It's been a long time from 2005 when I wrote the following to Pete Hamill. Pete is no longer with us. He never answered anyway. I didn't really think he would, but well, you never know.
I had once read that it was lengthy letter he once wrote as a 19-year-old to James Wechsler, the publisher of the
New York Post , that got Pete started in journalism. I took the chance that perhaps I had a story he might be interested in. No matter.
That there have been mass shootings in this country is no news. That we've had so many so quickly this week might be considered abnormal, but none of this is normal.
Is there a gun problem in this country? Sure. But deeper down there is a behavior problem when there are those—whether mentally ill or not—who act out with guns. When they do, the results are never good.
Why is there this behavior? I'm not here to theorize about that, only to tell a tale of my own direct experience with the results of someone using guns for whatever the reason that might have existed in their mind.
I felt pushed to share this piece in the confines of the blog because basically it hasn't really been shared on much of a basis. Probably with less than 10 people. I shared it with a writer back in 2009 who told me her hair stood on end after reading it.
That person today (who doesn't like to be identified) posted a Tweet yesterday morning that somewhat prophetically said: "I hope you don't get shot today." That was earlier in the day, before there was another shooting in Yakima, Washington at a convenience store, killing three. And this was of course after the Monterey dance club massacre, and the mushroom farm massacre, those in California. I replied to her Tweet, "I pretty much have that wish every day."
For some reason we need to feel better when we learn that the shooting wasn't terrorism by disgruntled Muslim yelling "Allahu Akbar" as he's squeezing the trigger.
The shooting was a "hate crime;" it was "targeted;" it was a "workplace dispute;" it was crime of passion;" it was not "random." Whew!
There is a great scene in a movie whose title I'll never be able to remember, where Harvey Keitel plays a NYPD lieutenant sitting at a desk in his office, sipping from a tumbler of his on-duty scotch—splicing the main brace—who makes sarcastic fun of a report he's reading that "it was a hate crime." Talking out loud to himself he says, "Oh, not a 'I really, really like you crime?"
When the workplace shootings occurred at Empire on September 16, 2002 at 1440 Broadway at 40th Street, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly eventually held a news conference in the middle of a street nearby in the Garment District to assure the Jewish merchant population there that the shooting was not connected with a pants-on-fire Muslim yelling Arabic phrases—otherwise known as terrorism. Whew!
The NRA will tell you guns don't kill people, the people who use the guns kill people. As if the production of firearms is done for artistic purposes for us to admire the creation of the workmanship. It is true that people can use guns badly, but gun control alone will never eliminate someone's urge to kill someone. The weapon will change, and knives of course prove useful, if somewhat messy.
The perpetrator of the Empire shooting, John Harrison, who killed my two colleagues and then himself was not someone you would consider mentally ill. He was an Assistant Vice President who became upset over unreturned affections and jealousy who took to firearms, which he was intimately good with, having been an F.B.I. agent and a gun collector, to act out his anger.
Since the two colleagues were male and female, and a divorced, attractive female at that, the love triangle theme was floated heavily by the New York Post. There was no love triangle, and The Post eventually dropped that story line. There was only pent up anger.
I constantly think back to the time, not long before the shootings, that John Harrison marched four of us into his office for an impromptu meeting. It wasn't a big office, but he brought Isabel, myself, and two others into the meeting to voice what he felt was a lack of success.
I can still remember him going to the cabinet where it was later learned is where he kept several weapons, open the door a bit, but then close it. Did he think that four of us were too many to take out at once? Did he think that at all? All I know is he backed off, and felt the meeting would be better served if Vinnie, the manager was there, who was out that day. Dismissed.
I think I read after the Monterey massacre over the weekend at the Chinese ballroom that there has been 49 mass shootings to date this year in the nation, and that a shooting is considered a "mass shooting" if four or more people are taken out. Always good to know the criteria, and why your own experience cannot be called a "mass shooting."
We love classifications. Americans love equipment, and what better piece of equipment can there be than a gun? Wasn't the .45 caliber Colt used to " tame the West" called the Peacekeeper?
In 1949 Howard Unruh became what you might now call the "father of mass shootings." I had never heard of the guy until he passed away in 2009 in prison, and I read his obituary and posted a blog.
Howard, mad at his neighbors and shopkeepers in Camden, New Jersey strolled through town and in 20 minutes eliminated 13 people with his WW II service revolver. No need to wonder where Howard got the gun,. The Army issued it to him and let him keep it.
Growing up, no one ever talked of Howard Unruh when Charles Whitman took out 15 firing from a tower building on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin in 1966, earning him the title of the Texas Tower Sniper.
On the heels of what is now called a "spate" of killings (three) someone is saying it's "Wash, Rinse, Repeat." Others are asking what can we do so that it doesn't happen again? Silly question. It already has.
Everything always happens again.
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August 7, 2005
Mr. Pete Hamill
Little, Brown and Company
Time Warner Book Group
1271 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Dear Mr. Hamill:
It was not the best of times.
It was Monday, September 16, 2002, around 8:20 A.M. when my co-worker Isabel Munoz and our manager, Vinnie LaBianca, went into a meeting with our Assistant Vice President John Harrison. The three of them in John’s office, on the other side of the wall from me. The last time any of them were alive.
This isn’t such a long ago event that your memory has to be dragged from the archives.
