A Long Line of Dead Men

15

We got on the A train and split up at Columbus Circle. TJ was on his way to the shop to show Elaine how he looked in his Young Man of Promise costume. I walked over to Midtown North to look for Durkin. I caught him at his desk, eating a sandwich and drinking bottled iced tea.

"Thomas Cloonan," I said. "Playwright, part-time cabdriver, shot and killed four years ago, Audubon Avenue and 174th Street, guy they tagged for it never went to trial-"

"Jesus," he said. "What am I, the central figure in a granny-dumping? You figure me for no short-term memory at all?"

"I just wanted to refresh your memory."

"It hasn't had time to get stale. We just talked about the son of a bitch the other day."

"What did Cloonan do to become a son of a bitch?"

"Not Cloonan, for chrissake. The shooter." His eyes narrowed in concentration. "Mims," he said. "How's that for memory, considering it's a case I got no reason to give a shit about?"

"You want to try for the first name?"

"Obadiah."

"Try Eldoniah."

"Well, fuck, I came close enough. What about him?"

"The guy who shot Cloonan was white."

I gave him what I had. It wasn't his case- it wasn't anybody's case at this stage- but he was too much of a cop not to take an interest, sifting data, proposing and discarding theories.

"Front-seat passenger," he said. "Who rides up front?"

"In Australia," I said, "when you get a cab, you automatically sit in front next to the driver."

"Because the rear springs are shot?"

"Because there's no class system, and you're all mates. Getting in back would be a snub."

"Yeah? What's the chances you got an Australian shooting cabbies and robbing them?"

"Well, it makes a refreshing change from Norwegians."

"All that aside, implication's the shooter's a friend of the driver, right?"

"Known to him, anyway."

"Front-seat passenger, meter's not running, no entry on the log sheet. He had a pickup in Midtown, long haul up to Columbia Presbyterian. How's the shooter know he's gonna be there?"

" 'Tommy, next fare you get anywhere near the neighborhood, drop by the Emerald Grill, I got something to talk about with you.' "

He thought about it. "I don't know. That's about as hard to swallow as the Crocodile Dundee theory."

"Or it's Cloonan's idea. He's in the neighborhood, so he decides to look up his friend."

"Who latches on to the opportunity to kill him." He took a swig of iced tea. "Raspberry-flavored," he said. "All of a sudden there's, I don't know, a dozen, fifteen different flavors of iced tea. I used to think, why do we fill up the shelves with so many different choices? How are we gonna keep up with the fucking Russians if we're dicking around with flavored tea while they're building tanks and going to the moon? So their whole system fell apart and we're working on ten more flavors and doing fine. Which shows what I know about anything." He took another drink and said, "How reliable's your witness?"

"On a ten scale," I said, "somewhere between zero and one."

"What I figured. Shooter gave Cloonan two in the back of the head. How do you manage that, you're sitting next to the guy?"

" 'Hey, Tom, what's that out the window?' "

"He turns to look, bang bang. Yeah, I suppose. I'd have to see the lab report. Why would he do that, though? So it would look like the shot came from the rear seat?"

"Or just so Cloonan wouldn't see it coming."

"Makes sense. Try this. Shooter's in the back, cab pulls to the curb, shooter puts a pair in Cloonan. Then he gets out, and then he gets back in, next to the driver this time, and grabs the wallet and the coin changer, whatever else he's after. Then he gets out a second time, and that's when Carmen Miranda gets a look at him."

"It could be."

"Or try this on. Same opening, two shots from the backseat, and the shooter slips out from the rear on the street side, so nobody talking trash in front of the candy store ever gets a look at him. Maybe he's from the same town in Norway as Obadiah, pardon me, Eldoniah, or maybe he's Hispanic like the neighborhood, and either way he walks around the corner and disappears."

"And?"

"And then you have this white guy walking down the street, and he wants to get a cab, and who can blame him, a white guy in that neighborhood?"

"It's not a bad neighborhood."

"Can we just accept the idea that a white guy on that block might just as soon get in a taxi? He sees this cab, and there's a man behind the wheel, and he opens the door to ask if the guy's waiting for a fare."

