“I knew it.” McCormick relaxed again and resumed his stride. “I’ve been wondering if your moral compass rubbed off on Boyle.”
“How do you mean?”
McCormick stuffed his fists deeper into his pockets, dipping his chin into the folds of his scarf. “From what I know of you, your moral compass has a true north, and his seems relative to his environment and the attitudes of those around him.”
That was more articulate than Joe had been expecting. “Based on what? You never had a chance to meet him, did you?”
“Let’s just say I’ve rubbed shoulders with those who knew him pretty well. I’d heard about that tunnel running from below HQ to Callahan’s across the street so police could get their drinks withoutbeing seen entering through the front doors. I had to check it out myself.”
“I bet you did.” Joe squinted into the wind. “I’ve got a nice lecture ready to launch at you right now, McCormick, about the pitfalls of keeping the wrong kind of company. Anyone who flouts the law, especially cops who do, are the wrong kind of company. Disagreeing with the law doesn’t give them license to—” Joe stopped himself before he delivered the entire speech. “I’m guessing you know the rest. So tell me. What did you learn about Connor at Callahan’s? Was he a regular customer before his arrest?”
“Apparently he was, but two years ago, he stopped going completely. I figured it was your good influence on him that made him stop.”
“Well, it would be news to me.” Whatever good influence he’d had was obviously not enough.
Joe opened the door to Ferrara’s, and warm air rushed to greet them as they stepped inside. Ferrara’s smelled of sugar and yeast, and the best coffee in Little Italy. For generations, the Caravellos had loved this place. So had Petrosino, and the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. In fact, Ferrara’s had been founded as a place to relax after the opera.
With two espressos and a plate of cannoli, Joe and McCormick settled into a corner booth in the back, with a clear view of the door.
“All right,” Joe said. “Now, what did you find in the Property Room?”
“It’s what I didn’t find that bothered me.” McCormick sipped his drink. “I was looking something up in the files and came across the receipt for a raid that had been made several months ago. According to the receipt, ten guns had been seized. They were itemized by type of weapon and listed individually.”
So far, all of that was normal. “And?”
“There was a photograph with the file showing all the confiscated guns laid out and tagged, but there were only nine guns in the photograph. The clerk said it was a clerical error and not to bother anyone else with it.”
“A clerical error?” Joe repeated, dubious. He took a bite of cannoli, and flakes of pastry scattered to the table.
“That’s a pretty big one as far as clerical errors go, right? And it happened more than once. I saw three other instances of it. There was one gun missing from the photograph. Or one extra gun listed on the receipt of seized guns.”
“Did you tell the clerk about all four cases?”
“Only the first one. I found the others after he told me it was no big deal.”
Joe tasted the espresso, his head filling with pressure. “Four times this happened. That’s not an error, McCormick. That’s a pattern, and that is a very big deal. The guns on the receipts but not in the photographs never made it into the storage chests.” Wooden chests were used to hold confiscated knives and guns. When they were full, the contents were dumped into the east river.
“Then where are those guns now?”
“If whoever is doing this isn’t stockpiling his own personal arsenal? Sold on the black market to the highest bidder would be my guess.” Joe sat back, trying to grasp what this meant. This level of corruption was so much worse than policemen accepting bribes to ignore Prohibition violations. Supplying guns to the black market not only put weapons in criminals’ hands, it stymied detectives’ attempts to find them.
Joe cut his voice low. “The market for guns is bottomless,” he told McCormick. “Serial criminals use a weapon once and dispose of it. Maybe they throw it in the East River. Sometimes they even wipe it off and simply leave it at the scene of the crime. The result is the same. First, getting rid of the weapon means it will never be found close to the criminal, implicating him. If we can’t link a weapon to the criminal...” He spread his hands.
“I get it. That means they need a new one. But they’re not going to walk into one of the gunsmiths on Centre Market Place to purchase one.”
“You got it.” He took another bite of cannoli. “Did you get a good look at the signatures on the receipts?”
McCormick brushed a crumb from his coat. “I couldn’t read all of them. It’s almost like they were trying not to be legible. Although, you might make them out, being more familiar with the officers than I am.”
Joe grunted in agreement. A scrawl instead of a signature was a way of covering one’s tracks. “Those receipts only have the signatures of the officer submitting the seized property and the clerk receiving it. We need more information than that anyway. If you can remember the dates of the raids, I’ll look up the typed reports. Those will have a record of all the involved officers, not just the one person tasked with turning in the weapons.” He finished his cannoli and downed what remained in his mug. “You did the right thing in telling me. I’ll look into it. For now, let’s keep this between the two of us, okay?”
McCormick agreed.
By the time they returned to headquarters, bells were ringing for mass from Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral a few blocks north on Mulberry. For Joe, it was a tocsin of dread for what he was about to find.
The train rumbled over the tracks, hurtling through evening’s darkness toward New York City. Outside the window, a mantle of snow reflected the moon’s glow. But if Lauren shifted her focus from the eerie blur beyond the pane, she saw her own reflection instead.
“Come away from the windows. Come away, I said. Lauren!”
