21

George F. Mallon knew he was running behind the mayor in the election race. The media reported it that way; the polls proved it. Every sampling his public opinion people took showed that he was doing absolutely the opposite of what the voters of the City of New York wanted when he campaigned against corruption, gambling, narcotics, high-rent luxury housing, and racism. He soft-pedaled his antiabortion and school prayer messages until they were almost nonexistent. He gradually persuaded his backers in the Electronic Evangelical Church to go silent in his support. He knew that somehow he had to effect an about-face. There had been a time when he had wanted to wipe the hoodlum element from the city entirely, but he was beginning to understand how much New Yorkers depended upon them for their comforts and conveniences, and he was starting to see that maybe a large dollar could be made there.

The wanton murder of Vito Daspisa, while the New York Police Department and the mayor of the City of New York simply looked on, seemed to have something to do with the way money was made in high office. But as a religious leader, Mallon could not believe that anyone would really seek to profit from such a brutal killing.

Surely, George F. Mallon asked his closest counselors, even the people of New York would not endorse something like that when they went to the polls on Election Day. His aides, recruited from tabernacles in North Carolina and Georgia, agreed with that. The conclusion was that the voters would admire the mayor for protecting his assets, but they most certainly would not condone the outright murder.

It was agreed that, if they could build an airtight case against the Charles Partanna whom Willie Daspisa had identified as his brother’s killer on behalf of organized crime in New York and on behalf of its partners—the mayor and the police—and if this were sprung on the public in the week immediately prior to the election, they would have created George F. Mallon’s single and best chance to win the mayoralty.

Trusted U.S. Marshalls would have to make the Partanna arrest in the company of several hundred media people and their television cameras at dawn of the Monday eight days before Election Day, to electrify the voters of the city by exposing the mayor, George F. Mallon’s opponent, as being a part of the organized crime that was was inflicting murder, gambling, and narcotics on the City of New York. If, on the other hand, they were to demand the arrest of Charles Partanna before they had built an absolutely airtight case against him, then the mayor, the police, civic leaders, and the media would all accuse George F. Mallon of attempting to deceive the voters by exploiting their fears in making wild charges out of desperation to get attention for his cause.

“We have five, possibly six, witnesses who can establish the case for us,” Mallon said to his staff at a secret meeting in the Disrobing Room of the Church of the Immaculate Recorder, an evangelical holding company which was preparing to go public in an offering of shares and debentures on behalf of the combined electronic churches of America, in whose stock issue George F. Mallon was a founder-partner. “We have Lieutenant Hanly and Sergeant Munger of the Police Department. Former Detective Sergeant George Fearons, and that NBC television camera crew. They’ll break under questioning, so I say, let’s bring them in.”

“These people should be secretly photographed, and their voice recorded, while you are interrogating them, Chief,” said Clarette Hines, Mallon’s shadow Secretary of State. “We can cut that into a terrific little fifteen-minute documentary and into a series of two- and three-minute spots for flashing on the morning talk shows.”

Mallon cross-examined police Lieutenant David Hanly first. The mayor and the Department had to allow Hanly to talk to Mallon. If they refused, it could be more embarrassing in the end. Nobody was worried about how Hanly would handle himself, and Pop made sure of that by seeing that a golden envelope was passed to Hanly. When it came around to Munger, Hanly coached him until he was cross-eyed, and the mayor passed the word down that if he did right his captaincy would be restored.

Under Mallon’s questioning, Hanly readily admitted that he had been on the scene before the actual murder of Vito Daspisa had happened.

“Why were you there, Lieutenant? Surely your duties as head of the Borough Squad did not require that you attend the stakeout of a fugitive?”

“I was on my way home. My radio unit picked up the action. One of the policemen murdered by Vito Daspisa was a coworker of mine and a good friend. I wanted to be part of bringing in Daspisa.”

“But of all the police officers there, as soon as you arrived on the scene, you, rather than any other police officer, went to the apartment in that building where Daspisa was holed up, and you spoke to him.”

“Vito sent down a written message. The TV cameras caught it as it came down from his window. He specifically asked for me.”

“There is television footage showing you entering the building alone, describing what you were going to do, and showing you as you came down to the street after talking to Daspisa.”

“I tried to speak to him. I didn’t have any luck.”

“I put it to you that you and Daspisa talked about the narcotics business.”

“You couldn’t be more mistaken, Mr. Mallon.”

“Then what did you talk about?”

“He said he wanted to talk to his brother Willie.”

“But when you came down after—as you say—trying to speak to him, you reported immediately to the mayor, did you not?”

“I don’t remember that.”

“The meeting was recorded by the network TV cameras, Lieutenant.”

“He was in charge on the scene. I told him the suspect had refused to talk to me.”

“But he refused to talk to you and Detective Sergeant George Fearons was sent in.”

“That’s right.”

“You knew Detective Fearons?”

“Not personally, no.”

“But you and Sergeant Munger, who was in charge of the task force, did brief him in the lobby of Daspisa’s building and issue an assault rifle to him?”

“No.”

“You didn’t brief him?”

“We didn’t issue him any assault rifle. Fearons was a psychology major. He went up to apply psychology on Daspisa.”

“He identified himself as Detective George Fearons?”

“Why would that be necessary? He was a police detective. He was known in the Department as a psychologist.”

“I put it to you, Lieutenant, that George Fearons retired from the New York Police Department three years ago and is now a professional eater in Montreal.”

“A professional eater?”

“He eats enormous continual meals in the windows of Montreal restaurants for a living.”

“That’s impossible. He is too young to retire and he is too thin to ever have eaten like that.”

“I put it to you that the man you briefed was not George Fearons but Charles Partanna, a Mafia hit man who, following your briefing, went upstairs to Vito Daspisa’s apartment and shot him dead.”

“It was Detective Fearons that we briefed. And after Detective Fearons came back down from the Daspisa apartment, Sergeant Munger and his task force went up and, after forcing entry to the Daspisa apartment, shot him in self-defense after he had opened fire on them.”

“Do you intend to stick to that story, Lieutenant?”

“That is what happened.”

“If you intend to stick to that story, you are going to have to tell it again in a court of law under oath. That is all, Lieutenant.”

The cross-examination of Ueli Munger supported Hanly’s statement.

Chester Singleton, the NBC cameraman who followed the task force into the apartment, told Mallon’s examining team that it was his impression that the task force had not had to force entry into the Daspisa apartment but that the door was wide open. Also, he said, he had a clear memory of seeing Daspisa in several pieces on the floor, walls, and ceiling of the living room of the apartment, before the task force began to shoot at him as he lay on the floor.

After Singleton left the examining room, Mallon and his aides came to their unanimous decision: there was no doubt in their minds that Hanly and Munger had been lying. The fact that Fearons was in Montreal and could be brought to New York to testify that he had not left Montreal for three years would be damning evidence, which would permit the District Attorney to move in on Hanly and Munger and crack them wide open. Singleton’s testimony would establish that Daspisa had been shot to death by someone who the New York Police Department claimed was George Fearons but who could not be. The lawyers on the staff agreed that there was enough evidence to seek a sealed Grand Jury indictment of Charles Partanna and that the facts of this indictment should be made public on the Monday eight days before the election. At that time George F. Mallon and his team of U.S. Marshalls and the accompanying media would move in to arrest him.