Chapter 103

Having finished the last of the melted ice cream, Harlan smacked his lips and tossed the pink plastic spoon and paper cup into a nearby garbage can.

He had in his vision the 71st Precinct—a handsome three-story, sand-colored building that straddled the corner of the residential New York Avenue and the commercial thoroughfare of Empire Boulevard.

The building had not always been a police station; in its former life it had once been the grand residence of some wealthy banker, and then later a private school for boys. Now it was more often than not the first checkpoint on a short journey to the penitentiary.

Harlan climbed the marble steps, and pulled back the heavy door. Inside, ceiling fans whirled and creaked. The clickety-click of typewriter keys, the hushed conversations, and the intermittent static blasts of walkie-talkie exchanges bounced off the cream-colored walls and echoed in Harlan’s ears.

He made his way toward the officer seated behind the receiving desk. Harlan could feel curious eyes crawling over him, picking him apart, attempting to detect if he was friend or foe. Reaching the desk, he reverently removed the tattered gray cap from his head and offered a soft “Good afternoon, sir.”

Twenty-six-year-old Daniel McCollum had rolled his eyes when he spotted Harlan coming through the door. He was not fond of Negroes. So it was to his great dismay that upon graduating from the police academy he was promptly assigned to the 71st Precinct in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn—a neighborhood teeming with Negroes and, almost as bad, Jews.

McCollum was a proud Irish Catholic boy, a third-generation American who wore a gold crucifix around his neck and sported a tattoo of a four-leaf clover on his right bicep and the American flag on his left.

He surveyed Harlan’s faded denim overalls stained with blotches of paint and oil that no amount of soap and water would ever clean away. Beneath the overalls, Harlan wore a blue-and-white-striped collared dress shirt, the front of which was speckled with rainbow sprinkles. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows revealing dark, sinewy arms. Harlan was slim-framed and of average height. His woolly hair was cut close to his skull, calling attention to the triangle of gray extending out in a widow’s peak. His bushy mustache was streaked silver as were his eyebrows and eyelashes. His face was deeply lined.

“Yeah?” McCollum grunted disinterestedly.

“I’m here to turn myself in.”

A stinking cloud of liquor wafted from Harlan’s mouth. McCollum frowned, waved the pungent odor away, and asked, “For what?”

“Murder.”

Eyebrows arched, McCollum leaned forward. “Murder? Is that so.”

“Yes sir.”

McCollum closed the newspaper he’d been reading and folded his arms. “And when did this murder take place?”

“’Round nine thirty or ten.”

“Last night?”

“No. This morning.”

McCollum glanced at his watch; it was nearly eleven thirty a.m.

“Uh-huh. And where did this murder take place?”

“245 Sullivan Place. Apartment 3C.”

Old drunk, McCollum thought. The old, the drunkards, or a combination of both were always wandering into the police station making ludicrous claims about murders, alien abductions, and government conspiracies. McCollum had seen and heard it all. He smirked. “So, um, who exactly was killed?”

“Andrew Mailer.”

“And who killed this Andrew Mailer?”

“I did,” Harlan stated calmly.

A few days earlier, McCollum had been out on foot patrol when an old woman—a black old woman—walked up to him and declared that she had murdered her husband of forty years.

“How’d you kill him?” McCollum had asked.

“I stabbed him with my knitting needle,” she said.

He had accompanied her back to her apartment where the old woman’s fifteen-year-old granddaughter—LaCoconut, LaBanana, La-something, McCollum couldn’t quite remember—was sprawled on the couch watching television. McCollum had hastily scanned the small apartment before turning to the wide-eyed teenager and asking, “Where’s your grandfather?”

The girl frowned, pointed to a framed photograph hanging on the wall, and said, “Him? He’s dead. Died before I was born. I think he’s buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery.”

McCollum shook his head at the memory and gave Harlan a stern look. “You say you did it, huh?”

“Yes sir.”

“How?”

Harlan presented his hands. “With these.”

“I see,” McCollum said. “And why did you kill him?”

Harlan thought for a moment. “I suppose because it needed to be done,” he said sullenly.

McCollum rolled his eyes. “It needed to be done?”

“Yes sir.”

McCollum dropped his hands onto the desk. “What’s your name?”

“Harlan. Harlan Elliott, sir.”

“How many drinks have you had today, Harlan?”

