A Dance at the Slaughter House

Page 19

 

  "How did you know to ask her? What gave you his name and address?"

  "Oh, I get you. Thats a good question. How did we know?" He frowned, paging through the file. "Prints," he said. "His prints were in the computer and that gave us the name and address. "

  "How did his prints happen to be on file?"

  "I dont know. Maybe he was in the service, maybe he had a government job once. You know how many people got their prints on file?"

  "Not in the NYPD computer. "

  "Yeah, youre right. " He frowned. "Did we have him or did we have to hook into the main system in Washington? I dont remember. Somebody else probably took care of it. Why?"

  "Did you see if hes got a sheet?"

  "If he did it must have been jaywalking. Theres no notation in his file. "

  "Could you check?"

  He grumbled but did it anyway. "Yeah, just one entry," he said. "Arrested four, almost five years ago. Released OR and charges dropped. "

  "What charges?"

  He squinted at the computer screen. "Violation of Section 235 of the Criminal Code. What the hell is that, its not a number Im familiar with. " He grabbed up the black looseleaf binder and flipped through it. "Here you go. Obscenity. Maybe he called somebody a bad name. Charges dismissed, and four years later somebody sticks a knife in him. Teach you not to talk nasty, wouldnt it?"

  I probably could have learned more about Leveque if Andreotti had felt like jockeying the computer, but he had things of his own to do. I went to the main library on Forty-second Street and checked the Times Index on the chance that Arnold Leveque might have made the paper, but hed managed to be spared publicity when he got arrested and when he got killed.

  I took the subway down to Chambers Street and visited a few state and city government offices, where I found several public employees who were willing to do me a favor if I did them favors in return. They checked their records, and I slipped them some money.

  I managed to learn that Arnold Leveque had been born thirty-eight years ago in Lowell, Massachusetts. By the time he was twenty-three he was in New York, living at the Sloane House YMCA on West Thirty-fourth and working in the mailroom of a textbook publisher. A year later he had left the publisher and was working for a firm called R & J Merchandise, with an address on Fifth Avenue in the Forties. He was a salesclerk there. I dont know what they sold, and the firm no longer existed. There are a lot of little clip joints on that stretch of Fifth Avenue, salted in among the legitimate stores and having endless Going Out Of Business sales, hawking dubious ivory and jade, cameras and electronic gear. R & J might well have been one of them.

  He was still at Sloane House then, and as far as I could tell he stayed there until he moved to Columbus Avenue in the fall of 79. The move may have been prompted by a job switch; a month earlier he had started work at CBS, located a block west of my hotel on Fifty-seventh Street. Hed have been able to walk to work from his new lodgings.

  I couldnt tell what he did at CBS, but they only paid him $16,000 a year to do it, so I dont suppose they made him president of the network. He was at CBS a little over three years, and he was up to $18,500 when he left in October of 82.

  As far as I could tell he hadnt worked since.

  THERE was mail for me back at the hotel. I could join an international association of retired police officers and attend annual conventions in Fort Lauderdale. The benefits of membership included a membership card, a handsome lapel pin, and a monthly newsletter. What on earth could they run in the newsletter? Obituaries?

  There was a message to call Joe Durkin. I caught him at his desk, and he said, "I understand Thurmans not enough for you. Youre trying to clear all our open files. "

  "Just trying to be helpful. "

  "Arnold Leveque. How does he tie into Thurman?"

  "He probably doesnt. "

  "Oh, I dont know. He got it in May and she got it in November, almost six months to the day. Looks to me like a definite patterns shaping up. "

  "The MOs a little different. "

  "Well, she was raped and strangled by burglars and he got knifed in an alleyway, but thats just because the killers want to throw us off track. Seriously, you got anything going with Leveque?"

  "Its hard to say. I wish I knew what he did the last seven years of his life. "

  "Hung out in bad neighborhoods, evidently. What else does a man have to do?"

  "He didnt work and he wasnt collecting welfare or SSI that I can tell. I saw where he lived and his rent couldnt amount to much, but he had to have money from somewhere. "

  "Maybe he came into some money. It worked for Amanda Thurman. "

  "That would give them another point of similarity," I said. "I like your line of reasoning. "

  "Yeah, well, my mind never stops working. Even when I sleep. "

  "Especially when you sleep. "

  "You got it. Whats this about he didnt work in seven years? He was working when they arrested him. "

  "Not according to the state records. "

  "Well, screw the state records," he said. "Thats how he got cracked, he was the clerk when they violated the place for obscenity. Leveque, hes French, I guess they got him for postcards, dont you figure?"

  "He was selling pornography?"

  "Didnt you get that from Andreotti?"

