression of the beauty queen.

Like most brownstones, this one was tall and narrow, so the conference room right off the lobby had a single window overlooking the street and ran long and thin toward the back of the building. There was just enough room in it for the table down its length and the thickly upholstered chairs lined up around it. Liptak took a seat just off the parental head of the table and motioned to his guests to make themselves comfortable. Gunther sat where he imagined Liptak normally did, with his back to the window and a full view down the middle. It made him think of what it might be like having a small family meal at the Rockefellers'.

Except that Andy Liptak didn't look like any blue blood. With his square, blunt body, stubby hands, and thick neck, he reminded Gunther more of a longshoreman than a man of means and leisure.

Liptak started things off. "I wanted to thank you for your under-the-radar approach," he said. "It's going to drive Casey nuts for the next week."

Casey, Sammie thought. Of course.

Gunther laughed pleasantly. "Actually, that was for us as much as for you. We thought she might accuse us of impersonating police officers otherwise."

"She might have at that. Very protective woman. I'm guessing you're here about Willy?"

"Not entirely. Our interest is more Mary Kunkle."

Liptak looked crestfallen. "Christ. I couldn't believe it when Willy told me. I mean, I knew she'd hit the skids. It's one of the reasons we broke up. But it's hard to imagine anyone you once loved could die that way. Really knocked the wind out of me. And, not to get personal, but Willy wasn't too subtle about breaking the news. I guess he told you I got a little pissed off at him."

Sammie waited for Gunther to take the lead, which he did by admitting blandly, "Well, it's an emotional issue for him, and we all know how lacking in subtlety he can be. That's actually one of the reasons we wanted to meet with you on our own. I want to make sure his report wasn't colored by his own view of things."

"His view of things?" Liptak echoed. "What's that mean? I thought she was an accidental overdose. He didn't tell me otherwise."

Gunther was purposefully vague, although curious about the other man's reaction. "Oh, that's a possibility, sure. We're also looking to rule out something a little more complicated."

Liptak's surprise seemed genuine. He sat forward in his chair, his eyes widening. "You're kidding. That's why Willy was being so cagey."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, he basically sandbagged me. We had dinner together and he spent the whole time letting me go on and on about the old days, milking me about how things had gone between Mary and me, and only at the end did he admit she was dead. I figured it was because he was still pissed off she'd moved in with me after dumping him, but now I guess he was fishing, seeing if I might've had something to do with killing her. That son-of-a-bitch. I accused him of being a cop even off duty-little did I know."

"Did he have any reason to think you wished her ill?" Gunther asked.

Liptak became agitated. "No. It was over between Mary and me. I didn't even know where she lived or what she was doing. To be honest, she could've died two years ago and I wouldn't have known it. It's not that I disliked her, but we'd broken up. It was over. I'd moved on."

"Why did you break up?" Sammie asked quietly.

Liptak looked both sad and angry. "I wasn't going to tell Willy this, but it wasn't just the drugs. She was screwing around, too. He might be pissed at me right now, but back then, I didn't think too highly of him, either. I thought he'd messed her up big time, and that I was the unintended victim."

He shook his head apologetically. "I know how that sounds. I also know it's dead wrong. We all bring a bit of ourselves to these messes, right? I can admit now that I was as much a part of her problem as Willy was, or her mom, or herself, for that matter." He rubbed his cheek with his open palm. "Christ, when he told me about her, it hit me like a ton of bricks. All the denial I'd piled up inside-the way I'd told myself she was just selfdestructive, and there was nothing anyone could do to save her. I mean, that might've been true, but when he broke the news, I couldn't stop feeling guilty."

Gunther was impressed by the big man's candor. How many times had he, too, been caught in a similar web of guilt and self-delusion, and had struggled later to save face?

"Mr. Liptak," he asked, "were you able to tell Willy anything at all about who Mary might have been entangled with after you two broke up? Her drug dealer or dealers, for example?"

He shook his head. "He asked me the same thing. Mary's and my parting was pretty friendly. I didn't know and didn't ask who she was seeing."

Gunther was beginning to run out of questions. The guy appeared so candid about his shortcomings that there weren't many obvious cracks to pry open.

Except for one point of interest. Looking around at the muted but expensive decor surrounding them, Gunther asked, "What exactly do you do, by the way? You seem pretty well off."

Liptak gave an embarrassed smile. "Yeah, well, there're a lot of smoke and mirrors here. I mean, I do okay-it's mostly real estate, to answer your question, and a few businesses-but appearances play a big role. It costs me a fortune to have this office and that debutante outside, but you know what they say about spending money to make money."

"Were you making this kind of income when you were living with Mary?"

Liptak burst out laughing. "No way. I was clueless then, trying to find my footing. Wasn't till after she left that I started to get serious." He paused and added, "Too bad, too. If I'd gotten my act together sooner, maybe I could've saved her."

