Forced Entry (25 page)

“Jesus Christ,” Dunlap muttered. “You smell that?”

Moodrow didn’t answer. Once over the initial shock, he eagerly snorted the odor up into his nostrils, using it like ammonia in the nose of a fainting virgin in a romantic novel. It pulled his attention away from the apartment above and focused it on the fire marshal in the spiffy uniform with the peaked hat. The man was standing in a large room just past a series of cheaply partitioned storage sheds. He had his hands on his hips, obviously impatient with his not-unexpected visitors.

“Sam Spinner?” Dunlap asked. “I’m Paul Dunlap, from the One One Five. This is Stanley Moodrow.”

Sam Spinner suspected that the two cops (he knew that Dunlap was a cop and he assumed Moodrow was Dunlap’s partner) were there to second-guess the investigation.
His
investigation. He was a short, thick man with a heavy face dominated by allergy-tormented blue eyes. Allergies had been the curse of his career and he was especially allergic to smoke.

“What’s up?” he asked curtly. Cop briefings were obligatory courtesies extended by one department to another. Spinner couldn’t avoid them, but he didn’t have to like them. Or to make them pleasant.

“I spoke to you on the phone yesterday,” Dunlap said evenly. “So you already know what it’s about.” Dunlap (as Sam Spinner had predicted) believed that all crime was the property of the NYPD. Including arson.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re the Sherlock Holmes who talks about arson
before
he even comes down to the scene. You’re a psychic, right?”

Dunlap threw Moodrow a sharp look before responding. He was trying to tell Moodrow that, as far as Sam Spinner was concerned, they were in trouble. Moodrow, who never doubted that he would eventually find proof of deliberate arson, was unimpressed.

“I take it you’ve completed your investigation?” Dunlap asked.

“Except for the lab tests,” Spinner announced.

“So whatta ya think?” Moodrow was all smiles as he suddenly entered the conversation. “Did you come to any conclusions yet?”

“Well, I sure don’t think it was arson.” Spinner turned to the more sympathetic Moodrow. “I think you cops are barkin’ up the wrong tree.”

“See,” Moodrow said, turning to Dunlap, “I told you it wasn’t arson. No way it
could
be arson. You’re buyin’ me lunch, Paulie. Don’t forget our bet.” He turned back to Spinner, still grinning. “I got a partner sees murder every time he farts.”

Spinner laughed. He didn’t like cops much. Most of them, he knew, held the Fire Department’s investigatory division in contempt, especially the detectives. “He oughta buy ya two lunches fa this one. I been through every inch of this basement and I don’t see nothin’ but an accidental fire.”

“But how do you know for sure?” Dunlap asked. “I mean, gimme a goddamn break. This guy eats like a horse.”

Spinner drew himself up. If they wanted a lecture on fire investigation, he would be glad to give them one. “First thing, there ain’t no sign of an accelerant anywhere. No gasoline, no kerosene, no lighter fluid, no nothin’. I took samples, nat’rally, and I’m gonna put ’em through the chromatograph, but I guarantee they’re gonna come out clean. Second thing is the mattress where the fire started. It’s been there for years. All ya gotta do is pick it up and look at the concrete underneath to see that. Third thing is there’s been people using this area for living quarters. There’s well-decayed human feces behind the boiler. There’s urine stains in several places along the back wall. There’s food particles…”

“How come there’s no damage? How come nothing got burned?” Dunlap continued to probe, asking his questions curtly while staring angrily at his partner. In every respect, he appeared to be no more than a dumb flatfoot pissed at being caught on the wrong side of an argument.

“Mattress fires don’t make a lotta heat. Smoke, yeah. Clouds of black smoke. Especially when they got motor oil soaked into one corner like this one did.”

“I thought you said there was no accelerant?” Dunlap said.

“Motor oil, unless you got tremendous heat, puts a fire out. Ain’t you seen all the ads on TV about engine heat and the oil don’t break down? You practically gotta use napalm to ignite motor oil. Here, lemme learn you a little something about fires.” Snorting triumphantly, he led them to the back of the room where the remains of the mattress, a jet-black rectangle almost lost against the smoke-scorched-wall, still lay. The fire had evidently begun in the center of the mattress and, fueled by the newspaper padding, spread to the edges. One corner was almost untouched and it was here that Sam Spinner pointed. “See this here?” he said. “Where it ain’t burnt? This corner is soaked with motor oil. I figure there musta been oil in the middle, too, but when the fire reached where the oil was thick, it went out. That oil, in case ya thinkin’ about askin’ me, is gonna show up in scrapings we took off the wall and ceiling. It don’t mean nothin’ in terms of heat, but it makes very dense smoke.”

