Night Work (18 page)

“We're eager beavers, Al. We want no delays in our search for truth and justice.” Cassidy cleared space to lean against the windowsill and lit a cigarette. “Tell us what you've got on our John Doe on the kitchen chair. His soul cries out for retribution for this foul murder.”

“My ass cries out for a three-bedroom apartment with a view. We all face disappointment. Come on. Let's go take a look.”

John Doe lay on his back on an exam table. He looked lumpy, like a badly stuffed cushion. His chest and stomach had been split and his organs taken out, weighed and examined, and then piled back into the open cavity without regard to nature's plan, and then the cavity had been sewn up. Al Skinner stood beside the table and indicated the points of interest with a pair of forceps. “What we've got here is a well-nourished male in his late twenties, five feet eleven and a half inches tall, and one hundred ninety-four pounds.” He pointed to the small dark hole in the corpse's forehead. “A .32 between the eyes. The slug started tumbling when it penetrated the bone, tore a hell of a path through the frontal lobe, and, as we say in the medical profession, ripped out all the wiring and fucked up the system.”

“Did you recover the slug?”

“Of course I recovered the slug. You think you're talking to an amateur?” Skinner pointed to a small glass dish on a nearby metal table near where he stood. The slug was in a clear plastic envelope. “Flattened a bit when it hit bone, but plenty left for comparison if you ever find a weapon. Check the powder stippling all around the entry wound.”

Cassidy could see the black speckles embedded in the dead man's skin, burned powder from the gunshot. “What do you think? The killer was about a foot away?”

“About that.”

“Probably knew him to get that close with a gun.”

“Ninety percent of them do, killer and killed. Friendship's a dangerous thing,” Orso said.

“He was killed about twelve hours before he was found in the park. Hypostasis, blood pooling, suggests the guy got shot, sat down, got moved while sitting from wherever he got shot.”

“In the chair?” Cassidy asked. He lit another cigarette against the sweet smell of decay and the harsh overlay of chemicals.

“I don't think it was that chair. I think he was sitting on something else, an easy chair, a sofa. Then they moved him to the wooden chair to carry him to Central Park.” Skinner looked at them expectantly and waited.

“Okay, I'll bite. How do you figure that?”

“There are traces of urine on the chair, and his trousers were damp. He pissed himself when he got shot, but he was sitting on something that absorbed most of it, a chair or sofa with a cloth cushion.”

“That's good, Al. I like that.”

“Right. Find the piss-stained sofa and you've got your killer.”

“How the hell did he get to Seventy-second Street with no one seeing him?” Orso asked.

No one had an answer.

Skinner touched the forceps to a pale welt on the dead man's abdomen. “Old appendectomy. Not much for an identifying mark, but it might help to confirm if you get a name. Take a look here.” He picked up one of the hands and turned it so they could see the back, and pointed out a number of small white scars, healed nicks and small cuts. There were also two recently healed cuts, the scars still livid, and one scabbed-over puncture wound. “The other hand's like that too. The guy worked with sharp tools, machinist, carpenter, maybe a chef, I don't know, but definitely a guy who used blades.”

John Doe's clothes hung from a rack nearby. “He dressed well for a workingman.”

“I was getting to that. The underwear's from Bloomingdale's. The shirt, trousers, jacket are from Brooks Brothers. The shoes are English, Church's. They've got a store on Madison. I went in and priced a pair when I was pretending I was going to be rich some day. Sixty bucks. The jacket goes for a hundred ten at Brooks. The trousers fifty. At the same time he's wearing a cruddy five-dollar watch. And his socks are crap, worn at the heels, coming through the toes.”

“The jacket's new,” Orso said. “No cleaner's mark. The soles of the shoes are barely scuffed. Probably new too. Maybe he was stepping up in class. Just 'cause a guy's a working stiff doesn't mean he can't look good.” Said by a man who spent all his money on clothes.

“We'll take them with us.”

“Fine with me,” Skinner said. “Just keep in mind, if no one comes to claim them, the shoes are my size.”

Back in his office Skinner produced four copies of a photograph he had taken of the dead man. “Indirect lighting. I used some cosmetics on the bullet hole so it doesn't show up so much. I think he looks pretty good.”

