Chapter 3 – Interview with the Widow

This is the third chapter of a novel in progress called "Uncivil Service." The previous chapter can be found here.

About fifteen minutes later we pulled up to a garden apartment complex in Westchester's least quaint municipality. We found the intercom, made our presence known, and after another demonstration of police aerobics, found ourselves standing in front of a third-floor apartment. Rendell rang the bell, and a few moments later the door was opened by woman who, if hair height contributed to vertical leap, could have been a playground legend.

"Hello Louise, I don't know if you remember me, but I'm Jon White, your husband's supervisor a work."

"Oh, yeah, I remember you Jon. What are you doing here?"

"This, uh, gentleman here is Detective Rendell from the NYPD, and I'm afraid we have some bad news for you."

"Oh shit. What did that idiot do this time? Is he in jail again? I hope he doesn't expect me to bail him out."

"Uh, I'm afraid it's not what you think -- he's dead."

"No way. He's just hiding out with that slut girlfriend of his in the Bronx."

"No, really, he's dead. I just identified the body."

"Was he on the job?"

"Uh, I don't …"

At this point Detective Rendell cut me off and said, “Mrs. Paternostro, the investigation has just begun and we don't really know what happened yet. But right now it does not look like he was at work.”

The widow P looked pensive for a moment than showed signs of her bereavement.

“Shit. I can’t believe that bastard croaked before I could nail the gambit down.”

Before either of us could ask her what she meant, she started grieving some more.

“That rat bastard screwed me again. I ain’t gettin a freakin’ dime. I could kill him,” she blurted out. As soon as she did, she appeared to realize that she may have set the wrong tone, buried her face in her hands and started boo-hooing somewhat over-ostentatiously.

As someone who stumbled into a civil service career, never quite believing my misfortune at having done so, I tended to overlook some of the intricacies of my compensation. The rules of government compensation are almost as tricky as the tax code. Some people work the system better than others and manage to retire wealthy when they’re 50 years old. Others toil in bureaucratic misery into their dotage and spend their golden years fighting with the cat for the last spoonful of friskies. It sounded like she might have been talking about some piece of fine print in the pension plan that I still haven’t read. Or not. I never really got it, but the widow clearly did, and was convinced she had gotten the short end of the stick.

As everybody knows, the greatest civil-service scam artists of all are cops. If anybody knows these things, Ed Rendell would. It would be interesting to see how the display we had just witnessed would play with him.

“Uh, Mrs. Paternostro,” he began. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss. If you don’t mind, though, I need to ask you a few questions.”

Either he’s a good poker player, or his cat better hide the friskies.

She brought the sobs under control and peeked out from under her two-inch fingernails.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll try, but first, tell me what happened”

“We’re not quite sure yet. A co-worker informed Mr. White here that he found your husband, apparently deceased. Mr. White then reported this to the police. We just came from the scene. We’re still investigating, but it appears he was shot to death.”

“Oh my gawd!” she gasped. “Shot? Who would do a thing like that?”

“Well, we were hoping you could give us some information about him that might help us figure that out,” Rendell responded.

“I don’t know what I could tell you. My husband was just a city worker. I can’t imagine anybody would want to kill him.”

“Well, Mrs. Paternostro, very often when a person is killed, the crime is committed by someone who knew him,” Rendell said in a reasonable facsimile of an understanding and sympathy.

“Let’s start by talking about how things were at home.”

The widow P. tensed visibly at the question.

“What’s that supposed to mean? You think I had something to do with this?” She shot back.

“Oh I’m sorry Mrs. Rendell, I didn’t mean to suggest anything like that,” Rendell countered with an unctuousness I never would have thought he could summon.

“I’m just trying to get a picture of what your husband was like, what sorts of things he did, who he hung around with. That sort of thing.”

“Oh I see. That’s okay then.” She appeared satisfied for the moment that she wasn’t under suspicion.

“Your husband was found in an apartment in the Bronx, Mrs. Paternostro. Do you have any idea what he might have been doing there?”

“Well, he’s from the Bronx, and his mother lived there, on Arthur Avenue. She died a couple of years ago. It was a rent controlled apartment, and my husband hung onto it. He was sub-letting it out.”

“Your husband was found in an apartment on Arthur Avenue, at this address,” Rendell said, showing here the address of the crime scene he’d written down in his notebook.

“Yeah, that’s the address. He must have been there checking on the tenants or something.”

“That’s a possibility we’ll have to check into. Do you know the names of the people he was sub-letting the apartment to Mrs. Paternostro?” Rendell asked.

“No, I don’t. He just told me he was renting the place to some Albanians, but he never told me their names,” She replied.

“Do you know if he had a lease with them? Maybe there’s a copy here somewhere?”

“Oh, I’m sure there wasn’t anything like that. Like I said, it was a rent-controlled apartment, and he wasn’t supposed to be doing that. He always used to complain about the landlord trying to evict him, and stuff like that. Oh my gawd! You don’t think the landlord killed him to get the apartment do you?”

“That’s definitely one of the leads we’ll by looking into Mrs. Paternostro. Do you know the landlord’s name, by chance?” Rendell asked.

“You know,” she said, starting to look very interested in the way things were turning, “I think I do. My husband used to take care of his mother’s affairs and such, and I’m sure we have that information around here. Let me go check.”

With that, she got up from here chair and walked out of the room. She returned a few moments later with a business card, which she handed to Rendell.

“I think this might be it,” she said as she handed Rendell the card. I managed to get a look at it as Rendell examined it. In plain type, with no logo or graphics it read “A Bronx Realty Company. Vincent Pugliacci, building manager.”

