Night Songs Read online

  “Tell ‘em what you told me when I asked you about the Daniel Boone killings, Vincenzo,” she said, her tone only half teasing. “Tell ‘em how you said it was no big deal since it was only a couple of nobody hooker junkies.”

  “Lighten up, Maglione! Che cosa fa!” His use of Italian signaled to Gianna that she’d gone too far, that she’d offended him, and she apologized—“Me scuse, Vincenzo,”—but didn’t give up her quest to have the prostitute murders assigned to her Hate Crimes Unit.

  “These are not ordinary homicides. These are crimes of hate. You know that’s true.” She looked around the table, watching her superiors watch her. None of them numbered among her close personal friends—except the chief—but she’d known them all for years, and she respected most of them. Still, sometimes she wondered what made them tick, how it was possible for them to be on the same side, have the same objectives, and yet differ so completely on such a fundamental issue: violence against women. “Four women are dead because some man—or some men—wanted power and control, not sex.”

  Vince Pelligrino sighed wearily. “Maglione, I got two hundred homicides already in this city and June ain’t over yet. I could be looking at close to five hundred for the year. You wanna take the weight of some dead hookers, be my guest,” he said, wiping his hands in an up and down movement that, in unspoken Italian, meant he washed his hands of the whole business. Then he looked quickly at the chief. “That is if you don’t see a problem with it.”

  The chief shook his head and looked down the table at Inspector Eddie Davis, head of Intelligence under which the Hate Crimes Unit existed, who nodded his acquiescence, and finally toward the Vice guys, one of whom blew her a kiss; the other shrugged that he didn’t care one way or the other and shoved a box of files down the table toward her. She peered inside. The files looked raggedy and unkempt, like the Vice guys who worked the street, and she groaned inwardly. Yet another opportunity to play catch-up, to try and build a bias case from the mess that had been passed between Vice and Homicide for at least a year.

  Washington, D.C. The head of the Hate Crimes Unit sat at her desk facing the window, looking out over her unique city, unlike any of its East Coast sister cities: smaller in land and population than Boston, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta or Miami; smaller most certainly than the mid-Western and West Coast behemoths of Chicago or Detroit or Los Angeles or Houston. Unlike any American city—large or small—because, in reality, Washington was no city at all. It was the District of Columbia, the Nation’s capital. The five hundred thousand or so citizens of the District of Columbia were disenfranchised in a way different from any other American citizens, and Gianna sometimes thought that was why policing the city was so difficult.

  Until the early 1970’s, the President of the United States appointed the mayor and the police chief and the other decision makers, and the Congress of the United States controlled the budget. These days, D.C. residents did elect their own mayor, and that mayor appointed the police chief, but the Congress still controlled the budget and most of the land within Washington—land that was home to the White House and the Capitol buildings and the dozens of monuments and museums and the hundreds of federal office buildings (IRS, FBI, HUD, HHS, etc)—none of which was taxable. Gianna could never consider this truth without wondering, seriously, whether the people in Congress truly understood the reason and intent of the Boston Tea Party. As much as Gianna disliked politics, she empathized with the mayor who was expected to find the resources to manage the crime while denied the right to tax most of the city’s land. And Gianna felt just a little guilty because she had a lot more bad news for the mayor: Gianna believed there was a serial killer who preyed on prostitutes and she suspected that there were more than the four victims known by name to the police department.

  Not only did the mayor not need to hear such daunting news, but the Chief did not want to be the bearer of such news; and that was why the Chief, who was appointed by the mayor, told the head of the Hate Crimes unit, who was appointed by him, that he wanted all files and reports on the ill-named “Daniel Boone killings” kept strictly confidential. Nobody but the Chief himself was to see the Daniel Boone files. That unnerved the head of Hate Crimes, because it meant withholding information from her boss. The Chief fully understood and sympathized with her trepidation, since he was withholding information from his own boss. But sometimes, he sagely informed his protégé, life threw you a curveball, and you had to catch the fucker barehanded

  CHAPTER THREE

  “I oughta arrest ‘em just for being the ugly, ignorant, evil pieces of shit that they are.” Officer Cassandra Ali tossed her pretty head of baby dreadlocks and managed a crooked grin despite her anger, as her colleagues on the Hate Crimes unit laughed at her pronouncement; but her boss saw beyond the grin to the venom that powered the words and was worried.

