The cold room

ELEVEN

The community of Maspeth, in Queens, is heavily industrialized, like virtually every other New York community bordering the waters that surround Manhattan. In this case, the water is Newtown Creek, a polluted canal that feeds into the East River. The joke among cops who work near the canal is that a body dumped into the water at sundown will dissolve before morning. I’d never had the good fortune to view a body pulled from Newtown Creek, but I’d been close enough in midsummer to experience the foul odor that seeps from its oily waters any time the temperature rises above eighty degrees. Newtown Creek was an industrial dump site for a hundred years before the first environmental laws were written. Somehow, the near-miraculous rehabilitation of the Hudson and East Rivers has passed it by.

I drove across Newtown Creek that Sunday afternoon, on Metropolitan Avenue, from Brooklyn into Queens, continuing on through the industrial heart of Maspeth and into a primarily residential neighborhood near Fresh Pond Road. The homes were modest here. Semi-detached and two-family for the most part, they bore flat roofs and were sided in a textured vinyl that made only the faintest stab at a wood-like appearance. But their yards were neatly kept, the tiny lawns mowed, the shrubs carefully trimmed. In one, the path to the front door was framed by a trellis overgrown with pink roses. In another, a woman bent over an enormous hydrangea, cutting the purple blossoms and transferring them to a laundry basket at her feet.

Blessed Virgin Roman Catholic Church was as modest and well tended as its neighbors. The stone tower on its northern face rose only a few feet higher than the surrounding homes, and the statue of the Virgin in its churchyard, though crude enough to pass for lawn furniture, was freshly painted.

There were people gathered outside the church when I walked down the block. As they were universally Caucasian, I gussed they were arriving for the Polish mass, as I assumed there’d already been masses conducted in Spanish and English. The Roman Catholic Church in New York is committed to satisfying the demands of believers from nations as diverse as Rumania and Botswana. In the vernacular.

I scanned the crowd as I passed the face of the church, looking for a group of young women escorted by a single man, but found only the expected gathering of families. I was headed for a narrow wood-frame addition jutting from the church’s northern face. Blessed Virgin Outreach was run from this building and that’s where I was to meet Sister Kassia.

The large room I finally entered was given over to a motley collection of couches and upholstered chairs. Hand-me-downs, without doubt, their wildly mismatched fabrics, colors and patterns might have filled a manufacturer’s sample book. The effect was homey, nevertheless, with the chairs and couches arranged in small groupings that afforded a bit of privacy. Sister Kassia was sitting on one of the couches, speaking to a woman who sat next to her. In her late twenties, the woman’s face was swollen and discolored, with one eye closed altogether.

When I shut the door, the nun turned to look at me for the first time, and I knew, instantly, that I’d been right about her take-no-prisoners attitude. Her nose was pointed, her mouth pinched and turned down at both ends, her chin sharp enough to punch holes in sheet metal. Two deep grooves rolled up and out from the bridge of her nose to echo the sharp hook of her pale eyebrows. Beneath those brows, her hazel eyes were as round as an owl’s. They appraised me without apology.

Finally, the nun turned to half whisper a few words to the woman on the other side of the couch before crossing the room. Late in middle age and a good thirty pounds above her best weight, she nevertheless moved with grace, coming at me with her shoulders squared, offering her hand for a firm shake.

‘Mr Corbin?’ she said.

I nodded my head. If she didn’t want it known that I was a cop, that was okay by me. ‘Why don’t you just call me Harry,’ I suggested.

‘Fine. Now I’m going to need a few minutes here. I have to get Flora settled.’

‘Actually, I was hoping to speak to Father Manicki before the mass got started.’

That brought her up short and she paused to reassess the big cop who towered above her. I met her gaze without flinching, the message I wanted to send quite simple. When Sister Kassia picked up the phone to call me, the entrance to the maze had closed behind her. There was no going back.

‘Father Stan’s in the sacristy, putting on his vestments.’ She pointed at a door to my right that fed into the church. ‘He won’t be happy to see you just now.’

‘Father Stan’s not gonna be happy to see me any time,’ I said. ‘Most likely, he was against your calling me at all.’

She smiled then, a thin and grudging smile to be sure, but a smile nonetheless. ‘You’re very astute, Harry, but don’t judge Father Stan too harshly. Our position here is very delicate. It seems the archdiocese approves of Blessed Virgin’s outreach to the undocumented, as long as we don’t draw attention to ourselves.’ I couldn’t help but think of the bosses in the Puzzle Palace. They didn’t care if you ignored a suspect’s civil liberties, as long as you didn’t get caught.

‘Tell me, Sister, does the parish offer this Polish-language mass on a weekly basis?’

‘Every Sunday.’

‘And Father Stan, does he usually conduct the mass?’

‘Almost always.’

‘These women you spoke of, can I assume they show up?’

‘Most of the time, they do.’

