Sidney Sheldon's Angel of the Dark

by Sidney Sheldon

  “Of course,” Danny said gratefully. “Hopefully I’ll be out of your hair before too long.”

  It turned out to be a forlorn hope. It was astonishing just how much paper could be stuffed, squeezed, folded and crammed into a single metal drawer. Birth certificates, medical records, police and caseworker reports lay side by side with private letters, children’s sketches and even old candy wrappers. Nothing was labeled, and though some official documents were dated, it didn’t look like anyone had made even a perfunctory attempt to put things into any sort of order.

  After two hopeless hours, a kid wandered in and handed Danny a much-needed cup of coffee. He was about sixteen, lanky and awkward and with punishing acne covering a good third of his face. But he looked Danny in the eye when he spoke—always a good sign—and you could see from his bone structure that he was going to grow up into a good-looking young man.

  “Mrs. Bingham said to ask if you could use any help.”

  Danny looked up from the midst of the mountainous piles of paper. “Nah, that’s okay. If I knew what I was looking for, maybe. But there’s no point in two of us wasting our time.”

  “It’s all stuff from the eighties, right?” said the boy.

  Danny nodded.

  “Have you seen the old yearbooks? If nothing else, they’ll put a smile on your face. The clothes were, like, tragic.” Grabbing a chair, the boy climbed up to the top shelf of a tall cabinet and pulled down a stack of black binders, dropping them on the floor beside Danny with a loud thud.

  “These are kept separately?”

  “Um, sure,” said the boy, looking a little embarrassed. “Not officially. It’s kind of sad, I guess, but sometimes we use them to play ‘hot or not.’ You know that Web site, where you put up your picture and kids can vote on how attractive you are? It’s kind of like a lame version of that. Anyway, these are the eighties ones.”

  The boy left, and Danny started flicking through this new treasure trove. Not that he seriously expected to see a photo of a teenage Lisa Baring jump out at him. The odds of that had to be thousands to one. But at least these were pictures, with names, pictures of real kids.

  Quite a number of years were missing. The books jumped from 1983 to 1987 and again from 1989 to 1992. It wasn’t until he flipped open the ninth yearbook that he saw it.

  The photo was dated, and the fashions as unflattering as the boy had warned him they would be. The face staring out at Danny was younger than he remembered, of course, and less polished. The teeth were not quite straight, and the hair was worn loose and long. But it was a face Danny McGuire would never forget. The long, aquiline nose. The regal curl of the lips. The arrogant sparkle in the azure-blue eyes. Beneath the photograph, some female hand from a later decade had scrawled the word HOT with several exclamation points.

  He was hot, even then. And didn’t he just know it.

  The head shot was captioned Frances Mancini—Most Likely to Make It to Hollywood! But Danny McGuire knew him by another name.

  Lyle Renalto.

  CLAIRE MICHAELS THOUGHT TWICE ABOUT MAKING the call. She felt guilty, but she had to do something. She was desperately worried about her brother, and had no idea who else to turn to. She dialed the number.

  “Hello?” Danny McGuire sounded extremely upbeat. For some reason, this threw Claire off her stride.

  “Oh, hello,” she stammered. “It’s me. Claire Michaels. Matt Daley’s…you know. We met.”

  “In L.A., of course. You’re Matt’s sister,” Danny said kindly.

  “Right. Have you heard any news from him?”

  This brought Danny up short. Why would Claire be asking him such a question? Wasn’t Matt staying at her house?

  To be honest, the last thing Danny McGuire wanted to think about right then was Matt Daley. After stumbling across Lyle Renalto’s picture—Frankie Mancini’s picture—in the Beeches’ yearbook earlier that day, he had hunted down Carole Bingham in high excitement. The director had introduced him to Marian Waites, one of the facility’s catering staff and the only individual still on payroll who had been around in Mancini’s day.

  Danny hadn’t expected much from Mrs. Waites, but it turned out the old lady had an encyclopedic memory, and was able to point out another face from the yearbook, a face that belonged to someone who had known Mancini well. “Thick as thieves, they were, those two.” His name was Victor Dublenko. A quick call to the NYPD revealed that they knew Dublenko well, as a pimp and occasional dealer, still alive, currently out of jail and living in Queens, not six blocks from the Beeches, where Danny was standing at that very moment. Danny had been about to head off to Dublenko’s apartment when Claire called.

