Madman's Thirst (2 page)

CHAPTER 2 – OCCUPATIONAL HAZARD

 The bus made several stops,
disgorging kids along the way. The men carefully watched passengers disembark.
There was a remote chance the girl might go to a friend’s house. But she was
still on the bus when after a mile it turned left up Lafayette Street, the van
a discreet block behind. She got off at Lafayette and Henderson with two
friends, as usual. The three kids liked to hit the candy store on the corner
for an after-school treat before walking to their respective homes nearby. Banaszak
watched them enter the store.

“I wonder if you can still get an
egg cream there,” he mused aloud.

“An egg what?”

Banaszak sighed.

“Let’s go. You’ll have at least a
half hour.”

They headed up Henderson, past St.
Peter’s Boys High School on the corner of Clinton, and four blocks later made a
left onto a tree-lined street, pulling to the curb in front of a well-kept,
two-story colonial in the middle of the block. Houses on both sides of the
street had sloping lawns. Some, like this one, were bordered by hedges. The
hedges had been neatly trimmed and the well-fertilized grass was mowed to an
even half inch. The plants and azalea bushes along the driveway were surrounded
by newly turned soil.

“Spics did good work,” Gallo said,
adjusting his cap.

Gallo and Banaszak had taken
exceptional pains on their surveillance, given their time constraints. Lacuna
pushed for a rush job but they had insisted on at least a week to figure out a
plan. Their caution had paid off in one respect. The prior day a landscaper’s
truck had unloaded a working party of  gardeners at the house. The two men had
estimated that their own job would take 20 to 30 minutes, tops. But only if
they were uninterrupted. They had no desire to tangle with four illegal
Ecuadorans, at least one of whom wielded a nasty-looking power hedge clipper.  

 The block was quiet. Nobody would
give their cable van a second glance. The Bronx crew that had provided the
vehicle had done an inspired job on short notice. In addition to the “Inter-Boro
Cable Company” logos, there was an “Always at Your Service” slogan plastered
below a large rendition of a smiling brown-uniformed repairman walking up to a
house with a white picket fence. There was even an “800” phone number and
official-looking city licenses. A call to the number would get a recorded
message promising a “speedy” return call, which never materialized. Since it
was a cable company, no one would expect anything else.

Both men wore brown, UPS-like uniforms, with caps and workingmen’s shoes. There were clipboards on the dash. A
clipboard can get someone into more places than an Uzi. Gallo reached back into
the van for a  toolbox.

“Don’t forget to stack stuff,” Banaszak
said. “I’ll make sure she is coming home alone, then wait for your call.”

Gallo walked up the elevated
driveway and disappeared behind the house. Banaszak drove down the street. They
had agreed that it would be prudent to limit the amount of time the van was on
the block. Somebody with a cable problem might stop to chat. He slowed as he
neared the boys high school. Students, all wearing dark slacks and light blue
shirts, were beginning to file out. They were, of course, louder than the girls
had been, with plenty of adolescent jostling.

He spotted her immediately,
gliding slowly, hips swaying, past the front entrance of the school. Jesus,
she’s a pretty thing, with great legs. And she knows it. Banaszak disliked the
crap public school kids wore, especially the girls, some of whom looked like
sluts. Parochial school uniforms left a lot to the imagination. But given a
teen-age boy’s limitless imagination, it made the girls sexier.

He suddenly realized that this
particular girl probably had another reason for stopping at the candy store
every day. If she stayed on the bus, it would have dropped her off past where the
boys came out of school. Some of them glanced at her and quieted down. A couple
of the older ones said something and she laughed. It was obvious she knew them.
Some parents picking up kids also said hello. Even at a distance, Banaszak
could tell she had a sweet way about her. Finally, she broke away. One of the
fathers kept his eyes on her as she walked away, shaking his head in middle-aged
resignation.

Banaszak made a U-turn and stopped
at the end of her street. She walked to her house and up the driveway. For the
briefest of moments he thought about honking the horn to warn her. Jesus!
What’s gonna go first, my body or my mind? Looks like a horse race. Get
yourself together! The girl was on a list she’d never get off. It’s Gallo and
me, or the next two meatballs. He started driving through the neighborhood.

“The Manor,” as it was commonly
known to residents, was named for Captain Robert Richard Randall, a wealthy
seafarer who died in 1801. With its trees, ponds and parks it was an oasis of
green on the North Shore of Staten Island. Banaszak turned down Kissel Avenue
to the entrance for the 83-acre Snug Harbor Cultural Center. The stone-arched
guardhouse was untended and he drove through, heading past a small pond where
parents were watching their children feed ducks. He knew this section of the Harbor
well and despite his tension the memories flooded back as he pulled up to the
Music Hall, which looked much as he remembered it.

