Deadly Enterprise Page 4

  “He did the same thing to some of the other small business owners in the neighborhood. Then Raul got curious and opened up one of the boxes.”

  “Was it drugs?” Ray asked, interrupting the story.

  “Shit yeah, it was drugs, man. We knew it was drugs all along, but we didn’t need to know it. Raul just had to look. And then he started talking to the others and he wanted them all to agree to tell the truth and call the cops. Well, somebody must have gotten scared because we got a visit from Ricky and he was not happy. Raul tells him he don’t know what he’s talking about. I was scared, but Raul said not to worry and that I should go ahead and make my trip home to see my mother in the hospital. So, I went on Thursday, and then this happens.”

  Jason was sympathetic, but he knew that saying “I’m sorry,” was not going to help, so he stayed in interrogation mode. “Could you identify Mr. Ricky if you saw him again?”

  “Sure. I ain’t afraid of him and his bullies.”

  “Do you know where he lives, or have a telephone number, or any way of getting in touch with him?”

  “No, man. He never gave out any information. He just came around in person when he wanted to talk or collect his money. He had a few of his gang dudes with him most of the time. They’re the ones who dropped off the boxes. We never tried to get to him. Why would we want to?”

  “Fair enough,” Jason said, hanging his head slightly. “Do you have any of the boxes now?”

  “I don’t think so. We did one on Wednesday and it’s never more than one a week.”

  “When does Mr. Ricky usually come around to collect his money?”

  “It’s usually on Thursdays. That’s when Raul got killed, so I guess they got their money.”

  “What time does he come around?”

  “Well, usually pretty late – always after dark.”

  “Do you know if he visits any of the other local businesses on Thursday nights?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know for sure. I don’t go looking. I’m here in my store.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rosario. I’m sure that this information will help us catch these guys.”

  Chapter 6 – Every Death is Tragic

  Monday, Feb. 11

  ON MONDAY MORNING, while he was still waking up with his first cup of oily coffee, Jason got an email from the crime lab and called for Ray to come over to his desk. They had a positive ID on their Jane Doe floater. The second set of fingerprints Dr. McNeill had extracted after her body had dried out a bit had come back as a match twice – once from the NYPD’s own database, and once from the Seattle PD. Both reports identified her as Christine Barker. The local rap sheet showed her having been arrested and booked three times since November. Twice for petty theft and once for theft and drug possession. All three times she was processed and released on a bench summons, although she had blown off her hearing on the first charge and there was a pending warrant for her arrest, which could now be removed. She had been identified as a drug addict and referred to a city-funded rehab clinic, but there were no records of her attending any program activities.

  The Seattle report was pretty similar.

  Jason looked up the email address for the Seattle PD to see if they could shine some additional light on Miss Barker’s past and fired off an inquiry, not expecting a quick response. He also sent a note to Mike and forwarded him the reports. He figured Mike would have more interest, and time, than he had at that moment.

  Ten minutes later, Jason, Ray, and Captain Sullivan were huddled in the conference room. Sully gazed longingly at the empty credenza against the far wall where a plate of bagels would normally sit. Its absence made him even grumpier than normal.

  “The dead girl, Christine Barker, was 20 years old,” Jason explained. “According to the Seattle PD file, Christine was from a small town in Northwest Washington called Port Angeles. She was a known drug addict who had been arrested multiple times for drug possession, petty theft, and solicitation. She had been referred to rehab in Seattle once but may not have actually attended. She fell off the radar in Seattle about three months ago after she failed to appear for a desk warrant.”

  “Well, that’s about that, then,” Sully said dismissively. “She’s a druggie and a hooker and she OD’d and ended up in the river. I don’t want you to spend any more time on this, Dickson. You and Ray are on this bodega killing. That’s your priority.”

  “We understand, Captain. But–”

  “But nothing! Don’t get distracted. That’s an order.”

  “So, are you closing the Christine Barker case, Sully?”

  Sullivan scowled, but knew that if he ordered Dickson to close the case, Dickson would include that in his report and his case disposition summary. Sullivan’s boss would ask him about it, and Sully did not really want to explain why he ordered a case closed one day after they got an ID on the victim. “No, Detective Dickson, I am not closing it. But you should be able to get it closed without much more time or effort, right?”

  Dickson nodded, but said nothing as Sullivan rose and stomped out of the conference room. Jason looked at Ray and shrugged. “The M.E. thinks the death is suspicious and that’s good enough for me to do at least a little digging. You have any problem with that?”

  “None at all, Jason.”

  “Good. Like the captain said, this is not a priority compared to the Rosario case, but let’s see if we have anything on Miss Barker since she arrived in the city. Ask records to take a look for us.”

  Ray nodded as he picked up his Starbucks cup and left the room. Jason sat for a moment, trying to put a finger on why the dead woman’s case bothered him. She was nobody, a runaway from Seattle who had landed in the Big Apple, into the drug and vice culture which eventually killed her. It was not an unusual story, and did not merit much attention, just like Sully said. That was what bothered him – that she was getting the brush-off because her death was routine. The death of a twenty-year-old woman should never be routine.

