by Julie Bozza
Julie Bozza
The
Definitive
Albert J.
Sterne
Manifold Press
Published by Manifold Press
Text: © Julie Bozza 2010
Cover image: © José Luis Guttiérez | iStockphoto.com 2008
E-book format © Manifold Press 2010
____________________________________
For further details of titles
both in print and forthcoming see:
http://www.manifoldpress.co.uk
____________________________________
ISBN:978-0-9565426-4-9
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Annie,
who had a lot of input
and influence along the way
Proof-reading and line editing:
Thalia Communications
www.thaliacomm.net
Editor: Fiona Pickles
Characters and situations described
in this book are fictional
and not intended to portray real persons
or situations whatsoever;
any resemblances to living individuals
are entirely coincidental.
PROLOGUE
NEW ORLEANS
OCTOBER 1971
“No, don’t send us Albert!” McIntyre blurted down the phone from New Orleans. “I mean, sir,” he continued in a more reasonable protest, “there must be someone else available - anyone else available …”
“Albert Sterne is the best forensics man here at headquarters,” Jefferson replied in weary and resentful tones. Perhaps he was tired of defending a subordinate for whom he had no respect. “That makes him the best in the FBI.”
“He’s only the best because he’s incapable of a relationship with anyone still breathing!”
Jefferson appeared rather taken aback by this assertion.
Albert moved around the desk to stand closer to the speaker phone. “You’ve been listening to scurrilous gossip again, McIntyre. You don’t have the imagination to have thought of that yourself.”
McIntyre groaned down the phone. “What the hell are you doing there, Albert?”
“I thought that much was obvious: being briefed to join you in New Orleans. It seems you are yet again in need of some expert assistance.”
“Then, God love me, pack your knives and drills. We’ve got a live one here.”
“I thought,” Albert said deliberately, “you had three dead ones - the latest of which happened since the case was assigned to your superiors.”
“You arrogant bastard, you get on the next flight down and help us catch the damned perp.”
“Yes.” Then Albert added, “You’d best remember that Jefferson is too incompetent to warn people they are on the speaker phone. Next time there might be someone present whose feelings can be hurt.”
“Next time it might be someone with feelings -” Deadly silence. “You can’t possibly have just said that in front of the man.” And McIntyre hung up the phone.
“These emotional Irish,” Albert commented. “They expend so much energy in the wrong directions.”
“Mr Sterne,” Jefferson began in tones of umbrage.
“Yes.” Albert was once more facing him across the desk, eyes intent and expression implacable.
“You have a mighty high opinion of yourself for a youngster.”
“I’m twenty-four, hardly a youngster. And I simply endeavor to fulfill my potential.”
“Is that so?” Jefferson considered the man for a few moments longer. Perhaps anyone else would have exhibited some discomfort, some tension at being the object of such attention, but not Albert. In fact, it was a common story around HQ that, after his last blood pressure test, Jefferson’s doctor had warned him off smoking, drinking, and dealing with Albert Sterne. “Don’t believe for a moment that I won’t report this to the Director. The plane leaves in an hour,” Jefferson added, his white moustache quivering with anger. “Dismissed!” And, as Albert reached the door, Jefferson muttered with what sounded like genuine regret, “If we were at war, I could have you shot for insubordination.”
Albert snorted. “If I had the time to contradict everything in that rather absurd statement, I’m sure we’d both benefit. But I have a plane to catch.”
“You never did,” McIntyre said as Albert strode up to him at the New Orleans airport. “Tell me Jefferson left the room before you said he was incompetent.”
Albert looked the man over, and turned away with a sneer. McIntyre, a scruffy version of the FBI-clone at the best of times, had become distinctly bedraggled under the influence of the Louisiana humidity. Albert, used to traveling around the States in all seasons, had no trouble adapting to the climate here, even though it was a contrast to the fall weather in Washington DC. “You have some work for me,” Albert prompted.
“First you explain why he didn’t fire you.”
“Jefferson is so ineffectual he couldn’t fire a communist from the Bureau. He won’t talk to the Director about me for fear of highlighting his own inadequacies.”
“You son-of-a-bitch,” McIntyre said admiringly. It was the first appreciative tone of voice he’d used to or about Albert since they’d met when training at Quantico. “I could almost begin to like you.”
“That would obviously be one of your more pointless ventures, as there is no chance of me returning the compliment. You have corpses for me to examine, I believe. Have the locals already done irredeemable damage to the crime scenes, or is it worth my while to investigate them as well?”
