Another Part of the City

6

A kerosene heater was going in the squadroom at four-thirty that afternoon, enabling the men to work in relative comfort. It was colder outside than it had been this morning. The sun was gone now, the meshed windows showed as only frost-rimed black rectangles. Reardon had been fifteen minutes late, relieving at four on the dot, rather than at the customary fifteen minutes to the hour. He was on the phone now, trying to get through to Washington, D.C. At his own desk, Gianelli was also on the phone.

“Okay, I’ll wait,” Gianelli said, and rolled his eyes at Reardon. “Ballistics,” he said. “I hate Ballistics.”

“I know I can dial it direct,” Reardon said into his phone. “I’ve dialed it direct three times, and all I get is nothing. Nothing, yes. Zilch. Silence.” He listened, and then said, “Well, could you please try it for me?”

“Ballistics and the telephone company ought to go partners,” Gianelli said.

Haggerty, one of the Fifth’s clerks, wearing a blue V-neck sweater over his uniformed shirt and a bulky blue cardigan over that, came into the office carrying a sheet of paper. “Here’s the flyer went out,” he said to Reardon. “It ain’t much for anybody to go on. No year, no plate, just a brown Benz.”

“Who got it?” Reardon asked.

“Every precinct in the city.”

“I want the whole tri-state area covered.”

“Yeah. I’m here,” Gianelli said into his phone. “I been here forever.”

“Won’t do no good anyway, Bry.” Haggerty said. “This’s the week before Christmas, today’s already the eighteenth. What cop out there is gonna be looking for cars?”

“A what?” Gianelli said into the phone. “I never heard of such a thing. All right, give it to me. Nice and slow, please.”

“What they’ll be looking for is presents for their wives,” Haggerty said.

“Send it out, anyway,” Reardon said.

“Or their girlfriends,” Haggerty said. “They won’t be looking for no brown Benz ain’t even got a year or a plate.”

“Hello?” Reardon said into the phone, and waved Haggerty out. “Is this the Café de la Daine?”

“Out, bien sur,” the voice on the other end said.

“This is Detective Reardon, I’m calling from the Fifth P.D.U. in New York. I’d like to speak to Mr. John D’Annunzio, please. Is he there?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“May I speak to him, please?”

“Un moment, s’il vous plait.”

“Accommodate the what?” Gianelli said into his phone. “Well, was it? Then what are you wasting my time for?” He paused and then said, “What’s the capacity? Right. Anything else? Okay, thanks.” He slammed the receiver down on the cradle.

“Hello?” a man’s voice said.

“Mr. D’Annunzio?” Reardon said.

“Yes?”

“This is Detective Reardon in Manhattan...”

“Yes?”

“I’m assuming you were notified of your brother’s death...”

“Yes?”

“There are a few questions I’d like to ask you.”

“What questions, Mr. Reardon?”

“I understand he went to Washington on the fourteenth of December. Did he go down there to see you, Mr. D’Annunzio?”

“Yes, he did.” D’Annunzio said.

“That would have been a Sunday...”

“Yes, he came to the restaurant. We’re open for dinner on Sunday night.”

“Why did he come to see you, Mr. D’Annunzio? Can you tell me that?”

Farmer came limping out of his office. He put his hands on his hips and listened to Reardon’s end of the conversation.

“Did he say who’d made this loan to him?” Reardon asked.

Farmer stood listening.

“What?” Reardon said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize... well, what would be a convenient time for you?” He listened and then said, “I’ll try you later then, thanks.”

He replaced the receiver on the cradle, looked up at Farmer.

“D’Annunzio went there to borrow seventy-five hundred bucks. Told his brother he needed the money to meet a loan.”

“Who from?” Farmer asked.

“He doesn’t know. They’re setting up for dinner, he wants me to call him back in an hour or so.” He turned to Gianelli. “What’d Ballistics say?”

“Is anyone on this squad working anything but the D’Annunzio murder?” Farmer asked.

