The Last Brief

Still Life

It was two in the morning, raining to beat all hell outside, and it felt good to be sitting opposite Johnny Knowles sipping hot coffee, Johnny had his jacket off, with his sleeves rolled up and the .38 Police Special hanging in its shoulder holster. He had a deck of cards spread in front of him on the table, and he was looking for a black queen to put on his king of diamonds.

I was sitting there looking past Johnny at the rain streaming down the barred window. It had been a dull night, and I was half-dozing, the hot steam from the coffee cup haloing my head. When the phone began ringing, Johnny looked up from his Solitaire.

‘I’ll get it,’ I said.

I put down the cup, swung my legs out from under the table and picked up the receiver.

‘Hannigan,’ I said.

Johnny was watching me now.

‘Yep,’ I said. ‘I’ve got it. Barney. Right away.’

I hung up and Johnny looked at me quizzically.

‘Young girl,’ I said. ‘Gun Hill Road and Bronxwood Avenue. Looks bad, Johnny.’

Johnny stood up quickly and began shrugging into his jacket.

‘Some guy found her lying on the sidewalk.’

‘Hurt bad?’ Johnny asked.

‘The guy who called in thinks she’s dead.’

We checked out a car and headed for Gun Hill Road. Johnny was silent as he drove, and I listened to the swick-swack of the windshield wipers, staring through the rain-streaked glass at the glistening wet asphalt outside. When we turned off White Plains Avenue, Johnny said, ‘Hell of a night.’

‘Yeah.’

He drove past the Catholic church, past the ball field belonging to the high school, and then slowed down as we cruised up to the school itself.

‘There he is,’ Johnny said.

He motioned with his head, and I saw a thin man standing on the sidewalk, flagging us down. He stood hunched against the rain, his fedora pulled down over his cars. Johnny pulled up alongside him, and I opened the door on my side. A sheet of rain washed into the car, and the guy stuck in his head.

‘Right around the corner,’ he said.

‘Get in,’ I told him. I moved over to make room, and he squeezed onto the seat, bringing the clinging wetness of the rain with him. Johnny turned the corner, and the old man pointed through the windshield. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Right there.’

We pulled the car over to the curb, and Johnny got out from behind the wheel before the man next to me had moved. The man shrugged, sighed and stepped out into the rain. I followed close behind him.

The girl was sprawled against the iron-barred fence that surrounded the school. She’d been wearing a raincoat, but it had been forcibly ripped down the front, pulling all the buttons loose. Her blouse had been torn down the centre, her bra cruelly ripped from her breasts. Johnny played his flash over her, and we saw the ugly welts covering her wet skin. Her skirt and underclothing had been shredded, too, and she lay grotesque in death, her legs twisted at a curious widespread angle.

‘Better get a blanket, Mike,’ Johnny said.

I nodded and walked to the car. I took a blanket from the back, and when I walked over to the girl again, Johnny was getting the man’s name and address.

‘The ambulance should be along soon,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’ Johnny closed his pad, took the blanket and draped it over the girl. The rain thudded at it, turning it into a sodden, black mass on the pavement.

‘How’d you find her?’ I asked the man.

‘I been workin’ the four to twelve at my plant,’ he said, ‘out on Long Island. I usually get home about this time when I got that shift. I live right off Bronxwood, get off the train at Gun Hill.’

‘You were walking home when you found the girl?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What’d you do then?’

‘I walked clear back to White Plains Avenue, found an open candy store and called you fellows. Then I came back to wait for you.’

‘What’d you tell the man who answered the phone?’

‘All about the girl. That I’d found her. That’s all.’

‘Did you say she was dead?’

‘Well, yes. Yes... I did.’ He stared down at the girl. ‘My guess is she was raped.’ He looked at me for confirmation, but I said nothing.

‘I think you can go home now, sir,’ Johnny said. ‘Thanks a lot for reporting this. We’ll call you if we need you.’

‘Glad to help,’ the old man said. He nodded at us briefly, and then glanced down at the girl under the blanket again. He shook his head, and started off down Bronxwood Avenue. We watched him go, the rain slicing at the pavement around us. Johnny looked off down the street, watching for the ambulance.

‘Might be rape at that,’ he said.

I pulled my collar up against the rain.

We got the autopsy report at six that morning. We’d already found a wallet in the dead girl’s coat pocket, asking anyone to call a Mrs. Iris Ferroni in case of accident. We’d called Mrs. Ferroni, assuming her to be the girl’s mother, and she’d identified the body as that of her daughter, Jean Ferroni. She’d almost collapsed after that, and we were holding off questioning her until she pulled herself together.

