He strolled over. Like me, he was in a trenchcoat and hat. Mine cost more. We taxpayers are stingy bastards, except where we’re concerned.
“Roger Kraft has a record,” Pat said. “Armed robbery down south. Series of smash-and-grabs at... you’ll love this... gas stations. Long time ago. After that he was in the service, motor pool guy.”
“Working for Ernie Bilko probably,” I said.
“He owned this shop,” Pat said, nodding behind us. “But I don’t think he went straight. Robbery Division suspects him of being the driver for a crew that’s been hitting small banks upstate.”
“And now he’s gone,” I said, “and mankind will just have to bear up.”
“You ever see anything like that?”
“The Ferrari F40? Just when it clipped Vincent Colby.”
“No. I mean the way that guy died. His fucking chest is sunk in like Popeye punched him.”
“A fist didn’t do that, even with spinach. Two fists didn’t do it, either. I got no idea what did, unless the killer had a battering ram in his pocket.”
I’d already filled Pat in about Owens at the Colby brokerage. He’d said nothing then but the back of his mind must’ve been working on it.
He said, “You think this Owens character hired Kraft to kill his friend?”
“I think Owens hired Kraft to fine-tune his car. And I think if somebody did hire this guy to kill the Colby kid, they took advantage of how little Owens used the vehicle to borrow it for the job. Unless Kraft was just out joy-riding.”
“Just a coincidence that the Owens vehicle was what he was working on.”
“I didn’t say that. Come on, Pat — you know how us detectives hate coincidence. There could be a connection. Somebody might have recommended Kraft to Owens. I mean, this isn’t a part of the city Yuppies generally hang out in. How would William J. Owens stumble onto this place?”
“The Yellow Pages maybe?”
“I doubt Kraft was even in the Yellow Pages. This looks like a sub rosa operation.”
“Not big enough to be a chop shop.”
I frowned. “No, but if Kraft had a reputation for doing good work on high-end rides like the F40, he might get access to machines that could really go, for use with that bank-heist crew you mentioned. You need to talk to your contacts in Robbery and see if the M.O. includes getaway cars with impressive pedigrees.”
Pat was nodding. “Sometimes you think like a detective.”
“You cops ought to try it.”
Pat’s radio squawked again. More talk, more listening. When he clicked off and returned the handset to its slot, he made a note in his pad and then came over, his expression grim.
He planted himself in front of me and said, “You’re not going to like this.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Seems something didn’t smell good inside Casey Shannon’s apartment. The super called it in and our guys broke in and found Shannon there.”
“Not in Florida,” I said. “Not shacked up with an old honey.”
“No. Dead on the floor for a week, anyway. And here’s the part you really won’t like.”
“I already don’t like it.”
“I know. But get this — somebody caved his chest in.”
Chapter Seven
Tudor City, between Grand Central and the United Nations, was an island of apartment buildings within the island of Manhattan. In the heart of midtown, the cluster of apartments had everything — two lovely parks, great shopping, swell dining. Also the rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment where Lt. Casey Shannon had lived for twenty years, ever since his wife divorced him and he’d moved here from Queens.
The apartment had everything, too — hardwood floors, a separate foyer, a good-size living room, a full kitchen, a bathroom with windows (on the quiet north side of the building) and its one bedroom was damn near as big as the living room. One of a hundred-and-fifty apartments in a building built in 1929 (before the Crash), with a doorman and a laundry room, these digs had it all.
Everything but a living occupant.
Shannon was sitting on the floor with his head slumped, his back against the couch that had stopped his fall. He was in white blue-flecked pajamas under a maroon robe and wearing slippers; his chest looked sunken, a terrible blow of some kind having created a crater that sucked in the fabric of its garments, twisting the cloth like the striations of a spent bullet.
A big damn spent bullet.
But there was no firearm involved in this homicide. And for that ghastly indentation to have been the work of a fist, or even two fists, it would require an Andre-the-Giant-size killer.
When Pat, hat in hand, looming over the grisly corpse, said quietly, “Shit,” it was more like a prayer than a curse.
The windows were already up, to air out the smell of death, the job not yet done.
I said, “I didn’t know Casey as well as you, buddy. I mostly go back to when he was working with you ten, fifteen years ago. But I knew him enough to know he was a hell of a cop.”
“The best.” Pat gave me a hard look. “This one’s mine, Mike.”
“The case you mean? Or the kill?”
“Both.”
I shook my head. “No promises, pal. If I get my hands on who did this, I’ll take him out. You know I will.”
The gray-blue eyes were ice cold. “I’m asking you a favor on this one, Mike. This time it’s my friend some son of a bitch slaughtered. This is my Jack Williams.”
Jack had stepped in front of a Jap bayonet and it cost him an arm but saved my ass. Back here at home in the glorious post-war world, a cold-blooded murderer cut Jack down. And I had taken my revenge by way of delivering a slug in the killer’s belly, just the way Jack got it. It hadn’t been pretty and I still revisited it in my nightmares, but I could do it again. Easily.
“I’ll try, Pat. If I get there before you, I’ll save the bastard for you. But you’re not me. You don’t have the stomach for it that I do.”
“Oh, I won’t kill who did this,” he said. “With the death penalty gone, what I want is to watch him squirm in court, suffer public shame and humiliation, his every evil act dragged out and shoved in his face, then spend the rest of his sorry life behind bars, being some animal’s bitch.”
I shrugged. “To each his own.”
We had the place to ourselves for the moment. Two uniforms were in the hall on the door and the forensics team wasn’t there yet. I prowled the place, like I was walking point in the jungle.
It was in some ways a typical bachelor pad. Lots of guys are slobs and live in a mess of a place where a woman’s touch would have made it habitable. Casey was a thorough and meticulous cop and that had been the way he lived. This pad was neat as the proverbial pin, and whether he vacuumed and dusted himself or had a cleaning woman in, the result was a glimpse into the orderly mind of a top-notch investigator.
A Yuppie with a little dough would have salivated at the very thought of getting this place at twice the rent Shannon had been paying. Their interior decoration would have been far different, however — Casey had clearly furnished the place when he moved in a couple decades ago, raiding the showroom at J.C. Penney or Sears. The pictures on the walls were infrequent and were either hunting scenes or photos of his two grown children and four grandchildren. President Reagan’s picture beamed over a vintage wooden file cabinet.