Slow Burn Read online

  “Evening, Ed.” I quickly found a blank page in my notebook and got ready to write. I knew when Hancock worked a scene; the facts came fast and continuous. I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut and write down everything he said. Frank kept taking his pictures, but that didn’t stop Hancock from beginning his examination. I watched the fat man’s eyes canvas the girl’s body.

  Stopping. Squinting. Flashing, then moving on. I knew the mumbled dialogue that went along with it was worth sticking around for. “Ah, you poor, poor girl,” Hancock muttered to the corpse. His eyes never stopped moving. He took it all in: the position of the body, the wound, the blood. Hancock always saw more than everyone else, even the camera. His nostrils flared, like a dog tasting the air. The stuff he could figure out even before he touched the body had sent chills down my spine many times over the years.

  “He moved you, didn’t he, honey?” Hancock whispered to the corpse. “He cut your throat, smooth and clean. From behind, too. Yes, a neat cut right there, through to the carotid.” Hancock squinted. “He bled you out fast. So fast, you were too shocked to be scared, weren’t you? Too shocked to feel the pain. The blood shot everywhere and he panicked, grabbing the bedclothes to keep it from getting on him, didn’t he? Yes, of course he did. I can see the fibers from the sheets in your wound.”

  I strained to look closer. Sure enough, small white particles were caked in the blood. I cursed myself for paying attention to everything in the room except for the actual wound itself. That explained the bare mattress. I kept scribbling while Hancock whispered to her. “You realized what he’d done, but it was already too late by then. You got scared at first, but the fear didn’t last long, did it? You kept waiting for the pain to come, but it didn’t. Not really; not the way you’d always thought it would. And my, how the blood flowed so fast. So warm. You just went to sleep, didn’t you? You gave in.” Hancock nodded slowly. “Yes, of course you did. Easier that way. He never gave you a chance, did he, honey?”

  I took it all down. Every word.

  “She realized what was about to happen,” Hancock went on, “and probably tried to run for the door. That’s why he grabbed her from behind and cut her.” He pointed at the gash in her throat. “See the angle of the cut? The position? He jerked her head back and slit her throat while she was running away. Probably a switchblade, and a sharp one at that. Right-handed, too, judging by the angle and nature of the cut.” Hancock bent closer to the body and squinted. “The wound wasn’t deep, but deep enough and just the right location, too. Not jagged, but neat and clean and done in one swift motion. Yes, his was a practiced hand.”

  I’d seen Hancock work enough times to know how to talk to him when he was like this. “Signs of a struggle?”

  Hancock barely shook his head. “Look at her hands.”

  I did. I’d already noted they were placed at her sides, on the floor, palms down. I felt good about myself for already having noted that.

  “She has good sized nails,” Hancock told me. “Painted recently, too. None of them chipped or torn. Doesn’t appear to be anything under them, either. That means she didn’t claw at him or scrape his skin. She was too surprised.” He spoke to the corpse again. “Yes, of course you were. You’d never dealt with men like him before, did you?” He sucked his teeth. “What were you doing here amongst wolves, you poor, poor little lamb?”

  “I don’t think she was a pro,” I offered.

  “Nor should you,” Hancock said. “Judging by her overall physical condition, I’d say she’d lived a healthy life. Besides, a prostitute would’ve been on her guard, especially in a place like this. She would’ve expected something like this and fought back somehow. But not our girl here. She wasn’t a fighter. No, she was far too delicate for that.”

  I thought I was on to something. “Maybe she was grabbed off the street and brought here?”

  Hancock shook his big head again. “No evidence of bruising, so she wasn’t grabbed. Look at her wrists and ankles. No rope burns or ligature marks, so she wasn’t bound. And her lipstick isn’t even smeared, so she wasn’t gagged, either.”

  Then Hancock grunted to himself. “True, she may have been drugged and carried here, but I won’t know that until I get her downtown and test her blood. I doubt it, though. Bringing a drugged woman up those stairs would be awkward. He would risk being seen, being remembered, even in a den of inequity such as this. No, it appears that she most likely came here of her own free will.”