Why even write to you about it? I don’t really know myself, except that I find myself writing about it on and off. I’ve been reading your 'Downtown, My Manhattan,' and keep thinking about what went on at Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield that morning, newspapers, reporters, and comments I’ve already read in your book. This is not a manuscript. You seem like someone who can absorb this. Maybe someone who should absorb it and see what they can make of it.
Of course, there is the quote from Ulysses Grant, who when asked if he got a lot of mail, replied, “Not nearly as much as before I stopped answering it.”
____________________________________________________
I arrived at work that morning at about 7:55, a little delayed due the LIRR. Isabel, who sat on the other side of the aisle from me was already in, as usual. The secretary Felicia was also there, as usual. Our little cluster of open cubes at 1440 Broadway was what we were getting used to after making our way out of Tower One on September 11, down from the 29th floor and into history.
We represented part of the Fraud Division at Empire, and John was our nearly new boss. He started on September 10, 2001 at the Trade Center. He had spent about nine years in a Fraud Director capacity at Horizon Blue Cross in Newark, and that after 13 years with the FBI preceded by 10 years with the Philadelphia police. He hadn’t retired from the Bureau, but left under circumstances we never did find out about, even after the shootings and suicide.
John was about 52 years old, about the same age as myself. After the Trade Center collapse, and our subsequent work reunion in temporary hotel room settings, there wasn’t much left of the Fraud Division. We didn’t lose anyone to the event itself, but rather to the layoffs that quickly occurred after.
We took up a decent office setting at 1440 Broadway in December 2001, after nearly two months in the Hotel W on Lexington Avenue, opposite the back of the Waldorf. We were on the fifth floor of the Hotel, several of us in each room that had been stripped of its bedding and refurnished with folding tables, office chairs and computers. The lighting stunk. And the free Granny Smith apples and chi-chi squares of grass in the lobby did not impress us either.
The front rooms we occupied, that looked at the back of the Waldorf, revealed that while some noted guests have surely stayed there, pigeons stayed there free. There were plenty of them flying in and out of alcoves in the back of the hotel. From the back, and from the fifth floor of the W, the Waldorf looks shabby. Maybe it really is.
Despite the surroundings, work did get done, but more it turns out was getting done as well. Looking back at it, John was developing an infatuation with Isabel, a refined certain Cuban cutie, who wouldn’t mind me saying so. I told her as much.
She was easy to describe as refined because of her Ann Taylor clothing, added to the fact that she once bought a piano and tried to learn to play. I used to tease her about having bought a piano. I never knew anyone who ever bought a piano! Only people good enough for Star-Kist buy pianos.
Isabel was a divorced mother with two girls, about 12 and 8 at the time. She lived in her own apartment in a three-family house in Valley Stream that her brother owned and had remodeled. From the pictures, quite well, since he is a carpenter. The mother also had her own apartment in the house.
She was devoted to the girls Jessica and Cristina and wasn’t involved with anyone. If I tell you I was her friend, I was. We went to lunch together at least once a week. We also worked together on fraud cases for Empire. She was an investigator and I was the computer expert who got the data and developed the prospects to look at. And I’ll tell you, if I wasn’t married, I’d have chased her around the desk myself, despite the 17 years difference in our age.
But that’s not what we were about, and that’s not what we pursued. We were friends and I knew a good deal about her. She shared her trials about living in the same house with her mother, her lack of dating someone, (the girls came first) and her speed bumps in raising them. My own girls were already grown, so if anything, I enjoyed telling her what she had ahead of her. She was concerned for them and was petrified once when she thought Cristina was going to get left back in the second grade because of her sub-par reading. I did tell her that they weren’t going to leave her kid back.
I asked her about her eyesight, and Cristina soon got glasses, and Isabel spent a little more time with her, and third grade was a gimme. Isabel was always stopping by the book tables on the street and looking for something to buy them. She also looked at nearly every handbag any peddler had, so much so that I astounded my oldest daughter once about what had become my own knowledge of styles.
I even once told her that she was going to be surprised in life how she was going to hear of contemporaries of her kids, and some of the their parents, who didn’t make it. They could be killed, die early from cancer, any number of things could befall them. I never knew it would apply to her. Only that so far, it hadn’t yet happened to me or my wife, or my own kids.
Isabel was born in Cuba in 1966. Her father apparently died soon after she was born. Her brother was about 8 years older than her. At some point the family made their way to Spain, then got into the United States through Florida, I believe, legally. Isabel entered the second grade in the United States without any knowledge of English. She became a citizen in 1997, I think. I congratulated her.
The family lived in Astoria, she went to Cathedral High School, I believe, and then graduated Fordham. She married quite young, while still a senior in college, to Angel, a general construction laborer, who I think was about as good looking as she was. She liked eye candy, but was shy about meeting anyone. I teased her gently at lunch when I saw who she saw.
On one such occasion I still remember scoring high clairvoyant points when I put together something she had once said about someone with someone who appealingly passed by in the Trade Center concourse, when I asked if he was as good looking as that lifeguard she went for years ago. I still remember her getting scarlet and wanting to know how I knew about the lifeguard. I told her, frankly my dear, it was easy. I knew her type. Andy Garcia.
But that’s how we were, friends. We knew each other.
Vinnie was the next best thing coming. And by that I mean he was acquiring all the groomed traits for a good career as a fraud detection/investigator administrator. He had ben at Empire 12 years I believe, coming from their management training program when he graduated St. John’s of Staten Island.
