Gladyss of the Hunt (30 page)

“You're goddamn right I am!”

“There are just a couple small problems . . .”

“Like what?”

“For starters, the very first hooker you killed,” Bernie said.

“What?”

“Crystal was murdered back in the early '80s, when the neighborhood was still a big stinking shitpile.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Crystal Hodges. And don't tell me you don't know her. I checked her records and she lived in your shitty, rat-infested tenement on Forty-fifth Street before you even went to jail.”

“I don't know who you're talking about.”

“They didn't have DNA testing then, but guess what, Crystal had sperm in her and we still have that stored, so when we test your DNA against that sample . . .”

“Even if what you're saying were true, any specimen would've undoubtedly been corrupted by now. But it was a good bluff. Kudos to you, Junior.”

“We're getting a warrant to take a DNA sample from you,” the ADA fired back.

“Her pimp killed her.”

“Oh, look at this! Suddenly he remembers a twenty-five-year-old case,” Bernie commented. “They charged her pimp, it's true, but he went to jail for another murder. And three months later you got sent away for what turned out to be twenty years. Tell me there is no
God.”

“The murder rate in this city was through the roof back then,” O'Flaherty responded. “Good luck proving I killed some hooker trash all those years ago.”

“You've confessed to four murders,” Bernie said. “And I bet we can convince the jury of the last three murders.”

“You want to accuse me of seven murders,” O'Flaherty said with a grin, “Be my guest. When my buddies line up to say I was with them on most of those dates, it'll be a lot easier to beat all the charges.”

At that moment, I realized we had a photo of the knife that was used in the Jane Hansen murder—one of the two killings Bernie had suspected were done by someone else. It was visible in one of the jpegs that had been sent to Miriam's web site. I went to Bernie's desk and flipped through the file until I located the hard copy. The knife handle in the photo didn't look anything like O'Flaherty's weapon.

But I shouldn't have been disappointed. Bernie had been saying for a long time now that two killers were involved. Still, we'd hoped that it was all over.

Annie was taking a call at a neighboring desk. When she hung up, I told her what I'd discovered. She said she had just got a phone call from the desk sergeant. O'Flaherty's first official victim, his step-daughter Daisy Leary, whose statutory rape had got him jailed over twenty years ago, was waiting downstairs. We called Bernie out of the interrogation room to tell him, and he instructed Annie and me to try to extract any useful information from her.

As soon as I saw the stepdaughter, sitting blankly over a can of Diet Coke, one big mystery was solved. She was a tall blonde, now heavyset and middle-aged, with deep, dark circles under her bright blue eyes. And because she was a tall blonde, all the victims were as well—which in turn was why I had gotten this assignment.

Annie thanked Daisy for coming in, and introduced me as one of the investigators on the case.

“What happened to you?” Daisy asked as we walked, looking at my bruises.

“Your stepfather,” I said.

“Nessun did that to you?” she asked nervously as Annie dashed before us looking for an available conference room. They were all occupied.

“You're not charging Nessun with those midtown murders, are you?” Daisy asked. To my surprise, she seemed to have some sympathy for her former rapist.

“We know he did them,” I said.

“Oh my God . . . What do you want from me?”

“It was your case that led to his initial arrest.”

“But he was never violent to me. Not once. He probably would've gotten off if he didn't hit that cop. That was what got him jail time. He always had problems with authority.”

“So he didn't forcibly rape you?” I asked.

“Come on,” Annie said, spotting Bernie's office as the only empty room that offered some privacy. “Let's go in here.”

“He didn't actually rape me,” she said, taking a seat. “What happened was, he started dating my mother. I was 16, stupid and lonely, and we ended up getting involved.”

Apparently the details of the case had gotten screwed up in the retelling. I had gotten the impression she was only thirteen at the time.

“So you started a consensual relationship with him?”

“It's complicated.” She looked to the floor.

“Well you must've had sex with him if he was charged with statutory rape.”

“Let's just say he took advantage,” she said simply.

“How did he take advantage?” Annie pushed.

“He used to watch me.”

“Watch you undress?”

“Yes, but . . .” she paused, “See, I knew he was watching me, and I kept doing it. Then he'd give me a few bucks here and there. He was a peeper, which was probably why he lived near Forty-second Street.” Before the Internet, Times Square was the closest you could get to a 24-hour supply of porn.

“Look, if he went to jail on false charges . . .”

“They weren't entirely false,” Daisy said.

“Maybe you should just tell us what happened. That'll save us all time.”

“I was young and dumb, and the ADA kind of pressured me, so if you want me to say more, I'm gonna need some immunity,” she said directly.

Annie excused herself while she made a call to the ADA upstairs. When she came back, she said he'd checked O'Flaherty's file and discovered the statutory rape charge initially brought against him years ago had ultimately been dropped due to insufficient evidence. Daisy never even testified, so there was no question of her being prosecuted for perjury.

Annie resumed questioning her: “According to your mom's statement, she found several thousand dollars in your drawer that she said O'Flaherty had paid you.”

“That was a lie. I mean, it wasn't from sex.”

“You made all that money from his peeping?”

“Sure.”

She was being too protective of the sleazebag, I thought. She had to be hiding something herself.

“You helped him, didn't you?” I asked.

She flinched, then recovered. “Helped him with what?”

“He told us everything about the girls,” I replied playing up what I knew. During our first meeting with O'Flaherty he had all but said that he collected runaways, probably from trawling the Port Authority Bus Depot right down the block from his house.

“So he did a little chickenhawking now and then,” she said. “Big deal.” The fact that she knew the lingo made me realize how sleazy she really was.

