The Sandler Inquiry Part 50

"Maybe I've seen you in something. Broadway? Off Broadway?"

"No, probably not."

"Movies?"

The 'no" was hesitant. Her eyes lowered to the ashtray. Hearn glanced around the room. The furniture was both modern and reasonably expensive, centered around a large comfortable sofa. The adjoining bedroom, which Hearn eyed when he asked if he could use the washroom, was dominated by an expensive waterbed. The apartment was designed, in its way, for comfort, for satisfaction, and as a den of voluntary seduction. Under further questioning Debbie Moran admitted that she just remembered what her last acting job had been.

"A series of TV commercials on the West coast she volunteered.

"It's not being shown no more Hearn reached to an inside jacket pocket and handed her a picture of Mark Ryder.

"Ever seen this man?" he asked.

She glanced at it.

"No ' He watched her for a moment, studying the facial features and expression.

She handed back the photograph.

"You're sure?" he asked.

"I'm sure."

"That man was murdered in front of this building," he said.

"How awful : " "He was visiting someone in this building."

She shrugged.

"What we're interested in'" he said, "is what time he left, not what he was doing here "I live in the back of the building," she said.

"I sleep soundly. I didn't see no one or hear no one. I go to bed early."

And often, thought Hearn. All the way back to the precinct he cursed her.

Hearn found Sha.s.sad sitting at his cluttered desk on the cramped second floor. Behind Sha.s.sad was his bulletin board on which, in addition to items of more importance, there were two small posters.

One pictured a blue-uniformed police officer guarding a school crossing, set in an idealized suburban America of the mid-1950s.

The caption read,

"The Police Officer is your friend. Trust him ' The other, hand-lettered by an anonymous precinct-house philosopher, proclaimed simply,

"G.o.d loves Negroes. That's why there's so many of them."

"I found the girl," Hearn said.

"Apartment Three-C?"

Hearn nodded.

"A high-priced hooker," he said, 'unless my eyesight is failing. What I don't know is whether she's doing bar pickups or whether she has a little black book. There's no other female in the building who Ryder would have been on top of."

"Did you show her Ryder's picture?"

"She recognized it. And she wouldn't talk sa "Okay," said Sha.s.sad casually but with dissatisfaction @ know what's next."

By the next morning, Sha.s.sad had obtained four extra detectives, two teams of two, to aid in the Ryder case. A surveillance unit in a panel truck was placed on Seventy-third Street to observe Debbie Moran. At four fifty that afternoon she emerged from her building, hailed a yellow cab, and led two detectives in a plain car to Gypsys Bar at Fifty-fifth between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

Ten minutes later an undercover detective from the Midtown Anti-Vice Squad (known in the police vulgate as the

"p.u.s.s.y Possie") entered the bar. The detective's name was Samuel McGowan. His partner was a policewoman named Theresa d.u.c.h.ecki, better known as Saint Theresa for reasons which were dear to anyone who'd met her. McGowan was wired.

McGowan spotted Debbie sitting alone at the center of the bar.

He approached the bar and seated himself at the far right end. He watched the clock until twenty minutes past five. Then, certain that she'd been watching him, he initiated an aimless conversation.

Several minutes pa.s.sed. Debbie wanted to know if she was wasting her time.

"Look," she finally purred, leaning slightly forward so that McGowan could look down her dress, 'what do you say we cut out the talk and have some fun?"

"I'm having fun right now," he said.

"Come on, sugar," she intoned,

"I have a nice apartment where I'm all alone."

"I don't know," he said, fidgeting with his drink.

"You look like the type of guy who'll pay to have a super evening."

Pay?"

"Don't you like what you see, sugar?"

"Sure," he stammered, 'but, uh, well . . . How much?"

"A hundred and fifty dollars," she whispered, never suspecting that the cigarette case in his pocket contained a microphone and no tobacco.

"You get whatever you want twice. And I have to be back here by ten o'clock' "Let's go" he said.

They went, but not to Seventy-third Street. They were no farther than the sidewalk when they were joined by Saint Theresa. They didn't have to tell Debbie she was under arrest. She knew immediately.

"We've pegged something wrong somewhere," Hearn said sipping lukewarm coffee from a plastic container.

"Maybe they were a pair of standard muggers dressed up in good coats."

"No way, Patty," said Sha.s.sad, his dark eyes narrowing.