He too was in his 30s, a little younger than Isabel, actually. Married, with no children and lived in Old Bridge, New Jersey. He had two older brothers, one who ran an auto body repair shop and the other who worked for the IRS. I used to think of his mother wondering if all her sons had turned out all right. They had. She and the father are still alive.
Vinnie and Isabel were the people I figured that someday I’d come back and see, somewhere, perhaps at Empire, and tell lies to about how great retirement was, how well I was doing in the stock market and at the racetrack, and how big the fish were. I was looking forward to my future, but also looking forward to sharing mine with theirs. They each had one.
Into this picture came John Harrison. The very first time I saw Harrison in our area on his first day of work at Empire, he was talking to Isabel and Vinnie. Turns out, they were the last people he was with. And they with him.
John was a chunky six footer, light skinned black from Philadelphia. Turns out his father was black, but then dumped John with a German grandmother, who raised him. Brothers and sisters I do not know about.
His appearance was neat, business attire, with the silliness to wear para-military caps with gold lettering to work. He was quiet, but he really wasn’t nice. He filled his office with framed citations, plaques and photos of his days with the canine unit in Philadelphia, and of course his FBI days. He even kept an acetate page scrap book that he liked to show the women when he started. He never asked me to take a look. I looked anyway and thought high school Johnny should leave things at home. His reputation was that of a skirt chaser.
There was a meanness to John that was there if you were paying attention. And even if you weren’t. He was smart enough, but lazy. Work is not what he was about. He was what he was about.
He liked e-mail. And he liked to belittle. There was the time in April 2002 when he secured a promotion for Karen Gaskins, a supervisor in our Flag Provider Unit. John sent out an information, congratulatory e-mail to the staff (but not his bosses) that informed us of Karen’s promotion. The last line asked us to ask ourselves why it took Karen over 30 years at Empire to get that promotion when most people get it done in five. I kid you not. I’ve got the e-mail.
I e-mailed him that he sure knew how to hand out left-handed compliments. Karen was crying and had to be consoled by other workers. Mystified describes our reaction. My own thinking was that HR needed to know about this, but that it was up to Karen to pursue it. When someone told him he should apologize to Karen, he told them that women were too sensitive.
Clues, there were plenty of clues to the man’s character. Once when we were still in the hotel, he, Vinnie and I went to lunch. John spotted some police cadets and told us that there they were, with their “cunt caps” on.
Now, quite frankly, perhaps because I’ve never been in the service, I had never heard the phrase. Soda-jerk cap, gas station attendant cap, but never “cunt cap.” Of course, on quick reflection, I could see why it could be called that, but didn’t think the alliteration produced anything cute.
There was an iciness to John’s tone, and even before the shootings the phrase never left me. Robin Williams confessed to James Lipton in his interview that the word “cunt” was the one word that would get you thrown out of the house. He said he “let it fly” once and there was hell to pay. Robin further endearingly explained that the word was negative and had nothing at all to do with “pussy,” a word that was warm, wet, and represented what we were trying to get back to.
There was also the time with another co-worker when John and I were at lunch in a coffee shop on Broadway and I asked John if he had ever been to the Philadelphia Flower Show. I’ve always wanted to go, and I figured someone from Philadelphia might have some inside track. Plus, he had been a cop there. John told me he’d rather go to a gun show than a flower show. His voice had a bit of contemp in it, and quite frankly, I soon avoided having anything to do with him at lunch. He’s the boss, stay away.
(My own flower show interest is borne out of growing up around my grandfather’s, uncle’s, and father’s flower shop (Royal) on Third Avenue and 18th Street. My Manhattan. A whole other story, but the shop was once on Irving Place and 18th Street and served as the literal front for Pete’s Tavern during prohibition. There’s a picture in a back booth. My father wound the pendulum clock on the left when he came home from school.)
I always figured anyone who had been in law enforcement like John was used to guns. What I didn’t put together was how much he loved guns.
I never saw one on him, but others said they did. He had a PI license from New Jersey, (he lived in Mount Holly) but was not licensed to carry a weapon in New York. He admitted he had no New York license when a co-worker asked if he carried a gun. He didn’t volunteer any more. And he didn’t answer the question either. When someone asked him if he had his gun when he was going to go to Patterson, New Jersey to give a presentation, John said it was in his car.
After the shootings we heard that in New Jersey, John still met Doug Faldudo, his subordinate and then his Horizon replacement, weekly at a pistol range. John kept in shape. It had nothing to do with the demands of the job he now had.
At Broadway, where we waited for our next work location, John had taken to pulling a side chair next to Isabel’s work area and sitting and either looking at the newspaper, or talking to her, sometimes about work, but mostly light background conversation. He spent a good amount of time there and I did want to ask her if she wanted him sitting there like that, but never did. She didn’t seem to mind and I think because she talked about work that she thought is was okay.
He once showed her the back pages of The News or The Post and pointed out what he described as a really good rifle. He talked of his police days and how he liked it when a woman got even with her mate by slicing him up pretty good. He thought it was funny at how much the guy was bleeding. Everywhere you touched him, blood squirted out. Great conversationalist.
The bosses at Empire, the best I could tell, liked John. And why not? He had all the credentials.
He had a college degree, a master’s degree, and had been an FBI agent. He could be considered black, and a black woman, Patricia Scipio hired him, a completely unqualified woman for the job she had (VP Auditing) and for hiring anyone. (Isabel’s brother Val told me that his own PI turned up a bankruptcy in Harrison’s past. Maybe that’s why he left the Bureau. No smoke from the Bureau, only that those that might have still known him knew him to be arrogant.) Scipio and John represented diversity, and that was something the CEO Michael Stocker, M.D. sought. He liked appearances. A man of little substance and no regard for people. Just like Harrison.
