Dead Famous

by Carol O'Connell

  Many obscenities could be read into the grim, tight line of Hennessey’s mouth, for he was not actually in need of this magnanimous forgiveness from an out-of-towner, an interloper with no authority over him.

  Riker nodded his goodnight to the man beside him, then opened the passenger door and stepped out onto the pavement. “Argus, follow me.” And because the Chicago agent did not appear to understand a direct order, he jacked up the volume, shouting, “Move! Now!” As they walked away from the car, Hennessey made a thumbs-up gesture. Riker had just earned some currency with this local fed.

  “So,” said Argus, “you got something for me?”

  “Keep it down.” Riker glanced back at the gallery of fans clustered in front of the door to the radio station. When they were beyond earshot, he turned on the man, saying, “You lied about Agent Kidd. He was never Jo’s patient.”

  “Is that what she said? Tim had regular appointments with the lady—four times a week during office hours. That sounds like a doctor-patient relationship to me.”

  “That only tells me you were following Kidd—spying on one of your own guys.”

  “He was unstable,” said Argus. “Everybody knew—”

  “You think getting tailed by his own people might’ve made him a little crazier?”

  Argus averted his face, signaling a lie in the making, but then he shook his head and looked Riker in the eye. “After Timmy Kidd was murdered, I questioned that woman for hours and hours, five, six interviews, and she’d never tell me what they talked about on those visits. She was keeping a doctor-patient confidentiality.”

  “Did she ever spell that out for you?”

  “No, but I still say she was treating Tim.”

  Riker put more faith in Jo’s story. Agent Kidd was always Timothy to her—his friend—never Tim or Timmy. Marvin Argus had hardly known the murdered man.

  “Shrinks,” said the lying fed. “They’ll never give you a straight answer about a patient, not even a dead one. What else did Johanna say?”

  Riker shook his head. He was here to get information, not give it away. “Kidd was based in D.C. I think he could’ve found a psychiatrist closer to home. Not one more lie. You got that? You still don’t know why Kidd was in Chicago, do you?”

  Argus shrugged this off. “He didn’t report to me—not directly.”

  Not at all.

  “And Jo was never a suspect,” said Riker.

  “Wrong, and the Chicago cops will back me up on this. She was the prime suspect for Timmy’s murder. If I hadn’t taken her into the witness protection program, she’d still be in police custody. Even the damn cops knew that Tim was nuts. This is the way they figured it before they lost the homicide to us. Only his own doctor—Dr. Apollo—could get that close to a flaming paranoid, close enough to slit his throat. And a little paranoia wouldn’t hurt you right now, either. You couldn’t play it quiet like I asked. No, you had to play cop. Well, you’re not on the force anymore, so be real careful about who sidles up to you.” He tucked his business card into the pocket of Riker’s leather jacket. “And whatever Johanna tells you, bring it to me.”

  “Yeah, like that’s ever gonna happen.”

  A black limousine sailed past them, then rolled to a stop in front of the radio station. The street door opened, and a lean figure in a hooded sweatshirt emerged from the building. The fans converged on him, and he signed their autograph books before climbing into the backseat of the limo. The long black car pulled away from the curb, followed at a discreet distance by Agent Hennessey. Marvin Argus ran toward his own vehicle, planning to join the parade. And the fans quickly melted away, leaving Riker alone on the sidewalk. Well, not entirely alone.

  He stared at the pavement, watching a stealthy shadow coming up behind his own. Without turning around, he said, “Mallory, you’re overpaid.” As she came abreast of him, he held up a crumpled ball of papers, her falsified dossier on his life. “I found a few mistakes in this.”

  “So Zachary made you an offer? You’re on his payroll?”

  “No, but nice try. You might’ve run that past me before you set me up.” He turned toward the street and the distant cavalcade of departing vehicles. “The FBI hates Ian Zachary. So how does he rate a security surveillance?”

  “I arranged that,” said Mallory. “I sent a few death threats to the local feds so they’d keep an eye on him for me.”

  “Mallory, you can’t—”

  “I can’t be everywhere at once,” she said. “Up till now, I’ve been playing the game by myself.”

