3 Quarters (40 page)

“Drowned, disappeared, whatever.”

“You of all people should know the difference,” Roth said. “But more about that in a minute. Let's talk about the year 1991: the year John Shine first applied for a three-quarters pension . . . .”

Bobby stopped in mid-stride, in front of two homeless men who were fighting over the last sip of a forty-ounce bottle of Olde English malt liquor.

“Shine told me he never applied for a three-quarters pension,” Bobby said.

“Bullshit,” Max Roth said, and continued walking, slapping the papers against his open palm. “He applied three times in the same year. Each time he was turned down. Shine claimed he injured his back wrestling with a crazed crack dealer.”

“He told me about that,” Bobby said. “That's how he ruined the disks in his back. Said he never put in a claim because that was for crippled heroes who couldn't work.”

“Well, he put in his three-quarters papers, and an internal investigation revealed that he messed up his back on a ski trip up to Hunter Mountain,” Roth said. “In his Internal Affairs interview, Shine claimed he was sandbagged by a certain captain he didn't get along with.”

“His name wasn't Barnicle, was it?”

“The one and only,” Roth said.

“Who were the doctors who disapproved him?”

“One was named Dr. Frederick Jones,” Roth said.

“No data,” Bobby said, shrugging, tapping his right temple.

“He died in a car wreck a couple of months ago,” Roth said. “I vaguely remember it making a blip on the wires. But the second doctor who turned John Shine down was one Dr. Benjamin Abrams.”

“Okay,” Bobby said, recognizing the name from the printout Maggie had made for him on her laptop in Central Park. He looked over at the East River, busy with afternoon boats.

“Dr. Jones was replaced by a guy named Dr. Hector Perez,” Roth said.

Bobby also recognized this name from the printout.

“It should be no surprise that John Shine is never with the same woman more than once,” Roth said.

“He claims it's because he can never replace the love of his life,” Bobby said.

“That might be true,” Roth said as they walked toward the glittering glass UN building. “But whether he hurt himself in a ski lodge or in a fight with a crack head, according to his file, John Shine ruined four disks in his back, which also left him sexually impotent. Shine produced three affidavits from different doctors to verify this. Even the city's doctors agreed that part was true. They just said the injury happened off duty, so they turned him down for three-quarters three times.”

“The irony here is that he probably did get hurt on the job,” Bobby said. “And Barnicle sandbagged him. So what we have here is a good cop who gets denied a legit claim and to get even he decides to concoct one of the biggest pension scams in city history.”

“Think of the dramatic dynamics here,” Roth said with a whoop of a laugh. “A good cop is hurt on the job busting a mutt, left impotent, then turned down for a legitimate medical pension, and to get even he's
fucking
the whole department for fucking him.”

Bobby stopped, looked at Roth, and said, “John could think like that. He is grandiose.”

“Plus, he's using Barnicle, who
sandbagged
him, as his bagman,” Roth said with a measure of dark admiration. “This guy big on poetry? Because there is some badassed poetic justice in his madness.”

“He loves Emerson,” he said.

“Well, that explains it,” Roth said, rattling the printed pages. “If all this is even half right, he is definitely one sick
individual.”

“You said there was a woman in his past,” Bobby said.

Roth pointed to an NYPD kiosk box outside the UN, where a uniformed cop stood on duty, a young sentry assigned to look out for crazies who might take potshots at world leaders and diplomats. Then Roth leafed through the paperwork in his hands.

“According to his file,” Roth said, “Shine had that duty for a couple of years early in his career.”

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “He's mentioned it in passing a few times. No secret there.”

“What he probably didn't mention was that while assigned here, he had a steamy affair with a diplomat's wife,” Roth said.

“It's been known to happen,” Bobby said. “I met Connie while assigned to protect her. Patty Hearst married the cop who was assigned to bodyguard her. They say Princess Di even had a fling with her bodyguard. So . . .”

“So, in Shine's case, it caused a mini diplomatic shebang, and FBI and CIA got involved,” Roth said. “The diplomat, whose name was Slomowicz, was from the Ukraine . . . .”

