OUR FIRST STOP is the Porsche dealership near the crime scene. While Gabby and I review security footage, Melissa contacts taxicab companies, and ride-sharing services Lyft and Uber to determine if Miranda and her killer returned home from Bumpers by car. She’s requested security footage from the MTA for stations near the bar and Miranda’s home. Unlike our European counterparts, New York City has yet to install the ubiquitous Big Brother CCTV cameras on every street corner. If Miranda and her killer returned to the crime scene on foot, only footage covering the main entrance to her walk-up is likely to yield information.
To assist in the investigation, O’Neill assigns Detective, Second-Grade, Anthony Giardano to the murder team. At the Precinct, Giardano reviews the Manischewitz and Mancinelli files sent over from Bureau Queens earlier in the day. He searches for connections to Miranda Livingstone. Using the transcript from my own recorded call with The Chatterbox on that first day and my case notes from subsequent conversations, Tony tries to confirm the details in our caller’s story.
Waiting on the Business Manager at the Porsche dealership, Gabby and I wander the showroom floor. Admiring the inventory, she says, “And to think; just across the street Miranda Livingstone living on food stamps.”
“One has nothing to do with the other, Gabby,” I say.
She harrumphs. Eyeing a sleek-looking ruby-red Porsche Carrera, Gabby brightens. “What do you do in life to own a car like this, I wonder?”
“Deal drugs?” I say. “Win the Power Ball?”
“Must cost more than we make in a year.”
“Two.”
Just then the dealership Business Manager appears. “Would you like to take it for a spin?” he says, approaching from across the showroom floor.
“Too rich for my wallet,” I say.
“We’re offering flexible financing right now to make room for the new models. It doesn’t have to be a nine-eleven. I can fit you into a Boxster for under sixty K. Can’t buy a Japanese sedan for under that. You wouldn’t be the first blue-blood to drive off this lot in a brand-new Porsche. Sold one to Tom Selleck just last month. What do you say?”
Gabby gestures to a wall-to-wall picture window and the traffic crawling on the street outside. “In a city like this, what do I need with a car like that? I’d never get it out of first gear.”
The Business Manager eyes Gabby speculatively: tight, hip-hugging dark slacks, snug-fit sports top to accommodate the heat, shit-kicker ankle-high boots making her as tall as he.
Speaking directly to Gabby and ignoring me, now, he says, “You wouldn’t look out of place behind the wheel, darlin’.”
“The security tapes?” I say.
With a hint of debauchery, he says to Gabby, “What do you say, hon? Try it on for size?”
Taking a step forward, Gabby sets the heel of her shit-kicker boot down hard on the Business Manager’s moccasin-style Gucci loafer.
“What the fu—!”
“Try this on for size,” Gabby says, showing him her teeth.
“The tapes?” I say, as I haul Gabby back.
“Yeah, yeah, sure thing,” the guy says to me while glaring at Gabby, eyes glassy with a mix of lust and fear.
In his office, the Business Manager provides footage with views looking both north and south along 11th Ave. We ask him to leave and close the door after him. He huffs, but obeys.
Footage from the camera stationed on the building at the corner of 11th and W 51st Street faces south. In it, we see Miranda and a man enter the frame walking north along 11th. The footage is time-stamped Sunday evening, eleven thirty p.m.
The man in the video is slim, six-foot-plus tall when measured against Miranda wearing heels, who we know stands five foot eight inches tall. The man’s clothing is dark and nondescript; denims, possibly, and a hoodie. He wears a New York Yankees ball-cap pulled low on his head. The cap conceals his face.
I curse. “Shit. No way to know if it’s Marcus Livingstone.”
“Give it a rest, partner. It could be a million other guys, too. Any dick with a cap pulled down over his ears. Only dicks wear ball-caps pulled down over their ears like that, or a guy with low self-esteem. More importantly, it was over eighty degrees Sunday night. Who wears a hoodie on a night like that?”
“A guy who knows he’ll be on camera and doesn’t want to be identified.”
“So, he didn’t take Miranda home intending to make love. He went there intending to kill her.”
“Corroborates The Chatterbox’s story.”
Supported by the unidentified man, Miranda wobbles drunkenly on the sidewalk. At the door, Miranda fumbles with her key. After a minute trying but failing to negotiate the latch, the man becomes impatient. He scans the street up and down. He reaches for the key, takes it from Miranda, and opens the door himself. Nudging Miranda with his shoulder, the two enter the apartment together. The tape ends before we see him leave.
“Did we find a key? If we did, did CSU dust it for prints?” I say.
“A purse was bagged as evidence.” On her mobile, Gabby makes a quick call.
