Which is all to say that it was not a completely steady hand that pulled open Margo’s apartment door. Ever since that incident with the art appraiser, when I answer someone’s knock, my gaze does not first seek out the face. It goes for the hands.
LEONARD COX’S HANDS WERE IN HIS POCKETS. HE WASN’T IN HIS POLICE uniform. He was wearing jeans and a black leather jacket.
“Cop Cox,” I said.
“Malone.”
“May I say how lovely it is to see you? Especially at this hour.”
“You gonna let me in?”
I stepped back from the doorway and he came in. The scent of stale tobacco joined him. I made the introductions. Margo remained cool, opting not to mask her irritation.
“You’ll excuse me if I go back to bed?” she said, aiming her italics as much to me as to Cox. Or so I thought. But she retreated down the hallway with a goofy sliding action, something like a modified cross-country skiing step, and I knew she was only half as peeved with me as she was putting on.
I turned to Cox. “What’s this about? How’d you know to find me here?”
“You weren’t at your place. I checked there first.”
“Which doesn’t explain how you tracked me down here. What’s going on?”
“Carroll said you might be here.”
“Come on.”
He followed me into the living room. He pulled up short when he got there. “Jesus.” His eyes scanned the hundreds of spines.
“That grumpy chick in the bathrobe eats books for breakfast. There’re twice as many as you see. They’re double-shelved.”
“That’s a lot of fucking books.”
“Right. Well, she’s a colossus. But my guess is you aren’t here to borrow the letters of Harold Nicolson. Why have you been asking Tommy Carroll how to find me? Has something happened?” I sat down in the wicker rocker and motioned Cox to have a seat. He took the claw-foot chair.
“We found your car.”
“We?”
“Somebody phoned in an abandoned car with a smashed-in window on Flatbush. It was a rental. We ran it and came up with you. You rented it this evening from Dollar on Fifty-second.”
“Correct.”
“You were talking to the captain earlier tonight. You told him you were going to lean on some whores to try to find Ramos.”
“Yeah, that’s more or less how I put it.”
“Is that how you got your face scraped up?”
“Maybe. Or maybe I had a motor-skill meltdown when I was shaving. I hope you didn’t come over here at three-thirty in the morning just to show off your sleuthing abilities. I rented a car, I went looking for Ramos among people who might know where he is. For this you ask Tommy Carroll where my girlfriend lives?”
“You ran into trouble.”
“Stop telling me what I just did!” My explosion even took me by surprise, but I kept going with it. “Jesus Christ, Cox, you’ve got about five seconds to tell me why you’re here, or else guess what? You’re not here. What the hell is so goddamn important that Tommy Carroll had the nerve to give you this goddamn address?”
Cox hesitated. His eyes hardened. I didn’t care one bit for the smirk he didn’t bother to hide. “Why don’t you keep it down, Malone? You’re going to disturb the little lady.”
I was across the room in two seconds. Cox rose, which made it easier for me to get two fistfuls of his jacket. He was ready for me, though, and he landed a pair of piston shots to my shoulders. I backpedaled, releasing the jacket.
“Assaulting an officer,” Cox said coolly.
“Trespassing.”
“You let me in.”
The desire to leap at him welled up again, but I held my ground this time and waited for it to pass. There’s no gain in two cavemen pounding stones against each other’s heads. I was as irked with myself for losing my temper as I was with Cox for provoking it. He remained standing with his hands at the ready, like a gunslinger in the middle of Main Street. I could see in his expression that he’d be more than happy for me to keep the discourse purely physical. He was at least five years younger than me and two inches taller, and his reactions were probably a little sharper than mine at this particular moment. I was tired, for Christ’s sake. Pimps and blackjacks and prostitutes and pepper spray will do that to you, I don’t care what anyone says. Besides, the last thing I wanted was for Margo to come in and see me and Cox grappling on the floor in front of the fireplace like a couple of rejects from a D. H. Lawrence story.
“I’m listening,” I said. “Either give me something to hear or leave.”
“You ran into Donna Bia tonight.”
“For God’s sake, Cox, please don’t start in with the play-by-play again. Yes. I did. How do you know that?”
“I know it, that’s all. What did she tell you?”
I indicated my face. “She let her fingers do the talking.”
“Are we getting any closer to Ramos?”
“Is that why you’ve come over here at three-thirty in the morning? To ask me that? No. We’re not. She pretended she was going to take me to him. She pretended she was about to call him. That’s when she sprayed me.”
“Sprayed you?”
“Pepper spray. It was in her purse. I guess a girl’s got to protect herself.”
“I guess she must have used up all her protection on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Donna Bia’s body was found in the back of a laundry van at the Niagara Company lot just after midnight. Her throat had been sliced from one end to the other.”
My knees weakened. “Who found her?”
“Anonymous tip.”
