Pat Judice arrived the next day with a partner, and they flew back to New York with John Colangelo. Colangelo confessed. He copped a manslaughter plea and was sentenced to not less than fifteen years. He would be just about eligible for his second shot at parole now.
Judice was a ginger-haired man with a dozen years in on the hotshot Homicide Division. Arnie was wondering how he was getting along.
“Pretty good,” Judice said, over the long distance line. “I feel pretty good for a man my age.”
“I don’t know what kind of time you’ve got,” Martinson said, then used up some of it breaking down the Manfred Pfiser case. How they were getting close to a guy named Harry Healy.
“A precinct detective up there’s working something on a known associate of Healy’s, a loser by the name of Jimmy De Steffano. They took a fall together way back when, and this precinct guy, he figures they’re never too far out of each other’s sight.”
Pat Judice said, “What’s the cop’s name?”
“Cop is named Don Kellog and he works out of the, let’s see, Ninth Precinct. The Ninth.”
“Right. Don Kellog, Ninth Precinct.”
“Collared our man not long ago, as it turns out,” Martinson said, “before he made detective.”
“Nice,” Judice said.
“Anyway, I need this Healy soon as I can get him. I’m not squeezing you, but we could really use a hand with this.”
“I’m not making any promises, Arnie, but I’ll help you out if I can.”
“That’s all I’m asking,” Martinson said.
Judice said, “I’ve gotta go rid the streets of crime.”
“Whatever you can do to make this happen,” Martinson was about to say, but by that time he was talking into a disconnected line. Just then, he remembered the name of the hotel where he arrested John Colangelo. It was called the Sao Paulo.
The computer hit thirteen times on the name Alejandro Hernandez. Six of them were incarcerated, and of the two out of seven who were still in their twenties and free for the time being, one was five feet, two inches tall, and the other one was black.
A similar search on the name Alejandro Fernandez spit up eleven names, nine of whom were currently guests of the state, so Lili requested the records of the two on the outside. They were the same height and the same age, but the one who had a criminal record stretching back to his sixteenth birthday had also managed to lose an eye somewhere along the way.
That left one Fernandez, Alejandro, also known as Alex. Born: 7/3/68. Height: 6’2”. Weight: 140. In this photo, he was a doe-eyed kid with close-cropped hair, taken when he got busted for possession of a controlled substance, a quarter-gram of cocaine. The judge suspended his sentence. Lili got into her car and drove to 15th Street in Hialeah, the address listed on his record.
The Medical Examiner’s report stated that if Pfiser was shot while he was standing, then he had been killed by a person shorter than himself. This eliminated everybody but Beaumond. Only they couldn’t ascertain whether Pfiser was standing. In that case, why not Healy for Pfiser? Why not Leo Hannah? And why not Fernandez, Martinson had said, and Lili thought sure, why not?
The house was finished with stucco, like most of the other homes on the block. There was a grapefruit tree in the front yard, and the dug-out circle around the base of its trunk had been filled in with white stones. A line of shrubs banked the front of the place, six squat bushes trimmed to identical height. Two taller ones, shaped to resemble Christmas trees, grew on either end of the row.
The driveway was paved and sealed with tar, giving it a smooth, blue-black sheen. The front stoop was shallow, six feet wide by four feet deep, but evidently, somebody enjoyed watching the world from this perch: A lawn chair leaned against the stucco.
The screen door looked in on a sofa covered with a knitted blanket. A painting of a bullfight’s final stages hung behind it.
Lili pushed the doorbell and got startled by a buzzing twice as loud as it needed to be. The laughtrack of a sitcom was rising and falling somewhere in the house. She was going to hit the buzzer again when Alex Fernandez came into view, tall and lanky, his Soul Train afro intact.
She said, “Alex Fernandez?” She had her badge in her right hand.
The kid tilted his head like he was about to say Yeah, pivoted off his left foot, and disappeared. Lili ran toward the driveway side of the house. Another screen door banged shut. She rounded the corner to see the long-legged Fernandez scrambling over a chain link fence, his feet moving as he hit the sod in his neighbor’s back yard. Lili took off after him.
She hopped the same set of fences, her gun flapping against her hip in its holster. She yelled for him to stop, that she was the police. That was stupid. He knew exactly who she was.
He continued in a southerly direction, loping through a second set of yards. Lili felt confident on the hard pavement of the street, the asphalt and concrete, where the footing was certain and it was easier to run. Fernandez had veered east on 13th Street, and Lili caught a flash of one sneakered foot before it vanished around a corner. She followed it.
He cleared another fence and landed in a yard guarded by a snarling German Shepherd. Drool flew from its snapping jowls. Fernandez raced the animal to the back fence and won, the dog leaving all four of its feet in a last lunge the kid beat by some miracle.
Lili ran alongside the fence. She was closing the gap. Her breathing was deep and steady. If Fernandez wanted to run all day, that’s what she would do. She yelled, Stop, Police a couple more times in a couple more places, and as he hit 11th Street, he showed signs of weakening. His arms pumped crazily. His head lolled.
He came to another fence. Spooked by his confrontation with the dog, he dashed past the fronts of a few houses. Lili gained ground. “Your time’s up,” she yelled. “Where’re you running to?”
He headed down an alley. Lili was right behind him.
Coming to 9th Street, he pulled up short and shot a look back. He took two steps to his right, kicked it into gear, and broke east again, toward Palm Avenue. The light was against him. Two lanes, both directions, heavy traffic.
He dashed into the intersection, clearing the northbound vehicles. Lili got hung up on the curb. She yelled one last time for Alex Fernandez to stop. Looking over his shoulder, he sprinted off the safety island and directly into the path of a late-model Buick. They collided with a crunch of steel and bone. Fernandez got knocked ten feet into the air, and flipped a reverse somersault, his ankles bent back over his head, forming an inverted U. She was close enough to see the shock on his face. Thinking about it later, Lili would’ve sworn they made eye contact while he was still in the air.
He hit the street with a smack. The driver of the truck that ran over his legs and snagged him and dragged him had less than a second to hit the brakes, which he did, with an air-piercing screech. It sounded like a lullaby next to the scream he let go of when he jumped out of his truck and saw what he had done.
Chapter Fifteen
Sweet.
Oh yeah, this was sweet.
Just as sweet as sweet could be, live from Hialeah, Chopper Lens pointing straight down on the corner where Alex Fernandez had been hit by two cars and killed. Cut to a ground shot, and a picture of Alex’s mother, her wide mouth wailing one unbroken, dry-eyed sob. The frame went shaky after a few seconds, one of Fernandez’s uncles, Leo thought, taking a swing at the cameraman.
Leo felt sorry for Alex. He felt sorry for Alex’s mom, for his sister, and for the uncle. On the other hand, the hand that counted, he didn’t have to worry any more about Alex blabbing to the cops. He’d done the right thing, waiting him out. Fernandez was dead and Leo didn’t have a thing, not one thing, to do with it.