Linda Fairstein: Cold Hit

Chairs pushed back and the podium assembly changed over, with Lieutenant Peterson and Chapman accompanying the CO up to the stand.

The general precinct figures were good. Lunetta was pleased that the deputy inspector in charge had taken the story of one of his burglary patterns to a local cable TV program, ¿Que Pasa NY? , which resulted in an informant breaking the case. He liked that kind of creative policing, as he would call it. What he never had liked was wisecracking, not even back when he had been Chapman’s boss in the Street Crime Unit, almost a decade earlier.

“Who’s going to bring me up to speed on the new case?”

Peterson pointed at Chapman and stepped aside. Mike rested his notes on the podium and ran his fingers through his thick dark hair. He dug one hand into the pocket of his blazer, then started his description of how he was summoned to the scene. He was thorough, detailed, and professional-the best homicide cop in the business-but I fidgeted and recrossed my legs when he got to the end of the narrative and closed his description with Dr. Fleisher’s directive to load “Gert” into the EMS van.

“ ‘Gert’? I didn’t know she’d been identified.” Lunetta was annoyed. His head whipped from side to side as he checked with each of his aides to see if they had failed to give him the morning update on the city’s most visible crime of the moment. The case was the cover of both daily tabloids, and he should have had the newest information about the unfortunate victim before the public did.

“She hasn’t been identified yet, Chief.”

“Well, is her name Gert, or isn’t it?”

Don’t go there, Chief, I urged quietly from the peanut gallery. All of us who worked with Mike knew that he named his victims in every case. Always did it, and often stuck with his nickname, no matter what the eventual I.D.-his own perverse way of personalizing his cases.

“I call her that, Chief, so she’s not just some number, some cold statistic for the mayor to get off on. I named this one in honor of Gertrude Ederle-three Olympic medals and the English Channel. I figure, given the way somebody tried to send her to sleep with the fishes for keeps, she must have had the soul of a great swimmer to stay afloat.”

There were a few snickers around the room, but most of the group knew it wasn’t the safest direction to follow.

Lunetta wouldn’t bite twice. He moved away to the next questions. “What are you looking at here?”

Chapman went on. “After the autopsy results today, we’ll work on a press release and sketch.”

“Can’t you give the papers a photo from the scene-a closeup? Get an I.D. more quickly?”

“I don’t think the way she looked coming out of the water is the way any of her loved ones would want to see her featured. We’re working with Missing Persons and each of the precincts.”

“You checking every area that borders the creek? May turn out to be a Bronx homicide after all, Chapman. The numbers get tallied in the precinct where the crime occurred, you know.”

“I don’t care where she dove in, Chief. We got her now.”

Fat chance, Lunetta. Count it as an outer-borough murder so we keep the Manhattan numbers down? Nope, I’m with Chapman. She landed here, and no matter where she was killed, that gives us jurisdiction.

“I see from the newspapers that you had Miss Cooper up at the scene last night. You throwing in the towel, too, Detective? Ready to call in the Feds? I can’t help but wonder what it is you need a pet D.A. for at all these crime scenes and station houses. D’you carry her lipstick case for her, or her hairbrush?” The chief smirked at his put-down, jabbing the detective and me in the same thrust.

But trying to embarrass Chapman that way wouldn’t quite work. He’d simply use the opportunity to get more laughs, even if they would be at my expense. “No, no, sir. She never lets me near the makeup. You know me, Chief-I’m strictly a leg man. I’m in charge of her spare panty hose. Each time there’s a run in one of those suckers, I pull out a replacement pair. Best I can do at the moment.”

A couple of my friends around the room raised their eyes cautiously to meet mine, to make sure I was rolling with the flow. Not a problem. Battaglia had trained me well. I could control my short fuse with the knowledge I’d get some shots back at the chief eventually. The district attorney might even take them on my behalf.

Lunetta’s number-two man leaned over and whispered something to him, flipping through the briefing book to an earlier page. He scanned it and looked up. “Is that case of the body that came out of the East River last month related to this one, you think? That’s still open, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but no connection. That one, a homeless man was fishing, hooked up and pulled an arm out of the water. Right out of its socket, actually. Scuba went in and found the rest of the body, weighted down with concrete blocks. She’d been in the water more than half a year. Feet bound, ligature round the neck. That’s a mob case-got a good snitch who’s working with us. We know who we’re looking for, just haven’t been able to find him yet.”

Great restraint, Mikey. He had resisted the temptation to tell Lunetta that he had christened that victim “Venus.” A onearmed Italian woman in a cement overcoat didn’t lend herself to any appellation except Venus de Milo.

The aide whispered to Lunetta again. “We had Bronx South here on Wednesday of last week. They’ve got a rape pattern as well in a couple of the housing projects. You might check over there to see if there are any similarities.”

Chapman looked less than interested. The likelihood that the well-groomed, silk-clad woman he had dubbed Gert had anything to do with ghetto dwellings in a run-down neighborhood that wasn’t his official territory didn’t engage him very seriously.

Lunetta listed off a punch list of places to go and things to do that would have been elementary for a rookie homicide detective. Mike listened patiently and assured the chief that as soon as they figured out who the deceased was, he’d be off and running. “I assume we’ll know who she is by the end of the day.”

“That’s great, Chapman. Then I’ll expect an arrest within the week. Maybe next time you’ll do a better job keeping the shutterbugs away from the scene you’re working. No reason for a case like this to be front-page news, except for the photo opportunity you gave them. Now it’ll take a couple of days to make these headlines go away.”

Lunetta finished snapping at Chapman, looked around the room, and announced to the bosses, “I think you gentlemen realize how much the commissioner hates it when this kind of thing happens. Tourists aren’t scared away by drug dealers killing each other off on their own turf or gang members shooting other gang members to death. But if this woman turns out to be an innocent victim of violence, I don’t think I have to tell you what it means to the city. Last night, at a fundraiser, the mayor was just telling his supporters that murders in New York had dropped to their lowest numbers in more than a quarter of a century-when he got word of this mess.” Lunetta scanned the brass arrayed in front of him. “That’s the point of all these exercises-in case it’s slipped your minds. Letting everyone know how safe this city has become. Our homicide rate hasn’t been this good since nineteen sixty-one.”

Chapman made sure he muttered into the microphone as he picked up his notes and pocketed them. “I hate to burst Hizzoner’s bubble, but I gotta tell you his numbers are small comfort to the broad who’s laid out in a refrigerator up at the morgue, waiting for her last physical.”