Investigation (39 page)

Kelleher stopped for a moment, nodded at Tim and said, serenely, “Keep the faith, Timmy.”

“You bet,” Timmy answered.

The Keeler case was no longer the responsibility of either one of them. The primary was little more than a week away and Jerry Kelleher was running unopposed. He would undoubtedly become the next Mayor of the City of New York. In which case, Tim Neary would be our next Police Commissioner.

It was Edward M. Quibro who was now on the line. He was an unknown who needed the satisfactory wind-up of the Keeler case to recommend him to the voters come November. Dropping charges against Kitty Keeler would hardly be considered a satisfactory windup by the voting public. Without Martucci, Quibro’s case was all circumstantial, to say the least.

After about an hour more of buck passing and senseless speculation, Chris Wise picked his hat up off the counsel’s table, planted it firmly on his head and announced to anyone who cared to do anything about it, “I’m not saying one more fucking word until this fucking jackass gets the hell outa this room.”

At which point Tim Neary and I assisted Quibro from the courtroom with assurances that he would be kept posted on the entire situation. Tim couldn’t help saying, “After all, Ed, we all realize how much you have riding on this case.”

We watched Quibro hustle down the hall, buckling the straps of his briefcase as he went.

Paul Sutro was waiting for us in Tim’s office. He was settled comfortably on Tim’s couch, everything about him relaxed and easy. Everything except his large, dark, hooded eyes. It must have been a trick of the lighting, the way certain shadows fell on his large strong profile, or the way he held himself, but Paul Sutro could have modeled for one of those marble heads of a Roman emperor. His fringe of black hair fitted him like a wreath. He was a living encyclopedia on the structure and machinations of organized crime. He collected bits and pieces of information the way other guys collect rare, exotic stamps, and he displayed his treasures with the same kind of reverence and respect. The word was that Sutro was writing a book; the odds were that he wouldn’t live long enough to see it published, but my money was on Paul. He seemed to be the exception to the “rule of silence.” People talked to Paul. For their own reasons, of course. But he had a way of finding out more than people thought they were telling him.

“Well, what’s the inside word, Paul? Was Vinnie’s hit the start of something or the end of something? Or did somebody just do Kitty Keeler a big favor, or what?”

“Well, obviously the hit was the end of
Vinnie,”
he told us, “but the word is that it’s the
start
of something a helluva lot bigger than Vincent Martucci. We’re going to see some blood in the streets before things settle down, Tim.”

“You don’t mean that someone’s gonna avenge Martucci, do you?”

Sutro shook his head and rubbed his eyes. “No, Tim, no. Vincent was dead the day it was known that he testified before the grand jury. No one argues with that. And not because of Kitty Keeler. Actually, she has very little to do with it. It was the fact of his having testified at all; about anything, anyone. You don’t do that and live. The word out was that he and Kitty had a falling out, a lover’s quarrel, and he testified against her because of it. But no matter what the reason, the fact is the same: he broke the silence. Now, a man who does that once might as well do it again; what the hell has he got to lose at that point?”

“What about Keeler’s accomplice?” Tim asked. “Couldn’t this Mister X, Y or Z or whatever the hell have blasted Vincent for his own protection?”

“Anything’s possible, Tim, but it’s unlikely. Very unlikely. There are too many things moving behind the scenes. A few nights ago, Alfredo Veronne held a meeting with his sons. A kind of ‘passing of the crown’; there are going to be power moves, shifts, a reorganization in the East Coast ‘family.’ A certain number of
resignations
—by execution, disappearance, ‘industrial accidents’—like someone getting mixed in with the concrete foundation of a new building. That sort of thing.”

“Wait a minute, Paul.” I was puzzled. “Wadda ya mean, Veronne is passing the crown now? I saw Veronne what? six, seven weeks ago, and he looked to me like he’d been out of touch with things for a long time. I mean, the man was barely alive.”

