Ten Little New Yorkers (7 page)

J
ust like a hospital, a bus station, or a whorehouse has its own institutionalized ambience, so, indubitably, does a cop shop. I waited in the hallway, seated in one of those ubiquitous plastic chairs in which so many troubled souls had waited before me. The real bad guys get to go right in, no doubt. It's just the guys like me, the ones who might be on their way to becoming persons of interest, in whom the cops seem to have almost no interest at all. I thought about all of this and wished that I could still be fighting Perky for the chair by the fire.

By this time, I'd gotten over my anger at McGovern and Winnie. To paraphrase my father, they were just people doing the best they could. Given the same set of circumstances, if I'd been in their places, I might have done the same. And besides, this was America and I had nothing to worry about because I was innocent of any crime related to murder or stolen wallets. I wasn't totally innocent, of course. I'd let some good people down in my time. I broke some beautiful hearts that it was too late to mend. I almost ritually bought bad aloha shirts in Hawaii. (Somebody had to buy them.) I wasn't perfect. But I wasn't as guilty as Cooperman seemed to be making me out to be. In fact, I wasn't guilty at all. Unless being human is being guilty. You could argue that one, of course. If you wanted to.

While I sat there cops came and went, all on their busy little errands. Some of them glanced at me. Some of them didn't bother. None of them said, “Good morning.” Of course it wasn't really morning anymore. It had been when I'd gotten there. It was now a few hairs and a freckle past Gary Cooper time and I was still waiting in this fucking plastic chair. Ah well, I thought, like the Guinness slogan says: “Good things happen to those who wait.” Bad things happen, too, of course.

At least the time I sat there gave me a chance to get my story down. My story was that Scalopini, or whatever the hell his name was, had come over with McGovern and a few other guys I didn't know on the night before I'd left town. They were all fairly heavily monstered when they got there, and by the end of the evening I was pretty well walking on my knuckles as well. The soon-to-be-dead guy must've dropped his wallet on the floor at some time during the visit and was too fucked up to notice its absence. Of course, the rest of us had also been too fucked up to notice its presence. Maybe it had fallen against the counter or underneath the desk. Maybe we'd kicked it around like a soccer ball for a few hours. How the hell did I know? Anyway, I never saw it there. Then I left for Texas. That was my story and I was sticking to it.

“Hey, Tex,” said a familiar voice. “Come on in. Didn't realize you'd been waiting in the green room so long. Sorry 'bout that. Been a ball-dragger of a day and it hasn't even started yet.”

The voice and, of course, the vessel that housed it belonged to none other than Detective Sergeant Buddy Fox, a man not often known for being this positively chatty. His tone and demeanor were friendly, conversational, almost breezy, a far cry from Cooperman's blunt, bullying, doom-and-gloom telephone technique. Was an incipient case of good cop–bad cop already taking form? Why bother with such a charade for a guy like me? I wondered. Hell, I wasn't even a person of interest yet. Or was I?

“Thanks for coming back so fast, Tex,” said Fox, as he led me down a long, cramped corridor and ushered me into a small, drab room, the only other occupants of which appeared to be filing cabinets. “Myself, I've wanted to go on a vacation ever since the day I first put on a badge. I try like hell, but I can't get away. Know why, Tex?”

“Why?”

“Because the poor miserable bastards that make up the human race keep on killing each other. They're probably doing it just to keep me from taking the family to Sea World. I haven't had a vacation in thirty years. Kids are all grown up. Don't even want to go to Sea World. I'm the only one who wants to go to Sea World. But the bastards keep killing each other.”

“That's tough.”

“Go ahead and smoke, Tex, if you like. I'm going to. If we can't kill somebody else we might as well kill ourselves. Right?”

“Right,” I said. I pulled out a cigar and lopped the butt off. Before I could light it, Fox, like some thoughtful waiter, fired up his Zippo and did the honors for me. Then he lit his cigarette. Fox inhaled, then exhaled extravagantly—and rather sadly, I thought, as if he were losing the smoke of life.

“Mort'll be here in a minute,” said Fox lightly. “Go easy on him, Tex. He's pretty grumpy today.”

“Maybe he needs a trip to Sea World.”

“Maybe,” said Fox. He didn't say anything else for a while. He just looked straight ahead, as if attempting to establish eye contact with a nearby filing cabinet.

The little room seemed to noticeably darken when Cooperman finally made his entrance. He carried with him the now-several-days-old
Daily News
opened to McGovern's story with the bold headline “Twenty-four Hours to Die.” He tossed the paper to me and hoisted his large body onto a desk.

