“You can’t say that with her here,” she squawled and turned on Shirl. “She’ll steal and sell everything that’s not nailed down. My good brother …”
“Your good brother!” Shirl shouted. “You hated his guts and he hated yours, and you never came near this place as long as he was alive.”
“Shut up!” Andy broke in, coming between the two women. He turned to Mary Haggerty. “You can go now. The police will let you know when the things in this apartment are available.”
She was shocked. “But—you can’t do that. I have my rights. You can’t leave that whore here alone.”
Andy’s patience was cracking. “Watch your language, Mrs. Haggerty. You’ve used that word enough. Don’t forget what your brother did for a living.”
Her face went white and she took a half step backward. “My brother was in business, a businessman,” she said weakly.
“Your brother was in the rackets, and that means girls among other things.” Without her anger to hold her erect she slumped, deflated, thin and bony; the only round thing in her body was her abdomen, swollen from years of bad diet and bearing too many children.
“Why don’t you go now,” he said. “We’ll get in touch with you as soon as possible.”
The woman turned and left without another word. He was sorry that he had lost his temper and said more than he should, but there was no way to take back the words now.
“Did you mean that—what you said about Mike?” Shirl asked, after the door had closed. In a plain white dress and with her hair pulled back she looked very young, even innocent, despite the label Mary Haggerty had given to her. The innocence seemed more realistic than the charges.
“How long did you know O’Brien?” Andy asked, fending the question off for a moment.
“Just about a year, but he never talked about his business. I never asked, I always thought it had something to do with politics, he always had judges and politicians visiting him.”
Andy took out his notebook. “I’d like the names of any regular visitors, people he saw in the last week.”
“Now you are asking the questions—and you haven’t answered mine.” Shirl smiled when she said it, but he knew she was serious. She sat down on a straight-backed chair, her hands folded in her lap like a schoolgirl.
“I can’t answer that in too much detail,” he said. “I don’t know that much about Big Mike. About all I can tell you for certain is that he was some sort of a contact man between the syndicate and the politicians. Executive level I guess you would call it. And it has been thirty years at least since the last time he was in court or behind bars.”
“Do you mean—he was in jail?”
“Yes, I checked on it, he’s got a criminal record and a couple of convictions. But nothing recently, it’s the punks who get caught and sent up. Once you operate in Mike’s circle the police don’t touch you. In fact they help you—like this investigation.”
“I don’t understand….”
“Look. There are five, maybe ten killings in New York every day, a couple of hundred felonious assaults, twenty, thirty cases of rape, at least fifteen hundred burglaries. The police are understaffed and overworked. We don’t have time to follow up any case that isn’t open and shut. If someone gets murdered and there are witnesses, okay, we go out and pick the killer up and the case is closed. But in a case like this, frankly, Miss Greene, we usually don’t even try. Unless we get a make on the fingerprints and have a record on the killer. But the chances are that we don’t. This city has a million punks who are on the Welfare and wish they had a square meal or a TV or a drink. So they try their hand at burglary to see what they can pick up. We catch a few and send them upstate on work gangs, breaking up the big parkways with pickaxes to reclaim the farmland. But most of them get away. Once in a while there is an accident, maybe someone comes in while they are pulling a job, surprises them while they are cleaning out the place. If the burglar is armed there may be a killing. Completely by accident, you understand, and the chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred that something like this happened to Mike O’Brien. I took the evidence, reported the case—and it should have died there. It would have if it had been anyone else. But as I said, Big Mike had plenty of political contacts and one of them put on some pressure to make a more complete investigation, and that is why I am here Now—I’ve told you more than I should, and you’ll do me a big favor if you forget all about it.”