Dead of Winter

by Stuart Melvin Kaminsky

  Flack asked Taxx to go over what had happened at the hotel.

  "Told you already," said Taxx. "We knocked on her door."

  "We?"

  "I think it was Collier who knocked. I called her name. No answer. Collier put his hand on the door and looked at me. Signaled for me to do the same. I did. The door was cold."

  "Whose idea was it to break down the door?"

  "We didn't discuss it," said Taxx. "We just did it. When we got in, Collier ran to the bathroom and I went to the bed to check on Alberta."

  "Why did he go to the bathroom?"

  "Wind was blowing in from there," said Taxx. "We just agreed, nodded, something. You know how it is when something happens fast in the field."

  "Yeah," said Flack. "Why did he go to the bathroom and you to the body?"

  Taxx was holding the coffee cup in his hand.

  "I don't know. It just happened. I saw him run for the bathroom. That left the bed."

  "How long was he in there?"

  "Five, ten seconds," said Taxx. "Flack, what's going on with you? You look…"

  "Guy who killed Cliff sat on my chest before I shot him. Broken ribs."

  "You have far to drive to get here?"

  "It wasn't bad."

  "Want to spend the night here?" asked Taxx. "We've got an extra room."

  "No, thanks," he said. "I'll be all right. When Alberta Spanio went to bed, what was the drill the last night?"

  "Same as the first three nights," said Taxx. "We checked the windows to be sure they were locked."

  "Who checked?"

  "We both did," said Taxx.

  "Who checked the bathroom window?"

  "Collier. Then we left, and Alberta locked the door behind us. We heard the bolt slide and lock."

  "And no sounds during the night?" asked Flack.

  "From her room? No."

  "From anywhere?"

  "No."

  "Maybe you should have someone watching your house till we pick up the guy who killed Cliff?"

  "I'm well armed," said Taxx. "I know how to use my weapon."

  "You might want to wear it and have it at your bedside."

  Taxx pulled up his Jets sweat shirt to reveal a small holster and gun on his belt. Then he pulled the sweat shirt down.

  "I got the same idea when I heard what happened to Collier, but for the life of me, I don't know what Collier and I might have heard or seen that would make Marco send out a hit on us. He's got to know the morning news will be all over this and he'll be crucified if something happens to me. More coffee?"

  "No, thanks," said Flack, rising carefully.

  "Sure you don't want to spend the night?"

  "No, thanks," he said.

  "Suit yourself," said Taxx, leading him back to the front door.

  "Try to think of something you might have forgotten, missed," said Flack.

  "I've been trying, going over everything, but… I'll keep trying," said Taxx. "Be careful out there tonight."

  Flack went out the door and into the frigid night. The door closed behind him cutting off the last of the warmth. He was missing something. He knew it, felt it.

  He would drive home now, carefully, knowing that the pain was winning, at least for now, at least until he got home and took another hydrocodine tablet. In the morning, he'd check in with Stella to see if she had come up with anything. Whatever else he did in the morning would depend on whether Stevie Guista had been caught.

  He got into his car and reached into his jacket pocket. The move sent a shock of pain across his chest. He pulled out the bottle of pills, started to open it, and changed his mind.

  It took him almost two hours to get home.

  * * *

  The woman on the uptown intersection video monitor was Molly Ives. She was stubby, black, studying law at night, and wide awake. Her shift, the night shift, had begun fifteen minutes earlier.

  She spotted the bread truck at a red light at 96th and Third. She wasn't sure it was the one she had a note to look for on the clipboard next to her. She became sure when the light turned green and she could make out the words MARCO'S BAKERY on the side of the truck as it passed.

  Molly Ives called it in to the NYPD dispatcher who contacted a patrol car in the area. Five minutes later, the patrol car cut off the bakery truck, and the two policemen inside got out.

  They approached the small truck, weapons in hand, one officer on each side of the vehicle.

  "Come out," called one of the officers. "Hands up."

  The bakery truck door opened, and the driver climbed out slowly.

  * * *

  Big Stevie had stopped the bleeding. He had sat in the back of his bread truck with the heat on, took off his T-shirt and pressed it against the wound in his right leg, the thick fleshy part above the knee. When he reached back he felt the exit wound. That was bleeding less but the hole was bigger. No bones were broken. He wrapped the T-shirt tightly.

  He would have to abandon the truck. He would have to see a doctor or a nurse or something. Who knows what's going on inside? Could be internal bleeding, one of those embolisms, something. And he would need money to get out of town. Steven Guista's needs were great and he had only one place to go with them.

  He drove, thought about taking the bridge to Manhattan, changed his mind, and headed to the neighborhood he knew best. The makeshift bandage was holding reasonably well but some blood was seeping through. He drove to an outdoor phone, in front of a twenty-four-hour grocery where he had stopped a few dozen times before. He parked and hobbled out of the truck.

  "It's me," he said when the woman answered. He gave her the number of the phone he was calling from. She hung up. He stood, shivering, light-headed, waiting, the lights of the grocery giving off no heat. She called back in ten minutes.

  "Where are you?" she asked.

  "Brooklyn," he said. "Went back to my place. Cop shot me."