“How do ya know someone didn’t pour the oil on the mattress, then set the fire?” Dunlap asked.

Spinner looked at Moodrow, gesturing over at Dunlap. “Some guys don’t like ta lose,” he said, sarcastically.

“You got that right,” Moodrow agreed.

“The reason,” Spinner announced, turning back to Paul Dunlap, “why I know how long the oil has been in the mattress is that I picked up a corner of the goddamn mattress and checked to see if there was oil on the bottom. That mattress, my friend, is soaked through and the oil in the mattress is gritty and dry. That’s because it’s been there for a long time. No way it coulda been put there even a week ago.” He glared at Dunlap contemptuously, leaving a long, empty silence before taking up the thread of his logic. “Now the third reason why this fire was accidental is the presence of drug paraphernalia. Crack vials, glassine envelopes, syringes, candles, bent spoons, scorched bottle caps, etcetera, etcetera. Evidently, the neighborhood druggies come down here ta get their jollies and somebody didn’t blow out his candle. Could be the asshole just nodded out, as junkies are known to do. He nods off and, when he wakes up, the fire is too strong to put out. Or maybe he could put it out, but he don’t give a shit. Whatever the case, he takes off for parts unknown without havin’ the decency ta call 911.”

“It sounds right to me,” Moodrow interrupted. He had less than no interest in Spinner’s speculations. What he wanted was a rundown of the physical evidence, which he’d already been given. Now it was time to see if there was any profit to be squeezed from that evidence. “It’s too bad about the lady upstairs.”

Spinner’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I feel like shit about that,” he said, piously. “The bad breaks she got are almost unbelievable. First, when the landlord decides ta put in new pipes, he hires a lumberjack with a chainsaw instead of a plumber. The hole on this goddamn retrofit is nearly twice as big as the pipe. Second, the guy livin’ above the old lady stuffs the hole around
his
pipes with insulation so the smoke can’t go up. Third, she’s got the windows closed tight, the bedroom door shut and the smoke alarm out in the hallway. See, that’s another reason why this fire was an accident. What did an arsonist stand ta gain? How could he know all those things would be that way upstairs? I mean about the windows and the smoke alarm? It don’t make sense anyone should do it deliberately.”

“Say,” Moodrow interrupted, changing the subject abruptly, “did you mention you dusted that paraphernalia you found? I don’t remember.”

“For fingerprints?” Spinner was incredulous.

“Yeah.” Dunlap joined in, even though he didn’t know what Moodrow was getting at, either. “For goddamn fingerprints.”

“It’s just paraphernalia,” Spinner insisted. “Like ya find in every empty lot in the city. You’re actin’ like crack vials are weapons. Gasoline cans get dusted, right? Window glass. Lock handles. Since when do ya dust crack vials? Not that I didn’t gather all the paraphernalia. I got it bagged and tagged, just like they taught me in fire school.”

“Sam,” Moodrow said, again changing the subject. “I wonder if you’d do me a favor. Would you let me take the paraphernalia over to the precinct and let our print guy take a look at it? I promise I’ll have it back to you tomorrow.”

“I don’t know…” Sam Spinner didn’t want to refuse his pal, and his conviction that the fire had been accidental made it possible to agree. After all, once his report was written, the samples he’d collected would be so much garbage. Still, doing favors for cops went against the grain.

“It’s not for what you think,” Moodrow said quickly. “It’s for the narcs. There’s been a lotta dope in this building and if we can find a brand name on the vials or the envelopes, or even a print we can match with a known dealer, maybe we’ll finally be able to pinpoint the dirtbags bringing the dope in. Tomorrow—I promise—I’ll personally bring the bag anywhere you say.”

Ten minutes later, Moodrow and Dunlap stood outside the Jackson Arms, equally grateful for the fresh air. Moodrow held a large manila envelope in his right hand and both men were looking at it.

“What do you want with that crap?” Dunlap asked. “I’ve been going along with you. No problem. But how about letting me in on the secret?”

Much to Dunlap’s surprise, Moodrow took the question seriously. “The fire was meant as a warning. It wasn’t supposed to kill her. Sure, the mattress has been down there for years. The janitor who got fired when the new management took over was an alkie. He slept down there, hung out when he didn’t wanna be found. Maybe he even resented the tenants so much, he pissed and shit down there. But the janitor
wasn’t
on drugs. In fact, according to every tenant in the building, there wasn’t any drug problem at all until six weeks ago, so how do you figure the crack vials got down there? And the syringes? And the candles and the fucking spoons? It stinks, Paulie. It fucking stinks and you oughta know it.”

