Victims (22 page)

Screaming, inconsolable infants were tossed through open windows or slammed against walls by distraught parents who only wanted a little quiet.

A person looking at another person in the wrong way—whatever way that was, sometimes merely by making eye contact—had unknowingly issued a challenge which ended in violent death.

Life was taken randomly, without thought and seemingly without motive. Not just the violence-prone, who went about satisfying their peculiar needs regardless of weather or atmospheric pressures, but the most unlikely, the quiet, the good, exploded in the most incredible acts of personal violence against people known and loved, or in a setting of strangers. New York City was a psychiatric casebook of violence during the unrelenting pollution inversion.

The biggest act of violence in the city, however, was not random, impulsive, unplanned or careless. It was an orchestrated mob hit, performed in five separate locations, on five carefully selected victims: two in Manhattan, two in Queens and one in Brooklyn. The hit on five medium-level organization wise guys had been programmed and choreographed so that all the victims were hit at precisely the same moment, while probably enjoying more or less identical entrees at favorite neighborhood Italian restaurants. It was as though the message was not so much in the killing as in the timing. It was an inarguable way of saying, Not only can we take you out, but we can take you out as you eat your evening meal in your favorite restaurant, surrounded by your favorite people.

Precinct detectives and homicide detectives were running into one another, hurrying from one location to another. Too many cops were on vacation. Emergency calls to summer homes went unanswered by men who had heard all they wanted to know on the radio. The city morgues were running to capacity. There were not enough experienced coroners to deal with professionally killed people as well as run-of-the-mill average, mugging homicides and the tremendous number of spur-of-the-moment victims: people throttled by people who ordinarily would never even think of committing violence on a fellow living creature.

Bodies were shifted from borough to borough: Manhattan’s house of death gave temporary refuge to Brooklyn and Queens casualties. In times of crisis, borough and precinct lines had to be crossed.

Out at Kennedy Airport, in the far flat swampy reaches beyond the runways, the air was fouled not only by the heavy thick fumes of dropped fuel and jet exhaust, but by the rotten garbage odor of an unofficial dump that had been used by private garbage collectors for years. Rather than go through the legalities required to obtain an officially designated dump area, it was easier to just pull off on a side road near Rockaway Boulevard and unload a dump truck filled with debris from restaurants, supermarkets, hospitals, industrial plants, or whatever other customers hired private cartage.

Not only was the dump used for deposit, it was also carefully culled and searched by junk dealers who specialized in discarded newspapers, cartons, containers of a certain kind. There were those who waded through every other kind of litter until they found what it was they dealt in. There were parts of wrecked cars that even the professional dealers in such things didn’t want. There were scavengers who, for whatever reason, collected glass in any condition: broken, shattered, smashed, whatever.

There was a new breed, since the enactment of the bottle law: kids, about thirteen or fourteen years old, who couldn’t find jobs, who needed spending money, who were ready, willing and able to work and who had to invent their own source of income. They were the ones who discovered treasure troves of discarded bottles, beer cans, soda cans, tossed away by people who didn’t care about the nickel they were losing.

Three boys searched through the mountains of garbage and swamp. They wore kerchiefs, cowboy style, over their noses and mouths, carried plastic garbage bags over their shoulders. Their take was pretty good; at least enough to justify their working conditions. It was time to call it a day. None of them wanted to be stuck out there in the dark. The leader, a tall rangy kid whose clothes stuck to him with a combination of sweat and slime, slipped on a large green garbage bag. His feet skidded and he went flying flat out, his own bag of treasures tossed into the air. He turned, hauling himself to his feet to check on the damage. His two friends stood staring, gaping at the ripped bag that had tripped him.

A stiff, curled-up human foot poked through the tear. There was a second garbage bag, identical in size and general shape, lying alongside the first.

The boys ran, leaving behind their day’s earnings. They ran until their lungs were aching, their heads spinning, their eyes filled with tears.

A patrol car cruising along Rockaway Boulevard pulled up, a cop called them over and the boys began screaming in ragged voices, pointing back into the swamp garbage lot.

Although the policemen on the scene did not know it, the bodies of Arabella Vidales and Christine Valapo had been found.

