Day of Reckoning

A limousine pulled up behind. Fox got out and said to Falcone, ‘Aldo, you make this good.’

‘At your order, Signore.’

Fox got in the rear limousine and was driven away.

Katherine tried to open the door, but Russo was there, his great hand raised. Falcone cried, ‘Leave it. I don’t want bruising.’ He found her neck and yanked her forward on her knees on the rear seat. Her skirt rose up.

‘Go on, get on with it.’

He held her as she struggled. Russo took a box from his pocket, opened it, and produced a hypodermic. ‘You’ll like this, girlie. Best heroin on the market.’ He jabbed her left thigh, then injected her again, this time in the right buttock. ‘There you go.’

She cried out and slumped forward.

Russo patted her. ‘Hey, she’s not bad looking. Maybe I could do myself a little good here.’

He turned, reaching for his zipper, and Falcone gave him a shove. ‘You stupid bastard, that’ll blow the whole thing. Come on, give me a hand.’

Grumbling, Russo picked up her feet while Falcone took her arms, and they carried her to the edge of the pier.

‘Easy now,’ and she was in the water.

‘Come on, let’s go get a drink.’ They walked back to the Lincoln, and a minute later they drove away.

Neither of them noticed Katherine Johnson’s purse, where it had fallen out of the car, in the shadows beside a packing case.

The following morning at six o’clock, rain drove in across the East River, rattling the windows of the old precinct house. Harry Parker, brought out of bed only an hour before, drank coffee from a machine and made a face as a woman detective sergeant named Helen Abruzzi came in.

‘This is disgusting,’ Parker told her. ‘Reminds me of why I switched to tea. Okay, what have we got?’

‘This kid is called Charlene Wilson. She was working a strip bar not far from here.’

‘And doing business on the side?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘What happened?’

‘A man called Paul Moody took her home. When we found her, she’d been raped orally, half-strangled, her wrists tied.’

Parker frowned. ‘That sounds like those two murders in Battery Park.’

‘That’s what I thought, Captain, and that’s why I phoned you to come here. Charlene got away because he got drunk and fell asleep and she managed to loosen her hands.’

Parker nodded. ‘Okay, let me know when the line-up’s ready.’

She went out and Parker went to the window, the rain driving against it, and found a Marlboro, having long since stopped pretending to have quit. He lit it and looked out at the river morosely, a huge black man who had started life in Harlem, earned a law degree at Columbia, and then decided to join the police rather than a law firm. He’d never minded seventy-hour weeks, although his wife had, and had divorced him for it.

For three years now, he’d been captain in charge of a special homicide unit based at One Police Plaza. Sometimes he got depressed dealing with one killing after another, in a never-ending series, and when you were close to fifty you began to wonder if there was something better to do. He wondered if Blake had really meant what he’d said that there might be room for him in that special intelligence unit of his in Washington…

The door opened and Helen Abruzzi called, ‘Show time, Captain.’

The girl in the viewing room was in a bad way, a blanket around her shoulders, her face swollen, one eye black, bruise marks on her neck. Helen stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder, while Parker read the file. He finished, nodded, and she pressed a buzzer. A light flared and five men appeared on the other side. The girl cried out.

‘Number three. That’s him,’ she said and then she broke down.

Compassion didn’t come easy at six o’clock in the morning on the East River, but Parker put an arm around her.

‘Hey, take a deep breath. I know it isn’t easy, but I’ll make you a promise. I’m going to take this fuck out.’ He squeezed her shoulder and nodded to Abruzzi. ‘Take her away, then bring that bastard in.’

He stood at the window, looking down at the water, and after a while the door opened and Helen Abruzzi came in, followed by Paul Moody, cuffed between two police officers.

‘And who the hell are you?’ Moody demanded.

‘Captain Harry Parker. Sergeant Abruzzi’s got quite a list of charges against you, Moody, beginning with aggravated sexual assault.’

‘Hey, the bitch wanted it. She was into sadomasochism, all kinds of stuff. I mean, I was shocked, man.’

‘I’m sure you were, and I was forgetting physical assault on a minor.’

There was silence. Moody said, ‘What’s this minor crap?’

‘Didn’t Sergeant Abruzzi tell you? The girl, Charlene Wilson, was fifteen two weeks ago.’

Moody’s face paled. ‘Now, look, I didn’t know that.’

‘Well, you do now,’ Helen Abruzzi told him.