Gunther pushed himself away from the table, encouraging Sammie to do the same. "Okay, Mr. Liptak. We'll get out of your hair. We might want to talk again at some point, if that's all right."

Liptak got up and ushered them back out into the lobby. "No problem. Call me anytime. If I'm not around, Casey'll know where to find me."

Casey didn't bother looking up from the document she appeared to be reading.

They shook hands on the stoop and Sammie and Gunther returned to the sidewalk.

"What d'you think?" Gunther asked his sidekick.

Sammie thought a moment before saying, "I think it was interesting he didn't ask about the investigation."

For some reason, they found a parking place barely half a block away from the Seventh Precinct house. Gunther got out and scrutinized every sign he could see along the street, looking for the one that would explain this anomaly and make moving the car a necessity. But while several signs were contradictory, none made it clear that he was in violation.

Yielding to the evidence, he walked with Sammie the short distance to their destination. Immediately to their left, the trash-clotted stone base of the noisy, graffitiladen Williamsburg Bridge loomed overhead on its way to Brooklyn across the river. In his admitted limited experience, Joe Gunther had never been to a New York precinct house that wasn't located within similarly bleak environs. As one wizened cop had once put it to him, that way the commute to round up business was kept at a minimum.

The lobby was quieter than during their first visit, but the scrutiny they received upon entering was just as cursory. They mentioned to the receptionist that they were headed up to the detective bureau, and without looking up, she said fine and once again gave them directions.

They found Ward Ogden at his desk, on the phone and taking notes on a piece of paper, a file folder open before him. He caught sight of them standing in the doorway and motioned them toward the interview room they'd used before. Beyond him, behind the inward-facing glass window, his Whip, the lieutenant they'd met on their first visit, was hard at work stabbing at the keys on a computer. They quickly and quietly tucked into their hiding place.

Ogden joined them several minutes later, holding the same piece of paper in his hand, along with the file folder. "That was the medical examiner's office," he announced. "There was definitely something organic under her nails-they think skin-and they're guessing she scratched somebody shortly before she died. They walk the straight and narrow over there, so they won't commit themselves to a connection between her death and that finding, but as far as I'm concerned, this clinches it as a murder case. They'll be running what they found for a DNA sample, in case we get lucky with a suspect. You find your friend Kunkle?"

He asked this as he sat down at the small, battlescarred table with them.

"Nope," Gunther admitted. "Went up to Mount Kisco to see his brother, and just got back from Brooklyn, where we talked to a friend of his named Andy Liptak. Both of them had seen him recently, but neither knows where he is now. Until he calls us or draws attention to himself again, we're at a dead end. How 'bout you?"

"Andy Liptak, huh?" Ogden asked, raising his eyebrows and writing the name down. "Small world… As for us, it's too early to say anything for sure," he said, glancing at the contents of the folder before him. "But this is what we've got so far." He interrupted himself briefly and looked up. "By the way, I brought in a partner on this-standard procedure and something I would've done from the start if I hadn't had you two around. His name is Jim Berhle. He's downstairs right now digging through some files. He's up to date about you two, so you don't need to tiptoe around him, and he knows not to brag about you in front of the brass. Just so you know."

He returned to scrutinizing his file, adding as he read, "Told you about the scrapings. They also did a vaginal swab-that came up negative. Nothing to add about the injection site, but they did find subcutaneous bruising to her upper arms where she may have been held down. She died too soon for a bruising to surface. Jim's been working the computer like a dog, checking all the data banks from Social Security to Welfare to Parole and Probation to anyone else he can think of. Mary Kunkle managed to duck all the relevant ones of those, as far as we can find, which is incredibly unusual, and therefore a negative finding of note-"

"Telling you what?" Gunther quickly asked before he moved on.

Ogden placed his finger on the page he'd been consulting and glanced up. "On the surface? That she was never busted, never hit bottom so she had to ask for assistance, was never stopped for a motor vehicle violation, never entered a methadone clinic. Under the surface, it tells me that she had some kind of support system in place, even during the rough times. What do you think of the two gentlemen you interviewed today?"

"Both could qualify," Joe admitted.

Sammie agreed. "Willy's brother has the emotional wherewithal and Liptak's got the money. Neither one of them fessed up, though. Now that she's dead and we're asking why, they both may be acting dumb."

"Or covering their tracks," Ogden murmured, returning to his paperwork. "We talked to her neighbors in the building and next door," he continued, "and couldn't add anything to what we already knew. The pawnshops I haven't done yet, since we don't know what might be missing. I did call our Homeless Outreach people and got a few names, but the only bum I actually talked to didn't see anything notable. I had the trash compactor in her building torn apart and found a pair of coveralls that I ran by Mrs. Goldblum from across the alley. She said they looked right for the guy she saw working on the fire escape, so I'm having them checked by the crime lab. If we're lucky, the guy sweated and left us some DNA in the armpits. But I didn't find a key cutter or any tools.

