If the man had held on to the van another moment, he would have lost his hand when she pulled into the street. Johanna pressed the accelerator pedal to the floor and sped toward the broad avenue at the end of the street. She passed through a red light amid the screech and squeal of braking cars and a cabdriver's hollered obscenities.
Marvin Argus had grown smaller in her rearview mirror, only insect high when she rounded the corner.
The young detective slouched down behind the wheel of her tan car and watched the black van speed away. Her eavesdropping device was picking up a clear conversation between the van's driver and the radio dispatcher for Ned's Crime Scene Cleaners. The vehicle was heading for the company parking lot in Greenwich Village.
Mallory reached out for the small silver camera on her dashboard. It contained a photographic record of the hunchback's meeting with the driver of the white Lincoln. After downloading the new images into her laptop computer, she admired the array on the glowing screen. No public record had such clear likenesses of Johanna Apollo. The blurry portrait on a Chicago driver's license had been, in Mallory's view, deliberately sabotaged by the subject, who had moved in the moment the picture was taken. A perusal of prep school and college yearbooks had been of no help either, for the camera-shy hunchback had always been absent on the days when school photographs were taken.
The last photograph was the best of the lot, for the wind had swept the hair away from Apollo's body. With one red fingernail, Mallory traced the outline of the hump that rode the woman's back, bending her spine and bowing her head. This was the soft spot.
Mallory smiled.
With a tap of keys, her computer returned to another file and an official portrait of the man in the double-parked Lincoln. Not content with running the rental plate and billing for his car, she had spent the past hour acquiring a dossier on the renter, Marvin Argus from Chicago, who now smiled at her from the glowing screen. His brow was fringed with ludicrous bangs, but she did approve of the double-breasted blazer and the tie.
Argus was the solid connection that she had been waiting for – living proof.
The detective closed her laptop and set it on the passenger seat where her partner used to ride. Riker had been a constant fixture in her life since she was ten years old, but now he would not return her phone calls. And he was never home to her when she came knocking on his door, looking for a word with him alone. But that would change when he read her report on the hunchback. It mattered nothing to Kathy Mallory that this case belonged to federal investigators, that it was well outside the purview of a New York City cop. This was a national contest, and anyone with the stomach for it could play the game on the radio five nights a week.
Marvin Argus slid behind the wheel of the white rental car and drove off. Detective Mallory's vehicle eased up the street at a discreet distance, then crept into the southbound stream of traffic on Central Park West, following the man from the FBI.
Riker's gray eyes were hooded, always had been, and his constant squint gave him the air of a man who was damn suspicious all the time. Mixed with this message was the attitude and posture of an easygoing soul, and the total effect said to everyone, I know you're lying, but what the hell.
The man who ran Ned's Crime Scene Cleaners was not named Ned. Ned was his brother. Riker did have a first name and even a middle name – Detective Sergeant, though no one had called him by that moniker for the past six months, not since acquiring the scars of four gunshot wounds. He had spent most of his medical leave in charge of a glorified janitorial service. His brother, niece and sister-in-law were away on an extended visit to the fatherland. They had not intended to stay away so long, but distant relations had held the small family hostage, dragging them up and down the Rhine, in and out of German castles and other tourist traps – poor Ned. Riker had been placed in charge of the business and left to consider his brother's offer of a partnership.
He could not picture himself filling out the forms for his separation from NYPD, though this was common enough for cops at the age of fifty-five. His younger brother had left the force three years ago, and maybe it was time to follow suit. True or not, he believed his hair had gone grayer since leaving the hospital. And there was one more hint that the good years were gone; his wounds hurt him each time it rained – just like Dad's arthritis.
Riker planted his elbows in the mess of papers that littered the desk, causing the top layer to avalanche to the floor. The office window gave him a view of gray bricks, a sliver of sky and a parking lot enclosed by a chain-link fence – a view of the future? Could he really do this job for a living?
At least he had been liberated from suits and ties. That was something.