‘I see. Now, I’m not a Catholic, so I don’t know the customs all that well. But does the priest who performs the mass go outside to greet his parishioners as they leave the church?’

‘He does.’

‘Thank you, Sister.’

I discovered Father Manicki in a small room at the end of a narrow hallway. He was standing before a closet that held a variety of robes and brightly colored vestments. There were two children in the room with him. I would have made them for altar boys in an earlier era, but these two were of mixed gender, the girl a foot taller than her companion.

Father Manicki turned to me when I knocked on the open door. He raised a hand to slow me down, then instructed the children to wait outside. When they were safely gone, he closed the door behind them.

‘What do you mean, barging in here?’ he demanded. ‘I’m preparing to celebrate a mass.’

But I wasn’t about to be bluffed, not this time, not by the hawk’s nose, the square jaw, or the firm set of his mouth. At first glance, Father Stan might have passed for a bare-knuckle prize fighter, but there was something else in his blue eyes, a sense of regret that I knew I could exploit should the need arise.

‘I didn’t come here to accuse you,’ I said. ‘But I want you to tell me, right now, whether you recognized the girl in that photo. I want a confirmation or a denial.’

His jaw tightened momentarily — perhaps he wasn’t used to being challenged — but then he suddenly deflated, his gaze dropping to the carpet. ‘Try to understand,’ he said. ‘Those young women are virtual prisoners.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I’ve looked into the eyes of the men who escort them.’

When I didn’t argue the point, he continued. ‘And like all prisoners, if they attempt to run away.?.?. well, you know what happened to the girl you want to identify.’

‘No, I don’t, Father. I don’t know what happened to her. If I did, I wouldn’t be here asking for your help.’

‘But don’t you understand? Everything I learned about her life came to me through the confessional, so it’s just as I said when you first approached me. I can’t help you.’ He held up Plain Jane Doe’s photo. ‘In the Catholic Church, the seal of the confessional is absolute. I’m helpless here.’

The room was very spare, a plain chest of drawers, several ladder-back wooden chairs, a small table. Except for a large crucifix above the door, the walls were undecorated. Father Manicki turned his eyes to the crucifix at that moment, to a stylized Christ whose arms and legs were too long for his emaciated torso, who wore, in lieu of a crown of thorns, an actual crown, as if already risen. ‘This girl,’ he continued without turning around, ‘she’s beyond help. But the other girls are still at risk. You may think that you can ride to the rescue, perhaps arrest the men who watch over them. But even if you’re successful, it won’t help.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Because in this country, when it comes to undocumented workers, the policy is don’t ask, don’t tell.’

‘You mean they’re okay as long as the INS doesn’t find out about them?’

‘Exactly. But if they should come to the attention of the INS, say as a consequence of your investigation, they’ll be deported.’ He hesitated for a moment before delivering the punch line. ‘Right into the hands of the gangsters who sent them here in the first place.’

It was Sister Kassia who filled in the blanks, her story essentially the same as that of INS Agent Capra. Most likely, the young women in question had contracted a debt which they were now obliged to work off. Most likely, they’d originally been promised wages high enough to settle the debt in a year or two, along with decent housing and an unfettered lifestyle. Most likely, their dreams had been of opulent boutiques and trendy nightclubs that didn’t open until one o’clock in the morning, of celebrities, of opportunities.

Bait and switch, a marketing strategy as old as marketing itself. Sister Kassia told me the girls might be working for any employer willing to hire illegals. They might be waiting on tables in Manhattan, or sewing garments in Elmhurst, or dusting furniture in Bayside.

‘Church, apparently, is the one solace allowed them,’ she said. ‘Or, perhaps, the one solace they refuse to live without.’

‘Either way, Sister, that provides you with a chance to reach them. Something I want you to do.’

‘A chance I intend to take.’

‘I don’t doubt that for a minute, but if you don’t mind my asking, what exactly are you hoping to accomplish?’

We were standing at the window, looking out over the churchyard. The congregation was already inside Blessed Virgin, the mass about to start, but the girls and their escort had yet to appear.

‘The first goal is to get them away from their keepers, to separate the slaves from the slave holders. And, yes, I’m willing to use the word slave. I use it because these kinds of debts are commonly bought and sold, because tomorrow morning they could wake up to find a new master in charge of their lives.’

‘And the second goal?’

‘The second is to put them in control, to settle them in a place where they’ll be safe, to find them jobs and to guide them through the bureaucratic maze.’

I recalled my conversation with INS Agent Dominick Capra. I’d asked him why these women didn’t just run away and he’d explained that the loans had been co-signed by relatives back home. If the workers defaulted, the relatives would have to pay.

‘What about the relatives?’ I asked. ‘The ones in the old country who co-signed for the debt.’

But Sister Kassia had been all over this topic. Once the women were settled into real jobs that paid real wages, they would send money home to those relatives. The point wasn’t to avoid the debt. The point was to avoid involuntary servitude.