Johnny brought the report in and put it next to my coffee cup on the table.

I scanned it quickly, my eyes skimming to the ‘Cause of death’ space. In neat typescript, I read:

I flipped the page and looked at the attached detailed report. The girl had been raped, all right, consecutively, brutally.

I turned back to the first page and looked at it once more. My eyes lingered on one item.

‘Now she’s just a number,’ I said. ‘Sixteen year old kid with a grave-number.’

‘She was seventeen,’ Johnny said.

‘That makes a big difference.’

‘I think we can talk to her mother now,’ Johnny said.

I rubbed my forehead and said, ‘Sure. Why don’t you bring her in?’

Johnny nodded and went out, to return in a few minutes with a small, dark woman in a plain black coat. The woman’s eyes were red, and her lip trembled. She still looked dazed from the shock of having seen her daughter with the life torn from her.

‘This is Detective Hannigan,’ Johnny said, ‘and I’m his partner, Detective Knowles. We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.’

Mrs. Ferroni nodded, but said nothing.

‘What time did your daughter leave the house last night, Mrs. Ferroni?’ I asked.

The woman sighed. ‘Eight o’clock, I think,’ she said. There was the faintest trace of an accent in her voice.

‘Did she leave with anyone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who?’

‘A boy. He takes her out sometimes. Ricky. Ricky Tocca.’

‘Do you know the boy well?’

‘He’s from the neighbourhood. He’s a good boy.’

‘Did they say where they were going?’

‘To a movie. I think they go up to Mount Vernon a lot. That’s where they were going.’

‘Does this Tocca have a car?’

‘Yes.’

‘Would you know the year and make, Mrs. Ferroni?’

‘A Plymouth,’ she said. ‘Or a Chevy, I think. I don’t know. It’s a new car.’ She paused and bit her lip. ‘He wouldn’t hurt my daughter. He’s a nice boy.’

‘We’re not saying he would,’ Johnny said gently. ‘We’re just trying to get some sort of a lead, Mrs. Ferroni.’

‘I understand.’

‘They left the house at eight, you say?’

‘About that time.’

‘What time does your daughter usually come home?’

‘One, two. On weekends. During the week... well, I liked her to come home early...’

‘But she didn’t, is that it?’

‘You know how it is with a young girl. They think they know everything. She stayed out late every night. I told her to be careful... I told her... I told her...’

She bit her lip, and I expected tears again, but there were none. Johnny cleared his throat, and asked, ‘Weren’t you worried when she didn’t show up this morning? I mean, we didn’t call you until about four a.m.’

Mrs. Ferroni shook her head. ‘She comes in very late sometimes. I worry... but she always comes home. This time...’

There was a strained, painful silence. ‘I think you can go now, Mrs. Ferroni,’ I said. ‘We’ll have one of our men drive you home. Thank you very much.’

‘You’ll... you’ll find who did it, won’t you?’ she asked.

‘We’ll sure as hell try,’ I told her.

We picked up Richard Tocca, age twenty, as he was leaving for work the next morning. He stepped out of a two-story frame on Burke Avenue, looked up at the overcast sky, and then began walking quickly to a blue Ford parked at the curb. Johnny collared him as he was opening the door on the driver’s side.

‘Richard Tocca?’ he asked.

The kid looked up suspiciously. ‘Yeah.’ He looked at Johnny’s fist tightened in his coat sleeve and said, ‘What is this?’

I pulled up and flashed my buzzer. ‘Police officer, Tocca. Mind answering a few questions?’

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘What did I do?’

‘Routine,’ Johnny said. ‘Come on over to our car, won’t you?’

‘All right,’ Tocca said. He glanced at his watch. ‘I hope this doesn’t take long. I got to be at work at nine.’

‘It may not take long,’ I said.

We walked over to the car and I held the door for him. He climbed in, and Johnny and I sat on either side of him. He was a thin-faced kid with straight blond hair and pale blue eyes. Clear complexioned, clean shaven. Slightly protruding teeth. Dressed neatly and conservatively for a kid his age.

‘What’s this all about?’ he asked.

‘You date Jean Ferroni last night?’ Johnny asked.

‘Yes. Jesus, don’t tell me she’s in some kind of trouble.’

‘What time’d you pick her up?’

‘About eight-fifteen, I guess. Listen, is she...’