He wore the jeans and flannel shirt of a working man, though he never traveled with the cleaning crews anymore. His last time out with a new trainee, he had nearly wrecked a van. That was the day he had discovered his one remaining infirmity, a sorry little secret that he had chosen not to share with his doctors.
Most of his time was spent in the office, where he was daily nibbled to death by forms, federal, state and local, for the management of hazardous waste, quarterly taxes, payroll deductions and other mind-numbing bits of paper. And all the while, he listened to a police scanner on the pretext of noting addresses for sudden deaths and potential customers. At midday he followed his brother's custom of buying lunch for homicide cops, the real source of new business. He had eaten two lunches today, one in a Brooklyn precinct and one in the Bronx, so he had missed the hunchback when she had reported for work. And, in another sense, he simply missed Jo when she was not around.
He walked to the front window, called there by the sound of a dying muffler on the worst vehicle in the small fleet of three. He leaned both hands on the sill and winced as the van limped into the parking lot on one soft tire – more money out the window.
The woman he knew as Josephine Richards cut the engine and climbed out.
Lady, what long legs you've got.
Those mile-long gams were a subject of much discussion around the office. On the day of her hire, he had seen in her the makings of a Vegas showgirl spliced with a carnival freak. Over the past four months, he had become comfortable with her looks, her face in particular; it was saved from being ordinary by big brown eyes, warm and velvety, that held a man's attention. Oh, and her mouth – some might call it too wide, too large; he called it generous. Oddly enough, of all the employees, she was the easiest to look at. And he would not be a complete man if he did not occasionally speculate about the legs beneath the blue jeans. They strolled, graceful and naked, through his fantasy life at least once a day.
Jo looked so tired as she crossed the lot, bent forward, eyes to the ground.
He could have made her workdays easier by giving her the lightest jobs, but he never deferred to her handicap. That would have ruined his new mythology of himself: it was said that he was so mean only silver bullets could kill him; conventional lead had failed every time. And legend had it that, during his seven hours of surgery, the doctors had removed what passed for his heart, a hard little knot of a thing mistaken for a wayward prune pit. It was also rumored that he had once kicked Jo's cat clear across a room, and he would have kicked the poor animal through a window but his aim was off that day.
Riker had started these rumors himself, and none had taken hold. The employees insisted upon believing him to be a decent, likeable sort, a peg higher than a cat killer. In truth, he had only extended one hand to Jo's cat to stroke it. He had taken no revenge for the savage mauling of claws that had followed this friendly overture. And Riker was a man of such sweet nature that he never failed to ask after the health of Jo's pet whenever the lady walked in the door, as she did now.
He yelled, "Is that fleabag, shit-for-brains cat of yours dead yet?" "Not yet!" Jo called out from the reception room as she set off the buzzer beneath the floor mat. A moment later, she stood on the threshold of his private office, saying, "Mugs is just fine."
He sh
ook his head to convey regret, then settled into the chair behind his desk and hunted through the pile of papers. "I got a note here – a name and a phone number. Some guy dropped by today – a real flake."
And, with only that description, she said, "Marvin Argus? I don't need the number." She tossed a set of keys on the desk. "The van needs a new tire." Of course, this was sarcasm. They both knew that the van needed a whole new van. She signed her name in the logbook, then checked her watch before adding the time, five-thirty, and handed him two checks totaling an even thousand dollars.
"Not bad, Jo – for less than half a day. You can put in more time if you want."
"Don't start." Her eyes were fixed on a clipboard as she made note of all the supplies she had used and the containers of hazardous waste to be disposed of. Bent over her paperwork this way, she seemed almost normal, and he half expected her to straighten up at any moment. "Hey, Jo, just try it out for a week or so. What's the harm?" She met his eyes and wordlessly told him, I'm tired of discussing this, okay? Aloud she said, "I don't need more hours."
