“I don’t suppose I could come along for the ride,” McMaster said. “I’d be willing to take a vow of silence.”
“Sure thing,” she said. “But since we’ll be out there trying to pick up information that will be used in court, I really should give the DA’s office a call and see if they still have that pesky rule about not letting civilians tag along on an active investigation.”
He laughed. “I’ll grab a cab back to the Hammerstein. Keep me in the loop.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “As much as I can.”
The three of us knew that wouldn’t be much, but it was better left unsaid.
CHAPTER 14
THE PELHAM BAY section of the Bronx is a safe, desirable, historically Italian-American neighborhood whose streets are lined with mature trees, moderately priced family cars, and post– World War II architecture.
“Welcome to 1955,” Kylie said as she pulled the car onto Zulette Avenue, where many of the homes were red brick with metal awnings and wrought-iron railings. She parked in front of a house that fit the mold, right down to the American flag in the window.
The lights were on in several rooms upstairs, but the downstairs, with its separate entrance to a basement apartment, was dark.
“The landlady is awake, the perp is in the wind,” Kylie said as we walked up a flight of brick stairs and rang the doorbell.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice demanded from inside.
“Police,” Kylie said as we both held up our shields to the peephole. “We’d like to speak to Lucille Speranza.”
“About what?”
“Your tenant.”
Most people can’t hide the way they feel about cops, and they usually give themselves away immediately. I can break them down into three basic groups: those who are spooked by anyone in law enforcement; those who basically respect us and appreciate what we do; and those who distrust, don’t like, or downright hate us on sight.
As soon as Mrs. Speranza opened the door, I could tell she fell squarely into that last group. She was a seventy-seven-year-old widow who stood five-foot-nothing high and weighed in at about two hundred pounds. She had a hawk nose, a mop of Cheetoscolored curly hair that clashed with her red-flowered dress, and a chip on each shoulder.
Instead of a concerned Is everything okay?, she hit us with “What’s your problem?”
“Do you have a tenant by the name of Bobby Dodd?” Kylie said. “What kind of stupid question is that?” Speranza said. “You know I do, otherwise why else would you show up here in the middle of the night? What did he do?”
“We’d just like to ask him a few questions.”
“I’m not surprised the cops are after him. I never trusted him.” “Is there a reason?”
“He’s got no wife, no kids, no girlfriend. I never see him with people. How many more reasons do you need?”
“He rents the apartment downstairs, correct?” I asked.
“Of course he rents the downstairs. You think he lives up here with me?”
“The apartment is dark.”
“Then I guess he’s not home, and I have no idea where he is. Is that all?”
“No, ma’am. When was the last time you saw him?”
“A few days ago.”
“Could you be more specific?”
“Tuesday. No, Wednesday. He was carrying some laundry bags.”
“Does he have a car?”
“I don’t know. If he does, he doesn’t park it in front of the house.”
“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” I asked.
“I already told you. I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”
“Do you mind if we search his apartment?” Kylie asked.
Speranza thought about it. “And if I say no?”
“We’ll be back at three a.m. with a search warrant.”
“Wait here. I’ll get a key.” She closed the door hard.
“The middle of the night?” Kylie said. “It’s a quarter to eleven, her lights were on, and she’s still dressed.”
“The case is only a few hours old,” I said, “but clearly she’s out of the running for Miss Congeniality.”
Speranza returned wearing a lime-green cardigan over her red dress and carrying an oversize purse. We followed her down to the entrance of the basement apartment. She dug into the purse for a key, found it, and unlocked the door.
“Stand back,” Kylie said as we entered. I turned on a light.
“I told you he’s not there,” Speranza said. “The furniture is mine, so don’t mess the place up with fingerprint dust and all that crap.” She followed us in, and there was no point in trying to keep her out.
The room was a good size, about twenty by twenty-five feet. There was a tiny kitchenette with a breakfast bar, a sofa covered in a pink and green floral fabric, a plush burgundy reclining chair, a walnut dresser from the forties, a chrome and glass coffee table from the sixties, and a Sony TV from a bygone predigital era.
“The couch opens up to a bed,” Speranza said. “The toilet is over there.” Kylie and I started to open drawers and doors. “What’d he do?” Speranza asked. “Rob a bank?”
“Does he strike you as a bank robber?” Kylie asked.
Speranza muttered something in Italian. I understood enough of it to know that she and Kylie were never going to be besties.
It took us less than ten minutes to search and photograph the place. There was no sign of Dodd, no hint of where he’d gone or what he’d been up to while he was there.
“You done?” Speranza said.
“For now,” I said. “We’re going to send a forensics team to go over it more thoroughly, but for the moment, it’s off-limits.”
“No big deal. I don’t use it. It’s strictly a rental.”
“Off-limits means you can’t rent it,” Kylie said.
“Till when?”
“I can’t say. It’s part of an active police investigation.”
“Fine, but it’s June. You better be finished investigating by September first.”
“What happens then?”
“Dodd’s paid up till the end of August. What happens on September first is I either get a new tenant or I start charging the police department rent.”
CHAPTER 15
JAMIE GIBBS IS full of shit,” Kylie said.
We had just crossed the RFK Bridge from the Bronx into Manhattan and were headed back to the precinct. It didn’t matter that it was after midnight; the house would be jumping with detectives digging through notes from the hundreds of interviews they’d done, hoping to find the one nugget that could be a careerchanging home run. Breathing down their necks would be a gaggle of anxious bosses demanding immediate answers because they needed immediate answers for their own anxious bosses.
It was the last place on earth I wanted to be.
“Everybody we met tonight is full of shit,” I said. “Why single out poor Jamie?”
“When I said we wanted to talk to his mother, he got a little weepy, like maybe whoever took Erin took Mama Bear too. But that’s bullshit. Veronica Gibbs is a rock star in her own right. If someone abducted her, one of her many minions would know in a heartbeat and sound the alarm, and TV networks would interrupt their regularly scheduled programming. Jamie knows that better than anyone. So why even suggest that she might have been kidnapped?”