The Rock 'N Roll Detective's Greatest Hits - a Spike Berenger Anthology (7 page)

Now, here he was, working on what might be the biggest rock ‘n’ roll crime since Lennon’s untimely demise. Flame’s alleged murder was certainly being compared to that. The nonstop outpouring of sympathy and grief from fans all over the world had been overwhelming. It also made good press. Every day the second-tier papers in New York published some new angle on the case. Did Adrian Duncan really do it? Was Flame into drugs again? Was it a mob hit? Was it a government-sponsored conspiracy?

Fans and family alike were upset with the details of Flame’s interment, yet another controversy that fueled the rumors. That morning’s
New York Times
, of all places, revealed that three days before Duncan’s arrest, Flame had been cremated and the ashes were given to none other than the Messengers, per Flame’s own instructions. Carol Merryman was already in the process of fighting this decree tooth and nail but until it was resolved, Flame’s urn was being kept under lock and key at the Messengers’ church on the West Side. If anything was going to give the Messengers fifteen minutes of fame, that was it.

Berenger left his apartment at 68
^th
and Second Avenue—just down the block from the Rockin’ Security office—and picked up a coffee with cream and sugar and a chocolate-frosted donut from a street vendor. He then flagged a taxi heading downtown. The lawyer, Patterson, was supposed to meet him at the Sixth Precinct at nine o’clock. Berenger gave himself a half-hour to fight the traffic and get over to the West Village in plenty of time. The breakfast he could eat in the back seat of the cab.

The Sixth Precinct was located on W. 10
^th
Street between Bleecker and Hudson, not far from where the crime occurred. Its jurisdiction covered most of West Greenwich Village and Berenger had been there on several occasions. He knew many plainclothes detectives as well as uniformed officers all over the city—some he got along with and others he didn’t. The Sixth’s Lieutenant Detective Billy McTiernan was one he would just as soon keep at arm’s length.

The sergeant at the front desk looked up and recognized the big man that walked inside.

“Spike Berenger, what brings you down to our beautiful neck of the woods?”

“Hello Mackie, how’s it going?” Berenger greeted the uniformed officer.

“Can’t complain too much. Hey, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been meaning to give you a call.”

“What’s on your mind, Mackie?”

“Can you get tickets to the Stones? They sold out in, what, sixty seconds?”

Berenger smiled. “Sorry, Mackie, I can’t get no satisfaction. Their manager is pissed at me for something, I don’t know what. I’m sure you can get a good deal outside the venue the night of the show, though.”

“Oh yeah, for about three times the original price of the tickets!”

“So, just flash ‘em your badge and tell ‘em to give ‘em up for face value.”

The sergeant shrugged. “That’s not a bad idea. So what can we do for Rockin’ Security this morning?”

“Is McTiernan here?”

“Yeah, he came in just a few minutes ago. Is he expecting you?”

“No, but Adrian Duncan’s lawyer is supposed to meet me here and I think McTiernan is expecting
him
.”

“He’s already here. I sent him back two minutes ago.” The sergeant buzzed the door so that Berenger could walk through. “You know where it is?”

“I’ll find him. See you later, Mackie.”

Berenger moved past the administrative offices and into the detectives’ bullpen, a room that resembled every police squad HQ on television and in the movies. A half-dozen of New York’s finest occupied just as many desks. The noise level was high because everyone had to speak loudly in order to be heard over the others. Uniformed officers moved in and out, picking up and dropping paperwork, while the plainclothes detectives shouted into phones or called across the room to somebody. Berenger had considered joining the police force after he got out of the army. He was glad he didn’t—he couldn’t have taken such a claustrophobic atmosphere with no privacy whatsoever.

He spotted Derek Patterson sitting beside McTiernan’s desk. Patterson waved at him and McTiernan scowled. If the Incredible Hulk had been white and sported a red crewcut, he’d have looked like Billy McTiernan. The guy was as bulky as a toad and had the sense of humor of one as well. He also didn’t like rock ‘n’ roll, which Berenger considered to be a serious social disability.

Patterson stood and shook Berenger’s hand. “Hi Spike,” he said. “Do you know Detective—?”

“Sure, Billy and I go way back,” Berenger said. McTiernan stayed in his seat but held out his hand for Berenger to squeeze.

“How you doing, Berenger?” McTiernan asked in the low, gravelly voice that Berenger liked to make fun of. “I see you haven’t got your fucking hair cut yet.”

“And I see you must’ve just mowed yours, detective,” Berenger replied.

McTiernan ran his hand over the flat top and grinned. “Hey, it feels good when the goddamned wife scratches the top of my head.”

“And then you sit like a good boy?”

“Funny. I see you haven’t changed, Berenger. You’re still a goddamned hippie. Come on, let’s go someplace where we can talk in private.”

McTiernan heaved up his massive frame with a grunt and led the two men out of the bullpen and into one of the bare interrogation rooms furnished with only a table and three chairs.

“So, I understand you’re working for the fucking defense, is that right, Berenger?” McTiernan asked as he shut the door. He sat in the single chair on one side of the table while Berenger and Patterson took seats across from him.

“That’s correct, lieutenant.”

Patterson spoke up. “As I said on the phone, we’ve come to talk to you about Mister Duncan. It’s going to take a while for the DA to supply me with the evidence that’ll be used to prosecute my client. We were hoping that you’d give us an idea of what we’re facing.”

“I don’t have to tell you guys jack shit, you know that, don’t you?” McTiernan said.

“We’ll find out eventually once the DA—”

“I know, I know. I just don’t know if I want to help you. The guy’s a major scumbag and he murdered his own father. And I could care less about the victim being some famous fucking rock star. I’m not into that crap.”