“If I were a masochist, I could like you.” McIntyre sighed. “Okay, can we do all this with a minimum of garbage?”
“I’m here to do a job, as I trust you are.”
“That never stopped you from taking every opportunity to be thoroughly obnoxious, on the job or off. In fact -” and the Irishman unconsciously shifted to a more aggressive stance “- if you weren’t so damned good -”
“I don’t have time for your inept analysis. Take me to the morgue, and let’s see whether you’ve improved at all. I’m glad I can safely assume the investigation isn’t solely in your hands.”
It seemed as if McIntyre’s temper was about to brim over, but he made the effort to swallow back a variety of retorts. “Baggage?” he asked tersely.
“I have it with me.”
“Come on.” And McIntyre led the way out through the concourse. Once they were in the car, he said, “You’ve read the reports I sent.”
“Give me a summation. Then tell me what your superiors left off the record.”
McIntyre heaved another sigh but as he pulled the car out onto the street he began to provide an overview of the case, and of how the police and the Bureau had each handled it. The victims had all been young women, and all black - and McIntyre added that surely none had deserved such a ghastly death. Albert had a number of detailed questions about the killer’s MO, in the midst of which the Irishman protested, “I suppose you’ve had it all knocked out of you, with what you see every day, but this sort of thing keeps me awake at night.”
“Then you don’t belong in the FBI.”
“Yes, I do,” McIntyre insisted. “Or I’m going to, come hell or high water.” Shrugging, he added, “So maybe I have to learn how to care a little less - but God save me from caring as little as you do. That isn’t the answer.”
“But I do, of course, care,” Albert said dryly, “or I wouldn’t have chosen this field of work.”
“The way you behave -”
“Why don’t you return to a topic of which you have a slightly better grasp,” Albert pointedly interrupted, “and one of far more pressing relevance.”
They left the car in the parking lot of the adjacent hospital, and walked in silence to a low brick building.
“Hey, Albert,” McIntyre said as they reached the entrance. He waited until Albert impatiently turned to him. “Not that you owe me, but is there any chance of you doing me one small favor?”
“What would that be?”
The direct sunlight bleached all the color from the larger man, but his discomfort was betrayed in his stance and his tone. “Just be polite for once, would you? For a few lousy hours while we get through this.”
“Don’t waste my time, McIntyre.” Albert walked into the offices, pulling off his dark glasses as the light abruptly dimmed. There was a smell, both cold and spicy, familiar from morgues and hospital basements and medical examiners’ labs across the United States. Albert breathed it in, and strode through the foyer.
“Fuck you, too,” McIntyre was muttering behind him.
A small neatly dressed woman attempted to shake Albert’s hand before he got any further. Her black hair was drawn into a severe chignon at the nape of her neck, her bearing and clothes were precise and contained, but her large violet eyes betrayed her into attractiveness.
“Celia, this is Albert Sterne. Albert, this is Dr Celia Mortimer. She’s in charge here, and has been assisting us until you could arrive.”
“Let’s get to work,” Albert said, ignoring the social niceties. “Where do you have the corpses?”
The woman began, “Mr Sterne, if you would -”
McIntyre exclaimed, “God preserve me, is it too much to ask -”
“I’m here to do a job, McIntyre, and that is all. Stop making me repeat myself, and stop getting in my way.”
“If you’d listen for just one minute, you arrogant bastard, I’ll -”
Dr Mortimer interrupted the Irishman, placing her hand on his arm. “Mac, it’s all right. Mr Sterne, we have an autopsy room ready for you. If you’d come this way.” She led them off down a cross-corridor. “Mac, will you be attending the procedure?”
“I suppose I should,” the man said glumly, trailing after them.
Albert caught the tail end of a shared smile, and groaned. “McIntyre, you’re wasting my time asking me to be polite, for the sake of an infatuation with the doctor?” They had reached the prep room, where Albert and Celia began cleaning up. Albert pulled on a lab coat over his suit. “You must be trying to prove something trite like opposites attract.”
“I’m going to kill you, Albert, when we’re done here.”
Celia was trying not to show her amusement. “Never mind, Mac, he’s only the second one to work out your secret.” The Irishman’s color, still high from the heat outside, brightened. Celia asked, “Have you eaten at Tipitina’s yet?”
But there wasn’t time for more - Albert had swept into the autopsy room. As Celia trotted after him, there was the crash of steel tools against the tiled floor as Albert made room for his own instruments. McIntyre swallowed convulsively, crossed himself, muttered a brief prayer that he wouldn’t either throw up or lose his temper with Albert in front of the lady, and followed them in.
