Midnight Club (18 page)

61

John Stefanovitch; One Police Plaza

JOHN STEFANOVITCH HAD
always tried to embrace life; to accept the good with the bad. Because of his philosophy, he often had the sense that he was racing, trying to cram enough life into too short a time span.

He had slept only two hours the previous night. At four in the morning, he woke rigid and sweating. He spent the better part of an hour crouched behind a darkened apartment window overlooking Second Avenue—thinking, plotting, getting more lost and confused than he had been in a couple of years.

He still didn’t understand what had happened in Atlantic City. How could they have been so close to Trump’s, and failed to stop the killings?

The Midnight Club? Who actually controlled it, if it wasn’t the crime bosses themselves? Who had ordered the shootings at Trump’s?

Then there was the matter of Sarah McGinniss. In some ways, Sarah was the most difficult and troubling problem. Why had he run away from her down in Pennsylvania? Because he was afraid she might be playing with him? No, that wasn’t really true… Because deep inside he felt inadequate, unworthy of her? That was definitely closer to the mark. That was so close it hurt Stefanovitch to consider it.

It just couldn’t work.
They
couldn’t work. Stefanovitch was as sure of it as he was that the realization was one of the most painful of his life.

The sixth floor inside Police Plaza was choked with activity at nine in the morning. Like the seventh and eighth floors, the sixth was subdivided into departments. Outer offices were partitioned by enameled steel wall units to create compact but at least windowed offices. Each was large enough for a small sofa, work desk, and a chair or two. Stefanovitch wheeled past his own office, without bothering to look inside.

He was a few minutes late arriving at the commissioner’s briefing. Captain Donald Moran was delivering a postmortem on Atlantic City. Two dozen high-ranking cops were huddled around, listening. They were mostly stone-faced, looking about as awful as Stefanovitch felt.

“Vincent Poppo died this morning. That’s seventeen dead in Atlantic City. Santo Striga and Sammy Chum aren’t expected to live. Despite the allegations in the newspapers, no one’s been able to identify the hit men at Trump’s. This police vigilante thing in the papers is total bullshit. We don’t know why Aurelio Rodriquez was in Atlantic City. It’s possible he was part of the team that hit Trump’s, but not as a cop.”

Stefanovitch didn’t want to, but he also got the opportunity to speak to the group about the investigation.

“I don’t have a lot to tell,” he said. “We’re trying to cooperate with the FBI, and the Atlantic City police force. They’re doing hotel-by-hotel checks up and down the boardwalk. There are special detective teams operating in Newark, Philadelphia, Miami, here in New York.”

Stefanovitch raised his hands palms up. He felt burned out, frustrated, and he knew it showed. What he wasn’t telling the others was that the FBI and the local police had tied his hands in Atlantic City. They were playing jurisdictional games, which was why he’d left Atlantic City on Saturday night. The questions in his mind were: Why had the travesty down there been allowed to happen? Why was the N.Y.P.D. being pulled back from the manhunt at this time? It was one more thing that didn’t make sense.

Herbert Windfield, Stefanovitch’s captain, got to speak next. “We’re pretty sure whoever hit Trump’s knew we were right there at the Tropicana,” he began. “One of the hitters closed the drapes before the shooting started. Coincidence, right? So we have no videotapes of the shooting. The recordings show that none of the hitters said anything once they were inside. Another coincidence? On the tapes, there’s shouting from the mob bosses, gunfire. The hitters didn’t say a word. Cold as ice. The whole thing was like a hit by a gang of fucking Darth Vaders.”

Following the round of Monday morning quarterbacking, Stefanovitch was one of the first out of the briefing room. He was surprised that the commissioner hadn’t shown up. Why was that? Not enough teams had been assigned to do the follow-up work down in Atlantic City. Something had changed.

Back in his office on the Homicide floor, Stefanovitch flicked on the overhead lights. A familiar hum came with the lights. He hated the fucking buzz, hated everything mechanical in his life.

Suddenly he stopped. He stared at a man sitting in the wooden chair by his desk.