‘Where’d you go?’

‘Well, that’s just it. We were supposed to have a date, but she told me it was off, just like that. She made me drive her to Gun Hill and then she got out of the car. If she’s in any trouble, I didn’t have anything to do with it.’

‘She’s in big trouble,’ Johnny said. ‘The biggest trouble.’

‘Yeah, well, I didn’t have...’

‘She’s dead,’ I said.

The kid stopped talking, and his jaw hung slack for a minute. He blinked his eyes rapidly two or three times and then said, ‘Jesus, Jesus.’

‘You date her often, Ricky?’

‘Huh?’ He still seemed shocked. ‘Yeah, pretty often.’

‘How often?’

‘Two, three times a week. No, less.’

‘When’d you see her last?’

‘Last night.’

‘Before that.’

‘Last... Wednesday, I guess it was. Yeah.’

‘Why’d you date her?’

‘I don’t know. Why do you date girls?’

‘Why’d you date this girl? Why’d you date Jean Ferroni?’

‘I don’t know. She’s... she was a nice kid. That’s all.’

‘You serious about her?’ Johnny asked.

‘Well...’

‘You been sleeping with her?’

‘No. No. I mean... well no, I wasn’t.’

‘Yes or no?’

‘No.’

‘What time did you pick her up last night?’

‘Eight-fifteen. I told you...’

‘Where’d you drop her off?’

‘Gun Hill and White Plains.’

‘What time was this?’

‘About eight-thirty.’

‘Why’d you date her so much?’

‘I heard she was... hell, I don’t like to say this. I mean, the girl’s dead...’

‘You heard what?’

‘I heard she was... hot stuff.’

‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘Around. You know how the word spreads.’

‘Who’d you hear it from?’

‘Just around, that’s all.’

‘And you believed it?’

‘Well, yeah. You see, I...” He stopped short, catching himself and his tongue.

‘You what?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Let’s hear it,’ Johnny said. ‘Now.’

‘All right, all right.’ He fell into a surly silence, and Johnny and I waited. Finally, he said, ‘I saw pictures.’

‘What kind of pictures?’

‘You know. Pictures. Her. And a guy. You know.’

‘You mean pornographic pictures?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Then say what you mean. Where’d you see these pictures?’

‘A guy had them.’

‘Have you got any?’

‘No. Well... I got one,’ the kid admitted. ‘Just one.’

‘Let’s see it.’

He fished into his wallet and said, ‘I feel awful funny about this. You know, Jean is dead and all.’

‘Let’s see the picture.’

He handed a worn photograph to Johnny, and Johnny studied it briefly and passed it to me. It was Jean Ferroni, all right, and I couldn’t very much blame the Tocca kid for his assumption about her.

‘Know the guy in this picture?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Never seen him around?’

‘No.’

‘All right, kid,’ Johnny said. ‘You can go to work now.’

Richard Tocca looked at the picture in my hand longingly, reluctant to part with it. He glanced up at me hopefully, saw my eyes, and changed his mind about the question he was ready to ask. I got out of the car to let him out, and he walked to his Ford without looking back at us. The questioning had taken exactly seven minutes.

Johnny started the car and threw it into gear.

‘Want me to drive?’ I asked.

‘No, that’s okay.’

‘This puts a different light on it, huh?’

Johnny nodded.

We staked out every candy store and ice cream parlour in the Gun Hill Road to 219th Street figuring we might pick up someone passing the pornos there. We also set up four policewomen in apartments, thinking there was an off chance someone might contact them for lewd posing. The policewomen circulated at the local dances, visited the local bars, bowling alleys, movies. We didn’t get a rumble. The Skipper kept us on the case, but it seemed to have bogged down temporarily.

We’d already gone over the dead girl’s belongings at her home. She’d had an address book, but we’d checked on everyone in it, and they were all apparently only casual acquaintances. We’d checked the wallet the girl was carrying on the night of her murder. Aside from the In-Case-Of card, a social security card, and some innocent pictures taken outside the high school with her girl friends, there was nothing.

Most of her high school friends said, under questioning, that Jean Ferroni didn’t hang around with them much anymore. They said she’d gone snooty and was circulating with an older crowd. None of them knew who the people in the older crowd were.

Her teachers at school insisted she was a nice girl, a little subdued and quiet in class, but intelligent enough. Several of them complained that she’d been delinquent in homework assignments. None of them knew anything about her outside life.

