Len Levinson - Without Mercy

It was night, and the street was cluttered with patrol cars and vehicles from the medical examiner’s office, the photo and fingerprint units, and the press. Detective First Grade Danny Rackman drove up as close as he could, parking his unmarked, green Plymouth beneath a street lamp. He was the duty homicide detective and had received the call while doing paperwork in his office at Midtown North. A girl had been found with her throat slashed in an alley on Forty-Fifth Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, not far from Times Square.

Rackman got out of his car and strode toward the alley. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore a black turtleneck sweater under a brown leather safari jacket. His straight, black hair was parted on the side, and he had a nose like a hawk. At the entrance to the alley a cordon of cops kept back neighborhood people, their coats thrown hastily over their pajamas. Rackman walked past them, some reporters, and swarms of other cops. A searchlight shone into the alley, and halfway down was a crumpled figure soaking in a puddle of blood. A few feet behind her were four overflowing garbage cans that stank of rotten meat.

Rackman stopped beside the girl. She wore jeans and a navy pea coat, and appeared to be in her early twenties. The blood from the gash in her neck was turning into jelly. She had blonde hair and was reaching toward the brick wall of the tenement building. Shock and the horror of her ordeal were still on her face and in her eyes. He studied the position of her body and the dirt around it, looking for something that might be significant; it could be anything, but he detected nothing.

Sergeant Bob O’Grady of Midtown North came to his side. Rackman turned to him. “Who found her?”

O’ Grady pointed to windows of the tenement across the alley, where faces looked down at them. “Some people up there heard the screams and dialed nine-one-one.”

“Who got here first?”

“Patrolmen Wheatly and Farelli.”

“Where are they?”

“Around here someplace.”

“Get them for me.”

O’Grady walked away. Rackman studied the dead girl again. He wondered if she’d known her killer or whether some nut had cut her down for the hell of it. Her shoulder bag was lying beside her legs. He wanted to go through it to see if she’d been robbed, but didn’t know if the photo unit was finished yet.

Sergeant O’Grady returned with Patrolmen Wheatly and Farelli.

“When’d you two get here?” Rackman asked.

‘Three forty-three,” replied Wheatly.

Rackman checked his watch. It was almost five-fifteen. “See anybody running away?”

“No.”

“The people upstairs see anything?”

“Two of them said they saw somebody running out of the alley.”

Rackman took out his notepad and pen. “What’re their names?”

“Sylvia Suarez in apartment 5-L of 429 West Forty-fifth Street, which is this building right here. Also Reynaldo Pifla of the same apartment.”

“Nobody else saw anything?”

“Nobody we know of.”

Rackman turned to Sergeant O’Grady. “Send your men into these buildings. Find out if anybody saw or heard anything. And check the stores on Ninth and Tenth Avenues. Maybe the killer stopped somewhere for a pack of cigarettes or a bottle. Get me the medical examiner.”

Sergeant O’Grady walked off, and Rackman squatted beside the body. Dried blood could be seen around the girl’s nose and the corner of her mouth. He looked at her cold, stiffening hand; she had long fingernails. There were bruises on her cheeks. The medical examiner, a lanky man wearing a topcoat, came over. Rackman stood.

“What do you know so far?” Rackman asked.

“Her throat’s cut and she’s been punched around.”

“What came first?’

“I don’t know yet.”

Medical attendants arrived with the stretcher and rolled the girl onto it. They covered her with a sheet and carried her out to the wagon. Now Rackman could look in the girl’s shoulder bag. He knelt down and upended it. Cosmetics, Kleenex, and a wallet tumbled to the ground. He opened the wallet and found three hundred dollars and a blue plastic ID card from Roosevelt Hospital in the name of Cynthia Doyle, 429 West Forty-Ninth Street.

As the various police and press cars left the scene of the crime, the neighborhood people dispersed. Uniformed policemen spread throughout the area, waking people up and asking questions. The alley became deserted except for Rackman, who shuffled around the spot where the body had been. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he went next door to see Sylvia Suarez and Reynaldo Pifla.

It was a decrepit old tenement building whose hallways smelled like fifty years of cooking odors. He climbed to the fifth floor and knocked on the door marked 5-L. It was opened by a Puerto Rican woman around fifty years old, wearing a threadbare yellow bathrobe.

“Mrs. Suarez?” he asked.

“Yes?”

He showed his shield. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Come in, please.”

She opened the door and he entered her kitchen. The shiny Formica, linoleum, and tile were spotless but uneven because the walls behind them were caving in. A man in jeans and white tee shirt sat at the table. He had corrugated black hair and a thin mustache.

“This is Reynaldo Pifla,” Mrs. Suarez said to Rackman.

“I’m Detective Rackman.”

The men said hello and shook hands.

“Have a seat,” Mrs. Suarez said.

“Thank you.”

“Would you like to have some coffee?”

“That would be very nice.”

She poured some thick black coffee from a silvery pot into a white china cup and placed the cup before Rackman. He poured in some milk and sugar, tasted it, gave it another shot of milk, and lit a Lucky. For a few seconds the only sound was the faucet dripping into the sink.

“I know you’ve already talked to the police,” Rackman began, “but I’m a homicide detective and I’d like to get the information from you directly, if that’s all right.”

“Sure,” said Mrs. Suarez, sitting beside Reynaldo on the other side of the table. Pifla nodded his head in agreement.

Rackman took out his notepad and pen. “You heard screaming sometime tonight, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Suarez replied.

“What were you doing when you heard the screaming?”

“I was asleep in my bed. It woke me up.”

“Was Mr. Pifla with you at the time?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember what time it was?”

“Around three-thirty.”

“How do you know?”

“Because Reynaldo told me afterwards.”

Rackman looked at Reynaldo. “How did you know?”

“I looked at my watch.” He held up a stainless steel wristwatch with a matching expansion band.

“You were looking at your watch while the girl was screaming?”

“Yes.”

Rackman looked at Sylvia Suarez again. “And then what happened?”

“We ran to the window and looked down. A person was running out of the alley, and then we noticed that somebody was lying in the alley near the garbage cans. I ran to the bedroom and called nine-one-one.”

“Let’s go back to the person you saw running out of the alley. Was it a man or a woman?”