Winter Kills

  All grades spent their off-hours at Joe’s. It was only two blocks from police headquarters, but also precinct men from every section of the city showed up there throughout the day and night to set contracts. For example, if a citizen wanted a neighbor beat up, he would go to the Casino Latino, talk his problem over with Joe, and Joe would cast the right cop for the job. If an out-of-town dealer wanted to set up an operating base at a new school and housing development in the suburbs, he would buy his heroin from Joe, as a wholesaler, but Joe would set the okays to operate from the police in the new district, who would be represented at the Casino Latino. The waiters handled crap like traffic tickets and summonses.

  Joe Diamond, who had made it all possible for citizen and law-enforcement officer alike, had two great love affairs with life: money and policemen. He was sexually hung up on both. He just—well, he liked the way they smelled. He liked to grip them tightly. He liked to pack money and policemen in a crowded room and rub against them as he moved around. He patted young cops on the face when they were very clever. There were three young cops who were so low on the pole that he goosed them every now and then, but he made it up instantly by buying them drinks. He knew the cops who would kill for the right money. He knew the cops who would steal for him if the setup was right. He knew the plain gorillas. He had respect for one policeman. He was frightened of one policeman. When he lay in bed in the dark wondering if he wanted to go to sleep, his reveries were conscious dreams about Captain Heller.

  Captain Heller (and by association, Lieutenant Doty) was to Joe Diamond the most policeman that existed anywhere to a man who knew himself to be a connoisseur of policemen. Captain Heller was the Political Squad, accountable to nobody but the commissioner (who was a politician). Only Joe Diamond and a few dozen dead guys knew Heller was there. The work of the Political Squad was so tricky that Frank Heller had to be the best operating cop in the United States just to be chosen to handle work like that.

  But if Heller was Joe’s hero, Joe was like a mother and wife to the rest of the guys just the same. He was good for a touch of up to a hundred dollars for only five percent a week, but he wouldn’t lend more than that, because it made bad friendships in the end if he had to turn the guys in for nonpayment. He got the cops a better than fair share of all the narcotics business in the city. Whoever was in vice or stolen goods or retail extortion had a call from Joe the week he started in business, and honorable and convenient arrangements were made to pay off both the precinct and downtown.

  Joe ran a string of about a dozen, sometimes up to twenty, call girls. He cheated them whenever he could, because he hated women who could go into a business like that. He insisted that they put out to cops for nothing, and he beat them up if they refused. He also insisted on absolutely clean underwear. If a girl went out on a date with dirty underwear and he asked the customer about how was her underwear and it wasn’t right, he would kick that girl unconscious, because every one of those girls knew how he felt about that. Class showed, he explained to them vociferously, in little things like that.

  Joe Diamond was a dumpy man with an oatmeal face and four gold front teeth. Other than that he was easily as good-looking as a basket full of assholes. He was a sharp dresser. He took care of his hair. He shaved twice a day. He smoked thirty-five-cent cigars. He knew abortionists and clap doctors, and if a cop didn’t have the money, he made the cop let him pay for it. He had operated the Casino Latino for eight years, and it had been an important place from the start. Joe was an overachiever about making people understand that he was afraid of absolutely nothing and nobody. He re-established that two or three times every night in a loud voice. He was his own bouncer. Everybody knew he carried a piece in an ankle holster, which was why he walked with a gimp. He was not only the best-connected man in Philadelphia but he was very big about saying who he knew in New York and Cleveland, in Vegas and Miami. You asked Joe for something and he delivered. If he couldn’t—well, he didn’t. That was Joe—a very butch fag. He had his faults, certainly. He deducted for social security and withholding from his people, but he didn’t pay it in. If he was a sadist, it was because that was what anybody was quick to call anybody who beat up on women in public. But what the hell. He was a helluva guy, if he said so himself. He believed in palsmanship, and if he didn’t drink with you, it wasn’t because he didn’t like you, it was because he had a lot of blood sugar and had to be careful.

  Heller and Doty sat in a far corner of the big barroom, and everybody gave them plenty of room. Captain Heller was well known not to be a fraternizer and showed up in the Casino only for business reasons. They drank rye and ginger ale—just enough to keep the lips moist. Joe was making his rounds of the tables, copping a feel wherever he could. He hadn’t seen them come in and they didn’t send for him, but when he saw them he ran to their table.

  “Welcome to my place, Captain,” Joe said. “Hello, Lieutenant. Are they taking good care of you?”

  “We’ll be in the square in twenty minutes,” Doty told him.

  Joe told a couple of jokes. Nobody laughed. He fought to buy them another round of drinks until Doty told him to get the hell out of there. Heller and Doty left the saloon and drove to the south side of Rittenhouse Square. Ten minutes later Joe got into the back seat beside Captain Heller. He told himself he would give his life if he could have Doty’s job for one year.

  “Casper is all settled,” Heller said.

  “Oh, great,” Joe said.

  “But there is still plenty of work. First and foremost—who takes the fall?”

  “I have a guy in mind, if that is gonna be any help to you. It is strictly none of my business, I am just the middleman here, but this is a kid you won’t believe for this job. This kid spent two years in Poland—after he got outta the Marines—and in Poland, in the capital of Poland, he went to the American Embassy and said he wanted to be a Polish citizen.”

