St. Patrick's Day Murder (17 page)

“Mr. Joo’s gun can’t be a coincidence,” Joseph said, as though she hadn’t heard me.

“Well, if he’s involved, everything he knows will be secret forever. I’ve gotten him the best defense lawyer in the city. Arnold won’t let him answer anything if he’s ever arrested. But the police haven’t budged on Ray. They’re still sure they have their man.”

“Is that it then?” Joseph asked. It was getting late for an early riser.

“Not quite.” I got up and went to my papers. “I suppose I should show you this.” I handed her the letter from Jean to Ray and told her how I had come by it.

She read it and nodded. “I suppose we have everything now: murder; a stolen gun; nuns; an illegitimate birth with a change of identity; and now adultery.”

“Do you think the letter changes anything? Obviously, Ray didn’t want the police to see it, but that doesn’t mean …” I let it hang.

“I think it may, Chris. I think Mrs. McVeigh may be the key to this whole thing.”

“But how?”

“The motive is still missing,” she said thoughtfully. “Perhaps one of those many threads will lead you to it. But I’d keep my eye on Mrs. McVeigh.”

“Oh, Joseph! You’re becoming a regular sphinx!”

“It only seems that way,” she said, with a laugh.

The telephone rang, and I went to the kitchen to answer it.

“Chris? It’s Jean. Have you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“Another cop has been shot.”

“What!”

“Jerry McMahon,” she said. “A sergeant in Detectives. Scotty knew him.”

My body turned to ice. “He’s in Jack’s squad. Jack said he didn’t come to work yesterday and some of the guys were trying to cover for him.”

“Figures. They said he’d been dead for some time. Someone found his body near Kennedy Airport. I think Ray knew him, too. I met him once at a party. Nice-looking guy, single, real ladies’ man.”

“Thanks, Jean. I appreciate the call.” I hung up and went back to where Joseph was sitting with her notes. “There’s been another killing. Someone in Jack’s precinct. In the detective squad.”

Joseph looked at her watch. “I’m going to shower and get ready for bed. There’s news at ten, isn’t there?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll come down and watch it with you.”

“OK.”

She went up, and I tried Jack’s number—this was his spring recess—but he wasn’t there. I cleared the dessert dishes and got everything washed up, listening to the news on the radio while I worked. They were beginning to put the pieces together—McMahon’s unprecedented absence without calling in yesterday, a first in eight years of service.

Joseph came down in a bathrobe as I was putting the last of the dishes in the cabinet. I turned on the television set and switched to a news station. A movie had just ended and the credits were rolling by.

“Your hot water is good and hot,” Joseph said.

“It’s a good house. Aunt Meg took care of it. Here’s the news.”

The screen showed a dark field and a figure on the ground covered with something light. Far in the background there were lights, and a plane swooped along a runway and took off to my left. The on-scene reporter was talking about Sergeant Jerry McMahon, whose body had been found a few hours earlier. The view of the field was replaced with a
slightly blurry color shot of McMahon in uniform, probably the picture on his ID.

I turned to Joseph. “I’ve never seen him before.”

The voice started talking about McMahon’s work at the Sixty-fifth, and the picture changed again to a snapshot taken during a recent celebration in the squad room, four plain-clothes policemen having a good time. A circle marked Jerry McMahon’s head. The man standing beside him needed no introduction. It was Jack.

Jack didn’t call until the next morning when Joseph and I were finishing the last of our coffee at about eight o’clock.

The first thing he said was, “Don’t say it.”

I hadn’t slept well. “Do they think there’s a connection between McMahon and Scotty?”

“I just talked to someone on the phone. Everyone’s speculating, but no one knows anything.”

“What was he shot with?”

“Looks like a .22. And they’re not going to be able to pinpoint the time of death too accurately. He’d been dead several days. Probably killed somewhere else and dumped.”

“I’m worried.”

“Sure you are. Is Sister Joseph still there?”

“Yes.”

“Where she can hear?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be good then. Look, Jerry and I got in front of a camera last month. There’s nothing more to it. There were two other cops in the picture, you know.”