  The pause was so long that Stevie asked, "You there?"

  "I'm here," she said. "How badly hurt are you?"

  "Leg," he said. "I need a doctor."

  "I'll give you an address," she said. "Can you remember it?"

  "I don't have a pencil, paper, anything," he said.

  "Then just keep saying it to yourself. Get rid of the truck. Take a cab."

  She gave him the name of a woman, Lynn Contranos, and an address. He repeated them to her.

  "I'll call her and tell her you're coming."

  The woman hung up. Stevie pulled change out of his pocket, dialed information for a car service number, made the call, and waited. While he waited he almost sang the name of the woman he was supposed to see, Lynn Contranos.

  His birthday was only a few hours from ending. He didn't want to think about it. His pants were sticking to his leg now, the blood freezing.

  He kept repeating the mantra as he waited, didn't think beyond going to that address. One thing at a time and maybe he would come out of this.

  There was no car fifteen minutes later, and Big Stevie got back in the bread truck, turned on the heat and waited, watching the curb for the arrival of the car.

  If it doesn't get here in ten more minutes, I'm driving. He was having trouble remembering the name and address he was supposed to go to, but he kept repeating them as he waited for the car that might never come.

  * * *

  Mac sat in his living room in the worn brown chair with the matching ottoman. His wife had indulged him. He had loved the chair, was still drawn to it, but the love was gone. It was just a place to sit and work or watch a ball game or a dog show or an old movie.

  Tonight, clad in a clean gray sweat suit, it was work. On the slightly scratched, inlaid wooden table by his side stood two piles of books, new, fresh smelling, and twenty-seven neatly typed pages of paper clipped together. On a small cutting board no larger than one of the books rested a mug of coffee he had just microwaved.

  There was also a stack of book reviews, old and new, he had printed from the Internet.

&nb
sp; It was just before ten.

  He had the books by Louisa Cormier arranged in chronological order. Her first book was titled Genesis Standing. The reviews had been mildly good, but the sales had been phenomenal. By the fourth book, reviews said Louisa Cormier had turned a corner and belonged among the upper echelon of mystery writers. Now she was always compared, favorably, with women writers like Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, Marcia Muller, Faye Kellerman, and Sara Paretsky.

  Mac took a sip of coffee. It wasn't hot enough, but he didn't want to get up, go to the kitchen and go through the microwaving process again. He drank a little deeper and hoped he found the work of Louisa Cormier interesting.

  Before he could open the first book, the phone rang.

  * * *

  It was a little after ten at night. Stella was looking over Danny's shoulder as he constructed the image on the computer screen in the lab.

  Stella's eyes burned. She no longer doubted that she was coming down with something. Something was definitely causing her sinuses to fill, her eyes to water, and her throat to tickle. She tried to ignore it.

  The image on the screen looked like something out of one of those computer generated games advertised on television, the ones in which people, who didn't look all that much like people, slaughtered each other with noisy weapons, vicious kicks, and painful sounds.

  On the screen was a computer-generated brick wall. There was a single window in the wall.

  "How high above the bathroom window was the window to Guista's hotel room?" he asked.

  "Twelve feet," Stella answered.

  Danny's fingers played the keys and moved the mouse until the image scrolled down. A second window suddenly appeared.

  "Reduce it so we can see both windows," Stella said.

  Danny did it. One window was now directly above the other.

  "It was night," she reminded him.

  Danny created night.

  "Was the bathroom light on?" he asked.

  Stella pulled out her notes and a small packet of tissues. She flipped through the notes and said, "She slept with the bathroom light on."

  "Bathroom light on," Danny said.

  And a light yellow glow appeared in the lower window.

  "Now the chain from Guista's room to the bathroom," Stella said wiping her nose.

  "Chains, chains, chains, chains," Danny said pushing his glasses back on his nose and searching. "Here. Pick a chain."

  He scrolled down.

  "This one's close to the one he used," Danny said.

  "Can you make it hang from Guista's window down to the bathroom?" Stella asked.

  "You are definitely coming down with something," he said.

  "If he used the chain to lower someone," she said, instead of responding to his comment, "the person would have to be small, brave, and hope that the bathroom window was open."

  "Or know that it was open," Danny said.

  "Can you put a person at the end of the chain?"

  A figure, male, dressed like a ninja, appeared.

  "Make him smaller," she said.

  Danny made the figure smaller.

  "Can you open the window?" she asked.

  "How wide was it open?"

  She consulted her notes again and came up with, "A little under fourteen inches."

  Danny opened the window to scale.

  "Narrow," he said. "Should I make our ninja smaller?"

  "Sure," she said.

  Done.

  "By scale, how much would you say he or she weighs now?" asked Stella.

  Danny sat back, thought, and said, "Maybe one hundred," he said. "Maximum one hundred and ten."

  "And he had to open the window and swing through it," Stella said.

  "And he had to get back out through the window with that clearance," said Danny. "An acrobat? Maybe we should be checking on gymnasts and circus acrobats?"

  Stella thought and said, "Can you put something into the lower part of the window, where we found the screw hole?"

  "Something?"

  "A circular piece of metal?"

  "How big a circle?"

