by David Hosp
He was taken entirely by surprise. He’d imagined she might be somewhat annoyed when he turned her down, but he never expected the violence of the retribution. He reacted instinctively, swinging his arm at her wildly and catching her in the side of the face with the back of his hand. The blow sent her sprawling off the bar stool and onto the floor. As she fell she released her grip, allowing him to breathe again.
His relief was short-lived, as a wave of nausea swept through his lower abdomen and he doubled over. At the same time, he could see two mean-looking bouncers moving in toward him fast, practically drooling at the prospect of pummeling him.
“You fuckin’ faggot!” the girl was screaming. “I’ll rip your goddamned balls off!” She was struggling to her feet, but it wasn’t easy in the high-heeled shoes she was wearing. She looked like a mackerel flopping around on the barroom floor. At the same time, her hand was rubbing the growing welt under her eye.
“He fuckin’ hit me!” she screamed at the bouncers. “That fuckin’ faggot hit me because he couldn’t get it up!”
Finn looked at the two giants headed his way. It was clear they had no interest in getting at the truth. They’d already chosen to side with the hooker, who probably spent four or five nights a week in the bar, and might even work for the same people they did. Finn couldn’t blame them. If he’d seen a man strike a woman, he wouldn’t be in the mood for excuses, either. He was about to take a beating.
He was still doubled over when the first bouncer reached him. The man grabbed Finn by the collar and pulled him into a standing position. Finn watched as the giant pulled his arm back, aiming his huge fist at Finn’s chin in a controlled rage. Finn was powerless, and closed his eyes in anticipation of the blow.
“Hold up! Hold up!” Finn heard the yells and recognized the voice, though in the confusion of the moment he couldn’t place it. It was a thick Irish brogue with a deep baritone pitch.
“Wait a minute! I know this man! He’s all right!” the voice boomed. Finn could hear some additional yelling and a brief argument, but things were spinning out of control and he kept his eyes closed.
Then he felt himself being pulled by the collar. “I’ll take care of this,” the voice said, and Finn felt his shoulder being grabbed as he was steered out of the melee. His eyes were still closed and the nausea still permeated his abdomen as a giant hand shoved his head into the doorway and out into the street, where he crashed onto the sidewalk.
The entire altercation took less than two minutes, and then was seemingly forgotten in seconds. That was the way it worked in places like this, Stone knew. Although individual grudges could fester for decades, the collective memory was fleeting.
Only the girl was still at the bar, talking about the ruckus. The bartender had given her a bar rag filled with ice, and she was holding it against her cheek, cursing under her breath. One of the bouncers was looking at her with a critical eye, evaluating the damage.
“A little extra makeup and you should be able to work by Saturday night,” he concluded.
“You think I’m coming back here with the kind of bastards you let in?”
The bouncer laughed. “Yeah, I do.”
“Fuck you.”
“How much?”
“More than you can afford, asshole.”
She was tough, Stone had to give her that. She’d just gone a quick round with the guy at the bar and she was still shooting her mouth off to anyone who crossed her. But there was also something underneath the toughness. Something sad and desperate and familiar.
Familiar. That was most of it. There was something about the girl that stuck in his memory, like a phantom, just out of reach. Her shoulder-length blonde hair was tousled from the fight, and she radiated an energy, even in her acceptance of it all. He’d seen that energy before.
Suddenly she looked up and turned, staring straight at him. Her eyes were pale blue and full of intensity. Around her neck was a choker. Right then the memory fell into place.
Stone tossed some cash on the table and ran out the door, leaving Salandro behind. It was important he catch up to the man in the suit who’d attacked the girl. He’d gotten a good look at him, but he needed more: a name, an address, a license plate number— something that would allow him to check the guy out.
