Murder in Hell's Kitchen

by Lee Harris

  “Take the guns out slowly and set them on the floor. Use two fingers, left hand only. If you try anything, you’re dead.”

  She was still wearing her gloves. She pulled them off and stuffed them in her coat pockets. Then she removed the Glock and the S&W and laid them gently on the floor in front of her.

  “Kick them over here.”

  She kicked them with her toe and he picked them up.

  “Now sit on the chair behind you.”

  It was an old bentwood chair with a cane seat that was falling apart. She kept her coat on, sensing no heat in the room. Wang sat on an armchair about five or six feet from her.

  “Now pull up your pants so I can see your legs.” He wanted to see if she was wearing another ankle holster. She pulled up the pants and stretched out her legs. She had nothing to hide.

  “Open your coat all the way.”

  She unbuttoned the last few buttons and opened it. He got up and walked toward her. She tensed, hoping he would not touch her. He didn’t. He picked up her handbag and rummaged through it, pulling out the handcuffs.

  “Where is the key?”

  “On my key ring.”

  He found it, took it off the ring, and put it in his pocket. He looked at her ID, went through her wallet, fished around the bottom of the bag, then dropped it on the floor.

  “Why are you looking into the Soderberg case?” Wang asked, sitting back down.

  “I was assigned to it.”

  “Don’t be smart, Bauer, or I’ll kill you. Why is the police department interested in Soderberg?”

  “They weren’t. We were looking into another case, and his death seemed to be related. We started investigating it.”

  “What did you learn?”

  “Soderberg fell down the stairs and died. His body was sent to Virginia. He was cremated and I believe his ashes were taken out to sea for burial.”

  “Who did Soderberg work for?”

  “An electronics company. They’re out of business.”

  “What kind of business did they do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do know! Don’t lie to me. Tell me what they did.”

  He must want to know how much she had found out, how successful their investigation had been. She had not herself visited the building where QX had been located; Defino went there while she was in Omaha. But Wang was in Omaha at the same time, and he didn’t come back until last Sunday, after he dumped poor Jerry Hutchins. If Wang was working alone, or if Olivia Dean was still in Omaha, he might not know Defino had gone to the QX building or that Jane had visited Carl Johnson. He might not even know of the existence of Carl Johnson till she and Defino went to visit his home a second time. Maybe he didn’t know as much as she knew.

  She shook her head. She would see how much she could get away with. See what she could find out from him. If she survived this, it would be nice to know where Olivia Dean was.

  “Where did you go on Monday?”

  Monday had been the trip to D.C. when she left her building the back way. It was probably the morning after Wang returned from Omaha. “To work,” she said.

  “You lie to me I kill you.”

  “You kill me I can’t tell you anything.”

  “How did you find Hutchins?”

  That would be a sore point. She had done what he had not been able to do. “I found an old friend of his. He told me where to look.”

  “What did Hutchins tell you?”

  “He told me there were rats in the apartment across the hall.”

  His eyes bit into her. It was the only thing she could see above his chin. “Rats across the hall.”

  “Yes.”

  “He lied to you.”

  “There isn’t much I can do about it. He was terrified you would kill him.”

  “I did kill him.”

  She tried to keep the surprise out of her face. If he thought Hutchins was dead, why was Olivia Dean in Omaha posing as Hutchins’s aunt? It didn’t make sense.

  What did make sense was that he was an acknowledged killer and she was the next person on his list. No one knew where she was right now; no one would find her in time to save her. She had to try to placate him, string him along by answering questions without telling him anything, figure out how to get out of here or it was all over. Her stomach began aching.

  “He didn’t know anything,” Jane said. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “What did he mean about the rats?”

  “At the time Soderberg died, someone was living in the apartment across the hall from him, an apartment that was supposed to be empty. Maybe it was you.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, his lips curling. “It was me.”

  He probably knew they had been to the building on Fifty-sixth Street this morning, but he wouldn’t know why. The paperwork for the warrant had not passed through any of the offices where the leak could have occurred. And once she and Defino and Bracken were inside, he wouldn’t have been able to see where they went. As far as he was concerned, they had no reason to think that Soderberg’s killer still lived in that apartment. She wanted to be very careful to tell him only things he already knew. He didn’t know she had taken the train to Washington. He might not know she had visited Carl Johnson or what his involvement was with QX. Wang was an assassin who knew more about killing than spying.

  “Didn’t you kill Soderberg?” she asked.

  The lips curled again. He liked knowing more than she did. “Do you think I did?”

  “I think it’s possible.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the apartment on Walker Street. How did you find the apartment?”

  “We got a tip.”

  “Someone called and told you you could find me in that apartment?”

  “I don’t know what they said. The tip came in and I was told.” Let him think Olivia Dean had made the call, if she was still in New York. Where the hell was she anyway?

  “You’re a stupid woman, Detective Bauer, and I don’t like stupid women. Tell me how you found me.”

  “You don’t know how the police department works. We have someone who just does research. He’s on the computer and the phones all day. He finds something out, he lets us know. He told us to go down to Walker Street and we went.”