“Good old anonymous tip. Is that where she was killed? In the van?”
“Hard to say yet. But it looks like it. There’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
“In her mouth. The M.E. on the scene found something in her mouth.”
“Besides teeth and tongue?”
“A finger. Sliced off at the base.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “Hers?”
“A man’s.”
“Philip Byron’s.”
He nodded “M.E. says it was a fresh cut. He figures the finger got chopped near the same time Donna Bia got the ugly smile. Same knife.”
“Ugly smile. I haven’t heard that one.”
Cox ran a finger across his throat in a lazy arc. “She was one real piece of ass, you know?” he said. “Serious good stuff. Our goddamn Angel is really getting out of hand.”
COX STAYED ANOTHER TWENTY MINUTES OR SO. I PRESSED HIM, AND he told me that on getting word of Donna Bia’s murder, he had gone directly to the Flea Club to “rattle some of those nigger spics” and see if he could get any information about Donna’s activities and whereabouts in the hours prior to her throat being slashed from ear to ear. That’s when he learned about me. Not by name, of course, but the most cursory description was all he needed, especially once my window-smashed rental car was located.
“So you knew that Donna hung out at the Flea Club,” I said.
“Sure. It’s one of those spots.”
“Why didn’t you go looking for her once Angel’s name surfaced?”
“You mean like you did?”
“Okay. Yes.”
“I planned to. But it’s not like I could put on civvies and just go walking into the Flea like you did. This is my beat. They know me. If I approached Donna publicly, that’s a lot of eyes that have seen her getting the shakedown from a cop. Do you think she’s going to give up Angel when she knows word’ll come right back to him?”
I thought about this. It made sense. “Why do you think Angel killed her?” I asked. “The one thing she did not do was lead me to him. The way she behaved in that car, he should have given her a medal.”
“Maybe Angel didn’t believe her story.”
“Or maybe it was the fact that she went far enough to get in my car in the first place.”
Cox made a snorting soun
d. “Ramos? Not a chance. Donna might have been his main hump but she wasn’t like his wife or anything. He could handle her going down on other men. She was part of his cash flow, for Christ’s sake.”
“So why give her the ugly smile?”
Cox shrugged. “Got me. I think at this point, Angel’s probably keeping himself so high there’s no telling why the hell he’s doing any of this. The finger shit? That’s ugly. This boy’s over the edge. Who knows? Maybe Donna shows up, tells him a private dick was using her to get to him. He asks her some questions, and she doesn’t answer the way he wants her to. Boom. Out comes the knife. Or maybe he just figures he got lucky this time, and next time someone’s going to squeeze her better than you did. But let me tell you something. You shouldn’t try to overthink someone like Ramos. Don’t try putting logic to it. He’s a homicidal dopehead. He’s been pissing blood since he was a kid. Guy like that is just pure evil, end of story. He doesn’t give a crap about killing people. Killing Donna like that? If anything, it probably got his rocks off. By now it’s probably already ‘Donna who?’ ”
He asked for something to drink, and I went into the kitchen and got him a glass of water. If he had something harder in mind, he didn’t say so. He set the glass down, then said there was one more matter he wanted to run by me.
“Guy I talked to outside the Flea told me that Donna had bitched a blue streak to him that she lost some shit from her purse when the two of you had your little fight.”
“You might call it little.”
“The guy said she was real upset.”
“Yeah, the things we think are important. She won’t be needing them now.”
“So she did lose some stuff in your car? Can I have a look?”
“Hold on.”
I went down the hallway to the bedroom. The bedside light was on. Margo was sitting up in bed, reading a book of poetry by Deborah McAlister. Her face was pinched into a frown.
“Those poems are going to give you wrinkles,” I said.
“They’re good.”
“But you’re frowning.”
“It’s called focus. There are layers within layers.”
“Isn’t that always the way?”
I went to the opposite side of the bed and pulled Donna Bia’s phone and lipstick and drug vial from the drawer of the bedside table.
Margo folded her book onto her finger. “Hero cop still here?”
“He’s leaving soon.”
“I don’t like him.”
“I don’t like him, either,” I said. “We’ll keep him off our Christmas list.”
“As if.” She scooted up on her pillows. “What are you doing with those things?”
“Donna Bia was found murdered a couple of hours ago. Throat slashed.”
“Nice.”
“Cox was curious about the stuff that fell out of her purse. Someone told him that Donna’d been crabbing about it.” I came back around the foot of the bed.
Margo set her book down on the sheets. “Wait.”
“What?”
She said nothing for a moment. She was thinking. Sometimes when Margo’s thinking, she looks like her father, that same out-of-focus stare.
“Maybe he just wants the drugs.”
I held up the vial. “This?”
“I don’t like him,” she said again. “What’s he doing here?”
