4

Had Donald Nash kept his head, there might have been no slaughter on Pier Ninety-two that April evening. There would have been only a single murder, the one he had been hired to commit. And the chances are, he would have gotten away with it. When Leo Kuranuki approached with his question, “What’s going on?” if Nash had replied, “It’s nothing. My wife and I were having a little argument, that’s all. It’s all over now. Thanks anyway,” Kuranuki probably would have turned away, and that would have been that.

But Nash lost his cool. He had been edgy ever since reaching the pier. First, there was the very fact of the murder he was about to commit and the wait for his victim to arrive. And then there was the hitch in his plan, that car parked on the left side of the BMW, the spot he had meant to be his. If he had been able to park there, the van’s sliding door would have been directly opposite the driver’s door of the BMW. It would have been a simple matter to lean out and shoot Margaret Barbera while she was unlocking her car, then haul her into the van through the open sliding door without ever having to leave the shelter of the van’s interior, then slide the door shut. It would have been over in an instant. Nobody would have seen anything, and the most anybody could have heard was the soft pop of the silencer-equipped automatic, a sound that would have made hardly an impression on that vast pier. But that other car was there. He had been forced to park on the passenger side of Barbera’s car and then, once he had shot her, drag her around the van. That had put him in the open, naked to any eyes during those critical moments. Kuranuki, Schulze, and Benford had seen him then. Kuranuki had approached with his question. Nash was sure he had no other choice but to kill the three witnesses.

In panic, he sped off the pier. Sicca had nothing to worry about. With his limited vision and his preoccupation with too many other things, he had not noticed Sicca, and so the car up ahead meant nothing. Nash wanted only to flee from that place as fast as he could. He raced by the gatehouse, past Streiter, not bothering to slow and hand in his parking ticket. Streiter paid him no attention. He was turning over in his mind what Sicca had said about somebody hitting three people up on the pier, was reaching for the phone to call security and ask them to check on it.

Once out on Twelfth Avenue and heading south, Nash forced himself to slow, to keep within the speed limit, to obey the red lights. The last thing he needed at that moment, with Barbera’s body in the back of the van, was to be picked up for breaking a traffic law. He needed time to consider what course to follow now. His original plan, to kill Barbera undetected and then drive her through the Lincoln Tunnel and dispose of her body where it would never be found in the New Jersey swamps, was impossible now, he was convinced. The alarm must be out, and the exits from the tunnel blocked, cars and vans being checked. (He was wrong, as it turned out. That alarm still was some time in the future, and he could have gone through the tunnel and emerged safe. But there was no way he could have known that.) He had to come up with an alternative. He drove south along the avenue as far as Forty-fourth Street, turned east there for two blocks, turned north on Tenth Avenue, drove a block, and then turned west on Forty-fifth Street. He stopped halfway down the block, parking at the curb in front of number 436. It had taken him, even with all his extra care and caution, less than eight minutes to reach his destination from the pier.

The building on West Forty-fifth Street was home to Vinny Russo catering, purveyor of breakfasts and lunches to the movies and television shows being filmed on location in the city. Like many longtime businessmen and inhabitants along the West Side docks, Russo had known Nash for years and had a certain tolerant fondness for him. Some months earlier, when Nash had mentioned that he was setting up a small electrical contracting business and needed some desk space to operate out of, Russo had told him, sure, he could put a desk and a telephone in a back corner of Russo’s shop. Nash had taken possession, installed the telephone and an answering machine, and every few days, when he was in Manhattan, he would stop by to pick up his messages, what few there ever were. The shop normally was closed well before six in the evening and, Russo later insisted, Nash did not have a key, he had never given him one nor permitted him to have one. That day, though, there was no need for a key.

Leaving the van, and Barbera’s body in the back, out at the curb, Nash rushed to the door of Russo’s shop. It was unlocked and open. There had been a major water leak within the past hours, and the building’s superintendent, Alberto Torres, was inside, finishing the repairs, cleaning and mopping up. He and Nash had been friends for years. When he saw Nash, though, he was surprised not just at his appearance at this unexpected hour but also at his condition. Nash was in extreme distress; he was shaking, out of breath, and drenched with sweat; he looked as though he had just come out of a shower or a steam bath. Nash barely greeted Torres. He made straight for his desk, picked up the phone, and dialed a number in Keansburg, N.J., the home of his twenty-nine-year old nephew, Thomas Dane. Nash knew that if there was one person in the world he could depend on in time of need, it was Dane. Dane idolized him, looked on him not just as an uncle but also as his best friend, a father. There was nothing Dane would not do for him.