The man had a brown leather shoulder holster over a T-shirt that said “P.A.L.,” a police organization for helping kids around New York.

“Hello, Lieutenant Stefanovitch,” the man in the chair said. He didn’t bother to get up.

Detective Isiah Parker had come to visit.

62

Isiah Parker; One Police Plaza

“I’M ISIAH PARKER,
I work in Narcotics uptown. Nineteenth Precinct? We’ve met a couple times over the years. I don’t know if you remember me or not?”

Stefanovitch shut the door behind him. He wasn’t even sure why. “Yeah, sure. How are you, Isiah? I saw your brother fight a couple of times. Terrific boxer.”

“He was a good fighter. Thank you.” Parker leaned forward until his elbows were on his knees. His legs and arms seemed too long for his body. There was a gracefulness in the way he moved, though. Stefanovitch thought he remembered that Parker had been a track star once upon a time.

Parker was serious and quiet as he lit up a cigarette. His eyes continued to make contact with Stefanovitch’s. He seemed to be searching for some hint of recognition; something that would tell him who the Homicide lieutenant was, where he was coming from.

Finally, Parker folded his arms. He started to speak in a soft, calm voice, almost as if he were telling a story to a friend.

“Three police detectives hit Alexandre St.-Germain, Lieutenant. I was one of those men. I also hit that scum Traficante. I was the one who got to Oliver Barnwell about a week later. Sorry to say, I don’t think I have any regrets about it.” Parker took a long pull on his cigarette.

“I need to talk now. I need to talk about a lot of things that have happened lately, including what did and didn’t happen in Atlantic City.”

The small office in Police Plaza seemed very still suddenly. Outside, there was the usual clamor of police business: phones ringing, typewriters and copier machines going at it.

Stefanovitch noticed a few things about Isiah Parker. Parker was a large man, even more physically impressive than his brother had been. He had workingman’s hands and muscular arms, the physique of a construction worker, or maybe even a coal miner.

Stefanovitch knew about Isiah Parker by reputation. His brother’s boxing career had drawn attention to him, but before that, Parker had been an item around the N.Y.P.D. Stefanovitch remembered that Parker had led Manhattan in arrests a couple of years back. He was known as a hard-ass. Supposedly he was an honest street cop, too. He was arrogant and bullheaded, but maybe with some good reasons.

In some ways, his career in the department matched up with Stefanovitch’s. In other ways, they were worlds apart—about as far from one another as 125th Street in Harlem was from Main Street in Minersville, Pa.

“I think I need to back up a little, for you to understand some of this,” Parker said. His voice was still pleasant, as if the two of them were swapping department stories at a Blarney Stone.

Stefanovitch nodded. “I was going to suggest something like that. I’ll try not to get in the way too much. You go ahead and talk.”

63

“LET ME TRY TO GO
all the way through this one time. Then you can ask questions…I investigated my brother’s murder against strict orders not to from upstairs. That’s a serious problem I have. I don’t obey orders real well, Lieutenant.”

“I can understand that. I’ve had similar problems a few times.” Stefanovitch broke into a smile. “Maybe more than a few times.”

Whatever Isiah Parker might have done, Stefanovitch liked him. Cop to cop, he was feeling a kinship. There was something down-to-earth about Parker. Maybe he was giving him points because of what had happened to his brother, but Stefanovitch didn’t think so.

“My brother got his title shot by playing along with the New York mobs. It was the only way to go, he told me. Maybe he was right, I don’t know. They wanted a lot of special favors in return.”

“What kind of favors?”

“They wanted to control Marcus. Own him. Say who he would fight. Where he would fight. After a while, he said no. Marcus didn’t take other people’s shit too well.”

“Your brother didn’t seem like the type.”

“This went on for maybe a year. Most of the best fights in the fight game don’t happen in the ring, Lieutenant. One day they brought him down to the Bowery. A place called the Edmonds Hotel. They murdered him there. The street law. In the newspapers, on TV, my brother supposedly died shooting up smack.

