“I better get home before the supermarket closes. I don’t have any cottage cheese or milk left.” I held my hand against the digging pain.
“Joe. I think you better pick up on that ‘special’ assignment for me. I think you better continue checking our Jeremiah’s real-estate dealings.”
“That what you think, Tim?”
Tim stood up. We stared at each other across his desk; neither one of us said anything. Then Tim said, “Joe, stay off this case; it’s over now as far as you’re concerned. Get something on Jerry and get it fast or that bastard is just liable to take the primary. And then, buddy, it’ll be a uniformed desk job for me. And Florida for you.”
“Florida. Florida. You know, Tim, tonight, just tonight, that doesn’t sound too bad.”
W
HEN THE PHONE RINGS
at two o’clock in the morning, it’s natural to assume that it’s someone calling with bad news. No one calls to tell you something wonderful at two o’clock in the morning.
“Jen?” My eyes narrowed against the sudden sharp light from the bedside lamp. My fingers were fumbling a cigarette from the crushed pack.
“Joe?”
“Who the hell is this?” It sure wasn’t Jen.
“Joe, it’s me. Sam. Sam Catalano. Joe, could I come up to your place and see you? I’m right down the street; at the bar, Daly’s. Right on your corner.”
“Yeah, I know where Daly’s is. All right, Sam. Come on up.”
Sam looked fresh and wide-awake even though he said he was beat; he didn’t even need a shave, although he rubbed his chin and said he needed a shave.
“Look, Sam, you didn’t come up here at two o’clock in the morning to discuss your grooming. What’s on your mind?”
He started rambling; Sam finds it very difficult to get right to the point.
“Cut the bullshit. What’s on your mind?”
“Okay. Okay, Joe. I’m going to take you into my confidence. I’m going to trust you completely.” He said it like he was offering me a rare gift.
I was in no mood for Catalano. “Sam, why don’t you get the hell outa here and let me go back to sleep.”
“Jaytee Williams has a transcript of the entire presentation to the Keeler grand jury.”
“What?”
It was impossible; or rather, it should have been impossible as well as being illegal, which it is.
Sam looked over his shoulder, checking the walls in the tradition of all good secret-tellers. “I told you, I been cultivatin’ George. George told me. He tells me everything. Joe, according to George, Jaytee Williams has been having fits with Kitty because she won’t say anything against Vince Martucci. He’s been up the wall with her about it. Like one minute Vincent is her lover and now he’s talking his head off about what she said to him on the telephone the night the kids were killed. He keeps asking Kitty, not if what Vince said was true, but he keeps asking her, ‘What do the cops have on Vince to make him tell this story?’ And George says that Williams says that Kitty has
got
to know something about Martucci and she’d better tell him so that
he’d
have something on Martucci, too.”
It was funny; it hadn’t even occurred to me. Kitty would have to know about Martucci. In fact, Christ, Kitty must have been fronting for him for the last couple of years: Vince was safe going out with his boys; it was common knowledge that Kitty Keeler was his mistress. What the hell was in it for Kitty? Money, clothes, probably. But now why wouldn’t she blow his cover?
He
was crucifying
her.
“George says that Williams says that without Martucci’s testimony there was no real case against her. And that’s why I come to see you, Joe.”
“What’s why you come to see me, Sam?”
Sam flexed his shoulders to adjust the perfect fit of his jacket. He glanced toward the windows, checking that no one was hanging by the fingernails, six stories up, to eavesdrop.
“Joe, like I been tellin’ you, I’ve been buddyin’ up with George. We’re real close, Joe. Poor guy, he don’t have hardly anyone left to talk to, ya know? His business has fallen off, all his regulars, they don’t come around his pub anymore. They’re like uncomfortable, ya know? They don’t know how to talk to him anymore, with all the publicity about Kitty and all. So, see, he’s gotten to rely more and more on me.” Sam winked.
“That’s terrific, Sam.”
“Yeah, well, here’s the thing, Joe. The way I got it figured, Joe, is this. Kitty depends on George; hell, George is all she got left. You know that old lady neighbor, the Jewish lady?”
“Mrs. Silverberg?”
“Yeah, right. Well, she died last week, George told me. He said Kitty was all broke up about that. She says like everyone she loves is dying or turning against her. All she got left is George.”
