Thursday 7th May
East 91st Street
Jenny picked up the telephone to call Marty in Queens soon after Frank left. Two hours late but she assured him it would be okay. Though he did not realise it, she knew his "boss" Joe Haslam would not be around today. He would be over at the Queens branch of "Custom Cars" where the guys took almost all the stolen goods at first and where they would lay low for a day or so. Waiting to see the response and reaction from the cops.
Frank had jumped at the proposal she put to him when he came round after her slightly overdosing him with sleeping pills last night, fearing he might be building resistance. And depending on how things went, Marty might jump at the one she had to put to him. Her "currency" with him was running low, if not her bank balance. She only had one other name to give to him and a strong suspicion how Clarkson intended to keep his name from ever getting linked to these robberies.
Office Of the Captain, Major Case Squad
Danny Ross put down his phone with a sigh. The news was not unexpected. He had two teams out working with local precincts and some officers from SWAT. Logan and Wheeler as well as Faith Dempsey and Matt Desmond. Trying to track down this Joseph Haslam, almost certainly "Mr Green" in the gang, since the birthmark enabled them to identify him from the records. He must have gained forty pounds or more since their last details for him.
And like so many offenders with sex crimes to their name, he seemed to have dropped off the radar since he completed his parole just over two years ago. Mike and Megan had just struck out at another possible address for him and Ross did not doubt Logan might well have used some fairly ruthless tactics to get that from an old associate. But Haslam did not seem to running with his old crowd so much, if at all.
Ross poured himself coffee and stood for a while looking out of the window. Well aware that along the hall Goren, no doubt ably assisted by Eames, was going as close to the line as he dare with Robert Lacey the Third in the presence of his lawyer. Usually they relied on "smart" but Bobby could be very harsh and brutal when he needed to be. Be the sort of guy his height and build implied, instead of the soft-spoken and rather gentle man his real nature was.
The Captain knew some of the rage was probably genuine. From a sleep deprived and frustrated detective, when he told Lacey quite graphically the number of stitches Holly Young needed and where. In contrast to the snippets of information about his son that Eames had fed him. Almost tormenting him about the fact he didn't get to see Tommy yet and might not, if his ex-wife had anything to do with it.
Whether it would persuade him to remember a few more things he had chosen to not say or jog genuine amnesia, Ross did not know. But Goren had returned from the Young apartment with a little more information and needing the answer to something else. How this gang moved from Chester Lonsdale to him as a source of information. Lacey was claiming not to know the man, but somewhere they probably had someone in common.
Ross saw that himself as soon as he saw those almost doodles Goren did in his folder. The upside down "V's" that linked the seven previous crimes to Lonsdale and now two to Lacey and maybe more, if the gang acted on either of the other two locations. Because there had to be a third "tier" to that diagram. Someone in a position to identify and target the two men. He watched a tour boat heading upstream on the East River and wondered something else.
How James Young would react if he knew his name and address got into the hands of that gang thanks to a guy he vaguely knew from The Downtown Racquet Club. Whom Young had approached, asking if he could recommend and arrange insurance cover for him for when he re-located to the city. Some sort of favour that turned out to be. Ross was also wondering how that information could be put into Young's hands. As he would eventually ask "how this happened" to his family. How the gang knew what valuables they had and when they were moving to the city?
Sometimes being a cop posed you hard and conflicting legal, moral and ethical dilemmas.
The Vicksburg Apartments, Sherman Ave, Hoboken, New Jersey
It had taken until close to nine that night to find and get to the address where one of the gang might be located. The one who had held Tommy Lacey, along with a woman who may or may not be the one associated with them, he called "Auntie". After his ordeal he had needed not just to eat but also to sleep and at four years old, getting clues from him was not easy.
The local cops had spent some time tracking down apartment buildings with views of the various parks and which might meet the vague number of floors the kid thought he was above ground level. The trouble was none seemed to have a "green house" that the child had described in the same street, never mind opposite as he had explained the situation to Eames. The reason for that turned out to be simple. The house had grey painted weatherboards and that was a colour Tommy had yet to learn.
