CHAPTER EIGHTEEN #3
Bridget looked up from tying her other shoe.
She said again, more curtly, “Vargas. Used to be, he’d force Babs to make business calls for him, so the police wouldn’t have his voice on record.
By then, they were bugging everything in the neighborhood just to catch Westies in the act of something : apartments, diners, phone booths, candy shops… .”
Larkin raised a hand, interrupting. “Anthony Vargas worked for the Westies.”
“Was I not clear the first two times I said it?” She stood up, grabbed her purse from the dresser, and started checking the contents. “Tony fit right in with those nutjobs—he’d help ’em chop people up, throw ’em in the river. Babs being murdered was only a matter of time.”
Larkin almost stood, but Bridget was a hundred and twenty pounds of tension wound so taut, she was about to snap, and he didn’t want to pose any sort of threat to this delicate line of communication. He placed his hands on his knees and said coolly, “Barbara was not murdered by Anthony Vargas.”
Bridget raised her head. “What do you mean? Isn’t that why you’re here? To ask me what I know?”
“Barbara was murdered by Matilde Wagner.”
“Who the fuck is that?”
“She was a nurse at the New York Infirmary. She and her husband were responsible for the deaths of nearly two dozen sex workers between 1982 and 1989.”
Bridget appeared shell-shocked. She glanced at her purse, looked around the apartment as if she’d lost something, then slowly sat back on the bed. She looked at Larkin again. “Really?”
“Why did you believe it had been Vargas.”
“Because he was capable of it. He killed at least three people when he was with the Westies. Tony cheated on Babs—which, of course, was fine—but her leaving was public humiliation for him. When I left Hell’s Kitchen, he was still saying he’d kill Babs if he ever found her.”
“Did Vargas ever do prison time in the ’80s or ’90s for his Westie-associated crimes.”
The inquiry made Bridget laugh—a nasty sort of mockery that bubbled up from deep inside her chest, like she’d been holding on to it for half a lifetime.
“Of course he didn’t. Ever hear of the Mafia Cops, kiddo?
NYPD detectives, like you, on the mob payroll.
Why you think it took so long to take down a handful of disorganized Irish boys?
Because the same guys investigating them were protecting them.
” Visibly agitated, Bridget stood and pulled the strap of her purse over one shoulder.
The Westies, a gang of disorderly and deadly criminals operating out of one of the last Irish strongholds in New York, had included a half-Italian member so feared by the population that no one dared intervene when he mistreated and threatened his fiancée—a woman known to the neighborhood as one of their own, who’d become notorious for having run away from an abusive mobster—a mobster protected by local law enforcement.
Law enforcement that’d have surely known he had a girl.
A girl just like the one found dead in the Hotel Cavalier on the night of October 2, 1982.
And yet, the lead detective didn’t know her, didn’t recognize her, wasn’t able to trace her origins as belonging to a neighborhood just a few blocks west of her final resting place—because if Vargas was suspected, that’d make it hard to keep collecting under-the-table payments.
So sure, Detective Noonan didn’t know that poor Jane Doe , but it was funny how he could identify Bridget Cohen by name.
A woman who’d been living as Bridget Doyle, even after the birth of her son a year prior, but—if Phyllis Clark’s timeline was still to be believed—had worked with Barbara a month or two before her murder, and would have learned an old friend from the neighborhood had changed her identity entirely to a one Esther Haycox… .
“Ghosting was a form of identity theft.”
Larkin prompted, before Bridget could not-so-kindly suggest he make himself scarce, “ The Paper Trip .”
“Excuse me?”
“Barbara came into possession of a pamphlet called The Paper Trip ,” Larkin continued.
“It taught her how to obtain the certified birth certificate of a deceased child, how to use that documentation to get an out-of-state license in that name, how to request name changes, social security cards—how to live successfully under a stolen identity.”
“So what if she did? It kept her alive. Tony never found her, right? And it ain’t like the kid was gonna need it.”
“Barbara shared the pamphlet with you, when the two of you were briefly reunited at the Kitten,” Larkin said as he slowly got to his feet. “That’s when you decided to use it, didn’t you.”
Bridget’s brows rose in a blatant display of fear, an intensity stronger than dread but slightly less than panic. Her lower lids were tensed and lips drawn back as her mouth opened but nothing came out.