Dunlap flinched at the contempt in Moodrow’s voice. “And what do you expect to find? You think all the prints are gonna be the same?”

“The first thing I wanna know,” Moodrow replied evenly, “is if there’s any prints at all.”

The headquarters of Precision Management, the entire second floor of a small shopping plaza on Hillside Avenue in eastern Queens, was far from the suite of posh offices envisioned by Paul Dunlap. Five thousand feet of unwaxed, unwashed, black floor tiles, of desks lined one behind the other like beds in a homeless shelter, supported the various endeavors that made up the total business of Precision Management Consultants, Inc. There were two lawyers, their busy outlines just visible through dirty glass doors; an active insurance brokerage with phones ringing everywhere; a much quieter real estate division with three tired saleswomen talking shop; and, finally, almost as an afterthought, a small section specializing in residential real estate management.

As the two men crossed the big room, both were reminded of the detectives’ room in a precinct. Virtually everything above the floor was dirty metal: gray desks, filing cabinets, dusty shelves. The legs of the desks were black with dirt and looked sticky and there was a smell of physical neglect that utterly belied the powerful drive for achievement that had created that neglect in the first place.

“I think the cops subcontract the maintenance for this fucking place,” Moodrow whispered. “It’s a sewer.”

Suddenly, one of the real estate saleswomen, her square Irish face split into a smile, looked away from her conversation and asked, “Can I help you with anything?”

“Yeah,” Dunlap said. “We’re looking for Precision Management.”

“It’s
all
Precision Management,” the woman observed.

“Al Rosenkrantz,” Moodrow said, drawing the woman’s attention. “That’s who we’re looking for.”

“Sweet Al?” The woman broke into laughter.

“Yeah, Sweet Al. Where could we find him?”

“His office is against the far wall. In the real estate management division.” She watched them go for a moment, before calling out. “Make sure he keeps his hands in his pockets.”

When Moodrow pushed open the door to Al Rosenkrantz’s office, Rosenkrantz jumped straight out of the chair. “If this guy can’t control himself,” he said to Paul Dunlap, “get him out of here. There’s two lawyers at the other end of the building. Any repeat of the other night and I’m gonna send them after your pension.”

“Why don’t you sit over there, Moodrow?” Dunlap said, pointing to a dirty gray metal chair by the door. “And keep your face shut for a change.” He glared at Moodrow briefly, then turned back to Rosenkrantz. “Look, Moodrow apologizes for the other day. He was way outta line. Of course, you shouldn’t have said what you said, either, but that’s past us now. All we want is a few minutes of your time.”

Rosenkrantz, encouraged by Dunlap’s apologetic tone, pulled himself up in the chair before answering. “So take your few minutes and be on your way. I don’t mean to be abrupt, but I seem to be giving all my time to the Jackson Arms these days. It’s really a nothing project for us.”

“First thing I should tell you,” Dunlap said, “is that the fire is an open investigation at the 115th Precinct. It’s official, right? A suspicious fire.”

“That’s very interesting, because I spoke to the fire marshal not more than ten minutes ago and he thinks the fire was accidental. The building is insured through our brokerage, by the way, and the carrier is ready to cut a check as soon as the lab reports come back.”

Dunlap, nonplussed for the moment, looked over at Moodrow, whose face, unfortunately, remained blank. “Be that as it may, it’s still my duty to tell you that, as far as the New York Police Department is concerned, the origins of the fire remain suspicious.”

“Okay, you told me.” Rosenkrantz was beginning to enjoy himself. The cop was already uncomfortable and he was just getting started. “Now what could I do for you?”

“Of course, we’re not here to question you about the fire,” Dunlap admitted. “We’re here on behalf of the tenants.”

“If it’s about the dispossess notices, I already heard from this Legal Aid guy…” He searched his notepad for a moment before spelling out the name. “K A V E C C H I. I wouldn’t even make a guess as to the pronunciation. He informs me that all the tenants who received dispossess notices have retained a Legal Aid attorney to represent them. He says they intend to prepare a motion asking that all the cases be consolidated and dismissed at one hearing. Legal Aid is also going into Supreme Court to ask for some kind of injunction. This guy K A V E C C H I is very pushy; he expected me to make him an answer right on the spot. I told him that I just take orders…”