The Savage City by T. J. English Page A

not.
    Q: Could it have been eight stories?
    A: Yes.
    Q: But it could have been more than four or five stories?
    A: Yes.
    The questioning continued in a similar manner. Whenever there was confusion about an important detail, the detectives ducked out of the room, figured out the answer among themselves, then returned. The line of inquiry would return to important details to make sure they were clarified in the transcript. The investigators were determined to cover everything. George had even been supplied with a story about how, after committing the murders, he had retrieved a package of razor blades from the bathroom. He opened the package and took out a blade, used it to slice a bedsheet into strips, and then used the strips of cloth to tie up the bodies.
    The detectives and the assistant D.A. worked as a team. The inspectors and chiefs were there to make sure everyone dotted their i ’s and crossed their t ’s.
    At 4:12 A.M. , Koste said, “All right. Thank you, George. No further questions.” The longest murder confession in the history of New York State was complete. Koste had asked 594 questions. The transcript was sixty-one pages long. Whitmore was asked to sign it, and he did.
    A quiver of excitement rippled through the police command, all the way from the Seventy-third Precinct to the office of the commissioner. Before Whitmore had even finished giving his statement, someone had leaked to the press that a suspect in the Career Girls Murders was confessing to the crime. Reporters started arriving at the precinct around 4:00 A.M. ; they were held at bay near the station house front desk by uniformed cops and told that Chief McKearney would be down soon to issue a statement.
    Upstairs, Whitmore was placed in the cage and left there by himself. He had passed beyond fatigue into what resembled an out-of-body experience. Alone, away from the detectives for the first time in many hours, he began to feel something like anger. For nearly twenty-four hours he had been in police custody. Not once had detectives told him that he could make a phone call or have an attorney present. Not once had they asked him if he had an alibi for the dates and times of the crimes in question. They weren’t interested in alibis. They had promised George that, after he satisfied their needs and demands, it would “all be over” and he could go. Well, obviously that was a lie. For the first time, George realized that he’d gotten himself into something he might not be getting out of for a long time.
    After a while, a big group of white men in suits came and took George from the cell. Along with Bulger and Aidala and Di Prima, there was Detective Martin Zinkand, who’d arrived at the precinct as a representative of the Manhattan homicide squad. Department protocol called for the glory to be spread evenly among the various detective units involved.
    With Bulger holding George Whitmore by one arm and Di Prima by the other, they led the accused toward a staircase leading down to the front desk.
    It was approximately 5:30 A.M . At this hour, the station house in Brownsville was usually as quiet as a cemetery. But today was not an ordinary day.
    That morning, Fred C. Shapiro, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune who lived in Brooklyn, was awoken by a phone call from an assistant city editor. “Get over to the East New York Avenue precinct,” he was told. “They’ve got the Wylie killer.”
    Shapiro, a veteran reporter, was accustomed to early-morning calls, but this one seemed especially urgent. “Do we know the identity of the suspect?” he asked.
    â€œYou never heard of him,” he was told. “It’s a jig named Whitmore.”
    At the station house, Shapiro crammed into the front desk area with dozens of other print reporters, crime beat photographers, and TV news crews setting up lights. A buzz of excitement permeated the room, punctuated by the incessant ringing of the