  I heard myself say, “We can’t find her clothes.” I don’t know why I said that out loud.

  “Nor will you,” Hancock said. “They were ruined when she bled, which means she was clothed at the time of the attack, minimizing the likelihood that she was sexually assaulted. He laid her down here on the floor, then cut off her clothes. Cleaned her up. Notice, there’s not a drop of blood on her body.” His nostrils flared again. “You can still smell the soap he used, can’t you. He even took the time to shape the pool of blood around her head into something of a respectable halo.”

  I almost dropped my pen. “He did what?”

  “You’ve seen enough unfortunates who’ve had their throats cut,” Hancock said. “There’s always much more blood than what we have here. I’d wager he let it dry a bit before he cleaned the area. Look at the edges of the pool. You can see where he wiped it into a semi-circle around her head. Like a halo.”

  I’d seen it too, of course, but not the way Hancock saw it.

  His nostrils went to work again. “Yes, the vague smell of Murphy’s Oil is in the air, too. He scrubbed the floor and gave her a halo of blood.” He looked up at me again.

  “Whoever did this to her wanted her clean, Charlie. He wanted this whole room clean. No traces. No evidence of him. No evidence of her, either. No, this is a careful man, Charlie. A very, very careful man.” I saw everything, but I didn’t understand it, “Why?”

  Hancock stood up and rubbed his fleshy face. “He probably wants you wastin’ time asking that very question. That’s why you shouldn’t concern yourself with ‘why’ just yet. Concentrate on finding out who the victim was first. Her killer went to great lengths to hide her identity. Find out who she is, and you’ll find who killed her and why.”

  I could tell I’d gotten as much out of Hancock as I was going to get, but one question nagged me. “But what was she doing up here in the first place?”

  The folds of the fat man’s chins creased as he smiled at me. “How the hell should I know? You’re the detective.”

  IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT

  I COULD still hear Hancock’s and Frank English’s laughter echoing in the hall behind me as I headed downstairs to check on how the patrolman was doing with the night manager.

  I found them at the front desk, which was as cluttered and filthy as the rest of the dump. I coughed when a small cloud of dust rose as the patrolman turned the ledger so I could read it. He pointed to the Van Dorn entry in the register. Most of the other names before and after it were scrawled and intentionally illegible. But the name Silas Van Dorn was written in a clear, elegant hand. A name like that didn’t belong in a place like this, and neither did that handwriting. It was almost like it was supposed to stand out from the others. I made note of it.

  “There it is,” Augie Miller said. “Clear as day, just like I told you. Now what about cleaning the room?”

  I ignored him and spoke to the patrolman. “Any luck reaching the day manager?”

  The patrolman shook his head. “His landlady said he’s been drunk all night. Probably passed out in his room. We’ve got a couple of boys heading over there now to wake him up.”

  “Let me know what they find out,” I said. “Any idea where my partner is?”

  The patrolman jerked his chin toward the front door. “Outside grabbing some air.” He grimaced at Augie Miller as a small rat jumped off the filthy front desk and headed for the stairs. “Can’t say I blame him.”

  IT WAS half past four in the morning, and the air outside was
just as humid as it was inside The Chauncey Arms, maybe even more so. I found Floyd Loomis on the street. Alone, like he always was. He was taller than me by almost half a foot, which wasn’t saying much. I was only five-seven and weighed a buck-sixty soaking wet. Most guys were bigger than me.

  Loomis was way too thin by several pounds and looked like he’d shrunk out of his clothes. He had large, far away eyes with matching dark circles beneath them. He didn’t look very healthy, and for good reason: he lived mostly on coffee and cigarettes and the stale pastry from the German bakery up the street from the station house.

  Loomis had been working the Homicide graveyard shift for six years running and never complained once. He seemed content with spending the rest of his career shagging midnight calls on croakers and writing up the preliminary reports for other detectives to run down. He didn’t take vacations or days off unless he was ordered to. He wasn’t married and didn’t have many friends, on the force or otherwise.

  Then again, neither did I. Not anymore.