Black kid from Philly makes good. Becomes a cop, goes onto the Bureau and has his picture taken with William Sessions. Works there 13 years, but doesn’t retire from the Bureau.
One lunch I asked John if his pension time from one job transferred to the other. I knew the answer was no, but wanted to hear him say so. I wanted some insight as to why a guy who was my age had years so chopped up. Going from Philly police (10 years) to the Bureau was understandable, but to go there (13 years) and not retire, to go into the PI business on your own, fail at it, then go to work for Blue Cross of New Jersey (9 years; time with them counted with us) made no sense to someone like myself who had nearly 35 years with the same company.
John’s answer was nonchalant. They were all “buy-outs.” I know a good deal about pensions, having audited the plan at Empire once in my auditing days. I knew then I had an A-1 full-of-shit liar on my hands. The Feds may have arranged for a polite departure, but they didn’t buy him out.
John came to Empire on September 10, 2001, Monday. We worked on the 29th floor of One World Trade. September 11 is history. All from our unit survived. The company lost 13 people. The lobby and elevators were not the place to be. We occupied 10 floors, only as high as the 31st.
Vinnie was our fire warden. There had always been fire drills at the Trade Center and we knew full well where the stairs were. Isabel sat behind me. After the impact pushed my chair into the desk and I audibly said “Whoooa,” I took in the very odd sight of large confetti-like debris drifting absolutely silently down outside the window. The sky was a beautiful blue, cobalt blue, and I remembered how nice the morning was coming to work.
I turned, got up and looked for Isabel. She was gone already. Turns out she made an instant bee-line for the door, the stairs, out. She left shoes, hand-bag, wallet, everything, behind. I teased her later that she sure didn’t wait for me. She told me all she could think of was getting home and making sure the girls were all right. She had to be there for them. Nothing could happen to her. She didn’t want Angel raising those girls.
I backed away from my own desk and the window (I too left everything. Duck and cover. Don’t face the window. They later recovered and returned Isabel’s wallet and my ID card
from the Great Kills dump.) The next thing I saw was Vinnie fairly charging out of his office yelling at everyone to head for the stairs. Vinnie was a bit roly-poly, and running was not something you ever saw him do. He put a sense of urgency into getting movement out of people. He and I stood together for a bit and asked each other what did we think happened. I tapped my fingers and said it’s either a bomb, an airplane, an earthquake, or a terrible construction accident. And that now since the floor stopped moving, it probably wasn’t an earthquake.
He took a quick look around to see that everyone had gotten up and was headed to the stairs. We then went there ourselves. It was now 8:48. I became very conscious of time at that point. He told me later that when he was looking out of his office and the impact was made, he saw the building move to one side, then the other, of the Century 21 clock across Church Street. Ceiling tiles fell, and he jumped up. As he cleared people from the area he told me we was seeing people pick up the phone. He told them to put it down and move. I always credited him with our decisive actions.
John Harrison was nowhere in sight. He had temporarily been placed in an office at the other end of the floor. I took a look in that direction, figuring he wouldn’t know the way out. I didn’t see anyone. Later we heard he put his coat on and headed for stairs, following everyone else. He also later on made many presentations to outside groups about how he got his people out of the building.
General meetings of Empire employees were held within two weeks at various sites. Ours was large, and was at the Astoria Manor House. Basically, the CEO Mike Stocker was nearly booed after he caused a near disturbance by declaring that payroll was guaranteed at least through September 30. His second, Gloria McCarthy, had to save his ass from the podium. He didn’t make any friends, and he didn’t make anyone fell any better. At that point I figured we were there to say good-bye to each other. Others acted the same way.
Isabel had driven me to the event. I don’t drive, something I understand you were late to do yourself. I started to learn to drive at 19, but liked drinking better, and I correctly figured they didn’t go well together. I stopped drinking in 1985 and have remained without a drink ever since. I correctly figured The Salvation Army’s Booth Memorial de-tox center in Flushing could enlighten me. They did, and there were others. I never went to the Lion’s Head Pub, but do forever hold the memory of your story on the Op-Ed page explaining why you weren’t there when they closed. I mean, any place where someone has a heart attack and someone else asks, “what did he order,” certainly would hold memories for me too.
At the Astoria Manor House Isabel showed where on the curved stairs she stood when she got married to Angel. She drove me home and I figured that was it for seeing her too. We were going to cease to exist as a company after such reassuring words from our CEO.
You describe being at Union Square post 9/11 and cursing “these bastards, they’ve ruined the world.” Of course, your wife corrected you. Weeks later in my living room when we were still not back to work (but getting paid) and I was alone reading the paper, I finally burst into tears and cursed those “fucking Arabs, what they’ve done.” For some the world ends, but for others, it just continues, although changed.
A memorial service was held for Empire employees at St Ignatius Loyola, in Manhattan, in October. My unit was still not back to work, but I couldn’t make the service. I was by then in Vermont for what turned out to be a very much needed break.
The word came back that Michael Stocker was not too well received in church, very quickly sat down, and let the services proceed with no more utterances from himself.
I also learned later that at after the service some of my co-workers asked Vinnie if he wanted to go to lunch. He declined, saying he was “working security with John.”
