Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

The detective was on the phone. As he signaled me to take a seat, he rolled his eyes at whomever it was he had on the line. The sleeves of his pale blue shirt were folded back to his forearms in perfect rectangles. His top button was loose, and his tie was artfully askew. A copy of the Post was on his desk. Facedown.

“Of course I’m looking into it. What do you think? I want to know that just as much…Right. Exactly…No, I’ve got a man on it…Yes, he’s a good man.” A minute later, he hung up. His hard jaw was askew. “Ask me what I think of the First Amendment. No, don’t bother. I’ll tell you. I think it’s not worth the toilet paper it’s printed on.”

“Don’t let yourself get quoted on that.”

“If I weren’t sworn to uphold the law, I’d kill somebody over at the Post .”

“The photo?”

“The frippin’ photo, you’d better believe it. There’s nothing I can do to stop them from printing what amounts to pornography, as far as I’m concerned. They’ve got their lovely First Amendment. But do you know something? That picture was taken nearly forty minutes before the 911 was called in. We had the call traced, naturally. It was a pay phone at that diner next to the Post . We got the waitress to ID the photographer. The whole time this jerk is en route from the murder scene, Jimmy Puck is mucking around outside Burrell’s building, getting the lay of the land. I don’t know why people even read that weasel. The woman could have been in there bleeding to death.”

I placed the tote bag on top of the Post . “She did bleed to death.”

“You know what I mean. Look, I know she must’ve died within minutes. Her throat opened up like that. But those schmucks didn’t know that. All they’re thinking about is beating the other guy. Getting to press lickety-split with their goddamn photo. Their almighty scoop. That’s what your First Amendment does. It lets you screw up your priorities.”

“A cop with a beef about the press,” I said. “I’m shocked, shocked.”

Gallo looked ready to take a bite out of me then relaxed. A hand drifted to his hair and gave it a pat. “Right. Sure. What’s new on the planet three? Sometimes a guy’s just got to bitch.”

“It’s a free country,” I said. “Amendments and all.”

He eyed the tote bag. “Okay, now, run it by me again how it was you got your nose into this. I have to say I wasn’t paying a lot of attention last night.”

“Sure. You know Cafe La Fortuna? It’s down near the end of Robin Burrell’s block.”

“Sure. They’ve got that photo in the window of John Lennon and Yoko Ono hanging out in their back garden.”

“Right. Well, I go there pretty often.”

“I don’t recall seeing any pictures of you in the window.”

“I’m not the guy who wrote ‘Sexy Sadie.’”

“Hey. John Lennon didn’t become John Lennon by writing ‘Sexy Sadie.’”

“What I’m saying is that I pop into the place fairly often. I was there a couple weeks ago, and Mrs. Carella came over to me. Mrs. Carella is the owner. She came over to me and pointed out a woman who was sitting in the back.”

“Let me guess.”

“You guess Yoko and I’m leaving.”

“Robin Burrell.”

“Correct. I recognized her from TV. You’d have to live in a darker cave than mine not to know that face. It wasn’t so surprising to see her. I knew she lived right across the street from Margo.”

“Ever talk to her before?”

“Before La Fortuna? No. But Mrs. Carella said that’s exactly what I should do. I should go talk to her. She said Robin had come in earlier and taken the table in the back and started to cry. I’ll tell you something, you don’t cry around Mrs. Carella without her swooping in. She got Robin to tell her what the problem was. It was all this mail and e-mails from these creeps all over the place. She was spooked. Mrs. Carella knows what I do for a living, she thought maybe I could help. She’s like an Italian yenta. Except with the Sicilian accent. ‘Fritz, meet Robin. Robin, meet Fritz. You two sit here and share some biscotti and get to know each other.’”

“Sounds lovely. So is that what happened? Did you get to know her?”

I shrugged. “I heard her story. You know what they say about private eyes.”

“‘It’s not the eyes, it’s the ears.’”

“Exactly. I listened. Robin was scared. She was depressed. She was blaming herself for the entire mess. You know how it is. If she hadn’t gotten involved with Fox in the first place. Blah blah. All the usual stuff.”

“So you placed a manly hand on hers and told her not to blame the victim.”

“I kept my manly hands to myself.”

“Ms. Burrell was a pretty woman.”

“You noticed that, eh? They sure do hire the best around here.”

Gallo indicated the tote bag. “What’s your gut tell you, Fritz? Is the killer in there?”

“Could be. None of them scream, ‘Lock your door, little girl, I’m on my way!’ She told me there had been some calls, too. As soon as her name and picture started getting bounced around in the press. Eventually, she got an unlisted number.”

Gallo perked up at the mention of nasty phone calls. “Were any of the phone calls explicitly threatening?”

“She said mostly they were just jerks being jerks.”

“But no death threats.”

“None she shared with me.”

“Any repeats? Same guy over and over?”

“She didn’t say. She got the unlisted number pretty quickly, and that ended it.”

“Not quite,” the detective said. “Here. Let me play something for you.”

There was a miniature cassette player on the desk. I hadn’t noticed it. Gallo centered it, pushed the rewind button then hit play. There were several static-filled seconds, and then came a gravelly male voice.

“I’m coming, you whore. Can you taste the blood yet?”

Gallo hit the stop button. “How would you like to come home to that? This was left on Robin Burrell’s answering machine last night. Apparently the unlisted thing didn’t faze this guy.”

“It’s not so hard to get a number if you really want it.”

“Definitely not. Now, here’s your scoop of the day-and you heard it here first. That message? What you just heard? An identical message was left last night on the machine of one Rosemary Fox.”

“Mrs. Marshall Fox herself?”

Gallo nodded expansively. “I’m not saying this is necessarily the creep who got to Robin Burrell last night, but it does give you that funny feeling.”

“What kind of feeling does it give Rosemary Fox?”

“I’m trying to throw a dozen men around her, but she’s balking. The Foxes aren’t what you call benevolent friends of the New York City police at this particular point in time. They’ve got that loudmouth lawyer of theirs saying Fox will hire his own people to protect his family, thank you very much.”

“Riddick?”

“Right. Zack the hack. We’d like to keep all this quiet. I mean, these phone threats. But you know how Riddick operates. He’s called a press conference for noon today. How much do you want to bet he’s going to have a cassette player of his own with him?”

“It doesn’t help his client to advertise death threats made to his wife,” I said.

“You think he cares about that? It helps him . Who the hell do you think is Zachary Riddick’s biggest client?”

“Can’t you stop him? Tampering with evidence? Something like that?”

“We can bust his chops. But believe me, if he wants this tape out there, he’ll get it out there.”

“So what do you think you’re dealing with here?”

Gallo aimed his palms at the ceiling. “You know what? You’ll have to get back to me on that.”