The lady only worked on murder scenes. She had no interest in cleaning up the debris of landlords whose tenants had died of natural causes, leaving a stinking mess beyond the sensibilities of ordinary cleaning services. Early on, he had wondered about this woman's penchant for murder. Forays into her mind-set had always proven fruitless, and he could not shake the idea that Jo had racked up many hours in interviews with other cops. He also wondered why she paid extravagant rates to live in a hotel instead of finding some cheaper, more permanent address. It would have been an hour's work to run a background check, but where was the fun in that?
"Stay awhile." He smiled and gestured toward the chair beside his desk.
Whenever Jo sat down with him at the end of a day, he always had the sense of some ritual examination taking place. He could swear that her brown eyes were looking deep inside of him, visually probing his innards, body and brain – just checking to see that everything was where it ought to be and working well. And now came her brief smile that pronounced him A-okay. He felt so safe in Jo's eyes. When she was not scheduled to work, the structure of his day collapsed.
She leaned forward in the chair, arms braced on her thighs. In this posture, she seemed not at all deformed, merely tired. Jo's head tilted to one side, suddenly wary of Riker as he reached into a drawer and brought out the good stuff – a bottle of cheap bourbon instead of the usual beer cans. She also seemed suspicious of the clean coffee cups, a rarity so late in the day, for Miss Byrd, the receptionist and dishwasher, only worked mornings. Oh, and now the piece de resistance – goat cheese. Outside of work, all they had in common was this weird cheese addiction inherited from Nordic mothers. And, with these offerings, he telegraphed a bribe in the making.
"Given any more thought to that radio show?" He handed her a cup and waited out the silence.
Many times she had declined the offer to plug his brother's business on the hottest radio program in America. Riker had actually given up on this gift-from-God advertising, but the request from the star of shock radio had raised some interesting questions. "I know this guy Zachary's got a real smart mouth. Now I could probably never hold my own in an interview with him." He widened his smile. "But you're smarter than me."
Was she buying this flattery?
No, she merely took this as an obvious statement of fact – and it was.
He poured a shot of liquor into her cup. "All you gotta do is mention the name of the company three times, then hit the road. What could be easier?" He opened the package of cheese and pushed it across the desk – all for her. Was there a more generous boss in the entire -
No." Johanna sliced off a hunk of cheese with the letter opener that passed for a paring knife after hours. "Get someone else to do it."
"I tried. I told the producer I got five guys with more experience. Then Ian Zachary phones me himself. Says he only wants you. I call that odd." It could not be the novelty of a hunchback that so enticed the talk-show host; this was radio, not television. "The guy wants a woman crime-scene cleaner, but he hasn't tried any competitors yet, and they've got more broads than we do. Me, I never heard the guy's act. You ever tune into his show?"
"Every night," she said.
It surprised him that she would admit to being a shock-radio listener, but then, he had always suspected her of being dead honest at core – even though he was ninety-nine percent sure that she had lied on her job application. But this only enhanced the ongoing mystery of Jo. It was a little taste of police work, The Job, the only one that had ever mattered.
A chill breeze of outside air ruffled the papers on the desk. Every muscle in Riker's body tensed, and his hand went to that place where he had once carried a shoulder holster. The feeling of cold panic was not unreasonable, not this time, for the intruder in the next room had nearly stepped over the doormat, avoiding the concealed buzzer that loudly announced each exit and entry.
Paranoia was a contagious thing. Jo was also staring at the office door.
Kathy Mallory appeared on the threshold. The young detective wore a long, black duster in the best tradition of the Old West – a gunslinger with a subscription to Vogue Magazine.
You spooky kid.
Riker smiled, always glad to see his partner on these rare occasions when she stopped by to discover that they had nothing to say to one another anymore. He had missed her so much – and he wished that she would never come back again.
Poor Jo was startled into spilling her drink. Stunning Mallory, straight and tall, always had an adverse effect on her. By luck or design, his partner only visited when Jo was in the office, and that was a pity. It was almost an assault to put Mallory in the same room with her.