We got our first real break when Mrs. Ferroni showed up with the key. She placed it on the desk in front of Johnny and said, ‘I was cleaning out her things. I found this. It doesn’t fit any of the doors in the house. I don’t know what it’s for.’

‘Maybe her gym locker at school,’ I said.

‘No. She had a combination lock. I remembered she had to buy one when she first started high school.’

Johnny took the key, looked at it, and passed it to me. ‘Post office box?’ he asked.

‘Maybe.’ I turned the key over in my hand. The numerals 894 were stamped into its head.

‘Thanks, Mrs. Ferroni,’ Johnny said. ‘We’ll look into it right away.’

We started at the Williamsbridge Post Office right on Gun Hill Road. The mailmen were very cooperative, but the fact remained it wasn’t a key to any of their boxes. In fact, it didn’t look like a post office key at all. We tried the Wakefield Branch, up the line a bit, and got the same answer.

We started on the banks then.

Luckily, we hit it on the first try. The bank was on 220th Street, and the manager was cordial and helpful. He took one look at the key and said, ‘Yes, that’s one of ours.’

‘Who rents the box?’ We asked.

He looked at the key again. ‘Safety deposit 894. Just a moment, and I’ll have that checked.’

We stood on either side of his polished desk while he picked up a phone, asked for a Miss Delaney, and then questioned her about the key. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see. Yes, thank you.’ He cradled the phone, put the key on the desk and said, ‘Jo Ann Ferris. Does that help you, gentlemen?’

‘Jo Ann Ferris,’ Johnny said. ‘Jean Ferroni. That’s close enough.’ He looked directly at the manager. ‘We’ll be back in a little while with a court order to open that box. We’ll ask for you.’

‘Certainly,’ the manager said, nodding gravely.

In a little over two hours, we were back, and we followed the manager past the barred gate at the rear of the bank, stepped into the vault, and walked back to the rows of safety deposit boxes. ‘894,’ he said. ‘Yes. here it is.’

He opened the box, pulled out a slab and rested the box on it. Johnny lifted the lid.

‘Anything?’ I asked.

He pulled out what looked like several rolled sheets of stiff white paper. They were secured with rubber bands, and Johnny slid the bands off quickly. When he unrolled them, they turned out to be eight by ten glossy prints. I took one of the prints and looked at Jean Ferroni’s contorted body. Beside me, the manager’s mouth fell open.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘this gives us something.’

‘We’ll just take the contents of this box,’ Johnny said to the manager. ‘Make out a receipt for it, will you, Mike?’

I made out the receipt and we took the bundle of pornographic photos back to the lab with us. Whatever else Jean Ferroni had done, she had certainly posed in a variety of compromising positions. She’d owned a ripe, young body, and the pictures left nothing whatever to the imagination. But we weren’t looking for kicks. We were looking for clues.

Dave Alger, one of the lab men, didn’t hold out much hope.

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘What did you expect? Ordinary print paper. You can get the same stuff in any home developing kit.’

‘What about fingerprints?’

‘The girl’s mostly. A few others, but all smeared. You want me to track down the rubber bands?’

‘Comedian,’ Johnny said.

‘You guys expect miracles, that’s all. You forget this is science and not witchcraft.’

I was looking at the pictures spread out on the lab counter. They were all apparently taken in the same room, on the same bed. The bed had brass posts and railings at the head and foot. Behind the bed was an open window, with a murky city display of buildings outside. The pictures had evidently been taken at night, and probably recently because the window was wide open. Alongside the window on the wall was a picture of an Indian sitting on a black horse. A wide strip of wallpaper had been torn almost from ceiling to floor, leaving a white path on the wall. The room did not have the feel of a private apartment. It looked like any third-rate hotel room. I kept looking at the pictures and at the open window with the buildings beyond.

‘You think all we do is wave a rattle and shake some feathers and wham! we got your goddam murderer. Well, it ain’t that simple. We put in a lot of time on...’

‘Blow this one up, will you?’ I said.

‘Why? You looking for tattoo marks?’

‘No. I want to look through that window.’

Dave suddenly brightened. ‘How big you want it, Mike?’

‘Big enough to read those neon signs across the street.’

‘Can do,’ he said.

He scooped up all the pictures and ran off, his heels clicking against the asphalt tile floor.

‘Think we got something?’ Johnny asked.

‘Maybe. We sure as hell can’t lose anything.’

‘Besides, you’ll have something to hang over your couch, Johnny cracked.

‘Another comedian,’ I said, but I was beginning to feel better already. I smoked three cigarettes down to butts, and then Dave came back.