  “Cassie! Don’t be so cold! Give the dudes a chance.” Officer Kenny Chang, the resident peacemaker, stepped easily into the role he normally played opposite Cassie, the resident cynic.

  “Yeah, Cass, lighten up. After all, they haven’t broken the law. Yet.” Officer Robert Gilliam groaned and buried his head in his hands as he immediately recognized the failure of his attempt at sarcastic humor.

  “What would make you happy, Bobby, for them to drag the old woman off to the gas chamber? Would that be breaking the law?” Officer Lynda Lopez bubbled and simmered her anger like a pot about to boil over.

  “Jeez, men are such assholes!”

  “Oh, Cassie, come on. Not true and not fair.”

  “Shove it, Kenny. I’m tired of you trying to put a happy face on everything. What’s happening to Sophie Gwertzman is a crime. You hear me, Bobby Gilliam? A crime!” Cassie stood up abruptly, knocking over her chair.

  “Not according to the code, Cass. We can call these guys all the names we want, but until they break the law—” Bobby held up his hands and shrugged.

  “Then the law sucks.” Cassie righted her chair and slumped into it.

  “That’s enough, guys.” Detective Eric Ashby easily and competently gained control of his subordinates, while casting an uneasy glance across the room at his boss.

  Gianna relished the time alone with her Team, secreted away in the cramped, crowded work room they called the Think Tank. She listened to them talk as she always did: leaning back in her chair, feet on the desk, eyes closed. She loved listening to them, feeling their intelligence and their energy and their dedicated but no-bullshit approach to law enforcement. She was proud of them. She believed them to be the best young cops in the Washington, D.C. police department. They worked for her because they wanted to: She had chosen them from a group of volunteers, police officers who wanted specifically to work in the newly created Hate Crimes Unit; young officers who knew they’d be doing a different kind of police work, who knew that along with the normal ugly that accompanied every crime, they’d have the added evil of hatred: Hatred of a person because of race or color or religion or sexual orientation. She had chosen them because they were straight, gay, Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male, female. She had chosen them because each of them, in some way, reminded her of herself at that age: Idealistic and defiant and innocent and dedicated and a true believer in law as the great equalizer. To feel Cassie Ali’s anger, to hear her scorn for the laws that protected victim as equally as victimizer, deeply worried Gianna.

  “Did I miss something? I haven’t seen a new report on the Gwertzman case.” Gianna spoke quietly, evenly, directly to Cassie.

  “This happened last night—”

  “You weren’t on duty last night.”

  “I know. Mrs. Gwertzman called me at home—”

  “Called you at home?” Gianna bit off the words before Cassie completed her sentence and the energy of room shifted.

  Gianna went icy when angered and not even Eric, who’d known her for twenty years, could withstand the glare of her anger. Cassie shifted uneasily, wisely allowing her self-righteous indi
gnation to take a backseat. She scrunched down into her chair, managing to seem even younger and smaller than she was.

  “Yes, Ma’am. I gave her my number in case...”

  “That’s a violation of procedure. You have a beeper to be reached out of shift.”

  “Yes, Ma’am, but the old lady doesn’t understand what it is or how it works, so I thought—”

  “You thought you could violate procedure when it suits your purposes?”

  Cassie straightened herself, sitting as if attention. “Lieutenant, they were playing concentration camp music outside her window at two in the morning. I heard it over the phone, that’s how loud it was. She was hysterical when she called. She thought she was back in...in...that place.”

  Gianna allowed the silence to hang for a moment while she sought the balance between compassion and authority. Just as no parent would publicly claim any child as the favorite, neither would Gianna proclaim a favorite; but deep within she harbored a special care for Cassie, the one who was most like herself. Her own early years as a cop were marked by numerous rules violations because she believed that laws should bend to fit people, not the other way around. And the superior officer who had pulled her buns out of the fire more than once back then was the current chief of police who still was pulling her buns out of the fire.

