Grief Street

news Charlie brings—an official visit, and from someone outside the church! No yap of liturgy, no tired gossip from Rome. Comes now at last the answer to my prayers—a policeman with urgent questions, which I am duty-bound to answer.
    Aye, here now’s my chance to loose a long-suffering tongue!

    “Just tell me one thing. Detective—how much you got to pay your press agent?”
    This was asked as I settled into the backseat of a black Chrysler with a discreet red flasher in the windshield and a convenient copy of the morning New York Post for me to read. Until the question, put to me with a sneery laugh, I felt I ought to be sitting up front with the uniform sent to fetch me; after all, I am not the type of cop meant for the black Chrysler fleet. But now I was glad enough for the divide.
    “Shut up and drive,” I growled at the uniform. He shut up.
    I spotted Eddie the Ear, early at his post, sitting in his chair against the wall of Dinny’s Lounge. He waved at me.
    I waved back, and then when the car pulled off from the curb and headed toward the West Side Highway, I picked up the newspaper.
    The photograph splashed all over the tabloid cover was from a few years back, a grainy, nighttime shot of myself standing around in the Kitchen at the scene of slaughter on Tenth Avenue. I remembered that night: the bloody mess of a bodega owner, Benito Riestra, his neck gashed open by the deadly swing of a box cutter, his wife, Carolena, rocking him in her arms, keening —“¡Han matado a mi esposo!”... “¡Dios, guardar a mi esposo!”
    Slattery was there that night. I remember his taking my picture with that huge old flashing Speed-Graphic he hauls around in a ripped leather box. The camera and the box used to belong to Weegee, the legendary New York crime photographer back when FDR and the Little Flower were in office. Such is the claim of its current owner, himself a legend in his own time and the world’s last card-in-the-hatband newspaperman, in journalistic if not technological spirit. Weegee’s clunky camera aside, Slattery also hauls around an up-to-date attaché containing an impressive assortment of electronic spying contraptions and a cell phone that tucks inside his shirt pocket.
    Ordinarily, I have a warm spot for Slats, as I call him because if he turns sideways he is thin to the point of disappearance. He is one of the few people I know outside the department who can appreciate its dicey internal politics, and how this can chew at a cop’s life. As a reporter, Slats has had his uses over the years. And in my drinking days I could do a lot worse than palling around with a guy who was able to cadge free drinks at the better quality bars. But this morning was no day deserving of my warmth. Slattery ad sandbagged me with his exclusive.
    There on the cover of his paper was my sweating face in a crime scene photo, beneath a block-lettered streamer offering up no less than: THE ONLY COP WHO CAN SAVE AMERICA? In smaller letters teased along the bottom margin; Life Imitates Art: Mystery Playwright Predicts Murder!... Post Exclusive, with photos, Pages 4-5.
    I groaned and turned pages as instructed. The photo layout was dominated by Speed-Graphic prints of a shuttered Temple Ezrath Israel, fitted out with black mourning ribbons, the steps of Holy Cross Church, the roof of the National Video Center, and last night’s bloody pandemonium on West Forty-second Street. There were assembled por-traits of the murdered: the late Rabbi Paznik, and all seven of the Good Friday crossbearers. There was my own NYPD file photo... and also Ruby’s show biz head shot, the one her agent has mailed off to every newspaper and magazine in town at one time or another.
    Slats was good, very good. I had to admit it. His Weegee photos were straight out of film noir. He had hustled for portraits and dead accurate details, and had provoked a se- | cret source into serving up one truly strange tale.
    And, oh brother—how it had paid off. He must have worked all through the night writing his piece. And I had to admit, Slats had himself one honey of a card-in-the-hatband scoop:

Hell’s Kitchen Slay Orgy Echoed in “Grief Street”

By William Slattery

This is the true story of eight good men slain yesterday in gritty Hell’s Kitchen—eight devoutly religious men. It is also the story of eerie similarities between art and life in Hell’s Kitchen, parallels between the very real homicides of yesterday and the events of