Buried on Avenue B (11 page)

 

CHAPTER 26

“NOT MUCH BLOOD,”
says O'Hara. She entertained hopes of a modern glassy structure streaming with tropical light à la
Dexter
. And maybe a nice view of palm trees and water and a buff Latin cop or two. Instead, she finds herself in a windowless room filthy enough to be back in the 7, studying a dozen eight-by-tens of an elderly Jewish man on his bathroom tiles. The photos, taken in the early afternoon of March 3 in Unit 306 of a Longboat Key condominium called Banyan Bay, offer a pretty fair idea of the final moments of Benjamin Levin, a retired eighty-seven-year-old manufacturer of cosmetic gloves for women.

“That's what you get for using a rabbit gun,” says Connie Wawrinka, the Sarasota detective O'Hara talked to on the phone a couple nights before. “It's not like he blew his brains out. The twenty-two-caliber bullet never left his skull. Didn't even reach it.”

The first row of photos shows, from various angles and distances, Levin on his bathroom floor, his tennis shorts and shirt slightly darker than the white tiles. The only inkling of how he came to be there is the dried trickle that connects his nostrils to his upper lip and the dark stain no bigger than a tablespoon ballooning from his thin mouth like comic-strip dialogue. Despite his age, his hirsute limbs are still wiry, and O'Hara wonders if Leibowitz will look this lithe at the end. Jews age well, she thinks. Then again, considering the knee-jerk litany of nos and toos—no drinking, no smoking, too late, too spicy, no this, too that—it's not much of a payout.

“Take a look at this one,” says Wawrinka, and points to a picture of Levin's bedroom in the next row. To the left is the victim's neatly made bed with a dark rectangular shape on top of it. To the right, just outside the bathroom door, are the rubber soles of Levin's tennis sneakers. In between, leaning against the night table, is the antique wooden rifle Levin used to end his life. “Even after firing a bullet into his brain, he was able to prop the gun against the nightstand and get almost all the way into the bathroom.”

“He didn't want to leave a mess,” says O'Hara. Just like Leibowitz, she thinks, and longs for him in a way she hasn't for weeks.

“
EMS said the body was still warm. The poor fuck took ten minutes to die. He's lucky he died, period.” O'Hara looks up from the picture at the six-foot Wawrinka. Although she reminds herself not to stare, she holds her gaze a beat too long or reveals something nonplussed in her expression, because Wawrinka smiles and says, “Hawaiian mom, Polish dad.”

That's funny, thinks O'Hara, but is it a joke? Like a lot of things about Wawrinka, O'Hara isn't quite sure. Wawrinka's disclosure of her mutt ancestry explains the almond eyes in the fleshy East European face, but it hardly decodes the spectacle of Wawrinka's striking androgyny. NYPD is thick with butch gay females. It goes with the territory, but what Wawrinka is doing with her button-down oxford shirt, jeans, and old-school Pumas is more charismatic and stylish, more like cross-dressing. With her thick jet-black hair and short bangs carved like sideburns, she resembles a Polish-Asian Elvis. “Is that a book?” asks O'Hara, referring to the dark shape on the bedspread.

“A framed photograph,” says Wawrinka, “of his grandson. Apparently, before he shot himself, he took it off the night table, looked at it one last time, then left it facedown on the bed.”

“How about that dark shape on the floor just under the bed?”

“Don't remember exactly—a hanger maybe, or the edge of a shoe.”

“At the time, nothing struck you as hinky?”

“No. Just a lonely old widower who decided he'd had enough. Now we know the same gun also killed the boy, we start from scratch, no question. But like I said, at the time, we didn't see a single thing that didn't support a straightforward suicide.”

As striking as Wawrinka's rockabilly swagger is her lack of attitude. A homicide detective from NYC waltzes in and informs the locals they got their heads up their asses, you expect nothing but pushback and a fuck-you smile, but Wawrinka isn't playing it like that. Not at all. O'Hara gets more bullshit on a daily basis from her own sergeant.

“So let me ask you something, Connie, you ever do karaoke?”

“Of course,” says Wawrinka. Like O'Hara, she is in her mid-thirties, but with her schoolboy attire seems half a decade younger.

“What do you do—‘Heartbreak Hotel,' ‘Blue Suede Shoes'?”

“That would be a little too easy, don't you think?” says Wawrinka, running one hand through her mop and curling her upper lip. “No, I do Warwick, ‘Walk on By,' or the Carpenters' ‘Close to You.' The room goes so quiet you can hear the panties drop.”

