Buried on Avenue B (18 page)

 

CHAPTER 46

JANDOREK WELCOMES O'HARA
back to homicide with an arched eyebrow and a breath mint.

“I thought Florida was going to do you some good.”

“Florida in the summer doesn't do anyone any good. But thanks.”

When O'Hara turns on her computer, she has a new e-mail from Wawrinka, the gist of which is that there's nothing new. Despite the assault of wind, rain, and bird shit at TP Salvage, Sarasota Crime Scene was able to scrape some DNA from the inside of the van, along with two sets of prints, but they don't match anyone in the system, and there's still no trace of the white wagon the perps stole from the old man's driveway.

With nothing of value coming out of the van, the charges on Adams's MasterCard are the only trail for the perps north of the Walmart, and O'Hara opens up the account file on her screen. A total of seven charges were made on the card, and by calling the credit card company and the merchants, Wawrinka has been able to put together an itemized list of purchases:

2/17/07, 5:28 p.m., Sarasota Airport: van rental from Alamo ($399 per week)

3/3/07, 11:45 a.m, Longboat Key, FL, Circle K: six packages of gauze, 2 containers of Advil, two different kinds of antiseptic cream, adhesive tape, and four six-packs of water ($83.78)

3/3/07, 12:05 p.m., Bradenton, FL, CVS: 5 bottles of hydrochloric solution, 2 thermometers, six packages of gauze, sterile pads, cotton balls, 3 gallon jugs of distilled water, 1 six-pack of Coke, 4 Hostess Twinkies, 1 Superman comic ($147.38)

3/3/07, 1:12 p.m., Tampa, FL, CVS: 5 bottles of hydrochloric solution, 8 packages of gauze, sterile pads, 3 tubes of CVS antiseptic cream, 3 containers of Aleve, 3 six-packs of water, 1 six-pack of Coke, 1 package of Oreos, 1 Superman comic ($118.07)

3/3/07, 11:53 p.m., Vance, SC, Sunoco Service Center: 14.8 gallons of regular gas, two bottles of water, one six-pack of Coke ($56.10)

3/4/07, 10:16 a.m., Baltimore, MD, Exxon Service Center: 17.7 gallons of regular gas, two bottles of water, one large Coke ($67.49)

3/4/07, 3:09 p.m., Kings Ferry, NY, Citgo Service Center: 7.53 gallons of regular gas, 1 six-pack of Corona ($40.93)

The first time Adams used the card was to rent the van on February 17. The next was on March 3, seven minutes after Di Nunzio called 911. That was a minimart half a mile west of Levin's condo in Banyan Bay, where more than $80 was spent on first aid supplies and water, presumably to clean the boy's wound as much as drinking. Twelve miles and twenty minutes later, they stopped again for more supplies at a CVS in Bradenton, and a little more than an hour later, they stopped at a CVS in Tampa.

The short intervals between those first three stops, as they race to plug the boy's wound, are heartrending. So is the attempt to bolster the boy's spirits with the comic books, which this time someone actually got right. But after Tampa, the medical efforts stop, and O'Hara sees that the conflict between regard and disregard evident at the grave site was also being played out in the front of the car. The kid needed a lot more than gauze and Advil and a comic book, but one of the perps seemed to care about the kid, while the other didn't give a rat's ass. O'Hara assumes that somewhere between Walterboro, South Carolina, where the Volvo was stolen, and Vance, where they stopped for gas but no more first aid or comic books, the boy died.

The last three charges are all at service centers—in Vance, Baltimore, and finally thirteen miles north of Manhattan on the Palisades Parkway, and since they are all O'Hara has, she pores over them. She determines the distances between the stops and the amount of gas purchased, in case a change in mileage might suggest they switched vehicles a second time. But there isn't one. In Baltimore, which is 512 miles north of Vance, they put in almost 18 gallons, and in Kings Ferry, New York, on the Palisades Parkway, which is 209 miles north of Baltimore, they put in a little over 7.5 gallons, and in both cases that works out to about 28 miles per gallon. And because she can't think of anything else to do, she looks up the specs for a 1993 Volvo wagon, and sees it has an eighteen-gallon tank.