  “What did you do with my bicycle?”

  “Forensics is looking at it.”

  “For my fingerprints and DNA?” He said it with a sneer.

  “If they can find any.”

  “Who is the man who goes everywhere with you?”

  She didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t know how much the mole knew about their team. If it was Hack, he knew everything. If it was someone else, he might know a lot less. Wang seemed to be working with no one else except Olivia Dean. They might not have the manpower to follow both Jane and Defino. She decided to try a lie. “Harry Bittler,” she said, using the last name of someone she had known years ago.

  “You’re lying.” He stood up and came toward her, the gun pointing at her torso. As he neared her, he slammed the gun at the side of her face with the force of anger.

  She allowed herself to fall off the chair to her left, diminishing the full impact of the blow. As she went down, she remembered what Mike Fromm had said about Hutchins when they found him. That was what would happen to her. She would be beaten to death and Wang would disappear, leave the country and perhaps never come back. Her death would end up a cold case.

  She lay on the floor for a few moments, recovering from the blow. Her head pounded and tears leaked from both eyes. In another apartment, or in another building, a woman shrieked a tirade in another language. Then a child cried bitterly.

  “Get up,” Wang ordered. “Sit down on the chair. Don’t play with me and don’t lie to me. Get up,” he said, raising his voice. “Do what you’re told.”

  She pulled herself up and brushed her coat off. She didn’t want roaches crawling in her cloth
es and hair. She touched the side of her face gingerly. The skin was broken and there was moisture and it hurt like hell. She sat and drew her coat closer. Something in her mouth tasted like a copper penny.

  “Where does this Harry Bitter live?” Wang asked back in his chair.

  “Bittler,” she said. “There’s an L in it.”

  “Bittler.” He spat it out, the L sounding almost like an R. It was the first time he had made that mistake in his English.

  “I don’t know where he lives. Queens. That’s all I know. We don’t go home together.”

  “Who else is there?”

  “Captain Graves is in charge of the whole squad. Lieutenant McElroy is second.”

  “You said someone did research.”

  “I’ve never met him. I talk to him on the phone.”

  “Give me a name.”

  “Mark Frey.” She knew she would have to be careful. Make up too many names and she would get them wrong. Next one, she thought, she would say Paul Thurston.

  “And he’s the man who knows everything.”

  “Not everything. He checks to see if people have police records, where they live, that kind of thing.”

  “I want you to tell me how you found me. I want the truth or I’ll do the same thing to the other side of your face. Pretty soon you won’t have a face left.”

  She bent her head over and closed her eyes. The truth wouldn’t hurt anyone. “I remember now,” she said, looking up. “The Omaha police found the car rental you used. Your license had the Walker Street address. That’s how we found it.”

  “How could they find the car rental?” he asked angrily.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. An Omaha cop called and said he’d done some old-fashioned investigating. He came up with your name and address.”

  Wang stared at her. She realized as she spoke that she had nearly divulged the fact that the Omaha police might know that he was Chinese. If they knew that, Hutchins was still alive. If he was alive, there were other things he could talk about. Answering his question was a mistake.

  “How did the cop know it was me? A lot of other men rented cars at the airport that day.”

  “He said it was the only one from New York.”

  He stood up and approached her. She tensed, waiting for the blow, but he stopped and stood halfway between their chairs.

  “Did he know I was Chinese when he was asking questions at the car rentals?”

  “I don’t know what he knew. He gave me a name and address and we went down to Walker Street.”

  “Hutchins is alive, isn’t he?”

  “You said you killed him.”

  He stepped forward and whacked the left side of her face. She started to fall but he broke it and pushed her back up, putting his masked face close to hers. Her eyes were tearing badly, her head was pounding, and she was beginning to sweat. Both sides of her face were stinging.

  “You tell the truth when I ask you a question or you will die sooner instead of later. Is Hutchins alive?”

  He’s a madman, she thought. It doesn’t matter what I tell him; he’s going to kill me. The panic that was just below the surface threatened to undo her. He had to know the answers to these questions if Olivia Dean was in Omaha, but his pleasure was taunting her, terrorizing her. And he was succeeding. The pain in her stomach was worse and her face was on fire. This was how she would die, in fear and pain.

  “Answer me,” he shouted.

  “I haven’t talked to anyone in Omaha for a couple of days. Maybe he’s alive; maybe he’s dead.” Her voice shook.

  “But he was alive when they found him.”

  “He was alive,” she said wearily.

  “Was he talking?”

  “No. He was in a coma. He was expected to die. Maybe he has died.” She reached her right hand into her coat pocket for a Kleenex.

  “What are you doing?” he screamed.

  “I need a tissue.”

  “You take anything else out, I kill you.”

  “There’s nothing else in there.” As she said that, she felt something hard. My God, she thought, the cell phone. As she pulled out a tissue, her glove came out also and fell to the floor. The phone was in her pocket. Maybe the phone could save her life.

  She pressed the tissue against her eyes, then, very softly, on each side of her face. It came away with blood. She looked at it and set it on her lap where he could see it.