“Marcus had always been the people’s hero. He was living their dreams, showing them the dreams were real. I don’t know if you can understand? The people in Harlem dream a lot. They have to dream.”

“I understand some of it. I’m from out in the sticks originally. Lots of coal miners and farmers. Everybody out there lives on fantasies, too. Football and fast cars, mostly. Almost everybody wants to be someplace else, to be somebody else. Myself included.”

Parker nodded; then he went on. “When I found out what happened, how Marcus really died, I went crazy inside…I went to see the police commissioner. I bothered Captain Nicolo in Narcotics a lot. I wanted to clear Marcus’s name. I guess I needed to do it for myself as much as anything. People thought my brother was just another sports junkie. That hurt. It still hurts.”

Without hearing any more, Stefanovitch understood some of what Parker felt. There was something familiar about the detective’s frustration. When he had tried to investigate the ambush at Long Beach, he’d gotten the same kind of runaround inside the department.

“I was obsessed with my brother’s death. I stopped working on anything else. If I took another case, I’d only work it part-time. I couldn’t sleep. Stayed on my own a lot. I wouldn’t even talk to my partner about it.”

“Did anyone in the department try to help?”

“Nicolo did. In his own way, he did. He sent me to see one of the headshrinkers downtown. All I could think about was how Marcus had been murdered. How they kept increasing the junk load on him every day.”

“It’s a trick they used in the war. Over in Vietnam,” Stefanovitch said.

“I talked to a couple of junkies from the neighborhood. They told me how it felt; how my brother suffered before he died. The Grave Dancer liked to torture his victims. As you know, Alexandre St.-Germain was a butcher. A psycho.”

Isiah Parker tilted himself back on the spindly legs of the chair. He tapped out another cigarette, lighting up as he continued to speak to Stefanovitch.

“Back in February, I got called in by the chief of detectives. I was ready to talk about everything. I expected to be jived with. You know, a little tea and sympathy first. Then a reprimand that I shape up my act, or get out of the department. Fair enough. Chief of Detectives Schweitzer had been my rabbi once. Lieutenant—”

“I’m Stef. Or John, if you like.” Stefanovitch reached across his littered desk. He shook Parker’s hand. “What the hell, you know?”

“Well, it was nothing like what I expected, in Schweitzer’s office. I’m coming to the good part now. That is what I came to talk to you about.”

“You’ve got my attention.”

“The chief told me he’d heard I was having trouble since my brother’s death. He said not to worry about it. He said everything would work itself out. He’s smart, you know. He was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. Caught me by surprise, because I was expecting something else.”

“You expected to get your ass chewed off, which you felt you partly deserved?”

“Right. Schweitzer is hard to read sometimes. At least he knows the rules of the street. Protect your ass; protect your partner’s ass. We talked a long time in his office. He listened mostly. Schweitzer’s a real good listener.”

“And you tell pretty good stories.”

“He asked me something I thought was a little strange. Schweitzer asked if I ever heard of death squads inside the department.”

Stefanovitch could feel his face flushing. “Had you?”

“Yeah. I knew about a couple times somebody authorized certain detectives to go take somebody out. I knew about death squads.”

Stefanovitch continued to nod as he listened to Isiah Parker. This was getting heavy. Everything was tracking so far. He had a feeling that Parker was telling the truth. Stefanovitch also knew about police department death squads. They existed. Death squads in the New York Police Department were for real, although he’d only heard about them being used to go after cop killers.

“Maybe two weeks later, Schweitzer met me at a hotel bar. Trumpets in the Hyatt. He insisted it be a bar. Out of the office. He seemed like he was in a good mood that night. Loosey-goosey like. We had a couple of pops standing around the bar. Then he laid out what was on his mind.”

“This is the fun part, right?”

“Yeah. That’s right. Schweitzer said he was planning to put together a squad. He had orders directly from Police Plaza. He said that a lot…He said we were in the middle of a guerrilla war with the street mobs. Nine cops had been killed in the last year. He asked me to think about that. Just to think it over. No pressure.”

“Yeah, no pressure except now you know somebody at Police Plaza wants to shoot it out with organized crime. No pressure. Just go out and commit a few harmless homicides with some other vigilante cops.”