“Priorities, boss,” Gianelli said.

“Priorities, my ass.”

“The slugs were nine millimeter Parabellums. The gun... just a second.” He looked at his notes. “Was a SIG P-210-5.”

“A what?” Farmer said.

“Foreign pistol. Made in Switzerland, imported here by H.F. Grieder. It can be made to accommodate the 7.65 cartridge, but this one wasn’t. The bullets were nine millimeters.”

“I never heard of such a gun,” Farmer said, and then turned at the sound of Hoffman’s voice in the corridor outside.

“This city.” Gianelli said, “you can pick up any gun you want for thirty-five cents.”

Three young Hispanics came into the squadroom. their hands cuffed behind them. Hoffman and Ruiz were directly behind them. In this precinct, the Hispanics could have been anything: Puerto Rican, Cuban. Dominican, Salvadoran, Colombian. To the cops, with the possible exception of Ruiz, they all looked alike. These Hispanics did, in fact, look alike. All of them light-skinned. Each of them sporting a sparse mustache over his upper lip. All in their mid-twenties. All wearing little black fedoras with narrow brims. One of them wore a brown leather jacket. The other two wore short cloth coats. They were all wearing pointed shoes; cockroach-kickers, the cops called them.

“Make yourselves comfortable, you bums,” Ruiz said.

“Don’t tell me I’ve actually got some working cops on this squad,” Farmer said.

“Caught them sticking up a jewelry store on Canal,” Hoffman said, and tossed three ski masks onto the desk. “This is what they were wearing.”

Reardon looked at the ski masks.

Sadie had seen three Puerto Ricans wearing ski masks on the night of the murder.

“But no Mercedes-Benz, your Honor,” Ruiz said.

“They don’t speak English,” Hoffman said.

“So they say,” Ruiz said. “Habla inglés, maricón?” he asked the one in the brown leather jacket.

“No, seňor policia,” the man replied.

“How about your pals here?” Ruiz said, and turned to the ones in the cloth coats. “Alguno de ustedes vagabundos habla ingles?”

The other two answered almost in unison, shaking their heads.

“No, nosotros no hablamos inglés.”

“Sit down,” Hoffman said, pointing. “Over there, on the bench.”

The men sat, their eyes wide. The one in the leather jacket glanced at a Pimp Squad poster on the wall.

Hoffman beckoned Reardon and Ruiz to the other side of the room, where Farmer was standing.

“The guys who killed D’Annunzio were speaking English,” he said.

“With an accent,” Reardon said.

“But not a Spanish accent,” Farmer said. “Your report...”

“It’s worth a shot, anyway,” Hoffman said. “The family mighta been too excited to tell what kind of accent. You want to take it from here, Bry?”

“Don’t blow it,” Farmer warned.

Reardon walked to the bench where the three Hispanics were sitting.

“Which one of you guys speaks English?” he asked.

The three men looked at him, bewildered.

“Nobody, huh?” He turned to Hoffman. “This might be real meat, Chick,” he said.

“Looks that way,” Hoffman said.

“You’re sure you don’t speak English, huh?”

No answer. Eyes open wide in their faces.

“Because if you do, you’d better tell me right now. Otherwise you’re gonna be in hot water, believe me.”

“Que dice el?” the one in the brown jacket asked Ruiz.

“Keep out of this, Alex,” Reardon said. “Okay, listen,” he said, hands on his hips. “A restaurant on Mulberry Street was held up this past Monday night. The owner was killed. You understand that?”

Blank stares.

“You don’t understand it, huh? Okay, try to understand this. The guys who went in there spoke only Spanish. No English. Only Spanish, you got that?”

The men looked from one to the other.

The one in the brown jacket said, “No entiendo. No hablo inglés.”

“You don’t entiendo, huh?” Reardon said. “Here’s what I’m telling you, so you better start entiende-ing fast. If you speak English, you got nothing to worry about. Otherwise, we’re gonna think you were the punks went in there shooting.”