“He’s been alive, Joe. And he’s been the controlling force of this part of the organization right up until a few days ago. He’s been ruling, quietly, from his bed, Joe.” Paul tapped his forehead. “He’s a Machiavellian, Joe; brain like a devious computer. Feed in the information, spell out the problem, and click-click-click, out come ten different solutions, each one viable. He’s one of a kind, Joe. None of the other old-timers really understand any of the changes needed in the modern world. The only one to understand and appreciate the various power structures and methods of modern business has been Veronne. He was the only really far-sighted one; he prepared his sons for the modern organization. Two of them have law degrees; two of them have master’s in business administration. The other old-timers, it was all one big bucket of blood with money as the prize. Only Veronne was sophisticated enough, with a rare native intelligence, to understand the overlapping of the old organization into various areas of legitimate industry and government. A very remarkable man.”

“Then who the hell’s going to do all the killing you mentioned, Paul?”

“Oh, there are still gunsels around, Tim. There always will be. For the lower-level troops; sets a good example. Keeps everyone ‘honest,’ all the way up through organizational ranks. Vincent Martucci’s hit was an object lesson. A reminder that at the base of the new structure are the old rules.”

“So you don’t think Martucci was hit on Keeler’s behalf?”

Paul shrugged. “Some people win, some people lose. I think this time Keeler just happened to luck out. That’s the way it goes.”

Tim leaned back and locked his fingers over his chest. “Well, how about that, Joe? The little lady’s luck has changed at last.” Still looking at me across the desk, he said to Paul, “Joe here has spent sleepless nights worrying about Keeler. About how we might be railroading an innocent girl.”

“I never said she was innocent, Tim. I just never thought she was guilty.”

“Same thing,” Tim said complacently.

“You know something, Paul? It’s a good thing that Tim took all the examinations that came along. He’s got the perfect mentality for civil-service exams. One right answer per question. Miss X does so-and-so, therefore Miss X is (a) good; (b) bad. It’s not like that in real life, Tim. There are a lot of in-betweens between (a) good; (b) bad.”

“All comes down to the same thing in the end, Joe,” Tim said. “On the one hand ya got good; on the other hand ya got bad.”

“That’s a simplistic view, Tim, of a complicated philosophical question: good-bad. Depends on where you sit, what your point of view is, what your vantage point at the moment might be.” Sutro talks that way a lot; people are used to him.

“Bullshit,” Tim said simply, with the same conviction he had expressed at eighteen, when I once tried to explain to him that the difference between a “good” girl and a “bad” girl might be circumstance and opportunity rather than inherent evil.

“Well, I’ll tell you something interesting, Timmy,” Paul said in his slow, comfortable, unflappable way. “The word I got on Kitty Keeler in all this time has been that Keeler is a ‘good kid.’ I haven’t run into one bad word about her.”

“What the hell is the definition of a ‘good kid’ to the people we’re talking about, Paul? A girl who’ll take twenty without a squawk when she’s been promised twenty-five?”

I tried not to let the growing tension show; tried to lean back, listen politely, not let any of it get to me. It was very difficult; Tim’s expression was so damn smug and amused.

“No, no, nothing like that, Tim.” Paul leaned forward and looked from Tim to me, like a teacher including both of his students in the lesson. “There’s a lot of
respect
for Kitty Keeler out there. She’s a very bright girl. They respect that, brains. The world Keeler runs in is not exactly an equal-opportunity employer. These guys usually think of a woman only as a sex object, nothing else.”

“Well, what the hell else would you call Keeler? Jesus, she said so herself, Paul. When was it, the first week of the investigation, some reporter from the
News
asked her, ‘Hey, Kitty, how many of those guys in your little pink book are your lovers?’ You remember what she said, don’t you, Joe? She said something like ‘Go eenie, meenie, miney, mo and you got it!’ ”

“I’ll tell you something interesting, Tim. Keeler’s the only one who’s claimed any of these men were her lovers.”

“Oh, hell, I’m sure according to the guys in the book, Keeler got the wrong man listed. Who the hell wants to cop out to sleeping with a girl accused on the front pages of killing her own kids?”

Paul just went on in his own quiet way, steady, not argumentative, just explaining. “Well, Tim, I have run into a couple of the Don Juan types who were anxious to tell me what a great lay Keeler was, but I never believed one of them.” He held up his hand, anticipating Tim, and smiled. “Not about Kitty being a great lay or not. I just don’t think any of them knew one way or the other from personal experience. The interesting thing with Keeler is that over and over again the word is that Kitty’s
smart.
She’s ‘something special.’ I guess you could almost say she’s considered a sort of ‘stand-up guy.’ ”

“Instead of a lay-down lady?” Tim couldn’t resist. Then, in a hearty, buddy-buddy, you-can-tell-us-pal voice, he said to me, “Well, wadda you say, Joey? You got closest to the lady in question. She an innocent victim of her own bad-mouthing or what?”