“But only you were in the parking lot the night Scotty was shot.”

“Chris, I can tell you McMahon and I had nothing to do with each other, on the job or off. We didn’t eat in the same place and we didn’t go to the same bar before I met you and you cleaned up my life.”

“Maybe McMahon’s shooting is unrelated,” I said uneasily.

“And someone could have had it in for Scotty, only we don’t know why yet.”

“But you and McMahon were both in the same precinct and you said yourself you don’t like coincidences.”

“There are coincidences and coincidences. Suppose all the victims wore black shoes.”

“This is different. You know it’s different.”

“Anyway, I promise I’ll look over my shoulder all day. OK?”

“OK.” I smiled. “And you’ll let me know if anything turns up.”

“Have I ever failed you?”

I went back to the table, where Joseph was looking at the paper.

“I hope I’ll get to meet him soon,” she said.

“We’ll drive up some weekend. When he doesn’t have too much homework.”

Joseph left soon after. On my agenda, but not of immediate necessity, was a call or visit to Carol Hanrahan’s thirty some-year-old address. There were no Hanrahans listed there in the phone book, but someone else might know what had become of her. If she was alive and had given up Scotty at birth, would she know the name of the receiving family? I didn’t want to be the messenger of her son’s death, even a son she had never known. Also on my agenda, and also low on my list of things I wanted to do, was confronting Jean with the letter she wrote to Ray Hansen. I hadn’t been able to do it yesterday, but it would have to be done eventually, and something Joseph had said made me feel it should have my top priority. Third on my list was another trip to see Sister Benedicta. In spare moments I had been trying to think of a way to get her to open up to me. I wanted to know why Harry had almost quit his job and I wanted to know what, if anything, she could remember of Donner’s mention of Jack. And if I could get her to recall the last visit Donner had made, perhaps something they had talked about that day would shed some light on his death.

The last thing on my mental list was a call or a visit to Mrs. Moore. The arrest of her husband’s killers would surely have revived old feelings of grief, and my motive was no more than to contribute a few words of comfort. A visit, I knew, would be a lot better than a call, but I wasn’t particularly
anxious to drive down to Brooklyn unless I could kill at least two birds with one stone.

In preparation for a talk with Jean, I called Arnold Gold and got him before he got tied up for the morning.

“I see we have ourselves another body in blue,” he said. “Any chance there’s a connection to the last homicide?”

“Jack says there’s a lot of speculation, but no one knows.”

“Or no one’s saying and they haven’t ruled it out. You taking this one on, too?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You still think Hansen isn’t the man?”

“I’m still asking questions, Arnold. Later I’ll think. I have one for you.”

“Make it a good one. My brain is getting fuzzy.”

“That’ll be the day. I’m in possession of a letter. It was given to me by the addressee, who told me to destroy it.”

“But you were too smart to do that.”

“Maybe just too curious. I want to confront the writer of the letter with it and try to get an explanation.”

“You’re being very cagey this morning, Chrissie. I haven’t heard a personal pronoun since this conversation started.”

“Arnold, it’s such a pleasure to talk to a man of letters. Where was I?”

“Talking around the personal pronouns. ”

“The letter. Is there anything legally or ethically wrong with my taking it back to the writer?”

“You’ve got everything backward. The person the letter was written to doesn’t own it. It’s owned by the person who wrote it.”

“Really?”

“Cross my heart. If you get a letter from the president, it’s not yours to sell unless he gives you his permission. And he may not. He may want it back so he can sell it himself.”

“Very interesting. That clears my conscience.”

“You sound like you’re onto something.”

“Arnold, I’m onto nothing, but I have several leads that could explode into something at any point. How is poor Mr. Joo?”

“Very unhappy. He thought the problem with the gun would blow over. I don’t think he believed me when I said
he’d never get another permit to carry a handgun again, but he’s been talking to the extended family and they told him I was right. Now he believes it.”

“It’s a good thing you don’t have an ego,” I teased.

“Right. I’m the oldest lawyer in New York without an ego.”

I was flipping a mental coin to decide whether to drive up to see Sister Benedicta again or to talk to Jean about the letter when the phone rang.