The street was empty. A light rain had come and gone, coating the neighborhood with a watery sparkle as the few lights in the adjacent buildings reflected off the bricks and the cars and the garbage piles. Stone looked up and down the block, half expecting some movement to give him a clue about which way the man in the suit had gone, but nothing happened. The rain hadn’t broken the humidity, but instead had added to it. The air was thick, and he could almost taste the city in the damp atmosphere; dark and old and secret.
“Damn,” he muttered to himself. The man was gone. Stone should have noticed him earlier—him and the girl. If he had, he would have paid closer attention to them at the bar. He would have anticipated something like this, and it might even have provided a break in the case. He should have noticed the resemblance earlier, but he hadn’t seen the girl’s eyes. The girl looked very much like Natalie Caldwell.
Chapter Eighteen
“WHAT THE HELL were you doing in there, Scotty?”
They were sitting at a small Formica table in Dynasty at the edge of Chinatown, waiting on a late-night dinner of fried rice and wontons. Finn was nursing his blossoming hangover as he looked across a sea of condiments at Tigh McCluen. He hadn’t changed in eight years, Finn noticed. No, make that twenty years.
He was huge, as he’d been since the days of their youth. Six foot four, with broad, rolling shoulders and thick, immovable legs, he’d always been a great boulder of a man. Eyes that twinkled with mischief regarded Finn from the center of a large, round face, and beneath a dark goatee his mouth was torqued into a wry smile.
“Nobody calls me Scotty anymore,” Finn corrected.
“Getting a little big for our britches, aren’t we, lad?” McCluen snapped back. He’d never bought into any of Finn’s “bullshite,” as he referred to it; not when they first met on the streets of Charlestown as children—an orphan and an immigrant making their way on the meanest streets in New England; not even when Finn successfully defended him against a manslaughter rap resulting from a bar brawl several years earlier. “Don’t you go forgetting where you came from, Scotty boy, or you’ll lose your soul. It doesn’t matter how nice your suits are.”
“Sorry,” Finn conceded. It was the least he could do after Tigh had saved him from the worst beating in years. “Thanks for pulling me out of there. I was in for a nasty time if you hadn’t come along.”
McCluen smiled. “Nothing compared to the old days, though, eh? And not that you wouldn’t have deserved it—hitting a fine lady like that. I should take you across my knee myself. Not even your wife and you’re raising your hand to her? Not exactly kosher, now, is it?”
Finn laughed. “What the hell would a Mick like you know from kosher?” Then he turned serious. “I told you, I didn’t mean to hit her, but she grabbed my balls and was trying to crush them. I was just trying to get her off of me. I must’ve looked like a schmuck.”
McCluen roared at that, his laughter drawing stares from several of the other late-night patrons at Dynasty. “Maybe you haven’t changed as much as I thought, Scotty! Why the hell was she trying to make a gelding out of you, anyway?”
“She found out I wasn’t a paying customer.”
“You weren’t looking for a free ride, I hope.”
“No, nothing like that. I just needed someone to talk to, but I didn’t want to pay for it.”
“Ah, the worst of all economic crimes.” McCluen was still chuckling as he regarded his old friend. He could see the bags under Finn’s eyes, and the paleness in his cheeks. He’d lost weight, too. McCluen leaned in across the table. “Looks like something else’s got you by the balls as well, hasn’t it? You look like a hundred and eighty pounds of cow shit. What is it, Scotty?”
Finn shook his head. “It’s nothing you can do anything about, Tigh. A good friend of mine was killed a couple of weeks ago. I’m having trouble picking myself up from it, that’s all. That’s why I was at the bar, I guess. She took me there once, and I thought that going back there might make me feel better somehow. I was wrong.”
“A woman? And she took you to the Kiss Club?” McCluen looked sympathetic but skeptical. “It’s not a place many respectable ladies frequent. She wasn’t working you, was she?”
“No, nothing like that.” Finn could still see the reservation in McCluen’s eyes. “The world has changed, you backward Irish Catholic dinosaur. Women are allowed to go to more than church socials now.”
