his sister’s husband, who fenced hot cars and sold them to red-necks and Okies in North and South Carolina. And he was grateful that she was obviously not going to hit him with it, not sting him with the fact that he couldn’t see his sister or her children anymore because she was married to a common thief.
“You know, Sam, why don’t you try my side of the street for a while?”
Tonnelli asked her. “Who knows, you might get to like it.”
“You forget, Gypsy, us black cats don’t have no spots to change. And for Christ’s sake, Pope, the next time you ask me over, would you spring for a bottle of scotch?”
One of the offices in Tonnelli’s headquarters in the 13th Precinct House had been converted into a “darkroom” by a police sketch artist, Detective First Grade Todd Webb. He had set up a portable screen and a sixteen-millimeter projector, and all functional witnesses were present, save Joey Harpe, who would be along within a few minutes, since the little Irisher and his parents were already en route to the 19th in a squad car.
Lieutenant Tonnelli stood alongside Patrolman Max Prima, whose back was like a ramrod and whose eyes were wide with an almost comical respect, which were his reactions to the top brass on the scene, Deputy Chief of Detectives Walter Greene and, an even more significant figure, the borough commander of South Manhattan himself, a two-star cop, Assistant Chief Inspector Taylor “Chip” Larkin, who, with his slight frame and silver-white hair and rimless spectacles, looked more like a parish priest from his native county of Cork than the chief of all police in the southern half of this sprawling, million-footed city.
Coke Roosevelt and Biggie Lewis stood apart from the police, talking to each other in soft, chuckling voices; if they found it a distinction to be in the presence of such exalted police officers, they were concealing it nicely.
At last—it was then about three fifteen on the morning of October 15—the office door opened, and the little Irish boy, Joey Harpe, came into the room with his vaguely apprehensive parents.
It was Joey Harpe who had seen the man who had murdered Jenny Goldman in the basement of a building on Twenty-ninth Street between Lexington and Third Avenue. . . .
With all lights turned off, Detective Todd Webb went to work, flashing various shapes of skulls on the screen, long, square, round, and oval, until a consensus was reached by Patrolman Prima, the small Irish boy, and the two big blacks that the man they had all mutually observed had a head that was nearly as round as a bowling ball.
Detective Webb left that outline on the screen and began with deliberate speed to add and subtract from it various kinds and shapes of mouths, noses, and eyes and ears, until at last, after considerable argument and disagreement, the functional group of witnesses settled on a front and profile sketch of a man’s face with these characteristics: small eyes, a heavy forehead, scraggly blond hair, a corded, powerful neck, and comically protruding ears.
Copies of this sketch would be processed and distributed by squad cars to every precinct of every borough of New York City.
They would not be distributed to local newspapers or television stations.
This was Chief Inspector Chip Larkin’s decision.
As an impeccably schooled and highly intelligent police officer Chief Larkin knew that the Juggler could be classified medically as a Constitutional Psychopath Inferior, whose shames and humiliations, whose rages and angers, induced by his own construct of physical chemicals, would helplessly and forever drive him into antisocial violence. They would catch him, of course, because he would continue on his course of savage and sadistic murders until they did.
But Chief Larkin wanted him stopped tonight, not ten years from now.
Ten young girls from now. . . .
And that was behind his decision not to release the sketches of the Juggler to newsmen. They would need
“You know, Sam, why don’t you try my side of the street for a while?”
Tonnelli asked her. “Who knows, you might get to like it.”
“You forget, Gypsy, us black cats don’t have no spots to change. And for Christ’s sake, Pope, the next time you ask me over, would you spring for a bottle of scotch?”
One of the offices in Tonnelli’s headquarters in the 13th Precinct House had been converted into a “darkroom” by a police sketch artist, Detective First Grade Todd Webb. He had set up a portable screen and a sixteen-millimeter projector, and all functional witnesses were present, save Joey Harpe, who would be along within a few minutes, since the little Irisher and his parents were already en route to the 19th in a squad car.
Lieutenant Tonnelli stood alongside Patrolman Max Prima, whose back was like a ramrod and whose eyes were wide with an almost comical respect, which were his reactions to the top brass on the scene, Deputy Chief of Detectives Walter Greene and, an even more significant figure, the borough commander of South Manhattan himself, a two-star cop, Assistant Chief Inspector Taylor “Chip” Larkin, who, with his slight frame and silver-white hair and rimless spectacles, looked more like a parish priest from his native county of Cork than the chief of all police in the southern half of this sprawling, million-footed city.
Coke Roosevelt and Biggie Lewis stood apart from the police, talking to each other in soft, chuckling voices; if they found it a distinction to be in the presence of such exalted police officers, they were concealing it nicely.
At last—it was then about three fifteen on the morning of October 15—the office door opened, and the little Irish boy, Joey Harpe, came into the room with his vaguely apprehensive parents.
It was Joey Harpe who had seen the man who had murdered Jenny Goldman in the basement of a building on Twenty-ninth Street between Lexington and Third Avenue. . . .
With all lights turned off, Detective Todd Webb went to work, flashing various shapes of skulls on the screen, long, square, round, and oval, until a consensus was reached by Patrolman Prima, the small Irish boy, and the two big blacks that the man they had all mutually observed had a head that was nearly as round as a bowling ball.
Detective Webb left that outline on the screen and began with deliberate speed to add and subtract from it various kinds and shapes of mouths, noses, and eyes and ears, until at last, after considerable argument and disagreement, the functional group of witnesses settled on a front and profile sketch of a man’s face with these characteristics: small eyes, a heavy forehead, scraggly blond hair, a corded, powerful neck, and comically protruding ears.
Copies of this sketch would be processed and distributed by squad cars to every precinct of every borough of New York City.
They would not be distributed to local newspapers or television stations.
This was Chief Inspector Chip Larkin’s decision.
As an impeccably schooled and highly intelligent police officer Chief Larkin knew that the Juggler could be classified medically as a Constitutional Psychopath Inferior, whose shames and humiliations, whose rages and angers, induced by his own construct of physical chemicals, would helplessly and forever drive him into antisocial violence. They would catch him, of course, because he would continue on his course of savage and sadistic murders until they did.
But Chief Larkin wanted him stopped tonight, not ten years from now.
Ten young girls from now. . . .
And that was behind his decision not to release the sketches of the Juggler to newsmen. They would need
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