“That's fucking quiet,” says O'Hara, and Wawrinka laughs. “Do me a favor,” says O'Hara, “no matter how obvious, take me through everything that said straight suicide. Help get my bearings.”

“For starters, you got an eighty-seven-year-old sprawled on his bathroom floor with a bullet in his brain and a rifle by the bed. He's sick—according to the autopsy, advanced melanoma and prostate cancer. He's alone; his wife of sixty-one years—I know, it's sweet—died eight months earlier. And according to his daughter, it wasn't pretty. A stroke, a second stroke, feeding tube, infections from the feeding tube, infections from all the time in the wheelchair. And she died at home, so Levin had a front-row seat. Knew what he had to look forward to. Alone. At a certain point, getting it over with is a pretty good option, and it looked like Levin had gotten there.”

“And nothing about the scene looked off?”

“No. I know the killer could have taken a picture off the night table and dropped it facedown on the bed, but the truth is, nothing about the scene felt staged. You stage it, you wipe the gun down and place it in the victim's hand. At the very least, you drop it on the floor beside the body, you don't lean it neatly by the bed. Plus this gun was covered with twenty years of prints. But the main thing was that there was no evidence of anyone else having been in the place. No sign of a break-in, no one else's blood, no sign of struggle, nothing stolen.”

O'Hara glances at the autopsy report lying beside the pictures. “You said someone could easily have flipped the picture, given us a little detail to make it look legit, but you don't think someone could have overpowered him, put the gun in his mouth?”

“Possible, but there were no bruises on Levin. No sign of any struggle.”

“According to the report, Levin was five-six and a hundred and eighteen pounds. How much of a struggle could he have put up?”

“Maybe he would have gone down, but he would have fought back.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“In the last eight months, he was arrested for assault. Twice.”

“I thought he was a nice old Jew from Teaneck.”

“First incident was at a restaurant called Sweet Tomatoes. Apparently some guy cut the line at the early-bird special,” says Wawrinka with a straight face.

“Sweet Tomatoes?”

“A salad bar on Tamiami. Even after seven, it's like eight dollars all-you-can-eat, soup, dessert, everything. And it's good. I have no clue how they make money. Maybe it's a front for the cartel. Those old fucks wolf it down like there's no tomorrow, which is pretty much true. At five o'clock, people are lined up out the door, guys in their patent leather shoes, ladies all dolled up. Except for grandchildren, no one's under seventy.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Like I said, some guy cut the line.”

“Cut the line at the early-bird special at Sweet Tomatoes?” says O'Hara, as if repeating the words will give them meaning.

“Not a good idea when Benjamin Levin is in the line. He walks up to the guy, who is about a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier, and he tells the guy to go to the back of the line. And he doesn't do it nicely. The guy says something back, and Levin decks him.”

“The guy is like a hundred pounds?”

“One punch,” says Wawrinka. “Lays the guy out across the croutons and sliced beets. The beets stain the guy's pants, which is half the reason he files charges. I can get you the police report.”

O'Hara flashes back to the picture of the kid in the Chelsea gallery with his arm around his girl and smiling up at the camera like it's nothing, and thinks, related or not, the old man and the kid are two of a kind. Little guys with brass stones.

“
Okay,” says O'Hara, “that's assault number one.”

“Three months earlier, same story, different place. This time on a golf course. He's playing with his buddies at Landmark, up near the airport. Instead of the early-bird special, it's the senior off-season discount. These nutjobs out in the midday heat to save a couple dollars. Apparently Levin's foursome isn't moving fast enough, hardly surprising considering it's a hundred eighteen degrees. And someone in the group behind them yells something. Levin drives the golf cart back, asks who's in the big hurry. Finds out it's a fellow named Frank McGraw, and knocks him out cold. In the golf cart, on top of the steering wheel, like Faye Dunaway in
Chinatown
.”

“Except there's no horn on a golf cart,” says O'Hara. “Not the same without the horn.”

“True.”

 

CHAPTER 27

SHAMELESSLY SQUEAKING THE
tires, Wawrinka one-hands the Crown Vic through the tight turns of the basement garage. When she guns it at the ramp, the two-ton vehicle shoots onto the sun-blasted street like the Batmobile exiting the Batcave.

“Apparently,” says O'Hara, “they still let you burn a little fossil fuel down here. I'm lucky to get a Prius with enough volts to play the radio.”