  Jason didn’t have much time to wax philosophical. When he got back to his desk, he had a message waiting for him. He didn’t immediately recognize the name, Manuel Hwong, but as soon as he returned the call, he remembered that the man was one of the store owners near the Bronx bodega where Raul Rosario was killed. He was reluctant to talk on the phone, but was willing to meet Jason at the precinct house. While Jason waited for Mr. Hwong, he reviewed reports from the Vice department on drug cases that involved prostitution and deaths. He was discouraged by the number of hits for his search, but after narrowing down the cases to exclude Staten Island and the Bronx and looking only at the past two years, the number was a manageable, if still discouraging, twenty-three. He scanned each of the cases once, hoping that something would stand out. After finishing his first pass through the files, he went back and started again, this time reading much more carefully and making notes on a notepad.

  After three hours and no real progress, Jason’s desk phone rang and the sergeant at the front reception desk informed him that Mr. Hwong was there to see him. Jason brought him up to the fifth-floor conference room, where they would have a little privacy. The conference room featured a large whiteboard that took up most of the wall opposite the door. In the upper right-hand corner, Jason noticed the outline of a black square that had been drawn there so many times that the dry eraser could not entirely eliminate the remnants.

  Mr. Hwong sat down hesitantly and clasped his hands in front of him on the conference table. He looked tired and somewhat withered, with silver hair and deep wrinkles on his face and hands. His dark, almond-shaped eyes were set deep into their sockets, but he managed to appear alert even while the rest of his body sagged. Jason figured him to be over seventy.

  “Can I get you some coffee or soda?” Jason offered. The man shook his head silently. “What kind of shop do you have?” Jason asked.

  “Dry cleaner,” Hwong responded. “An officer came to the store and interviewed me. That’s how I got your number – he gave me your card and as
ked me to call if I remembered anything important.”

  “Of course,” Jason said calmly, trying to make the old man feel comfortable. “So, what prompted you to call today? What did you want to tell me?”

  The man ran his fingers through his white hair and pursed his lips, as if reluctant to start. “I – well, I just – I don’t want you to think that Mr. Rosario was the only one.”

  “Only one of what?” Jason asked.

  “The only one of us who he came to.”

  “He? Who is he? Who do you mean?”

  The dry cleaner looked at Jason with a puzzled expression. “Him, the guy who came around. The guy who killed Mr. Rosario.”

  Jason stared at the man, trying to figure out whether he could be lying. He could not imagine a reason why he would leave his dry cleaning shop, come to the police station in Manhattan, and tell this kind of story, which could get him into a heap of trouble if the guys who killed his fellow business owner were the kind of bad guys that Jason suspected. No, there didn’t seem to be any reason for the man to lie, and nothing about his demeanor or body language suggested he was. Jason sat forward in his chair and looked directly into Mr. Hwong’s eyes as he asked his next question. “Did that guy come to visit you, too?”

  The dry cleaner hesitated, then nodded his head slightly and whispered, “Yes.”

  Over the next twenty minutes, Mr. Hwong described a thin white man who matched the description of “Ricky” given by Luis Rosario. The man and his thugs had threatened to damage the dry cleaning store unless Mr. Hwong went along with the program. Different men came to drop off boxes of “shirts” and then other men would come in and ask for the boxes, paying large sums of cash for the exchange. The dry cleaner got to keep $500 from each transaction. It was clearly the same operation.

  “Why didn’t you go to the police sooner?” Jason asked, knowing what the answer was going to be.

  The dry cleaner just shook his head. “I either get the five hundred and keep my mouth shut, or my shop burns down. I was not doing anything illegal.”

  Jason just stared. “Did the little white guy threaten to burn down your store?”

  “Not exactly, but I knew that’s what would happen. I’m not stupid. That’s why I never looked inside the boxes. Maybe they were just really heavy shirts. I don’t know. I just handled the boxes and took the money.”

  “Alright,” Jason sighed, sensing that the dry cleaner was getting anxious to leave. “Thank you for coming forward, Mr. Hwong. We really appreciate it when citizens help our investigations.”

  “Am I going to be in trouble now?” the man said apprehensively.

  “I don’t think so,” Jason soothed. “I’m certainly not going to be arresting you. As long as you cooperate, I think you’ll be fine.”

  The man exhaled and relaxed noticeably. “Okay. Thank you. What do I do if someone brings me a new box?”

  “You don’t have one now?”

  “No. Last one was picked up two weeks ago.”

  Jason thought about that for a moment before responding. “You just do the same as always, but call me and let me know.”

  “I don’t want to end up dead like Mr. Rosario,” the man said, now looking nervous again.

  “I get it. We won’t put you in any danger. We will follow the man when he leaves your shop and arrest him somewhere else. He will not know that it was you who told us.”

  “I hope you are right.” The dry cleaner stood up and turned to leave, without offering to shake Jason’s hand.

  Jason went back to his desk in the bullpen and sat for a few minutes, pondering the significance of what he had just heard. Then he called out, “Ray! Meet me in Sully’s office, now.” He saw Ray wave to indicate that he had heard. Jason needed to brief his partner and his captain before writing up his notes for the case file.

