Blood in Babylon Read online

  I nodded. “But don’t let the Thought Police hear you saying things like that. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and also paranoia.”

  The pop of the cork echoed in the early evening. She set the bottle down and pointed at it with the corkscrew. “Now you have to let it breathe for at least an hour.”

  “No kidding. Where do you learn that stuff, Dehan?”

  “Some guy who was coming on to me. I forget his name. So he had a psychiatrist who he was seeing for his meds and stuff…”

  “Indeed, Dr. Epstein.”

  She leaned down, pulled two bottles of beer from a bucket of ice and cracked them both, then handed me one and sat. I took a pull and continued.

  “His practice was, and still is, at 1910 Benedict Avenue, just off the Hugh J Grant Circle. A short walk from Al’s place. In fact, he had just been to see Epstein the night he was killed. According to Epstein’s statement, Al was not great at keeping up with his meds, but he always made a point of turning up on his birthday, November 23rd, because they always made a fuss of him and brought him in a cake.”

  “Cute. That’s nice. I should go crazy so people would do nice things for me.”

  I ignored her and went on. “It seems he stayed a bit late that day. Apparently, he would just sit in the waiting room, or chat with the staff. By all accounts, he was a pleasant kind of guy, polite, well educated, so they didn’t mind him hanging around.”

  Dehan was frowning. “Seriously?”

  “I know. It sounds odd to me too, but that is what we have at the moment. So he hung around and then left, intending to go home. What happened next isn’t one hundred percent clear. It was pieced together from eyewitness accounts. He crossed the Hugh J Grant Circle, as he would have to to get home, saw a couple of people who knew him and greeted him. Then he made his way down Virginia Avenue, toward his place on Ellis. It’s not a long walk—two hundred yards from the Circle to Ellis, and another fifty to his house.”

  She was frowning at me over the rim of her glass as she sipped. “Is that relevant? You seem to be stressing it like you think it’s relevant.”

  “I don’t know yet. The thing is, as he is walking those two hundred and fifty yards or so, some kids start hassling him. As I said, this is put together from accounts of people who saw or heard things as he walked past. Remember, he had been in the neighborhood for a long time, and he was known as a kind of local character. According to what they were able to piece together in the original investigation, this gang…”

  I hesitated and Dehan said, “You don’t mean like a real gang, like the Chupacabras…”

  “No, not at all. It was just a gang of kids, sixteen to eighteen, who used to hang around and make a lot of noise. But there was one of them, Ned, who, according to local gossip, kind of had it in for Al, used to call him the Freak, and any time he saw him he’d give him a hard time, shout abuse, call him names...”

  She leaned back in her chair. “Is there any record of physical violence?”

  “Yes and no. Ned was always getting into fights, was known to carry a knife and he was certainly on the radar. There is no record of his ever having physically attacked Al…”

  “That doesn’t mean it never happened.”

  “No, it doesn’t, but neither do we have any record of Al suffering from any kind of injury that might have been inflicted in a fight. So if there ever was a physical confrontation, it didn’t lead to much.”

  “OK, so that evening, these assholes start giving him a hard time. What happens next?”

  “He panics. He was seen by several people passing the upholstery shop and the deli on the corner of Ellis and Virginia, and all of them reported him as being in a very agitated state. Apparently Ned was right behind him, seemed angry and aggressive, and Ned’s pals were holding back, but laughing. The witnesses watched Ned and his friends follow him to his house and go into his front yard. There was a slam, like a door slamming, a lot of screaming and the kids left. The people at the deli said it looked like Ned had hurt his hand. They thought about calling the cops, but felt the whole thing had blown over.”

  “So presumably, Ned then became the prime suspect and was easily traced because he has a bruised, swollen hand.”

  I smiled, removed the tinfoil from the two T-bone steaks I had beside the barbeque, and sprinkled them with Maldon sea salt. Then I dropped them onto the iron grill over the burning coals. Flames leapt three feet high around them, licking at the herb-seasoned oil I had soaked them in.