“And what have you been telling George?”
“That if he wants to see Kitty walk away from this before she’s an old woman, he better convince her to give with the name of her accomplice. The guy who drove the bodies to Peck Avenue. Either Kitty tells him or
he’s
gonna
walk.”
Sam leaned forward and spoke quickly, nervously. “Then she’d have no one. At all.”
“And when you say that to George, what does
he
say?”
Sam shrugged. “Aw, George is a funny guy, Joe. Quiet; never says too much, but he’s thinking; like you can tell he’s holding it all inside himself. But I’m sure he can get to Kitty, Joe. And, see, here’s the thing, Joe ...”
“You want to make the collar.”
Sam looked like I’d just thrown water in his face; he jumped slightly, looked around, leaned forward. “Well, after all, Joe, it’s only right. Look, I don’t know why Neary’s always on my back, but you know as well as I do he hasn’t let me near this case. Look, Joe, I’m not gonna be a third-grade all my life. If I come up with this accomplice, hell, anyone else would get jumped right up to first grade. But I’m willing to take second if that’s all Neary will give me.”
“So George believes Kitty did it?”
“Sure he does. Oh, he doesn’t come right out and say it, but when I talk to him, ya know, about getting down to cases with her, threatening to leave her, he don’t object, he don’t say a thing. And, see, I been emphasizin’ the bright side of it: ya know, if Kitty cooperates, her lawyer can deal with the D.A.”
“Sam, why’d you come to me with all this?”
Sam brushed some ashes from his knee, then checked the side of his leg. “Well, see, Joe. Well, you and me were partners almost since I been in the squad. And we
did
answer the Keeler call together. I mean, technically, it’s
my
case, too, but for some reason Captain Neary hasn’t liked me from the day I come into the squad. And, well, I wanna be sure no one screws me outa the collar. So, seein’ as you’re good friends with him, and we
were
partners and all, I wanna ask you to back me up. To make sure I don’t get shafted.”
“Are you that sure, Sam?”
“That George’ll get it out of her? Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Look, you know the old saying, still waters runs deep and all. She got no one at all left. Ya know, Joe, I already talked George outa killing Martucci.”
He said it as though it was all in line with a day’s good deed. He was just full of surprises.
“And. hell,” Sam went on, “that woulda blown the case, right?”
“Not to mention what it would have done to Martucci. And to George. And to Kitty.”
“Right, right. That’s what I tole him. So wadda ya say, Joe? Will you back me in this? Make sure I don’t get screwed?”
“Sam. Go home. Go to bed. Let me go back to bed, all right?”
“Right, right, sure, sorry I got you up. But, see, I just come from George’s place and I was really high on all this, ya know? Like I can
feel
the timing; that it’ll be
soon,
ya know?”
“Terrific.” I led him to the door, practically had to shove him into the hall.
“Joe, listen, just one thing, okay? Joe, how’d you get Martucci to turn on Kitty?”
I closed the door and went back to bed.
Sam was right about one thing. It happened soon. That was all he was right about.
The next day, Tuesday, I spent most of the morning checking out Brooklyn and Queens real-estate records, going back nearly twenty years, which is just about when Jeremiah Kelleher entered the public employ. During those years, he had acquired, for remarkably little money, a collection of those useless little side alleys and irregularly shaped, unusable garbage lots and corridors between buildings, which the city sold at auction. He purchased these parcels regularly, steadily, over the years, and just as regularly and steadily he sold them back to the city, and in some cases to the state, for incredibly high amounts of money, when as it just so happened expressways or post offices or police stations or public libraries were to be built in exact proximity to Kelleher’s seemingly useless holdings.
This was the kind of information Tim wanted me to locate, but it was really too complicated to be of any immediate use to him; there would be delayed investigations, charges, countercharges, accusations, denials, which could go on for years, during which time Jeremiah Kelleher might well be defending himself from City Hall. However, this is what the Man told me to do with my working life and this is what I was going to do.
I had a bite to eat and went in to the office to write up my report. There wasn’t anyone else in the office except Sergeant Max Gelber, who looked like he was about to start another siege of the flu that had him laid up for a week. I stopped typing to listen to him yelling into the phone. Ever since he was sick Gelber had been accusing everyone of whispering around him; he wouldn’t admit his ears had been affected by the virus.