  Reluctantly, he turned his attention back to Matt Daley. “No. I haven’t heard a word from him since I saw him at your place. He’s not there with you?”

  “If he were here with me, I wouldn’t be calling, would I?” snapped Claire. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to take it out on you. But I’m worried about him. He left me a voice mail last night that literally made no sense.”

  “Did he say where he was?”

  “Yeah. He’s in Italy.”

  “Italy?”

  “Uh-huh. The Amalfi coast. He said he had some lead about the man who may have abducted Lisa. To be frank with you, I’m surprised he had the money for a plane ticket. God knows how he’s surviving out there.”

  Danny’s heart sank. Matt had sworn to him that he’d let it go, that he wouldn’t go chasing down this maniac on his own. Now that the powers that be at Interpol had officially sanctioned Operation Azrael, the last thing Danny needed was a mentally unstable Matt Daley crashing through his case like a bull elephant, interfering with potential witnesses and, for all he knew, withholding key evidence. He’d made no mention of an Italian “lead” when he and Danny met.

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “He said a lot of things, but like I said, he was rambling. He said Lisa’s lover wasn’t her lover. He was gay. He said that she knew him before she knew Miles, which for some reason he thought was important, but that he ‘couldn’t be Azrael,’ that you and the other officers were on the wrong track. Who the hell is Azrael?”

  “No one,” said Danny. “It’s a code name. Don’t worry about it.”

  He too was worried about Matt, personally as well as professionally. “I appreciate your calling me,” he told Claire. “I’m on my way to an important meeting right now, but afterward I’ll try to contact your brother again. In the meantime, if you hear anything else, anything at all…”

  “I’ll let you know. He’s not…he’s not in any danger, is he?”

  Danny could hear the anxiety in her voice.

  “No,” he lied. “I don’t think so. I’ll put a call in to the local police in Amalfi, just in case. Ask them to keep an eye out for him.”

  The conversation with Claire Michaels was bothering him. Had Matt Daley really gotten a useful lead on Lisa’s lover? Without talking to him, it was impossible to figure out how much of what he’d told his sister was real, and how much a figment of his fevered, anxiety-racked imagination. By the time Danny reached Dublenko’s apartment, his train of thought was hopelessly muddled.

  Lyle Renalto. Frankie Mancini. What connection could the boy in the yearbook photograph possibly have to Italy and Lisa Baring? Why was Danny even here?

  Five minutes later Victor Dublenko appeared to be asking himself the same question, glaring at Danny from his grimy, vinyl La-Z-Boy recliner.

  “I got nothing to say.”

  Dublenko’s living room was disgusting, a fetid dump littered with stained cushions, needles, dead marijuana plants and half-eaten plates of food. Down the hallway, the two bedrooms were cleaner. Clients expected a certain standard of hygiene, and Victor Dublenko made sure he provided it. Bedrooms were for business. But for himself, Victor was quite happy to live in shit.

  “I don’t like cops.”

  Danny McGuire shrugged amiably. “I don’t like pimps. But hey, what
are you gonna do? We’re each an occupational hazard of the other.”

  Victor Dublenko laughed, a phlegmy, guttural sound that quickly morphed into a hacking cough. Pulling a handkerchief out of his pocket, he spat something vile into it and stuffed it back into the pocket.

  “So we don’t like each other. But we can still do business, right? You pay, I talk.”

  Just then a very young, very skinny girl in shorts and a vest wandered into the room looking disoriented. Victor Dublenko snarled at her and she scurried out like a frightened beetle. Poor kid, thought Danny. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen. Scum like Dublenko made him want to puke. But he reminded himself why he was here, how many lives might depend on Dublenko’s information, and bit his tongue. Pulling a wad of fifties out of his jacket pocket, he licked his fingers and made a show of counting them before carefully putting them back.

  “I prefer ‘you talk, I pay,’ if it’s all the same to you, Mr. Dublenko.”

