Paul, the maître d’, did not know what was going on at the Interlude, nor did he want to know. He followed his instructions, minded his own business, and made a lot of money. That was all he was interested in—the money. If the owners of the Interlude wanted Landsford and his army friends to be shown special consideration, Paul would see to it that they received it.
“You’re both friends of Major Landsford?” the maître d’ said, leaving the office and walking over to the two detectives.
“Yes we are,” Stern said.
“We haven’t seen Major Landsford for a while,” the maître d’ said.
“He was transferred,” Johnson said. “Before he left we had a poker game. Landsford ran out of money and called a raise with a watch and this key. He told us that his membership in the club was transferable. Jake won the pot and the key.”
“You must have been close friends of Landsford’s,” the maître d’ said.
“We are very good friends,” Stern said firmly.
“In that case, gentlemen, I would like to invite you both to be our guests tonight. For the first round of drinks.”
The bar was smoky and crowded; its décor tasteful decadence—there were banquettes of red velvet, etched glass partitions, soft lights, and thick carpet. As the maître d’ led them into the long bar he explained that there were private dining rooms on the second and third floors where couples, gay and straight, might enjoy the pleasures of cold wine and clean sheets. Waitresses, showing ample amounts of breasts and asses, threaded their way among the guests carrying trays of drinks and canapés.
Two women were sitting at a corner banquette. One was a Valkyrie, a statuesque woman whose long blond hair was braided. She went by the name of Ursula. The other woman was Vietnamese, and she had long black hair that ran down the length of her back. She answered to the name of Iris Lee. Ursula watched the two soldiers being led up to the bar. She gave Starling Johnson the kind of a look that makes a man check to see if his fly is open.
“Who are they?” Johnson asked, catching the look.
“Hostesses. Would you gentlemen like to meet them?” Paul asked, glancing over at the women.
“I think that might be very pleasant,” Stern said, adjusting his khaki tie.
The maître d’ ordered a round of drinks for his guests, excused himself, and then pushed his way through the crowd over to where the women were sitting.
“Who are they?” Iris Lee asked the maître d’ when he came over to them.
“Friends of Landsford’s. They are to be treated as special guests of the house,” the maître d’ said.
Ursula raised her glass and started to dart her tongue over the rim. “And who is going to pay us?”
“You will both be taken care of,” he said.
“The nigger looks like he is hung,” Ursula said.
“A little change of luck can’t hurt,” Paul said, moving away from the women and going back to the bar.
The two women slid out of the booth and followed the maître d’.
“How long have you been in the army?” Iris Lee asked Stern.
“I enlisted when I was sixteen,” he said, glancing down at the slit that ran along the front of her dress.
Ursula leaned close to Johnson, examining the three rows of campaign ribbons. “You’ve seen a lot of combat,” she said, running a finger over the ribbons.
“A little,” Johnson said, looking at his partner who was now ensconced against the bar with Iris Lee, whispering and smirking like a prepubescent adolescent.
“Violent people get me off,” Ursula said, moving even closer, and sliding her knee between his legs.
“Me too, baby,” Johnson said.
“I’m getting a hard-on listening to this crap,” O’Shaughnessy said, his ear near the receiver inside the surveillance van.
After they had consumed two rounds of drinks Iris Lee suggested that their little party adjourn to one of the private dining rooms on the second floor.
The detectives cheerfully agreed.
“She doesn’t buy their story,” Heinemann said.
“She’s not sure,” Malone said. “When they get them alone upstairs, they’ll start to play some parlor games with them to see if they’ll go all the way. It’s the old hooker game. They figure a cop is not going to play it out until the end.”
“Those ladies have the wrong two guys,” Davis said, grinning.
“What if she feels the Kel on Starling?” Heinemann said.
“Then we make like the cavalry,” Malone said.