Harlan shrugged his shoulders. “One or two, I guess.”

“Or five of six?” McCollum said.

Harlan remained quiet.

“Yeah, well, Harlan, the New York City Police Department does not have time for jokes.”

“But sir, I ain’t joking. Andrew Mailer is dead, and I killed—” He stopped short and gave his head a hard shake. “Wait,” he stammered, “the thing is, sir, Andrew Mailer ain’t his real name. It’s a long story.” Harlan’s eyes glazed over. “It’s a very long story. You see, back in Germany—”

McCollum raised his hand. “Germany?”

“Yes sir.”

“What were you doing in Germany?”

Harlan swallowed. “Well, during the war—”

Again McCollum raised his hand, halting the black man’s words. The cop thought he understood now. He had two uncles who’d served during World War II. One drink too many and they started to hallucinate that their living rooms were the front lines. “You having a flashback of some kind? You have them often?” McCollum asked, and then answered, “I suppose you do. Do you got any pills for that sorta thing?”

“Sir, I am not having a flashback. If you just let me explain—”

“Can I call someone to come and get you?” McCollum reached for the black phone on his desk. “A wife, kid—”

“No sir, I’m not married. If you just let me—”

“You live alone? Who comes to check on you? A neighbor, nephew—”

“Sir, please!” Harlan bellowed.

The police station fell silent, and Harlan became supremely aware of the rotating ceiling fans slicing through the June heat.

The color drained from McCollum’s face; his warm green eyes turned to ice. “You watch your tone, you hear me, old-timer?”

“I-I’m sorry, sir,” Harlan whispered.

McCollum glanced over at the two detectives who had abandoned their paperwork in favor of what was happening at the receiving desk. He nodded assuredly at them before turning his attention back to Harlan. “You better be sorry,” he growled under his breath.

The sound of hurried footsteps echoed from the corridor behind the receiving desk. Within seconds, a tall, stately looking man with a handlebar mustache appeared. He glanced briefly at Harlan before fixing questioning eyes on McCollum. “Is there a problem, officer?”

McCollum straightened his spine. “No, sergeant. No problem. It’s just that this man is claiming he killed someone.”

The sergeant’s eyes darted between McCollum and Harlan. “Have you confirmed his claim, Officer McCollum?”

“Well, um, no sir. I figured he was lying,” he said, and then lowered his voice and leaned toward the sergeant. “For God’s sake, he smells like a distillery.”

The sergeant remained unflappable. “He give you an address?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well then, dispatch a cruiser over there to check it out.”

“Yes sir,” McCollum said, reaching for his walkie-talkie.

The sergeant stepped toward Harlan. “What’s your name?”

“Harlan Elliott.”

The sergeant pointed at a chair alongside a desk piled high with folders. “You sit there until we confirm your claim,” he said, and walked away.

Eyeing Harlan ominously, McCollum barked the address into his walkie-talkie.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, a black-and-white police cruiser stopped in front of 245 Sullivan Place. They pressed six of the thirty bells. A woman’s voice blared through the intercom system, “Yes?”

“It’s the police, buzz us in.”

“Who?”

“The police!”

There was a long silence and then the door buzzed open.

The two police officers climbed the stairway to the third floor. Their sudden appearance startled an old man dressed in a blue bathrobe who was shuffling from the incinerator back to his apartment. He stood staring at them with his mouth agape until one of the officers snapped, “This has nothing to do with you, pops. Go on back into your apartment.”

The door leading into apartment 3C at 245 Sullivan Place was indeed unlocked. Guns drawn, the officers moved cautiously into the apartment. Meow hissed at them from the shadows.

On the couch was a man in repose. Tan slacks and white shirt buttoned clear to the neck. Black leather shoes. His hands were folded majestically across his chest.

One of the officers banged loudly on the wall and yelled, “Hello!”

At the sound, Meow scurried into view, jumped onto Andrew’s stomach as if confirming the obvious, and leveled her yellow eyes with those of the officers.

One cop pressed his fingers against Andrew’s neck, checking for a pulse. He looked at his partner and shook his head.

The second officer nodded his understanding of the situation and brought his walkie-talkie to his lips. “McCollum?”

“Yeah, what you got?”

“Um, deceased male, approximately seventy years old. I’m no coroner, but from the impressions on his neck, it looks like he was strangled to death.”