Murder in Greenwich Village Page 23

  Then the phone rang. Jane dashed to the office, Smithson at her heels. It rang four times, and Roger’s voice picked up and gave a canned speech. After the beep, a man’s voice said, “Roger, it’s Sal. I’m down in the Village. Something came up and I may not make it back tonight. If I don’t get there, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Smithson opened his cell phone and called the telephone company. While he was making his inquiry, Jane called McElroy.

  “He called from a pay phone on Sixth Avenue in the Village,” Smithson said, hanging up. “You think he’s crazy enough to go to the apartment?”

  Jane relayed the message to McElroy.

  “Leave the Queens detectives at the automotive place and get yourselves down to the Village. You know what this guy looks like?”

  “I saw him the day Defino was kidnapped.”

  “Well, if he tries to see the girlfriend, you pick him up. He may go up the fire escape. Call for backup while you’re driving into the city.”

  They took off. It was past rush hour and they got down to the Village in good time. Smithson parked, putting the plate in the window, and they headed for Judy Franklin’s apartment. They spotted the car from the Six and went through the introductions. The detectives from the Six split up, one taking the back of the building. Manelli had seen Jane but not Smithson. They stood at the corner and looked down the dark street. There was some pedestrian traffic but no one was lingering in front of Judy Franklin’s stairs. Jane and Smithson went to the building with one of the detectives from the Six, and up to the apartment.

  Judy Franklin opened the door and then, angrily, tried to slam it shut. The detective from the Six stopped her easily, pushed the door open, and the three of them went in, Jane and Smithson running through the apartment looking for Manelli.

  “He’s not here!” Judy screamed, fury pouring out of her.

  “When did he leave?” Jane asked, returning to the living room. “Where did he go?”

  “He wasn’t here. I haven’t seen him since that day. Why don’t you believe me? I’m not lying to you. Sal’s gone. He’s just gone.” She began to cry bitterly, berating Jane, the police department, anything she could think of.

  “He was in the Village half an hour ago,” Jane said.

  “How do you know?” Judy sniffed and wiped her face with a tissue.

  “He was here.”

  “He wasn’t here. I haven’t seen him since—”

  “OK, I got it.” She turned to Smithson. “You think he knew where we were? You think he was trying to lure us down here?”

  “Or lure us away from the place. Maybe the guy’s got more brains than we gave him credit for.”

  Jane took out her cell phone and called the automotive shop. When the beep sounded, she said, “Hey, Wally, Bill, this is Jane Bauer. Pick up.”

  No one answered. Jane kept talking to keep the connection, but there was no response. She waited until she got beeped out, then closed her phone.

  “Not there?” Smithson said.

  She shook her head. “I didn’t get their cell numbers, if they have them. They must have gone outside. Something’s up, Warren.”

  “Sal couldn’t have ambushed two armed detectives.”

  “We’ve got to get back there. I’ll call the One-oh-eight and have them check out the shop.”

  The sergeant who answered said he would send a sector car out immediately, and Smithson told the men from the Six to stay in case Manelli showed up.

  Judy Franklin watched them as they spoke. “What will you do if you find him?” she asked softly.

  “Turn him over to the DA,” Jane said.

  “Oh, my God.”

  Jane ignored her. “Let’s get going.” They ran to the car.

  37

  “SHIT, I HOPE one of those cops doesn’t shoot Manelli. He’s all we’ve got.” Smithson had put the light on the roof and was tearing uptown on the FDR, using his horn liberally.

  “That son of a bitch,” Jane said. “He really set us up.”

  “But he was calling from the Village. He didn’t just say it on the message.”

  “And then he turned around and went back. What’s he doing up there?”

  “Call the One-oh-eight and see what’s going on.”

  They learned that the detectives had called in to report that Manelli—or someone who they thought was Manelli— had shown up and they had gone after him. So far, they had failed to make contact.

  Smithson zipped across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, turned off the roof light and the headlights, and stopped the car before making the turn onto the street of their destination. They got out and turned the corner. Down the block they could see the flashing lights of two radio cars. They went back to Smithson’s car and drove over, getting out of the car with their shields raised.

  “Hey, Detectives. I’m Officer Dwayne Carlson. This place is empty and we can’t raise the detectives who were here.”

  “You call the owner?” Jane asked.

  “He’s on his way over. The patrol supervisor and the duty captain from the borough are also on their way over. This place is gonna be top-heavy with bosses in a few minutes.”

  “Anything on the answering machine?”

  “You Detective Bauer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just a message from you.”

  “Their car here?”

  “Around the corner.”

  “Then they’re on foot. We have to find them. Manelli could be armed.”

  Jane reported to McElroy. She had lost track of time. It was night, and there were many empty streets and dark lots behind businesses closed till morning.

  “Call the Borough Detective Task Force office and request help,” McElroy ordered. “I’ll get the boss to call and clear it. Then get a search party going. Keep me informed.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cops arrived in minutes and they started combing the area, through weedy fields and garbage-filled alleys between buildings. About a quarter of an hour later, one of the men around a corner called. “Hey, this way. I think we’ve got them.”

