St. Patrick's Day Murder (5 page)

“Come on in. I’m so glad you’re here. I think I’m living in a bad dream.”

We dropped our coats on a chair and sat. Petra went to the kitchen and came back with a tray of coffee mugs and some cookies.

“Tell me what to do, Jack,” she said.

“Where’s Ray now?”

“I don’t know. He called from Central Booking. The PBA sent a lawyer. He said he’ll come here after he talks to the lawyer.”

“Petra, you and I know Ray didn’t do this. We just have to hang in there and be there for him.”

“But how could anyone even think he would do it? He was Scotty’s friend—you know that. This is all crazy.”

“You’re right, it is crazy. But it’s going to work out.”

“I feel like I’m living in a dream.” She looked around helplessly. “A bad dream. It didn’t happen. He’s innocent.”

“We’ll prove it, Petra. The truth will come out, I promise you. Just tell the truth when they question you and we’ll find out what really happened.”

“OK.” She was about to say something when the phone rang. Instead she jumped up and ran to the kitchen.

“He couldn’t have done it,” I said. “Petra’s right; it’s crazy.”

“Being innocent isn’t good enough. Ray’s situation stinks. He’s got a wife and a girlfriend. The prosecutor doesn’t have to be a genius to make him look bad. And he’s not the kind of guy who bows and scrapes to anyone.”

“There’s no motive, Jack. You don’t sit in a car and wait to gun someone down without a motive.”

“They must have something. You don’t make a collar in a case like this just to clear it. The department and the D.A. have to be convinced. Beats me what they’ve got.”

Petra came back to the living room. “That was Ray. He just got home and he’s knocked out. He’s not coming tonight.”

“OK. Let’s go, Chris.”

We left the building in silence. Whatever Jack was thinking, my own thoughts were a bundle of confusion. Could Ray Hansen really have left Petra, stolen a car, and driven to the bar to wait for Scotty—if he knew where we were going,
which he didn’t? I couldn’t believe it any more than Petra did.

Jack unlocked the car door, and I got in. Before he walked around to the other door, he stood on the sidewalk and looked up and down the street. This was where it had started a week ago, four happy people leaving the building and driving to a disaster. Had someone been sitting in one of the many parked cars along the street, watching us? Had we been stalked all day by a killer just waiting for the right moment? Or had Ray followed us in a car he had stolen earlier in the day and parked on the street?

Jack got in and started the car. “I don’t know how to say this.”

I turned to look at him, feeling scared. He was going to tell me we couldn’t see each other till this was over and my heart was going to break.

“I’m crazy about you, Chris. I love you. I want us to be together, not just a night here and a night there.”

I put my hand on his. If this was a proposal of marriage, it was the craziest one I’d ever heard of. “Jack—”

“Let me finish. I’m going to ask you two things and I want you to know there’s no connection between them. I want you to marry me. I want us to be married. Shit, I don’t know the politically correct way to say it and I wasn’t planning on saying it tonight.”

I started to laugh even though I had tears in my eyes. We hugged awkwardly, the emergency brake between the two front seats keeping us apart.

“I really love you,” he said softly.

“I do, too.” It was the first time we had said it. I had dreamed of the moment we would say it, but I had not imagined it would be in a car on a cold night, with the shadow of a murder hanging over us.

“I wish you wouldn’t cry.”

“I’m not crying,” I said, sniffing away my tears, laughing and crying at the same time.

He wiped my tears away with his hand. “We’re gonna be a great family,” he said.

“Yes. I think so.” I felt warm and euphoric and sexy all together.
I took a tissue out of my bag and dried my eyes, which had spurted again.

“It’s a deal then,” he said.

“Do you want to shake on it?”

He gave me the sweet smile that was half the reason I loved him. “Your word’s enough for me. I have to ask you the other question now.”

“The other question.” I had forgotten he had said two. Somehow I knew the bad news was coming.

“If you turn me down on this, I want you to know it doesn’t matter.”

“Turn you down on what?”

“I want you to try to clear Ray. You’ve done it before, and you’ve done it when the police couldn’t and the evidence was hard to come by. If anyone can clear him, I think you can.”

“I see.”

