It was 12:40. Karp got up and said, “I’ll be there. It still sounds great.”
Lerner said, “Enthusiasm, that’s what we like. Oh, to be fifty again! Good luck.” He patted Karp on the shoulder and left.
Karp took his yellow pad and his suit jacket, left his office, and picked up the case folder from the smiling secretary. He went down the hall and, on his way out, told Walter Leonard to meet him at the Tombs at one. Leonard was in his late fifties, a gray, quiet civil servant, who as a stenographer for the Homicide Bureau during the last twenty-five years had recorded more tales of illicit slaughter than Agatha Christie.
The Tombs was in the building next door. Karp picked up a couple of hot dogs and a root beer from a Sabrett cart and sat down on a bench across the street to read the case folder. It was thin and told him little he did not already know from Joe Lerner’s briefing.
After lunch he went into the Tombs, a noble institution serving New Yorkers badly since 1838, met Leonard, went through a series of clanging doors, smelt the smell, heard the noise, felt the feelings that most visitors feel in jail (how horrible to cage men like beasts, how marvelous that they’re in here and not out on the street), and arrived at the interview room at just one o’clock.
The room was about ten by twelve, city green, furnished with a battered long table and hard chairs, like the boardroom of a long-bankrupt corporation. Slocum and Dunbar were already there. Fred Slocum was a beefy, florid man in a plaid blazer and sky-blue polyester pants. He had one of the last crew cuts in New York, a reddish fuzz like an unusually hairy peach. He was smoking a Tampa Nugget.
Karp shook hands all around and in a few moments a guard brought Donald Walker into the room. Walker looked shrunken in his yellow prisoners’ jumpsuit; he’d lost the touch of baby fat in his face and his tan complexion was grayish. He nodded at Dunbar and sat down. When everyone was seated, Karp began.
“Mister Walker, my name is Roger Karp, and I’m an assistant district attorney here in New York County. I am about to ask you some questions about the shooting deaths of Angelo Marchione and Randolph Marchione, which occurred between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock on the night of March Twenty-sixth, Nineteen-seventy, at A amp;A Liquors, located at Madison Avenue and Forty-ninth Street.” Karp then introduced everyone in the room-for the record-and told Walker that Leonard would be taking down on the stenotype machine everything that was said.
Then he advised Walker of his right to remain silent, of his right to have a lawyer present. Walker had had these rights read to him at the precinct, but Karp was establishing for the record that Walker was confessing voluntarily, in full knowledge of these rights, and without coercion. It was not enough to find out the truth. If Walker had killed fifty people on a live broadcast of the “Johnny Carson Show” it would still be necessary to go through this ritual before he could be brought to justice.
Karp went on. “Now, Mister Walker, having been advised of your rights, are you willing to tell us what you know about the shooting deaths of Angelo and Randolph Marchione, without a lawyer being present?”
Walker raised his head and tugged at his sparse beard. “I din see no shooting.”
At this Slocum gave a disbelieving snort. Karp shot him a sharp look. The detective rolled his eyes and looked away.
“Could we have your full name and address, please,” asked Karp. Walker gave it. Speaking his address made him think about the missed mortgage payments, about his family losing their home, about his failure. He started to weep. “Take it easy, Donny …” Dunbar began, but Karp cut him off with a gesture of his hand, and said, “Mister Walker, just tell us what you do know; that’s all we want.”
Then the story emerged, Walker speaking in a monotone, broken by sniffling and long silences. Karp let him tell his tale at his own pace, scrupulously avoiding any leading questions. After a while, Walker began to enjoy the confession; here, after all, were four serious, grown men listening attentively to what he had to say. It was a unique experience in his life.
Walker finished his confession by describing how he had dropped the two other men off at the 50th Street subway station. The sound of the stenotype machine echoed his last words, and after a brief silence, Karp said, “Mister Walker, I want you to know that I appreciate you coming forward like this and giving us this information. I also want you to know that while I can’t promise that it will have any effect on your own case, I would very much like your help in finding the two men you say were with you on the night of the crime. Are you willing to help us do that?”
“Yeah, sure, but I done already tol you everythin’ I know.”
“OK, but let’s go over some of the details once more. This man you call Stack-you met him at a pool hall near where you live?”
“Yeah, Torry’s, on Queens Boulevard.”
“More than once, right?”
“Yeah, a couple times.”
“And he supplied you with heroin?”
“Yeah, just one hit.”
“And he gave you the phony plates for your car?”
“Yeah, the last time I saw him, it was a couple days before the, you know, the robbery.”
“And where did he give you these plates?”
“In the parkin’ lot outside of Torry’s. I open my trunk an he toss ’em in.”
“So he had the opportunity to see your real plate numbers?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Mister Walker, are you aware that on the morning after the robbery, an unidentified man called the police and said that he had witnessed the crime at A amp;A Liquors, described your car in some detail, and gave your plate numbers?”
“No, I din. But so what? I already tol you I was there in my car.”
Karp paused for effect. “Not the phony plate numbers. The real ones.”
It took Walker a long minute to catch on. He jumped to his feet, and for the first time an animated emotion appeared on his face. “That muthafucka! He never … he never was gonna … that fuckin’ lyin’ bastard!”
Karp put a hand on Walker’s shoulder and eased him back into his chair. Karp believed Walker’s story, and thought him to be what he seemed-a patsy with his ass in a sling. He asked, “Mister Walker, do you have any idea who could have made that call?”
“Who! You know damn well who. It hadda be him, that Stack, him or his damn buddy, Willy Lee. Who the fuck else knew my damn plate numbers?”
“You did,” said Fred Slocum.
“What! You think I call the cops to turn my own self in?”
“Take it easy, Mister Walker,” said Karp, “nobody’s implying anything of the kind.” He gave Slocum another look.
“But here’s our problem, Mister Walker. You say there were two other men involved in the robbery, but all you’ve given us are two names, without any indication of where we could find these men. Somebody who knew your real plate numbers called the police. But if you were frightened about what you had done, and you wanted to paint yourself as a relatively innocent wheelman and not as the cold-blooded killer of two people, it is at least possible that you could have invented a couple of partners and made that call to make it seem like somebody else was involved in the crime.”
Walker looked at Karp as if he were speaking Ukrainian. He turned from one man to another and settled on Sonny Dunbar. Waving his hands, he cried, “I tol you! They don believe me. I bein’ set up for this. Damn, Sonny, you gotta tell them. How could I make up some story like that?”
“Donny, it’s OK, I believe you. But you gotta give us something. Are you sure neither of these guys ever mentioned where they lived or worked, nothing we could use to find them?”
“Shit, Sonny, I tol you that. I don know nothin’ about who he is, where he live. I jus call him at this number he give me an …”
“Number? You have a phone number?” shot back Karp.
“Shit, Donny,” said Dunbar, smacking the table, “why in the hell didn’t you tell me you had the dude’s number?”