Neither John or Vinnie were part of security. John did not report to anyone in security. That was part of facilities management under John Donovan, (A later death, possibly suicide, in Miami, December 2004 somewhat after he was fired for drinking.) reporting to a different vice president, Kenneth Klepper. I asked where Vinnie and John were during the services. They said they were watching everyone come into the church, and John was in the back during the proceedings. They said he was tugging at his leg a bit.
My own guess is that the CEO Stocker, who went over so well at the Astoria Manor House, was not well liked. Not well liked enough to get at least threatening mail, or messages, or phone calls. Possibly death threats. After all, he was instrumental in the decision to sell our long-time offices at 622 Third Avenue, take the cash to the needed bottom line, and rent space at what was really a deal. So what if there was bull’s-eye on the roof?
The space we moved into at the Trade Center in 1999 had been vacant since the bombing in 1993, so of course it was a deal. But no less expensive than running our own modern 39 story building at 40th Street. Pure accounting reasons prevailed. Deloitte Touche had the Trade Center space in 1993, but never came back. They went to World Financial across West Street.
My other guess is that since Harrison was former Bureau, and therefore the “real thing” he could be impressed upon to do body guard work. I learned later that the bosses all knew he carried weapons and that he kept them in his office. There was no firearms policy that was ever communicated, or workplace violence policy that was mentioned, to general staff prior to the shooting. Certainly a good while after (I left in May 2004) they finally paid someone enough money to develop one.
Vinnie was not from a law enforcement background. He had nothing to do with weapons.
I later found out he had once applied to be a Port Authority cop, but never pursued it. But he had a pair of eyes and wasn’t stupid, and certainly had been raised on enough television. And why not do what your boss asks you to do?
My seating position at Broadway and Harrison’s constant chatting with Isabel accorded me the right to hear things I didn’t need to hear, but couldn’t help but hear. And so what if I pay attention?
John mentioned how Dr. Stocker wanted him to take some PR seminars on how to deal with the media. John did not report to Stocker. In February 2002 our unit was removed from Auditing and was reporting to Legal, a much better fit considering the people who were running things. But even once with Legal, John’s boss changed when Jeff Chansler left the company after 12 years or so and went to take the top legal job at GHI in August. John was now going to be reporting to his third boss since arriving at Empire, Mitchell Richling, a lawyer who John easily considered his inferior.
John often mentioned that Dr. Stocker was asking him to do things. He was bristling that the man wanted media exposure and that John needed grooming on it. John complained out loud that didn’t his years with the Bureau teach him how to deal with the press? He said in e-mails that Dr. Stocker wanted him to check out the surroundings in Brooklyn, where we were going to be permanently located (Metro Tech Center) once the building was built.
John was not happy, and it showed. He did things that weren’t in line with being in upper management. He arranged for the office pool when New Jersey’s Lotto got astronomical. He openly solicited everyone. I declined. He made up the sheets, bought the tickers, gave out the photocopies, collected the money. Hardly the duties of an AVP.
When I came back from a week off in June there was a noticeable change in behavior. He had grown a full beard. He was trying to lose weight by taking long lunch hour walks and trying to get Isabel and another worker Beth to accompany him. And he sometimes did, but then Isabel got too self-conscious about taking more than an hour for lunch when John told her not to worry about Vinnie. It was not proper office behavior.
Just before I went on vacation the unit’s medical director left. Dr, Goldberger was a retired surgeon who was now about 66 and was looking to really retire. At that point, all that was wrong with John was only a here and there thing. It did not become pronounced until June.
I had initially thought that Dr. Goldberger’s departure had a negative effect. A well-liked, senior respected guy was leaving. But this wasn’t any precipitating factor in the decline toward danger. We later heard that in June that John and his wife’s troubles took serious hold. Gail was his second wife. There was a child from her former marriage that they raised together and was grown. John’s own child from his former marriage was estranged from him.
Dr. Goldberger and I have met several times since the shootings and I’ve always told Bob that if he were still at Empire in June 2002, then he and I would be talking about John’s behavior. Bob and I were nearly daily lunch partners after 9/11.
June sees John make a bee-line for Goldberger’s office, a larger one at the end of the aisle, that was tucked away. You could go to work there for a 100 years and you didn’t have to pass that office. My own workstation was on the other side of the wall, but I didn’t have to look into the office. If you were looking in, it was because you would be going in. The drawing in The Times the day after was accurate.
July sees a continuation of time spent at Isabel’s work area and a certain added abruptness and isolation on John’s part. His clothing changes. Dress shirts become casual and tropical. One morning I said to myself, “what the Hell is he wearing today?” Jeans are spotted.
He plays music loudly from his office. One afternoon on hearing West Side Story I e-mailed John that I already know all the lyrics, and just a little less fortissimo, please. Isabel’s a little flabbergasted I tell him. He marvels I can hear it, and tells me I need a cone of silence, like from Get Smart. But he does stop.
One afternoon in July when Vinnie was out, John, with no prior notice, herds the Fraud Detection unit, myself, Isabel and two others into his office and wonders out loud where the good cases are. I see him by the clothing cabinets that I later figured the weapons were stored in, but I don’t see anything but his making sure the doors are shut. I’ve always wondered if he thought about doing all four of us right then, but changed his mind.
That afternoon he writes a half page e-mail telling us what we need to do and that tomorrow when Vinnie returns he’ll have another meeting. He already told us that in the meeting, but he couldn’t stop. He said he wouldn’t settle for mediocrity. I already knew Empire had. And even less.
