Slaughter (16 page)

F
our people had been killed, seven injured, in the fall of the construction crane at the Taggart Building. Two of the dead were off-Broadway chorus line dancers, Betty Lincoln and Macy Adams. Their names and faces were known only to avid playgoers.

Not enough time had passed that Quinn and his detectives were done talking to the few witnesses who'd actually seen the crane come down, observed the panic, heard the screams. Then almost instantly the impact of the crane, followed by the landslide rumble and crashing of concrete, marble, and brick.

Quinn and Fedderman were doing the last of the interviews of witnesses, which didn't make for a long list. Usually they weren't technically witnesses, as it was the bomb-like crash of the crane that first drew their attention. It also scrambled their senses so that much of what they saw and said was wrong, forgotten, or irrelevant.

Now Quinn and Fedderman were in a modest apartment on the East Side, interviewing a giant of a man the others in SBL Properties called Little Louie. He had a bandage on the bridge of his nose and an arm in a sling. Quinn knew they were injuries from the crane accident. Next to Little Louie, on a faded but comfortable-looking sofa, sat Louie's wife, Madge.

Louie Farrato looked like what he was, a solid type who worked with his hands, simple but not stupid. He would have made a great Indiana Jones in the movies. Madge was a sloe-eyed beauty of the sort who would abide no nonsense.

Quinn glanced at the preliminary notes made within hours of the crane incident.

“Would you like some iced tea or lemonade?” Madge Farrato asked.

Quinn declined. Fedderman gave it some thought and settled for iced tea.

They both waited patiently, along with Little Louie, until Madge returned with a tray on which were four glasses of what looked like iced tea. “Just in case,” she said with a smile that made her look like Sophia Loren. (Had Loren and Harrison Ford, who owned the Indiana Jones role, ever been in the same movie? Fedderman wondered.) “There's real sugar and some artificial on the tray.” She set the tea on a glass-topped coffee table, and they all settled in as if they were going to watch a movie on television instead of talk about murder.

Quinn, who had changed his mind, sprinkled the contents of a pink artificial sweetener package in his tea and twirled the ice cubes with his forefinger. “We don't mean to irritate anyone by asking them to repeat what they've already probably said over and over. It's just that sometimes, after a traumatic event, people don't remember things until some time has passed.”

Madge said, “Tell him, Louie.”

Louie squirmed a bit, ill at ease. He had on buffed leather boots, a many-pocketed tan shirt, and faded Levi's, and sure enough looked as if he should be on an archeological dig.

He said, “Not long before the crane fell—say, about twenty minutes—I was working a jackhammer and I looked up and saw this guy in a yellow hard hat, carrying a clipboard and taking notes or something. I got a good look at him when I let up on the jackhammer and he became more than a blur. Still, he was some distance away. I got curious and walked over there.”

“So you saw him close up,” Quinn said, as if just to keep the conversational ball rolling. They might have a genuine close-up eyewitness here.

“Yeah,” Louie said. “There wasn't anything really memorable about him. He was short. Built about average. Little, nimble type, but strong. Like a good flyweight boxer. Even had a cauliflower ear. That's what I remembered later, when I saw that drawing or something of him on TV.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Asked him if I could help him. He kind of tugged his hard hat down like he didn't want it to blow off his head.”

“What did he say?”

“Kept kind of doing his job, making notes, checking off stuff, like he was on a schedule. Said, ‘Safety.' Like it was the one word that should explain it all. So I figured he was an inspector from one of the city agencies. We get 'em all the time, checking for workplace danger, long-term issues, lead-based paint, asbestos . . . that kinda thing.”

“Did you talk about safety?” Fedderman asked.

“Naw. We didn't gab. We both had things to do.”

“Then?”

“Then he left.”

“Say good-bye?”

“Nope. I guess neither of us thought we had that kinda relationship.”

“Did you see him get into a vehicle?”

“Nope, he just walked outta sight. I didn't think much of it at the time.”

“When did you think of it?”

“A few hours ago. I was watching news on TV, and up pops this picture of somebody that looked familiar. Then, during the commercial, I remembered. The safety guy! Then I read about him on the crawl at the bottom of the screen. I still couldn't believe it, that I was just a few feet away from this guy, talked to him. So I read some more about him. The Gremlin. That just about scared the pastrami outta me.”