“Sailors Snug Harbor” had been
established as a retirement retreat for “aged, decrepit and worn-out seamen”
established in the community by the last will and testament of Captain Randall
in 1831. Over the years the complex grew and by the 1960’s contained
dormitories, a music hall, a chapel and other buildings noted for their
Greek-Revival and Anglo-Italian architecture.

But when Staten Island’s real
estate began to boom, the city fathers broke Captain Randall’s will, piously
claiming that its “white only” codicil was unconstitutional, and quickly
formulated plans for a series of high-rise apartment buildings on the property.
The last of the retired sailors were relocated to what one of the octogenarians
called a “malarial swamp” in North Carolina. But the intercession of preservationists
– including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis – prevented the land from being sold to
developers and Sailors Snug Harbor became a cultural center, with art
galleries, botanical gardens and museums.

Banaszak had heard the story
first-hand, with appropriate obscenity-laced embellishments, from the last of
the residents. In high school, he and his friends snuck into the Music Hall on
Thursday nights to watch movies with the old seafarers, some of whom weren’t
averse to sharing a flask with the boys. He was still a fan of
Miss Marple
. 

Banaszak continued his tour and was
startled by the property’s transformation. He headed down a road that he knew
led back to Henderson Avenue, passing a Botanical Garden with a huge
greenhouse, a Chinese Scholar’s Garden and finally a Secret Garden, complete
with a maze of tall hedges. None of them had existed in his youth. After that,
the road, now flanked with huge trees, narrowed to barely one lane. He reached
the 12-foot-high double wrought-iron Henderson Avenue gates. They were securely
fastened with rusty but sturdy chains. Banaszak cursed his carelessness in
assuming the gates were still open after all the years that had passed. He was
boxed in. If Gallo called he would lose precious minutes finding his way out.

He was barely able to turn the van
around on the narrow road and had a bad moment when the rear wheels became
stuck in a rut. But he finally made it and drove out the front entrance of the
Harbor. He checked his watch. It had been 45 minutes since he dropped Gallo
off. Had something gone wrong? He headed back to the house. The pain in his
stomach seemed worse. Maybe it’s an ulcer, he thought. I’m getting too old for
this. He was two blocks away when he got Gallo’s call on his throwaway cell. When
he reached the house, the front door opened and Gallo walked quickly to the
van. His cap was askew and his shirt rumpled. He threw the tool box in the
back.

“Make fuckin’ tracks!” 

“What happened to your face?”

“Nothing, man,” Gallo said, but
his hand automatically went to the long bloody scratch on his left cheek. “She
was a fighter. Now get me to the airport. I’m gonna change.” He clambered into
the back, giving off a slight but unpleasant odor as he brushed against Banaszak,
who grunted in pain. “Sorry.”

The only other people visible on
the block were an old woman walking briskly up the street carrying a large
canvas bag and a mailman coming from the opposite direction on the other side.
They waived to each other. Neither gave the van a second glance as it pulled
away.

“If she scratched you, she’lll
have shit under her nails. They’ll DNA you.”

 “Man, I gave ‘em plenty.” Gallo
laughed harshly. “And it ain’t under no fingernails.”

“What the hell did you do, Lucas?
It was supposed to be a burglary gone wrong.”

“What’s the fucking difference?
They’ll chalk it up as a burglary that really went south. I told you that was
some fine quiff. Give me a break with the conscience shit. I’m tired of hearin’
it. What did you think I was doin’ in there man, fixin’ their mother-fuckin’ cable?”
Gallo saw that his partner was steaming, so he adopted a reasonable tone.
“C’mon, I ain’t in the system.” He scrunched into the passenger seat. “Besides
there’s always DNA. Occupational hazard. That CSI shit on TV is bogus. They
ain’t that good.”

CHAPTER 3 – CHECKMATE

Neither man knew how close they
had come to catastrophe. The old woman with the canvas bag was a cleaning lady.
Sophia Radice worked in the girl’s house every other week for four hours, 3
p.m. to 7 p.m. That’s all the place needed. It was remarkably well kept. Sophia,
who was in great demand in the neighborhood, loved this job best. Both father
and daughter were very neat. The girl was so sweet, and did most of the
vacuuming and laundry. Her mother had done a good job with her. What a shame, that
nice lady dying. A girl needs her mother.