‘Another thing,’ Parker said. ‘There’ve been two killings in Battery Park within the last three months, using the same technique you prefer, Moody. Girls tied up, abused, beaten, and young.’

‘You can’t pin those on me.’

‘I don’t need to. We have good DNA samples retrieved from Charlene Wilson. We’ve got the DNA of the Battery Park killer. I’d bet my pension we’ll have a match.’

‘Fuck you, nigger bastard.’

Moody lunged at him and the two officers restrained him.

Parker said, ‘Why, Paul, you should conserve your energy. You’re going to need it to keep you going for the next forty years in prison.’ He nodded to the officers. ‘Get this piece of shit out of here.’

He turned to the window as the door closed. Helen Abruzzi said, ‘It’s a bad one, sir.’

‘They’re all bad, Sergeant.’ He turned. ‘I need air. I’ll take a walk if you can find me an umbrella. I’ll come back to sign the papers later.’

‘Fine, sir.’

He smiled, and suddenly looked charming. ‘You’ve been doing a good job here, Sergeant. I’ve been noticing. There’s an inspector’s job coming up, if you’d like a posting to Police Plaza. You deserve it. I can’t promise, mind you.’

‘I know, sir.’

‘Fine. I’ll see you later, but ring the front desk and get me that umbrella.’

It was raining hard on the waterfront. Parker had borrowed a police raincoat with caped shoulders, and carried the umbrella Abruzzi had organized. The rain actually made him feel good, cleared the head. He lit another cigarette, and then an old man was running towards him in a panic.

Parker got his hand up. ‘What is it? What’s your problem?’

‘I need the police!’

‘You’ve found them. What’s the problem?’

‘My name’s Richardson. I’m a night watchman at the old Darmer warehouse there. I was coming off shift and I went to the edge of the pier to toss my butt in the water, and…and there’s a woman in the water!’

‘Okay, show me,’ said Parker and pushed him forward.

Katherine Johnson was a couple of feet under dark green water. Her arms floated to each side, her legs were open, the eyes stared into eternity. There was a look of surprise on her face and she was achingly beautiful in death.

Harry Parker took out his mobile and called the precinct. ‘This is Captain Parker. I’ve got a Jane Doe in the water only three hundred yards from you. Let’s get an ambulance and back-up out here.’ He stood there, holding his mobile phone, then handed it to Richardson and took off his raincoat. ‘Hang on to those.’

He went down a flight of stone steps, waist deep in water, and reached for her. It was stupid, because that was the recovery team’s job, but he couldn’t leave her there. In a strange way, it was personal.

She was covered for a moment by flotsam, and he went chest deep and pulled her in and above his head. Above him, he heard the sound of vehicles grinding to a halt as the recovery team arrived.

Parker went home, changed, had breakfast at his corner coffee shop – eggs, bacon, English breakfast tea – and returned to his office. But the dead woman’s face, the open eyes, wouldn’t go away as he phoned Abruzzi.

‘What’s happening with the Jane Doe I found?’

‘She’s at the morgue. They’ve brought in the chief medical examiner. I believe he’s doing the post-mortem himself later this morning.’

‘I’ll be down. Tell him I’m coming.’

When Harry Parker arrived at the office of the chief medical examiner, Dr George Romano was eating a sandwich and drinking coffee.

‘Harry, my man, what’s new?’

‘This Jane Doe from the river. I took her out.’

‘So you’re feeling personal about it, right?’

‘Something like that.’

‘I’m about to finish the post-mortem. I was just taking a break. What do you want to know? Did she fall or was she pushed?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Okay, Harry, join me, ’cause this one stinks.’ Romano drained his coffee and led the way out.

They went into the post-mortem room, where two technicians waited, suitably gowned. Romano held up his arms and one of them helped him into a robe. He went and scrubbed at the sink.

‘There she is, all yours, Harry.’

Katherine Johnson lay on a slanting steel operating table, her head on a wooden block. She was naked, the Y cut of the preliminary vivid against her pale skin. Romano held up his hands and one of the technicians pulled on surgical gloves for him. There was a cart loaded with instruments and a TV video recorder on a swivel.

Romano said, ‘Tuesday, March 2, resuming post-mortem Mrs Katherine Johnson, 10 Barrow Street, Greenwich Village.’

‘Hey, what is this?’ Parker demanded.

‘Didn’t you know?’ Romano looked surprised. ‘The guy who found her, Richardson? He was hanging around and discovered her purse. She must have dropped it when she went over the pier. Plenty of ID.’