  “There’s an after hours noise ordinance—” Kenny began.

  Cassie cut him off razor sharp and quick. “What the hell good is a noise ordinance when psychological terrorism is the problem?”

  “Cassie. All of you. Listen to me. We cannot impose morality. It has taken us this long in the development of our culture to determine that certain behavior generated by hatred violates people’s basic rights, and that such behavior is criminal. But no where in the law does it say that hatred itself is a crime. The skinheads or Nazis or whoever they are, have a right to play Wagner at two in the morning—as long as they don’t violate the noise ordinance. They even have a right to play it outside the home of a Buchenwald survivor.”

  “But that’s so wrong,” Cassie wailed. “The woman is eighty years old, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Yes, it’s wrong and it’s evil and you’ve every right to every feeling that you’re having. Just don’t ever forget that you’re a police officer with a duty to serve the rights of all citizens. Am I clear?”

  The chorus of “Yes Ma’ams” floated gently in the room and dissipated the accumulated tension.

  “Let’s move on to another brand of depravity, shall we? Any word on those hunting knives?” Gianna asked Eric.

  “Every major sporting goods, camping, and outdoor store on the East coast sells that knife. So do most military surplus stores.” Eric shook his head in dismay. “But that’s not the worst of it. Oh no. Not by a long shot.”

  Gianna tasted the bitterness of his words and sat and waited.

  “There are no words to describe the condition of the files on these cases that we got from homicide and vice. Anna, you really gotta complain to the Chief—”

  She held up her hand to silence him because she certainly would not join him in criticism of another division in the presence of subordinates. “What’s in the files, Eric?”

  “Who the hell knows?” Eric snarled. “I’m telling you, Boss, I’ve never seen anything like it. As far as I can tell, there’s been almost no follow-up to leads. There are no forensic reports attached. Two of ‘em don’t even have autopsy reports attached. Hell, it even looks like somebody merged two of them, as if the two dead women were the same person. I can’t tell which witness list goes with which file.” Eric threw his hands up and then began pacing.

  Gianna got up and crossed to the box containing the files. Each file bore the name of a victim, but it seemed that any semblance of order ended there. One by one she removed them and gave the file of each of the four murdered prostitutes to each of the four young cops before her. Remembering Gwen Thomas’s pain and anger, she gave Andrea Thomas’s file to Cassie.

  “Do I need to tell you all what to do?” she asked, and before they could answer, she suggested that they get started. She watched them leave and when the door closed she allowed herself to share Eric’s anger about the condition of the files.

  “Did you talk to Pelligrino?”

  “Hell yes! And I’m sure you don’t need for me to tell you how busy they are solving real murders. Too busy to worry about some dead hookers.” When Eric was thoroughly angry all the blood drained from his face, making it stark white, making his red hair flame and his blue eyes glaciers. She watched him struggle for control. “What really pisses me off is those files look like they didn’t care. It’s just some hookers, so who cares, you know what I mean? And if I believe that—”

  “McCreedy’s back from vacation this week, isn’t he?”

  Eric frowned and nodded. “Why?”

  “Because I want him to be a presence at Homicide and Vice until we’re convinced that the victims’ files are correct and complete. Because I want him to push and pull and prod until it becomes gently clear to Homicide and Vice that a victim’s file is a victim’s file whether or not they like the victim. Because I want to irritate them as they’ve irritated me and McCreedy is the best way I can think of to do that.”

  Tim McCreedy was as close to a perfect specimen of male pulchritude as Gianna had ever seen. He was six feet-four inches tall. He had coal black hair and sea-blue eyes and snow-white teeth. He held national and international body building titles. He was a Black Belt in karate and had recently discovered the joys of kick boxing. nd he was one hell of a good cop: detailed, organized, resourceful, and persistent to point of being a pain in the ass when that was necessary. Tim McCreedy was also happily, openly, and joyously gay. Tim McCreedy was a flaming queen and proud of it. Tim McCreedy was despised by the macho cops of Homicide and Vice not only because he was a “fuckin’ faggot,” but because he had, on more than one occasion, beat the ever-lovin’ shit out of every one of those macho cops stupid enough to call him a “fuckin’ faggot” loud enough for him to hear. Now the macho boys would have to explain to Tim McCreedy how and why it was that the files on Andrea Thomas and Sandra King and Patricia MacIntyre and Rhonda Green were such a mess; would have to explain to the fuckin’ faggot how they were just some fuckin’ whores.