  “He’s a Commie?” Doty asked incredulously.

  “What else? Also a Marine. Also very stupid.”

  “Why do you think he would want to work on this?”

  “He is a Cuba nut. He hands out leaflets on Market Street every weekend. He thinks Kegan is oppressing Cuba.”

  “What’s his name?” Heller asked.

  “His name is Willie Arnold.”

  “Check him out,” Heller said to Doty.

  “You know what this kid does?” Diamond asked rhetorically. “This kid pushes shit in his spare time, and he sends the money he makes to Cuba.”

  “If he checks out,” Heller said, “we’ll pick him up. Then he’ll go to you to fix it, and we’ll have a little lock on him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, who do you have for an alternate?”

  “We need an alternate,” Doty said.

  “The natural is the shooter they are bringing up from Texas,” Diamond said. “In fact, there isn’t anybody else.”

  “They’re bringing a man all the way up from Texas?” Heller said. “When will he be here?”

  “He’s not a racket guy. Just some farmer. Casper said he would bring him here like a week ahead of the date.”

  “Call Ray when you know,” Heller said. “That’s all. Good night, Joe.”

  Diamond got out of the car thanking his friends. They left him in mid-sentence and drove away. Heller looked at his watch. “This is great. I can be home and sitting in the parlor before the girls get home. Step on it, Ray.”

  ***

  Three nights later Captain Heller sent word to Diamond that he wanted to see Casper at his house. When he had frisked Casper, when the coffee and schnecken came in and Myrtle had left, Captain Heller said he had developed his plan. Casper held up his hand. “I don’t know nothing about plans and I don’t want to know. We got to keep this thing compartmentalized. My job was to contact Joe Diamond, then, later on, to bring the shooter to him. My other job was to make the money deals. The way I see it, the best thing is if you tell the whole plan to Joe Diamond, so he can deliver
the shooter to where he’s supposed to be. The fewer people who know about the plan the better.”

  “I agree with you one hundred percent,” Heller said.

  FEBRUARY 17, 1960—AMALAUK, NEW JERSEY

  The night before Casper brought Turk Fletcher to Philadelphia, Heller, Doty and Diamond had a meeting at Doty’s chicken ranch. They sat around the kitchen table with their hats on. Doty mixed chicken feed while they were talking.

  “This is the last meeting, Joe. All right. This is the drill. He will be on his way through the city to the Liberty Bell. I take him up Market Street, then we snake around through Hunt Plaza as if we were going under the railway bridge. There are a lot of good things about this route. The Texas shooter will have good elevation from the Engelson Building. Here are two sets of keys to Room 603, where he will work. He should be planted there by about half past nine in the morning. Ray will work out the details with you and how we’ll want to deliver him. Aaalzzo, Hunt Plaza is good, because Willie Arnold works in the TV Center warehouse. Ray will give you a cheap rifle, which you will have Arnold plant in the TV Center room on the top floor overlooking the plaza. And some cartridges for him to throw on the floor. Ray gives you the details. After the hit and after we have established him in the building, tell him to go home and wait there in case we need him. If we need him we’ll send a patrol car for him. Tell him nobody gets paid until the job is all over. Ray gives you the details.” He stared heavily at Diamond.

  “And you know what you do—right, Joe?”

  “Yeah. I know,” Joe mumbled.

  “There were a lot of things to consider here,” Heller said by way of apology.

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1974—PHILADELPHIA

  “And that’s it,” Lieutenant Doty said on the bench with Nick in Rittenhouse Square. “Frank was just a born leader.”

  “How did they find Diamond?”

  “Who?”

  “Casper and his people.”

  “It figures they were passed along by the Mob. Diamond was with them in Cleveland and Chicago and Detroit—a long time.”

  “Lieutenant—I was with Heller the day we found the rifle. Where’s the rifle?”

  “He never said nothing to me, Mr. Thirkield.”

  “But you know how his mind worked. He didn’t take the rifle to the lab. Where would he go with it?”

  “I think he would put it away somewhere, then he would contact Casper to sell him the rifle.”

  “He knew where to find Casper?”

  “He didn’t say so. But I bet he had Casper tailed back to his own house in Texas. Waste not, want not was Frank’s motto. He was always saying, ‘If you’re always ready, you’re always glad.’”

  “Who did Casper work for?”

  “Frank never said.”

  “Did he have any ideas?”

  “He had a theory.”

  “What theory?”

  “He said Joe Diamond was the first man in. He thought it was probably a Syndicate hit.”

  “He believed that? He believed the Mafia would want to kill the President?”

  “What the hell—that’s their business, isn’t it?”

  “But—why?”

  “How do I know? But we once heard a very big Syndicate man say Kegan took a two-million-dollar campaign contribution from the boys and then never did anything for it.”

  “That just isn’t possible.”

  “Look—Kegan could have been hit by anybody. There were a lot of grudges flying. We think the Mob did it. But whoever did it still has one terrific amount of clout fourteen years after it happened. It was good to see you, Mr. Thirkield. Good luck.” Doty got up from the bench and walked rapidly away. Nick went back to the Petroleum Club to call his father.

