Maybe, but did that mean that his story wasn’t true, or only that he was afraid I wouldn’t think it was true?
The only way to know was to go to work, and I could always use two thousand dollars. I called Centre Street. They told me Captain Gazzo was on the case. It figured-a mayor’s daughter. Gazzo agreed to meet me at The Medical Examiner’s Building on the East River.
2
I walked across town in the autumn afternoon sun, the sharp October wind blowing through my old duffel coat. A wind that had been blowing hard all week, the whole city walking bent.
Captain Gazzo was at one of the crypts in the basement autopsy room when I walked in. The dead girl in the crypt had not been beautiful, yet there was something very alive about her face even in death. Her long, dark hair framed a face of high, broad cheekbones, and a proud nose like a hawk. There was an Oriental shape to her dark brown eyes. She wore no make-up at all. It made her seem older.
Gazzo said, “I know all the violence, but I never get used to the young ones. Especially not the girls.”
“Women’s Lib wouldn’t like that,” I said. “Male prejudice, feeling worse because women are toys, weaker.”
“Maybe they’re right,” the Captain said. “Maybe I do feel worse because it’s a waste of what some man should have had. A girl should be alive to produce kids for him, or be a decoration to be protected. A girl is our loss, a dead boy is his own loss.”
Sometimes I still wonder where it comes from, Gazzo’s flow of words that can drown a prisoner. He says he knows-from thirty years of talking to himself.
“Anything beside the knife wound?” I asked.
“That’s all. Once through the heart. She never even woke up. The only other mark is this.”
He moved the dead girl’s long hair. She had a thick, three-inch scar from under her right ear to her jawbone. An ugly, livid scar like a bullet furrow.
“It’s old,” Gazzo said. “When she was around three, the M.E. thinks. The roommate says she wore her hair tied back, showed the scar. Flaunted it, you know? Makes you wonder.”
The scar made her broad face seem harder, older, especially with no make-up at all.
“Anything else in the M.E.’s report?” I asked.
“No. A healthy girl, no bad habits, no evidence of any recent sex, no bruises. An outdoor type, the M.E. thinks: from her tan, wind-roughened skin.”
“Can we talk in your office?” I said.
I wanted to leave. The young ones bother me too. Usually, it’s the very weak or the very strong who die by violence so young. I wondered which she had been.
The light is always artificial in Captain Gazzo’s office, the shades drawn. He says it fits better with his work.
“How’d you get on this, Dan?” he asked as we sat down.
“I knew the girl a little,” I lied.
I’m a good liar, I’ve practiced in a lot of places where liars have to be good, but knowing when a man is lying is part of Gazzo’s trade. That’s one reason I always work with the police. I need them more than they need me, and by working openly most of the time, I have a better chance of being believed in my lie when I don’t want to work in the open with them. I had the conviction that John Andera’s out-of-town alibi would check out, and that if the police hounded him all he would do was close up and pull out.
“Another charity case?” Gazzo said. “What do you live on?”
“Very little,” I said. “What can you tell me, Captain?”
“Not much. She was in her bed, stabbed once with a long, thin knife. If a killer knew where to push to miss bone, the knife would go through like a hot finger through butter. A very efficient weapon, and this killer pushed on target.”
“Around midnight on Tuesday?”
“Give or take an hour. No one saw or heard anything, even though people were awake in apartments on both sides.”
“How’d the killer get in?”
“No sign. Apartment’s on the top floor. No fire escape. Nothing on the roof. The girl’s door was on the chain, one window was open. It’s risky, but he must have climbed down from the roof without a rope. An expert, or a lucky amateur. Nothing in the place that didn’t belong to the girl or her roommate. A very neat job.”
“What do you have to go on?”
Gazzo shrugged. “Theory, Dan, and that’s about all. A two-bit killing like we get every day. She just moved into the place three weeks ago, told the roommate nothing-not even why she was using a phony name. Wasn’t there much, but was alone most of the time when she was. We’re looking into her actions, but she didn’t have time to do much here. So far, she looks like a solitary kid who did nothing.”
I said, “She used a false name, but moved in with a girl who knew her? That’s kind of odd.”
“Maybe,” Gazzo said. “Meanwhile, we go on routine. Some drawers were open, and her handbag was gone. No money around, and she had some. No address book.”
“Probably it was in the missing handbag,” I said. “Just robbery? Some scared junkie? Or a real pro?”
“It’s possible. I don’t much like the quick killing for that, or the entry for some junkie, but it happens. Or maybe she was just a runaway girl who mixed in wrong company. The parents are due here any time. I’d like to know more about the time between when she left home, and three weeks ago.”
“Okay if I hang around?”
“Hang around,” Gazzo said.
They came into the office with the confidence of power in a small city. Rulers in their world, and, like most people, they carried their world with them. It was there in the fine suit and imposing presence of Mayor Martin J. Crawford, and in the mink Mrs. Crawford wore over a slim black suit, despite the heat of Gazzo’s office, as if she were making a brief, royal visit. There in their dry eyes and emotionless faces-public faces that looked only at Captain Gazzo.
“Can we take her, Captain?” Martin Crawford said.
He was well over six feet tall and two hundred pounds. His soft hands moved when he spoke as if giving orders. He had a lawyer’s eyes that took in everything, but held the results of his judgment to himself until he was sure of where the advantage lay for him in any situation.
“You can take her home,” Gazzo said.
Crawford nodded, and then stood there. His lawyer’s eyes were clear, but his big body didn’t seem to know what to do next. Paralyzed by an event that didn’t relate to the world he understood.
“Martin?” the wife said. “You’ll call the funeral people?”
“Yes,” Crawford said, reminded. “Of course, Katje.”
The wife watched him as he went to a telephone. She was a tall, dark-blond woman about forty. Thin and athletic-looking, she played a hard game of tennis or golf I guessed. No prettier than her dead daughter, her handsome face was thinner, and she must have been a patrician dazzler at twenty among cuter, more girlishly pretty girls. Her upright bearing made me think of medieval ladies who defended the castle when their lord was off to the wars.
She said, “We thank you, Captain. We… don’t really know what to do. She was our oldest, Francesca. We… we’ll always wonder why. What happened? Did it have to?”
“We’ll find out what happened, Mrs. Crawford,” Gazzo said.
She gave a small shrug, as if to say that she knew Gazzo would find the killer, yes, but would that really tell her what had happened? Or really why?
Martin Crawford put down the telephone. “They’ll meet us at the… morgue, Katje.”
The word “morgue” sounded painful, and Crawford sagged in the hot office, his big face all loose flesh. Mrs. Crawford touched his shoulder. I placed her face and manner-her name was Katje, and she was from upstate New York: a patroon. One of the Dutch aristocrats. Crawford patted her hand.