Since the last charge is at the Kings Ferry service center on the Palisades Parkway, the focus has been on New York and New Jersey, but in fact the car could be anywhere, and despite her efforts, O'Hara can't get the data to yield anything that might pinpoint the search. All she gets is a white wagon that looks like an ambulance, but is in fact a hearse.

 

CHAPTER 47

THE FLAT SCREENS
are up third, scheduled for 10:30, and O'Hara meets Krekorian at Lakeside at 10:00. Arriving at 10:00 for a 10:30 show is a mistake only a mother could make. At midnight the second band hasn't started, and forty minutes later, when they're down to the ice chips in their third Maker's Mark, K taps out.

“I'm too old for midweek shows,” he says. “Before I go, you got to promise me you're not going to embarrass Axl, yourself, or the NYPD.”

“I'm already embarrassing the NYPD. A month since we dug up the boy, and I don't know his name.”

“I'm more concerned about your immediate family.”

“You afraid I'm going to wander onstage, blubber into the mike, and fall on my ass?”

“Yeah.”

Despite her nascent cold and a long day, O'Hara is all keyed up for Axl's show. Based on the knots in her stomach, you'd think she's about to watch him step into the ring at one of those smoke-filled joints where Sollie cheered Schoolboy from the front row. Then again, the stakes aren't much different. One seat over is a twentysomething who looks as much of a wreck as she, and he's wearing a Germs T-shirt. All hands, forearms, and spiky black hair, he taps out a beat on the rim of his glass with a red swizzle stick.

“The Germs were a hell of a band,” says O'Hara, shamelessly passing on information recently acquired from her new pal Holly. “Too bad Darby Crash killed himself.”

“The Germs? Never heard of 'em. I swiped the shirt from some chick's drawer.”

That's what you get for being full of shit, thinks O'Hara. Although it wouldn't take much to convince herself she needs another drink, she remembers K and pushes from the bar. Rather than stand around awkwardly waiting for the show to start, she steps outside and walks past the smokers clustered by the door toward the corner. Across the street, Tompkins Square Park looks like a zoo closed down for the night, the animals asleep in the shadows. Like any woman killing time on a street corner at one in the morning, she pulls out her phone. One voice mail. One text. O'Hara starts with the text from Ashworth in evidence:

Darlene, you know the marble and the fake pearl? Along with the victim's DNA, we found traces of beeswax on both of them. Based on that, I'd say they weren't there as currency but placed in the boy's nostrils. The only people I know who do that to their dead are the ancient Egyptians, king tut, etc. There aren't a lot of folks keeping it Egyptian so I thought it could be helpful.

O'Hara reads the text again and shakes her head. “I don't see it,” she mumbles.

“You're talking to yourself?”

O'Hara turns over her shoulder and it's the kid from the bar.

“Was I disturbing you?”

“Not at all. Mental illness runs in my family.”

“I hope it skipped a generation.”

“No such luck.” He tosses his thumb toward Lakeside, “I'm up next. With the Flat Screens.”

At this point, O'Hara should identify herself, if not as NYPD, as the mother of the front man, but when she hesitates and the kid continues, it seems too late.

“Their original drummer quit—a job, business school, something pathetic—and I've been rehearsing with them for a couple weeks. Basically, this is an audition. It goes well, I'm in like Flynn. I suck, it's sayonara cupcake. You should stick around, they're awesome.”

“I just might. Good luck, then.”

“I'm Silas.”

“Darlene.”

“To be honest, I'm nervous as hell. How about a kiss for luck?”

“Can't I just say, ‘Break a leg?' ”

“I suppose.”

“Fine,” says O'Hara. As she plants a kiss on the drummer's cheek, he helps himself to a generous handful of her Irish butt, squeezes it emphatically, and darts around the corner.

“Nervous, my ass!”

“Exactly.”

Like any self-respecting woman who has just been groped on a street corner by her son's new drummer, O'Hara takes out her phone again. This time, she plays back the voice message.

“Hey, Darlene, it's Sollie. I remembered something. Fricking miracle, right? Thought I better share it before I forget it again. At dinner, I told you Bun got conned into paying tuition for some gold digger's son. That was the first woman. And the smaller amount. The second woman took him to the cleaners. She said her kid was born with one leg shorter than the other and needed an operation to lengthen it. I'm pretty sure he paid the whole tab—or at least thought he did—which was some serious cabbage, almost a hundred large.”