Before leaving, we have the Business Manager sign-off on a receipt for the videotape.
Ignoring me, he says to Gabby, “We got off on the wrong foot.” He chuckles as if he’s made a joke. “Seriously, think about it. I can have you behind the wheel before the weekend. It’s a hundred and twenty miles to Montauk. Boxster will have you on the beach sunning in a string-bikini in less than an hour and a half.”
Unable to resist, the Business Manager licks his lips. To my surprise, Gabby passes him her card. “I won’t buy before end-of-the-month. But maybe a test drive.”
The Business Manager pockets the card. He takes Gabby’s hand and grins like an alley-cat sipping cream.
At the door, I say to Gabby, “You serious?”
She says, “Call it an early Christmas gift. To moi.”
The video from the Mobile gas outlet is hopeless. The view is primarily of the gas pump island and the cash register counter with no perspective, however oblique, showing the sidewalk leading to Miranda’s apartment building or to her entrance door.
Returning to the precinct, Gabby and I log evidence and prepare reports. I give follow-up instructions to Giardano and Johns. For two hours, the tedium consumes us all. Finally, at eight p.m., I order-in. Anticipating reflux, I pop two Zantac. Experiencing pain, I pop two painkillers.
Seated at a meeting room table, Gabby, Melissa, Tony, and I sip soda and dig-in to Chinese.
“You first,” I say to Mel.
To begin, she says, “There’s no evidence Miranda Livingstone left Bumpers by cab. Three fares departed from that location last night between the hours of eight p.m. Sunday, and two a.m. the following morning, the approximate time of her death. Another half dozen fares from locations nearby. She didn’t arrive home by cab either; no drop-offs at, or near, that address.”
Gabby says, “We know she arrived on foot at her apartment with the unknown subject at eleven-thirty Sunday night. There was no vehicle in sight. Miranda was drunk but still standing.”
“I contacted Uber and Lyft,” Melissa continues. “Lyft was cooperative enough, say they have no record of either a pick-up at the Bumpers location or a drop-off at the Vic’s apartment. Uber basically told me to shove it, come back with a court order.”
“You tell ‘em it was a homicide?” I ask.
“They didn’t care.”
“Protecting their own,” Tony Giardano says as he snags the last chicken ball expertly with a set of chopsticks. For a guy weighing all of one forty sopping wet, Tony has a hearty appetite. “Sharing economy my ass,” he says, through a mouth half full. “Pretty soon, we’ll be sharing-out our kitchens, toilets, pussies and our dicks to total strangers just to make rent.”
Tony chomps down angrily. Though he doesn’t say, I suspect Tony’s anger has less to do with fairness than resentment at the army of immigrants invading the City in search of a living wage. Tony is a career cop, pushing fifty, looking sixty, who knows he’ll never advance beyond Detective, Second-Grade.
Around the Precinct, he’s considered a bigoted, sexist douche. As an investigator, he’s valued as an asset because, in New York, we all know it takes a douche to know one. NYPD public relations would have us believe cops like Tony don’t exist. In fact, we rely on cops like Tony to get the job done.
“The MTA?” I say to Mel.
“Zilch. Miranda did not ride the subway anywhere. Why would she? It’s only a fifteen-minute walk from Bumpers to 11th and 51st, ten if you’re in a hurry.”
“She was drunk,” I say. “Too drunk to walk the distance.”
Tony says, “From what you say the guy is big enough to carry her on his back. Maybe she wanted to take that pony for a ride.”
“Fuck-off, Tony,” Gabby says.
“Just sayin’.” Tony grins.
“Tell me this, Tony. How are these cases connected?” I say.
Sipping Coke Zero from a tin, Tony looks like he’d prefer beer. He has the Medical Examiner files for each victim open on his laptop. “Obviously, there’s MO; the pantyhose around the neck causing asphyxiation. Nylons look like a Signature. Postmortem describes heart-shape tats of red and blue located on the left breast of all three women just above the nipple.”
“Or the heart,” Gabby says.
“The killer has a type,” Tony says, ignoring Gabby. “The tats are the number and gender of the victim’s children. One red, one blue for Miranda Livingstone; two blue, one red for Dorothy Manischewitz; two red for Maria Mancinelli. Mancinelli is the mother of two daughters, Manischewitz two boys, and a girl.”
“Smells like a connection to me,” I say, convinced.
“You ask me,” Tony says, “the guy has mommy issues. These are women who deserve to die for being such rotten mothers to their kids.”
“Leave the psychoanalysis to the shrinks, Tony. For now, I say The Chatterbox is a Serial Killer. Show of hands?”
From the table, all hands rise.
“Serial Killer it is. I’ll send the Loo a memo.”