  Jane and Smithson broke into a run. Bill and Wally, their hands cuffed behind their backs, were surrounded by cops from the precinct. One of them was about to use a key to uncuff Wally.

  “Wait!” Jane shouted. “Don’t touch those cuffs.” She pushed her way forward. “You guys OK?”

  They said they were. She put a pair of gloves on and unlocked each cuff carefully in case a print had been left on it.

  “Was it Manelli?” she asked when they were shaking their hands to get the circulation going.

  “Manelli and another guy.”

  “What other guy?”

  “Could have been a cop,” Wally said. “Manelli asked him if he was the sarge.”

  They had begun walking back to the shop. “You up to talking?”

  “Sure. It was crazy, but I remember almost everything.”

  “OK. Take your time. We can do this sitting down.”

  On the way she called McElroy and told him what she knew. “I’ll get back to you, Loot. The men are all right. Warren and I’ll talk to them at the shop. I want everything they remember before they lose any of it.”

  A lieutenant from the One-oh-eight was waiting at the shop, and Roger arrived at the same time the search party did. Amid the bedlam, Jane and Smithson took the two detectives into Roger’s office, closed the door, and sat down with them.

  “From the top,” Jane said.

  “I saw him approach,” Bill said. “He didn’t try to come inside. He was just looking to see if anyone was there. He walked around the front, the side, talked to the dogs in the back. I thought he might be like that first guy who fed the dogs, but this one fit the description. While he was out back, we walked out the front way, but he must have circled the building because he came up behind us, said he had a gun, and told us to keep walking.”

  “How far did you go?”

  “Quarter of a mile maybe, behind a
big industrial building a few blocks from where we met up with you. Looked like he knew where he was going. You agree?” He looked at Wally, who nodded.

  “That’s when the other guy showed up.”

  “What did he look like?” Smithson asked.

  “We never saw him. He told us to stop, put our hands on our heads, and if we turned around we’d get a bullet. Where we were, he could’ve shot us and no one would’ve heard it. We stopped.”

  “You said Manelli called him ‘sarge’?”

  “Didn’t call him that,” Wally said. “He asked him: ‘Are you the sarge?’ like he’d never seen him before but he’d heard of him.”

  “And the guy said?”

  “ ‘Yeah. Do what I tell you.’ ”

  “Was he white?” Jane asked.

  “We didn’t see him,” Wally said. “He told us to lie face-down on the ground, hands behind our head, and then he told Manelli to cuff us and take our weapons.” Wally turned to his partner. “Did you get a look at him?”

  “Not me.”

  “Then what happened?” Jane asked.

  “I heard them walking away. The guy who did the talking told us to stay where we were or he’d shoot us. I could hear them talking but I couldn’t get anything. We stayed there, I don’t know, maybe five minutes, and we heard what could’ve been a gunshot.”

  Jane and Smithson exchanged glances. Then Smithson said, “We gotta look for a body.”

  “Take it easy, guys,” Jane said. “Thanks. I’m sorry we got you into this.” She called McElroy, who was on his way. Then she and Smithson took two uniforms and went out in the direction Bill and Wally had come from.

  They checked out alleys and areas behind buildings, much as they had done a little while earlier, walking around cars and trucks, crates stacked high in rows, and through weeds littered with discarded objects.

  “What do you know about the guy we’re looking for?” Officer Samson asked.

  “He was involved in something ten years ago and he’s one of the guys who kidnapped my partner a week ago Friday.”

  “The detective working on a cold case?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Going stir-crazy, but he’s feeling much better. This son of a bitch Manelli and his pals were close to killing him when we found him. What’s around the corner here?”

  “More of the same. We should go behind this warehouse. There’s a lot of open space.”

  They shone their flashlights through the chain-link fencing, but saw nothing that looked like a body.

  “There’s a gate down here,” Smithson said. “Let me see if it’s open.” He sprinted along the fence and called them to come.

  The gate was open. Inside were several trailer trucks, two unattached cabs, and two smaller trucks. They walked between the vehicles, squatting and shining their lights under them.

  “Over here,” Officer Samson called.

  They joined him at the cab of one of the large trucks. He pointed his light out onto the empty concrete, weeds sprouting between the rectangles, at something that looked like a man’s body lying on its stomach in the moonlight, a pool of blood seeping around it. All four of them ran toward it.

  “That your guy?” the second cop asked, stopping a few feet away.

  “That’s him, Salvatore Manelli, dead with all his secrets.” Jane approached the body. After a good look, she opened her cell phone and started making calls.

  38

  THE CRIME SCENE unit arrived faster than ever before in Jane’s experience. Something positive to say about the borough of Queens. She left the two uniforms to guard the body and she and Smithson went back to the auto shop to wait for McElroy, who arrived quickly and kept in contact with Graves.

  They all drove to the crime scene and searched the area carefully for the detectives’ missing guns, but found no trace of them or anything else useful. The sarge had probably shot Manelli with one gun and then took both of them with him.

  McElroy phoned in a description of the body and the detectives’ story to Graves. Manelli had a wallet with ID and cash in his pants pocket, but no weapon, which didn’t mean he hadn’t been carrying one. The sarge had been thorough in leaving no weapons and no clues to his identity at the scene. Manelli had been shot once in the back, the force of the bullet pushing him forward. Judging from the abrasions on his face, he had slid along the concrete a few inches.

