They didn’t call it Court Street for nothing. You could throw a rock across the road from the lobby of number 40 and hit the State Supreme Court Building. If you took to heart Shakespeare’s line about killing all the lawyers, blowing up 4 °Court Street would have been a good start. With its proximity to the court and the Brooklyn Tombs only a few blocks away on Atlantic Avenue, the dirty brown skyscraper was chock-full of lawyers. Where there are courts and jails and lawyers, there are investigators. Spivack and Associates among them.
When cops are on the job they love lawyers like lions love hyenas, only minus the mutual respect. But the minute a cop puts in his papers and goes into private investigations, he finds as many hyenas as he can and becomes an associate member of the pack. When you beg scraps, it pays to stay close to the pack. That’s why Spivack and Associates was such a natural fit in the brown building on Court Street. If I had gone into the business full-time, I too might have rented office space here.
Suite 1404, all glass, stainless steel, and uncomfortable furniture, had a rather antiseptic feel to it. I suppose they could always rent it out to local hospitals for ambulatory surgery. The receptionist barely got “Good day” out of her mouth when a drill sergeant type approached. Easily six foot three, he had a graying brush cut, a square chin and shoulders, rough features, and impatient blue eyes.
“I’m Spivack,” he barked, shaking my hand in spite of himself. “This way.”
Spivack wore a short-sleeve white shirt, black slacks, black tie, black shoes. He sort of looked like an angry escapee from 1950s middle management. His strides ate up carpet in big chunks.
He stopped. “Here,” he said, pushing open his office door.
His office, while not exactly inviting, was less antiseptic than the rest of the place. The chairs looked sat in, the desk was scratched and chipped. There were photos on the wall, certificates and diplomas, and a Lucite display featuring a green beret, an army-issue.45, and handcuffs. I took a more careful look at some of the photos. Several featured a younger Spivack in a U.S. marshal windbreaker escorting prisoners.
Mr. Geary was seated on a black leather sofa and waited for me to finish checking out the office before standing to greet me.
Spivack sat down behind his desk and glared even more contemptuously at Geary than he had at me.
“Hello, Moe,” Geary said, the butter melting in his mouth. “Good of you to come.”
“I know a command performance when I see one.”
Geary didn’t waste time disputing the facts. “I see you’ve met Joe Spivack.”
“Sort of, yeah.”
He beckoned me to come join him back on the sofa. I was amazed at how in command he acted in someone else’s place of business. He treated Spivack as another piece of furniture. I sat.
“Mr. Spivack’s firm did the original investigation into Moira Heaton’s unfortunate disappearance. I won’t bore you with the details. Let’s just say it was an expensive and thorough, if not very fruitful, exercise for Mr. Spivack and company.”
Geary gestured to Spivack as if he were calling the busboy to refill his water glass. Spivack handed an accordion file to Geary, who handed it to me.
“Don’t bother going through it now.” It wasn’t a suggestion. “This is the salient material. Take it home with you, Moe. I’m told there are several more boxes of ancillary material which we’ll have delivered wherever you’d like. Mr. Spivack will lend you all possible assistance and answer any of your questions.”
“Wait a second! Wait a second,” I barked, my patience wearing razor thin. “Mr. Spivack, is there a room where Mr. Geary and I can talk in private? There’s some stuff him and me have to get straight.”
“Will right here do?” Spivack asked, happy at the prospect of getting out from under Geary’s thumb.
“Works for me,” I answered.
If Geary was upset by being left out of the decision-making process, he didn’t show it. Spivack got up and left before that changed.
“I’m sorry, Moe,” Geary offered as soon as the door clicked shut. “I’ve behaved badly, I know. I’ve taken things for granted.”
“I don’t like threats, Mr. Geary.”
“Thomas,” he corrected. “Call me Thomas.”
Yeah, right, I thought. And we’ll go have some buttered scones and tea afterward.
“Like I was saying, I don’t like threats, even implied ones. I didn’t appreciate that little visit this morning from the New York State Liquor Authority. Not one bit.”
“It got your attention, though?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“That was my idea, I’m afraid. I would ask you not to hold it against Steven, Senator Brightman. He would disapprove.”
“I’m liking him better already.”
Geary smiled. “Then you’ll do it. You’ll look into this matter for us.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you will, won’t you?”
“I may have been a cop once, Mr. Geary, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
“Far from it, I’d say. That’s part of the reason you’re here at all.”
“Pardon me if I don’t thank you, but that’s been bugging me all weekend long,” I confessed. “And now that I’m in this office, it’s bothering me even more. Why do you need me? I’m a part-timer with no network. I mean, look around you. This guy is major league. He’s a former U.S. marshal. They’re like fucking bulldogs.
What can I do to find Moira Heaton that Spivack and Associates and their network and friends and informants couldn’t?”
“Would it suffice to say you come highly recommended?”
“No.”
“I didn’t suppose it would. How about this then?” he asked, reaching into his inner jacket pocket.
I knew even before his hand reappeared what it would hold. “Gotham Magazine,” I said, “pages seventeen through twenty, continued on page ninety-three, far left column.”
When Katy’s brother Patrick vanished in ‘77, an ambitious reporter for Gotham had done a piece about the disappearance and subsequent search. The reporter, correctly sensing there was a lot more to the story than what the press had been spoon-fed by the family, thought the story had Pulitzer Prize written all over it. Unfortunately for him, the people who knew the truth, myself included, kept it to themselves. The story turned into more of a puff piece and part of the puff was about me or, more accurately, about me and a little girl named Marina.
On Easter Sunday of 1972, Marina Conseco, the seven-year-old daughter of a city firefighter, went missing in Coney Island. Several days later, while searching the area with some off-duty firemen, I got the idea to check out the wooden rooftop water tanks on some of the older buildings in the neighborhood. We found Marina, battered but alive, in the third or fourth tank we checked. In an undistinguished career as a cop, finding her was my one shining moment. People would forget Patrick, but never Marina. It was this same story that had brought poor Arthur Rosen to me. However, there was nothing remotely poor or needy about the man who stood in front of me at the moment.
“Bravo, bravo.” He applauded, his left hand hitting the folded pages in his right. “Bravo.”
“That was eleven years ago when I found the girl.”
“Don’t be modest,” he said coolly, the smile running away from his face. “I know much more about you than you’d think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, beginning to feel light-headed.
He didn’t answer, checking his watch instead. “We can discuss your fee at a later date. I assure you you won’t suffer financially. As I said previously, you can expect the fullest cooperation from Mr. Spivack. I must be on my way.”
“You didn’t answer my question. Why me?”
“In a word, luck. You’re lucky, Mr. Prager.”
“We’re not on a first-name basis anymore, huh, Tom?”