Laurie led the way to table six, where Frankie’s mortal remains were laid out. The corpse was slightly bloated. The right eye was more swollen than the left.
“He looks younger than eighteen,” Laurie said.
“More like fifteen,” Lou agreed.
Laurie asked Vinnie to roll the body over so they could look at the back of the head. With a gloved hand she parted his wet, matted hair and exposed a round entrance wound surrounded by a larger round area of abrasion. After taking some measurements and photographs, Laurie carefully shaved the surrounding hair to expose the wound completely.
“It was obviously a close-range shot,” Laurie said. She pointed to the tight ring of gunpowder stippling around the punched-out center.
“How close?” Lou asked.
Laurie pondered for a moment. “I’d say three or four inches. Something like that.”
“Typical,” Lou said.
Laurie took another series of measurements and photographs. Then, with a clean scalpel, she carefully teased bits of the gunpowder residue from the depths of some of the small stippled puncture wounds. By tapping the scalpel blade against the inside of a glass collection tube, Laurie preserved this material for laboratory analysis.
“Never know what the chemists can tell us,” she said. She gave the tubes to Vinnie to label.
“We need a break,” Lou said. “I don’t care where it comes from.”
When Vinnie was finished labeling the collection tubes, Laurie had him help her turn Frank back into a supine position.
“What’s wrong with the right eye?” Lou asked.
“I don’t know,” Laurie said. “From the X-ray it didn’t look like the bullet went into the orbit, but you never know.” The lid was a purplish color. Swollen conjunctiva protruded through the palpebral fissure. Gently, Laurie pulled up the eyelid.
“Ugh,” Lou said. “That looks bad. The first case had no eyes; this one looks like the eye’s been run over with a Mack truck. Could that have happened when he was floating around in the East River?”
Laurie shook her head. “Happened before death. See the hemorrhages under the mucous membrane? That means the heart was pumping. He was alive when this occurred.”
Bending closer, Laurie studied the cornea. By looking at the reflection of the overhead lights off its surface, she could tell that the cornea was irregular. Plus, it was a milky white. Reaching over to the left eye, she lifted its lid. In contrast to the right, the left cornea was clear; the eye stared blankly at the ceiling.
“Could the bullet have done that?” Lou asked.
“I don’t think so,” Laurie said. “It looks more like a chemical burn the way it’s affected the cornea. We’ll get a sample for Toxicology. I’ll look at it closely in sections under the microscope. I have to admit, I haven’t seen anything quite like it.”
Laurie continued her external exam. When she looked at the wrists, she pointed to them. “See these abrasions and indentations?”
“Yeah,” Lou said. “What’s that mean?”
“I’d say this poor guy had been tied up. Maybe the eye lesion was some kind of torture.”
“These are nasty people,” Lou said. “What irks me is that they hide behind this supposed code of ethics when in reality it’s just a dog-eat-dog world. And what really irks me is that their screwing around tends to give all Italian-Americans a bad name.”
As Laurie examined Frank’s hands and legs, she asked Lou why the Vaccarro and Lucia crime families were feuding.
“For territory,” Lou said. “They all have to sleep in the same bed, Queens and parts of Nassau County. They are forever at each other’s throats for territory. They are in direct competition for their drugs, loan-sharking, gambling clubs, fencing, extortion rings, hot car rings, hijacking… You name it and they’re into it. They’re forever fighting and killing each other, but it’s a Mexican standoff so in a way they also have to get along. It’s a weird world.”
“All this illegal activity goes on even today?” Laurie questioned.
“Absolutely,” Lou said. “And what we know about is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Why don’t the police do something?”
Lou sighed. “We’re trying, but it ain’t easy. We need evidence. As I explained before, that’s hard to get. The bosses are insulated and the killers are pros. Even when we’ve got the goods on them they still have to go through the courts, and nothing is guaranteed. We Americans have always been so worried about tyranny from the authorities, that we legally give the bad guys the edge.”