  Without taking his eyes off the pocket with the money in it, the pimp said flatly, “So whaddaya want to know?”

  Danny handed over the yearbook picture. “Do you remember this guy?”

  “Jesus!” Dublenko smiled, revealing a crooked collection of mostly gold teeth. “Frankie Mancini, man. Where the fuck you get this?” The coughing was back with a vengeance. Danny McGuire waited for Victor to clear his tobacco-ruined lungs, gasping for breath like a stranded fish.

  “From the Beeches. I was there earlier. A Mrs. Waites mentioned that you and Frankie were both residents of the home between 1986 and 1988 and that you were close. Is that correct?”

  Victor Dublenko’s green eyes narrowed. “Mrs. Waites. That old bitch is still alive?”

  “Is that correct, Mr. Dublenko?”

  Victor nodded. “You know a lot about my past, Detective. I’m flattered.”

  Danny didn’t bother to conceal his contempt. “Frankly, I’m not interested in your past. I’m interested in Frankie Mancini. When did you last see him?”

  Dublenko shook his head. “A long time ago, man. Years, too many years. Maybe twenty?”

  “Where?”

  “Right here, in New York. He got transferred to another home the year after this picture was taken and we kept in touch for a while. But then he got a job out west somewhere and that was that.”

  Out west. Los Angeles…Where he became Lyle Renalto and met Angela Jakes…Where it all started.

  “You never heard from him again?”

  “We weren’t exactly the pen-pal types,” Dublenko sneered. “So what are you after him for? He done something wrong? Robbed a bank?”

  “Would it surprise you if he had?”

  Dublenko reflected for a moment. “Yeah, it would, actually. I always figured he’d do well for himself.”

  “Why’d you figure that?”

  “Well, for one thing, he was smart. Foreign languages, math, there was nothing that kid couldn’t do. And for another, just look at him. With a face like that, your life is easy.”

  The words could have been interpreted as bitter, but there was no resentment in Dublenko’s tone. Quite the opposite in fact. He sounded admiring. Nostalgic. Affectionate, even.

  “Easy in what way? You mean he was successful with girls?”

  A grin spread across Dublenko’s toadlike features. “Frankie wasn’t interested in girls, Detective. That wasn’t his team, if you know what I mean.”

  A shiver ran down Danny’s spine. What had Claire Michaels said to him about Matt Daley’s call from Italy? “Lisa’s lover wasn’t her lover. He was gay. He couldn’t be Azrael. You’re on the wrong track.”

  “Now, that’s not to say women weren’t interested in him. The bitches were all over him like flies. And like I say, Frankie was smart. He used that power to his advantage.”

  Danny thought of Lyle Renalto, the way that he’d wheedled his way into Angela Jakes’s life, how he’d gotten her to trust him, perhaps even lured her to her death.

  “Used it in what way?”

  “Oh, you know. He’d get girls to do stuff for him, get him gifts, cover for him when he broke curfew. Little shit like that. But he never really dug women, if you know what I mean.”

  Danny was growing tired of Dublenko’s less than subtle euphemisms. “I get it, Dublenko. Frankie was gay.”

  “Yeah, he was gay, all right, but it was more than that. I kinda got the feeling that women, like, repulsed him. Not just sexually, but as people. Apart from the princess, of course.”

  “The princess?”

  Dublenko’s expression soured. “Princess Sofia. That’s what he called her. Fuck knows what her real name was. Frankie was totally obsessed by her.”

  “You resented their friendship?”

  “Ah, whatever.” Dublenko waved a hand dismissively. “It was bullshit, that’s all. I remember Frankie telling me she was descended from the Moroccan royal family. Like, sure. That’s how she wound up dumped on the streets in Brooklyn, right?”

  Danny hesitated. Something Dublenko just said had reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.

  “I left the Beeches before Sofia arrived there, but I met her once, right before Frankie left town, and a precious little bitch she was too. I heard that before she met Frankie, the male staff at her previous home used to pass her around like one of those blowup dolls. Give it to her up her royal ass.” Victor Dublenko laughed lecherously at the memory. “She was just another skank, used goods, but Frankie didn’t want to hear it. ‘My princess,’ he called her. She put some kinda spell on him.”

