A Well-Known Secret Read online

  A Well-Known Secret

  A Terry Orr Mystery

  Jim Fusilli

  To the memory of David Rosenberg

  For know that there is nothing more tractable than the human soul. It needs but to will, and the thing is done; the soul is set upon the right path: As on the contrary it needs but to nod over the task, and all is lost. For ruin and recovery alike are from within.

  —EPICTETUS

  The New York Times Metro

  R. Thomas Coombs

  Metro Matters

  Murder Statistics

  Mean Little to

  Two Who Know Better

  Murder, we realize, is not uncommon in this city. Nor has it ever been, as recent statistics hailed as encouraging serve to remind us. The latest figures announced Monday by the Mayor at a contentious press conference at City Hall show an 11-percent decline in murder in the five boroughs in the last year. (Acts of terror, it has been agreed, fall under the new, unsettling category of attempted genocide.) Despite the decline, we are still left with 809 murder victims during the past year, a figure that fails to suggest cause for celebration.

  It is a short leap from those numbers to the story of Terry Orr. Unlike those of us for whom murder is a remote concept, Mr. Orr is among the many New Yorkers who know that “809 victims” is not merely a statistic. It cries out that 809 people have ceased to exist, and that at least as many families have been irreparably damaged.

  Mr. Orr became acutely aware of the difference between statistics and reality when his wife, the artist Marina Fiorentino, and their infant son were killed. A man later identified as Raymond Montgomery Weisz is said to have thrown the infant onto the tracks at the 66th Street subway station near Lincoln Center. In trying to save the boy, Ms. Fiorentino was crushed along with young Davy Orr beneath the wheels of an express train.

  For statisticians and reporters who routinely cover carnage, the deaths of Ms. Fiorentino and her son were merely numbers 19 and 20 among people killed that year on the tracks of the IRT, the IND and the BMT. A “12-9” is what motormen call death by subway train. It is a radio alert that no one wants to make or hear, and it usually leads to a home visit from a member of the New York City Police Department that no one wants to receive.

  For Mr. Orr, when that visit came on a July afternoon four years ago, his life as he knew it was ended. And then a new life began, for him and for his daughter Gabriella.

  For most of the last four years, Mr. Orr has worked as a private investigator, having put aside a promising career as a writer and historian. There is a large part of Mr. Orr that seeks to bring the killer of his wife and son to justice, but he has expanded his mission considerably according to Sharon Knight, an executive assistant district attorney for New York County who has employed Mr. Orr, as well as other private investigators.

  “Terry’s very bright, very passionate,” says Ms. Knight. “He’s willing to help friends, to do whatever he can. He’s looking to set things right.”

  Mr. Orr has been a valuable citizen indeed: he has solved the murder of a livery cab driver, uncovered an extortion ring at the Byron hotel, and exposed both a rapist-murderer from Bosnia, who was hiding in plain sight at St. Nicholas of Bari Church in TriBeCa, and the priest who chose to ignore his crimes.

  Mr. Orr is also said to have tracked a black bear through TriBeCa streets, to have apprehended a man on the Bowery who assaulted passersby with a cast-iron skillet, and even to be in possession of previously unknown recordings by Frank Sinatra. Apocryphal stories, perhaps, but of the kind that spring to life when a quiet, resourceful man gets a reputation for doing good.

  What is certain is that Edward T. Orr has come a long way from the day when, as a member of the St. John’s University basketball squad, he punched teammate Howard Apple in the locker room at Madison Square Garden. The seven-foot-plus Mr. Apple lost four teeth and was unable to play that night, the Johnnies lost to their Big East rivals Seton Hall by six points—a third of Mr. Apple’s average per-game output—and Eddie Orr, as he was known, lost his basketball scholarship. To this day, a few Red Storm fans in Queens spit at the sound of his name. Those with more finely tuned memories recall that several teammates declined to criticise Mr. Orr, who refused to reveal what Mr. Apple had done to provoke him.

