Play It Again

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

  She turned and pushed the joystick again. “What are you looking for?”

  “Footage of the funeral, if you have it. I thought—there!”

  She stopped the tape. A small crowd was gathered at an open grave. “Okay, run it forward, slowly.” The tape went on, frame by frame. “Stop.” Casey froze it and R.J. leaned forward.

  An overweight man with a florid complexion was leaning on an adjacent tombstone, looking just a little tipsy somehow. It was hard to make out too many details of his face, but R.J. was sure he’d never seen the man before. Except—

  “Next tape.” Again they wound forward to the funeral. And once again R.J. stopped it as the camera panned across a solitary man on the outskirts of the small crowd. “Stop.”

  She shook her head. “This guy’s a lot skinnier.”

  “So he was wearing padding before. Look at the face.”

  This time he was a Jesuit priest, looking solemnly toward the grave. He was about the same height as the drunk, but slimmer. R.J. couldn’t quite make out the face. The angle was bad and the cameraman wasn’t really focusing on the priest. But it could have been the same face, or at least similar, as though the two men were related.

  More than that, though, was—what? Something he could not for the life of him put his finger on.

  He swore softly under his breath.

  “What? Do you see something?” Casey asked, frowning at the monitor.

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to be sure. But after what you said about one guy playing different parts, and the feeling I already got about this…I don’t know.” He shook his head. It was just too stupid to say out loud.

  Casey leaned toward him impatiently. “Come on, R.J., don’t hold out on me. What’ve you got?”

  He threw the mangled cigar at the wastebasket and let the breath hiss out between his teeth. “I think I recognize the actor,” he said.

  CHAPTER 11

  R.J. was unable to shake that haunting feeling of familiarity. He and Casey had looked at the tapes over and over until almost dawn, and when he finally stumbled down the stairs to go home all they could agree on was that it might be the same guy.

  But the name wouldn’t come, and he could not remember how or why the face was familiar.

  R.J. took the subway home, hoping the adrenaline rush of danger would keep him awake. But all the muggers must have taken the night off too, and he dozed around Grand Central Station. He woke up one stop past his and walked back.

  The elevator was out again in his building, so he climbed the four flights up to his apartment, so tired he couldn’t even think of a good death threat for the super.

  He opened the door and stood blinking for a good thirty seconds, sure he was hallucinating.

  There was a body on his couch.

  “Shit,” he said, and the body sat up.

  “Well,” said Henry Portillo, stretching. “Hell of a time to be tomcatting around, R.J. Your mother’s funeral is this afternoon.”

  R.J. was stung. “It’s all right for you to sleep,” he snapped. “She was my mother.”

  Portillo froze in midyawn. R.J. could see the remark had hurt. Tough, he thought.

  “All right, R.J.,” he said softly, “let’s just start over, okay? Where have you been all night?”

  “Working. With that TV producer, Casey Wingate.”

  Portillo nodded. “What did you find?”

  R.J. sank into a chair and rubbed his bleary eyes. “I’m not sure if I found anything. But I think we got a serial killer. I don’t know how or why he got on to my mother. Maybe coincidence. And—”

  He hesitated. He knew that Uncle Hank, like most longtime cops, would respect a hunch. But it was still tough to put into words something that indefinite. Still, he wanted the older man’s input. “I think I know the guy.”

  Hank leaned forward, his eyes gleaming. “Tell me,” he demanded.

  R.J. ran it all down for him: the different figures at the funerals that could have been the same man in different disguises, Casey’s ideas about the role-playing, the haunting feeling that he knew that face. When he finished, Hank lounged back on the couch, his brow furrowed in thought.

  “It fits,” he said. “When I saw what the crime scene was like…” He shook his head. “A one-time killer, somebody who does it for revenge, out of passion, whatever—somebody like that doesn’t do those things. This guy took a lot of time, made it look perfect.”

  “He’ll be there this afternoon,” R.J. said.

  “That fits too,” Portillo agreed. “Let’s see if we can’t catch him. But first…” He stood up. “It has been, by my account, almost three years since you have had a proper breakfast.”

