girlfriends?”
“I don’t think so.” The landlady’s nose wrinkled as she gestured at a pile of lurid porn magazines on the coffee table, along with a spread of well-thumbed copies of Soldiers of Fortune and Small Arms Review and a bunch of candy wrappers.
“Did he have problems with any neighbors?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t go outside much.”
Jack wandered into the kitchen. The refrigerator was nearly empty, except for some beer and big cans of bodybuilder’s muscle powder. He passed through a back doorway: the bedroom was more like a walk-in closet, just big enough for a mattress on the floor, which smelled of sweat and foot odor.
As Jack returned to the living room, a phone rang upstairs and the landlady trundled off to answer it.
“What do you think?” Jack asked his partner.
Richie shook his head. “You know what this reminds me of? When I was a kid, I used to dream about being grown up. I thought it would mean that I could eat candy bars and watch TV all day, and no one could stop me.”
The detective picked up one of the porn magazines, flipped through it, then tossed it back onto the coffee table. “This must be a pretty weird part of working in Homicide: you look through everything in people’s houses. Like, they go off to work, never expecting that they’re not gonna come home, and all their stuff is just layin’ there. My mom always used to tell me that thing about making sure I went out with clean underwear, in case I got hit by a car and had to go to the hospital.” He frowned. “Man, I wonder what the crap in my house would say about me .” He shrugged. “I guess I don’t have any big secrets lying around, though.” Richie sighed and sat on the edge of the couch. “I keep thinkin’ about those feds. They certainly didn’t leave us a lot to work with.”
Jack shrugged. “It could be worse. A lot worse. We sometimes get dump jobs, a decapitated body in a Dumpster, or out in a marsh off the Belt Parkway. Sometimes we can’t even get fingerprints. Look at the bright side here: we know the vic, and we’ve got a big jump on identifying the perp.”
Richie wrinkled his bulbous nose. “There are tens of thousands of Pakistani or Indian men in this city.”
“Yeah, but we know our killer is not black or white or Hispanic or Chinese. We can cross about eight million potential perps off the list.” He headed for the front door. “We may be looking for a needle in a haystack, but at least we know what the needle looks like.”
Richie chuckled. “You must be a glass-half-full kind of guy.”
Jack smiled. “A glass half-full of needles.”
IN HOPES OF RECOGNIZING their suspect, the two detectives spent the rest of the morning staring at computer databases: any files that cross-referenced zip code and country of origin, and provided photos. They found no matches for their mysterious Pakistani or Indian in 11218 or 11230. Searching citywide—not to mention the rest of the state and nearby New Jersey and Connecticut—might take days, so they decided to leave the computers alone and follow an old but trustworthy motto: Get Off Your Ass and Knock On Doors.
“I told you this wasn’t going to be easy,” said Richie, later in the day.
The two detectives had just walked out of a little Pakistani café on Coney Island Avenue, half a block from the deli crime scene. Outside, the weather was pleasant, but the agreeable aromas of spring were damped down by the avenue’s usual odors of motor oil and car exhaust.
The café owner, a mournful little man with a bushy mustache, had not offered a single remotely useful piece of information. “Please, sirs, I saw nothing,” he’d said, eyes wide. “I will do everything possible to cooperate, but I saw nothing.”
The man wiped down the counter with what seemed like a suspicious amount of nervous energy. In front of him lay steam table vats of mysterious entrées, orangey-red, pale yellow, muddy brown. The food looked oily,
“I don’t think so.” The landlady’s nose wrinkled as she gestured at a pile of lurid porn magazines on the coffee table, along with a spread of well-thumbed copies of Soldiers of Fortune and Small Arms Review and a bunch of candy wrappers.
“Did he have problems with any neighbors?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t go outside much.”
Jack wandered into the kitchen. The refrigerator was nearly empty, except for some beer and big cans of bodybuilder’s muscle powder. He passed through a back doorway: the bedroom was more like a walk-in closet, just big enough for a mattress on the floor, which smelled of sweat and foot odor.
As Jack returned to the living room, a phone rang upstairs and the landlady trundled off to answer it.
“What do you think?” Jack asked his partner.
Richie shook his head. “You know what this reminds me of? When I was a kid, I used to dream about being grown up. I thought it would mean that I could eat candy bars and watch TV all day, and no one could stop me.”
The detective picked up one of the porn magazines, flipped through it, then tossed it back onto the coffee table. “This must be a pretty weird part of working in Homicide: you look through everything in people’s houses. Like, they go off to work, never expecting that they’re not gonna come home, and all their stuff is just layin’ there. My mom always used to tell me that thing about making sure I went out with clean underwear, in case I got hit by a car and had to go to the hospital.” He frowned. “Man, I wonder what the crap in my house would say about me .” He shrugged. “I guess I don’t have any big secrets lying around, though.” Richie sighed and sat on the edge of the couch. “I keep thinkin’ about those feds. They certainly didn’t leave us a lot to work with.”
Jack shrugged. “It could be worse. A lot worse. We sometimes get dump jobs, a decapitated body in a Dumpster, or out in a marsh off the Belt Parkway. Sometimes we can’t even get fingerprints. Look at the bright side here: we know the vic, and we’ve got a big jump on identifying the perp.”
Richie wrinkled his bulbous nose. “There are tens of thousands of Pakistani or Indian men in this city.”
“Yeah, but we know our killer is not black or white or Hispanic or Chinese. We can cross about eight million potential perps off the list.” He headed for the front door. “We may be looking for a needle in a haystack, but at least we know what the needle looks like.”
Richie chuckled. “You must be a glass-half-full kind of guy.”
Jack smiled. “A glass half-full of needles.”
IN HOPES OF RECOGNIZING their suspect, the two detectives spent the rest of the morning staring at computer databases: any files that cross-referenced zip code and country of origin, and provided photos. They found no matches for their mysterious Pakistani or Indian in 11218 or 11230. Searching citywide—not to mention the rest of the state and nearby New Jersey and Connecticut—might take days, so they decided to leave the computers alone and follow an old but trustworthy motto: Get Off Your Ass and Knock On Doors.
“I told you this wasn’t going to be easy,” said Richie, later in the day.
The two detectives had just walked out of a little Pakistani café on Coney Island Avenue, half a block from the deli crime scene. Outside, the weather was pleasant, but the agreeable aromas of spring were damped down by the avenue’s usual odors of motor oil and car exhaust.
The café owner, a mournful little man with a bushy mustache, had not offered a single remotely useful piece of information. “Please, sirs, I saw nothing,” he’d said, eyes wide. “I will do everything possible to cooperate, but I saw nothing.”
The man wiped down the counter with what seemed like a suspicious amount of nervous energy. In front of him lay steam table vats of mysterious entrées, orangey-red, pale yellow, muddy brown. The food looked oily,
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