  This rebuke was another reminder that he had abandoned her and left her all alone in Copland. So, if she had to bend the law a bit, well, that was clearly his fault. Her logic was flawed but consistent; she always came out blameless. And he had to smile because this policy of hers had not changed since she was ten years old. Here was his old Kathy.

  “It’s your turn,” she said. “Wait for Zachary, then follow him. I’ll catch up with you at the bar on Green Street.”

  Riker raised one hand to point the way Zachary’s limousine had gone. His extended arm hung in the air for one foolish moment before dropping to his side. “He wasn’t in that limo.”

  “Right,” said Mallory. “He uses a double every night. You see? It’s all coming back to you. Once a cop, always a cop.”

  She walked down the dark street, traveling almost the length of the block before he fully grasped what had just happened. She had sicced the feds on Ian Zachary, then duped them by letting them chase a doppelgänger. Before he could ask why, Mallory turned a corner and disappeared.

  A truck with the logo of a janitorial service pulled up to the radio station. Five men in orange coveralls piled out and unloaded mops, machines and cleaning supplies. Riker backed into the dark of a doorway and waited the length of one cigarette. A man emerged from the building across the street and moved down the sidewalk at the pace of an elderly arthritic. He wore orange coveralls like the janitors, but none of those men had been stooped with age, nor had any of them worn the slouch hat that hid this man’s face in shadow.

  Following at a distance, Riker saw his target stand erect before descending a concrete slope to the lower level of a parking garage. Slowing his steps to give the man some lead time, Riker strolled down a ramp marked for one-way traffic. He was heading toward the lighted window of an empty ticket booth. At the bottom of the ramp, in place of a human being, an automated ticket machine extended its mechanical arm across the ramp to halt incoming vehicles with a bar of wood. Riker moved out of the way to allow a blue sedan to crawl past him. At the bottom of the ramp, the driver reached out the window and pulled a ticket from the mouth of the machine. The mechanical arm raised to let the car pass. Beyond that wooden barrier, all Riker could see were patches of light and empty parking spaces.

  A gunshot exploded in the cavern below, quickly followed by the screech of the blue sedan’s brakes and echoes of the bang.

  Riker rocked on one foot, caught midstride and off balance. His body stiffened, his chest seized up, and he was dropping like a manikin. In an act of pure reflex, his hands shot out in front of him to soften his fall and save him from a broken nose, but now his arms had turned useless. He could not move them, nor could he breathe. This time, he thought his lungs would burst. The panic was ratcheting higher and higher, heart racing.

  The gunshot had also panicked the driver of the blue sedan. The car was backing up, hitting the guardrail in haste to get out. Riker heard the crack of the wooden barrier, then footsteps and a tapping sound. His face pressed to concrete, all he could see was a dark coat and the white tip of a blind man’s cane. No help was coming from that quarter.

  Another gunshot sounded—and another.

  The blue sedan moved forward, and Riker knew what would happen next. The frightened driver wanted distance before he reversed his gears and crashed backward into the wooden barrier that trapped him. The driver would not be checking for bodies in his rearview mirror.

  Riker kne
w he was a dead man, out of breath and flat out of time. He heard the grinding of the gears reversing, the car engine revving, backing up, crashing through the rail, coming to smash his head like a melon. A warm body covered his own and rolled with him back to the wall and safety as the blue sedan sped past him in reverse. Riker’s eyes were closing as his deliverer eased her body off of him to kneel at his side, but he was aware of Jo’s hands on his chest, his face, and then her mouth was pressed to his as she breathed for him, filling his lungs with air. Panic and fear yielded to a lightness of the head, a floating sensation.

  “Listen,” she said. “It’s like the day you almost wrecked the van. You won’t die. If you lose consciousness, all the muscles will relax.” And then she whispered, “Don’t be afraid.”

  And he was not.

  The paralysis had passed off, and what had begun as the kiss of life became a kiss for its own sake. Drunk on the euphoria of oxygen deprivation, that part of his brain where the thinking was done excused itself and stepped off a cliff. His hands were on the back of her neck, pressing her closer, his fingers tangling in her hair. Jo was life and breath and more.