  Loomis’s biggest problem was that he was a loner and always had been. He had no use for partners in general, or for me in particular. He knew the rap against me and bought it hook, line and sinker. He thought I was nothing more than a dried out hack, running out my string until my pension kicked in. And I hadn’t worked too hard to change his mind.

  The bosses told us we had to work together, but no one said we had to like it. And neither of us did.

  I fished out my pack of Luckies from my pocket. I would’ve offered Loomis one, but he already had one going. “Get anything from the canvass?” I figured he hadn’t, but I had to ask.

  Loomis shook his head as he let out a long plume of smoke from his nose. “Nothing but a bad stink I can’t shake.” The cigarette in the corner of his mouth bobbed as he talked. “I like a pull on the jug as much as the next guy, but Jesus, there’s some sad cases in there.”

  I thumbed a match and lit my cigarette. Prohibition was still the law of the land, but that didn’t stop people from finding as much booze as they wanted whenever they wanted it. “Imagine what it’ll be like after Repeal.”

  “Happy days,” Loomis said. “Get anything on the girl?”

  “Nothing. Stark naked, throat cut, cleaned up and no sign of her clothes. Every inch of the place scrubbed clean, too. I bet the dust boys won’t find a print anywhere. Not a single clue in the whole damned room.”

  “Except for the girl,” Loomis said. He knew I hated it when he corrected me. He did it anyway. We both knew he was the better homicide detective. Every once in a while, he liked to remind me.

  Neither of us said anything for a while after that because there really wasn’t much to say. The two of us just stood there, together but alone in the thick air of a late August morning in New York City. It was just past four-thirty, and Twenty-eighth and Ninth wasn’t exactly busting with activity.

  The heat had made it tough to sleep and a few people were already out on the street, heading to work before it got even worse. The lucky stiffs. With the Depression on, working men and women seemed to be a dying breed in this town. Hell, they seemed to be a dying breed everywhere. In any other neighborhood in the city, police cars on the corner would’ve brought out a hell of a crowd. But Chelsea wasn’t any other neighborhood.

  The working-class Micks regarded cops with a hatred normally reserved for British royalty. I caught a few old harpies peering down at us from the fire escapes and open windows of surrounding buildings. They were curious, but kept their distance all the same. I knew the neighborhood rumor mill would be going at full blast in a few hours, making it that much harder for us to get a line on whoever killed the girl upstairs.

  I watched a couple of drunks across the street linking each other home from God knows where. One of them looked pretty banged up, either from a bar fight or a mugging or something in between. Hacks cruised Ninth Avenue looking for stray fares. An old nag loped a milk truck eastbound along Twenty-eighth Street. The driver looked as tired as the horse did. The heat was hard on everyone.

  Loomis broke the silence first. “Think the victim was a good time girl?”

  I decided to use some of Hancock’s wisdom, with a little of my own work thrown in. “She’s in too good a shape to be a pro. Expensive make up and hairdo.”

  Loomis shrugged. “Could be a high-class call girl.”

  “Not in a place like this. Besides, a pro wouldn’t have let a guy get behind her like that without a fight. Her nails were still intact. No sign of a struggle.”

  Loomis grinned. “You get all that from Hancock?”

  “Fuck you, Floyd.”

  Loomis shrugged that off, too. He took a final drag on his cigarette, then flicked it into the gutter. “If she’s not a call girl, then this case just got a whole lot more complicated, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it did.” I flicked my cigarette into the gutter, too. “At least we’ve got a name in the register. Silas Van Dorn. Written plain as day, too. I know I’ve heard that name before, but I can’t figure out where.”

  “Silas Van Dorn,” Loomis repeated. “Probably a phony. But it’s a fancy name for a dive like this.”

  It was my turn to smile. “That’s what I said.”

  Loomis gave up, digging his hands deep into his pockets. “You picked up the phone on this one, Charlie. That makes you the lead here. Tell me how you want to play it.”

  Loomis was right. I was the lead and I had two choices. I could just fill out the paperwork and let the daytime boys run it down. Or, I could dig into this Silas Van Dorn angle on my own. The name was written too neat in the register. Too obvious to be random, even for an alias. I knew the killer must’ve used it for a particular reason. And I still had a few hours until the end of my shift to find out why.