Silence. Puzzled frowns.

“Okay? I’ll give you thirty seconds.”

“Que quiere el?” the one in the brown jacket asked Ruiz.

“He’s not gonna give you any help,” Reardon said. “The only thing’ll help you is to start talking English.”

One of the men in the cloth coats said, “Nosotros no sabemos que dice usted.”

“Twenty seconds,” Reardon said. “You guys have a possible murder rap hanging over your heads, never mind a two-bit holdup.” He looked at his watch. “Ten seconds,” he said.

The telephone rang. Gianelli picked up the receiver.

“Fifth Squad, Gianelli,” he said.

“Time’s up,” Reardon said, and turned to Hoffman. “They’re either clean or they’re stupid,” he said.

“For you, Bry,” Gianelli said. “On four. It’s Mark D’Annunzio.”

“Get Sadie in here,” Farmer said. “Run a private little lineup for her.” The one in the brown leather jacket said, “Usted tiene que decirnos nuestras leyes en espaňol.”

“Cállate, pendejo!” Ruiz said.

Reardon picked up the receiver.

“Hello. Mr. D’Annunzio,” he said.

“He wants us to read him his rights in Spanish,” Ruiz said to Farmer. He turned to the three men sitting on the bench, and said, “Yo les voy a dar sus leyes, pendejos!”

“When was this?” Reardon said into the phone, and listened. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Where are you? Uh-huh. Wait for me, I’ll be right there.”

He hung up.

“Bobby Nardelli was just there to see the D’Annunzio kid,” he said. “Told him he wants the interest on the loan they made to his father.”

Robert Alfred Nardelli was a small-time hood with three priors, two for burglary and one for assault. He was a sometimes enforcer for the mob’s loan-sharking operation, and this bothered Reardon a lot. He had hoped the Monday night murder had nothing to do with the boys. Mark D’Annunzio had told him he couldn’t see any connection between his father’s death and the mob. “They used to come eat in the restaurant all the time,” he’d said. So now he’d been visited by Bobby Nardelli, and Bobby wanted the interest on the loan they’d made. It looked shitty.

He found Bobby in the back room of a furniture store on Baxter Street. The store was the target of a Narcotics Squad stakeout that had been in effect since early August. Reardon supposed the unmarked truck out front had a narc in it, listening on a court-ordered wire. He also supposed Bobby knew the truck was NYPD issue. Nothing much slipped by the thieves in this city. You could bet your ass that the only words going in and out of the store on that telephone were between Bobby and the legion of girls who allegedly swooned everytime he swaggered into sight, God knew why.

Bobby was a man in his late twenties, some six-feet four-inches tall and weighing at least two hundred and twenty pounds. If you were going to have an enforcer, you could do worse than to pick a man like Bobby. His hands on the desk in front of him were huge, with the oversized knuckles of a streetfighter. A small scar ran from the tip of his right eyebrow to a point on the temple. He had eyes that could freeze a desert.

“He owed money,” he said, and shrugged. “I went to collect it. Is that against the law? A man going to collect money that’s owed him?”

“Did you know he was dead?” Reardon asked.

“No. What difference does it make?” Bobby said. “Man borrows money, he don’t pay it, then his family pays it. Somebody pays it, Reardon. We don’t get stuck holding the bag.”

“Who’s we?” Reardon asked.

Bobby shrugged.

“How much did he borrow?”

“Seven K. And some change.”

“When?”

“Couple of weeks before he opened his joint. I’m cooperating, right, Reardon?”

“Sure,” Reardon said.

“He was short, the bank wouldn’t let him have another nickel. They’re charging interest almost as high as us these days, the banks. Can you believe it?”

“Who’s us?” Reardon said.

Bobby shrugged again.

“This is a homicide we’re talking here,” Reardon said.

“So what do you want from me, your homicide?” Bobby said. “I’m a businessman. We lent the guy some bread, he knew what the interest rate was, he knew when the payments were due.”