  “Uncle Hank—”

  But Portillo held up a hand to cut him off. “No, R.J. You are tired, and you’re hungry. You can’t catch a killer without a fire in your belly, and I’m going to put it there.” With that he headed for the kitchen.

  R.J. trailed after him. “You can’t even get most of the stuff you need in Manhattan,” he protested.

  “I brought it with me,” answered Portillo, rummaging through several grocery bags. “Why don’t you make coffee while I cook?”

  In a very few minutes the two were sitting at the rickety kitchen table, tearing into huevos rancheros smothered in hot salsa, refried beans, and fresh, hot tortillas.

  R.J. was surprised at how hungry he was. He wolfed down two full plates before settling back with his coffee.

  “Better, huh?”

  R.J. had to agree.

  As R J. stood up to get more coffee, there was a knock at the door.

  Hank looked at him with a raised eyebrow, but R.J. shrugged. “Not a clue,” he said and went to open the door.

  Hookshot stood in the hall. R.J. gaped in surprise: His friend was wearing a tie with his black silk jacket. R.J. hadn’t even known Hookshot owned a tie.

  “R.J.,” said Hookshot with grave formality, “is there anything you need? Anything I can do for you?”

  “Yeah, there is,” said R.J., holding wide the door. “Come on in.”

  The three of them sat in the kitchen with mugs of coffee. When they had filled Hookshot in, he nodded. “Count me in. I can get some of the minimensch to help too.” Hookshot had a small army of preteen boys working for him. They hawked papers, carried messages, and gathered information.

  “All right,” R.J. said. “The service is at Parker and McDonald’s on 44th Street. It’s not a big place. Should be easy enough to keep an eye out.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” said Hookshot. “This is going to be a circus. You’ll have two or three hundred people from the press, God knows how many geeks and gawkers and goons. People be coming from everywhere, man.”

  “He’s right,” said Portillo.

  “Sure, I know. But if they come in they all have to come through the door. I can keep an eye out—”

  “Leave it to me,” Hookshot said. “You’re gonna be busy.”

  “I can handle it,” R.J. said through his teeth.

  “Chico, no. There is enough for you to do,” Hank said.

  “Hey,” added Hookshot gently, “the news hounds be on your ass like slick on a pimp. Let the minimensch handle this, R.J. Kinda thing they good at.”

  “He is right,” said Portillo. “Let him do it, him and his pobrecitos. You and I will be busy.”

  “You? What are you going to be doing?”

  Uncle Hank looked at him with quiet hurt in his eyes. “I will be with you, chico. Como siempre.”

  R.J. nodded, ashamed. “Like always.”

  “Be easy on this, R.J.,” Hookshot told him. “I’ll have a couple of little dudes on roller blades waiting outside. Midtown traffic like it’s gonna be, they be faster than anyone on foot or in a car.”

  “All right,” said R.J., suddenly overwhelmingly tired.

  “So tell me again what we’re looking for,” Hookshot said. “‘Could be anybody’ just doesn’t cut it.”

  “It’s what w
e got,” answered R.J.

  “If this guy fits the kind of profile I think he does,” Portillo tossed in, “he’ll want to get close, be part of it. I think a guy like this, he will get off on being in your face without you knowing who he is.”

  “From what I figured out with Wingate,” R.J. said, “he could look like just about anybody. Young, old, fat, thin—whatever he wants. But I agree with Uncle Hank: He’ll want to get close.”

  Hookshot shook his head. “That’s gonna fit just about everybody in town too. You don’t know how they’re talking about this on the street. You were selling tickets, you could retire tomorrow.”

  “All I can say is, keep an eye out for anybody who doesn’t look quite right,” said R.J.

  “Or somebody who looks a little too right,” Portillo added.

  Hookshot nodded. “That should cover just about everybody,” he said with a straight face. “Okay, I got a couple of real smart guys I can stick inside. You have to fix it for them, R.J.”

  “Can do,” R.J. said.