  Not the daytime detectives. Not even Floyd Loomis. Me. For the girl’s sake. Maybe for the sake of my own pride, too. Because I’d already been laughed at three times that morning. Once by Frank English, once by Ed Hancock, and once by my own partner.

  Maybe I wasn’t much of a homicide man, but I’d been one of the best investigators on the chief’s staff not too long ago. And I was still a cop. It was time to start acting like it.

  I pulled down my tie and took off my suit jacket. I knew my shoulder holster would draw stares, but I didn’t care.

  “Tell Frank I want those pictures developed as soon as possible. Then follow up with the boys who are running down the day clerk. What’s his name?”

  “Clarkson,” Loomis said. “Joe Clarkson. His landlady says he’s been drunk in his room, but our boys’ll straighten him up.”

  “Good.” I slung my jacket over my shoulder and started walking north. I had an idea on who might know who Silas Van Dorn was, but I kept it to myself. What Loomis didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. “I’ll call you in about an hour to see where things stand.”

  Loomis didn’t look pleased. “Where the hell do you think you’re going? The print boys haven’t even gotten here yet.”

  “You wait for them,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ve got some thinking to do.”

  I hadn’t gotten two steps when Loomis called back: “You did say ‘thinking,’ not ‘drinking,’ right, Charlie?” A snappy comeback lived for a moment before it died in my throat. I just kept walking north instead.

  BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS

  FLOYD’S CRACK about my drinking stung the whole walk up Ninth Avenue. I knew that people were starting to talk about my drinking, but I didn’t have a problem with booze. Not yet, anyway. But booze was starting to become an easy answer to a lot of hard questions I was trying to avoid asking myself. How did I fall this far so fast? Why didn’t I have two nickels to rub together anymore? Why did Theresa leave and take my girls with her?

  Questions like that are always hard. But the answer was even harder: Me. I’d gotten myself into this mess. No one else. I’d played the game for damned near twenty years, and made every easy buck I could make. I’d toed the Tammany line my whole
life. More so after I’d gotten my badge. I Archie Doyle’s dirty work for him and let him and his cronies break the law. I gathered and sold information for Doyle and busted the rackets he told me to bust. I leaned on Doyle’s rivals and turned a blind eye to the dead bodies his button man – Terry Quinn – left in his wake.

  I also picked up my envelope from Doyle’s political headquarters every Friday like clockwork. Part of my job was picking up Chief Carmichael’s payoff, too, seeing as how I’d been his link to the Doyle machine and Tammany Hall.

  My conscience never barked once. It purred, just like the Tammany Tiger.

  And why not? The Tiger had run this city since before the Civil War. The Tiger was the meanest cat in the concrete jungle. The Tiger had been very fat, and very comfortable, for a very long time. And very, very old.

  My party ended the moment Doyle got pushed out of New York at the end of a gun. I thought Doyle had his hooks too deep into this city to ever get run off, but I guess I was wrong. He’d gotten shot up pretty bad in a street war with a rival named Howard Rothman. I didn’t think Rothman had the muscle, but again, I was wrong. Doyle took off, Terry Quinn disappeared and so did my partner, Jim Halloran.

  Everyone seemed smart enough to leave town except for me. I stayed and swore I’d help Chief Carmichael find a way to work with the Jews and Italians who’d stepped in to take over Doyle’s rackets. That had been two years ago.

  But Chief Carmichael had other plans. He surprised me and everyone else when he signed on with Roosevelt’s Reformers instead of Lucania and his crowd. I’d known the Chief since we were kids, so I knew he’d always been an enterprising boy. Trouble was, Carmichael’s treachery actually made sense.

  The Reformers had the full weight of an ambitious governor behind them: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Reformers had momentum. Reform was the future. Reform was now. Doyle was gone and Tammany was the past. Tammany was too big and too old to change.

  Carmichael smelled the change in the wind and adjusted his sails accordingly. He signed on with Roosevelt’s Reformers and saved his own ass. His conversion validated their cause and they were all too glad to have him.