Tully was struggling to pay attention. He had decided to start from scratch with his investigation of the killing of Harold Salden, religion writer for the
The reason Tully had not been devoting himself as usual was the same reason he was having difficulty concentrating on Mangiapane’s briefing: trouble at home.
Neither Tully nor Alice normally bothered reading Lacy DeVere’s column. But when a co-worker had twitted her on the subject, Alice had checked the column and read the item linking Tully with Pat Lennon.
She was not amused.
Initially, Tully couldn’t blame Alice. It was a shot out of the blue and it had hit her hard. He agreed that she deserved an explanation. So he had explained-or tried to. He and Lennon had worked on the same case; he to solve a killing, she to write what proved to be an exclusive story. Their parallel efforts had thrown them together. Probably they had been seen together. But, nothing had happened. Where DeVere had come up with that outrageous tidbit was anybody’s guess. Nonetheless, it was pure fantasy. Under ordinary circumstances he would have mentioned it to Alice as part of their normal everyday conversation pertaining to what each was doing at work. But Alice had been so ill at the time that normal conversation had become a rarity. And since there had been nothing to it, after Alice had recovered it had simply slipped his mind.
All of which was true, but not totally believably true. Their relationship was scarred by Alice’s lingering doubt and Tully’s impatience with that doubt.
At long last, Alice said that she believed him. But it didn’t take a psychic to detect the incredulity.
The situation was affecting his work, and that was intolerable. His work came first. That was a given. He was growing angry with Alice’s suspicions. It was blossoming into a full-blown dilemma for him.
He put extra effort into absorbing what Mangiapane was telling him, “What was the beef again?” he asked. “The meeting was …?”
This would be the second time Mangiapane explained the reason for the meeting. He was becoming concerned. “See, Zoo, this priest, the pastor of St. Agnes, announced the Sunday before that he was leaving the priesthood to get married.”
“Sounds simple enough. Why the problem?”
“The people who go to church here got really upset. For one thing, there’s a pretty good chance that the archdiocese can’t or won’t send a replacement. Which means they’d probably close the parish. See, they’re running out of priests. And the ones they got don’t want to take a core-city parish. So the parishioners called the meeting. But then a whole bunch of outsiders showed up, and that’s when the trouble started.”
“Outsiders?”
“Some of them belong to an organization that wants priests to be able to get married, and the rest are real conservative right-wingers.”
The Catholic Church! Tully couldn’t seem to get away from it. If this continued, one of these day she would probably become a Catholic by default. “With a crowd like that, weren’t there any cops here?”
“Yeah. They even beefed up the personnel when things started getting nasty. But all the action was inside the church. Those two groups got here early, so they were pretty much all inside. The people outside, on the street, were mostly parishioners who got here late, and some gawkers who were attracted by the loudspeakers and the crowd. Salden got here just about on time but everything was jammed. I guess he was trying to get in when he got it.”
“Trying? Maybe that’s what happened: He pushed some hopheaded trigger-happy dude. It doesn’t take much anymore.”
Mangiapane shook his head. “Six rounds, all in Salden. The two people who got wounded were hit by slugs that went through him. I suppose it could have been spur-of-the-moment, but it looks premeditated. Some of the people around him said he was just part of the crowd trying to get as close as he could. But he wasn’t physical about it at all.”
“Okay. I like it better that way. Let’s say he was the intended victim. Then, why?”
“Up for grabs, Zoo.” Mangiapane consulted his notepad. “No problem that anybody could uncover with his wife. They were close. She broke down when she was informed. She’s in St. John’s Hospital now, recovering.”
“Hmmm. No girlfriend?”
“Not that we can find.”
“Who’d want to shoot a reporter? Talk about killing the messenger! And a religion writer at that. Who gets mad at religion writers?”
“The people who were here for that meeting were pretty worked up, Zoo.”
Tully considered that for a moment. “Yeah, that’s right, isn’t it? Any kind of make on the perp?”
Mangiapane smiled. “Everybody went to the bathroom.”
Tully smiled, but more grimly. Either because they were afraid or did not want to become involved, lots of witnesses routinely offered unlikely excuses for seeing, hearing, and saying nothing. It was as if, at the crucial moment, the witness insisted he or she was somewhere-anywhere-else. The bathroom would do.
“The few who would talk had pretty contradictory stories. It was a man. It was a woman. He was tall. She was small. About the only points of agreement were that the perp was adult, with a long black coat that could easily conceal the weapon, and a dark hat pulled low over the face.”
Tully rubbed his chin. “Sounds like the perp came to do business. Somebody who didn’t plan on shooting wouldn’t have covered up so completely. No reason to unless you know beforehand that you’re going to off somebody.”
Mangiapane nodded agreement. “As soon as the shooting started, everybody out here on the street hit the deck. The people inside could hear the shots, but they weren’t sure right off what it was. Then within seconds everybody knew what had happened, and-pandemonium. In that time, the perp faded away. It was dark-no moon- and the streetlights here are few and far between. Besides, most of ’em weren’t working.”
“As usual,” Tully commented.
“Right. So when the dust settled, everybody out here got up except three-two wounded and one dead.”
“A make on the weapon?”
Mangiapane glanced again at his notes. “MP5-KA4.” He was impressed.
So was Tully. A nine-millimeter machine pistol, he reflected. Able to be adjusted to fire either semiautomatically, as a full automatic, or in bursts of three rounds. A very powerful weapon.
“There seemed to be some agreement,” Mangiapane said, “that the shooting was
No wonder a couple of others got it, Tully thought. Bullets like that don’t deform when they hit, so they tend to go through things-people. Probably had to buy both pistol and bullets somewhere out on the street. That might prove to be a break, out on the street where so many breaks originate. Follow the gun. Trace it, and when you find the last guy who sold it, you find the perp.
Tully verbalized his thoughts. “Probably bought from one of our gunrunners. On the street, at any rate. Manj, see if any of our guys are out there looking for whoever sold it. If they’re not on the street, get ’em looking. Get some uniforms on it. Call in some markers. This is the best lead we’ve got so far.”
“Okay, Zoo. Where you gonna be, just in case?”
“For starters, I think I’ll go down to the
Tully easily could have swung onto the Lodge and sped his return downtown. But he wanted a few minutes to himself for thinking. So he turned down the one-way Fourteenth Street. In any case, when possible he preferred traveling the streets of his city rather than the freeways. State Police patrolled the expressways quite adequately. The streets were his, and he knew them like he knew his own body.
Damn that DeVere broad! His life had been in such a comfortable rut. Alice was well and their life together very satisfying. Work, as usual, was challenging and fulfilling. Since these were the only two areas of his existence
