Wallflower j-3

by William Bayer

  "Yeah, slick," Janek agreed.

  "On the first go-around he sees if there's anything worth taking, figures out how he's going to get in, and neutralizes the alarms."

  "What's he looking for?" "Not the crap the addicts take. No computers or VCRs. Leo goes for the good stuff: money; gold; jewels; bearer bonds. He likes stamp and coin collections but won't bother much with art. Too cumbersome, he says, hard to sell. He likes stuff he can stick into his pockets."

  "I doubt Archer's got anything he'd be interested in."

  "You may be surprised, Frank. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Leo'll find something, and we'll take it from there. "

  It was a complicated scheme, devious and tempting, which was why Janek had agreed to go uptown and take a look at Leo Titus. But he didn't think he'd end up going for it. I'm much too true blue a cop for this, he thought.

  Aaron pulled into a space on the east side of Third, center of the block between I 12th and I 13th streets. He cut the engine and pointed toward a bar. A narrow red neon sign flashed BAD BOY. "We're meeting in there," he said.

  "Gay bar, isn't it?" Aaron nodded. "One of the esoteric ones.

  Whites cruising Latinos and blacks."

  "I thought you said this guy had a girlfriend."

  "Yeah, he does. But he's kind of a swish sometimes, too. Goes home occasionally with guys. He's gotten into some nice Park Avenue apartrfients that way."

  "Shit!" "Hey, Frank! This isn't about sexual preference." "You know I don't care about that. But you make him sound, I don't know-undependable."

  Aaron clamped his jaws. "Leo's highly dependable." He glanced at his watch. "Time I went in. I'll talk with him a few minutes, then bring him out and parade him up and down the block. He'll know someone's looking him over but won't know who. All I want is for you to get a feel for the guy. Watch his moves, see what you think."

  Janek nodded. "Yeah."

  As he waited, he asked himself what the hell he thought he was doing sitting low in a car in this none-too-elegant neighborhood, implicating himself in this thoroughly illegal maneuver. And the answer, he knew, was that he was at a point where he didn't care about legalities one way or the other. All he cared about was finding Jess's killer.

  When Aaron walked out the door of Bad Boy Bar with Leo Titus in tow, Janek strained forward to peer. Aaron slouched in his usual manner, but Leo, a small, suave, coffee-colored man with neatly cropped hair and a debonair mustache, stepped forward with a stylish gait. And then, as they made their promenade down to the corner and back, Janek had to smile. It was impossible to dislike Leo. The lithe cat burglar moved with the bold grace of Fred Astaire. He almost seemed to prance.

  "What do you have on the guy?" Janek asked as Aaron drove them back downtown. It was past 2:00 A.M.

  The street life of Spanish Harlem gave way to the cold, silent, empty residential cross streets of Manhattan's Upper East Side.

  Aaron glanced at him quizzically. "Hub?"

  "He's not going to do this for charity, is he?"

  "Charity?" Aaron shook his head. "Not Leo."

  "So?"

  "He owes me a favor, Frank. Let's just leave it at that. "

  Janek nodded. He knew better than to pry into the intricacies of a detective's relationship with an informant. Such alliances could be built upon almost anything from real affection and respect to manipulation and fear. This time, Janek suspected, it wasn't Leo who owed Aaron a favor; rather, it was Aaron who was about to incur an enormous debt.

  "Here's the plan," Aaron said. "Tuesday night, soon as Archer leaves for her class at Eisenberg, we pull up to her place and wait.

  We're running a surveillance. After a while we happen to notice a black man with a briefcase enter the house. We sit tight. For all we know Archer gave him the key."

  Janek nodded. "Go on."

  "After a while the dude comes out. And now we notice instead of a briefcase he's carrying this overstuffed satchel. We look at each other. 'Hey,' we say,,maybe a robbery was committed in there.' So, having probable cause, we step out of our car and grab the guy. Leo's scared. He's done two tours in Attica, and he doesn't want to go up for a third. He starts to bargain. Is there any way he can get himself out of this mess? We don't take bribes, we're not that kind, but we're very interested in what he may have seen that could tie Doc Archer to the Happy Families crimes. Well, seems with all his snooping around Leo came across some pretty interesting evidence. So he trades what he saw for a walkaway deal on the robbery. And on the basis of that, valid information from an informant, we get a warrant, go in legally, and impound whatever he saw." "Suppose Leo doesn't see anything?"

