Then, suddenly, they all stopped moving and were motionless, as if a
command had come to them. Gradually, they began to sway from side to
side, their beaming eyes describing small arcs in the darkness. Their
metronomic movement was in time with the song that Baba Lavelle sang in
another, distant part of the city.
Eventually, they stopped swaying.
They did not become restless again.
They waited in the shadows, motionless, eyes shining.
Soon, they might be called upon to kill.
They were ready. They were eager.
CHAPTER THREE
Captain Walter Gresham, of Homicide, had a face like a shovel. Not that
he was an ugly man; in fact, he was rather handsome in a sharp-edged
sort of way. But his entire face sloped forward, all of his strong
features pointing down and out, toward the tip of his chin, so that you
were reminded of a garden spade.
He arrived at the hotel a few minutes before noon and met with Jack and
Rebecca at the end of the elevator alcove on the sixteenth floor, by a
window that looked down on Fifth Avenue.
“What we’ve got brewing here is a full-fledged gang war,” Gresham said.
“We haven’t seen anything like this in my time. It’s like something out
of the roaring twenties, for God’s sake! Even if it is just a bunch of
hoods and scumbags killing one another, I don’t like it.
Absolutely won’t tolerate it in my jurisdiction. I spoke with the
Commissioner before I came over here, and he’s in full agreement with
me: We can’t go on treating this as if it were just an ordinary homicide
investigation; we’ve got to put the pressure on. We’re forming a special
task force. We’re converting two interrogation rooms into a task force
headquarters, putting in special phone lines and everything.”
“Does that mean Jack and I are being pulled off the case?”
“No, no,” Gresham said. “I’m putting you in charge of the task force. I
want you to head back to the office, work up an attack plan, a strategy,
figure out everything you’ll need. How many men-both uniforms and
detectives? How much clerical support? How many vehicles?
Establish emergency liaisons with city, state, and federal drug
enforcement agencies, so we don’t have to go through the bureaucracy
every time we need information. Then meet me in my office at five
o’clock.”
“We’ve still got work to do here,” Jack said.
“Others can handle that,” Gresham said. “And by the way, we’ve gotten
some answers to your queries about Lavelle.”
“The phone company?” Jack asked.
“That’s one of them. They’ve no listed or unlisted number for anyone
named Baba Lavelle. In the past year, they’ve had only two new
customers named Lavelle. I sent a man around this morning to talk to
both of them. Neither is black, like your Lavelle. Neither of them
knows anyone named Baba. And neither of them made my man the least bit
suspicious.”
Driven by a sudden hard wind, snow grated like sand across the window.
Below, Fifth Avenue briefly vanished beneath whirling flakes.
“What about the power company? ” Jack asked.
“Same situation,” Gresham said. “No Baba Lavelle.”
“He might’ve used a friend’s name for utility connections.”
Gresham shook his head. “Also heard back from the Department of
Immigration. No one named LavelleBaba or otherwise-applied for any
residency permit, either short-term or long-term, in the past year.”
Jack frowned. “So he’s in the country illegally.”
“Or he’s not here at all,” Rebecca said.
They looked at her, puzzled.
She elaborated: “I’m not convinced there is a Baba Lavelle.”
“Of course there is,” Jack said.
But she said, “We’ve heard a lot about him, and we’ve seen some
smoke…. But when it comes to getting hold of physical evidence of his
existence, we keep coming up empty-handed.”
Gresham was keenly interested, and his interest disheartened Jack. “You
think maybe Lavelle is just a red herring? Sort of a . . . paper man
behind which the real killer or killers are hiding?”
“Could be,” Rebecca said.
“A bit of misdirection,” Gresham said, clearly intrigued. “In reality,
maybe it’s one of the other mafia families making a move on the
Carramazzas, trying to take the top rung of the ladder.”