Tick Tock (11 page)

“It’s five-thirty,” Mary Catherine said, peering at me.

“Duty calls,” I said with a hopefully convincing smile and a wave as I headed toward the front door.

I stopped as I came out onto the porch. Even in the predawn murk, I could see it. Somebody had spray-painted the wall behind the porch swing.

GO HOME STUPID BASTERDS!

I stood there holding my hungover head in my hands. The sons of bitches had come onto my porch in the middle of the night? I guess my scare tactic over at the Flaherty compound hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. This was really getting nuts now.

“Seems like Flaherty gets his spelling lessons from Quentin Tarantino,” Seamus said in his bathrobe from the doorway.

I shook my head. Like it or not, I really did need to get to work. I couldn’t stay to sort through this latest outrage. I glanced at Seamus.

“Seamus, I’m swamped at work. Do you think you could take care of this for me before the kids see it?”

Seamus gave me a hard glare.

“Oh, don’t worry, Michael Sean Aloysius. I’ll be cleaning up all the latest
shenanigans
going on around here before the kids see them,” Seamus said.

I winced at his emphasis on the word. I guess I was getting a fresh, un-asked-for heaping of Catholic guilt to go this morning.

“And I’ll tell you another thing, jail time or no jail time, I’ll blast the first Flaherty I see back to Hell’s Kitchen and straight down to Hell, where they belong,” he called as I walked down the steps. “This old codger will make Clint Eastwood from
Gran Torino
seem like Santa Claus.”

“You already do,” I whispered as I hurried for the safety of my police car.

INSTEAD OF HEADING into the city to my crowded, frantic squad room, I skirted Manhattan altogether and took the Triborough Bridge north to the New York State Thruway. An hour and a half later, I was upstate in Sullivan County near Monticello, sipping a rest-stop Dunkin’ Donuts java as I rolled past misty pine forests, lakes, and dairy farms.

The bucolic area was close to where Woodstock had taken place. It had also been home to the “Borscht Belt” vacation resorts, where Jewish comedians like Milton Berle and Don Rickles and Woody Allen had gotten their start.

Unfortunately, my visit had nothing to do with music and even less to do with laughter. This morning I was heading to Fallsburg, home of the Sullivan Correctional Facility.

My boss and I had decided it was time to have a chat with its most infamous resident, David Berkowitz, the .44 Caliber Killer. The Son of Sam himself.

There were several reasons why. One of the most compelling was that the Monday night double murder in Queens wasn’t the only recent Son of Sam copycat crime.

An hour after we put the Son of Sam lead over the inner department wire, a sharp Bronx detective had called the squad. He told us that on Sunday a teenage Hispanic girl in the Bronx had barely survived an odd stabbing in Co-op City. Her attacker had worn a crazy David Berkowitz–style wig and said some real out-there stuff to her as he slowly cut her up. It mimicked almost perfectly Berkowitz’s first crime, the random stabbing of a girl in Co-op City in 1975.

There was a long list of people with whom I’d rather spend my morning, but since Berkowitz seemed to have some connection to the recent string of murders, I thought it might be fruitful to have a sit-down. It was probably a long shot, but with seven people dead and no lead in sight, it was high time to get creative.

Sullivan Correctional was hidden discreetly behind a tall stand of pines, a few miles northeast of Fallsburg’s small-town main street. As soon as I spotted the sudden vista of steel wire and pale concrete buildings built terrace-like up a rolling hill, the coffee in my stomach began to percolate for a second time. Sullivan was a maximum-security prison that housed many of New York City’s most violent offenders. I knew because I had put a few of them there.

Under the stony eye of a tower guard, I was buzzed into the south complex administrative building, where I
reluctantly relinquished my service weapon and signed in. I was escorted to the ground-floor office of Doug Gaffney, the prison manager, whom I’d spoken to the day before to set up the meeting.

Bald and stocky in a polo shirt and khakis, Gaffney reminded me of a middle-aged football coach more than a warden. Books about anger management and drug abuse lined the shelf behind his desk, along with a thick binder with the words “Life Skills” on the spine.

“Thanks for setting this up for me, Doug,” I said after we shook hands and sat down.