‘Okay. Fine. Let’s get on with it. Why did you say this stinks?’

‘She’s a nice lady, well nourished, good condition, about forty years of age.’

‘So?’

‘So she died of a massive heroin overdose. Enough to kill her twice over. It doesn’t fit. Someone like her, in her condition? Plus, someone on that stuff at a high level would have needle sores all over. She only had two – the recent ones. One in the left thigh, the other in the right buttock. And what was she doing in the water?’

‘Accidentally overdosed and fell in?’

‘Maybe. But I doubt it. Like I said, she wasn’t an addict. And another thing. Her medical insurance card was in her purse and I checked it out. She was a lefty.’

‘So?’

‘Harry, with the greatest will in the world, I can’t see a left-handed person injecting herself in the side of the right buttock. It’s possible but unlikely.’

He reached for a De Soutter vibratory saw.

‘So you’re saying she was stiffed by someone?’

‘Harry, like you, I’ve spent years in the death business. You get a smell for it. Yes, I’d say someone wasted her.’

‘Which means I’ve got a murder case on my hands.’

‘I’d say so. Now I’m about to take off the skullcap, so if you’re not too happy about that, I’d leave.’

‘Excellent advice. I’ll take it,’ said Harry Parker, and he turned and left.

He found his way to Abruzzi’s office. She was seated at her desk, working away.

‘I hear you turned up ID on the Jane Doe,’ he said. ‘Let me see.’

‘It’s an interesting one. She’s a reporter for Truth magazine, named Katherine Johnson. I did a computer printout. Divorced, no children. Her husband was a guy called Blake Johnson, FBI.’

Parker’s mouth went dry. ‘Blake Johnson?’

‘That’s right. You know him?’

‘We’ve worked together. Except he isn’t FBI anymore. He works for the President.’

‘Jesus, is this a hot one, Captain?’

‘I’d say as hot as they come. You zip your mouth tight, Sergeant.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Jesus,’ he said again. He looked at her. ‘You wouldn’t happen to have a bottle of anything here, would you, Sergeant?’

She hesitated, then took a half-bottle of Irish whiskey from a drawer in her desk. ‘For medicinal purposes,’ she said.

‘And sometimes we need it. Sergeant, you’re working for me now. I’ll take care of things with your lieutenant. The first thing I want you to do is call the White House and ask for a woman named Alice Quarmby. Got that? That’s Johnson’s assistant. I need to talk to her.’

He turned to the window, stared out, and took another swig from the bottle. Abruzzi called to him, he turned and took the phone.

‘Alice? Harry Parker. Is Blake there?’

‘He’s with the President, Harry.’

‘Damn.’

There was a pause. ‘Is it important?’

So he told her.

In the Oval Office, President Jake Cazalet sat at his desk, Blake Johnson on the other side, as they reviewed the latest intelligence reports on the Irish peace process. The President’s favourite Secret Service man, Clancy Smith, a tall, black Gulf veteran, stood by the door. The phone rang and Cazalet picked it up.

‘Alice Quarmby, Mr President.’

‘Hello, Alice, you want Blake?’

‘No, Mr President, I need you.’

He straightened, aware from the tone of her voice that something was very badly wrong.

‘Tell me, Alice.’

She did, and a minute later he replaced the phone and turned to Blake, genuine pain on his face, for this was a man he liked more than most, a man who had helped save his beloved daughter’s life, who had saved the President himself from assassination.

Blake, sitting there in shirtsleeves, papers in front of him, said, ‘What’s the problem, Mr President? What did Alice say?’

Cazalet stood up and walked to the window, watching the rain drifting across Capitol Hill. He summoned up all his strength and turned.

‘Blake, you’re a true friend and one of the finest men I’ve known, and I’m going to hurt you now in the most terrible way. At least, thank God, it’s me.’

Blake looked puzzled. ‘Mr President?’

And Cazalet gave him the dreadful news.

When he was done, he ordered, ‘Whisky, Clancy, a large one.’

Clancy was at the sideboard at once and back within seconds with a crystal glass half-filled with bourbon. He handed it to Blake, who stared at it, frowning, then swallowed it whole. He put the glass down on the desk.

‘I’m sorry, Mr President. This is quite a shock. Although my wife and I were divorced, we’ve always stayed close, and now I…May I phone Alice back?’

‘Of course. Use the anteroom for privacy, then we’ll talk.’

‘Thank you.’ Clancy opened the door and Blake went out.