“He was a pimp?”

“No, but he'd . . . find girls for pimps.”

“How many girls are we talking about?” Annie asked.

“Who remembers?”

Suddenly her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. She looked like she'd seen a ghost. Following her sight line, I saw that she was staring at the little wooden framed picture of Juanita Lopez Kelly, Bert's young wife from whom he'd contracted HIV.

“You remember her?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said softly, and reflected for a moment. Then, without prompting, she continued, “We were heading into the bus depot one night just as she was leaving. She had this little knapsack on her back. She was trying to cross the street when she fell right into this huge puddle. The drain was stopped up so it was more like a fucking lake. And it was cold out. Nessun went right in after her. He was a
real gentleman that way. She was sopping wet. She said she had just got off the bus and didn't know anyone here. I mean, she might as well have been wearing a bulls eye. Nessun invited her to come home with us to dry off.”

“Then what happened?”

“She had no job, nowhere to go, and she was just a kid, like me. Ness would let the girls stay in an empty room in the basement and I'd hang out with them for a few weeks. Become friends. And after a while he'd bring pimps by.”

“So how exactly did it work? Were they raped or drugged?”

“Hell no, it was all on the level! The girls were given a tour. The guys were like, ‘Look what I'm doing for my ladies.' Pimps would drive them around and say shit like, ‘This is the sweet life. I love them and they love me back.' Easy money. Nice clothes. Coke and clubs. If they went with the pimp, Nessun would get a quick grand and he'd throw me a couple hundred.”

“How do you live with yourself?” I asked.

“It wasn't like I was pulling any triggers. I just went along with it and got some cash. We never forced anyone to do anything they didn't want to, and that's the truth!”

“So how'd your mother catch you?” Annie asked.

“I thought Nessun had shortchanged me over one girl. I was sure we was alone so I was cursing and yelling at him when suddenly my mother walks in. I hushed up, but it was too late. She asked me if I was fucking Nessun and I said no, which was true. But she took me to a doctor who examined me and saw that I wasn't a virgin.”

“But it wasn't Nessun?”

“No, I had a boyfriend by then. Still, my mother asked if Ness had raped me, and I thought I'd be helping him if I said I had consented. She went nuts. I swore he hadn't fucked me, but it was too late. She was the one who said I had to claim it was statutory rape. Between losing my mother and sacrificing Nessun . . . Well, I didn't think he'd go to jail. But I sure as shit didn't expect him to do what he did then.”

“Which was?” Annie asked.

“Some smartass rookie cop started pushing him around, so Nessun waited until the officer was talking to my mom and then he jumped on him, knocked him to the ground.”

It sounded familiar.

“He didn't hit the guy hard, just knocked him over, really. But when they dropped the rape charge, some other detective who was there said that he'd seen Ness hanging out at Port Authority and knew he was up to no good. He was the one who pushed for the assault charge on Ness.”

Looking at the file Annie was reading from, I saw her finger pointing at the name. Kelly, Bernie's old partner, who was working in Vice at the time, was the detective.

“Did Nessun ever make any attempts to get ahold of you over the years?” Annie asked.

“At first he did. For the first year or so, while we were still living in the neighborhood, he sent threatening letters from jail. So Mom moved us out of the city down to Asbury Park, in Jersey. That was over twenty years ago, and I never heard from him again after that. I moved back up here a few years ago when my second marriage ended.”

Annie had me stay with Daisy Leary while she went to discuss what we'd discovered with the ADA. When she came back she told Daisy the statute of limitations had run out on any possible charges against her for involvement in Nessun's chickenhawking activities, and she was free to leave.

Daisy stood up and looked at each of us in turn. “For the record, Ness was never mean to me. He never forced me or any of the others to do anything, and that's God's honest truth.”

After she left, Annie said, “You did a great job with the interview, Gladyss, but I want you to do me a favor. Don't mention any of this to Bernie.”

“Why?”

“I can see him putting two and two together, figuring out it was Nessun who turned Bert's wife into a hooker. And then going on to blame him for Bert's death, with all the aggravation that will bring. But Bert already knew Juanita was a hooker when he met her.”

Just the similarity of their unusual names should've cued me into it earlier, but it wasn't until Annie made that remark that it all started to fit together. The discovery that it was Nessun O'Flaherty who had led Detective's Kelly's wife into prostitution had an odd parallel to the Greek myth I'd had just read, the story of the Shirt of Nessus.
The fact that Juanita Kelly had contracted AIDS and passed it along to Bert was reminiscent of the strange way in which Nessus's blood had ended up killing Hercules long after the centaur himself had died. But how could O'Flaherty have retro-plotted such a complex revenge? He knew his Greek mythology—he'd been reading Bulfinch the other day in Starbucks when I first met him—but back then, how could he have known that one particular runaway of the many he had carefully inducted into the whirlwind life of whoring would contract AIDS and subsequently marry a cop who had been instrumental in getting him sent to prison, and that almost twenty years later the virus would end up killing Detective Kelly? It sounded like the plot of a tacky sci-fi novel.

“I'm still blown away that it was Bert Kelly who was behind Nessun's arrest,” was all I could say. Just to explain the parallel myth would require more energy than I had.

I stayed in Bernie's office until he'd finished interrogating O'Flaherty so I could break the news that the knife used in the Jane Hansen murder was a different one. While I was waiting, I picked up the Duffy file and looked closely at the autopsy photos. I tiredly compared them to the dolled-up jpegs that had been uploaded to Miriam's web site. That was when I figured out why there were traces of adhesive on Caty's face.