  I swigged my beer and went on. “Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple. Al telephones the surgery. Judging by the time of the call, it must have been almost as soon as he got in. The call was taken by one Joy Jones, Dr. Epstein’s receptionist, assistant and general factotum—his words, not mine. According to her testimony at the time, he was practically incoherent. She managed to calm him down and he told her, more or less, what the detectives at the time managed to piece together, and I have just told you. Except that he added in a fair old dose of paranoia about tidal waves of darkness engulfing him and his house, and evil beings who had followed him from Mexico. She told him she’d call the precinct and ask for somebody to pass by and make sure he was OK.”

  Dehan frowned. “And did she?”

  I flipped the steaks. “No, she didn’t. In her statement, she said she thought about calling the cops, but decided against it. She knew that Al imagined things. She also knew there was a bunch of kids who used to call him names, but she was pretty sure they were not dangerous. She didn’t feel it was right to waste police time, so she left it at that. Martinez, that was the investigating detective at the time, said she was devastated when she discovered what had happened.”

  “So what did happen?”

  I took the scorched steaks and put them onto our plates. Dehan poured the wine and we sat and ate in relative silence for a while, broken only by Dehan making small noises of visceral pleasure. When she had gotten halfway through her steak, she sat back with her wine and smiled. “Man, love a good steak.”

  I nodded and returned the smile. “What happened? That’s the million dollar question. Here’s what we know. He didn’t cook. He didn’t make himself any food at all. He didn’t turn on any lights. He closed the drapes in the living room and put on a DVD from a box set of Murder She Wrote.”

  “I love that show.”

  “Who doesn’t? He obviously did. According to Dr. Epstein, he had watched the entire series more than thirty times.”

  “Wow, that’s intense.” She started cutting into her steak again.

  I continued. “He wasn’t found for three days. Joy Jones got worried when she didn’t hear from him and wouldn’t answer his phone. She doesn’t live far from his house, so on the way home from work, she went to see him. There was no reply when she knocked and, when she questioned the neighbors, nobody had seen him since his birthday. So she called the cops.”

  She stuffed the last piece of steak in her mouth and spoke around it as she chewed. “They found him on the living room floor, with a stab wound to his heart.”

  I drained my glass, refilled hers and then mine. “That misses all of what Holmes would call the most interesting features, my dear Dehan. First of all, the place had been trashed, turned upside down, though nothing was broken. Second, he was, as you say, killed by a single stab wound to the heart, but the blade of the knife was exceptionally long and broad, consistent, according to the ME, with the blade of a large kitchen knife. He was lying on the living room floor, beside his sofa, with the TV still playing Jessica Fletcher on repeat, over and over.”

  “That’s kind of creepy to think about.”

  “There were shots fired.”

  “What?”

  “Three shots. Nobody heard them. That is not surprising in itself: residents of the Bronx have a peculiar deafness where gunfire is concerned. However, the 9mm rounds traveled from the living room, through to the open plan kitchen and shattered various items, the kettle, a stack of plates, and a radi
o sitting by the sink. The radio had a clock, so the lab was able to establish at what time the power was cut off.”

  “So we have time of death…”

  “Ten thirty on Friday night, 23rd November, 2007.”

  “Good. So what happened?”

  “The first thing Martinez did was haul Ned in for questioning. He had a very badly bruised right hand with two broken fingers. At first, he said he got his fingers caught in a car door. That’s what it says on his medical report from the ER department. But later, he admitted that it was Al who had slammed his front door on his fingers when they were, and I quote, ‘messin’ with him and just trying to scare the old guy a bit.’ They didn’t mean no harm.”

  “So they charged him?”

  “No, he came up with an alibi. He was with his friends all that weekend, nursing his hand, and he didn’t go out. His friends were willing to testify that they were with him every hour of every day from Friday lunchtime to Monday morning.”

  “So the son of a bitch got a false alibi.”