‘Clancy,’ Cazalet said, ‘I need a cigarette.’

Clancy found a pack, shook one out, and gave it to him. ‘Mr President.’

Cazalet inhaled deeply. ‘These got me through Vietnam, Clancy. Blake, too, I suspect. What about you? In the Gulf?’

‘Long days of boredom, broken by moments of sheer terror? Yes sir, a cigarette came in handy now and then.’

Cazalet nodded. ‘Old soldiers, the three of us.’ He sighed. ‘He doesn’t deserve this, Clancy. If there’s anything we can do for him, I’d appreciate it.’

‘My privilege, Mr President.’

Twenty minutes later Blake returned, his face grey, eyes burning.

‘Is there anything I can do to help, Blake?’

‘No, Mr President, except with your permission I need to get to New York now.’

Cazalet turned to Clancy Smith. ‘Make the call and get the Gulfstream ready to take Blake to New York immediately.’

‘You got it, Mr President,’ and Clancy went out fast.

Cazalet turned to Blake. ‘My friend, do you have any kind of idea what happened?’

‘No, Mr President.’ Blake pulled on his jacket. ‘But I intend to find out. And with Harry Parker helping me, that’s just what I’ll do.’ He held out his hand. ‘Many thanks, Mr President, for your understanding.’

He turned and went out.

3

In Parker’s office at One Police Plaza, Blake listened to the whole story. When the police captain was finished, Blake nodded.

‘I’d like to hear what Romano said from his own mouth, then I’d like to see where it happened.’

‘Be my guest.’ Parker picked up the telephone. ‘Have my car at the front entrance in five minutes.’

Shortly thereafter, still in the rain, that bad March weather, they stood on the edge of the pier with umbrellas and looked down into the water covered with scum and flotsam.

‘She was there by the steps,’ Parker told him. ‘The night watchman saw her. I happened to be walking along.’

‘And you pulled her in.’

‘I couldn’t leave her.’

Blake nodded. ‘Let’s go and see Romano.’ He turned and walked away.

At the morgue, Romano was in the chief medical examiner’s office, drinking minestrone soup from a plastic cup and eating French bread. Parker made the introductions.

Romano said, ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘Just tell me what you told Harry.’

Romano did.

‘So she was murdered?’

‘In my opinion, and for what it’s worth, yes.’

‘But why?’ Parker demanded. ‘And what would a nice middle-class lady with an apartment in the Village be doing in Brooklyn under these circumstances?’ They sat silent for a moment. ‘You never had any children, did you, Blake?’

‘No.’ Blake shrugged. ‘It wasn’t possible. She was sterile, so she concentrated on her career, and I concentrated on mine. We just kind of drifted apart. But though we got divorced, we never lost touch. We were always concerned friends.’ He turned to Romano. ‘I’d like to see the body.’

‘No, you wouldn’t.’

‘Yes, I damn well would.’ At that moment Blake looked every inch the Vietnam veteran.

Parker put a hand on Romano’s shoulder. ‘George, I’d say we should indulge the man.’

‘Okay, let me phone down.’

She lay on one of the tables under the hard white light. There were enormous stitched scars where Romano had opened her up, the same scar around the skull.

Blake felt incredibly detached. This creature had been the love of his life, his wife, his support in many bad times, and now…

He said, ‘I was never all that religious, but human beings are pretty remarkable. Einstein, Fleming, Shakespeare, Dickens. Is this what it ends up as? Where’s Kate? This isn’t her.’

‘I can’t give you an answer,’ Romano told him. ‘The essence, the life force – it just goes. That’s all I can say.’

Blake nodded slowly. ‘I’ll tell you one thing. She deserved better, and someone should pay for this.’ His smile was the most terrible thing Parker had ever seen when he said, ‘And I’m going to see that they do.’

Back at Parker’s office, there was a message for him to phone Helen Abruzzi.

‘What’s new?’ Parker asked.

‘Well, we checked out Katherine Johnson’s house, and it’s been burgled.’

‘Damn,’ Parker said. ‘Okay, we’ll be right there.’ He turned to Blake and explained. Blake said, ‘Let’s take a look.’ Helen Abruzzi was already there ahead of them when they arrived.

‘There’s no sign of forced entry, but the study upstairs has been ransacked. It’s hard to tell what’s been taken.’

She led the way, opened the study door, and entered. The scene of devastation was evident, videotapes scattered all over the place.

Parker said, ‘Anything in the machinery?’

