Quinn reminded himself that June Galin had a bad heart. She stood squarely in the doorway of her house in Queens, as if braced to defend her home against invaders. A bee droned close by, abruptly changed direction, and passed within inches of her face. She ignored it.
“We need to look around the place,” Quinn told her.
“You mean search it,” she said.
“Yes. That’s what we’re asking you to let us do.”
“What do you think you’ll find?”
“We don’t know. That’s why we want to search.”
June’s gaze darted to Pearl and Fedderman, standing just behind Quinn, then to the radio car parked behind Quinn’s big Lincoln at the curb.
“You have a warrant,” she said, “or you wouldn’t have brought people with you to help search.”
“We do have a warrant, dear. We thought we’d ask and might not have to use it. We were hoping for your cooperation, considering it was your husband who was murdered.”
She flinched when she heard it so bluntly stated.
“You won’t have to serve the warrant,” she said, stepping back. “Come on in. Just try not to mess things up too much.”
Quinn waved for the two uniforms waiting in the radio car to join them, then led the way past June Galin into the house. Though she’d made room for them to enter, they still had to edge past her. It was as if she was putting up a token defense for her dead husband.
“We’ll try to be neat,” Pearl assured her as she squeezed past, the two uniforms at her heels. They were officers Nancy Weaver and Vern Shults. Shults was near retirement and could be sitting behind a desk, but he preferred to be out in the field. Weaver had worked her way up to detective rank, but had screwed up again somehow and was back in uniform. She was a talented detective, but she liked to sleep around, especially with other cops. It had been good for her libido, but bad for her career.
June Galin walked to the sofa and sat down squarely on the middle cushion. She picked up a throw pillow and held it in her lap, hugging it, as the five invaders began what, in her mind, must be a vandalizing of her home.
“Possibly we can find something that tells us who your husband met the night of his death,” Quinn said.
“I’ve already searched for that,” June said, not looking at him.
“Then you understand why we must.”
She didn’t answer. Almost certainly Joe Galin hadn’t confided in his wife. She didn’t know she was defending honor already lost.
Quinn began opening drawers. The warrant specified that the object of their search was evidence that might shed light on who’d been with Galin the night of his death. But out in the street, before they’d approached the house, Quinn had made it clear to everyone what they were searching for once they got inside. It was the same thing police auditors and bank examiners were trying to find, only they were searching in paper form or on the Internet, or for a safety deposit box. Everyone was looking for Joe Galin’s secret cache.
Looking for money.
Across the bridge, in Manhattan, something else had been found.
“Go on in and take a look,” the uniform in the hall said. He was a young man with old eyes. His uniform was a size too large for him. He was pale, slender, with a prominent Adam’s apple. Acne scars pitted both cheeks and the bridge of his nose. He could have passed for seventeen if it weren’t for those eyes. “I’ll go back in there if I have to, but I gotta say it ain’t high on my want list.”
Detective Sergeant Sal Vitali and his partner Harold Mishkin exchanged a glance.
“You say the super found her?” Mishkin asked. He was a small man in his fifties, with a receding chin and a sprout of gray mustache. He had arched gray eyebrows that gave him a perpetual expression of mild surprise. Vitali thought Mishkin always looked like a befuddled accountant interrupted at his work.
The uniform nodded, swallowing. “Yeah. In the bathroom. Said a neighbor complained about the smell and the flies.”
“Flies?”
“Yeah. So many of them. Like thousands. They got into the ductwork, and some of them made it into the apartment upstairs.”
“Where’s the super now?” Vitali asked. He had a voice like gravel in a can, and a head of unruly curly black hair. He might have played Columbo if Peter Falk hadn’t beaten him to it. Vitali traded on that in cold weather, wearing a wrinkled trench coat and squinting a lot. Mishkin let it pass without comment. Anyway, Sal wasn’t nearly as subtle or polite as Columbo.
“The super?” the young cop asked, almost as if he was in a daze. “He’s down in his basement apartment. He ain’t feeling so well.”
“What’s your name?” Vitali asked.
“Henderson, sir. Ron Henderson.”
“You ride with a partner?”
“No, but there’s another of us here. Gary Mumford, he was nearby and did a follow-up on the squeal.”
Vitali remembered two radio cars parked outside.
“Where’s Mumford?”
“Went out to get some air. He ain’t feeling so good, either.” Henderson glanced at his watch, as if events were on some kind of schedule. “He oughta be back soon.”
“You stay here in the hall,” Vitali said. “Don’t let anyone else in this apartment till we give you the go-ahead. Understood?”
Henderson nodded and swallowed. Vitali thought the young cop had the most prominent and hyperactive Adam’s apple he’d ever seen.
Vitali looked at Mishkin. “You ready, Harold?”
“Almost,” Mishkin said. He drew a small tube of mentholated cream from a pocket, squeezed a little on his finger, and applied it beneath his nose. “You want some?”
Vitali did, and followed suit. Usually he didn’t bother, and it was only Mishkin, with his famously weak stomach, who used the menthol fumes to keep from upchucking. But after listening to young Henderson, Vitali figured this time should be an exception.
Mishkin held the tube out to the young cop. “This’ll help,” he said. “Used to be we lit up cigars at times like this, before they declared open season on smokers.”
Henderson dabbed some of the cream beneath his nose and nodded his thanks to Mishkin. Another swallow, this time followed by a feeble smile.
Vitali was a little surprised by Henderson’s reaction to this crime scene. Cops saw a lot, even young ones like this. And what about the other one, Mumford? What had so badly shaken up these guys?
Time to find out.
“Let’s do it, Harold,” Vitali growled, and led the way inside.
Mishkin drew a deep breath and followed.
Their first impression was that the apartment was quiet.
No, not quiet.
As they moved farther into the living room they could hear a faint but persistent buzzing.
Both Vitali and Mishkin had heard the sound before and knew instantly what it was. The flies Henderson had mentioned. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of flies.
The mentholated cream was making Vitali’s eyes water as they made their way toward the short hall that must lead to the bathroom. With each step the buzzing got louder.
As they approached the open doorway they began to notice flies in the hall, all around them. Mishkin slapped one away from his face. Another threatened to fly into Vitali’s right nostril. He brushed at it and saw it circle away.
Where have you been, you little bastard?
The buzzing coming from the bathroom was very loud now, filling every chamber of Vitali’s brain with noise.
