McCloskey almost smiled. “Spare me,” he said, and sighed again. He stared at the ceiling for some time, then continued: “The stiffs’ names were Floyd and Baxter Small; that’s what their identification said. There was nothing on them to indicate that they worked for Nuvironment.”
“But they did,” I said. “Nobody else would have had an interest in following us.”
“You say.”
“Call Patton or somebody else at Nuvironment and see what they have to say. I don’t believe Patton went to Europe.”
McCloskey looked away. “It seems Patton doesn’t have a phone—listed or unlisted. And nobody’s going to be up there in the office on Christmas Day.”
“Call Henry Blaisdel and see what he has to say. As a matter of fact, I’d like to talk to him if you can get him on the phone.”
“It isn’t the first time the Smalls have made it into the papers,” McCloskey said, ignoring what I thought had been a most helpful suggestion.
Garth grunted. “I don’t recall either of the names, McCloskey. Where would Mongo and I have read about them before?”
“It would have been a small item, maybe a year or two ago. It seems the Small brothers were pro golfers—but not anywhere near top rank. They played on a secondary circuit that toured a lot of the third world countries. They were playing in some tournament in Botswana, of all places, when they both came down with the crazies. It seems they were taking part in some kind of Christian athletes’ prayer meeting in the hotel where they were staying when they had a vision of Jesus. They tore up their passports and all their money, stripped off their clothes, and went running through the lobby screaming at the top of their lungs. They ran right through a plate-glass window, and they were lucky they didn’t cut their heads off. There were difficulties in getting them new papers so they could come back here. It made the papers. Immigration has copies of their new passports on file, if you’re interested.”
“Jesus,” I said. “And you said you didn’t believe us when we told you they went into a religious trance?”
“They didn’t kill themselves in Botswana,” McCloskey mumbled, avoiding my gaze.
“Obviously—but only because the prayer meeting was held on the first floor. Patton, or maybe Henry Blaisdel, seems to have a thing for athletes. He’s got two ex-ballplayers on his staff; they serve as muscle.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“It’s a link.”
“To what?”
It was Garth who answered. “One of Blaisdel’s favorite charities is something called Born Again Christian Athletes for Christ, McCloskey. That strikes me as rather redundant, but that’s what they call themselves. You can look it up. I came across it in the library. In the article, the word ‘fanatical’ was used more than once. Apparently, they’re not to be confused with any of the other organizations of Christian athletes.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” I said to my brother.
“It didn’t seem important at the time; I was looking up Blaisdel’s companies, not his charities.”
“Thank you for the information, Lieutenant,” I said, turning back to McCloskey.
“Yeah.”
“The problem is that it doesn’t do any of us any good, since the Smalls are dead. Nuvironment, the people working there, is the key to this thing. I’m certain Patton is still lurking around here someplace; but if you can’t find him to talk to, then you’re going to have to talk to Henry Blaisdel.”
“Don’t try to tell me how to do my job, Frederickson.”
“Those two worked for Nuvironment—they were being chauffeured around in limousines, for Christ’s sake. Peter Patton is covering up something big, and he’ll obviously risk a lot to make sure nobody finds out what it is. It’s a lot more than a shipment of dirt, or a case of child sexual abuse. Men die for him—or they die to hide his secret. You’ve got a lot of seriously crazy religious zealots on the loose here, Lieutenant, and I’d think you’d want to find out just what it is they’re up to.”
McCloskey was beginning to look seriously distressed. “Being religious—or supporting a Christian athletes’ group—is no crime, Frederickson.”
“Aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice is—and every time Craig Valley or either of the Smalls opened his mouth he sounded like a clone of William Kenecky. Sometimes religion of that brand can kill. Remember the Inquisition? Every single Nazi or neo-Nazi group in the world, in this country, has used that kind of religious interpretation as a foundation stone for the rest of their murderous nonsense. Maybe it’s time you asked the F.B.I. to come in.”
“On the basis of your fantasies?”
“Three men are dead by their own hand, Lieutenant. That’s no fantasy. And all three were in a religious trance when they died. That’s no fantasy.”
McCloskey shook his head. “I hate the fucking F.B.I., just the same as your brother hated the fucking F.B.I. when he was a cop. We don’t need those arrogant, glory-hogging fucks in here.”
“Then what are you going to do about it, Lieutenant?”
“I don’t know,” McCloskey said after a long pause. “I’ll tell the captain what you said, see what he wants me to do.”
“Garth and I are getting back on it right after you let us out of here. You know that.”
“Shit,” the man with the pockmarked face said. “You guys are to trouble what a magnet is to steel filings.”
“We’re looking for a little girl, not trouble. We’re the ones who are being hassled.”
“Mongo and I understand that you’re caught between a rock and a hard place, McCloskey,” Garth said evenly. “If we do come across something unsavory—criminal—in connection with Nuvironment, would you rather we not tell you?”
McCloskey’s black eyes flashed. He sat up abruptly, winced with pain—and then deliberately straightened his back. “Don’t you condescend to or patronize me, you son-of-a-bitch! I’m still a cop, and until next week I’m still on active duty! Don’t you forget it! You find out anything, you’d damn well better let me know about it!”
