Bronx Noir

“But you see how useless this is,” Hamilton pointed out. “Even if we find the girl’s prints on this car, all that tells us is that she touched it. Hell, we’d basically have to find her body in here for anything to stick on anybody, and then this car’s been through a lot of hands.”

Nearly a hundred prints were lifted from the car, but Jasmine’s hands were very small and many of the prints could be discounted without even a close examination. The rest would be left for technicians to sort out.

“Progress?” the squad captain asked when the detectives finally returned.

“Started out cold and is getting colder by the minute,” Hamilton answered. “Right now we’re thinking it was either the lady who says she found the body and who happens to have spent time in the pokey for killing her own daughter and who was married to a guy who did serious time for a robbery that wound up with three bodies in the ground. Or maybe we’re looking at a squeaky clean millionaire’s son and his lawyer friend who also has no record. Who, by the way, are placed at the scene only by the aforementioned daughter-killer.”

“Physical evidence?”

“Sure,” DiRaimo said. “We have a body with a bunch of indistinct stomp and fist marks all over. Other than that, we’re waiting for forensics or the prints. Maybe some miracle…” He left it at that.

There was no miracle. No prints from Jasmine showed up on the car, forensics found nothing at the scene that might tie Tim or David or anybody else to the murder. What did show up, after announcements in the news, were distraught parents of Antonia Flores. She had run away from a loving home, they said. Just two miles from where she died.

They were saddened by the death of their daughter, but then it was explained to them that she had been drug-addicted and a prostitute.

“Can the city bury her?” the father asked. “It’s such a waste of money…she had become such a terrible person.”

“But she was only thirteen,” they were told.

“Yeah, but imagine if she had lived longer,” her father said. “She could have been a murderer.”

Almost a week later, Detective DiRaimo took a couple of hours of leave to place a bouquet of flowers on the newly carved grave in St. Raymond’s Cemetery. There was a potted Jasmine plant sitting there already. He had a good idea who it was from. He called on Yolanda.

“You put the flowers?” he asked from the doorway of her apartment.

“Wait,” Yolanda said. “Let me see. You find the killers?”

“For all I know, I could be looking at the killer right now.”

“Then you don’t know jack. But I know you playing me, because if you thought I could be a killer, I don’t think you’d be standing outside my doorway without backup. Listen, I like you…Can’t stand your partner, but I like you. Let me tell you something: I’m getting witnesses, I’m getting information. I know about your two Westchester County boys, Tim and Dave. I know where they live, I know what they do. I know how they like their sex, and I know where and when they get their action.”

“And why are you collecting all this information?” DiRaimo asked. He didn’t like the sound of an amateur sleuth working his case. Good way for people to get hurt.

“Don’t you worry. I’m not going to kill anyone or do anything like that. But y’all will know the next time these boys take their pants down. I’ll get you pictures, I’ll get you tape recordings, I’ll get the ho’s who work them. You want proof they lying? I’ll get you all the proof you want. These boys been to the Bronx, they been in that neighborhood, they been with the working girls there, and they like it rough. I already got a couple of girls who’ll swear on a stack of Bibles that these guys been beating on them.”

“Why don’t you let me talk to these women?” DiRaimo asked.

“Nah-ah. Wait. In fact, tomorrow morning I will bring you all the evidence. If they stick to their routine, I know exactly where they gonna be tonight, and I’ll be waiting.”

“But if they’re killers—”

“Don’t you worry about me, Mister Man. I been taking care of myself for plenty long time. And you know what? I don’t even care. I’m on a mission from God. I been waiting almost twenty years to pay Him back for what I done to my baby girl. Now I finally get to square that up…Do me some good in this world.”

Back at the precinct, DiRaimo sat quietly at his desk. He was weighing up what Yolanda had told him about getting tapes and photos and testimony from a flock of prostitutes. He wondered if all of it stacked high could amount to a murder charge. He didn’t see how it could.

“What you thinking about, partner?” Hamilton asked him.

“Oh, I just talked with that Yolanda Morales lady. You know, from the Antonia Flores case.”

“And what? Did she confess?”

“Nope. She says she’s going out tonight to get some evidence on Tim McElhone and David Franklin. Pictures, recordings, testimony…”

“You told her about them?”

“Of course not. She’s been snooping on her own.”

“That’s dangerous,” Hamilton said.

“Yeah.”