‘One Rheingold beer billboard,’ he said.

‘Yeah?’

‘And one Hotel Mason. That help?’

The Hotel Mason was a dingy, grey-faced building on West forty-seventh. We weren’t interested in it. We were interested in the building directly across the way, an equally dingy, grey-faced edifice that was named the Allistair Arms.

We walked directly to the desk and flashed our buzzers, and the desk clerk looked hastily to the elevator bank.

‘Relax,’ Johnny said.

He pulled one of the pictures from under his jacket. The lab had whitened out the figures of Jean Ferroni and her male companion, leaving only the bed, the picture on the wall, and the open window. Johnny showed the picture to the desk clerk.

‘What room is this?’ he said.

‘I... I don’t know.’

‘Look hard.’

‘I tell you I don’t know. Maybe one of the bellhops.’ He pounded a bell on the desk, and an old man in a bellhop’s rig hobbled over. Johnny showed him the picture and repeated his question.

‘Damned if I know,’ the old man said. ‘All these rooms look alike.’ He stared at the picture again, shaking his head. Then his eyes narrowed and he bent closer and looked harder. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘that’s 305. That picture of the Injun and the ripped wallpaper there. Yep, that’s 305.’ He paused. ‘Why?’

I turned. ‘Who’s in 305?’

The desk clerk made a show of looking at the register. ‘Mr. Adams. Harley Adams.’

‘Let’s go, Johnny,’ I said.

We started up the steps, and I saw Johnny’s hand flick to his shoulder holster. When the hand came out from under his coat, it was holding a .38. I took out my own gun and we padded up noiselessly.

We stopped outside room 305, flattening ourselves against the walls on either side of the door.

Johnny reached out and rapped the butt of his gun against the door.

‘Who is it?’ a voice asked.

‘Open up!’

‘Who is it?’

‘Police officers. Open up!’

‘Wha...”

There was a short silence inside, and then we heard the frantic slap of leather on the floor.

‘Hit it, Johnny,’ I shouted.

Johnny backed off against the opposite wall, put the sole of his shoe against it, and shoved off toward the door. His shoulder hit the wood, and the door splintered inward.

Adams was in his undershirt and trousers, and he had one leg over the windowsill, heading for the fire escape, when we came in. I swung my .38 in his direction and yelled, ‘You better hold it, Adams.’

He looked at the gun, and then slowly lowered his leg to the floor.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t going anyplace.’

We found piles of pictures in the room, all bundled neatly. Some of them were of Jean Ferroni. But there were other girls and other men. We found an expensive camera in the closet, and a darkroom setup in the bathroom. We also found a switch knife with a six-inch blade in the top drawer of his dresser.

‘I don’t know anything about it,’ Adams insisted.

He kept insisting that for a long time, even after we showed him the pictures we’d taken from Jean Ferroni’s safety deposit box. He kept insisting until we told him his knife would go down to the lab and they’d sure as hell find some trace of the dead girl on it, no matter how careful he’d been. We were stretching the truth a little, because a knife can be washed as clean as anything else. But Adams took the hook and told us everything.

He’d given the kid a come-on, getting her to pose alone at first, in the nude. From there, it had been simple to get her to pose for the big stuff, the stuff that paid off.

‘She was getting classy,’ Adams said. ‘A cheap tramp like that getting classy. Wanted a percentage of the net. I gave her a percentage, all right. I arranged a nice little party right in my hotel room. Six guys. They fixed her good, one after the other. Then I drove her up to her own neighbourhood and left her the way you found her — so it would look like a rape kill.’

He paused and shifted in his chair, making himself comfortable.

‘Imagine that broad,’ he continued. ‘Wanting to share with me. I showed her.’

‘You showed her, all right,’ Johnny said tightly.

That was when I swung out with my closed fist, catching Adams on the side of his jaw. He fell backward, knocking the chair over, sprawling onto the floor.

He scrambled to his feet, crouched low and said, ‘Hey, what the hell? Are you crazy?’

I didn’t answer him. I left the Interrogation Room, walking past the patrolman at the door. Johnny caught up with me in the corridor, clamped his hand onto my shoulder.

‘Why’d you hit him, Mike?’ he asked.

‘I wanted to,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to.’

Johnny’s eyes met mine for a moment, held them. His hand tightened on my shoulder, and his head nodded almost imperceptibly.

We walked down the corridor together, our heels clicking noisily on the hard floor.