Robert Tanenbaum: Justice Denied

Wayne moved away to let the crime-scene man put plastic bags over the victim’s hands, a routine procedure, and then, stepping carefully to avoid soaking his shoes in the thick blood, he went through pockets.

Frangi, meanwhile, was getting names and addresses of the eyewitnesses and writing down where they had been at the time and place of the crime and whether they had seen anything. He decided to start with the young dog walker, who was apparently the witness closest to the crime. She had by this time recovered from her hysterics and was sipping coffee. Her afghan was quivering at her feet, chewing on a beef knuckle supplied by the proprietor.

Frangi established the basic facts: two shooters, both had shot. There was no talking from either the shooters or the victim. The victim had tried to get away by flinging his coat. The shooters had not taken anything from the victim. They had reentered their car and driven off.

No, she hadn’t taken down the license plate number. No, she hadn’t recognized the make of car. Yes, she would be available to look at different pictures of cars. No, she hadn’t noticed anything peculiar about the shooters. They were average. She couldn’t tell their race because they had been wearing ski masks and gloves.

The other witnesses added little to this except that, by a miracle, the restaurant proprietor had spotted the car for a ’77 or ’78 Ford Fairlane two-door. His sister had one just like it.

Wayne watched the body being bagged and loaded into the waiting M.E. wagon, and he then put the evidence bags with the pocket contents into a cheap plastic briefcase and walked over to the restaurant.

The press had picked up the scent already, and the sergeant had called in a few more troops to handle the growing crowd of journalists and photographers. People shouted questions at Wayne and poked microphone tubes at him and held up recorders in the din to catch some marketable vibrations from his lips. He waved them off and pushed past into the restaurant along a path kept clear by the uniformed men.

Wayne put his briefcase on the table where Frangi was sitting and sat down himself.

“Have some coffee,” said Frangi. “It’s the first time I ever got good coffee on a crime scene. Probably the last too. I hear the jackals make it for a terrorist attack.”

Wayne raised an eyebrow. “We’re always the last to know. The target’s right, anyway.” He removed a clear plastic evidence bag from his briefcase. It had in it a long European-style notecase that had once been tan but was now almost entirely covered with red-brown stains. It had a rough half-inch wide hole punched through it.

“Got one right through the passport. The vic’s name is Mehmet Ersoy. He’s the cultural attaché at the Turkish embassy to the U.N.”

“Holy Christ! Ah, crap! The slicks’ll be all over us on this one.”

“Yep. I’m surprised they’re not here already. Uh-oh, I spoke too soon. They’re playing our song.”

The sound of sirens coming closer could be heard. “Hey, I just remembered,” said Wayne. “Did you call D.A. Homicide?”

This was new. An instruction had been passed down from the chief of detectives that the detective in charge of a crime scene in a suspected homicide was to call the newly reconstituted homicide bureau of the New York D.A.’s office immediately upon arrival at the crime scene.

Frangi said, “Yeah, I made the call. Our luck, we’ll get a fourteen-year-old girl just out of law school.”

Now the little restaurant’s window reflected the beams of a half-dozen red lights as the slicks arrived, in increasing order of rank, for it would never do for a superior officer to arrive on a scene without his inferiors stacked up to show that they too were on top of things. An elaborate system of delays and phone calls built into the vitals of the NYPD insured that this would ever be the case.

Thus Wayne and Frangi had to tell their story to the lieutenant in charge of their precinct squad, who told it to the duty captain, who informed the deputy chief in charge of Manhattan, who told the deputy commissioner, who told the deputy mayor. It was somewhat unusual to have a deputy mayor on a slick, but the mayor knew that the U.N. brought forty thousand jobs to New York, and he was determined to let the world know that whether or not lesser New Yorkers fell like flies, the flesh of the international community was as sacred to him as that of his sainted mom.

After the word had gone down and the deputy mayor had posed gravely before the cameras to ritually renew the City’s marriage to the World Body and its every minion; and after the man from the P.C.’s office had come out strongly against terrorism in general and especially in New York (not forgetting to boast about the matchless anti-terrorism capacity of the NYPD); and after each level of command had left in decreasing order of rank, each one telling the next one down that there better not be a fuck-up on this one, they wanted clearance yesterday, and whosoever got the blame if there were to be a fuck-up (and it would certainly not be himself ) would spend the rest of their career in a blue bag guarding a motor pool in the South Bronx; after all that, when there was no one left in the restaurant but the lieutenant, the two detectives, a half-dozen irritable witnesses, a restaurateur wondering whether a story he would tell for years was worth losing a Sunday lunch hour, and a dog who had to pee, Wayne said, “Hey, Lou, could you tell us one thing? What’s all this horseshit about terrorists? We don’t know zip yet. The guy’s old lady could’ve had him whacked for the insurance or something.”

The lieutenant stared at him. He motioned the two detectives to follow him into the restaurant’s small bar.

“Nobody told you?”

“Naw,” said Frangi. “I mean, what the fuck, we’re just the detectives on the case, why give us any information? It’d be like cheating-”

“A guy called the Post and CBS. He gave the time and place and the name of the vic and said he was the Armenian Secret Army, and then a lot of political horseshit. We got a transcript back at the house.”

“Armenians, huh?” said Wayne. “You think it’s legit, Lou?”

The lieutenant rolled his eyes. “The fuck I know. The brass wants a terrorist. If it turns out the guy was dorking some big gaupo’s kid sister, well, we’ll have to work around it. But, guys, I need speed on this one. Whatever you need-cars, radios, stealers up the ying-yang, whatever. Red ball, all right?”

Wayne and Frangi exchanged a look. Wayne said, “We’ll toss his place, see if he’s into anything naughty. His office too, maybe-”

“Uh-uh, the office is out. It’s foreign territory,” said the lieutenant. “The guy’s a dip; we’re gonna move like silk around most of the people he knows. You understand the drill.”

“It’s like parking tickets,” said Wayne.

The lieutenant shaped his face into a false smile. “You got it. No leaning. Please, thank you, yessir, nosir. Any intrusion on U.N. mission property, and that includes motor vehicles, has to be cleared up the chain to the P.C. After you’ve made your calls and figured out who you need to talk to at the mission, if anyone, I need to clear it in writing. There’s a form.” The lieutenant paused and lit a cigarette from the butt of his old one. He asked, “You run the car yet? No? Well, get on it, and when you get the printout, check it for Armenian names.”

“Armenian names?” asked Frangi wonderingly. “You think these big-time terrorists used their own car on a hit?”

“It shows movement, dammit,” snapped the lieutenant. “And call B.S.S.I. too. There’s a guy there, Flanagan, he’s waiting for your call.”