“I told you. He came by to tell me about Donna. He knew that I’d been with her earlier tonight.”
The frown had returned. “Ever hear of a phone? Or waiting until a decent hour?”
“That’s just cops,” I said. “They don’t give a damn.”
“This is the guy you think shot Roberto Diaz in cold blood, right?”
“That’s the man.”
“He should be in prison, not sitting in my living room. I don’t think you should give him what he’s asking for. I don’t trust him.”
“Margo, I’m sure a cop like Cox can get ahold of all the dope he wants, if that’s what he’s into. He’s hardly going to come all the way over here at three-thirty in the morning just to lift a little vial of whatever this is. Besides, he didn’t even know what fell out of Donna’s purse. He was just told ‘stuff.’ ”
“That’s what he’s telling you.”
“That’s what he was told by some guy.”
“That’s what he’s telling you.”
“How would some guy he’s talking to know the specifics of what fell out of the purse?”
“Maybe it wasn’t some guy. Maybe Cox actually talked to Donna.”
I heard movement from the living room, and I stepped over to the door and pulled it closed. Margo sat up higher on the pillows.
“Daddy always says to doubt.”
“I know he does. And it drives your mother crazy.”
“If this were that tall policeman. The black one?”
“Patrick Noon.”
“If this was him, I’d let the scales tip toward believing him. But this guy?” She raised both hands, palms flat, then let one rise higher while the other dropped all the way to the bed. She lowered her voice. “That’s a murderer in there, Fritz. That’s all I’m saying. Heepy-creepy.”
I looked at the three items I was holding. Margo was right, of course. My line of business is about doubt, not about trust. I’ve had more than a few meaty discussions with super-shrink Phyllis Scott on that topic in my day. I ran back Cox’s story in my head. Simple. Clean. Believable. Still, Margo was right. From someone like Patrick Noon, it would be easy to believe. But with Leonard Cox?
I handed one of the items to Margo. “Put this away, will you?” Then I leaned forward and gave her a peck on the top of the head.
“Down here, stupid,” she said, and I gave her a peck on the lips. “That’s better.”
I indicated her book. “Find us a sexy poem. I’ll go ditch the cop and be right back.”
I returned to the living room. Cox was standing in front of the bookcases. His water glass was on the coffee table. I noticed he hadn’t touched it. He turned sharply as I came into the room.
“Everything okay?”
“Fine,” I said. He didn’t look convinced. “Just wiping up a domestic puddle.” I handed him Donna Bia’s lipstick and her vial of powder.
“That’s it?”
“That’s all I found.”
“Those two things?”
“Right.”
“Well… okay.” He sounded doubtful. He pocketed the two items. At the door, he started to say something, then changed his mind and left without a further word.
Margo had the sexy poem all ready when I returned to the bedroom. It wasn’t from the book she was reading. She made it up herself.
“You’re a talented chick, aren’t you?” I said, turning off the light.
A warm foot touched my knee. “So I’m told.”
30
I SHOWERED AT MARGO’S IN THE MORNING-EARLY, BEFORE SHE’D gotten up-but had nothing clean to put on, so I took the subway downtown and worked my way into fresh skins at my place. I brewed up some coffee. I would’ve as soon flipped open my skull and poured it directly onto my brain, but the hinges were too rusty.
There were two messages on my machine, both from Captain John Kersauson of the Ninety-fifth Precinct. Apparently I hadn’t given him my card, which has my cell phone number, so he’d found me in the book. He said he had called my office number as well. The first message was a request that I come into the station at my earliest convenience to give a statement to the detective in charge of the Donna Bia murder concerning my activities the night before from the time I left the police station, specifically those activities concerning the deceased. The second message had come forty minutes later and told me to skip it “for now.” He went on, “I spoke with the commissioner. He says you’re busy. Must be nice having a fairy godfather like that.”
I had already determined that my first stop of the morning would be to see the fairy godfather himself. I recalled last night’s encounter wit
h the brooding thundercloud that was Tommy Carroll. No one would ever accuse him of being a happy man; that was never the cut of his suit. But I knew he was a proud man, hardworking and accomplished well beyond the crowd he’d grown up with. Unlike Martin Leavitt, whose aspirations-I believed Carroll was right on this-were aimed for even bigger and glossier brass rings than what he had already achieved, Tommy Carroll’s boyhood dreams had been realized when he became police commissioner for the city of New York. Carroll had reached his Everest. When my father had gotten his nod to head the NYC Police Department, Captain Tommy Carroll had cornered me at one of the congratulatory bashes thrown for the old man and told me that my father was now the most important man in New York City. “Day to day?” he had said. “On the streets? It’s all about the cops. They grease the wheels in this city. All the other crap that’s New York, it doesn’t happen unless you’ve got the cops. It’s your father now who’s going to make this city run. No one else. The man in that office? He’s the king.”
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