Outrage

22

Marlene was reading the morning newspaper when Ariadne Stupenagel called and asked if they could meet for lunch. “I’m really busy, Ariadne,” she said, trying to beg off.

“Too busy to talk to me about a call I got from a guy who says he knows the identity of the real Columbia U Slasher?” Stupenagel asked.

Marlene was unimpressed. “As I’m sure you’re aware,” she replied, “everybody in Manhattan who doesn’t like their neighbor, or wants a piece of the Crime Stoppers reward money, knows the ‘real identity’ of the killer. Besides, Felix Acevedo has been indicted for the murders.”

Butch had come home the night before still steamed from his meeting with Davis and Cohn. He explained what had happened and his call to Sam Hartsfield. As hard as he’d been on Davis, she knew Butch would be far harder on himself. He, like his mentor Garrahy, was as committed to exonerating the innocent as he was to convicting the guilty. And there was nothing that he abhorred more than unjustly accusing a citizen.

Marlene sighed. He’ll handle it, she thought, like he handles everything else. He’ll accept responsibility, express his sincere regret, and move on. No excuses. No whining. And no blaming anyone else.

“Yeah, well, rumor has it Acevedo may not be going to trial,” Stupenagel replied.

“Where’d you hear that?” Marlene asked.

Stupenagel laughed. “Don’t worry, Mama Bear, I’m not going to squeal. But that might make it even more important to listen to this guy. I understand lots of people would like to get their hands on that reward money, but what grabbed my attention was that he said his suspect was also connected to the murder of a detective in the Bronx yesterday. Cop’s name was Phil Brock.”

“I saw that,” Marlene replied. She’d just finished reading the small story on page three about his death, which was being described as a possible robbery gone awry, given that the victim’s wallet and wristwatch were taken. The murder had apparently occurred late the previous night and the newspaper had few other details.

“Not that I’m paranoid or anything,” Stupenagel said, “but I’d rather have this discussion face-to-face. I do have my reasons.”

Marlene knew that her flamboyant friend lived for drama. She also knew that Ariadne was a hard-nosed investigative reporter who knew when to be serious, and her tone said she was serious now. If she didn’t want to talk on the telephone, the reasons were valid.

So they agreed to meet at Kaffe 1668, a trendy coffee shop on Greenwich Street in Tribeca. “Bring your truck, we may be going for a drive,” she said, and hung up before Marlene could argue.

Dressed in shorts, a tennis top, and running shoes, Marlene easily spotted Stupenagel standing on the sidewalk outside the shop in a tight-fitting, cleavage-revealing, plum-colored minidress and matching plum lipstick and eye shadow and calf-high black boots with stiletto heels. They took a table in a corner, where Stupenagel told her friend about the call she got from “some guy named Vinnie, no joke. He said that he knows who did the murders and can prove it. But apparently he’s in some hot water with the law and wants a deal out of it.”

“Of course he does,” Marlene responded. “These guys are always working some angle. But what was this about a connection to Brock’s murder?”

“He wouldn’t say much,” Stupenagel replied. “Just that Brock was aware of this new suspect, which I find intriguing following on the heels of your husband going to dismiss the indictment against Felix Acevedo. Then Brock ends up dead? What if this wasn’t a mugging? What if Brock was onto the new suspect and it got him killed?”

“A lot of questions,” Marlene said in agreement. “So what do you propose to do with this information?”

“Well, this guy Vinnie got my name from that story I wrote about you and Butch-the Manhattan crime-fighting family,” Stupenagel said. “And he wants to talk to you, said he also heard that you were working for Acevedo.”

“Why not just go to the cops or the Bronx DA and try to work out a deal?” Marlene asked.

“I asked the same thing,” Stupenagel replied. “He says he’s afraid to go to the authorities without a middleman for ‘insurance.’ He thinks Brock told the, and I quote, ‘wrong person,’ but he thinks you can be trusted. Of course, I tried to get him to meet with me first, so I could get the story out of him. But he said you have to be at the meeting, and I can’t write about it until he gets his deal. So I propose that we go talk to him and see what he has to say.”

“When do you want to do this?”

“There’s no time like the present,” Stupenagel said, getting up from her seat. “Oh, by the way, Vinnie lives in Soundview.”

Marlene rolled her eyes. “Of course he does. Maybe he could have picked someplace a little safer, like Afghanistan. And you are, of course, appropriately dressed for talking to junkies, dealers, and other assorted violent criminals. But who am I to complain? Should we stop by my place first to get bulletproof vests and Gilgamesh?”

Stupenagel laughed. “Nah, vests wreck my look, which takes more and more time every morning to achieve. And we have to drive separately anyway. I’m going to be on a tight time crunch and need to go from there to meet Gilbert. We’re going to check out a few churches around Mount Vernon for our wedding.”