  "Then he exits with an empty satchel. The satchel's the signal: If it's bulging with stuff, he's seen something, we move in on him and make the deal. Otherwise no harm done. He just walks away." Aaron looked at Janek. "What do you think?"

  Janek stared ahead. "We never had this conversation."

  Aaron shook his head. "That's right, Frank. We never talked about any of this."

  Tuesday, December 1. All day Janek asked himself if he wasn't making an enormous mistake. Twenty-five years in law enforcement and he'd never done a deal like this. Suppose Leo doesfind something, he asked himself, and they go in after it, and then Archer gets a smart lawyer who finds Leo's entry just a wee bit coincidental The lawyer goes to the D.A., who opens Leo up with the threat of a perjury charge. Leo quickly gives up Aaron, but Aaron hangs tough.

  Could he, Janek, live with himself if Aaron got in trouble for helping him out? No way! He'd turn himself in with the result that the doctrine of "poisoned fruit" would prevail, the evidence against Archer would be tainted and quashed, Archer would get away with murder, and he, Janek, could end up doing a year in the penitentiary.

  Would it be worth it? Not if it went down that way, it wouldn't be.

  But there was another scenario, far more succulent. With one bold stroke he might solve a case that could otherwise require years of orthodox investigation.

  That, he was ashamed to admit, was a possibility he could not resist.

  At seven that evening, fifteen minutes after Archer's last patient left her house, Beverly Archer herself emerged, bundled in a shapeless gray goose down coat.

  It was teeth-chattering weather. Janek and Aaron watched shivering from their parking spot as Beverly seemed almost to be swept by the wind down to the corner of Eighty-first and Second, then attempted to flag down a cab.

  Several passed her by. Perhaps they didn't like the look of the short, dumpy lady thrashing at the air with her arms. But then a large Checker glided to a halt, Archer hopped in, the cab took off downtown, and, a few seconds later, after Janek stepped out of the car, Aaron waved to him and took off after the cab. For thirty minutes Janek waited on the corner, collar up, arms clutched to his chest, trying to avert his face from the wintry wind. "Knives-in-the-cheeks" was what he called the relentless, driven icy air that ripped into the sides of his face. He was shaking when Aaron finally returned. He stumbled back into the car, then immediately began rubbing his hands while Aaron pulled into a fire hydrant zone directly across the street from Archer's house.

  "Sorry I took so long. I thought I should follow her all the way just in case she forgot something and came back."

  "She could still come back."' "Harder now. Class started at seven-thirty. Which gives us a good hour and a half." He glanced at his watch. "Leo should be turning up. I talked to him this afternoon. Yesterday morning he did his utility man routine. No problems. The alarm system's disarmed." Aaron grinned at Janek. "Don't worry, Frank. No paper trail. I called him from a booth."

  But Janek was nervous. Still got time to cancel this madness, he thought. He was about to call the whole deal off when Aaron gestured toward the corner. Leo Titus was crossing Third Avenue.

  "Good old Leo," Aaron whispered.

  Later Janek would wonder if the reason he didn't cancel then was that he didn't want to cause Aaron to lose face.

  Leo didn't even g
lance at them as he approached the house. And then Janek had to admire the man's cool. Leo walked straight up to Archer's front door, paused briefly, and two seconds later he was in, the door was closed again, and even someone watching would have no reason to suspect that a burglar had just entered the house.

  "Guy's got moves," Aaron marveled.

  Fifty minutes passed before Janek became uneasy. Then, when he asked Aaron if Leo wasn't due out pretty soon, Aaron responded with patronizing patience as if Janek were a rookie in need of a steadying hand.

  "Keep the faith, Frank. This is our one crack at her. It's gotta be a thorough search. Leo's good. He knows how to look for stuff, and he knows how much time he's got left. Don't worry. If there's something in there, he'll find it."