  "Uh-uh. Just the number of the code violation. "

  "Well, he could have got more than that with a little digging. They did a sweep of Times Square whenever it was, October of 85. Oh, sure, I remember that. It was right before the election; the mayor wanted to look good. I wonder what the new guys gonna be like. "

  "I wouldnt want his job. "

  "Oh, Christ, if it was be mayor or hang myself Id say, Gimme the rope. Anyway, Leveque. They hit all the stores, bagged all the clerks, hauled off all the dirty magazines and called a press conference. A few guys spent a night in jail and that was the end of it. All charges were dropped. "

  "And they gave back the dirty books. "

  He laughed. "Theres a stack of them in a warehouse somewhere," he said, "that nobodyll find till the twenty-third century. Of course, a few choice items might have been taken home to spice up some policemans marriage. "

  "Im shocked. "

  "Yeah, I figured youd be. No, I dont guess they gave back the confiscated merchandise. But we had a guy just the other day, a street dealer, we locked him up and he walked on a technicality, and he wants to know can he have his dope back. "

  "Oh, come on, Joe. "

  "I swear to God. So Nickerson says to him, Look, Maurice, if I give you your dope back then Ill have to grab you for possession. Just shucking him, you know? And the asshole says, No, man, you cant do that. Wheres your probable cause? Nick says what do you mean probable cause, my probable cause is I just handed you the fucking dope an I seen you put it in your pocket. Maurice says no, itd never stand up, Id skate. And do you want to know something? I think hes probably right. "

  * * *

  JOE gave me the address of the Times Square store where Leveque had taken his brief fall. It was on the block between Eighth and Broadway, right on the Deuce, and since I could tell that from the number I didnt see any reason why I should go down there and look at it. I didnt know if hed worked there for a day or a year and there was no way I was going to find out. Even if they wanted to tell me, it was unlikely that anybody knew.

  I went over my notes for a few minutes, then leaned back and put my feet up. When I closed my eyes I got a quick flash of the man in Maspeth, the perfect father, smoothing his kids hair back.

  I decided I was reading too much into a gesture. I really didnt have a clue what the guy in the movie looked like under all that black rubber. Maybe the boy had looked like the youth in the film, maybe that was what had triggered my memory.

  And even if it was the right guy? How was I going to find him by sniffing the fading spoor of some sad bastard whod been dead for the better part of a year?

  Thursday Id seen th
em at the fights. It was Monday now. If it was his son, if the whole thing was innocent, then I was just spinning my wheels. If not, then I was too late.

  If hed planned to kill the boy, to spill his blood down the drain in the floor, it was odds-on hed done it by now.

  But why take him to the fights in the first place? Maybe he liked to work out an elaborate little psychodrama, maybe he had a protracted affair with a victim first. That would explain why the boy in the film had been so unafraid, even blas? about being tied up on a torture rack.

  If the boy was dead already there was nothing I could do for him. If he was alive there wasnt much I could do, either, because I was light years from identifying and locating Rubber Man and I was closing on him at a snails pace.

  All I had was a dead man. And what did I have there? Leveque died with a tape, and the tape showed Rubber Man killing a boy. Leveque had died violently, probably but not necessarily the victim of an ordinary mugging in a part of town where muggings were commonplace. Leveque had worked at a porno shop. Hed worked there off the books, so he could have worked there for years, except that Gus Giesekind had said that he stayed in most of the time, unlike a man with a regular job.

  And his last regular job-

  I reached for the phone book and looked up a number. When the machine answered I left a message. Then I grabbed my coat and headed over to Armstrongs.

  HE was at the bar when I walked in, a slender man with a goatee and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a brown corduroy jacket with leather elbow patches and smoking a pipe with a curved stem. He would have looked perfectly at home in Paris, sipping an aperitif in a caf? on the Left Bank. Instead he was drinking Canadian ale in a Fifty-seventh Street saloon, but he didnt look out of place.

  "Manny," I said, "I just left you a message. "

  "I know," he said. "It was still recording when I walked in the door. You said youd look for me here, so I walked right back out the door again. I didnt have to stop to put my coat on because I hadnt had time to take it off. And, since I live closer to this joint than you do-"

  "You got here first. "

  "So it would appear. Shall we get a table? Its good to see you, Matt. I dont see enough of you. "

  We used to see each other almost daily when Jimmys old Ninth Avenue place had been a second home to me. Manny Karesh had been a regular there, dropping in for an hour or so, sometimes hanging around for a whole evening. He was a technician at CBS and lived around the corner. Never a heavy drinker, he came to Jimmys as much for the food as the beer, and more than either for the company.

  We took a table and I ordered coffee and a hamburger and we brought each other up to date. Hed retired, he told me, and I said Id heard something to that effect.

  "Im working as much as ever," he said. "Free-lancing, sometimes for my former employers and for anyone else wholl hire me. I have all the work I could want, and at the same time Im collecting my pension. "

  "Speaking of CBS," I said.

  "Were we?"

  "Well, we are now. Theres a fellow I want to ask you about because you might have known him some years ago. He worked there for three years and left in the fall of 82. "