Rendell showed no signs of recognition, but as someone who had to sign off on contracts, I had seen the name Vincent Pugliacci many times, and it sure got my attention. Vincent “Vinnie the Pooh” Pugliacci was the president of Hundred Acre Asphalt and was known to have an interest in at least a dozen companies in the construction, demolition, trucking, trash-hauling, recycling, and landfill businesses. He was reputed to be the mastermind behind the biggest bid-rigging conspiracy in New York since the days of Boss Tweed.

His name surfaced in tabloid articles about the trials of other people, but he always managed to keep himself un-indicted. Several generations of Feds and local DA’s in jurisdictions all over the northeast had tried to take him on, but had never even gotten him into a courtroom. Maybe the evidence got shot down in the crossfire between dueling prosecutors. Maybe some grand jurors had misplaced sympathy for woodland creatures. From where I sat, all I knew was that every time he submitted a low bid things got complicated.

Or simple, depending on how you look at it. New York City spends billions of dollars a year on construction projects and all kinds of supplies and services. Over the years, the city has been victimized by every imaginable racketeering, bid rigging, feather bedding, kickback, and corruption scam. In response, elaborate systems for keeping contracts away from the bad guys have developed.

Nowadays, whoever bids on a contract has to fill out a two hundred page form listing the intimate details of his personal, professional, financial and legal life. On big dollar contracts, or contracts in industries with nefarious reputations, the forms are pored over by an army of investigators, auditors, and lawyers. Every name associated with the business and all of its affiliates are run by every organized crime task force in the country. If a contractor has even the faintest whiff of a problem, he gets knocked out and the next lowest bidder is selected. If investigators think he’s a bad guy, but they can’t prove it they’ll use any pretext – a late income tax return, unpaid speeding tickets, a summons for abusing a tree – to deny a contract.

Vinnie the Pooh had been run through that ringer dozens of times, and every time, the lawyers said there was no hard evidence that Pooh was connected, but things sure smelled funny in his waste disposal business. Something was rotten in Jersey, and they didn’t like the idea of giving him a contract. There was one catch, though. Every time he was low bidder, he was also the only bidder. For some no doubt completely innocent reason, no one ever bid against Vinnie the Pooh. With nothing, er, concrete to hold against him, and no, one else to give the contracts to, Vinnie the Pooh was the biggest supplier of construction materials to the city. He also had a reputation for being a big supplier the to the NYPD’s homicide division.

I found it hard to believe that a homicide cop never heard of a guy like Pugliacci, but I couldn’t tell what Rendell thought about this. He wrote something in his memo book and handed the card back to Mrs. P., and, still giving away nothing, proceeded with his questions.

“Mrs. Paternostro, your husband was found by a man named Joe Pazzolini. Can you tell me anything about him?”

“Oh yeah. Crazy Joe. Creepy little guy. He worked with my husband on his city job, and they hung around together sometimes.”

“When was the last time you saw the two of them together, Mrs. Paternostro?”

“I really have no idea. I wouldn’t let that man in my house.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, he was a real low class type of guy. The last time he was here, he took his eye out and started playing with it. Scared the shit out of my daughter.”

“Excuse me?” sputtered Rendell.

“He’s got one a them glass eyes. I ain’t got nothing against cripples and such, but there’s no excuse for something like that. In front of my children no less. Plus, he’s always gettin’ into trouble, and makin’ trouble for other people.”

“What kind of trouble?” asked the detective.

“My husband had to bail him out of jail a couple of times. And one time he and my husband were out all night together. When my husband got home in the morning, he stunk of booze, and he looked like he had been in a fight. After that, I told him that was it. I didn’t want to seem him again.”

“It seems that Mr. Pazzolini still knew something about your husband’s activities, though…maybe more than you do,” suggested Rendell.

“What do you mean by that?” asked the widow, looking like she was tensing up a bit again.

“Well, he knew where to look for him, and he found him. I understand that when co-workers of your husband asked you about him, you said you hadn’t seen him in three days. Let me ask you again Mrs. Paternostro, how are things at home?”

“Well I’m sure they’re mistaken. Me and my husband was married a long time, and we planned to stay that way,” said Mrs. P, not altogether convincingly.

“Was you husband still living here, Mrs. Paternostro?”

The widow P. tensed visibly and blurted out “Who told you he wasn’t? Of course he was. Why would you ask something like that?”

“No particular reason, Mrs. Paternostro. I’m just trying to fill in some of your husband’s background and immediate situation,” answered Rendell.

“Was he a member of any, you know, fraternal organizations? Social clubs? Did he moonlight at anything?”

“Uh, not to my knowledge,” She answered cautiously.

“Can you think of anyone, friends, neighborhoods, relatives, co-workers, he might have had disagreements with?”

“No. No one at all. My husband was an angel. He got along with everybody,” she said, a little too firmly.

Rendell muttered something that sounded like “everyone but you” under his breath while jotting something down in his notebook.

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” said the grieving, and now aggrieved, widow, nearly shouting.

“Oh, I said ‘we’re done with you’, Mrs. Paternostro,” answered the detective innocently.

With that he turned to me and said “You, you’re coming with me.”

He then turned back to Mrs. The widow P.

“I’m sorry again for you loss Mrs. Paternostro. I have no more questions for you for now, but I may need to get in touch with you again shortly. Please make sure you don’t leave town for the next few days, In case there are any developments.”

“Leave town? Why would I do a thing like that? Where would I go?”

“Oh it’s just a figure of speech, Mrs. Paternostro. I’m sure you weren’t thinking of going anywhere.”

With that, it seemed the interview was over, and we exited the apartment.

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