The line was busy.

Nash hung up, dialed again, this time his own number in Keansburg. His common-law wife of seventeen years, Jean Marie, answered. He told her he was trying to reach Dane, it was urgent that he talk to him, but the line was busy. He told her to walk the two and a half blocks to Dane’s house, tell him to get off the phone because Nash was trying to get through. She did as she was told.

Dane was talking to his girlfriend in Manhattan, had been talking to her for about ten minutes, when Jean Marie Nash rang the doorbell and gave him Nash’s message. Dane went back to the phone and told his girlfriend, “I’m sorry. My uncle is trying to reach me. I have to hang up. But I’ll call you back after I talk to him.”

On Forty-fifth Street, Nash waiting nervously and impatiently, counting the minutes he knew it would take his wife to reach Dane. Outside, he could hear the shattering screams of the sirens as police car after police car raced north to Pier Ninety-two.

When he figured enough time had passed, he dialed Dane again and this time got through. He told Dane it was vital that they meet. He was in Manhattan and would be heading for New Jersey within a few minutes. Dane should meet him just off the parkway on the way to Keansburg, a spot where they had met several times before. Dane agreed and hung up. He called his girlfriend back and told her, “That was my uncle. I have to meet him later on.” Then, for the next eight minutes, he conversed with her, picking up where they had left off.

For some moments after his call was completed, Nash sat silently at his desk, holding his head in his hands. Suddenly he looked up at Torres. “Alberto,” he said, “my God, I just shot three people. They’re all dead. You have the keys to the fence of the parking lot next door. Can I put the van in there?”

Torres was stunned, unbelieving, appalled. He stared at Nash. What he didn’t know was that there was a body in the back of the van. Nash didn’t tell him that. He shook his head. He wanted no part of this, did not want to become involved in any way. “I can’t do it,” he said. “The people who rent the lot, they come in very early in the morning, and if anybody’s parked there but them, I’ll lose my job.”

Nash just looked at him. He did not persist. He got up, walked slowly out of the shop, and returned to the van. He headed downtown, for the Holland Tunnel in lower Manhattan, deciding that might be safer than the Lincoln Tunnel in mid-town. It was barely a half hour since the murders, and over the van’s radio came a constant stream of reports. He knew the alarm must be out, and he could not chance driving through the tunnel with Barbera’s body in the back. He would have to get rid of it before he crossed into New Jersey.

Once in lower Manhattan, he drove around for a bit, stopping finally at a phone booth in front of a McDonald’s, directly across the street from 26 Federal Plaza, the New York home of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He called Dane again, and this time he followed an old habit of his when using a phone booth. He called the operator, gave her the number, and asked her to bill the call to his home phone in Keansburg. The New York Telephone Company made a record of the call. When he reached Dane, he said he was about to leave the city and wanted to make sure Dane would meet him as planned. Dane told him not to worry, he would be there.

There was still the question of what to do with Barbera’s body. Driving up from Federal Plaza toward the Holland Tunnel entrance, he spotted a dim alley, Franklin Alley. He drove into it, opened the sliding side door of the van, and dumped the body well into the alley, then backed out and continued on his way, through the tunnel and out of New York.

Dane was waiting for him at the agreed spot. Nash ordered his nephew to follow him to Newark Airport. Once there, Nash drove into the long-term parking lot. Dane followed. Nash parked the van, got into Dane’s car, and they drove out of the lot and headed for Keansburg.

Weeks later, Richie Chartrand questioned Thomas Dane about that meeting beside the parkway and that trip to and from Newark Airport. “Did you meet your uncle that night?” Chartrand asked.

“Yes, I met him,” Dane said.

“And what was the topic of conversation?”

“Well, he told me that he’s not happy at home and that he’s going to leave his wife and going to go away.”

“Then what did you do?”

“We went to the parking lot at the airport.”

“You did?”

“Yeah.”

“You brought Donald’s other car with you?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you get to the airport?”

“Well, Donald followed me.”

“Well, what did he follow you in?”

“I don’t know. I never paid any attention to what he was driving.”

“So he just followed you in another vehicle?”

“Yeah.”

“What other vehicles did he have access to?”

“Well, he had a taxicab and a van.”

“Well, was he driving the van?”

“I don’t know. I never saw.”

“Well, now you go into the airport. You go in and he goes in and you come out and he doesn’t. Did he leave the van there?”

“I guess so.”

“Did you drive him from the airport?”

“I guess so.”

“Why do you think he left the van there?”

“I don’t know.”