“Chris?” a young woman’s voice said. “It’s Angela at St. Stephen’s.”

“Angela, how good to talk to you. Are you looking for Joseph?”

“No. We expect her back by noon. I’m actually looking for you.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Well, I’m on bells this week and I got a call the other day for you, but you weren’t home.”

“An old student?”

“A policeman from New York, or so he said.”

“I see.” But I didn’t. “What did he want?”

“To talk to you, I guess. I said you weren’t here, that you’d left a long time ago, and I didn’t know your new address or phone number.”

“Thank you, Angela. I appreciate that.”

“There’s something else. I think he may have called once or twice before. I found a note taped to the switchboard the other day from one of the other nuns who was on bells last week that a man had called asking for you, but he wouldn’t leave a name or number. I thought you ought to know.”

“Did the one who called this week give a name, Angela?”

“Yes. He called himself Sergeant O’Brien. Try checking that one out in New York.”

“Thanks an awful lot, Angela.”

We gossiped for a few minutes, and then I got off. Someone was looking for me, someone who had traced me to St. Stephen’s, probably through my license plate. Sergeant O’Brien. It was as good a name as any if you were trying to pass as a New York City police officer. It could be the man
who hadn’t showed up Friday night. In fact, if it wasn’t the Friday night informant, I didn’t have the faintest idea who it could be.

I called Jean, but she was out. My morning had slipped away in a flurry of telephone calls. I sprayed some water on my seed pots, looking in vain for signs of germination. Brooklyn was out today. I would have to drive up to see Sister Benedicta. But not in jeans. I went upstairs and got a skirt and blouse, a pair of stockings and black shoes, and started to change. The phone rang again when I was more undressed than dressed.

“Chris, I’m glad I got you.”

“Jack?”

“I want you to come down here. Can you make it by three?”

“Sure, but why?”

“There’s someone I want you to talk to. I think this whole thing is breaking wide open.”

“Where shall I meet you?”

“Remember the coffee shop we had lunch in the first time we met?”

“Yes. It’s around the corner from the station house. I can find it.”

“Why don’t you plan to stay over tonight? Then you won’t have to drive home in rush hour. I’ll bring home a pizza or something.”

“OK.”

“If it looks like I’ll be late, I’ll call the coffee shop.”

“I’ll wait.”

“If I’m not there by five, go to my apartment. I’ll call you.”

I tried Jean again with no success. A call to Sharon Moore ended up with a message on an answering machine. I didn’t have the kind of message you could leave, so I hung up without saying anything. That left only Carol Hanrahan. So be it. After lunch, I drove to Brooklyn.

In two of my earlier investigations, either Jack or I had made use of old records in old New York apartment houses, so I was fairly confident that I could successfully do it again.
There are lots of reasons why records of who lived where in the forties and fifties still exist. Most of those buildings are still under rent control or rent stabilization, and from time to time inspectors walk in unannounced to check to see whether landlords have illegally subdivided large single apartments into smaller ones—like Ray Hansen’s situation—to increase their rental income. Determining the configuration of the building decades ago is essential when a comparison has to be made with today’s floor plan.

The records have other uses, too. It’s not unheard of for tenants and landlords to steal electric power from one another. If you can tap into somebody else’s line, you can reduce your own bill while raising that of your neighbor’s. So utility inspectors also need records dating back a long way when they check out complaints.

According to my map, the Hanrahans’ address was near Prospect Park and not far from Kings County Hospital, where Scotty had been born. I found the apartment house, an old red brick building probably dating from before the Second World War, and took the elevator down to the basement, where the super’s apartment was. A young black man in work clothes answered my ring. When I told him the name I was looking for, he looked blank. When I said they had lived in the building about thirty years ago, he said, “I wasn’t even born then. I’ve only been here two years myself.”

“You must have records,” I said.

“Sure I got records. I also got a lotta work to do.”

I knew he wanted me to open my wallet and make it worth his while, but I don’t do that. I believe people do things for other people if there’s a reason. It’s up to me to put it in the right terms.