Bobby stopped and looked at his friend and swallowed hard.

“Where Dorothea was from,” Bobby whispered. “Tom Larkin kept asking me if I was certain she was from the Ukraine . . . .”

“Silly accusations of espionage were exchanged,” Roth said. “This was in the seventies when the Iron Curtain was still rust free. But according to this report, which has lots of blacked-out National Security sections, it looks like it was just sex. The diplomat's wife, who was a brilliant linguist with great breeding, claimed she was tired of her husband being a New York nightlife whore-master. The diplomat was apparently out banging everything that moved, and Shine, a poor bored, single young cop, wound up laying a little log on the jilted bride. Probably just a vengeance fuck on the wife's part. Most of the record is sealed because of National Security classification. But it couldn't have been too politically serious, because all Shine lost was a month's pay and he was transferred—with a solemn promise never to attempt any further contact with the woman or he would be fired from NYPD and arrested on federal espionage charges. The diplomat and his wife were recalled back home. In her case, probably to a fucking salt mine. More likely house arrest.”

“Shine never mentioned a word about any of that,” Bobby said. “And I worked with him for four years.”

“I'm not surprised,” Roth said. “But that's as close as his file comes to John Shine ever having a woman or any other kind of significant other in his life. He never claimed a wife or kid on his medical insurance, income taxes, or anything else. And in his Lexis file, which is his legal history done by Social Security number and date of birth, there's no record of a marriage. Although it does say that he employed an attorney to get him a visa to visit the Ukraine after the Iron Curtain fell in eighty-nine. He used the same lawyer when he won the lottery, to help him get his liquor license, set up his corporation, close on the Bay Ridge saloon and the Windy Tip beach house. The lawyer was, I'm sure you'd also like to know, none other than Moira Farrell.”

“Jesus, the world shrinks by the sick second,” Bobby said.

“Now, I remember clear as a bell, because I wrote about this, that Moira Farrell also defended a crew of Bensonhurst wise guys who laundered money by buying lottery tickets from actual winners,” Roth said. “A legit guy wins, doesn't want to pay all the taxes, or let his ex-wife find out. So he sells the ticket to a mob guy for seventy-five percent of face value, in
cash
. This way he doesn't have to pay forty percent in income taxes. He's up fifteen percent and remains anonymous. Bill collectors, the IRS, or his ex-wife never learn about him winning. No record of it. The wise guy, on the other hand, cashes it at the official lottery office and makes some of his dirty drug or gambling money clean and legal. Capisce?”

“You think Shine did that to launder some of the dirty three-quarters pension money?” Bobby asked.

“Yes,” Roth said. “With Moira Farrell's client's help. Shine buys a legit winning lottery ticket with the dirty three-quarters cash, sets himself up legitimately with a saloon, beach house, Mercedes. These people are better connected than Ma Bell.”

They walked across First Avenue and up Forty-first Street, where Roth had his car parked in the press parking zone alongside the old
Daily News
building.

“What else did you learn about this Kate Clementine case?” Bobby asked.

“I have a call in to the architect who designed that house of horror,” he said. “I want to see if she's designed anything else like it.”

“I have to update Gleason,” Bobby said, “and at least one cop I know who I can trust.”

“Don't tell me it's that Forrest Morgan asshole.”

“He's not a big fan of yours either,” Bobby said.

“I don't like any of your friends,” Roth said. “They all have a habit of coming up dirty.”

“Dirt is your life,” Bobby said.

“This is true,” Roth said. “Anything else?”

“Do you have a connection at the State Department?” Bobby asked.

“Yeah,” Roth said. “Through our Washington bureau. Why?”

“At my trial they said they had no record of a Dorothea Dubrow entering the country,” Bobby said. “Let's see if she entered under another name.”

I
n the morning, Bobby borrowed a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser from Doug the dockmaster. He knew that Shine or Barnicle could now recognize
The Fifth Amendment
. He steered the cabin cruiser out to the calm waters off Windy Tip. At 10:28
AM
he dropped anchor. He used the zoom lens on the camcorder to get a good look at John Shine's house. He saw that Shine's Mercedes and his red Land Rover were both in the driveway alongside the house.

