Porter’s mouth fixed into a shrug before he said, “There’s a story—can’t say how true it might be—that back in the day, prospecting dockworkers would line up at the pier each morning, and if they tucked a toothpick behind one ear, it signaled to the foreman that they were game.”
Doyle asked, “Game for what?”
“That they’d kickback some of their wages in return for the job,” Porter clarified as he got up from his chair.“It perpetuated the system of racketeering and loan-sharking—kept the Irish mob alive a few decades longer than they shoulda been.”
“Thank you,” Larkin said.
“Thanks, Jim.”
Porter gave them a lazy salute before heading toward the breakroom.
Larkin shrugged out of his suit coat and draped it over the back of his chair.“The history of the Hudson is relevant in this case the same way that the subway and Broadway locations were in the past.”
“It’s sounding more and more like Hell’s Kitchen mob activity,” Doyle agreed with a nod.“Last month, Phyllis said that Esther—uh, should we start referring to her as Barbara?”
“I do believe we should consider this an opportunity to give Barbara her identity back.”
“Sure.Phyllis said that Barbara had the quintessential New York accent, making her a local.On top of that, she’s a beautiful young woman possibly from Hell’s Kitchen.What if the reason she turned to a life on Broadway was to get away from someone in the neighborhood?”
“It’s not an unreasonable theory, especially given the extra work she put into changing her identity.She didn’t buy a fake ID and call it done—she went to considerable lengths to obtain those legal documents we had a brief look at.”Larkin motioned Doyle to follow him as he started across the bullpen.“But we need to speak with someone who knew her—knew her as Barbara.”
Doyle switched gears.“Debra’s a little backed up in Public Relations, but she said your composite sketch should be up on Local4Locals sometime today.”
“Good.”
“And Detective Winter in Homicide confirmed what Millett said: Joe was horny for a story.He ran a background check last month—no arrests, no priors.But Winter echoed Millett’s concern: The guy tried speaking with queer officers in Vice, Transit, and Homicide before circling back to you.”They reached the threshold that led to the breakroom on the right and copy room on the left, and Doyle followed Larkin left.“Winter’s investigation ended up going in another direction and he lost the opportunity to delve further into Joe, but from all accounts, Joe was pretty pushy with the other officers too.”
Larkin came to a stop outside of a closed door at the end of the hall.“Based on what Joe said yesterday, that all of the media outlets want to interview me—which is correct—but only he could tell my story without pandering—which I found extremely doubtful—I would have believed his fixation was on me.But this only proves my original read of Joe was correct: So long as the subject of his narrative fucks other men, the individual themself is interchangeable, which, to be quite frank, I find more than a little offensive, considering the call is coming from inside the room.”
Doyle winced and said, “If it was only about landing an interview with a gay cop, you’d be thelast oneI’d harass a second time.”
Larkin raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Respectfully.”
Larkin retrieved the keys from his pocket.“So it is about me.”
“I think, whatever Joe wasactuallytrying to accomplish, it did become about you, yeah.It was about more than an interview.He wouldn’t have been shot, otherwise.”
—dead eyes reflecting back his final living seconds like a still image caught on film, that of a man with a puckered scar—
Larkin shuddered.He quickly unlocked the door before them, pushed it open, and took Doyle’s hand, leading him inside.He flipped a switch on the wall, and an overhead light flickered once, twice, and with an audible hum, illuminated a windowless space roughly the size of the breakroom.Cream-colored metal filing cabinets from the ’90s lined the wall directly ahead and to the right.A worktable with a faux-wood laminate top was pushed to the left, and beside it was metal shelving that reached to the ceiling.It’d been packed tighter than tinned sardines with bankers boxes.Plastic totes were stacked two and three high along the floor and shoved as far out of the way as possible, suggesting no one had anticipated humanity being such a disappointment that detectives would run out of space in which to shelve unsolved murders.The room had a musty, old paper smell, and Doyle promptly sneezed.
“Welcome to the Morgue,” Larkin replied.He turned to face Doyle.“These are our unassigned cold cases.”
“There’re hundreds.”
“Thousands,” Larkin corrected.“9,024 is our current total of unsolved cases.If we estimate each detective has about two dozen assigned and open investigations, there are nearly 8,800 cases left in this room.Of course, these numbers don’t take into account any cold cases Homicide detectives might still be sitting on.”
Doyle swore quietly.
“You can ignore the filing cabinets,” Larkin explained.“That’s everything from the turn of the century to the 1960s.Ignore the tubs as well.Those are all from the ’90s and later.”Larkin put a hand on one of the boxes shoved onto the metal shelving.“These are the ’70s and ’80s.John and Jane Does will be marked with a red tag.”
“I’m having Property Clerk flashbacks.”
“I assure you, there will be no maggots in these boxes.”
Doyle smiled at that, but as he walked over to the shelving, he said, “I have to ask… because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.Did you ever doubt me?”