C
APTAIN O’CONNOR PRETENDED
the smell of the garbage, compounded by the thick heavy black taste of dropped fuel and the suffocating air inversion, didn’t bother him. He pulled on his cigarette, choosing his own poison.

He told Miranda Torres, “I wouldn’t have called you out on this, but I remembered something you said, about the stewardess who had rented the Barclay Street apartment for her younger sister. The one the neighbors called the ‘Spanish girl.’”

Miranda breathed shallowly and she pretended that nothing bothered her: not the place, not the obscene fumes, not the murdered bodies of two young women her own age. She focused on the fact that she was surprised by O’Connor. She wasn’t always sure that he listened when she spoke. She had underestimated him. She would remember this.

“Their boss at Avianca reported them as missing persons,” he said. “He mentioned the fact that you’d inquired about them. So—” O’Connor turned to where the technicians were working—“looks like they’re not missing anymore.”

He watched her closely. They all did that when things got rough.

“Of what did they die?” she asked.

“They’re in bad shape. What with the heat and all. But, apparently, strangulation. Both were probably raped. Maybe roughed up some first. So, what with your inquiry and then the guy at Avianca, what we probably got here are”—he glanced at his notebook—“Arabella Vidales and Christine Valapo. They don’t look too good, but good enough for ID, I guess. Is there any other relative you know of besides the little sister who can ID Vidales?”

She flashed on Carlos Galvez, menacing, troubling, larger than life. She shook her head.

“No. I will get the girl.”

“Okay.” He turned to watch the activity around the bodies. “I think all these good people are just about finished with their preliminary work. The bodies will be taken to Queens General. You want anyone to go with you—to pick up the sister? Gonna be okay?”

“I will handle this by myself, Captain.” Conscious that he was watching her closely, Miranda glanced at the attendants as they loaded the bodies onto carriers. “You know, Captain,” she said, “it will
not
be okay. This is not an ‘okay’ thing, is it, this... this raping and beating and strangling of young women. It will
not
be okay for anyone at all, but in all of this, if you mean will
I
be okay, yes. I will do my job, if that is what you are asking.”

He had never seen her anger before. Hints of it, flashing signs of it, quickly controlled. It was as he would have anticipated: cool, careful, limited and, surprisingly, very tough. He sensed immediately that this was necessary for Miranda Torres, this girding herself, this drawing on herself. He kept on her line exactly: offered her a hard, official presence.

“Fine, Detective Torres. Now that you’ve had your say, get going.”

She nodded once, briskly, then took off in her car.

She tried to reach Carlos Galvez. She put aside her reluctance to confront the man again or even to hear his voice. His phone rang more than ten times before she hung up. It wasn’t that far from her office and it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes. She drove past Barclay Street after checking that there was a light on in Maria Vidales’ apartment.

On Inverness Street, the two rows of attached houses on either side of the street showed signs of declining night life: dim lights on patios; bedroom lights glowing; the odd grayish flicker of television sets. The first thing she noticed was the absence of any cars in front of the Galvez house. No limo-size Lincolns or Caddies. No Mercedes. No lights on inside the house or on the terrace.

Miranda got out of her car and tried to see into the living-room windows. It was too dark, she could see nothing. She was both relieved and regretful. Now she would have to escort Maria Vidales for identification.

She listened for a moment to the music, hard rock, barely muffled by the apartment door. It was loud and somewhat out of control, devoid of humor or good feeling. Just loud noise, pierced by shouts and whoops of laughter. Someone in there was feeling very loose and very high.

Maria opened the door, then tried to close it when she saw Miranda.

“Oh. Look who it is. No. No, you cannot talk to me. I don’t want to see you, get lost.”

A young man, thick dark hair hanging across his forehead, pulled Maria away. “Who is this? Wadda ya want? Want some fun, baby? Hey, Maria, who is this, your sister? She is a beauty, this one.”

A door across the hall opened, then shut with a resounding noise. Neighbors were annoyed.

Miranda shouldered her way into the apartment, closed the door behind her. She spoke quietly, firmly and rapidly in Spanish.

“You, take whatever illegal substances you have on you and get lost. Very quickly, before I decide to bust you just for the hell of it. I’m a police officer, ask Maria.”

“What the hell is this? Jeez, you can’t just bust in here and—”

“Oh yes I can. I just did. Ask Maria. Tell him. Tell him to get lost.”

