Murder in Greenwich Village Read Free

walked?”
    â€œHe could have done any of those three things,” the captain said. “In my opinion, he would have walked. He was an athletic guy, as fit as anyone I’ve ever seen, and he could do that mile in fifteen minutes easy, ten if he jogged. The subway . . . well, by the time he got to a station, waited for a train, rode down to Thirty-fourth Street, and walked to his house, he might as well have walked the whole way. If he took a taxi—and it’s not out of the question; he was tired and he hadn’t seen his wife for a couple of days—they never found a record on a trip sheet.”
    â€œWas it just a coincidence that the meet was so near where he lived?” Defino asked.
    â€œFar as I know, yes. These guys had a place on the East Side, but the lease had expired and they found the new one on West Fifty-second. When they were arrested, only three guns were found, samples of the goods so the buyer would know they could deliver on the order, but enough for a charge of possession.”
    â€œHow many people knew about the operation?” Jane asked.
    â€œWe kept the number down. I knew, obviously. The PAA knew something undercover was going on, but she didn’t know the details or the players. She never met Micah, by the way. We didn’t give her things to type up. He did that himself. And then there’s his wife.”
    â€œWhat about the wife?” Defino asked.
    â€œI don’t know what he told her; I only know what she said she knew, which was that he was working undercover on a special assignment, that she shouldn’t worry, and everything would be all right. He called her right after he called me; they verified that. It was a short call: ‘Honey, I’m coming home.’ That was it. I still call her once in a while. She remarried last year, maybe the year before; time goes by faster than I can keep track. She’s a stunning woman: smart, knows how to make money. This guy was after her to marry him for a couple of years. She told me . . .”
    They waited.
    â€œOK, you’re the investigators; there’s no personal secrets in a homicide case. She told me she didn’t feel she could be intimate with another man after Micah. I guess she changed her mind. And if you think Micah went down to the Village to see some babe, you won’t find one. He was crazy about Melodie. They were a nice couple, expecting their first child, waiting to move to a new house. The Six looked in every bedroom down there for a girlfriend. There wasn’t any and no evidence of recent sexual activity in the autopsy.”
    â€œLovers don’t always meet to have sex,” Jane said, wondering if she was the only one in the room who knew that from personal experience. From the looks on the men’s faces, it appeared to be so.
    â€œIt was eleven at night; he’d worked hard all day,” Captain Bowman said. “He hadn’t seen his wife for a few days. If he had a girlfriend, you think he went down there to play patty-cake?”
    She let it pass.
    â€œBut there was no girlfriend,” Bowman said. “I’m sure of it.”
    â€œYou said the PAA never met Anthony. How did that work?” Defino asked.
    â€œI’ll lay it out for you.” Captain Bowman pushed himself back from his desk, nearly hitting the wall. Space did not come cheap. “We were OCCB at One PP.” That meant the Organized Crime Control Bureau at One Police Plaza. “Micah was a UC detective, working in deep undercover operations. The last one was guns. You know that. He had no actual assigned command or a real office. On paper he was part of a task force we called WRAP, Weapons Reduction and Purchase, just so we’d have a name for it. We talked by phone when he was able, mostly for his protection. I wanted to know he was alive. Once in a while we’d meet, sometimes in New Jersey, once in Connecticut, once or twice upstate or out of