by John Lutz
Twenty years ago…
Even ten…
But not today.
52
By the time he reached Things Past, Beam’s leg felt okay. He dabbed at his eye. It was sore, but not bleeding. He was wet, and somehow or other had torn the knee of his pants.
When he entered the shop and the little bell tinkled above his head, Nola looked at him from where she was standing behind the counter. He watched her deadpan glance travel up and down. He might have to bleed from every artery and pore to impress this woman. With a slight surprise, he realized that might be one of the things that so attracted him to her.
“What happened, Beam?”
He told her about his futile pursuit of the man in the long raincoat.
“And you’ve seen him before?” she asked.
“I think so. Somewhere.”
She disappeared for a moment from behind the counter, then reappeared with a folded white towel. She tossed the towel to him, and he caught it and began rubbing his hair dry.
“He’s been following us?” Beam heard her ask, his head beneath the towel.
“I think so. That’s no surprise.” He rubbed harder with the towel. “Twenty years ago-ten-I could have nailed the bastard.”
“It’s not ten years ago.”
“No.” He raked back his wet hair with his fingers, then used the towel to dry his hands.
“You saw him watching us,” she said, as if trying to fix the notion in her mind.
He tossed the towel back to her. She caught it absently and dropped it on the floor behind the counter. “Watching you,” he said.
Her dark eyes didn’t change expression. She didn’t seem at all frightened or even perturbed.
Beam thought that someday he might be so accepting and unafraid. It seemed a long way off.
It was a small thing, but it was something.
Street sounds found their way into Nell’s bedroom. She’d just arrived home, just turned on the window air conditioner, and the stillness and stuffiness hadn’t been chased. It smelled almost as if someone had been smoking in the bedroom, but that couldn’t be.
She opened her dresser’s second drawer to see if she had clean panties or would have to do a wash before Terry picked her up.
Nell stood before the drawer and studied its contents. Her panties and bras seemed to have been rearranged, but only slightly. And the nine-millimeter Glock handgun she kept there unloaded seemed to be pointed more toward the window rather than the wall. Seemed.
A faint scent, a subtle shifting of symmetry. Of course, it could always be her imagination. Probably was her imagination. She knew that lately she’d been irritable, uneasy, perhaps looking for something to spoil what was otherwise beautiful. Her mother had told her some people refused to be happy, and if they didn’t learn to change, they’d be unhappy all through life. The message was clear. If only her mother had told her how to change, life to this point would have been a lot easier.
Nell knew that two things kept her from trusting someone enough to fall completely and unreservedly in love-her job, and her recent divorce. Those were the reasons she was standing here sweaty, skeptical, and maybe paranoid, trying to find a reason to distrust Terry and tell him to return the key to her apartment.
The truth was, she hadn’t felt completely at ease since she’d given him the key. It was supposed to be an act symbolizing her love and the seriousness of their relationship. If a guy had your key, he had it all.
What had also come with Nell’s key was her subtle distrust.
Terry deserved better. She understood that now. She told herself she understood.
The person Nell distrusted was herself.
She shut the dresser drawer and pressed it firm. Then she drew a deep breath and made herself smile.
Terry had her key. He had her. It was going to stay that way.
Jack Selig did not have her key.
Of course, he could always buy the building.
53
St. Louis, Christmas, 2001
Time had healed nothing.
A brisk wind whipped across the cemetery, shaking the leafless trees and causing a lone crow to flap sideways into the gray sky and veer toward the shelter of the mausoleum that stood like a small Greek temple on the hill. The gusting wind drove particles of sleet that stung the eyes and anywhere skin was exposed.
Justice was wearing jeans, thick leather boots, a sweatshirt, fur-lined gloves, and a green parka with the hood up, but he was still cold. He bowed his head, staring at the dates on the modest tombstones. Seventeen years since Will died. Thirteen since April died.
The pain was unabated.
There had been no escape from it. The doctors hadn’t helped, the pretending to be other people hadn’t helped, the fierce dedication to his perishable work, the drinking, the medication, the soul-searching, the loss of soul, it all seemed to feed rather than subdue the monster in the basement of his mind. He could restrain the monster no longer.
He’d become obsessed with those who killed, who placed no value on human life other than on their own destructive lives. Over the years he’d seen too many of them go free, or serve brief sentences only to return to the streets to murder again. Killers like the one who murdered Will. Killers who, in their own evil and indirect way, also killed people like April.
April herself. It had taken time, but finally they’d killed her, even if her death had been by her own hand.
There must be a reckoning.
Always one to plan carefully, he knew that if harm came to his son’s killer, or to anyone connected with his acquittal, he, Justice, would be the prime suspect. So he’d decided to exact his revenge by executing those who were involved in the acquittals of other violent criminals who were obviously guilty-starting with the forepersons of the juries that set them free. It was the system that had failed and continued to fail, that bore responsibility, that would be the target of his revenge.
There would be nothing to connect him to those cases or to those victims. And there would be a wide pool of potential victims, making it impossible for the police to protect them all. He would be performing a public service. And because of him, April’s death, and the death of their son, would mean something in the chaos that he now knew life to be.