  But that wasn't what Janek was worried about.

  Twenty minutes later Aaron, too, started showing signs of nervousness.

  "Class breaks at nine. Takes her a minimum of fifteen minutes to get home. Point of fact, she usually hangs around a while answering questions, stuff like that. So we're safe for another half hour at least."

  "Does Leo think he's got till nine-ten?"

  Aaron exploded. "I'm not stupid, Frank! I told him nine max.

  He's got fifteen more minutes. He'll make it. Trust me-he'll be out of there in time."

  At eight fifty-five they turned to each other. "Should have wired him up," Aaron said.

  But Aaron knew there was no way they could have wired Leo, though it would have been nice to listen to him as he worked. If they wired him and something went wrong, their role would be exposed.

  At nine Aaron smashed his fist against the steering wheel. "That son of a bitch better not try a double cross."

  "Could he?" Janek asked.

  "If he found something really valuable-I don't know." Aaron paused.

  "I can't imagine it. Anyway, we would have seen him come out." He paused. "Unless there's some way he found to sneak out through the back." He hit the wheel again. "But he wouldn't. He wouldn't dare! He knows I'd come after him. I'd never rest!"

  Ten minutes later Aaron announced he was going in no matter the risk to the case. Janek gently put his hand on Aaron's arm.

  "Yeah, you're right, someone has to go in. But this is my case. If it's going to get screwed up, I'll do the screwing."

  "You can't go in there, Frank. You're a lieutenant, for Christ sakes!"

  "I'll say I saw a thief enter and followed him in hot pursuit."

  "Jesus!

  "They'll believe me."

  "Leo's my boy. I feel… awful."

  "Could be it's not his fault. Maybe he ran into whatever." Janek picked up a radio. "No talking unless you see Archer. Then just one squawk."

  It was only on the doorstep of Archer's house that he wondered how he was going to get inside. He wasn't one of those detectives who excelled at opening locks. But when he took hold of the doorknob, turned it, and pushed, he was not surprised to find the door opening easily. Somehow he expected it to open, as if he had dreamed of the very sound it would make, as if everything that had happened and would happen on this night was familiar to him in some mysterious way.

  The door, of course, was taped. Perhaps Aaron had told him Leo always taped his doors while describing the burglar's technique. Janek closed the door softly behind him, then stood very still. The hallway was dark except for a residual glow from the street that filtered in through the narrow leaded windows on either side of the portal.

  The coat closet door was open. lanek glanced inside.

  A tiny bulb on the burglar alarm keyboard burned red to show that the system was armed up.

  But Leo had neutralized it the day before. There was no danger; motion detectors would not set off the siren. Janek listened but heard nothing. Then he thought he felt vibrations, a faint thump on the floor above. He glanced at his watch. Nine-eleven. He had four minutes to find Leo and get out. He headed for the stairs. they were carpeted. He could barely hear his own footsteps as he crept up to the landing. He paused to listen again. This was the mysterious residential portion of the house he had been thinking about for a week. Janek waited until his eyes adjusted to the darkness, then continued to the second floor. Nine-twelve. Three more minutes. He noticed a reddish glow from an open doorway down the hall. He passed a closed door, probably a closet, then a door that was partially open. A glimpse of floor tiles suggested a bathroom. He paused.

  "Leo," he whispered. When he heard nothing, he whispered the burglar's name again and again heard no response.

  He crept farther up the hall to the open doorway where he'd seen the glow. He stood there and peered into a cavernous high-ceilinged room strangely filled, like a photographer's darkroom, with dim red light.

  It was a bedroom, but unlike any bedroom he had ever seen except perhaps in a movie. An enormous fourposter stood free, a foot or so from one of the walls. Opposite the bed there was a wide niche which once may have contained a fireplace. In this niche hung a fulllength life-size oil portrait of a woman. A light extending from the wall above the painting shed red light upon its surface. Janek stared at the picture, his eyes riveted to its dominating imagery. The woman depicted wore a lowcut silk scarlet dress and held a microphone in her hand. Posed before a dark velour curtain held open by a gilded rope, she appeared to be singing in a smoky ambience. But what was most striking about her was the halo of thick, glossy red curls that surrounded her head, her hard-edged alabaster white features, and the equally pale, lustrous exposed flesh of her upper bosoms, which swelled within the clinging silk of her dress. The woman made a striking figure, at once carnal and statuesque, sensual and unobtainable. And although the painter had worked in a standard academic style, he had caught something vibrant and alive in his subject, a moment when she projected herself, bursting with life-force, to the viewer.

