“Yo,” came a voice from the alley, and in the next minute a grim-faced man in rolled-up shirtsleeves and a striped tie emerged from the shadows. He wore wire-rimmed glasses under a scissored spray of silvery Phil Donahue hair, and his manner was intelligent, if not downright bookish. Into the back pocket of his pressed pants he slipped a long, skinny steno pad, of the type carried by detectives. “I heard you were looking for the primary, and I don’t like people yelling at my scenes.” Despite his gruffness, he extended a hand. “Bob Needleman.”
“Sorry.” Bennie introduced herself. Her handshake wasn’t as firm as usual.
“Kovich and Brinkley are on day tour this month, but they told me about you.” It was too dark to determine his eye color, but he had an easy grin. “You’re the famous Bennie Rosato.”
“Guilty.” Bennie couldn’t manage a smile. “Robert St. Amien was my client. My friend.”
“So I hear. My condolences.”
So it is really true. Bennie had hoped he’d say that there’d been some mistake, and she entertained that fantasy for a moment longer. “Oh, sorry, the victim of this murder is Robert Amien, not Robert St. Amien! Oops!”
“I admire your work, Ms. Rosato. The civil rights work, not the police cases.”
“Fair enough. Thanks.” Bennie peeked over his shoulder to the shadows. “Can I see what happened to him? It was a stabbing, they said on the news.”
“You’ve been to scenes before.” It sounded like a statement, but the detective waited for an answer, and she nodded. He pursed his lips and took her arm gently. “All right then. This one isn’t pretty. Keep your cool. If you gotta leave, leave. You know what Kovich always says, ‘Leave or heave.’”
She nodded, noting the kindness in his eyes, which turned out to be light blue. She sensed that Robert would be in good hands. They edged forward, going into the alley, where a ring of personnel clustered in the middle. The coroner, an older man wearing a yarmulke over a balding head, was kneeling over the middle of the alley, and Bennie recognized him: Dr. Feldman, one of the best on rotation. His two assistants, both black men, flanked him, bent over, working. They’d be finishing the tasks they performed at the crime scene, bagging the hands to preserve trace evidence under the fingernails and making final notations on the position and condition of the body.
Robert’s body. Bennie looked away.
The alley couldn’t have been more than three feet wide, with a concrete floor that dipped in the center, presumably sloping down to a drain somewhere. A tiny snake of greasy water lay stagnant in the gulley, its surface shiny with oil and littered with a striped straw, a few cigarette butts, and an old Daily News sports section, and Bennie tried not to think about Robert lying among the trash. He doesn’t belong here. The alley reeked of rotting garbage from rusty blue BFI Dumpsters that overflowed at its head, and its walls were lined with old red brick, its color dimmed with age and grime, its mortar grayed and crumbling, granulated. The activity in the alley had stirred up its dirt, soot, and silt, and particulates leavened the air, sparkling as they floated into the exacting beams of the klieglight. It must have been why the light looked foggy at a distance. Bennie felt her brain returning to function.
“What happened?” she heard herself say in a hushed tone, even though she didn’t know if Detective Needleman was listening. She wasn’t sure she was addressing him, or anyone at all.
“He was stabbed to death. We looked but didn’t recover the knife. Same MO as that murder, last month, you heard of it. He was about the same age, fiftyish, from Belgium, it happened two blocks away.”
Bennie nodded, sickened.
“This body was found by a Temple kid walking by, out with his buddies, he called on his cell.” Needleman checked his watch, pressing on a tiny button so its purple numbers glowed in the dark. “That was about ten-thirty. An hour ago, at this point. Tentative time of death was nine o’clock, but that’s only tentative. We found the vic’s wallet beside him, credit cards and cash gone. Watch gone, too. And a ring, I think. Had a slight indent on the ring finger. Same as the guy from Belgium.”
Bennie flashed on St. Amien’s wedding band. The simple band, worn by a widower. She bit her lip so it wouldn’t tremble.
“Cause of death, also unofficial, exsanguination. He bled to death. This is all confidential from the media, by the way. I was assuming you could be trusted, from what Brinkley told me.” Needleman looked over for verification, and Bennie nodded. She knew it wasn’t procedure for him to be talking to her so openly, or even to take the time. Kovich and Brinkley must have given her very good press. Needleman was saying, “The way I figure it, and it’s a working theory at this point, is that this is another tourist got picked on. Whoever’s doin’ this is taking these tourists as easy prey and robbing them. Either your friend wouldn’t give up the goods when they asked, or they killed him anyway.”
Bennie tried to picture it, then tried not to. Her gaze remained glued to the bent backs of the coroner and his assistants. Steeling herself for the moment they’d step aside.
“It won’t do the tourism business any good, and it doesn’t help CompStat either.” The detective was referring to the crime statistics the Philadelphia police had instituted under the now-legendary Commissioner John Timoney. “Now with these two murders, it throws off the numbers. Shame of it is, we decreased street crime in the Center City District last year by adding beat cops. You would think it would help with these tourists.” Detective Needleman was thinking aloud, and Bennie felt reassured to see that he was questioning even his own theory. Not every detective was secure enough to do that. He continued, “But I guess not, and these foreigners, they’re easy marks.”
“How would somebody know he’s a tourist, just by looking?” Bennie asked, hearing an unnecessary sharpness in her tone. She hated the term “foreigner” and thought about how bigotry had hurt St. Amien. In the lawsuit, and now. “Sorry, I guess I’m being oversensitive, and I think it gives street thugs a lot of credit. And I don’t know why somebody would be running around killing foreigners.”
“S’okay, these are all good questions, and I don’t mind being backstopped. My partner’s on disability and I’m solo until he comes back.” Detective Needleman waved the apology away. “Foreigners, or tourists, are easy marks because they have lots of dough on them, and they don’t expect violence the way we do. They don’t take the precautions. They walk in dumb places, not paying attention. They think they’re safe here, like they are at home.”
Bennie ignored the irony. We get killed in the streets, and foreigners are the crazy ones. “So how can you tell St. Amien wasn’t from here? Could you have told, with Robert?”
“Sure. He smoked those weird cigarettes, he was smoking one when he got hit. Also, from the cut of his clothes, his expensive suit. He dressed too nice for here, especially for Philly.”
Bennie managed a smile that only made her sadder. That much was true. Robert stuck out in this dressed-down town.
“He had very polished shoes, a little formal. Lace-ups, and I never saw that kind here. A fancy silk tie. You could tell he was different, not from here, even if you couldn’t tell he was European. Same thing with the Belgian, and he was an international banker.”