There would be meaning and purpose to the rest of his own life.
Justice and balance and purpose.
He had access to a gun, and to a silencer, and he’d obtained both. What he needed now, all he needed now, was April’s understanding, her approval.
The wind kicked up again, moaning through the columns of the mausoleum and driving the distant crow back up into the roiling gray sky. Justice was unmoving, his feet spread wide, his head bowed, staring steadily at his wife’s tombstone.
And from the grave she gave him her blessing.
54
New York, the present
Not right…Not right…
Cold Cat sat hunched over the control panel, toying with the equalizer, raising the volume of the second track. He was in his home studio on the Upper East Side. Self-contained in a corner of the vast living room, it was a small room with sound baffles all around to appease complaining neighbors. The apartment was violently furnished, with Chinese red carpet, thick green drapes that puddled on the floor, orange leather chairs, and a fifteen-foot leopard-skin sofa. The walls were festooned with gold-framed oils of nude women in various lewd positions. Such bad taste had to be deliberate. Cold Cat called it In-Your-Face decorating, and had threatened to open a chain of shops. When Edie had been alive, she didn’t like to spend time here.
Cold Cat had both tracks going now. He leaned toward the microphone and jumped in on the one beat:
I be on the hunt.
Gonna waste that cunt.
She say no, no more.
I say hit the floor.
Something still wasn’t right. He rewound and sat back, removing his earphones. Needed something tight.
He licked his lips. Comp
osing was hard work, and he’d been at it more than two hours. What he needed was a beer. Something. He’d made it a rule: no liquid in the studio. There was too much sensitive electronic crap in there to run the risk of something spilling and shorting the shit out of it.
He looked through the thick, soundproof glass to where his bodyguard Lenny was sitting in an orange easy chair, reading some tit-and-ass magazine or other. Lenny had an opened Miller can on the table beside him. Cold Cat regarded his bodyguard. Fat Lenny. He oughta be told not to put on any more weight. It wasn’t like he was all muscle, the way he’d been when Cold Cat hired him. Lenny looked like he could walk through a wall then. Now he looked like the wall.
Cold Cat contemplated leaving the studio for a few minutes to finish whatever beer was left in Lenny’s Miller can. Show the potato brain who was boss.
But the beer can had given Cold Cat an idea. Taste.
Yeah, that’d work better. He put his ear phones back on and edged his chair up closer to the control panel.
Lenny must have sensed he was being stared at. He looked up from the magazine and glanced toward the studio’s thick rectangular window.
But Cold Cat was already hard at work.
He ran the tape again, this time jumping in over the last lyric line:
I say taste the floor.
Much better.
The phone must have been ringing. He saw through the thick window that Lenny had put down his magazine and was standing near the desk, the receiver pressed to his fat head.
He hung up the phone, looking like something had scared him shitless, the whites showing all around his dark eyes. Then he marched right over and yanked open the studio door.
“What the shit you doin’?” Cold Cat said, peeling off the earphones. “Can’t you see I’m workin’?”
“Building’s on fire, Cold.” Lenny was puffing with excitement, making his cheeks flutter. “Fire down in the garage.”
“Parking garage is concrete,” Cold Cat said. “Whole goddamn building is. There’s a fire way down in the garage, fire department’ll put it out. I hope whoever called you wasn’t dumb-ass enough not to call the fire department first.”
But even as Cold Cat finished talking, he could hear sirens below in the street. Some of them had to be right outside.
“Cold, listen-”
“You listen, Lenny. The brave firemen and women are on top of the situation. Fire’s way below us, don’t matter a bit ’less they tell us to evacuate. Which they ain’t gonna do, because the garage is concrete and concrete don’t burn. Meantime, shut the damned door so I can get back to work.”
“You don’t understand, Cold.” Lenny was bobbing, waving his arms. “The super called here ’cause it’s my car that’s on fire! My brand new BMW!”
Cold Cat shrugged. “Ain’t brand new, Lenny. Last year’s model.”
“I love that car, Cold!”
“So go to it. Help ’em put out the fire. Just don’t bother me ’less we get the order to go. Fire’s forty stories down in a concrete garage. BMW probably got some kinda self-fire-extinguishing feature, anyway.”
Lenny looked thoughtful. “Maybe it does, Cold.”
Cold Cat shook his head. “So get your ass down there and see to it. What I’d be doin’ if it was my car. Fire Department’s here, so are the police. I can spare you for a while, so go tend to your wheels.”
“Thanks, Cold. I mean, really!”
“Shut the door,” Cold Cat said, and settled down again behind the microphone and sound controls.
Lenny complied, and Cold Cat was sealed in and soundproofed again. Cold Cat was pleased to note that even the piercing sirens below were completely inaudible once the padded studio door was closed.
He didn’t bother watching Lenny sprint from the apartment and almost yank the door off its hinges opening and closing it. Cold Cat was unconcerned. He didn’t see how a fire could spread in the concrete parking garage; no way it could get to the upper floors. And all the civil servants in uniform were down there with hoses and axes and whatever the hell else they used to put out car fires. Can openers, maybe.