“Churches? You? I thought you were more the justice-of-the-peace type,” Marlene said, surprised and delighted.

“Well, I would have gone for the Chapel of Love in Las Vegas,” Stupenagel said with a giggle. “But Murry wants to do the whole shebang. Oh, by the way, you are my matron of honor, of course, and I think my man wants yours to be best.”

Marlene hugged her friend and kissed her cheek. “I thought you’d never ask. Okay, we’ll take a chance and leave Gilgamesh at home if it will get you to the church on time.”

On the way to the Bronx, Marlene called Clay Fulton at the DAO and asked what he knew about Brock’s death.

“Not much,” he replied. “Apparently the neighbors didn’t see or hear anything. It looks like he was surprised as he was getting out of his car. Officially, it’s being investigated as a robbery/homicide.”

“Officially,” Marlene repeated. “Which means unofficially there’s something hinky about it. So spill it, Clay.”

Fulton hesitated but then made her promise that she had to keep the information to herself. “When I heard about it this morning, I talked to Brock’s sergeant in the Bronx,” he said, “a good guy named Jon Marks. I knew that Brock was working on the Acevedo case up there, so I wanted to see if there was something I should be aware of. They’re keeping it under wraps, but there are a few things that look suspicious. One is that Brock was stabbed and then shot.”

“That usually means two assailants,” Marlene said. “No one stabs someone and then shoots them, or vice versa.”

“Right,” Fulton said. “Not unheard of but rare. Anyway, this happened right in front of Brock’s apartment building on a residential street, and no one heard any shots. Again, it was sometime after midnight, and the two shots were probably fired in quick succession-bang bang-so it could be that no one noticed… Or the killer used a silencer.”

“A hit,” Marlene said.

“Maybe,” Fulton replied. “The last thing is that according to Brock’s cell phone log, he got a call about ten P.M. from a pay phone a few blocks from his house. He apparently was going somewhere, or was coming back from somewhere, a couple hours later and there just happened to be a mugger or muggers waiting for him.”

“And, yeah, maybe he got set up,” Marlene said. “But why?”

“Don’t know; it’s a dangerous job,” Fulton said. “You make a lot of enemies. Why the interest?”

“I’ve heard something and am going to go check it out,” she replied. “I’ll let you know if it’s worth looking into.”

Marlene could feel the big detective frowning over the telephone line. “Be careful, Marlene. You sure you don’t need a little backup?”

“Nah,” she said, and then laughed. “Ariadne Stupenagel is going with, and we should be okay. It’s the middle of the morning.”

“Oh, well, if Ariadne’s going then I pity the fool who looks at either of you cross-eyed,” he said. “Still, you know where to reach me if things start to go downhill.”

Thirty minutes later, Marlene and Ariadne stood on Watson Avenue. In the time it had taken to park, get out of their vehicles, and meet in front of the seedy six-story apartment building, they’d been offered every drug imaginable, as well as a dozen different lewd suggestions.

Marlene was less concerned about what the various thugs and miscreants were saying than the way they were eyeing her purse. She was plenty capable of taking care of herself-she’d been more than just a figurehead for her VIP security firm-but she still found herself wishing she’d brought her dog or the Glock nine-millimeter she’d left at home.

Stupenagel, on the other hand, seemed impervious to the threat. In fact, she had said, “I’ll put one of my stiletto heels through the back of your squirrelly head if you don’t get out of my face, dirtbag,” when one of the local pimps asked if she wanted to work for him.

When Marlene said, “Next time warn me if we’re going into a war zone,” Stupenagel scoffed. “I’ve been in worse places. Did I ever tell you about the time I tagged along with some ex-military types working for the CIA into Cambodia during the Pol Pot regime to confirm reports that the Khmer Rouge was carrying out a mass genocide? Now that was rough.”

“Well, that’s all very encouraging,” Marlene replied while watching a group of young men who stood in a circle occasionally throwing suspicious glances at her and Ariadne. “But I don’t see any ex-military types and that was thirty years ago.”

The women entered the building, took the elevator to the third floor, and walked down a dark hallway that smelled like mold and urine. Coming to the apartment at the end of the hall, they knocked and soon became aware of a presence on the other side of the door as the occupant obviously checked them out through the peephole.

Various bolts and chains were moved and the door opened to reveal a tall, nearly bald white man in a wife-beater undershirt and threadbare boxer shorts who grinned when he saw them. “Ladies,” he said, and made an awkward flourish with his hand to indicate that they should enter, “welcome to our humble abode.”

The women entered and the man closed and secured the door behind them. As he shuffled past them, Marlene noticed that his other hand held a large revolver. He placed the gun on the counter of the filthy kitchen they passed on the way to an equally unkempt living room.