“What was the interest rate?”

“Does Macy’s tell Gimbels?”

“When were the payments due?”

“Every Thursday. Today’s Thursday.”

“When did he make the last payment?”

“Last Thursday. When it was due.”

“You’re sure he paid you, huh?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re sure you didn’t go in there with a little muscle Monday night...”

“Positive.”

“Who did?”

“You got me, pal.”

Reardon sighed. “Okay,” he said, “stay away from the D’Annunzio family. Your interest’ll wait.”

“No, it won’t,” Bobby said. “This ain’t in my hands.”

“Whose hands is it in?”

Bobby shrugged.

“You still working for Sallie Fortunato?”

“Who says I ever worked for him?” Bobby said.

“Come on, Bobby, cut the shit.”

“That’s news to me. my working for Sallie.”

“Next time you talk to him,” Reardon said, “which should be about three minutes after I walk out of here, tell him I’ll be stopping by.”

“I don’t even know his number,” Bobby said.

“Send a carrier pigeon.”

“Besides,” Bobby said, smiling, “who wants your truck outside listening?”

Salvatore Luigi Fortunato’s B-sheet gave his age as sixty-four years old, his place of birth as Palermo, Sicily, and his various aliases as “Sallie,” “Salvie,” “Big Lou,” and “The Accountant.” He had done time only once, shortly after arriving in America, for Second-Degree Arson, presently defined as “intentionally damaging a building by starting a fire or causing an explosion,” a Class-C felony for which he’d been sentenced to three years in prison, a year of which he’d served at Ossining before being paroled. He had managed to escape confinement since, presumably because he was connected with the mob, and could freely call upon their legal talent. Paunchy and graying, wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, black shoes, a dark blue tie, and rimless eyeglasses — which indeed made him resemble an accountant — he sat behind his desk in the small office at the rear of the Angela Cara pastry shop on Grand Street, and said, “Yes, I okayed the loan. So what?”

Two of his goons were in attendance. One of them was cleaning his nails with a toothpick. Reardon figured he’d seen this in a movie someplace. The other one was reading a copy of Penthouse magazine. Both of them feigned enormous indifference to the conversation.

“He came to you personally?” Reardon asked.

“No, no, he went to Bobby. Bobby called me, I said okay. It was peanuts, what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal is he was killed.”

“I’m going to give you a lesson in economics.” Fortunato said. “You listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“Dead men can’t pay what they owe you.”

“Is that the lesson?”

“It’s the best lesson you’ll ever learn.”

“Thanks. But accidents sometimes happen.”

“No. Reardon. Accidents don’t happen accidentally. They only happen if they’re supposed to happen. How long you been a cop? I have to tell you this?”

“Ralph D’Annunzio was killed, Sallie.”

“None of my people killed him. Not accidentally or otherwise.”

“Suppose. Sallie... I’m just supposing now.”

“Sure, go ahead, suppose.”

“Suppose D’Annunzio wasn’t meeting his interest payments...”

“You’re already supposing wrong. He made the loan, what, a month ago? Sometime around Thanksgiving, it musta been, is that a month? Whenever. The point is, he’s been meeting all the interest payments. So why would...?”

“I have only Bobby’s word for that.”

“And mine.”

“What if somebody went in there to collect, Sallie, and faked a robbery so it’d look like...”

“With me in the place? They’d have to be out of their minds.”

Reardon looked at him.

“What are you saying?”

“I was there Monday night. I was sitting there eating when those punks came in.” He indicated the goon reading Penthouse. “Jerry here wanted to bust it up, I told him to cool it. That’s all I need, interfering with a stickup. You guys’d figure I was the one masterminded it.”

“But you weren’t, huh?”