Ursula and Johnson were sitting on a cane-backed love-seat that complemented the baroqueness of the second-floor dining room. They had been on the second floor for almost fifty minutes. It was time for the girls to get to work. Iris Lee looked at Ursula and nodded slightly. Ursula picked up the cue and slipped out from under Johnson’s arms and went to her knees in front of him. She moved close, rubbing her hand in the crook of his thigh.
Iris Lee and Stern kissed. She reached down and forced his legs apart, then slid out of his embrace and knelt on the floor in front of him. “Does it turn you on to have people watch?” she said, reaching for his zipper.
The receiver inside the van went silent. Detectives crowded around, each raptly concentrating on the black piece of mesh in the center of the receiver.
“They better not,” Malone said, shaking his head incredulously.
“Lou, I think they’re going to,” Heinemann said.
Slowly, almost inaudibly at first, sounds of carnal pleasure began to seep from the mesh. Detectives snapped to attention, ears pricked.
“I don’t fucking believe it,” Malone said, turning to O’Shaughnessy and shouting, “Turn off the goddamn tape.”
“Can I go in tomorrow night?” O’Shaughnessy asked, laughing as he flipped off the switch on the recording console.
Gus Heinemann leaned against the wall, his head resting on folded arms, laughing.
The sounds of sexual pleasure reached a violent crescendo, and then avalanched into an elongated sigh.…
“Lou, I … do believe that the cavalry has come!” Heinemann said, wiping his eyes with a handkerchief.
Iris Lee insisted on ordering dinner for her guests. Tanqueray martinis were served in frosted glasses. After two rounds of drinks the door opened and a waiter with a butch-boy haircut wheeled in a serving cart. Iris Lee ordered him to put the dinner on the table in the corner of the room.
When they were finished eating, the waiter put a tray of fruit and cheese down on the table. He then reached under the cart and removed an unopened bottle of Courvoisier. He put it down next to a silver humidor.
Blouses open, the detectives sprawled in their chairs sucking on large and deliciously illegal Havanas. “That sure wasn’t anything like army chow,” Johnson said, blowing a thick ring of smoke.
“You ladies sure know how to treat a soldier,” Stern said, raising the snifter to his nose and inhaling the strong bouquet.
In unison the detectives inside the van harmonized, “You fucking humps.”
Iris Lee was coiled on the floor next to Detective Johnson, her head resting on his lap, her arms looped around his leg. She glanced up at him. “Can I get you anything else?”
“Nothing, thank you. Everything was perfect,” Johnson said, stroking her hair.
“An experienced soldier like you must have a really important job at Totten,” Iris Lee cooed, rubbing the tips of her fingers over the back of his thigh.
“Why the hell would you be interested in that?” Johnson asked.
“I’m a taxpayer. I’d like to know that I’m well protected,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” Stern said. “You’d be surprised if you ever knew the stuff we got there.”
Johnson shot a warning look at Stern and started to say something when a piercing scream came from the floor above. Both detectives’ heads snapped up.
“What the hell was that?” Stern said, getting to his feet, staring up at the ceiling
.
“Relax,” Ursula said. “That’s the Turk. He likes to do it in the rear. The louder the girl screams the more he pays her.”
“I think we’re going to enjoy being members of the Interlude,” Johnson said, sliding his hand inside Iris Lee’s silk blouse.
Another scream! Faint. Subdued.
“Sounds like the Turk has finished playing,” Stern said, glancing upward.
Iris Lee reached back and unhooked her bra. Her breasts were large, out of proportion to her thin body. “Play with them,” she said.
Johnson fingered her nipples.
This time there could be no doubt, a terrifying scream that begged for mercy. The detectives leaped to their feet and ran for the door.
“It’s nothing,” Iris Lee said, hooking up her bra and going after them.
The detectives ignored her. They stood outside the room and looked up and down the deserted corridor. Another violent scream forced a decision. The detectives hugged the wall, moving cautiously in the direction of the scream. At the end of the corridor they discovered a darkened staircase partially hidden behind dusty, faded drapes. Stern jumped to the other side of the drapes and pulled them aside. Johnson covered.