“Lydia, we got company,” he announced to a large woman with frazzled gray hair who stood in a tattered bathrobe near one of the windows that looked out onto the street. A shotgun leaned against the wall next to her. “See anything out there, my sweet?”

“All’s clear, baby,” Lydia replied, and nodded to the women. “Excuse the mess, I ain’t had time to clean up lately.”

“Ah hell,” the man said with a wink at his wife, “she’s got better things to do than clean. Ain’t that right, sweet cheeks?”

“Now, Vinnie, these fine ladies don’t want to hear your dirty talk,” Lydia said, scolding him, though with a smile. “So which one of you is which?”

“I’m Ariadne Stupenagel,” the reporter said.

“And I’m Marlene Ciampi.”

“Your husband is the DA of New York, ain’t he?” Vinnie asked, turning to Marlene.

Marlene started to say, “Yes, but I’m not here representing him-”

“Yeah, but maybe he helps me and I help him,” Vinnie said, moving another shotgun off a filthy overstuffed chair so he could sit down. He explained his situation. “I barely got them to let me out on a hundred thousand bail. But that’s not the big deal. The big deal is if I can’t make this go away, they’re going to send my scrawny ass to the joint for longer than I got left.”

“So what are you selling?” Stupenagel asked to cut to the chase.

Vinnie grinned. “Well, I know who the Columbia U Slasher is,” he said. “And I can prove it. That and he’s good for the Atkins killing, too.”

“And why should we take your word for it?” Marlene asked.

“Well, for one thing I got him on tape talking about it,” Vinnie said. “But that ain’t all; you go back to your husband and ask him if a blue silk shirt means anything.”

“So what’s this guy’s name?” Stupenagel asked, prodding.

Vinnie shook a skinny finger at her. “Not so fast. This information has already got one person killed, and I don’t aim to be next. I want a deal or I ain’t talking. If I got to go to prison, I ain’t going with a snitch jacket, which would get me killed sure as shit.”

“Who got killed over this information?” Marlene asked.

“You know that cop that got whacked last night,” Vinnie said, “that Detective Brock?”

“What about him?”

“I told him the name of the Columbia U Slasher a few days ago,” Vinnie said. “Now he’s dead.”

Marlene shrugged. “What makes you think it’s connected?”

“You tell me,” Vinnie replied. “It wasn’t just a mugging, was it?” He kept his eyes on Marlene’s face and then smirked. “I knew it! It was a hit!” He looked at his wife. “What I tell ya, baby? The shit has hit the fan on this one!”

Lydia kept her eyes on the street below but nodded. “That’s what you said, my man. That’s what you said for sure.”

Stupenagel looked at Marlene and raised her eyebrows. “You holding out on me, girlfriend?”

Marlene ignored her. “How do we know you told Brock anything of the sort?”

“Go talk to the cop who dragged my ass to jail on the drug beef,” Vinnie said. “His name was Dave Drum, or something like that. I told him I wanted to talk to Brock about the Atkins murder. Ask him. And I tell you what, Brock sure perked up when I told him about that blue silk shirt.”

“So what’s this deal you want?” Marlene asked.

Vinnie smiled triumphantly. “You tell your husband I can hand him the son of a bitch who killed them two women,” he said. “But with Brock getting whacked, the stakes have gone way up. First, I want the charges against me dropped.”

“Those are Bronx charges,” Marlene told him.

“Yeah, well, this is the same guy who did the Atkins murder, so I’d think your husband and the Bronx DA might want to cooperate,” Vinnie said. “Second, I want a safe place for me and my old lady to live until the trial is over. If word gets out that I’m snitching, somebody’s gonna stick a shiv in me just on principle. Third, I want the reward money for the killings in Manhattan and the Bronx. Me and Lydia is going to have to get the hell out of Dodge and we’re going to need a bankroll for that.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, Lydia ain’t been able to visit her elderly mom in Yonkers,” he said with a smile at his wife, “and she wants to take her a little something. But she needs a ride there and back. They won’t visit long, and I’d surely appreciate it.”

“I can do that,” Marlene said, “but I can’t promise anything else.”

“Well, neither will I,” Cassino replied. “This is all I’m saying until I got my deal.”

Marlene controlled the urge to slug the drug dealer. “I understand, and isn’t it fascinating how under certain circumstances we sometimes find the religious spirit to do the right thing,” she said with a smirk.

Vinnie laughed. “Okay, okay, you get me just fine. The right thing is what’s right for me and Lydia; ain’t nobody going to look out for us. Ain’t that right, sugar lips?”

“Damn straight, beautiful boy,” Lydia said in agreement. “Got to look out for number one. Now, let me get my care package and we can be off.”