  "Start big, five inch diameter."

  Danny searched. An image appeared at the bottom of the bathroom window. A circle.

  "Can you make it stand out, perpendicular to the window?" she asked.

  "I can try."

  He manipulated the circle, give it a three-dimensional hoop look.

  They both looked at the chain, the hoop, and the window and came to the same conclusion.

  "You going to say it or should I?" he asked.

  "Get rid of the ninja," she said.

  "Check," said Danny, and the ninja was gone.

  "Attach the end of the chain to the hoop," she said.

  He was ahead of her and had it done before she had finished his sentence.

  "Guista hooked the hoop and then kept pulling till the hoop on the screw came out," said Danny, showing it on screen as they watched. "That's what happened. It also explains why he used a metal chain instead of a rope. A rope would flop in the wind. A chain with a hook would be easier to grab the hoop. And then he lowered whoever killed Alberta Spanio."

  "Why couldn't the killer just open the window and climb in?" Stella asked, looking at the computer screen. "Why go through this hoop and chain business? Maybe the killer didn't come through the window."

  "Why would someone go through all that to open a window they weren't going to use?" asked Danny.

  "Maybe to bring the temperature down below freezing in the bedroom so we couldn't pinpoint time of death?"

  "Why do that?"

  Stella shrugged.

  "Maybe they wanted to make it look as if someone had come through the window," Danny said. "But the snow screwed that up."

  "We're still missing something," Stella said, followed by a sneeze.

  "Cold," he said. "Maybe flu."

  "Allergies," Stella answered. "We've got to find Guista and get some answers out of him."

  "If he's still alive," said Danny.

  "If he's still alive," Stella repeated.

  "I've got some Vitamin C tablets in my kit," Danny said. "Want one?"

  "Make it three," she said.

  Danny stood, still looking at the image on the screen.

  "What?" Stella asked.

  "Maybe we're wrong," he said. "Maybe somebody did go down that chain."

  "The little man the clerk saw with Guista," she said.

  "Back to square one?" said Danny.

  "Database?"

  "Looking for the little man," said Danny. "Let's go home and start again in the morning."

  Normally, Stella would have said something like, "Go ahead, I have a few things to clean up." But not tonight. She was one large ache, and home sounded good to her.

  They both went home. When they came in the next morning, they would have information that threatened to throw their theory out of the window.

  * * *

  The two black kids who stepped out of the bakery truck, hands in the air, couldn't have been more than fifteen.

  The police officers, one a black woman named Clea Barnes, kept their weapons leveled at the driver. Her partner, Barney Royce, was ten years older than Clea and not nearly as good a shot. He was and always had been just average on the range. Fortunately, in his twenty-six years in uniform, he had never had to shoot at anyone. Clea, however, with four years in, had already shot three perps. None had died. Barney figured punks and drunks took Clea for an easy mark. They were wrong.

  "Step away from the truck," Barney ordered.

  "We didn't do nothin'," the driver said in a surly manner both police officers well recognized.

  "No," said Clea. "You didn't do nothing. You did something. Where'd you get this truck?"

  The two boys, both wearing black winter coats and no caps or hats, looked at the truck as if they had not noticed it before.

  "This truck?" said the driver as Barney moved forward to check both of the boys for weapons. They were cle
an.

  "That truck," Clea said patiently.

  "Friend let us drive it," the driver said.

  "Tell us about your friend," said Barney.

  "A friend," said the driver with a shrug.

  "Name, color," said Clea.

  "White dude," said the driver. "Didn't catch his name."

  "You didn't know his name but he let you take the truck," said Barney.

  "That's right," said the boy.

  "One chance," said Clea. "We bring you in, get your prints, check you out, let you walk if you tell us the truth. Right now. No bullshit."

  The boy shook his head and looked at his buddy.

  The second boy spoke for the first time.

  "We were in Brooklyn," he said. "Visiting some friends. On the way to the subway, we saw this big old white guy walking around. Limping around in front of a deli. It wasn't a neighborhood where you'd expect to find a white guy walking around, big guy or not."

  "So you decided to rob him?" Barney asked.

  "I didn't say that. Besides, while we were talking, a cab pulled up. He got in. We checked out the truck when the cab was gone. Keys were in the truck."

  "And you took it?" asked Clea.

  "Beats the subway," the first kid said.

  "Where was this deli in Brooklyn?" asked Barney.

  "Flatbush Avenue," the second kid told them. "J.V.'s Deli."

  "Now," said Clea. "Big question that's going to maybe let you walk if you're not wanted for something: What kind of cab was it and what time did the white guy get picked up."

  The second boy smiled and said, "One of those car service sedans. Green Cab Number 4304. Picked him up a few minutes after nine."

  * * *

  Aiden had taken her shower, washed her hair, put on her warmest pajamas, and turned on the television in her bedroom. The Daily Show would be on in half an hour. Meanwhile she turned on CNN and lay back with a pad of paper, glancing up from time to time at the news scroll at the bottom of the screen.

  On the pad she wrote:

  One, call Cormier's agent. Ask about.22 she supposedly gave her. Ask about the manuscripts she delivers. On disk? Printed out?