The James Deans

An entire day and another night had passed when I received the call. Katy said there was a Joe Spivack on the phone.

“Good news, Prager. I got it!”

“What?”

“The proof, the original sign-in sheets. I had one of the five dusted just to make sure we weren’t wasting our time.”

“And …?”

“It’s a match. And I don’t mean a partial. He must have had something oily on his hands.”

“Okay, so we can prove Almonte was really Alfonseca and we can tie him to Moira.”

“Looks that way.”

“Did you call Larry McDonald yet?”

“He knows. Called him the minute I got the results. You can exhale now, Prager. It’s not just a theory anymore.”

Although the theory was mine, I hadn’t wanted to believe in it so much that I might be blinded to the chance I could be wrong. It seemed I needn’t have worried. Beyond what Spivack had come up with, there was mounting evidence of Alfonseca’s involvement. Just yesterday, the doorman at Moira’s building had identified a picture of Alfonseca. He said he thought he remembered a delivery guy who looked a lot like the picture. Posing as a delivery boy was a ploy Ivan had used to stalk many of his victims.

“Funny,” the doorman said, “this guy looks like that guy in the papers.” I agreed, not wanting to make too much out of it. And Sandra Sotomayor, Brightman’s longtime aid at the community affairs office, thought she recognized Alfonseca as someone she’d seen around, but not for a while. “His face is very familiar.” I asked if she might not be confusing this man with someone she might have seen recently in the papers. She said she didn’t think so. While we couldn’t exactly go to the bank with either the doorman’s testimony or Sotomayor’s, they would help if we had to go to a prosecutor. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be necessary.

“You see the paper yet?” Spivack continued.

“No, not yet. Why, is it in there?”

“Is it in there? Are you kidding? That Wit guy came through in a big way. Wait’ll you see the stories. Alfonseca’s gonna go apeshit.”

“Let’s hope so. I’ll speak to you later.”

I showered and dressed, kissed Katy and Sarah, and headed to the newsstand under the subway station on Sheepshead Bay Road. Spivack was right. Wit had done more than we’d asked for. The Post headline said it all:

MYSTERY VICTIM SAYS IVAN WAS TERRIBLE

The story on page 3 detailed the saga of a woman, a thinly veiled Moira Heaton, who had been an intended victim of Ivan Alfonseca. The woman, abducted outside her office in late 1981, claimed to have been driven to an unknown location, where her abductor attempted to sexually assault her. Her would-be attacker, however, proved to be “woefully” inept. Frustrated and embarrassed, Alfonseca had strangled her, leaving her for dead. That was all she remembered, she said, having only recently awoken from a coma in an upstate hospital.

Of course the story was utter bullshit. The reporter credited several unnamed sources for the story and quotes contained within. Those quotes were full of particularly insulting and inflammatory adjectives. The alleged victim seemed very fond of the words “limp,” “tiny,” and “impotent.” She said her attacker had “cried like a little girl when his laughable attempts at penetration failed.” The story in the Daily News was equally damning. Wit hadn’t bothered trying to plant the story in the Times.

I crossed the street to the bagel store and got a coffee. When the pay phone came free, I dialed Pete Parson’s home number.

“Parson,” he answered.

“See the papers today?”

“About old limp dick? Yeah.”

“Your son’s on today, right?”

“Don’t worry, Moe, Captain Peter Parson Jr. of the Department of Corrections, City of NewYork, will make sure Mr. Alfonseca gets complimentary copies of today’s papers and all the translation help he needs. Anyways, you know what Rikers is like. That story got back to him before the papers ever made the island. His compadres are probably whistling at him already, calling him pato and maricon. He’ll go fuckin’ nuts.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “let’s hear him brag his way outta this. Thanks, Pete, and thank your son for all of us.”

“He’s glad to do it.”

Now there was nothing we could do but wait. I went to the Brooklyn store to do it.

I was wrong-waiting wasn’t the only thing I would have to do. Klaus rolled his eyeballs as I strode through the doors of Bordeaux in Brooklyn.

“If I were you,” he warned, waving several pink message slips at me, “I’d start digging myself a foxhole in the basement. If things get bad enough, I’ll just shovel the dirt back over you.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Worse. I don’t know what you did to get these people so upset, but you did a very commendable job of it.”

I snatched the slips out of his hand and walked back to the office, which, I had forgotten, was still in disarray. My life had been so consumed by the case that I had neglected to clean up after my all-nighter. The files were everywhere, spread all over the desk, the floor, and the adjoining room. I picked up enough to allow safe passage. I’d already suffered enough in my life from a careless piece of paper thrown on the floor. What I was actually doing was avoiding.

I turned on the radio, still tuned to the news channel which had first alerted me to Ivan the Terrible’s existence. The papers, apparently, weren’t the only branch of the media to run with the story Wit had so carefully planted. Someday, if I worked up the courage, I’d have to ask Wit how much personal capital this had cost him. I suspect he had called in more than a few favors.

I called John Heaton first because his pain and confusion would be worst of all, and lying to him would be most difficult.

“Where the fuck’s my money?” he screamed in my ear. “It’s been two days since you spoke to me.”

Oddly, I was quite relieved. Either he hadn’t yet seen the papers or he hadn’t made the connection or he was too drunk to care. I wasn’t about to ask which.

“How much do I owe you again?”

“Five.”

“Okay, will you be at the club today?”

“After four.”

“I’ll be in later,” I said.

“When?”

“Later.”

“Cash.” It was a demand, not a polite request.

“Cash.”

I thought about calling Brightman back, but decided against it. Politicians can never be trusted to keep their traps shut, even when it’s in their best interest. No, he’d have to stay in the dark. Thomas Geary, on the other hand, was technically my employer. If he hadn’t called me first, he’d have stayed in the dark too. But he’d probably already called Spivack, who would have, as agreed, referred him to me. Unlike John Heaton, Geary would not be so easily placated.

Geary’s wife, Elizabeth, picked up the phone. We chatted for a moment. She said the expected things about Katy. I thanked her on my wife’s behalf and lied about what fun the fund-raiser at the Waldorf had been.

“Hold on, will you, please, while I fetch Thomas.”