“Yeah, I know,” Berenger said. “Your favorite singer is Raffi.”

“Who?”

“Never mind.”

McTiernan glared at Berenger and then addressed Patterson. “Look, we’ve got an ironclad case against Adrian Duncan. I’ll tell you what we’ve already told the press. Duncan’s fingerprints were all over Flame’s office and in the bedroom where the crime occurred. He was seen fleeing from the townhouse by two witnesses, before the discovery of the body.”

“So?” Berenger suggested. “Adrian was Flame’s son. He’s probably been to Flame’s place a zillion times and left fingerprints. Maybe he was in a hurry to get home. There’s plenty of doubt there.”

McTiernan looked at Berenger and said, “Yeah? Well we also have several witnesses that saw the suspect in a heated argument with the deceased earlier in the evening. Before Flame’s concert. And even more witnesses observed the suspect in a very agitated state backstage after the concert.”

“Could have been a typical father and son spat,” Berenger said.

“And then there’s the post-mortem,” McTiernan continued.

“I’m very interested in hearing about that,” Patterson commented.

“Well, I’m not going to tell you fucking everything, but suffice it to say that it proves that Peter Flame didn’t commit suicide. He was already dead before he was hung from the ceiling. Duncan strangled him prior to that, then strung him up and tried to make it look like Flame had killed himself. I’m not going to list all the goddamned pieces of evidence that confirm it. We know a staged crime scene when we see one. And this one was
definitely
staged.”

Berenger had figured as much but he wasn’t going to let on. “At first you were fooled, though, isn’t that right? Didn’t you believe Flame had committed suicide?”

McTiernan shrugged. “At first glance, sure. Anyone would. But we’ve got a lot of experience with shit like this. Lots of things struck me as just-plain-wrong about the crime scene. The next day when I was looking at the photographs it hit me. The post-mortem confirmed it.”

“You did a good job keeping it a secret,” Patterson said.

“Yeah. We didn’t want the killer to bolt so we conducted our investigation quietly and privately. We had our eyes on Adrian Duncan within twenty-four hours of the murder. Given the history between the father and son, it didn’t take a leap of faith to conclude that he was the prime suspect.”

“Weren’t there other fingerprints at the townhouse?” Berenger asked.

“Sure! Lots of ‘em. But Duncan’s just happened to be in all the right places, or rather, in all the
wrong
places.”

Berenger rubbed his beard and asked, “I understand you’ve got something linking Adrian to the Jimmys?”

McTiernan smiled. “I think I’ll let the DA give you that. If you ask me, it just proves that Duncan was up to no good.”

Patterson looked at Berenger. The lawyer didn’t have to say anything for Berenger to know what the guy was thinking. This was going to be harder than they thought.

“But just ‘cause I’m a nice guy,” McTiernan said, “I’ll share with you the capper. The piece of evidence that’s going to make the case.”

“What’s that?” Berenger asked.

“Flame was clutching something in his hand when we found him. It turned out to be one of those color-coded, numbered backstage passes that they give out to people for the after-show Meet ‘n’ Greet. You know, you peel off the back and stick ‘em on your shirt or jacket.”

“Yeah?”

“The tour manager keeps a record of what number pass is given to who.” McTiernan raised his eyebrows. “The one in Flame’s grip was the pass that had been assigned to Adrian Duncan.”

T
he next port of call for Berenger and Patterson was Rikers Island. Berenger had been there on numerous occasions and it never failed to depress him. By far the largest penal institution in the United States, Rikers usually hosted 15,000 prisoners on any given day. The island, officially a part of the Bronx but accessible only from Queens, was half the size of Central Park and was the location of ten separate jails, each one of varying security.

As Patterson’s Lexus left Queens and crossed the Rikers Island Bridge, with LaGuardia Airport’s runways looming uncomfortably close on the right, Berenger was once again amazed by how much of a small town the corrections facilities had become. Schools, chapels and mosques, ball fields, grocery stores, medical clinics, barbershops, a bus depot, a laundry, a bakery, a power plant, and other amenities now stood amongst the cell blocks, some of which had been constructed as far back as the 1930s. The Rock, as it was unofficially known, also went by the moniker “Land of Darkness.” Berenger thought the latter term was more appropriate. Rikers was a place where that elusive thing called Hope had no haven.

The car passed the sign that proclaimed that Rikers Island was “Home of New York’s Boldest” and Berenger wondered what that was supposed to mean. Boldest criminals? Boldest guards? Boldest wardens? They drove along a narrow two-lane road lined by the cellblocks—aging brick structures as well as high-tech modern ones—and twelve-foot high fences crowned by razor-sharp barbed wire. Eventually they came to the commissioner’s office, a yellow trailer that was the first stop in coordinating visits.

“I take it Duncan’s in NIC?” Berenger asked.

“That’s right, it’s where they keep all the prisoners requiring protective custody,” Patterson replied. NIC was the North Infirmary Command, which consisted of two buildings. One of these was the original Rikers Island Hospital, built in 1932. Housing approximately five hundred inmates, NIC was also the dormitory for inmates with AIDS. Berenger knew it was a better spot to be than one of the general population buildings, such as C-95, where mostly young toughs resided. NIC was where they put the “Maytags”—what they called the inmates considered too soft to be in the dangerous general areas. “They’re washing socks,” was how the protective custody prisoners were described in other cellblocks on the island.

After Patterson parked the Lexus, they went inside and immediately felt the oppressive silence. For some reason, NIC was always quiet, whereas the other cellblocks reverberated noisily like high school gymnasiums. Perhaps it was because more of the inmates in NIC were in solitary confinement, protective custody, or were too sick to make a sound.