  “They’re really gonna have it in for you for that,” Eric said, his anger ebbing in the appreciation of the moment.

  “I sincerely hope so,” she said, still seething.

  “Well, if anybody can find the missing pieces of those files, McCreedy’s the man,” Eric said.

  “I just hope it’s only four of them.” She envisioned some dread-filled cop in Washington State and in California and in New York saying the same thing before each found more than a dozen prostitutes in each state, victims of a single serial killer. She couldn’t bring herself to say out loud what she believed deep inside: that such a thing really was possible in D.C., so she changed the subject.

  “Nice job of diffusing the skinhead debate,” she said.

  Eric grinned his thanks and shook his head in amused wonderment. “That Cassie is a fierce little one. Those Nazi punks better watch their asses.”

  “It’s our asses we’ll need to worry about if she lets loose on one of them. I’ve never seen her so thrown out of balance.”

  “Do you want me to pull her from Gwertzman?”

  “No, Eric, I don’t think so. There may be another way to handle this.”

  Eric’s antennae perked up at the tone in her voice and at the half-grin that raised her mouth at the corners. She picked up the phone, punched some numbers, and waited.

  “Tyler Carson, please.”

  Eric’s eyes widened in disbelief. His boss calling the newspaper? She hated the media, despite the fact that her lover of a year was one of the best investigative reporters in town.

  Those standing closest to Tyler’s desk in the newsroom did a double take as he hung up one of the phones that he held, as he put down his copy
editing pen, as he turned away from the computer monitor on which he was editing another story. Not one of them ever remembered seeing Tyler do only one thing a time. He turned his back to the habitual crowd around an editor’s desk and frowned his full attention into the phone.

  “You will forgive the understatement if I acknowledge being totally surprised by this call.”

  Tyler Carson knew that she was Mimi Patterson’s lover. She knew he was gay and dating a married FBI agent. They both knew that Mimi would have a fit if she found about this telephone call.

  “This call is strictly off the record, Mr. Carson. Yes?”

  “Of course.” Tyler listened intently while Gianna related the terrorism inflicted upon eighty-year old Sophie Gwertzman and why the police were powerless to make any arrests. He wrote down the names and addresses of those identified by Officer Cassandra Ali as being responsible and he wrote down Sophie Gwertzman’s address. Everything else he committed to memory, just as he had in his ace reporter days before he was city editor; and, like the best of journalists, he promptly erased from his mind the source of his information. When she was finished, Tyler asked, “Do you have a preference for which reporter is assigned this story?”

  “I have a preference for which reporter is not assigned this story,” Gianna answered as carefully as he’d asked, and hung up.

  Baby Doll’s feet hurt. She’d walked ten blocks out of her way in the ninety degree heat in her brand new purple spike heels so that she could meet the newspaper lady without being seen by any of her associates, and damned if that Marilyn Monroe wasn’t standing right at the bus stop! Standing there in hot pink hot pants, holding up the pole like he didn’t have a thing else in the world to do! Baby wondered if the newspaper lady had psyched her out and made an arrangement to meet Marilyn, too; but that question was answered when the bus arrived and the door opened and the fifth passenger off was the newspaper lady and she walked right past Marilyn without a hint of recognition to the bench where she was supposed to meet Baby. But Baby had no plans to move from the shadow of the apartment building that hid her from view unless and until Marilyn boarded that bus and evaporated, which he did; and when the bus was a full block away, Baby slowly—because her feet hurt—and cautiously—because she trusted not a living soul—approached the reporter from the rear, noticing for the first time how pretty she was.