  But even as Janek was awed by the powerful image before him, his head began to whirl with a kaleidoscopic array of other images in the room.

  Below the portrait, arranged upon an odd piece of furniture set within the niche, he saw a number of anomalous objects he could not make out clearly in the red light. Something about them was important. He wanted to decipher them, and was about to move closer to do so, when his eyes, drawn around the room, fastened onto the curled figure of a man lying on the floor at the foot of the bed in a puddle of dark liquid.

  Leo!

  The moment it registered on him that Leo Titus was lying there, probably dead in a pool of his own blood, the radio strapped to his belt began to squawk. A second later he heard Aaron's voice.

  "Shit, Frank! She's coming now, fast!"

  Gotta get out of here!

  Hearing a sound behind, Janek turned in time to see a short, slim, baldheaded figure, dressed top to bottom in black, ice pick in hand, poised in the doorway to the room. A second later the figure, weapon raised, was rushing at him through the reddish gloom. Janek feinted to the left. At the same time he reached for the Colt strapped to his ankle. Too late. Before he could crouch, his attacker was upon him, plunging down the weapon.

  He knew he'd been hit. No pain, but he could feel the steel strike the bone of his shoulder and then his right arm hanging limp. His only chance now, he knew, was to get to his gun with his left hand. He knelt and struggled for it even as he saw his assailant step back two paces, produce a second ice pick, raise it, and thrust at him again.

  He ripped the Colt from its holster and, hand trembling, fired at the advancing figure. The pain was coming upon him now, a great wave of pain that filled his head with delirium. He fired a second time, directly into his adversary's body. And in that same split second, when he saw the body blasted back across the room and knew for certain that it was a woman, the pain smashed into him; he felt a wave of nausea and understood that on her second foray she had stabbed him in the throat.

  He could feel the blood gushing out of him. And then, as his legs collapsed slowly, he was seized with the certainty that he was going to die.

  He ca
me to in an ambulance. He knew it was an ambulance because there was a white-coated medic leaning over him, working on his throat, a siren was blasting directly above, and Aaron was crouching by his head, whispering encouragement.

  "Hang in there, Frank. Just a block from Lenox Hill Emergency."

  "Aaron…

  "Frank?" Aaron's face was above him now, slightly blurry but recognizable.

  "It was Archer, wasn't it?" Aaron shook his head. "Wasn't her. But don't worry II Aaron smiled. "You got her. You blew the little bitch away." "Then who?" But before Aaron could reply, Janek felt himself sinking back into a pit of pain. "Tell Monika-"

  Oh-oh-I'm passing out.

  When he woke again, he was on his back, naked beneath a sheet, being wheeled rapidly down a tiled basement corridor. Kit Kopta was by his side. "Kit "Right here, Frank." "Who?" "Don't worry about that now.

  You're going to be all right. The surgeons'll fix you up."

  Surgeons… Christ, it huti!

  Perhaps he dreamed it, though later he would tell people he woke up terrified during the operation, felt the heat of the lights on his face, saw the surgeons and nurses in their pea green smocks and masks, felt the probe of their instruments as they worked on his shoulder and his throat. And then seeing something in their eyes that told him he had a chance to live, he resigned himself and slipped back into a fuzzy chemical-induced sleep.

  Kit was beside him when he came to in the recovery room. He could feel the tight grip of her hand. "You're going to be okay, Frank. I've got some good news for you, too. Aaron got hold of Monika. She's flying in tonight."

  "Great…" he murmured.

  "Your arm should be all right. A week here, a week at home, and that should do it. As for your throat-well, another quarter inch and she'd have waxed you. She didn't, thank God!"