'Oh, you made detective? And now you're a writer? My dad talked about writing a book, but that's all it ever was, talk. He retired, oh, it must be eight years now, he's down in Florida growing grapefruit in his backyard. Lot of cops I know are working on a book, or say they are. Or say they're thinking about it, but you're actually doing it, huh?'
It was time to shift gears. 'No,' I said.
'I beg your pardon?'
'That was crap,' I admitted. 'I'm working private, it's what I've been doing since I left the department.'
'So what do you want to know about Alvarez?'
'I want to know the nature of the mutilation.'
'Why?'
'I want to know if it involved amputation.'
There was a pause, long enough for me to regret the whole line of questioning. Then he said, 'You know what I want to know, mister? I want to know just where the fuck you're coming from.'
'There was a case in Queens a little over a year ago,' I said. 'Three men took a woman off Jamaica Avenue in Woodhaven and left her on a golf course in Forest Park. Along with a lot of other brutality, they cut off two of her fingers and stuck them in, uh, bodily openings.'
'You got a reason to think it was the same people did both women?'
'No, but I have reason to believe that whoever did Gotteskind didn't stop at one.'
'That was her name in Queens? Gotteskind?'
'Marie Gotteskind, yes. I've been trying to match her killers to other cases, and Alvarez looked possible, but all I know about it is what wound up in the papers.'
'Alvarez had a finger up her ass.'
'Same with Gotteskind. She also had one in front.'
'In her—'
'Yeah.'
'You're like me, you don't like to use the words when it's a dead person. I don't know, you hang around the MEs, they're the most irreverent bastards on earth. I guess it's to insulate themselves from feeling it.'
'Probably.'
'But it seems disrespectful to me. These poor people, what else can they hope for but a little respect after they're dead? They didn't get any from the person who took their life.'
'No.'
'She had a breast missing.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Alvarez. They cut off a breast. From the bleeding, they say she was alive when it happened.'
'Dear God.'
'I want to get these fucks, you know? Working Homicide you want to get everybody because there's no such thing as a little murder, but some of them get to you and this was one that got to me. We really worked it, we checked her movements, we talked to everybody who knew her, but you know how it is.
When there's no connection between the victim and the killer and not much in the way of physical evidence, you can only take it so far.
There was very little on-scene evidence because they did her somewhere else, then dumped her in the cemetery.'
'That was in the paper.'
'Same thing with Gotteskind?'
'Yes.'
'If I'd known about Gotteskind— you say over a year ago?' I gave him the date. 'So it's been sitting in a file in Queens and how am I supposed to know about it? Two corpses with fingers, uh, removed and reinserted, and here I am with my thumb up my ass, and I didn't mean to say that. Jesus.'
'I hope it helps.'
'You hope it helps. What else have you got?'
'Nothing.'
'If you're holding out—'
'All I know about Gotteskind is what's in her file. And all I know about Alvarez is what you just told me.'
'And what's your connection? Your own personal connection?'
'I just told you I—'
'No, no, no. Why the interest?'
'That's confidential.'