Wawrinka grins beneath reflecting aviators. “This is Florida, Darlene, the state that gave us W.”

“Thanks for that.”

Wawrinka makes short work of Sarasota's small downtown, and they're soon flying over the bridges O'Hara traveled the night before. The tranquil moonlight has been replaced by a murderous glare, and for O'Hara the lack of visual content is unsettling—all that sky and water and nothing in it but the speck of a bird or the wisp of a boat. In the midday heat, the tennis courts, golf courses, and beaches are deserted, and even the most elegant limestone condos look like little more than a place to pull the shades and hide. Although O'Hara fears she'll find out soon enough, she can't imagine what it would be like with a hangover.

A couple miles past Publix, Wawrinka turns into a relatively modest two-story development called Banyan Bay, and they hustle from the carport to Unit 306. At the door, O'Hara tries to conceal her impatience as Wawrinka fishes for the key.

“Having a little trouble with the heat?”

“Only when I'm outside. Ever get used to it?”

“No.”

Wawrinka leads O'Hara past the kitchen into a living room/dining room and hits the lights. “The place looks exactly the same,” she says.

“It's six months,” says O'Hara. “It hasn't been sold or rented?”

“I guess you haven't been following the Florida real estate market. A couple years ago, a place like this on the Gulf was worth a million. Now it might be worth half that, if you could get someone to buy it, which is unlikely. As far as I know, Levin's daughter hasn't bothered to put it on the market.”

“No one's been here in six months?”

“It's not a crime scene. A neighbor might have given in to morbid curiosity and talked the super into giving him a tour. Or maybe some broker has wormed her way in, but it doesn't look like it. Either way, I brought the pictures to compare.”

With Wawrinka behind her, O'Hara steps gingerly into the master bedroom, where the last minutes of Levin's life played out. She studies the corner of the bed, where he sat when he presumably shot himself, and the nightstand against which he propped the gun, and takes the same three steps Levin took before he collapsed in the bathroom. When she compares the pictures with the present, she finds the same pale yellow bedspread and the frame still facedown in the middle of it.

In the bathroom, the only visible difference is that the blood has been scoured from the tiles. O'Hara isn't sure if she's more grateful for the unlikely integrity of the crime scene or that Wawrinka thought to call the super to turn on the AC. Without it, the walls would be sweating. When O'Hara flips over the picture with her pen, she sees why Levin might have chosen it for his final glimpse of the world. In the shot, Levin and his brown-haired grandson, who is about the same age as Herc, are stretched out on the same bed, playing cards. Neither is aware that he is being photographed, and they are completely engrossed in their game and at ease with each other. In front of the bed are a dresser and TV stand, on the far side a chaise and a tall halogen reading light. Beyond them, a large window faces the Gulf, and when O'Hara crosses to the far side of the bed and peeks behind the blind, the light bouncing off the sand rebuffs her.

Take your sweet time, she tells herself. All that's waiting is a preheated oven of a car and the four walls of her motel room. With her back to the window, she does a calm scan of the room, ending at the TV stand in the corner. In addition to an outdated, modest-size TV and a DVD player, the shelves are covered with a dozen cans of yellow tennis balls, half of them opened. On the top shelf beside the TV is a remote control, and next to the remote a wooden spoon. “See the wooden spoon on the TV stand?” says O'Hara. “Remember that?”

“No.”

“You think it was there six months ago?”

“I don't know, but I don't see why anyone would have brought it in since.”

“No cooking going on when you arrived? No sauce simmering on the burner? No boiling pasta?”

“I would have remembered that.”

I would fucking well hope so, thinks O'Hara.

“It was eleven in the morning,” says Wawrinka with a hint of annoyance. “The guy wasn't cooking spaghetti in his tennis whites.”

“So why would he bring a spoon into his bedroom that morning?”

“Maybe he didn't bring it that morning. Maybe he brought it sometime before and forgot about it. Maybe he used it to scratch his back or some other part of his anatomy I'd rather not think about. Maybe he used it to squash a water bug. Maybe he had a hooker come over and spanked her with it.”

“A drive-by spanking.”

“Yeah, but in that case I don't think he would leave it lying around.”

That's true, thinks O'Hara, impressed. Not after using it for something vaguely shameful. In the kitchen, she opens cabinets until she finds the drawer with the cooking utensils. Stuffed inside and crammed together are a big plastic spoon with a hole in it, two different kinds of cheese graters, three spatulas, a Rabbit wine opener, and two more wooden spoons like the one in the bedroom. “So this is where the spoon came from,” says O'Hara.