“Well, I’ll give you one thing: the world has changed, and not for the better. Even the priests have been feeling their liberty a little too well these days.”
“I don’t think it’s their liberty they’re feeling, that’s the problem.”
“True enough, the sick bastards.” McCluen examined his friend again. The pain was obvious on his face, and there was a notion of defeat about him that concerned the big man. “If she was a friend of yours, Scotty, I’m sure she was every bit the lady. I’m sorry to hear of her passing, and for your sorrow. Is there anything I can do?”
“No, but thanks for the offer.”
“Look, Scotty, I don’t forget my friends, particularly my old friends. If it wasn’t for you I’d be sitting on my arse in a tin can up at Walpole for that manslaughter rap they had me on. More than that, we go back to the first day I stepped off the boat. If there’s anything I can do, I want you to be straight with me.”
“No, really. If there was anything, I’d let you know.”
McCluen continued to regard Finn for a moment or two, then shrugged. “All right, then,” he said. He took out a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote on it, handing it to Finn. “That there is the number for my mobile. I don’t give that out to many people, so keep it to yourself, but if you ever need anything the phone’s always on.”
Finn frowned. “What are you doing these days that you need a cell phone on around the clock?”
“Now why would a nice, respectable barrister like yourself want to know the answer to a question like that?” McCluen raised his eyebrows.
Finn nodded. “You’re right, I don’t want to know. Forget I asked.”
“It’s forgotten.”
They sat in silence for a minute or two; just two old friends from a tough neighborhood who knew when nothing needed to be said. Then McCluen raised his half-empty glass of beer in a toast. “Ná feic a bhfeicir; is ná clois a gcloisir. Is má fiafraítear díot, abair ná feadrais.”
“That’s quite a mouthful. What is it?”
“An old Irish proverb.”
“Sounds pretty. What does it mean?”
“Don’t see what you see; don’t hear what you hear. And if you’re asked, say you don’t know.”
“Words to live by from the motherland?”
“As applicable in the new world as they were in the old, Scotty. Sometimes I think more so.”
Chapter Nineteen
FLAHERTY HAD NEVER SEEN Captain Weidel so angry, and that was saying something. Weidel was not one to bottle up his emotions. She’d seen him explode with such force that it had driven dedicated officers to resign from the department. His acerbic tongue had reduced more than a dozen hulking rookies to tears. But this was something new, something Flaherty had never before witnessed. It was a simmering, contemplative sort of rage that bubbled under the surface of his skin, turning his forehead bright red as he worked a silent tongue back and forth in his mouth.
“Say that again,” he said finally. It was more a dare than a request, as though if she didn’t repeat it, it would be treated as if it had never been said. Flaherty considered letting it drop, but it was just not her style to back down from a fight.
“I said that the Caldwell murder might not be related to the others. It might not be Little Jack after all.”
“You wanna tell me what the hell you’re talking about, Lieutenant? And I use that rank for the moment only.” Weidel’s voice registered pure fury. “He took her heart, right? She had a gold crucifix around her neck, right? She was dressed like a hooker, right? So please explain to me why this murder is not related?”
“Well, it may be related in the sense that it could be a copy-cat killer.”
“May be? May-goddamned-be? Let me tell you something, Lieutenant, if I hear you say anything like that outside this office, I’ll have your fucking badge. We’ve got a city full of people locked in their apartments because of this guy, not coming out until we catch him, and you want to start telling them it’s two guys they need to be worried about?”
“I’m just telling you that Farmalant thinks it’s a different guy based on the autopsy results.”
“Yeah, well you tell Farmalant that if I hear he’s spreading that kind of rumor, I’ll have him arrested for interfering with a police investigation, obstruction of justice, disturbing the peace, and any other charge I can come up with.”
“Look, Captain, no one likes the idea that this may be a different guy, but the Caldwell girl was killed before her heart was taken out. It looks like she was strangled, then moved, and then cut up.”
“So?”
