Lil Farber took them into a large sandstone office building, still in tour director mode. “This is the flip side of places like Irvington. Old on the outside, jammed with modern electronics on the inside. And talk about ironies: Newark is second only to Hartford in its number of insurance companies. Very high-tech.” She smiled broadly at that, adding, “Not a bad idea, given the number of local claims.”
On the building’s fifth floor, Farber delivered the court-signed paperwork she’d secured before setting out, earning in exchange the attentions of a young woman named Melanie, who studied the subpoena as if it were written in Latin and finally gave all three of them a hapless expression, along with the question “What do you want?”
Joe reached across the counter and tapped the form with his fingertip. “The registration listed there belongs to one of your cars. We want to know who was renting it on the date marked.”
Melanie looked nonplussed. “That’s it?”
“Too much?” Willy said caustically.
Thankfully, she didn’t get it, her eyes on his arm and her smile doing its best. “Oh, no. This shouldn’t be a big deal. I will have to get my supervisor, though.”
The supervisor, a steely-haired man named Philpot, with too little power and too few opportunities to exercise it, wasted half an hour asking questions he wasn’t entitled to have answers to, before finally delivering a copy of the rental contract. As with the motel registration in Vermont, it was signed “S. Corleone.”
Joe showed it to Farber. “That home address do anything for you?” he asked her.
She studied it for a moment. “Yeah. Makes me think of the Hudson River. The street numbers there don’t run that high.”
Joe turned back to the supervisor. “We’ll need the name and address of the employee who handled this contract.”
Philpot rose to his full splendor. “I don’t believe that falls into the purview of your subpoena. We have to protect our people from unwarranted harassment.”
Having reached his limit, Willy shot his hand out, aiming for the man’s throat. Joe saw it coming. He seized Willy’s thick wrist in midair and brought it down with a thump onto the counter.
“What was that?” Philpot stuttered, his eyes wide. “What did he just do?”
Joe leaned forward, making the supervisor tuck in his chin nervously, as if expecting a punch. “Do you have any idea why three cops would come into your office with a court order looking for this information?”
Philpot looked stumped. “A crime?”
“A big one. Do you really want to hinder a murder investigation?”
Without further delay, a printout of the clerk’s name and address was produced.
“Do you have a business card, Mr. Philpot?” Joe asked, handing the printout to Lil.
“Yes. Why?”
“So I can get my boss to write your boss a letter of thanks for your cooperation.”
Looking suspicious, Philpot slowly produced a card from under the counter. Joe took it, smiled, and slipped it into his pocket. “Thank you.”
On the ride down in the elevator, Willy said, “You should’ve let me kill him. Would’ve been faster.”
Back in the car, Lil looked at the employee card and shook her head. “You don’t actually think this person is going to remember renting a car to a guy in a hat weeks ago at the airport, do you? And even if he does, what’s he going to tell us?”
“That had crossed my mind,” Joe admitted.
“Let me try something else,” she offered. “I don’t want to step on any toes, but maybe a quick meeting with the rest of my guys might kick something loose. I keep thinking the hat’ll help. It could be more than just something to keep the cold off, like a trademark. Fedoras aren’t that common anymore.”
Two hours later, Joe and Willy were sitting in a windowless conference room back on the third floor of the task force’s garish building. Around the table were Lil Farber and all five of her investigators, something Joe took as an extraordinary show of professional courtesy, given-as he knew now-the overwhelming size of their workload.
Introductions completed, Joe addressed them: “I want to thank you first off for meeting with us…”
“We just wanted to see what you looked like,” cracked a voice to general laughter.
“… and to thank you also for putting up with my colleague,” Joe continued.
Responding to the general mood, Willy shot them all the bird.
“As you have no doubt discovered by now,” Joe went on, “he’s our token New Yorker. We’ve had him Christ knows how long, and it hasn’t done any good whatsoever.”
“We could’ve told you that,” said another voice.
“The reason we’re here,” Joe kept talking, “other than to give Willy a breath of polluted air, is because we’ve had a few fires in our neck of the woods which may have been started by one of your locals-certainly somebody whose MO is like the one you filed with ATF.”
He began passing out stapled packets of all the relevant information, which he’d generated from a borrowed copier just prior to the meeting. “I’ll give you a few minutes to familiarize yourselves with what we’ve got.”
The room filled with the soft sound of pages being turned over and restless men shifting in uncomfortable seats. They were a seasoned group, with only one still in his twenties, casually dressed in khakis or jeans and clearly at ease with one another. Lil had told him earlier that her most recent member had five years with the unit, and the rest a lot more than that. This was a crucial detail, she’d said, because in a highly computerized world of databases and instant communications, the arson task force was just now getting its case information digitized. As a result, until that process was completed-God knew when-the archival intelligence of the unit would be only as good as the memories of the men around this table. It was a curiously quaint reminder that much of the high-tech razzle-dazzle portrayed on TV and assumed by the public was either downright fiction or only true for certain elite state and federal outfits. Not county cop shops like this one.
Joe waited for the last man to finish before he resumed. “It goes without saying that the evidence linking our torch to yours is pretty skimpy, but we’re hoping against hope that maybe something in what you’ve just read will ring a bell.”
“A man in a hat?” one of them asked.
“A fedora,” Lil responded, coming to Joe’s aid. “I suggested this meeting, thinking one of you might remember something like that. It’s a Humphrey Bogart hat. Real distinctive. Might be a trademark.”
A tall, heavyset man in a T-shirt spoke up. “We’re not trying to bust your chops. And the thing with the chemical squibs and the chips and chasing the fire downstairs does fit our profile, but we don’t have a name, either.” He gave Joe a hapless look. “Maybe the hat is a trademark. We can add it to what we got, but…” He shrugged to show his conclusion.
“Give us more,” another suggested. “He rented a car at the airport, drove up north, rented a room, then what?”
“Looks like he scoped out his targets,” Joe answered him. “Not bothering to dress locally or fit in. Either that, or he thought the hat would act as a disguise, which I guess it did, since that’s all anyone remembers. At one place, he was just seen driving by; at the other, he was on foot.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A short leather coat-another thing that stood out. We tend more toward wool or ski parkas or barn coats. Not a lot of leather.”
There was silence in the room as everyone pondered the unlikeliness of success here. On pure impulse, Joe added, “He registered, both for the car and the motel room, under the name S. Corleone.”
“Sonny Corleone?” asked the heavyset man.
“Presumably.”
The man looked across the table at one of his colleagues. “The Godfather. Who’s the Godfather freak? Talks about that fucking movie all the time.”