  ***

  Pa got on the phone. He said, “I’ve been waiting for your call. I sent the dead cat and that poisoned milk to Standard Laboratories in Glendale. I just got the report back.”

  “What kind of poison kills that fast?”

  “We’re up against some real pros. If you hadn’t brought that cat, they could never have figured out what killed it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? The milk shows no poison. How about that? But the cat had a terrific immunological reaction. It died from—wait, I gotta read this off—anaphylactic shock. So they went back to the milk and isolated foreign matter, which turned out to be about four drops of red pigment of a guinea pig’s blood. It would have turned you bright blue.”

  “Maybe they got that into Heller.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But he died in his own house.”

  “First we have to find out if that’s how Heller died. I talked to Fritz Frey. He is going to try to clear an autopsy on Heller.”

  “The funeral is tomorrow morning.”

  “Did you see Doty?”

  “I just left him. Heller set Tim up for the murder. Pa, I think I might have a hunch where Heller put that rifle. I may even have a hunch who killed him.”

  “Who?”

  “He probably tried to sell them the rifle, and they agreed to talk about it, and they went to his house. He has a real coffee ritual for visitors. Maybe they put the stuff in his coffee.”

  “And maybe the rifle is right there?”

  “Right. Will you call Frey again and say I have this hunch and ask him to send me a reliable man to go with me to get it if it’s still there?”

  “I’ll call him right now,” Pa said. “Stay where you are.”

  In twenty minutes the front desk called to say the police commissioner was waiting downstairs.

  The commissioner was sitting in a large limousine. Nick got in. The driver took the car out into the stream of traffic. Nick said, “I didn’t mean to get you out, Commissioner. This is only a hunch.”

  “Where is the hunch?”

  “It may sound simple-minded, but Heller was such an intense family man, I am guessing that the only place he would think the rifle would be safe would be in his own house.”

  Frey looked at Nick blankly for a moment, then he said, “That’s right.” He told the driver where to take them and told him to use the siren.

  When the car pulled up in front of Little Germany, Frey asked Nick to wait in the car. “This is going to be a delicate and personal visit with Myrtle Heller as well as being a police call.”

  Myrtle greeted him warmly. She took him to the kitchen, which was the largest room in the house. She poured him a cup of coffee, put a schnecke on a plate and set it in front of him. “Take care of yourself, Fritz,” she said. “You smoke too many cigars.”

  “I never light ’em.”

  “But the juices. Who would have thought it would be his heart? Two weeks ago he had a department checkup and the doctor said he had the heart of a twenty-five-year-old.”

  “Myrtle, look…”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It might not have been his heart.”

  “But the doctor said it was his heart.”

  “We have some new evidence. I mean there’s a chance that—well, I have to say it to you—Frank could have been poisoned.”

  “Poisoned? In his own house?”

  “Did anyone come to see him that night?”

  “A woman was here. Just a routine call, Frank said. I showed her in. I brought them some coffee.”

  “Do you remember her name?”

  “I remember everything about that night. I always will. She said her name was Mrs. Casper.”

  “Think you could identify her in a lineup?”

  “I’m sure I could. She was a pretty woman about thirty-five, but she had silver hair.”

  “Did Frank keep any records of his meetings here?”

  She smiled proudly. “No one kept such meticulous records as Frank. He taped every phone call. And he taped every meeting, then he filed it all away—why, you can’t imagine. Come in here with me.” Myrtle led the way to Captain Heller’s study. She went to a long filing box on his desk. “This is just the card fil
e for meeting tapes,” she said. “You should see the boxes with the card files to locate the telephone-call tapes.” She opened the box. “Go ahead. Look up Casper. It’ll be there.”

  Frey riffled through the cards. There was one Casper card with three entries. It said:

  CASPER, WILLIAM—Dallas (?) Texas. Five feet seven, 190 lbs. White wavy hair which curves over the forehead. Contempt for money. Recorded:

  November 28, 1959. No. 1364

  December 1, 1959. No. 1371

  February 18, 1960. No. 1409 in Code P

  Myrtle was looking over Frey’s shoulder. “I don’t know what ‘Code P’ means,” she said. Frey thought silently that it probably stood for “payoff.” There was no card for Mrs. Casper.

  “It could be he didn’t have time to make out a card for Mrs. Casper,” Frey said.

  “That would mean the tape is still in the machine,” Myrtle said. She went to the window seat behind Heller’s desk and opened a large walnut cigar box. There was a four-track cassette recorder fitted inside it. Frey leaned on the EJECT button. A cassette popped out. Written on the cassette was “MRS. WILLIAM CASPER.”

  “I’ll have to take this along with me, Myrtle.”

  “What is happening?”

  “I came here myself this morning because we have all been such good friends and I know you trust me.”

  “I do trust you, Fritz.”

  “We want your permission to conduct an autopsy.”

  She looked at him helplessly.

  “It won’t delay the funeral,” Frey said. “We can have it done this afternoon, and he can be back at the funeral parlor tonight.”

  “Is it police business?”

  He nodded. “If he was poisoned.”