  When the ME arrived, he said Manelli had lived only about five minutes after the shot. By the time the two detectives had managed to rise from their prone position, not an easy feat with hands cuffed behind their backs, Manelli was, in all likelihood, dead, and the sarge putting distance between himself and the crime scene. An expert at keeping his identity a secret for ten years, he had managed yet again.

  “According to what those detectives told you,” McElroy said, “Manelli didn’t recognize the sarge.”

  “Looks that way,” Smithson said.

  “So all we know is that he’s alive and well. And now he’s cut the last cord between himself and the guys in the crib. Randolph didn’t call him, did he?”

  “He called Farrar,” Jane said. “I wonder if the sarge found Manelli through Farrar’s number.”

  McElroy looked at her with a frown. “You think after he killed Farrar he called Farrar’s wife and asked if Manelli had called?”

  “Why not? That’s how we found Manelli. The sarge may have asked Farrar where Manelli was holing up, but Farrar didn’t know. Those guys split up after they left Defino in Rockaway. The sarge would have Farrar’s phone number and Manelli’s. He’s too smart to call Manelli’s apartment in the Village. He’s a cop. He’d guess we’d put a trace on that phone. But we just discovered Farrar after the kidnapping.”

  “And we didn’t monitor his phone.” McElroy sounded as though he just realized he’d missed something.

  “I’ll call Mrs. Farrar,” Jane said, looking at her watch with a flashlight. “It’s too late tonight. She’s burying her husband tomorrow. Another few hours won’t change anything.”

  “Do that.” McElroy went over and talked to the crime scene detectives. When he came back, he said, “I don’t think they’re gonna find anything useful. It’s a clean shot, up close, no footprints on concrete, no car tracks. This guy is smooth, knows what he’s doing.”

  “There’s still Randolph,” Smithson said.

  “Randolph doesn’t know the sarge,” the lieutenant said. “He knew Farrar. Randolph’s a waste of time.”

  “Let’s ask MacHovec tomorrow to check the incoming calls to Farrar’s phone from the day he died,” Jane said. “See if anything interesting turns up. And I’ll call Mrs. Farrar after the funeral.”

  McElroy sent them home, telling them to sleep in the next day. Smithson drove Jane home over her objections. She was too tired to make it an issue. They talked sporadically. When Smithson stopped in front of her building, she thanked him and said good night, although it was closer to morning.

  Upstairs there were messages from her father, from Hack, from Defino, and from an old friend who wondered if she were still alive. “I’m wondering myself,” she murmured, stumbling to the bedroom.

  “Just check out calls from pay phones, if there are any,” she told MacHovec at ten thirty when she arrived at Centre Street. Smithson was still out.

  “You look like death warmed over.”

  “I feel like it. After forty you shouldn’t have to pull all-nighters. Or almost all-nighters.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re forty. I’ll crawl into a hole.” He got on the phone to his contact at the telephone company and gave Farrar’s number and some dates, asking for a quick response. MacHovec knew someone everywhere: the post office, the board of education, the telephone company, almost every part of city government, and some useful contacts in D.C. as well.

  While he was on the phone, Jane returned her father’s call and left a message for the old friend. Then she returned Defino’s call
.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Defino said when he recognized her voice. “I’ve got something.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I got a call last night from the ad in the Post.”

  “About the guns?” She saw MacHovec look her way.

  “An inquiry, kind of cagey, never used the word ‘gun.’ Said he’d call back. I can’t tell you much more but it’s on tape. I left a message for McElroy too. You all out on the town last night?”

  “Oh, Gordon, do I have a story for you.” She gave him the highlights, finishing the conversation when McElroy appeared at the door.

  “Our ad in the Post backfired,” he said with a grim smile.

  “Backfired how? I just heard from Defino. He said—”

  “I know what he said.” McElroy yawned. He was over forty too and he had been at Centre Street when Jane walked in. “Inspector Graves got a call from someone who works for Captain Bowman. They spotted the ad and called Defino to find out what was going on.”

  “Shit.”

  “Right. The only people looking for ads are our people. I told Detective Defino to stay on it, but I’m not expecting much. By the way, we’re still the only ones who know we have the guns, and I want to keep it that way.”

  “No problem,” Jane said. Defino would be disappointed, but that was three-quarters of their job.

  Smithson walked in and she told him about the call to Defino.

  “Anyone got any good news?” he said.

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  “MacHovec.” He picked up the phone, said “Yeah,” and grabbed a pen. “That’s it.” He wrote. “You got an address? . . . Say that again? . . . Shit. Yeah. Thanks. I owe you a big one.” He hung up, swiveled toward Jane and Smithson. “That was the guy at the phone company. A call came in to Farrar’s phone from a pay phone, I make it a couple of hours after Farrar was shot. Short call, couple minutes. The phone’s on Broadway in the One-fifties; he’ll get me an exact address. Know where that is?”

  Jane ran the map of Manhattan through her mind. “Hamilton Heights, Sugar Hill.”