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but actually Kitty’s reputation had come almost strictly from Kitty herself. She had given wise-guy, hard-nosed answers to anyone who questioned her about her sex life: police, reporters, television newsmen. She had built her own image out of her anger. But when it came down to it, I didn’t know who her lovers had been.

Not Ray Mogliano; not according to his brother, John. (“Kitty was a friend, ya know?”)

Not Vincent Martucci. (She fronted for Vince.)

Not Billy Weaver. (Kitty said she hadn’t slept with Billy.)

“Far as I know, Tim,” I said lightly, “the girl’s a virgin.”

Tim threw his head back and laughed, then said we should all go and get something to eat. He jabbed me on the arm and said to Paul Sutro, “Tell ya, Paul. You ever need a good guy on your side, you get my pal Joe here. When he’s on your side, he’s on your side all the way.”

I
T WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT
when Kitty called. I had been home long enough to scan the late edition of the
Post
and the early-bird edition of the morning’s
News.
Both were playing up Vincent Martucci’s hit as it related to the Keeler case.

It took me about twenty minutes to get to her apartment. I hadn’t seen Kitty since that morning a few days ago when she’d shown me where, in Flushing Meadow Park, she and George had taken their sons for springtime picnics. I’m not sure what I expected her mood to be.

She walked from the hallway to the living room with a rigid stiffness; indicated the well-stocked bar cart. “Help yourself, Joe. Nothing for me.”

She sat on the beautiful dark-brown suede couch; she looked as though the room had been designed just for her. It was all expensive, contemporary mixed with a few touches of modern and one or two really good antiques. It suited her more than anything in Fresh Meadows had ever suited her.

She stood up abruptly when I sat beside her. She stood with her back to me for a moment, then let her hands drop to her sides. She kept clenching and unclenching her fingers.

“Well, Joe,” she said, finally turning to face me. She was very pale, very tense and agitated. “It’s all over. The whole thing. You want to know what my ‘attorney’ said? My elegant-Southern-gentleman Mistah Jaytee Williams said? He had his stooge, Jeff Weinstein, sneak me out of the building through the garage this afternoon so I wouldn’t run into any of those lousy bastard vultures downstairs, waiting with their cameras and microphones for my ... reaction to Vincent’s death. You know what Jaytee Williams said to me, first thing, the minute I set foot in his office?”

“What did he say, Kitty?”

“That bastard.” She began to pace, reached down, snatched up a large rough-textured pillow from a chair and hugged it hard against her body. She turned and stood very still, then said, “ ‘Wal, little lady, you-all surely got a good Mafee-oh-so godfather lookin’ after your best interests.’ ” She did a mean imitation of Williams. Then she dropped the pillow. “Is that your opinion, too, Joe? Is that what you think? That I had someone kill Vincent? Because if that’s what you think, I want to know about it, right now. I really want to know what’s going on inside your head about me, right now.”

“No, Kitty. I don’t think you had anything to do with it. It
does
have something to do with you, though. Vincent’s death.”

“You want to know something, Joe?” She began to speak again with that same intensity, the same restless energy and tension. “You want to know how I feel? I feel like every death, every single goddamn death in the whole world, somehow has something to do with me.” She looked around, searching, then snatched the
New York Times
from a table; it was folded back to the obit page. She held it up for me to see. “Look, Joe. Look at this. You know what I was doing before I called you? I was sitting here, reading the names of all these people, all these dead people, wondering if any of them have anything to do with me.” Her hands were shaking as she tilted the paper toward the light, blinked quickly and began to read. “ ‘Abramson, Judah; beloved husband of Esther, father of David and Hannah; dear grandfather of ...’ ”

I took the paper from her and reached for her, but Kitty pulled back.

“No, Joe. I don’t need you to comfort me. You want to know why? Because I am
glad
that Vincent’s dead. I am glad he’s dead.
I’m glad he’s dead.”