Louie clamped his lips together, looking as if he was in conflict. Quinn waited for him to say more, not asking him, not wanting to be the first to speak. Fedderman maintained the same silence. Sometimes people who are the first to speak say the damnedest things.

It was Madge who spoke first. “Tell him, Louie.”

“It's probably nothing.”

Quinn said, “Everything's something.”

“Tell him, Louie,” Madge said again.

Louie looked pained, but he spoke. “The big noise when the crane fell was when it slammed into the ground. But there was a small noise before that. A smaller explosion up high.”

“You sure? It could have been the crane hitting something on the way down.”

“It came before the crane hit,” Louie said. “Before it fell.” He clamped his lips closed again. Then parted them. “I was in bomb disposal in Afghanistan. I know explosives. I can know some things by the sound of the explosion, the extent and kind of damage that's done. I'm pretty sure this was a shaped charge.”

“Which is?”

“A bomb—and it can be a small bomb—shaped a certain way so that it directs most of the force of the explosion in one direction. They're used to take out tanks and other armored vehicles. I think one was used to separate the crane from the Taggart building.”

Quinn and Fedderman looked at each other. They seemed to be thinking the same thoughts.

“Would it take an expert to build and plant such a bomb?”

Louie squeezed his lower lip between thumb and forefinger, then said, “An expert, yes. An artist, no.”

Quinn thought, here was a man who loved his previous occupation perhaps too much. “Could you build one?” he asked, smiling.

“Probably, but I might blow myself up. My expertise was in disassembling bombs so they wouldn't detonate.”

“He might have gotten killed,” Madge said, patting Louie's arm.

Fedderman said, “My guess is he knew what he was doing, or he wouldn't be here.”

“Could an amateur have made and set this shaped charge?” Quinn asked.

“A gifted amateur,” Louie said. “Gifted and lucky. Like this Gremlin I keep hearing and reading about.”

“I wouldn't jump to any conclusions,” Quinn said. Fedderman shot him a glance. But Louie had jumped.

“I wasn't gonna say anything about it at first,” he said. “It was Madge talked me into it.”

“You're lucky to have Madge.”

“I am that,” Louie said, and gave Madge a hug.

 

 

When they were back out on the sidewalk, Fedderman said, “They've got a great marriage.”

Quinn kept quiet. He knew the problems of a cop marriage. He wondered if his and Pearl's relationship would last, and if it had a better chance because they were both cops.

It took only a phone call for Quinn and Fedderman to ascertain that there hadn't been any kind of safety inspection on anything owned by SBL Properties the day of the crane collapse. And the company's hard hats were white and had a corporate logo on them.

“What now?” Fedderman asked, as they walked toward Quinn's old but pristine Lincoln.

“We get that high-tech artist who made the so-called sketch to get with Little Louie, and maybe Helen, and improve on it.”

“The Gremlin isn't getting better looking.”

“None of us is.”

“With him, there should be a portrait in his attic, where the subject gets uglier with every rotten thing he does. Know what I mean?”

Quinn said, “You've been seeing too much of Harold.”

Q
uinn phoned Renz and told him about the shaped-charge possibility. Renz thanked him, but told him the bomb squad had already been discussing the shaped-charge theory.

“Do they like it?” Quinn asked.

“They say it's unlikely, except for a guy who disarmed bombs in the Navy. He said somebody with a little knowledge and a shit pot fulla luck might make such a bomb.”

“Why didn't we learn this sooner?” Quinn asked.

“We just figured it out ourselves. But it's only hypothetical. We're still trying to decide how seriously we take it. Look at it piece by piece, and it doesn't seem like much, so don't go getting all excited. And for God's sake, don't talk about this to Minnie Miner.”

“Do I sound excited?” Quinn asked. “Or pissed off?”

“Do I sound gone?” Renz asked, and ended the connection.

Louie was still on sick leave, and still wearing the arm sling, when Helen and the NYPD sketch artist visited him in his and Madge's apartment. They'd stopped for breakfast on the way, but that didn't stop Madge from offering them coffee. Helen and the artist fell under the aromatic scent of freshly brewed coffee, though they managed to forgo the delicious but wildly caloric cinnamon-butter coffee cake.