“Okay,” Garth said in the same even tone. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Well, you did offend me! And let me tell you—!”
McCloskey was interrupted by the sudden ringing of the phone on his desk. He grunted with disgust, snatched up the receiver. “Yeah, what is it?” He listened, and the blood slowly drained from his face, making him look even more exhausted and haggard. “What the fuck?! No, leave everything as it is. I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone, rose and snatched his overcoat off a rack in the corner, headed out the door. “You two come with me!” he shouted over his shoulder.
Garth and I looked at each other, then rose and followed after McCloskey. “I wonder what that was all about?” I said as we walked through the squad room, ignoring the heads that turned in our direction.
“I assume we’ll find out soon enough,” Garth replied in a low voice. “Incidentally, all that talk about athletes jogged my memory; I remember where I’ve seen that big, ugly chauffeur before.”
I abruptly stopped, looked at my brother. “Where?”
“On a football field. It was Tanker Thompson.”
“Tanker Thompson? Are you kidding me? I thought he was in prison.”
Garth slowly shook his head. “He’s out now, working for Nuvironment.”
Thomas “Tanker” Thompson, born-again Christian or not, was not a man I wanted at my back, whether in a car or on foot. When he’d played defensive tackle for one of the now-defunct U.S.F.L. football teams, he’d weighed upwards of three hundred pounds, and had been quick as a cat. His problem had been that he was a virulent racist; considering the number of pro football players who are black, he’d apparently never had a problem getting himself worked up for game day. One day he’d gotten himself a little too emotionally worked up. After a missed tackle and an exchange of words with a black running back from another team, Thompson had chopped the man in the larynx with the side
of his hand. Despite an emergency tracheotomy performed on the field, the other man had died two days later. Tanker Thompson had been convicted of aggravated assault, and had become the first athlete in the United States to go to prison on a sports-related charge. A while back, in a “where they are now” column in some magazine, I’d read that he’d undergone a “spiritual conversion” while in prison, and was devoting all his time to religious studies. Obviously, he had been let out on parole, and was now on the payroll of Nuvironment.
It figured.
Still pondering the unpleasant implications of having a murderous behemoth of an ex–football player assigned to watch over us, I followed Garth out of the station house into a cold, gray Christmas dawn that seemed ominously still and foreboding. I smelled snow; lots of it.
Malachy McCloskey, still pale-faced and looking very agitated, was standing at the curb, nervously tapping his palm on the roof of a squad car that had its motor running. “Let’s go, you two!” he shouted when he saw us, then hurried around to the other side of the car and got in behind the wheel.
“Where are we going, Lieutenant?” I asked as Garth and I got in the back.
McCloskey slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and Garth and I were pressed back in our seats as the car sped away from the curb. He switched on the flashing red light atop the car, but not the siren. “Central Park,” the gray-haired man said tersely as he cut between two cabs.
“And I’ll bet we’re not going to a sunrise service.”
“Hardly,” McCloskey replied, and grunted. “I think someone’s left you two a Christmas present, and it wasn’t Santa Claus.”
9.
It wasn’t a present, but a message.
The good Reverend William Kenecky certainly was no longer going to be abusing Vicky Brown—or anyone else, for that matter. Somebody had crucified the self-styled “scourge of the Lord,” nailed him upside down and naked, with his skinny arms and legs grotesquely splayed, to the trunk of a massive, gnarled oak tree about twenty-five yards off a narrow, twisting path in the heavily wooded section of Central Park known as the Ramble, a notorious trysting place for homosexuals. He was missing his genitals, which had been cut off—or out; he looked like he’d been cored like an apple, and I hoped he’d been dead when it had been done to him. He was a sight, and if I hadn’t so detested this skinny, spiritually bent creature that had walked like a man, I’d have vomited. I was glad I hadn’t eaten in a while. I glanced at Garth to see how he was reacting to this less than cheery Christmas morning sight; my brother didn’t look sick, only thoughtful.
We were standing just behind the police lines—strips of yellow tape that were flapping in a stiff, cold breeze from the northwest. On the other side of the tape, uniformed police officers, detectives, police photographers, and technicians from the coroner’s office were going about their grisly business. Measurements were made as strobe lights flashed; the scene somehow reminded me of one of Kenecky’s shows on television. Twenty yards behind us, crowded together on the narrow trail, a phalanx of reporters and television camera crews were being held at bay by a second phalanx of police officers.
Reverend William Kenecky’s last picture show, I thought.
Shit.
McCloskey, his grizzled, scarred face once again wearing its riot-act expression, separated himself from a knot of uniformed officers and detectives and stalked over to where Garth and I were standing behind the fluttering yellow tape.
“It’s no wonder the two of you are famous,” the detective said in a thick voice. “Lots of people die around you. I’d always heard that about the Fredericksons, but now I’m seeing it for myself.”
