Investigation Read Free Page B

little too loudly, “Hey, George, tell you what. Let’s you and me take a ride over to your ginmill in Sunnyside. That way, we’ll have touched all the bases and your wife will believe that you haven’t been conning her. What do you say?”
    When Catalano came back from the kitchen, his color had changed. He was still smooth and easy and he kept coming on with the blond mother, flexing his body, holding attention to himself, keeping it all under control. But his color had changed. And, for some reason, I think Kitty Keeler noticed it. I looked at her over my shoulder, just before we left the apartment and caught something: something in her eyes, some glint of terror or pain or anticipation. Something I would have to think about later.
    There were a number of official vehicles in the immediate vicinity when I pulled my Chevy alongside a squad car which had been parked haphazardly on Peck Avenue. There was an ambulance with the word MORTUARY printed front, back and on both sides. The whole area had a look of urgency.
    “I gotta check on something for a minute, George. Be right back.”
    There were uniformed personnel to deal with the curious neighbors, who really presented no problem: they were frightened middle-aged women for the most part. The homicide people were at work, measuring, photographing, cooperating with the forensic people, who were taking invisible samples of whatever substances they deemed should be brushed or scraped into the inevitable plasticine envelopes. A CBS-TV camera crew had just arrived; a crew from the Daily News was flashing pictures.
    Captain Chris Wise of the Queens Homicide was present and in charge. Chris had been my boss for nearly four years and we knew each other for longer than that. He nodded to me, then jerked a thumb to indicate where the bodies were.
    “Understand you guys took a call, Joe, about two missing kids this morning?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, I don’t think they’re missing anymore.” He turned toward the street, where my car was parked. “Who ya got, the father?”
    “Yeah.”
    Captain Wise led the way and motioned his men aside. He reached down and pulled back the tarpaulin which had been tossed over the bodies. “This what you’re looking for, Joe?”
    The lower torso, pajama clad, stuck out from beneath a small body wearing white pajamas with round, smiling yellow moon faces. Face down in earth softened by morning mist, then slightly hardened by the sun. The head of the child on top seemed peculiar; it had swelled to twice normal size as the result of the brain having been penetrated by a foreign object. A bullet in the head causes various fluids to flow; the child’s head was bloated as though air had been blown unevenly into a balloon. There wasn’t very much blood, just a thick, dark, wormlike mass at the base of the skull on the right side, site of penetration, and a few trickles down the thin neck. The pale-blond hair lifted in a breeze, then settled back into place. The huge head was slightly to one side and the face had turned the color of a bruise; the features were swollen and distorted.
    The face of the younger child was covered by his brother’s body. There was a strong, peculiar yet familiar odor. Captain Wise said, “Dog shit, Joe. The smaller kid is laying with his face in dog shit.”
    Automatically, my hand began to massage the biting pain in my stomach. “Captain, can they be turned over yet? I mean, that’s their father in my car. It’s bad enough without him having to see them like that.”
    “Give it five minutes more, Joe.” He put a hand on my arm and we turned away from the bodies. He spoke while looking down at his well-polished shoes. “What’s the story with the parents?”
    There wasn’t very much to tell, and when we circled back the bodies had been placed on their backs, side by side.
    “Can’t they wipe the kid’s face, for Christ’s sake, before the father sees them? I mean, dog shit in the kid’s mouth.”
    Chris