  Today, Terry Orr is raising his daughter, by all accounts a bright, curious, well-adjusted 14-year-old who, not coincidentally, plays on the freshman basketball team at Walt Whitman High in TriBeCa. Perhaps she is comforted by the knowledge that her mother’s paintings hang in homes, offices and galleries throughout the world. Perhaps she finds consolation in the considerable estate her parents’ talents have provided: It is estimated that the sale of Ms. Fiorentino’s art has generated some $20 million, and Mr. Orr’s Slippery Dick is perhaps the only nonfiction book about the Tweed Ring to be optioned by a major Hollywood studio.

  But it is more likely that Gabriella Orr misses the comfort of her mother’s embrace. She no doubt yearns to play with her baby brother. These things no amount of money can replace. And curious though she may be, about murder she need know only this: For her, the number that matters is not 809, nor is it 11 percent. It’s two: her mother and brother.

  For Terry Orr, his wife and son.

  “What I admire most about Terry,” says Ms. Knight, the executive A.D.A., “is that he never seems to forget that the victim was a person with a family, with loved ones. It’s never a stranger. It’s some body’s husband, wife, brother, sister, friend. And he always remembers how devastating it is to lose a child.”

  ONE

  Her name was Dorotea Salgado. Our housekeeper called her a friend.

  She was sitting in a two-seat booth with her long, crinkled hands folded on the tabletop, and as I approached her she looked blankly at me, then returned to staring into the distance, toward the dappled sunlight and budding trees in Union Square Park. Her hollow, angular face was scored with wrinkles and dark lines, and her skin sagged slightly from the jaw. She wore a modest dress, burgundy with a paisley print, over her thin frame. Strands of gray, standing in contrast to her black hair, rested above her ears. At her side near the window sat a square pocketbook that wasn’t new. It matched her brown belt and sensible shoes.

  The old, ’40s-style clock above the entrance to the kitchen read DIAMONDS, but if that was the name of the place, no one used it: The red-neon sign out front said COFFEE SHOP and nothing more.

  At 11 on a Monday morning, black stools waited for customers at the Formica counter, and the small dining room to my right was empty except for a man working a laptop, nursing a mug of coffee.

  I was in here once on a Sunday morning at about eight and was the only one who hadn’t been out all night.

  “Mrs. Salgado?”

  She looked at me and blinked her sad eyes and said, “Yes.”

  I told her I was Terry Orr. She slid out of the booth and stood. She was of average height and that made her much shorter than me.

  She had a faint accent. Mrs. Maoli had said she was Cuban.

  “Please,” she said as she gestured to the booth.

  I waited for her to sit. When she did, I squeezed in across from her, leaving my legs in the aisle.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  I nodded.

  When the waitress appeared, I ordered coffee black.

  “An espresso, Mrs. Salgado?” I asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  In here, espresso was as close as we’d get to café Cubano, which had the viscosity of Brent crude and enough caffeine to jump-start a slug.

  I waited for her to doctor her drink with sugar. Her teaspoon clinked the sides of the tiny cup.

  She wore her gold wedding band on her right hand.


  “You’re looking for your daughter,” I began.

  “Yes,” she said, “Sonia.”

  “Where did you last see her?”

  “In Bedford Hills.”

  “You haven’t seen her since her release?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you know where she went?”

  Again, no.

  “I see.” I went gently. “You’re not close …”

  She looked down into the cup. “It is difficult. Mistakes were made, and, no, she didn’t want me to come see her.”

  “‘Mistakes?’”

  “I—I was very angry,” she said, “and then maybe it was too late.” She hesitated. “In time, I visited, but she preferred not. Maybe so I would not see my daughter grow old in prison.”

  Our housekeeper Mrs. Maoli told me Sonia Salgado had been in Bedford Hills, a maximum-security facility up in Westchester, but between her wobbly English and my poor Italian she hadn’t been able to give me much more. Her friend Mrs. Salgado was “a good woman, not young now—she must not work at this age. She has many problems. Her grandson is not well.” Urging her to tell me more, I learned that the Italian word for a woman who murdered is assassina.

  Mrs. Maoli mimicked downward strokes with a knife.

