“Nice place,” I told Fitzmartin. “Bigger than it looks from outside.”
“It’s a real family place. The old-timers still come round steady from the neighborhood. And we’ve been gettin’ a lot of younger people, some from as far away as the Bronx. To hear them folk singers we got, three times a week, ya know.”
“Yeah, I hear they’re pretty good. Except for a show of temperament now and then.”
The barman shrugged and grinned. “Crazy Irishmen, what can ya expect?”
“You were both here Wednesday night?” They both nodded and their faces became serious. “And George Keeler was here, all night, Wednesday into Thursday morning?”
“Oh, George was here,” Lucille answered. “Poor George, them poor little kids, poor George.”
She didn’t say “Poor Kitty.”
“George was here until about two and a little after, maybe ten or fifteen after two,” Fitzmartin said.
“And did you see George, all during that time? Was he absent for any length of time at all?”
Lucille poked at her hair and leaned a little closer to Sam. “Oh, Georgie was here the whole time, here and in and out of the kitchen. Like I already told Sam.” The last with a wink at Sam.
“How about a little something to make the day go by?” Danny gestured to his entire stock. We settled for beer, and as an afterthought he drew one for Lucille and himself as well.
Lucille sipped the beer with small, dainty little swallowing sounds, then licked her lips. “George works the bar right along with Danny and he even works the tables with me, if the part-timers don’t show. We got two part-timers; young kids. Ya never know if they’ll show or not, ya know how kids are.”
The part-timers were all present Wednesday night; could vouch for George Keeler.
“Jesus,” Danny said suddenly, his meaty shoulders hunching over his arms on the spotless bar. “Who’d do a thing like that to George’s kids? That guy’d give you the shirt offa his back you asked him. He’s one in a million, that guy. Everybody loves George.”
“Yeah, everybody but Kitty,” Lucille said tightly.
Danny turned to her. “All right, Lucille.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not all right. It’s true.” She added, softly, “That little bitch.”
“Lucille, I understand you spoke to Kitty Keeler on the phone Wednesday night?”
“We were just up to that when you came in, Joe.” Sam wanted me to know he was right on the ball.
“That’s terrific, Sam. Lucille?”
“Yeah, well, like I started to tell Sam, ya know, she called him at eleven-twenty, on the button.”
She verified what George Keeler had told me: the Irish folk singers had gotten into an argument because one of them wanted to sing something for an old-timer and the others objected because it was eleven-twenty and they had a break until eleven-thirty.
“What did Kitty say when you told her George couldn’t come to the phone?”
“I just asked her that, Joe, when you came in,” Sam told me.
No doubt about it; Sam
was
right on the ball.
“Well, like I started to tell Sam,” she spoke directly to Catalano as though they were alone and sharing a confidence, “her ladyship tells me, ‘I don’t care about that he’s involved with those singers, you tell him to get his ass over to the phone, right now!’ ” One thin hand rested on a sharp hipbone and her face and voice were expressive as she imitated first Kitty, then herself. “So I tell her that George would get back to her as soon as he was free and she says again, ‘Get him on the phone right
now!’ ”
According to Lucille, Kitty’s voice had been high-pitched and screechy; Lucille’s had been warm and polite. “So, okay, I call George again, and poor George, he’s up to his eyebrows in trouble with them singers, so I just hold the phone up high so’s
she
can hear the noise and all and then I tell her, I says like this to her, ‘As you can hear for yourself, Kitty, George ain’t free to come to the phone at the moment.’ And I tell her, ‘He’ll get back to you as soon as he’s free.’ And then I hung up on her.” She nodded a righteous jut of her chin. “Before she could do me, ya know?”
“She got a bad temper—Kitty?”
“She’s just so useta George gotta jump when Kitty says jump is all.” Lucille made a clicking noise against her teeth. “Huh, too bad about her,
Mrs. Keeler.”
“How did she sound, Lucille, when she spoke to you? Any different from how she usually sounds on the phone? Upset? What?”
“I was just gonna ask her that when you came in, Joe.”
This time I ignored Sam.
“To me, she always sounds bitchy,” Lucille admitted. “She sounded the same as always, only more so, if you take my meaning. Just mad as hell that George didn’t come to the phone right away.”
“Did she sound worried? Upset? Hysterical?”