To Cassidy he looked like meat, slack-faced, lifeless. He gave two of the photos to Orso and kept two for himself.

*   *   *

Cassidy went back to the squad room and read the canvassing reports. No one had seen the dead man and his chair delivered to Central Park. How could that be? How do you get a nearly two-hundred-pound man and a chair to that position without anyone noticing? He copied the names and addresses of the people contacted by the canvassing cops into a notebook. He would go talk to them again. Somebody missed something. Somebody had to have seen something.

“Hey, Cassidy, step in here a moment.” Lieutenant Tanner beckoned from his doorway and turned back into his office. When Cassidy entered, he was seated behind his desk setting fire to a half-smoked cigar that smelled like burning rope. Tanner was a big, top-heavy man, a heavyweight's upper body on a lightweight's bandy legs.

“What's up, boss?”

“How are you getting on with the dead guy on the chair in the park?”

“Little by little. You know how it is. You begin pulling on the string, pretty soon the whole thing unravels.” No reason to disappoint the Lieutenant by telling him they hadn't found the string yet.

“Why'd they leave him out there?”

“We don't know.”

“Someone was supposed to find him. Like a warning. Like this could happen to you.”

“That's what I think.”

“Do you think he did? Find him, I mean.”

“I don't know.”

“We're getting some pressure. People who live over there on Fifth Avenue don't like dead bodies turning up in their park. They pay for the view, and they don't think stiffs should be part of it. Anyway, some of them know people who know people so, like I said, we're getting some pressure to clear it up. Where's your partner?”

“Checking out the stores where the guy's clothes came from. They were new. We're hoping someone remembers him coming in to buy them.”

“Okay. Good. It's a weird one.” He looked at Cassidy for a while without saying anything. Then he sighed, put the cigar down in the tin ashtray on his desk, and ran a hand wearily over his face. “You're a good cop, Mike. Some people think you're a loose cannon, a fuckup. Never bothered me. You and Orso get a lot of arrests, you clear a lot of cases. You've got all the right instincts by my lights: fuck up the bad guys, protect the innocent. That's all the job requires, if you look at it right. A good cop. But lately, not so much. Half the mornings you come in you smell like you fell into a whiskey barrel, look like you haven't slept. You let cases slide. You don't follow up. Days I need you, I can't find you. Orso covers for you. I don't know what's eating you, but pull yourself together. Go back to being who you are.”

Cassidy said nothing. There was nothing to say. He headed for the door, but Tanner stopped him.

“One more thing. Deputy Chief Clarkson called. He wants to see you down at Centre Street.”

“What about?”

“The Deputy Chief did not choose to confide in me.”

Cassidy went over his transgressions but could think of nothing that might have provoked someone so high on the food chain as Chief Clarkson. Clarkson ran Special Operations, a unit that worked outside the normal NYPD organizational chart, a kind of flying squad that could be sent to any crisis.

“Ten o'clock Friday. Hair combed, hands and face washed.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don't be late for the chief, and by that I mean get there at quarter to ten. He's one of those guys thinks if you're on time it shows a lack of commitment.”

*   *   *

The lab report stated that the kitchen chair on which the dead man sat was mass produced in upstate New York and could be bought at almost any cheap hardware or house supply shop in the city. The chair showed traces of linseed oil, lead-based paint, and varnish, and, as Skinner had said, urine. Sawdust scraped from the cracks came from birch, pine, and cherry. There were trace elements of other woods, but they were too small to identify. The bottom of the chair showed traces of lime. Cassidy picked up the phone and called the lab.

“Geyer here. What do you need?”

“This is Detective Michael Cassidy over at the Nineteenth. We sent a kitchen chair down there for examination a couple of days ago. I want to talk to whoever wrote the report.”

“That's me, Detective. What do you need to know?”

“The stuff that's on the chair, the sawdust, the paint, varnish. Where would all that stuff come from?”

“Well, a lot of places. Could be it was used in a hardware store. Could be a home workshop, you know, a guy who likes to take care of his own maintenance around the house. Could be, you know, a carpentry shop, a home or commercial one. Like I said, a lot of places.”