“Read it,” was all he said.

I pored over the piece dutifully. There was a photo of Scalopini that seemed to vaguely resemble one of the three wise men McGovern had dragged to my loft, but I really couldn't be sure. He'd apparently not been a model citizen. He'd done some time more than twenty years ago on sexual assault charges involving a young girl. Since getting out of prison eight years ago, he'd worked on and off as a bouncer, a shoe salesman, and a limo driver. He'd been married and divorced twice. And, of course, on the last night of his life, he'd stopped by to pay a social visit to Kinky Friedman's loft. There wasn't much else to it. There didn't have to be.

“Is that the guy?” growled Cooperman. “Guy who came to your party?”

“It wasn't a party. I didn't—”

“Is that the guy?”

“I think it's him. I can't really be sure.”

“You
think
it's him. What else do you
think?
”

“Not too much,” I said, looking doubtfully down at the guy's picture in the paper.

Suddenly, something struck me in the chest, startling me out of whatever protective stupor you habitually fall into whenever you're being grilled by cops. It didn't really hurt. It just surprised me a little. I saw what it was quickly enough and caught it in my hands. It was the guy's wallet.

“Now I know what it's like,” I said, “to be struck by a speeding wallet.”

“You seen it before?” asked Cooperman sharply, all no-nonsense now.

“Never,” I said. “The guy must've dropped it—”

“At the party you didn't have?”

“Look, Sergeant, I didn't invite these guys over. I didn't want to see them. I didn't even want to see McGovern.”

“Take a good look at that wallet. Look at his driver's license. Is-that-the-guy?”

“I guess it must've been him.”

“You guess it must've been him? You
guess
it must've been him? Never seen the wallet?”

“No.”

“Want to know how he died?”

“Sure. Tell me.”

“Tell him, Fox.”

“Bound and gagged with his dick cut off. Bled to death. Slowly.”

The room grew quiet. I looked at the guy's driver's license photo again. It wasn't a bad shot, as they go. Didn't look much like the picture in the
Daily News,
but then you never should believe everything you see in the papers. What the hell was I doing here anyway? I wondered.

“Think carefully, Tex,” snarled Cooperman. “You've never laid eyes on that wallet before?”

“Never,” I repeated truthfully, wondering why Cooperman was being so persistent. Where the hell was he going with this?

I didn't get to find out right away because Cooperman's wallet fetish was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door. A uniform came in and handed Cooperman some papers. He perused them with a grave expression, then abruptly removed his large buttocks from the desk.

“Looks like a fifth victim, Tex. Went down in Chelsea very late last night. This one was found with a knitting needle jammed up his nose right into his brain.”

“What'll they think of next?” said Fox.

“You got in this morning, right, Tex?” said Cooperman.

“That's right. I took a cab from the airport to here, just stopping long enough at my place to drop off my busted valise.”

“We've got to get over to Chelsea now, but I want you to understand something, Tex. Under no circumstances are you to leave the city. You got that?”

“What am I?” I said. “A witness? A suspect?”

Cooperman looked at me coldly with obsidian eyes that had seen a lot of shit go down in this city and were sure that they were going to see a lot more. He smiled a smile that wasn't really a smile; it was a stubborn, bitter rictus of malice.

“What are you?” he asked mockingly. “You are whatever we want you to be. 'Cause I'll let you in on a little secret, Tex. Your friend McGovern got it wrong. This dead guy? Scalopini?”

“Dickless wonder,” said Fox. Cooperman paid him no attention.

“This dead guy? Scalopini?” he repeated. “He was never at your loft. He wasn't even in the city that night. He was on a skiing trip in Vermont. When he came back the next day, the killer surprised him when he entered his own apartment. I'll take that wallet now.”

I looked down at the wallet in my hand. Then I gave it to Cooperman.

“Then how—?” I started to ask.

“That's what we want to know,” said Cooperman.

M
uch later that afternoon, at the Second Avenue Deli, Ratso's large, slightly pear-shaped, Jewish buttocks were literally on the edge of his seat as I regaled him with the morning's adventures at the cop shop. Cop-talk about “vics” and “perps” always seemed to titillate Ratso's proclivities to delve deeply into the psychological nature of the criminal mind. But unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, depending upon the way you looked at it, Ratso was quintessentially a good guy. And good guys rarely if ever are capable of gleaning significant insights into the criminal mind. Nevertheless, Ratso's enthusiasm often compensated for his spiritual disability.

“This is it, baby!” he shouted, as the waiter brought the matzo ball soup. “This is the big case we've been waiting for, Sherlock!”

