Later, Rizzo and Priscilla sat at the landlord’s kitchen table, the elderly man and his wife staring at them with pale, grim faces.
“So,” Rizzo asked, “Mr. Lauria was your tenant for over ten years?”
The landlord, Victor Annasia, nodded gravely. “Yes,” he said, his voice strained with tension. “Eleven, it would have been, this January coming.”
“Tell me about him,” Rizzo said.
The man shrugged. “There isn’t much to tell. He lived alone, a bachelor. Didn’t seem to have any friends, none at all. In ten years, except for a cousin of his, I don’t think he ever had a visitor. Quiet as a mouse, always paid his rent early, in cash, never a problem. The perfect tenant, really.”
Mrs. Annasia spoke up, her eyes moist. “A very nice man. Such a terrible thing to happen.”
“Try not to let it upset you too much,” Priscilla said gently.
“How could it not?” the woman said with resignation. “A murder in my own home. My God, this world is becoming more and more evil. Sometimes,” she said sadly, “I’m glad to be so old. So I won’t see things get worse than they are now.”
“Mr. Annasia, do you have this cousin’s name and address?” Rizzo asked.
The old man nodded. “Yes, it’s with the lease, in my desk. She was his emergency contact person.”
“Before we leave, I’d like that information,” Rizzo said. Then, after a pause, he continued his questioning. “Did Mr. Lauria work?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“On Eighty-sixth Street, at that big shoe store. The one near Nineteenth Avenue.”
Rizzo jotted it down, then, without looking up, asked, “Did he seem to have much money?”
“No, not much at all. But he paid his rent, bought his food. He has no car, no real expenses that I saw. I guess he got by.”
Rizzo looked up. “Do you think he could afford a really expensive wristwatch?”
“Oh, that Swiss watch, the gold one? No, Sergeant Rizzo, that was his dead father’s watch. Was Robbie wearing it when he died?”
“No,” Rizzo answered. “It was on his nightstand.”
“Well, I’m glad the thief didn’t get it,” the old man said. “Poor Robbie was very proud of that watch. It was the most important thing he owned.”
“Not that he owned very much,” Mrs. Annasia added. “Always going from job to job, out of work for months at a time, no friends or family. No woman. A very sad life, Sergeant. Very sad.”
Rizzo nodded. “Yes,” he said thoughtfully, then resumed his questioning. “As far as you know, did he have any enemies, anyone who maybe could have done this?”
Annasia frowned. “You mean on purpose? Not just a burglar, but someone he knew? Absolutely not,” he said. “I told you, Sergeant, he had no one in his life, just that cousin and her family. This was not a man with enemies, Sergeant. This was a man alone. A man killed by a thief, a random thief.” After a pause, Annasia continued with a sheepish glance at his wife. “Let’s be honest here, Sergeant. Robbie wasn’t right, he was an odd duck-almost a recluse, a very sad man living a sad, empty life. I hope he’s at peace now with God. I hope he’s with his parents, somebody to love him again.”
The man paused, reaching out a veined, liver-spotted hand and placing it gently upon his wife’s hand.
“Otherwise, Sergeant, there’s no point.” He looked at his wife once more, then met Rizzo’s eyes.
“Without someone to love, somebody to love you… there is no point.”
Rizzo drove the Chevy slowly toward the precinct house. He turned slightly in the seat, speaking to Priscilla’s profile as she scanned her notes.
“The guy is dead for at least a week, probably longer, and there’s not one message on his answerin’ machine,” he said. “Not even a call from his job. Didn’t they wonder where the fuck he was?”
Priscilla shrugged. “Why don’t we stop off and ask ’em?” she asked. “It’s not far from here, and it’s only three o’clock.”
Rizzo turned back in the seat. “Yeah, okay. What avenue was it?”
“Nineteenth.”
They identified themselves to the young store manager, explaining the reason for their visit. She gasped, raising a hand to her mouth.
“Oh my God,” she said, her eyes tearing suddenly. “How awful! That poor man, he never hurt a fly, never had a bad word to say. Oh my God,” she repeated.
Priscilla spoke. “We were wondering, Ms. Gallo. Lauria was killed some days ago, yet there were no messages on his answering machine. Didn’t you wonder what happened to him? When he didn’t show up for work, I mean.”
The young woman looked puzzled. “Work?” she asked. “No… We’ve been slow the last few months and I… I had to let him go. Unfortunately, Robbie was my newest hire. You know, ‘Last hired, first fired.’ ” She looked from Rizzo to Jackson, taking in their somber expressions. “I… I intended to rehire him, of course. As soon as the holidays kicked in and business, presumably, picked up. I definitely planned to hire him back. He was a great worker, always on time, polite to everyone, really no trouble at all. You didn’t even know he was here, he was so quiet.” She scanned their faces. “He kept to himself, you know.”
“So we’re findin’out,” Rizzo said. “When exactly did you let him go?”
She thought for a moment. “Exactly?”
“Yes,” Priscilla interjected. “Exactly.”
She had to check her records before she could answer them.
“October twenty-eighth. It was a Tuesday, that’s our end pay-week day. I gave him a week’s salary plus commission and eight severance days.”
Rizzo thanked her. After a few more routine questions, the two detectives left.
As they reached the Impala, parked beneath the elevated train tracks on Eighty-sixth Street, Rizzo spoke. “Guy gets fired, takes his severance pay and squares his rent the same day.”
Priscilla nodded. “Yeah. Then he’s hanging around his apartment every day and he’s so quiet, so unobtrusive, the landlord doesn’t even know he’s no longer working.”
As Rizzo dropped into the driver’s seat, starting the engine, he wondered aloud, “But for how long? We don’t know when he got whacked.”
“What now?” Priscilla asked, as she hooked her shoulder harness.
“Back to the house,” Rizzo said with a shrug. “The Swede has Bobby Dee and his partner doin’ a street canvass and the uniforms gathering plate numbers and lookin’ around the area for the murder weapon. We need to get Lauria’s phone records and contact the cousin, maybe first get her local precinct to do the death notification so we won’t have to. And Vince told me the fax came in from Rosen. I wanna go over all his notes. Tomorrow, after that stink airs out some, we’ll go back to the scene. I want to look around again carefully, see what’s what. We need to go through the guy’s stuff, then talk to the cousin. Maybe she can point us at someone.”
“You goin’ premeditated on this, Joe?” Priscilla asked. “What happened to our junkie burglar?”
He shrugged. “If it was a junkie burglar so strung out he missed that watch, chances are he dropped his prints all over the joint. CSU will make the prints and that’ll be the end of it.”
“And if there are no prints?” she asked.
“Well, in that case, we’re up against it. An untargeted, random break-in homicide like this one is the toughest. No motive, nothing, just a random series of bullshit that ends up with some poor schmuck like Lauria gettin’ his throat crushed. Cases like this usually get solved when some street stoolie gets jammed up on an unrelated case and uses his info to cut himself a deal. You know how it works: the perp brags to his lowlife buddies what a hard-ass he is, how he whacked Joe Citizen for givin’ him some grief, struttin’ around like he’s John fuckin’ Dillinger. And then when he gets ratted out, he’s perplexed, don’t know what happened.” Rizzo shook his head. “I’m gettin’ real sick of these dumb fucks, Cil. Real sick.”