Bobby called Patrick on the cell phone. Patrick was parked in a rented Plymouth at a rest area on the side of the road outside the security gates of Windy Tip.

“Stand by, Sonny,” Bobby said, using the Charlie Chan code they'd worked out. “He's home.”

“I'm waiting, Charlie,” Patrick said.

Bobby kept watching Shine's house until he stepped out at 11:41
AM.
Bobby began taping him as Shine eased into his Mercedes. Then he phoned Patrick and told him Shine was on his way out of Windy Tip.

As Bobby waited for an update from Patrick, he used his viewfinder to pan the beach. He saw that The Central Booking Saloon was opening for business, several daytime drinking desperados piling in for eye-openers.

Patrick phoned again, saying he'd picked up John Shine's tail and was following him into Brooklyn.

Then Bobby focused his camcorder on Barnicle's spectacular beach house and spotted Sandy Fraser stepping out onto her balcony with her son, Donald. She wore a skimpy yellow bikini, which made her deeply tanned and oiled body gleam in contrast in the sun. He studied the little boy's face again, trying to match a father's older face to it with some genetic imagination. It still eluded him.

The cell phone rang again. “Shine just picked up a blind guy from a bus stop on Avenue U and Flatbush,” Patrick said. “Across the street from the Kings Plaza shopping mall.”

Bobby swung the camcorder back toward John Shine's house. Twelve minutes later, at 12:01
PM
, Bobby hit the record button when he saw Shine's Mercedes swing into the blacktop carport alongside the red Land Rover. Bobby watched Shine walk around to the passenger side of the car, open the door, and help out a man wearing a hat and big dark glasses. He led him awkwardly into the house. The blind man carried a small black doctor's bag, just as Sandy Fraser had said.

He felt suddenly guilty about doubting Sandy and swung the camcorder back toward her on the sundeck. She was now engaged in an animated argument with Lou Barnicle. Sandy was trying desperately to talk into a cordless phone. Barnicle wrestled the phone from her hand, poking her, then pointing to the wailing baby, waving a finger, shouting. Bobby saw young Donald crying and Sandy picking him up and shouting right back in Barnicle's face. Now the housekeeper came out on the porch, and she and Sandy had a small tug-of-war over the child. With Barnicle's help, the housekeeper won. Young Donald seemed hysterical as he was detached from his frantic mother.

Barnicle forced all of them into the big house. Once inside he slid the heavy glass door shut and pulled a curtain across it. Bobby felt hollow and a little nauseous. The woman who had warned him of his own danger was now in some kind of trouble. These people he'd been spying on the last few days all seemed suddenly desperate.

A police launch chugged past. A cop stood near the edge of the boat eyeing the surf through binoculars. The cop politely nodded to Bobby. He nodded back. Another cop stood on deck, his back to him. The police boat kept going.

Bobby thought of pouncing on Shine's house right then. Swimming ashore, kicking open the door, and seeing what the hell the doctor was doing. But Gleason's warning haunted him. Forget that he would be illegally entering the house, which could get him arrested and his bail revoked. It was the other fear that Gleason had put in him. The fear that if Dorothea was in there, being held prisoner, Shine might kill her. Kill them all with a booby trap.

If Sandy was right and Shine was bringing Dorothea a doctor for regular checkups, it meant she was being cared for in some sick, demented way. There was no immediate need to act.

Bobby knew he had to do it right. Legally if he could. With backup. He needed to get the doctor alone. Pick his brain, crack him like a coconut.

Sixteen minutes later Bobby filmed John Shine as he led the same blind man out of his house and into the Mercedes. Bobby phoned Patrick, and a few minutes later his brother called back to say that he had picked up Shine's tail again and was following. Bobby fired the motor of the cabin cruiser. “I'm gonna cruise over to the marina behind Kings Plaza, near where the blind man was picked up,” Bobby said. “I'll meet you over there. I want to find out who this doctor is.”

Patrick said, “They're heading down Flatbush Avenue in that direction now.”