“Come on, Reardon, why would I bother? For a lousy seventy-five hundred? When the man is meeting his payments? Come on.” He sighed heavily, shook his head as though exasperated by the dullness of his student. “Anyway, I liked the guy,” he said. “I been eating there ever since it opened. Nice clean place, good food.” He smiled broadly. “I hate to eat places the Mafia goes, you never know when somebody’s gonna start shooting.”

“If you liked him so much, call off your dogs.”

“Sure, I’ll tell Bobby to cool it for a while. We can’t forget the loan, Reardon, that’s business. But respect for the dead is another thing. We’ll give the family a little breathing space.”

“Thanks,” Reardon said.

“And you call off your dogs, okay? My people had nothing to do with this, I promise you.”

“What’d these guys look like, Sallie? You were there, you saw the shooting...”

“Two of them with ski masks. Kinda slight of build. You checked the Chinese community? I wouldn’t be surprised this was one of the Chinese gangs. Them Chinese punks need a swift kick in the ass.”

“If you should hear anything, I’d appreciate your letting me know,” Reardon said.

“Oh, sure,” Fortunato said, his grin contradicting his words. “You’ll be the first to know.”

Reardon came out of the pastry shop, and walked to where he’d parked the unmarked sedan at the curb. He looked at his watch. Almost six o’clock. He was starting the car when the walkie-talkie on the seat erupted with the dispatcher’s excited voice.

“Five P.D., all cars! Five P.D., all cars! Ten-thirteen on Rivington and Forsyth! Ten-thirteen on Rivington and Forsyth!”

Reardon picked up the walkie-talkie.

“Four-oh-three,” he said.

“Go ahead, Bry.”

“Who’s the officer, do you know?”

“Chick Hoffman,” the dispatcher said.

Rivington and Forsyth was in the extreme northeast corner of the precinct — walk two blocks uptown, cross Houston Street, and you were in the Ninth, which was no joyride. Everything down here overlapped, not only the precincts. Reardon sometimes thought of the city, especially this part of the city, as a jigsaw puzzle with interlocking pieces — the Village spilling over into Lower Broadway and Little Italy; Little Italy running into the Bowery and Chinatown; the Bowery becoming the Lower East Side; Chinatown and Lower Broadway becoming Whitehall and Wall Street — a puzzle that remained a puzzle even when all the pieces were in place. Here on Rivington and Forsyth, this particular piece of the puzzle was now Hispanic, although an abandoned synagogue up the street had been organized in 1886 and erected in 1903.

The dispatcher had specified only Rivington and Forsyth, no address. A red brick building dominated one corner, the gold-lettered sign over its entrance arches identifying it as the N.Y.C. Adult Training Center. An empty lot was on the corner opposite, strewn with rubble and surrounded by a cyclone fence. Alongside this was a five-story tenement, the address over its door obliterated by spray paint. A Spanish “social club” now occupied what had been street-level stores flanking the entrance to the building. It was very cold there on Rivington and Forsyth at a little past six P.M. but the streets were thronged with citizens — the circus was in town. The circus consisted of an Emergency Service van and a dozen or more patrol cars angled into the curb. Most of the uniformed cops were crouched behind the protective cover of the cars or the van; all of them had pistols in their hands. The Emergency Service cops — big fuckin’ volunteer heroes — were casually strapping on ceramic vests. Reardon got out of the car, and walked over to a heavy-breathing, red-faced sergeant.

“Who called in the Officer-Assist, do you know?” he asked.

“Man on the beat,” the sergeant said. “Heard shooting on the roof, went up there to find Hoffman pinned down behind a chimney.”

“Thanks,” Reardon said, and started toward the building.

An Emergency cop stopped him at the door.

“We’ve got it, Reardon. Go home,” he said. He was wearing a ceramic vest, and he had a shotgun in his hands.

“That’s my partner up there,” Reardon said. “Go find yourself a jumper on a bridge.”