“All the other girls were kept alive until their hearts were removed. They had a highly sophisticated blend of anesthetics in their blood. There was nothing like that in the Caldwell woman.”
“Maybe he was in a hurry this time. Maybe she fought back and he had to beat the shit out of her before he was ready. Maybe she screamed and he had to shut her up. There are a thousand different maybes that would explain the difference. But no, you’d apparently rather scare the public with some new theory about multiple killers.”
“Also, she was raped. The others weren’t.”
The anger bubbling under the captain’s skin seemed ready for a major eruption. He said nothing, just glared.
“Trust me, Captain,” she began again. “I’m not talking about making a public announcement. I just want to consider other possibilities while we continue our investigation. The Caldwell woman had a friend at her law firm who mentioned an older man she was dating. That opens up other possibilities that may be worth checking out.”
“Let it drop, Lieutenant. You’ll last longer in this job.”
“I think we need to look into this.”
Weidel threw his hands up in the air. “Fine, Lieutenant, have it your way. Look into this if you have to, but understand: I don’t want to hear anything about it from anyone, got it? Just remember that shit rolls downhill, so if anyone starts dumping on me, you’ll end up knee deep in it.”
“I appreciate the support, sir. I’ll keep that in mind.” She put her hands on her hips in a defiant stance.
“Get the fuck out of my office,” Weidel growled. Then he turned toward the window, giving Flaherty his back as she walked out.
She probably should have just let it drop, she knew. It was hard enough to chase down one serial killer without throwing additional variables into the equation. But something was eating at her about the Caldwell case. Nothing seemed to fit, and she didn’t like it. She couldn’t let it drop.
Kozlowski was sitting in the chair across the desk from her, leaning back in his patient, relaxed manner. Flaherty wished she could be that calm. She’d once asked him how he seemed not to let the ugly parts of police work get to him. “It comes with twenty-five years on the job and thirty years of Dewar’s straight up,” he’d explained. She wasn’t sure if she’d make it that long.
“Any word on the street?” she asked.
“Nothing yet. We’re still shaking the trees, though. And you’ll be happy to know that we’re getting a little help from our friends in the mob.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The South Boston folks have put a bounty on this guy’s head,” Kozlowski said. Flaherty raised her eyebro
ws in disbelief. “Fifty thousand dollars is what we’ve heard. More if he’s not alive to make it to trial.”
“Great,” Flaherty said. “Nothing like a little street justice. Do we get the reward if we catch him?”
“I don’t think you meet the eligibility requirements. You’ve got to be a low-life scumbag.”
“Well, you ought to qualify, anyway.”
“Funny.”
“Any word from Stone?”
“He’s the one who found out about the bounty. Other than that, he hasn’t come up with anything useful. There was a little dust-up at the Kiss Club the other night. Some john was smacking the heck out of one of the working girls—apparently a girl who looked a little like Natalie Caldwell—but it didn’t amount to anything. Stone didn’t get any kind of ID on the guy.”
Flaherty looked at Kozlowski with a furrowed brow.
“What’s up, L.T.?” he asked her. “You look concerned.”
She sighed, almost afraid to raise the issue. “What do you really think about the Caldwell murder?” she asked finally.
“Personally, I’m opposed to murder.”
“I’m serious. What do you think about how it fits in the investigation?”
“You mean, do I think Little Jack is responsible for offing everybody’s favorite former federal prosecutor?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”
Kozlowski rolled his eyes. “You don’t want to know what I think. Actually, that’s not fair. I think you already know what I think, but you don’t want to hear it.”
“It doesn’t fit, does it?”
Now it was Kozlowski’s turn to sigh. “It’s possible it’s the same guy. There are a lot of ways to explain the discrepancies in the way she was killed. And there are still a lot of similarities between the Caldwell murder and the others that would be difficult to explain if it’s not the same guy.”
“But …”
“But my gut instinct is that we’re looking for a different fish.”
Flaherty nodded. “Mine too.”