  * * *

  Parker and McDonald’s Funeral Home sat on 44th Street just two blocks off Times Square. For over a hundred years they had taken care of show people. Belle had specified them in her will, but she hadn’t needed to. R.J. knew who they were. So did everybody.

  They knew how to handle crowds too, but this crowd was pushing them to their limit.

  R.J. took a cab over to the funeral home. Henry Portillo and Hookshot rode with him. The cabbie stopped three blocks away and told them, in his heavily accented English, that he couldn’t get any closer and the gentlemen might want to walk the rest of the way.

  But R.J. had only one foot out the cab door when the first of the news hounds hit him like a greasy squall. Within two steps he was in the eye of a hurricane.

  He could see nothing but a forest of arms waving at him as if in a high wind. He could only hear his name shouted at him from a hundred mouths and snatches of self-important monologue blurted into microphones. “Sole heir and leading suspect” seemed to be one of the catchphrases, almost as if somebody had handed out a tear sheet with those words on it.

  Portillo and Hookshot formed a barricade in front of him, and the three of them pushed their way through. Hands clutching microphones still blew in at R.J. from over their linked arms.

  “Mr. Brooks! Is it true—”

  “How did you feel—”

  “What is your response to—”

  “Mr. Brooks—”

  “What was it like—”

  “How did you feel—”

  “Did you really—”

  “The police say—”

  With a block to go he’d had enough. He stopped walking and held up a hand for quiet. “Ladies and gentlemen! Please, just a moment, ladies and gentlemen!”

  They didn’t exactly get quiet, but they got quieter. When R.J. felt that all eyes were on him, he took a breath and looked squarely into the nearest camera. “Blow it out your asses,” he said and turned to go.

  He heard Hookshot snort out a short laugh, and Portillo whispered, “Feel a little better, chico?” And to his surprise, R.J. did feel a little better.

  The feeling didn’t last. Soon they were inside the funeral home. The smell turned R.J.’s stomach into a roiling knot. There was no mistaking it, that death smell, the sickly-sweet chemicals. He’d smelled it before, but this time it was too close, too personal.

  His mother.

  The dark, wood-paneled hall seemed to funnel the smell, the soft music, the feeling of death, and bring it straight into his gut with a hard, sharp jab.

  He was conscious of Portillo beside him; Hookshot had slipped away to work the crowd, talk to his boys. But Hank stayed with him as the service droned on.

  R.J. found that he couldn’t hear the words of the service, just the tone of voice: monotonous, cloying, deeply regretful without any real emotion. It was being played for the cameras.

  And cameras there were. About two-thirds of the mourners were media coyotes. At the back of the room he saw Casey Wingate. She was sitting quietly, dressed in a dignified dark wool suit that still managed to show off her legs. He assumed that at least one of the cameramen at the back was working for her, but Casey herself looked more like a mourner than a coyote. Her stock went up with R.J.

  He made it through the service without strangling any reporters.

  As they headed out for the rented limo now parked at the curb—all part of Parker and McDonald’s star package—he saw Hookshot standing beside the door. They locked eyes; Hookshot gave his head one half-shake. Nothing.

  He and Portillo shoved their way out the door to the limo. A howl went up from the reporters, like a pack of hounds baying at the moon.

  One or two got close enough to shove a microphone at him and shout a question.

  One of these was a very average-looking man in a careful suit and styled blond hair. On his dark suitcoat was a lapel tag that read “CABLE INDEPENDENT NEWS.” The man brutally elbowed a cluster of reporters out of the way and put his microphone right under R.J.’s nose.

  “Mr. Brooks,” he shouted, “how does it feel—”

  But R.J. ignored him, just like all the others, and crawled into the limo with Portillo.

  CHAPTER 12

  R.J. moved numbly through the service at graveside. He was mildly surprised that it was hitting him so hard, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  When it was over, a rising tide of reporters shoved him back to the limo. He hadn’t given them their soundbite yet, and they were starting to turn mean. But he made it into the backseat of the big Caddie, and as soon as he was joined by Hank and Hookshot, he signaled the driver to get going.

  They drove in silence for about five minutes. Then Hookshot cleared his throat.