“What about the lime? Where'd that come from?”

“It's not the fruit, the citrus, you know. The guy's not drinking gin and tonics while he's fixing the molding.”

“No?”

“No. It's the mineral. Crushed limestone, crushed chalk. Inorganic materials with a lot of calcium in them, carbonates, oxides, hydroxides mostly.”

“Would that be used in carpentry?”

“Well, you wouldn't use it to fix a table, but it's a construction material, used in masonry work, concrete, like that.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Any help?”

“Could be. I don't know yet.”

Orso was coming up from the evidence lockers when Cassidy headed downstairs. “Hey, I was just coming upstairs to find you. Lunch?”

“It's where I was going.”

“How about we go over to Victor's, get some of those spiced pork chops?”

“No Cuban food.”

“Right. Sure. I forgot. We'll go to Dempsey's. They've got a good macaroni and cheese.”

*   *   *

Jack Dempsey's was full. The Champ was at the rounded end of the bar holding court with Carmen Basilio, the former middleweight champion whose lumpy face looked like a sack full of marbles. They were surrounded by men warming in their light. Red Smith, the columnist for the
Herald Tribune
, caught Cassidy's eye and gave him a nod.

A line of tourists stood like sheep behind the rope waiting to be seated. Frank, the maître d', saw Cassidy and Orso and waved them up. He unhooked the rope and led them to a table near the back, away from the disgruntled muttering and wounded looks of the out-of-towners.

The waiter came and Orso ordered a Schlitz and the macaroni and cheese. Cassidy asked for a double Jack Daniel's on the rocks, water back, and a shrimp cocktail.

“That's it? You're not going to eat anything?” Orso asked.

“I'm having a shrimp cocktail.” He read the flicker of concern in Orso's eyes, but then Orso shrugged.
It's your life.

“I hear Basilio's fighting Fullmer in the summer,” Orso said.

“Fullmer'll kick his ass. He's a bull. He's going to push Basilio around the ring, tire him out, and then knock him on his ass in one of the later rounds.”

“Bullshit. You know less about boxing than you do about the atom bomb. Basilio's going to hit him from angles Fullmer never knew existed. He's going to stick him with the jab and then hit him with that right hand. Stick him and hit him. Stick him and hit him.”

“Did you see him when we came in? The guy leads with his face. Fullmer's not going to have to look for him. He's going to be right there.”

“That is one tough wop. A hundred bucks says he's champ again at the end of the night.”

“Done. Easy money. Like finding it in the street.”

The drinks came.

Cassidy took a slug. The ice banged against his teeth. The smoky whiskey slid down with a cool burn, and things quieted in his head. “What did you find out about the clothes?” Cassidy asked. “Anybody remember him?”

“Nobody at Brooks Brothers ID'd the photo. The jacket and pants were both popular items. They're selling for spring and summer now, and that jacket was probably bought a month ago. They'll check the charge slips, but if someone paid cash it's not going to show up.”

“What about the shoes?”

“Maybe we'll get lucky. No one recognized the guy, but the regular salesman is out for the week on vacation, down in Florida someplace. He'll be back in the store on Monday. I'll go back then. God, they've got some good-looking shoes. I'm thinking of asking for the public servant's discount.” He winked at Cassidy and looked with satisfaction at the sizzling casserole of macaroni and cheese the waiter slid in front of him. “Did you look at the canvassing reports?”

“Yeah. Nothing there. Nobody noticed anything. Nobody even noticed the dead guy.”

“Hard to believe, dog walkers and such, early-morning strollers, guys headed for work. What about Sanitation guys emptying trash cans? What about park workers? Any of them have early-morning shifts?”

“What do you want, Sanitation or the Park?”

“It makes no difference. It's going to be a waste of time. Somebody working for the city sees a dead guy, he's going to call it in. Flip you for it. Heads takes the park.”

*   *   *

It took Cassidy more than an hour at the Department of Parks and Recreation to get the information he needed—half an hour waiting in the outer office of a deputy commissioner, fifteen minutes overcoming the man's bureaucratic reluctance to give out any information, fifteen minutes to track down the duty officer who had the week's work roster and schedule.