“Did you know Detective Ralph Noonan.”
“Get out.”
“Was Detective Noonan the inside man for the Westies.”
“Get out now.”
“He knew you from before, didn’t he,” Larkin pressed.
“From Hell’s Kitchen. And when he interviewed you that night, when he mocked you for identifying yourself as Bridget Cohen, you didn’t budge, didn’t pretend to be anyone else.
He probably made a grandiose gesture of writing your new name down, like an asshole.
Bullies target those they perceive as weak, but not always in a traditional sense,” Larkin explained.
“You were a threat to his social dominance. Because Noonan was a Homicide detective being paid to keep Vargas and other Westies out of handcuffs. He couldn’t have a young female sex worker blow the whistle on Barbara’s murder.
He promised you dismemberment and garbage bags and East River dumps if you talked.
And because you’d known the kind of man Vargas was, it never occurred to you anyone else would want to hurt Barbara. You said nothing all these years—”
Bridget was breathing hard from her nose, and she spat, “I didn’t say nothing because Vargas is still alive.”
“He’s been in prison since 2013.”
“Yeah? Well, Noonan sure as hell isn’t!”
“Bridget,” Larkin said firmly, insistently. “I can help, but I need you to—”
“All my fucking life, I’ve been doing what men’ve told me to do,” she said, and her face grew flushed as all those negative emotions mixed together like a violent chemical reaction.
“Men like you, with your fancy suit and expensive watch and posh attitude, treating me like a dumpster you can leave your fuckin’ trash in—”
“Please—”
“Get the fuck out of my apartment!” she screamed.
Larkin held one hand up in defense as he reached for his wallet. He removed a business card, turned, and set it on the love seat cushion. “If you want to talk,” Larkin said, “I’ll listen.”
He saw himself to the door without another word, exited, and took the stairs slowly—not because he expected Bridget to change her mind, to run after him, to spill her darkest and dirtiest secrets in the stairwell between the second and third floors, but because he needed to catch his breath.
He needed to present a calm and controlled front for Doyle.
Larkin left the vestibule and stepped into an early evening still bright with the summer sun.
Nervous sweat had bunched the fabric of his shirt under his arms, and his upper back felt as if it was cooking like a cracked egg on asphalt.
He took a deep breath, slid his hands into his pockets, and started for the corner.
Larkin wasn’t surprised to see Doyle back on the sidewalk, restlessly pacing before the Audi.
And when Doyle turned to cross back in front of the passenger door, catching sight of Larkin as he did, he took to a jog. “What happened?” he asked impatiently. “Was—was it her?”
“Yes.”
Doyle took his sunglasses off. “And?”
“Do you want me to tell you about the case or about Bridget.”
Doyle’s uncertainty played out across his face like a game of tug-of-war. He admitted, “I don’t know.”
That makes two of us , Larkin thought. He said, “Barbara was a Hell’s Kitchen native. She was engaged to a Westie in the late ’70s.”
“Do you know who?”
“Anthony Vargas, their half-Italian buddy and connection to the Gambino family.”
Doyle put his hands on his hips. “I don’t understand. He couldn’t have possibly murdered Wagner from inside prison.”
“It’s not about Vargas,” Larkin explained, “I think it’s about those he surrounded himself with.
Bridget says he was abusive toward Barbara—that’s why she left, why she sought a new identity.
Allegedly, Vargas swore he’d kill Barbara if he ever found her.
Apparently, he had no qualms with mob killings or keeping mistresses, but it was Barbara’s leaving that was the unforgivable sin. ”
“And despite her caution, Barbara still wound up a victim.”
“There’s more,” Larkin cautioned. “Ralph Noonan, the lead investigator—”
Doyle interrupted, his tone uncharacteristically bitter, as he asked, “Vargas paid him to look the other way, didn’t he? Like what happened with Stolle?”
“Arguably worse. Bridget says Noonan was on mob payroll. By day, he investigated the Westies—by night, he protected them.”
“Then there’s no way on God’s green Earth he’d have not known who Barbara was,” Doyle said. “Not if she was the fiancée of the guy he was protecting.”
“That’s my belief as well. And while I couldn’t get Bridget to confirm, she didn’t deny when I suggested she knew Noonan.”
Doyle’s brows rose. “Knew him?” he echoed. “Knew him how ?”