“This case you’re working on? We’re talking about the bombing thing?” Gaffney asked as his secretary closed the door.

“Yes, but that’s confidential, as is my visit,” I explained, sitting up in my folding chair. “The press is already dogging us on this. I’d hate to sell more papers for them than I have to. What should I expect from Berkowitz?”

“Don’t worry. We don’t have to put him in a hockey mask or anything,” Gaffney said with a small grin. “In the six years I’ve been here, he’s been nothing but a model prisoner. Runs a prayer group now. He even helps blind inmates back to their cells.”

“I heard about his religious conversion. Do you believe it?” I said.

“I limit my belief to things outside these walls, Mike, but who knows?” he said, lifting a radio out of the charger behind him. “If you’re ready, I’ll walk you over.”

I MET BERKOWITZ IN A BRIGHT and airy secure visitors’ room in a cell block across the concrete yard behind Gaffney’s office.

What struck me first was how surprisingly unthreatening he was. Short, paunchy, and middle-aged, with white hair, he reminded me of the singer Paul Simon. He was clean-shaven and his hair was freshly cut. Even his green prison clothes seemed excessively neat, as if he had had them dry-cleaned. He bore little resemblance to the wild-eyed sloppy young man on the front cover of all the newspapers when he had been apprehended in 1977.

He actually smiled and made eye contact as he sat on the opposite side of the room’s worn linoleum table.

“Hi, David. My name’s Detective Bennett from the NYPD,” I said, smiling back. “Thank you for agreeing to speak with me this morning.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, taking a small Bible from
his pocket. He placed it directly on the table before him. “How can I help you, sir?”

“Well, I was wondering if you might be able to give me a little insight into a case I’m investigating right now,” I said.

Berkowitz’s eyes narrowed as he cocked his head.

“It must be some case for you to come all the way up here from the city.”

“It is, David. It seems a person is committing crimes similar to the ones you were involved with back in the seventies.”

I reluctantly used the term “involved with” instead of “viciously and cowardly committed” because I needed his cooperation.

“A girl in Co-op City was stabbed, and two people were shot in a lover’s lane in Queens with a forty-four-caliber weapon,” I continued. “We even received a letter from someone claiming to be you.”

Berkowitz stared at me wide-eyed. He looked genuinely shaken.

“That’s terrible,” he said.

“Do you know anyone who might want to do these things?”

“Not a soul,” he said immediately.

“C’mon, David. I know in the past you’ve made reference to other people who might have been involved in your case. Other satanic cult members, wasn’t it? Have you had any contact with any of those people lately?”

“Well, to tell you the truth, Detective, I don’t know how
helpful I can be in that area,” he said, staring at the Bible. “You see, what I remember of that tragic time is really all a blur now.”

How convenient for you, I thought.

He began to fan the Bible pages with his thumb as he continued.

“I was deep into the occult back then and not really in my right mind. In fact, ever since giving myself over to Jesus Christ, more and more of those memories seem to fade every day, thankfully. That’s the incredible power of Jesus. His forgiveness can cleanse even a man like me.”

I looked across the table for a beat. Berkowitz had his eyes closed and hands clasped in silent prayer. He seemed pretty convinced that Jesus Christ was now his personal savior.

I wasn’t so sure. I knew that one of the things serial killers tended to crave was manipulation. They exulted in their superiority over people and liked to lie for the sheer pleasure of it.

“You said you weren’t in your right mind,” I continued in order to keep the conversation flowing. “Do you think I should look for a person with mental instability? Talk to some psychiatrists maybe?”

Berkowitz nodded, opening his eyes.

“Sure, sure,” he said. “Though, like myself, there are a lot of lost individuals out there who never receive any formal psychiatric help.”

That’s when I dropped my payload, the thing I was truly interested in.

“Does the name Lawrence mean anything to you?” I said, staring into his eyes. “Think hard, David. Someone from your past or maybe someone you met in jail?”

He cocked his head again and squinted up at the ceiling.

“No,” he said slowly after a few seconds. “Should it?”

“Have you ever received any correspondence from anyone named Lawrence? An admirer perhaps?”

I kept staring into his eyes.

“Not that I remember,” he said, looking back at me serenely. “It is possible though. I do receive a lot of mail.”