  R.J. looked at his friend.

  “None of my people saw doodle-squat, R.J.,” he said. “Sorry.” He shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t show.”

  R.J. nodded. “He showed. He was there. I could feel him. I just couldn’t find him.”

  Uncle Hank put a hand on his shoulder. “We may have been asking too much of ourselves, to stay alert on such an occasion.” He shook his head sadly. “She was—your mother,” he said. And R.J. wondered what the man had been thinking of saying in that tiny hesitation.

  “What now, R.J.?” Hookshot asked.

  R.J. looked out the window. It was a bright, warm afternoon. He felt like sleet should be coming down in cold sheets of misery.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I need a little time. I have to go through her stuff.”

  Again he felt Hank’s hand on his shoulder; not hard, just a gentle pressure to say I’m here.

  “I must get back to Quantico,” Portillo said. “But I will be back on the weekend. And I may have something we can use.”

  R.J. looked up. He felt like he should be taking charge of finding the killer, pointing Portillo and Hookshot down likely paths, but he couldn’t focus enough.

  “What do they have in Quantico that we might want?” he asked.

  Henry placed a blunt brown finger against his forehead. “The BSU—Behavioral Science Unit. They have a program I can use to work up a profile of the killer.”

  “You believe that shit?” asked Hookshot. He raised one scarred eyebrow halfway up to his hairline.

  He nodded. “I do. The Bureau has been having very good results finding serial killers with this workup. I think it can help us.”

  “Uh-huh,” Hookshot said. He didn’t sound convinced.

  * * *

  They dropped R.J. at Central Park West and 79th and he walked to his mother’s apartment.

  The building was not on everybody’s list of top ten celebrity apartment buildings, and Belle had preferred it that way. Nonetheless, it was a beautiful old building, with a great view of the Park, and very secure.

  The uniformed doorman was an ex-cop who packed a piece he wasn’t afraid to use. He knew R.J., although there hadn’t been that many visits.
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br />   “Morning, Mr. Brooks,” he said, touching his cap.

  “Hey, Tony,” said R.J.

  “Sorry about your mom. She was a grand lady.”

  “Yeah, thanks. Uh—I guess I have to go through her stuff.”

  The doorman nodded and reached into his pocket. “I been expecting youse,” he said. He placed a key in R.J.’s hand. “You know where it is,” he said, with a touch of—was it disapproval? That R.J. hadn’t been a more dutiful son? He probably thinks I should have come every week for Sunday dinner, R.J. thought dourly.

  “Yeah, I know where it is, Tony,” said R.J., a little harder than he had to.

  Tony shrugged. “I guess the place is yours now.”

  R.J. nodded and thought, What the hell. He put a fiver in Tony’s hand.

  “I guess it is. Thanks for the key.”

  “Forget about it,” said Tony.

  The elevator let him off on the seventh floor and he let himself into the apartment.

  And then he just stood and looked around.

  How did you do that? Go through her stuff? Where did you start? What did you look for?

  Her stuff. The apartment was furnished sparsely but elegantly. So very much like her.

  No designer had been here. This place had been hers, and the things in it were for her comfort.

  And it had not been entirely his fault that he had been here so rarely. She did not like other people in this place. Although she was very social when the mood was on her, she did not socialize here. It was her Fortress of Solitude, and she was extremely fussy about who she let in.

  R.J. took a deep breath. The place even smelled like her. Well, he thought, gotta start somewhere.

  He moved through the rooms: living room, bedroom. He peeked into the bathroom. Back to the living room, the kitchen. The spare bedroom, which she called her office.

  He sat in the high-backed swivel chair at his mother’s desk. It was a rolltop, a beautiful piece of furniture.

  The top of the desk was neat. There was a clean blotter, a pencil holder, a stapler, a small calculator—the kind with the roll of paper to print out your figures.

  At the back of the desk were a row of small drawers, tiny pigeonholes, and some vertical slots for storing correspondence. R.J. riffled through the envelopes standing in these. Mostly bills, bank and broker statements. There was a stack of unused envelopes, the kind with the stamp already on.