Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

“Seems like Flaherty gets his spelling lessons from Quentin Tarantino,” Seamus said in his bathrobe from the doorway.

I shook my head. Like it or not, I really did need to get to work. I couldn’t stay to sort through this latest outrage. I glanced at Seamus.

“Seamus, I’m swamped at work. Do you think you could take care of this for me before the kids see it?”

Seamus gave me a hard glare.

“Oh, don’t worry, Michael Sean Aloysius. I’ll be cleaning up all the latest shenanigans going on around here before the kids see them,” Seamus said.

I winced at his emphasis on the word. I guess I was getting a fresh, un-asked-for heaping of Catholic guilt to go this morning.

“And I’ll tell you another thing, jail time or no jail time, I’ll blast the first Flaherty I see back to Hell’s Kitchen and straight down to Hell, where they belong,” he called as I walked down the steps. “This old codger will make Clint Eastwood from Gran Torino seem like Santa Claus.”

“You already do,” I whispered as I hurried for the safety of my police car.

Chapter 37

INSTEAD OF HEADING into the city to my crowded, frantic squad room, I skirted Manhattan altogether and took the Triborough Bridge north to the New York State Thruway. An hour and a half later, I was upstate in Sullivan County near Monticello, sipping a rest-stop Dunkin’ Donuts java as I rolled past misty pine forests, lakes, and dairy farms.

The bucolic area was close to where Woodstock had taken place. It had also been home to the “Borscht Belt” vacation resorts, where Jewish comedians like Milton Berle and Don Rickles and Woody Allen had gotten their start.

Unfortunately, my visit had nothing to do with music and even less to do with laughter. This morning I was heading to Fallsburg, home of the Sullivan Correctional Facility.

My boss and I had decided it was time to have a chat with its most infamous resident, David Berkowitz, the .44 Caliber Killer. The Son of Sam himself.

There were several reasons why. One of the most compelling was that the Monday night double murder in Queens wasn’t the only recent Son of Sam copycat crime.

An hour after we put the Son of Sam lead over the inner department wire, a sharp Bronx detective had called the squad. He told us that on Sunday a teenage Hispa

nic girl in the Bronx had barely survived an odd stabbing in Co-op City. Her attacker had worn a crazy David Berkowitz–style wig and said some real out-there stuff to her as he slowly cut her up. It mimicked almost perfectly Berkowitz’s first crime, the random stabbing of a girl in Co-op City in 1975.

There was a long list of people with whom I’d rather spend my morning, but since Berkowitz seemed to have some connection to the recent string of murders, I thought it might be fruitful to have a sit-down. It was probably a long shot, but with seven people dead and no lead in sight, it was high time to get creative.

Sullivan Correctional was hidden discreetly behind a tall stand of pines, a few miles northeast of Fallsburg’s small-town main street. As soon as I spotted the sudden vista of steel wire and pale concrete buildings built terrace-like up a rolling hill, the coffee in my stomach began to percolate for a second time. Sullivan was a maximum-security prison that housed many of New York City’s most violent offenders. I knew because I had put a few of them there.

Under the stony eye of a tower guard, I was buzzed into the south complex administrative building, where I reluctantly relinquished my service weapon and signed in. I was escorted to the ground-floor office of Doug Gaffney, the prison manager, whom I’d spoken to the day before to set up the meeting.

Bald and stocky in a polo shirt and khakis, Gaffney reminded me of a middle-aged football coach more than a warden. Books about anger management and drug abuse lined the shelf behind his desk, along with a thick binder with the words “Life Skills” on the spine.

“Thanks for setting this up for me, Doug,” I said after we shook hands and sat down.

“This case you’re working on? We’re talking about the bombing thing?” Gaffney asked as his secretary closed the door.

“Yes, but that’s confidential, as is my visit,” I explained, sitting up in my folding chair. “The press is already dogging us on this. I’d hate to sell more papers for them than I have to. What should I expect from Berkowitz?”

“Don’t worry. We don’t have to put him in a hockey mask or anything,” Gaffney said with a small grin. “In the six years I’ve been here, he’s been nothing but a model prisoner. Runs a prayer group now. He even helps blind inmates back to their cells.”

“I heard about his religious conversion. Do you believe it?” I said.

“I limit my belief to things outside these walls, Mike, but who knows?” he said, lifting a radio out of the charger behind him. “If you’re ready, I’ll walk you over.”

Chapter 38

I MET BERKOWITZ IN A BRIGHT and airy secure visitors’ room in a cell block across the concrete yard behind Gaffney’s office.

What struck me first was how surprisingly unthreatening he was. Short, paunchy, and middle-aged, with white hair, he reminded me of the singer Paul Simon. He was clean-shaven and his hair was freshly cut. Even his green prison clothes seemed excessively neat, as if he had had them dry-cleaned. He bore little resemblance to the wild-eyed sloppy young man on the front cover of all the newspapers when he had been apprehended in 1977.

He actually smiled and made eye contact as he sat on the opposite side of the room’s worn linoleum table.