  “Even after thirty years, she is my daughter,” the old Cuban woman said.

  “Did she have any plans? A job?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I have no information.”

  I sipped the bland coffee. “Is it possible she wanted to disappear?”

  “Possible, yes.”

  “Is there a reason you need to find her?”

  She frowned quizzically. “Did Natalia tell— Do you know about Enrique?”

  “Is he the grandson?”

  “He’s very sick. She should see him.”

  “Mrs. Maoli said the boy has never seen his grandmother. Is that—”

  “No. We would not take him to prison.”

  “How old is the boy?”

  “He is three.”

  I found myself sketching invisible flow charts with my finger on the tabletop, avoiding the coffee-cup rings. “I’m trying to understand: You haven’t seen her since—”

  “Not in five years. This Christmas, five years. For a few minutes only.”

  “Does she know she has a grandson?”

  “I wrote to her, yes.”

  I leaned forward. “There’s no easy way to say this—”

  “I understand, Mr. Orr, that Sonia does not want to see me and she does not want to see Enrique. I understand. But the situation has changed.”

  “Perhaps not for Sonia, Mrs. Salgado.”

  She stopped, then she shook her head. “I cannot explain. She is my daughter. I am seventy years old. And Enrique is sick.”

  “Sure,” I nodded, “and you want to make things right.”

  “I think it is too late to make things right. But she was my little girl,” she said without a trace of sentiment, without anger. “Then she was lost to me. I cannot explain. The newspapers said she was a monster. No.”

  Thirty years in Bedford Hills made it Murder One for Sonia Salgado. There was no sense asking her mother why she’d done it. A premeditated killing meant money or revenge.

  “Perhaps she’s hiding, Mrs. Salgado. That may be why she can’t be found.”

  “I have thought of this and this is why I ask you and I do not ask the police. You can find her and you can give me the information. No one will know.”

  “You expose her and you may put her—and yourself—in danger.”

  “Mr. Orr, I just want to see my little girl. I want her to see Enrique. I want to see what is possible now.”

  “I understand, but—”

  “And you help children, Mr. Orr. We know this.”

  On the north side of Union Square Park, they were cleaning away the debris from the Farmers’ Market: Rotted fruit that had escaped the homeless lay in a pile near the curb. A city dump-truck moaned and wheezed as it backed toward 17th Street.

  “Sure, Mrs. Salgado. Why not?”

  She smiled, not in triumph but as if to signal that a burden had been lifted, a milepost passed.

  “Give me a call in a day or two,” I added.

  “Thank you.”

  “No thanks yet,” I said. “Let’s wait until something gets done.”

  She reached for her handbag, but I dug out a five before she could get her money to the table.

  “No, Mr. Orr, I insist.” She pulled out a small brown wallet and dropped two folded singles between our cups.

  That wasn’t enough to cover my coffee, but I said nothing. I shouldn’t have asked the proud old woman to meet me at this place, whose high prices paid for a hip cachet rather than customer satisfaction.

  But since Mrs. Maoli said she knew Dorotea Salgado from the Farmers’ Market, I thought it might be convenient for her.

  What kind of people charge $3 for coffee?

  I told her I was going to have another cup. She thanked me again, and I waited until she was halfway to Lex before I asked for the check. I left her two singles as a tip.

  The New York County District Attorney’s office is about a two-mile walk from Union Square. The best way to get there on a mild April morning is to cut through the park and stay on Fourth until the Bowery meets up with Park Row; or just take Lafayette through Little Italy toward the construction near Paine Park. Either way was faster than a cab, especially today: Somebody’d been given a big enough bag of cash to let Tim Robbins take over Spring near Balthazar for his latest flick, and traffic on Broadway had slowed to a dribble. Or so said WNYC before I left the house.