A lyric in that?
No. Let it go. Not easy to rhyme “opener.”
Hey, wait a minute-“open-her.”
He put his earphones back on and skillfully worked the control board again. Maybe he could add a line:
I say taste the floor.
Gonna open her.
No, no…
Gonna open whore.
Yeah! Gettin’ it on!
It was glorious when the creative juices were flowing.
Now if he could get the blend down, raise the volume on “whore.” Uh-huh! This one was going to work. He could feel it.
He manipulated the control board and ran though the number again, then played it back, all the tracks.
Needed more drum, be okay. Better’n okay.
In the isolation of his soundproof room, with his earphones on, his head bowed, and concentrating so intensely, Cold Cat didn’t notice the figure, armed with a handgun and bulky sound suppressor, enter the apartment beyond the studio’s window.
His first and only view of the intruder was when he glanced up an instant before the first bullet shattered the thick glass, and the second slammed through his right eye and into his brain.
When Lenny returned to tell Cold Cat the fire had totaled the BMW and had been deliberately set, he immediately saw the damaged studio window and stood still in the center of the living room.
Holy shit!
The glass in the window had gone milky. There were two jagged holes in it, close together, spiderwebbed. He was pretty sure what had made them.
“Cold? Cold? You in there?”
Foolish to call. The studio door was closed. Lenny rushed over and yanked at the door, but it was locked. He hadn’t locked it when he’d run out to get to the basement garage. But it locked automatically sometimes. Or maybe Cold had locked it.
He knew he’d better force the door open, but he shouldn’t touch anything other than his cell phone, and use it to call the police.
Other hand, Cold might be in there bleeding to death.
Lenny went to the ruined window and peered in through one of what he was certain now were bullet holes.
Cold was slumped over the control panel, his head turned to the side. He was looking back at Lenny with an empty eye socket. Lying flat in the center of his back was a red letter J cut from some kind of cloth.
Lenny reeled backward.
Justice Killer!
He found himself sitting on top of his magazine in the orange easy chair. It was difficult for him to breathe. He was squeezing the chair’s arms hard enough to leave permanent indentations. This was badder’n bad.
Bodyguard career’s all over. Nobody gonna hire me now.
In a dark dream, he fumbled with his cell phone and called the police.
It didn’t take them long to get there.
They were right downstairs.
55
Beam stood next to da Vinci as they watched Richard Simms’s body being removed, Cold Cat leaving his expensive, tastelessly furnished Manhattan apartment for the last time. The paramedics tending the gurney craned their necks, taking a final, lasting look around, as they guided their burden through the door. They knew they’d never see anything like this again.
“Dizzy modern,” one of them said.
“Martha Stewart’s nightmare,” said the other.
“We’ve been had,” da Vinci said.
Beam couldn’t disagree, so he said nothing.
Nell was sitting over on the leopard-skin sofa, running Lenny the bodyguard through his story again. Beam knew it would be essentially the same as the first time. Lenny was telling the truth, just not adding that there would have been more police nearby, outside and in the building, if they hadn’t been redeployed to protect Melanie Taylor. Everyone had assumed she would be the Justice Killer’s next target.
Looper entered the crowded apar
tment, sidestepped some busy crime scene unit techs, and made his way over to where Beam and da Vinci stood. He’d been talking to neighbors and double-checking what the doorman had told the uniforms who’d been first to arrive on the scene.
“Nobody saw or heard anything unusual,” Looper said. “The doorman noticed no one suspicious entering or leaving the building either before or after Cold Cat’s death.”
“The usual professional, clean job,” Beam said.
“And the public’ll be delighted this piece of shit was flushed away.”
“He was shot from outside his recording room,” da Vinci said. “So if the killer didn’t use a sound suppressor, folks in the next unit might have heard.”
“He used one,” Looper said. “Nobody heard a thing. And the medical examiner says it looks like a. 32 slug did the work.”
“We’ll know soon enough if it’s a match with the other slugs fired by the Justice Killer,” Beam said.
“Do you really have any doubt?” da Vinci asked.
“No.” Beam looked at Looper. “You check out the parking garage, Loop?”
“Yes, sir.” Very formal in front of da Vinci. “Tenants drive in and out with a plastic card they insert in a machine that raises and lowers a gate. Code’s changed once a month.”
“The kind of gate somebody can walk around?” Beam asked.
“No, a genuine gate. All fancy iron or steel. Like a see-through overhead door.”
Beam looked thoughtful. Somebody had sure as hell gotten into the parking garage. “They set the bodyguard’s BMW on fire, took the elevator up, and shot Cold Cat.”
“You make it sound simpler than it must have been,” da Vinci said. “This had to be carefully planned.” He looked at Looper. “Did anyone in the building notice somebody slip into the parking garage when they drove in or out?”
“We’ve checked just about everyone who has an entry card. Nobody saw anyone on foot coming or going as they used the gate.”