"That him?" Ward Ogden asked quietly.
"Yeah."
They weren't in the formal and neutrally supportive environment where Willy had viewed Mary's remains. This was the ME's more functional part of the building, and everything around them spoke of the emotionally detached curiosity the inhabitants applied to their silent patients. It was starkly lit and equipped for one purpose, all of which made it easier for Willy to focus.
He looked up at the doctor, who'd already given Nate a thorough going-over. "What d'you think?"
The doctor was a woman wearing a mask, goggles, and gloves, the mask, he suspected, mostly to ward off the odor that Nate's body was already exuding.
"Massive trauma, for sure," she said. "Consistent with a fall from a bridge. He could have been killed and then pitched over. It would be pretty hard to tell, especially if his heart was still beating when he hit. There're no signs of anything else, though. No bullet holes or stab wounds. But that's not to say I don't have a few questions."
She moved to the body's right hand and held it up to the light. "He's got two skinned knuckles and a broken finger, for instance. Again, that might've happened in the fall, but it's more consistent with a fistfight, especially if he was right-handed, which his musculature suggests.
"Also," she added, moving up to the head, "I found something really curious. See this small smear of blood just under his ear? Where did it come from?"
Sammie pointed at a gash on the dead man's leg. "Is it too stupid to think there?"
The woman shook her head. "That would make us both stupid, 'cause that's what I thought-at first. But then I wondered how it was transferred. There's no laceration except for the leg. It's not a splatter mark, so it didn't splash there when the body hit the ground, and aside from the skinned knuckles, which didn't bleed, there's no blood on his hands. So, what's the explanation?"
"It's not his," Joe Gunther suggested.
Her eyes widened behind the plastic glasses. "That's what I'm thinking. Two men in close combat, one with maybe a bloody nose. This one here lands a punch in the other one's stomach, let's say. That guy doubles over, and his face connects with the dead man's neck and shoulder area, depositing a smear. Too bad the clothes weren't kept. They might've given us a clearer picture."
But Willy didn't need a clearer picture. He'd seen that broken nose.
Ogden gestured toward the blood smear. "You got enough to work with there?"
"Oh, sure," she answered. "We'll compare it with the deceased's. If I'm right, they won't match. That won't tell you who it does belong to, of course, but maybe it'll come in handy later if and when you line somebody up."
Ogden nodded his satisfaction. "Okay. Another piece for the puzzle. Things're beginning to move along." He looked at the doctor. "You'll call me as soon as you get the autopsy results? I'd love to hear what else you find out about Mr. Lee."
She nodded without comment, writing a note to herself on her clipboard.
Ogden waved his arms at the others like a nanny shooing his small charges out of the room. "Then I guess we'll go back to hitting the bricks."
Out in the hallway, the cell phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out, listened to what the caller had to say for several minutes, thanked him briefly, and hung up. "That was Jim," he explained as they all continued walking. "He spoke with someone at CCNY in Harlem. Turns out Mary Kunkle had just enrolled there for a course in psychology and drug counseling-one of their community outreach programs. According to them, she visited several times to set up the enrollment and payment schedule, so that gives us at least the most obvious explanation for her subway trips there. He also got something on Ron Cashman. Turns out he has quite a history. How was it again that you heard about him?"
The question was asked genially enough, but given his own lack of forthrightness on the subject, Willy couldn't help hearing a note of suspicion in Ogden's voice.
"I was trying to find out about La Culebra," he said. "Cashman's name came up as a possible associate who hung out near the Lower East Side. That made me curious. Does he live down there?"
Willy made an effort to sound only marginally interested, but in fact it was a struggle. This was the sole reason he'd broken cover, after all, and since then, the man he thought was Ron Cashman had not only taken a shot at him, but had just now been all but nailed as Nate Lee's killer.
But Ogden wasn't going to just blurt out an address and wish Willy happy hunting. Unlike Sammie and Joe, Ward Ogden didn't know Willy, and what little he'd discovered hadn't filled him with confidence. He also had serious doubts that Willy had asked to have Cashman's name run through the computers for the reason he'd just stated.
"No," he answered vaguely. "He's more of a Brooklyn boy. Was it drug dealing he was supposed to be doing, or what?"
Willy sensed what was going on, or was paranoid enough to imagine it. The question was designed to draw him out, and possibly to reveal that he knew more than he was admitting. So, instead of answering in the affirmative, he merely looked confused.
"That was the weird part. I asked the same thing, and got nowhere. But it wasn't just the Lower East Side connection that caught my attention. I mean, the guy's not Hispanic, he's not from the neighborhood, and nobody I talked to knew what the hell his angle was. It was the whole package that made me wonder. Why do you ask? What kind of bad boy is he? Did I fall over something hot?"
That put the shoe on the other foot. Now Sammie and Gunther were looking at Ogden expectantly, and Willy interpreted Ogden's frown as a sign that he was feeling slightly outmaneuvered.
"Good lord, I don't know," he said lightly, ducking the question. "All I got was a synopsis of the man's rap sheet. We'll have to put him under a bigger microscope back at the office."
"What part of Brooklyn?" Gunther asked, making Willy suddenly feel kindlier toward him.
Ogden hedged his reply. "Sort of Greenpoint to Red Hook area-ten to twelve square miles. Jim said it looked like he moved around."
"Does he work for anyone or is he a freelancer?" Gunther persisted naturally enough.
At that point, Ward Ogden changed tactics. Being a realist, he weighed the chances of locating the killer of a dead junkie and an all-but-homeless black man in two completely different parts of the city. Time was against him, his own caseload wasn't getting any smaller, and his boss would soon start wondering just how much effort all this warranted.
He didn't like the idea, but he was coming to terms with having to deal with this one-armed bird dog in any case, which meant he might as well put him to work. Maybe the man would prove as professional, if unconventional, as his colleagues seemed to believe.
"My partner told me," he therefore admitted, "that years back, Cashman was connected to Lenny Manotti. Manotti ain't what he used to be, but in his day, he worked the Brooklyn docks a fair bit. What the movies call the 'import-export' business. I don't know what Cashman did for him-that's where the microscope'll come in-but his record implies enforcement. Weapons and assault charges, mostly. The drug stuff was minor- a couple of small possession raps."
He stopped there and watched Willy's expression as he added, "Looks like an interesting angle to chase down if we get the chance."
Willy kept walking down the long hallway, his eyes on the floor ahead of him. The last thing he wanted to do now was tip his hand.
Chapter 19
Willy Kunkle excused himself from Ward Ogden and the others as quickly and innocuously as possible-never wondering why Ogden seemed so amenable to this-and was back in Riley Cox's store in Washington Heights just as night was beginning to fall.
He found the big man as he had before, holding the fort behind his elevated counter by the door, his hand within reach of the shotgun, and his eyes looking half asleep.