The artist wasn't Warfield this time, but an affable kid named Ignacio Perez, on loan from the FBI, who asked everyone to call him simply “the artist.” He set his laptop on the coffee table but off to the side. Then he ran some wires, turned on the fifty-two-inch screen on which Louie and Madge watched
Justified
and
The Good Wife.
He settled back on the sofa with a small mouse pad and a wireless mouse.

Up popped the digital likeness of the Gremlin, as it originally appeared on
Minnie Miner ASAP.

“I wonder what he'd look like in a hard hat,” Helen said. “Carrying a clipboard.”

“I anticipated you,” the artist said. “Except for the clipboard.”

His fingers danced over the keys. He pressed some others, and there on the large screen was the Gremlin in a yellow hard hat that looked too big for him.

“My old friend,” the artist said.

“See anything that doesn't look right?” Helen asked Louie, leaning toward the TV screen.

“No. That's just the way the hat fit him, like he was a little kid playing dress up. How's it look when you tug the hat down in front?”

The artist lowered the hard hat until the subject's eyes almost disappeared. “Something like that?”

“Yeah. That's more it. More hair sticking out.”

Helen said, “Now make the ears somewhat visible beneath the hair.”

“Like they'd stick out without the hair?” Louie said.

“Yeah, just like.”

“Did you notice anything unusual about the ears?”

“Naw. Not on this guy. Except for the right ear.”

“It sticks out more than the left?”

“Somewhat,” Louie said. “But like I told you, he was built like a flyweight boxer. Had a cauliflower ear, it looked like to me.”

The artist played electronically with the right ear. Made it slightly larger and more damaged by countless jabs and left hooks.

“That's good,” Louie said. “But his hair should be a little longer, and slightly darker.”

Again the artist made some adjustments while the others looked on.

“More chin, less nose,” Louie said.

The artist complied.

“The ear that you can see all of, it is rather pointed, at least from a certain angle.”

Helen squinted at it. “So close to the head. Not like the other ear.”

“Other one probably came unstuck,” the artist said.

“Unstuck?”

“Like with movie stars. A guy's or woman's ears stick out like open car doors, so they got this flesh-colored two-sided tape. Like carpet tape. An ear won't stay taped in for very long, but plenty long enough to shoot movie or TV scenes. And if it's still too much trouble, there's always an operation to make the ears flatter to the skull.”

“So tell me who's had their ears operated on?” Madge said, from where she sat over in a corner where she could see the big screen.

The artist shook his head, smiling. “I couldn't reveal that.”

“They've got their right to privacy,” Madge said

“I don't know for sure about that, but they've got the right not to hire me if I shoot them or draw them with car-door ears.”

“Shoot?” Madge asked.

“Photograph. Shoot pictures.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, for photo shoots or short movies for TV scenes, there's always the two-sided tape. The stuff works pretty well. And if you don't like it, you can always do what this guy probably does . . . did—grow your hair long at the sides and comb it back over your ears.”

The artist put together another screen image of the Gremlin, this time without the hard hat.

“Look like the same guy?” he asked Louie.

“Yeah. I wouldn't mistake him. Of course, some people do look different with and without caps or hats.”

“But would you feel confident picking this guy out of a lineup?”

“Sure. Unless he's got a twin brother.”

“Louie,” Madge said, “don't make things more complicated than they are.”

“So let's make some final adjustments,” the artist said. “You never saw this guy's hairline, right?”

“Yeah, but he wasn't bald. He had sideburns, anyway.”

The artist used the mouse to create sideburns on the screen image. He paused and looked at Louie.

“A little longer,” Louie said. “There. Just right.”

“We can put out images with different hairlines,” Helen said.

“Good idea,” the artist said. He created several renderings, finishing with one that left the killer bald except for a bush of hair around his ears.

“I wish we could have one of him smiling,” Helen said.

The artist shook his head. “I'd have to see him smile to do that.” He looked at Louie. “Did he smile when you were with him?”

“Not once. He was all business.”

“Which you shouldn't be all the time,” Madge said. “Remember you are not well.”

They thanked Little Louie and left him with Madge. Not a bad situation, if you didn't count Louie's nightmares and broken bones.

As they were walking toward where their cars were parked, the artist said, “I'd like to draw that woman.”

“You guys,” Helen said, “for the kind of drawing you're talking about, you'd have to use a crayon so the other ten-year-olds would understand it.”

“A crayon,” the artist said, “would melt.”