  She pulled back.

  He tried to rise, and she put one hand flat on his chest to restrain him. “Stay here,” she said. “I’ll get help.”

  He had his breath back—and his mind had also come back to him. “Get out of here, Jo.” He pushed her hand aside. “Go now! I need backup. Get to a phone.” He was on his feet again and running down the ramp toward the thing that scared him more than anything else on earth. And he could not have done otherwise. This was a cop’s job, running toward the sound of guns. Past the splintered guardrail and running on level ground, he rounded a thick pillar and came upon two men in a pool of overhead light.

  Ian Zachary had lost the slouch hat of his janitor disguise. Unarmed, he squared off against the man who held the gun, taunting him. “What’s wrong with you, MacPherson? A thirteen-year-old girl could’ve made that shot.”

  The other man, small and rail thin, raised his revolver and fired three shots at Zachary’s chest.

  Riker remained standing this time, fighting down the panic as bone locked with bone and every muscle constricted. He would not suffocate and die. This would pass; he knew it would because he believed in Jo. He was hyperaware of every detail to this scene: his banging heart, the sweat on his upper lip. And he could see that the gunshots had no effect on Zachary. The shooter could not have missed, but there were no holes in the target’s orange coveralls and no ricochets off concrete walls.

  Blanks?

  Agape, Zachary stared at Riker, no doubt wondering why the frozen man simply stood there rooted to the cement. The paralysis passed off faster this time, and Riker relaxed into a casual stance, feigning mild interest in the stranger with the gun. When he felt steady and able again, he strode toward the shooter, rolling his body with all the old authority of the badge. He took the weapon from the man’s trembling hand, saying so casually, “So you’re MacPherson.” He opened the revolver’s cylinder and checked the chambers. “You’re out of bullets. Tough break, pal.”

  Riker glanced at Ian Zachary and the bulk beneath the orange coveralls. Was the man wearing a bulletproof vest? Of course he was. All that bravado had come from a civilian’s lame idea that the vest would take the bullet with no harm done. But getting shot in the chest was worth a ride to the hospital, vest or no vest.

  “I have a carry permit.” MacPherson’s voice was shaky, and his eyes had the vacant look of a trauma victim. He was assuming that Riker was police, for now he unfolded a paper and handed it over, as if this might excuse him for this ambush of an unarmed man.

  Riker held the document at arm’s length to read the small print. Yes, this was MacPherson, one of the last three living jurors and duly authorized to carry a pistol for the purpose of self-defense. He handed the permit back, saying, “Okay, I guess you’re licensed to shoot him.”

  Not seeing any humor in this situation, MacPherson actually seemed relieved that he was not in any serious trouble. Riker pulled back the man’s coat to expose a metal cylinder hanging from his belt. He unhooked the speedloader and emptied its store of ammo into his hand. The cartridges were capped with wax to hold the charge of gunpowder, but no bullets.

  “More blanks?” Riker was that rare person who did suffer fools gladly, for the criminally misguided had always been his chief source of entertainment. “So you thought you might need to reload in a hurry . . . with emergency blanks.”

  MacPherson nodded, then forced a smile because Riker was smiling.

  “Imbecile.” Ian Zachary shook his head slowly from side to side and leaned back against an old junker of a car, the perfect complement to his disguise of workman’s coveralls. He was a portrait of New York élan, so blasé in the aftermath of his own attempted murder. He turned to face Riker, saying, “You’re going to arrest him now, right?”

  “Hell, no. How many ways can I say this?” Riker spoke slowly and carefully in the manner of talking down to a half-bright child. “I—am—not—a—cop—anymore.”

  “You could make a citizen’s arrest.”

  “Naw, I’m gonna buy him a beer. Poor guy, he’s had a rough day.” Riker clapped one hand on MacPherson’s shoulder. “C’mon, you’re with me. I wanna know what the hell went on in that jury room.”