"And he sees the driver's dead."

"Right. And he does what most people would do, especially out of their own neighborhood, which is get the hell out of there, because who wants to be a witness, and maybe he was up in the Heights buying dope or getting laid, so why get involved?"

"And the witness didn't see him until he was getting out of the cab?"

"Why would she?"

"I don't know," I said. "She doesn't see the shooter get out of the cab and she doesn't see the white guy get in."

"Why should she? She's got other things on her mind."

"I guess."

"Basically," he said, "you haven't got anything, have you?"

"No."

"In terms of evidence, I mean."

"Not even close."

"But if you're trying to build a case that a single killer did these four people-"

"Five, with Shipton's wife."

"- then this doesn't slow you down any. I can't recommend you talk to anybody up in the Three-four, though. They got enough open files, they don't have to get cracking on one of the closed ones."

"I know."

"Unless you wanted to go on the record. Reopen all those cases at once. If your client'll go for it."

"My client and some of his friends are meeting in a couple of days to see what they want to do."

"What, all twenty-six of them?"

"Where'd you get twenty-six?"

"Thirty guys, four of them killed. That leaves twenty-six, right?" He grinned. "Nothing wrong with this granny's short-term memory."

"The arithmetic's wrong." He looked at me. "Thirty minus four equals-"

"Fourteen."

"Huh?"

"There were four murders," I said, "and twelve other deaths."

"What kind of deaths?"

"A few suicides, a few accidents. A few resulting from illness."

"Jesus Christ, Matt!"

"They weren't all faked," I said. "It's hard to make murder look like testicular cancer, or a combat death in Vietnam. But the suicides could have been, and a few of the accidents."

"What's your guess?"

"Including the four that went into the book as homicides? A guess is all it is, but I'd say twelve."

"Jesus Christ. Over how many years?"

"Hard to say. Thirty-two since the group was formed, but the first deaths didn't happen for a couple of years, and they were probably legitimate, anyway. Say twenty, twenty-five years."

He pushed his chair back. "I don't see how I can sit on this."

"Sit on what?"

"Do you swear this isn't a sex thing?"

"On a Bible, if you've got one handy."

"You know what I think? I think I ought to take a statement from you."

"Fine. Type up 'No comment' and I'll sign it."

"You'd hold out?"

"Until I'm instructed otherwise."

"I don't get it," he said. "What's your client more scared of than getting killed?"

"A media circus."

"What makes you think they'd be that interested?"

"Are you kidding? Some clown targeting a group of men and taking decades to knock them off? If that won't put reporters in a feeding frenzy-"

"Yeah, you're right. And Boyd Shipton was one of the victims."

"There are three survivors who are at least as prominent as he is."

"Seriously? That's some club. And it had a cabdriver in it, and a commodities broker, and what was the gay guy? Interior decorator?"

"Carl Uhl? I think he was a partner in a catering firm."

"Same thing. Three guys as prominent as Shipton?"

"Household words."

"Jesus."

"I don't want to sit on this, Joe, but at the same time-"

"Yeah, sure. You said the fourteen of them are having a meeting?"

"Some of them, anyway."

"When's that?"

"Tuesday."

"Today's Friday. What do you do between now and then?"

"Whatever I can," I said. "I was thinking about Forest Hills."

"The guy who got stabbed. The commodities guy, Watson."

"Right. I was wondering what the private security guard might have seen."

"He saw a man lying on the ground and he ran over and called it in. If he saw anything else it would be in his statement. Believe me, they would have asked him."

"Would they have questioned him about what he saw earlier?"

"Earlier?"

"If someone was waiting for Watson, planning to ambush him-"

"Oh, I get you. Maybe they would have, back when they were thinking it might be a client with a resentment. But it wouldn't hurt to ask him again. You want his name?"

"And where he works."

He reached for the phone, then turned to look at me. "You seen these AT amp;T ads about the information highway? They don't say anything about it's a one-way street."

"I know that, Joe."

"Just so you know," he said, and made the call.