The nun concluded with a direct appeal to my conscience. ‘These women were born with the same hopes and dreams as you and I,’ she declared, her tone firm and steady. ‘They have a right to their lives, a right we take for granted. Now you have it in your power to affect those lives directly. You’ve become responsible, whether you like it or not.’

The women came first, five of them in their Sunday best, the oldest in her mid-twenties, the youngest in her late teens. They wore simple cotton dresses, knee-length and brightly colored, and flat-heeled shoes with tiny white socks that barely covered their ankles. Make-up was held to a minimum, a hint of blush in the cheeks, a pale gloss across the lips, a touch of color in the brows.

Snap judgements, especially of strangers, are a hazard for cops. But as I searched their faces, I knew I wasn’t making any mistake about these women. There was nothing hard in their expressions, no element of cold calculation. They were not whores.

Pleased with this conclusion, I focused on the man who walked behind the women, the shepherd tending his flock. I watched him turn onto the path leading up to the church, then pass within twenty feet of where I stood. He seemed as ordinary, at first glance, as the women who preceded him. His face was noticeably thin, his cheeks hollow, his mouth squeezed between a strong nose and a cleft chin. Though he appeared no older than thirty-five, the top of his head was bald except for a dark fuzz at the very front which might have been better shaved. As he passed me, I watched his eyes criss-cross the landscape in little jumps. They never stopped moving and only the fact that I was standing well away from the window prevented my being discovered.

‘Tell me,’ I asked, ‘do you know their names?’

‘One of the girls is named Katrina. The man is named Aslan.’

‘Aslan? Is that a Polish name?’

‘No. In Turkish and Farsi, aslan means lion. I know because I became curious the first time I heard the name and ran a search on the Internet.’

‘You said they’re sometimes escorted by a second man. Can you describe him?’

‘Tall, middle-aged, heavy-set, with very narrow eyes. Really, you can’t mistake him.’

I stifled a burst of nearly infantile glee, then changed the subject. ‘Can I assume they drive to church, the girls and their minders, that they don’t take a bus?’

‘They come in a van.’

‘Can you describe the van?’

Forty-five minutes later, I followed the van back through Maspeth and into Greenpoint, virtually retracing the route I’d taken a few hours earlier. I gave the van plenty of room, passing by the corner of Eagle Street and Franklin Avenue in time to watch it disappear through a roll-up door into the interior of a warehouse. The warehouse was two stories high and no more than twenty feet wide. As decrepit as its attached neighbors to the east and west, the entire face of the building, including the steel door in front, was covered with graffiti. This corner of Greenpoint was mostly Hispanic and poor, a place where folks minded their own business, which was definitely not the plight of a few blanquitas who didn’t even speak English, much less Spanish.

While Aslan and the women were still in church, I’d briefly inspected the van. I called in the plates, first. They came back registered to an outfit called Domestic Solutions. Jane, it appeared, was somebody’s servant. That done, I checked the well-worn tires. I’d photographed a tire impression at the crime scene. Now I had something to compare it with. Finally, I looked inside the vehicle, just in case there was a kilo of cocaine lying in plain view. Instead, I discovered a pair of car seats in the back, one clearly meant for an infant. Children, of course, would add another layer of control, especially pre-schoolers who could be kept out of sight.

As I passed by Eagle Street for a second time, a light went on behind the curtains in the two small windows on the second floor. This was a violation of the building code I could turn to my advantage. Industrial structures cannot be used for residential purposes, not without going through a complicated conversion process that requires a thorough renovation, inside and out. That the home of Domestic Solutions and its workers had not undergone that process was obvious at a glance. A wooden sign running across the building’s facade looked as if it was about to drop onto the street below. Eagle Street Roofing was what the sign said, and I didn’t grasp its significance until I was on my third circuit of the block. Bottom line, there’s very little call for walk-in refrigerators in the roofing business. That meant Jane was killed somewhere else and the only somewhere else she could have been killed was at work. Again, I remembered the Roach’s prediction: there’s a sadist in the mix.

I kept at it for another twenty minutes, certain of only one thing: come tomorrow morning, bright and early, I’d be staking out Domestic Solutions. The single issue to be resolved was the vantage point from which to do it. Tradition would have me sitting in an unmarked car, pretending to read a newspaper. But this block of Eagle Street, between Franklin Avenue and West Street, was only fifty feet long.

I pictured Aslan as I’d seen him walking into the church, his eyes in constant motion. If I was parked in plain view he’d spot me in a minute. And I didn’t want to be spotted, not before I had a better idea of what I was up against.

Eventually, I settled on a place and a plan. Across from Domestic Solutions, a narrow yard was closed off by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The yard ran back at least sixty feet and was littered with everything from bags of garbage to sheet metal boxes and tubes. There was even a cracked toilet. I didn’t have to guess where the debris came from. The squat brick warehouse on the eastern side of the yard had been long abandoned and long ago looted. Whether or not it was also unoccupied remained to be seen.

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