Sophia walked up the driveway. She
picked up a small branch and threw it at a three-legged raccoon sitting boldly
on a garbage can. The raccoon was a neighborhood institution, forced by its
injury to scavenge during the day. The crippled little bandit ignored her, as
usual. Using one of the keys the family had given her, Sophia opened the side
door.

She knew something was wrong
almost immediately. A television, stereo and computer were piled in the vestibule
off the kitchen. She looked into the dining room; a pillowcase sat upright on
the table. The drawers in the credenza were open. She looked in the pillowcase;
it was loaded with silverware. Her chest constricted. Breathing was hard. She
wanted to run out of the house. But the girl was always home by now.

“Betta!” The girl’s name was
Elizabeth, but the old lady could barely speak English. There was no answer.
She yelled louder, “Betta!” She was not leaving until she knew the girl was all
right. She walked back toward the kitchen, shaking. Stairs to the basement were
to her right. The door was open. As she passed it she noticed something on the
landing. It was a shoe. She recognized it. She picked it up and looked down the
stairs. The lights were on, and she could see another shoe at the bottom. She
called the girl’s name again. Hand trembling on the wooden railing, she headed
down the stairs.

***

Freddie Keller was used to
raccoons – and dogs, cats and possums, not to mention ducks, geese and even the
occasional reticulated python that escaped from the zoo near his route. He
loved his job. After walking all over Afghanistan, the physical aspects of mail
delivery were a breeze. And he liked the people he worked with. None of them
looked even remotely capable of going “postal.” At 22, with a job serving the
neighborhood where he grew up, Mom’s cooking and three taverns where everybody
knew his name, Freddie – as he told anyone who would listen – knew he had it
made in the shade.

Elizabeth’s house was his favorite
stop. He always put the mail inside the side door, on the off chance that she
would hear him and come out to chat. Truth be told, on most days he slowed his
route to make sure she’d be home from school. He made up the time later and was
always done early anyway.

A group of girls at St. Peter’s
sent cards and packages to Staten Island boys in war zones. Something about Elizabeth’s
letters touched him, and they became ‘pen pals.’ It was pure luck she was now
on his route. The first time she opened the door, he was stunned by her beauty.
Despite their age differences, they had a lot to talk about. He was going
nights to the Staten Island campus of St. John’s University and, like her, was
interested in journalism. He never got out of line, but he intended on keeping
in touch when she went away to college. You never knew.

Funny, the side door was wide
open. Keller tentatively opened the screen.

“Hey, Lizzie, you there?” She
hated that name, but tolerated it from him. No answer. “Sophia, that you
downstairs? Where’s Elizabeth?”

Nothing, not even combat, had
prepared the young mailman for Sophia Radice’s shrieks. They were even too much
for the raccoon, which clambered off his garbage pail and scampered up the
nearest tree as if he had all his limbs. 

***

There was a backup on the Goethals
Bridge to New Jersey, an infrastructure anachronism with two narrow lanes in
each direction that barely let cars pass each other, let alone thousands of
trucks streaming across the borough.

“Man. I can’t believe they want to
build a NASCAR track our here,” Gallo said. “Are they fucking nuts? Look at
this traffic. But I guess it means a shitload of money to Lacuna.”

 “What are you talking about?”

“The stock car track, man. That’s
the reason we just aced the kid. Her old man might have screwed up the deal.
Jesus, you had me read the local rag every day and you didn’t pick that up?”

“Lacuna told you that?”

Banaszak was incensed. He was the
senior man. If Lacuna was going to confide in anyone it should have been him.

“Nah. But I heard some of his boys
talking about how much money they were going to make when the track was finally
built. I told you these wops can’t keep their mouths shut. It’s why most of
them are in jail. It’s just so damn obvious. Like chess. You’ve got to kill the
queen to topple the king. Or, in this case the princess, I guess. Great game.
You should play more.”

Fucking chess, again, Banaszak
fumed. But he admitted to himself that the NASCAR connection made sense. The
thought unsettled him. Reasons were dangerous. Knowledge was dangerous. All one
needs to know is the target. 

“Maybe they’re checking the
bridges,” Gallo said nervously as they slowed to a crawl.

“You mean roadblocks? You’ve been
watching too much cable. It’s like this all the time.”

“I’m gonna miss my plane.”

“Don’t worry,” Banaszak said
easily. “It will open up on the other side.”

It did, and a few minutes later
they passed Exit 14 on the New Jersey Turnpike.