  After satisfying himself that Dublenko had told him all he knew, Danny paid him and caught a cab back to his hotel. It was dark now and bitterly cold outside. Retreating to the warm cocoon of his room, he locked the door, threw his notes, tape recorder and briefcase on the bed and checked his messages. Nothing interesting. After a brief call to Céline—for the third night in a row Danny got to tell his wife’s voice mail how much he loved and missed her—and another failed attempt to reach Matt Daley, he dialed Claire Michaels’s number.

  “This gay guy that Matt mentioned, Lisa’s lover. Did he tell you his name?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Claire. “Oh, wait. He might have said something in passing. Franco? Francesco? Is that possible?”

  Hanging up, Danny stripped off his clothes and jumped into the shower. Something about pounding jets of hot water always helped him think. He felt as if today he’d been handed multiple pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. And if he could only somehow see how they fit together, he might have the answer to this riddle. The problem was that they weren’t the pieces he’d been looking for.

  He came to New York looking for information about Lisa Baring’s past. Instead, he’d learned a lot about Lyle Renalto’s. Only there was no Lyle Renalto, there was only this Frankie Mancini. Frankie Mancini…who was gay…so he couldn’t be Azrael the rapist-killer, right?…but who was apparently linked with Lisa Baring. Though not as her lover. Just as Frankie had not been “Princess Sofia’s” lover, whoever she may have been. Just as Lyle Renalto had not been Angela Jakes’s lover. Everything was linked, but each link came full circle back to itself rather than connecting with the others.

  Lisa…Lyle…Frankie.

  Lisa…Angela…Sofia.

  What am I not seeing?

  It wasn’t just the people who came full circle but the places too. New York, L.A., Hong Kong, Italy, New York. And Morocco. That’s it. Dublenko said Frankie’s Princess Sofia claimed to come from Morocco. That’s where Matt Daley and Lisa were going to run off to, before Lisa disappeared.

  Was Morocco important, or just a coincidence? Danny’s head ached.

  Drying himself off, he sat down on the bed and looked again at Frankie Mancini’s photograph in the Beeches yearbook. Lyle Renalto smiled mockingly back at him. Frankie was younger than Lyle, his face more fleshy and rounded. Yet despite the differences, they were clearly the same person.

  On instinct, without really k
nowing why, Danny switched on his computer and pulled up the picture Inspector Liu had provided of Lisa Baring, the one he’d given the NYPD and various agencies and organizations in the city with so little success. He stared at Lisa’s face for a long time, almost as if he expected her to speak, to reveal her secrets. Finally, he zoomed in on her eyes, the eyes that had bewitched Matt Daley—and presumably Miles Baring before him—reducing him to a shadow of his former self. They reminded Danny of other eyes he had seen. Eyes he had seen somewhere else. Eyes he had seen long ago.

  All at once, there it was. Literally staring him in the face.

  Heart pounding, Danny McGuire picked up the telephone.

  How could I have been so blind?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  INSPECTOR LIU LOOKED AT THE HOTEL manager distastefully. The man was bald, apparently uneducated and morbidly obese, his whalelike blubber squeezed into a gray polyester suit two sizes too small for him and so shiny it was almost silver. Yet he seemed to be running one of the most expensive establishments in Sydney, a five-star hotel right on the harbor whose clients included rock stars and politicians. There was no justice in this world.

  “You’re quite sure it was her?”

  “Look, mate,” the manager wheezed, handing back the photograph of Lisa Baring. “I might not be Stephen friggin’ Hawkins, all right, but I know how to recognize a face. Especially a face that gorgeous. It’s part of my job.” He scratched his armpits unselfconsciously. “It was a couple of months ago now. Stacey upstairs’ll have the exact dates for you. She checked in with a bloke, good-looking fella, but she paid the bill. I’m pretty sure they reserved under ‘Smith.’”

  “You don’t verify your guests’ passports?”

  The manager snorted derisively. “We’re not the bloody FBI, Mr. Liu.”