The staircase ended in darkness. They stood at the bottom step, straining to see and hear what was going on at the top, where only a faint sliver of light could be discerned. They ascended the steps, one at a time, their backs rubbing the wall, and had almost reached the top when a large, shadowy form stepped out of the darkness and peered down at the two wary cops. “This floor is private,” he said in a low, menacing voice.
Johnson moved away from the wall. He braced his right leg behind, slowly moving his left onto the next step, firming his stance. “We’re members,” Johnson said, sliding his left foot up another step.
The man’s hand came out of the blackness gripping a metal bar. He lunged down at the detective. Johnson ducked under the powerful swing. The detective came up hard, slamming his left hand into the man’s elbow, at the same time banging down on top of the wrist with his right hand. Johnson pushed in the opposite direction and suddenly the elbow snapped. Then Johnson pivoted, tugging the man forward, tossing him, screaming, down the flight of stairs. The body crashed into the drapes, tearing them off their rod. The man lay whimpering from the agony in his arm.
Johnson and Stern rushed to the top, where they crouched down and let their eyes grow accustomed to the semidarkness. A line of light seeped under a door at the end of the hall. Hearing eerie sounds coming from behind it, they ran toward the door. Johnson moved his mouth to the miniature microphone concealed inside his shirt. “Stay in the van,” he shouted. “We’ll handle it.”
“What should we do?” O’Shaughnessy said, concerned.
“Wait and listen,” Malone said. “They know what they’re doing, most of the time.”
“And if they need help?” Davis asked.
“Then we make like fucking Gang Busters,” Malone said.
Stern smashed his foot above the knob. The door splintered and crashed open; the two cops rushed in, crouched defensively to minimize the targets they offered.
The windows were shuttered; street light filtered through the slats. The room was large and bare save for a grotesquely ornate four-poster bed and one heavy wooden armchair. Two swarthy men were standing over a semiconscious, half-naked woman who was tied in it. Her body was swollen, bloody; both breasts were peppered with festering red blotches. Burnt matches were scattered around the chair.
The tormentors whirled as the detectives crashed into the room. One of them pulled a blackjack from his rear pocket and leaped at the detectives. Stern met the attack and pivoted the threatening hand with his outstretched arm, rammed his knee into the man’s groin, and smashed his gun’s frame into the man’s forehead. He crumpled to the floor, blood spurting from the jagged gash on his head.
“Okay, Abdullah, play time’s over,” Johnson snarled. “Get against the wall before I give you a second asshole!” Johnson cocked his revolver, assumed a combat stance, and leveled the weapon at the man’s face.
Andrea St. James tried to get up. She and the chair tumbled to the floor.
“Help me,” she pleaded.
Stern stepped back, covering the two men. Johnson removed his blouse and went to her, kneeling at her side. He untied her and gently placed the blouse over her. “Let’s get you out of here,” Johnson said. “We’ll put these two bastards behind bars for a couple of years.”
Andrea St. James clutched at his arm. “No police, please,” she said, tears streaming down her swollen cheeks. “Just get me out of here.”
“But …” Johnson started to protest.
“Please … no arrests.”
Johnson looked over to Jake Stern who shrugged. “Without a complainant we got nothing,” Stern said.
The maître d’ and the two hostesses burst into the room.
Stern whipped around. “Against the wall, my lovelies.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” the maître d’ demanded.
“We’re leaving and the lady is leaving with us,” Johnson announced, cradling Andrea St. James in his arms.
“Who the fuck are you?” Ursula yelled.
“Why, mamma, we’re officers and gentlemen,” Starling Johnson said, backing out the door.