“I know you’ve had a hard time getting to know him, and I know how you feel about his leaving Betsy and hooking up with Petra. None of that makes him guilty. It doesn’t even make him a suspect. I’ve known this guy for a lot of years, and I know he isn’t a killer. Whatever they have on him, it’s either a mistake or it’s flawed. Something’s wrong and no one’s ever going to find out why because once they’ve got their man, the investigation is over. Ray didn’t do it, Chris. Someone else did and he’s got to be found.”

As he spoke, he pulled out of the parking space and started to drive. I had just committed my life to this man and now he wanted me to clear his friend of a murder, a friend I didn’t like, a man I didn’t want to spend time with, someone I would feel very uncomfortable questioning.

Still, as Jack had just said, none of that made him guilty. I had known Arnold Gold long enough and had been involved in enough of his cases to know that people who are not very nice are not necessarily criminals. I knew, too, that Jack could not investigate this case, much as he obviously wanted to. He was hardly a disinterested party and, as he had just told me, the investigation was over. All they would be doing now was sewing up the case against Ray.

“I can’t do what you asked me to do, Jack,” I said. “I
won’t try to clear Ray. I’ll do what I’ve done before. I’ll try to find Scotty’s killer. If I turn up evidence that’s damaging to Ray, I won’t hide it.”

“OK.” The muscles in his face relaxed. “You’re right. I asked you something I shouldn’t’ve. We need to find Scotty’s killer, whoever it is. I’ll give you all the help I can. We can bat it around between us if you want, and if you’d rather not, I’ll keep out of it.”

“Of course I want to talk to you about it.”

He reached over and patted my hand. I smiled and squeezed his hand. I wanted to go back to his apartment in Brooklyn Heights and consummate our engagement with the release of the enormous passion I was feeling for him. Instead, he turned down a street I had never seen before and slipped into a parking spot just as someone vacated it.

“Let’s go talk to Ray,” he said.

I had never been to Ray’s apartment and didn’t know which way to turn. Jack took my arm and we started walking. It was a street of New York-style houses: brick, two stories, one family on each level. Usually the owner lived on the main level, up several brick stairs to a front door. A trio of young, laughing men came down the street toward us, and I felt Jack tense till they passed harmlessly by. I wondered if the reaction was rooted in his police background or whether all New Yorkers reacted that way. Across the street I heard someone running and glanced over. A woman with a long cape or shawl covering her head was hurrying down the street. Although the young men had seemed intent only on getting somewhere, I automatically worried about the woman should her path cross theirs. It was night in New York, not a healthy time to be walking alone on the street.

“Let’s cross,” Jack said, and we went to the other side. “He’s in one of these houses, but they all look the same. I think it’s two-twenty-one.”

“It’s hard to see the numbers. They’ve all turned their front lights off.”

“It must be getting late.” He dropped my arm and bounded up a couple of steps. “Two down,” he said.

Ray was in the basement apartment with the entrance on
the driveway. Jack pressed the buzzer, and Ray responded right away. “Yeah, I’m coming.”

The door opened, and Jack said, “Can we talk?”

“Come on in.”

It was one large room with a sofa that I assumed doubled as a bed. A refrigerator, stove, and sink lined one wall as though they were a natural part of a bed-living room. The place had a military fastidiousness about it. It could have passed white-glove inspection without a moment’s warning.

“All right, let me hear it,” Jack said. “All of it.” His voice had changed from the one I knew to a harsh one that belonged to a police sergeant.

Ray shrugged. “You got me. The doorbell rang this morning and they put the cuffs on and read me my rights. I didn’t know what they were talking about.”

“What have they got?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Tell me what you think.”

Ray looked uneasily at me and then back at Jack. “Nothing that’ll stand up in court.”

“Give it to me straight, Ray.” The sergeant talking again.

Ray got up and walked around. “How do you like my pad, Chris?” he said.

“It’s nice. Compact.” I watched him moving nervously. He was tall and lean, taller and leaner than Jack. Tonight he looked unshaven but not disheveled. He was wearing tan pants and a brown sweater over a tan shirt.

“It’s illegal,” he said. “They took a three-room and made two ones out of it. Put in a second bath with a Sears prefab shower. They make a little more in rent, but half of it’s off the books. Nice little extra, three hundred a month tax free.”