John was not stupid, but he was lazy. He was not about work. I was realizing that this guy was bringing nothing to the table. He only wanted to take. When he later stopped by the desk and again asked about his good cases I had a memo waiting for him that would be a good case, but they had discarded it. He re-reads the memo and says they’ll have to re-open it. He pretty much leaves me alone.
July and August the oddness and estrangement grows. I tell my wife on at least two occasions that there’s something wrong with this guy. These guys get depressed and put guns in their mouth and commit suicide.
I tell Vinnie I’m thinking about leaving. Vinnie tells me he wouldn’t blame me. He’d hate to lose me. He tells me he doesn’t know what’s wrong. John and him are basically communicating through e-mail. I don’t leave, but I also talk to Isabel about John. I tell her there’s something wrong with this guy. It’s his wife, money, health or Stocker. She tells me she knows there’s friction between him and Vinnie, but it’s just work. I leave out my theories about suicide. But I still figure we’re going to come in on some Monday morning and we’re going to get a call that he’s done himself in at home, or they’re going to find him dead in the office. I should pick horses so well.
When I returned from Saratoga in late August things were no better. John didn’t even talk to me. I’m not sure he even realized I was back. At one point he heard my voice and did a double take from the other end of the aisle.
I again was asking Isabel about John. I thought that maybe she could shed some light on this. She couldn’t. He did eventually talk to me and it was a surprise. He asked me if I was interested in being a Fraud Detection Manager. With a lot of background information, I declined. I was more interested in the programming aspects of building cases through data than managing people. He asked me if I thought Isabel could do it. I said I thought she could grow into it.
It turns out he was buying time. Isabel did talk to him and likely was telling him I was expressing concern about his behavior. He was deflecting attention. He was good at it, and it worked. He was more predator priest than you would think.
We had off September 11, but Isabel had a job interview at Horizon. She needed to make more money and Empire wasn’t providing the opportunity. Harrison’s day off was spent at Poland Springs in Kearney, New Jersey where he again made his presentation of saving Empire employees from the Tower.
Friday, September 13 Isabel and I had lunch in Bryant Park. The first time we ever ate in the park. We sat at a table on the Sixth Avenue side. It wasn’t my style to pointedly ask questions, but I did have to ask why was she looking at Horizon for a job. She lived in Valley Stream, Horizon was in Newark. Two rivers. She had already once left Empire, but returned when NylCare (New York Life health care, not an Egyptian skin cream) was bought by Aetna and the job went away. I knew she didn’t like the thought of starting somewhere else again. She told me the Horizon opportunity came about through John. He suggested it as a way that she would make more (she did want to make more money for herself and the girls) and she’d be working for people he knew who were good.
I was facing north and I saw her look up and sort of nod to someone on Sixth Avenue who was walking north. She said, “speak of the devil.” It was Harrison, out for one of his exercise walks, with his gold braided cap on, no jacket, long sleeved shirt, cell phone and ID cards dangling from his neck. I turned to acknowledge, but he didn’t. I whispered to myself that the guy looks like a full-fledged asshole walking up Sixth dressed that way.
We went to the Verizon store where Isabel was trying to settle a dispute over cell phone minutes. I told her I’d give her Ivan Seideman, the president’s address to write to. That’s what I do with disputes. I wrote a note to myself to get it for her, writing IUM, her logon id as a reminder to myself.
In the elevator that afternoon on returning Isabel asked me what did I think her chances of leaving were. I said well, if they make a sizeable money offer, I’ll plan her luncheon and she should order desert. They may make a luke-warm offer that is not enough to make it worth while, or, thanks for coming in, but plans have changed. She didn’t yet know what extra money she might be talking about. But for some reason, she said she didn’t think she’d be leaving.
That afternoon at her workstation John had taken up his seated position and was sometimes talking about work. He and Isabel were talking about a prospective undercover target to satisfy Stocker’s desire for media coverage. (That Stocker once enjoyed tremendous positive media coverage before John with Lou Parisi, John’s predecessor, seemed too dangerous to remind anyone.)
Vinnie was called into the discussion. It should have really been taken into John’s office, but it wasn’t. It went on for 40 minutes, without rancor, but without any consensus, or plan. John was all over the place with thinking and I remember saying to myself that this guy is a real obstructionist. He can’t get anything done. I interjected nothing. I wasn’t made part of it, and didn’t try and make myself part of it. It was distracting though.
John left before five that Friday afternoon and I said good-night to Isabel and Vinnie who were in the evidence room trying to get some recording equipment to work for whatever undercover visit might evolve. I told them that if they picked up any chatter from Osama to alert the authorities.
Isabel and I e-mailed each other fairly regularly. We did it at work, replacing a conversation that could be overheard about someone with words that can be deleted, and were. Kvetch about work. The poop on so and so. Etc.
We did it from home as well. I e-mailed her the name of Verizon’s president and his address. I then realized, because I had written down IUM, that I didn’t, after all these years ever know what her middle name was. What did U stand for? She told me it stood for nothing. She didn’t have a middle name. I e-mailed her, “Here’s looking at U, kid.”
That Monday morning I continued my tongue-in-cheek pun, and said, “Hi, U.” She laughed. I asked her if John was in. She said yes, that he had already come out and given her a story of the memorial service Giuliani had gone to over the weekend for the off-duty EMS worker from Astoria who was killed when he ran back into the Trade Center. Apparently, Isabel knew the family from the neighborhood and had once upon a time dated the fellow’s brother. She had told all of us this, and I know she told Harrison as well. I also remember her telling us (and Harrison) that she dreamed about Carlos, I think, and that she was telling him things were all right.