Eventually, one of the officers cruising locally worked that out when he saw a large white dog taking a dump in the front yard of a residence in Sherman Avenue. Tommy identified the house and the dog from pictures and research on the residents of the building across the street eventually resulted in the name of Gerard Dipnall. The only one with a record. For petty crime associated with gambling and an uncanny fit to the smallest man in the group when it came to height and build. The one their spreadsheet had as "Mr Black".
The delay which frustrated Eames and Goren after that, was a legal one with the premises out of the New York jurisdiction and papers needing to fly between DA's, courts and police each side of the Hudson. Before they were finally moving up the stairwell guns drawn. In the company of a well armed team from New Jersey, whilst the rest of the building was surrounded and secured.
"Bobby" hissed Eames to her partner in the hall.
He turned to see her look. One that said, "Get back here with me". It was one women seemed born able to give the male of the species. From when you were a small child liable to wander off in a mall away from your Mom, right through your teens when your High School girlfriends thought you were speaking a little too much to another female and then into your maturity. When you were failing to show sufficient interest in what the woman in your life was browsing in a store.
As he complied meekly, Goren knew why his partner gave him that look. He was altogether too close to where the door was about to be broken in for her liking and for a man wearing only a bullet proof. Eames wanted the better protected and armed specialists to go in first not knowing who, how many and what they would find waiting for them.
In the small living area they found just one man. By then, flat on his face on the floor and squealing with pain as he was cuffed behind. When they turned him over he yelped again as Goren holstered his gun, squatted down beside him and poked none too gently at the bloody and amateurish dressings around his lower abdomen to determine how bad things were. Someone was calling for medics and Goren had no doubt he was looking at and smelling Gerard Dipnall. The temptation to prod him a little harder was close to overwhelming for him by then. He was short of sleep and angry and frustrated by the case. And it might just "persuade" Dipnall to give them some names.
He stood up and went to join his partner in the only bedroom.
"Dipnall is saying nothing" he muttered.
"These look like the clothes Tommy was wearing when he was taken" she said pointing to items on the floor.
"Someone left in a hurry" said Goren opening fully one of the closet doors. "Only spaces seem to be where the women's clothes and shoes were"
Eames picked up a picture frame thrown on the floor. "This lady I expect. Looks like "auntie" might have been Liz Dipnall"
Goren looked at the wedding photograph, which had a date on the frame from two years ago.
"Don't think she was the woman on the boat or the one knocked on the Young's door" he said "She looks too young and about thirty pounds heavier than our mystery woman"
"I thought the same" said Eames as she picked through some papers on the floor. "Bank and credit card statements Goren"
He squatted beside her and began to go through them with her. It took them maybe five minutes to sort them out, by which time Dipnall was on his way to St Mary's Hospital.
"No sign of anything else for this account opened just recently with twenty thousand bucks" said Eames handing Goren a confirmation letter from a bank.
"In cash" he mused. "And more money than ever seemed to be in this one. I think Liz Dipnall has run off. No car in the lot, clothes taken and dust marks in the closet the size of a suitcase"
Eames shrugged. "With Jed's cut of the loot so far. It would tie in with what Tommy said too. That when she woke him up and then left him at the group home, he was sure "uncle" was no-where around"
"Probably still on his way back from Manhattan with a stab wound to the gut courtesy of Paul Young. Time line would be about right"
"With no record herself until now I don't blame her" muttered Eames. "She's facing possible kidnap charges if we traced her somehow…and if she knew her old man was hurt and would need hospital treatment, Liz would have known the chances of that increased"
"So much for until death us do part" Goren murmured. "There is another possibility. She knew the gang intended to keep Tommy longer, perhaps even feared they would kill him and wanted none of that. Let him go without the say so of the leader and knew what he'd do if he caught up to her"
"Wonder why they didn't shoot him like they did Max James?" said Eames bagging certain items.
"Recruited a marine won't leave a fallen colleague?" yawned Goren. "Or maybe just circumstances. Only sheer chance those kids found his body"
"You need to get some sleep Bobby" said his partner in that tone of bullying kindness he knew so well.
To be continued…