Maria looked at her. They stared at each other, and, without words, she knew.
She knew.

Maria whispered, “Peter, go home. Please. No, don’t say anything, don’t ask...just go home. This is between this lady and me.”

There was something about both of them that froze the young man: two women, with something terrible, some secret, between them that he didn’t want any part of.

Miranda reached out and took hold of his arm.

“How are you traveling? Do you have a car?”

“None of your business, what is this anyway?”

Maria said, “He takes the bus or he walks. He isn’t driving.”

Miranda let him go. She walked over to the stereo and turned the music off.

“I’m going to take you to her,” she said to Maria.

“Yes. I thought that was why you are here.”

The young girl’s face sagged, her mouth pulled down, her eyes were glazed not just by drugs but as though a shield of some kind clouded them.

“Maria, is there anyone you’d like to call? Shall I call that boy back? To come with us.”

Maria studied her, and her lips twisted into a grotesque smile. “No. He is no one. Without Arabella, I have no one to call.”

“What are you on, right now? Are you speeding or floating or what?”

“Right now, police lady? Right now? I am on something so terrible it has no name. Could we go now? Could we not talk?”

She never asked and Miranda never told her. It was an assumed knowledge, that her sister was dead, that she was being taken to see her dead sister. The girl sat without touching the back of the car seat, rigid, frozen, blank, only her body present—Maria had gone to some unknown far place.

When they arrived at Queens General Hospital and were headed toward the morgue at basement level, Miranda heard Maria gasp, cough. Caught her as she leaned forward clutching her stomach; tried to help her.

Maria turned her back. “Leave me alone. I am all right. Don’t touch me. Just don’t touch me.”

When she stood up, she seemed smaller, hunched forward by despair. Her complexion was devoid of color, devoid of blood, the pallor of a corpse. A long strand of thick black hair fell over her face, covered her mouth. Maria reached for it, pushed at it, couldn’t seem to deal with it.

“This hair,” she said. “I want to cut this hair. I want to cut this hair. I want to do it now. Could I do it now?”

“Later,” Miranda said. “We’ll do that later. Maria, I think maybe we’d better—”

Maria pulled herself free of Miranda’s hand. “I told you, do not touch me. Let’s get this over with. I want to see her. Take me to my sister. I want to do this, now.”

Miranda nodded and they continued down the long, dark corridor, past piled-up cafeteria furniture, bulging garbage bags.

An explosion of laughter from a small office startled them. A short bald man in a dirty white uniform with rolled-up pants came toward them, smiling at the joke he’d just heard. He shook his head at them, as though they knew, too, what was so funny.

“Wait here,” Miranda instructed her at the door to the morgue. Her tone was crisp, official, impersonal, unemotional.

“They’re not here,” the clerk at the rubber-topped desk told Miranda. “They got detoured to Manhattan. We got a couple of those Mafia guys that got hit at dinner—man, one of them at a restaurant where I take the wife, a small place on the Boulevard. The other guy at some place on Union Turnpike. I wanna get the name—these guys always eat where the food is great.” He grinned. “At least they had a good last supper, huh? One of them, the older guy, boy, he fell forward, bam, right into a plate of pasta. First I thought it was blood, but when they wiped it off, I gotta tell ya, it smelled lots better than blood, ya know?”

“Where are the bodies of the two women?”

He checked his ledger, then turned the book around so that Miranda could see for herself. He kept a stubby index finger on the appropriate line. “They’re in Manhattan. We been shifting stiffs, I don’t know what’s goin’ on. It must be the weather got people crazy, right? You know, one day last week, I’m here, minding my own business, and who do you think they brung in?
My bartender.
I mean, a guy I been drinking at his place for maybe fifteen, twenty years, a neighborhood joint in Queens Village, a nice place, like your own home, and some jerk,
a neighborhood guy,
not some nutty outsider, but one of the regulars, ya know, he gets into an argument about one thing and another and he goes home and then he comes back and points a gun, right between the eyes, blows this guy away, right? Willy, the bartender, twenty years I known him. Funny, I never knew his last name until I put him in the book. Wilson. Willy Wilson, right? Now you tell me, lady, is that crazy or is that crazy? Jeez, you just don’t know when you get up in the morning, right?”