Fingerprints and photographs do not identify a dead person. They only provide means of identification, assuming the unfortunate deceased had a police record or served in the armed forces or worked for municipal, state, or federal governments or marched in anti-war protests; and/or further assuming that a friend or relative, when looking at a photograph, will jump up from his seat and shout, 'Eureka, that's Harry!' It's nice when a corpse has a tattoo on the right biceps, a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset perhaps, with below it, in blue and red ink, the words 'My name is Harry Lewis.' Very few corpses are that obliging, though occasionally a tattoo will provide some insight into a dead man's past, or even his occupation. It is no secret, for example, that many tattooed men were, at one time in their lives, sailors. (But then again, if a man had been in the Navy, his fingerprints would be on file and there'd be no need for going the circuitous tattoo route.) Besides, there are even better ways of guessing at a dead man's occupation.
In many respects a dead and naked human being is no more easily identifiable than a slab of beef hanging in a butcher shop. The human being, however, does possess some physical characteristics that differentiate it from the beast of the field. Like hands and fingernails. A steer does not have hands and fingernails. Moreover, a steer does not use his hands and fingernails (which he doesn't have in the first place) to perform certain jobs linked with societal development. The human being does. A skilled medical examiner can therefore make some pretty shrewd occupational determinations based on the shape, length, condition, and trim of the fingernails as well as the calluses or lack of calluses on the fingers or other parts of the hand.
A workman's fingernails may be chipped, or caked with traces of his specialty - brick dust, plaster, soil, paint - and will rarely be manicured. A typist, pianist, court stenographer, or masseuse will definitely not have long fingernails. A man who repairs shoes will have a characteristic callus on his left thumb. An engraver will have a similarly identifiable callus on his right thumb. (Steers sometimes develop calluses on their hoofs, but these are caused by repeatedly pawing the ground and cannot be used as a means of establishing the occupation of the slaughtered animal.)
In truth, none of the M.E.'s career guesses serve as much more than guides to the detective in the field; if a pharmacist will characteristically have brittle fingernails, you can turn up a corpse with brittle fingernails who happens to be a pimp. Or a motion-picture producer. Or an airlines pilot. Or a ventriloquist. But a couple of guys with six corpses on their hands needed all the help they could get, and were grateful for whatever the lab or the medical examiner's office gave them.
Which in this case was nothing.
The six bodies in the ditch achieved a nice racial and ethnic balance. Three of them were black, two of them were Hispanic, and one of them was white. None of them carried any identifying scars or tattoos. None of them had hand or fingernail characteristics that could identify them as lacemakers or garage mechanics. None of them had any scrapings under their finger nails that proved decisive in linking them to an occupation. Worst of all, none of them had any fingerprint records. For all intents and purposes, they were all still as anonymous as the photographs taken of them, and the detectives still had no clue as to who had killed them or why.
Statement of one Randall M. Nesbitt made this fourteenth day of January at 10:55 P.M. in the detective squadroom of the 87th Precinct on Grover Avenue in Isola. Randall Nesbitt freely and voluntarily offered the following information in the presence of Detective 2nd/Grade Stephen Louis Carella, Detective 3rd/Grade Bertram A. Kling, and attorney appointed for aforesaid Randall Nesbitt, Harold Finch of the law firm of Finch, Golden & Horowitz of 119 Cabot Street, Isola. Having been duly warned of his rights, and having waived his privilege to remain silent, Randall Nesbitt replied as follows to Detective Carella's question: Why did you do it, Randy?
Why? What do you mean 'why'? I'm the president, that's why. I'm the elected leader, I can do what I want. I can order a hit when I want to, and if the orders ain't followed, there's trouble. I don't have to discuss the hit with nobody. I know what's best for my people, and I do what's best, and they listen to me, and they carry out the orders. The decisions I make ain't always popular, but I don't care about that, I'm not running no popularity contest. I'm doing what's best, and I'm the only one who can decide what's best because I'm the only one has all the facts at his fingertips. Those people were the enemy. I ordered the hit because I was trying to make peace.
Lots of guys in the clique, they think it's great to be president. An easy job, you know? But it ain't. It's a lonely job, and it's a job where the decisions you got to make ain't always understood right away. But I stand behind all the decisions I make, and I'm willing to take responsibility for them, even though I don't have to answer to nobody. I got my negotiator, and I got my war counselor, and they're two top men who I listen to, but even they know that what I say goes. I listen, I weigh the information, and then I decide. And it was me who decided to make the hit.
It was a complicated hit because there were two different cliques involved. The reason for the hit was to make peace between them and us. We'd been rapping since October, meetings down our clubhouse, meetings in their clubhouses, what did it accomplish? Nothing. You can talk only so long. After that, you got to make a show of strength. You got to show them who's the most powerful. Okay, I decided to show them. As it turned out, it didn't solve nothing because we later had to take even stricter measures. But I think it gave them reason to hesitate, you know? I think it made them look on us with respect. It made them say to themselves, 'This guy is the president of the most powerful clique in the neighborhood. We better not fool around with him, because he's not kidding. He says he wants peace, and he means it. That's what the first hit must've made them think. After that, we had to get tougher.
'There are guys in the clique who don't understand why I did what I did. They think it's easy. They didn't understand the first hit, and they still don't understand all the other things that happened. I'll tell you something. When you got these difficult decisions to make, and you finally make them, then you expect the people you're leading to support you, you know what I mean? I mean, man, these are your own people, you dig? They ain't supposed to raise objections, they ain't supposed to say this or that or the other thing. They're supposed to understand that I'm the president, and they're supposed to say, 'Right on, man. Even if we don't like what you're doing, then maybe it's because we don't understand it yet. You go right ahead, man, you got our support.' That's the way it's supposed to be. Instead, there were these cats on the inner council, they started complaining right away, the minute I told them the hit was already accomplished.
That was after Chingo reported back to me and told me he'd carried the bodies down to Isola, and dumped them in an open ditch on the North Side. So the council raised a stink. Like, man, who was asking them for their opinion? I almost ordered seven lashes. There's a club pole if you don't obey orders, you get seven lashes from each and every one of the members. Who was the council to question what I done? I swear, they're like children, you know what I mean? You got to take them by the hand and lead them every place, they wouldn't know how to wipe their own noses without me. Why am I the president? Why did they give me a mandate? To lead them, right? Okay, so I was leading them, and I wasn't about to take no back talk about how come I ordered a hit, and didn't I think it was going to just prolong matters, and maybe provoke other hits from the enemy against us, or bring down the fuzz, or whatever. I wasn't concerned with none of that. I was concerned with making peace.