I was getting just a tad weary of Malachy McCloskey’s increasingly uninspired quips about my brother and me; I started formulating what I thought would be an appropriate response, one that would undoubtedly include unflattering references to the man’s ancestors, as well as the suggestion that he perform an unlikely act of sexual self-abuse. Fortunately, Garth spoke before I did.
“I haven’t noticed any of the good guys dying around us lately, McCloskey,” Garth said calmly. “And we never met the gentleman hanging on the tree over there. We used to watch him on television; for a piece of shit, he was a great comedian.”
“You’re a cold son-of-a-bitch, Frederickson.”
Garth raised his eyebrows slightly. “Am I? If that means that I don’t feel a lot of sympathy for that skinny, kid-fucking scumbag over there, I guess you’re right. It must be a personality defect. At least somebody put him out of his misery; but the child he abused may have to live with the nightmare memories of what he did to her for the rest of her life. Because of Kenecky, Vicky Brown may never be able to lead a normal life.”
“Maybe you’ve got a point,” McCloskey said, looking down at his feet.
I asked, “Did you find the genitals, Lieutenant?”
McCloskey shook his head. “There’s no blood from the spike wounds in his palms or feet, and precious little from the hole where his prick and balls used to be. You can’t see it from here, but he’s got a bullet hole just behind his left ear. It looks like he was executed someplace else, then mutilated after he was dead; the corpse was brought here and put up for public display—all for the benefit of you two, of course. Somebody’s trying to assure you that the girl’s not going to be harmed anymore.”
“It looks that way, doesn’t it?” Garth said in a flat voice.
McCloskey used the toe of his right shoe to draw a small circle in the snow and leaves on the frozen ground. “It looks like you guys were right about the girl, Kenecky … and maybe a few other things. I apologize to you if I seemed a little … insensitive. You know I’ve got kids of my own. And grandkids. I guess seeing this creep hanging up there brings a lot of things home to me. It makes me think of my own. You know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Speaking of those other things we may be right about, want to bet that the lab people find traces of Amazon rain forest soil under his fingernails?”
“You’ve made me a believer.”
Garth asked, “Any idea of how long he’s been dead, McCloskey?”
“The coroner’s people tell me that’s going to be hard to pin down until they get him on a cutting table. The low temperature complicates everything. The initial estimate is that he died somewhere between six and fourteen hours ago. There are burns on the flesh that could have been caused as a result of the corpse being packed in dry ice.” He paused and laughed grimly, without any trace of humor. “I guess whoever did this wanted him to look fresh for you.”
I grimaced in frustration. “If he’s been dead up to fourteen hours, and the corpse was packed in dry ice, he could have been brought here from anywhere in the country.”
McCloskey shrugged. “Or he could have been killed only a few blocks away, and then kept on ice until now, Christmas morning, as a special gesture. Unless forensics finds something very special on or in him, it’s going to be almost impossible to tell where he was killed.”
“We come back to the postmark on the letter,” Garth said to me. “He had to have been killed somewhere around here, which means that the girl has to be close by. That’s why they went to so much trouble to mask the time of death.”
I thought about it, then slowly, reluctantly, shook my head. “I don’t think we can assume that anymore. We know now that Kenecky was tied in with a multinational corporation, with operations all over the world. True, the letter was certainly mailed somewhere in the New York region; but now we have to consider the possibility that it was brought here from someplace else. It could have been written anywhere.”
“Shit,” Garth said with disgust. “And all we thought we were looking for was a needle in a haystack. In fourteen hours, he could have been brought here from just about anywhere in the world. That’s thousands of haystacks.”
“You two sound as if you’re still worried about finding the girl,” McCloskey said carefully. “If you don’t mind my asking, wh
at’s the point? I thought you agreed that Kenecky was killed and hung up here to assure you that the girl was going to be all right. And you did say that was all you cared about. They got your message, and they sent back one of their own.”
“And their message is a mutilated corpse,” Garth replied evenly. “Before, all we knew was that Vicky Brown was being sexually abused by a lunatic; now we find out that the girl is living with—or under the control of—a whole barrelful of lunatics who think that death doesn’t mean a goddamn thing because they’re all going to be resurrected and go floating up to the sky in a few days. And one of those lunatics is most definitely murderous.” He paused, looked at me. “I don’t think that sounds like a very healthy environment for a child. Do you, Mongo?”
“Absolutely not. And I’m sure the lieutenant agrees.”
“This is police business now,” McCloskey said curtly.
“Finding Kenecky’s murderer is police business,” I said. “Finding the girl in order to make certain she’s all right is our business. I wouldn’t be surprised if we met at the end at the same dirt pile.”
“You’re probably right about that,” McCloskey said distantly. He was looking somewhere over my right shoulder; his face was grim, as if he didn’t like what he saw there.
“The girl is our client.”
“Your client?”
“Right,” I said, and smiled thinly. “We’re acting in loco parentis for Santa Claus.”
Garth asked, “Will you let us know if you find out anything more specific about when and where Kenecky was killed?”
McCloskey frowned. “I don’t know if I can do that, Frederickson.”
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