The emergency room at Bellevue was filled with the night’s casualties. Malone peered past the partly drawn curtain at the doctor working over Andrea St. James. It never changes, he thought. She was just another person caught up in mindless carnage; night after night—cuttings, stabbings, shootings. Malone scanned the people patiently waiting their turns to be patched back together. A white man sat pressing a flap of skin from his cheek in place. Malone looked at him. Just your friendly corner knife fight, no doubt, he thought.
A dead-tired intern left the cubicle and shambled over to Malone.
“Are you going to keep her, Doc?” Malone asked.
“Where?” the doctor said. “They’re packed in here like sardines. I’ve patched her up. Her private physician will have to take it from there.”
Malone went into a huddle with the detectives. “We need a safe house.”
“Do we go the official or unofficial route?” Davis asked.
“Unofficial,” Malone said. “We’ve nothing to hold her on.” Malone pondered the situation for a moment. “Bo, call Delamare at the Barton Hotel. He’ll give us a room for a few days, no questions asked.”
“What about baby-sitters?” O’Shaughnessy asked.
Malone sighed. “We’ll have to steal two of Harrigan’s men.”
The management of the Barton Hotel on Lexington Avenue was glad to cooperate with the NYPD. They knew from experience that small favors reap a large harvest.
Andrea St. James was tucked away in a suite of rooms for which a paying guest would have had to pay three hundred dollars a day. Large windows overlooked the Manhattan landscape. There was a large living room decorated in almost-French Provincial. A rose-pink bedroom and lace-bordered sheets seemed an incongruous setting. She lay in bed, wearing an open-back hospital gown, twisting and turning, her face swathed in bandages.
Malone dragged a chair over to the bed and placed a cassette tape recorder on the marble-topped night stand, thinking of how to question her. He knew only that she was the hooker who had made the porno film with Landsford and that there was a definite connection between her and Anderman. And he assumed that it was she who used to call Eisinger at Braxton Tours, and was the same woman Eisinger told to look at the song.
Frightened, unsure eyes peered up at him from behind an embrasure of gauze. He noticed that her fingernails were broken and chipped. The smooth colored glaze that once covered them had been chewed, leaving atolls of ugly yellowish nail.
Andrea St. James was semiconscious. Her hands worked on the sheets, squeezing and scratching. She let her eyes close. Malone was afraid she would be lost to the sedation they had given her at Bellevue.
H
is knees pressed into the side of the bed. “You took a bad beating. Feeling any better?”
“Who are you?”
“The police.”
“Oh. Thank God. Yachov sent you. You’re from the Unit.”
“Yes. Yachov sent me,” he said, playing her.
She clutched his shoulder. “Tell Yachov it was Westy. I saw Westy with them.… He gave it up.… Yachov was right … tell him … should have pulled me out … no list … couldn’t find list … Sara … poor dear Sara …”
She was scratching his shoulders as though she was trying to claw her way back to consciousness. Her tongue was heavy in her mouth; her eyes would open, focus, and then close. She tried to get more words out, but could manage only a low mumble.
Malone took her hand in his, soothing it with gentle strokes. His voice was low, calming. “Andrea. Tell me so that I can tell Yachov.”
“Yachov … the Unit has been breached … warn him. Westy … I saw him that first time with Sara … in the restaurant with the other two … one was wearing that stupid shirt … it was a beautiful day … Fort Surrender … Sara … remember … he waved at her … oh, I hurt so much.” Her hand slid from his shoulder.
Malone licked at the film of sweat that had formed above his lip. His eyes were wide, fixed in a disbelieving stare. He began to gnaw at the extremity of his lower lip. Had he heard correctly?
He was suddenly conscious of his throbbing temples. He shuffled closer. He now had his direct link. Cops were involved—somewhere, somehow. He bent closer, not speaking, studying her, trying to unscramble her words.
He moved his lips next to her ear and whispered, “Tell me who killed Sara.”
Her consciousness was slipping away. “Westy … no … don’t know … yes … him … Westy … warn Yachov …”
“Andrea. Tell me about the song.”
One Police Plaza Page 12