  There was no sound of sirens yet. He knew they should be gone before the first police car arrived. Jo would have located a public phone by now. However, he had a feeling that she would not leave her name as the 911 caller. Riker walked the incompetent shooter up the ramp in silence, and there was time to wonder who the lady had been following tonight. Himself? Was Jo taking the blame for Bunny’s death? Was she worried that another friend would be the next target? Or was it Ian Zachary she was tailing? He glanced at the ashen face of MacPherson and decided to include him on the short list of men who so interested Johanna Apollo.

  From the bowels of the parking garage, Ian Zachary called out, “Can I come? I’ll buy!”

  Riker sat back and enjoyed his favorite brand of bourbon—Free Booze—as Ian Zachary laid out more cash for the cocktail waitress. Turning to the small thin man between them, Riker said, “You’re perfectly safe. This is a cop bar.”

  Once again, MacPherson failed to get the joke. He appeared not to understand that cops usually arrested people for waving guns around in a menacing way. Perhaps there was something to the Reaper’s stupid-juror theory. But then he decided that this man had simply lost the ability to think clearly; he had spent too much time in seclusion, hiding from a maniac who wanted him dead. Riker could empathize with that, though he had never been a man in hiding. That was not his way. And he would never tremble so in public.

  Upon entering this old SoHo haunt, he had made his usual scan of the crowd, checking out young males for signs of psychosis and concealed weapons. And now his gaze settled upon a blind man’s white cane; it leaned against a bar stool draped with a black coat. Squinting for clarity, Riker decided that this man in the silly wig was young, but he could read no finer detail between the long red curls and the oversized dark glasses. The blind man dipped one hand into his coat, and Riker froze, waiting for a bullet. The man withdrew a wallet, set his money on the bar, and Riker began to breathe normally again. It was unlikely that this was the same white cane that had tapped past him in the parking garage twenty blocks away, but he wished he could see this blind man’s eyes.

  Two drinks had gone by, and he had learned nothing of the events that had led MacPherson and his fellow jurors to a not-guilty verdict. But he knew that something shameful had happened in the jury room. That much was in MacPherson’s eyes as the man evaded every question.

  “Well, what is a juror anyway,” Ian Zachary was saying, pontificating to no one, for Riker had ceased to listen and poor MacPherson was sliding into shock. “A juror,” said Zachary, “is someone too stupid to get out of jury duty. Now, this man here, he was one of the rocket scientists in that courtroom.
He’s a math teacher.”

  MacPherson corrected him, saying in a small cracked voice, “Was a math teacher. I lost my job. I still have a wife, though.” He looked down at his bony hands tightly folded in his lap. “But she always cries when I call home.” He also seemed at the point of crying, and his last drink had done nothing to calm his nerves. “The jurors weren’t stupid. Those poor people were only—”

  “Hey, I was there, too,” said Zachary. “Remember me? The defendant? When the prosecutor polled the jury in open court, one by one, they all voted not guilty. And you? You just tried to kill me with blanks, you fool.”

  “I only wanted you to know how it felt to be me.”

  “You mean you didn’t have the guts to kill me. You’re a coward.”

  “No, he isn’t,” said Riker. “He didn’t run, did he? You and your fans set him up, nailed him down to New York City—even the building he lives in. And the Reaper’s probably camped out at his front door right now. I say the man has guts.”

  However, MacPherson was an idiot.

  Riker scribbled a brief note on a cocktail napkin, then pulled Marvin Argus’s business card from his pocket. “It’s time to call for protection, pal. You’re naked now.” Under the cover of the table, he pressed the napkin and the card into the man’s hand.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” said MacPherson. “I just want it to be over.” He glanced down the note, then rose from the table, mumbling, “Men’s room.” He turned his back on them and walked toward the sign for the rest rooms at the rear of the bar.

  “He’s one scared rabbit,” said Zachary. “Or maybe not.” He slid along the seat of the leather booth, moving closer to Riker. “Wouldn’t it be a kick if that was just an act? What if he turned out to be the Reaper?”

  “Yeah, right.” Riker’s attention was divided between the blind man at the bar and MacPherson, who stood by the pay phone, shaking his head and debating the wisdom of making a telephone call to the FBI.