Years and years ago I once read that John T. Scopes, the teacher whose trial became known The Monkey Trial, was not even in school the day that was given in the court papers as the day he was teaching Darwinism. If true, imagine that. The whole thing was a typo.
I never saw Harrison the day of the shooting. He could have been in there buck naked and I wouldn’t have known it. Some mornings when I came in I would ask Isabel if he was in. She’d usually tell me yes. I’d tell myself that well, he didn’t blow himself away this weekend.
John got there at odd early hours, despite the tremendous commute from Mount Holly. I’d ask her how she knew, since at this point he wasn’t playing music anymore. She told me she knew because the waste basket had been moved from the outside of the office, so it was at least a good guess he had brought it in with him when he arrived. She was a good investigator.
So that morning, as this guy is fully prepared to end two lives and then his own, he’s strolled out of his office and offers a news clipping to a victim about a subject she’s talked about and gone back in into his den. That morning he has also returned a book to O. J. to a black woman, Diane Sears, who worked in Information Systems Auditing on the floor and was another early arrival.
Vinnie came over to Isabel’s desk. It was early, but his bus, with less traffic because of the quasi holiday, had gotten him in a bit earlier than usual. He and Isabel chatted a bit and I think she commented on what she thought was a new watch. I didn’t really hear what thy might have been talking about, but it was apparent there was a meeting in John’s office. Vinnie went in first and I heard a little chatter, but never heard John’s voice. Isabel went in with a pen and a pad, like you would to go to a meeting. She was left-handed, like myself. And that’s where the pad and pen were as I turned to watch her go to the meeting.
She had just gotten off the phone with her oldest daughter with a discussion regarding homework, and with Mirta, a co-worker who wasn’t coming in and was trying to get in touch with Vinnie. There was something wrong with the phone. My only assumption was that the meeting was a continuation of Friday’s discussion. It was probably theirs. The sliding door, much like that of a terrace, was slid shut. For me, patio doors aren’t the same anymore.
I wasn’t even finished logging on. I had never opened up. I wasn’t reunited with my computer until I came back, weeks later, wondering if there had been an e-mail for me to attend a meeting. There wasn’t. I wasn’t part of it. The secretary told me later that she never scheduled the meeting. John must have done it himself over the phone that morning. Or e-mail to them. I don’t know.
No voices. No shouts. No screams. Just shots. Rapid, rapid, shots.
The shots that morning of September 16 took all of seven seconds. I’ve replayed all my actions. It turns out there were 15 shots from two handguns. A third fully loaded 15 shot handgun was also found.
My own theory as I was describing things with the police was that he used two handguns simultaneously. That’s why no one screamed. I correctly imagined where they were sitting and probably correctly figured he pulled two handguns from the clothing closet behind Vinnie. I’ve also imagined that he might have even had a meeting agenda that he presented them to insure their heads were down. He was thorough was going to succeed.
He put two in the back of Vinnie’s head and 12 into her. He shot her in the face on her right side often enough that the undertaker had to position the body in the casket with her head on the right side as you approached, so that the right cheek was mostly hidden by the casket lining.
The 15th shot went into his mouth. No shots strayed, or went through any walls, floors, or windows. Nothing smashed. The bullets all found their mark and stayed there. And why wouldn’t they? An expert shot ambushing unarmed people in something about twice the size of an elevator. An execution.
There weren’t many people in at the time. It was early, and it was Yom Kippur. But this time I created the movement away. My only regret is that there were some that foolishly drifted back to view the scene. A scene I’m sure that will haunt them forever. My own suspicion was that all were dead, but I couldn’t be sure he was dead. The office was at the end of an aisle, and the only way to see in was to stand in front of it.
I never looked in. I peeked around a corner to make sure the sliding door wasn’t opening and that no one was coming out, then bolted with the others. By the time I got to the lobby cops were running in with guns drawn. The pandemonium was starting but it was only going to arrive at an eerily quiet, thoroughly bloody scene that stunk of gun powder.
The rest of the day was long, but went fast. Police, questions, ADAs, more questions and narrative. I overheard the detectives talk of two of the weapons. A Glock and a Smith and Wesson. New Jersey registered. Two female ADAs, one named Linda Ford, who I met again last year as I was trying to provide additional information, were there.
The ADAs seemed to want to know about possible sexual harassment. At the time I couldn’t really make the connection. A detective, Carlos, (funny, right?) who interviewed me asked quite delicately if there might have been a relationship between Vinnie and the young woman. I didn’t understand the need for the question at the time, thought about it for a short bit, and gave him an answer that went, “Carlos, you’re going to have to show me pictures. No, no relationship.”
Carlos wrote and asked if there might be a relationship between John and the young lady. I thought about that one too. “Yeah, in his mind.”
The ADAs pursued the sexual harassment line further. Obviously, they were aware of something I didn’t know about just then, like the Dear John e-mail from Isabel that John had with him; the number of shots that went into Isabel. All clues.
I carefully thought some more. I told them about John’s meetings with us. His apparent frustrations with the job. I told them that I thought John thought we were keeping him back from “greatness.” We were pulling him down, to mediocrity I would guess. They listened.