It was Albert’s second night in New Orleans and he finally had some time to himself after thirty hours of work, interrupted only by two hours of sleep on a cot in the morgue. The reports were complete, listing all the factual details and briefly explaining the deductions he’d made; the evidence was neatly bagged or bottled and labeled; the last of the photographs were being processed. Dr Celia Mortimer hadn’t done a bad job on her own while waiting for expert assistance, Albert grudgingly admitted to himself. The case was, for now, the province of McIntyre and the special agents. There would be work for Albert tomorrow, or when they found further evidence of the offender, but tonight Albert was free from official responsibilities.
He had time available, in a large city away from Washington. He had plans, and he would put off the necessity of sleep for a few hours until he could see them through.
A certain amount of discretion, if not complete anonymity, seemed wise, so Albert took two different taxis and a circuitous route for the trip to the French Quarter. Then he walked up three blocks, and across two, before choosing a seedy hotel at random, though he signed the register in his own name.
He glanced briefly around the drab little room for which he’d just paid a small fortune and walked over to push at the mattress. The chenille cover was rough, patched and of indeterminate color, and the bed itself rocked from leg to leg, though the mattress seemed surprisingly firm. Albert grimaced, then cast an even more critical eye at the mirror.
For a while he stared at his image, discovering anew all the crude imperfections. It had been years since Albert was prey to the disappointments and self-consciousness that were an inevitable part of struggling through the transition from child to adult. But he could regret that he was driven to this, impatient with the undeniable need in him even as he recognized that it should be one of the more joyous qualities of being human.
Joy was not the prevailing emotion of those he soon walked amongst. It took a careful thirty minutes to find an option he thought even remotely possible.
“You looking to party?” the young man asked.
When Albert drew off his dark glasses, his companion politely followed suit, tucking his own into the back pocket of his jeans. Albert considered the figure before him, stepping to one side for the full effect of the late-setting sun’s illumination: male, of primarily Hispanic background; eighteen or perhaps nineteen, which was getting old to be on the game; one-seventy, an inch taller than Albert; light brown and dark brown. Further than that: undernourished, and had been for months if not years; clothes old and torn, though fairly clean and assembled with a harmony of color; eyes too bright; demeanor anxious, assessing. Some might have considered the haunted expression romantic, those who thought fey meant something more whimsical than the tragedy of ‘fated to die’. But Albert was instead drawn by the spark of intelligent curiosity.
“If party is a euphemism for having sex,” Albert said, “then, yes, I do want to. Frankly, I have no idea why else I’d be approaching you.”
“Well, I don’t do cops.” Though he continued to hold Albert’s gaze in what seemed a challenge, rather than turn away.
“I’m not a cop, I’m federal, so the petty crime of prostitution is somewhat below my jurisdiction. Apart from which, I’m off-duty.”
The young man laughed humorlessly. “So you’re the first cop I’ve met who didn’t take the job home with him every night.”
“Are you interested in earning your drug money or not?”
The too-bright eyes sharpened. “Is that an accusation?”
Albert heaved a sigh and feigned patience. “The Drug Enforcement Administration has jurisdiction over narcotics violations. I assure you I simply want to … party.”
After a long moment of parried stares, the younger man quirked a weary smile. “Then, G-man, I’m your boy.”
“Hardly. As opposed to most of your colleagues who would not have reached the age of consent in the most liberal of states.”
The smile turned to a frown, more deeply felt. “That a problem for you? Me being older, I mean.”
“Quite the opposite.”
“Fine. So where are we going?”
“I have a room at the Oberon.”
“Obviously a man of style.”
“Amazing,” Albert commented as he turned to walk beside the youngster. “A two-bit street brat capable of irony.”
“You think we’re all too stupid?”
“Whoring is hardly the career choice of an intelligent person.”
“Yeah, well, that goes both ways - slumming it with the likes of me is hardly the most in
telligent way of getting laid. But you enjoy the dirty end of town, huh?”
“Unfortunately, that rather depends on you.”
“That so,” the kid said flatly. He paced along at Albert’s side for a few minutes, silent, arms folded and shoulders huddled. The swift twilight descended, and the city seemed to breathe easier.
Now that he had the briefest chance to reflect, Albert found himself glad this was a man he was about to have sex with. He had considered himself bisexual ever since he was old enough to think the issue through, to realize all the implications of his sometimes wayward urges - but somehow it was reassuring right now that this was someone of his own gender.