  “Perhaps; either way, they were unable to shake it or make anything stick. Forensic evidence was very thin on the ground. There was not a trace of DNA evidence, not a single thing to link him to the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. They had to let him go.”

  She sat forward with her elbows on the table. The light from the flames in the barbecue bathed her face and danced in her eyes.

  “Well,” she said, “there is no mystery to this case, Stone. Making the evidence stick may be a problem, but you and I both know exactly what happened. Ned was having some fun tormenting this poor guy. Maybe he got pissed because he didn’t like the way Al answered him, or maybe he got mad because Al ignored him. Whichever. You know—you don’t disrespect a bro’ from the hood, know what I’m sayin’? You feel me, dude?”

  “I feel you, man.”

  “Assholes like that don’t need an excuse. They smell your weakness and they go after you. So things get out of hand and they try to force their way into his house. He slams the door. The guy was big and heavy…”

  “Six three and almost four hundred pounds.”

  She grinned. “So when he says, ‘I’m gonna close the door here,’ he closes the door. Only this time, he closes it on Ned’s fingers. Ned goes away to nurse his hand, but comes back a few hours later with a 9mm, picks the lock and goes in planning to shoot Al dead. Al freaks out and panics. So Ned has four hundred pounds of panicking crazy to contend with. He panics too and fires. The shots go wide. Maybe Al snatches the gun, or knocks it out of his hand.” She shrugged and spread her hands. “So Ned stabs him.”

  I took a deep breath and swirled the wine around in my glass. I took a sip and sighed.

  “That is pretty much word for word what Martinez concluded.”

  She nodded and snorted. “But you have some pain in the ass Sherlock Holmes observations which make it impossible, my dear Watson.”

  I shrugged. “Not impossible, but they are, as he would say, features of interest. For a start, when questioned, Ned was asked if he had a knife. He admitted that he had a switchblade. It was a barely legal folding knife with a five inch blade. More than enough to kill a man with.”

  “So…?”

  “Well, the blade was much smaller than the one that was used to kill Al. So, make the movie in your head. What happened? He went home from the hospital, sore as hell. He packed a 9mm pistol, which we assume he had, though it was never found, and, even though had a lethal knife which he carried everywhere with him, he also went and took his mother’s huge, cumbersome kitchen knife, just for good measure?”

  Dehan grunted. “Maybe he used one of Al’s knives.”

  “Wait, we’re not there yet. Assuming still that he took the kitchen knife with him for some reason—that knife has, at the least, an eight inch blade, maybe three or four inches wide at the base, plus it has a four or five inch handle. If he already has a gun and a knife, why does he burden himself also with this very large knife that he doesn’t need? Where does he carry it?”

  “And what for?”

  “Exactly: what for? And when the gun is knocked from his hand, does he wrestle this short sword from his jacket pocket?”

  “Point taken. So now can you answer my question? Did he use Al’s own kitchen knife?”

  “No. The one knife he had that might have fit the wound had only his fingerprints on it, and those had not been smudged by latex gloves or anything of the sort. Plus, there was no trace of Al’s blood on the knife, not even in the grooves by the handle. To have been cleaned that thoroughly…”

  “The prints would have gone too. OK.”

  “There is another point, which is quite important.”

  “What?”

  “Have you ever had a broken hand?”

  “No…”

  I laughed. “It hurts. A lot. The last thing you want to do with a broken hand is fire a gun. If he’s shooting left-handed, then that might account for the shots going wide. But the knife wound to the chest did not go wide. That was precision engineering, powerfully executed, dear Dehan. That blade was placed and thrust without a second’s hesitation. And with considerable force. That was not done with a broken hand, or left-handed.”

  “Son of a gun.”

  I nodded. “No, I don’t like Ned for this. I have a feeling somebody else went to visit Al that night.”

  “But what motive could anyone possibly have to kill him? The guy was harmless.”