In terms of shamelessness, thinks O'Hara, that's up there with Perps' Bring Your Kid to Work Day. You got a kid walking around with a limp, because no one bothered to fix his broken leg, and use that as the pretext to scam an old guy out of $100,000.

In the last week, the Flat Screens have been touted in several blogs and an item in the
Village Voice
: “Are the Flat Screens the next Television?” Every seat in the back room is taken, and she's lucky to find a spot to stand between the jukebox and the photo booth. After a week among the frail olds of Longboat Key, it's a pleasure to be squeezed tight on all sides by electric youth, and when her own twenty-year-old steps up to the mike with his big beard shaved off, the beauty and vulnerability of his pale, freckled skin almost make her weep.

“Welcome,” says Axl, “to the all-important second show. Someday we may be good enough for Williamsburg or Bushwick or even Red Hook. But for now, we're just humble apprentices of rock, grateful to play wherever, even in Manfuckinghattan. So thanks for coming. I know what a pain in the ass it is to get here, and how depressing once you arrive.” Like a restless ballpark crowd cheering over the national anthem, the tattooed boys and girls clap and stomp their feet, and one nearly middle-aged female detective sticks two fingers in her mouth and emits an ear-piercing whistle.

At last the band begins to play. The tempo is funereal and the sound muddy, until the outline of “When You Were Mine” bubbles to the surface. Of all the songs in Prince's catalogue, it still strikes O'Hara as the best, and she recalls the night she first played it for Axl. In the Flat Screens' version, the synth pop of the original has been replaced by three miles of bad road. It underlines the heartbreaking simplicity of the chorus—“I love you more than I did . . . when you were mine”—and drives home how hard it is to appreciate anyone enough at the time.

The Prince cover is followed by five originals, only two of which she recognizes from the Ukrainian Center. Despite the noise and excitement and jostling, O'Hara can't stop her mind from returning to Sollie's voice mail. In the midst of the sweaty din, it occurs to her that Sollie might have answered the first question she asked herself at Milano's, which is why Levin stopped banging the water heater before Lebrie.

Maybe Ben saw the kid's limp, remembered the money he had sent to fix it, put it together, and reached for his gun. Then O'Hara realizes Sollie's rekindled memory does more than explain why Levin might have seen through the scam before Lebrie. It means that around the same time Levin was targeted by distraction burglars, he was also being scammed by two different women, and in all three cases the kid seemed to have been involved and used as a kind of prop to soften the mark. The burglars said the kid was along to see what his father did for a living, the second woman sought the money for an operation to fix his leg, and the first woman, the one who nicked Levin for the smaller amount, featured him too.
My kid's having problems at school. Other kids pick on him. I want to send him someplace new so he can get a fresh start, but I can't afford it.
Instead of a random knock on the door, Levin was being worked over by a tag team of scammers operating in concert to milk him dry. Meanwhile her own kid is singing his ass off on the small stage twenty feet away, but in her effort to process, the band's last couple songs pass in a blur.

 

CHAPTER 48

NINE HOURS LATER
O'Hara is back in Tompkins Square. In the midday heat, the juicers on the benches sit as still as the leaves in the trees, and the jungle gym, handball and basketball courts are all on hiatus. From the skateboard park, however, comes listless grinding, and O'Hara is relieved to spot Ben, Jamie, and minions bogarting the shade of a large elm. Based on the strong smell of reefer, she's arrived thirty seconds too late.

“I need you slackers to concentrate for five minutes,” she says. “We got a description of two perps with Herc when he was shot. I want to run them by you, see if they spark anything. One was in his early forties, Caucasian but really dark, at least six feet and over three hundred pounds. The other was half his size, about twenty-three, five-seven, and a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Wore diamond studs in both ears. They target old people, talk their way into their homes, and rob them. Remember either of these scumbags coming by the park?”

“I don't see how we could have forgotten a pair like that,” says Ben.

“How about separately?”

“The smaller one,” says Jamie, “sounds like the one I told you about, the one Herc got along with.”