  I went toward Fourth, stopping briefly by the melted candles, weathered fliers and inexhaustible well of sadness at the makeshift tribute to the victims of the World Trade Center attacks that stood sentry to Brown’s statue of Washington on horseback. As I walked along the wide avenue, passing a Salvation Army thrift store, a year-round costume shop dubbed the Masters of Masquerade and the elaborate and decidedly English architecture of the Grace Church School, I called Sharon Knight, the best known and perhaps the best of Morgenthau’s army of assistant district attorneys. A secretary with a Jamaican accent told me she was in court, so I asked for Julie Giada and got her voice mail. The clock in the musical quarter note on Carl Fischer’s building told me a lunch recess wasn’t too far off, so I kept going and arrived at Hogan Place just short of 45 minutes later: If Julie got my message, she’d help.

  If Sharon was the star in the D.A.’s office, Julie was its angel. Julie, Sharon once said, had “a big, big heart,” and added that “it’s too bad she’s doesn’t check with her head now and then.” Julie was plenty smart, but I knew what her boss meant: She liked to dig through the system to find lost causes—a bag lady who didn’t want to move off a grate in Sutton Place, a wizened old man set up to take a fall by his pinstriped nephew and trophy wife, a wide-eyed yet insolent kid caught playing lookout for the neighborhood drug dealer. Julie had interned in the Brooklyn D.A.’s, then joined full-time after graduation from Penn Law. She spent a year in private practice, but jumped at the chance to come into Sharon’s small group. “She really should’ve joined the Legal Aid, ACLU, something,” Sharon laughed. “If I didn’t trust her with my soul, I’d think she was working us from the inside.” Maybe Julie’s compassion would extend to the mother and grandson of a murderer.

  I breezed through the first metal detector, then another, and I took the elevator upstairs. The receptionist was a cop who long ago had been taken off the streets and given a job that kept him warm and relatively safe: He still carried a service revolver. His family name was Casey, and whenever I came up here, perhaps 50 times in the past four years, he reacted as if he’d never seen me before.

  “Officer Casey,” I said with a nod.

  He pushed aside his copy of the Post. “What’ll it be?” he asked blankly. The thin black man had pale blue eyes and a long chin.

  “Julie Gi
ada, please,” I said.

  “Are you somebody by the name of Terry Orr?”

  “Terry Orr,” I replied, surprised.

  “You have some ID?”

  I dug out my wallet and showed him my P.I. license.

  He handed me a white envelope that bore the New York County crest. “Julie’s still out.”

  I nodded.

  “You can call later if you want.”

  “OK.”

  I tore open the envelope and slid out a single sheet of paper.

  Sonia Salgado’s address. St. Mark’s Garden in the East Village.

  I stopped at Bazzini’s, grabbed a salade niçoise and a half-pound of raw pumpkin seeds for lunch and brought it in a sack across Greenwich Avenue to my house. As I punched in the security code, I looked west to the river and watched it roll by for a while, its narrow ripples undisturbed by ocean-bound boat traffic or heavy winds, its scent barely discernible in the warm spring air. But at that moment the light scent was as fragrant as the saltiest sea, because its presence meant that the oppressive odor of toxins and death had finally been vanquished.

  With the door open a crack behind me, I sat on the front steps, a mere eight blocks from where the World Trade Center had stood, and looked up at the wooden water tanks and ornate acanthus leaves in the fading green copper edging high on the buildings on Greenwich and Hudson. Bathed in sunlight, they seemed fine now, crowns on vital, broad-shouldered homes brimming with activity—creativity, housework, children playing, music, laughter—or quiet, as people slept off long nights of work and pleasure. But I knew that tomorrow these buildings might once again seem fragile repositories of gloom and sorrow, sagging remnants of a once-thriving neighborhood hit by an inglorious attack, by a stunning loss of life and the overwhelming aftermath: police sirens, a din of whirling helicopter blades, panic, crippling fear, brilliant klieg lights, expressionless soldiers in high boots and khaki carrying M16s, firemen in uniform staggering away from their 12-hour shifts (opposite raccoons, Bella called them, their faces black with soot and their eye sockets unmarked thanks to protective goggles), horrified tourists slowly approaching the burning chasm in the city, the nation. Neighbors lost in grief. The smell of death, the eerie silence.