Jo rose from the chair, making exit apologies with her mouth full of goat cheese, not wanting to spend one more second in the younger woman's company. Perhaps it was the way Mallory looked at her with the eye of a predator that had not fed recently. When the office door had been softly shut, Mallory waited a beat until she heard the buzzer and then the close of the outer door. She turned on Riker.
"Hey, Kathy." His greeting was met with a cold glare to remind him of the rules: it was always Mallory now and never Kathy anymore, not since she had joined NYPD. As if he could throw away all of her puppy days – watching Kathy grow, though his old friend's foster daughter had never been a real child, not in terms of innocence. After a little girl had lived on the streets awhile, homeless and eating her dinner from trash cans, childhood was over. But Riker had done his small part to make certain that she never went hungry again. He had a favorite memory of taking Kathy to a baseball game when she was eleven years old. He had bought her enough hot dogs and soda to bring on projectile vomit.
Food was love.
In that same spirit, he pushed the remaining goat cheese in her direction. It was all that he had to offer her these days. "Mallory," he said. "Hungry?"
She leaned over his desk to drop a computer spit-out on top of his mountain of bills and forms, time sheets and invoices. Without even glancing at her offering, he guessed that she had made good on a threat, and this was the background check on Jo.
"Her name isn't Josephine Richards," said Mallory. "That's an alias."
"Yeah, yeah. Big surprise." Riker picked up the sheet, and, without reading it, he wadded it into a ball. "You might've noticed – " He dropped it into a wastebasket. "I don't need any more paper today. But thanks anyway."
She glared at the pile on his desk and the other pile that had slopped to the floor, all the paperwork that was burying him alive. He could see that she was longing to create order out of the chaos, to align every sheet and envelope, every paper clip and pencil at right angles. Mallory was freakish about neatness, and that was her most benign personality trait.
With a slow shift of strategy, she settled into a chair. Her head rolled to one side, eyes closing to languid slits of green, calm and drowsy. Riker had seen Jo's cat do this, and he knew it was a
trick to lull him into a false idea that he was safe from attack.
"You haven't been reading your personal mail," she said. "I bet you're wondering how I know that."
Riker did not like to repeat himself, so this time he only waved one hand to say, Yeah, yeah. Letters from One Police Plaza had been stacking up unopened in his new SoHo apartment for months. He could guess that most of them required his immediate attention. One clue was a slew of stamped messages on the outside of last month's envelopes, words in red ink and capital letters, OPEN IMMEDIATELY The heaviest one had been pushed under his door, and it had borne a more expansive wording in Mallory's machine-perfect penmanship: Open this IMMEDIATELY, you bastard!
"Well, I'm not much of a reader," he said. "Haven't touched a newspaper in six months." Riker preferred to spend his time cocooning in the company of a quiet bartender. "But I do open some of my mail." He held up both hands. "See? Paper cuts." This was what came of handling dangerous utility bills in the evening hours after the lights had been turned off for nonpayment due to apathy.
His partner was not amused, and he could hardly blame her. The young cop deserved a better explanation for her abandonment. Regardless of the circumstances, she took every desertion so personally. She had yet to forgive her foster parents for dying. Helen Markowitz had been wheeled away into surgery, then returned to her family as a corpse. Unfair. And Lou Markowitz, Riker's oldest friend, had died in the line of duty. Kathy Mallory was not about to stand for any more defections.
"Your leave time expired." Her voice was a bit testy, and this was akin to Jo's cat switching its tail. "You never showed up for the physical or the psych evaluation." And that was an accusation. "They ran you out of the department on a medical discharge." She leaned forward, a prelude to a lunge. "If you'd bothered to open your damn mail, you'd know that they pensioned you off." She slammed her hand on the desk and sent papers flying to the floor. "Is that what you wanted?"
Riker shrugged as if this meant nothing. It meant the world to him.
Dead Famous aka The Jury Must Die Page 2