“I've seen him a couple times,” says a kid she doesn't know by name. “Herc called him Bones or Sticks, something like that.”

“You said two women came by, and one was unattractive. Can you try again to remember what made you think that? Was she overweight?”

“It was her face,” says Ben.

“What about it? Her features? Her nose, her teeth?”

“She had bad skin.”

“Sure about that?” Asking a teenager, stoned by noon, if he was certain about something, seems absurd, but his description matches what she got from Sollie. Not only that, their memory of Herc's affection for the smaller perp corroborates her own observations about the contradictory behavior in the van, with one perp trying to help the kid far more than the other.

“How about an old guy name Gus? Short, bowlegged, black hair, thick black glasses? Moves slow, thinks slow? Ever see him with Herc?”

These last questions fail to get a rise from any of them, and a scan of their faces indicates that their window of attention has closed. “If you remember anything, give me a call,” says O'Hara. “But try not to call me when you're stoned. I'm a cop. Remember? . . . You know what? Nix that. You think of something, call me any time.”

“Darlene, you okay?” asks Ben.

“Just tired. Had a long night.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. But thanks.”

O'Hara traverses the park, passing a tree where she once spotted an owl the size of Bruno. South of the dog runs, she enters an elegant paved plaza where a tribe of bike messengers meet in the early evenings, their beloved single-gear bikes stacked at their feet. Today the Caribbean and African health-care workers from the old-age home on Fifth Street have wheeled out a dozen old-timers and aligned their chairs in a half crescent facing the sun. Side by side, they soak up vitamin D, their drooling, farting, and nodding off a modest last stab at camaraderie.

On her way downtown, O'Hara called Paulette and asked her and Gus to meet her at the garden. O'Hara spots them inside, beneath an arbor, Gus sitting at the end of a bench, and Paulette standing beside him, and as O'Hara watches through the gate, Gus reaches up and grabs Paulette's ass. It reminds O'Hara of the previous evening. Still, she can't help but smile, surprised to see that Gus has a little more game left than she thought. The audacity of hope, she thinks. Or is it the audacity of grope? Paulette takes her time before she loosens the old man's grip, and even then she does it with a warm smile, which strikes O'Hara as well beyond the call of duty and the reasonable expectations of minimum wage.

“Hey, Johnny Depp,” says O'Hara when she reaches them, “I see you're feeling your oats.”

“Why not? I ain't dead yet.”

“Nowhere near, apparently.”

As O'Hara takes a seat beside Gus, she can see Christina Malmströmer tending to her salad greens and peppers.

“Gus, remember the big guy you told Paulette you killed?”

“The big white guy?”

“Now he's white? You said he was black.”

“Did I? All I know, he went down like a sequoia.”

“Gus, no bullshit. Was he black or white?”

“What does it matter? The point is, he was a bastard, big as a house, and I killed him.”

“Oh, yeah. Why?”

“Because the bastard deserved it a hundred times over.”

O'Hara had hoped meeting in the garden might jar loose some memories, but this exceeds her hopes.

“What I hear, the big guy had a partner. A younger guy, much smaller fellow, about your size. Wore diamond studs in both ears. You kill him too?”

“No,” says Gus. “No, I didn't.”

And then he starts to cry.

“Come on, Gus, don't waste your tears over these guys. Save them for people who deserve it.”

“Maybe I got enough to go around?”

For the same reason that O'Hara arranged to meet in the garden, she has brought the catalogue from the show in Chelsea. When Gus recovers, she pulls it out of a plastic bag and opens it to the picture of Herc and the girl.

“Gus. You ever seen this boy? His friends called him Hercules.”

Gus runs a fingertip along the profile of the boy's face and stares through the branches at Malmströmer weeding her plot. “Nice paper,” he says, “thick.” Then he turns the catalogue over and glances at the cover. “You shelled out two-fifty for this?”

“No way. I impounded it.”

O'Hara tries again to get Gus to focus on the photo, but it's no use. Between the demented and the addled, O'Hara hasn't gotten a straight answer all morning, and when her cell phone rings, she is relieved.

“Steve Baginski with the New York State Police. We found the stolen vehicle. It was right there at the service center, a hundred feet from the pumps.”