"That," he added, straightening up and rubbing his eyes, "suggests to me that he left the building dressed differently but still carrying the stuff he entered with, so I had Jim go up and down the block to see if any stores or buildings had surveillance cameras overlooking the street, maybe aimed through the display window beyond the cash register or something. The best one he found was an ATM video that took a shot of every customer. That still ain't much, though-leaves a lot of gaps. He's still checking it, but nothing yet."

"What about Mary's phone records?" Sammie asked.

Ogden nodded agreeably. "Yup. Just getting there. We got a subpoena for them. That's some of what Jim's doing right now, running reverse checks on the numbers she called. We found Willy's brother right off, of course, it being long-distance-she called him a few times. I tried contacting you about that, but your pager's on the blink. Not that it mattered, since you found him anyway. It should all make interesting reading once Jim's done.

"Until then," he went on, extracting a sheet of paper from the file and laying it face up between them, "we have this, which may be nothing at all."

It was a subway map of the five boroughs, with several of the stations circled in red, accompanied by red numbers running anywhere from one to fifteen.

"Her Metro cards?" Gunther asked.

"Yeah. As Willy figured, our technical people had fun with them. When you run one of these cards through the entrance gate, it marks the date and the station. Course, we have no idea where each trip ended, but it still sets up a pattern of sorts."

Sammie pointed at the one station with a fifteen written next to it. "This the one closest to her home?"

"Right."

Joe saw one that immediately caught his eye. "Look. Four times at 135th Street, not all that far from where Bob goes to see his mother every week."

"It gets better," Ogden commented. "I ran that bag of heroin by the narcotics folks here. It's called Diablo, and 135th is near where it's circulated most. It's supposedly the trademark of some guy calling himself La Culebra, which means The Snake."

"Cute," Joe muttered. "I don't guess Mr. Snake would be too interested in a chat."

"I doubt it," Ogden agreed wryly, "but it's a big coincidence to overlook. On the other hand, that same subway stop also services a City College campus up there. It may be a stretch, but I've asked one of the local detectives to check the enrollment files, just for what-the-hell."

"You talk with her co-workers and friends?" Sammie asked.

Ogden laughed. "Several of them, and found that Willy had been there already. He goes right after it, doesn't he?"

Neither one of them could argue the point, but Gunther asked, "Did he say anything to them that might tell us what he's up to?"

"Mary's old boss thought he was having a hard time accepting the accidental overdose scenario, but she didn't think he had any evidence proving otherwise. The other one-a friend and colleague of Mary's-was almost too pissed off at him to even talk about it. Apparently he didn't fess up to being the infamous ex, and she didn't find that out till she talked with her boss later.

"But," he added, holding a finger up in the air, "there were a couple of things that came out of that conversation we should look into. And if they pan out, I want the NYPD to get full credit for having trained your guy to be as good as he is."

"You want the credit," Gunther replied, laughing, "we might give you the guy, too, if my bosses get sick enough of him. What were the couple of things?"

"First, he asked about boyfriends, specifically mentioned someone named Andy, which is why I lit up just then when you mentioned Liptak. Mary's girlfriend, Louisa Obregon, drew a blank there, but she did say Mary had been a bit of a party girl and that Obregon even met a couple of her dates. She couldn't remember their names, but they were ordinary-sounding like Bill or Dave."

"Or Bob," Joe said quietly.

Ogden smiled. "Thought you'd find this part interesting. I couldn't get any worthwhile descriptions, but flying a mug shot of Bob Kunkle under her nose couldn't hurt. The other two things she told me were just as interesting: One, she swore Mary was a speedball shooter when she last used. She'd shot heroin in the old days, but had moved to speedballs exclusively and wouldn't have touched straight heroin with a pole, supposedly. Two, she said that Willy really got after her about the Re-Coop- asking who owned it, how was it financed, what was its real story-stuff like that."

"Interesting," Gunther said. "You look into any of that yet?"

Ogden shook his head. "Nope. We've already jammed a lot into a short time. I just haven't gotten to it."

"Maybe we can help. Some of this just requires breaking down data-noncomputer stuff-matching Metro stops to phone call addresses or credit card and sales receipts to various dates we have on hand, or even chasing down the incorporation records on the Re-Coop. Couldn't Sam and I do that while you and your partner do the street cop and computer work?"

Ogden didn't take two seconds to react. "Sure. I'll tuck you away somewhere upstairs. More than one case has been made that way. After losing so much time, we should be that lucky."

He stood up and began collecting his paperwork. Smiling at them as he did so, he added, "But I'm an optimist at heart. Ask anybody."

There was a knock on the door and one of Odgen's colleagues poked his head into the room. "Call for you, Ward. Guy named Willy Kunkle."

"Thanks, Freddy." Ogden waggled his eyebrows at the two Vermonters. "See?"