Lucille bit on her lip in thought. “Naw. Just sore as hell. Boy, poor Georgie, he tried to call her back like in five minutes, but from then on, the phone was busy-busy. She musta took it off the hook for the resta the night. She’s some bitch, that Kitty.”
“Okay, Lucille,” Danny said, not so softly, “you done your little number. Take care a that old couple in Booth Three. They look like they’re drying out.”
He leaned on the counter and confided, “She just don’t like Kitty is all. Hell, I guess most women don’t like Kitty much. She’s a real beautiful girl.”
“How do you figure Kitty and George?”
Danny pulled back, stiffened. “None of my business, ya know. I’ve known George fifteen, sixteen years, and he’s the nicest guy I ever known in my life. Kitty? Well, Kitty’s George’s business, the way I figure. How they live ain’t none of my business.”
Spoken like a true bartender. While Danny and I shot the breeze, Lucille took Catalano upstairs to check out George’s apartment. Homicide guys had already checked out George’s .32, for which he had a permit.
“Jeez,” Danny said, “I unnerstan the older kid, Terry, was hit by a thirty-eight.” It overwhelmed him for a moment and he rubbed his water-reddened hand over his face. “Jeez. What an awful thing.”
“Yeah. You think of anything, Dan, anything at all, give me a call, right?”
He assured me that he would and I believed him. Lucille brought Catalano back through the door from the hallway which led to George’s apartment. She was playfully poking at her bubble of hair; Catalano leaned close and said something that sent her into high ripples of laughter. Then Sam pressed her hand and left her regretfully.
“Anything?” I asked him when we hit the late-afternoon street.
“Naw. Nice neat little place, though. Lucille told me that in all the years she’s known George, he’s never once played around. She says Kitty is enough for George, but that it don’t work both ways. She says she can’t figure how George, or any other man, would put up with the way Kitty plays around. Like she don’t make no secret, no excuses or anything.”
“Well, that’s how some people are, Sam.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put up with it if it was
my
wife.” Then Sam flexed his shoulders, settled his jacket and told me, “Ya know, I bet I coulda made out with her in another five minutes; if I wanted to.”
“Lucille knows a good thing when she sees it.” That made him feel good; at least until I told him his next assignment.
“But that don’t make any sense, Joe. Hell, we don’t need all those people to verify that George was at his place all night. Joe, I wanna talk to you about something been bothering me.”
Sam Catalano was bothered by the fact that he was only a third-grade detective; that he rarely had an opportunity to prove that he was worthy of promotion to second grade, which would merely be a steppingstone to first grade, which was what he
really
deserved. For some reason he was beginning to sense that Captain Neary didn’t like him very much, and could I maybe put in a word with Tim on his behalf? But be subtle about it, like it was all my own idea. “After all, Joe,
I
was the one who caught the case, even if you are senior man. It isn’t even as if we was partners anymore, it’s just the way things worked out, ya know?”
I promised I’d mention his name to Neary, but he didn’t seem too cheered up by that. “Hey, Sam, you know a guy named Steve Werner? Second-grade guy in Narcotics?”
“Steve Werner?” Catalano was memorizing the name. “Hey, Joe, anything to do with the ... the ‘drug thing’?”
I winked and patted Sam on the back. There was a new spring to his step as he headed for his car. The son-of-a-bitch was in a hopeful mood again.
Vito Geraldi’s beady little eyes were gleaming with excitement when I reported to Tim Neary’s office. Even Tim looked a little cheered up, but Tim keeps a tight rein on himself.
Vito wrapped a heavy arm around my shoulders and escorted me across the room. “Pay dirt, Joey,” he told me. “We’re starting to hit pay dirt, kid.”
“That’s terrific, Vito.” I eased myself from his grip and glanced at Tim.
“Vincent Martucci, Joe. Familiar name?”
Either they were going to tell me or they were going to make me guess. “Owner of the New World Health Spa; Kitty Keeler’s boss. Right?”
“Minor mob figure, with a record going back some thirty years,” Tim said. “Owner of the New World Health Spa; Kitty Keeler’s boss;
and
Kitty Keeler’s
lover.”
Tim picked up his reading glasses. “He’s out in Phoenix, Joe; where Kitty was supposed to be going. On Wednesday night, April sixteenth, 1975, Kitty Keeler made a person-to-person call to Vincent Martucci, out at the spa in Phoenix.” He checked with a slip of paper, then said, “They talked from eleven-thirty
P.M.
until twelve-five midnight.”