“It also has the advantage,” I said, “of my being involved in it whether I like it or not.”

Ratso, never one to pick up on ironical nuances, or nuances of any kind for that matter, slurped his soup and nodded repeatedly to himself with a seeming sense of great satisfaction. Whether this response was in reaction to the situation or the soup, I would not like to hazard a guess.

“Do you think they're random?” he asked.

“Do I think what are random?”

“The string of killings, of course, Sherlock. The four murders in the Village.”

“No killing is random in the true sense of the word, my dear Watson. Or, very possibly, one could say all of them are.”

“I see,” said Ratso, staring down intently into his matzo ball soup.

“What're you looking for?” I said. “Matzo ball leaves?”

“No, I'm just thinking, Sherlock. Do you believe the same perp committed these murders?”

“Judging merely from the proximity in time and geography, Watson, I would say there's a good chance they were done by the same hand. I haven't really looked into it.”

“I have, Sherlock.”

“Say what?”

“I've looked into it,” said Ratso, with a not inconsiderable measure of pride. “Of course I haven't held conversations with the cops like you and McGovern and that vicious diesel dyke, Winnie Katz.”

“Ah, Watson, you are blessed with such a forgiving nature. Just because she tossed you out of her lesbian dance class.”

“Mad cow was named after her.”

“After all, it
is
a lesbian dance class. Or at least it was a lesbian dance class. I think she's decided to take a break.”

“I'd like to hire Joe the Hyena to break her legs.”

“She speaks very highly of you, Watson,” I said, as the waiter brought a huge corned beef sandwich for me, a huge reuben for Ratso, and a large bowl of pickles. “I'm rather in a pickle myself these days because of this singular matter of the wallet.”

“That's why it's so perfect, Sherlock! What better revenge? We solve the case ourselves right under Cooperman's and Fox's noses! We've done it before! We can do it again!”

“Maybe you're on to something, Watson. You say you've been looking into it? Marvelous! And what have you gleaned from your explorations?”

“Well, I'm sure the cops know more than they're telling us, but I have been studying the papers, the coverage on television, and the Internet.”

“How ingenious of you, Watson! And you discovered precisely what, might I ask?”

“Well, for one thing, not to state the obvious, but all the victims have been men.”

“Ah, Watson! Does nothing escape your scrutiny?”

“If all the vics turn out to be fags, it could be a homophobe. Or maybe a fag killing other fags.”

“The hand of the killer supported by a limp wrist? I doubt it, Watson.”

“There's also the fact that three of the four murder victims were divorced. That's quite a bit higher than the national average.”

“Clever, Watson, clever! No detail too superficial or ridiculous for your rapacious eyes to divine! Perhaps the killer is a disgruntled marriage counselor.”

“I lean to the homosexual theory.”

“Don't lean too far, Watson! Don't lean too far!”

Over coffee and cheesecake, I imparted to Ratso the cutting-the-dick-off and the knitting-needle-up-
the-nose tidbits. He, of course, had not heard these details before and it took him a short while to process this new and rather graphic information. Ratso habitually made the fatal, and quite irritating, mistake of thinking of everything that happened as “clues.” The clues he didn't like, he ignored. The ones that appealed to him he mindlessly embraced and ruthlessly followed, like some men follow their penises around the world. It is a futile exercise and, indeed, if you take it far enough you invariably wind up fucking yourself in your own large, Jewish, slightly pear-shaped buttocks.

Yet, to paraphrase my sister Marcie, despise no thing and call no man useless. There was always something for some sad Sherlock to learn from the Watsons of the world. One of the most important things I myself had learned was never to rely on them to pick up the check.

“You may have something with this homosexual business, Watson,” I remarked, as I lighted a cigar out in the street. “Perhaps we should start with me interviewing McGovern and you interviewing Winnie.”

“That's fucking brilliant, Sherlock. She fucking hates my guts.”

“Have I not already told you, Watson, that she speaks very highly of you? She says you have more balls than any student she's ever worked with. Of course, it
is
a lesbian dance class.”

“You're serious, Sherlock?”

“I'm always serious, Watson. That's why I'm Sherlock. To paraphrase Billy Joe Shaver, I'm a serious soul nobody takes seriously.”

“I take you seriously.”

“That's why you're Watson,” I said.

And so it was decided that the two of us would once again sally forth into that cauldron of imagined urgency that was New York to do battle with the criminal element and the powers that be. Who was behind this ugly little string of killings I had not a clue, or should I say, I had no idea. There was, in fact, only one point upon which Watson and Sherlock entirely agreed. At long last, by God, we had a case.