“What? What?” he kept yelling. Finally he looked up at me and said, “Joe, you pick up on this goddamn joker, I got better things to do than play games.”
He waited until I picked up the phone, then he slammed down his receiver and went down the hall toward the men’s room.
“Detective Peters. Who’s this?”
The voice was low and hoarse; I could hardly hear what was being said. There was a gasping, wheezy sound, a strangling, desperate, suddenly familiar sound.
“George? George Keeler, is that you?”
“Where’s Sam Catalano? Gotta talk to Sam. He wasn’t at his home; tried to call him, but he wasn’t at his home.”
“George, this is Joe. What’s the matter, George? You okay? You sound bad. You having an attack, George? I’ll get you some help; hang up and I’ll call an ambulance.”
“No. No. No ambulance. Listen. Just listen.”
It was painful to listen to him; I felt a tightening, a constriction in my own throat and chest, a sympathetic wave of suffocation. It seemed to get worse, George’s wheezing, as I argued with him to let me get help.
“Okay, okay, George. I’ll listen. Calm down and tell me what you want me to know.”
“Kitty,” he gasped. “Kitty. Didn’t do it. Not Kitty.”
I didn’t interrupt him again, because then he struggled harder, and the harder he struggled, the worse it became for him. I just sat there and listened.
“All wrong. Everyone, wrong. Newspapers, police. Terrible mistake. Not Kitty. She never hurt the kids. I got it all written out. All written in letter. You tell Sam. Tell him.”
I was beginning to get the message. “What letter, George? George, where are you?”
“Letter. Right here. Kitchen table. In my apartment, see. Pub. Over pub. In kitchen. Letter on table. Right here. Tells everything. Everything.”
“George, let me come over. We’ll talk about it. I’ll bring Sam. We’ll come over together and we’ll talk about it, okay?”
“Too late. All too late. Letter. Tell Kitty I love her. Oh, God. I love her.”
There was a terrible desperate wheezing sound as George Keeler sucked in one last deep breath before putting the muzzle of his gun into his mouth, and while I sat and listened he blew his brains out all over the walls of his small kitchen.
T
HE TWO PATROL-CAR COPS
who responded to my urgent call had arrived in time to pull Danny Fitzmartin and Lucille Travera out of George Keeler’s apartment before they had touched anything of importance, including what was left of George. There was a cop leaning against the far end of the bar, near the door leading to upstairs. He gave me one of those meant-to-be-intimidating chin jerks and narrowing-of-the-eyes cold stares as I approached.
“Hold it, buster. Where do you think you’re goin’?”
I held out my hand so that he could see my shield.
“Yeah? Well, you’re supposed to have it pinned on your jacket,” he instructed me. “How the hell am I supposed to know who you are?”
There are so many things you can say to a hard-nosed bastard like this guy, but not one thing that’s worth the bother. I pushed the swinging door to the kitchen open a few inches; Danny Fitz was slumped against a worktable; his beefy shoulders were heaving and he was sobbing and shaking his head from side to side. Skinny little red-bubbleheaded Lucille, white as a sheet, turned from the sink and slammed a wet cloth over Danny’s face. She looked at me and with just a slight gesture of her hand, a slight movement of her head, she let me know: Lucille was in charge; she’d handle Danny.
The young cop stationed upstairs, just outside the open door of George’s apartment, saluted the shield on my jacket. There was a look of relief that he wasn’t solely responsible anymore for what was inside.
“You haven’t touched anything in there, have you?”
“Oh, Jeez,” the kid said, “are you kidding? Holy God, there’s some mess in there. Richie, that’s my partner, Richie said the guy musta put the gun in his mouth. Christ, how can a guy do a thing like that?” He was babbling, looking over his shoulder toward the kitchen, then turning away; then looking back, irresistibly.
“The reason a guy puts a gun in his mouth instead of against his temple is that it’s the only sure way. Straight up, right through the brain.
“Oh, Jeez, you mean that’s what all that stuff is, all over the wall? Oh, Jeez, his brains?”
“What the hell did you think it was, Officer, chopped liver?”
He swallowed dryly and shut his mouth and pulled himself together a little. Even in the dim hall light, I could see that his face was a greenish yellow. He’d get over that; in time.