Your old paper made quite a splash about the story. It ran for a week and covered the first page several times. The sloppiest reporting imaginable. Typos, facts , names screwed up beyond belief. I talked on the phone with Beth the next morning and screamed the only thing the papers have right is the word ”the.”
Well, it turns out in some way, Harrison was having a relationship with Isabel. He was e-mailing her, and she him. He was acting as a father figure, something she was prone to be attracted to and advising her about job, career, confidence, etc. She was impressed how well he could speak and write Spanish. The predator priest in action. (After listening to Harrison talk once at Isabel’s desk I once remarked to him that he seemed like he could have gone into the clergy rather than law enforcement. The comment somewhat stunned him because he told me almost did.) That’s what the Jersey job interview connection was. To get her away from the office so he could pursue her without violating fraternization policy. She’d come live with him in his newly rented Jersey digs. Yeah, in his mind.
He was not even a good looking man. He was heavy, his nose was broad and covered a good part of his face, and he was married. Isabel once told me married men always go back to the spouses. She didn’t go for married guys. She was not a home wrecker. I knew her type, and he wasn’t it. And as for moving in, she would do absolutely nothing to upset the girls. And move from Valley Stream to Elizabeth New Jersey? She wasn’t mentally ill.
The Post, the Sunday after, finally came around to more realistic conclusions and backed away from the love triangle theory. Sex sells, we know. Even if it didn’t happen. It also makes a convenient backdrop for police commissioner Kelly to stand in the middle of 40th Street and tell the press that a shooting in the garment district on Yom Kippur might just be a lovers’ quarrel and not a Palestinian who ran amok. Pictures of Harrison, even without the beard, could have certainly put him as Middle Eastern to most people with even a small imagination.
The Post published a segment of Isabel’s e-mail to John from September 12, the day before she tells me, “speak of the devil.”
“Emotions and feeling are not things subject to fairness, they either exist or they don’t.”
Not quite parallel construction, but eloquent, and certainly her. We don’t see his e-mail that prompted that. Or maybe it was phone call. But we can guess what his entreaty might have been. His angle. It would only be right and fitting that they hook up. Yeah, in his mind.
As for haunted scenes, I have my own. After many hours of waiting and talking and being interviewed, which all took place on another floor at 1440 Broadway, we were allowed to go back to the floor, stand in one spot, and tell the detective where things were on our desk that we needed to go home with. Some people had keys, pocketbooks. I had left everything.
We pointed to our areas and described what we needed. He repeated it back to us. There was such concentration on hearing and describing the items that I thought we were going to have to give serial numbers as well as detailed descriptions. As such, I forgot to tell him about my umbrella. It had been raining lightly that morning and I left it out to dry. I later did get it when our things were boxed and given to us as we relocated to other floors.
I never had a police job, and I was never a reporter, so I’ve never been at a true crime scene like that. (I won’t count the Trade Center) It was now six and a half hours after the shootings. There was a uniformed officer outside of Harrison’s office moving stuffed hefty bags. You could hear the rustling of the plastic. Windows were open for ventilation, but there was no lingering gun powder smell. One detective was writing something near a window. All office noise was absent. Vinnie’s office was completely covered in aluminum powder from the fingerprinting. It looked like vandals had been there. Of course that wasn’t the case, but I still don’t understand that one.
It was still Monday, although it didn’t seem like it was any day of the week or time. Only the time after something. I was standing in a museum with no dates, imagining what had happened “back then.” I couldn’t see Isabel’s work place from where I was asked to stand, but I could see mine. Nothing was disturbed. The chair was still turned around from my having gotten up so quickly. But it wasn’t mine. It was where someone else had to get up quickly from and join others to make an exit. Some of the same others, who only 53 weeks prior to today, had made their dusty descent from the Trade Center to the sparkling outdoors and the blue sky that was turning hazy.
Our item retrieving detective did his job and nothing beyond what we described was disturbed. We rode down the freight elevator and went out to the street. The rain had long ago stopped, so not having an umbrella was no big deal. Some lanyard ID carrying reporters correctly guessed we might be from Empire and tried for interviews. Nothing was forthcoming. I denied I worked there. I was surprised how young they looked. They were.
You mention the sad-eyed detective who instructs you that the biggest killer in New York is greed and jealousy. Harrison was jealous of Vinnie. Vinnie was popular with the staff. He was well-liked by Mitch who had just become Harrison’s boss. He had roots in the company and Harrison didn’t. I learned through Beth that Doreen, Vinnie’s widow, recounted that when Harrison came to their house in Old Bridge for post 9/11 work on reorganization he never thanked her for being in the house. He was never ingratiating. She said she never liked him.
Beth also theorizes that Harrison was jealous of Vinnie. Vinnie had a nice house, a nice wife who loved him, and a job and people who liked him. The post 9/11 meetings were never at Harrison’s house. He didn’t return any favors or hospitality.
As for Isabel, he couldn’t have her. God-damn e-mail. If she doesn’t write him on Thursday, September 12, takes the job that we learned later was going to be offered her at a hard-to- turn-down $12,000 a year raise, she lives.
But we never really know, do we? Maybe he plugs her on the street coming out of a PATH station. Once twisted into intent the mind can make the body do plenty of things. He was a terrorist. He didn’t get his own way.
So, this is my letter to James Wechsler. The software program tells me there are 8,756 words here. I’ve never written anything this long. It’s taken me several days to write and self-edit. The date has changed three times.
Why does anyone write anything? Not easy to do, but easy to understand. To let someone know.
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