  He had stood as she did this. Now he kicked the glove away from her. “You talked to Hutchins, didn’t you?”

  “I haven’t seen or talked to Hutchins since we interviewed him at the station house in Omaha. He left and went to the gas station. I never saw him again.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying. I’m—”

  But he was in front of her again, pummeling her with his fists. She felt pain everywhere, her upper arms, her shoulders, her face. He stood back, retrieving the gun, which he had left on his chair for the assault.

  Why was he asking these questions? she wondered. What did it matter whether she had spoken to Hutchins in the hospital or not, where his bicycle was, who her partner was? Maybe he was just revving himself up to kill her and this was the way he did it. He admitted to her that he had killed Hutchins—although he was wrong— and that meant he didn’t expect to let her out alive. But he was wearing a face mask, so maybe there was a chance he would let her go.

  She wanted desperately to live. She loved Hack. She cared about Mike Fromm. She wanted to talk to Lisa Angelino and say all the right things to her, whatever they were. She wanted to sit in front of a hot fire in the apartment she now called home.

  Wang had begun pacing, as though he were trying to decide what other stupid question to ask her that would give him an excuse to beat her some more. He stopped now and faced her. “What do you know about the Rawls woman?” Once again he had difficulty with the R and L.

  “She was just a woman who lived in the building. She went back to Tulsa and you killed her there.”

  “She wasn’t ‘just a woman,’ Bauer. She was Soderberg’s girlfriend. If I know that, you know that. And you know where she worked too, in the Federal Building. She was an agent of the government. She was working with Soderberg.”

  Jane felt a chill. She had never asked where Margaret Rawls worked. She had assumed it was just a job, and it probably had been. Federal jobs were often word processing and secretarial.

  “So you killed her for having dinner with Soderberg. And all the others in the house on Fifty-sixth Street?”

  He gave her a faint smile. “I couldn’t take a chance. They knew him. He talked to them. He went to their apartments. He told them who he was and what he was doing. They all ran from that building like frightened mice after he died. They ran because they knew. All except Hutchins. Hutchins stayed. Then he disappeared. Then you found him and went after him. He told you things. What did he say?”

  “He didn’t know anything. None of them knew anything,” Jane said, feeling the sadness of the loss of innocent lives. “They were just—”

  There was a commotion in the hallway. Feet pounded up the stairs and someone banged on the door.

  “Don’t move,” he said. He turned his back on her and opened the door. Two young men were there, and the three of them spoke in agitated Chinese.

  Jane put her right hand in her pocket, but one of the young men peered over Wang’s shoulder and stared at her. She let her hand hang and stared straight ahead. The conversation was brief. When it ended, Wang slammed the door and walked over to her. On the way, he picked up a rope from a table.

  He tied her ankles together and her wrists together behind her back. Her torso was tied to the back of the chair. Then he grabbed a roll of duct tape, tore off a piece, and pressed it over her mouth. Then he left the apartment.

  This guy is nuts, she thought. He’s crazy. He kills because he loves it. She fought back the urge to be sick.

  34

  SHE LOOKED AROUND, trying to
find something she could use to cut the rope or scratch off the duct tape. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this much pain. Her handbag was still lying on the floor where he had half emptied it. The cuffs were gone, but she might have a small mirror in there or some keys he had missed. She moved the chair inch by inch to where the bag lay. Her hands were tied behind her but she could move her fingers. She had no idea how long Wang would be, and if he came back and found her half-untied, he’d finish the beating he had only started before he left. Still, it was her only chance.

  She reached the bag and managed to get it between her feet, although they were tied together. She tried lifting it as she bent over, afraid she would topple forward and hit her head on the bare floor. It seemed to take forever, but she found she had some play in her knees. He had done a hasty job of tying her up, or maybe he just ran out of rope. In any event, she kept trying to raise the bag, first between her feet, finally between her legs, then toward her face so she could lean over to get the leather strap over her head. The rope was around her chest, giving her very little distance to move forward. It was try and fail, try and fail, pray Wang didn’t return, hope something in that bag would get her loose.

  Suddenly she felt the strap touch her nose. She almost cried with joy. Come on, Janey, you can do it, she told herself. Keep trying. One more try, one more try.

  It was exhausting and depressing, but little by little she worked the bag up between her legs until she held it tightly between her knees. Wriggling, she moved it up till it was between her thighs, then, finally, almost on her lap. The zipper was open and only half the contents still inside, but she was just able to get her face to touch the zipper, and she started scratching the zipper against her face and the duct tape, over and over.

  She could feel progress, and that alone kept her working at it. Suddenly she was able to expel air from the right corner of her mouth. After that, it was almost easy, pulling the tape against the zipper until her whole mouth was exposed. She opened her mouth and breathed through it. Then she grabbed the front of the bag between her teeth and hauled it up on her lap so it touched her stomach.

  She was just about to see what was left inside the bag when she heard the thunder of footsteps and shouting on the stairs. Dear God, she thought. Don’t let it be Wang.