I nodded as I let out a sigh. That was about it. Either Berkowitz wasn’t aware of anything or he wasn’t going to tell me. There was no connection, no lead. I’d arrived at yet another dead end.

“Thanks, David,” I said, frustrated as I stood and nodded at the guard outside. “I appreciate your time.”

“Good luck and God bless you, Detective Bennett. I hope you catch the poor soul who’s out there hurting people,” Berkowitz said as the guard led him away.

Poor soul? I thought, rolling my eyes as Gaffney came in. Yeah, I couldn’t wait to catch the poor, tragic, homicidal wayward lamb myself.

“Does he get a lot of mail?” I asked Gaffney.

“It’s amazing,” Gaffney nodded. “From all over the world.”

“I know you guys read the mail, but you wouldn’t happen to have a record of Berkowitz’s correspondence, would you?”

“That we do. For Diamond Dave, we read and make a copy of everything coming and going. Even the stuff we won’t let him have.”

Maybe my trip wasn’t such a bust after all.

“Do you think I could see it?”

“Confidentially?” Gaffney asked with a wink.

“But of course,” I said.

“We actually scan everything now. I’ll e-mail you the whole ball of wax. Hope you have a big hard drive. Anything else?”

“Just one thing,” I said, hurrying behind him toward the block’s electric gate and the free world. “Where do I get my gun back?”

TO THE CLACK OF KITCHEN PLATES, the pale, elegant brunette weaved her way around the dim room’s empty linen-covered tables and climbed the little corner stage to reach the ebony Steinway Concert Grand. After a moment, a slow and pretty impressionistic piece began to drift out over the room, Debussy or maybe Ravel.

At the opposite end of the wood-paneled room, Berger nodded with approval. Then he carefully tucked his damask napkin into his shirt, closed his eyes, and
inhaled
.

Invisible ribbons of hunger-inflaming scents from the vicinity of the swinging kitchen door behind him invaded his quivering nostrils. He detected nutty sizzling butters, meat smoke, soups redolent of mushrooms and leeks, decanted vintage wine. His palate was so sensitive, he felt he could actually distinguish the separate odors dissolving against the postage stamp–size tissue called the olfactory epithelium, high in his nasal cavity.

“Now, sir?” whispered the bug-eyed tuxedo-clad maître d’ at his back.

The arrangement was that only the maître d’ could serve or speak to him. Berger never spoke back, but rather indicated his wishes with a series of predetermined head and facial gestures. He had even asked that the shades be drawn to keep the dining space as dark as possible.

Berger waited a moment longer, holding in the glorious aromas, a junkie with a hit of crack smoke. Then he gave a subtle nod.

The maître d’s finger snap was like a starter pistol, and in came the white-jacketed waiters with the plates. They were actually more like platters. There were mounds of brioche, caviar, quiche, a roast duck, a crème brûlée, oysters, a gravy boat filled with a saffron-colored sauce, and more. It was hard to tell which meal was being served.

It was actually
all
of them, a montage of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Berger immediately tucked in. The first thing within his grasp was a still-warm baguette. He ripped off a hunk in a detonation of flaky crumbs, stabbed it into a tub of white truffle butter, and slammed it into his waiting mouth. More crumbs went flying as he chewed with his mouth open. He loudly slurped at a glass of Cabernet, spilling much of it. Arterial-red rivulets dripped unnoticed off his chin as he reached for the plate of oysters.

He was well aware that he was breaking every rule of table etiquette. No doubt about it, he had a soft spot for
food. When it came to meals, he literally became overwhelmed, almost drugged, with all the smells and tastes and, lately, even textures. He was so unabashedly gluttonous, he didn’t even use silverware anymore but went at it with his bare hands like a savage in order to heighten his obsessive pleasure. The consumption of food had become something shameless, almost horrifying, and yet in a very real sense, somehow divine.

Like the famous killers Berger so admired, he possessed an intensity of desire for certain things that other people either couldn’t understand or were afraid to even consider.

The maître d’ cleared his throat.

“More wine, sir?” he whispered beside his ear.

Berger nodded as he ripped into the duck with his bare hands, fingernails tearing deliciously at the crispy, greasy skin.