Tim paused significantly to let me consider the timing of the call; before I could say anything, he held his hand up, looked down at a second slip on his desk, then up at me.
“She called him a
second
time, person to person, from three-ten
A.M.
to three-twenty-five
A.M.,
Thursday morning, April seventeenth.”
We stared at each other, then Vito slammed me on the back. “Wadda ya think, Joey?”
I sat down on one of the chairs in front of Tim’s desk; slouched way down with my legs going under the desk and my shoulders even with the top of the chair. There was no portion of me that Geraldi could punch, pinch, jab or pat.
“Run through it, Joe.”
I closed my eyes and started. “First kid is killed between eleven and midnight Wednesday. Kitty calls George at his bar at eleven-twenty.” When I opened my eyes, I saw that Tim was checking me against a page of jotted notes. He nodded when I continued. “We can assume the first kid was killed sometime between eleven and eleven-twenty, right? She can’t get to speak to George. She calls Martucci and talks to him between eleven-thirty and twelve-five midnight. At around this time, the older boy, Terry, has apparently ingested a certain amount of a barbiturate, so he’s either dead or comatose at this time.”
“Comatose,” Tim said. “He was still alive when he was shot; the M.E. confirmed the tentative times of death and that the thirty-eight was the cause of death of the second boy.”
“Right. Then this Scotch girl—”
“Scots
girl,” Tim said coldly.
“Right. Patti MacDougal claims she was at the Keeler apartment at two-thirty
A.M.
Apparently, no one home; at least no one came to the door and she didn’t hear anyone inside. Still not confirmed, Tim?”
“No, but presuming the girl had no reason to lie, she then returned to her apartment and called Kitty at three
A.M.”
He nodded at me to continue.
“Right. Kitty talks to Patti at three
A.M.
; says something about having been under the shower earlier. Then at ... what? Three-ten?”
Vito came behind me and rested a hand on my shoulder. He began to squeeze his encouragement. “From three-ten to three-twenty-five, Joe, she and Martucci talk on the phone again.”
“By which time both of her children are dead, Joe.” Tim stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets and began clinking coins together; he stared out the window for a moment, then turned and leaned against the sill. “My guess would go something like this, Joe. In some kind of ... anger, maybe, she strangles the first kid. Probably didn’t mean to do it; give her the benefit of the doubt, at this point. The other kid witnessed it; maybe he starts to cry, is all upset, so she gives him a couple of sleeping pills.” He interrupted himself. “No question that the sleeping pills came from Keeler’s medicine cabinet: Doriden. She just picked up the prescription about a week ago. That’s what ‘someone’ gave to little Terry. Okay. Now let’s say she’s in a panic; calls George to come over to help her out. Can’t connect. Calls Martucci in Phoenix and they talk for more than half an hour.”
“Did he call her at any time?”
Vito massaged my numb shoulder. “No, Joe, we checked with the Phoenix P.D. Martucci didn’t make no New York calls, no one from the spa made
any
long-distance calls those two days.”
“He probably calms her down.” Tim sounded like he was talking to himself; his eyes were glassy and unfocused. “Tells her who to call for help; who’ll help her get rid of the bodies.” He stopped speaking and just stared, then rubbed the back of his neck and looked up at me. “Her own kids, Joe. Jesus, this girl has got to be cold-blooded.”
“She’s nothin’ but a little whore, Tim, wadda ya expect?” Vito declared. He dug at me with his thick fingers. “Time of death for the second kid, Joe, from the bullet: estimated sometime between two and three
A.M.
Thursday morning.”
“It can even be narrowed down,” Tim said. “To sometime between two-twenty and three
A.M.
Figuring they were out of the apartment before two-thirty and Kitty was back by three. Takes maybe five minutes to load the kids into a car, drive them down to Peck Avenue, dump them, shoot Terry, drive back. Kitty gets out of the car and back into the apartment and answers the phone at three.” He rubbed his face roughly, first down, then up. His eyebrows were all rumpled. “What we have to find now is who helped her. That’ll pull it all together.”
“Then she calls Martucci back at three-ten until three-twenty-five, to tell him the score,” Vito told me.