“What do they have, Ray?” Jack said again.

“I loaned Scotty some money.”

“You should be in a psycho ward. What kind of a dumb thing is that to do? Money goes through Scotty’s hands like water. You know that. You’ve known it for years. He used that money to buy a car he didn’t need.”

“He said he needed it. I had it. I gave it to him. It was before I split with Betsy. He said he’d get it back to me in a
couple of months and he didn’t. After we split, things got a little tight. I asked him for it back.”

“How did you ask?” Jack said, and I got a sick feeling in my stomach.

“I wrote him a note.”

“To where?”

“To the station house. I didn’t want Jean to see it.”

“He probably tossed it in his locker and they read it the day after Scotty was shot. How much was it?”

“Three thousand bucks.”

“They should have you in a straitjacket. That’s what he made in a month.”

“Come on, Jack. You kill a guy who owes you money, you don’t collect. Even loan sharks know that. There’s something else.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He just looked at Ray as though he didn’t want to face what was coming.

“I drove over to talk to Scotty a few days before St. Patrick’s Day. I really needed the money back, or at least part of it.”

“I don’t think I want to hear this,” Jack said. “How bad did it get?”

“We had some words.”

“Tell me you didn’t lay a hand on him.”

“I pushed him around a little. It was nothing.” But Ray looked nervous now.

“You pushed him around.
You pushed him around
. Where did this happen?”

“In the locker room.”

“You invite the captain to watch it? How big was the crowd?”

“Ten or fifteen. I didn’t hurt him, Jack. Hey, you saw us on St. Patrick’s Day. Did it look like trouble?”

“Ten or fifteen witnesses to a fight that got physical.”

“Come on, you see it every day.”

“But this time the guy getting pushed around ended up dead. You say anything while you were slugging him that’ll kill you in court?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe.”

Jack got up and walked to one of the windows. It was at
about eye level and probably offered an enchanting view of the driveway and the basement windows of the house on the other side of it. “All right, here’s what we’re going to do. Chris is going to look into Scotty’s homicide and see if she can turn anything up. I’ll give her whatever she needs.”

“Forget it, buddy. This is no job for an amateur.”

“Hansen, you are under arrest for Murder One, the killing of a police officer, a family man that you got in a fight with over money a couple of days before he got shot. You’ve got a dozen cops who’ll take the stand and swear you threatened to kill him. Just who do you think is going to clear you?”

“They got no case, Jack. The whole thing’s gonna fall apart.”

“Listen to me. Chris and I have some ideas. We’re all tired now so we’ll come back in the morning to talk to you. Eight o’clock. We’ll all be able to think a little better.”

“Don’t bottier.”

“Come on, Chris.”

I got up and rebuttoned my coat, which I hadn’t taken off.

“When did you leave Petra’s apartment last Sunday night?”

“Never looked. We did the dishes, rolled around for a while. I got dressed and came home.”

“Why’d you come home?”

“I always come home.”

“You see her last night?”

“Yeah.”

“Why’d you come back here?”

Ray gave us a small smile. “It may surprise you,” he said, “but I like sleeping alone. OK?”

“OK with me, buddy.”

Jack opened the door, we went up a few steps, opened the outside door, and stepped out onto the driveway.

My thoughts were such a jumble I couldn’t sort them out. Whether Ray had been generous or stupid to lend the money to Scotty I could not pass judgment on. But to have talked to him about it in a locker room, to have, by his own admission, pushed Scotty around, filled me with disgust. And to have done it in front of other people, people in Scotty’s precinct
who could be counted on to side with Scotty and probably dislike Ray in the bargain, only made it worse.

We drove home without saying much, but when we were upstairs, Jack said, “Let’s talk.”

“Go on.”

“I know what you heard upset you. I know how you feel about violence. What Ray described happens all the time. A couple of guys have a beef, they talk about it in the locker room or a car or the men’s room, and it escalates. There’s an undercurrent of violence in a cop’s life and sometimes it just explodes. I’m sure Ray was sore as hell when he went over to ask for the money, but he wasn’t planning to kill for it. You saw them on St. Patrick’s Day. They were buddies.”