  Ж Ж Ж

  The next day, an article appeared in The New York Times about a young girl who had been found dead floating in the East River. The story was written by Dexter Peacock, a veteran investigative reporter who had been rooting around in city politics and crime issues for a decade. He was known to be a bulldog who would not let go of a story once he got his teeth into it. He also had a history with Mike Stoneman and Jason Dickson. Peacock wrote that the medical examiner, Doctor Michelle McNeill, had raised questions about the cause of death, and the police were treating the case as a homicide, although there was no information available about how the investigation was going. Peacock had obtained the girl’s identity, and the story was mostly focused on the hard-luck tale of a young woman who left a small town in the state of Washington and came to the Big Apple, where she met her untimely demise. He linked the case to many other stories of runaway teens and the drug and sex culture into which they were often pulled. It was not an attractive portrayal of New York City, and it did not speak well of the NYPD.

  The article caused Commissioner Ward to toss his Times in the trash without doing the crossword puzzle. It caused Captain Sullivan to explode into a series of expletives that made his wife blush. Jason called Ray, then called Mike. The three of them all agreed to ignore the article. Michelle cut out the clipping and saved it, because she was mentioned by name, and she always kept a record of when her name appeared in The Times.

  Chapter 7 – Recruiting Season

  THE NIGHT LOCK-UP IN BROOKLYN HEIGHTS was a buffet of human misery. Drug addicts arrested for possession or petty theft, men slowly sobering up after bar fights, gang members still flexing their muscles, and street people who were glad of a warm night’s sleep all huddled together in a space too tight for the humanity squeezed inside.

  In sight, but out of reach, was the female cell. Young women arrested for solicitation at one end, keeping their distance from the drug users at the other, a few moaning remorselessly through their withdrawal pains.

  Three gray-haired officers sat around a gray steel desk at the front of the precinct house, behind the security door that separated them from the outer lobby and the general public. They had long since resigned themselves to the futility of the system. Most of their guests would be arraigned, charged, and then released back into the dark underbelly of Brooklyn. Their crimes were not severe; they would be no danger to the public if they were released. That was the theory, anyway.

  The three cops were huddled around a small television set, intent on the Rangers game. The Blue Shirts were beating the Pittsburgh Penguins with only a few minutes left in the third period. The door buzzed open – it was an unwelcome interruption. The officer in charge looked up. Sergeant Fitzsimmons was a man less than a year away from retirement, who’d taken the night shift desk assignment as a way of avoiding any real police action. He made eye contact with the officer who’d walked through the door.

  The man was short, with large, bulging eyes. He was wearing a non-descript beige sports coat and khaki trousers, with his thin black tie hung loosely around his neck. He passed Fitzsimmons, giving him a weary nod.

  “Evenin’ Sarge,” he added in an equally weary voice.

  Fitzsimmons nodded back and wracked his brain to identify the man. He’d been buzzed in, so he must be a cop; his clothes said he was a detective, and he strode in with the confidence of a man who knew where he was going. He was familiar, but Fitzsimmons couldn’t place him. He shrugged, too tired and too disinterested, and turned his attention back to the hockey game. The Rangers were up by a goal, and were on a power play.

  The short man in the beige jacket walked to the back of the holding area, checked in with the duty officer, showed his ID, and asked to talk to one of the female detainees, a young woman named Yolanda Rodriguez. The officer wrote down the visitor’s name and ID in the log book. Yolanda looked up on hearing her name.

  She rose quickly from the hard bench, balancing carefully on four-inch heels. She had long, dark hair with reddish highlights that hung halfway down her back, cut into bangs on her forehead. Layers of dark blue and black makeup surrounded her eyes, smeared near the corners. She
wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she was thin, with long legs exposed beneath a short black leather skirt. Her breasts benefitted from a push-up lace bodice, which was covered by a thin black chemise. Her nails were long and painted blood red. She could hardly look more like a hooker, which was exactly what she was, according to the booking report.

  The officer escorted her to an interrogation room – a windowless space containing a metal table with grommets where dangerous prisoners were secured with handcuffs. Yolanda was not dangerous. She sat, unchained, and waited. This wasn’t her first time; she wasn’t nervous. A female social worker would offer her help and make threats about prison if she was caught again. She would be warned about her drug use and how much danger she put herself in on the streets. She’d heard it all before.

  The door creaked open and a man in a beige jacket and thin tie sat down in the chair opposite Yolanda. She was surprised to see a man. She was curious – and suspicious. He had no file folder and no note pad – even more suspicious. He stared at Yolanda as if he were evaluating a new car. After two silent minutes, she felt awkward. The pressure mounted. She shifted uncomfortably in her stiff, unyielding chair. This was different.

  “Are you happy, Yolanda?” The man spoke in a raspy voice with a heavy New York accent.

  “Huh?” she grunted. “Who are you?”

  “I’m someone who solves problems, and you have a problem.”

  “Oh yeah? What problem do I have?” Yolanda crossed her thin arms across her chest and looked defiantly across the table.