  I made a protracted ‘hmmmm’ noise. “I don’t know if he was harmless.” I shrugged. “He may well have been. But there was a rumor, which most people paid little or no attention to, that said he’d had a pretty wild, shady life and kept a vast sum of money in his house, in a paper bag or a carton or some equally stupid container.”

  “Oh… and the place had been ransacked.”

  “Yup, and when you look at the photographs…” I sighed. “I don’t know, it looks to me like a search that somebody has tried to disguise as a fight or a struggle.”

  She laughed. “How the hell can you tell that?”

  I hesitated. “Nothing is broken. That struck me as odd. When two people thrash around fighting, they break things, but not necessarily when they are searching. And every time I look at the pictures, it strikes me as more odd. Why is nothing broken?” I shrugged. “And naturally, no trace of the money was ever found.”

  “You think he really had a stash of money?”

  “I shouldn’t think so for one moment. But it may well be that somebody in Ned’s gang thought it was worth exploring the possibility.”

  “Did they pull in the other kids?”

  “They asked them questions, but they were all each other’s alibi. So the case stalled.”

  She gazed at me for a while. Then she spoke suddenly and emphatically, nodding her head. “No, that is a really interesting case. It has, like you said, interesting features. But, Stone, how the hell do you plan to crack it? Where do you begin? It is insoluble.”

  “I know,” I said, and smiled. “That’s why I want to solve it.”

  THREE

  Next morning, we dropped in on Dr. Epstein’s practice on the way to the precinct. We approached through heavy morning traffic via the Metropolitan Oval and peeled off into Benedict Avenue, where I managed to find a space for my ancient, burgundy Jag, right outside his block. By the time I’d climbed out and slammed the door, Dehan was already on the sidewalk, doing little jumps on her toes. It wasn’t cold, but there was enough chill in the morning air to bring out pink flushes on her cheeks. That made me smile. She ignored it and said, “So, you want to tell me what it is you hope to find out here?”

  We entered the lobby. There was a thick, dark green carpet, there were wood-paneled walls, brass lamps and a mahogany desk for a porter. But there was no porter, the lamp shades were flyblown and the thick green carpets were worn thin from years of being trodden by increasingly cheap shoes. I pressed the button to call the elevator and shoved my hands in my poc
kets.

  “I hope to find out,” I said, “what it is I hope to find out.”

  “Have you been reading annoying books on Zen philosophy again?”

  I closed my eyes. “I am annoying Zen philosophy, Dehan. You godda be de watter, Rittoo Glasshopper.”

  The elevator doors slid open and we stepped in. I pressed the button and as the doors closed, I said, “Let me explain; somewhere in this apparently insoluble case, there is one, small, loose end, but we don’t know what it is yet.” We began to climb. “So if we are busy looking for fingerprints, but the loose end is a handkerchief with blood on it, we may never find it, because we are looking in the wrong place for the wrong thing.”

  “So?”

  “We must look nowhere—and everywhere!”

  She smiled with hooded eyes. “I bet you used to watch all those shows and movies, didn’t you?”

  The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. “What shows and movies?”

  She followed me out to the landing. “You know, Bruce Lee, Kung Fu, Karate Kid…”

  I spied Dr. Epstein’s brass plaque and headed for it, speaking over my shoulder. “Never heard of them. It seems to me, however, young Dehan, that you are quite familiar with all of them! Here we are…”

  I tapped lightly on the door and stepped through to a comfortable reception area while Dehan muttered something behind me. The walls were plain cream with half a dozen unobtrusive prints hanging. There were chairs and a couple of small sofas that had been new not so long ago, but weren’t anymore, and there was a coffee table with lots of magazines on it. Opposite the door, and slightly to my right, there was an old, oak desk and behind it there was an attractive woman in her late thirties or early forties. She had large, humorous eyes and a mouth with generous lips and very white teeth, that found it hard not to smile. When she spoke, her accent said she had once been from Barbados, but she was now from the Bronx.

  “Good morning, what can I do for you?”

  We showed her our badges. “I’m Detective Stone, this is Detective Dehan, of the NYPD…”