“Looks like it.”

“You know the band Spoon?” says O'Hara. “I think they're okay.”

“Not bad,” says Wawrinka without enthusiasm.

“You're probably right. My son's in a band—the Flat Screens
.
”

“What's his name?”

“Axl. Axl Rose O'Hara.”

“Seriously?”

“He swears he forgives me.”

O'Hara opens the fridge. It's empty except for a six-pack of Amstel on the bottom shelf.

“It's like a sign from God,” says O'Hara. “Want one?”

“It's a little early for me.”

“It's actually a little late for me, but we got to drink at least one. I read somewhere it's bad luck not to.”

“Where you read that?”

“The New Testament or the Old Testament. One of the two. Besides, it's one-oh-three outside, and cool in here.”

“Fine.”

They take their beers and the crime scene photos into the shade-drawn living room, where they stretch out on opposing couches. Nice place, thinks O'Hara. No kitschy beach shit or store-bought pictures. A simple place on the beach.

“What made you become a cop?” asks O'Hara.

“I think it was the butch toys—the gun, the holster, the cap, the badge, and best of all, the cars.”

One of the more honest answers I've gotten, thinks O'Hara.

“How about you?”

“I had Axl when I was fifteen, and barely finished high school. It's not like the world was knocking down my door.”

“And you made homicide, good for you.” Wawrinka makes a little salutary gesture with her bottle, and O'Hara sits there embarrassed, surprised as always that anyone might see her as a success.

“At the station, I asked you about everything that said straight suicide. In hindsight, now that we know it wasn't, is there anything that seems off?”

“The gun,” says Wawrinka, “particularly that one. It's such a stupid way to kill yourself. He could have ended up in a wheelchair as easy as dying. And the timing. Maybe he had his reasons, but why then? His cancer wasn't so bad that he couldn't play three sets of doubles the day before and win two. Something happened that morning.”

O'Hara puts her empty on a
Newsweek
on the corner table beside the couch. As she eyes it wistfully, wishing she hadn't drained it so fast, she notices the answering machine behind it, reaches over, and hits messages. After some static comes a male voice. The speaker is old, but not so old that he can't be pissed off.

“Bun, it's Sol. What'sa matter, you don't return calls anymore? Don't be a schmuck. Give me a call.”

“
Don't be a schmuck, Bun
,” mimics Wawrinka. “
Give me a call
.”

O'Hara laughs. “That's not bad.”

“Work in Florida, you learn how to do an old Jewish guy.”

“I believe that.”

The other two messages are also from Sol, also exasperated, hocking his old pal to get off his bony ass and call him back. “Sol was worried about him,” says O'Hara, thumbing through the crime scene pictures on her lap. “I hope when I stop returning calls, someone gives enough of a shit to get on my case about it.”

“Jesus,” says Wawrinka. “One light beer, and you get morbid.”

O'Hara stops at the picture that shows the gun leaning on the night table and looks at the dark shape in the shadows at the edge of the bed. She gets up and walks into the bedroom. The dark shape in the picture is gone. She steps over to the TV console, grabs the wooden spoon, lays it on the floor in the same spot half under the bed, and studies the picture again. “I'm pretty sure that spoon was the dark shape by the side of the bed.”

“Makes sense,” says Wawrinka, who has followed her into the bedroom. “EMS would have picked it up and moved it out of the way when they wheeled Levin out.”

“And if it was on the floor by his bed, it probably hadn't been there long,” says O'Hara. “So why the fuck would Levin have brought a wooden spoon into his bedroom that morning?”

Not ready to face the heat outside, O'Hara returns to her spot on the living room couch, but not before a detour to the kitchen for two more Amstels. If you can't take the heat, she thinks, get into the kitchen.

When O'Hara first walked into the apartment, she noticed a shape perched on the wall above the pass-through from the kitchen to the dining room, and now sees it's a lovely antique angel carved out of wood, with pink chubby cheeks and dimpled cherubic thighs, strategically perched in the corner so that she can look out over the whole room.

“See that angel?” asks O'Hara.

“She's kind of a honey.”

“I bet when Levin's wife realized she was dying, she put that angel up in the corner so that she could look out after her husband.”

“You could be right. Too bad she did such a half-assed job.”