Parker smiled and seemed to enjoy Stefanovitch’s sense of irony.

“The third time we met, it was up in Mamaroneck. This time it was at the house of Deputy Commissioner Mackey. Beautiful old house. Mackey was very intense and serious. He raised ethical considerations. But he showed us a lot of hard evidence. How many cops had been killed for breaking the street law. He said there was nothing the department could do legally. The mob was using guerrilla tactics, then hiding behind the court system with their expensive lawyers. There was no way the department could win. The mob kills a cop, maybe even a judge, a certain witness, anybody they want to kill. If we can make any kind of case, they hire the best lawyers and get themselves off.”

“Did it get any higher than Schweitzer and Mackey?”

“There was another meeting the next week. This meeting’s up in Westchester, too. I get introduced to the rest of the team. Detective Jimmy Burke is former Vietnam and Manhattan South Vice. Detective Aurelio Rodriquez is from Queens Narcotics. His partner had been killed a few months before. I knew Aurelio. He wanted a little vengeance, just like me. The three of us were told that Commissioner Sugarman approved of the special unit himself. It almost sounded like it was Sugarman’s plan.”

Stefanovitch could feel a cold spot forming in his stomach. “This was a verbal approval from Commissioner Sugarman?”

“That’s right. You got it. Mackey used a lot of the police commissioner’s own words. He was trying to make us more comfortable. After that, we met only with Mackey. He’d give us the specific targets. Alexandre St.-Germain. Traficante. Ollie Barnwell. Everything was very organized. We even kept a surveillance log before and after the hits. We recorded our time on undercover.”

“Do you still have the surveillance log?” Stefanovitch was beginning to make a few written notes. “You did keep the log, Isiah?”

Parker smiled. “Sure I kept the surveillance log. It’s in a safety deposit box. A girlfriend of mine has the key. Just in case I ever get into an accident, in case something unfortunate happens. I never completely trusted my partners, especially Burke.”

Stefanovitch rubbed his forehead, then his eyes. He believed what he was hearing—he just couldn’t believe he was hearing it.

“I met with Mackey one more time. This was almost two weeks ago,” Parker said. “He told me about Atlantic City.”

“Did you keep a surveillance log on the meeting? Do you have a record of the meeting?” Stefanovitch’s heart was starting to beat faster. They were getting into what really mattered.

“The last meeting with Deputy Commissioner Mackey… I was wired. I wired myself. Like I said, I was very uncomfortable.”

“Jesus Christ. You wired yourself for a meet with Charlie Mackey?”

“The tape is in the safety deposit box I told you about. Safe and sound.”

“I’m beginning to see how you got all those narcotics arrests. Tell me more about Atlantic City. Everything there is to tell.”

There was silence as Parker lit up another cigarette. The detective seemed to be taking stock of what he had gone over, maybe what he hadn’t gone over yet.

“We were supposed to check into separate hotels in Atlantic City. I was in Trump’s. Burke stayed at Bally’s, Aurelio Rodriquez was at Resorts.”

Parker told about the chaos and confusion after the shootings at Trump’s. “I saw you outside on the boardwalk. I also think I saw Deputy Commissioner Mackey in the crowd. Some coincidence, huh?”

“Then Burke tried to kill me. Burke was waiting for me near my car…

“Rodriquez had already been murdered. The vigilante cops, right. Somebody pimped us. Somebody set us up, Lieutenant. I’m not even sure who. Mackey and Burke? The commissioner himself?”

“What are you doing now, Isiah?”

“I’ve been checking on my good buddy Burke over the past few days. Pulling some favors with a few friends. As it turns out, Burke met St.-Germain in Southeast Asia. He worked for him there. One other thing you should know. It’s the reason I came to see you, Lieutenant.”

Parker paused for a few seconds. John Stefanovitch waited for him to start again.

“I think that Jimmy Burke might be the one who killed your partner, Kupchek. I think some of the men who originally ambushed you at Long Beach were
New York City cops.
”