He went into the hallway. A naked light bulb hanging from a broken fixture. The locks on the mailboxes broken. The glass panel on the inner door broken. The stench of urine. This was a city of minor assaults. The graffiti spray-painted on the subway cars and on the walls of buildings and monuments — Grant’s Tomb, for Christ’s sake, obliterated by graffiti! You saw enough graffiti, you began to think that’s the way it should be, all that shit scribbled on the walls, you began to think that was the way it had always been. Beautiful art work, right? Fuckin’ mayor smiling, smiling. You like our graffiti art work, folks? How’m I doin’, folks? Ghetto blasters sitting on the shoulders of strolling kids, polluting the atmosphere, assaulting the ears the way graffiti assaulted the eyes. We don’t care about this city, the assaulters said. Fuck your city. And fuck you. We want you to be afraid to wear a gold chain on Fifth Avenue. We want you to put bars on your windows, we want you to tremble in your beds at night. We want to assault you incessantly, assault you with the knowledge that the barbarian ponies are massing outside the barricades, assault you with fear of the unknown. This whole fucking city was an assault on the imagination.

A shot rang out the moment Reardon opened the metal door to the roof. He threw himself flat on the tarred surface, saw Hoffman crouched behind a chimney as more shots shattered the stillness of the night. He crawled over to him.

“Hello, Chick,” he said.

“Well, well, the Cavalry,” Hoffman said.

“Plus a thousand nine-one-one-cops pounding up the stairs.”

“I hope they know how to handle a trigger-happy lunatic.”

They both ducked as more shots came. Brick dust flew off the chimney.

“What happened?” Reardon asked.

“I was cruising, saw this guy come out of the building, thought he was running to catch a bus or something.”

More shots.

“Crazy fuck won’t let up for a minute,” Hoffman said. “Anyway, he’s running, and a gun falls out of his pocket, drops on the sidewalk. He stoops to pick it up, I’m already out of the car by then, the crazy bastard throws a coupla shots at me.”

More shots. The men hugged the chimney wall.

“I’ve been counting,” Hoffman said. “He reloads every seven shots. Got to be an automatic.”

“Why’d he start shooting in the first place?” Reardon asked.

“Who the hell knows? Crazy.”

A single shot this time.

“That’s seven. Here’s where he changes the clip. Want to count with me, friend?”

Silence.

Then two shots.

More silence.

Another two.

“That makes four,” Hoffman said.

They waited.

Silence.

A single shot.

“Five,” Reardon said.

“He’s behind the pigeon coop,” Hoffman said. “You take the right, I’ll take the left.”

On the street below, an ambulance siren.

Another shot.

“Six,” Reardon said.

“Get set.”

They braced themselves. It seemed an eternity before the last shot came. “Go!” Hoffman yelled.

They broke from crouches into running strides, splitting into two targets as they came across the roof, Reardon on the right. Hoffman on the left. A small metallic click from behind the pigeon coop, a new clip being rammed home. Vaporized breath pluming from their mouths as they pounded across the tar. Reardon reached the corner of the pigeon coop. The man had his back to him.

“Freeze!” Reardon shouted, and the man whirled.

A Colt .45 automatic was in his right hand.

Reardon fired at once, taking the man in the shoulder. The man fell back against the pigeon coop. There was the frantic flutter of wings. The man slumped to the floor of the roof, lay in darkness against the wall of the coop. Breathing hard, Reardon reached down for him, rolled him over, cuffed his hands behind his back. A flashlight snapped on. Hoffman coming around the left-hand corner of the coop. He threw the beam into the man’s face.

“You make him?” he said.

Reardon looked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Harold Jurgens. The prick who got acquitted this morning.”

He reached down for him.

“Up!” he said.

The door to the roof snapped open, metal banging against brick. A 911-cop peered into the darkness, a shotgun in his hands. “You guys okay?” he said.

“Move it!” Reardon told Jurgens, and shoved out at him angrily, almost knocking him off his feet again. “We’re fine,” he told the 911-cop.

“You’re lucky,” the cop said. “We’ve got a dead kid in the hallway downstairs.”