Homicide A Year On The Killing Streets

Maybe he picked it up on the street. Maybe not. Requer wrote an office report for Garvey that included the statement.

Now, on his return visit to the headquarters building, Robert Frazier seems not only cognizant of his surroundings, but genuinely curious about his girlfriend's violent death. Over the // hour-and-a-half interview with Garvey and Kincaid, he asks as many questions as he answers and volunteers a good bit of information on his own. Leaning back in his chair, tipping it slightly with every stretch of his legs, Frazier tells the detectives that although he has a wife and a second girlfriend who lives in the Poe Homes, he had been seeing Lena Lucas for some time. He also claims they rarely fought, and says that he, as much as the police, would like to know who killed Lena and stole his cocaine from the bedroom dresser.

Yeah, he admits, Lena often kept cocaine for him in the Gilmor Street apartment. Kept it in that stand-up dresser, in a purse in a bag of rice. He had already heard from the family that whoever killed Lena took what she was holding at the time.

Yeah, he dealt cocaine and a little heroin, too, when he wasn't working down at the Sparrows Point steelyards. He wasn't going to waste time lying about that. He sold enough to make a living, most of it down by the Poe Homes low-rises, but it wasn't like he was working out all the time.

Yeah, he had a gun. A .38 revolver, but it wasn't even loaded. He kept it at his other girlfriend's house on Amity Street. She held it for him and that's where it was now.

Yeah, he had heard about Vincent Booker's father, too. Didn't know Purnell Booker, but he had heard on the street that the same gun had been used in both murders. True, the boy Vincent had worked for him for a while, selling dope on consignment. But the boy often f----d up the money, and he had a bad habit of snorting up profit, so Frazier had to let him go.

Yeah, Vincent had access to Lena's place. In fact, Frazier would often send him there for dope, or bags, or cut. Lena would let him in because she knew he worked for Frazier.

Garvey cuts to the meat of the interview: "Frazier, tell me what you can about that night."

Here, too, Robert Frazier is more than helpful, and why shouldn't he be? After all, he last saw Lena alive on Saturday, the evening before the night of the murder, when he stayed with her on Gilmor Street. On Sunday, he spent the entire evening ten blocks away in the projects on Amity street, where his new girlfriend threw a dinner party for several friends. Lobster, crabs, corn on the cob. He was there all night, from 7 or 8 o'clock on. Slept in the back bedroom, didn't leave until morning. He went by Lena's on the way to work that day and saw that the front door of the rowhouse was open, but he was late, and when Lena didn't answer the buzzer, he didn't go in. That afternoon, he tried calling Lena's house a couple times but got no answer and by early evening, the police were already over there about the murder.

Who, Garvey asks, can confirm your whereabouts on Sunday night?

Nee-cee . . . Denise, that is, his new girl. She was in the bedroom with him all night. And of course, the people at the dinner party saw him there. Pam . . . Annette . . . a couple of others.

Here, Robert Frazier puts in another good word for young Vincent Booker, who he says showed up on Amity Street at the height of the party, knocking on the door just after 10 p.m. and asking to speak with Frazier. The two men talked on the stoop for a few minutes, Frazier tells the detectives, long enough for him to see that the boy was all nervous and wild-eyed. Frazier asked what was the matter, but Vincent ignored the question, asking instead for some cocaine. Frazier asked him if he had any money; the boy said no.

Frazier then told him there would be no more drugs, not when he kept f-----g up the money. At which point, according to Frazier, young Vincent got mad and stormed off into the night.

As the interview winds to a close, Frazier offers one last observation about Vincent Booker: "I don't know how things were between him and his father, but since they found the old man dead, Vincent hasn't been real upset about it."

Was Vincent sleeping with Lena?

Frazier looks surprised at the question. No, he answers, not that he knew about.

Did Vincent know where Lena kept the dope?

"Yeah," says Frazier, "he knew."

"Would you be willing to take a lie detector test, a polygraph?"

"I guess. If you want."

Garvey doesn't know what to think. Unless Vincent is fooling around with Lena Lucas, there is nothing to explain her nudity, or the nested pile of clothes at the bottom of the bed. On the other hand, there isn't any obvious connection between Robert Frazier and old man Booker, though it's certain that both murders were committed by the same hand, wielding the same gun.