Q. Yes, but you didn't say you'd had an argument.
A. A misunderstanding, I said, a misunderstanding. Over a letter I sent to the entire... Yes, but just now you said you'd had an argument.
Q. When did you have this argument, Mr. Farnes?
A. A misunderstanding. Listen, I want to make this clear.., is that tape still going? I want it made perfectly clear on the tape that I meant to say misunderstanding, not argument. Misunderstanding. Your detectives came to see me about that damn letter, I told them the misunderstanding had been cleared up, Father Michael and I settled the whole thing on Easter Sunday. There was no damn argument, is that clear?
Q: On Easter Sunday, do you mean?
A: On Easter Sunday or any other time. not argue. Period.
Q: Ever?
A: Never.
Q: Mr. Farnes, I can ask for a search locate the inventory log you mentioned, feel certain you would want to help us fin wonder if you could accompany the detectives to your store...
A: No. I want a lawyer.
Nellie looked at Carella. Carella looked The stenographer looked up from his pad.
Byrnes shrugged. The only sound in the the whirring of the tape recorder. "Mr. Nellie said at last, "am I to understand...?”
"You've got it, sister.”
"Am I to understand that you will not locate that log?”
"Not unless a lawyer tells me you can do "What is it you think we're doing?”
"Taking me to the store against my will.”
"Very well, Mr. Farnes, we'll request a warrant. Am I to understand further that you wish questioning to stop at this time?”
“You've got it, sister," Farnes said again.
Nellie snapped off the tape recorder.
"We're off the air," she said. "You ever call sister again, I'll kick you in the balls, got it?" I'll mention that to my attorney," Farnes said.
"Please do," Nellie said, and walked out of the It was not until one o'clock that afternoon that ;lla and Hawes obtained both a search warrant a Superior Court judge and a key to C&C 's Furnishings from Sally Farnes. Sally said she led it turned out that her husband had, in fact, ;d Father Michael, and she hoped further that he be sent to prison for the rest of his natural life. "he also mentioned that he usually kept his inventory log in the lower right-hand drawer of the desk in his office at the back of the store.
They found the office, they found the desk, and they found the log in the lower right-hand drawer.
The log indicated that Farnes had indeed taken inventory of his stock on the twenty-fourth of May.
"Nellie'll be disappointed," Carella said. "She was hoping we'd catch him in a lie.”
"This could still be a lie," Hawes said. "Just 'cause he wrote the twenty-fourth doesn't mean he actually did it on that date. He could have done it a Week earlier, three days earlier, whenever.”
"Say he killed the priest," Carella said. "What do you see for his motive?”
“He's a nutcase," Hawes said. "He doesn't need a motive.”
"Even a nutcase has what he thinks is a mo "Okay, he was annoyed that his wife ratt "Then why not kill her? Why the priest." 9”
“Because he had a further grievance witi priest.”
"The whole business with the letter, huh?”
"Yeah, and being made to look foolish in of the congregation. Nutcases take thems seriously, Steve.”
“Yeah," Carella said..Both men were silent for several moments.
Then Carella said, Do you think he did it.
"No," Hawes said.
"Neither do I," Carella said.
The way Martha Hennessy later described it was just another teenage wolf pack. You read them all the time now, these gangs going to "/ crazy and doing unspeakable things. This was m a dozen strapping young men, all of them will Mrs. Hennessy could have understood it if the/ been black or Hispanic, but white? Came sto into the church around three o'clock it must've she was in the rectory, heard a lot of noise in I church itself, ran through the paneled corrwi/ leading to the sacristy where three of them already there, knocking over things, tearing the pli art. Inside the church itself, Father Oriella was in English and in Italian, and his secretary, old Italian woman whose English was atrocious, iwas screaming for them to stop. Mrs. Hennessy ran back into the rectory and dialed 911 from the office telephone. A police car arrived in about three minutes flat.
The responding car was Edward's car, because the church was in the precinct's Edward Sector, and the two officers driving the car were the same man and woman who'd responded to the fracas here on Easter Sunday.
The difference this afternoon, and the reason their response-time was so rapid, was that after the priest's murder, they'd been called downtown to Headquarters and asked a lot of questions about their behavior on Easter Sunday, which Inspector Brian Mcintyre from Internal Affairs had found somewhat less than exemplary in a community rife with white-black tensions. Mindful of the inspector's diatribe and reprimand, the moment Officers Joseph Esposito and Anna Maria Lopez caught the 10-39 - a Crime In Progress, specified by the dispatcher as a "rampage at St. Catherine's Church" - they hit the hammer and screeched over to the church, where if this wasn't a rampage it sure as hell looked like one.
Officer Lopez got on her walkie-talkie and called in an Assist Police Officer, and within another three minutes, cars from the adjoining David and Frank sectors, and half a dozen foot-patrol officers assigned to CPEP were responding to the lo swarming all over the church and the church and the rectory, rounding up what eventually out to be six teenagers, all of them white, all with Italian names, least of whom was Robert Corrente. :: Bobby and his pals all seemed to be rather an unidentified substance of a controlled seemed not to care that he was now in a police squadroom, being charged will assortment of crimes, among which was an upon Father Frank Oriella with a brass Bobby had seized from the main altar friends were knocking over the altar, and altar cloths from it, and otherwise ransackin church. Bobby was screaming that he w lawyer. His assorted friends, some i! desk legs in various parts of the squadroom, I! already in the detention cage in the corner room, parroted every word he said. Bobby lawyer, they wanted a lawyer. He yelled father, they yelled for their fathers. It was an here in the squadroom, with everyone in fine Carella wished he had ear plugs.
When Vincent Corrente arrived at the sq at four P.M. that afternoon, he looked much as he the day Carella talked to him, except thai he was wearing a tank top undershirt. Or, if he was, it not visible under the Hawaiian print, sports shirt he wore hanging outside his tan .wise, he was still jowly and paunchy and and he was still smoking an E1 Ropo cigar lent a distinctive olfactory dimension to the squadroom medley of yelling teenagers, typewriters, ringing telephones, and cops everyone to shut the fuck up. Corrente was It was difficult to tell, however, whether he angrier with his son or with the people who'd him.
"You dumb bastard," he told Bobby, "wha'd you to the church, hah?" and belted him upside the :head. To Carella, he shouted, "You! Take these cuffs offa my son or you're in deep shit!”
Carella looked at him calmly.
"You hear me? I know people!" Corrente shouted.
"Mr. Corrente," Carella said, "your son has been charged with...”
"I don't care what he's been charged with, he's a juvenilel”
"He's been charged as an adult.”
"He's only seventeen!”
"That's an adult, Mr. Corrente. And he's been charged with...”
"I want a lawyer!" Bobby shouted.
"Shut up, you dumb bastard!" Corrente said. To Carella, he said, "He don't say anything till my lawyer gets here.”
"Fine," Carella said calmly.
He was wondering when Bobby down off his high.
The lawyer Corrente called was a man I'll Dominick Abruzzi.
This was getting to be a regular reuni WOPS, the World Order for the Prew Subterfuge, a watchdog society dedicated proposition that any American born with an name must keep that name forever, neither it completely, nor even Anglicizing it, lest mercilessly and eternally hounded to his grave reminders that he is merely an ignorant hoity-toity pretensions. Abruzzi looked as Richard Nixon. Carella guessed his teeth capped.