“Hey, wasn’t that the exit for the
airport?”

“Shit! The pain is killing me. I
can’t think straight. What time is your flight again?”

“I got about an hour and 15, man.
But the security lines at Newark are a bitch.”

“No sweat. I’ll get off at the
next exit and take a back road I know.”

The next westbound exit was six
miles up the turnpike, and Gallo kept looking at his watch and complained the
entire way. After exiting, Banaszak found a local road. Soon a heavily
industrialized area gave way to a vast stretch of vacant land crisscrossed by
small toxic-looking dull grey streams and yellowish marshes. An occasional
smokestack could be seen in the distance and passenger jets roared overhead
with lowered landing gear.

“Well, we’re headed in the right
direction,” Gallo groused. “Just follow those planes.”

“Maybe they’re going to JFK,” Banaszak
said.

“Don’t even fuck around.”

Suddenly Banaszak pulled over
along a deserted stretch flanked by high weeds and rushes. An abandoned car was
just barely visible in the bushes. He grabbed his stomach and moaned.

“I think I’m gonna puke. Can you
drive?”

“Oh, shit. Sure, anything to get
there. And you better get checked out. This could have happened an hour ago and
we’d be fucked.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Listen, grab
my cigs in my jacket in the back. I’m just gonna slide over.”

Gallo climbed into the back and
started going through pockets.

“Where the hell are they? They’re
probably what’s fuckin’ you up. OK. Got ‘em.”

He turned. Banaszak was holding an
automatic pistol.

“What the ….?

Banaszak pulled the trigger. The
explosion in the confined space of the van reverberated off the corrugated
siding.

“Shit,” Banaszak said, his ears
ringing. But he wasn’t worried about anyone else hearing the blast. Most of it
would be contained inside the van, and muffled shots among the reeds were not
rare in this part of New Jersey.

Gallo, for his part, never heard a
thing. The bullet, traveling faster than sound, entered his forehead. There was
no Hollywood splatter. The dum-dum mushroomed to a stop mid-brain and
effectively turned Gallo’s skull into a blender. With a brain suddenly the
consistency of a smoothie, his eyes crossed comically and his mouth popped open
and stayed that way. He squatted onto his haunches and farted, long, loud and
posthumously, then toppled backwards.

“Great,” Banaszak muttered,
opening a window as the interior of the van turned a noxious mix of cordite and
intestinal methane. He immediately regretted having talked his ex-partner into
kielbasa and sauerkraut dinner the night before. “She was a nice kid, you
stupid prick. Not worried about DNA, were you? This ain’t Memphis.”

Banaszak pried the cigarette pack
from Gallo’s fingers and lit up. He took a deep drag and exhaled in a long,
satisfying cloud over the corpse, waving his hand to spread the smoke and cut
the odor. After a few more puffs, he leaned over and casually dropped the
cigarette into Glover’s gaping mouth. It hissed and a small stream of smoke
eked out.

“Checkmate,” he said aloud. “Now
let me show you how we deal with DNA in New York.”

Climbing back into his seat, he
pulled out his own cell phone and hit a speed dial. After a brief conversation,
he headed north, spending another uncomfortable hour in traffic listening to
Gallo’s body settling and gurgling obscenely before crossing the George
Washington Bridge. Twenty minutes later he pulled into a combination junk yard
and chop shop in the Bronx. A trio of snarling dogs, a Doberman and two
shepherds, hurled themselves maniacally at a fence as he walked toward a
construction trailer. A man came out of the trailer and they shook hands.

“Nice dogs,” Banaszak said. “Can I
pet one?”

The man laughed, and said,
“Michael Vick rejects.” He pointed at the van. “The full treatment?”

“Yeah. The compactor and acetylene
torches.”

 “Too bad. The boys were proud of
their artwork.”

“Tell them it will be messy. It may
squirt. They shouldn’t wear their Sunday best.”

“What about the tires. They look
pretty good.”

Banaszak thought about it. He knew
what the man was getting at. Probably could make a couple of bills selling the
tires.

“Van was heisted anyway,” the man
said encouragingly.

“The tires are yours,” Banaszak
said. “How about a ride back to the city?”

“No problem. Take you myself. You
can wait in the shack while I get this started. Coffee is fresh.”

In an hour, the van, gun, toolbox,
uniforms and 225 pounds of stiffening DNA were compressed into a two-ton cube,
then cut into shards dripping  a gruel of gasoline, oil and blood that would be
shipped to various landfills outside the state.

Lucas Gallo would be spread over a
dozen zip codes.