‘Not a thing. No disks, no tapes, no copies, nothing in the computer.’

‘That smells, for starters.’

Blake said, ‘Somebody was after something, Harry, that’s obvious, and probably found it. The thing is, what and why?’ He turned to Abruzzi. ‘Have the crime scene people finished here?’ She nodded. ‘Then could you get your people to look at these tapes littering the floor, Sergeant? You never know. You might turn up something.’

‘I’ll see to it, sir.’

Blake started down the stairs, and Parker said, ‘Now where?’

‘Truth magazine. I want to see Kate’s editor, find out what she was working on. You don’t have to come. You’ve got other cases on your hands, Harry. I can handle this on my own.’

‘Like hell you will,’ Harry Parker told him. ‘Let’s get going.’

The editor of Truth magazine, Rupert O’Dowd, was the kind of middle-aged journalist who’d seen it all, been there, and done that, and he had little residual faith in human nature. Nevertheless, sitting in his office in shirtsleeves, he reacted with horror to the suggestion that Katherine Johnson had been murdered.

‘Please, tell me, what can I do to help?’

‘You can tell us what she’d been involved in lately,’ Johnson said. ‘Was she working on anything special, anything dangerous?’

O’Dowd hesitated. ‘Well, there’s a question of journalistic ethics here.’

‘And there’s the question of my wife being murdered by the administration of a massive heroin dose, Mr O’Dowd. So don’t play around or I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.’

O’Dowd put up a hand. ‘Okay, okay, you don’t have to come down hard.’ He took a deep breath. ‘She was working on a big Mafia exposé.’

There was silence. Parker said, ‘Isn’t that old stuff?’

‘Only because the Mafia wants you to think that. Let me explain. The ruling power in the Mafia, the Commission, right? It called a halt to mob killings in New York in 1992 because of the bad publicity.’

‘So?’

‘So they started again last year. Five stiffed in Palermo a month ago, three in New York, four in London. But it’s all different, all back-room stuff you can’t connect to them. They’ve gone legit. They don’t figure in Forbes magazine, but they’re easily the biggest company structure in Europe. The drug market in America is saturated, so they’ve moved to Eastern Europe and Russia, but now they do it behind an elaborate façade.’

‘So what are you saying?’ Blake asked.

‘That the days of men in gold chains have gone. Now they wear good suits and sit next to you in the Four Seasons or the Piano Bar at the Dorchester in London. They are into construction, property development, leisure, TV. You name it, they do it.’

There was a pause. Blake said, ‘So where did my wife fit in to all this?’

‘As I indicated, these days the new image is everything. The most influential Mafia group right now is the Solazzo family. Don Marco is the old devil who runs things, but he has an extraordinary nephew named Jack Fox. Fox’s mother was Don Marco’s niece, so the good Jack is half and half, though he sounds very Anglo-Saxon. He was a young Marine in the Gulf, a decorated war hero, Harvard Law School, and now he’s the respectable face of the Solazzos.’

‘And how does this affect Katherine?’

‘She managed to get into a relationship with Fox. She was intending to produce a devastating series, not only for Truth magazine but also for our TV side.’ There was silence, then O’Dowd said, ‘She wanted to get behind that acceptable face of the Mafia and expose it.’

‘Which meant showing the reality behind Fox,’ Parker said.

‘And he couldn’t have that.’ Blake nodded. ‘So now we know.’ He stood up and said to O’Dowd, ‘Play this down. Trust me. Give us time and you’ll get the story Kate wanted.’ He held out his hand. ‘A bargain?’

‘It sure as hell is.’

On the way downstairs, Parker’s mobile rang. He answered and nodded. ‘We’ll be there.’ He turned to Blake. ‘Abruzzi. She’s sorted out the videotapes. Wondered if you’d like a look.’

‘Why not?’ Blake said.

The study at Barrow Street was much more ordered now, the videotapes arranged neatly on the shelves.

Helen Abruzzi said, ‘I’ve put the movies on the top two shelves, the language courses and self-help tapes on the bottom two shelves.’ She turned to Blake. ‘There is one that refers to you, sir. That’s what I thought you’d want to know.’

Blake said, ‘What do you mean?’

‘The label says: Blake’s parents.’

Blake was silent for a moment. ‘My parents died when I was very young. I never knew them. And my wife knew that better than anyone. I’d appreciate you turning that tape on, Sergeant.’

He sat down, Parker stood behind him, and the screen flickered.